Man of the year' thé N

THE US has launched massive bombing offensive against N Vietnam. The size of the raid appears to be the largest since the so-called 'bombing halt' called by President Johnson in 1968.

The usually talkative US officials in Saigon have refused to state the number and type of aircraft in the bombing party and they have also refused to name the target areas.

Pressmen estimate that up to 350 aircraft, including three • squadrons of tactical fighters, may have been used in the strikes which begun on Sunday.

An army spokesman said the large-scale raid was 'not a general resumption' of bombing, but what 1s known as a 'protective reaction'.

He said that the strikes into N Vietnam and Laos were in reaction to 'enemy activity which imperils the diminishing US forces curPRESIDENT. Nixon, the man who authorized the huge Christmas bombing just been made magazine's Man. of the Year. In a special interview he said Americans wanted a President who is 'cool and sober in a crisis, a human guy who likes his wife and kids but who: is not sloppy, lewd or vulgar'.

rently in S Vietnam'.

So far this year the US 'Kas staged' 107 so-called "protective reaction' operations against targets in N Vietnam.

recent weeks N Vietnamese MiGs have been enjoying successes against US Phantoms and other reconnaisance planes flying over the the N.

Last week a MiG for the first time brought down a US Phantom jet over N Laos.

Then four US Phantems were shot down; the surviving pilots have since • been produced for the press in Hanoi.

Saigon observers say it is the success of the MiG which has brought about the wholesale bombing of towns and villages in the N. • In New York 16 war veterans have barricaded themselves in the Statue of Liberty in protest against the continuation of the war.

They intend to stay inside the 300-foot monument until New Year's Day.

Late yesterday New York police had been despatched by boat to the statue to investigate.

STARTING

ON WEDNESDAY An interview with playwright on the Tory government and the working class. Nixon wants new anti-strike laws THE NIXON administration conference Commerce Sechas blasted the US Congress retary Maurice Stans warned for failing to give the Pre- that this failure could lead sident stronger emergency to another long dock strike powers to prevent strikes in next year which would wreck the transportation industry. Nixon's plans for a trade It is absolutely outrageous surplus.

Crisis weeks ahead for on the 'substantial' wage claim that the Congress will not For the past two years move to pass this legislation,' Nixon has unsuccessfully under-Secretary of Labour sought stronger powers than Laurence Silberman said at he now possesses under the the weekend. Taft-Hartley Act" to stop And at the same press national strikes by dockers. rejected by the employers.

Natongt main of Mineworkers' national executive meets on the eve of the strike. On the same day, the Engineers' executive is in session.

And so the stage is set for the most decisive confrontation for generations between the working class and the employers, led by the Tory government.

This government is armed with the Industrial Relations Act, which has not yet been put to the test of struggle.

What will be the outcome?

Miners are asking whether the NUM executive will make its final plans on January 5 for men fight wise. ernment,. will compromise with the National Coal Board and the Tories?

And if this executive cannot find a way out, and goes ahead with the strike, will it not look the first opportunity to sell out?

Every miner has a right and and a duty to ask, and to answer, these questions especially after the 1969 anc 1970 strikes were sold out Secondly, there is a rightwing majority on the executive led by President Joe Gormley. At every stage since the Coal Board rejected the £9, £8 and £5 claims decided at NUM conference, this right wing has voted to keep going back to the Board, instead of getting down to the serious business of preparing "to defeat the Board and the government.

This majority - some 13 votes to eight on every occasion-will still be there if again Sam the 900th 'radical agenda' prepared by the group. It is relieved the proposed document will contain at least ten references to 'technological revolution', 'new life styles', 'greater participation', "shop floor democracy', 'grass roots' etc., etc. miners " BY CLIFF SLAUGHTER and when the strike goes This can only mean that the miners must be wary of the greatest dangers as they go into battle.

MOBILIZE

The 'left' on the NUM executive cannot really deal with this right wing.

This would mean to use decisivefe sence balond the mobilize union members throughout the coalfields in such a way that the right wing would be isolated.

This would mean setting up branch-elected strike committees of 50 to 100 men immediately at every colliery, to begin registering mass pickets and approaching transport and engineering workers in the districts for joint struggle and support. decided Instead, the executive has 'liaison committees' for operating the overtime ban shall function as strike committees.

This is an attempt to confine the running of the strike to area and branch officials, so that the executive, when NUM President Joe Gormley they vote to sell out, will not be accountable to the rank and file.

Within these strike committees, what 1s needed is a coalfield-to-coalfield leadership which consciously fights on the lines of: • No return to work without the full claim! • Watch your leaders! • Mobilize the rest of the working class to defeat the Tory government!

The 'left' will not do this because it would mean accepting that a big wages' struggle today is a fight to defeat the government.

It means organizing jointly with the engineers for that It means posing the ques tion of forcing the Tories out by mass action and replacing them with a Labour government which would take socialist measures.

The question of power is raised, with the prospect of general strike as the major step towards it.

'Left' reformists cannot face to this issue. Only a Marxist, revolutionary leadership can do that.

The men are ready for the fight.

In operating the overtime ban the pre-Christmas period, and thus sacrificing a large part of their normal earnings, they have acted with discipline which proves absolutely that the strike can be won.

The Coal Board, has tried one provocation after another to get partial strikes going every here reemen have everywhere men conserved their strength, conscious of the big fight ahead.

The NUM leaders are caught in a vice between the men's militancy and the Board's intransigence.

No matter how often the '13' have wanted to crawl back to the Board, and have talked about the 'serious consequences' of the strike, NCB chairman Derek Ezra and the Coal Board, backed by Heath, will not budge.

The few coppers extra offered last Tuesday were even withdrawn again when the NUM executive refused to put the offer to the men.

And the Board is boasting about the size of existing coal stocks, trying to intimidate the miners.

Miners know very well that the transport and power workers black the movement of coal, these stocks are as much as the capitalists' capital when workers withdraw their labour.

We repeat the warning given in the policy statement issued by the miners' section of the All Trades Unions Alliance: Watch the leaders! Make them accountable to elected strike committees! Fight for mobilization of all other trade unionists in support of the miners' fight against the common enemy, the Tory government.

Above allions the All Trades Alliance miners' section, the alternative leadership, in every coalfield.

a cal WHO DID bachelor Edward Heath have for dinner on Christmas Day?

Apart from a free turkey donated by the British Turkey Federation, he_ had as guests Lord and Lady Aldington and 'Mr and Mrs Madron Seligman and their children.

The Seligmans aren't in Who's Who and the society editor of a national newspaper had never heard of them.

But plenty of people know