Part 14

Today, Labor is faced with and all-out offensive of the profit-greedy NAM. They are determined to bring wages down while continuing to raise the cost of living. This attack on the peoples’ living standards is most serious to the thousands of greatly underpaid white-collar workers.

To accomplish this union-busting program, the most vicious antilabor legislation, such as the Taft-Hartley law has been passed, and the Un-American Activities Committee, the little Dies Committees and numerous other government agencies--all in conjunction with the FBI--are engaged in a witch-hunt against labor.

Let us recall that it was not until trade unions were made impotent in Germany that Hitler dared to embark on the road to concentration and extermination camps.

The National CIO has condemned the Department of Justice for conducting a “gumshoe” probe of CIO political expenditures. President Philip Murray has reported “furtive operations and dramatic unearthing of clues by the FBI ... which can have only the objective of harassing and intimidation.”

Anyone working with the FBI or with any of the above-named antilabor committees or against the best interests of the union must clearly be labeled an enemy of labor and removed from membership in any labor organization to which he may belong.

Therefore, in pursuance of the procedure established by Section I, ARTICLE XV, which states that any elective or appointive officers of a local union may be removed from office subject to provisions of this Article for any violation of this Constitution “or because of the commission of an act impairing the usefulness of the organization,” we are presenting these charges, and demanding the expulsion of Harriette Dennett from UOPWA 35. We call upon our Union to immediately set up a trial committee to investigate these charges and report back its findings to a special membership meeting to be called for action by the membership.

uopwa 35 cio

Mr. TAVENNER. And I would like also to introduce in evidence at this time the expulsion notice that was given you, and ask that it be marked “Dennett Exhibit No. 11.”

Mr. MOULDER. As requested by counsel, without objection, it is so ordered.

(The document above referred to, marked “Dennett Exhibit No. 11,” is filed herewith).

DENNETT EXHIBIT No. 11

NOTICE OF EXPULSION

To All Sections, Clubs, and Members of the Northwest District Communist Party, U. S. A.:

This is to notify all Sections and Clubs of the expulsion from the Communist Party of Eugene V. Dennett, Harriet Dennett, and Claude Smith.

In the case of Eugene Dennett and Harriet Dennett, the expulsion is based upon violation of the conditions of membership in the Communist Party as set forth in Article 9, Sections 1, 2, and 4 of the Constitution of the Communist Party, U. S. A., based upon the following facts established by the District Review Commission:

1. Admitted employment of Harriet Dennett by an agency of the F. B. I. and the submitting of regular reports to said agency over a long period of time, with the knowledge and consent, and direct participation of Eugene V. Dennett. This was established by his admission of personal contact with a known agent of the F. B. I. and his concealment from the Party of Harriet Dennett’s activities and his own personal contact with the F. B. I.

2. Admitted personal and political relations by Eugene V. Dennett with known Trotskyites with established participation by Harriet Dennett.

3. An established record of anti-party, disruptive, and provocative activity by Eugene Dennett on numerous occasions and by Harriet Dennett in several instances.

In the case of Claude Smith, the expulsion is based upon violation of the conditions of membership in the Communist Party as set forth in Article 9, Sections 1, 2, and 4 of the Constitution of the Communist Party, U. S. A., and based upon the following facts established by the District Review Commission:

1. Admitted participation in the preparation of the reports submitted by Harriet Dennett to the Agency referred to above as well as sharing in the payment for those reports and concealment of these activities from the Party.

The District Review Commission wishes to call to the attention of the Party membership and its organizations the necessary conclusions from these facts. First, in this case as in many in the past, a negative, carping attitude toward the Party and its program has upon investigation disclosed enemies of the Party and the working class.

The same thing must be said of toleration and association with Trotskyites who are simply fascists hiding behind “left” phrases. While such attitudes may be due to lack of understanding in new members, in the case of experienced long time members it can only be regarded as conscious assistance to fascism and to the agents of fascism. It must be noted also that the personal record of these people is marked by individualism instability and extreme egotism.

The District Review Commission also wishes to point out that it is necessary to learn to distinguish between honest differences of opinion which we have to constantly resolve by discussion and majority decision and disruptive, dishonest attacks upon the program activities and leadership of the Party, which is the earmark of the provocateur and agent of the enemy. Only by more resolutely defending and fighting for the program of the Party can we make this distinction clear. Only by becoming more alert to the smell of anti-Party poison can we root out these disrupters. Only by fighting for the unity of the Party and testing our cadres struggle can we create guarantees that such elements will not remain long in the Party or be able to steal into its posts of leadership, and that the damage that they do will be reduced to a minimum.

Harriet Dennett is at present holding the position of President of the Seattle UOPWA Local Union No. 35. Eugene Dennett is a member of the Board of Control of the NEW WORLD and a member of the Steelworkers Union. Claude Smith is at present editor of the Washington State CIO news.

All Party members are warned against personal or political association with these expelled members and to give them no consideration or comfort in the excuses and protests they can be expected to make against the expulsion action which was ordered carried out by unanimous vote of the Northwest District Committee in executive session on October 6, 1947.

Signed: HENRY HUFF, _District Chairman_, C. VAN LYDEGRAF, _District Orig. Sec’y_, _For the Northwest District Committee Communist Party, U. S. A._

uopwa No. 35.

Mr. VELDE. There is one question I would like to ask you, Mr. Dennett, about your expulsion and your wife’s. You probably recall the argument that took place within the ranks of the Communist Party during the change from the Communist political association to the militant type of organization it was before.

Did you or your wife engage in any of those arguments after the receipt of the Duclos letter?

Mr. DENNETT. Yes, we did.

Mr. VELDE. I am interested in that, if you will please be as brief as you can.

Mr. DENNETT. I will do my best, sir.

I was still in the service at the time. This occurred in New Orleans. My wife was still doing this same work in New Orleans.

Mr. VELDE. Was that in the middle of 1945?

Mr. DENNETT. That is right, in May and June of 1945.

And with the publication of the Duclos letter in the Daily Worker, which my wife was a subscriber to at that time, we observed that something tremendous was taking place within the party. And she made contact with some of the party people in New Orleans.

When they found that we had an interest in it, they invited us to the meetings where this discussion took place. And I was quite startled to find that the general criticism was mainly directed at the bureaucratic attitude and dictatorial policies pursued by Mr. Earl Browder. I was flabbergasted because I did not have that conception of him, and I was quite surprised as a result of it. And, of course, you know the rest of the story, which was published.

Mr. VELDE. In other words, you and your wife both took the side of Earl Browder?

Mr. DENNETT. I wouldn’t say that my former wife took the side of Earl Browder. I wouldn’t say I took the side of Earl Browder either because I was not in the party at the time. I was simply a visitor invited, and I was mainly surprised. I questioned the reports that people made. I didn’t pass judgment on it. I simply could hardly believe the criticism which I heard.

Mr. VELDE. It appears to me from your testimony that you were probably sort of independent in this matter of following the Communist Party line as handed down from Soviet Russia, and that was probably one of the chief reasons why you were expelled. Is that not right? You would not follow the party line? You thought for yourself.

Mr. DENNETT. I thought I was following the party line, and I thought the leaders around here were zigzagging all over the lot, and they didn’t know what the line was. They thought I was nuts. I thought they were nuts.

Mr. VELDE. Maybe you were just like Trotsky or Lovestone. You just didn’t happen to be in the ruling class as far as the party line was concerned.

Mr. TAVENNER. Mr. Chairman, we have just checked the names on exhibit No. 10, and find that all of the persons whose names appear there have been identified in testimony before this committee as Communist Party members. Therefore, I see no reason for restricting that document in any way in its introduction in evidence.

Mr. MOULDER. It is so ordered. Do you wish to read the names?

Mr. TAVENNER. I desire the witness to read the names.

Mr. DENNETT. Alice Kinney, known to me before as Alice Balmer, B-a-l-m-e-r; Trudi Kirkwood, Helen Huff. Helen Huff was known to me as the wife of Henry Huff, who was the district organizer of the party, and Helen Huff was one of those persons to whom I spoke when I requested that they allow my former wife to resign, but they would have nothing to do with that. They wouldn’t allow it. They wanted to make an example of her. Hallie Donaldson, Vivian Stucker, S-t-u-c-k-e-r, Jean R. Hatten.

Mr. TAVENNER. Mr. Dennett, are there any other facts relating to your expulsion which would be of interest to this committee?

Mr. DENNETT. I think, Mr. Tavenner and members of the committee, that there are probably many. But, in view of the pressing time, I think that this is sufficient to give you the picture, and, if you want to go into more detail at a later time when you have more time available, I think maybe we could do that. I have said all I think I need to say at this time.

Mr. TAVENNER. After your expulsion have you been identified with the Communist Party in any way?

Mr. DENNETT. No, sir; I have not.

Mr. TAVENNER. The committee had information indicating that you may possibly have become a member after your expulsion, or even prior to that, of the Socialist Workers Party. And the information that the committee had in that respect was a nominating petition of that group signed by you.

We would like to know whether you were at any time a member of the Socialist Workers Party.

Mr. DENNETT. The answer is very simple. I was not. I never have been a member of the Socialist Workers Party.

The occasion for that signature on that nominating petition is the result of a request from the Socialist Workers Party leader, Mr. Daniel Roberts, who was the leader at that time, that I sign a nominating petition to permit their candidates to get on the ballot.

In the State of Washington a provision is in the election laws allowing nominating petitions to be signed by a minimum of 25 people who are qualified voters who did not vote in the primary. In other words, it is equivalent to casting a vote.

Mr. TAVENNER. Did the Socialist Workers Party endeavor to recruit you as a member?

Mr. DENNETT. Yes. Mr. Daniel Roberts tried time and time again to recruit me, thinking that my vast experience in the Communist Party gave me plenty of background to qualify me if I would simply change my thinking with respect to certain fundamental ideas which were points of difference between the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party. However, I never was able to accept all of the ideas which Mr. Roberts and some of their national leaders to whom he introduced me--I could never resolve all of the policies which they advocated to my own thinking.

And the whole experience caused me to go back and question and challenge the validity of the theoretical basis upon which the Communist Party was organized and upon which it operated. And it caused me to reach the conclusion a long time ago that it is very inadvisable for anyone to commit his political fealty to anyone or any organization that he doesn’t understand in full. And I do not to this day completely understand the Socialist Workers Party.

Mr. TAVENNER. I noticed in some of the earlier documents introduced in evidence that reference was made to you when the Communist Party was critical of you as being a Trotskyite.

Mr. DENNETT. That is true. Remarks were made about me on a number of occasions. And, as near as I can make out, the reason for it is I was asking embarrassing questions. It seems as though Trotsky did that against Mr. Stalin in the Soviet Union--when everyone especially was interested in a democratic procedure that went contrary to Stalin’s rule. His rule was that you had to accept his decision whether you liked it or not. And that is the rule of democratic centralism, a principle with which I am in total disagreement today. I thought for a long time that that was a wonderful principle. I had read Lenin’s writings on the subject. I thought that his explanations were quite good. But once I had had service in the military, once I knew what military organization was like, I recognized the principle of democratic centralism as the application of military rule to civilian life. And I am strictly opposed to it.

Mr. TAVENNER. In light of your experience in the Communist Party, and from your study of the Socialist Workers Party, would you please state as briefly as you can the principal differences between these organizations as you understood them.

Mr. DENNETT. One of the principal differences lies in the fact that the Socialist Workers Party people accused the Communist Party people, in particular Stalin and Stalinism, of having deserted the principle of socialism, of internationalism, accusing Stalin of degenerating into nationalism. That is when he developed the so-called theory of the possibility of developing socialism in one country alone.

Mr. TAVENNER. That country being the Soviet Union.

Mr. DENNETT. That country being the Soviet Union.

The Trotskyites maintained that Stalin was thereby deserting the cause of internationalism and that he would think first of the interests of the Soviet Union, and later, if at all, subordinate the interests of the world working class to building the Soviet Union at the cost of letting the working class in other countries go by the boards.

In other words, if a revolutionary situation developed in some other country Stalin would exert his power to prevent the success of the revolution in that country for fear that it would detract from the success of the Soviet Union.

Mr. TAVENNER. Unless, of course, such a revolution would strengthen his power and his regime in the Soviet Union. Wouldn’t you make that qualification?

Mr. DENNETT. That might be a consideration. But all history, all experience since the Second World War would indicate that Stalin at no time approved successful revolutions in any country. He opposed revolutionary effort of the Yugoslavs. He opposed the revolutionary effort of the Communists in Greece. He opposed the revolutionary effort of the Chinese Communists. He even made commitments, and part of the deal which people seemed to be so concerned about at Yalta and Potsdam and Cairo and Casablanca involved Stalin making commitments to Roosevelt and Churchill to the effect that the Soviet Union would use its influence to suppress the revolutionary effort of the workers in the various countries that were on the brink of revolution.

And that is why when the Soviet Red Army marched into those border countries in eastern Europe they did not attempt to create a Soviet revolution. They, instead, created something they called people’s democracies. But they were established in some instances with the aid of the Red army marching in, and the people in those countries had nothing to say about it.

Mr. TAVENNER. What was the attitude of the Trotskyites as to Stalin’s agreement with reference to Greece, for instance?

Mr. DENNETT. They accused him of betraying the working class not only in Greece but in the Soviet Union because he was ruling in the Soviet Union with such an iron hand that workers there were being suppressed. They were being forbidden from enjoying the efforts they were putting in to build a Socialist country. In fact, they were being deprived of the fruits of what was intended to be socialism. In fact, the Trotskyites, as I understand, their philosophy in the matter is that the Soviet Union has suffered from an arrested development--it is not truly Socialist; it has not been permitted to become Socialist, and that the biggest crime Stalin committed was to pretend and hold the Soviet Union up to world view as a Socialist country when, in fact, it was not a Socialist country.

I also came to the conclusion, as a result of some of the theoretical material I read in about 1946, where Stalin was insisting that, instead of the authority of the state withering away as predicted in the writings of Engels and Lenin, that Stalin insisted that the authority of the state must increase, that the police power must be increased in the Soviet Union to make sure that they would continue in an ordered fashion, which certainly was contrary to all the earlier writings on the theoretical subject of the development of the state.

Mr. TAVENNER. It has been demonstrated time and again, has it not, to your satisfaction, that Stalin has endeavored to use international communism as a tool in order to advance his own foreign policy which necessarily, of course, meant his strengthening his own position in the Soviet Union.

Mr. DENNETT. It certainly is.

Mr. TAVENNER. There are many other matters that I would have liked to have gone into with you, but I must terminate the examination. I do not like to do so without giving you an opportunity to state anything that may be in your mind about the effect of your experience in the Communist Party or your present attitude toward the Communist Party.

I am not insisting that you do, but I merely want to give you the opportunity.

Mr. DENNETT. My counsel has already advised me to be very brief. I am very appreciative of the suggestion because the hour is late, and I want to thank you for the opportunity you have given me to make a statement.

The only statement I would make at this time is some elaboration over what I started to say earlier when we were talking about what steps to take to protect yourself against this sort of deception.

I am sure that some people in hearing the account which I have given by way of testimony before this committee may gather the impression that I learned quite a little bit about deception. And I am sure that some people were quite firmly convinced that I would do nothing except deceive this committee when I appeared before it.

I wish to assure you that I have testified to the best of my ability about the facts that I know and facts which I can substantiate with documentary evidence in my own records.

Those records are available to the committee. They have been made available to the committee, and I understand that you intend to have the United States Marshal pick them up and place them in protective custody where they will be available for me for further study and also to yourself.

I simply recite that as some indication that in my testifying before you the only reservation that I have is that I still have some misgivings about this kind of procedure because I fear that we are needlessly hurting individuals when we name them in such vast numbers as the committee has called upon me to do.

I think that some means needs to be found to change that procedure. And I believe that there will be more information of value to convincing the general public and to assisting the Congress, by way of its legislative effort, if a better effort is found.

And I hope that you will seriously pay attention to the recommendations of the American Civil Liberties Union in this regard. I think their recommendations deserve your worthy consideration.

I think, gentlemen, that is about all that is needed for me to say at this time. I can only say that I am available for whatever further work that you wish to do with me. I do not want anyone to think that they are going to make a professional witness out of me. I have no intention of being a professional witness. I would like to be able to live in peace and quiet because my own health will not permit me to do all the other things that need to be done.

Mr. MOULDER. Mr. Dennett, as chairman of this committee, and on behalf of counsel, Mr. Tavenner, and Mr. Wheeler, and I believe I should presume to express appreciation also on behalf of the full committee on Un-American Activities, the Congress of the United States, and the people of America for your honest, courageous, patriotic, and convincing testimony and information concerning communistic activities.

Your comprehensive and intelligent testimony is not only revealing but has been ably presented by you in a patriotic and conscientious spirit and duty to your country and also to yourself.

We commend you for your appearance and conduct before this committee as an example--and I emphasize this--as an example of how any and all former Communist Party members can clear themselves of any doubt whatsoever concerning their loyalty to the United States of America.

And, speaking for myself, I am glad I had an opportunity to observe your conduct on the witness stand, and, having heard your testimony, I am deeply impressed by the valuable information you have given to the committee.

Mr. Velde, do you have anything?

Mr. VELDE. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I don’t think I can add too much to your very fine statement.

Let me say that I concur with our distinguished friend from Missouri in his statement about your testimony.

I happened to be here last year when you refused to testify. I think I mentioned earlier--last Thursday--that you would have a lot more friends after you got through testifying than you had before or during the time that you appeared here last time, and I sincerely hope that that is true. I believe it will be.

The reason, of course, that we were not able to hear your testimony at the sessions here last June was that we had too many other witnesses subpenaed to be heard as we do apparently this time, Mr. Chairman.

Let me say that I think you have made a great addition to the information that is already on file concerning the activities of the Communist Party. But, chiefly, you have made a great contribution in substantiating, in large part, the testimony that was given by Mrs. Barbara Hartle and other witnesses who gave information here last June. For that we are very appreciative.

I want to say just a word about Mrs. Hartle.

As you know, she is presently serving in the prison in West Virginia, a Federal penitentiary in West Virginia.

I think she certainly exhibited a great deal of courage and a great deal of American spirit in giving the testimony that she did.