Breeze in Blackpool

It was a meeting full of "firsts." It was the first time a Prime Minister of Britain had ever addressed the Trades Union Congress. When bulky Foreign Secretary "Ernie" Bevin, absent for the first time in 30 years (because he was attending the Council of Foreign Ministers in London), sent immaculate, briefcased Ivone Kirkpatrick to "observe" for him, it was the first time the Foreign Office had ever set such an official seal on the T.U.C. And the 900 delegates (representing some 7,000,000 workers) packed into Blackpool's ornate Winter Gardens had their own prideful "first": never before had the workers of Britain so completely felt themselves the backbone of a British Government.

The new consciousness of political power charged the proceedings with electric confidence. Under the watchful presidency of ex-miner Ebby Edwards, delegates barged through their business like a bulldozer through the brush. For the pressing problems currently besetting the Government there was tolerance and understanding. Even on the T.U.C.'s tenderest sore point--the Government's dilatory demobilization plan--delegates pulled their punches. This was their Government: it must get every chance.

But from America . . . Considerably less ordered and arranged was Congress' experience with one of its fraternal foreign delegates, the A.F. of L.'s burly George Meany. A tough-talking ex-plumber from New York. Meany carried a verbal rocket in his pocket, lost no time firing it. His target: Soviet Russia, whose fellow fraternal delegate, Michael P. Tarasov, sat an arm's length away.

Blazed Meany: "Let there be no quibbling or misunderstanding. We do not recognize or concede that the Russian worker groups are trade unions. The Soviet worker groups are formally and actually instruments of the state. These so-called trade unions actively support the Soviet system of worker blacklists and deportations to labor camps that have resulted in virtual enslavement, for millions. . . . The so-called Russian trade-union movement . . . has denied to the workers of Soviet Russia the basic human freedoms that American workers hold prerequisite to a free nation."

There was a pained silence. Then it burst in a hubbub of jeers and cheers. From the chair, Ebby Edwards, bell in hand, energetically clanged down further discussion. Even bristling Comrade Tarasov was gagged by Ebby's veto. Next day he protested by letter against Meany's "insults, lies and calumnies." which would "provoke in the ranks of workers in my country the deepest resentment."

Spare, ascetic T.U.C. General Secretary Sir Walter Citrine did his tactful best to smooth the waters. But the Congress bore Meany no hard feelings. From the rank&-file members of the T.U.C. he received a handsome gold watch. The presentation was made by President Edwards. Said he, twinkling: "This is not Lend-Lease."

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