Immigrant workers show solidarity on picket line Union in 'trial of strength with hotel

THE 800-STRONG international branch of the Transport and General Workers' Union is fighting for the reinstatement of Federico Martin, a young Spanish cellar porter from the Mount Royal Hotel, Marble Arch, London.

With the support of catering workers from other hotels, nightclubs and restaurants in London the branch is mounting a picket outside the Mount Royal from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. every day this week and is planning an extralarge demonstration outside the hotel on Saturday.

The hotel is part of the Maxwell Joseph octopus an the union's international branch regards the Federico Martin case as a trial of strength with management.

The Maxwell Joseph chain owns a large number of hotels in central London, among them the Clifton Ford, Maytair, Britannia, Rembrandt, St Ermyn's, Strafford Court and the Londoner.

The group has refused to recognize the international branch and at the Mount Royal has so far extended facilities only to the General and Municipal Workers' Union. Agreement with the G&MWU was reached in November last year, seven months after the T&GWU began its recruitment drive in the catering trade in London.

Federico Martin was GET YOUR BOOKS, PERIODICALS AND NEWSPAPERS FROM THE paperbacks centre PAPKKBACKS CZNAKE 28 charlotte st london wl NOW OPEN Monday to Thursday 9 0.m.--6 p.mn.

Frelays flate might opening) 9 a.m.-7.30 p.m sacked last Wednesday because management claimed he had gone to see his doctor without permission.

He said he had told his manager beforehand about the appointment. He has been actively campaigning in the hotel to recruit members for the union.

Members of the international branch are mainly from Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. Many of them work for extremely low wages: porters at the plush Mount Royal, it is claimed, are paid only £18 for a full week's work.

Branch members say that the management has used the threat that militants will be sacked and deprived of their work permits to prevent union organization in their hotels.

But the international branch has succeeded, despite opposition, in Winning recognition and 100 per cent membership at the Talk of the Town nightclub in the West End.

About 80 workers from the Talk of the Town joined men from Watney's Whitechapel brewery and members from other parts of London on Monday's picket.

A BELFAST lic's allegation Branch men in to persuade him paid informant IRA is to be f‹ Defence Minister rington.

It is the second blackmail by the weeks.

A statement from the man, 25-year-old son of a Belfast trade unionist, has been sent to Mr Kevin McNamara, Labour MP for Kingston upon Hull North, who said he would be writing to Lord Carrington about the matter. He said he was not, as yet, releasing the man's name.

Mr McNamara said he was questioning the general attitude of the security forces on informers. •If people information MASS meeting of 1,000 construction workers at the Esso refinery, Fawley, near Southampton, yesterday voted to accept a stewards' recommendation to return to work. Strike committee chairman Tommy Copeland told the men that the 32-man stewards' liaison committee had met officials from 'Army blackmail' Roman Cathothat Special Ulster tried to become a Forwarded to Lord Carallegation of army in two are being used to get in this way, it is putEsso construction site strikers WE SHALL WIN LRECCENITION Belfast youth's allegation the second in two weeks ting the informants and their families at great risk,' he said.

The man said in his statement that he was offered £10 a week, and his release from custody, to spy on the IRA.

The man was released from Long Kesh in April 1972, and was later shot and wounded close to his home near Unity Flats. During the 65 hours he was held under the Special Powers Act, he maintains he was interrogated by two Special Branch men.

He was told that he could become a paid informant. He said in his statement:

•They also asked me if I would Join the IRA and work tor them, getting some information and return for talks the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions and these officials had now agreed to recognize the committee.

Negotiations will begin shortly between the unions and management on the men's claim for improved pay and conditions. The Members of the International branch of the Transport and General Workers' Union on the picket line outside the Mount Royal Hotel, London, demanding the reinstatement of Spanish cellar porter Federico Martin (left).

CORRESPONDENT then getting myself out of after a couple of months. If I was caught with anything they would arrange for me to get off.' The man was told the only way he could get out of the police station at Castlereaghwhere he was interrogated-was by agreeing to the suggestions.

He also said that an army intelligence office made threats of leaving him in a Protestant quarter called Tiger Bay, where he would be in danger of his life.

He was released without being charged only after Mr McNamara, at the instigation of the father, made inquiries about the man.

• SEE PAGE report.

stewards' committee will only 'advisory status' talks.

A call for the strike to tinue until any agreement re in the negotiations had ratified by the men was re on the stewards' advice. have these coniched been ected

Alliance conference, Birmingham, on October 22, 1972.

Fellow trade unionists, comrades and friends we address you with this urgent call to action:

THE TORY government is relentlessly pursuing its plan for a confrontation with the working class. Each day new sections of workers are forced to become criminals — under Tory law - to defend their standard of living against government-inspired soaring Large sections of these workers openly acknowledge that the only answer to their fight to maintain a decent standard of living is a General Strike. That is, the creation of the industrial and political conditions which will force the government to resign.

The working class is interna- JOIN the Socialist Labour tional. We fight for the un- League and help transform it restricted right of any worker into a revolutionary party. 6) The right to health and wel- of any nationality to move fare benefits. Every Tory gov- freely through the world.

Victor Feather outside No 10 Downing St. 'The TUC is falling in line with the Tories.' In its place must be elected a Labour government which is pledged by the mass action of the working class to implement socialist policies.

We say "pledged| to socialist policies' knowing that the present leaders of the Labour movement have no intention of introducing such policies. Indeed, in the last analysis some of them will be prepared to join a coalition government with the Tories to head off the working class.

But if the working class is strong enough to force the Tories out, it is strong enough to deal with the traitors in its own midst. This can only be achieved by exposing them in the fight for an alternative socialist policy.

The Central Committee of the Socialist Labour League calls upon the working class to support the following policies to unite the working class against the Tories and the present Wilson-Feather leadership of the labour movement:

Here is the policy which the next Labour government must be forced to carry out.

I) A Labour government must immediately repeal the Industrial Relations Act, Housing Finance Act, Immigration Acts, Fair Trading Act and all wage control. After the repeal of all Tory anti-working class measures, there must be legislation to implement the Charter of Basic Rights, along the following lines.

2) The right to work! Capitalism demands mass unemployment. The right to a job must be guaranteed. This can only be done by breaking the grip of capitalist ownership on the economy. Employed and unemployed must unite to insist on a Labour government nationalizing the main industries and banks, under workers' control and without compensation.

Chris, an apprentice foundryworker in Derby: • Wages are being kept but prices are going If prices go up by 10 per cent wages should go up 10 per cent. Every week in Grocer' there are hundred s of price increases.

How much money do Tories get off industry like the breweries? They are not going to tell these firms to put their prices down.

If you had some decent leaders in the Labour Party it would be better.

The TUC is falling in line with the Tories. You want to get Vic Feather out. He doesn't graft all week in a factory for £15.

You either have to reform the Labour Party or build an entirely new party: But the Labour Party leaders are elected by the MPs. How can they elect a proper leader?

You've got to have a big organization to win cost of living.

3) The democratic right to strike and to organize in trade unions. Only the organized working class can lead mankind out of the historical crisis. Every right and every gain won by the working class, every democratic right in Britain, has been won because of the organized strength of the unions and the strike weapon.

A Labour government must immediately repeal the Industrial Relations Act. This fight must begin now by forcing the TUC to break off all relations with the government and mobilize the working class to destroy state control of wages.

4) The right to defend rights won in the past and change the system. All the changes in legal procedures made by the Tory government must be repealed. All secret police and MI5 organizations must be disbanded and fully exposed. The secrets of the Tory administration in this sphere must be published. All rights to assembly, free speech and the Press must be guaranteed.

The struggle must begin now. No closures, no sackings, must be the policy of the trade unions. Occupation of factories threatened with closure, Brian Hankey (28), was making decorative candles in a remote part of central Wales three months ago. Two years ago he left a Lancashire engineering factory to look for something better in London. But after a year he threw up a job as a contractor's fitter and set up in Aberdovey. He is now an AUEW shop steward and acting convenor at Power Jacks, Acton, west London:

I wandered around for a bit looking for an ideal place to settle. It was a escape from middle-class idea really: Of course, there isn't an ideal place.

I had to leave Wales. I was doing nothing there, just rotting away. There was nothing to interest me there, but I read a lot about politics in the The meagre existence I was making out of candles, inflation and competition, was impossible to live on. That was as part of the fight down the Tories. 5) The right to a higher standard of living. It is not the living standards of trade unionists, but the profit system, which causes the crisis. The first step must be to expropriate all the great fortunes of the rich, close down the Stock Exchange, place a state control over all movements of capital in and out of the country.

Nationalization of the basic industries and of all large companies, banks, building and insurance societies will provide the resources for a unified plan to improve the living standards of the whole people. Workers' control of these, as well as the present nationalized industries, will run them in the interests of the workers and consumers.

Again, the fight must begin now. State control of wages must be answered by the most widespread fight for wage increases to meet price rises and improve standards. This means a fight to remove the Tory government and change the union leadership. when I first started thinking about inflation.

It was growing pretty fast and there was panic around the world. Whatever measures they brought in to control inflation collapsed as soon as they were implemented 'I understand what the crisis about. Someone's got to pay ernment cut in welfare benefits, in the health service and in all public spending n.ust be revoked. On the basis of nationalization, a crash programme of expansion of services to the unemployed, the low-paid, the sick and the aged must be undertaken as an absolute priority. The working class and the Labour government must take immediate and absolute responsibility for 'these victims of the capitalist 7) The right to decent housing. Decent housing is not a luxury; it is a necessity. People have the basic right to decent accommodation at rents they can afford. Nationalization of the handful of building monopolies and building societies will provide the basis for a massive programme of new house building. The disgraceful problem of the homeless in the cities must be immediately solved by census and takingover of all unoccupied property. 8) The international responsibilities of the working class.

for the inflation since Bretton Woods agreement.

The crisis is such that the Tories are trying to solve it by making the working class pay for the inflation they created.

The organizations of the working class must be destroyed totally if capitalism is Withdraw the troops from Ireland. Unite the Irish and British working class to throw out the Lynch and Heath governments.

Unite in the struggle for the Socialist United States of Europe, the only alternative to the Common Market plans for dictatorship.

Withdraw all British troops from abroad and disband the present standing army.

Sign treaties with all ex-colonial countries for programmes of equal trade and mutual assistance.

Break from NATO imperialist alliances.

For the carrying out of such policies the SLL fights for the setting up of Councils of Action to lead the struggle against the Tory government in every area. These Councils unite trade unionists, tenants, unemployed, all political parties and tendencies of the working ; class (Labour Party, Communist Party, SLL, IS, IMG, etc.) to fight against the main enemy, the Tory governThe SLL calls upon every socialist and class-conscious worker to consider this programme and manifesto very carefully, and to decide now to take up their inescapable responsibilities. The building of the revolutionary party is the burning question now, not in some remote future. The SLI is determined to carry through its transformation into a revolutionary party.

Central Committee Socialist Labour League to survive. The ruling class must force them to pay for their crisis. Three years ago the crisis was coming, but didn't see it.

•When I came to London I came into contact with the League, the International Marxist Group (IMG) and the International Socialists (IS)

sud through the kind people was mixing with.

I stayed in London for a it could as I could, but then I left and year and absorbed as much tried to do the entrepreneur bit in Wales. But even in that isolated place it was obvious from the papers that there was a crisis.

With reading and the political contacts I'd had before, SATS CHOPCA 11 l AL ERS Press, Wednesday May 16; 1973 PAGE' 5