Trade Unions Set Up International Body Free From Communism

Chronicle (Levin), 29 November 1949, Page 5

Trade Unions Set Up International Body Free From Communism

Received Tuesday, 10.10 a.m. LONDON, Nov. 28. Trade union leaders from countries in all five Continents, said to represent over 40,000,000 members, met in London today for the open- ' ing session of a free world labour conference, which is to establish. a new trade union international organisation. The new organisation will work in opposition to the World Federation of Trade Unions and will be led by the national trade union movements which left the W.F.T.U. last January. They al~ iege-d that the W.F.T.U. had fallen under Communist control. Mr. Herbert Bullock, chairman of the British Trade Union Congress, said they did not ackn&wledge defeat in their effort to establish upon broad and unshak-

I able foundations an international organisation uniting all free, independent and democratic trade unions of the world. They now saw more clearly the significance of the contemporary conflict between the democratic and totalitarian ways of life. The meeting must not confuse the economic and industrial sphere of activity with the political sphere, he continued. "We are not forming our organisation to ' involve it in poltical controversies, or to engage in national politics. We of the British trade union movement believe that the signpost which points the path to freedom points away from the path that leads. to the- authoritarian and totalitarian systems of . government and economic organ- • isation." I