Mr. Reid (the first Firing Line guest who was an active member of a Communist

Party) had been the leader of the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders' "work-in" in defiance of the closing of their shipyard. As with Michael Foot a few years earlier (Firing Line #75), Mr. Reid has a view of capitalism that is nothing short of breathtaking: "I had three sisters who died in infancy. On the death certificates they've no doubt written such things as 'diphtheria,' 'chronic bronchitis.' They should have written 'capitalism.' "... JR: "The naked-claw-and-tooth capitalism exercised in the United States has done a lot of things, for example, the genocidal treatment of the Red Indians; you talk of the kulaks, that's one of the great crimes in the history of humanity. Not so long ago in the Southern states the sport was to hang Negroes from trees ..." WFB: "You're not suggesting this was capitalism hanging the Negroes, are you?" JR: "Indeed."