STALINIST MANOEUVRES FAIL TO HALT IN YORKS

FROM STEPHEN JOHNS IN YORKSHIRE WE MET big Communist Party opposition in Sheffield at the weekend.

The powerful shop stewards' quarterly of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers had backed the march by a big majority. But the AUEW district committee Stalinists, by a mixture of falsehood and bureaucratic manoeuvre, managed to veto this support.

At the first meeting the committee the creature of the diehard Stalinist George Cabornamended the stewards' resolution (which had been seconded by a leading CP member) deleting all reference to the march and campaign.

Two other resolutions of support from AUEW branches were stainped upon by the committee. The opposition has been to no avail. however. The Stalinists were rebuked by the Sheffield Labour group who welcomed the march and arranged for accommodation in one of the city's colleges.

Frank. Green, an engineers steward at Firth-Brown's, marched with us into the city. He condemned the Stalinists:

I think this behaviour is disgusting and entirely lacking in principle. I had no hesitation to back these lads. The fight they are putting up for this right is tremendous. If I was unemployed PLAYWRIGHT DAVID MERCER JOINED THE MARCH AFTER AN EARLY MORNING DRIVE FROM LONDON TO BARNSLEY I would be walking with the way' Brian Flanagan, a General and Municipal Workers' steward at Firth-Brown's agreed with 'I am flabbergasted by the committee's action. It has been an eve-opener on the Communist Party for me.' Earlier there was a great reception in the half-way stop, Chapeltown. The local prizesilver band played us into town and we ate an excellent stew paid for by a f10 donation from the local bingo hall manager.

Our thanks also to the students have erised Poly chni Tolley Sheneid _ro vrecnnic. nev hornbraded reacher Toning cellege £35.

The miners came to our suppert as well. After six weeks of strike the men of Orgreave colliery dug into their pockets and raised £12 for the marchers.

In fact our journey through the Yorkshire coalfield was a big political experience. workers from other over Britain.

Up to the war, industry didn't extend beyond mining. Anything else was comprised by the holiday trade of resorts populated with drop-out Londoners and with farming.

During the post-war boom, some of the captains of the new Britain were smart enough to see a pool of cheap labour on the S coast and as small, light industry type firms moved wages were often f5 a week lower than in London.

Slump has swept all these get-rich-quick companies out of the running. Unemployment in Deal Barnsley is possibly the centre of the most militant working-class area in Britain today. It compares to Ayrshire in Scotland and the Rhondda in Wales. The Labour majorities are truly enormous, yet here also the march has exposed once more the yawning rift between the Labour Party bureaucracy and the working class.

Barnsley Trades Council passed a resolution of support and established a six-man committee to make the unemployed youth really welcome when they passed through last Friday.

But Barnsley is one of those towns where the Labour Party and the trades council meet as a joint body. So when the Yorkshire Labour Party HQ squealed about the YS being a proscribed erganization, the Trades and Labour Council withdrew its support.

Jack Brown, the secretary of the trades council was among those who opposed this low manoeuvre.

He spoke in TRADES COUNCIL SECRETARY is 7 per cent, in Ramsgate nearly 8 per cent and on the Isle of Thanet as a whole, it has climbed above 9 per cent. The prospects for young people are hopeless.

In Ramsgate money and support for the young jobs marchers has come from AUEW members and from the town's trades council.

As the march went into Ramsgate, Trades Council secretary Charlie Britton told me:

'The Young Socialists are doing a good job, but it's a pity there aren't more older people out to help them. I think the marches will have an effect on people, especially in the unions. •Morning Telegraph' condemning the policy switch. His right-wing counterpart, councillor Walter Sinfield made a revealing 'no comment' to the press over the attempt to keep the march out of Barnsley.

Thanks to the miners of the area we ended up with no less than two offers of accommodation. Mr Brown secured one miners' hall for us and the miners of the Barrow pit-who have no connection with the YS -came forward and offered their own homes. That's where the girls on the march slept and everyone went with them for a meal cooked by the miners' wives.

At Castleford the Labour town council officially backed the march and paid for excellent accommodation in the town's finest school-Airdale High. The canteen staff were brought in to give the marchers dinner and a slap-up breakfast in the morning.

We had a full escort from the miners of Glasshoughton and Wheldale pits. Glasshoughton's MARCHER LES PANKHURST : OUT OF ARMY ONTO DOLE *I can remember the Jarrow marches and I certainly don't want to see them back in this country.

"The Labour Party is not doing its job in opposition to the Tories. We've got to do something about our own leadership, otherwise we'll just stagnate.' Jobs marcher Les Pankhurst (23) knows better than anyone how grim the employment prospects are in the S.

He spent three years in the army medical corps because he couldn't get a job. When he came out, it was back to the dole queues. SILVER PRIZE BAND GAVE A (MUSICAL ESCORT THROUGH THE TOWN huge union banner led town.

Alderman Henry Goodall, chairman of the finance committee, visited the school and told our meeting: "Anyone who is fighting sincerely against this government will get our support. It is a scandal, in this so called civilization, that young people have to make this kind of protest because they want work. Please extend my best wishes for success to all the other marchers.' Our thanks to playwright David Mercer, a long-time supporter of the Young Socialists. He drove through the early hours to join the march as it left Barnsley. He told me it was an issue principle.

'As a writer and a socialist, I agree entirely with the aims of this march, the policy in the Charter of Basic Rights and the Manifesto of the All Trades Unions Alliance. This I sincerely hope will only be a beginning of the struggle • to get rid of this illegal, reactionary and totally barbaric government.' I'm on the march because I haven't got a job at the moment and I think something's got to be done about the way the Tories are running the country,' said Len.

I've been- out of work five months. I go down to the dole queue every week, but it doesn't matter when you go they tell you without even looking: "Sorry, nothing doing."

I'm not going on the march to get work. I know the march alone can't do that. I'm going because I think we have to express the feeling that we're not going to be pushed aside.

It's not just the Tories we've got to get rid of, it's the Tories in the Labour Party as well. We want a government that's willing to care about the just demands of workers.' Throughout the first full day's march to Ramsgate, Tory hatred was implacable. One driver swerved to try to run the marchers down.

In Ramsgate their hostility jcined with a near total back turning of the Labour Party bureaucracy unmoved behind their bans and proscriptions.

But Mr Tony Miles, one of the 22 full-time volunteer staff at the Simon Community, who spend their time caring for the homeless, told me:

'We helped the Young Socialists because we know what being out of work means. Many of the homeless are without work. If I didn't have broken toes, I'd march with them?

Today the march goes on to Herne Bay—the longest haul of the 100-mile march - passing through Edward Heath's birthplace, Broadstairs. There the young organist cycled around the country lanes during the time of the 1930s hunger marches.