Page 35 - Report on the National Lawyers Guild, legal bulwark of the Communist Party

ruary 21, 1948, p. 1).
The destruction of the rights of the Communist is the classical first step down the road to fascism. (1948 Election Platform of the Communist Party, Political Affairs, September 1948, p. 940).
End the witch hunts, loyalty orders and phony spy scares.
Abolish the Un-American Committee. Withdraw the indictments against the twelve Communist leaders and the con- tempt citations against the anti-fascist victims of Congressional inquisitions (1948 Election Platform of the Com- munist Party, Political Affairs, Septem- ber 1948, p. 941).
Martin Popper, an executive of the National Lawyers Guild, addressed the World Congress of International Demo- cratic Lawyers at Prague, September 7, 1948, and proposed that it send a European lawyer to observe the trial of the 12 American Communist leaders. Popper warned that "the indictment of Communist leaders presages the begin- ning of the end of the Constitutional form of government in America." Daily Worker, September 9, 1948, p. 2),
An aynicus curiae brief, filed by the
National Lawyers Guild, October 7, 1948, before U. S. District Judge Murray Hulbert regarding the indict- ment of the twelve leaders of the Com-- munist Party, contained the following statements:
"These indictments are part of the ominous pattern that has come to threaten the entire Bill of Rights.
"They are a direct outcome of the
anti-Communist hysteria, spy hunts,
etc., that daily fill the press and every
other channel of public informa-
tion.
"We respectfully urge this court to
assert the judicial integrity of our Constitutional system by dismissing these indictments as the clearest viola- tion of the First Amendment." •
As construed and applied to these indictments, therefore, the Smith Act infringes the basic rights of the de- fendants to speech, press and assembly, destroys their right to organize and assemble with others as a political party, suppresses their right to expound, and advocate a social science thereforeunconstitutional. * * *
Worker, October 8, 1948, p. 1).
THE NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD 29
TENNEY COMMITTEE
(Explanatory Note.—^The Tenney Committee was the California Joint Fact Finding Committee on Un-American Activities.)
COMMUNIST PARTY, U. S. A.
State Senator Jack B. Tenney today
initiated his version of a book-burning
crusade against The Daily People's World.
Enraged at the paper's forthright opposition to his activities, the senator concluded his Un-American committee
hearings late yesterday by receiving rubberstamp approval of a resolution
urging a boycott of the Daily People's World. {Daily People's World. Feb-
NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD
The California Tenney Committee on Un-American Activities is the counterpart on a state scale of the Committee on Un-American Activities of the House of Representatives * * * the National Lawyers Guild reiterates its position that the rights of an indi- vidual against interference or inquiry into his political, social and economic views and beliefs are inviolate and may not be the subject of inquisition by
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any agency of government (National Lawyers Guild Convention Resolution, February 1948. Lawyers Guild Revieio, January-February 1948,
pp. 329, 330).
4. Trial of Communist Leaders
—and is
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{Daily