Trainman News

World Interests Urged

Delegates Authorize BRT To Affiliate With ICFTU

MIAMI BEACH --The Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen will take a broader and more aggressive interest in foreign affairs as a result of action by delegates to the 30th Convention in session here.

In addition to resolutions reaffirming the BRT's support of the United Nations and calling for a realistic U. S. foreign policy as a basis for promoting world peace, the delegates took the practical step of authorizing participation by the Brotherhood in the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions.

The BRT will thus become the first operating railroad labor organization to affiliate with the ICFTU which has its international headquarters in Brussels, and the objective of strengthening democracy throughout the world by promoting free trade unionism.

The action was unanimous.

The delegates declared that "we frankly recognize that speeches about freedom do not create the conditions of freedom for working people anywhere in the world and that unless there can be industrial progress, land distribution and increased productivity millions of people will never stand a chance of freedom. Therefore we should dedicate our foreign policy to a recognition of this basic truth and become a partner of the working people of the world to create the conditions of progress and human welfare which alone can withstand the Communist appeal."

Urges Participation

The convention also urged participation by the Brotherhood in advisory committees of the Department of State and other government departments concerned with formulation of international policies and programs.

In this connection, President W. P. Kennedy praised the State Department's labor attache program and the Department of Labor's Office of International Labor Affairs for their role in bringing "a labor viewpoint with its contribution to understanding into the State Department's Foreign Service."

He added, however, that "the full effectiveness of this program cannot be realized until there is a bonafide labor officer with a ... (Continued on Page 3)
Delegates OK BRT Joining With ICFTU

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labor background in every U. S. Embassy and Consulate-General throughout the world."

The convention called upon the government to recognize that the "future of the freedom of the world lies with the hundreds of millions of oppressed peasants and workers in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America" and to make all grants and loans of economic aid "dependent upon proof that these people are helped toward freedom by these loans and grants."

The delegates also urged that the U. S. become "an effective partner rather than a gang boss of the free world."

They scored preventive war talk and cautioned the Administration to "forbid all high officials, including ex-Army officers, to engage in the process of scaring the world into believing that we would ever start such a war."

Praise UN

The delegates praised the United Nations and urged all Americans to support it as "an absolute prerequisite for the efforts of the freedom-loving democracies to stop aggression and maintain world peace for ourselves and our children."

The Convention's UN resolution asserted that the United Nations "has already shown its value through international cooperation in stopping aggression in Palestine and Korea without bringing on a Third World War."

The delegates deplored attacks of "reactionary forces at every opportunity on the UN forces which seek to return the United States to the isolationism which prevailed in the early 20th Century."