Brandt govt under fire in W Germany

Coal Board during the strike. CLIFF TRUE, from Fernhill the rank-and-file committee y the S Wales coalfield.

He sees that dispute instrumental in producing the militancy now SO apparent in every pit. This and the actions of the lory government have caused the strike, he says.

•Many of our national executive will have to alter their ways. But I am not worried about them. In the course of the struggle a new leadership will be thrown up and those that stand in the way will have to go.

"There is a changed mood among the miners and the whole of the labour movement for that matter. This has been taking place now for some time and it is creating a great workers' unity.

"This is mainly due to the development of monopoly capitalism and its effects on the working class-this is undoubtedly throwing MINERS! AGAIN! RIVER LETE e Rhondda, was the chairman of led last year's unofficial strike on Cliff True:

New leadership thrown up during strike "The mood of the miners is such that those people who try to prevent the movement taking place on constitutional grounds are going to be swept aside. In two or three years we will, I think, have a different, more democratic union.

'You can see what this kind of solidarity does to the NCB. They offered us 10s more on the strength of the ballot. Just think what they will come forward with if we come out.

'The working class in NIV Despite right wing Yorks ranks determined to strike DESPERATE ATTEMPTS were made over the weekend to stop this morning's meeting of the NUM's Yorkshire area council following the strike lead of the coalfield's four unofficial panels of pits. ' Albert Martin, a TUC General Council member, called for the panels' disbandment.

NUM executive representative for the nearby Nottinghamshire coallela, he clearly fears that a break in the Yorkshire council's artificiallymaintained front against strike action will also spark his county's pits into life.

Rank - and - file Yorkshire miners at Yorkshire's Brodsworth colliery, who spearheaded the present movement against the Coal Board's 22 7s 6d to £3 offer, give equally short shrift to Martin as to the doom-laden prophecies of their own area secretary Sid Schofield.

'RED' SCARE

*Already the local press has started a "Reds under the bed" scare, Brodsworth miner John Martin told Workers Press. 'They say "Reds" are trying to take over the union.

•What they mean is the ranks are shaking the grip of the right wing.

"The Brodsworth rank and file was the first to come out. They voted against their own 'But whenever we've beén picketing, for instance, at Glasshoughton, union officials have stood at the gates urging the men to go to work.

RULE BOOK

'Every time there is a move by militant rank-and-file members, the leaders throw the rule-book at us. Last October they were telling us that there general and the miners in particular have been dormant for too long. But now every section of the workers as I see it are learning how to struggle all over again and the miners are no exception.

I am pretty certain that by the time this government tries to get its anti-trade union Bill through parliament there will be an entirely new unity of purpose among the working class than we have seen in years.' was a procedure for making the strike official - but that would take too long!

'But thére is a rule which says that if a coalfield is out, the national executive can make it official.

'Or all they need to do is call a national executive or a national delegate conference and they can vote for a strike in a couple of days.

'We were told by our delegate that at the last meeting of the Yorksire area council in Barnsley a resolution from Edlington-Yorkshire • Main— pit was pased, first by a show of hands then then by a card REFUSED 'Our area president then re'But now aring incial inst these right'Even £5 is not enough'Scottish miner MEETINGS took place all over the Scottish coalfield at the weekend and NUM area secretary Bill McLean confidently forecast that all 30,000 miners in the area would be out by this morning.

Rank-and-file miners at Midlothian's Monktonhall colliery, which led the fight against 'the NCB's offer in Scotland, told Workers Press why they are rejecting the biggest pay offer yet made to miners.

"It seems that the Tories are determined to take on the me is because the said lad Keggie.

"They have taken back things like school milk - a vicious attack against the working class and the gains they have made years ago. £5 is a perfectly reasonable claim for the miners, after it's already been eaten into by Barber's mini-Budget.' Bitterly critical of both the NUM's national executive and the Scottish area leadership, which sent them back to work just over a week ago behind a call for unity, he said:

"We should never have gone back.

"We should have fought to bring other areas out, even outside Scotland.

"The area executive should have sent delegations down South.

"The men are very angry here, where we're on a lower rate and the question of parity with Kent and Nottinghamshire under the National Power Loading Agreement has been put in jeopardy by the national executive.

If anything, it will only strengthen the determination of the men if they send the troops in.' Slap Unice Charles, who has had AS 3,800,000 W German voters went to the polls yesterday in the regional elections in Hesse, two important sections of workers in the Federal Republic prepared to fight their major wage claims.

Transport workers, including dockers, are demanding increases of up to 14 per cent in a nationwide claim affecting 1,200,000 workers.

And in a separate demand, W Germany's 170,000-strong railway workers' union (GDED) is calling for a uniform 9 per cent increase.

The urgency of these claims is sharpened by unrestrained inflation in the W German economy and union leaders, already frightened by the determination shown by metalbargain and manoeuvre.

The Brandt government now finds itself squeezed between the powerful resistance of the working class and the attempts of the right-wing Christian Democrats to procure the fall of the coalition.

In the Hesse elections Brandt and his fellow-Social Democrat campaigners have penly asked for votes for the Free Democratic Party (PDP) their minor partner in the national coalition, which is already mutilated by defections to the right.

They fear that if the PDP fails to get the 5 per cent of the vote needed to get any seats, the resulting party crisis will sink the national government. against Brandt is the ottrareactionary Bavarian demagogue Franz Joseph Strauss.

An article in the magazine "Der Spiegel' last week revealed that a year ago he held secret meetings with top industrialists including representatives of the motor firm BMW) at which they agreed to finance his campaign.

And last week, in the aftermath of a Nazi-sponsored demonstration, at Wurzberg, representatives of the German Communist Party in Bavaria demanded a judicial inquiry on Strauss and the lifting of his parliamentary immunity.

His statements are reported to have included clear dications that he would be Willing to use violence to install a right-wing regime in W Germany. cribed the NUM national executive's decision to recommend acceptance of the NCB offer as la real slap in the face'.

The following day, he lobbied the Scottish area delegate conference in Edinburgh —only to find area president Mick McGahey, who had previously insisted on £5 nothing, saying go back for the sake of unity.

"The leadership talks around Righting against the Tories, of told us, 'but never really comes out and does it— or really brings politics into the fight.

"They try to keep it on the question of wages.

It all the pits come out he strike need not be a lons one - we can win hands downl His family—he is a married man with seven children-are backing him to the hilt, he says. And, like him: 'Most men are determined to win.' Not enough Once top of the pay league nationally—in October 1965miners now fall in thirteenth place.

Unice Charles says: '£5 is not enough after deductions because of the cost of living.

We need at least £20 clear in our hands, not a €20 basic.' ALL TRADES UNIONS ALLIANCE MEETINGS 'No anti-union laws' 'Force the Tories to resign' Novemb Miners? St Ship, Strike.' Speakers: Trevor Parsons, Brian Lavery. Mersey Miners their disbandment they are rocking structure of causing unwanted strikes'.

The miners are demanding £5 to f6 a week on the pay packet and have rejected the Coal Board's offer of rises between f2 7s 6d and f3.

They will ballot on this deal - which is recommended b heir executive — in the weel ending November 21.

THE CZECHOSLOVAK government has announced that many of the proposals for production in the five-year plan for 1971-1975 have had to be rejected and referred back to With only seven weeks before the plan comes into operation, this means severe crisis for the Czech economy and for the Stalinist bureaucracy. ment splains of annourae •• • grave deviations in the proposals of branches and production-units which are opposed to directives from the centre'.

Under a newly-signed trade agreement with the USSR, the Czech government has undertaken to increase deliveries of exports to the Soviet Union by 43 percent.

Speed-up

This obviously demands very great speed-up and discipline of the industrial workers, and there is a considerable section of the technical. intelligentsia, including even members of the bureaucracy, who either sympathize with the present and future opposition of the workers or who hesitate before provoking it The government in its state.

ment consistentiy decided to stand original concepts of the plan for 1971, branches androposals to the ordered them over so as to respect strictly all social needs and possibilities'.

Skilled lost

So , severe have been the purges since the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968 that the country is suffering from the exclusion of thousands of skilled personnel from all branches of life.

The Stalinist bureaucracy simply cannot make the political changes necessary to rectify this position.

What faces the working class in Czechoslovakia is a political revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy and replace it with soviets in control of government and economy.

happen, then hit does way the Czech Stalinist daily 'Rude Pravo' states the ugly truth:

'At present the nation has no economic levers for reconciling the legitimate needs of the factories with the needs of society and must rely on political decrees and exhortations to compel the factories to work better at lower cost.' Such are the horizons of Stalinism.

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