Basic rights INSIDE the unions

PROSCRIPTION of the International Socialist group by the Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staff (APEX. formerly CAWU) conference on Saturday is a sinister blow at the democratic rights of trade unionists and a step in the direction of the corporate state. le IS group was banned ostensibly because the APEX executive committee had received complaints that IS literature was being distributed to members of the Bristol branch and that, subsequently, IS formed a number of 'action groups'. the banning of the IS is wrong, the speech of APEX general secretary Roy Grantham in defence of this antion ie ahenltaly nrannotarnne and acuuu lo dusulley prepusitruus anu 'Freedom,' as Rosa Luxemburg •Monopoly capitalism is less and less must be condemned by every British trade unionist. Said Grantham: ach member of the union is entitled differently.' to his or her point of view and is But this is not Grantham's point of entitled to fight for it in a democratic fashion, but it must be fought apparently if they are organized by table, that they become transformed for union democracy is a blow for within the rules of the union and 'young and misguided people, but yes of she working de bite ind against the secret talks and the not by factions, cliques or outside certainly not by serious political eyes of the working class. bodies. groups. This is the essence of the APEX Tories.

Gold barometer' points to storms THE RAPIDLY rising price of gold is the most important and signi ficant indication of the depth of the economic crisis and false Tory talk about boom. The on ine Lonaon market last week jumped $6.60 to close at $96.95 an ounce.

In the continental bullion markets the price was even higher than in London. Gold bars were being traded in Paris on Friday afternoon at the record high level of $99.13 an Nat onleach, mark looks easily ounce.

'The $100 mark easil Not only did the price rise steeply in Paris, there was also a sharp increase in demand. 24.1m francs-worth of the metal was traded on Friday compared with 15.im on Thursday.

The gold price is the real barometer of the depth of crisis.

As the Nixon scandal moves towards its climax in the United States, holders of paper money fear that whether the President goes or stays, the economic consequences are going to be truly disastrous for them.

This explains the reluctance of the capitalist media to publicize the flight from paper money which now reaching panic proportions. The 'Sunday TeleEASTBOURNE THE ASSOCIATION of Scientifc, Technical and Managerial Staffs rejected at the weekend any form of co-operation with wage-restraint policies, whether voluntary or imposed by governments.

Delegates to the ASTMS conference in Eastbourne, however, threw out a move to stop the union's executive appearing before the National Industrial Relations Court or other bodies governed by the Industrial Relations Act.

On wage restraint, ASTMS leaders claim to have beaten the Tory, pay laws in several areas of the country.

because we thought that the people misguided, Were mainly young and This is nothing more than bureaucratic " attempt to impose thought control on APEX and suppress or drive out every political tendency and dissentient opinion except that which represents the reactionary, anti-communist, proCommon Market faction of Grantham and president Dennis Howell, MP. ispite our differences with this reactionary duo, we would defend their factional right if any group or government tried to denrive them of it Similarly we defend the is right to RATTANA exist as a political faction unconditionally.

'is freedom only for those who think JOHN SPENCER graph' commented discreetly yesterday, however:

•.. The activity [on the gold markets] points simply to the nervousness which holders of currencies feel about the dollar and other paper money following two dollar devaluations. Another crisis could, once again, be round the corner.

'Talks about monetary reform are still going on, but nothing concrete has yet emerged from the Group of 20. The reformists are still talking blithely of basing reform on an expansion of special GENDARIE wanla ¡HEALE!• i al or Tur SULF tolerant a crude another 'factionalist'-once stated, willing to reconcile itself to the iew. He is in favour of factions pick the crumbs from its banquet anti-socialist leadership. Every blow rights and VICTORY PFLOAG This. of course. drawing 'Yet the performance of the gold market-which could very shortly move over the $100 taking gold shares merrily along with it - is making reforms based solely on paper money with little regard for gold increasingly difficult to take seriously!

The same could be said with even more force about the talk of sustained expansion from the Tory government.

Heath has no more chance of maintaining the inflationary boom than Nixon has of putting Watergate back under the carpet.

CONFEDERATION; -insult to intelligence of ÄPEX members and a mockery of trade union democracy. Why doesn't Grantham include mental defectives as well in this category? orkers Press does not defend minority rights out of some abstract love of democracy and justice, but because we recognize that the defence of union democracy is inseparable from the struggle to defend the unions from the attacks of the capitalist state— and more important -from the attempts to integrate them into the structure of the state. Grantham's reactionarv statement is but a belated confirmation of the absolute correctness of Trotsky's warning in 1940: independence of trade unions. It basic rights should combine in the demands of the reformist bureau- broadest possible faction to reverse cracy and the labour aristocracy who it and throw out this reactionary, OVER sympat Iranian Shah's Dhofar.

and photographed the marchers.

S TOF eh<MI I AGGRESSION FASCIST REGIME FORM SHAHa Iranian students protest Shah's military moves 100 Iranian students lizers marched througl embassy • on Saturday military intervention The march was the culmination of a week of protest organized by the Confederation of Iranian Students in Great Britain. Many of the demonstrators wore masks to prevent identification by Iranian agents who kept the march under surveillance In an interview published in Paris yesterday the shah told the magazine 'Le Point' he had bought modern arms so that he can be truly independent and 'never have to pick up the telephone to call But the APEX warning: It is is WRONG DANGEROTIS therefore, victims not of any episodic witchhunt. They are casualties in the campaign of the Tory government and the TUC to introduce the new style corporatism, to strengthen government and right-wing union collaboration at the expense of working-class living standards and basic rights. strengthens immeasurably the necessity for the campaign of the Socialist Labour League, IS and the International Marxist Group to defend basic rights and indicts the refusal of the Communist Party to support it.

decision is also a a BAD decision. It decision. It is a decision trade unionists who value their corporate state measures of the and Arab and Bri central London to in protest against in the Gulf state Mr Nixon for help' He justified his decision to buy Phantom jet fighter-bombers from the United States on the grounds that though each of them cost as much as a hospital, if I build hospitals without having the means to detend them, maybe a day will come when there will be no more hospitals, only ruins.' Referring to the Arabian Gulf, the Shah said he had let all the great powers know that they need not worry. He said he would take care of the security in this part of the world and that commercial shipping could move freely.

Just how the Shah intends to go about this sell-imposed task is demonstrated by a commufrom the Kurdistan Democratic Party announcing the murder by his assassins of Kadir Wirdy, a member of the party's central committee.

The communiqué says that in an attack on the party's local organization in Baneh, several other party members were wounded and a large number of people rounded up by the secret police, Savak. tish