Mersey port bosses plan war on dockers

Congress.

Called 'Phela Ndaba', the title in Zulu means "The End of the Dialogue. Certainly the film made a powerful and moving case for why there can be no more dialogue.

It was made under the threat of the Sabotage and Terrorism Act and it showed the stark contrasts between the conditions of the 50 million blacks and those of the 3 million whites in an unusually clear way..

Everywhere the film made its point with stern economy and a powerful use of music.

Faces of black men and women and children looked out at us, mostly unsmiling. There is nothing to smile about.

No vote even, no parliamentary representation at all.

Fifty per cent of black children die before they're five years old. The average life expectancy for blacks is 34 years.

Ninety-two per cent of blacks who attend school leave before 13 and 15 per cent don't go at all. The average annual expenditure on education is £73 for a white child and £7 for a black one. There is free education and free school meals for everyoneexcept blacks.

The commentary was bare you there is nothing you're black. on apartheid made secretly zers of the Pan Africanist But it wasn't just the counterpoint of the oblivious tennis players with the gang of blacks heaving on the big grass roller nearby, nor in a paraphrase of Dr Verwoerd's words, the black children gazing on the green pastures where they will never graze.

Often the most revealing passages of the him were simple• sequences like the. misty damp evening in. the filthy. townships, with people struggling to find something human in the desolatian and poverty...

A group dancing in the far background of one shot haunted me through all the succeeding images in town and country and the gold mines; images of men women crippled and exploited; pictures of children carrying the distended bellies of hunger and malnourishment.

Slave labour

Many of the faces which looked at us appeared beyond suspicion or even hope. 87 per cent of the land is for the whites, the rest is too barren, bleak and dusty to support more than a malformed population with rachitic and trachomatous children.

The pass laws prevent free movement and are the main means of the control of labour. Curfews, constant harassment and arrest, slave labour ... a you peration which had lead these courageous men to fight back.

It didn't try to explain what policies lay behind their fury.

Members of a more militant breakaway from the reformist African National Congress, the film-makers clearly could not explain or offer any way out to the millions they so compassionately portrayed.

But the discussion which followed the film-fair play after all and equal air time to the exploiter—was interesting in one main respect.

The S African embassy refused to take part, despite voicing noisy and racialist attacks on the film in the press; instead, two Tory MPs stood in and defended their absent friends.

And what a warning for the British working class—white or black-they were!

Harold Soref fired a softening salvo by accusing the BBC of a consistent psychological war aimed at all the noble countries such as S Africa, Portugal, Spain and Rhodesia fighting communism. From there he never looked back. 'Phela Ndaba' ('End of the Dialogue').

A contemporary film 45 mins.

Now at the Paris-Pullman cinema, London Shown on 'Man Alive' BBC-2 last GENERAL STRIKE OVER BASQUE TRIAL THE ILLEGAL workers' commissions in Spain have called for a general strike to begin as the military trial of l6 Basque nationalists opens in Burgos tomorrow.

The Basque city of Bilbao was flooded with leaflets on Monday urging the strike, as 500 economics students clashed with The students had been at a meeting, to pledge support for six of the nationalists for whom the prosecution is expected to ask the death sentence.

Nine years

On the same day, a Madrid court sentenced another Basque nationalist-Sabino Arana Bilbao —to nine years' imprisonment.

He was convicted on charges of illegal association, distributing illegal propaganda, . Possessing firearms without a licence and shooting at a policeman.

Four other Basque workers were convicted on similar charges and sentenced to periods of up to seven years in prison. One was convicted in his absence. firms advice from Powell ary speech to date.

Speaking to S Kensington Young Conservatives on Mondas evening, Powell made it clea nationalized industries and the speradary ed ation and secial services must be the main tas] t the Tory government.

1he Conservative Part * materia barbiter rejects the state.

Hence the necessity of elim. inating state decisions or interyen is on cented as the touch stoneWhole-hoggers There is no choice here bu • be whole-hoggers - fror call for succulent morsels to private employers.

govern sive political opposition from Turning social services, 'less government.

It does not mean dismantlin he National Health Service o the state education system or withdrawing the state's ultimate guarantee of want'-all of which have in fact been undermined by the 'miniBudget' proposals.

Not choked What it does mean is that where economic forces will provide services within this area, we shall see that they are not choked or driven out by -the committee to manage the affairs of the stricken Mersey Docks and Harbour Board means a virtual declaration of war on the Liverpool Plunder state THE RESPONSE of right-wing Tory Enoch Powell to the growing working-class resistance to the government's attacks has been to deliver his most reaction-. port worker.

The committee's immediate problem will be to stave-off the impending collapse of the Board, which has already announced that it will be unable to pay off bonds maturing in the New Year.

But its long-term and Tory-inspired objective is to preside over the closure of the South end of Liverpool docks and possibly the whole of the port.

In its place Seaforth-a containerized dock at the Northend — will be developed and staffed by a much reduced dock labour force.

'To understand this one must appreciate the full depth of the crisis the port of Liverpool and its labour force now face.

Only one aspect of this is the mess the Board is in.

LOANS

Basically the Board is near 'bankrupt' because of overcapitalizațion. Its workers charge it with deliberately keeping dock and plant hire charges low in the interests of the shipping concerns that dominate its membership. Rates-per-ton in Liverpool are, for example, half those charged in London.

This has meant that income fromithe Board's operations. has ever-growing appetite of the state, but rather the state withdraws as the action • of individuals, expressing itself through market forces, advances.' Elaborating on this theme, he stated that there was 'no reason why the provision and the pattern of university education and of technical training at maturer ages ought not to be determined by a variety of forces, among which the economic motivation would predominate...

"The principle holds good throughout the social services.' In other words, whatever resistance, the party of capitalism must ensure that the dictates of capital are enforced in every sphere.

To complete the picture, Powell spoke of the 'noneconomic role of the state . in the administration of justice.

Mockery

"Today both the administration of justice and the means of detection and punishment have been starved of resources, he said. What is certain is that penal reform is a mockery when the resources are not provided even the existing range of penalties, let alone improve upon them.' In the face of mounting opposition to the Tories' attacks, Powell is now stepping up his campaign inside the Tory Party for the strongest measures to place the entire burden of the crisis on the backs of the working class, with no holds barred.

Lenter THAKIN SOE, whose capture you report in your issue last Thursday (and whom I met in 1945), played an important part, as a leader of guerrilla activity, in the undermining of Japanese military power in Burma.

BY STEPHEN not been sufficient to maintain the port and loans from the private market have been raised to breach the gap.

Interest payments on the résulting massive capital debt, now at £83 million, have converted small operating profits into losses in the past.

Throughout 1969 this situation deteriorated and eventually, when it was clear that the port was not going to be bailed out by nationalization, the Board was forced to go to government for assistance.

The Tories refused to inject public money into the port and continues to do so.

The oblique statement by John Cuckney, banker whiz-kid in charge of the five-man team, that 'there will be a re-capitalization on a new lower and different gear, can Only mean, context of Tory policy, that a substantial proportion of the Board's assets are to be sold or run down.

Cuts already announced involve the closure of the South end of the port employing 2,000 dockers, big redundancies in the Board's own maintenance labour force and stringent economies in all sectors of dockland.

But the Tories envisage more than a traditional rationalizaThey must also deal with the other side of the port's crisis the Liverpool docker.

CHARGES

Though dock charges are relatively cheap, Merseyside is an expensive place to load and unload a cargo.

Liverpool dockers have still not accepted Phase Two of the Devlin scheme and work under a multiplicity of piece and bonus rates.

These, with the ports's strike record and prehistoric cargohandling methods employed • by management, make docking at Liverpool a 'dear do'.

The current modernization talks between the unions and the Port Employers' Association have reached near deadlock. The dockers want £60 for 20 hours, the employers have offered £35 for 32% hours.

This move into the port by the Tories clearly indicates that they have called a halt to the haggling and are lunging straight for the dockers throat.

If the financial carrot will not lure the Liverpool port worker into the Devlin web, the big stick of closures, promoted by the committee, might.

Rationalization on the scale apparently envisaged would throw thousands of dockers into the unemployed 'pool' where they would exist on lower rates than those who are working.

CONTEXT

It is in this context of a large unemployed 'pool' that the current pressure by the employers for the abolition of the 1947 Dock Labour scheme must be seen.

If this legislation was ' dismantled, then employers could safely rationalize and push port workers off the dock straight onto the dole.

It would mean rationalization and Devlin on the cheap.

The final aim of these moves would be the concentration of all shipping at the new Seaforth container dock due for completion in the mid-1970s.

But to do this all militancy on Merseyside must first be smashed by the threat of the "pool' and eventual redundancy.

Again the Tories have stripped the illusions aside.

They want to end time-wasting negotiations, speed-up the development towards containerization and dispose of those sections of dock labour who, by their militancy, continually foul the dock employers' plans.

To do this in Liverpool they are prepared to use the ultimate weapon-closure of the old port.

Unlike some other Burmese Marxists, he never fell for the line that, in order to get rid of the British imperialists, it was good policy to collaborate with the Japanese imperialists. A A WORKERS PRESS PAMPHLET December 2, 9 and 16. December 10 and 17.

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