Rebellion at the Worker

For trying to serve Moscow in its coverage of the Hungarian rebellion, London's Communist Daily Worker had a rebellion on its own hands last week. Of its 30 staffers, four quit and 19 signed a petition protesting the paper's whitewash of Soviet brutality. Angriest of those who quit was its star correspondent, Peter Fryer, fresh from his assignment in Budapest itself. The others: Political Cartoonist "Gabriel" (real name: James Friell), Features Editor Malcolm MacEwan and Film Critic Patrick Goldring.

During Fryer's fortnight in Budapest, Worker readers saw only one of his dispatches, a wishy-washy interview with a British Communist living in Hungary. In his letter of resignation, published by the Worker when he threatened to "seek other means" of getting out the truth, Fryer disclosed that the dispatch had been heavily cut and two others had been killed altogether. Reason: they showed that Soviet intervention was "both criminal and unnecessary."

In an interview that the Daily Express spread over six columns, Fryer charged that his editors had withheld one of his dispatches even from Worker staffers. He added: "It described certain excesses committed by Soviet troops. I saw the result of one of them. I saw an old man of 70 lying on the pavement dead, with a loaf of bread in his hand. He had been shot by a Soviet tank as he was coming away from a bread shop. I argued that there was no 'White terror' in Hungary. The rising against the Communist government of Hungary was supported by 99% of the people, including a great number of ordinary honest rank-and-file members of the Communist Party."

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