Bank and boardroom men clamp your pay

therefore the standard of living workers began their duties yesterday House in Westminster.

The Tory - appointed members of the Pay Board include a Treasury mandarin, senior executives from ICI, Courtauld's and GEC, a leading banker and a former official of Labour's Prices and Incomes Board.

These men - all getting extravagant salaries-have two main powers invested by the state pay laws: • Prohibit the whole or part of an intended pay increase from being paid. • Reduce to a permissible level a pay increase that is already being paid.

Their powers are backed by the might of the judiciary.

Anyone not complying with an order or notice issued by the Pay Board may be prosecuted.

The first offence may be a fine of up to £400, but on indictment the fines can be unlimited and could result in jail sentences.

•CAREFUL Opening the board for business yesterday the chairman, Sir Frank Figgures, said:

'In dealing with pay increases and making sure that they comply with the code, we intend to be carefulbut quick.' The men wielding this enormous power are drawn straight from the ruling class, not to say the Tory Party itself!

SIR FRANK FIGGURES, KCB, CMG, is the chairman. He was educated at Oxford and Yale. After the war he became director of trade and finance Eurteen Econotion CoEuropean Economic operation from 1948 to 1951.

After a spell at the Treasury he became secretary general of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), formed after Britain and six other countries, including Portugal, were refused membership of the Common Market.

The EFTA countries decided to take away all tariffs paperbacks 28 charlotte st NOW OPEN Monday 10 Thursday 9 a.m. p.m. Fridays tale Salmaws gam - m among themselves but that each country would have its own, separate tariff wall to the outside world.

In 1965 he returned to the Treasury as third secretary and became second secretary in 1968.

Last year premier Edward Heath promoted him to director-general of the National Economic Development Council.

Figgures was responsible for launching the first 'informal' talks with the TUC's Victor Feather last year which led to the tripartite talks and the state pay laws.

another Oxford graduate, has served with the Colonial Administrative Service in Nigeria. On returning to the UK in 1961 he joined the CBI, the 'bosses' trade union', in the economic department.

The Wilson government awarded him the OBE in 1966 for his work at the CBI on economic planning and a prices and incomes policy.

In 1967 he became the CBI's director of industrial relations, the department which was acti 'e in drafting and promoting laws against In 1970 he joined Courtauld's and currently centre london wl chairman and managing represented a determined director of one of the tex- struggle to smash DATA giant's subsidiaries, militancy Cook and Watts Limited. works. In the past few weeks Courtauld's has been named said the secret letter 'shows as one of . the British com- clearly the concerted effort panies paying slave wages to its workers in South Africa.

DEREK ROBINSON was educated at Oxford On a TUC scholarship. In 1961 he became senior research officer at the Oxford University Institute of Economics and Statistics.

From 1965 to 1967 he was an economic adviser to the ill-fated Prices and Incomes Board.

Since 1969 he has been a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.

RELUCTANCE

GEOFFREY GILBERTSON was educated at the Sorbonne in Paris and Cambridge. For many years he has been personnel manager at Imperial Chemical Industries, whose deputy chairman is Michael Clapham, the president of the CBI.

Since last year Gilbertson has been general manager (personnel) for the company.

ICI has shown a bitter reluctance to allow ASTMS, the white-collar union, to enjoy bargaining rights inside the firm.

An ICI Staff Association was set up with the assistance of the company and this body was one of the first to • register under the Industrial Relations Act.

MICHAEL BETT • is known to members of TASS (formerly DATA), the technical and supervisory section of the Amalgamated Union Engineering Workers. From 1970 to 1972 he was director of industrial relations with the Engineering Employers' Federation.

On October 2, 1970, the EEF sent a confidential circular to its members which engineering The union's newspaper being made to undermine and dismantle genuine staff unionism and to destroy DATA (now TASS)'.

When Workers Press asked Bett to comment he said:

'We've prepared ourselves for guerrilla warfare. We've had to. The gloves are off.' Since leaving the EEF, Bett (38) has been personnel director of Sir Arnold Weinstock's General Electric company, wnere tens ...lanua dream of thousands of jobs have been lost over the past few JAMES BLAIR-CUNYNGHAME, OBE, went to King's College, Cambridge. He was chief personnel officer at BOAC from 1947 to 1955 and director general of staff at the National Coal Board from 1955 Since 1968 he has been powerful figure in the banking world-chairman of the National and Commercial Banking Group Limited since 1968 and chairman of the Royal Bank of Scotland since 1971.

'JUSTICE'

IT IS from this corporatist board and from these six men that the working class is supposed to receive 'wage justice' and have 'anomalies' rectified.

The board is a conspiracy of ruling-class interests to slash wages and impoverish the working class.

The board and its laws can only be ended by a fight to remove the Tory government from office.

An incoming Labour government must be mandated by the trade unions and the working class to dismantle this corporatist body. Some of the Pay Board members in their office (left to right), Mr Kan Inhn. son, executive deputy chairman, Mr lan Hudson, secretary to the Board, Mr Derek Robinson, deputy chairman, and Sir Frank Figgure chairman. Tyranny' in inmate claims CONDITIONS shire, are back ber's riots, the has said.

They added that after the disturbances extra police were drafted in and prisoners were kept locked up for long periods while the jail was repaired.

But an inmate at the top-security prison has smuggled out a letter to relatives claiming that far from being back to hormal a 'barbaric tyranny' has been established at Gartree.

* The POA claims that Gartree was not built for top-security prisoners and that riot damage made the long detention of inmates inevitable while security was restored.

During the riots security doors were ripped out, cell walls torn down and the outer wall of the prison breached.

The POI 4 also says that pris‹ oners were forced to eat in their cells while the canteen Leics jail -Gart to nori ee Prison, Leicesteral after last NovemOfficers' Association was being put back working order.

But in his letter (see article page 4) the prisoner alleges that inmates are being subjected to a reign of terror; that they continue to eat in their cells; that they are not allowed to wash properly and that they are unlocked only one hour in 24.

LETTER Harborough's Conservative MP Mr John Farr, who has taken up the case, assures me that the letter was written at least three months after the riot.

And he added that it came into his hands within a week of being written.

The Home Secretary has not commented on the allegations and a Home Office spokesman would only say that the matter was being investigated.