SHOWING STRAIN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 August 1939, Page 7

SHOWING STRAIN

BRIDGES AT DEPORTATION HEARING POLITICAL AND OTHER VIEWS. CLASS STRUGGLE UNDER WAY. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. SAN FRANCISCO. August 3. Th former Australian Labour leader .• Harry Bridges, while giving evidence t at the hearing of deportation charges ? against him. was apparently under considerable nervous strain. ? Bridges testified that about 20 years • ago he had been a member of the ■ I.W.W. (Industrial Workers of the - World) for a short time till he found ■ out what it stood for. He repeated ! again and again that he never was a Communist and that he abhorred any revolutionary movement that would destroy democracy. I Bridges said he believed that, the Communists had "their weight behind me . . They make good militant trade union men. “I had most of my beliefs before the Communist Party existed." he said. "I came from Australia and Australians arc pretty progressive, and many things Communists now advocate are old stuff down there." Bridges paraphrased the reply io a repeated question which asked him whether he was a Communist Party member or believed in Communism. He insisted that there would be no benefit in scrapping the American system of government. "I don't think the American form of government can be bettered anywhere else in the world.” he added. Pointing to newspaper headlines on the clash between strikers and non- ] strikers in Kremmling, Colorado. , Bridges declared that the class strug- < gle was under way and workers were j being shown down on picket lines all I over the country. "On the one hand are large corporate, interests: on the i other are working people, small busi- £ ness people and small farmers." < He expressed the opinion that the c class struggle could be settled amicably if employers would agree "to give way a little . . Certainly the class struggle results in bloodshed, but the blood is usually ours.”