BR to slash 40,000 jobs in eight years

BR chairman Richard Marsh yesterday. overshadow Brezhnev WITH SOVIET Stalinist leader Leonid Brezhnev in Washington for a week of talks, President Nixon is facing the most dangerous week yet in the Watergate bugging investigations.

John Dean III, man he DEAN: Could he topple Nixon with evidence? Will central banks sell their gold? THE QUESTION of central banks selling gold on the free market was raised at the meeting of the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland yesterday.

At present central banks are committed to buy and sell gold only among themselves and at the 'official price of $42 an ounce. The free market price 'in London yesterday morning was $122 an ounce.

For many months the gold stocks of central banks have been effectively frozen because they refused to settle debt payments at the official price. At Dean evidence will JOHN SPENCER THE BRITISH Rail Board yesterday revealed plans to slash the labour force on the railways by more than 40,000 over the next eight years. т1 - 1-ma any reduction in track But there is threat to hundreds of track in the small print. sacked as White House counsel, is due to take the witness stand today at the Senate Watergate committee and his evidence could blow the President right out of office.

Dean has already testified behind closed doors to the Senate's investigators, giving answers 'quite different from any public testimony given so far' to the inquiry.

Dean has said that he will tell prosecutors that Nixon consented to provide campaign funds of up to Slm to buy the silence of the seven convicted Watergate burglars.

He has also spoken of his numerous conversations with President Nixon about the cover-up of the White House role in Watergate. According to the 'New York Times' Dean has also linked Nixon with the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist in 1970.

Dean says he was told that the orders for the break-in— part of a wider plan for bugging and illegal surveillance of Nixon's political opponents-came from 'the Oval Office', a euphemism for Nixon.

Fear of Dean's testimony has forced Nixon to undertake a dramatic shift in the grounds of his self-defence. Acording to the 'Washington Post' the President now plans to claim that he was misled by his two senior aides.

Quoting White House and the Basle meeting some central bankers urged the United States to begin selling its gold reserves on the free market.

They claimed this desperate measure would lead to a decline in the gold price and in time stabilize the position of the dollar on international money markets.

The question met with opposition from the US, which declared it had no intention of changing its gold policy. But it is likely to be raised again when the International Monetary Fund's Committee 20 meets next month.

1 ne pian does not mean ral policy since 19/1. mileage, according to Bri- almost total verification of tish Rail chairman, Rich- the article which appeared ard Marsh, the former in the 'Sunday Times' in Labour Transport Minis- resulted in Scotland Yard ter. detectives harassing writers a clear of miles report's It says that uneconomic Monday Club, insisted on passenger services 'will con- massive savings on the railBY OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT tinue to be provided as long as the government considers that their social value justifies retention'.

Under instructions from the Tory government, British Rail has been reviewing - - 1: -.. 1071 Yesterday's report is an October last year and which on the 'Sunday Times' and 'Railway Gazette' Transport Minister John Peyton, a member of the according to Nixon. Now he mis Ehrlichman and Haldeman other government sources, the newspaper said Nixon had discarded his previous position in which he described the two aides, H. R. (Bob) Haldeman and John Ehrlichman as 'two of the finest public servants' he had known.

No longer asserting noninvolvement in the spreading Watergate scandal, Nixon will acknowledge presidential misjudgement based on misinformation and on unauthorized action by the two senior aides, the 'Post' said.

Acceptance of the free market gold price would have an immediate effect on the market in Euro-dollars, which speakers at the BIS meeting admitted is out of control.

Dr Otmar Emminger, the vice-president of the Bundesbank, was extremely. sceptical about the chances of bringing it under control.

In its report the BIS says that 'authorities in almost all countries have in practice reconciled themselves to lower standards of performance in containing inflation'.

It says that the capacity ways by either cutting power or services.

It seems that the board has opted for the naive policy of trying to cut 40,000 jobs by 'natural wastage' while preserving the same track mileage.

Peyton and his advisers had recommended that the mileage be reduced from 11,000 to 7,000; there were even more crushing demands that the board investigate a network of 3,000 miles.

This ferocious attack on railmen's jobs is a recognition that large sections of British industry are to be 'phased out' now that Common Market membership has been achieved.

It also means a bonanza • of the finest public servants', blame them for everything.

Haldeman and Ehrlichman resigned their White House posts on April 30 over Watergate. Dean was fired from his post at the same time. While Nixon's position in the Watergate affair gets worse almost hourly his Stalinist guest remains completely unperturbed.

It remains to be seen, however, whether the efforts of the Kremlin bureaucracy will be enough to keep President Nixon in the White House once Dean has spoken.

contain upward pressure prices is "beyond the reach governi nent authority in strained . and fluid world of day'.

The bank, which is jointly owned by a syndicate of central banks, also warns that the present arrangement of floating currency values will continue for some time, given the reluctance of governments to return to fixed exchange rates.

It is pessimistic about the prospects of a 'more stable monetary environment' in the future, saying 'the way ahead is obscure. who . have being lobbying determinedly against the nationalized industry.

Millions of tons of commercial cargo will be switched to the roads in the wake of these decisions.

For railwaymen there must be a united and unflinching fight against these Tory plans. Not a man's job must be lost.

There must be no repeat of Beeching; no repeat of the disastrous job losses in the pits; and no implementation of the 50,000 jobs axe threatening the steel industry.

In 1965 there were some 47,000 drivers and secondmen. Now there are only 27,000. The union leaders have only recently negotiated away some 20,000 jobs.

These retreats stopped at once.

They can only be stopped by a fight to unite all railwaymen against government.

The Tories are the main enemy: it is their policies which are threatening the livelihoods of tens of thousands of workers on the rails, in steel, on the docks and in the pits.

To stop the cuts means a fight against the government, to bring it down and to elect a Labour government pledged to socialist policies.

These must include • nationalization of the docks and workers' control in the pits, the steel industry and the railways.