Mr. Dennett. Browder visited here in the Northwest during the time this action was being taken, and he explained it to our district bureau in this fashion, that the law was clearly aimed at putting the Communist Party out of business, and that the Communist Party was determined to not be put out of business, and it was going to comply with the act to the best of its ability, but that certainly did not mean that the Communist Party was going to disavow its sympathy with the working class throughout the world and the various sections of the Communist Party throughout the world.
There was great apprehension on the part of our district bureau about the action. We feared that perhaps the Communist Party was going nationalist on us, and we thought that was a heinous crime, that you should always be internationalists. And Browder was reassuring us that the Communist philosophy was still internationalist and would continue to be internationalist, but that the formal connection and the formal affiliations would have to be dispensed with.
He felt that the party was strong enough to travel along the road, as it needed to, without the direct intervention of the Comintern.
And, of course, it was shortly after that the Comintern itself was dissolved.
Mr. Tavenner. How long did this organization, the Trade Union Unity League, remain in effect in this area? And when I say in effect, I mean in existence.
Mr. Dennett. Until the organization of the CIO.
As the organization of the CIO approached or became clear that it was going to come in, the policy of the Red International of Labor Unions was modified by the international headquarters in Prague. It was modified because the 12th Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International had reviewed the developing world situation, had noted with alarm the rise of fascism in Germany, and resolved that somewhere their policies were not being too effective and, therefore, they must make certain modifications and allow for a little more flexibility than they had before.
You must understand that one of the conditions which existed as a condition for organizing these Red trade unions was that those workers so organized were virtually obliged to declare their loyalty to the cause of the Communist Party. Now that did not mean that they had to be members of it, but it meant that they had to express their sympathy with the efforts of the Soviet people and they had to accept the idea that the objectives of the working class and of the Communist Party were the same.
Therefore, they didn’t meet with much success in the United States in organizing these Red trade unions because the average worker who was confronted with this choice would say, “The devil with you.” He wouldn’t make a choice of that kind.
Mr. Tavenner. In other words, they realized they could not sell communism to the rank and file of American labor if it knew what they were buying.