a ta SS

Communist troops

Shanghai fell to only 15

SHANGHAI
signs urging the
Support the war against
unists” hung from Shan-
ten tings as soldiers of the
ite an Liberation Army entered

Y at “the double” last week.

Dilapidateg
People to «
the Comm
Shai

march smartly through the streets of the liberated city carrying U.S.

900 troops of liberation army

Kuomintang generals had boast-
ed that the battle for Asia’s largest
city would be another Stalingrad.
According to a story put out by
the Kuomintang, Chiang Kai-shek
himself secretly directed the city’s
defense, but if he was in the city,
he took good care to leave it days

before the Liberation forces reach.
ed the outskirts.

‘hen Liberation troops finally.
entered the city some Kuomintang
troops fled to Woosung, ten miles
to the north of Shanghai, attempt-
ing to carry out a planned escape
by” sea, and thousands were cap-
tured. Others sat complacently on

handbags meant for barricades,
waiting to give up.

Another group showed even more
open sympathies,

A sign hung near city hall read:

“Welcome, People’s Liberation
Army.”

Unlike the last weeks of Kuomin-
tang occupation, there was no loot-

Py

-made sub-machine guns captured from the beaten Kuomintang forces.

ing and no terror.

One of the first acts of Liber-
ation Army officials was cancella-
tion of the curfew and other Kuo-
mintang decrees enforced against
the population.

Only 15.000 soldiers participated
in the liberation of the Chinese
metropolis.

Ask protest
of new Greek
°Xecutions

T ATHENS
aie creek 80vernment has be-
Ptitones round of killings of im-
®Xeention 22 unionists with the
M. Timonayakis,

lead Tobacco Workers’ Union
Protestey 1o8e trial was previously,
Out ¢: é by union leaders through-
Donay World, including President
baces paerson of the Food, To-
ie svicultur llied

meters (Cio) al and A

of the v8 advantage of the closing
Yor, Ssembly session in New
Alera 2S Which ‘the Polish
Bren. jt salted the: facta sofithe
temporg “fon and made executions
ern mly, Mconvenient, the gov-
Shootin has also staged new mass
as of union rank-and-filers,
19 Whom have been in jail
ng Tn one of the smaller
hy Ber sin St. Nicholas, Crete, a
the Mke of al] prisoners stop-
Killings a
a
cgi Uleg
r
eat hy, athe of the Greek roy-
¥ to More
Scounas: shters against German
» ™Most of them trade
have been under
in Greek concen-
mig MPS Since 1945,
i €mistocles Sophoulis,
ie court to refuse
0 he sentences, has
th for red firing Squads to pre-
© 700 m, MMediate execution of
aoe 8nd women. Greece
tep that i eve of mass killing
pre Shootin that of last May, when
tests the.°f 240 persons aroused
di eeshout the world, in-
Dlomatic representations
Stherg 7. °f governments.
by a he prisoners now
§ remier Sophoulis have
PPeal to organizations
als in all countries to
SOvernment de-
®& executions be

By,
Wh,

at th

HARRY BRIDGES

“Seldom have so Many power-
ful and seemingly diverse fonoes
joined in a conspiracy to ‘get
one man.”

. i
‘Is peace crime ?
asks Zilliacus

LONDON
“It seems that if you fight fon
peace you can’t be a member of
the Labor party,’ Konni Zilliacus,
MP, said here after his ee a
Labor party execu ive.
ae Ser member of parliament
expelled from the party, Leslie t
Solley, commented that the Labor
government is “mortally afraid of
eriticism within its own ranks be-
cause criticism makes plain to or-
dinary people the coalition which
it has made, in both home and tors
eign affairs, with the Conserva-
yO eal adick dna /Golley. polntel aut
that agreement with the Soviet
Union, which they advocate, was
part of the Labor party plat-
form when it was elected to pow-
er. but has now been abandoned
inder U.S. pressure.
“The Gateshead branch of the
Labor party, which elected Zillia-
cus in 1945, recently defied the es
tional party executive by re-indors-
ing him by a 92 percent vote.

and file leader of the 1934 mari-
time strike. comprises one of the
most amazing chapters in Ameri-
can history.

Seldom have so many powerful
and seemingly diverse forces join-
ed in‘a conspiracy to “get” one
man,

Twice before have these forces
sought through lengthy and costly
proceedings to secure his deporta-
tion. Now they seek to throw him
into jail, and then put him on that
boat for his native Australia.

A U.S. department memorandum
in 1936 recorded that his “depor-
tation was then (in 1934) and later
urgently sought by the interests
which he had antagonized.”

The “get Bridges” pressure has
been unceasing. Only its most overt
instances have erupted into head-
lines:

The first deportation hearing
lasted 11 weeks, from July 10 to
September 14, 1939,

James M. Landis, then dean of
the Harvard Law School, sitting as
special trial examiner, ruled the
sovernment failed to prove its al-
legation that Bridges was a mem-
ber of the Communist party.

Evidence at the hearing re-
vealed that the proceedings had
resulted from five years of pain-
staking effort and. pressure by
steamship operators and various
anti-labor agencies on the Pa.
cific coast.

On June 13, 1940, some six months
after Landis’ ruling, the House of
Representatives passed a bill to de.
port Bridges. This was so raw and
so unusual that U.S Attorney Rob-
ert H. Jackson. now a Supreme
Court justice, termed it “an his_
torical departure from an Ameri-

Fifteen years of persistent effort to ug
of the militant president of the CIO International
union associates. The relentless tenacity with wh
against the Pacific Coast labor leader ever since

he was catapulted

et’” Harry Bridges were climaxed
Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s
ich seemingly “unseen forces”

Charge against Bridges
seen as new frameup

—SAN FRANCISCO
last week with indictment
Union and two
have pressed the hunt

into national prominence as_ the rank

can practice and tradition,” adding:
“It would be the first time that
Congress, without changing the
general law, simply Suspended all
laws which protect a named indi-
vidual and directed the Attorney
General to disregard them and
forthwith to deport ‘notwith-
standing any other provision of
law’.”

This extraordinary bill that aim-
ed to establish a “law to end all
laws” never passed the Senate. But
it indicated just how far the “in-
terests” Bridges. had antagonized
would go to “get” him.

Frustrated in Congress, these
“interests” next turned to the de-
partment of justice. The depart-
ment was induced to institute de-
portation proceedings for a second
time. Bridges exclaimed:

“How many times must a man
be cleared before they’ll let him
alone?”

The second deportation hearing
lasted from March 3 to June 12,
1941. Charles B. Sears, sitting as
the trial examiner, dismissed the
testimony of most of the govern-
ment witnesses as unreliable. Yet
he found the case against Bridges
had been established, and ruled he
should be deported.

Sears’ ruling was, unanimously
reversed by the board of appeals
of the bureau of immigration. Nor-
mally, this is the highest tribunal
within the immigration service, but
Attorney General Francis Biddle
then took an unheard of step in-
dividually nullifying the board’s
findings. The case went to the
courts. In January, 1945, the U.S.

Supreme Court ruled that Sears
had erred, that the government’s
case should be thrown out.

In August, 1941, with the aid
of a reporter from the now de-
funct newspaper, PM, Bridges
proved that ‘the FBI was still
Spying on him. That instrument
of monopoly capital had wired
“for sound” a New York hotel
room where he was staying, and
was tapping his telephone, both
procedures being illegal.

The incident was Significant for
two special reasons:

@ At the time, Judge Sears was
still weighing the testimony of the
Second deportation hearing and had
not issued his findings. Thus, the
FBI was so unsure of its case, that
even while it was being decided,
J. Edgar Hoover's boys were ille-
gally compiling “evidence” for an-
other try.

@ While this one instance of FBI
illegal espionage was brought into
the open, it only expressed the con-
Stant, unremitting surveillance to
which Bridges has been Subjected
for 15 long years.

Shipowners tried directly to “get”
Bridges last year. They provoked a
long, tough strike by their insist-
ence that the longshoremen remove
him from union leadership. This
attempt failed, too, as the long-
Shoremen remained solid in their
Strike. refused to be diverted by
the “red” issue.

Now the department of justice
has again intervened directly to
achieve what the shipowners had
failed to achieve in the 1948 mari-
time strike. The hounding of
Bridges had come full cycle again.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — JUNE 3, 1949 — PAGE 8