CP should affiliate

It seems to me highly desirable, too, that the university branch of the Communist Party should openly affiliate with the Students' Association as student branches of the British Communist Party do at the larger universities in the United Kingdom. Up till now the university branch of the CP at Victoria College has preferred not to do so and while the excessive witch hunt hysterias of the cold war was on their reasons for not doing so were understandable and can, in part, be sympathised with, but now with a considerable improvement in the cold war, they and the College could only stand to benefit by declaring themselves openly.

For my own part I can see extremely little ground for common action between Democratic Socialist and and Communist while infamous deeds such as the sale of Czech arms to the Neo-Fascist Nasser Government in Egypt are going on.

At the same time I am always prepared to hear their point of view and debate with them Important issues of the day; but the words spoken by the Chairman of the NZCP, Vic Wilcox in November, 1962—"Our aim must be to break the role of Social democracy in the working class movement"—provide for me at least one powerful objection for a resurrection of the notion of the Popular Front.

[This letter was written prior to the Social Democrat Society's inaugural meeting—Ed.]