CELIAM SOFTLY, SOFTLY

anti-pass campaigns.

The ISL had to 'avoid a blood bath by preaching industrial unity ... This would ensure peaceful change without "such evils as the white workers justifiably fear"' (p.211), wrote the 'International' in December, 1918.

What this had in common. with support for the Russian Revolution is more than difficult to imagine.

1922 antiAfrican strike THE INDUSTRIAL Socialist League in Cape Town, similar to the International Socialist League in Johannesburg, published the 'Bolshevik' before the two led to the founding of the CPSA.

Before the latter was formed, the African and Coloured workers had begun to form militant, anti-colour bar unions and the African National Congress (ANC) had launched an anti-pass campaign, while African and Coloured workers came out in massive strikes.

The early "communists' largely turned their backs on these historic developments, which were greatly inspired by the Russian Revolution.

When white workers scabbed on African strikes in 1919, Bunting condemned them, but Jones and Andrews 'defended the white workers' (p.223).

When the ISL celebrated May Day in 1919, 'Andrews regretted the absence of Africans and Coloured' (p. 224).

The ISL brochure carried pictures of Lenin, Trotsky, Liebknecht and Luxemburg, but few of their real ideas.

The first major non-European trade union, the Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU) was formed almost entirely independently of the ISL's of Cape Town and Johannesburg. • Nor did they have a significant hand in the strike of 70,000 African miners in Februrary, 1920.

But when the white workers came out in a strike against the employment of African miners in skilled jobs, the early 'communists' came out in full force, as if it was the start of the long-heralded revolution'.

Nominally the CPSA was proposed in September 1920 and in January 1921 accepted the Communist International's 21 conditions of membership, with a reservation on clause 3, (on illegal work) so as to enable the Party to take part in (all-white) parliamentary elections (p.261).

The CPSA itself was set up in Cape Town in July 1921, with Bunting as treasurer, and Andrews as secretary-editor.

'All the delegates and members of the executive were whites' (p.261).

'The party's first manifesto appealed mainly to the white working man' (p.261).

The first test of the CPSA came soon afterwards, with the white miners' strike in favour of the mining colour bar and against the African miners, in 1922.

In November 1921 the 'International' , organ of the CPSA, said that the white miners were 'perfectly justified in & fighting to keep up the numbers and pay of holders of blasting certificates' (p.276). (Colour bar certificates reserved for whites only under the Mines and Works Att of The Simons comment:

This unqualified approval of the oldest and most significant colour bar on the mines revealed the decision of the communists to back the white workers against the Chamber in all circumstances' (p.276).

The Chamber of mines favoured letting cheap African labour do a restricted number of jobs previously reserved for whites. The CPSA did not think of supporting the African miners against the Chamber's multifarious colour bars.

The Trades Hall in Johannesburg was the headquarters of the CPSA and also became the HQ of the 'militants' leading the white workers.

Bunting called on African workers to support the white workers and said that 'colour bars were "of course unfair" yet served the interests of all workers "to the extent" that they helped keep up higher wages and the number of those drawing on them..

'The abolition of the colour bar would benefit only a small handful of Africans' , he said adding, 'security for the white man, on the other hand, lay not in retaining the colour bar but in raising the wages of Africans' (p. 281).

In January 1922 the CPSA offered its services to the strike committee.

The strikers came out with the slogan 'For a white South The Forsburg commando (anti-African vigilantes) hoisted a Red Flag and carried a banner 'Workers of the world, fight and unite for a white South Africa' (p.285).

The CPSA supported the slogan 'critically' (p.285).

The CPSA 'hailed the commandos as "Red Guards of the Rand" and praised them for enrolling in the Red Army under the Red Flag' (p.286).

The commandos rejected a Chamber offer to keep a ratio of one white to 10 Africans.

The commandos beat up Africans and the police terrorized and arrested the Africans rather than the strikers.

The CPSA defended the colour bar as a defence of wage-rates, saying that 'The immediate, partial demand for the retention of colour bars was consistent with the movement's long-range aims' (p.290).

After Smuts put down the strike with the use of bombers, the apartheid regime offered and gave the white workers a place in the sun, recognising them as allies in, the struggle for a 'white South Africa'.

Seventy-eight strikers were killed and 30 Africans were killed by strikers themselves.

After the end of the 'strike', Bunting wrote a pamphlet, 'Red Flag', which continued to defend the colour bar on the mines.

In its first major practical test, in 1922, the CPSA had stood on the side of apartheid and against the African workers, no matter what excuses it made for its betrayal.

This emerges fairly clearly from Chapter 13 of the Simons' work. movement.

with Nationalists THE WHITE miners' strike of 1922 was followed by the Labour-Nationalist Coalition, which replaced the Smuts government.

Major concessions were made in order to bring the white workers into the 'United White Front' against the nonEuropeans, and new apartheid laws of labour, land and the compounds and reserves (Bantustans) were passed by the Labour Party - Nationalist regime.

Under cover of the Communist International's directive to form 'proletarian united fronts', ', the Communist Party formed the opposite, a Popular Front, not with the parties of the oppressed, but with two of the parties of the Herrenvolk oppressors, namely, the Labour Party, representing the colour-bar white workers, and the Nationalist Party, representing the white farmers and small businessmen.

'Andrews, Shaw and Dunbar'. , write the Simons, 'appeared on platforms with Labour and Nationalist party leaders' (p.302).

The International' of June and July 1922 regarded this as a step towards a 'peoples' government' '. Essentially it was no different from the present Vorster apartheid government of South Africa.

Even reformist leaders of the coloured people, like Dr Abdurahman, write, after Smuts had bombed and killed African peasants at Bondelzwartz, South West Africa, and at Bulhoek, Eastern Cape, that the Nationalists would treat the Africans in no different manner.

Indeed, the 1922 strike, supported by the CPSA, increased the flood of racialism which, in turn, guided and was directed by the ruling Nationalist and Labour Parties, as Smuts' party had done before.

The CPSA supported this policy of racialism with their Popular Front of 1922-1923 and later. It revealed, thereby, the depth of the influence on it of 'white South Africa' and British social democracy.

In this period the CPSA, while backing white Labour and white nationalism, helped to confuse the members of the great African-Coloured Industrial and Commercial Workers' Union (ICU).

The ICU members had hailed the Russian Communist Revolution, yet here, in South Africa, was a Communist Party which was openly on the side of the 'white' oppressor his parties, and, thereby, against non-European oppressed and workers.

Moreover, the 'International', organ of the CPSA, attacked the ICU for being against the industrial colour bar (p. 307. 'International', May 18, 1923).

Further, at its April 1923 Congress, the CPSA voted by a two to one majority to apply for affiliation to the antiAfrican Labour Party (p.309).

The pro-Nationalist line of the CPSA was taken up by a section of the ICU leadership under Klement Kadalie (who in turn was guided by British Labour and trade union and also Liberal advisors).

The Nationalist Party, using the Popular Front, gave money and printed an election issue of 'Workers Herald', the ICU paper.

Kadalie's short-lived faith in enethe Com munist Party itself with these enemies of the African people.

This collaboration was seen as a result of a directive from … In tact Stalin) advocated the opposite policy.

There was a revolt of E. Roux and others against the policy of collaboration with the Labour Party and Nationalists, and the YCL was formed, with one of its aims to bring Africans into the E. S. ('Solly') Sachs, in the ICL since 1917, a leading Party member, and a trade union leader of a segregated all-white union, with a separate branch for coloured members, was among those who opposed a change in policy.

He defended separate organisations for the Africans.

Roux's group won the day but in 1924 were defeated when Andrews and others won a motion at the Party Congress of December 1924 to again apply to join the Labour Although at its January 1929 conference the Party eventually adopted 'the principle of complete equality of races' and called for a 'Workers' and Peasants' Republic' independent of Britain, (p. 352), this was little more than groups in the coloured and African unions and even 'bourgeois organizations' had previously spoken about and even advocated.

Nor did it put an end to the CPSA's colour bar policies.

CPSU against African union THE ICU had an estimated African membership of 120,000 by 1927. Although estimates varied, it was recognized as the biggest industrial union of African workers which has ever existed in South Africa.

After the attempt of Hertzog to corrupt it, it was heavily persecuted.

Kadalie's own nationalism, sharpened by the anti-African #1111110J11| closer to the main ideological influence on the CPSA in this period: British social democracy.

He moved into the maws of the ILO at Geneva and else-' He was 'taken in hand' by hand' by Fenner Brockway and the British ILP.

The Amsterdam (Second) International accepted ICU membership in January 1927.

The International Federation of Trade Unions, run by social democracy, welcomed him in Paris. Grimshaw and CreechJones, of the Labour Party's 'colonial' (imperialist) section, 'revised' the ICU constitution.

Despite this the British TUC would not accept Kadalie as a fraternal delegate to its annual conference 'for fear of offending white trade unionists in South Africa' (p.362).

In the face of wage and anti-segregation strikes of farm workers in Natal, of Natal coal miners in June 1927, of railway workers, of 30,000 diamond workers in June 1928 and of other African workers, the BICU leadership adopted more and more a British Labour Party and Fabian reformist line.

Kadalie admitted, in December 1927, that his new 'constitution' was based on the model of the best modern trade unions in England' (p.365), and Champion, one of his rivals, said: 'Our 1 Kadalie was full of English ideas' Among his advisers were British 'socialists' and 'liberals' like Mrs Ballinger (later a 'Native Representative') and Miss Winifred Holtby.

Finally, after Lord Oliver, Labour peer, had wished to see 'the ICU relieved of its communist propagandists' (p.360), and Walter Citrine sent William Ballinger of the Motherwell Trades Council to 'organize' the ICU.

There is a saying in South Africa that Ballinger did 'organize' the ICU-out of existence, with the policy of British social-democratic reformism, paternalism and collaboration with apartheid.

•Ballinger became the ICU secretary, president national council all in one' (p.375).

By the end of the 1920s British social democracy had helped to reduce South Africa's biggest and most militant African trade union to a shambles and a memory.

The CPSA's criticism of the reformism of the ICU did not put it in practice to the left of the British Labour Party. (The beginning of being 'left' in South Africa was and is to be against colour discrimination and other forms of imperialism.)

For when the ICU applied to join the TUC in South Africa in December 1927, Ben Weinbren, an executive member of the TUC and a leading 'communist, said:

'We were all scared that he would swamp us, so we rejected the application' (p. 369) ('Forward'), January 1, 1944).

Andrews, of the CPSA, was among the TUC members who examined the ICU application in a memo to the TUC of December 28, 1927.

The memo was approved by 58 to two by the TUC's segregationist leadership.

Apartheid white labour approved the memo of a leading CPSA member because it was basically in line with their own anti-African policy. Moreover, Andrews himself 'drafted the memorandum' (p.369).

Andrews was then secretaryeditor of the CP.

'When the test came', wrote the Simons, 'he made his stand on the issue of white labour solidarity' (p.370).

Once again the CPSA had betrayed the African proletariat of South Africa. WHILST broadcasting experiences its greatest crisis, those who own or control it are trying every move open to preserve their interests and power and to ensure that radio and television continue to serve the class masters.

One astonishing feature of the struggles at the BBC is the rapidity with which both workers and management, quiet for so long, are now passing through the phases of conflict.

From protest to strikes, to government inquiry — all in a few months. The weapons employed by the bourgeoisie vary very little, but they never hesitate to use them - however obvious.

In the November 11 edition of the BBC house magazine, "Ariel', which is sent to every worker in the Corporation, a message from the Director-General is prominently featured at the front.

Headed 'Pay dispute with the ABS', it goes like this:

'By the time this issue of "Ariel" appears, the Court of Inquiry set up by Mrs Barbara Castle to inquire into the causes and circumstances of the recent dispute with ABS will have completed its hearing.

'Its report should be out in a few days.

'Industrial action of the kind that took place during October is bound to leave an aftermath of problems— for the ABS as well as for the BBC.

'But I hope that on both sides we can concentrate on building for the future rather than exchanging recriminations. We need the best possible staff representative machinery in the BBC.

It will help to achieve this if we can all let bygones be bygones' "task force' in BBC's 'Softly, Softly, a programe aimed at boosting Frank Windsor (left) and Stratford Johns as the heads of the police Such a crude attempt to reestablish the old cuddly relations cannot succeed, but it can confuse. When taken alongside the flurry of parliamentary goings-on over broadcasting, it is certainly intended to paper over the deep cracks which have appeared in the once smooth facade.

But the cracks are irreparable; the conflict of interests involved is fundamental. The questions of pay and conditions, of the future of radio and television, of redundancies and profits and policy, cannot be met at Westminster or by cheery messages from on high.

The Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, Mr John Stonehouse, has been forced to make preparations for a major government inquiry into the long-term future of broadcasting after 1976.

It was only in June 1962, however, that the last one, the Pilkington committee, made its report on 'the future of the broadcasting services in the UK' and on 'what financial and other conditions should apply to the conduct of all these services' The bourgeoisie and its agents in the government are staggering from one aspect of the crisis to another. Workers will not fail to notice this desperation.

COMMERCIAL television, of course, continues to exhibit all the features of the same contradictions of capitalist In the 'Financial Times' (November 7), for example, Lord Shawcross, chairman of Thames Television, made his carefully-prepared pitch. for more profit, T21Y return on i capital invested in this most important industry, as it's called, Lord Shawcross took the line that programmes are bound to suffer unless the companies can retain more of their income.

He was at pains to point out that commercial television longer goldmine anot clearly indicated coming 'unless the government lake prompt action' holders may be going into the red after only the second year of the current contracts. Authorityne has estimated that The Independent Television during the companies will re programme ceive £100 million income from Costs are The government levy plus corporation and income taxes, will take nearly £35 millions the estimate seven in and million shared amongst the contractors. This is a shortage ol pronts.

And commercial television, need we add, is run purely and simply simply, in Scotland, Grampie its contractual obligations to provide local intercoduce to cur outs are now producers to cut costs are now normal. Granada, ATV big five London 60 per and Yorkshire, network programmes, are considering orming production move towards mergers crisis scale is always Smaller companies like Scottish TV are lanning a sales ampian er hist Nestward ana have already reached agreenent in this way and Anglia are said to be discussing ways to share facilities and thus some tish Lion (Britain's and British largest film production and listribution company) are buy Thames Television • takes 1 All round there is a flurry of defensive activity point which no doubt as a bearing on these activ les; on June 16 Mr Stonehous made a firm promise that thé evy will be reviewea it pronts estimatedins million fall to the estimated £5 going to hold him com aies are Clearly, the government to that promise ast weeks statement about the new committee of inquiry make 1976 clear.

the present chises run out and the charter comes up for renewal. By then more will have been Baed meaner and also found wanting. possible without Socialist No long-term solution ownership and control. makes that quite clear. An creasing desperation schede eV Times' makes intershowing through.

sting readin A Coronation Street' birth dav pull-out souvenir, a fullpade pic picture of Eamonn who returns would you believe it, with 'This Is Your Life'.

The only interesting shows Kestrel Kestrend Preyevision. London lhe BBC is in no bette state. 1 here the situation shows in a different way. Last week brought a pertect example of it.

Softly Task Force Force', lik ike tal Ce new ore or the at ha new image eficient. productive relentless ind always ready for change ast Thursday's episod was natures coppers and detectives concerned a shot of stratord ended lit i debate duned an his selves. The news followedard anNew Scotland nounced that four detectives under investigation in the cur- ent allegations of corruptior ad bee suspended. them is from the new re ask crime squad on which Force' is modelled !

PAGE FOUR WORKERS' PRESS December 9,