Railmen oppose 9p.c. offer

SCARBOROUGH 1971 April Young THE employer's offer of 9 per cent pay increases for railwaymen met strong opposition from many workers yesterday.

For large sections of the country's rail workers it immediately revived the lessons of the still unsettled postal dispute.

'The best move our leadership could have made was to have joined the postmen when they were on strike, James McCarthy, a porter at London's Euston station, told us.

He thought the offer was 'disgraceful to men who had asked for 25 per cent'.

The Tory government in his opinion had 'gone too far with the postmen.

'But it also showed how harsh they intend to be with other workers?

One of his workmates Euston, Hopton Jones, a train Heath-Ford driver, explained that they faced . the same dangers as the postmen.

'Postmen were absolutely betrayed because Jackson was scared of Heath and his government, he said.

The railway unions, he said, were weaker in militancy because:

'When it comes to a confrontation we don't have much of a chance because our leaders stand in the middle.' Some workers expressed fear that aceptance of 9 per cent or anything slightly better would certainly be tied to productivity deals.

But what are they going to give away this time?' questioned a train driver from Bristol.

'We have such a bad record of productivity dealing, we haven't got much left to sell.' The offer, he said was completely out of proportion with price increases' and felt that strike action was necessary 'not only over the pay claim, but against the Industrial Relations Bill as well'. are sufficient proof that the task of the TUC is not to try and reform this bunch of arrogant Tories, but to make them resign and replace them with a Labour government that will put an end to the Tory counter-revolution.

This can and will be done only by the maximum exercise of the power of the trade unions through an indefinite General Strike.

General Strike and not another step back — that must be the clarion call from Croydon on March 18. A WIDE SELECTION OF MARXIST UTERATURE WRITE OFF TO NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS 186A CLAPHAM HIGH ST, SWA.

BOOKS L. TROTSKY: GERMANY 1931/1932 paperback WHERE IS BRITAIN GOING ? HISTORY OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 3 vols AGE OF PERMANENT REVOLUTIC REVOLUTION BETRAYED PROBLEMS OF CHINESE REVOLUTION paperback PERMANENT REVOLUTION, RESULTS & PROSPECTS R. BLACK: STALINISM IN BRITAIN paperback PAMPHLETS L. TROTSKY DEATH AGONY OF CAPITALISM (The Transitional Programme) 5p • CLASS NATURE OF THE SOVIET STATE CLASS AND ART MARXISM AND TRADE UNIONS Please tick those books required NAME...

ADDRESS Amount enclosed £ each pamphlet 10p postage for each book. Complete form and send money to : New Park Publications, 186a Clapham High St, London, SW4. VOTING in the first roi elections reflects grow: the working class and More than any previous local election held under the Fifth Republic, voters have grouped themselves around the country's two main parties-the Stalinist-led Communist Party and the ruling Gaullist UDR.

There were wholesale named "Centre Party" aptly desertions from the other middle-of-the-road formations.

Yet even with their increased vote- 40.3 per cent as against 31.6 in 1965- the Gaullists have failed in their campaign to capture the municipalities of the large industrial cities.

£1.25 cloth {1.87} 37}p {1.50 45p paperbar cloth cloth £1.25 {1.12} cloth £2.00 20p 10p 174p plus 3p postage for nd of France's municipal ig polarization between he Pompidou regime.

Prime Minister linister, Chabane Only in where Delmas presides over a precarious anti-socialist coalition, do the Gaullists control an important French city. They lost Calais, Nevers and Laval.

The stubborness and consistency with which the French working class plumped for Communist Party-and, to a far lesser extent, Socialist Party - candidates is the Achilles heel of the Pompidou regime.

Its complete inability, despite the opportunist policies of the Stalinist leaders in the CP and the CGT trade unions, to make any inroads into the ranks of the French working class compel it to lean for mass. support on the rural population and the small-town middle class.

But the rapid growth of large-scale capitalist farming is now undermining the mass basis of Gaullist rule.

REVOLTS

Peasants, growers. Alsace dairy farmers are all turning violent revolts against Pompidou's ruinous economic policies, which favour only the biggest and most competitive producers.

Meanwhile a spate of strikes has hit all the docks and airlines, the huge Creusot-Loire engineering works at Batignolles, the Lorraine coalfields, the General Motors' gearbox plant at Strasbourg and the Pyrenees-Biarritz Snoe plant, which, after its owners went bankrupt, has been occupied by its workers.

These class tensions also find their expression in the growth of ultra-rightist and fascist groups - notably the 'New Order' group, which last week staged provocative rally at the Paris Palais Des Sports, calling for a "tough' government that would 'clean up the leftist mess'.

UNDEFEATED

But the French working class remains undefeated.

Its decisive vote for the CP list does not necessarily imply confidence in that Party's Stalinist leadership.

On the contrary, many French workers are very wary of Duclos, Marchais, Rochet and Seguy after their great betrayal of the 1968 May-June General Strike.

The line-up of class forces is unfolding all over Europe.

British and French workers now confront basically the same tasks - the defeat of right wing, Bonapartist regimes through the construction of a revolutionary leadership able to expose and defeat both reformism and Stalinism.