Unions must say NO MORE WAGE FREEZE

we of Ralph Schoenman TUESDAY'S statement by Bertrand Russell repudiating beaver many important politica questions unanswered.

reads: 'Mr Schoenman has not been my secretary for some three-and-a-half years Keso utions were bassed with full approval refrom memberthe board of the undation Coll Dall and benarine Peace Ltd. some three months ago.

For cons der l have a period than no contact whatsoever with Knowledge of his activities? schoenman Who is Ralph Schoenman ? The Socialist Labour League, indeed the entire movement have coolause look close into the man' c political We remember Schoenman firstly the 966 chairman the August meeting To e Solidarity Campaign when he closed down the meeting League (which was at that : camtangerous ropoin of the Stalinist bureaucrad tremnting tr betray the Vietnamese Revolutio. Wend his porters in the ot from Schoenman portersled the ton o bethe refused the right to criticize were not even members ol the campaign committee. Schoenman closely collaborleadership through activities The Restrand Russell Peace Foundation, under the poli man became involved in rotten compromise with Stalinism. Schoenman C1c.

as in the Marxist working-class movement. In she early years of his assocation with Bertrand Russell. deColin Jordan when he WaN sacked Trom teaching invoking right to speech Ernest member of the Pabloite United Secretariat.

This position revealed Schoenman man ent of Marxism. as an creasingly 1 flence the Patient rational ar han bean a one port Young can associate lordan Bob Purdie, both of the ING issell's Foundation now be.

ame ian, in the through SchoenminG activities las the ce to the wave or menenc Russell Peace Foundation's 'War Crime!

Vietnam n the course of the Tribunal' hame leaders. met North Viet- choenma: visited He later became the centre of an in, natio in tro British Passiona yed Col over to TIc authorities while he the Vierin journalist im Regis Debray prisoned in Bolivia.

order clear !? the rumours wara sirpy Hating exact at that time about Tween Schoenman and the letter' Enter contacted 'The Bertrand BIG TROUBLE for the Labour government's White Paper on prices and incomes, officially published today, is already brewing in the trade unions.

In the last six months, the Trades Union Congress's Downing Street undertaking to Wilson to stop strikes has been torn to shreds.

Bus and truck workers at Leyland Motors, dustmen and firemen in London and other cities, blastfurnacemen at Port Talbot and miners all over the country have contemptuously forced breaches in Mrs Barbara Castle's 34 per cent ceiling on wage increases.

Now, within what may only be months of a Tory return to political power, the execrable and cuts Busthe way LONDON'S PUBLIC transport system may grind to a halt on New Year's Day.

Underground drivers, guards and station staf may decide to join the city's 28,000 busmen in their threatened 24-hour token strike.

Such action would be an important blow in the fight against the Labour government's slashing attacks against wages, conditions and the services themselves in the nationalized 'service' industries.

More and more workers— hit by productivity deals, speed-up and redundancies resulting,, for instance, from containerization and 'one-man' buses-are being forced into this struggle.

Railwaymen's union members working for London Transport have been called to a meeting next Tuesday to discuss tactics in opposing cuts in Sunday services, railway workshops and road transport.

Talks

Officials will meet the busmen's delegates for talks earlier in the day.

Mr Alfred French, who proposed a motion to call a January 1 strike at Tuesday's meeting of representatives from all London's bus garages, says the busmen are protesting at being 'kept in the dark over the negotiations for the take-over of London's buses by the Greater London Council'.

They are also incensed by rumours of possible withdrawals in services following recent fare increases.

They understood that 400 busmen's duties were being cut by the GLC from January 24, said Mr French.

Decimated

Similar fears are expressed by a resolution which will go before next Tuesday's meeting of railwaymen.

'We have no intention, it reads, 'of allowing not only our earnings to be cut and our livelihood taken away Labour leaders want the unions to accept a 2t-4} per cent ceiling.

Mrs Castle's White Paper will argue for wage restraint on the basis that smaller, 'noninflationary' wage increases are in fact more valuable than larger ones •.. if prices can be kept stable.

No one will be fooled by such bare-faced deception.

In fact, according to figures published by the Board of Trade itselt earlier this week. the price of most retail goods has risen by at least 5 per cent over the last year alone.

Far from guaranteeing the stability of prices or rents, the government has in fact yielded to pressure from the employers to drop from its White Paper an ranging from cars—for which 'early warning' of price-rises has been required up to now by the government.

Made more confident by the cowardice of the Labour leaders, the Tories-as indicated by Mr Robert Carr's demand yesterday for action to end London Underground maintenance strike (see Briefly)-are preparing for battle.

They intend to go on pushing up the cost of living and are preparing for a major battle over wages in the spring.

Opposed

It is in this situation of sharply polarizing class forces that Trades Union Congress leaders were yesterday forced to come out in opposition to the government's White Paper.

Their opposition, however, is fundamentally weak.

The White Paper attempts to strengthen the arm of right-wing trade union leaders by arguing that there is no magic fund out of which lower-paid workers' wages can be improved.

Increases above 21-3} per cent just might be possible for the lower-paid, it is suggested, so long as there is restraint by the better-paid.

This is dangerous and lying nonsense!

The Socialist Labour League states unequivocally that opposition to the government's White Paper is a question of basic political principle.

The fight for wages is determined by the strength of the working class against their class enemy-the employers.

All forms of state intervention, both the White Paper and the re-activation of Part Two of the 1966 Prices and sinely rejected must be deci- Incomes Briefly TO NIXON TORY ATTACKS UNIONS: Tory MP Mr Robert Carr yesterday made vicious attack on the strike by maintenance men at the Acton underground train depot.

At a Wimbledon lunch he said it was 'disgraceful' that commuters should have to suffer 'intolerable' conditions 'just because of an inter-union squabble about who does Carr threatened: 'Interunion strikes of this kind

from us, but also London's transport system to be decimated'.

Some of the proposed cuts are due to be made from January 4 onwards.

The real purpose of prodecrigue and meaniest on — as the Socialist Labour League has always warned— can only, under capitalism, be to drive through such cuts.

Claims that they are designed to improve the services concerned are now being more openly exposed every day. Saturday at the Young Russell's secretary, whose reply we published in the June 29, 1968 issue: 'The situation is that Bertrand Russell does not know where Ralph Schoenman is •.. Schoenman has recently been abroad and could not sustain his secretarial work.

He has become an ambassador-at-large for the organization. Ralph Schoenman remains a director of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. that, Is no question about So in June 1968 Schoenman, on the testimony of Russell's personal secretary, was still a director of the Foundation and entrusted with responsible work, even though he was no longer able to serve as Russell's Yet at the same time, Russell (in June 1968) could not say where his 'ambassador-atlarge' was.

This also, according to Russell's most recent statement of two days ago, still the case now.

On whose authority then has Schoenman been travelling the world in his quest for noble causes to embrace? Why has the news of the final break between himself and Russell been so long delayed ?

How is it that a director of the Foundation involved himself in such vital international questions as Vietnam, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the Middle-East crisis without the knowledge of Bertrand Russell, who is, after all, the man from whom the Foundation takes its name? And if we look at the political WEATHER London area, SE England : Cloudy, bright periods. Wind light, south-westerly. Near normal. Maximum 6C (43F). Central Southern England, E Midlands: Cloudy, occasional rain or drizzle. Wind light. South-westerly. Near normal. Maximum _6C (43F).

W Midlands, Central-Northern England: Cloudy, some rain or drizzle at first, bright periods later. Winds southwesterly, light or moderate. Near normal. Maximum (43F).

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North-West England: Cloudy