Letters : International Brigade Association

              International. 
VT/AEC/RC/75.
1st November, 1950.
Mr. J. Kelly, 
Secretary,
Yeovil & District Trades Council,
99, Seaton Road,
Yeovil.
Dear Mr. Kelly,
International Brigade Association.
Many thanks for your letter of the 30th October, in which you enclose the appeal which you have received from the above-named organisation, and request our views before replying.
The International Brigade Association is under Communist control.   It would, therefore, be out of order for your Council to give its time to a discussion of correspondence which it may issue.
So far as the content of the communication is concerned, enquiries which we have made show that it concerns a decision taken by the French Government to deport 150 persons to Algeria.
Your Council will recall that on the conclusion of the war in Spain, a large number of Spaniards were offered asylum in Spain, which they accepted.   The position now is that some 180 of them are considered by the French authorities as having abused this hospitality by forming a clandestine organisation.
Your Council will be interested to know that the persons in question were offered the choice of being interned in Algeria or being sent to any country behind the Iron Curtain.   Fewer than 30 persons preferred the Iron Curtain and the remainder sailed from Marseilles a little over five weeks ago.
- over -