SLL sends fraternal greetings to US conference

Marxism as today.

This we all understand can only be carried out in the continuous fight against our class enemy whose revisionist, reformist and Stalinist agencies constantly threaten to destroy the revolutionary vanguard.

Principles

For ten years the leadership of the Workers League and the Socialist Labour League have continuously upheld the principles of the Fourth International.

Since the occasion of my last risit to the United States there have been considerable change: on the international scene.

The coming to power of the Tory government in Britain last June tended, just as the election of Nixon in November 1968, to strengthen the forces of international capitalism.

But this has been more than offset by the revolutionary determination of the working class both in Britain and the United States to resist the encroachment of capital on their wages and working conditions.

To state a few examples: the postmen's strike in New York and the victorious Council workers' strike in Britain recently.

Although the capitalist class have been able to push workers slightly backwards in a number of cases this has been mainly due to the treachery of the reformist trade union leaders.

But neither in Britain nor the United States have the capitalists been able to inflict a serious defeat on the working class.

This is a source of great en suragement for, the Trotskyis Marxism Ve are turned entirely toward he working class Ne consider that the develor lent of Marxism can only t arried out through such ai orientation. tail-end shees orkir pay pious tributes to its militancy. but it is not our forev understand the movemen • requires us to plunge ever Union films highlight THREE FILMS about the Tory anti-union Bill are currently available to trade union branches, shop stewards' committees and other workers' organizations.

They form a hard-hitting, tightly argued condemnation of the laws and stress the necessity of a • General Strike to force the Tories to resign as the sole means of smashing • the Bill.

Shot in a matter of days, the low-budget films cost about £100 and were the work of members of the Association of Cinematograph and Television Technicians.

On January, 12, they were shown in work time to members of the 4,000-strong Magazine and Book branch of the National Union of Journalists as part of its protest against the Industrial Relations Bill.

The ACCT members who made the films are to ask the Trades Union Congress to distribute them to its members. They can also be obtained direct from the ACCT, 2 Soho Square, London, Wl.

Dustman

Two films are of the documentary type and the third was in the form of a satirical sketch.

The first film is based on a series of interviews with trade the Midlands and On, Ipool, ind one worker, after another spontaneously linked the fight against the Bill with the need to defeat the Tory government and all its anti-working-class policies.

A dustman instanced the victory of the municipal workers as proof of the strength and possibilities of working-class action.

Helend men at Pilkington's up, Helens works told how they had been locked out for taking sympathetic action even before the Bill became law. They were convinced things would be much worse afterwards.

A woman office cleaner spoke more deeply. into the historical. background of this movement order to understand philosophic. ally the particular characteristics arising from the movement of the working class.

Our two movements have been engaged over the past year in a serious study of dialectica materialism.

Mainspring

This is no accident. The movement of the working class impels us to use dialéctical materialism as a method of thinking—what comrade Trotsky described as the mainspring in the building of the For the first time since his last of her disappointment at the failure of the Tories to keep prices down and living standards She said unions were the only protection workers had, and that the Tories must not be allowed to destroy them. She called for a General Strike against the Bill.

Workers at the Morris factory at Oxford said their employers were refusing to negotiate anything since the Tories won power made to 'bulldoze, were "being them accept pay-and-productivity agreements.

Judge

A doctor and a teacher spoke of the way charges for NHS treatment and school meals would have crippling atiects on workers and their children — affects which the Bill would render them powerless to redress by striking for more pay. • Linking the interviews, a lawyer spelt out exactly what the anti-union laws would mean and concluded they would decisively 'tilt the balance in favour of the employers'.

In the second him, the role of the courts and-behind themthe state is punched home in scenes involving a judge, a worker and an employer.

No one could doubt, as the sketch concluded, that the sole defence against this vicious Bill, under which every traditional right and practice of trade unions would become 'unfair" and which will send many unionists to jail is to defeat the Tories.

For any who did doubt the effect the threat, let alone the reality, of the Bill was having on workers the third film documented the December 8 demonstration in London. anti-Tory fight historical fight. we are now in aposition to fully appreciate the advice which he gave in that fight: that the American Trotskyist movement must concentrate on teaching dialectical materialism to its members in a way in which they would be able to enrich and develop the party and the same time consciously raise their own theoretical understanding.

The more the working class moves in the direction of revolution, the more we must put into practice what Trotsky advised.

Gratifying

This is what the Socialist Labour League has concentrated on in England with some signifiThousands of trade unionists marched through London amid the amazed stares of middle-class businessmen to register their anger at Tory attempts to snatch from them rights won over centuries.

Historical

The concern of men who could remember the betrayal of union leaders in the 1926 strike, who could remember the suffering and hunger of the 1930s dovetailed with the historical resumé at the opening of the first film.

Trade unionists were reminded that it was the slavelabour conditions in which millions of men, women and children worked in the 18th and 19th centuries which led to the development of workers' own organizations. Dangers of soil erosion POTENTIAL productivity of Britain's soils is being undermined by the dangerously low levels of humus brought about by unplanned farming methods.

Intensive farming systems, the ploughing up of grassland and the disappearance of livestock from some areas has brought a drop in humus contedvisory uncil report pure lished yesterday.

Weeds associated with continuous cereal growing have also been causing anxiety. AN NH mt, DELEGATED BY THE &LL CENTRAL COMMITTEE DANY SYLVEIRE ADDRESSES THE FOURTH NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE WORKERS LEAGUE. cant results. Not only have webeen able to publish and maintaín the Workers. Press six days a week, ' we have over the past three months concentrated on a programme of mass theoretical work.

The result is most gratifying. Not only have we raised the political level or our member: but we are penetrating deepel and deeper into the working class and into important sections of the middle class.

The Workers Press and the expansion of your weekly Bulletin' have dealt powerful blows agains! the revisionists, especially, since your paper and ours • deal seriously with the political issués that are posed while the revisionists in their opportunist ways are picked he l sinter th businera men watching the march and pointedly caught a Kolls sweeping imperiously past.

It identified the. ruling class and their agents in the shape of police accompanying the march and in the form of the "Times' and "Telegraph' offices they were at pains to protect.

The class divisions could not have been visually clearer.

The importance of these films not just the clarity with which the effects of the Bill are documented.

They also show that since June, millions of workers have realized that Heath's Toryism means an all-out attack on the working class and trade unionists which only a political fight will drive back.

The TUC must show these key films to their members.

'There has been an alarming spread of grass weeds, the most serious of which is noW wild says the report ('Modern the soil').

Drainage

The use of heavy machinery on wet soil has also , créated serious problems which have been accentuated by poor drainage. notótious for evasions of such matters.

The year of 1971 promises to be the most important year in the history of Bolshévism since Greetings Enormous class forces are at ork, changing the face of the orld.

We are beginning to feel the first strength from these massive developments.

Your conference meets at a ime of great opportunity. It is herefore a very great, pleasure for me to convey gréetings from the Socialist Labour League to you. CPSU move to A FORMAL 'rehabilitation' of Stalin is likely at the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union opening on March 30, according to Czech sources quoted in Monday's 'Le Monde'.

The paper reports that Starikov, secretary of the Soviet Embassy in Prague, addressed a secret dinner for about 40 ultraStalinist Czech Party leaders last November.

Poison

Starikov said that events in Czechoslovakia must be viewed in the wider context of evolution since the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 (at which Khrushchev gave his 'secret speech' attacking some of the crimes of Stalin).

It was necessary, said starikov, to be clear just how tar (Khrushchev's) 'cult of personality' had injured the international Communist movement The present rate of aided field drainage is & yeal, with another for maintenance and arterial drainage.

The report says that: "Even if there were no problems of arterial drainage on any of the improvable land, at the present rate of under-drainage it would take well over 40 years before improvements considered necessary now could be completed' THE RECENT strikes in Poland have, if any. thing, speeded-up the political reasons for improving its links with the West.

STRIKE-BREAKING The recently released statement on the Polish government's foreign policy marks a rightward turn even from the pro-imperialist position of the Gomulka helped break, the Spanish miners strike on behalf of Franco and cement workers' strike for the Lynch regime in Ireland.

'rehabilitate' in Hungary and Poland, as in Czechoslovakia. And it was, be said, Khrushchev who led the way with his attack on Stalin.

He added: 'Khrushchevism is a poison in the veins of the international Communist movement. This poison must be eliminated if the movement is to regain its health.

"The last 14 years have shown the truth of Stalin's thesis on the sharpening of the class struggle under conditions of socialism and on the penetration of the class enemy within the Party.

'In rejecting this thesis, the 20th Congress prepared the way for the class enemy to penetrate Parties. The 24th Congress must repair this damage.' It is clear that Starikov speaks for an important, if not the dominant, section of the Soviet bureaucracy.

Idealism

Top military leaders have begun Stalin's rehabilitation in speeches and films glorifying his role during the Sęcond World The Stalinist thesis he mentions, of course, is the purest idealism. According to this 'Marxist', class antagonisms grow sharper to the extent that the social basis for them disappears.

But if we substitute for 'socialism' the rule o class bureaucracy, and for enemy' those who lead the struggle for the political revolution against the bureaucracy, the meaning of the theory becomes clear.

For the statement goes on:

'France is not, of course, the only country with which Poland wants to keep good relations. Well-known reasons• [!] called for the conclusion of a Treaty by Poland and the Federat Republic of Germany. . . . No one understands better than we Poles the importance of the new Treaty...

Neither is strike-racked Italy left out of the picture:

•.. we are anxious not only to expand our trade with that country, but also to bring closer together our political cooperation to the benefit of the cause of security' TRADE RELATIONS Never have Marxists rejected on principle trade relations betwen workers' states and capitalist countries.