Tanned, bouncy and back from Rhodes holiday, but...

Crouching over port in the City clubs they have been asking general meeting on Tuesday the silence was broken. An anxious shareholder asked Slater to confirm or deny rumours that his health was failing.

feet looking suntanned and fit.

ance purposes and I'm a 100 per cent risk and I'm in the pink, he said. 'It is my present intention to spend the rest of my business and my natural life with this new company. And I hope the two coincide.

and am feeling very fit. I would recommend Rhodes for a break.' propaganda for the Greek colonels, Slater went on to more serious matters.

carried a lengthy and intriguing investigation of the proposed merger between Slater Walker and the fast-moving merchant banking firm, Hill Samuel. City Press you could be excused for thinking that this move was the most outstanding piece of financial broking in a generation.

IRRITATED

It was the 'Sunday Times' criticism of this wisdom that irritated Slater. He told shareholders:

'I am taking legal advice on it and my comments may be sub judice. I don't disagree with what seems to be the main conclusions of the "Sunday Times" piece. They are that we make profits by dealing, that our business complex, and that our accounting is conservative.' But as to the substance of the article, he said: 'A lot of the facts simply are wrong.' He concluded by saying: 'As far as I am concerned, it is a non-event.' If Slater thought the article was a non-event, then canny shareholders didn't. The day after the article appeared Slater Walker's shares dropped several pence to below 200p.

And if it is such a non-event, why did he intimate legal action?

During the course of his diatribe against the 'Sunday Times' Slater said: 'It was an attempt to get at us by innuendo.' This is perhaps the most ludicrous of Slater's defensive remarks. For the article was a chapter-and-verse attempt Edinburgh unions to discuss Council of A SPECIAL meeting of representatives from all organizations supporting the formation of a Council of Action in the Edinburgh area will be held on Thursday, June 14.

Organized • by the Edinburgh General Branch of ASTMS, the meeting will be at the Edinburgh Trades Council premises, Albany Street, at 7.30 p.m.

In a circular to all Feather's plea for collaboration VICTOR FEATHER, TUC general secretary, told accountants in London yesterday that the next TUC Congress in September could raise 'the urgent demand' that the Tory government be replaced by a government more committed to policies for 'social justice'.

Feather was might happen if in next week's THERE HAS been a breathless debating point around the London Stock Exchange for the past of months: How is Jim Slater's health?

each other for the latest medical bulletin. Not a word has crept into the City pages. Such a thing would be unsporting, not to mention detrimental to the shares in Slater's £1,000m financial conglomerate, Slater Walker Securities. But at the group's annual Slater (44) bounced to his I've been looked at for insur'I've had a holiday in Rhodes Having given some unsolicited Last week's 'Sunday Times' To read the majority of the describing what the government, Downing Street in and couple ...still a question mark over Slater Walker Securities WALKER • No reference Monopolies Commission. show how the group works. It carried these very specific charges:

'We have collected hundreds of documents and amassed quantities of information about how Slater Walker operates. In examining even some of these activities, we have found further disturbing evidence that the profits and assets of the group are more than usually interrelated and, in fact, significantly depend on the switching of major assets from one part of the group to another.

'Apparently randomly-applied accounting treatment can thus make significant differences in the balance sheet and profit and loss accounts of the group. At the same time, the information available to shareholders in the disparate parts of this far-flung empire, has, in some cases, sharply diminished, and in many Action branches in the area, Edinburgh General ASTMS says:

"The unity of the workers' movement is an essential requirement in the struggle to defend the basic democratic rights of the working class, now increasingly under attack by the Tory ROYSTON BULL talks on Phase Three, cannot offer a suitably attractive package for the TUC to continue collaboration with the state control of wages which is the rightwing's plan.

But Feather then confused the issue still further by saying that a change of government would not alter the economic situation, and that governments could come and go but, the economic problems would go on for ever.

Then he revealed his real attitude to the possible Congress demand to remove the Tories. ment, and the election of a Labour government pledged to a socialist programme of nationalization of all major industries under workers' control and withlegislation all repressive Tory out compensation, and the total 'What we need is greater understanding between finance, manufacturers and the trade unions to see the problems clearly and properly. We do not want a partisan solution.' By this plea for corporatism Feather again showed that he 1s hostile to the growing working-class demand for action to get rid of this government.

He will, if he can, lead the trade union movement into the corporatist trap of co-operation with the Pay Board, Phase Three and the continued state control of wages in return for some meaningless amendments to the Industrial Relations Act.