Rents increase and housing conditions w

tenants to demonstrate COUNCIL TENANTS in demonstrating outside the meeting tomorrow.

They are dissatisfied with the treatment of their complaints and angry about rent increases due on August 1.

They intend to serve the Tory-controlled council with notice to quit - a mock eviction order.

It is quite possible that a number of tenants will refuse to pay the increased rents.

Since the initial leaflet issued by the Marsh Tenants' Action Committee, thousands of signatures have been coming in on petitions against the increase.

On the Marsh estate itself practically all the tenants have signed.

With the signatures have come donations to help the tenant., of cash movement; and from every estate in Lancaster there has been a stream of complaints about the council's neglect • of tenants' problems.

New action committees have been formed on the Ryelands, Ridge and other estates.

PAY MORE

At a Marsh estate meeting earlier this month railway worker and Committee chairman Albert Rigby, said that while the tenants were being asked to pay more, they were getting nothing back.

Many pre-war council houses did not even have fitted washbasins. They still had outside toilets and could not receive improvement grants.

This point was reinforced by a woman from the Newton estate who complained that paintwork was in a disgusting condition and the house needed painting.

The houses had cost £275 to build, but some tenants had spent as much as £2,000 to £3,000 'and they still want more'.

A young mother from the Rvelands estate complained of the lack of play facilities for young children.

Peter Ageros, a Ridge estate tenant. accused Tory councillors of treating council tenants as 'second-class citizens'.

He urged that committees be formed on all the estates and tenants' complaints taken along to councillors.

'GET OFF'

'If your councillors don't do anything about them hands answer is in your own Lancaster will town hall coun Castro says industrial and agricultural problems have created an economic crisis in Cuba New economic crisis IN A DEMAGOGIC Bonapartist gesture during his Havana speech on Sunday night, Cuban leader Fidel Castro told his listeners they could remove him if they were disatisfied with recent setbacks in the economy.

In his speech marking the 17th anniversary of his first armed attack on the Batista regime, Castro admitted serious and growing problems in industry and agriculture.

The most spectacular reverse had been the failure to reach the sugar harvest target of ten million tons, for which the entire population has been mobilized over the last six months.

But there were also shortcomings in the beef, milk, fertilizer, fuel, tyre, rubber and other industries, admitted Castro.

'This is our responsibility and mine in particular.' he added.

'NEW GROUPS' After suggesting that one solution to the crisis was for the masses to 'take a direct role in management', he announced that he would form 'new groups' to "co-ordinate the economy'.

So on the one hand, he enSouthampton I don't think dockers are highly paid at all. cultoseradmitted by Castro courages hopes that workers' control of production might be introduced to help solve the crisis-and on the other, announced that the decisions affecting the economy have already been taken over the heads of the 'masses', and that new forms of control and direction have already been approved by the Castro leadership.

Castro employs the same demagogic and Bonapartist methods in the political sphere.

Having clamped down on all dissident and alternative political tendencies both outside (i.e., the Posadas group) They have to work for every penny..? and inside (i.e., the Escalantes "micro-faction') his movement, and blocked even the creation of a ruling body or the writing of constitution, Castro now invites the Cuban masses to remove him if they so desire!

Revisionist admirers and apologists of the Cuban regime may well attempt to present the speech as yet more proof of Cuban socialist democracy.

In fact it represents an acute crisis for the Castro ruling group, which is mirrored internationally by its growing ties with reactionary governments in Latin America and the Caribbean. says Bristol docker's wife WE TALKED to Mr and Mrs Mike Worlock in a club facing the immobilized Avonmouth docks, now the main port for Bristol and the West Country, where Mike has been working ten years.

'Just at this moment I'm sick, my wife is pregnant and we already have two children, but all the men are behind the strike, he says. "They say there is high earning on the docks, but this is not altogether true.

"To have a drink and keep my house I have to work three or four nights a week and Sundays to make my wage good.

"The trouble is you can earn good money one week then in another week your pay is poor. So in a good week I can't spend the money because I don't know what the next week will bring.

"This is why we want the higher basic.

'This will give us security of earnings, but I would like to see the rates go up on some jobs as well.

I can get an average of £28 I suppose, but this means some weeks working maybe 50 hours, sometimes much more than this.

'Now its strike pay and national assistance. But the men are in good spirits; at the moment we are ready for the fight.

I hope it isn't a long strike, but we have no choice, we have to stick it out.

I saw Tonge on the television. He said he didn't want to talk.

'So far we haven't felt the pinch, but in the future I don't know, I don't know how we'll manage.' Mrs Worlock was angry about all the false newspaper and television stories about the dockers.

I know what its like. I see Mike when he comes home, and I have to manage on his pay,' she told us.

'I don't think dockers are highly paid at all. They have to work for every penny they earn.

I would like to see some of the employers do the kind of filthy work they have to do on these ships. Arabs march over Nasser-US deal 1 THOUSAND Arab workers and youth took Amman yesterday to demonstrate their hostility a 'egime's acceptance on Sunday of the US Middl The marchers called for the continuation of the armed liberation struggle against the Zionists and opposed any settlement with the current occupiers of Palestine.

Houston police kill negro militant BY A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT A MILITANT Negro leader Carl Hampton-was killed by police gunfire and six others were injured in Houston, Texas, early yesterday.

The shooting began after a rally protesting against the arrest of two Negroes.

Police moved into the Houston suburb where the headquarters of the newlyestablished 'People's Party Number Two' is situated, and arrested more than marchers on various charges.

Fighting then broke out and the police opened fire.

BY A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT And in Tel Aviv, the Israeli government has begun to look more favourably on the plan put forward by State Secretary William Rogers a month ago.

This became evident when the Israeli cabinet, after a day-long Sunday, met againe today to re-examine the US plan for a three-month "cease fire' and mutual withdrawal by both Zionist and Arab forces from the present battle lines.

Toned down

Sensing the softening attitude of the Zionists, Moscow has deliberately toned down Nasser's verbal blusterings, which he is now using to cover over his capitulation to the US plan.

Nasser's speech • to the Arab Socialist Union Congress last week contained the usual ritual references to the continuation of the 'armed struggle' against Israel.

All such references have been carefully excluded from the Soviet news agency "Tass' coverage of the congress.

Leaders of the various guerrilla groups have undoubtedly been • forced to take up a position against Nasser's capitulation by the pressure of the Arab masses, especially those driven from their Palestinian homeland by the Zionist invaders.

Support for the Rogers plan would have deprived them of the popular support which they have won over the last year.

Compromise?

Yet even now a compromise with Nasser and Hussein is possible.

None of the guerrilla groups-even those claiming to be 'Marxist-Leninist' — denounced the Rogers plar until Nasser pronounced or it.

They all hoped that Nasser's Moscow trip would provide them with a new formula that would prevent them from having to clash openly with the Egyptian After a delay of several weeks and a series of highpressure talks in Moscow, Nasser swallowed the Rogers plan whole.

The liberation groups were forced to speak out.

But their complicity in Nasser's manoeuvring over the last month reveals them all as tied to the ideology of Arab nationalism and back-stage dealings of Stalinist diplomacy.

With all their heroism and militancy, these organizations are still unable to lead to the streets of ainst the Hussein East peace plan'.

the Arab workers and peasants to victory over imperialism and the establishment of a unified Arab state.

These are tasks which require Marxist, Trotskyist leadership.

The present critical Middle-East situation demands the building of such a leadership.

Without it, the Arab people will be betrayed by the Kremlin and the Nassers to imperialism.