Steel sackings sign of slump

MEETINGS

Lessons of the postmen's strike.

BIRMINGHAM: Sunday March 14 7 p.m. Digbeth Civic Hall. Lecture Room 1.

LIVERPOOL: Sunday March 14, 7.30 p.m. Mitre Hotel,, Dale St. 1.50 P.M. Camp Hon Working Men's Club, Camp Hill Estate.

READING: Tuesday March 7.30 p.m. Trades and Labour Club. SWANSEA: Wednesday. March 17, 7.30 p.m. Swansea Working Men's Club, Alexander Road.

NEWCASTLE: Thursday, March 7.30 p.m. Connaught Hall, Blacket Street.

LUTON: Friday, March 1% 8 p.m. AEU House, Dunstable Road. GLASGOW: Sunday March 21, 7.30 Woodside Hall, St George's Cross.

ACTON: Monday March 22, 8 p.m. Co-op Hall, High Rd, W3. CROYDON: Thursday March 8 p.m. Ruskin House, Coombe Rd.

SW • LONDON: Wednesday March 17, 8 p.m. Unitarian Church Hall, Effra Rd, sw2. (Opposite Lambeth Town Hall). Speaker: G Healy (national secretary of SLL).

OVER Scotland and N Ireland there will be showers and sunny intervals, althou Scotland. Over mainly dry in E N England and N Wales it will be mainly dry with sunny intervals. S Wales, the Midlands and E England will be cloudy with little rain at first, but it will become dry with sunny periods later. S England will be mainly cloudy with a little rain in places. Temperatures will be near normal. Outlook for Sunday and Monday: Some rain in S England at first, otherwise showers and sunny intervals. Becoming colder. Marxist economics The revolutionary party and the working class stalinism and Trotskyisn starting CLOSURES announced by the British Steel course towards economic slump. Five plants are to close, making 2,600 men redundant. They 600 already sacked in the past fortnight.

A series of lectures at 8 p.m.

E LONDON

Tuesday March 16 Tuesday March 23 'o-op Hall, Whitney Chamber aw Avenue (near Barking St. Given by Tony Richardsor SW LONDON Sunday March 21 Sunday March 28 St John's Church Hall Clapham Road/Jeffreys Road Given by Michael Banda ACTON Thursday March 18 Thursday March 25 'Blue Anchor pub Rd (off Horne Lane), Acto siven by Cliff Slaughter CROYDON Monday March 15 • Monday March 22 Monday March 29 The Plough and Harrow Thornton Heath Pond Given by P. O'Regan SOUTHALL Wednesday March 17 Wednesday March 24 Indian Workers' Association Hall, From our Industrial correspondent So serious are the losses in the steel industry that these announcements are certain to be followed by at least another 5,000 sackings in the next few weeks. Other plants will be shut down.

The whole investment programme of the industry is now in jeopardy, and the much-publicised venture to build a new plant costing £1,000m will now be abandoned.

For several weeks 25,000 workers in the special steel plants have been on short These latest developments are caused by a rapid decline in orders from manufacturers.

Prospects

In other words, they. indicate exactly the real business prospects in the manufacturing steel is hit, chances of like Once a basic industi trolling the tendency to slump, even if that were the government's policy, are nil.

Faced with this fall in denand, the steel industry is also caught in the grip of the other basic facts of the world economic crisis.

Inflation has increased costs it the rate of £100m a year nd vet the real need of the industry is to re-equip with a big investment programme, in order to meet intensined ternational competition, especially from Japan.

Steel manufacturers all over' he world-even 'inadequate' profit returns on their capital The 15 per cent steel price increases which the governexpected grant will barely meet the increased cost of existing investment, and cannot bring any Nome so blind Close watch on Mrs Gandhi's promises LITTLE JUBILATION was emanating from the Congress Party camp following Mrs Indira Gandhi's landslide victory in the Indian General Election. As counting of votes BY ROBERT BLACK ran into the third day yesterday, Congress had won 284 of the 381 results declared compared with the 228 seats it held in the last 521-member parliament.

Workers and peasants deserted the right-wing Swatantra and Tan Sangl paror ine fist line they voted for. Congress, which campaigned on a programme of social justice and tough measures against the rich.

But Mrs Gandhi must Mrs Gandhi view her crushing victory with mixed feelings.

As Reuter's India correspondent Ram Suresh commented yesterday:

'She faces a tide of rising expectation from the nation's teeming masses, who have given her ruling Congress Party the absolute majority she sought...' 'Progressive' Mrs Gandhi told reporters after her victory was certain that her massive vote the progressive policies of the Congress BY A WORKERS PR INDUSTRIALISTS were yesterday urged to continue opposition to high wage demands by Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry Mr W. Campbell A damson.

Speaking to the NE Development Council in Durham, he said he hoped every management and every employer would oppose high settlements when negotiating wage demands.

If they did not, they would find that by settling high they would again find themselves in difficulties in a very short time. and the provision of minimum social services.

But she stressed that nothing could be done overnight.

Commentators in India do not expect any sweeping reforms from Mrs Gandhi's new government.

The only measures taken by her previous administration were the nationalization of major Indian banks and a crash programme to relieve unemployment, which has• so far proved totally ineffective.

There are 13 million unemployed today and the figure is growing.

India's undernourished, poorly • clad, badly housed and disease-racked millions will watch Mrs Gandhi's first moves very closely.

Promises

Drawn into political action by Mrs Gandhi's demagogic campaign against the extreme right, they will not be fobbed off by promises of a few tinkering reforms.

Despite its massive majority, the new Congress government will be a regime of crisis.

The deepening world economic crisis will exert enormous pressures on the semi-colonial world and cuts the ground from under capitalist reforms of the type proposed by Mrs Gandhi.

suspect ABOUT 650 workers at a alliance South Wales factory supplying Rolls-Royce, where engineers have been on a week-long strike, are to lose their jobs.

Teddington Aircraft Controls Company in Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorgan, announced yesterday that it was closing down the factory because it had "serious doubts as …to whether it could continue to operate' in present conditions.

300 engineers struck work last week over a £3 pay claim which prompted the management to issue a warning saynight. ing that industrial action would only hasten the closure. The campaign is part of La highly-suspect alliance which stretches from the S-CBI chief Stalinists of the Communabout Common he particular, 'THREAT'