Racialist Charter of Basic Rights Trotsky

no Tory government is going to take them off us.

The only criticism that I have of the Charter is that it has taken these kind of acts from a Tory government before someone produced it.

have some of the national press who like to pride themselves on being papers of the people, but they never publish anything like this. These clauses in the Charter are not demands, they are rights, rights won by the great men of our movement in the past, rights won by workers the last century and by the labour movement in this century "brother" and Words like "fraternal" to me are not just empty terms, they are part of the spirit of our movement and that spirit the Tories want to destroy. It is a spirit that goes right back to the Tolpuddle martyrs — men who went into exile for their beliefs.

When I go to management and ask for pay or better conditions I don't say, "I demand this or that," I say, "These are our rights and we are going to have them." That is above all what I like about the Charter-it's a document of basic rights.

The working class now have They fought for and won a substantial pay increase, opened a breach in the Tory wages policy and endangered the Postmen Heath government.

The guiding hand behind their strike in the London areà was the rank-and-file council workers' liaison committee chaired by Kensington and Chelsea dustman Tony Sweeney. In his own borough Tony and a group to move into battle and fight the government with everything they have got. This means one thing; the strike weapon-or to be more precise the General Strike weapon.

When I say General Strike I don't mean a oné-day protest I mean coming out for as long as possible until we win.

I agree with you blokesdon't just make the Tories sit up in surprise, but force them to resign. I would say that the resignation of this government should not be the ultimate aim of the fight against the anti-union laws-it should be the first and foremost aim, the demand for a General Strike to force the Tories to resign will acquire tremendous popularity.

That is why they suppress any mention of the postmen's demands and attack Trotskyists as 'sectarians'.

Follow

The Workers Press categorically condemns this eformist Stalinist fraud against the working class.

We urge all workers to follow the example of the postmen by making their union leaders fight to implement the demand: A General Strike called by the TUC to force the Tories to resign! Walk-out strike.

Weeks after the council workers have returned nationally the Kensington men are still in dispute — working to rule because the council refuses to make the necessary bonus payments for clearing the back-log of rubbish.

We talked to Tony about the Draft Charter of Basic Rights to be presented to the December 19 All Trades Unions Alliance conference.

it should be what the whole struggle is about.

This means all the unions must • band together in one fighting force - no splits. I think you could get a tremendous response from every worker if we went forward with this policy.

We council workers showed the way and I don't mean to be boastful when I say that we won a major victory in the face of outright Tory opposition.

If we can do it, so can all the workers. I was proud to struggle alongside the men in London-they fought, fought, fought until they had won.

On the various points of the Charter I like the bit about workers' control. Every worker has the ability to run his factory or work-place.

You might laugh, but in my depot there is a sweeper who goes into the library when he has an hour and reads Plato. Only the most ignorant people think workers have no capabilities.

The right of a worker to go Rumania is key in China's links with West CHINA announced yesterday that it will provide Rumania with a long-term interest-free loan. some city postal workers stopped work in the early hours of the morning.

Birmingham's head postmaster commented :

'I very much doubt if we have seen the last of this.' WALK-OUT Later 400 telephonists walked out for an hour and stopped all calls to the city's main exchange.

In NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE telephone engineers staged a two-hour token stoppage and in Lancashire 100 PRESTON telephonists walked out for 90 minutes and 2,000 MANCHESTER telecommunications and postal engineers stopped work to hold a meeting.

In GLASGOW workers were dealing with a backlog of mail caused by a walkout on Monday night and in CARDIFF about 150 postmen, sorters and delivery men staged a oneand-a-half-hour strike during the morning.

In ABERDEEN about 600 stopped work for two hours and the city's second mail delivery was suspended.

The longest stoppage iccurred in the Midlands at LICHFIELD where counter staff struck for 24 hours and closed the post office.

The council on which all five postal unions are represented is to meet the Minister on December 2.

Yesterday Ministry statement claimed that there had been no major policy disagreement between Chataway and Lord Hall.

It added that his decision. to fire Hall was totally unrelated to policy questions affecting telecommunications, Giro, the UPW pay claim or the superannuation schemes. Driving the Tories along the road ULTRA-RIGHT Tory MP Enoch Powell's demagogic attack on immigrant workers in Wednesday night's Commons debate provides the reactionary foil for Home Secretary Maúdling's proposals to introduce work vouchers—a major step towards direction of immigrant labour to be announced over the next few weeks.

Powell's wild outburst throws into relief the Bonapartist character of the Tory government. Frontbench Tories are able to plan their attacks on the working class using Powell as a front-runner for antlimmigrant sentiment. and settle where he likes whatever his colour, is also important. There is no racial feeling among the council workers and I'll tell you why.

The coloured lads were out on the picket lines every day during the strike and not once did I see a coloured scab — though there were plenty of white ones around.

Finally, the right of a sliding scale of wages and especially pensions is very important. I have never seen this in any other programme and I support it to the hilt.

There are men and women who fought their lives through for the working class for nothing - no money rewards only the pride of saying you are an upright worker who never gave in.

Now these people have to live on pensions because they never earned anything.

They should never be forgotten by us and I will never forget them. And there is one way to remember them -fight now for these rights.

The agreement, signed in Peking yesterday by viceprime ministers Li Hsien-Nien and Gheorghe Radulescu was designed to 'further strengthen the friendship between the people of China and Rumania and develop relations of mutual economic help and co-operation'.

Since 1964, the Rumanian declined to take sides openly in the China-Soviet Union •i Czechoslovakia HOST Rew there in thei well Frano ree i spin he r consolates i tree with his extreme rights ving IN LINE It is in line wi developing Red Guard movement by the Despite its verbal attacks on Soviet policies of collaboration with imperialism, the Chinese bureaucracy also seeks to make a relationship with he major capitalist powers.

The Rumanian regime ha a key part to play in this POLITICAL COMMENTARY The third leg is supplied by Labour shadow minister James Callaghan — himself an advocate of immigration control—who claims to be 'standing up for the rights of foreigners in this country.

Callaghan's own government before the election laid the legislative framework for Powell's present attacks with its Immigration Acts and its refusal to admit Asian • holders of British Tony Sweeney Enemies smash PRESIDENT TITO Yugoslavia has warned party workers that certain (un-named) countries were trying to 'smash' Yugoslavia by inciting 'internal quarrels.

In his speech yesterday, Tito said 'we have many foreign enemies, although it is not is ho all these are ear to us Yugoslavia, he added, w n a very delicate situation with every devil from outide trying to harm us 1 some bribe remate are becaus directed in have against neighbours to the East, and not only against imperialism.

Tito also confirmed recent reports that the Dinar would have to be devalued some time in the future, but that this would have to be preceded by a series of other measure: to 'calm lown the current economi situation'.

Bess as forted sork union leaders demand higher living, with there rising overnmer lanning bodies have call La policy of 'stabiliza ion' underpinned by sever restrictions on earnings.

NATIONALISTS

Recent speeches by Tito and other leaders have also sharply attacked nationalist Yugoslavia's six provinces.

Tro tian national 5,00 sating inks with the exited the last war.

sharp The cademato gall claims by the Brain parts opopulated minority that overlaps from Yugoslavia into both Greece and Bulgaria.

ow coming to bead, an ito will no doubt use t threat of 'external pressures' to strengthen his authorits to deal with the interna questions.

Jets bomb

Malaysian guerrillas MALAYSIAN air force jets rained 8,000 lb of bombs and fired 16,000 machine gun rounds in a series of raids yesterday on suspected Sarawak guerrilla hideouts.

E Malaysian Deputy Air Commander Lawrence Phong said this was the first time the air force had been used in anti-guerrilla operations.

There has recently been a sharp increase in guerrilla activity in Sarawak, a province of Malaysia on the mainly Indonesian island of Borneo. passports from E Africa.

Callaghan certainly has every justification for accusing Powell of creating an atmosphere 'which could lead to excesses like the disasters we saw in Nazi Germany before the war'.

What he conveniently forgets is the role of his own government creating these anti-working-class possibilities for Powell.

Powellite demagogy, with its absurd predictions of cities being swamped by coloured people, is aimed at driving the Tories further along the road to dictatorship.

• See debate new national labour contract.

Meanwhile Italy's major port, Genoa, was brought to a total standstill by a general strike called to demand a solution to problems caused by floods on October 8, and idence between the adminis.

new local economic tration and the youth of the policy. nation.

In Rome the secretaries of the national firemen's unions he time, causing considerable confirmed a strike call for discomfort on the part of the November 27 and 28.

warns The Congress is intended to be the platform for a. stern there is the threat of prison sentences or being locked up in 'lunatic asylums', as has already happened to dozens of oppositionists.

It is a measure of the resistance growing in the working class and the intelligentsia that world-famous artists and intellectuals, whose talents would guarantee them a comfortable life, choose to take positions in defence of the oppositionists.

EEC nuclear workers strike NEARLY •3,000 Common Market nuclear research workers struck yesterday in Italy, Holland, Belgium and W Germany.

They were protesting against planned staff cuts, which may reach up to one third of the present work force.