SIR—The difficulties in these days of reporting, writing up, cutting down, and proof-reading must account for the extraordinary mix-up of the sentence in my account of the Trades Union Congress, which reads: " . , . the' clean-up of Communist-controlled trades councils and the importance properly attached to Cotholies by Sir Walter Citrine and by the General Council as doing locally for the working people what the latter is
doing nationally . ."
This might convey that Sir Walter and the Report of the General Council made allusions, direct or indirect. to Catholics which is not the case.
At the same time, it is only proper to inform your readers elsewhere than in Liverpool and in Birkenhead of the fact that Sir Walter does attach a very real importance to Catholics both in the trades councils and in the trades unions. Formerly a local official of the Electrical Trades Union on the Merseyside, he has known where to seek reinforcement against such " borers from within " as Will Lowther and Arthur Homer of the Miners and John Jagger and Ellen Wilkinson of the Distributive Workers.
Sir Walter and Ernest Bevin have had at their back the Catholic influence in the Transport Workers, the Warehouse Workers and the General and Municipal Workers. The tradition lives on which was created by Pete Curran at Jarrow, by Jack Jones as well as Will Thorne in Silvertown and Canning Town, by Jim O'Grady in Leeds and by Jimmy Sexton in Liverpool. Those stalwarts, who stood alongside Keir Hardie when he won at West Ham in 1892 and when, in the year of the Labour Party's birth, he fought at Preston, have left behind them a power in the land in the mighty organisations of the general labour unions. It is they who can lead the Labour Party. It is they who will welcome the activity of the Catholics as trade unionists, .1. T. WALTON NEWBOLD.