NO COMMUNISTS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 787, 7 October 1929, Page 11

NO COMMUNISTS

RADICALS NOT WANTED BY UNION OF SEAMEN

REPRESENTATIVE FROM ABROAD Twenty-four years ago Mr. Robert F. Bell left New Zealand in search of adventure. He returned by the Niagara today as an overseas representative of the National Union of Seamen. Mr. Bell is on a combined mission. He is exploring the seaports and studying conditions of seamen throughout New Zealand and Australia. “I don’t want to disturb anybody,” he said on the Niagara. “I just want to look round and find out all I can and I want to do it quietly.” Mr. Bell has been in the United States for the past 18 years, but he makes three or four trips to England every year in the interests of the union. “They keep me in America because I am a colonial/’ he said. Mr. Bell says that the National Union of Seamen will not tolerate Communists, from whom there has been a great deal of opposition. However, that conflict is now being worn down. Radicals and Communists are to be found in countries where there is a good deal of depression. They had been active in England to a great extent during the past few years. “Ours was the only organisation in England "which declared war on the Communists from the start,” continued Mr. Bell. “I think other organisations are only just waking up to the fact that they are detrimental to existence. “One of our principal objects is to build up the trade union movement on international lines,” he said in reference to his visit. “We want to be in a firm position and strongly organised. One finds the whole world over that seamen’s organisations ha ve been destroyed by Communists and then left when there is no more money available. That is their method. They suck the organisation dry and then leave it a wreck.” Mr. Bell will spend some time in New Zealand, most of the time with seamen at the various ports. When his investigations are over lie will make a return trip to visit his family and spend a holiday with them.