League soccer since they closed down music

of a good-hearted, rough, ignorant, intellectual-hating, cynical, cheerful, beer-swilling, sports-following lout, with a nagging wife and noisy aggressive children.

But one of the problems in trying to hold a class in bondage with a false consciousness is that the reality won't go away.

It may be possible to promote the fantasy in newspapers, in television and at the cinema, it may even be possible to pervert all institutional education and learning into giant lies, but every Workers and their families live the truth. Our task is the consciousness of truth.

At the mass meetings of the Pilkington workers last week, it was impossible to miss the hostility to the reporters and photographers of the capitalist press and television.

If one stood up and blocked the view, he was roundly told to get down--and he got down.

But it was also impossible to miss the lies and distortions which were still published by these men and their masters, and the complete lack of skill in dealing with them at press conference.

Platitudes They must not be underestimated; they are practiced in their perversions, they are well paid for their pious platitudes and witch-hunting inanities.

They too are part of the truth of the Tory capitalist class.

And as the class confrontations become sharper and starker, as the election period sees an artincial truth in the reactions of the employers and government, so another great British institution is being fully mobilized for its soothing, quieting and distracting effects-the great god sport.

What a mighty deity it has become! From the playing fields of Eton to the big business of competitive sport is a tiny step.

The sideshow around the nowcancelled S African cricket tour, the enormous competitive expenditures by BBC and ITV in promoting and covering the coming World Cup contest (70 hours on BBC, nearly 60 on ITV), 'the working man's beer, fags--and football'; these are all part of the same social order.

They all represent the same interests, the same attempts to continue in control by exploiting any genuine interest or enthusiasm, any real skill or achievement, for the continuation of BOBBY CHARLTON:

World Cup team de chance to win the support of the police by calling off the tour after months of public relations The whole charade also gave the black nationalist governments of African . countries a splendid opportunity to confuse them apparently to take a sting against apartheid in boycotting the Edinburgh Commonwealth Games.

Meanwhile, in the same week, President Banda of Malawi received an official visit from the p player istrates in England's his skill Back in Britain the England football team's record made number one in the charts, a Royal Television Gala Performance for the Queen and the Duke was staged 'in aid of British Isles countries participating in the Commonwealth Games and Heath, Sir Edward Boyle's leader, continued to imply by his silence that one of the first jobs of any new Tory government will be a settlement with the same Mr Smith. It's cricket all right.

halls... makers, but the rumour that he is to join with Mrs Wilson, Mr Jenkins and the rest of the Cabinet in a close harmony group has no foundation.

But the preparations for the World Cup in Mexico are well beyond rumour and the vast sums of money spent by both television networks to cover the same events are by now legend. The same features are also clear throughout Europe and S America. Booming In previous weeks television nas been swamped with football —new games, old games, best goals, best saves, best sportsman, portraits of the England team, a booming sideline in trinkets and clothes and endless slow-motion coverage of this controversial shot, that controversial tackle.

Of course it will all get large audiences; of course the skill of the players and the excitement of best competitive football, racing, boxing and all the rest. But let's not forget what it's all about.

'It may not be the greatest show on earth. But for sheer panache there has been little to rival British League soccer since they closed down the music halls. Its star system flourishes; its extravaganzas pack them But like many other epics, it is hugely overspent.' (Financial Times', April 29, 1970.)

As an industry it shows all the same features of other capitalist enterprises.

As the gulf between the superrich and the downright broke clubs gets greater, so the pressure for mergers gets stronger.

As the players organized in the Professional Footballers' Associaso their productivity was forced up by a vastly increased number of matches in the year.

As top players comfortably earn over £100 a week and others, like Bobby Moore, Geoff struck in 1918 for union recognition.

strike was put to last week's Police Federation conference at Llandudno, it was overwhelmingly defeated.

While vociferously demanding greater powers and equipment to knock people about, and more pay for doing it, the cops were quite clear above their devotion to the state machine.

It wasn't always like that. In 1918, a massive strike of police shook London, and struck fear into the heart of a ruling class already terrified of Bolshevism.

The strike was called by the National Union of Police and Prison Officers, formed before the war, against the delay in raising pay.

Over 6,000 of the Metropolitan Police stopped work on August 30, and nearly all the City of London force.

Lloyd George, with his usual cunning, granted the pay increase immediately, and set to work to break the union. Hurst, Martin Peters and Alan Ball are said to exceed £8,000 a year, so the playing life of most footballers continues to be comparatively short and their wages to go nowhere near their true value.

George Best can run his boutiques and Bobby Moore do his advertising, but that makes no difference to the mass of players who pound away through the season.

Nor to the fact that whilst Allan Clarke is bought for £165,000 and Moore is valued at £250,00, no club includes its players in its balance sheet! They are high risk material.

Similarly whilst clubs are being VORSTER BANDA forced to raise the ticket prices next season they are also turning more and more to capitalist industries for support.

And that suits industry just fine. The exploitation of sport is a splendid means for big business to promote its products, to entertain its customers, to further attempt the maintenance of profit levels for comparatively trivial sums.

Some of the biggest and oldest sponsors of sport are the tobacco companies. They can no longer advertise on television so they spend the money on contests with their names attached.

Sir Nevil Macready, AdjutantGeneral of the Army, was appointed Commissioner of Police.

As a soldier, he had seen action against the S Wales miners in 1911, when Churchill had sent the troops in. Later, he was in Ireland, fighting the IRA.

Macready forbade any policeman to belong to a union, and a Bill was put through parliament making it illegal. The union replied by calling a strike for August 1, 1919.

But, although the response was good in some provincial towns, especially Liverpool, in London Macready's intimidation had done its work.

Only 1,083 men came out, ot a force of 19,000. All of them were dismissed, losing all pension rights.

The union was smashed.

Policemen became the passive instruments of the capitalist state they are today. ('Financial Times', April 29, 1970)

That way they even get so-called unbuyable time on BBC where the commentators have to speak their names and cameras cannot avoid their banners.

Promotion The amount of money going into this form of company promotion is estimated to have risen 25 per cent this year and predictions are for trebling it in the next ten years.

Rothman's £50,000 tennis tournament at the Albert Hall, its big interest in motor racing, its involvement in golf are examples.

At Wills, they also gọ for show jumping and horse racing.

Players made a big hit with its Sunday cricket and this year it is also getting into golf.

The Midland Bank, with a huge agricultural business, backs the farmers' sport of horse trials, as do Whitbread and BassCharrington.

Watney-Mann have made a big advertising killing with their intervention in football. A spokesman there put it in a nutshell:

'Football is a rassionate hobby of large numbers of beer-drinking The chairman of the Llandudno conference last week reflected. this when he called for the rejection of the right-tostrike resolution, with the words:

'Parliament will never grant us this, and we should achieve a great lowering of the respect, esteem and affection in which we are held by a great majoriy of the public.' Tony follows the banker NOBODY GOT very excited at the news last week that Anthony Greenwood was to become chairman of the Commonwealth Development Corporation (salary: £10,500 a year).

One-time glamour-boy of the Labour 'left', Greenwood was a leading Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament marcher-until the Labour victory of 1964 called him to higher things as Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs.

He was also once the righthand man of Fenner (now Baron)

Brockway, as the chairman of the Movement for Colonial Freedom.

At the Commonwealth Development Corporation, Greenwood will follow in illustrious footsteps.

Since 1964, the chair has been occupied Glendale whose term of office was extended by Wilson in 1967.

The noble Lord was better known as Sir Evelyn Baring, Governor of Kenya during the •Mau-Mau' emergency.

The name Baring is indeed one well-connected with 'Commonwealth Development'. The merchant bank of Baring Bros has total assets amounting to £122 million-built up from investments in colonial countries.

A former Sir Evelyn Baring, Lord Howick's grandfather, became the first Lord Cromer, anc the first Governor-General of Egypt.

Baring Bros had played a leading part in the transactions which entangled the Khedive of Egypt, nominally a servant of the Turkish Empire, in the financial web of the City of London.

Having squeezed the Egyptian peasants dry to pay the interest on his enormous debts, the Khedive had to sell his shares in the Suez Canal to the British government. Top left: CALLAGHAN calling ol talking about music. Above: PIL hostility to reporters and photog customers.' ('Financial Times' March 24, 1970.)

It is also the hobby of a large number of car-building, caTbuying, boss-hating workers and after Watney's persuaded the Football Association to accept their money, Ford's weren't far behind with its £100,000 prize contest.

A good work-out at the match for its workers has always been a highly-prized safety valve to the capitalist class.

The brighter the match the more steam is let off, so the argument runs.

'Beer, fags and football' are certainly part of the same thing.

CURIOUS FOOTNOTE:

A recent 'tentative DER NOW SPECIAL REPRINT from NEW ... PARK BLICATIONS 186A Clapham High St, SW4.

Baring was appointed chairman of a committee of the Khedive's creditors, and soon took over the running of the country.

Greenwood will not have the family experience of his predecessor to draw on, but he will be serving as a member of the Board of the CDC under Lord Howick until he takes over in November.

participation 'WORKER participation', to use one of General de Gaulle's favourite phrases, is going on apace in the British •Steel Corporation.

Three more 'workers' were apboard director salary 61,000 a as part-time divisional year-last week.

All- three appointments have the Trades Union Congress seal of approval.

I would like information about the Fill in the form below and send to NATIONAL SECRETARY, SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE, 186A CLAPHAM HIGH ST, LONDON SW4.

Name Address of football in the 'Black Dwarf' reached some very extraordinary conclusions. One was that football really belongs to the working class, but that sadly it now does face the nasty penetration of big commercialism.

Another revelation was that football is good for the class because it gives experience of street fighting! Revisionism gone crazy, you may say, but no such thing.

Any medicine such middle-class muddleheads are serving up for the working class, under the usual guise that it's 'good for us' is bound to have ail the usual nasty partic sia elsis is and tainly sickening.

THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE AND REVISIONISM They are Mr Jack Leonard, 53, former president of notoriously right-wing - British Iron Steel and Kindred Trades Association, who works at the Shotton BSC plant, Mr Charles Abrahams, moulder at a Sheffield foundry, and Mr Don Sutherland, 57, who works in a Lancashire plant.

When they take up their appointments the three men will be following in the footsteps of a more famous trade union luminary who decorates the Corporation's boardroom.

This is Mr Ron Smith, the Corporation's £18,000 personnel and social policy director.

Smith was, of course, at one time the general secretary ot the Post Office Workers' Union.

Last year he forecast 50,000 redundancies in the steel industry by 1975 and promised to increase output to 35 million tons 'though we may scrap half the industry in the process' Not a happy precedent perhaps, for the three budding directors.

SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE