Phnom Penh 'on the verge of collapse? Panic reports flow out of Cambodia

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186a Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UG Brewery workers ignore Pay THE THREAT of intervention by the Pay Board their strike was ignored yesterday by workers Watney Mann's Whitechapel brewery, east London.

A mass meeting applauded the extension of the strike to Isleworth and Mortlake breweries. Shop stewards received an encouraging response to their call for more workers to come forward for picketing duties.

More than 800 workers are now involved in the strike, which is over Watney's alleged attempt to breach an agreement on pay and productivity signed last year.

The agreement phases out guaranteed overtime, ends compensation pay for the changeover to shift work and provides for the introduction of MeasuredDay Work for transport workers.

In return a working party was to be set up to negotiate shift pay. Discussions were also promised on extra holidays.

After much dragging of feet a £2.40 across-the-board payment was agreed in settlement of the shifts issue, but Watney's refused to implement it on the grounds that it was above the limit allowed by Phase Two of the pay laws.

Reference

Over the weekend the company_referred the issue to the Pay Board.

Yesterday's Whitechapel meeting heard a report from steward Hughie Wilson on the supporting action taken by craft union members at Isleworth and Mortlake.

This meant that these breweries would be closed down in a matter of days, he said.

From the Royal group of docks, Transport and General Workers' steward Tony Delaney brought a pledge of backing for the brewery strikers if needed.

After the meeting brewery steward Mick Herrin said the strike leaders had not discussed their policy on any action by the Pay Board.

For its part, the Pay Board is examining the issues in the dispute and may be making a move tomorrow or on Friday.

By then another 1,000 workers could have joined the 900 already laid off by the strike. • TRUMAN'S transport drivers have been in dispute with Grand Metropolitan Hotels, which owns Watney Mann, for three weeks over a plan which they say would cut their earnings by £10 a week. 'THE GOVERNMENT is really not functional at this time. It appears to be on the verge of collapse? This is the verdict of the US Senate study mission report on the doomed Lon Nol dictatorship in Cambodia which Nixon is trying to sustain with massive last-minute B52 bombing.

So serious is the plight of the Lon Nol regime that it cannot even obtain enough intelligence to direct the bombing. As a result the bombing , iS being directed from the US Embassy in Phnom Penh!

One western diplomat in city described the panic of US command succinctly:

'The Americans are throwing support around like a mad at Board threat in men at their meeting Tories have anti- 'guerrilla' plans THE TORY government admitted yesterday that it had contingency plans to deal with 'urban guerrillas'.

In answer to a question about special "anti-terrorist units in the army to combat 'urban guerrillas' the parliamentary under Secretary for Defence, Peter Blaker, said:

'As far as the army is concerned, there have been no proposals for a special anti-terrorist unit as such, but there has been a good deal of contingency planwoman. They don't know what effect it's having.' ('Herald Tribune' ', April 17, 1973).

If the US generals don't know the casualties, civilians certainly do. Casualties of the bombing are huge-and growing daily as the volume and intensity of US air strikes escalate into the new familiar pattern seen in the Vietnam war.

US fighter-bomber. pilots based on Thailand are flying an average of 250 sorties a day while the area around Phnom Penh alone is receiving an average of 1,800 tons of high explosive daily.

The genocidal bombing has not stopped the insurgent forces, although it has transformed half of Cambodia's 6.5 million population into homeless refugees.

Almost 500,000 of these face starvation because of the breakning with which my department has been associated.' Patrick Duffey, Labour MP for Attercliffe, spoke the vital THE ENGINEERING union will try to persuade other unions to harden their opposition to the Industrial Relations Act at the TUC conference next September.

Unions will be asked to reaffirm their total opposition to the Act and to reverse the present TUC policy which allows appearances before the National Industrial Relations Court. importance departing frontiers of down of transport and shortages.

The communist forces are now firmly dug in ten to 20 miles to the south east of the capital along the marshy banks of the Bassac river.

Neighbouring provincial capitals to the south-Takeo and Tram Khnar-were heavily attacked on Monday night by the Khmer Rouge guerrillas who infiltrated the central market place. Government sources described the position here as highly critical'. A similar phrase was used to describe the situation in the seaside resort of Kep.

Jovernment attacks on communist forces blocking the access to rice fields north of the capital have been repulsed while severe casualties were suffered by Lon Nol's men when they tried to reopen the Saigonof the army not from established civil and military The engineers, who have already paid £60,000 to the court in fines and costs, want the TUC to set up a joint fund to meet financial penalties suffered by any union for its defiance of the The TUC will be urged organize 'concerted acts defiance' against the laws. Phnom TOTe Penh highway east.

At the same time South Vietnamese attempts to relieve the besieged capital have proved abortive, thus emphasizing the complete isolation of the city.

What worries Nixon and the US Pacific Command - felicitously situated in Honolulu-is not the future of Phnom Penh, but the prospect of communist forces reopening the port of Sihanoukville — renamed Kompong Som-and establishing a major logistics base for the NLF in South Vietnam.

The overthrow of Sihanouk and the US invasion of Cambodia was carried out mainly in order to deprive the NLF of this strategic port.

Control of Sihanoukville, the rice-basket of Cambodia, and the Mekong waterway would enable the Hanoi and NLF forces to launch powerful offensives in the south and smash President Thieu.

In order to forestall such moves and maintain his puppet regimes in Saigon and Phnom Penh, Nixon has not only escalated the air and ground war, but is also using every form of diplomatic leverage to secure the support of the USSR and China.

Presidential adviser, Dr Henry Kissinger has already made urgent approaches to the Russian and Chinese Stalinists warning them that disarmament talks and trade concessions would be jeopardized if support by Moscow and Peking is extended to the Cambodian liberation forces.

Since Moscow already recognizes the Lon Nol regime and supplies it with goods and weapons, there is every reason to believe that Kissinger will get a favourable response.

Peking, however, is host to Prince Sihanouk's government in exile and has actively encouraged his cause against Moscow in the hope of making a 'neutral' Cambodia into a Peking sphere | of influence.

But having betrayed the cause of Vietnamese unity and independence to get trade concessions from the west, the Peking bureaucrats will, without diffculty, swallow the Cambodian canary as well.

Only the international working class can defend the Cambodian revolution and help it to victory.

Stalinism, will prove to be its grave-digger dockers