Big U.S. aircraft competition grows CONCORDES 50% OBSOLETE BY 1972? "No strike' pledge

'It [Nixon's decision] is most encouraging, because it British Communist Party. reinforces our conviction of the commercial viability of , 1969) and SSIs. By the time the Boeing comes into service, towaras the end of the next decade, Deutscher Memorial Prize jury. Concorde will have been in service for five years or so.

By that time there is going to be a tremendous build-up in traffic which will require crimes. these two aircraft types to support it. They are in no way competitive' The Americans had no such 'Challenge' of March 14, 1953:

Opponent Mr William Hamilton, engineering director Boeing programme, said : on the road to communism... 'We view the Concorde as an opponent . . • people will ily on it in preference to the subsonic airliners which we produce. When our supersonic airliner is introduced there will be a sufficient endure through the ages":

number of lesser routes that the Concorde will suit.' What is the real prospect grave-digger of the Bolshevik Party. facing aircraft workers?

Previously unpublished testimony given by the US Aviation Agency to the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee in support of a request for about £40 million in SST funds has come to light.

This report says: If the US SST is as superior as expected, it would result in the gradual retirement of almost half the Concordes produced up to 1972' Massive blow Tanuary 10, 1953.)

This would be a massive blow against British aircraft eastern Europe. manufacturers' plans, already floundering in the cut-throat battle for world markets.

The threat to the Concorde equally fraudulent and reactionary. programme must now mean La stepping up of the attacks on the wages and conditions of this section of workers with the possibility of largescale redundancies used as the big whip.

The employers are now increasingly turning to their classic weapon to hit the working class.

Stalinism the next? In the fight against speedup and redundancy, the programme of the All Trades OVER a 1,000 ground staff at London's Heathrow airport British CP.

staged a 40-minute demonstration around the seven-storey control building on Monday in protest against the threat of legal action against three of their shop stewards. position.

All ground services were halted. Porters and loaders followed at all other times. joined the demonstration and passengers had to be driven to their aircraft by management staff. country'.

The three stewards were handed letters accusing them greater things. of inciting their members to illegal industrial action on Friday night.

The letters were signed by • British Airports Authority (BAA) solicitor.

This accusation concerned the resistance of ground stali and their stewards to a conbe nationalized without comensation along with the other asic 'industries.

The development of alternative leadership inside the trade unions around this programme is now the urgent task.

writer expelled from union IT WAS officially confirmed In Moscow Monday night that Saviet writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn has been expelled from the writers' union.

The decision to expel Solzhenitsyn, one of the leaders of the anti-Stalinist opposition in the Soviet Union, had been taken at a meeting of the union of the Russian Federal Republic last Thursday, though this was officially denied at the time.

The main grounds given were the writer's "black' attitude to Soviet life and his failure to take adequate steps to prevent his writings being published in the West.

This second charge is a classical Stalinist frame-up, as at least two of Solzhenitsyn's works have been 'leaked' to the West by agents of the bureaucracy precisely in order to provide 'evidence' now being used to expel him.

Stalin is dead, but the methods of repression which he perfected live on.

in airpol tract for ground handling awarded by the authority to a Canadian company.

The men fear that the new contract will bring redundancies.

The letters requested the stewards to sign an undertaking within three days to balt further activity against the contract.

Shop stewards are demanding the withdrawal of the letters, saying that blacking the Canadian company was not illegal and had been approved by the trade unions at national level.

The three senior stewards have discussed the letters with the Transport and General Workers Union's LONDON FIREMEN may resume normal working tomorrow afte having refused all duties apart from emergency calls for two-and-a half weeks. Their November 19 strike for a new rent allowance is alsi in jeopardy.

Firemen also ' report strong rumours that it is planned to circulate them with forms demanding the signing of a no strike?

pledge.

If they refuse to sign, say the rumours, they could be suspended.

Mr Terry Parry, Fire Brigades Union general secretary, has told station delegates that he knows nothing of this.

But Communist Party and firemen's executive member, Mr Ken Head, is believed to have told them that the Home Office might well move on this and that they might as well sell such an agreement 'for a few bob'.

"The last nails in the coffin', as one station delegate described them, were hammered home by members of the Fire Brigades Union's national executive and London Brigades Committee at a delegate conference on Monday.

On orders from the national executive, the committee structed delegates to call off their 'emergency calls only action and the threat of strike action on November 19.

REJECTED

By overwhelming majority the delegates rejected this instruction and affirmed that their stations would continue with these actions.

Brigades Committee chairman Mr 'Dusty' Miller insisted however, that they were telling, not asking, firemen to do thould be unconstifutional tind that any such action that they would have to face the consequences if they went If the firemen go ahead now, it could mean suspensions and sackings.

The FBU's reported agreement with the Home Office sole negotiating rights could further strengthen local councils in this direction.

No amount of left' talk from the Brigades Committee, nor its attempts to paper over executive, can concea union the cracks with the t march general secretary, Mr Jack Jones, and the union's legal advisors.

The Importance of the dispute is that the BAA is challenging the right of a union to defend the jobs of its members at a time when this question is being posed throughout industry in various forms.

The Labour government may have chosen to make the airport workers' dispute a test case in order to step up the campaign for legal restrictions on the right to strike.

Also in the background lies the airport workers' growing dissatistaction the attacks being made on their wages and conditions under cover of the productivity concessions demanded by the Prices and Incomes Board. crisis of leadership now facing the firemen.

Already a number of firemensome with many years of active union membership -have torn up their cards in disgust.

But many firemen stubbornly refuse to be demoralized in this way.

As one told Workers Press on Monday:

"We'll have to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and start over again—we've got to build a new leadership now!' MERSEYSIDE IN a letter signed by Mr. "Dusty' Miller and London Brigades Committee secretary Mr. Jim Stracey, received by firemen at the weekend, the committee , condemns the bellaviour of members towards executive members at last week's mass meeting and warns that 'those who resort to this* are not wanted as members of the Fire Brigades Union'. * Union leaders were forcer off a platform by a barrage o hour, eggs and tomatoes.

Northgate Hall St. Michael's Street GLASGOW Sunday, November 23, 7.30 p.m. Partick Burgh Hall (nr. Merkland Street underground) Speakers at both meetings will be: MIKE BANDA (Editor of Workers' Press) EILA TORRANCE (National Secretary of

Young Socialists)

Young Sooialists Canning Town Public Hall doors open 12 noon Can you sew? knit? paint?

make something for our Bazaar? give something towards our bazaar ? Have you a tin of grocery? jumble? Help us make this the best bazaar ever held ! Help us raise the money for our daily paper— THE WORKERS' PRESS Standard men suspicious of return terms WORKERS at Merseyside's Standard-Triumph plant returned to work yesterday after Il weeks on strike for lay-off guarantees and increases in bonus pay. Many workers remain highly suspicious of the By our Industrial reporter five-point plan for ending the strike put forward by the strike committee at Monday's 90-minute mass meeting.

Despite pleas for unity from Amalgamated Engineers and Foundryworkers' convenor Mr Bill Moore, a sizeable minority voted against a return.

'Sell-out'

It's a sell-out', one striker told the Workers •Press as he left the meeting "We don't know what we're going back on—it's 11 weeks wasted.' The combine should have continued with its action', heavy at times. Hill fog. Becoming brighter tomorrow with showers. Wind southerly strong, perhaps gale force veering westerly on Wednesday. Rather warm, maximum 14C (57F).

N.W. England: Cloudy with periods of rain, perhaps bright intervals Wednesday. Wind variable or southerly moderate. Near normal, maximum 10C (50F).

Edinburgh, Glasgow area, N. Ireland: Showers and sunny intervals. Perhaps some long outbreaks of rain. Wind southerly or variable, light or moderate. Near normal, maxiтит C (48F).

meotings OLLERTON (NOTTS)

'Lessons of the miners' strike' Saturday, November 15 Hop Pole Hote Speakers:

Two Yorkshire miners ELLESMERE PORT •Report back from the Motor Workers' Conference' Sunday, November 10.30 a.m.

Railway Hotel Little Sutton really know what we're gent- thought another. 'We don't Commenting on the conduct of the meeting, one trade unionist claimed angrily that 'the chairman closed the meeting when we were still throwing questions at him'.

Five points The five points put to the strikers were :

• Negotiations on a cash offer within one hour of a return to work.

• A personal representative of Lord Stokes to be presenNo staggered return.

No victimization.

Immediate reinstateof & shop steward sacked during the strike.

Nothing was said at the meeting about either lay-ofi pay, parity of earnings with Midlands British - Leyland plants or the amount of the company's cash offer.

The convenor had to plead with the strikers to return to work, saying:

'Reached ond' 'We can't go any further. We've reached tite end of the road.' Production at. StandardTriumph's Coventry plant would resume as soun as a full inspection of the position at the Merseyside plant had been carried out, a company spokesman said on Monday night.

'anti-Stalinist opposition in the world communist movement. The Deutscher Prize thus becomes all things to all men.

Doubtless some members of the Prize Jury-E. H. Carr for example—honestly seek to promote Marxist scholarship and research, and that is of course to their credit. But how can Johnstone even begin to make any contribution to Marxist theory while he refuses to face up objectively to his own political past? Marxism, the most objective of sciences, demands that history, including one's own, be assessed objectively. Jahnstone has consistently refused to do this. Instead he hides behind the meaningless formulation that 'old sectarian habits' ('Cogito', p. 2) are being discarded by many of the world's communist parties. The where does Johnstone himself number one question 15" 'sectarian habits'? He remains silent. Does this silence mean that he is seeking to use the Deutscher Prize and the various people involved in it as a bridge between the revisionist groups and individuals attracted to Johnstone's variety of Stalinism, and the 'liberals' of the British Communist Party? The IMG were so anxious to build up Johnstone as a genuine anti-Stalinist that they authenticity of the quotations from 'Challenge' that we have reproduced here from our reply to Johnstone in the January 1969 number of the Young Socialists paper 'Keep Left'. What mattered most to Purdie and the IMG was that Johnstone could serve as an ally in the fight against the Socialist Labour League. On that basis, he and the YCL were defended by the IMG. Johnstone is notorious for his anti-Marxist views on the in not countries. He is equally reformist and anti-Leninist in relation to the states, must all pass through a period of capitalist 'development' before carrying out the socialist revolution :

i.e. the Stalinist-Menshevik theory of the "two-stagerevolution'. an anti-Marxist, and as a long-established slanderer of Trotskyism, Johnstone has absolutely no credentials as a Marxist authority either political or academic, for serving on the Deutscher Prize Jury. The man is a political charlatan and an imposter in the field of Marxism. The Socialist Labour League will step up the fight to expose and politically destroy the influence of the Johnstones and their revisionist admirers, such as Purdie. We warn them that the fight against these gentlemen has only just begun. struggle for revolutionary leadership in the British working class today demands that such a fight be waged with the utmost severity. At all costs, Marxist principles and theory must be defended from the attacks of their Stalinist and revisionist enemies.