Lone Heretic

Arthur Horner, cocky Communist general secretary of the (nonCommunist) National Union of Mineworkers, last week flouted clear-cut orders from the Communist hierarchy. To beat Britain's critical fuel shortage, Horner supported Prime Minister Clement Attlee's appeal to miners for 3,000,000 extra tons of coal by April.

The official party line was laid down in the Daily Worker by Harry Pollitt, secretary general of Britain's Communist Party: "The government and the Tories are making the biggest mistake of their lives if they think they are going to bribe and corrupt the miners ... to produce more coal for war against the Soviet Union."

Retorted Horner next day, in a speech to 153 mine union delegates: "If we don't get the coal, our economic recovery is killed and the Socialist government will lose the next election. That would mean a return of the Tories--the last thing we want. We must get the coal." The delegates supported Horner 152-1.

Homer's stand did not mean that he was renouncing Communism, but simply that the realistic little Red thought he knew better than Moscow how to further the Red cause. He has indulged in such heresies before and got away with them because he is Britain's only top Red union leader with a mass following. Years ago there were many semi-independent Communists throughout the world. Today Horner is the only prominent one still tolerated by the party.

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