Evening star., 1940-12-10
Nv RALPH INGERSALL.


BY RALPH INGERSALL.
In America, the Communist party
Is almost universally regarded as
subversive. Many States barred its
candidates in this November cleo
tion and most people believe that 1t
should or soon will be driven un-
dergrounG.
This IS not at all the case in Great
Britain, a nation already at war with
a country with whom the Com
munist state of Russia is partially
allied. The Communists Daily
Worker is sold on the streets-a boy
hawks it outside the gates OF the
Ministry of Information every morn
ing-and the leaders of the Com
munist party agitate openly, Or
eaniZe mass meetings and Demon
strations.
got hold of an editor of the
Daily Worker to talk to him about 1t.
He Is Claude Cockburn, many years
publisher of an often sensational
news letter on international affairs
called The Week-and once upon
time London correspondent Tor
Time magazine I knew him then
the son of the governor OF a bank
In Canada, oxford graduate and
bright Young man, when Lord Bea-
verbrook, then publisher of the Daily
Express and now Minister OF AVA
tion Production, was his most ener-
setic admirer.
He talked to me for a long time
and very frankly about conditions IN
England and the Communist partys
position.
Fights for Better Shelters.
He said the party was extremely
unpopular with the government, but
that it had decided rather than hght
the war effort-it still felt the war
an imperialist, capitalist, rather than
an anti-Fascist one-it should con-
centrate its energies on local issue.
The issue it chose was improvement
of shelters.
He spoke bitterly and scornfully
of the government lack of interest
In the way people were sheltered
and very possesSively about what
shelter reform had already been
achieved-this last in rebuttal to my
statement that I had seen a good
deal of evidence OF effort at improve
ment.
What improvement there has
been is the result of our agitation,
he said.
The shelter problems terrific
~ than1
to open up the empty houses in the
West End, but when the government
did commander them, the owners
boarded up the bathrooms and took
out the fixtures and made slumS of
them. And then the way they moved
people didn't work out. They put
families into a house in the West End
and in the morning they'd get up
and go out to buy their tea and
bread for breakfast. And all they
had to buy with were ha'pennies,
and the West End shopkeepers had
never seen a ha'penny before. They
were all very nice to them, but there
wasn't anything they could sell
them. And they were lonely and un-
happy in strange surroundings, so
they went back to the East End.
Ideas for Improvement.
He said the Communist party did
organize in the shelters and that the
government didn't like that. He said,
"Of course, what ought to be done is
to move people in big unit groups so
that their friends and families can
be around them and things arranged
so that they have the food they
like to buy at prices they can afford" !"
He had many other ideas for i'm
proving shelters, most OF which I
thought intelligent. I remember a
government report I had read on
morale which had listed as one of
the problems the fact that the mid
die class people in whose home the
poor were billeted complained that
the government was imposing "the
worst features of Communism and
FaSciSm combined" on them. And
that the poor people reported not
unnatural resentment at the hostil-
ity met in country billets.
What found myself resenting in
Cockburn's speech was that possess
siveneSs I have referred to-a quail
ity resulting from phrasing all his
observations to suggest that his po-
litical party and his political party
alone had any real interest in these
things. I had seen too much evil
dence that this was nonsense.
The official Ministry of Home Sc
ny- 1o OF
maximum efficiency to improve shell
ters, but working and working hard
they are. And so-more Importantly
ARE the thousands of air raid war
dens and the millions of people who
are themselves concerned, quite un-
conscious of politics.
Not Bothered by Censors.
I asked Cockburn how the censors
felt about the Daily Worker. He
said, surprisingly, They are pretty
good. So far it really is voluntary
censorship. A paper doesn't have to
submit anything to the censor it
doesn't want All the other papers
have signed up voluntarily, but we
just submit something about which
we're in doubt. Of course, we are
very careful to stay away from any
military information, but the CEN
sorship doesn't bother us much. The
only thing the government won't let
us do is send the paper out of
England"
He said the governments policy
on mass meetings was not quite
clear-that sometimes the men and