Bring down the govt or it will be worse than 1926 The only road for the working

LEADERS OF at Porthcawl yesterday to back overwhelmingly all-out official Monday.

But the S Wales area council of the National Union of Mineworkers refused to allow discussion of militant demands to call for" all immediate walk-out.on the coalfield.

After the meeting, however, delegates felt that the vote would persuade more men in the Welsh pits to strike from today.

"I can't see many men going back now, Cwm colliery delegate Bryn Williams told 'We have to give an immediate lead to the miners in England and Scotland and this means coming out now. Though we are quite satisfied with the decision to strike en masse on Monday.' The vote showed 545 lodge delegates in favour of strike action out of a total of 674.

Only eight lodges - reprePALESTINE commando leader Yassir Arafat arrived in Cairo un-announced yesterday morning for talks with Egyptian, Libyan and Sudanese leaders over the Jordan situation.

The appointment ot extreme right-winger Wasfi El Tell as the new Jordanian premier is high on the agenda at the Last week Egypt withdrew its ambassador in Jordan as an expréssion of concern about Tell's appointment.

Clashes between the Jordan Army and the guerrillas have continued sporadically despite the sell-out truce agreed between Arafat and King Now Arafat is clearly concerned that Husesin and Tell - strengthened the stringent truce conditions imposed on the commandos — will take the opportunity to spring another surprise attack on the Palestinian revolutionaries.

This is the logical outcome of Arafat's sell-out.

Now he is trying to rally support against Hussein from the Arab nationalist states which refused to help thé guerrillas during the earlier fighting. NALGO rejects BRITAIN'S fourth largest trade union, the 400,000strong National and Local Government Officers' Association, says today that the majority of the government's union-law plans are : *repugnant'.

A policy statement opposes 'as a whole' government's consultative document, though some parts, it says, would be quite acceptable if amended. Monday 40,000 Welsh miners voted coalfield strike action from From Stephen Johns Porthcawl, Wednesday senting 6,440 miners - voted against. The 80 lodges who voted to come out have in membership 27,250 miners.

• special meeting of the NUM's S Wales area council has been called for today to discuss appeals to other coalfields to support the Welsh miners.

Approaches will be made to the Transport and General Workers' Union and National Union of Railwaymen—who could be involved in transporting the National Coal Board's meagre stocks— to ask for their support.

Stormy

The Porthcawl meeting was a stormy one.

Delegates called on the platform to sanction the 12,000-strong unofficial strike that has already paralysed 23 of the Welsh coalfield's 52 pits.

They also demanded that the council back their call to make the stoppage complete and official from today.

But Welsh miners' president Glyn Williams ruled the appeals out of order:

'We made it quite clear at. last week's meeting that the lodges already out on strike should go back until today's meeting which discussed the resolution for an official stoppage next. Monday,' he told the delegates.

Lodges voting against strike action have agreed to observe the union's call.

After yesterday's decisive vote, the strike in both Wales and Yorkshire is likely to escalate before Monday — when every miner will almost cértainly be out on strike.

Miner after miner expressed complete support at Porthcawl yesterday for the claim for f5 on the minimum rates.

Half out

"The miners have already voted by 83 per cent for a strike. There are already almost half of the pits out on strike, there can be no question of the feeling of the men on this issue-it is very, very strong indeed, Dai Davies, also from Cm colliery, told at pr ABOUT 42,000 miners were on strike and over 50 South Wales, Yorkshire and Scottish pits wholly or partially shut down. strike das 23 5 Wales 52 collieries, 30,000 YORKSHIRE miners closed 29 pits.

Five of the county's pits were partially stopped and at another five, miners were operating overtime bans. THE WORKING CL. o fight the Tories.

Car workers, miners, + council men and housewives are all swelling a vast and growing army of hundreds of thousands who now see clearly where the main enemy is.

No one with a wage claim can fail to get the Tory message. If you want more wages then you must fight the government, because it is they who are backing the employers to the hilt in refusing it.

The wages fight has been transformed into a political conflict and there can be no real victories without struggle to bring down the Tory government.

Millions of workers are also beginning instinctively to realize that it is this, more than the issue of wages in itself, which is beginhing to radicalize them.

A swing to the left inside the trade unions is now well But what is to be the future of this swing? This is the key question.

Brutally

If it is defeated, then the working class will be driver back even more brutally than in 1926.

This will undoubtedly happen if it remains under control of the treacherous leaders who present dominate the trade unions.

These men do not want a showdown with the Tories. They fear the growing militancy from their own members more than they fear the government.

This is especially so, since they can see that many of their members are now more concerned about getting rid of Heath and company, even more than wages.

It is not the wages issue as such that frightens union leaders, but the development of political interest. They know that this takes the struggle far beyond the wages issue.

A growing desire to fight the government poses the problem of power. In turn, the fight for power poses portunism and class collab- the end of reformism, oration. It spells the end of trade union bureaucracy.

Labour 'lefts' and revisionists single out the antiliners esent Among those completely stopped were four pits in the Barnsley panel — Darfield, Ferrymoor, S Kirkby and Riddings Drift (the newest pit in Britain)which were out in defiance of their panel's stay-at-work decision.

In SCOTLAND, 700 men were still out at two pits Polmaise, near Stirling, and W Lothian's Kinneal colliery.

CORRESPONDENT

US ELECTIONS demonmuchin the 'Chelsea' rents into workers' pay parliament.

and council house stunned silence.

head.

private. rises. 1968. all will bite CHELSEA rents-some of the highest in London-are intended to become the national norm under Environment Minister Peter Walker's plans announced in The enormity of the Tory ande counts assault operante réduced even the hardened Labourite opposition to More to the point, it will rouse the anger of every tenant who will be forced to dig deep into his wage packet to put a roof over his Main plank of the Tory proposals is the extension of the misnamed fair rents scheme to all tenants— council and In the Tory dictionary, a "fair' rent is a high rent, and for many tenants—in fact for all those tenants not already suffering under 'fair rent' schemes — it will mean stiff The 'fair rent' principle was established by the Labour government in its 1965 Rent Act —a measure which has proved the launching pad for the Tories' new round of attacks. The principle was extended in Officer Under this scheme rent is fixed by a rent officer who is supposed to take into account a property's age, state, character and locality.

In practice, more than half the tenants who have gone before rent tribunals since the Act have had their rent raised.

The effect on council tenants will be very marked.

In London, tenants have suffered rise after rise, and the Greater London Council -Tory-controlled-has still not reached its fair rent targets.

In places like Merthyr Tydfil where council house rents are well subsidized,

SCAMP FINDINGS ARE

OUT THIS AFTERNOON BOTH sides involved in the council workers' strike will on the National Joint Council to discuss the recommendati Sir Jack Scamp's inquiry into the dispute. The employer the union leaders received the report yesterday, but it w: be made public until after today's NJC meeting.

JUL 1335C BY A WORKERS PRESS CORRESPONDENT they could triple within the next couple of years.

A new council house with central heating costs 36s a week there, while in Southampton a similar house costs Motor bosses worry over Carr's 'Force the Tories to resign' DOUBTS about the Tory government's proposed Industrial Relations Bill have reportedly been voiced by some of the 'big four' motor manufacturers in private talks with Employployment Minister Robert Carr.

Lord Stokes, supremo of the crisis-ridden BritishLeyland combine, was scheduled yesterday to outline his company's point of view in the House of Lords.

Of course the car bosses' hesitation is motivated not by any desire to pull back their political friends from their assault on working-class rights, but by fear that their attack will not be decisive enough.

The best way of giving the employers a real dose of the shakes is to unmercifully step up the campaign to force union leaders to fight them.

Convene

Tottenham, N London, branch of the Amalgamated Tense scenes on council picket line TENSE councilmen's pickets had to stand by yesterday as large forces of police escorted contractors clearing rubbish compounds in the London borough of Hackney.

Each contractor's lorry working in Defoe Rd, Stoke Newington, was preceded by a police motorcycle while about six police cars were closely supervising the work. . The contractors were called in by the Tory-controlled council whose leader has made witch-hunting attacks the strikers. _ Among. those on the Defoe Rd picket line was' Public Employees' union official Mr Nick Wright. Engineers and Foundryworkers is calling on the union's executive to convene an emergency meeting of the union's policy-making national committee.

It is also demanding that the leadership of the Trades Union Congress organize a one-day general strike to defeat the Tory law and force the government to resign.

Similar resolutions have been carried by numerous other AEF branches.

It is unlikely they will be it all satisfied with thi lecision of the union'‹ executive not to recall the committee until next year.

Official

Croydon's No. 6 AEF branch has called on the executive 'to make December 8 an official stoppage of all members to defeat the Tory legislation.

"This, says the branch, 'should be the start of a campaign by the whole The Hackney councilmen's strike was made official on Tuesday after most of them walked out on their own initiative last Hackney council tenants have blocked streets on several occasions with rubbish from the compounds after conferring with the dustmen that this would put pressure on the Council to concede the 55s claim.

On Tuesday night scores of police converged on the barricades being built at the tower block estates of Kingsland and St Mary's.

Early yesterday morning at least four Hackney streets were effectively barricaded with rubbish.

grow labour movement to force the Tories to resign'.

Shop stewards at Daniel Doncaster's Sheffield engineering plant have condemned the TUC General Council's opposition to the December 8 action.

They call on the trade union leaders and the trade union movement as a whole to organize for December 8 in order to force a Tory resignation.

The city's No. 2 AEF branch has carried a similar motion.

In Birmingham General Transport and Workers' automotive and engineering district committee is to approach other unions to seek co-ordinated action against the government's legislation plans.

Officials have been instructed to report to the committee's next meeting December 1 with an organized plan of campaign. to give as much time as possible for the fight in unions to build up.

The Leyland combine executive is to become the action committee for co-ordinating the fight against the law in the combine.

It was decided that the officers of the executive should attend the November 14 conference on the law called by the Liaison Committee for thé Defence of Trade Unions.

Yesterday's meeting refused to accept leaflet or letter raids' by the management of Leyland's 9,000-strong Birmingham Pressed-Steel Fisher plant threatening closure if proposals for a new MeasuredDay Work pay system were not accepted.

The stewards warned the company that transferred work could not be touchéd by any other plant without the agreement of the unions, and would be "blacked'.

See page four

No MDW in Oxford!'

'Chelsea Nixon's and Agnew's venomously unique campaign against dissent and students might have provoked liberal-minded people to protest at the strident atavism of Nixon's "philosophy, but the aim behind this attack was to paralyse the Democrats by torcing them to state an alternative.

Senator Muskie's speech on Tuesday night revealed beyond doubt that the Democrats are not only in disarray, but are completely bankrupt politically.

No issue To his TV audience he said flatly: ••. there is no issue of law and order, nor of violence. There is only a problem. There is no disagreement about what we want. There are only different approaches to getting it. The harsh and uncomfortable fact is that no one, in either party, has the final answer...

Scarcely concealed in Muskie's speech is the tacit admission that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans can separately control the giant American working class which, under the stimulus war, inflation and growing unemployment, is beginning to straighten its back and unleash powerful blows at the US ruling class.

Class-conscious American workers can draw only one conclusion from the elections and that is to start building now an independent labour party based on the trade unions and put an end, once and for all, to the cynical fraud the two-party 93s. Merthyr tenants can look forward to paying rents just as high as those in Southampton.

The discrépancies in London between the various boroughs provide an index of the extent to which rents can be expected to rise.

A recently built thrée-bedroom fiat costs 43s in Tower Hamlets, 47s in Southwark, 82s from the GLC, 132s in Lambeth and 163s in Kensington and Chelsea.

Triple

The Tories' aim is Chelsea rents for all - tripling the Tower Hamlets rent and dealing a crippling blow to working-class tenants.

All this of course takes place against a background of rising unemployment, skyrocketing cost of living and government strike - breaking against workers fighting for higher wages.

Walker's free market housing costs mean dire poverty for hundreds of thousands of workers and their families.

They put paid to any hopes of relief for the two million families living in accommodation declared unfit for human habitation, or for the hundreds of thousands of homeless whose ranks are certain ALL TRADES UNIONS ALLIANCE CONFERENCES Support Pllkington glassworkers and their right to strikel Defeat the proposed Tory anti-union laws SUNDAY NOVĘMBER 8 COVENTRY: Keith's Club, Cox Street, 3.30 p.m. NEWCASTLE: Royal Turk's Head Hotel, Grey Street, SHEFFIELD: Crooksmoor Vestry Hall, Crooksmoor 2.30 p.m.

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 15 GLASGOW: Partick Burgh Lesser Hall, near Merkland underground, 7.30 p.m. LONDON: Woodlands Hall, Crown Street, Acton, 7.00 p.m.

Speakers will be from the Pilkington LATE ULSTER ROADS SWOOP About 250 British soldiers and a large number of members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary took part in wide-ranging road checks close to the N • Ireland border yesterday to cut down the number of illugal entries.

NEDC BROKERING'?

National Economic Development Council yesterday discussed Tory public-spending cuts.

TUC spokesmen appeared to have raised few objections to NEDC chairman Fred Catherwood's proposal that he acts as an 'honest broker' to draw up a new tripartite structure—government, unions and employers-to discuss wage controls.