CP election programme A reformist pipe-dream

NOW IT'S UP TO YOU We are absolutely convinced that our circulation can be considerably Increased over the next three You have the opportunity to Introduce new readers by using our speclal election offer of 18 Issues by post Get your new reader to fill in the form below and pool Please send Workers Press from June 1 to Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office. Published by • Workers Press, 186a Clapham High Street, Poor captain pa, set, London: THE COMMUNIST PARTY to dates, at a total cost in deposits than £8,000 in the General Election.

The main reason for standing so many-to judge from the pre-election press conference given by general secretary John Gollan and other leading functionaries— is to enable the Party to get time on television, for which 50 candidates are required.

The demand for more television time is, in fact, one of the main planks of the Party's, platform - it works out at about £30 a second in deposits alone!

The Party's election manifesto "People Betore Profits' reveals its leadership's total adherence to reformism and its complete inability to pose a socialist alternative to the Wilson leadership of the Labour Party.

The first three lines of the programme reveal just what the Party intends by its intervention:

"Two aims need to be achieved in this General ElécThreadbare 'One is to prevent a Tory return to power. The other is to strengthen the movement fighting for a change to the léft in the Labour government's policy' YEAR OF LENIN & TROTSKY with 158-to:

Special Election Offer, Workere Press 186A Clapham High Street London, sW4.

MELLISH WARNS ON Local councils would have to prove their house building ability if Labour were returned to power, Mr Robert Mellish, the newly-appointed Minister of Housing, warned yesterday.

Speaking to workers at a factory meeting in Halifax, he said he intended to publish a 'league table' giving the results of the various councils' housing records.

He would set realistic targets for council programmes and 'if they don't reach the target I set them it will not be the Minister of Housing who will be screaming at them, but the people of their own town', he said.

PAPERS STOPPED

A walk-out by print workers yesterday stopped publication of the London evening newspapers, the Evening News' and the 'Evening Standard'.

-adam mada Having totally failed throughout the six years of ilson's government to achieve the slightest movement by their CP serves up this threadbare brand of 'pressure politics' retormist objective once again ın an attempt to head oit any development of a révolutionary alternative.

All the marches of the protestérs failed to produce the least wavering in Wilson's wholehearted support for the United States war in Vietnam.

And Wilson's climb-down over the anti-union laws last year was achieved not by pressure, but bý the thréat of decisive working-class action in defence the basic workers' organizations.

Yet when the Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists in January of this year, proposed a fight for industrial action to stop Wilson's visit to Nixon, the CP called instead for 'pressure' to 'make Wilson speak for Britain'.

The first section of the proagainst the monopolies, people gramme, 'For the to offer 'the only viable solution to thé problems of the "70s'.

Its perspective is of an exthrough 'curbing' 'monopoly rule'.

'Britain's present capitalist system is totally incapable of doing this, the document says. However, it implies that, suitably reformed by the application of 'pressure', capitalism will able to satisfy workers' needs.

'The government,' the programme says, 'chose. to tackle the balance of payments problem in a way that brought it chas confict with the working According. to this Fabian tract, if the imperialists would only stop being imperialists and listen to the CP's expert advice, capitalism could satisfy everybody's needs.

If the problém had been tackled. as the Communists, others on the left [i.e. the Trades Union Congress [Scan• and Feather] advocated-espécially by cutting military spending and the export of investment capital and adopting proposals to expand the economy—a surplus could have been achieved much sooner without sacrifices from the péople.' Arms bill And what does the CP propose to do with, for example, military spending? Why cut the arms bill . by half ?

The other half, according to Gollan at his press conference introducing the manifesto, is be applied to 'maintaining our (sic) commitments to the United Nations, Not a word about the of this imperialist thieves' in Korea, the Congo Suez! 'Our' commitments to world imperialism must be maintained!

The programme goes on to advocate 'national price stop' and calls for government action to 'compel the big firms to cut profits so that prices can be frozen'.

After proposing a few tax reforms, like the abolition of SET, and for 'the curbing of the monopolies', it buries a mealy - mouthed and half-hearted call for nationalization in the middle of page nine.

Policing

posal for joint policing of the European working class by imperialism and the Kremlin bureaucracy.

That is why Gollan could say at his press conference, that the Indo-China war was an 'obstacle' to this agreeThe revolutionary struggle of the working class in Asia stands in the way of this anti-working-class pact!

The 'domestic' demands -for a national minimum wage the princely sum of £17 a week is suggested), for the implementation of the Plowden report in education, for crash housing programmes and so on, differ little from the kind of promises the Labour Party made in 1964.

Not a single one of these demands can be achieved without revolutionary struggle to prepare the overthrow of capitalism, and yet the CP is careful not to point this out.

There is 70 call for the removal of immigration control, only for the repeal of the Immigration Acts of 1962 and 1968. Immigration oontrol, it appears, is only objectionable when it discriminates against coloured people.

The most striking teature of this document is its extreme tediousness.

There is not an ounce of fire in the Communist Party's present campaign.

The May local elections, in which the CP's overall vote was halved, demonstrated the futility of the Party's electorad perspective to many hundreds of CP members.

The dreary parliamentary cretinism of the Manifesto contrasts markedly with the growing class polarization which characterizes this electian.

At a time when workers are turning towards a class vote for Labour in order to keep the Tories out, the CP's intervention can only introduce confusion and side-track sections of workers. Its programme is a fraudulent reformist sham.

Workers must vote Labour against the candidates of this Party and participate in the real movement of their class to keep the Tories out.

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Sovex

dig in ENGINEERS from the Sovex elevator and conveyor plant have unaniroductivity deal Intervention by the Engin éering Employers' Federation -the dispute was discussed during an emergency meeting of the federation earlier this week—has strengthened their determination to win, stewards said yesterday.

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