BETRAYAL

Throughout the worst of the depression years, workers unceasingly fought the encroachment of the employers, but got little else but betrayal from their leaders.

The TUC General Council, having called off the General Strike in 1926, were two years later entering into discussion with leading employers on the need to rationalize industry and collaborate in working methods which inevitably meant the elimination of more jobs.

These 'Mond-Turner talks' were named after Sir Alfred Mond, the head of ICI, and Ben Turner, leader of the Textile Union. They involved leading trade unionists, including Ernest Bevin, head of the Transport and General Workers' Union, as well as magnates from the steel, textile, coal, food, oil, shipbuilding and motor industries.

Bevin enthusiastically backed the discussions and insisted to the TUC that _rationalization of industry must be welcomed. This get together was only a few months after the worst anti-working-class legislation for years -the Trades Disputes Act-bad gone into the statute book.

The real reasons for Mond's interest in the talks were revealed in 1928. During a visit to fascist Italy he was reported as admiring the system there and to have commented:

'Fascism is tending towards the realization of my political ideals, namely, to make classes collaborate loyally.' ('Daily Herald', May 12, 1928.)

However, even this did not dissuade the TUC from its policy of enthusiastic support. The fight of the TUC leadership to uphold capitalism was formally recognized a feru years later. Walter Citrine, secretary, and Arthur Pugh, both received knighthoods from the National government • in 1934 for services rendered. Citrine had been the secretary of the General Council during the General Strike and Arthur Pugh had been TUC President. Both had been directly involved in the Mond-Turner talks.

During the 1930s major action by busmen, spinners, engineers and dockers against the wagecuts and speed-up was sold out by the union leaderships.

The betrayal by Ramsay MacDonald and the two preceding years of Labour government, when the basis for many of the worst aspects of the 1930s were prepared - unemployment rose, wage-cutting was rite and no fight to repeal the Trades Disputes Act of 1927 was mademeant disillusion with Labour. (The 1927 Act was repealed in 1946.)

During the Labour Party period of office, hundreds of workers had been arrested under the terms of the 1927 Act and every wage-cut and speed-up required by the employers had been backed by the government. The number of workers suffering wage-cuts rose from 917,000 in 1929 to 3 million in 193l..

At the time of the betrayal, no special conference was called by the Labour Party to deal with MacDonald and his associates in the National government. They were not expelled from the Labour Party until September 28 -more than a month after the link with the Tories had been made. Thomas had resigned from the NUR on August 3l.

In the October 1931 General Election, the Labour Party stood against the National government of MacDonald, the Liberals and Tories, on belated left policies, which Philip Snowden, in a broadcast for the National government candidates, referred to as 'Bolshevism run mad'.

Mass abstention by disillusioned Labour voters contributed heavily to the huge defeat of Labour; the Conservatives getting 471 seats and the Labour Party only 46.

Thirteen so-called National Labour candidates were also elected, including MacDonald. These joined with the Tories and Liberals in mak National governm The voting wa: bad for Labour : of seats implied vauves got 11,920 Labour 6,362,561. 72 per cent .com per cent in 1929 In the Commu best-placed to ma bership gains and alternative workir ship, the Stalini hirmly entrenched in 1920 of how th struggle in E develop:

It is possible "breach", Perap ic wil be mentary crisis Perhaps it will be a crisis by the hopelessly increasingly pain! colonial and imp dictions, perhaps cause, etc.' ('Le munism'.)

In 1925, Leon book 'Where is ] analysed the dr British society ar cluding brilliant ci of MacDonald, 1 den, the Webbs ar leaders - and po road the Britis Party must follor power as the par letarian dictatorsł But by 1931 maintaining the B tion under the b skyism were be hounded and exp the CP leadershir of the TUC's lin trade unions via tł Committee, had n the working clas cing the new ent! s not quite so as ahe number The Conser; 1,23/ votes and • The poll was ipared with 79 nist Party, the ake huge memI to provide an ng-class leadersts were now I. Lenin wrote le revolutionary ngland might that a parliavill cause the ›reak the ice".

a crisis caused entangled and ful and acute erialist contrasome third ift-Wing ComTrotsky in his Britain Going?' evelopment of id politics-inharacterizations Thomas, Snowid other Labour inted out the ih Communist w to come to ty of the procommunists Solshevik tradianner of Trotsing ruthlessly ›elled. In 1926 ›, on the basis ks with soviet he Anglo-Soviet vorked to keep s blindly supporting Strike.

nature leaders, love left: a British the TUC in the General task of exposing the of the right-wing TUC and the inevitability of tell Delayal or the suike, was suppressed beneath the slogan 'All Power to the General Council'. Such a policy was a sure prelude to defeat.

In 1929 the Stalinists' 'third period designation of Labour Parties and trade unions as 'social-fascist' organizations effectively alienated Labour supporters who might otherwise have turned to the Communist Party for a lead.

In his book 'Fascism and the Social Revolution', written in 1934, a leading Communist Party member, R. Palme Dutt, reters to Oswald Mosley's leaving the Labour Party to set up a new organization which was to lead to the British Union of Fascists as 'the final evolution from the womb of social fascism to open fascism'.

In the 1930s, the main role of the British Stalinists was not defence of the working class and the overthrow of capitalism, but whitewashing of the murder of Bolsheviks in the Moscow Trials 'and concealment of the real nature of Stalinist betrayals in Germany, Spain and elsewhere.

In Britain, Mosley's tascists, building on the fear and instability of the lower middle class, and lack of a firm working-class leadership, began to increase their membership. The truncheons of the police were now turned against the demonstrating opponents of fascism as well as against strikers.

In the mid-1930s, lavishly supplied with cash by sections of ascists' 'Mobile Defence the suliness in petit, any with the backing of his band of Blackshirts, Mosley's aims for corporate state bore the Impucatons or ine rutniess ana 1L - -brutal destruction of workers' organizations_which had already occurred in Italy and Germany.

The National government brought in new legislation, some of it ostensibly against the fascists, but in reality directed against working-class organizations. The Incitement to Disaffection Act, 1934, virtually made the possession . of revolutionary socialist material or antiwar literature an offence punishable with up to two years imprisonment.

Under the Public Order Act of 1936 the police were allowed to ban any political procession in London and recommend the local authorities to do the same elseThe 1930s were a tragic proof of Trotsky's assertion that the historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership. In every capitalist country workers showed strength, initiative and heroism in combating the capitalist class. In Britain, even the worst years of unemployment and oppression saw industrial action-like that of the miners-being taken to defend rights and conditions.

But by their betrayal of Bolshevism, of internationalism, of world revolution, Stalin and his henchmen, gave a new lease of life to a rotting and dying world capitalism; a chance to build again on the ruins bought by it with fascism and the slaughter and destruction of World War II.

Lenin wrote in 1920 that for Squad'. Above right: Mosley capitalism 'there are no absolutely hopeless situations', meaning that even in its most fundamental crisis it will find ways to drag on unless the working class forcibly and positively overthrows it.

Today, all evidence shows that its temporary respite is over, that the crisis is renewing in an even more intense and calamitous form.

Now the Tories launch bitter political attacks on trade unions, strikes, wages, working • conditions, jobs, pensions, welfare, housing and education to try and stave off the crisis and win back the gains made by workers since World War II.

But the situation of the working class is vastly different from the 1930s. There has been no major defeat like the General Strike, no terrible preceding years equivalent to the 1920s when unemployment never fell below 1 million in any year from But there can be no standing still. Favourable conditions must be either utilized or give way once more to repression and destruction.

The lessons of the 1930s show that the primary need is to construct now the alternative socialist leadership, the revolutionary party of the working class.

The Socialist Labour League, the All Trades Unions Alliance and the Young Socialists will combine to launch such a Party this year and call on every worker to join in this task.

TOMORROW. A new series by Jack Gale on How Hitler came to power.

huge newspaper chain. The first act of the new management was Valle It's a normal practice in the House of Commons, if you've got some other pressing business, to miss out on important debates by an arrangement known as 'pairing'. You simply find some MP on the other side who also wants to miss a day or so and agree that you'll both be away together.

That way, the theory goes, the vote isn't affected. And, since relations between Tory and Labour MPs are usually quite friendly, the system works pretty well.

Except for Michael Barnes, Labour MP for Brentford and Chiswick. He missed the Common Market vote-having 'pair' arranged with Tory Hugh Frazer.

Fair enough - except that Frazer's an anti - Common Market Tory!

So Barnes—who also missed the unemployment debate and the debate on the introduction of emergency regulations during the coal strike is well and truly in it.

February lift a ington.

One other piece of business Nixon got done while he was in Peking. .. His aides rushed him a copy of the Bill which permits enforced arbitration in the case of long strikes. The Bill was specifically aimed at the long dock strike which ended last weekend.

He signed it in his guest house in the People's Republic of China. That will cause some consternation on the docks in Melbourne, Australia, which are dominated by Maoists. BREAD £18 a week or less doesn't go far after stoppages - stamp, tax, pension contributions.

Take £3 or £4 rent out of it at the very least and comes down to fl2 a week. Where there's still overtime to be worked an extra shift or double shift might bump it back up a bit.

But at its most generoussay £20 a week-hundreds of thousands of workers are takPAGE