Novotny emerge

Tuesday CINESI national campaign for higher wages.

Nine columns of workers converged on the city entre from various point: on the outskirts and held : meeting addressed by union leaders.

These huge demonstrations of the power of the Italian working class must serve as a source of great strength for workers fighting the same battle here in Britain.

and we are not only uniter y the same struggle ssentially we also face th ame problems of leadershi The tactics of the union leaders are very clear.

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strike, At so call bein protese fore. class—to managable proportions.

These tactics create big dangers for the Italian working class.

In the 1918-1922 period, the centrist and reformist trade union leaders betrayed such strike movements time and again, exhausting the workers and finally leaving them demoralized and defenceless in the face of the fascist gangs.

But the workers' spirit today is confident, oftensive.

They have forced their leaders to adopt a militant stance on wages.

POLITICAL

ISSUES The basic issues are political. Big wage increases for workers in export inWITH the Czech purge now in full swing, news has come from Prague of promotion for several secret police officials disgraced in the period after the fall of Novotny.

Many of those 'rehabilitated' have close contacts with their opposite number in the Soviet Union, the KGB.

Promoted Novotny men inClude the new deputy Minister of the Interior, Miloslav Kosnar, who was sacked by Dubcek in 1968, much to the horror of his KGB friends.

So much so that General Kotov, head Soviet 'adviser' to the Czech government, intervened (vainly) to rescue him.

Ominous

An even more ominous name has been mentioned in the Czech party organ, 'Zivot Strany'.

It is that of Miroslav Mamula, former head of the 'Seventh Department' and removed under Dubcek for 'incorrect methods applied during the Novotny era'.

His name has been linked with the attempted ultraStalinist army coup of January 1968, a move designed to restore Novotny to power following his isolation inside the Party Central Committee at the end of 1967.

Mamula has just received a clean bill of health from the Czech bureaucracy-it needs him now more than ever.

Faced with an increasingly defiant working class, the Stalinists realize they can trust only those who served the arch-purger Novotny.

What have' the leaders of the British Communist Party to say on these latest Dromotions of men judged, under Dubcek, to be guilty of crimes against the Party and the working class? work' order to Montreal THE Quebec government ordered striking policemen and firemen back to work in Montreal on Wednesday in the face of what it termed 'the threat of anarchy'.

While bank robbers appear to be having a held-day, the main problem for the government has been a series of demonstrations, mainly by taxi drivers, which have erupted since the police strike began on Monday.

A provincial policeman and a demonstrator were reported as shot dead after crowds had surged through Montreal on Tuesday night.

Faced with a partial collapse of its state machine, the government has now called in the army and mobilized 800 provisional policemen.

At midday on Tuesday, only about 40 of the city's 3,700 force were on duty, while about as many of the 2,400 firemen reported for work.

This strike for wage increases is the first in the police force for 30 years.

It certainly reflects the instability of the new Trudeau administration, which after a long build-up for its leader's radical image, now finds itself using the armed forces to maintain 'law and order'