Pilkington strike ends but Glass workers' struggle is not over

UNIONS representing more than 250,000 ancillary hospital staff are this week to lodge a 20-32 per cent pay claim on behalf of their members.

They want the lowest basic rate for ancillary staff lifted to £16 10s increases of at least £2 15s a week for all the workers involved.

WEATHER London area, SE England, Central Southern England, E and W Midlands, Central Northern England: Dry with sunny periods. Wind westerly light. Warm. Maximum temp. 21C (70F).

Channel Islands, SW England, NW England: Dry with sunny periods. Wind westerly, light or moderate. Warm maximum temp. 18C (64F).

Edinburgh, Glasgow area N Ireland. Mainly dry with sunny spells. Wind westerly moderate. Warm. maximum temp. 16C (61F).

Outlook for Wednesday and Thursday: Little change.

NEW MID-EAST CLASH LEBANESE and Israeli armlocked in battle in an area of our Trade London, oured forces were yesterday South Lebanon.

Armoured Israeli forces, which launched a concentrated land attack on the Bint Jbeil area. Lebanese armoured and mechanized forces north of Yaroun village fought back.

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LATE NEWS The Israeli armoured column which pushed into Lebanon yesterday (see story this page) was checked on the outskirts of Yaroun after fierce fighting near the southern frontier with Israel.

DIPLOMATS LEAVE PHNOM PENH After a three-week delay, diplomats from China, North Vietnam and Korea left Phnom Penh yesterday by plane for Canton and Peking.

These three countries now recognise the Sihanouk exile government as the legal regime in Cambodia. (The Soviet bureaucracy still maintains its embassy in beleaguered Phnom Penh. following Friday's return to work, which would mean a loss of £3-£5 in earnings despite the £3 interim pay settlement.

At the Cowley Hill floatglass plant, meanwhile, PilkClearly nothing is settled at St Helens.

'Nailed lid'

'We have nailed the lid or he coffin of the G&MWU' Gerry Caughey day sorting the filled in du Both the and into the Ged to get us back flower told the seoreters Press Two editions (For any two days 0 R you select)

£1 for three months {4 a year •kers Press, 18 (Tel: 01-720-200 U.S. IN MID-EAST Italian Foreign Aldo Mor o and US of State William Ro talks dev oted mainl Middle E ast crisis yesterday.

Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office. Published by Workers Press, 186a Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4.

Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (TU), 180b Clapham High Street, Londor, clast -out on Saturday worker plants leaders remain deterWith SWU Congres TAROF LENIN & TROTSKY TALKS Minister ¡ers held In Rome as members piled out of Congress House late on Friday night. "They didn't succeed'.

In the seven weeks prior to this meeting, the strikers redieserichreats to their jobs, officials, government appeals for a return to work, continuous pressure from the press and moral blackmail from the local clergy.

Why were the employers and their friends so concerned about this strike?

Closing the government's three-day court of inquiry into the dispute on Thursday, as previously reported in the Wood dismissed the wages issue at St Helens as 'a very small area of difference' and commented that 'violence, illfeeling between men and damage to the company are matters of greater concern'.

Even 'The Guardian', which usually tries to preserve a liberal face towards industrial disputes of this kind, claimed in a waspish editorial the following day that 'democracy ... has slid frighteningly into mob rule'.

orders were stepping out of line!

To understand the root of these gentlemen's concern it is necessary to go back almost a year to the TUC General Council's negotiations with Wilson over In Place of Strife'.

Victor Feather's 'solemn and binding undertaking' to do the Labour government's dirty work in the unions was accepted by Wilson only when the crucial phrase'this ..• will have the same binding force as the TUC Bridlington principles and regulations'— was unanimously agreed by the council.

Questioned

Since 1939, when the Bridlington resolution was carried by the TUC, it has become ane of the major planks in the bureaucracy's programme for resisting on capitalism's behalf all attempts to democratize the unions. Manifesto: Keep the Tories out!

Labour June go before the general election, in other words, it has served notice that the working class has no intention of lying down under the plans nurtured in the breasts of both parties to hamstring the unions like never before.

This previously quiescent section of the working class has shown the shape of things to come in threatening to bring the whole bureaucratic edifice with which capitalism has propped itself, up in the post-war period crashing about its ears.

These fears steeled the £108,792,000 Pilkington glass monopoly to lose £3.5 million in a 50-day strike and spurred the motor bosses into making the most expensive arrangements for charter-flight glass supplies in an attempt to break it.

Strike pickets, particularly those at the Ravenhead glassworks, also drew attention on several occasions to the company's plans for productivity dealing in St Helens and elsePilot scheme A pilot scheme is already in operation at Ravenhead and the company has engaged Professor 1om Lupton, from the Manchester Business School, to develop a national draft agreement.

Pilkington's regard the next 12 months as crucial.

'Productivity ?' queried one Ravenhead picket when talkCOMPENSATION: Foreign capitalist investments in Britain would also come under the control of the state. Any question of compensation payments would be considered only after the domestic programme to meet the crisis was paid for.

Such compensation would, in any case, be paid only against guarantees of trade agreements and guarantees of no action by foreign capitalist governments against nationalized British companies in their countries.

Such measures would necessarily bring to an end the of the Stock Exchange and all speculators and profiteers. The power of capitalist would be An immense example would be given to workers in other countries.

Once the result of these measures were seen, workers would never again want to see the Tories back, since this would mean the return of the capitalists and landlords.

The carrying out of these policies would also necessarily mean the repeal of anti - working - class legislation of the Wilson government.

The Prices and Incomes Act must be repealed, as will all laws against the trade unions.

The Immigration Act would be repealed.

All charges in connection with the Health Service would be abolished.

All the cuts made in social services, housing and education would be restored. HEALTH SERVICE: Measures would immediately be put in hand to re-organize and expand the Health Service and all the social services.

May 25, jobs!' With the decline of the coal industry-the last St Helens Ravenhead colliery, shut is the dominant industry in the town, employing almost a third of the labour force.

Unemployment, which many glassworkers believe must be the inevitable consequence of Pilkington's plans, is thus a source of very real fear; the local rate is already far higher than the national average.

It is an issue which must not be buried by the return to work.

Not simple There is no simple solution to the basic questions raised at St Helens.

The fight for democratization of the trade unions is fundamental to the fight against the employers' antiington glassworkers from trade unionists throughout Merseyside and S Lancashire remains Renewed disputes at the Triplex and Cowley Hill works demonstrates that the struggle is by no means finished.

• Bridlington and the struggle for union democracy on the docks, in the car industry and at Pilkington's will be the subject of a special feature article in Workers Press later this week.

ASSISTANCE: An attack would be launched against poverty by raising benefits. abolishing system National Assistance with its prying and probing and enabling all elderly people to spend the rest of their lives free from material anxiety.

HOUSING: The whole building trade and the massive technological means now available would be mobilized to deal with the housing crisis and make possible the organization of housing as a social service.

Free from landlordism and the interest racket, a plan to end the slums, re-build the cities and provide a reasonable standard of housing for all would be put in hand • as a matter of priority.

Immediate re-housing of the homeless in the mansions and luxury homes of the rich.

Sections of industry could be re-organized to turn over from war production and the manufacture of luxuries for the rich, to producing housing components and the basic equipment of living.

SCHOOLS AND HOSPITALS: A special attack would be made on sub-standard school buildings. A plan would be drawn up for re-building and expanding hospitals and providing special facilities now non-existent or deficient.

Funds would be made available for medical research and to end the present shameful dependence on appeals for charity.

INSURANCE AND PENSIONS: All increases in insurance and pension charges will be cancelled. The funds will be re-couped out of levies on the wealthy and afterwards maintained by direct charges on production each year.

Considerable savings will thus be possible in administration costs.

RENTS, RATES AND TAXES: Rents, rates, taxes and interest rates will come under state control. Interest rates, severed from the international finance market by the monopoly of foreign trade and control of exchange transactions, would be lowered.

This would permit mortgage rates on housing to be drastically reduced. Purchase tax would be abolished, income tax on low and middle wages would be reduced and revenue raised from the wealth expropriated from big business. One of the many meetings o glass workers in St Helens 18!

All these charges would come up for revision in accordance with the general needs of a socialist financial policy and would be freed from the manipulations of speculators and the banks.

A genuinely socialist Labour government would ins through a policy in rye thus be pledged interests working class, aiming at a transition to socialism.

Such a policy would require and obtain the support and co-operation of the class and its organizations and determined resistance to all those seeking to maintain or restore the old order.

INDO-CHINA: All support for the US imperialists' war and Vietnam must cease immediately, and relations must be established with N Vietnam.

TROOPS: All British troops must be removed from N Ireland and overseas territories.

NATO AND UNO: A socialist government would unhesitatingly sever all connections with NATO - counter-revolutionary alliance-and with the UNO-docile tool of imperialism. There must be no more secret diplomacy or participation in summit meetings the Big Four.

Without this programme, domestic and foreign, there could result only large-scale unemployment, cuts in the welfare. state and impoverishSocialist Labour League Young Socialists have always THE MILITARY dictatorship of Brazil pushes on with its round-up of political opponents.

Among those recently seized by the police are five members of the Revolutionary Workers Party of Brazil -Wili Alberto Brankas, Alexandre Schneider, Lucio Borges, Vito Antonio Letizia, and Nava Helena Naumann.

They are accused by the police of being part of a 'national subversive organization carrying out acts against the state' from bases in a number of towns including Pernambaco, Sao Paolo, Ceara, Bahia and Labour with illusions.

Basically they. will vote in the belief that the experience of the last two years can be continued i.e., that no matter how treacherous Wilson is, militant union action can still preserve living standards.

This illusion will be shattered by experience, as Wilson returns to the attack and the economic crisis plunges downwards. Already many workers -as in shipbuilding, civil aviation, and the docks-have had to raise nationalization as the only answer to their future security.

Despite the dangers in capitalism of depression and war, the situation is favourable for the working class.

The employers forced attempt destroy independence of the unions, but they must do so against a strong, confident and broken working class which will resist.

The election of a Labour goyernment creates the best conditions for this fight back and for the defeat of the capitalists. It is not a question, as the Stalinists maintain, 'pressure' 'turn Wilson left'.

The task of socialists is to mobilize the maximum opposition the Tories, before and after the election, on all fronts, political and industrial. This means above all to fight for independent socialist policies; build the circulation of the Workers Press: the alternative leadership: the Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists.

This is the essential preparation for coming revolutionary struggles.

Rio Grande do Sul.

These comrades are among thousands of revolutionaries, militants and even democrats held in Brazilian jails, often without having charges brought against them.

Reports from one of the most notorious prisons, on the Isle of Flowers', have called forth protests from all over the world, forcing even the Pope to speak out.

But in addition to the official forces of the state, the government encourages right-wing terrorist squads, with names such as "Communist-hunting Commando' and 'Death Squadron'.

The Brazilian government