PAY RETREAT AT FORD

WE ARE still not yet at our halfway mark. One more boost this weekend and we know you will do it. We need £151.54 by Monday and we will then be half way to raising our £1,750 target. There is not another moment to lose.

We know It is a tough struggle trying to raise two funds at once. But each day, as the economic crisis emerges more serious than ever, the importance of Workers Press can clearly be seen.

Our paper alone explained that the decision of August 1971, that gold would no longer back US DRIVE TOWARDS RECESSION up the dollar, was of major importance. This has been more than proved today.

Only Workers Press is prepared for this inflationary crisis. Our paper must be used to warn workers everywhere of the next round of deflationary measures.

So—help us in every way you can. Don't waste any time in the campaign to raise our May Fund. This weekend, take the opportunity to collect extra amounts. Rush these immediately to:

186a Clapham High Street London SW4 7UG adverse consequences overheating'.

But it adds: 'Unfor tunately it is difficult to see how it is going to be managed.' This is the height statement.

The controls which once made possible a crude form of economic management based on stopgo policies during the boom have been swept away.

There is now no stable relationship between gold and paper money • and there are at least $100,000m footloose in circulation outside the United States with no fixed value not only in relation to gold but even in relation to other currencies.

These are conditions of uncontrollable inflation which once the bubble is pricked can lead only to equally uncontrollable deflation.

Once deflation and slump is set in motion it cannot be controlled.

This is doubly so at a time when the government of the most powerful imperialist power has lost its authority and can no longer speak for anything more than a discredited faction of the ruling class.

The effect of the Watergate scandal and the break-up of class relations in the United States will be to strengthen the growing big business lobby for slump at any price and create a panic flight from paper money which will mark the downfall of the inflationary boom.

CHART

Builders picket court case FOUR HUNDRED workers picketed the magistrates court in Shrewsbury yesterday when seven building workers were committed for trial on charges arising from picketing activities during last winter's building strike. They were released on £50 bail.

The seven accused are William Hooson, Bryn York, Wrexham; George Murray, Old London Road, Bigillt, Flint; Kenneth O'Shea, Maef-y-Fel, Heullan, Denbigh; William Pearce, MaesLaDy Myddleton Avenue, Loyds Y-Dre. Denbigh; Edward Wilbigh; Derrick Hughes, Avenue, Denbigh; and Jchn Kenneth Seaburg, Blaen-Y-Coed, Brynseion, Denbigh.

Hooson and Murray's alleged offences relate to a site at Padeswood, Denbigh, on August and those against the remaining IE TERMS of settlement spelt out by the Ford unions yesterday in no way alter the principle of their acceptance of the Tory pay laws or the dangerous situation for Ford workers which this has opened has taken this group of bureaucrats five months. But finally, with the aid of some expert political footwork from the Communist Party, they feel they have bound, gagged and beaten the Ford workers into submission.

ley now hope that the $2.20 pay deal offered by the company yesterday will be meekly accepted in the factories. At that point, it is already being whispered in union headquarters, it will be time to start blaming the rank and file.

is important advance.

As i Moss Evans, _ union side chairman of the Ford national joint negotiating committee, was forced to admit last Tuesay, responsibility for the colapse of the pay fight must rest with the union leadership. What he will not say openly, of course, is that this was a deliberate and conscious retreat before the Tory pay laws.

st December Evans told shop stewards at Ford's Dagenham factory that the pay claim would be pursued regardless of these laws.

It every action • since then of the union leaders, and these left' and Stalinist convenors who support them and bolster them up, has been in contradiction of this pledge.

the context of Heath's Nov- General Strike, the convenors ember 6 announcement of a had consigned the decision of total standstill on all wage in- the February conference to creases, a serious struggle for the waste-bin and opted for a F IT PUTT five to alleged offences at Brenneg reservoir, Denbigh, on September Il.

Altogether 24 building workers face a total of 210 charges, including conspiracy.

The other 17 will committal in June.

Contingents on the picket included workers from Thomas's Hospital site, London, Morris Motors, the South Wales Coalfield, and builders from Rotherham, Oxford, North Wales and Colchester.

The picket was followed march through the town. A SURVEY made shortly after the introduction of Value Added Tax showed that 22 per cent of the prices checked were higher than the official guide to the new tax suggested they should be, the Consumers Association has reported. the Ford workers' £10 pay demand clearly meant an •all-out struggle around which the rest of the trade union movement would have to mobilized, to create the industrial and political conditions to force the Tories to resign.

orkers Press insisted on this position constantly. But when Evans and his fellow negotiators presented the claim, their whole emphasis for the struggle was that Ford's could afford to, and therefore should, pay hile many sections of workers were confused and disillusioned by this reformist garbage, the negotiators dragged their feet on the claim. They allowed Ford's almost unlimited time to give their formal reply, allowing talks to continue so as to encourage the idea a compromise might be possible.

eanwhile the 'lefts' and Stalinists moved in to knife the growing conviction in the Ford workers' ranks that the fight must urgently be waged against the Tories.

: a national conference of shop stewards in February, they refused to accept a motion demanding the TUC call a General Strike to force the Tories out.

motion calling for an all-out official strike was passed. But within days of the meeting Sid Harraway, Stalinist secretary of the national convenors' committee, was allowing himself to be quoted in the capitalist Press implying workers were afraid of a struggle against the pay laws.

By March 5, the day the TUC leaders refused to call …a RIN 315 MUr TRICIANS PUBLIC MEETING Transforming the Socialist Labour League into the Central London Hull Sunday May 20, 7 p.m.

The London Film School, 24 Shelton Street corner Langley Street)

London WC2 Speaker: Roger Smith howing the Pageant Filn 'he Road to Powe Several articles Trotsky LENIN policy of selective bans on overtime.

ren this watered-down, ineffective form of action was strongly supported throughout the combine, but the clear reluctance of the union leaders to fight and the equally mealy-mouthed position of the convenors encouraged the company to launch a disciplinary crackdown throughout the combine.

le aim of this crackdown was clearly to break the last shred of resistance on pay. Yet even in this situation the union leaders called no retaliatory action and continued scrabbling around for few more concessions on 'fringe' benefits from the company. In this they again had the slavish support of the Communist Party and the 'Morning Star'.

'ans admits responsibility for the collapse only in answer to stewards' criticism that the unions should have given "a positive lead' in February.

it what we have seen at Ford's is the ruthless strangling, by the reformists and the Stalinists, of a pay struggle which could have shaken the Tory government to its foundations and, with the support of other sections, brought crashing.

lis has placed Ford and other workers in great danger. It has paved the way for talks in which the TUC are now engaged with the Tories, which the Tories intend to ise to indermine all workers' living standards and all democratic le lesson of Ford's is that reformism and Stalinism are dangers the working class cannot afford. They must be smashed and the alternative, revolutionary leadership built.

NOW AVAILABLE Fourth International A journal of international Marx ism published by the Inter national Committee of the Fourt International Spring 1973 Contents include:

Ceylon: The Centrism Tampoe April Dictatorship: The Tasks of the Greek Trotskyists ...

Resolution of the 5th Congress of the Workers International League translations of from the German ist newspaper Der Funke AND TROTSKY WRITING ON FUROPE vor turnt and six International Committee statements Wednesday May Windmill Hote Witham Goole ly May 24 of Good I