20 DECEMBER 1957, Page 7

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`THE AFFAIRS of the ETU must be handled by the members themselves . . . nothing is more cer- tain to unite Communists and anti-Communists than outside interference . . , it will mobilise the innate loyalty which trade unionists have for their union when it is being attacked' . . . and so on. I get very tired of this kind of thing; and I was surprised to find it in the Observer, in a leader-page article by Mr. V. L. Allen. If the ETU members had had any desire to get rid of their Communist bosses they would have done so long ago. The present rumpus in the union is due not to an upsurge of democracy—though there are some genuine democrats among the rebels, Mr. Kingston, for instance—but to a fight be- tween one faction of Marxists—the ex-party- liners—and the party-line junta now in control. For all I know Mr. Foulkes may be right when he objects to his opponents' electoral practices (he should know—he instructed them); and I shall believe that ex-Communist Cannons can be beaten into democratic Deakins when I have seen it happen. At the moment, however, I agree that this is irrelevant; the need is to break Com- munist control; and the ex-Communists, with their intimate knowledge of how the election- • rigging has been done in the past, should be useful allies.