Frank Buchman, Anti-Communist, Union-Buster

Playing to the Red Scare of the early 1950's, the opportunistic Frank Buchman shifted the focus of his publicity campaign to anti-Communism, and he claimed that MRA was now the philosophy that would save the world from Communism.

"The Indian people suffer from being too philosophical? We are a lost people? We want the right people (white people) to come and tell us the right things?"

Jeez Louise. Where did Frank Buchman find that pathetic grovelling sycophant?

Indian Buchmanites: Sri Bekkai (far left) and Mohamed Masmoudi (far right), with the former French socialist Mrs. Irene Laure and the French businessman Robert Carmichael.

Frank Buchman sent his theatrical troup on a world-wide tour, trying to spread his anti-Communist message around the world. He talked sympathetic people in the U.S. Air Force into flying his show around the world for free. When this fact became known, a scandal erupted. The Secretary of the Air Force under President Eisenhower resigned over it, and then rationalized that he had really resigned for other reasons. Then Buchman wrote a check to the U.S. Air Force to pay for the use of the airplanes (which was way too small to cover the expenses), and explained that MRA never took any free gifts from the Air Force.

"Take on the top athletes and scholars and subvert them." The MRA propaganda film "The Crowning Experience" depicts Communist agents plotting to destroy an American Negro university by "subverting" the top students.

In his analysis of Buchmanism, Geoffrey Williamson commented:

      Finally, I think the Buchmanites have made a cardinal error in turning their energies towards high-pressure politics in general and towards anti-Communist activities in particular.
      Again, they may contend that they are merely exploiting human fears of another world war to lure people to Caux to listen to the "Message". But even if that is their alibi, it still seems too drastic a departure from their registered aims of advancing the Christian religion.
Inside Buchmanism; an independent inquiry into the Oxford Group Movement and Moral Re-Armament, Geoffrey Williamson, Philosophical Library, New York, c1954, page 222.

Buchman's anti-Communist campaign never caught on. The MRA organization was reduced to being a mere shell of its former self. Still, it hung on for a good while longer. There were always still a few more rich arch-conservatives willing to make donations here and there, to keep Frank Buchman going for a little while longer.

What particularly pleased rich ultra-conservatives was Buchman's preaching that labor's demands for higher wages were merely sinful greed. Remember Buchman's remarks while praising Hitler: "Human problems aren't economic. They're moral and they can't be solved by immoral measures." Buchman declared that all social and human problems were due to sin, and he considered labor's demands for higher wages to be "immoral" attempts to improve the world, using social activism when prayer and confession were the only acceptable answers to the world's problems. Some of the big businessmen loved the sound of that.

As usual, Frank Buchman exaggerated and lied about his accomplishments in the field of labor relations. He loved to tell rich industrialists that he had saved some other industrialist millions of dollars by "changing" some labor leader, like John Riffe, Executive Vice-President of the CIO, and the labor leader had gotten down on his knees and cried to God and confessed all of his sins and shortcomings to the business executive, who was so touched that he had gotten down on his knees, and confessed his sins. Then, the two of them successfully negotiated a fair labor contract. The only problem with that story is that it never happened.¹⁰     Still, Frank Buchman's preaching about labor's demands for higher wages being sin was music to big business' ears, and Frank got his donations.

Peter Howard, the fascist who would assume the leadership of Moral Re-Armament after Frank Buchman's death, wrote in one of his shallow books of propaganda that Buchmanites were solving all kinds of labor problems just by getting the leaders of labor and management to stop being angry and resentful. This story of two young Buchmanites ending a labor strike is typical of Frank Buchman's simple-minded solutions to major social problems:

MRA pretended to be neutral in labor disputes, but they were actually very biased against labor unions. The MRA members thought it pretty funny to ridicule unions and strikes with fake picket signs like "United Oughta Workers".

Worse than childish was the way that Buchman and his followers constantly exaggerated and lied about their successes. At one point, Buchman claimed that there had been no more labor difficulties or strikes on the London docks since Moral Re-Armament started its campaign among the dock workers. Tom Driberg, a Labor Party Member of Parliament, immediately listed three large, serious, prolonged and expensive strikes that had occurred in spite of Buchman's meddling in labor union affairs.¹⁰⁸ Likewise, when Driberg investigated the MRA claims that their campaigns had greatly increased production in the coal mines, he found that their claims were completely bogus, and that their statistics were fabricated out of thin air.

The following story which MRA published also shows the standard MRA attitude about labor unions and strikes:

Gordon MacDonald, Briggs Local 212, United Automobile Workers Union, CIO, speaking at Mackinac about his work in Detroit:
      I worked for the company back in 1924-30 but was discharged because of an argument with a minor executive. Four years later I was back with the company. During that time my hatred for this person grew larger and larger. When the Union came in during 1937 I immediately saw a chance to get back at this person. First, I took the position of Steward over some 20 people. Then Chief Steward of some 800 people. I went up to Chairman of the Shop Committee of 15,000 and then was elected First Vice-President of the Company, employing 27,000. That was the spot I'd wanted. It was one week before Pearl Harbor. I was out to get even with that person, but an Executive Order from Washington said no more automobiles and my equipment was taken out of my hands so fast I didn't know. Instead of having some 22,000 people to back me up I had some 22,000 saying, "Where's my job?" The weapon was turned back at myself.
      During this time our relationship with Management was terrible. I would have some flare-up in the shop among the few people that were working and called the Management. That was how it was until one day we were called to the office of the industrial relations man with three or four from the Revue. So we agreed to put the show on for our people.
      By that time I had maybe 4,000 people working who had suddenly become prima donnas in their own estimation in the world of industry. They were very touchy and easily agitated. I was at a loss about what to do. Our meetings because chaos. We would have commonsense for 15 minutes, then for two or three hours we battled and settled nothing.
      We had the Show. I didn't see the answer to my problem, but a couple of the boys that are in the Army now — Duncan Corcoran and Stuart Smith, every time I looked out of my office door I saw one of them, so I came up to Mackinac and got a little bit of philosophy, but I still had that feeling in my heart. When I went back after the first visit here I found that the plan had dissolved a little bit. Then the boys were on my doorstep again and back I come. After being here I went back on the job and suddenly found, through being honest, that what I thought was the poorest example of a personnel man wasn't such a bad chap. I found out he had been waiting for me to be honest and I had been waiting for him, and neither one of us was ready to give in. But the mutual respect and feelings that we have now has done a lot. The concessions that the Company has given us in the past nine months are more than we have got in the past six years.
      Formerly we paid a high salary to a lawyer to put trick clauses in our contract. The Company did likewise. We used to give our Chief Stewards and Committeemen an interpretation of the contract — a Union interpretation — the Company gave their Supervisors their interpretation, and it was like reading the Bible and reading some fiction. They didn't jibe. We had continued quarrels. To show you the difference — what honesty and unselfishness has done in that plant. We signed this contract in less than 24 hours, a contract that previously took 30 to 60 days.
Preview Of A New World; How Frank Buchman Helped his country Move from isolation To world responsibility; USA 1939-1946, Arthur Strong, page 136.

Again, we got the standard MRA story that all difficulties between labor and management were caused by some laborer having a silly resentment against the management, and the cure for the problem was a dose of Moral Re-Armament philosophy, as expressed in a song-and-dance show. Henry Ford must have been pleased.

Also notice how the MRA recruiters, Duncan Corcoran and Stuart Smith, kept coming around again and again, determined to add the scalp of a union official to their belts. --United Auto Workers, no less. Henry Ford must have been very pleased.

In 1942, Frank Buchman found it amusing to celebrate Labor Day with a fake "labor union convention" that declared that Moral Re-Armament was the best union.

The Moral Re-Armament "labor union convention" arranged around the front porch of the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. Frank Buchman is on the porch, at center.

"Materialism" was one of Frank Buchman's favorite words. Buchman found both labor and management guilty of it. When workers wanted higher wages, that was Materialism. When factory owners wanted greater profits, that was also Materialism.

Materialism is our great enemy. It is the chief "ism" we have to combat and conquer. It is the mother of all "isms". There is the battleground. There the warfare must be waged so that we can firmly establish those homely truths of honesty, unselfishness and obedience to God that are the hallmarks of personal and national sanity.   ...
      This is the battle of Moral Re-Armament. Without the conquest of materialism, our nations will decay from within while we prepare to defend ourselves against attack from without.
      Materialism and atheism are breeding-grounds for corruption, anarchy and revolution. These have their allies in the selfishness that rules our homes, the bitterness that separates class from class, and the spirit of faction that divides a nation.
Remaking the World: The Speeches of Frank Buchman, Frank Buchman, page 176.

• Is it "materialism" if you desire that your children have food and clothing?
  
• Is it "selfishness" to desire a good home for your family and a good job for yourself?
  
• Is it "materialism" to want a fair day's pay for a fair day's work?
• Is it "materialism" to want good health care?
• Is it "materialism" to desire a retirement fund?
• How much can we rise above abject poverty and misery before we are, in the eyes of people like Frank Buchman, immoral and guilty of "materialism"?
  

That's the problem with Frank Buchman's simplistic, absolute, black-and-white thinking. Whether someone is "materialistic" or just surviving in this material world is a matter of shades of gray. It's easy to make absolute, sweeping statements. It's much harder to be realistic and truthful.

And even more to the point:

• Why didn't Frank Buchman's consider his ultra-rich sponsors and multi-millionaire patrons guilty of wallowing in "materialism"? How did they rate a life of wealth and leisure?

• Why didn't Frank Buchman think about his own materialism when he lived a luxurious first-class lifestyle in the Waldorf Astoria and Mayfair Hotels, and in the first-class salons of floating palaces like the Queen Mary?

• Or was Frank Buchman's entire "philosophy" just so much selfish hypocrisy?

A playbill for an MRA theatrical production in London, by Peter Howard and Cecil Broadhurst, circa 1956. Peter Howard wrote a lot of the MRA propaganda, so much so that MRA literature actually listed Peter Howard's occupation as "playwright".

The art and photo team: (Back, left to right)   Elie Purdy, Annelou Teixeira, Georgina Weaver, Signe Lund, Charlotte Simpson, Erma Phillips, Van Wishard. (Front, left to right)   Arthur Strong, R. Fleming, Nancy Curtis, C. Kennington and Ray Purdy Jr.

The Buchmanite true believer Arthur Strong was a draft-dodging British photographer who traveled with the Moral Re-Armament road shows in the USA from 1939 to 1946. He later put together a book of photographs and stories about that adventure. He explained how they rigged photographs of management and labor union leaders "making peace" with the help of MRA:

At every meeting or revue performance, Bill Jaeger takes round the photographer allotted him for the evening. He shows who and where they are sitting. These will be labor union officials, often with their families.
      The photographer makes the necessary notes, then joins the other photographers at the back. They in turn have been shown the leading management, armed forces, educationalists, club women and any other representative people. Then we have guidance about what pictures to take, who with who, and above all what is the big idea symbolic of the whole evening.
      During the evening we generally have one cameraman roving for interesting expressions and good crowd angles. Another stays at the back to cover any who might have to leave early.
      Another goes back stage to pick up any good candid shots of how we work. It gives you an idea of the importance of pictures in the life of the work when I mention that short as we are of tenors, I have been excused from production to give all my time to the pictures.
      The big time is when the meeting or revue is over. Then to battle stations. Bill Jaeger is like a fast bull dog. Sometimes he has a celebrity in tow like Admiral Sir Edward Cochrane, whom he'll take round to be photographed with labor man after labor man. The remaining photographers cover the others as guided (by God). Quite often we have a youngster to every photographer, carrying flash bulbs and fresh slides. Of course there will be a few management with labor pictures.
      With the evening fully covered we return to our temporary darkroom. Generally one of us stays to develop, sometimes right through the night, having 5 by 7 prints ready for the morning team meeting.
      Then one photographer goes over the labor pictures with Bill, writing on the back how many prints are needed — sometimes as many as 16 off one. Others of us go over with responsible people in the other sections. Management generally prefer 10 by 8. Bill uses as many as 150 in a week. They are used as calling cards for inviting people for the Sunday follow-up meeting. Bill maintains that it is the pictures that turn the scale in getting labor to make the 300 miles from Detroit to Mackinac.
Preview Of A New World; How Frank Buchman Helped his country Move from isolation To world responsibility; USA 1939-1946, Arthur Strong, page 136.

So the Buchmanites would steer labor leaders towards the managers, to be photographed in smiling, hand-shaking poses, and then, the next day, Moral Re-Armament would be bragging that it had brought about a new peace between management and labor. And then Bill Jaeger and the other recruiters used the photographs as an excuse to get in the door, to invite people to the Sunday meetings and to lure people to the Mackinac Island MRA training center for more indoctrination.

Arthur Strong captioned this picture: "The President of the Associated Industries of Florida (center), after seeing the Revue. He wanted to be photographed with leaders of labor who also were in the audience. So five State leaders of the C.I.O. and A.F.L. met and talked with him at the reception which followed the Revue. The woman had written an article against him in the labor paper only this week. One week later she wrote in a different spirit." Preview Of A New World; How Frank Buchman Helped his country Move from isolation To world responsibility; USA 1939-1946, Arthur Strong, pages 106+107.

John Riffe, the Executive Vice President of the AFL-CIO, and other labor union leaders: Bob Shippey, Charles Haines, Jim Thimmes, and Jack Flannery Preview Of A New World; How Frank Buchman Helped his country Move from isolation To world responsibility; USA 1939-1946, Arthur Strong, page 40. John Riffe was an enthusiastic convert to Buchmanism who tried for years to entice other labor union leaders to get "changed" and join Buchman's organization.

Preview Of A New World; How Frank Buchman Helped his country Move from isolation To world responsibility; USA 1939-1946, Arthur Strong, page 177. The captions on the pictures are: The Riffe and Scott families with Frank Buchman: Scott is Financial Secy. Ford Local 600 UAW-CIO, Riffe, ten years later, was elected Executive Vice-President of the CIO. Joe Yablonsky, CIO, Warner Clark, John Riffe, Robert Hall, UAW, John Ramsay, Bethlehem Steelworks, CIO, Dick Stollery, Canada. George L. Eastman, Pres., Security Materials Co., Los Angeles, (Left then clockwise): Robert H. Keys, Pres. Foreman's Assn. of America, Detroit; H. Birchard Taylor, Vice-Pres. Cramps Shipyards; W. Edgar Gallway, Pres. Vacudri Corpn., Oakland; H. Baugh, Personnel Mgr. Cramp Shipyards, Philadelphia; Stanley Parker, Chairman Boston City Plans. William Schaffer, 1943 Pres. of Shipyard Union, Cramps CIO, of 17,000 men, with Dale Reed, Pres. Aeronautical Ind. District Lodge No. 727, Int. Assn. Machinists, AFL — 80,000 members.

This story of 'spiritual strikebreaking' is from Arthur Strong's book of praise of Frank Buchman and Moral Re-Armament: Preview Of A New World; How Frank Buchman Helped his country Move from isolation To world responsibility; USA 1939-1946, Arthur Strong, page 137.

This is one Moral Re-Armament portrayal of labor union leaders: bigamists, cons, and thugs — even after they had been converted to belief in MRA: Preview Of A New World; How Frank Buchman Helped his country Move from isolation To world responsibility; USA 1939-1946, Arthur Strong, page 205. Arthur Strong captioned the photograph: William Schaffer, 3rd from rt. Pres. Local 42, Cramps Shipyard with his most trusted lieutenants. One has 2 wives — both living in the same house! Another is a former bouncer, who has been in Sing-Sing prison. He has lost a finger in a fight, and causes us much merriment when he talks about MRA's 4 standards and holds up 3 fingers. Schaffer's body-guard is an ex-bouncer with an unusual interpretation of our work. "Before I got MRA," he says, "I used to hit everybody. Now I just hit the ones Schaffer tells me to." — C. Clark.

The labor unions did not see things the same way as Frank Buchman did. Echoing Tom Driberg's earlier denunciation of Buchman's organization as "spiritual strike-breakers", the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions condemned Buchman's meddling in labor relations:

WORLD LABOR BODY ASSAILS BUCHMAN Says Moral Rearmament Group He Heads Is Anti-Union -- Indians Defend Him Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES.       BRUSSELS, Belgium, Sept. 22 — The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions has issued a "hands off" warning to Dr. Frank Buchman and his Moral Rearmament Movement.       In a report recently approved by the confederation's executive board and now distributed from its headquarters in Brussels to all affiliated trade unions, the Moral Rearmament Movement is alleged "to interfere with trade union activities and to make anti-trade union efforts even to the extent of trying to found 'yellow unions.'"       The report said there had been cases, "for example, a report we received from a Swedish worker," where the employers had exercised very strong pressure on their workers to get them to join the Moral Rearmament Movement.       "This movement is clearly an exceptional body which is trying to obstruct the trade union movement with its ideas and through a small group of followers is trying to introduce its directives into factories," the report said. "These directives seldom correspond to the will of the majority and in view of the sectarian character of the Moral Rearmament Movement are hardly aimed at the welfare of mankind in general.       "It is our view that the Moral Rearmament Movement should be prevented from encroaching on trade union preserves." Ex-Reds Reported Enrolled       The report said that in building up his movement Dr. Buchman enlisted former Communists. It added:       "The sources from which the Moral Rearmament Movement draws its necessary funds are completely unknown. All that can be said is that those who supply the money must be very well off. In 1946 the movement bought three castles at Caux [Switzerland]. The MRA resort hotel headquarters at Caux, Switzerland.       "As the leaders of the movement themselves emphasize, people of all races and classes of society and of all political and religious beliefs belong to the movement. It needs strong financial support for the upkeep of its considerable machinery, etc. These amounts can by no means come from the workers in the ranks of its supporters.       "The movement needs these funds and this certainly means that it has to make concessions, scarcely in keeping with the original Buchman program, to those who donate the money."       The world labor body solicited material about the Moral Rearmament Movement from its affiliated trade unions. Walter Reuther, president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, pointed out in his reply that at the C. I. O. convention of 1951 a resolution was drafted expressing opposition to the movement. In view of the possibility that such a resolution might be misinterpreted as an expression of anti-religious opinion, no formal vote was taken, he said, although no doubt was left about the feeling of the vast majority. Mr. Reuther added that an overwhelming majority of the leaders of the C. I. O. still held the same views. The New York Times, Sept. 23, 1953, page 15.

Notice how the C.I.O. was reluctant to criticize Frank Buchman's political activities for fear that their statements would be misinterpreted as an attack on a religion. Buchman took full advantage of that confusion. He routinely promoted a fascist political agenda while claiming that he was winning more souls for Christ. If anyone criticized his behavior, Buchman hid behind the Bible and claimed that his enemies were immoral and opposed to the Will of God. Remember Frank Buchman's disciples Peter Howard and Paul Campbell writing:

Moral Re-Armament cannot be honestly opposed on intellectual grounds because it is basic truth... Opposition to Moral Re-Armament has special significance. It always comes from the morally defeated.
Remaking Men, by Paul Campbell and Peter Howard, page 66.

TIME magazine reported:

The militantly anti-Communist International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, which represents 97 unions in 73 countries, tossed a monkey wrench toward the machinery of Moral Re-Armament, the nondenominational, untheological, polite revival movement that evolved out of Frank Buchman's old Oxford Group. A report prepared by I.C.F.T.U.'s secretariat accused the Moral Re-Armament movement of interfering "with trade-union activities and [making] anti-trade-union efforts, even to the extent of trying to found 'yellow unions.' " M.R.A., it said, was undemocratic: "Buchman does not build up his movement from below . . . but from the ranks of leaders . . . The sources from which the Moral Re-Armament movement draws its necessary funds are completely unknown. All that can be said is that those who supply the money must be very well off."
TIME magazine, Oct. 05, 1953

Coming generations will value him rightly and give his work its rightful place. The world of today, blinded by lack of ideological clarity, is not ready to give him bouquets and crowns of laurel. But in the hearts of all true revolutionaries he is greatly valued and respected. I thank God for a man who gave my life a new direction.
Frank Buchman, Eighty, by His Friends, Blandford Press, page 101.

Likewise, the degree to which the Buchmanites were in denial about any problems with their religion was almost unbelievable. In 1963, James M. Coltart, one of the faithful, wrote a letter to Tom Driberg, the London newspaper reporter and Labor Party Member of Parliament who had done so much to expose the shortcomings and dishonesty of Frank Buchman and his organization, saying:

Now may I be frank with you, because I am sure you would expect no less from me. When I said earlier that your constant criticism didn't disturb me, what did concern me was that a man like yourself would persist in criticism year after year, yet after twenty years you had not to my knowledge been able to discover and expose any real weakness in the beliefs of MRA.
The Mystery of Moral Re-Armament; A Study of Frank Buchman and His Movement, Tom Driberg, 1965, page 281.

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