A warning to all trade unionists MINERS WERE BETRAYED

THE DECISION of the Yorkshire area council of the National Union of Mineworkers to recommend a return to work without the eijust hour day for surfacemen is more than another sell-out by a It is one of the first fruits of the joint declaration with the Confederation of British Industries signed by Jack Jones, Victor Feather and others to 'resolve' the question of industrial relations.

The decision follows the direct intervention of TUC general secretary Vic Feather.

We know that the decision of the strike committee to travel to London to see Mr Feather did not come from nowhere. ~. It was 'leaked' to the committee that Feather was 'sympathetic, that they might 'get something' the easy way.

(Exactly the same thing happened a few days earlier back strike 6d.-an-hour increase for similar work and have said they will only take on the job of moving the pipes when this demand is met.

The support of the furnacemen was 100 per cent in all three shifts and the 1,300 men met Saturday.

The 26-man lodge committee backed the men and recommended giving ten days' notice to the company to comTaking the key sector-engineering—-in 1967, capital investment per head stood at 374 million dollars.

The comparable figures in Germany were 580 millions and in Japan 590 millions.

Or, again taking 1967, engineering output in western Germany and the United Kingdom were roughly the same-around 10,500 million dollars.

In Germany the output was achieved with 3.6 million man hours, in the UK over 5 millions.

Investment hit

exports rests.

With growing signs of serious American recession, the rate of expansion in world trade must now begin to slow down, if not turn down absolutely.

None of the historical roots of British capitalism's crisis have in way been tackled over the last five years.

Far from looking forward to any further improvements in the balance of payments, British workers must prepare for major class struggles against the employers and the government as British capitalism attempts to tackle this crisis. union leadership.

when the Cadeby committee also 'suddenly decided' to ser Feather and were persuaded to call off their demand for market men till the surface issue was over.)

We know also that Feather was in contact every day with Lawrence Daly and Lord Robens (behind whom stood Harold Wilson).

The strike committee's action must show miners that convinced socialist leadership is to put yourselves into the hands men who can be manipulated.

Urgency

The TUC is now determined to intervene in all strikes to smash them on behalf of the government, regardless of the cost to the working class.

This takes on a special urgency when they see the danger of a new and politically conscious leadership beginning to develop.

For the issue here was not one of 20 minutes (the difference between having meal breaks included in the eight hours or excluded, as the NCB had offered).

accumulated resenumen the miners against their treatment by the Labour governfrom their own leaders strikes ment and the lack of fight The old threat mean closures' had failed to work. Demand after demand was surging forward-on hours, on wages, on closures Above all, the official lead. ership faced its biggest challenge since the war.

Daly-elected as general secretary after talking about strike action against closures -had been exposed at the first challenge.

The miners' fighting strength, sapped by years of pit closures, aroused again.

The area council and the eight-man strike committee (nobody knows how this committee was formed-and every member of it 1S branch official) did not organize single mass meeting or demonstration.

Yet car loads of rank-and-file pickets travelled from Yorkshire to Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.

Real were being established militant miners in different coal fields—moreover these men were learning political les sons in the strike and represented a real challenge to the leadership of the Party and the feltmunis Warned This was why the strike had to be broken.

We warned over and over again the Workers' Press forced to make mi land bises London tube guards stop deand promises s Be despite appeals pay deal. the hame and are des as ine drivers. • 12-man str last Mor pects stopport fron the 1,800 men involved. mandate to ore ze liven er again strike action at a mass ing last Thursday.

Mr McCloskey, strike committee member, said :

"The attitude of the men is hard—and hardening?

The strikers are angry at the lack of progress in talks between the management and their unions-the National Union of Railwaymen and the Associated Society of LocoGLES Millis Vate Vote WILLC Political crisis hits Italianruling THE ITALIAN strike wave THE ITALIAN strike wave has again heightened the crisis within the ranks of the ruling Christian Democratic Party.

The Party's dominant faction, which holds the bulk of the cabinet posts in the present caretaker government, has itself just split into two new fragments.

Prime Minister Mariano Rumor's position of strength was based on his leadership of the ruling faction, which until recently held the balance between the 'left' and right factions within the Party.

Now Rumor is faced with two formidable new opponents: Giulio Andreotti, chairman of the parliamentary party in the Italian Chamber, and Emilio Colombo, Minister of the Treasury.

Left move

Together with the leader of the pro-Stalinist faction, Aldo Moro, these two are now calling for a new move towards the left inside the Party and the government, which they feel has become isolated in recent months from the real problems before the nation.

Flaminio Piccoli, a close ally of Rumor in his centre policy, will now resign as party secretary.

With this latest split (the Party now has no fewer than motive motive Engineers and FireUnion officials tried to persuade the strike committee to call off today's strike by holding out the prospect of a new pay deal for all London underground workers to be signed shortly.

This would raise the guard's basic wage by Ios. a week.

ASLEF leaders sent telegrams to their members asking them not to strike because of the 'disrepute' this brought on the union. seven factions) the future the government itself is question.

As in. West Germany until last week, Italy has been ruled since the war by governments dominated by 'Christian Democracy', parties which in some ways resemble the British Conservative Party in their policies.

But on the continent, and especially in Italy and France, the ruling class has been unable to develop a unified class party with a mass basis on the similar lines to the British Tories.

Whether fragmented into numerous small parties, as under the French Fourth Republic, or brought together under one party umbrella, as SWINDON BY-ELECTION Thursday, October 30 SOCIALISTS' campaign for candidate contact Central Committee 5a Milton Road, Swindon in the Christian Democratic Fional interest rene see on agrarian and small propertied elements, have still plagued the struggle of the big capitalists for a united front against the working class.

In France, this conflict helped to prepare the way for the rule of de Gaulle, whose Bonapartism was an attempt to regulate these interests while defending the power of the ruling class as a whole against the workers.

Smothered

• This method does not so much abolish these contradictions as temporarily smother them.

The fall of de Gaulle has once again brought these age-old problems to the fore.

In Italy, such contradictions are, if anything, even more acute.

The Christian Democrats represent an attempt by the Italian ruling class to weld together a mass party embracing conflicting interests and classes through the medium of the powerful Catholic hierarchy.

This strategy demanded a change of tactics on the part of the Vatican itself, which in the fascist period had openly backed Mussolini in his bid for power and throughout the entire 22 years of his rule.

Considerable pressure was brought to bear by sections of the Italian ruling class on the Vatican to 'liberalize' itself as an integral part of creating a mass capitalist party based on a programme of moderate reforms.

Pope John (1958-1963) was the answer to their prayers.

His election also heralded a new warming of relations Italian useful for the Italian ruling class.

The current crisis in every level of the Catholic church today cannot be separated from the new ralicalization in previously more backward FRANK WILLIS phone: Swindon 20570

layers of the working class, rural workers and women, and the conflicts shift to the left in the Catholic masses has produced the Christian Democratic party itself.

Now historic decision faces the Italian ruling class and its representatives in the Christian Democratic Party.

Contributions

Should it continue to search for what it calls 'the opening to the left' (a coalition with the socialist parties or even the Stalinists), or should it opt for an 'extra-parliamentary solution' through the army on the lines of the 1967 Greek coup?

If we look at the possible parliamentary combinations, together with their probable repercussions in the working class, the magnitude of the dilemma becomes clearer. of Present composition Italian Assembly :

Seats Christian Democrats ... 265 Communists 177 Socialists (Left-Wing) 62 Liberals 31 United Socialists (Right Neo-Fascists 24 Proletarian Socialists 23 Republicans 9 Monarchists 6 Total 626 Recent attempts to form a 'centre-left' coalition between the Christian Democrats and the socialists led to split in the reformists' ranks, with the right-wing becoming even more discredited in the eyes of the working class.

This indeed is the essence of the problem.

The Christian Democrats cannot rule alone.

They need the support of at least 51 other deputies.

They can be sought on the left or amongst the extreme right—in the Liberals, the Monarchists and the fascists.

Options

It is this variety of options that has produced the splits within not only the socialists but the Christian-Democrats.

The right-wing group will not countenance an alliance with the socialists, let alone the Stalinists, while the Moro group (now joined by two defectors from Rumor's camp) lunklinke neace were only waiting for the opportunity to sell out.

On 'Panorama' (October 20) two very militant gentlemen were Bill O'Brien from North Yorkshire and Jim Oldham from the Doncaster area.

Both denounced Robens and Daly for the benefit of the television audience.

Both vowed that they would never go back without the eight hours.

Yet on October 24 it was O'Brien who moved the return to work in the North Yorkshire panel meeting and on October 25 it was Oldhama member of the strike committee-who reported its unanimous decision to call off the strike to the Yorkshire area council meeting.

What had been gained? Nothing.

Unable to handle the mass strike which had developed, because of its political implications against the Labour government, the strike committee had gone running to Feather not for support for the strike, but because they wanted a formula to end it.

This formula was a promise of an 'independent' inquiry by either the TUC or the governSo men who a few days earlier had been forced by pressure from below to demand the resignations of Ford and Daly ended by hiding behind right-winger Feather.

More fight They talk about more fight if they don't get the eight But even the right-wing Sam Bullough, Yorkshire area president of the NUM, who dissociated himself from the strike right from the beginning, told the press that the strike might be called again if the demand was not met.

But what sort of preparation was this action for a further struggle ?

Are the miners going to be asked to follow the same leadership again ?

How do they know the same thing will not happen?

The miners have already shown that they reject the NCB's hours position. year.

They have now been joined by other sections of lowerpaid workers like the dustmen and the miners, who are waging a political fight against the Labour government and the employers.

They must join the All Trades Unions Alliance to win a decent living wage without productivity strings and to defeat the Tories' plans. piete negotiations with the riggers so that the process men are relieved of this dangerous work.

Meanwhile No. 2 furnace stands cold.

'The pipes • are made of heavy iron lined with brick and we back the men's fight to the full, committee members declared.

The management has agreed