Who are the wreckers?

(10.30) a programme of newsreel, interviews and commentary centred on the first post-war Labour government.

If it did nothing else, the programme chronicled, mainly through the mouths of present Labour rightwingers, the thorough-going betrayal of the working class which Attlee and his colleagues carried out They set out, through timid reforms and half-hearted compromises, to patch • together the war-mangled body of British capitalism and lay new foundations for it to continue.

They ended, as all such attempts must necessarily end, in humiliating defeat at the hands of Churchill and the Tory Party.

Newsreel film of the 'Forces election' in 1945 gave a glimpse of the tremendous wave of anti-Tory feeling which swept the Tories out of office at the end of the war. Right winger Christopher Mayhew recalled that when the Army ballot boxes were opened in his constituency, almost every single vote was for Labour.

Defeat

In 1945 the working class administered the most crushing electoral defeat ever to the party of unemployment, war and big business.

Despite the singing of the 'Red Flag' in the Commons when • the new parliament assembled, Attlee made clear that though some reforms were to be expected, the working class would have to make sacrifices to 'put Britain on its feet'.

In reality, the Labour leaders were mortally afraid of the working class that had lifted them to office. Over the rest of Europe, their fellow bureaucrats were, with difficulty, holding back revolutionary struggles, and the Labour Party leaders, with suitable modifications, set themselves the same task in Britain.

The United States' $4,000 million loan was, in reality, a turning point in this process, MENTAL BREAKDOWN IT MIGHT be thought that experiments carried out by time-and-motion consultants to fix the amount of energy each worker should use in a given operation are the last word in the drive by the employers to intensify labour. This is not the case.

Although the 'experts' claim to have defined all manual Drop of the hard stuff The Cramlington Wreckers BBC 2 August part of the inflationary export of dollars which initiated the post-war boom and combined with the counter-revolutionary efforts of reformism and Stalinism to give a new lease of life to the capitalism in W Europe.

Then came the beginnings of Labour's nationalization programme.

The mines were to be first —on the basis of an efficiency plan drawn up for the coalactions in the finest detail, particularly by use of the predetermined-motion-time systems, they are still concerned that much valuable profit-making time is being wasted on ineffective mental activity.

According to the current issue of the specialist magazine 'Work Study', attempts are now being made to correct this deficiency by the Work Factor company which has laid down its results in a so-called 'Mento behind THE NEWS owners during the war.

Herbert Morrison, in charge of the nationalization programme, saw it as intervention by the capitalist state to increase the efficiency of backward key industries in the overall interests of the employers' system.

Despite the tremendous welcome the miners' gave nationalization (the programme showed Durham miners dancing in the streets the day the Manual'. The article explains that, as with manual work, mental activity can be divided into basic elements.

The times for each element are given in one or several tables and are expressed in time units where one time unit (TU) equals 0.0001 minute. The fundamental elements are said to be: 1. EYE-MOTIONS. As with the MTM system, this is IT WAS a bright and sunny day in Ormskirk and down at the bottom of a Mr Duxfield's modest patch of grass, the local Tories were relaxing at their annual garden fete.

Everybody who was anybody was there to enjoy the atmosphere of goodwill and camaraderie and have a go at the 'goofy golf' and sundry side shows.

There were displays by the Eaglais A Chnot Scottish dancers, music from the Blue Magnolia Band and more to entertain the local Tory brotherhood.

Ted's back in No. 10 and all's well with the world.

But down amongst the tombola, something stirred. It was Harold Soref, recently-elected member for Ormskirk, come to address his loyal supporters.

Obviously intent on exercising his muscles in preparation for the coming parliamenSOREF (centre) mines were nationalized), workers in the state industries -and none more than the miners-have tasted to the full the bitter fruits of the Labour government's pro - capitalist take-overs.

The government's austerity policy, designed to allow business to re-equip itself after the ravages of the war, meant bread and clothing rationing, a measure which was exploited to the full by the Tory women's divided into eye focus and eye shift.

SEE. The time for this is said to be based on the and is cour and its colour.

CONDUCT. This is the time required to conduct the impulse from the eye along the nerves to the brain and from tłe brain tary session, Soref proceeded to start the lory day with a bang by hurling himself into a blistering tirade on black power, expatriate revolutionaries, subversives, agitators, wanton and vicious violence, anarchy and troublemakers.

Warned Soref :

"Too much tolerance is shown to demonstrators who would blackmail the majority of the population and flout the country's traditional hospitality. Some pose as students and others as professional racialists.

'Agitators,' he went on, 'who seek to dwell in this country are not entitled to undermine its security and institutions. Those who revile the police and demonstrate in the pursuit of wanton and vicious violence are seeking a state of anarchy and climate agreeable to revolutionary intent.' Sounds familiar? Read on.

'In the interests of Britain their deportation should be accelerated, said Soref and added that those who were so keen to knock Powell might now care to pay tribute to his prescience.

The disorders and riots, which are happening with increasing frequency, will doubtless shortly lead to street fightinfithe sooner the Home Secretary takes action the better, before trouble gets out of hand.' After this lengthy blast, Soref politely apologized for pursuing a 'hard line' at what was a pleasant social occasion, but he had felt it his duty.

His apology was obviously superfluous. An enjoyable afternoon was had by one and all, confident that their affairs were in the hands of a capable and far-seeing rep.

Ice creams in hand, they wandered about the tranquil lawns. For those who wanted more of the hard stuff, there was always Punch and Judy.

lobby. The programme showed scenes of overfed Conservative ladies waxing indignant about the coupon system.

The most phoney Tory lobby of all, however was the British Medical Association's campaign against the National Health Service, masterminded by 'radio doctor' Charles Hill.

Hill denounced 'the state doctor' and praised the virtues of 'independent' (i.e., private) medicine.

to various parts of the body. 'It depends on the length of the nerve path.' IDENTITY. This involves the speed at which an object can be clearly picked out for what it is. 'Ar unusual position', e.g. 'upsidedown', says the article, requires extra time'.

DECIDE. This is the time taken to decide what action to take on the basis of the information received from the eye.

DISCRIMINATE. Is the time needed to make a distinction between similar shapes, colours and sizes.

SPAN, it is said, relates to observation of a whole number of characters. For example, to look at a group of soldering joints at once instead of looking separately at each one'.

CONVERT. This is said to mean the conversion of one type of information into another. 'For example, a postal sorter reads name of a street on an envelope and puts the letter into the pigeon-hole for the appropriate district'.

TEMPORARY MEMORIZE AND RECALL. This is the temporary storage in the memory of information required again in a short time.

TRANSFER ATTENTION.

This is to disengage the operator's attention from task A to task B. 'The time, explains the article, 'is governed by the intensity of concentration required to execute task A and task B' COMPUTE AND SUSTAIN. The time for this, it is said, depends on the kind of computation and the number of continuous computes to be made.

Inspection

The article gives an example of how this system would be used to fix times for an inspection task. This involves examination of sheets of paper 30 cm by 22 cm for visible flaws (spots, bumps, pits, etc.).

It explains that the inspection unit which can be properly encompassed in one gaze is 3.1 by 2.4 cm. This would mean that 100 such 'gazes' were required to examine each sheet of paper.

The elements Now that the Tories are getting ready to slash even greater holes in the NHS, it is worth remembering just where they stood on the question of free medical care.

Finally, after being forced to devalue the pound, the Labour government went to the polls and was returned ...

but with a majority of just six.

The historic crisis of British capitalism posed enormous questions before the Attlee CRAMLINGTON NRECKERS : left to right)

Robert Harbottl William Nuckle, Arthur Wilson & this operation and the time each is given as follows:

Eye shift to next unit 5 TUS See inspection unit 4 TUS Conduct impulse to brain Identify presence or absence of spots, etc. ••• 7 Decide to go on or not 7 Conduct impulse to eye 3 TUs total 29 TUs For the complete sheet of paper the time would be 100 by 29 TUs = 2,900 which is 17.4 seconds. This system is reckoned to provide opportunities to study routine mental activity and 'gives the possibility of drawing up standard times for inspection work'.

The current trend among work-study consultants is to call for a more human approach to workers. 1 More psychology and plenty of workers' participation is said to be what is needed. The early users of the systems, Taylor and Bedaux, are attacked as having been too much concerned with the mechanical aspect of the operative.

Inhuman

This present attitude is clearly no more than a cover for the most inhuman concept of all; that the worker is no more than a bundle of mental and physical impulses which exist for nothing else than to be applied to working operations.

In this situation, not only must the worker refrain from all useless actions which might detract from full-speed production, but he must also be sure not to think any thought unconnected with the work he is doing as this might well affect output-and so profits.

However, it should not be thought that these methods are simply some form of sick joke by one or two businessThe employers are desperately concerned to stave off a falling profit rate by use of automation, and, where he inorati die met in to incorporating the worker the automated sytem.

So long as capitalism exists, managements in all seriousness Will set out to pursue and extend this policy. government, but it proved powerless to solve them.

Like Wilson's government of 1964-1970, it ended by opening the door to Toryism.

The lesson of the 1945 Labour government is that reformism cannot answer the needs of the working class in a period of capitalist crisis.

Even with the best of intentions-and these were notably lacking from the 1945 government - Labour was ousted by the Tories.

ANOTHER flash-back programme-this time on BBC, revealed something of Toryism means to the working class.

The 'Cramlington Train Wreckers' were eight NorthBBC umberland miners sent to prıson aiter the general strıke for derailing a train.

Four of them are still alive, and their story was told on 'Yesterday's Witness' last Monday.

The tour men told how, on the seventh day of the strike, they had set out on union instructions to stop trains on the main railway through the village.

Derailed

They removed a portion of track and the Edinburgh express, driven by two medical students, ran off the rails, though only one passenger was injured.

After a five-week search for witnesses in the village, the police were finally able to suborn some of the men to turn King's evidence, and the eight were jailed for from four to eight years.

The survivors still consider their action was right. They STALINISM IN BRITAIN A TROTSKYIST ANALYSIS !.W PARK PUBLICATIONS PRiCE 22:td spoke of the appalling conditions in the pits, and the wage cuts the employers wanted to make-the coal masters wanted to trim the wage of 6s 8d a day by 40 per cent.

'Conditions were wicked, said one of them.

'Slaves'

'We were next to slaves. Churchill wanted to set the troops on the strikers. We had to let the people see what we were getting. We were getting starvation wages, and they wanted to cut them.

Tory justice extracted a terrible price for their action, and tried to brand them as potential murderers.

But they described how the International Class War Prisoners' Aid stood up for them, and how they were greeted with brass bands and a huge procession on their release.

The most terrible thing, one of them said, was when 'Your mate gets up in the witness box and swears your life away. That was terrible' Even now they hold a celebration when one of the men who betrayed them dies.

By contrast with the medical student strike-breakers, now respectable middle-class Scottish medicos, the four miners gave a tremendous impression of class loyalty and tenacity.

They were victims of ruling-class justice which took vengeance on them for the general strike and for its own fear of revolution.

But they were not broken men. As one of the four said at the end:

I'm still smiling. Nobody will ever take the smile off my face. I've learnt to take hardships as they come.' What a contrast with the Labour bureaucrats who figure so prominently in "The Day Before Yesterday'!

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