 Early on in the strike, Chifley and H. V. Evatt froze Miner's Federation funds and "introduced legislation aimed at starving the workers back to work".In 1949 in the House of Representatives, Chifley stated that the Labor Party was a "bulwark against communism", and that the most effective way of weakening the strength of the Communist Party was "improving the conditions of the people".Despite this, Menzies exploited the rising Cold War hysteria to portray Labor as soft on Communism.