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1 the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project Labor Series MORRIS WEISZ Interviewed by: James Leader Initial interview date: May 16, 1993 Copyright 2012 ADST TABLE OF CONTENTS Early years Educated at City College New York Socialist Club Socialist Youth activities International Ladies Garment Workers Union Communists Socialist Party of Washington DC Spanish Civil War Abraham Lincoln Brigade Debs Battalion Communists Milton Zantisky interviews of Weisz Rise of Hitler Norman Thomas Russian Communists Socialist join Communists Mitterrand Reagan’s defense policy World Federation of Trade Unions McCarthyism “Were you ever a member of the Communist Party” Angelica Balabanoff Italian Socialist Party Fabian Socialism Daniel P. Moynihan Trotskyites Phillip Murray Holocaust Museum Jewish Labor Committee Jajiben Ramalfren 1 US Embassy, New Delhi, India: Counselor for Labor Affairs 1965-1971 Ambassador Chester Bowles Ashok Mehta Hyman Bookbinder Hind Mazdoor Sabha Gandians Royists (M.N. Roy) Hind Mazdoor Sabha George Fernandes Ghandian Trade Union Movement (INTUC) Jayaprakash Narayan Marxist Trade Union (CPM union) S.A, Dange Indo-Soviet relationship India Communist Party (CPI) Communist Party of India- Marxist (CPM) Soviet Union control 5% commission to Communists Soviet Union/Indian Communist relationship Food shortage Indian food subsidy India-Pakistan War Soviet arms supplier US Military Mission China US/Pakistan relations Jay Lovestone Labor Attaché Hazel Sokolov Labor Attaché Burgess Harry Goldberg Jim Power HMS Aminabad Prime Minister Shastri USAID Mission Aid Negotiations John Lewis Bechtel Corporation Congress Party George Fernandes US Consul General Bombay Prime Minister Indira Gandhi United Public Workers of America Congressman Vito Marcantonio Trieste 2 Labor strike tactics Anti-US business strikes Jogesh Chatterjee Congress Party Union Panchayat India Union Trade Congress (AITUC) India-China relations Union Trade Union Congress (UTUC) Relations with US Consul General American contractors Tony Pillai Speaking engagements Madras Varahagiri Venkata Giri Embassy labor seminars Leonard Weiss Mel Spector US Pakistan “tilt” Embassy/Consulate US business briefings Oliver Peterson Reuther/Lovesone dispute Victor Reuther Krishnan Tarapur project Bowles/Gandhi relations Nehru’s pro-Soviet slant Harold Laski Famine 1966 Communist show-case projects US aid projects Gajendragadkar India Report 1967 Majority representation American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) Paladino British Council project funding US Military Mission in India India/China relations Mysore politics Labor Unions in Congress Party Bangladesh President Giri Later Years Visits to India 3 Disarmament negotiations Max Kampelman Additional comments Joined Foreign Service Appointment as Labor Counselor to Embassy New Delhi Harold Snell Philip Arnow Walter Reuther visit Harry Goldberg INTERVIEW [Note: This interview was not edited my Mr. Weisz.] WEISZ: This is Sunday, May 16, 1993, and we’re sitting in the charming home of Jim Leader and his wife, Caroline, and, by the way, I’m going to raise later with Caroline whether or not she would be willing to be interviewed for the spousal project, which I do some interviewing for, if the spouse of a labor officer has had experiences that are relevant. But today I’m not interviewing him, but rather he is interviewing me regarding my background in international affairs with specific reference to the India experience, which both of us had at different times and shared for a brief period. Jim, why don’t you go ahead with whatever you want to question me on? Q: Okay, well, this is kind of a novel experience, because when I’ve sat across the table from you in previous years, it was as a student and you as the guru, the professor, and now I get to throw some at you. Well, you have such a rich and long experience; and you and I have such a rich and long experience together that it’s hard to limit, but I think for purposes of this interview, if we can talk a little bit about how you got interested in international labor affairs generally and then move to how you got interested in India and happened to end up there as labor counselor in New Delhi. Then I’d like to talk to you a little bit about our shared experiences on Sri Lanka. We could start with your involvement in an early training program for labor attachés. I sat at your feet as a student at American University in a course on international labor affairs organized by Phil Kaiser, former Assistant Secretary of Labor and former Ambassador to Senegal and Deputy Chief of Mission in London. I think that was a two- or three-year experiment where American University in effect ran the training course for the labor attachés. I happened to be there as a student of American University and not as a present or potential labor attaché, but it was such a great course. You might say just a few words on how Kaiser got that established, why he came to you, and what were the results and what’s the evaluation of that course as we look at a number of labor courses that have been run over the years. 4 WEISZ: Well, I think that’s an important subject, and it’s important to get it into the labor diplomacy oral history field. If we cover it thoroughly, we may never get to India. How I got interested in international labor affairs is clear from the interview in the Marshall Plan interview of me, which is in our records and in the other records which these interviews are being prepared for, that is the Reuther Archives that asked for much more about my history than will be covered by the labor diplomacy oral history. With my education at City College in New York, with my activity in socialist youth activities, and all of the problems that were addressed by our youth movement and our student movement at City College, it was just natural for me to be interested in international affairs. Although I never was a Marxist, the relevance of Marxist thinking and the deviationists from Marx to labor issues and the fact that the trade union for which I worked, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, was very active in international affairs, had a socialist leadership, etc. So when I came to Washington in 1935, I did a few things relevant to international labor affairs in connection with my activities in the Socialist Party of Washington DC. I was very active in the Spanish Civil War situation both as a supporter of the government that was attacked so viciously by the Franco forces in Spain and within the aid effort to anti-Franco forces -- the support of the democratic socialist government of Spain against the Communists. This was my first direct experience in which we saw what Communists could do in the international field. Q: Could I stop just a second there, because some of us just aren’t as, in terms of adult history, familiar with this period. How did the Socialist Party differ, and what attitude did it support -- for instance, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, or what was the distinction? WEISZ: We had the Debs Battalion, because Eugene Debs was a Socialist leader. We didn’t support but we didn’t criticize severely what the Communists were doing. We were essentially on their side, but it was very distressing to see how they used large amounts of funds they got from the liberal establishment in the United States, movie stars and things like that, to give less support to the Government of Spain fighting the Franco forces than to their own wing in the effort. This was especially true with their vicious murdering tactics against the anarchists, the anti-Franco forces who were led by the government. This had elements of the socialist movement under Largo Caballero, socialists who were not as willing to be anti-Communist as we were after the experience we had, the anarchist movement, the libertarian movements, and all those were forces coalesced into an unevenly supported and unevenly strengthened combination of united front against Franco. Later on it became obvious, and later on in my own chronological history I’ll be going into some details about that, but there was a joint committee to help the government of Spain in which we were active and the Communists were active. There were no anarchist groups active in it. This is where we learned the lessons about Communist tactics. Their medical supplies were geared to supporting only the Communist effort. They were very critical of some of the things that we were doing. When they established the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which was made up of liberals and Communists but run by the Communists, we felt it necessary to show our support of the government by forming a much weaker Debs Battalion and supporting the military forces 5 of the government through that. We had a few people who went into the Debs Battalion right here from Washington, and some of them didn’t survive. Many of the Abraham Lincoln people also didn’t survive. The rest came back, most of them, bitter about the results, that is, the neutrality of the government of the United States and the unwillingness on the part of many others in Europe to support the government of Spain. And they were bitter about the fact that within the government the Communists engaged in activities which have now come to light, now that the records are clear, supporting many of the things that we merely suspected. Unless you have particular personages, I’d rather save that for a more thorough discussion. Let me just say that many students are now studying the archives of the Soviet Union and coming up with a whole lot of supporting material showing the secret financing of different groups by the Soviet government.
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