Car sales down — prices up Crisis behind the Motor

over Court phere Exhibition strike may hit Show CAR barons visiting Motor Show today have another reason to uneasy.

Parts may be missing from some Earl's Court stands as a result of Monday's 24-hour stoppage by 1,500 carpenters, painters and labourers.

They were striking, as they have done for the last three weeks, in support of their demand for increased pay.

Exnibition electricians have also been on strike until this morning.

On Friday, the exhibition industry's joint council agreed new hourly rates of Ils. 3d. for craftsmen and 10s. Id. for labourers. They will be backdated to September 8.

Mrs Castle's Department of Employment and Productivity has now approved the increases.

The International Audio and Photo-Cine Fair, due to open at Olympia tomorback one day because of has had to be put the exhibition men's action. B.B.C. unions plan two unions involved in Saturday's one-day strike and the BBC will probably receive little advance warning of strike action instead of the 48-hours' notice given before Saturday's stoppage.

This action follows the rejection by the Association of Broadcasting Staffs (ABS) of a 4 per cent pay offer.

Saturday's strike was said general secretary, to have been a 'great demonstration'; only 24 members had crossed the picket lines.

The general secretary of the other union, the Association of Cinematograph,_Television and Allied Technicians (ACTT), Mr. Alan Sapper, claimed that it was the first real strike against the BBC.

Recordings

Some programme changes had been forced and work in recording studios hit.

'We shall be continuing our action against the anti-trade union management' said Mr. Sapper.

But as Frank Cartwright explained in yesterday's sues teen the beer velopments at the BBC than the union leadership admits BBC workers are faced with taking on the government in two ways and more than oneYEAR'S Motor opens Earls today in an atmosof acute crisis.

More than half the car industry's assembly lines are at a standstill. 25,000 workers are laid off or on strike.

Production valued at more than £20 million has been lost in the last few weeks.

At the same time, bard on the heels of last Thursday's announcement of a big drop in home market sales comes news that several big manufacturers-caught between sharpening competition on an international scale and the growing resistance of carworkers-are to raise their prices.

This means that the employers have no alternative but to prepare the ground for a major battle with carHalted All Vauxhall's car and commercial vehicle production has been halted for more than a fortnight because of two disputes. 15,000 workers are laid off.

The company has refused to increase the money it is prepared to pay for the notorious 'penal clause' deal it wants introduced.

Despite last Thursday's York changes in the clauses themselves, they remain totally unacceptable.

British-Leyland is in profound difficulties in at least three areas.

It has laid off 8,000 workers at Coventry, Birmingham and on Merseyside and stopped all production rather than settle the demands of 1,150 Standard-Triumph body plant workers at Hunt's Cross, Liverpool, for lay-off pay and increased bonus.

Yet the strike, now moving towards its seventh week, shows no sign of weakening.

Continuing

At Cowley, Oxford, disputes are continuing over its proposals to move work to other areas, cut back production and put workers on short time.

For the third week running, production at its Rover, Solihull, assembly plant is halted because of the strike over layofis of 600 gearbox and axle workers at Cardiff.

All this is directly linked with the pressure on car prices. guerrilla day stoppages will be needed in this fight.

irst, the government dicates the BBC's finances and the present acute shortage of funds stems from a combination of expansion plans and lack of revenue because of the smallness of the license fee.

Squeeze

The only way out for the BBC management is to try to squeeze more productivity out of its workers.

Secondly, the BBC uses the government's incomes policy as the grounds on which to reject the unions' claims.

Now that taking on the government iș clearly posed to BBC staff, it is not surprising that a polarization amongst them should take place.

Of course, there are those such as the three ABS members who resigned over the dispute-Mr. Hardiman Scott, ATUA meeting Wages battle, unemploy nent and Workers' Press Thursday, October 23, Queens Hotel Rutland Street From midnight on Sunday, British-Leyland—-which 1ncreased its Mini and Minor 1000 prices on September 15 -brought up the rest of its car range by a maximum of 5 per cent.

The 1100 two-door de luxe model thus goes up by £26.

The increases are said to be caused directly by increased production costs including those of steel, other raw materials and labour.

Ford has changed the prices of its. Zephyr, Zodiac and Executive cars £52-£81 following modifications to Paris-Moscow FRENCH Foreign Minister Maurice Schumann met his Soviet opposite number Andrei Gromyko for the third time during his five-day visit to Moscow.

Diplomatic sources

North Vietnam premier in Moscow for talks PHAM VAN DONG, Prime Minister of North Vietnam, arrived in Moscow on Monday for top-level talks with the Soviet government.

Seven k Turkish FIGHTING erupted on Sunday during the Turkish General Elections.

Rival supporters of the ruling Justice Party and Mr. Conrad Voss-Bark and Mr. Hill of the parliamentary and political staff.

BBC workers must realize where their class interests lie and take up the fight against the Labour government alongside the rest of the labour movement.

Soviet space laboratory PAGE ONE caused a serious split in the ranks of the scientists connected with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and has caused a number of resignations since July.' One of the scientists threatening to resign, Dr. Eugene Shoemaker, said that NASA should concentrate not on "space spectaculars' but rather on space research.

Main obstacle

If unmanned, remote-control space craft had been sent to the moon to recover surface material instead of the very costly manned expedition, the US could have afforded to develop orbiting stations like the Russians. door seals, suspension seating.

And Fiat, of Turin, are raising their prices to pay for improvements designed to sell their cars on the British market.

Watch out

Carworkers, watch. out!

Only by the building of a powerful alliance between workers in every section of the industry, around the revolutionary polices of the All Trades Unions Alliance, can the new • attacks now in pretie-up to continue dicate that discussions centred on the problems of European economic and political co-operation.

Schumann is understood to have promised support for the Kremlin plan of holding a pan-European conference on He is the first North Vietnamese leader to visit the Soviet Union since the death last month of Ho Chi Minh.

illed in election the opposition Republican People's Party clashed in the rural south-east provinces.

At least seven were killed and many others injured.

Prime Minister Suleyman Demirel claimed victory for the last hose held ish in the last house the 450 seats in the National Assembly.

All Marxist and socialist parties are illegal in Turkey. Czech exiles' property ZECH Foreign and In- taken CZECH Foreign and Interior Ministry officials srinr Ministru officials announced in Prague on Sunday that all Czech citizens who have stayed abroad without permission are to lose their homes and personal property.

About 28,000 are affected by this new law, which folThe US will not now attempt to put a space station into orbit until the mid-1970s.

Cost is indeed the main obstacle to large space stations with facilities for many scientists.

It was announced on Sunday that Soyuz 6 could act as a ferry, bringing astronauts and materials up to the station and back.

This may mean the Russians have developed a reusable space craft thus cutting the huge cost of the present rockets used only once.

Moreover, the tremendous financial burden imposed by the space programmes of both the US and the USSR make it clear that space research can only reach its full potential as an international venture and therefore only after the establishment of socialism. paration by the employers pushed back.

If the employers cannot sell their cars, keep prices down and pay higher wages to those who slave in their factories then they must be expropriated and the industry placed in the hands and under the control of carCome to Birmingham on November 8 and make the Alliance's car conference rallying-point for the whole That is our message for Motor Show week.

Gromyko 'European security, provided the Soviet plan was likely to assist in ending the continent's division into two blocs.

Schumann also conveyed the intention of the new Pompidou regime to strengthen its relations with both West and East Europe, adding that France's membership of the Common Market was not in contradiction with its policy of expanding ties with the East.

With another franc devaluation staring him in the face, Pompidou is keeping all his lows the sealing of the frontier with Bavaria and Austria last Friday.

Only 600 out of 50,000 Czechs living abroad returned under the terms regime's amnesty, which expired on september 15.