SHOPKEEPERS FIGHT PARIS

EDITORIAL organizations.

Under pressure from militants at the meeting, the moderate leaders attempted to lead a march to the local radio station.

After blocking their path, the police charged into the demonstrators. The shopkeepers fought back, hurling paving stones and other missiles.

The rally was called to protest against government financial policies, which after the new budget 'squeeze', threaten the 'small man' with extincGermany These latest riots have great political significance for the working class.

The small propertied and self-employed section of the French population is about as numerous as the industrial working class and has in the past been a firm supporter of Gaullist or even more rightwing policies.

The pressure that hit the franc last year and which still mounts, has forced the French capitalist class to attack its loyalist supporters.

It was significant that just before de Gaulle's defeat in this year's referendum, small shopkeeper and artisan • riots broke out in south-east France, the heart of Gaullist territory.

Significance

In the absence of decisive working-class action against the monopolies, such middle-class ferment can be turned towards fascism and attacks on workers' organizations, as in Germany before 1933.

With a confident French working class after its enormous struggles of last year, there is every opportunity to win these middle sections for joint action against their real enemies-the bankers, the monopolies and the Pompidou government that serves them.

Coventry miners 1,200 miners at Coventry colliery unanimously decided to stop work yesterday in support of the Yorkshire miners' pay claim.

National Union of Mineworkers' Midlands area executive unanimously voted yesterday to work normally. The Coventry delegate was absent from the meeting.

The National Coal Board says the strike is unofficial and will cost between £8,000 and £10,000 per day due to lost production of approximately 1,800 tons of coal per day.

Soviet bureaucracy comes to Pompidou's IT WAS announced in Moscow on Monday that following talks between French Foreign Minister Schumann and Soviet Communist Party secretary Leonid Brezhnev, three top Soviet leaders (Brezhnev, Prime Minister Kosygin and President Podgorny) will visit France in the near future.

This comes after confirmation that Pompidou will travel to Moscow some time in 1970.

It was also disclosed in Paris that the French Prime Minister, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, Vill be going tr oland at a date still to b fixed.

By making this open gesture ot only to the Kremlin bu o one of its most loyal sup porters in the invasion of zechoslovakia last year, the new French government has ATUA meeting Wages battle, unemploy nent and Workers' Press Thursday, October 23, Queens Hotel Rutland Street A demonstration during the earlier days of the tremendous strike and sit-in wave now building up in Italy. The picture shows over 50,000 engineers packed into a Turin square carrying the banners of their towns—most of the leading industrial centres were represented.

Italian

strike wave continues Workers' Press correspondent ANOTHER round of strikes hit Italy on Monday.

In Naples, striking taxi and bus drivers blocked all the city's main streets by creating traffic jams at strategic points.

Cement workers began a national three-day strike while in Taranto, scene of a recent strike in the huge modern steel works, farmers blocked roads in protest against low milk prices.

In the North, a series of lightning strikes hit the Pirelli plant in Milan. restored the close working relationship that flourished up to the downfall of de Gaulle.

Cold-shoulder

The Rumanian government, on the other hand, finds itself cold-shouldered by France, even though it favours closer economic and diplomatic ties with the West.

The Soviet bureaucracy has a great deal more to offer the French capitalist class than trade talks.

Despite its initial opposition to the Kremlin invasion of Czechoslovakia, the French Communist Party still looks largely to Moscow for its political line.

In fact it signed the statement issued after the Moscow conference of world Stalinist parties last June.

This, as much as trade relations, is what determines French diplomacy today.

Three times in the past; 1936, 1944-1945 and again in CHINA PREPARES PEKING radio announced on Tuesday new government measures to counter the threat of war with either the Soviet Union or the USA.

Quoting from an article in the latest edition of 'Red Star' (journal of the Peking Revolutionary Committee), the broadcast called for the dispersion of industry.

If it was done effectively, China would have big and small reliable bases scattered all over the country.

Peking radio then gave the following warning:

•Should US imperialism and social imperialism Chinese term for the Soviet bureaucracy] impose a war on China, she will have greater manoeuvrability. Each locality could conduct war independently, wipe out the enemies, and win the war.' aid May and June last year, the French ruling class was able to lean on the counter-revolutionary Soviet bureaucracy and ensure that, through the leaders of the French Communist . Party, working-class revolutionary struggles were Neither the Kremlin nor Pompidou are likely to discard this strategy now.

This basically guerrilla strategy is geared only to warfare with 'conventional' weapons, in which the US and the Kremlin are anyway superior.

Against a nuclear strike, such as that contemplated by 'hard-line' anti-Chinese faction in the Kremlin and in the Red Army, these measures would prove useless.

International working-class action against the Stalinist and imperialist enemies of the Chinese Revolution remains the only sure defence.