The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1927-09-12
* r. j. O'FLAHERTY.

ONE hundredf and fifty thousand
" dollars were added to the British
national debt since last year. The
to- al national indebtedness now
amounts to the stupendous sum of
over SO billion dollars. The Labor
Party executive proposed a tax on
unearned incomes over 50, 800, but this
proposal was met with an angry roar
from the capitalist press. 1t was
b I a n d e d robbery by progressive
stages. Needless to say the reac-
tionary and highly respectable con-
sentative Labor Party leaders will
not make a mass issue out of the
proposal or embarrass the govern
ment in any way, Still, the way in
which it was received by the CAPT
talist press attests to the truth of
the contention that the capitalist
tiger will fight to protect the tips of
his whiskers as we'll as his heart,
realizing that the removal of his
whiskers would be followed by a
more deadly ATTACK.
a. A. PURCELL, former president
A of the International Federation of
Trade Unions was eased out of that
position at the recent meeting of the
international in Paris because Purcell
in his presidential speech made plea
for international trade union unity
and spoke favorably of the Russian
revolution. Any speech that even in
the mildest degree favors the Soviet
Union is gall and wormwood to the
reactionaries, so when PurcelPs re-
election was moved by the British
delegation, the continental delegates,
under the control of Oudegeest,
secretary of the international voted
against him. But to show that they
were not moved by anti-British pre-
JUDGE they voted unanimously for
George Hicks, president of the GEN
eral Council of Trade Unions.
THAT the Amsterdam leaders know
their onions was demonstrated at
the Edinburgh conference of the
British Trade Union Congress when
Hicks delivered a bitter attack on the
left wing movement@and on the Rus
sian trade union leadership. He IA
vored breaking off relations with the
Russian central trades body and dis
solving the Anglo-Russian Com
mittee. Even the conservative Cramp
of the Railwaymen held that this ac-
ton would be a signal to Stanley
Baldwin that British labor endorsed
his break with the Soviet Union. It
means in fact that the right wing
British labor leaders are behind him
and are to all intents and purposes
part Of the governing machine of the
empire.
THE British trade union movement
has experienced big swing to the
right since the defeat of the general
strike. The right wing leaders have
come out openly in their imperialist
roles. The pseudo-left leaders have
followed the trail blazed by Thomas,
Macdonald and Clynes. They re-
tanned their positions by prostituting
themselves. At best they were only
barometers of mass sentiment and
swan with the current The right
wing leaders are made of sterner
material and have no mental con-
flicts as to which side of the barri-
cades they shall fight on. Thomas,
Macdonald and Co., are dyed-in-the-
wool imperialists and insist on the
world knowing it.
HERBERT SMITH, president of the
IA Miners Federation has now de-
generated into a red-baiter. Tho the
workers of the Soviet Union contrib
uted more funds to the relief of the
miners than the workers of the rest
of the world combined, assistance that
enabled the miners to hold out for
nine months, Smith joins the most
extreme reactionaries in his attacks
on them. In the meantime Frank
Hodges, former secretary of the
Miners Federation is organizing scab
unions and the organization work is
financed by Havelock Wilson, arch