Page 21 - Report on the National Lawyers Guild, legal bulwark of the Communist Party

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THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD 15
It was well known that the drive of the World Peace Congress for endorsement of the so-called Stockholm Appeal and for interference with shipments of material sent by the United States in support of the Atlantic Defense Pact is the main present objective of international communism. ThefollowingexcerptfromtheMoscowHomeService Broadcast of May 21, 1950, therefore demonstrates how the Inter- national Association for Democratic Lawyers functions on an interna- tional scale to protect the Communist sabotage and espionage appara- tus, just as the National Lawyers Guild functions on a national scale:
Among the organizations who have sided with the Stockholm declaration during the last week are the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and others. The International Association of Democratic Lawyers has also addressed dockers and railwaymen refusing to transport war material in a declaration in which they state that "they consider their actions are well-founded from a legal and juridical point of view because their actions are aimed at the prevention of war crimes.
It should be remembered that the National Lawyers Guild, as a subordinate of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, is in duty bound to comply with this directive in oiu- own country.
At the previous Prague Congress in 1948, the International Associa-
tion of Democratic Lawyers officially solidarized itself with the Wroclaw
Congress of Intellectuals, attended by a number of leading American
Communists, which devoted itself primarily to assailing the foreign
policies of the United States and extolling the "peace policies" of the Soviet Union.
According to the Daily Worker of October 19, 1949, page 10, the Fourth Congress of Democratic Lawyers held in Prague went even further in its service to international communism. Welcomed by Klement Gottwald, Communist President of Czechoslovakia, it worked out a "people's law code," intended as a guide for Communist dictator- ships. Inconcludingthesession,Dr.Nordmancomparedtheadmin- istration of justice in Communist Czechoslovakia with that of the western democracies.
"The American Constitution," remarked Nordman, "particularly the first
amendment, guarantees freedom of thought, but we can see in the trial of the
12 Communists in New York that they are being prosecuted only for their
thoughts, only because they are Marxists and the jury is selected not democrat-
Incidentally, Czechoslovakia has been the scene of a number of
recent Communist purge trials in which the right to trial by jury and
accepted juridical practices were ruthlessly violated, without protest from the Association of Democratic Lawyers for the National Lawyers GuUd.
The headquarters of the International Association of Democratic Lawyersisat19Quaid'OrleansinParis,France. Thepresidentofthe organization at the time of its 1949 convention was D. N. Pritt, K. C, a British lawyer prominent in the defense of Communist causes. Its general secretary is Joe Nordman, who recently defended the French pro-Communist publication, Les Lettres Frangaise.
GUILD COMMUNISTS AND FELLOW TRAVELERS
The files of the Committee on Un-American Activities show that the dominant forces in the National Lawyers Guild have been composed of kno-\vn Communists and fellow travelers.
H. Rept. 3123, 81-2 8