Reid prepares New Year at UCS

EXAMINE these two statements devoted exponent of the Communist Party's policy of peaceful co-existence with capitalism. He said on October 16, facing a mass meeting at Clydebank:

'So far as I am personally concerned there will be no recognition of Govan Shipbuilders. They will not be allowed to assume management responsibility in these yards until there are. cast-iron guarantees regarding all four divisions and all the men in them.' Yesterday in the Stalinist daily the 'Morning Star', Reid said this about Govan Shipbuilders:

'If early in the New Year people want firm agreements for two or three of the yards, there will be delays in any settlement unless there are reasonable negotiations and guarantees concerning the fourth yard.' We draw your attention to the phrase 'reasonable negotiations'.

Reid is referring to possible talks between the liquidator and Breaksea Tankships, a US firm, that has hinted it may lease the Clydebank yard to build liquid-gas tankers. Now the change from insisting on 'castguarantees' that four divisions will be before agreement with ' Govan reached, and the new formula-'reasonable negotiations and guarantees' over Clydebank —may seem slight and to the unsuspecting only a matter of emphasis.

But if you have lived through the UCS struggle and watched the Stalinist spokesmen abandon one battle line after the other, you realize shifts emphasis -count, and generally disguise , yet another retreat.

No less in this case.

A new point of confrontation is likely to be reached on the upper Clyde early in the New Year. Then the feasibility study on the Scotstour divigor will be out and Govan Ship* builders will expect to begin meaningful negotiations which will result in the establishment of their company as a shipbuilding opération.

A spokesman for the company said yesterday that there would be breakdown if the stewards stuck to their policy of 'four divisions or nothing'.

Add to this the fact that a firm guarantee between Breaksea and the liquidator will not THE CLYDESIDE naval shipyard of Yarrow's is negotiating: a £13m order with the Iranian government. Yarrow vice-chairman Dennis Norton says it is still too early to talk of a contract. A month ago the yard, once a part of the bankrupt UCS consortium, landed a £34m order for Royal Navy frigates.

be reached until well into the New Year (if it is reached at all), and the Stalinists will be faced with abandoning any co-operation with Govan Shipbuilders or . . . capitulating once more to the Tory plan to , break up the consortium and sack shipyard workers.

In this light Reid's latest statement is an indication that possible agreement with Govan can be reached so long as 'reasonable negotiations' are proceeding over Clydebank.

This is the cue for Danny McGarvey, leading official of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions, to establish some formal contact with Breaksea and raise hopes that they will save Clydebank.

Now this is certainly NOT the promise UCS stewards made originally over talks with Govan Shipbuilders.

Pakistan.

WORKERS at the Imperial Typewriter Co in Hull have threatened to strike on December 31 over a substantial pay claim. The Americansured factory, which a vear ago took over, from the company's plant in the United States, employs about 2,000 people—80 per cent of them women.

The two unions, the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers and the Transport and General Workers' Union are claiming parity for their Hull members with rates paid in other industries.

don't to k THE ALMIGHTY dons of Qur universities have a 'union' called the Association of University Teachers.

You could scarcely call it a hotbed of militancy.

For example, a couple of years ago the government appar'ently had to ask the association to submit a pay claim! This year the organization took another historic decision not • to affiliate with the TUC. The AUT council met in Durham at the weekend. One of the items on the agenda was a resolution submitted by Warwick University calling for a fair trial for Angela Davis.

When the mover described Miss Davis as a 'professional colleague', he was jeered.

They wrote, soon after a London stewards' delegation agreed in principle to nego. iate with the company:

Without guarantees for all four yards and the retention of the labour force, there wil.

no meaningful discussions UCS workers will discuss the future of the yards with anyone at any time providing the results are those which have always been our aim, 1.e. the four yards must continue, no loss of jobs.' From yesterday's "Star' statement, Reid appears to be ready to abandon this formula —as always to avoid real conflict between the Tory-appointed company and their henchman in the yards, liquidator Robert Smith.

If the Stalinists were allowed to get away with their manoeuvre and start discussions with Govan Shipbuilders with no guarantees for Clydebank it would be one more blow for the Tories.

Then the great hope of saving UCS as a unit, and the demand for nationalization of the company, will recede even further Into the dim past of the UCS struggle.

With the continuing world recession in the level of world shipbuilding and chronic inability of Britain's big conRevival of Japanese militarism JAPAN'S Finance Minister has decided to increase military expenditure by almost 20 per cent in the fiscal year 1972—an unprecedented increase which clearly illustrates the swing to militarism among the Japanese capitalist class.

Despite its post-war constitution, which supposedly outlaws war, japan is the sixth country in the capitalist world in terms of military expenditure and has the largest milimachine any Asian capitalist state.

This makes nonsense of repeated declarations from Japan's politcial leaders that there is no need to worry about a militarist revival.

Under US encouragement they are extending the range of Japanse armed forces in the Pacific, and when the island of Okinawa reverts to Japan from the US next year the Army will be deployed in force on this ocean outpost.

The American government is pressing Japan to buy even more weapons. It wants the Japanese overnment an extra $1,000m-worth of Us arms a year.

Faced with the loss of markets due to the revaluation of the yen, th Us encourageployers, with encouragement, are clearly preparing for a new round of military adventures in Asia.