Watergate heralds slump

The case of Andrew Cunningham Bureaucratic action IN 1970 Andrew Cunningham was a powerful figure in the north-east labour movement. He was regional officer of the General and Municipal Workers' Union in charge of the affairs of some 100,000 workers in the shipyards, gasworks and local factories.

He was also a member of the 28-man National Executive Committee (NEC) of the Labour Party, the supreme policy-making body; chairman of the northern region Labour Party; chairman of the Durham Police Authority; chairman of the Tyneside Passenger Transport Authority; chairman of the Northumbrian River Authority; a Durham County Councillor; and a Justice of the Peace.

From these public appointments and other directorships Cunningham was drawing an extremely handsome salary. He drove a sleek Jaguar and lived in a €15,000 bungalow at Chester-le-Street.

Europe. in the web of scandal.

The basic conception of this plan is the formation of what Kissinger called a New Atlantic Alliance, to be opened by a series of linked negotiations on trade, monetary questions, troop reductions and European security.

But this plan has already been overtaken by events.

Nixon is under siege in the White House with a powertul section of the American ruling class growing more and more determined that he must go.

For them it is not a question of Nixon as an individual, nor of conducting some return to "clean government' in the United States.

Unleashed The moneyed interests which stand behind the 'Washington Post' and the 'New York Times' are interested, above all, in clearing the decks for all-out trade war and deflation.

They are not thinking in terms of negotiation with the Europeans, but in terms of ultimatums.

The Common Market bourgeois must be told to accept American terms and shoulder the full burden of the uncontrollable deflation that is being unleashed.

Cunningham also had other Foulson empire. Both he and his • with the empire. wife, Freda, were receiving payments from Poulson, via Mr T.

Dan Smith, the public relations consultant and man of influence.

On the Poulson 'gravy train' the Cunninghams took holidays in Nice and Portugal. While the Cunninghams were living it up in the north-east as important power-brokers in the labour and trade union movement, things were vastly different for brother members of the G&MWU at St Helens.

They were out on the stones at the giant Pilkington glass factories. They were sacked by the management of the glass monopoly. And the leadership of the G&MWU - on which Cunningham sits — did nothing to oppose the company's decision.

When the men asked the union and the TUC for assistance, they were turned down in the most cynical and off-hand fashion.

The latest revelations in Cunningham case engender DIVISIONS within the ruling: class: which lie behind the Nixon scandal are coming more and more into the open on the question of relations between the United States and As the flood of revelations undermines the Presi. dent's authority there is mounting fear among the European bourgeoisie that the most savagely proslump faction of the US capitalists will triumph.

The Common Market employers fear that Nixon will now be unable to continue with the 'Year of Europe' plans outlined by his national security adviser Dr Henry Kissinger, who is now himself implicated BY JOHN Hence the fear in Europe that Nixon might be forced out of office and the idea that while Nixon may be a crook, he's the best President the world has got.

This hypocritical theme song was sung by Paul Lewis, US editor of the 'Financial Times' yesterday:

Whatever his personal popularity at home or abroad, the Common Market countries and the other members of the Atlantic Alliance are likely to find Mr Nixon about as sympathetic to their interests as any President elected in the current state of American public opinion.' Lewis points to the strong feeling in Congress that the President's freedom of manoeuvre should be resstricted in the multi-lateral trade negotiations due to open in September, and that the American garrisons in Europe be reduced, regardless of reaction from the European governments concerned.

This assumes, of course, that Nixon is still there to conduct any kind of talks with the Common Market and Japan.

And with every passes, his chances deep and bitter hatred of trade union bureaucrats.

Yet let's look at how they close ranks. Last year the regional council of the union passed a vote of confidence in Cunningham's leadership-despite what had come out in the Wakefield bankruptcy hearing and despite the fact that he is head of the management side against his own members in at least one of his public chairmanships, at Newcastle Airport.

The other union bureaucrats have also been implicated in accommodating themselves with Cunningham. At last year's Labour Party conference at Blackpool. Cunningham was re-elected to sit on the NEC when the Transport and General Workers' Union and Roy Grantham's APEX continued their support. This enabled Cunningham to scrape home in the polling.

Cunningham has now been removed from many of his public posts.

But he is still a full-time official of the union and hopes to see out the next three years until his retirement at 65. SPENCER day that of clingcommented: contain it. Robert Helms ex-CIA boss Nixon. ing to office get thinner and thinner.

A very important indication of the break-up of relations at the top in the United States is the statement of Richard Helms implicating the President in the decision to enlist the Central Intelligence Agency in the cover-up operation after the Watergate burglary.

Helms is a former director of the CIA and is currently ambassador to Iran.

Decimated

His statement adds great weight to similar testimony already. given by. James McCord, one ot the convicted burglars. Unlike McCord, Helms is not trying to get a reduction in a prison sentence.

Not only will Trade Bill - regarded as essential if the multi-lateral talks are to make any progress-lace strong opposition in Congress, but his negotiating team may also be decimated by resignations resulting from the Watergate The chief international trade negotiator, William Eberle, his deputy, Harald Maimgren, together with other staff members in the trade team, are threatening to hand in their resignations if they are subordinated to Peter Flanigan, executive director of the White House council on international economic policy.

Here is yet another indication that the US administration is breaking up and that divisions over economic policy towards the rest of capitalist world are racking the American ruling Class.