of the huge German trade union and labour movement partly as the fault of the communists' divisive tactics. He and Bevin were determined to prevent such an occurrence in Britain which perhaps gave them a heightened sense of communist conspiracy in its dealings with internal opposition within the unions and the Labour Party. Thar caused much hostility by the left, such as the Socialist League, which would colour the attitude of many leftists to him thereafter. Michael Foot's biography of Aneurin Bevan is indicative of that. Citrine wrote that his robust exposure of the Communist International and the Communist Party of Great Britain attempts to subvert British trade union leaders' authority and to capture key posts in the trade union movement drew a "campaign of calumny" against him "in which everything I did was distorted into some sinister conspiracy against the workers". One example that he gave were allegations that he had colluded with the French Labour Minister Charles Pomaret "to clamp down on French labour with a set of drastic wage-&hour decrees in 1939 and had agreed a proposal by British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir John Simon that pay rises in Britain be stopped." As TUC General Secretary, Citrine and seven members of his General Council had gone to France to confer with its counterparts in the Confederation Generale du Travail "to secure close co-operation between the two trade union movements to prosecute the war against Hitlerism". Only The Daily Worker (later The Morning Star), organ of the Communist Party and the Comintern, were likely to criticize them for that since they were supporting the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Citrine and his colleagues sued the Daily Worker for libel in April 1940 in a case that lasted six days, with Queen's Counsel on both sides. In finding for Citrine and the General Council, Mr Justice Stable said: "This libel was, in my judgement, inspired in its origin, it was protracted and persistent, it was unscrupulous in its method, it was inspired from abroad, and when brought to the bar of justice, the defendant had not the courage to go into the witness-box and tell me the truth." Citrine and his colleagues were awarded substantial damages and their costs, but they were never paid, as the Daily Worker changed publishers two days after the judgement. The TUC published the full judgement in a pamphlet by Citrine: Citrine and others v Pountney: