A SPECTATOR 'S. NOTEBOOK
COMMUNIST methods in this country are worth studying. We have lately had the appeal of the Secretary of the Labour Party to trade unionists to wake up and prevent Communists from packing lodge and district meetings and carrying their own resolutions and electing their own candidates. I have been hearing a good deal of the assiduity with which this policy is pursued—very often with success, because the rank-and-file unionist either fails to attend the meeting or goes home before the end (and therefore before the motion is put) because he is sick of the interminable Communist speeches. In the last week or two the Lancashire area of National Union of Mineworkers has unseated its Communist president. On the other hand the important Electrical Trades Union has just elected a member of the Communist Party as secretary—not cer- tainly because he was a Communist, more probably in spite of it, but he is subject no doubt to the powerful influences which inter- national Communism brings to bear. Simultaneously the Civil Service Clerical Association is organising against its Communists in earnest, and I predict that Mr. W. J. Brown, who has been rather in the limelight in connection with this particular union, will be in it again triumphantly at the next annual meeting.
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