As funny money' empires totter Down and down plunge share prices

IN THE MIDST of the most serious crisis of confidence facing American capitalism since the 1929 crash, Wall St opened this week with its worst fall in a single day for over As the Dow Jones industrial average plunged over 20 points, Senate Democratic leader Mr Mike Mansfield demanded that President Nixon call an emergency meeting of business and labour leaders to discuss what he termed the 'crisis' facing the economy.

All the 'glamour' stocks were hit with over 12 million shares changing hands and increasing evidence of the entry of the large institutional investors into the market.

The Wall St slide is now rapidly assuming the proportions of a world-wide financial crisis.

Tumble

• Wall St nerves were directly responsible yesterday's severe tumble on the JAPANESE exchanges. Investors, rushing to liquidate their holdings it any price knacked over 20 points of the index to add to Monday's 60-point dive.

SYDNEY was caught in a wave of selling as share prices crashed to new lows.

Both Australia and Japan rely heavily on US capital and fears are growing that a collapse in confidence on Wall St will lead to a flight of capital on the scale and pattern of 1929.

Backlash

But LONDON also felt the backlash. The 'Financial Times' Index dropped nearly nine points yesterday's early trading as many leading industrial shares took a heavy battering.

The growing American financial crisis and its repercussions in London now promises to be at the centre of the election campaign, despite the tacit agreement of Labour and Conservative leaders to try to hide its true implications from the working class.

The unresolved crisis of Investors Overseas Services also continues to aggravate the growing feeling of unease. It is a special factor in Tokyo, where IOS holds over $100 million of Japanese stock.

Doubts

The Japanese-based Daiwa Securities Company has now said that it will join any consortium to rescue IOS.

But doubts exist about its ability to raise sufficient cash to carry through such operation.

Despite Mr John M King's direct plea to President Nixon for help in his attempt to salvage IOS, with which he has the closest financial ties, he is running into growing opposition from the New York Securities and Exchange Commission.

One of the companies which urchased a millior acres of r King's holdings ir Arctic land at the inflated price of $14 an acre was Lake Shore Associates.

It is now revealed that this company was run by a certain Mr Bernard King who, funnily enough, turns out to be a senior vice-président of King Resources.

Dubious

Rumours of a series of collapses of many of the funnymoney' paper empires built during the boom on dubious accounting practices are

LENIN

CENTENARY SWINDON Two lectures to mark 100th anniversary of birth of Lenin.

Sunday, May 31, 7.30 p.m. "Theory and practice and the Sunday, June 7, 7.30 p.m. 'Lenin and the coming English revolution' OXFORD HOTEL Corner of Groundwell Speaker: Gerry Healy, national, Secretary, Socialist Labour League Admission 2s Strings 'unacceptable', say Sovex strikers THE 80 STRIKERS at the Sovex Elevator and Conveyor factory, Erith, Kent, are digging in for a determined fight as their pay and productivity dispute enters its third week.

At a mass meeting yesterday they reiterated their opposition to Sovex's productivity proposals aimed at speeding up the factory in return for what the workers describe as a 'ludicrous' pay offer.

Management has turned down flat their demand for instead to return for sweeping productivity concessions.

These include elimination of tea breaks; reduction of the ratio of mates to skilled men; upgrading to be allowed; mates to undertake ork on long runs; flexi bility between trades o1 erection work; introduction Heath's 'old friends'attacks on working class of merit pay; and an end to the firm's contribution to the sick-pay scheme.

(The last concession, strikers say, is designed to encourage those who are sick to return to work.)

AEF convenor Laurie Smith told Workers Press:

'Ours is a principled struggle for a straight increase, conditions that demand it if our members are to maintain their standard of living.

•The management's, proposals have been rejected out of hand by the AEF, the boilermakers and the Transport and General Workers' Union in the plant.

Present 'take home' wage rates at the factory range from £14 to £21 for a 40hour week with bonus.

The strike has spread to Sovex sites in central London, Bradford, Hull and Amsterdam, Holland. demonstratar (or striker, in due course) who causes damage to property 'will be obliged to compensate his victim in addition to fines or other punishments imposed by the courts'.

Asked about the effect of the Wall St slump, Heath said that he thought it would be a

cal political crisis which precedes either right-wing coups or revolutions.

In the case of Cyprus such a situation cannot last indefinitely but must be resolved either by the mobilization of thè working class and the development of its struggle to the final conquest of power, or by a coup and a bonapartist dictatorship.

Dilemma

This dilemma is now posed irrevocably in Cyprus just as it was in Greece during 19611967.

In the face of mortal danger for the working class the Cypriot-Stalinist leadership— in no way different from their fellow bureaucrats in Greece -refuse to lead the class in a struggle for power.

Instead they attempt to stave off the dictatorship with means that are destined not to avoid it but to speed its advent.

Not wanting to (and not being able to) realize how final and irreversible is the break up of their comfortable alliance, they try desperately to reinstate the political balancing, act by launching with Makarios a last-ditch attempt at reconciliation.

Although they are the party with the greatest mass fluence they are calling on the bourgeois parties to transform the electoral conflict into a behind-the-scenes settlement and • share-out of parliamentary seats.

Anxiety

More than this, in their anxiety to avoid a mobilization of the class, they are prepared to accept less seats than in the last share-out, which itself was unjust to the AKEL strength.

This campaign has already failed as all the other parties have declared that they will enter the election independently.

The chaos continues and the pro-junta gangs terrorize, murder and prepare themselves by disarming the police, which is influenced by the