WILSON TO EXPLAIN

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31092, 22 June 1966, Page 13

WILSON TO EXPLAIN

(N.Z.P A.•Reuter-—Copyright) LONDON, June 21. Mr Wilson will meet the Conservative Party leader, Mr Edward Heath, in London today to explain an allegation that Communist influence is prolonging the five-week-old British seamen’s strike.

The Prime Minister startled the nation yesterday when he told Parliament that a ‘•tightly-knit group of politically motivated men” was dictating policy to the executive of the 62.500-strong National Union of Seamen. Although Mr Wilson avoided using the word Communist. Government spokesmen said he was referring to them and to Trotskyites active in some big ports like Liverpool. “Backstairs Pressure”

In his statement. Mr Wilson raid the militants were “dominating the majority of an otherwise sturdy union.”

They were using backstairs pressure to force hardship on seamen and their families, endanger the future of the union and attack the economic welfare of the country. The Government spokesmen said the militants were not believed to be members of the union’s executive. It was claimed they met every day to decide what the day’s strike policy should be.

Decisions taken at these meetings would then become the decisions of the executive. The British Comumnist Party general secretary, Mr I John Gollan, said Mr ’Wilson’s 'statement was an insult to 'seamen and contained “McCarthyite smears and innuendo"