SUGGESTIONS REFUTED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20009, 7 August 1939, Page 5

SUGGESTIONS REFUTED

TRIAL OF HARRY BRIDGES U.S. CLASS STRUGGLE (Reed. August 7, 9 a.m.) NEW YORK, August 5. Illustrating the extent of the national interest in the trial of Harry Bridges of Communist activities, the New York Times to-day published seven columns of the Australian’s evidence. The New York Herald-Tribune editorially characterises the picture drawn by Bridges of "a nation given over lo shooting pickets” as a “romantic distortion” and adds: “A survey of recent industrial warfare discloses that the source of most of it was in factional quarrels of labour. It no more represents a class struggle than docs a split between the American Federation of Labour and the Committee for Industrial Organisation." A San Francisco message says that in his concluding testimony Bridges accused the Government of subsidising the Pacific waterfront employers in the purchase of tear gas used against workers in the great 1934 waterside strike.

“The majority of the 400 men shot were shot in the back” he declared. “Two men who were killed were shot in the back. It was a deliberate plan to murder by police and wc have never forgotten it.”

Bridges -stated that he did not favour abolishing the private ownership of small farms and businesses. He added that he owned a small piece of land in Australia himself and declared that he had not joined the Communist Party, although he solicited and obtained the party’s aid in union activities.