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United Nations list of non-self-governing territories

Chapter XI of the United Nations Charter defines a non-self-governing territory (NSGT) as a territory "whose people have not yet attained a full measure of self-government". In practice, an NSGT is a territory deemed by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to be "non-self-governing". Chapter XI of the UN Charter also includes a "Declaration on Non-Self-Governing Territories" that the interests of the occupants of dependent territories are paramount and requires member states of the United Nations in control of such territories to submit annual information reports concerning the development of those territories. Since 1946, the UNGA has maintained a list of non-self governing territories under member states' control. Since its inception, dozens of territories have been removed from the list, typically when they attained independence or internal self-government, while other territories have been added as new administering countries joined the United Nations or the General Assembly reassessed the status of certain territories.

Since 1961 the list has been maintained by the Special Committee on Decolonization.

History
Chapter XI of the UN Charter contains a Declaration Concerning Non-Self-Governing Territories. Article 73(e) requires UN member states to report to the United Nations annually on the development of NSGTs under their control. From the initial reports provided by eight member states (Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States), a list was compiled in 1946 listing 72 NSGTs. In several instances, administering states were later allowed to remove dependent territories from the list, either unilaterally (as in the case of French overseas territories such as French Polynesia), or by a vote of the General Assembly (as in the cases of Puerto Rico, Greenland, the Netherlands Antilles and Suriname).

The list draws its origins from the period of colonialism and the Charter's concept of non-self-governing territories. As an increasing number of formerly colonized countries became UN members, the General Assembly increasingly asserted its authority to place additional territories on the list and repeatedly declared that only the General Assembly had the authority to authorize a territory's being removed from the list upon attainment of any status other than full independence. For example, when Portugal joined the United Nations it contended that it did not control any non-self-governing territory, claiming that areas such as Angola and Mozambique were an integral part of the Portuguese state, but the General Assembly rejected this position. Similarly, Western Sahara was added in 1963 when it was a Spanish colony. As with Namibia, which was seen, due to its former status as a League of Nations mandate territory, as a vestige of German colonial legacy in Africa, until it was removed in 1990 upon its independence. A set of criteria for determining whether a territory is to be considered "non-self-governing" was established in General Assembly Resolution 1541 (XV) of 1960. Also in 1960, the General Assembly adopted Resolution 1514 (XV), promulgating the "Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples", which declared that all remaining non-self-governing territories and trust territories were entitled to self-determination and independence. The following year, the General Assembly established the Special Committee on the Situation with Regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (sometimes referred to as the Special Committee on Decolonization, or the "Committee of 24" because for much of its history the committee was composed of 24 members), which reviews the situation in non-self-governing territories each year and reports to the General Assembly. A revised list in 1963 listed 64 NSGTs.

1946

 * UNGA Resolution 64(I) regarding the Establishment of the Trusteeship Council.
 * UNGA Resolution 66(I) regarding Transmission of information under Article 73 e of the Charter.

1947

 * UNGA Resolution 142(II) regarding Standard form for the guidance of Members in the preparation of information to be transmitted under Article 73 e of the Charter.
 * UNGA Resolution 143(II) regarding Supplemental documents relating to information transmitted under Article 73 e of the Charter.
 * UNGA Resolution 144(II) regarding Voluntary transmission of information regarding the development of self-governing institutions in the Non-Self-Governing Territories.
 * UNGA Resolution 145(II) regarding Collaboration of the specialized agencies in regard to Article 73 e of the Charter.
 * UNGA Resolution 146(II) regarding Creation of a special committee on information transmitted under Article 73 e of the Charter.

1960

 * UNGA Resolution 1514 (XV) Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples.
 * UNGA regarding Principles which should guide members in determining whether or an obligation exists to transmit the information called for under Article 73e of the Charter.

1961

 * UNGA Resolution 1654 (XVI) regarding the situation with regard to the implementation of the Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and peoples.

1966

 * International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted by the UNGA on 16 December 1966.
 * International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights adopted by the UNGA on 19 December 1966.

1990–2000

 * UNGA Resolution A/RES/43/45 regarding Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.
 * UNGA Resolution A/RES/43/46 regarding Dissemination of information on decolonization.
 * UNGA Resolution A/RES/43/47 regarding International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism.

2001–2010

 * UNGA Resolution 55/145 regarding Dissemination of information on decolonization.
 * UNGA Resolution 55/146 regarding 2nd International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism.
 * UNGA Resolution 55/147 regarding Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.
 * United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Resolution 2007/25 regarding Support to Non-Self-Governing Territories by the specialized agencies and international institutions associated with the United Nations.

2011–present

 * UNGA Resolution 65/116 regarding Dissemination of information on decolonization.
 * UNGA Resolution 65/117 regarding Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.
 * UNGA Resolution 65/118 regarding Fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.
 * UNGA Resolution 65/119 regarding 3rd International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism.

Criticism
The list remains controversial in some countries for various reasons:

Referendums
One reason for controversy is that the list includes some dependencies that have democratically chosen to maintain their current status, or have had a referendum in which local government requirements were not met regarding the number of votes required to support a change of status or the number of voters participating (e.g., in the United States Virgin Islands).

Falkland Islands
The Falkland Islands is a British Overseas Territory with a population of 4,000 people and an autonomous government, that is also claimed by Argentina due to an inherited historical colonial claim to the islands by Spain. In March 2013, the Falkland Islands government organised a referendum on the status of the territory. With a 92% turnout, 99.7% of Falkland Islands voters voted to maintain the status quo, with only three islanders (0.2%) favouring a change.

Gibraltar
Gibraltar is largely a self-governing British territory on the tip of the Iberian Peninsula with a population of about 30,000 people, whose territory is claimed by Spain. It continues to be listed as an NSGT though its residents expressed a preference in two referendums to retain the status quo. In 1967, they were asked whether to retain their current status or to become part of Spain. The status quo was favoured by 12,138 votes to 44. In 2002, a proposal for a joint British–Spanish administration of the territory was voted down by 17,900 votes to 187. (The "no" vote accounted for more than 85% of Gibraltar's entire electorate). The United Nations did not recognise either referendum, with the 1967 referendum being declared in contravention of previous UN resolutions. The Spanish government does not recognize any right of the current Gibraltar inhabitants to self-determination, on the grounds that they are not the original population of the territory, but residents transferred by the colonial power, the United Kingdom.

Tokelau
The territory of Tokelau divides political opinion in New Zealand. In response to attempts at decolonizing Tokelau, New Zealand journalist Michael Field wrote in 2004: "The UN ... is anxious to rid the world of the last remaining vestiges of colonialism by the end of the decade. It has a list of 16 territories around the world, virtually none of which wants to be independent to any degree." Field further notes that Patuki Isaako, who was head of Tokelau's government at the time of a UN seminar on decolonization in 2004, informed the United Nations that his country had no wish to be decolonized, and that Tokelauans had opposed the idea of decolonization ever since the first visit by UN officials in 1976.

In 2006, a UN-supervised referendum on decolonization was held in Tokelau, where 60.07% of voters supported the offer of self-government. However, the terms of the referendum required a two-thirds majority to vote in favor of self-government. A second referendum was held in 2007, in which 64.40% of Tokelauans supported self-government, falling short of the two-thirds majority by 16 votes. This led New Zealand politician and former diplomat John Hayes, on behalf of the National Party, to state that "Tokelau did the right thing to resist pressure from [the New Zealand government] and the United Nations to pursue self-government". In May 2008, the United Nations' Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged colonial powers "to complete the decolonization process in every one of the remaining 16 Non-Self-Governing Territories". This led the New Zealand Herald to comment that the United Nations was "apparently frustrated by two failed attempts to get Tokelau to vote for independence from New Zealand".

Viability
A lack of population and landmass is an issue for at least one territory included on the list: the British overseas territory Pitcairn Islands, which has a population of less than 50 descended primarily from indigenous Polynesians and mutineers from HMS Bounty. Regardless, the territory's colonial status was disputed during the 2004 sexual assault trial where the seven defendants – comprising a third of the adult male population – unsuccessfully argued that the islanders had rejected British control ever since the 1789 mutiny and, as a result, British criminal law did not apply to them. Four other territories – Tokelau, Montserrat, the Falkland Islands and Saint Helena – are also less populous than any current UN member state.

In addition, some territories are financially dependent on their administering state.

Completely autonomous dependencies

Another criticism is that a number of the listed territories, such as Bermuda (see Politics of Bermuda), the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar,  consider themselves completely autonomous and self-governing, with the "administering power" retaining limited oversight over matters such as defence and diplomacy. In past years, there were ongoing disputes between some administering powers and the Decolonization Committee over whether territories such as pre-independence Brunei and the West Indies Associated States should still be considered "non-self-governing", particularly in instances where the administering country was prepared to grant full independence whenever the territory requested it. These disputes became moot as those territories eventually received full independence.

Removed under other circumstances
Territories that have achieved a status described by the administering countries as internally self-governing – such as Puerto Rico, the Netherlands Antilles, and the Cook Islands – have been removed from the list by vote of the General Assembly, often under pressure of the administering countries.

Some territories that have been annexed and incorporated into the legal framework of the controlling state (such as the overseas regions of France, and the U.S. states of Alaska and Hawaii) are considered by the UN to have been decolonized, since they then no longer constitute "non-self-governing" entities; their populations are assumed to have agreed to merge with the former parent state. However, in 1961, the General Assembly voted to end this treatment for the "overseas provinces" of Portugal such as Angola and Mozambique, which were active focus of United Nations attention until they attained independence in the mid-1970s.

Territories have also been removed for other reasons. In 1972, for example, Hong Kong (then administered by the United Kingdom) and Macau (then administered by Portugal) were removed from the list at the request of the People's Republic of China, which had just been recognized as holding China's seat at the United Nations. This was due to the PRC's belief that their presence on the list implied eventual independence of the territory, instead of their status being handled by bilateral negotiations.

Change of status
On 2 December 1986, New Caledonia, an overseas territory of France, was reinstated on the list of non-self-governing territories, an action to which France objected. Within France it has had the status of a collectivité sui generis, or a one-of-a-kind community, since 1999. Under the 1998 Nouméa Accord, its Territorial Congress had the right to call for three referendums on independence between 2014 and 2018. The first referendum was held on 4 November 2018 (56.4% against independence), the second referendum on 4 October 2020 (53.26% against independence), and the third referendum on 12 December 2021 (96.50% against independence). While in all three the independence was rejected, the result of the third referendum stems from the boycott by the pro-independence Kanak community in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic in New Caledonia.

French Polynesia was also reinstated on the list on 17 May 2013, in somewhat contentious circumstances. Having been re-elected President of French Polynesia in 2011 (leader of local government), Oscar Temaru asked for it to be re-inscribed on the list; it had been removed in 1947. (French Polynesia is categorised by France as an overseas country, in recognition of its self-governing status.) During the year 2012, Oscar Temaru engaged in intense lobbying with the micro-states of Oceania, many of which, the Solomon Islands, Nauru and Tuvalu, submitted to the UN General Assembly a draft of a resolution to affirm "the inalienable right of the population of French Polynesia to self-determination and independence".

On 5 May 2013, Temaru's Union for Democracy party lost the legislative election to Gaston Flosse's pro-autonomy but anti-independence Tahoera'a Huiraatira party; obtaining only 11 seats against the party of Gaston Flosse, with 38 seats, and the autonomist party A Ti'a Porinetia with 8 seats.

At this stage, the United Nations General Assembly was due to discuss French Polynesia's re-inscription on the list twelve days later, in accordance with a motion tabled by Solomon Islands, Tuvalu and Nauru. On 16 May, the Assembly of French Polynesia, with its new anti-independence majority, adopted a motion asking the United Nations not to restore the country to the list. On 17 May, despite French Polynesia's and France's opposition, the country was restored to the list of non-self-governing territories. Temaru was present for the vote, on the final day of his mandate as President. The United Nations affirmed "the inalienable right of the people of French Polynesia to self-determination and independence".

A few hours before the UN review of the resolution, during its first meeting, the new Territorial Assembly adopted by 46 votes to 10 a "resolution" expressing the desire of Polynesians to maintain their autonomy within the French Republic. In spite of this resolution adopted by the parties representing 70% of the Polynesian voters, the UN General Assembly inscribed French Polynesia on the list of the territories to be decolonized during its plenary assembly of 17 May 2013. France did not take part in this session while the United States, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom disassociated themselves from this resolution.

List not complete
Also controversial are the criteria set down in 1960 to 1961 by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV), United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1541 (XV), Principle 12 of the Annex, and United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1654 (XVI) which only focused on colonies of the Western world, namely Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This list of administering states was not expanded afterwards.

Nevertheless, some of the 111 members who joined the UN after 1960 gained independence from countries not covered by Resolution 1541 and were themselves not classified as "Non-Self-Governing Territories" by the UN. Of these that joined the UN between 1960 and 2008, 11 were independent before 1960 and 71 were included on the list (some as a group). Twenty new UN countries resulted from breakup of Second World states and of Yugoslavia: six were part of Yugoslavia, two were part of Czechoslovakia, and 12 were part of the Soviet Union (Ukraine and Belarus already had UN seats before the dissolution of the USSR, whose seat was reused by the Russian Federation without acceding anew). Out of the other ten, seven (mostly Arab) were colonies or protectorates of the "Western" countries, and one each was a non-self-governing part of Ethiopia (later independent Eritrea), Pakistan (East Pakistan, later independent Bangladesh) and Sudan (later independent South Sudan). Territories like Tibet, the Xinjiang Uygur Region (administered by China) and Siberia (or parts thereof; administered by the Soviet Union, later by Russia) have never been on the list. Also, the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), which considered themselves illegally occupied by the Soviet Union, were not on the list either. Western New Guinea (also known as West Papua), which was ceded to Indonesia, is also not on the list as well as Sarawak and Sabah, which were handed to Malaya during its territorial expansion through the formation of Malaysia in 1963. In 2018, the government of Vanuatu started seeking international support to have West Papua added to the list in 2019.

After the revocation of Norfolk Island's self-governing status by the Australian government in 2015, an island community group requested the UN add the island to the list of non-self-governing territories.

Current entries
The following 17 territories are currently included in the list.

Notes

Former entries
The following territories were originally listed by UN General Assembly Resolution 66 (I) of 14 December 1946 as Trust and Non-Self-Governing Territory. The dates show the year of independence or other change in a territory's status which led to their removal from the list, after which information was no longer submitted to the United Nations.


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Round Table Conferences (India)

The three Round Table Conferences of 1930–1932 were a series of peace conference's, organized by the British Government and Indian political personalities to discuss constitutional reforms in India. These started in November 1930 and ended in December 1932. They were conducted as per the recommendation of Muhammad Ali Jinnah to Viceroy Lord Irwin and Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, and by the report submitted by the Simon Commission in May 1930. Demands for Swaraj or self-rule in India had been growing increasingly strong. B. R. Ambedkar, Jinnah, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri, Sir Muhammad Zafrulla Khan, K. T. Paul and Mirabehn were key participants from India. By the 1930s, many British politicians believed that India needed to move towards dominion status. However, there were significant disagreements between the Indian and the British political parties that the Conferences would not resolve. The key topic was about constitution and India which was mainly discussed in that conference. There were three Round Table Conferences from 1930 to 1932.

First Round Table Conference (November 1930 – January 1931)
The Round Table Conference officially inaugurated by His Majesty George V on November 12, 1930 in Royal Gallery House of Lords at London and chaired by the Prime Minister. Ramsay MacDonald was also chairman of a subcommittee on minority representation, while for the duration his son, Malcolm MacDonald, performed liaison tasks with Lord Sankey's constitutional committee. One of the foremost advisers was Sir Malcolm Hailey, an Indian civil servant with thirty years experience. The leading Liberal on the committee, Lord Reading was "well aware of the troubles which might arise if and when India became independent." Clement Attlee, who served on the Simon Commission, wanted an early resolution but was baulked by the Conservatives in government until 1945. Sir Samuel Hoare wrote the cabinet a memo recommending a federal formula for the Government of India to "make it possible to give a semblance of responsible government and yet retain the realities and verities of British control." The idea was proposed by the princely states and other Liberal Indian leaders including Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru would welcome it. The minority Labour government hoped to win the support of Liberal and Conservative colleagues in parliament for a "responsive" Indian government at central and provincial levels and a conservative legislature.

The eight British political parties were represented by sixteen delegates. There were fifty-eight political leaders from British India and sixteen delegates from the princely states. In total 74 delegates from India attended the Conference. However, the Indian National Congress, along with Indian business leaders, kept away from the conference. Many of them, including Gandhi, were in jail for their participation in Civil Disobedience Movement. Their boycott doomed the conference to failure. Lord Irwin made a controversial statement declaring that India should be eventually granted Dominionship. The Conservatives were disgusted: "the whole conference was manipulated and manoeuvred by the Socialist Party, said Sir Winston Churchill, "to achieve the result they had set before themselves from the beginning, namely the conferring of responsible government at the centre upon Indians."

Participants

 * British Representatives:
 * Labour: Ramsay MacDonald, Lord Sankey, Wedgwood Benn, Arthur Henderson, J. H. Thomas, William Jowitt, Hastings Lees-Smith, Earl Russell
 * Conservative: Earl Peel, Marquess of Zetland, Samuel Hoare, Oliver Stanley
 * Liberal: Marquess of Reading, Marquess of Lothian, Sir Robert Hamilton, Isaac Foot
 * Muslim League: Aga Khan III (leader of British-Indian delegation), Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar, Muhammad Shafi, Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, Sir Abdul Halim Ghuznavi, Sir Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah, AK Fazlul Huq, Dr. Shafa'at Ahmad Khan, Raja Sher Muhammad Khan of Domeli
 * Indian States' Representatives: Maharaja of Alwar, Maharaja of Baroda, Maharaja of Darbhanga, Nawab of Bhopal, Maharaja of Bikaner, Rana of Dholpur, Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, Maharaja of Nawanagar, Maharaja of Patiala (Chancellor of the Chamber of Princes), Maharaja of Rewa, Chief Sahib of Sangli, Sir Prabhashankar Pattani (Bhavnagar), Manubhai Mehta (Baroda), Sardar Sahibzada Sultan Ahmed Khan (Gwalior), Akbar Hydari (Hyderabad), Mirza Ismail (Mysore), Kailash Narain Haksar (Jammu and Kashmir)
 * British-Indian Representatives:
 * Hindus: B. S. Moonje, M. R. Jayakar, Diwan Bahadur Raja Narendra Nath
 * Liberals: J. N. Basu, Tej Bahadur Sapru, C. Y. Chintamani, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri, Chimanlal Harilal Setalvad
 * Justice Party: Arcot Ramasamy Mudaliar, Bhaskarrao Vithojirao Jadhav, Sir A. P. Patro
 * Depressed Classes: B. R. Ambedkar, Rettamalai Srinivasan
 * Sikhs: Sardar Ujjal Singh, Sardar Sampuran Singh
 * Parsis: Phiroze Sethna, Cowasji Jehangir, Homi Mody
 * Indian Christians: K. T. Paul (All India Conference of Indian Christians)
 * Europeans: Sir Hubert Carr, Sir Oscar de Glanville (Burma), T. F. Gavin Jones, C. E. Wood (Madras)
 * Anglo-Indians: Henry Gidney
 * Women: Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz, Radhabai Subbarayan
 * Landlords: Maharaja Kameshwar Singh of Darbhanga (Bihar), Muhammad Ahmad Said Khan Chhatari (United Provinces), Maharaja of Paralakhemundi Estate (Orissa) Krushna Chandra Gajapati, Provash Chandra Mitter
 * Labour: N. M. Joshi, B. Shiva Rao
 * Universities: Syed Sultan Ahmed, Bisheshwar Dayal Seth
 * Burma: U Aung Thin, Ba U, M. M. Ohn Ghine
 * Sindh: Shah Nawaz Bhutto, Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah
 * Other Provinces: Chandradhar Barua (Assam), Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum (NWFP), S. B. Tambe (Central Provinces)
 * Government of India: Narendra Nath Law, Bhupendra Nath Mitra, C. P. Ramaswami Iyer, M. Ramachandra Rao
 * Officials attending in consultative capacity: W. M. Hailey, C. A. Innes, A. C. MacWatters, Sir Henry G. Haig, L. W. Reynolds
 * Indian States Delegation Staff:
 * Hyderabad: Sir Richard Chenevix-Trench, Nawab Mahdi Yar Jung, Ahmed Hussain, Nawab Sir Amin Jung Bahadur, Reginald Glancy
 * South Indian States: T. Raghavaiah
 * Baroda: V. T. Krishnamachari
 * Alwar: Fateh Naseeb Khan
 * Orissa States: K. C. Neogy
 * Nominated by the Chamber of Princes Special Organisation: L. F. Rushbrook Williams, Qazi Ali Haidar Abbasi, Jarmani Dass, Anna Babaji Latthe, D. A. Surve
 * Secretariats: S. K. Brown, V. Dawson, K. S. Fitze, W. H. Lewis, R. J. Stopford, John Coatman, Marmaduke Pickthall, K. M. Panikkar, N. S. Subba Rao, Geoffrey Corbett, A. Latifi, Girija Shankar Bajpai
 * Secretariat-General: R. H. A. Carter, Mian Abdul Aziz, W. D. Croft, G. E. J. Gent, B. G. Holdsworth, R. F. Mudie, G. S. Rajadhyaksha

Proceedings
The conference started with six plenary meetings where delegates put forward their issues nine sub-committees were formed to deal with several different matters including federal structure, provincial constitution, province of Sindh and NWFP, defense services and minorities e.t.c. These were followed by discussions on the reports of the sub-committees on Federal Structure, Provincial Constitution, Minorities, Burma, North West Frontier Province, Franchise, Defense services and Sindh. These were followed by 2 more plenary meetings and a final concluding session. It was difficult for progress to be made in the absence of the Indian National Congress but some advances were made. The Prime Minister wrote his diary "India has not considered. It was communalism and proportions of reserved seats" that exposed the worst side of Indian politics.

The idea of an All-India Federation was moved to the centre of discussion by Tej Bahadur Sapru. All the groups attending the conference supported this concept. The princely states agreed to the proposed federation provided that their internal sovereignty was guaranteed. The Muslim League also supported the federation as it had always been opposed to a strong Centre. The British agreed that representative government should be introduced on provincial level.

Second Round Table Conference (September 1931 – December 1931)
After the failure of the First Round Table Conference, the British recognized they needed the participation of the Indian National Congress. On January 26, 1931, Gandhi and other Congress leaders were freed from prison. The resulting discussions culminated in the Gandhi–Irwin Pact (1931) under which the Congress agreed to participate in a Second Round Table Conference. Although MacDonald was still Prime Minister of Britain, he was by this time heading a coalition Government (the "National Government") with a Conservative majority, including Sir Samuel Hoare as a new Secretary of State for India.

Participants

 * British Representatives:
 * Labour: Ramsay MacDonald, Wedgwood Benn, Arthur Henderson, William Jowitt, Hastings Lees-Smith, F. W. Pethick-Lawrence, Lord Sankey, Lord Snell, J. H. Thomas
 * Conservative: Viscount Hailsham, Samuel Hoare, Earl Peel, Oliver Stanley, Marquess of Zetland
 * Scottish Unionist: Walter Elliot
 * Liberal: Isaac Foot, Henry Graham White, Robert Hamilton, Marquess of Lothian, Marquess of Reading,
 * Indian States' Representatives: Maharaja of Alwar, Maharaja of Baroda, Maharaja Of Darbhanga, Nawab of Bhopal, Maharaja of Bikaner, Maharao of Kutch, Rana of Dholpur, Maharaja of Indore, Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, Maharaja of Kapurthala, Maharaja of Nawanagar, Maharaja of Patiala, Maharaja of Rewa, Chief Sahib of Sangli, Raja of Korea, Raja of Sarila, Sir Prabhashankar Pattani (Bhavnagar), Manubhai Mehta (Baroda), Sardar Sahibzada Sultan Ahmed Khan (Gwalior), Sir Muhammad Akbar Hydari (Hyderabad), Mirza Ismail (Mysore), Col. K.N. Haksar (Jammu and Kashmir), T. Raghavaiah (Travancore), Liaqat Hayat Khan (Patiala)
 * British-Indian Representatives:
 * Government of India: C. P. Ramaswami Iyer, Narendra Nath Law, M. Ramachandra Rao
 * Indian National Congress: Mahatma Gandhi (He was the sole representative of the Congress).
 * Muslims: Aga Khan III, Maulana Shaukat Ali, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, A. K. Fazlul Huq, Sir Muhammad Iqbal, Muhammad Shafi, Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, Sir Syed Ali Imam, Maulvi Muhammad Shafi Daudi, Raja Sher Muhammad Khan of Domeli, Abdul Halim Ghaznavi, Hafiz Hidayat Hussain, Sayed Muhammad Padshah Saheb Bahadur, Dr. Shafa'at Ahmad Khan, Jamal Muhammad Rowther, Kaja Mian Rowther, Nawab Sahibzada Sayed Muhammad Mehr Shah
 * Hindus: M. R. Jayakar, B. S. Moonje, Diwan Bahadur Raja Narendra Nath
 * Liberals: J. N. Basu, C. Y. Chintamani, Tej Bahadur Sapru, V. S. Srinivasa Sastri, Chimanlal Harilal Setalvad
 * Justice Party: Raja of Bobbili, Arcot Ramasamy Mudaliar, Sir A. P. Patro, Bhaskarrao Vithojirao Jadhav
 * Depressed Classes: B. R. Ambedkar, Rettamalai Srinivasan
 * Sikhs: Sardar Ujjal Singh, Sardar Sampuran Singh
 * Parsis: Cowasji Jehangir, Homi Mody, Phiroze Sethna
 * Indian Christians: Surendra Kumar Datta, A. T. Pannirselvam
 * Europeans: Edward Benthall, Sir Hubert Carr, T. F. Gavin Jones, C. E. Wood (Madras)
 * Anglo-Indians: Henry Gidney
 * Women: Sarojini Naidu, Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz, Radhabai Subbarayan
 * Landlords: Muhammad Ahmad Said Khan Chhatari (United Provinces), Kameshwar Singh of Darbhanga (Bihar), Raja of Parlakimedi (Orissa), Sir Provash Chandra Mitter
 * Industry: Ghanshyam Das Birla, Sir Purshottamdas Thakurdas, Maneckji Dadabhoy
 * Labour: N. M. Joshi, B. Shiva Rao, V. V. Giri
 * Universities: Syed Sultan Ahmed, Bisheshwar Dayal Seth
 * Burma: Sir Padamji Ginwala
 * Sindh: Shah Nawaz Bhutto, Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah
 * Other Provinces: Chandradhar Barua (Assam), Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum (NWFP), S. B. Tambe (Central Provinces)
 * Indian States Delegation Staff: V. T. Krishnamachari (Baroda), Richard Chenevix-Trench (Hyderabad), Nawab Mahdi Yar Jung (Hyderabad), S. M. Bapna (Indore), Amar Nath Atal (Jaipur), J. W. Young (Jodhpur), Ram Chandra Kak (Jammu and Kashmir), Sahibzada Abdus Samad Khan (Rampur), K. C. Neogy (Orissa states), L. F. Rushbrook Williams, Jarmani Dass, Muhammad Saleh Akbar Hydari, K. M. Panikkar, N. Madhava Rao
 * British Delegation Staff: H. G. Haig, V. Dawson, K. S. Fitze, J. G. Laithwaite, W. H. Lewis, P. J. Patrick, John Coatman, G. T. Garratt, R. J. Stopford
 * British Indian Delegation Staff: Geoffrey Corbett, A. Latifi, Girija Shankar Bajpai, Benegal Rama Rau, Syed Amjad Ali, Prince Aly Khan, A. M. Chaudhury, Mahadev Desai, Govind Malaviya, K. T. Shah, P. Sinha
 * Secretariat-General: R. H. A. Carter, K. Anderson, C. D. Deshmukh, J. M. Sladen, Hugh MacGregor, G. F. Steward, A. H. Joyce, Syed Amjad Ali, Ram Babu Saksena

Proceedings
The Second Session opened on September 7, 1931. There were three major differences between the first and second Round Table Conferences. By the second:
 * Congress Representation — The Gandhi–Irwin Pact opened the way for Congress participation in this conference. Gandhi was invited from India and attended as the sole official Congress representative accompanied by Sarojini Naidu and also Madan Mohan Malaviya, Ghanshyam Das Birla, Muhammad Iqbal, Sir Mirza Ismail (Diwan of Mysore), S.K. Dutta and Sir Syed Ali Imam. Gandhi claimed that the Congress alone represented political India; that the Untouchables were Hindus and should not be treated as a “minority”; and that there should be no separate electorates or special safeguards for Muslims or other minorities. These claims were rejected by other Indian participants.
 * National Government — two weeks earlier the Labour government in London had fallen. Ramsay MacDonald now headed a National Government dominated by the Conservative Party.
 * Financial Crisis – During the conference, Britain went off the Gold Standard, further distracting the National Government.

At the end of the conference Ramsay MacDonald undertook to produce a Communal Award for minority representation, with the provision that any free agreement between the parties could be substituted for his award.

Gandhi took particular exception to the suggeston of untouchables as a minority separate from the rest of the Hindu community. Other important discussions were the responsibility of the executive to the legislature and a separate electorate for the Untouchables as demanded by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. Gandhi announced that henceforth he would work only on behalf of the Harijans: he reached a compromise with the leader of depressed classes, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, over this issue; the two eventually resolved the situation with the Poona Pact of 1932. But not before the conference of All-India Depressed Classes had specifically 'denounced the claim made by Gandhi.'

Third Round Table Conference (November – December 1932)
The third and last session assembled on November 17, 1932. Only forty-six delegates attended since most of the main political figures of India were not present. The Labour Party from Britain and the Indian National Congress refused to attend.

From September 1931 until March 1933, under the supervision of the Secretary of State for India, Sir Samuel Hoare, the proposed reforms took the form reflected in the Government of India Act 1935.

Participants

 * Indian States' Representatives: Dewan Kishen Pershad (Dewan of Hyderabad), Mirza Ismail (Dewan of Mysore), V. T. Krishnamachari (Dewan of Baroda), Wajahat Hussain (Jammu and Kashmir), Sir Sukhdeo Prasad (Udaipur, Jaipur, Jodhpur), D. A. Surve (Kolhapur), Raja Oudh Narain Bisarya (Bhopal), Manubhai Mehta (Bikaner), Nawab Liaqat Hayat Khan (Patiala), Fateh Naseeb Khan (Alwar State), L. F. Rushbrook Williams (Nawanagar), Raja of Sarila (small states)
 * British-Indian Representatives: Aga Khan III, Sir Dr. Allama Muhammad Iqbal, B. R. Ambedkar (Depressed Classes separate Electorate), Ramakrishna Ranga Rao of Bobbili, Sir Hubert Carr (Europeans), Nanak Chand Pandit, A. H. Ghuznavi, Henry Gidney (Anglo-Indians), Hafiz Hidayat Hussain (All India Muslim League), M. R. Jayakar (Liberal Party), Cowasji Jehangir(Libreal Party), N. M. Joshi (Hindu Mahasabha), Narasimha Chintaman Kelkar, Arcot Ramasamy Mudaliar, Begum Jahanara Shahnawaz (Women), A. P. Patro, Tej Bahadur Sapru, Dr. Shafa'at Ahmad Khan, Sir Shadi Lal, Tara Singh Malhotra, Sir Nripendra Nath Sircar, Sir Purshottamdas Thakurdas, Muhammad Zafarullah Khan.

Proceedings
Similar to the first two Round Table Conferences, the Third Round Table Conference did not turn out to be fruitful or inclusive.

Conclusion
A Joint Committee was set up and had to present the recommendations as a Bill, which was eventually enacted as the Government of India Act 1935.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Round Table Conferences (India)


text:
Chickering & Sons

Chickering & Sons was an American piano manufacturer located in Boston, Massachusetts. The company was founded in 1823 by Jonas Chickering and James Stewart, but the partnership dissolved four years later. By 1830 Jonas Chickering became partners with John Mackay, manufacturing pianos as "Chickering & Company", and later "Chickering & Mackays" until the senior Mackay's death in 1841, and reorganized as "Chickering & Sons" in 1853. Chickering pianos continued to be made until 1983.

History
It was P.T. Barnum who persuaded Jenny Lind - the Swedish Nightingale - to make a concert tour of the United States. After her agreement, Barnum commissioned the Chickering company to manufacture a custom grand piano for her nationwide tour, ultimately involving 93 performances. The piano was completed by August 1850; Lind arrived in September and the concert series began in Boston. Her pianist was Otto Goldschmidt, whom she married at the end of her tour.

Coincidentally, as the tour began, Henry E. Steinway (Steinweg) and his large family arrived in New York as immigrants from Germany. Henry attended the opening night of the NYC concert series but showed little interest in the diva. His profound interest was in the Chickering piano, to which he dashed for such careful examination that he nearly had to be hauled away so the concert could begin.

On December 1, 1852, a fire destroyed Chickering's piano factory located at 336 Washington Street in Boston. While some believe it was arson, most agree it was likely accidental. One policeman was killed. The walls of the building collapsed, and set adjoining structures on fire. A new factory was built in 1853–54 at 791 Tremont Street in Boston. From 1860 to 1868 space in the building was the location of the Spencer Repeating Rifle Company, who made over 100,000 rifles and carbines for the U.S. Army and sportsmen from 1862 to 1868. This structure still stands today. It was renovated into artist studios in 1972. Jonas Chickering made several major contributions to the development of piano technology, most notably by introducing a one-piece, cast-iron plate to support the greater string tension of larger grand pianos. He also invented a new deflection of the strings, and in 1845 the first convenient method for over stringing in square pianos. Instead of setting the strings side by side, the company introduced substituting an arrangement of the string in two banks, one over the other. This not only saved space but brought the powerful bass strings directly over the most resonant part of the sound-board, a principle used to this day in the construction of all pianos, both grands and uprights.

Chickering was the largest piano manufacturer in the United States in the middle of the 19th century, but was surpassed in the 1860s by Steinway. In 1867, Jonas's son Frank Chickering had the Imperial Cross of the Legion of Honour, then one of the world's most prestigious non-military awards, bestowed upon him by Emperor Napoleon III for services to the art of music, one of more than 200 awards the piano manufacturer garnered over the years.

The company became in 1908 part of the American Piano Company (Ampico), and continued after the merger in 1932 of American with the Aeolian Company, to form Aeolian-American. That company went out of business in 1985, and the Chickering name continued to be applied to new pianos produced by Wurlitzer and then the Baldwin Piano Company.

Recordings made with instruments by Chickering
 * Dag Achatz. Franz Liszt. Franz Liszt played on Liszt's own piano. Label: BIS. Played on Liszt's Chickering piano (1867).
 * Jenő Jandó. Franz Liszt. The Instruments of Liszt in the Budapest Liszt Ferenc Museum. Label: Hungaroton. Played on pianos by Chickering (1867 and 1879-1880), Bösendorfer and other instruments.
 * Artem Belogurov. Foote, Whiting, Paine, Chadwick, Nevin, Ruthven Lang. American Romantics: The Boston Scene. Label: Piano Classics. Played on a Chickering piano (1873).

Chickering Halls
The firm commissioned and operated several concert halls in Boston and New York:

 * Chickering's building, Boston (c. 1850s), no.334 Washington St.
 * Chickering's Hall, Boston (1860-1870), no.246 Washington St.
 * Chickering Hall concert auditorium, 130 5th Avenue, New York City (1877), designed by George B. Post, and the venue for Oscar Wilde's first lecture in America in 1882 (razed)
 * Chickering Hall, Boston (1883-c. 1894), no.152 Tremont St., near West St.
 * Chickering Hall, Boston (1901-c. 1912), Huntington Ave., corner of Massachusetts Ave.
 * Chickering Hall, 27 West 57th Street, NYC (1923), designed by Cross & Cross (1924)

title: Chickering & Sons


text:
Lance Mitchell

Lance Robert Mitchell (born October 9, 1981) is a former American football player. He was selected in the fifth round of the 2005 NFL Draft by the Arizona Cardinals. He played college football at Oklahoma.

In his career, Mitchell also played for the Orlando Predators, and Arizona Rattlers.

Early life
Mitchell attended Los Banos High School, where he was a three-year starter and an All-State selection at both linebacker and Running back. As a senior, he averaged 9.6 yards-per-carry, rushed for more than 3,000 yards, and scored 36 touchdowns. His best game as a running back was 12 attempt, 250 yard performance, including six touchdowns.

College career
Mitchell originally signed with the University of Florida, but the Southeastern Conference ruled him ineligible because an issue with his high school transcript. While in college, he majored in Sociology.

S.F. City College
Mitchell attended San Francisco City College for two years and helped lead his team to a 24–0 record, two California state championships, and two JuCo Gridwire national championships. As a sophomore, he earned All-American honors and recorded five sacks, one interception, and 80 tackles.

Oklahoma
In 2002, Mitchell transferred to the University of Oklahoma, where he played his final three college seasons.

In his first season at Oklahoma, Mitchell started every game at middle linebacker. He led the team with 124 tackles (87 solos), four sacks, 20 tackles-for-losses, six passes defenses and four forced fumbles. He earned Second-team All-American (CNNSI), First-team All-Big 12 Conference, and Big Twelve Newcomer of the Year honors.

In 2003, Mitchell was off to a strong start, recording 17 tackles (13 solos) with two tackles-for-losses in the first two games. However, his season came to an early end after he tore the ACL in his left knee against Fresno State.

As a senior in 2004, Mitchell finished second on the team with 78 tackles (45 solo), two sacks, ten tackles-for-losses, four quarterback pressures, two fumble recoveries, a forced fumble and five passes defensed. For his performance, he earned consensus All-Big 12 Conference first-team honors.

Oklahoma career summary
In 29 games at Oklahoma, Mitchell recorded 219 tackles (145 solos) with six sacks, 32 tackles-for-losses, two fumble recoveries, five forced fumbles and eleven passes defensed. Despite playing just a little over two seasons at Oklahoma, his 32 tackles-for-losses rank fifth among Sooner linebackers in a career.

Pre-draft
Mitchell was invited, and attended the 2005 NFL Combine. He was rated the 7th best Inside Linebacker out of 57, and was projected to be selected in the third to fourth rounds of the draft.

National Football League (2005–2006)
Mitchell was selected in the fifth round (168th overall) of the 2005 NFL Draft by the Arizona Cardinals. As a rookie, he played in 12 games, recording eight tackles on defense, along with 14 special teams tackles. In 2006, he appeared in two preseason games for the Cardinals, however, he suffered an injury, and on September 5 was placed him on Injured Reserve. Then, just three days later, he and the Cardinals agreed on an injury settlement and he was released by the team.

Arena Football League (2007–2008)
On January 25, 2007, Mitchell signed with the Orlando Predators of the Arena Football League. For his rookie season, he started all 15 games he played in at linebacker. For the season he finished seventh on the team with 18.5 tackles, second on the team with 3.5 tackles-for-losses, and third on the team with two sacks. His performance for the season earned him AFL All-Rookie honors. However, he was not re-signed by the Predators and became a free agent.

On November 19, 2007, Mitchell signed with the Arizona Rattlers. Then on February 6, 2008, he refused to report to camp with the Rattlers. In turn, on September 10, he was waived by the Rattlers.

title: Lance Mitchell


text:
A. J. Casson

Alfred Joseph Casson (May 17, 1898 – February 20, 1992) was a member of the Canadian group of artists known as the Group of Seven. He joined the group in 1926 at the invitation of Franklin Carmichael, replacing Frank Johnston. Casson is best known for his depictions in his signature limited palette of southern Ontario, and for being the youngest member of the Group of Seven.

Life and career
Casson was born on May 17, 1898, in Toronto, Ontario, to an English Quaker father, John Edwin Casson, and a Canadian mother, Henrietta (Hardy). At age nine, he moved to Guelph, and to Hamilton at age fourteen. The first exposure he had to art was at Hamilton Technical School, where he was asked by his teacher to demonstrate for the class. His father sent him to work at age 15 as an apprentice at a Hamilton lithography company. In 1915, the family moved back to Toronto where his first art classes were private lessons with Harry Britton. Britton taught him about colour and how to use oils and watercolour, a medium he loved. At the same time as working, he attended evening classes at Central Technical School. The first public exhibition of his work was at the Canadian National Exhibition, in 1917.

He was hired by the commercial art/engravers firm Brigden's, owned by brothers George and Frederick Henry (Fred) Brigden. In 1919, Casson moved to Rous and Mann Ltd, where he was influenced by and assistant to Group of Seven member Franklin Carmichael to sketch and paint on his own. Carmichael and Casson then moved on to the first Canadian silkscreen printing firm, Sampson-Matthews Ltd, founded by artist J. E. Sampson and businessman C. A. G. Matthews, for which he worked from 1926 till 1958. After Carmichael left in 1932 to teach at the Ontario College of Art, Casson became their Art Director and in 1946 their vice-president.

During the 1920s, Casson continued to paint during his spare time alone and with the Group of Seven. He enjoyed painting using watercolour and in 1925, along with Carmichael and F. H. Brigden, founded the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour. After Frank Johnston, a Group of Seven member, left the group in 1921, Casson seemed like an appropriate replacement. In 1926, he was informed by Carmichael that he had become a member of the Group of Seven. In the same year, he also became an associate member of the conservative Royal Canadian Academy (he became its president in 1949). Carmichael also introduced Casson to The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto.

In 1924, Casson married Margaret Petry. His father died shortly after his marriage, and he had to take care of and support his widowed mother. After the end of the Group of Seven in 1932, he helped found the Canadian Group of Painters in 1933, along with several members of the Group of Seven who also became members of the Canadian Group of Painters, including Lawren Harris, Arthur Lismer, A. Y. Jackson and Franklin Carmichael.

Casson developed a painting style with clear colours, background designs, and a limited palette. His approach was what Lawren Harris had talked to him about - simplification and the elimination of all nonessentials. In 1952, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Corresponding member. In 1954, he was one of eighteen Canadian artists commissioned by the Canadian Pacific Railway to paint a mural for the interior of one of the new Park cars entering service on the new Canadian transcontinental train. Each mural depicted a different national or provincial park; Casson's was Algonquin Provincial Park. He "retired" in 1958 from Sampson-Matthews, at age 60, to paint full-time. He also was helpful as a special consultant to the Anti-Rackets Branch of the Ontario Provincial Police uncovering forgeries of Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven and many other historical Canadian artists.

A. J. Casson died on February 20, 1992, just three months short of his 94th birthday, and is buried on the grounds of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, along with six other Group of Seven members.

Honours

 * 1940 full member Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (1940 elected president)
 * 1942 winner, national competition for designing poster for a Victory Bond;
 * 1948 Province of Ontario Award;
 * 1954 Gold medal for distinguished service to advertising in Canada;
 * 1957 Gold medal, University of Alberta;
 * 1967 Silver Centennial Medal;
 * 1969 RCA Medal;
 * 1973 Fellow, Ontario College of Art;
 * 1975 Honorary degree, University of Toronto;
 * Officer of the Order of Canada

Record sale prices
A privately owned work of A. J. Casson's appeared on the May 26, 2008, airing of PBS's "Antiques Roadshow". According to the owner, the painting was given to her grandfather by Casson, his friend and neighbour at the time. The work appraised in the $25,000 to $35,000 range.

A large oil on canvas by the Group of Seven's A. J. Casson, Street in Glen Williams, sold for a record $542,800, including buyer's premium on June 1, 2010. The Casson – a leafy, autumnal portrait of Glen Williams, a small town near Toronto – carried a pre-sale estimate of $200,000–$250,000, the highest such valuation ever accorded a Casson canvas.

Canadian art critic and historian Paul Duval wrote in 1980, "Street in Glen Williams is unquestionably his key autumn portrayal." Bidding for Street in Glen Williams began at $180,000, then bounded in increments of $10,000, then $20,000 before reaching its hammer price of $460,000. The clinching bid came from a western Canadian buyer. The previous record for a Casson, $489,100, including premium, was also set by Joyner Auction, in May 2005.

On Wednesday, November 23, 2016, his Gathering Storm sold for $1,534,000 CDN (premium included) – the highest amount paid for a Casson painting to date.

At the Heffel Auction of Canadian, Impressionist & Modern Art, December 1, 2021, Casson's Pic Island, Lake Superior, an oil on board sketch, 9 3/8 x 11 1/8 in, 23.8 x 28.3 cm, estimated at $40,000 - $60,000, sold for: $481,250 (including Buyer's Premium).

title: A. J. Casson


text:
Lee Pressman

Lee Pressman (July 1, 1906 – November 20, 1969) was a labor attorney and earlier a US government functionary, publicly alleged in 1948 to have been a spy for Soviet intelligence during the mid-1930s (as a member of the Ware Group), following his recent departure from Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as a result of its purge of Communist Party members and fellow travelers. From 1936 to 1948, he represented the CIO and member unions in landmark collective bargaining deals with major corporations including General Motors and U.S. Steel. According to journalist Murray Kempton, anti-communists referred to him as "Comrade Big."

Background
Pressman was born Leon Pressman on July 1, 1906, on the Lower East Side of in New York City, first of two sons of immigrants Harry and Clara Pressman of Minsk. His father was a milliner on the Lower East Side of New York City. As a child, Leon survived polio. In his teens, the family moved out to the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. In 1922, he entered Washington Square College of New York University, where classmates included Nathan Witt and possibly Charles Kramer (later, fellow AAA and Ware Group members), then transferred to Cornell University, where he studied under labor economist Sumner Slichter.

In 1926, Pressman received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In 1929, he received a law degree from Harvard Law School. At Harvard, he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and was in the same class as Alger Hiss. With future defending lawyer Edward Cochrane McLean, they served on the Harvard Law Review:

Mr. Hiss: ... Lee Pressman was in my class at the Harvard Law School, and we were both on the Harvard Law Review at the same time.

Career
After graduation, he joined the law firm of Chadbourne, Stanchfield & Levy (currently Chadbourne & Parke) in New York City. (During the Great Depression, founder Thomas Chadbourne asserted that the capitalist system itself was "on trial" and became an early champion of both collective bargaining rights and profit sharing for workers. ) There, he worked for Jerome Frank (future chair of the SEC). When Jerome left in 1933 to work in FDR's New Deal, Pressman joined a small firm called Liebman, Blumenthal & Levy, to handle Jerome's clients.

New Deal service 1933–1936

In 1933, Pressman joined the Ware Group at the invitation of Harold Ware, a Communist agricultural journalist in Washington, DC: "I was asked to join by a man named Harold Ware"    (See "Ware Group" sub-section, below)

AAA
In July 1933, Pressman received appointment as assistant general counsel of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) by Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace. He reported to Jerome Frank, who was general counsel. The New Dealers saw the AAA as complementing the National Recovery Act (NRA – where fellow Ware Group member and lifelong Hiss friend Henry Collins worked). As they arrived at AAA, two camps quickly arose: previously existing officials who favored agribusiness interests and New Deal appointees who sought to protect small farmers (and farm laborers) and consumers as much as agribusiness. Or, as Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. summarized the attitude, "There were too many Ivy League men, too many intellectuals, too many radicals, too many Jews." By December 1933, Frank had hired John Abt and Arthur (or Howard) Bachrach (brother of Abt's sister Marion Abt Bachrach) to develop litigation strategies for agricultural reform policies.

In February 1935, Chester Davis fired many of Frank's cadre, including Pressman, Frank, Gardner Jackson, and two others.

WPA, RA
By April 1935, Pressman had been appointed general counsel in the Works Progress Administration by Harry L. Hopkins. A joint resolution dated January 21, 1935, called the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935, passed in the United States Congress and became law on April 8, 1935. As a result, on May 6, 1935, FDR issued Executive Order 7034, that essentially transformed the Federal Emergency Relief Administration into the Works Progress Administration. "Pressman set to work analyzing the budget request that would transform FERA into the WPA."

By mid-summer 1935, Rexford G. Tugwell appointed him general counsel of the Resettlement Administration. Pressman split his time between the two agencies. However, by year's end (he recollected in a letter to Tugwell in 1937), he came to believe that New Deals changes occurred only when "major controlling financial interests" concurred or when "financial interests had been able to seize effective control of the code and manipulate it to enhance their power."

CIO 1936–1948
Pressman left government service in the winter of 1935-36 and went into private law practice in New York City with David Scribner as Pressman & Scribner. Clients included the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association (MEBA), the United Public Workers CIO, and other unions.

In 1943, during hearings by a Dies Committee "Special Committee on Un-American Activities," director of research J.B. Matthews asked whether witness Lucien Koch had retained the New York City law firm of "Hays, St. John, Abramson, and Schulman" and "Is this Lee Pressman's firm?"; Koch confirmed "yes." (Osmond K. Fraenkel, a fellow member of the National Lawyers Guild, was also a member of Hays, St. John, Abramson, and Schulman. )

In his role as the CIO's general counsel, Pressman was influential in helping to stop the attempt to deport Communist Longshoreman's Union official Harry Bridges. He continued to interact with Bridges well into June 1948, as longshoremen continued to threaten strikes on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts and Bridges remained president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union.

Under John L. Lewis 1936–1940
In June 1936, he was named a counsel of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO—later AFL-CIO) for the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC—later, the United Steelworkers of America), appointed by union chief John L. Lewis as part of a conscious attempt to mobilize left-wing activists on behalf of the new labor federation. According to scholars, "One of Pressman's unofficial roles in the CIO was liaison between the CIO's Communist faction and its predominantly non-Communist leadership."

In 1936-1937, he supported the Great Flint Sit-Down Strike.

In 1937, Michigan Governor William Francis Murphy supported workers rights and the nascent United Auto Workers in a sit-down strike at General Motors plants. He listened to advice Pressman that civil rights statues passed to protect African-American voters during the Civil War might grant the federal government authority to intervene in strikes in terms of Free Speech, like strikes in Harlan County, Kentucky. In February 1939, when President Roosevelt made Murphy United States Attorney General, Murphy created a Civil Liberties Unit within the criminal division of the United States Department of Justice.

In June 1938, Pressman moved back to Washington, D.C., to become full-time general counsel for the CIO and the SWOC. He remained in this position for the next decade. (According to his obituary in the New York Times, he was general counsel from 1936 to 1948. )

In August 1938, Pressman criticized the American Bar Association in The CIO News in his own "bill of particulars," which included the following:
 * 1) Mooney Case: ABA refused to investigate injustice committed therein
 * 2) Industrial Espionage: ABA lawyers have worked with firms "that engage in industrial espionage"
 * 3) Sacco-Vanzetti Case: ABA refused to investigate
 * 4) Wagner Act: Shared ABA and NLG members declared this act "unconstitutional"
 * 5) Racism:  ABA membership asked for and often excluded members based on race ("White," "Indian," "Negro," "Mongolian")

In May 1939, Pressman spoke on behalf of the CIO before the US Senate's Education and Labor sub-committee to support the "National Health Bill" (part of the Reorganization Act of 1939), sponsored by US Senator Robert F. Wagner. He attacked the American Medical Society's position against the bill as "reactionary," which he felt had kept the bill from going "far enough."

From May through August 1939, Pressman attacked support for the "Walsh amendments" to the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (AKA the "Wagner Act"). In May 1939, when AFL president William Green supported the amendments on CBS Radio, the CIO's response, penned by Pressman, accused Green of colluding with the National Association of Manufacturers against not just the CIO but also the AFL, i.e., workers. In August 1939, Pressman appeared before the Senate Labor Committee to state that Green's support did not represent AFL rank and file.

Also in August 1939, Congress passed the Hatch Act of 1939, which restricted political campaign activities by federal employees. A provision of the Hatch Act made it illegal for the federal government to employ anyone who advocated the overthrow of the federal government. The left-leaning United Public Workers of America (UFWA) immediately hired Pressman to challenge the constitutionality of the Hatch Act.

In October 1939, during a closed-door session during a CIO convention, president John L. Lewis declared his intent to rid the CIO of "Communist influence." This decision came in response particularly from Philip Murray and Sidney Hillman, the CIO's two vice presidents, that pre-dated the Hitler-Stalin Pact (announced the previous month). Instead, Lewis would empower eight member of the CIO's 42 executive committee members. Further, Lewis increased the number of CIO vice presidents from two to six with: R. J. Thomas, president of the United Automobile Workers; Emil Rieve, president of the Textile Workers of America; Sherman Dalrymple, president of the United Rubber Workers; and Reid Robinson, president of the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers. "Left forces" failed to have Joseph Curran, president of the National Maritime Union, elected vice president. Further, Lewis demoted Harry Bridges from West Coast CIO director to California state CIO director. In 1939, New York Times reported on further internal conflict.

On January 3, 1940, Pressman discussed the "1940 Legislative Program of the CIO" on CBS Radio. orIn his speech, Pressman said:

"On pretexts of economy, more money for war purposes and similar catch cries, the reactionary financial interests and their political henchmen hope to reduce appropriations for the unemployed and for publish works, to emasculate labor and social legislation, and to restrict our civil liberties. The CIO ... calls for a determined advance in adapting social legislation to the needs of the whole American people."

Under Philip Murray 1940–1948
On January 14, 1940, John L. Lewis retired from the CIO presidency, and Philip Murray succeeded him.

On May 18, 1940, Pressman again spoke on CBS Radio, this time on the "Wagner Act."

In 1941, FDR appointed CIO vice president Sidney Hill to the Office of Production Management. Hillman lobbied for a mediating entity to OPM, and FDR created the National Defense Mediation Board (NDMB). In June 1941, NMDB and the United Auto Workers took over a North American Aviation factory during a strike. Later in June 1941, at a convention of the National Lawyers Guild in Chicago, Pressman criticized the Vinson and Ball bills before the US Congress, both of which he accused of a "long-range" plan whose aims included "destruction of workers' rights to organize, bargain collectively, and strike"; "destruction of labor organizations as the barrier to unchecked monopoly profits"; and "complete control of the national economy and the government by big business."

Pressman continued to give as good as he got. In February 1940, he held a "heated exchange" with US Representative Clare Hatch during a hearing of the US House Labor Committee, again on the issue of amendments to the NRLA (Wagner Act):

"Pressman: I'll answer the question all right, Mr. Hoffman. Representative Thomas can take care of himself.

Hoffman: This boy is not going to tell me what to ask. I won't take this from Pressman. Remember that.

Pressman: I'll remember all I say.

Hoffman: You keep a civil tongue in your head."

In September 1941, Pressman received a pin from pro-Communist Mike Quill, leader of the Transport Workers Union (TWU), a CIO member, during a TWU strike. Pressman then urged TWU strikers to stand up to the New York City government, as he had four years earlier in 1937 when the TWU first left the AFL for the CIO.

In July 1942, the National War Labor Board sought advice on FDR's wage stabilization policy by increasing wages in the four "Little Steel" companies with a combined 157,000 employees by one dollar. CIO president Philip Murray and Pressman both supported the increase.

In July 1943, the CIO formed a political action committee, the "CIO-PAC," chaired by Sidney Hillman, and supported by Pressman and John Abt as co-counsels. In his 1999 memoir, Abt, general counsel for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America under Sidney Hillman, claimed the leaders of the Communist Party of the USA had inspired the idea of the CIO-PAC:

In 1943, Gene Dennis came to me and Lee Pressman to first raise the idea of a political action committee to organize labor support for Roosevelt in the approaching 1944 election. Pressman approached Murray with the idea, as I did with Hillman. Both men seized upon the proposal with great enthusiasm.

Thus, in 1943, as American spy Elizabeth Bentley resurrected the Ware Group (of which Abt had been a member), could not risk involvement with her or the group. Instead, the group reformed under Victor Perlo as the Perlo Group.

In September 1943 at a conference of the National Lawyers Guild, Pressman praised labor for reducing strikes and promoting the war effort. He praised the National War Labor Board's policy for recognizing labor unions as institutions within the basic framework of our democratic society. He criticized "selfish blocs" in Congress that had opposed FDR's program.

In 1944, Pressman participated in resolution of a labor dispute of a national case in basic steel, involving some six hundreds unions on strike. The six-person board consisted of David L. Cole and Nathan P. Feisinger for the government, Philip Murry of the CIO with Pressman as counsel for unions, John Stevens with Chester McLain of U.S. Steel for industry.

During 1945–1947, Pressman worked with John Abt for the CIO to help create the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) as successor to the International Federation of Trade Unions, itself seen as dominated by communist and socialist parties. During formation of the WFTU and in working with pro-Soviet American unions, "the active role played by" Pressman "in writing and rewriting convention resolutions helped to smooth possible conflicts."

In April 1945, Pressman represented Harry Bridges before the U.S. Supreme Court in Bridges v. Wixon with the help of Carol Weiss King and her recruit, Nathan Greene who penned the brief. Later that month, Pressman joined Murray, Abt, and other CIO officials in Paris for a meeting with Soviet counterparts about the WFTU. In October 1945, he traveled to Moscow with a CIO delegation in the company of John Abt among others.

On June 6, 1946, he contributed to a broadcast entitled "Should There Be Stricter Regulation of Labor Unions?" on America's Town Meeting of the Air show on NBC Radio with Sen. Allen J. Ellender, Henry J. Taylor, and Rep. Andrew J. Biemiller.

In July 1946, at a National Lawyers Guild convention in Cleveland, he attacked the "fallacious notion that increased wages in the interests of adequate purchasing power necessarily bring higher prices." He also attacked future Progressive Party vice presidential candidate, US Senator Glen H. Taylor, for the latter's prediction of economic uncertainty due to monopolies. He asked that an "aroused and enlightened public" make itself heard in Congress and in the 1946 fall elections:

This Congress has sought to stifle labor organization and at the same time has fought vigorously to assure expanded profit levels through tax and price policies. It has resisted any effort to lighten the tax burden on the lower income groups, but has acted swiftly to remove the excess-profits tax on corporations while continuing the carry-back provisions permitting gigantic tax rebates out of excess-profits tax payments of prior years.

In 1947, Pressman became involved in passage of the Taft-Hartley Act. In January 1947, he appeared on "New York Times radio" station WQXR-FM with US Senator Carl A. Hatch, former National War Labor Board chairman William Hammatt Davis, and General Precision Equipment Corporation general counsel Robert T. Rinear, to debate the topic "Do we need new labor laws?" While endorsing a Truman commission plan, he attacked any labor legislation passed hastily ahead of the commission's results, saying, "Judging from the bills now before Congress, their purpose is merely to penalize labor organizations." Senator Hatch agreed with him that severe wage cuts in terms of real wages and increased cost of living would not find resolutions in terms of legislation that addresses only jurisdictional disputes or secondary boycotts. "We need additional and new laws on all phases of the general problem of labor-management," Hatch said. Again in January 1947, on the topic of the related Portal to Portal Act of 1947, publicly before the US Senate Judiciary Committee, he urged Congress to make that act a simple authorization to employers and unions to settle portal claims through collective bargaining, while prohibiting management from attempting such settlements with individual workers at the "economic mercy" of employers. Further, he urged Congress to use the US Supreme Court's definition of "work" as activities of an employe which required physical or mental exertion for an employer's benefit and under an employer's control. Any legislation that ended portal-to-portal claims, he said, would "most seriously undermine" and in fact threatened "the entire future, operation" of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. Again at month's end, he attacked labor curb bills in Congress during a speech before the University of Cincinnati Lawyers Institute. He said: Where parties agree to union security, what objection can there be? Nine million workers are now covered by such contracts. The status of the union under the Wagner Act established the obligation not to discriminate against non-members. Why should not all employees, therefore, have an obligation to become members? ... The anti-trust law stating that the service of the human being is a commodity is a negation of the Constitution, of the 1918 Clayton Act and the [1932] Norris-La Guardia Act ... The employer's right of free speech is fully protected ... The act has not created inequality between employers and employees for collective bargaining. The fairness of the Labor Board has been established by decisions of the Supreme Court ... [A compulsory] "cooling-off period" [would] actually discourage collective bargaining ... There is adequate protection in State courts for breach of collective bargaining agreements. Federal legislation will limit the protection labor unions now have under the anti-injunction statute. Litigation for alleged breach of contract is negation of collective bargaining and would merely clutter up the courts. He also asserted that labor unions do not constitute monopolies, compared with industrial combines.

In June 1947, Pressman also wrote an influential critique of the Taft-Hartley Act, used by President Harry S. Truman as background material to justify his "bristling" veto of the measure. Co-sponsor, US Senator Robert A. Taft belittled Truman's veto: "The veto message covers the Pressman memorandum which the Senator from Montana (James E. Murray) put in the record and to which I replied.  The veto message substantially in detail follows the Pressman memorandum ... point by point." Taft's accusation drew considerable attention for days. On July 4, the Washington Post's Drew Pearson noted "There've been considerable charges and counter-charges that CIO Counsel Lee Pressman ghost-wrote the hot White House veto message on the Taft-Hartley labor bill. Truth is that he had no direct hand in writing the message, though some of his words did creep in." Pearson explained that White House Assistant Clark Clifford had penned the veto with help from William S. Tyson, solicitor of the US Labor Department, and Paul Herzog, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board – and their "analyses" of the bill bore striking resemblance to Pressman's analysis."  Later on June 24, 1947, Pressman appeared again on CBS Radio with Raymond Smethurst, general counsel of NAM to discuss the effect of the new labor law.  In August 1947, he gave a strong speech to the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers (IUMMSW) against the Taft-Hartley Act.

In August 1947, Pressman and Reid Robinson called for a third party to support Henry A. Wallace for U.S. President during a convention of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers ("a Communist-dominated union").

By September, the right wing of the CIO, led by Emil Rieve, claimed they were about to drive left wingers "with Lee Pressman as the leading victim" out of the CIO during its Fall 1947 convention.

In late 1947, Meyer Bernstein of the United Steel Workers of America wrote as an anti-communist against Pressman (amidst a rising tide led by Walter Reuther against pro-communists in the CIO).

1948

As of 1948, James I. Loeb, co-founder of both the Union for Democratic Action (UDA) Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), stated that Pressman was "probably was the most important Communist in the country ... he certainly was a Communist influence."

In early 1948, Pressman led a group of like-minded colleagues in a pitch to CIO executives to abandon Truman and the Democratic Party for Henry A. Wallace and his Progressive Party. The pitch failed. Repercussions came quickly. In late 1947, housecleaning of the CIO from communists had already begun when Len De Caux was let go by Murray.

Private practice
On February 4, 1948, Pressman was "fired from his $19,000 job as CIO general counsel, reportedly as a byproduct of a factional struggle within the federation in which anti-Communist labor leader Walter Reuther emerged triumphant. Time magazine (anti-communist) gloated, "Lee Pressman and his Communist line are no longer popular in the C.I.O., where Walter Reuther's right wing is in ascendancy." (On March 4, 1948, CIO president Philip Murray announced his replacement by Arthur J. Goldberg. )  Pressman went into private legal practice in New York City following his firing. In March and April 1948, however, it was clear that the CIO still used his services, even after "firing" him.  In March 1948, he joined CIO attorneys in opposing Government attorneys, who had declared that "the Taft-Hartley Law's ban against expenditures by labor unions in connection with Federal elections permissibly limited Constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and of the press." In April 1948, he represented the CIO before the Supreme Court in a case about barring of expenditures by labor unions for political purposes. (Felix Frankfurter, then Supreme Court Justice, taught at Harvard Law while Pressman was a student there.)

In March 1948, Pressman's name appeared in the New York Times as legal counsel of the Furriers Joint Board. The thousand-member Associated Fur Coat and Trimming Manufacturers, Inc., had asked for a return to pre-WWII two-season wage scheme plus compliance with affidavits from non-communist union leaders per the Taft-Hartley Act. The latter condition put pressure on two CPUSA union leaders, Ben Gold and Irving Potash. "In a unique turn of events," Pressman cited a Taft-Hartley Act provision to block a lockout. He sued for a temporary injunction based on failure by employers to give 60-day lockout notice to workers, plus failure to provide thirty-day notification to Federal and state mediation services. He also helped get Potash set free on $5,000 bail while awaiting deportation hearings.

Pressman continued private practice. He continued to represent the MEBA, e.g., over a restraining order against strikes on the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts in 1948. At the Supreme Court he represented Philip Murray (1886–1952), Scottish-born steelworker and American labor leader, first president of SWOC and USWA, and longest-serving president of the CIO.

Also in March 1948, Pressman joined a group of lawyers in defending five "aliens" against deportation hearings due to their Communist ties. Pressman represented all five, at least some of whom had their own attorneys: alleged Soviet spy Gerhart Eisler (represented by Abraham J. Isserman), Irving Potash of the Fur and Leather Workers Union, Ferdinand C. Smith of the National Maritime Union (Pressman); Charles A. Doyle of the Gas, Coke and Chemical Workers Union (Isadore Englander), and CPUSA labor secretary John Williamson (Carol Weiss King). Pressman went on to join Joseph Forer, a Washington-based attorney, in representing the five before the U.S. Supreme Court. On May 5, 1948, Pressman and Forer received a preliminary injunction so their defendants might have hearings with examiners unconnected with the investigations and prosecutions by examiners of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. (All attorneys were members of the National Lawyers Guild.)

On May 16, 1948, the United Public Workers read aloud their general counsel Pressman's letter, summarized by the New York Times:

"The Congressional proposal to prohibit payment of Federal wages to members of groups whose leaders refused to swear they were not Communists violated the constitutional rights of civil service workers.

Mr. Pressman contended that the proposed ban would deprive civil service workers of freedom of speech, press and assembly under the first amendment, would violate their right to participate in political activity under the ninth and tenth amendments and would impose a test of 'guilt by association' in contravention of the fifth amendment.

One of the most basic doctrines in American jurisprudence is that individuals may not be prosecuted for acts except for those for which they are directly responsible. It is this doctrine which precludes any individual from being adjudged guilty because of association, rather than because of his own personal guilt. It is this doctrine which is directly violated by the proposed rider."

On May 19, 1948, Securities and Exchange Commission official Anthon H. Lund accused Pressman of interfering in a lawsuit filed against the Kaiser-Frazer car manufacturing company in a Federal District Court in New York City. He specified that between February 3 and 9, 1948, Harold J. Ruttenberg, vice president of the Portsmouth Steel Corporation, had contacted Pressman for advice on "how to go about filing a stockholder's suite against Kaiser-Frazer." Later in May, during testimony before an SEC board of inquiry, Pressman declared he had "absolutely nothing to do with" the suit. "I have not been requested by anyone to suggest the name of a lawyer who would file a lawsuit against the Kaiser-Frazer Corporation." He stated, "I demand that I be given the opportunity to examine Mr. Lund under oath on the stand to determine who gave him that inaccurate information." The trial's examiner Milton P. Kroll informed Pressman, "You have been given the opportunity to state your position on the record. Your request is denied."

After passage of the Mundt-Nixon Bill on May 19, 1948, at month's end Pressman submitted a long, undated statement called "The Mundt Control Bill (H.R. 5852), a Law to Legalize Fascism and Destroy American Democracy" as part of proceedings by the Senate Judicial Committee on "Control of Subversive Activities."

During 1948, Pressman formed Pressman, Witt & Cammer; Bella Abzug started her career there. Since February 1948 or earlier, Witt's clients had included the Greater New York CIO Council. In September 1948, Pressman and Charles J. Margiotti tested the campaign-expenditures provision of the Taft-Hartley Act. Pressman and Margiotti each received $37,500 for their services – a fee CIO President Philip Murray called "outrageous, even for Standard Oil."

Political involvements
Pressman was important enough in American politics to have Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. single him out as recent example in Schlesinger's concept of the Vital Center as first described in a long New York Times article in 1948 entitled "Not Left, Not Right, but a Vital Center." In it, Schlesinger argues first that the 19th Century concept of "linear" spectrum Left and Right did not fit developments of the 20th Century. Rather, he promoted the "circular" spectrum of DeWitt Clinton Poole, in which Fascism and Nazism would meet at the circle's bottom with Soviet Communism (Leninism, Stalinism). He himself promotes the term "Non-Communist Left" (NCL) as an American modification of Leon Blum's Third Force. He cites as example the ascendancy of Walter Reuther in the CIO and ouster of Lee Pressman:   "Newspapers will doubtless continue to refer to Walter Reuther as the leader of the Right wing of the CIO, whereas, as every automobile manufacturer knows, Reuther is to the Right only in the sense of being profoundly pro-democratic and anti-Communist ... Instead of backing the Non-Communist Left as the group in Europe closest to the American progressive faith in combining freedom· and planning, the CIO, for example, maintained a disturbing silence over foreign affairs; and altogether too many liberals followed Communist cues in rejoicing at every Soviet triumph and at every Socialist discomfiture. The Wallace Doctrine of non-interference with Soviet expansion prevailed in these years. In recent months, the conception of the non-Communist Left has made headway in the United States. On the moderate Right, men like Senator Vandenberg and John Foster Dulles have recognized its validity. The fight against Communist influence in the CIO, culminating in Walter Reuther's victory in the United Auto Workers and the discharge of Lee Pressman as CIO general counsel, has finally brought the CIO side by side with the AFL in support of the Third Force in Europe."    Schlesinger was carefully noting the entrance of Pressman into national politics.

Pressman became a close adviser of Progressive Party 1948 presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace. In fact, when his former AAA boss Rexford Tugwell joined the Progressive Party campaign in early 1948, "he did so on condition that Lee Pressman would serve as its secretary."

In March 1948, Pressman joined a 700-member national organization in support of Henry A. Wallace for U.S. president and Glen H. Taylor for U.S. vice president.

By June 1948, the New York Times cited him as "general counsel" for the "National Labor Committee for Wallace." At the party's convention (July 23–25, 1948), Pressman served on the committee (under Rexford Tugwell, who had helped create and directed the AAA back in the early 1930s) to create a platform that the New York Times summed up as "endorsing Red foreign policy."

At the time, the Washington Post dubbed Pressman, Abt, and Calvin Benham "Beanie" Baldwin (C. B. Baldwin) as "influential insiders" and "stage managers" in the Wallace campaign. However, he was reportedly "forced out because of his Communist line."

During the 1948 convention, the New York Times described as follows:    Lee Pressman, who, for years, exerted a powerful left-wing influence as counsel for the CIO, is secretary of the Platform Committee, which will hold another executive session at 10 A. M. Friday before preparing its final draft for submission to the 2,500 delegates who are expected at the convention's closing session next Sunday.

On June 9, 1948, Pressman declared that he himself was running for public office as the candidate of the American Labor Party for U.S. Congress in the 14th District of New York (Brooklyn). In early July 1948, he registered his candidacy. He ran against Abraham J. Multer. Multer used Pressman's communist association against him early on by claiming that he had received his "certificate of election" from the Daily Worker (CPUSA newspaper), thanks to its condemnation of him. In July 1948, he faced condemnation from New York state's CIO head Louis Hollander, who promised to oppose Pressman's candidacy. In late August 1948, he

In August 1948, during the Progressive Party convention in Philadelphia, Rexford Tugwell, chairman of its platform committee found his self-style "old-fashioned American progressive" platform scrapped by a pro-Communist line platform spearheaded by Pressman. TIME magazine noted, "It now seemed obvious to Tugwell that the Communists had taken over."

In the fall of 1948, Communist affiliation continued to hound Pressman's campaign. A month before the election, Pressman might have held out hope, as the New York Times characterized him as a lawyer of "wide reputation" and a man with a "national reputation" and did not mention allegations in Washington. Days before the election, headlines in the Brooklyn and New York area were still appearing, like this from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle: "Pressman:  Candidate for Congress, Long Active in Pro-Red Groups."

Private practice 1951-1969
Between 1948 and 1950, Pressman had represented "the estates of persons with heirs in Russia" of interest to the Soviets as well as affairs of AMTORG.

By 1951, Pressman had only one major client left, the Marine Engineers Beneficial Association (MEBA). Its president, Herbert Daggett, retained Pressman at $10,000 (some $94,000 adjusted for 2017).

Ware Group (1933–1935)
In 1933, Pressman was one of the original members of the Ware Group. He was present at its earliest known meeting. Furthermore, surmised historian Allen Weinstein, as the "top-ranking AAA official in the Ware Group," he was most likely also a top recruiter of new members. Weinstein also noted that, according to Gardner Jackson, Pressman had recommended that the Nye Committee take Alger Hiss on loan.

In 1935, he left the group and Washington, D.C. Of his time there, Ware Group controller J. Peters said of Pressman that he was a "big climber" and had a "bad case of 'big-shotitis'."

In 1936, when Pressman began work as general counsel for the CIO, Peters recommended against it, as Pressman was hard to control. However, Chambers encouraged him to take the position anyway.

In 1936–1937, Chambers put Pressman in touch with Philip Rosenbliett and "Mack Moren" to travel to Mexico and buy arms for "J. Eckhart," a representative of the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War.

In 1939, former underground Communist Whittaker Chambers privately identified Pressman to Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle as a member of a so-called "Ware group" of Communist government officials supplying information to the secret Soviet intelligence network.

In the 1940s, the FBI investigated Pressman and other Communists. On October 31, 1943, during a CIO convention in Philadelphia, the FBI recorded conversations of Roy Hudson, then CPUSA labor secretary. Hudson met with CIO union leaders (including Harry Bridges). On November 5, they heard identified the voice of a man whom Hudson instructed on Party demands for changes in the CIO platform: the name was Lee Pressman. Pressman's meetings continued with Hudson into September 1944.

Historian Robert H. Zieger held that Pressman was no longer a communist by the time he joined the CIO. Instead, he claimed that Pressman was important to the CIO because he "retained close ties with the CPUSA."

1948 denial
On August 3, 1948, in testimony under subpoena before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), Chambers identified Pressman as a member of the Ware group.

On August 4, Pressman characterized Chambers' testimony as "smearing me with the stale and lurid mouthings of a Republican exhibitionist who was bought by Henry Luce." By using Chambers, he claimed, HUAC sought to achieve three objectives: distract Americans from "the real issues" (civil rights, inflation, housing, Israel, and repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act), smear FDR's New Deal officials, and discredit Henry Wallace and his associates."

On August 20, 1948, in testimony under subpoena before the HUAC, Pressman declined to answer questions regarding Communist Party membership, citing grounds of potential self-incrimination.

1950 admission

During the superheated political environment which surrounded the Korean War, Pressman seems to have stepped back from his previous communist affinities. In 1950, Pressman resigned from the American Labor Party because of "Communist control of that organization," which was reported in the press and which signaled HUAC that Pressman was at last ready to talk.

Called again before Congress to give testimony on Communist Party activities, on August 28, 1950, Pressman reversed his previous decision to exercise his Fifth Amendment rights and gave testimony against his former comrades. Pressman stated: "In my desire to see the destruction of Hitlerism and an improvement in economic conditions here at home, I joined a Communist group in Washington, D. C, about 1934. My participation in such group extended for about a year, to the best of my recollection. I recall that about the latter part of 1935— the precise date I cannot recall, but it is a matter of public record — I left the Government service and left Washington to reenter the private practice of law in New York City. And at that time I discontinued any further participation in the group from that date until the present." He stated that he had no information about the political views of his former law school classmate Alger Hiss and specifically denied that Hiss was a participant in this Washington group. He indicated that in at least one meeting of his group, perhaps two, he had met Soviet intelligence agent J. Peters. Although he made no mention of having himself conducted intelligence-gathering activities, his 1950 testimony provided the first corroboration of Chambers' allegation that a Washington, D.C., communist group around Ware existed, with federal officials Nathan Witt, John Abt and Charles Kramer named as members of this party cell.

TIME magazine mocked Pressman in its reportage in the issue following his hearing: "Like many another smart young man who followed the Communist line, sharp-eyed, sharply dressed Attorney Lee Pressman did very well for a long time. Har-vardman Pressman launched his leftward-turning career in Henry Wallace's AAA back in 1933, ended up as chief counsel of the CIO. He held the post for twelve years. But though he was a skilled labor lawyer, his fellow-traveling finally became too much for Phil Murray; 2½ years ago, Murray tearfully threw him out. His star did not entirely wane. He became a power among the back-room Reds who steered Henry Wallace through the presidential campaign. But when the Korean war began, he, like Wallace, began slipping away from his Commie cronies. California's Congressman Richard Nixon, scenting opportunity, decided to call him before the House Un-American Activities Committee and ask him a few questions. (Once before, when Whittaker Chambers named Pressman as a member of the same elite apparatus as Alger Hiss, Pressman had taken refuge in the Fifth Amendment, refused to answer Congressmen's questions.) Last week, Pressman decided to reverse his field... This week ... he reluctantly consented to name three men who had been fellow Communists in the '30s—John Abt, Nathan Witt and Charles Kramer..."

Personal and death
On June 28, 1931, Pressman married the former Sophia Platnik. The couple had three daughters.

He was a member of the International Juridical Association (IJA) ("probably through Shad Polier who was a classmate of mine at law school"), the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), and the New York Bar Association. According to biographer Gilbert J. Gall, Pressman, Witt, and others formed the "radical" wing of the NLG against a more moderate, liberal wing led by NLG president Morris Ernst (also co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union).

In 1957, he stated during an interview:

"I don't think today's generation has nearly as exciting a life as we did when we were in our twenties, but I suppose it's the times. It seems to me that the labor movement with all the strength it has nowadays should be able to organize several million unorganized workers."

Pressman died at home at 26 Forster Avenue in Mt. Vernon, New York, on November 20, 1969. Sophia Platnik Pressman (Cornell '28) died on May 12, 1980, in Sandia Park, New Mexico.

Legacy
"Showing men in power how to get things done legally" was Pressman's special skill, asserts historian Gilbert J. Gall in a biography of Pressman.

TIME magazine (never a friend of Pressman's) wrote at his death: '''Died. Lee Pressman''', 63, the C.I.O.'s legal counsel from 1936 until 1948, when his far-left politics finally cost him his job and career; of cancer; in Mt. Vernon, N.Y. Pressman never made any bones about his Communist leanings, often supporting the Moscow line. Yet as a union lawyer he was tops; he played a major role in negotiating the original C.I.O. contracts with such industrial giants as U.S. Steel and General Motors, and ably fought labor cases before the Supreme Court. In 1948, "the first of a series of reports on Communists and Pro-Communists for Wallace" summarized Pressman's role in both the CIO and the 1948 presidential campaign as follows:  "Before taking up the question of the Wallace vote in the CIO Executive Board [in January 1948], it is pertinent to discuss the resignation of Lee Pressman as general counsel of the CIO. Less Pressman has exercised a dominant role in the CIO, thanks to his appointment by John L. Lewis. The main reason for his resignation, given by Pressman himself, was that he would be able to participate in the Wallace campaign for the presidency.  Inasmuch as the CIO Executive Board voted in January 1948, three to one against Wallace's candidacy, Pressman's position became untenable. Long before John L. Lewis selected him as general counsel of the CIO, Lee Pressman was a member of the Communist Party.  The fact of Pressman's Communist Party membership was first revealed in the newspapers by Nelson Frank in the New York World Telegram on November 25, 1946. Pressman did not challenge Frank's statement. Frank's revelation may be accepted as authentic, without fear of a challenge by Pressman. Just why Philip Murray submitted meekly to the rule of a known Communist for so many years is a difficult question to answer. Nevertheless, the fact is on the record. Right down the line for twelve years, Lee Pressman has been loyal to the Communist Party. Henry A. Wallace has done the CIO and the country a distinct service by driving Pressman into the open as a support of Stalin's candidate–nothing more, nothing less. Lee Pressman had to make his choice: either get out of the Communinst Party and hold his job in the CIO, or resign from the CIO and support the Communist Party's candidate. He did the latter, and in so doing clarified the political situation in the United States in 1948... (Pressman's) resignation ... was one of the most significant defeats which the Communists have suffered in the CIO."

Subsequent findings
Pressman's VENONA codename was "Vig."

In 1946, VENONA reveals that Pressman hosted Mikhail Vavilov, first secretary in the Soviet embassy, at his home in Washington, D.C., where he met fellow (former) Ware Group member Charles Kramer.

In 1948, Anatoly Gorsky, former chief of Soviet intelligence operations in the United States, listed Pressman, code-named "Vig–Lee Pressman, former legal adviser of the Congress of Industrial Organizations" among the Soviet sources likely to have been identified by US authorities, as a result of the defection of Soviet courier Elizabeth Bentley three years earlier.

In 1949, VENONA reveals that the KGB used Pressman to pay Victor Perlo for "analysis." In 1950, it reported "Vig–covering the activities of the Progressive Party." In 1951, Pressman served as "conduit" to pay funds to Harold Glasser.

In 1951, VENONA reveals that Soviet intelligence in Washington reported to Moscow, "Vig has chosen to betray us."

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, archival information on Soviet espionage activity in America began to emerge. Working in Soviet intelligence archives in the middle 1990s, Russian journalist Alexander Vassiliev discovered that Pressman, codenamed "Vig", had told only fragments of the truth to Congressional inquisitors in 1950. Working with historians John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Vassiliev revealed that Pressman had actually remained "part of the KGB's support network" by providing legal aid and funneling financial support to exposed intelligence assets. As late as September 1949, Soviet intelligence had paid $250 through Pressman to Victor Perlo for an analysis of the American economic situation, followed by an additional $1,000 in October.

A 1951 Soviet intelligence report indicated that "Vig" had "chosen to betray us", apparently a reference to his 1950 public statements and Congressional testimony. Historians Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev indicate that the assessment was an overstatement, however. With his carefully limited testimony before HUAC and in his unpublicized interviews with the Federal Bureau of Investigation it is instead charged that Pressman:

"... Sidestepped most of his knowledge of the early days of the Communist underground in Washington and his own involvement with Soviet intelligence, first with Chambers's GRU network in the 1930s and later with the KGB. He had never been the classic 'spy' who stole documents. Neither his work in domestically oriented New Deal agencies in the early 1930s nor his later role as a labor lawyer gave him access to information of Soviet interest. Instead, he functioned as part of the KGB espionage support network, assisting and facilitating its officers and agents. He gambled that there would not be anyone to contradict his evasions and that government investigators would not be able to charge him with perjury. He won his bet ..."

Writings
Pressman left one posthumously published memoir, a microfiche transcript of a Columbia University oral history interview:

 * The Reminiscences of Lee Pressman (1975)

Images

 * Library of Congress Lee Pressman (June 17, 1937)
 * Library of Congress Lee Pressman (March 24, 1938)
 * Library of Congress Lee Pressman (August 24, 1938)
 * Library of Congress Lee Pressman (July 1, 1942)

title: Lee Pressman


text:
In My Brother's Shadow

In My Brother's Shadow: A Life and Death in the SS (German: Am Beispiel meines Bruders) is the title of a semi-autobiographical novel by Uwe Timm. It was translated and published in English in 2005. The plot, based on Timm's own experience living through World War II, tells the story of the protagonist's brother, an SS corporal killed in Russia in 1943.

title: In My Brother's Shadow