French Stalinists slander 'leftists'

drain reserves TREASURY officials in Washington are becoming very anxious about the accelerating drain on US gold reserves.

Official foreign claims against US gold stocks rose by around £770 million in the three months ending September 30.

The total' amount claimable against the US gold reserves in Fort Knox now amounts to $18,500 million.

This sum represents the dollars held by foreign central banks which the US Treasury is pledged to exchange for gold at the rate of $35 an ounce.

Total US reserve assets stand at only $15,500 million —a graphic illustration of the US economic crisis.

« 84522 (al)= THES WL NO 'L'HUMANITE', the French Communist Party daily paper, yesterday set the tone for the sort of slanders and insinuations which must be expected by those who fight for a revolutionary leadership in the working-class movement.

WEATHER WALES and the S half of England will have bright periods at first, but rain will spread from the W across much of the area during the daN England, Ireland and Sand E Scotland will have showers and bright periods, but there may be more prolonged periods of rain later.

N and W Scotland will have showers, heavy and prolonged at times, with some snow falling on high ground.

Temperatures will be near or rather below normal.

- I INTO"

ERVIE.

The first in a series by Alain Guerin on 'Some particular aspects of Leftism', its sole purpose is to smear as 'criminal' and 'police agents' all those who fight Stalinism with class policies.

Discussion of political differences does not enter into Guerin's method. As he himself puts it:

'There will be no political analysis of the leftists' attitudes, nor of the evolution of their different tendencies, nor a list of their organizations, usually tiny, nor their publications, nor portraits of their Leader forms and speech of their lyrical slogans, an anatomy of what is called "the leftist environment", nor autopsies on their abandoned projects, nor a list of their successful provocations.

INSINUATION

What, then, can Guerin offer? Evidently nothing but allegation and insinuation, or, to use his own phrase:

some flashes of light in shadowy areas. Some facts. Some men. Some mysteries.' And there are indeed mysteries.

Guerin goes on with a list of individuals who have been associated with (usually unspecified) left-wing groups, and who came, he says, from either a criminal background or the extreme right wing.

Of the ten he writes of in the first article, seven are not namu beened on their (alleged) surnames.

This is the mark of fabrication and slander at its worst.

It is fully in line with Guerin's failure to identify a single left-wing organization by name.

FALSEHOODS

In their haste to bolster the frequent allegations by leading members of the French Party that Trotskyists, Maoists and anarchists are all 'fascists of the left' controlled by the Minister of the Interior, the Stalinists and their press are scraping the bottom of their barrel of slanderous falsehoods.

Guerin's articles provide a warning for the international labour movement that the methods with which Stalinism hunted down and vilified the Communist Opposition in the 1930s are not dead, but being refurbished to answer the growing revolt against "peaceful co-existence' in the Stalinist movement itself.

In 1970, however, with the growing international strength of the Trotskyist movement, and the publication of the first-ever Trotskyist daily paper in Britain, the liemongers will find no easy victims.

The complete series of Guerin's article will be the subject of a full reply at a later date.

Elements Lectures by M. BANDA (Editor of Workers Press) BARKING p Hall, Whitney Chambers Fanshawe Ave. 8 p.m.

Lectures by G.

NEWCASTLE

Sunday, November 29 Les C. SL (Central Committee SHEFFIELD Sunday November 22 LIVERPOOL 'ednesday November 25 al Institution, Colquitt St ear Bold St). 7.45 p.m. 86a, LECTUR Marxism mportance of Marxist philosophy building of the revolutionary party

Monday

Monday Healy tures by AUGHTER of Socialist Labour League)

Crooksmoor Vestry Hall Crooksmoor Rd, Sheffield 7.30 p.m.

OXFORD Thursday November 19 Thursday November 26 Northgate Hall. 8 p.m.

An All Trades Unions Alliance pamphlet Measures Day Work and Productivity Deal Swindle Now ll werks and low to fight i!

Packed with information on types of deals 160 pages Illus. 3s hope that such talks may develop into direct contacts with the Arab states and that those talks might bring about the signing of peace treaties.' It would be completely in line with her policy for Mrs Meir to prepare the way for such an agreement by secret talks with Hussein, the most openly pro-imperialist and anti-guerrilla of the Arab leaders.

It is reported that during the desert meetings King Hussein and Allon disguised themselves in sunglasses and slouch hats.

PAPER REPORTS

papers, Maariv. evening news- Both Israel's Ahronot', said yesterday that the last series of meetings between the two men took place in October on the IsraeliJordan border in the desert South of the Dead Sea.

'Yediot Ahronot', quoting Jerusalem sources, said vious meetings were held sea, in London and in Switzerland when King Hussein went abroad for medical treatment.

Foreign Minister Abba Eban attended some of the meetings and Defence Minister General Moshe Dayan had been invited, but always declined, the paper said.

General Allon spoke Arabic and English while Mr Eban, who is an oriental scholar, tried out his classical Arabic on the King, the report said.

Neither newspaper was specific about the topics discussed.

The attorney-general's office is now considering whether to take action against three foreign correspondents who wrote the story without submitting it to censorship when they learned it had appeared in "Time' magazine.

The censor is still investigating how the story got to 'Time' and whether the magazine's correspondents were involved in sending it out in violation of censorship.

November November and M. Banda Hotspur Hotel Haymarket 7.30 p