Briefly

£1,000 fund With one eye on the shares of flaredy mu foing Terrible itorial MICHAEL grow TEACHERS in several areas are becoming increasingly critical of the way their union leaderships are conducting their fight for a £135 - a - year increase.

How, many of them are asking, did the executive of the National Union of Teachers select the 300 or so schools that are to strike for two weeks on Monday?

Why is it not involving more than 4,000 of its members?

By 4 p.m. yesterday, almost 100,000 teachers had been involved in some form of action —local half-day or one-day strikes—in support of their claim.

The response to the call for two-week strikes was enormous. A total of some 5,000 schools applied to be called out.

DECISIVE

What is decisive now, in the face of continued government intransigence towards the demands of the teachers, is to step up the action.

Such a break from 'protest' GRAND CANISTAS BAZAAR Father Christmas 'TROUBLE-SHOOTERS' : A labour relations 'troubleshooting'. team has been appointed by British-Leyland's Lord Stokes, it was announced yesterday.

Mr. Pat Lowry, at present Engineering Employers' Federation director, will be labour relations director responsible for long-term policies early in 1970.

Mr. Barry. Mackie, AustinMorris division's personnel director, is to be brought onto the board to advise on day-to-day problems.

The appointments are clearly connected with BritishLeyland's drive against wages and conditions in its Midlands car plants.

UNEMPLOYMENT TRENDS: The Labour government's present policies will cause a steep rise in unemployment over the next few months, the semi-official National Institute of Economic and Social Research reported yesterday.

The Institute's report claims that on present trends, particularly if the credit squeeze is maintained, the slowing down of investment in manufacturing industry will mean unemployment above the 700,000 mark by the end of 1970.

VC-10s CLEARED by BOAC: BOAC has said that there is no question of grounding their fleet of 28 super and standard VC-10 jet airliners because of the explosions yesterday in the engines of one of its VC-10s.

The aircraft, bound for New York, managed to land safely at Heathrow.

BOAC is satisfied that there is no connection between the incident and the crash of the Nigeria Airways VC-10 near Lagos last week.

CREDIT DEAL: An agreement with the export-import bank of the United States, published yesterday as a white paper, establishes a further line of credit of £41.6 million to meet the cost of buying American military aircraft. Total credit is £355 million at 6 per cent interest.

This is the sixth instalment of the credit facilities made available by the American government for this purpose, and will cover the expected remaining cost of Phantom and Hercules aircraft.

MORE CZECH PURGES : The Czechoslovak government has dismissed the Director-General of the official Ceteka news agency, Jindrich Suk.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the Federal government presided over by Prime Minister Cernik.

Ceteka is the last sector of the mass media to be hit by the current purge of Dubcek supporters.

TODAY Young Socialists All the fun of the fair!

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