TL |

Peers save Attlee on
German army vote

U.S. arms fascists

A shipment of

U.S. heavy tanks destined for Franco's fascist

army is unloaded from the freighter Northwestern Victory in the

harbor at Cartagena, Spain.

By PETER ZINKIN

LONDON

By a majority of only two votes, the Parliamentary Labor Party, at a meeting

last week, voted to support

German rearmament.

The vote is universally regarded as

the biggest moral defeat yet suffered by Herbert Morrison and Clement Attlee on a

major policy issue.

Had Labor members of the House of -Lords not been present and voted at the

meeting, there is no doubt that
the Labor MPs would have shown
a majority against giving arms to
Britain’s recent enemies.

Strong protests against the Labor
peers, who represent none but
themselves, being allowed to vote,
were made in the meeting, but

right wing leaders ignored them.

MPs said that had the rank-and-
file been consulted there would
have beeen a decisive vote against
German rearmament.

Attlee opened the meeting by
moving the parliamentary commit-
tee majority motion calling for sup-
port of German rearmament. He

Report indicts police
for terror in Kenya.

By ARTHUR CLEGG

The British parliamentary delegation to
brutality and corruption of the Kenya
It admits that African resistance
‘is stronger now than it was when

months ago, despite all the killing

(Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyt-
telton disclosed to the British
House of Commons last week that
in 16 months, from October 1952
to the beginning of February this
year, a total of 3,399 Africans were
slaughtered by British troops and
Police in Kenya.)

“Brutality and malpractices by
the police have occurred on a,scale
which constitutes a threat to pub-
lic confidence in the forces of law
and order,” the report says.

It adds that there have been 130
prosecutions for brutality among.
the police forces, ending in 73 con-
victions. Forty more cases are
pending. There have also been 29
prosecutions for corruption, ending
in 12 convictions. Thirteen cases
are pending. ; oe

The delegation was composed of
‘three Tory and three Labor MPs,
‘with a Conservative, Walter Elliot,
as chairman. “ :

A “section of European public
opinion” in Kenya is also indicted
by the delegation for supporting
the police in their brutality.

“For example, we were inform-
ed,” says the report, “that a fund
has recently been started with the
object of paying the legal expenses
of European members of the securl-
ty forces accused of committing
offences in the course of their
f duty.” .

The report, which in general
handles the basic problems of
Kenya with kid gloves, points to
the color bar, overcrowding of Af-
rican areas so that they are “un-
able to support the people, save
at a level of poverty,’ and low
Wages as factors in the Kenya situ-
_ ation. :

It says that “the minimum wage
in Kenya is based on the require-
ments, of °a single man living in
the area affected by the minimum
wage order,” so that he cannot
ately maintain a wife and. fami-
But it draws a veil over the
- still worse’ conditions of the serf
“contract” workers in agriculture,

simply stating that on the estates

there is a “cash-wage stipulation”
and “perquisites” including the use
Of a piece of land. Pye
The report points to the fact that
here is no trade union in Kenya

police. : s
to this official reign of terror

of Africans. e

7 1
for these agriculture workers.
It admits that none of these

workers, either in town or country,
has any security in old age. »°

Of the lack of education for Afri-
can children, particularly second-
ary education, it writes that this
causes ‘discontent, misunderstand-
ing and frustration.” ?

In the usual official manner the
report describes as “Mau Mau” all
African discontent with these ter-
rible conditions and resistance to
them.

lt finds that after 18 months
ceaseless slaughter of Africans:

4 the influence of Mau Mau
in the Kikuyu area, except in
‘certain localities, has not declin-
ed; if has, on the contrary, in-
creased; in this respect the situ-
ation has deteriorated and the
danger of infection outside the

Kikuyu area is now greater, not

less, than it was at the begin-
ning of the Emergency.”

In Nairobi, the capital and centre
of European power, it finds that
the situation “is both grave and
acute.” - 5 at

Africans hold their unofficial
courts in the heart of the city and
“for several months” passive -Afri-
can resistance has organized a boy-
cott of European-owned buses.

All this has happened though
the police force has been doubled

and five battalions of British troops,

have been sent to the colony. _
But, when it comes to making
recommendations to end this ter-
rible state of affairs, the parliamen-
tary delegation shies away from
the fundamental problems.
Instead of self-government for
the Kenya Africans it demands
that “a numberof highly experi-
enced police” should be sent to
Kenya to uproot undesirable feat-
ures and “ensure efficiency.”
Instead of handing back to the
Africans the land seized from them

‘py European landowners it recom-

mends a land survey to record who
owns the land.  —

To such recommendations it adds
vague references to more educa-
tion for Africans and a hint that
some of the arrested trade union

leaders might be released.

For political matters it appar-

Kenya has denounced the

the Emergency was declared 18 |:

&

Africans rounded up by police
in Kenya are held in a barbed
wire compound with a gallows in
the background.

oes

ently considers that a declaration
by the British government that
the objective in Kenya ‘is “a
multi-racial society, in which the
rights of all men are safeguard-
ed” and the introduction of a
‘few non-Europeans on the Execu-
tive Council is enough to cure
the evils to which it refers.

France bans Briton

LONDON

The former secretary of the
British Peace Committee, Vincent
Duncan-Jones, was refused permis-
sion to land at Le Bourget Airport

in Paris last week.

Duncan-Jones was on his way
to Vienna to take up a permanent
position with the World Peace
Council. He returned to London. |

was _answered in two _ brilliant
speeches against putting arms into
the hands of the West Germans
made by Harold Wilson and Wil-
fred Feinburgh. :

Wilson moved an amendment to
the leaders’ motion that said no
forther moves to rearm the West
Germans should be taken until
after the coming Geneva confer-
ence on the Far East.

When put to the vote his mo-
tion got 109 votes, with 11
against. Illness prevented Hugh
Dalton, a strenuous opponent of
German rearmament, from at-’
tending the meeting.

After this vote, the parliament-
ary committee motion calling for
support for rearming West Germ-
| any was put. It was carried by the
narow majority of 113 votes to 104
against. S ;

There were 18 abstentions from
MPs who did not want to expose
the party leaders to defeat.

~ Supporters of Aneurin Bevan and

other members of the Labor party
executive committee tried unsuc-
cessfully to defer a decision on
German rearmament until after the
Geneva meeting of the Five Great
Powers. -

The vote was kept a close secret,
but it was reported that nine
members supported. the move and
16 opposed.

Harold Wilson, MP, who led the

challenge, said that the Five-Power
meeting should be given every —
chance to succeed; it should not be
prejudiced by a premature deci-
sion supporting German rearma-
ment.

Indeed, he. pleaded, such a de-
cision might well be the rock on
which ‘the Five-Power meeting
could crash. 5

He was strongly supported by

Tom Driberg, MP, Richard Cross-

man, MP, .and Aneurin Bevan, MP.
In the House of Commons a
stern warning to the right wing ©
Labor party leaders that the rank-
and-file would not follow them in
supporting German militarism was _
given by Emrys Hughes: ;
“T don’t think the Socialists of
this country will be satisfied if we
are going to line up behind the
foreign secretary in this super-
ficial attitude of negation,” he said.
“The people of this country and
of Europe want a bold, construc-
tive urge toward peace. They want
it expressed in terms of foreign
policy. 3
“The national executive of the
Labor party may pass a resolu-
tion. But they won’t be able to
damp down the discontent and
the tremendous feeling of frus-
tration that will come if the
leaders line this great party up
behind the recovery of German
militarism and the support of
German rearmament. :

First in new chain

By RALPH PARKER
MOSCOW
An engineering wonder is being
'built in Soviet Asia, near Lake
Baikal—it is a new dam and power
station twice the size of the world-
‘|famous Dnieper Dam. :
Situated on the Angara River at

:| Irkutsk, the new dam is the first

of a series that will lenable the
rich deposits of bauxite and other

_}ores in the region to be extracted

more cheaply and easily. ris

Last week, the chief of the An-
gara Power Station Project gave
the Soviet public a progress. re-
‘port on the work at Irkutsk.

A new township, with three
school, a hospital, creches and nur-
sery schools and homes for the
many thousands of workers en-
‘gaged on the project has been
founded. ema
_ The foundations for the new
power station are already being
‘laid. Over 10 million cubic yards
of earth—a figure which alone is
almost*equal to the volume of the
Grand Coulee Dam in the U.S.—
were excavated last year.

The construction work is highly
mechanized, mechanical shovels
and 25-ton tip lorries being in use
on the job. Despite 72 degrees
of frost recorded this winter, novel

ed the workers to maintain their

high pace. :
To cope with the problem of

frozen earth, the area to be exca-

ered during the summer with a

layer of gravel many feet thick

from the river bed. ;
This froze to a depth of 10 feet.

frost-fighting methods have enabl-

vated during the winter was cov-|

Dam in Soviet Asia _
i dwarfs Dnieper

When removed by blasting, soft
earth for the excavators to work
at was laid bare.

On the only outlet from Lake
Baikal, into which 300 rivers flow,
the Irkutsk power station is only
the first to be built at various points |
along the Angara’s course up to
its confluence with the Yenisei. _

And this chain along a river _
whose power potential is said to
be greater than that of the Volga, __
Dnieper, Don and Kama combin-
ed, with a water level which
never varies, is only a part of a
greater development scheme at
which Soviet engineers are sys-_
fematically working, involving
all Siberia’s rivers. ae

Neutrals confirm —

POW camp ferror —
eer PANMUNJOM

The final report of the Neutral

Nations’ Repatriation Commission
published here confirms that ter-

ror prevented the return home of

22,000 Korean and Chinese POWs.
The report is signed by all five
members of the commission — al-
though the Swiss and the Swedish —
representatives add some dissent-
ing remarks. a
_ Prisoners who returned to North
Korea from the southern camps

did so secretly and at risk of their
‘lives, it states. oe

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MARCH 5, 1954 — PAGE 3