Unwanted Guest

YOU'RE NOT WELCOME, COMRADE, read the headline in the London Daily Mail. Just in case the visitor failed to get the message, the paper repeated it in Russian: Mbl BAC HE XOTHM, TOBAPHIU.The comrade was Politburo Member Alexander Shelepin, whose 48-hour visit to Britain last week mortified the Labor government, embarrassed the trade unions, and stirred unexpectedly deep reserves of anti-Communist feeling among the British public.

The outcry actually began last February when news leaked out that Shelepin would head a Soviet delegation invited by Britain's Trades Union Congress. The Kremlin could scarcely have chosen a less suitable delegate. Shelepin is not only head of the impotent trade union organization in the Soviet Union--where strikes are illegal and workers are notoriously without genuine representation--but is also a former chief of the KGB, the dreaded Soviet secret police, which he ran from 1958 to 1961. Declared Frank Chapple, head of Britain's electrical and plumbing union: "The only experience Shelepin has of workers is putting them in jail."

Milk Cartons. Despite the protests, T.U.C. General Secretary Len Murray refused to rescind the invitation. To keep potential demonstrators off balance, the T.U.C. would not disclose when Shelepin's Aeroflot jet would arrive or where he would go. Worried that the Soviet labor leader might be attacked or even assassinated, security agents later dispatched a stand-in resembling the short, heavy-set Russian in a decoy Daimler limousine. He took the brunt of a barrage of umbrellas, milk cartons, bricks and Passover cookies, as the real Shelepin slipped into T.U.C. headquarters through the tradesmen's entrance.

Fearful of possible rioting, T.U.C. officials whisked their controversial guest to Scotland. During a tour of Kilmarnock, Shelepin fleetingly made contact with a real, live British auto worker, producing a less-than-historic exchange. "Is your lunch hour long enough?" inquired the Russian through an interpreter. "It's all right," the worker replied.

Shelepin hastily summoned reporters to Prestwick Airport as he prepared to leave. He claimed that the demonstrations against him "did not reflect the interests of the English working class and its unions." He blamed the protests on the Jews. Contending that the U.S.S.R. had fought World War II for the sake of Jews, he charged that they are now "ungrateful enemies of detente." In fact, most demonstrators were Protestant Britons or Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian refugees.

Although actively in pursuit of detente, Britain was discomfited by Shelepin's presence, even though he is widely regarded as a contender for Leonid Brezhnev's job when the Soviet party chief retires. As for the T.U.C., it defended the bungled visit in a statement claiming that the trip had led to "constructive conversations held in a friendly atmosphere."

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