Communists on the Docks

The free world's greatest strategic asset in its struggle against onrushing Communism in Asia is control of the Pacific Ocean. In war, this control would be challenged and limited by Russian submarines. In peace (and perhaps in war), it is challenged and limited by Communist control of longshoremen's unions on the U.S. and Canadian West Coast, in Hawaii, in New Zealand and in Australia. In all these areas, the Communists shelter behind the English-speaking peoples' guarantees of personal and political liberty.

Communist Harry Bridges (whose International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union controls dock work in San Francisco, Hawaii, the U.S. Northwest and Vancouver) is still undeported after 16 years of U.S. efforts to send him back to Australia. Last week New Zealand's and Australia's efforts to deal with their Communists were in the news.

In Australia, a Communist-led dockers' union has just relaxed a costly, month-old slowdown strike over a variety of wage and overtime issues which the Government charged were pretexts to hide the real reason: the Communist plot to slow down the British Commonwealth rearmament. The Australian government has tried in vain to deport British-born James ("Big Jim") Healy, Communist boss of the dockers. Last week Australia's efforts to cope with Communism received a heavy blow when the High Court voided a 1950 law outlawing the Communist Party and giving the government power to "declare" union officials and government workers Communists. The law placed the burden of proof on the "declared" individual, who would have to show that he was not a Communist. In defending the law, Liberal Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies had said: "We are not dealing with the ordinary Australian citizen who is entitled to be treated with all the delicacies of the law. We are dealing with a movement of scoundrels, of enemies of the people, whose one desire is to pull Australia down." When the High Court invalidated his law, Menzies said: "This is not the end of the fight against Communism. It is merely the beginning."

In New Zealand, dockers have been on strike for three weeks. Troops have been loading and unloading ships, but because freezing-plant workers support the dockers, many ships that would have carried meat to Britain left New Zealand with nearly empty holds. As in the Australian strike, the surface issues concern wages and overtime, but the government charges that the real reason is the Communist aim to hurt the Commonwealth. To deal with strikers, Prime Minister Sidney Holland has broad powers. So far, he has used them with restraint. The majority of New Zealanders, including many unions, seem to be backing the Prime Minister against the Communist-led dockers.

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