Nag & Gnaw

Last week British Communist Party Secretary Harry Pollitt, standing before Lenin's portrait, briefed the Party Executive Committee on the new party line from Moscow. British Communists must pep up their policy of gnawing into the trade unions and nagging at the Labor government (which they helped to elect in 1945) for cooperation with the U.S. Pollitt declared war on the Labor Government, which he sneered at as "Right-Wing Social Democracy." British Communists, said Pollitt, must start an organizing drive among trade unions. Their immediate objective was the same as that of French, Italian and U.S. Communists: to scuttle the Marshall Plan.

Pollitt then laid out the party tactics. By encouraging Britain's workers to demand higher wages and a bigger slice from British production, Communists would try to upset Cripps's carefully calculated program for economic recovery. "In our anxiety to drive for increased production," said Pollitt, "we have sometimes done far too little in the fight for wages and conditions. . . . No further cuts . . . must be tolerated and steps [must be] taken to secure immediate wage advances to meet the rising costs of living."

British Labor promptly hit back. Arthur Deakin, Ernie Bevin's successor as head of the powerful Transport and General Workers' Union (1,250,000 members), called on British Labor to oust Communists from their high councils*: "The activities of the Communists within the trade unions are mainly directed to propagating their political faith. . . . We cannot afford to allow the Communists' attempted infiltration into and domination of the trade unions to succeed."

The Trades Union Congress, over Communist protests, voted to support the Marshall Plan as "a statesmanlike approach to the problems of Europe."

The Labor Party had already censured the British Communists' most eloquent spokesman, who is not a Communist--burly, buck-toothed Konni ("Zilly") Zilliacus, intellectual Laborite M.P. who wants Britain to help Communist Russia set up control of Europe against U.S. "imperialists." Zilly and twelve other Labor M.P.s who follow the Russian line had recently sent a friendly message to the Russian-sponsored "People's Congress" in Berlin. The Parliamentary Labor Party passed a resolution that "This meeting . .. dissociates itself from the message . . . [which] in no way reflects [our] attitude or views. . . ."

*Conspicuously high-placed Communists in British unions: Arthur Homer, general secretary of the Mineworkers; Jim Gardner, general secretary of the Foundry Workers; Abe Moffat, president of the Scottish Mineworkers. Seventy out of 833 delegates to the last Trades Union Congress were Communists, as are eight of the 33 members of Deakin's own executive board.

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