Y.S. LOOKS TOWARDS 1970 WITH CONFIDENCE

More docks redundancies on the way DOCK employers are expected to ask the government next month for another big loan to finance the voluntary severance scheme in the Unable-for fear of provoking an open confrontation with the dockersto use the direct methods of sackings to cut down the labour force in preparation for the implementation of Devlin Phase Two, the employers have had to hand out large severance payments averaging €1,700 per docker to induce men to leave their jobs.

Since the scheme began in July 3,069 dockers have and ted er a are to te offered severance in the near future.

These payments have already used up the govern. nent's frst loan of £3.5 mil. lion.

The government is, in other words, to be made directly responsible for the Devlin scheme's implementation.

The reduction in the labour force is part of the continual drive for speed-up which will take place under Phase Two.

The employers want to put dockers on the vicious productivity merry-go-round if they can.

They argue that productivity must be increased, otherwise work will be lost to other more competitive ports.

But, of course, increased productivity leads to fewer jobs and the whole cycle starts again.

On the London docks alone the employers want to pay off another 1,400 men by March.

The London labour force has already been reduced by 5,300 to 23,500 over the past two years.

The employers, need as one newspaper put it, 'young fit men able to cope with higher output targets and more complicated cargo - handling methods.

Only a direct fight against the Devlin scheme and not, as the Communist Party advocates, pressure for "better redundancy pay', can answer this treacherous policy. Petition grows stop Wilson's Washington AND STILL they pour in. Below are listed the latest signatures to the Workers Press petition against Wilson's planned visit to Nixon next year, which can only be seen as condoning the recently-exposed atrocities. LEEDS branch committee of Dyers, Bleachers and Textile Workers' Union has supported the campaign to stop Wilson's visit to the archimperialist Nixon.

The Workers Press petition was also signed by a total of 53 teachers demonstrating through Leeds in support ol their £135-a-year pay claim last week.

TWO Communist Party members were among a number of miners who signed at the Kent coalfield's Betteshanger pit. 20 University of Kent students have also signed.

44 DELEGATES to the General Union of Arab visit Students' conference on Sunday—reported in yesterday's campaign to stop the visit.

IN LONDON, 23 Union of Post Office Workers members bers at King's Cross GPO mail van depot and West Central sorting office have signed the petition; seven NUR members from King's Cross station; five student nurses from University College hospital and eight students at Kensington's Imperial College.

16 members of the Schools Action Union signed outside their conference in London at the weekend.

12 Workers Press subscribers in Euston have written to say that they are in favour of the greatest possible mobilization of the labour and trade union movement to stop Wilson's visit.

During a highly-successful Young Socialists seen voting for their programme at one of 1970 WILL be the 'Year of Lenin and Trotsky' for the Young Socialists—a year in which item number one on the agenda is the building of a mass revolutionary youth movement.

The Young Socialists have By a Workers Press pledged themselves to poli- correspondent tically commemorate 100 years since the birth of Lenin and 30 years since the death of Trotsky with a programme of expansion for their youth paper Keep Left and recruitment never before embarked upon by this youth movement.

Already YS branches up and down the country are driving full steam ahead for the first great event in 1970, the Weekend Rally of their paper on january 10 and 1] (see page four advertisement).

Right from the word 'go' grows to campaign by. West London Young Socialists, J. J. Capper (a visiting member of the Australian Communist Party) and member of South Paddington Communist Party signed the Workers Press petition.

40 pupils at Marylebone Central School and 23 at Ackland Brighley School, Tufnell Park, have signed the Bob Sugdon, Deptford International_ Socialism, P. S. Dowden, Young Communist League, Bill Greenshields and R. Moydes, Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) have also signed.

CAMPAIGNS by Crawley and North Kent Young Socialists brought in, respectively, 182 and 150 signatures. 28 ATTI and National Union of Students members-including members of the Young Socialist Student Society, the International Marxist Group LEON TROTSKY •.. AM SURE.. W THE VICIORE ISF last weekend's rallies. this campaign has got off to a particularly good start.

Branches are finding an enthusiastic response to the rally with its variety of events.

60,000 two-colour, doublesided leaflets have been printed so far for the rally and already YS branches have been out on the high streets distributing them to the Christmas shoppers.

Rallies

Last Sunday, as part of the campaign to make january 10 and ll a big success, the London and Middlesex Regions held rallies and Christother at Blythe Hall, West Kensington.

One hundred YS members attended the Middlesex rally and 200 came to the London The important concern at these rallies was a discussion on the expansion of the Young Socialists and the Keep Left, the 'Stop Wilson going to Washington' campaign and the building of support for the Workers Press.

At its meeting last weekend the YS National Committee discussed the plans for a campaign to make the Tenth Annual Conference in Scarborough the biggest and most decisive conference in the history of the Young Socialists.

wage as against the £2 demanded by the unions to give gas workers the same rise as recently awarded to workers in the electricity supply and water industries.

The national pay talks for the gas industry will be resumed on January 12, a week after the threatened strike.

The unions, led by Sir Frederick Hayday of the Petition