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Protest Greek decree

NEW YORK—A new Greek law
providing death penalties for wor-
kers who strike was denounced as
a fascist action by the Transport
Workers Union (CIO) in wires to
President Truman, Secretary of
State George C. Marshall and the
Greek embassy. The TWU called
on the U.S. government to protest

the new decree. N

“As American trade unionists
cherishing the democratic rights
of labor, we recognize in these
harsh anti-labor measures the Taft-
Hartley law carried to its logical
conclusion,” said the wires, which
were signed by TWU President
Michael J. Quill and Secretary-
Treasurer Douglas L. MacMahon.

“Like American workers, Greek |!

workers ask for decent wages to
fight the high cost of living.
Shooting strikers asking for more
bread and butter is repugnant to
all freedom-loving Americans.

“We ask the American mission
now in Greece to speak out against
it, and offer our fullest support
to the trade unionists of Greece in
their heroic battle against this
outrageous law.”

‘All in favor, say... ?’

WASHINGTON—Rep. James W.
Wadsworth, Republican from Gen-
esco, N. Y., got up in the USS.
House last week and suggested
that members of Congress con-
tribute to the world’s needy by
giving up the $222,000 travel allow-
ance they get for attending this
extra session.

He got a big hand from Con-
gressmen present.

But when the vote came, the
“No’s” could be heard all the way
to the cashier’s window, accord-
ing to PM. The vote was 143-
to-27.

A ‘disgraceful farce’

LONDON — Moscow Radio, fol-
lowing the break-up of the Big
Four foreign ministers’ conference,
has accused the United States,
British and French delegates of
acting a “disgraceful farce.”

Moscow broadcast an article by
Nikolai Pogodin in the Moscow
Literary Gazette which said:

“The heroes of Stalingrad now
witness a disgraceful farce by a
trio of bourgeois ministers in the
British capital. No wonder that
for some time past the names of
some modern foreign politicians
have become despicable to our
people. :

“Low and greedy bargaining has
replaced the solemn treaties of the
war years. Profit defiles count-
less graves of soldiers of the
United Nations. The ideal of
truth has been replaced by lying
demagogy.”

FBI men quiz Murray

WASHINGTON—CIO President
Philip Murray and Publicity Direc-
tor Allan L. Swim have been
quizzed by FBI agents in connec-
tion with a supposed violation of
the Taft-Hartley law, the Decem-

ber 15 issue of the weekly CIO News
revealed. The federal sleuths in-
terviewed both CIO officials in con-
nection with the open support giv-
en by the paper to Judge Edward
Garmatz, successful Democratic
candidate for Congress in a speci-
al Baltimore election last July.

Murray had signed an editorial
asking Baltimore workers to vote
for Garmatz, announcing he did so
in, open defiance of the view of
Senator Robert A. Taft (R.O.) that
the new slave law would make
such support by a union paper
illegal. Neither defeated candidate
made an issue of this point after
the election.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 2, 1948

‘T-H’ in action

(left) and arrested more than
operation.
ness agent of Local 1150.

170 men and women.

These CIO members turned out to support the strike of Local 1150, United Electrical Radio and
Machine Workers (CIO) against the Cory Corp. Chicago cops showed up too,

roughed up pickets

A good example of the Taft-Hartley ‘law’ in
“A contemptible action arising out of a contemptible law,” said Irving Krane, busi-

subsidizing certain splitters whose
objective was to weaken the
French unions.
Saturday! Soir,
weekly journal, declared that as
far back as November 8, the
United States wanted a rupture
in the CGT. William Bullittt, on
his recent visit, openly advised
Socialist party forces in the CGT
to split. ;

In an editorial in Humanite re-
cently, Marcel Cachin, noted that
a week ago Leon Blum wrote in
Populaire, that the Socialists
sought to “detach workers from
the absurd and intolerable tyran-
ny of communism.” .

Cachin commented: “Thus a
U.S. agent carries out.the orders
of American imperialism.”

That the Schuman government
had a direct hand in the split
was revealed in Saturday’s In-
transigeant, a reactionary organ,
which said:

‘This split is a victory for the
government. One can rest assur-
ed that Finance Minister Rene
Mayer, was in part an architect
of the split, giving it all the aid
in his power.” ;

Following the vote of the So-
cialist faction and the split, Leon

conservative

|Jouhaux and four Socialists re-

signed from the executive com-
mittee of the CGT and will pro-
ceed to establish a new center.

The Catholic trade union lead-
ers deny that Jouhaux’s “Work-
ers Force” will be united with
their center.

An interesting fact is that Jou-
haux was advised by rightwing
CIO and AFL friends to retain
his group as a formal part of
the CGT and bore from. within.
However, Jouhaux was unable ,to
execute that strategy thereby los-
ing former standing among
French workers.

Observers refuse to estimate
the extent of the splitters’
strength. Frachon cited to me
as the best indication a recent
CGT executive council vote on
the Marshall Plan. Frachon, de-
nouncing the plan, secured 86
percent of the ballots, Jouhaux
received 14 percent.

The most optimistic Jouhaux

followers expect no more than

By ROB F. HALL

US reaction prompted split in
ranks of French labor : Cachin

PARIS—The split in the General Confederation of Labor resulted from the acts of
French agents working in the interests of the United States State Department, according
to well informed persons here. Benoit Frachon, secretary-general of the trade union fed-
eration, told me in an exclusive interviewthat for weeks the State Department has been

500,000 workers will follow the ex-
CGT leader in the coming year.

This is a small part of the
six milion members .of the CGT.
But Confederation leaders do not
minimize the serious. situation
created by the - split.

Frachon said that while defec-
tions in themselves will be neg-
ligible, this act by the Jouhaux
clique was a “weakening factor
for the working class at a time
when workers need all their
strength.”
“Because of this consideration,
three CGT leaders belonging to
no political party announced
they were sticking with the CGT.
They are Louis Saillant, who is
also. general secretary of the
World Federation of Trade Un-
ions, Eduard Ehni and Alain Le-
leap. The latter said:

Two forces are is: motion, the
workers and their enemies. I’
will do nothing to serve the
workers’ enemies.” ,

New proposals of the govern-
ment to lift price controls except
on items needed by the large
manufacturers is expected to re-
sult in a further zooming of the
cost of living, wiping out the
wage gains won in the recent
strikes. This, together with the
repressive anti-labor legislation
confronts the French workers
with grave problems and a new
round of struggles.

But the workers’
not pessimistic.

As Cachin said, “French un-
ionists will not obey the crim-
inal counsels of the splitters of
the working class. The vast ma-
jority will remain with the CGT
in which they have placed their
confidence for 12 years. It is
their best weapon. They know
that still sharper struggles lie
ahead.

“It is easy to see that the
splitters are puppets of the peo-
ple’s enemies.”

leaders are

Laski rejects US aid
‘with political strings’

By PHYLLIS ROSNER
LONDON—If U.S. aid .to Europe is based on political

considerations it should be

refused, Professor Harold Laski,

British Labor party leader and foreign affairs expert, told
Allied Labor News as he rapped American policy in Greece.

While criticizing Russian refus-
al to participate in the Marshall
plan, Laski pointed out that the
U.S. owed the Soviet Union “gen-
uine reassurance that she does

not intend to support every re-
actionary government left in
Europe.”

American assistance to the

present Greek regime cannot be
regarded as the protection of
democratic freedom, he said, add-
ing: “I have great admiration
for the amazing insight of those
Americans who see democracy in
Greece and Turkey. Obviously the

American eagle has the powers

of vision that are not given to
English earthworms.”

The Truman doctrine, he
commented, intends to and does
place American frontiers “as a
threat to the Soviet Union.
Whenever the Soviet Union
wants to cushion herself against
the danger of external attack,”
he continued, “that is called ‘im-
perialist expansion, but when
ever America wants to do the
Same thing, that is called ‘the
defense of freedom ‘and de-
mocracy.’ I am not able to see
any distinction.”

Declaring he has no doubt the

American working people want!

Wallace taboo
in US army press

TOKYO — An unofficial
censorship is suppressing all
news about Henry A, Wallace

from Stars and Stripes, daily
newspaper published here for
American troops. Chief censor is
Brig.-General Courtney Whitney,
one of General Douglas A. Mac-
Arthur’s top aides.

The ban on Wallace was im-
posed four months ago and news
stories reporting General Dwight
D. Hisenhower’s presidential pros-
pects were also killed. Lately,
however, a slight amount of BHis-
enhower coverage has been ap-
pearing,

Although a recent Stars and
Stripes editorial alleged that nei-
ther “MacArthur nor any of his
officers have ever dictated or
tried to dictate” to the paper, the

fact is that all so-called “news
policy” stories are referred to
Whitney.

Now editing the paper are

Hanson H. Hathaway and George
W. Hurd, both formerly employ-
ed by the Washington Times Her-
ald, the capital’s cousin of the
Chicago Tribune and the New
York Daily News.

Bosses set up
‘international’

PARIS — Employers
from eight western Euro-
pean countries have joined

with those of the U.S. to
set up an International Employ-
ers Federation, Allied WLabor
News learned here.

Merging both trade and in-
dustrial employers, the new
group aims to function as a
lobby at the International La-
bor Organization and _ the
United Nations and to “defend”
business interests at all inter-
national conferences,

Acknowledged ambition of
the new group is to obtain
recognition as a “world agency”
though it involves, besides. the
U.S., only Britain, France, Bel-
gium, Holland, Luxemburg,
Sweden, Norway and Denmark.
It plans to seek admission to
the UN economic and social
council “on the same footing”
as the World Federation of
Trade Unions, which groups
nearly 80 million workers in
50-cdd countries,

A spokesman for. the French
Employers Federation, confirm-
ing this claim, said the “em-
ployers’ international aims at
being for the employers in all
countries what the WETU is
for organized labor.”

A conference with this end
in view was held recently in
Paris at the headquarters of
the French employers’ group,
with the Swedish Employers
Organization taking the initi-
ative in calling it.

The heads of the employers’

federations in all the eight
European countries’ involved
attended the Paris meeting.

The U.S. was represented by
an “observer” whose identity
was not disclosed.

plete

peace, Laski said: “I shave no
doubt that the American busi-
nessman’s objectives in the long
run would be found to prove in-
compatible with peace if pursued
in the same way that has’ oper-
ated so far.”

Laski stressed the importance
of reviving British-Soviet trade.
Intelligent Americans, he said,
will realize that the more com-
Britain’s friendship with
the Soviet Union, the more com-
pletely we can assure lessening

of U.S.-Russian tensions.

“But Americans like John
Foster Dulles, the Chicago Trib-
une’s Col. McCormick and Wil-
liam Randolph Hearst,” he add-

ed “are bound to be angry and
criticize us for
American way of life.’”

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 2:

‘deserting the

sities

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