Teachers in militant mood

of Schoolmasters-stopped work in 330 schools all over England and Wales yesterday at the start of a two-week selected strike for their interim £135 pay claim.

Wales, the North West, Manchester, Birmingham and London were among the worst-hit areas.

Altogether, 81 local education authorities are aflantad ho the atrika Rail shopmen may strike again SCOTLAND'S railway shopmen have elected a rank-and-file committee to call strike actions if their demand for a f4-a-week pay increase is not met soon.

1,400 shopmen from depots throughout Scotland fan Z1 larous lant manhantino ahanst tha came out IOr 44 nours last Their stoppage was organized by an unofficial group which met in conference the same day, with 300 delegates attending from as far apart as Inverness and Dumfries.

They demanded that their wages be brought into line with those paid in the main railway workshops.

Under the railway efficiency deal, regional shopmen's wages were left out of line with those which applied in the main depots.

Fine job times

In the regional shops, which deal with running repairs of rolling stock, craftsmen receive £16 6s. basic with a £4 6s. bonus.

The bonus, they say, is exceedingly hard to earn due to job-times which • are extremely fine. railway workshop the main A craftsman in £19 10s. basic with better bonus earnings than regional Resolutions were passed at the delegate meeting to be sent to the leadership of the main craft unions and the National Union of Railway400 London strikers met yesterday in the basement of Hamilton House, the NUT's headquarters, and sent a solidarity message to fellowstrikers in other parts of the country.

The strikers' mood was clearly expressed in the roar of 'Nol' which went up when they were asked if they would accept rumoured offers of £84 or £100.

HALF-HEARTED Faced with this kind of determination, platform speakers made an effort to appear militant—-without committing themselves to anything beyond the present less than half-hearted action.

Stanley Newens, NUTsponsored 'left' MP for Epping, said the teachers had reached a high pitch of anger with the way their claims were treated by the 'community at large'.

The strike, he said, had "really, shown people right throughout the community that teachers mean business'.

Having thus absolved the Labour government, Newens went on to appeal demagogically for a cut-back in overseas military expenditure-the savings to be invested in education.

By obscuring the teachers' real enemy - the Labour government — the 'lefts' and NUT leaders are doing thei best to keep the struszle. an the level of protest, providing a safety-valve for militancy in 'selective' strikes, instead of making it an all-out national action. men protesting about the alsparity.

A motion to withdraw the payment of trade union dues was defeated, but decisions for the taking of further action and the extension of strikes to depots in the South were carried.

PUBLIC MEETING Czechoslovakia, persecution Soviet intellectuals and the Communist Party Congress Monday Dec. 15, 8p.m. John's Mews off Northington Street G. Healy (national secretary, Socialist Chairman: M. Banda (Editor, Workers Press)

STOP WILSON'S WASHINGTON FOR THE DEFEAT OF US IMPERIALISM IN VIETNAM DEMONSTRATION SUNDAY JAN. 11 ASSEMBLE: Speakers' Corner (Marble Arch), MARCH: via Oxford Trafalgar Square pa: MEETING: Lyceum Bi FOREMEN STRIKE: 150 foremen and supervisors at Massey Ferguson's Coventry tractor factory began a strike yesterday which could affect the jobs of 3,500 other men. The strikers say that the ompany has refused to recogize their union, the Amalamated Engineers and 'oundryworkers, at supervisory level.

LUCAS LAY-OFFS : Five hundred workers were laid off yesterday at the Joseph Lucas starter and dynamo factory at Hall Green, Birming ham following a strike of 120 machinists demanding a £2-aweek increase.

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