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Vol. 9, No. 46 Vancouver, British Columbia, November 17, 1950 SSI 2° Price Five Cents

Secret Attlee letter bared

PEACE CONGRESS BAN
PLOTTED MONTHS AGO

BY SPECIAL CABLE TO TRE PACIFIC TRIBUNE
: LONDON

The British Labor government, because of its commit-
ments under the Atlantic war pact, issued secret instructions
to its representatives abroad “to do all in their power to pre-
vent the (Second World Peace) Congress from being held.”
The letter of instrucion, written in September, was signed by
Prime Minister Clement Attlee himself.

This sensational disclosure was made this week by Tele-
press News Agency at Prague. which circulated the text of
Attlee’s letter. It came as the Second World Peace Congress
held a one-day session on. Monday, this. week in Sheffield, with
many of the 1,700 delegates barred from England, and then
moved to Warsaw. The Congress reopened in the war-
scarred Polish capital on Thursday this week and is continu-
ing in session until Tuesday, November 21. Among those
attending are 23 Canadian delegates.

Exposure of the Labor government’s actions has aroused
a storm in Britain. Winston Churchill, for the Conservatives,
is assailing. the government not for barring delegaes but
for what he considers the government’s failure to move
against the peace movement with “tact, skill and discretion.”

Many Labor MP's, on the other hand, are alarmed by
the protest coming from rank-and-file members of the Labor
party, large numbers of whom are in the peace movement
despite official Labor hostility toward it. Their views were
expressed in the“House of Commons this week by Sidney
Silverman, MP, who held that Home Secretary Chuter Ede
was guilty of “outrageous abuse of the constitutional authori-
ty reposed in him.”

Last Sunday night an overflow protest rally in Sheffield
City Hall heard Pablo Picasso, the Dean of Canterbury, John
Rogge, L’Abbe Polevoi and Dr. James Endicott, leader of
the Canadian delegation, denounce the Attlee government's
action. :

The most direct answer to the Labor government, how-
ever, was made by the working people of Sheffield. In two
days following release of the news that delegates from many
countries had been barred from entering Britain, 9000 Shef-
field citizens signed the Stockholm appeal.

These photos show some of
the atrocities committed by

Syngman BRhee’s police, under Among delegates barred were such world-famous figures
Gear Maca Tthune command: as Metropolitan Nicholas, head of .the Russian Orthodox
(Top) Li Dukko, North Korean Church; Professor Joliot-Curie, president of the World Peace
soldier, is crucified. (Bottom) Committee; Louis Saillant, secretary of the World Federa- .

Systematic murder of civilians. tion of Trade Unions; Pietro Nenni, leader of the Italian So-

cialist party; Pierre Cot, former French cabinet minister:
Dmitri Shostakovich, Soviet composer ; Ilya Ehrenburg, So-
viet writer; Louis Aragon, French novelist: Kuo Mo Jo,
Chinese writer.

The questions working people in Britain—and.in other
countries—are asking include these: Why is the British
Labor government, which calls itself socialist, so afraid of
the world peace movement? What secret commitments for
war under the Atlantic pact made it necessary for Prime
Minister Attlee to send a letter to British embassies including
the following instructions?

“The British government are fully aware—bearing in
mind the potentialities for the Peace Congress—of their re-
sponsibility under the Atlantic Pact to do all in their power
to prevent the Congress being held. (Attlee underlined this
paragraph. )

“At present we cannot refuse visas to persons who do

not stress in their applications that they are coming to Britain
Continued on page 7 — See NORTH ATLANTIC