BITTER ATTACKS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20109, 1 December 1939, Page 11

BITTER ATTACKS

OUTBURSTS BY SOVIET U.K. SOCIALISTS ASSAILED Outbursts by the Soviet press and radio against the “unreasonable” and “uncompromising’’ attitude of Finland toward Russia’s demands have been frequent recently. Those who have looked upon Russia as a champion of the workers of the world have thus been obliged further to revise thenopinions. Even more startling to admirers of Russia is a summary of Soviet press attacks on British and French Labour leaders which has come to hand —a summary which is of particular interest throughout the British Empire, and which leaves no doubt as to Russian intolerance of any political system other than their own. In Izvestia, the official organ of the Soviet Government, there appeared on October 21 a historical survey of the British Labour Party which was bitter and cynical, but which defeated much of its objects by inaccuracies. Intellectual Careerists The Soviet writer stated that when the British Labour Party was formed in 1895 it included varied elements of "trades union leaders, functionaries divorced from the working masses, philanthropists sympathising with socialism and bourgeois intellectual careerists.”

Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, the former British Prime Minister, and Viscount Snowden were declared to belong to the last category and their careers were criticised.

The writer said that the great fear of the British Labour Party to-day was that it, may be forced to take office, “but Labour is more useful to the English bourgeoisie in Opposition, for there its leaders can deflect the -popular indignation into channels of ’legality away from the true needs and the strivings of the working class.’ ”

“A Socialist Chameleon”

Present-day Labour leaders were described as “petty figures like Sir Walter Citrine and Hugh Dalton.” Sir Walter Citrine was called “a typical Socialist chameleon,” and Mr. Dalton was charged with having said in 1933 that Germany would be unable to fight for another 50 years. “Mr. Dalton,” the writer continued, “uses any falsification against the Communist Soviet Union and, of course, both Citrine and Dalton demand war to a victorious conclusion and sing the praises of British democracy which tramples the rights of 450,000,000 colonial slaves.”

In the army paper Red Star, British and French Socialist leaders were called social imperialists and were declared to have “sold for 30 pieces of silver the life of the workers. In comparison with 1914 their role is many times fouler.”