Vietnam debate a farce

By a Workers BY 196 VOTES to 57 the Labour 'lefts'' motion to adjourn the House was defeated. As we predicted yesterday the debate was a farce.

The agony of Vietnam was buried under a pile of demagogic platitudes and effusions of simulated sympathy and stabs of rhetoric.

Will!!

But Wilson's policy despite, or rather because of the Labour 'lefts' , remained inflexibly firm.

He first attacked Greece to get the Labour benches on his side.

'Britain, he said, 'will have to vote for the suspension of Greece from the Council of Europe?

After this meaningless gesture, guaranteed to raise a belly laugh from the colonels and their torturers in Bouboulinas St. Athens, Wilson proceeded to evade deftly the issues of the Like a Pentagon lawyer, Wilson argued cogently for the defence of the inspirers of the 'Pinkville' massacre known as the Vietnam war.

Referring to 'Pinkville' he asked, 'Is it an aberration or part of a policy of atrocities consciously followed out as part of a strategic pattern ? ' His answer should be branded on the foreheads of every 'left' MP who thinks Wilson can or will speak for labour in Washington :

I am certain most MPs will reject any suggestion that this is or has been part of the top direction of the wax, either at political or high strategic level' UNCONVINCING This statement might convince the credulous and the naive, but it will not convince those who today see the war as the continuation of 'politics by other means' The lie to this version of VISIT!

Briefly PROFITS UP: The Rugby Portland Cement Company's half-yearly profits have increased from £2,096,952 to £2,415,640 in the first half of this year following the recent government-approved cement price increase.

Barclays Bank DCO (Barclay's overseas banking subsidiary) has increased its net profit by £670,000 to £5.17 million for the year ended September 30, 1969.

Spear and lackson-the steel and tool makers—on the basis of half-yearly profits of £274,000, have announced that their target of a 20 per cent profit increase for the full year should be easily attained.

BBC DEFICIT GROWS: The BBC's annual report has shown that the Corporation's home radio and television service ran at a deficit of £4,456,000 in the year ended March, 1969.

The size of the deficit— more than double the previous year's figure-will increase the pressure on BBC workers for greater productivity and throw the BBC's big expansion plans yet more into question.

The report blames the deficit chiefly on the government's delay in introducing the £6 combined radio and television licence fee, but also cites increasing SET and national insurance costs, and the ineffectiveness of the campaign to enforce the buying of licences.

TRAILER - LORRY MANNING: Minister of Transport Fred Mulley yesterday published proposed amendments to the Construction and Use regulations which would remove the requirement for a vehicle pulling a trailer to carry a second driver.

A deadline for comments on the proposals has been set by the Ministry of Transport for mid-January 1970. "ten rati BRS STRIKE : About 2,500 British Road Services drivers and loaders returned to work yesterday following Monday's shop stewards' meeting which voted by a small majority to accept the management's offer of £3-a-week more but with productivity strings.

Many BRS stewards and workers are angry that their £4 claim with no strings for which they struck, has not been fought for to the

Wilson's story is given by none other than the exdeputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Affairs, Townsend Hoopes. In his book on the workings of the Pentagon ('The Limits of Intervention', ', David McKay), he recalls how his boss, John T. McNaughton, came back from a White House conference on the war held in Spring 1967 and said :

«We seem to be proceeding on the assumption that the way to eradicate the Vietcong is to destroy all the village structures, defoliate all the jungles, and then cover the entire surface of South Vietnam with asphalt.' This was the 'top direction of the war' , no matter how much Wilson and Brown dissimulate.

Hoopes, as additional evidence, adduces the fact that when McNamara, appalled by the work of his own military Frankenstein, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee on the futility of bombing the North, Johnson replied brutally :

'Mr McNamara has gone doveish on me?