Taming of the Left

The C.I.O.'s ninth annual convention in Boston last week, which a lot of delegates expected to be a Donnybrook Fair between the left and the right, turned out to be more like a day at Sunnybrook Farm. Shrewd Phil Murray had it firmly under control.

For weeks, Murray had pestered Secretary of State George Marshall to come to the convention. Russian propaganda cried that the Marshall Plan was a product of Wall Street. What better reply than for Marshall himself to address the C.I.O. convention? George Marshall acquiesced.

He pleaded gravely for labor's support of U.S. foreign policy, warned against "vicious propaganda and outrageous criticism" and reminded his 2,000 listeners that "among the first victims ... of the police state is the right of labor to organize itself for the protection of its own interests."

His speech drew a long and enthusiastic ovation from the delegates. But it was not unanimous. Small groups of delegates of Communist-line unions kept their hands in their pockets. Not until their leaders signaled to them did they get up off their seats; even then, they did not join in the applause.

From then on, the leftists knew that they had no chance to sway the convention. They had come primed to fight for the re-election of bumbling R. J. Thomas as a C.I.O. vice president, and thus build up his efforts to take the presidency of the U.A.W. away from redheaded Walter Reuther. But the leftists never got their fists up. Phil Murray, taking note of rumors that Thomas was plotting with John L. Lewis to take the autoworkers out of the C.I.O., called Thomas in and bluntly told them he was through as a C.I.O. top officer. When his nomination came up, Thomas bowed out.

The delegates had little chance to blow off steam until Phil Murray's nomination for re-election to his eighth term as president. They voted him in by acclamation and gave him 20 minutes' worth of howling, snake-dancing and table-thumping. Then Murray did some thumping of his own for price controls and smacked the Government for being "definitely derelict" in its duties. Later he was asked if he meant to include Harry Truman in his criticism. He did. Said Murray: "In this country we can criticize whom we choose, when we choose to."

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