L'infiltration communiste dans les Industries Anglaises Communist Infiltration in English Industry

Sommaire

Les tactiques utilisées avec un certain succès, par les communistes pour s'infiltrer dans les industries anglaises et canadiennes incitent à réfléchir sérieusement. Avant de mettre en oeuvre une action organisée, on est forcé de repenser les buts et objectifs du syndicalisme et les idéaux de l'action civique; ce sont là des aspects dont l'auteur veut montrer brièvement la nécessité dans cet article.

Summary

All the free countries suffer from the corrosive pressure of Russian spying and Communist propaganda. Canada is not free from it. A recent exposure of Com-piunistic activity in England throws new light on the danger that it constitutes for this country.

Even though the English Communist Party has known desertions that have aroused considerable interest in the last few years such as those of Douglas Hyde, of Kendall and Fred Copeman, even though the number of its members does not exceed the figure of 35,000; even though its candidates had very little success in the local and national elections of 1950, its increasing influence is no less a serious obstacle to the recovery and to the prosperity or English industry.

The Communist party inside the basic English industries concentrates its propaganda efforts in a permanent state of work stoppages, unrest and strikes.

The Communists have succeeded in multiplying work stoppages for trifling causes and to start, against the will of the union leaders, disastrous strikes such as that of the Canadian sailors and that of the workers in the oil indusries.

These examples show the new Communist strategy of guerilla strikes of which the two — fold aim is to block the defence preparations of England and to experiment with in this country a form of industrial struggle which has proved itself on the Continent.

From this point of view, the 24-hour strike fomented by the Communist-controlled electrician's union is very typical. The strikers had to attend the general meeting and participate in the parade or lose their strike allowance.

Already 476 Communist cells have been formed in vital industries chosen by party officials. Party chiefs appoint trained agitators. Once installed in the factory as workers, they are grouped and directed by the local Communist party chief. The final aim is no doubt control of the enterprise; but the immediate aim to be attained is to infiltrate in the local union and to take over its direction.

Obviously, it has not been a general success; but the red influence is much stronger than its numerical value. Once the union is controlled by the Communists, it stops following the directives of the union leaders and becomes a branch of the Communist party.

This strategic action of the English Communists in the factories and vital industries of the country is backed up in public opinion by clever and insidious propaganda in various civic and cultural movements. This communist propaganda ecomes diluted, at the city level, in some fifty organizations and societies controlled by the party and of which the apparent neutrality draws representatives from all schools of thought and opinion but which carry no less Communist ideas.

In face of these Communist infiltration tactics, it may be asked if free unionism has been able to perfect a defence able to frustrate them.

Marxist dynamism, which has succeeded in dominating the third of the world, forces us to think again about the aims and objectives of unionism as well as about the ideals of civic action.

A Communist, converted to the Catholic religion, Fred Copeman, wrote not long after his conversion: "Because it is opposed to hate and proclaims the law of love, the Catholic religion is the only possible reply to Communism".

As Pius XII recently declared to the members of the I.L.O. "the labour movement cannot be satisfied with material success. The aim which it pursues must be glimpsed... in a social order where material prosperity results from a sincere cooperation of all for the common good and which serves as a support for higher values, those of culture and, above all, the indefectible union of.hearts and minds".

Unionism of Christian inspiration such as the C.C.C.L. is already placed in a favourable position in this anti-Communist struggle of the labour world; but this advantage will bear little results if it does not succeed in sharing the truth about man and society with all the other free union forces which believe in the liberty of the worker but sometimes do not know to what height this liberty may attain.