Major Jewish Groups Oppose “communist Control Bills” As “indiscriminately Repressive”

Officers of seven major Jewish organizations, in combination with 15 other national organizations, this week-end condemned the McCarran, Mundt-Ferguson and Wood “Communist control” bills and urged House and Senate leaders to substitute legislation “in the spirit of the President’s message on national security” when the anti-subversive measures come up for action in both Houses this week.

In a statement signed by the officers of 22 national organizations and issued by the National Civil Liberties Clearing House in Washington, the organizations said that the McCarran and related bills are “ostensibly written to meet the Communist threat to our national security, but they will not do that job.” The organizational leaders called the internal security bills sponsored by Senator Warren G. Magnuson and Representative Emanuel Celler “more adequate to protect the country against security threats while maintaining conformity to traditional American guarantees of individual freedom.”

The statement signers said they are “conscious of the need for adequate internal security measures, united in opposition to all totalitarian political movements and committed to the preservation of the democratic way of life at home and abroad,” but that they are “unalterably opposed” to subversive control bills which are “indiscriminately repressive.”

The N.C.R.A.C. organizations which signed the statement were: American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Anti-Defamation Leagus of B’nai B’rith, Jewish Labor Committee, Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A., National Community Relations Advisory Council, and Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Among the other 15 groups opposing the bills were the National Council of Jewish Women and National Association of Jewish Center Workers.