NEW TORY WITCH-HUNT Lloyd's Bag

EDITORIAL 'he Inquisitors Ride High • Tories celebrate the success of their wage pause, new measures are being introduced to weaken the trade union movement. The government has launched a vicious McCarthyite attack on all Civil Servants who may be socialistminded. ore and more power is to be granted to the faceless men of MIS to probe into the private lives of thousands of people. lose who are considered unreliable by the unknown snoopers will at worst lose their jobs and at best be permanently spied upon by specially planted agents. So much for the democratic way of life of the so-called ' Free World' What, one might ask, is the relationship between the witch-hunting of Civil Servants, the attack on ETU militants and the wages pause? In our opinion there is the closest relationship. eartened by the retreat of the right-wing trade union leaders before their offensive, the Tories are now busily creating an atmosphere where victimization will deprive the ranks of the trade union movement of real leadership in a situation where a new offensive is being planned against wages and working conditions. le 'reasonable' men of the right wing always open the gate for the witch-hunters. Anti-communism becomes a smoke-screen behind which a dictatorship from the right operates.

recent reprint of the ETU case, which is now receiving considerable applause from the capitalist press, is nothing more than a manual for witch-hunters. ue enough, the Communist Party members of the Electrical Trades Union committed serious mistakes, but the measures taken against them transcend by far the seriousness of these mistakes. le attack on the militant rank and file of the ETU today is carried out by the same people who are now about to probe into the Civil Service.

We said that the ETU case was the beginning of a witch-hunt and we were right.

Those democrats who have gone out of their way to attack Haxell and his friends do nothing more than to add grist to the mill of the Tory offensive. Their 'moral outrage' serves to cover up the mailed fist of state intervention in the trade inions. SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 1962 Vol. 6, No. 244 blockade (p.4)

McCarthyite Attack on Civil Service Unions E are now witnessesing a new outbreak of McCarthyism in Britain. Anyone who imagines that the capitalist class can be quietly and constitutionally removed from power should study 'Security Procedures in the Public Services. This is the report of the Radcliffe Committee which was set up by the Tories to advise them on how to meet the danger of espionage in the Civil Service, It shows just how firmly the ruling class holds on to its State machine.

Ordinary people will not be able to read the report in full. Some sections are not to be published for security reasons.

It is unlikely that the report will be debated in parliament. This is not considered necessary, since Mr. Kenneth Younger, a former Labour MP, was a member of the Committee and Mr. Gaitskell has been consulted and agrees with the recommendations.

The committee thinks that communist infiltration of the Civil Service trade unions is a danger to national security.

By 'communist, they explain, they mean someone who 'is or has recently been a member of the Communist Party; or, in such a way as to raise reasonable doubt about his reliability, is or has recently been sympathetic to communists or communist possible, Djilas' memoirs of his discussions with Stalin might prove embarrassing And so, with the aid of a specially prepared decree and with the assistance of a US publishing company, the book is suppressed and its author put back in jail.

Tito can fete slave - owning monarchs and sup with military dictators; this same Tito recently amnestied thousands of reactionary and fascist emigres who fled the wrath of the Yugoslav Revolution.

Tito not long ago demanded the rehabilitation of over 200 Yugoslav communists, done to death by Stalin; he now has the effrontery to suffocate the political views of one of the most prominent fighters in his Party.

The Socialist Labour League does not support the opinions of Djilas, but it insists on the open discussion of his ideas, free from interference and suppression. General Meeting sympathisers; or is susceptible to communist pressure.

Such people, says the committee, must not only be purged from Civil Service jobs involving secret work. It is now recommended that departments should refuse to negotiate with them if they are trade union representatives.

This move against the unions must be seen in relation to the attack on the ETU.

Members of that union are involved in many projects concerned with war preparation and this fact is undoubtedly connected with the efforts made to push the CP leadership out of office.

An ominous paragraph in the report complains that Civil Servants do not take security seriously enough.

"To some extent,' the committee states, 'this attitude probably reflects an equally ambivalent attitude on the part of the general public and of the government towards the Communist Powers and the Communist Party generally.' 'Reliable' The Radcliffe Report will begin a wholesale witch-hunt in the Civil Service and in trade unions whose members are engaged on government work.

This will be directed against anyone who is not clearly 'reliable' as supporter of capitalism.

It is amusing to see the attitude of liberals to this threat to democratic rights.

Friday's 'Guardian' carries an editorial on the subject in which the report's recommendations are received without criticism.

However, in the best traditions of British liberalism, the paper tells us how 'distasteful' they are.

In the course of preparing to defend the 'free world' -including Franco, Verwoerd and Chiang kai-shek-capitalism is forced inevitably to take actions which cut down democratic rights, especially of trade unions. McCarthyism is inseparable from the Cold War.

All sections of the movement must fight against this witchhunt. It is just one more manifestation of the drive to war inherent in the capitalist system.