REVOLUTION OR REFORM Part 3: Ramelson puts his head in a noose.

Jack Jones leader of the Transport and General Workers' Union lobbied Labour leaders to persuade them not to support the May 1 stoppage for fear of turning it into a General Strike. For months, and without making any secret of it, Jones has been going around saying: 'We must head off the revolution?

Jones is pushing the most reactionary corporatist ideology within his own union by his policies for co-partnership with the capitalist class in industry as a permanent solution to the class struggle.

Hugh Scanlon, the engineers' president, has made himself notorious for advocating a corporatist deal with Heath accepting the Common Market, the pay laws, and the Industrial Relations Act in return for some trivial concessions.

It is an utterly taise jibe to accuse the Socialist Labour League of calling Jones and Scanlon enemies of the working class, or the main enemy instead of the ruling class. No such thing.

What Jones and Scanlon do represent is the most effective expression of bourgeoisideological influence within the workers' movement. They have done the things listed. Workers Press has not made them up.

Because they talk 'left' and make militant gestures from time to time, they are the most valuable prop of reformism. They provide a priceless 'left' cover for the most reactionary moves by the TUC, such as the secret and now open talks with the Tory government about continuing the state control of wages into Phase Three. Workers kept isolated These actions are not errors, but the deliberate moves of convinced reformists, totally hostile to revolution.

The Communist Party's support tor Jones and Scanlon is the hallmark of Stalinism's counter-revolutionary role.

Ramelson challenges the SLL's position on the 1972 building workers' strike and the 1973 miners' pay dispute. But it was the Stalinists who played the reactionary role. They allowed the building union leaders to avoid calling a national strike.

Even now, the Stalinists are still trying to fob the building workers off with a policy over the 'lump' which will keep them away from a decisive confrontation with the employers and the government standing behind them.

A selective strike campaign against one employer means another long haul which will not lead to a decisive conclusion, but which will exhaust and fragment the men's determination to fight, just as happened in the pay struggle.

What workers are asking is why repeat isolated long strikes, such as those by miners and building workers in 1972, to win gains which have since been eroded by inflation (and are prevented from being repeated by the pay laws) when a General Strike by all workers could, in half that Joe Gormley, right-wing president of the NUM. Workers out how Gormley's statement of 'General Strike or aimed directly at the Stalinists and 'lefts'. Above: The ers strike of 1972. The Stalinists allowed the building to avoid calling a national strike. away from a repeat of last year's miners and Gormles a to I 'Gormley, a prominent member of the Labour Party executive, quickly explained the reasons for his own less than full-hearted call to arms'.

•Having stated the case clearly, the retormist leader then tailed on the crucial test. What kind of leadership will he and his colleagues give to the working class in such a confrontation with the Tories? Answer: NONE' The front-page article the same day said: 'At the end of the miners' executive, rightwing president Joe Gormley said the union was postponing any pay action until after the March 5 Congress.

'It's either a General Strike or nothing, Gormley said.

'So he is telling the miners to hold of for a month during which the Tories will be blasting against the gasworkers, hospital workers and lorry drivers day in and day out in the capitalist Press.' The next day, Workers Press wrote: Into this situation Toe Gormley, the miners' president, Press pointed nothi g' was bulldiı } workunion leaders matter; things will, and have already, become much more serious.

Eventually, it will lead to a complete capitulation to the right wing and the corporate state.

Already, to the pot sure of Surender bourgeois ideology operating in the labour movement, number of trade unions have begun witch-hunts against militants.

And now has come the final bitter irony, the persecution of the Stalinists themselves in a union where they their was have gone out to be reformists imore act lacks thes Union of Post Office Workers The post workers' leader has ning a left-wing nikover n accused the Stalinists of isn't true.

reformism has been often repeated in Stalinist history and always with disastrous unfortunately the g'ese and results to themselves and the working class as well. Hitler's Germany is only the most famous example, but there are many others.

The Communist Party is all or to resear the pattern in Britain in 1973. The consequences could he just grave as Germany 1933.

crisis capitalism is forcing the Tories inexorably towards the necessity of ruling through corporate state. These Thalen eve he working class to the Tories for state power unavoidable.

Stalinism must be eradicated The defeatist politics from the workers' movement.

This challenge must take the form of a demand for an end tovernment and ithead Toil. all talks with ize a campaign to create the necessary industrial and political conditions TO force the discredited Heath regime to resign from office.

These demands must noW become the policy every trade union.

'Every effort is made to ensure that applicants are well-balanced and able to cope well with stress. There is no room for the "headstrong" type, or those that are liable to overreact to any difficult situations?

You might be pardoned for thinking that the above description is recruitment material for nurses. Or preachers.

It is in fact an extract from a New Scotland Yard circular on the development of the Special Patrol Group, the sinister armed branch of the Would the Yard describe Pcs Stanley Conley or George Burrows as unlikely to 'overreact to any difficult situaOn February 20 last Conley and Burrows, both top SPG men, raced to India House in the Strand, London, where they shot and killed two teenage Pakistanis, Mohammed Hanif Hussain and Basharat Hussain, cousins from Watford.

Conley, who has since been proclaimed as some kind of 'hero' in the Fleet Street Press and by the coroner who invesThey helped him to a wall. He leaned against it looking pale. Then he was sick.

This weak-stomached fellow is clearly not the type of 'wellbalanced' individual that the SPG wants. It is to be hoped that he has since been removed to helping old ladies cross the road!

Meanwhile, more detailed information about the SPG has surfaced. It was first under discussion as early as 1964, the year the Wilson government came to office. According to the Yard statement:

"The then deputy commissioner, Mr Douglas Webb, CVO, OBE, asked the research and planning branch to study the possibility of a group of uniformed officers using their own transport and communications that could be organized for preventative patrolling of estates subject to hooliganism and housebreakings?

A police order calling for applicants was published on January 26, 1965, and it became operational on April 26, 1965—with the full approval of the then Labour Home Secretary, Sir Frank Soskice.

Its inaugural strength was 96, including four inspectors and 12 sergeants. Today the organization has more than doubled its strength to 204 and that's a conservative figure given by the Yard.

The head of the SPG throughout its eight years' hisYard as the Commitment'.

'It's an emergency reserve. We've got to have them for all kinds of reasons. All sorts of emergencies arise. Any suggestion that it is "an armed body of men" is nonsense. It isn't.' The same theme is echoed in the Yard Press release:

'There is really nothing Special" about this group. They are merely ordinary policemen doing an ordinary policeman's job, mostly walking the streets for the protection of the citizen and property and the prevention and detection of crime' Yet the SPG can be called out at any time of the day or night and in less than an hour. More than 200 armed specialists, in and out of uniform, in civilian clothes and uniforms, can deployed in 'emergencies'.

Average age of SPG officers is 31 years and average length of service is ten years. Members are expected to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a 'If any officers cannot maintain the professionalism and high standards of the group, they are asked to leave, the Press release says.

This means that one third of the group's members get out each year-one in three.

They operate from six areas of London: headquarters is at Hounslow and the sub-districts There was a recent gettogether in Whitehall to discuss home loans. The official statement said that the ministers • present were Patrick Jenkin, the Treasury_ Secretary, Paul Channon, Housing Minister, and Geottrey Rippon, the Environment Secretary.

As a Cabinet member Rippon is the most senior minister, but his name came last. Why is this? Is Rippon losing favour because of some misdemeanour?

•..in the dark Also noted the other day that Rippon has quit the right-wing Monday • Club. Many West End night-goers are wondering if this will extend to other areas of his club life, namely Annabel's and the Berkeley Square.

Tiny paragraph tucked away in the 'Sunday Telegraph' the other day caught my eye. 'Yard report on Fund' it said enigmatically. Turned out to be a reference to the marathon inquiry by Scotland Yard's Fraud Squad into the collapse of the Real Estate Fund of America.

Reginald Maulding, the unfortunate ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer and Home Secretary, was the first president of this amazing organization.

It was run by Jerome D. Hoffman, now serving two years in an Illinois prison for mortgage fraud. The crash occurred in December 1970 and apparently an 'interim' police report has just gone to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

It just makes you think how hard-working and mercurial the boys at the Yard really are!! Give them another couple of years and the whole thing might be wrapped up... Domestic assassination As reported in a prev. ous 'Notebook', one episode in the Radio 4 'Assassination' series was cancelled at the last minute. It was the episode dealing with the murder of Lord Cavendish in Now the BBC bosses have again decided to shield their customers trom revolutionary activity. Last Sunday's BBC 1 television repeat showing of the film on the life of the poet Shelley was cut by ten minutes.

The original film, broadcast last year, showed Shelley in Ireland in 1812 pamphleteering for Irish freedom. It also showed him in an English market distributing tracts protesting against the appalling living conditions in the new English industria cities.

Both these scenes omitted on Sunday. Instead the film was allowed o sink under an accumulated weight of domestic groans.

Pay rise There's one law for the working class and another for top Tories. A worker can only get El plus 4 per cent under the state pay laws.

But Edward du Cann, former chairman of the Conservative Party has had a rise of £360 per week.

His salary as chairman of the Cannon Assurance Company (tormerly International Life) has risen from £7,000 to £25,000 a year.

Du Cann is now chairman of the Tory backbench 1922 Committee.

The House of Commons authorities refused to allow a Labour MP to table a motion about the matter, although they had permitted one phased in exactly the same terms about the proposed salary to be paid to Don Revie, Leeds United's manager, if he had gone to Everton.

Tourism Enjoy the sunshine, the beaches, the ancient Budahist ruins. Thus the posters entreat tourists to savour the attractions of South Vietnam. Yes, South Vietnam!

This grisly billing is finding some success in two countries -the United States and Japan. Already a wave of exUS army officers have been seen combing through the devastation with wives and kids. 'Gee, Pop, this is a gas!' The Japanese are less ostentatious. They wander about picking up war mementoes which fetch fantastic prices back home.

Here's a sentimental little