US WAGES: FIGHT TO A FINISH'

PRESIDENT Nixon has defence of his wage-freez sentatives on the Pay Boi 'norm'.

Four of the five union representatives, including George Meany, head of the AFL-CIO, resigned after the Board majority voted a 30-per-cent cut in the Pacific dockers' recent wage increase.

The four who walked out represent 14 million workers. They include steelworkers' president I. W. Abel, the machinists' union's Floyd Smith and Leonard Woodcock, head of the Auto Workers' Union.

They cited last month's 0.5 per cent increase in the cost of living as evidence that the Board is an instrument for cutting real wages. The price of meat and other foodstuffs rose by a staggering 2 per cent in February-the largest monthly grocery price rise in 14 Meany said the increase showed Nixon's price policymediated by another board which is supposed to hold prices to a 5-per-cent annual rise-is a sham.

'While prices are going up, workers' wages are being held down,' he said.

Nixon has ordered the Board to carry on, reducing the business representation from five to one to balance the gap left by the union chiefs' walk-out.

The lone union representative is Frank Fitzsimmonds of the Teamsters' (lorry-drivers) Union.

Announcing his decision to keep the Board going, Nixon said: 'This is a fight to a finish and with the support of the American people, we will win it.

'I shall not be deterred disaffection of a few union leaders.' Nixon's decision to carry on with the Pay Board means there will be a collision with the unions each time the Board decides to slash a negotiated wage rise.

Already the dockers are talking in terms of a national strike against the Pay Board decision on their recent settlement.

Israel Kingdom ISRAEL has signined its willingness to accept . King Hussein's plan for a federal kingdom on both sides of the Jordan, although it firmly rejects the borders he proposed last week.

The plan is strongly opposed by Egypt, Libya and Syria. It is also possible that opposition to the plan will help to heal the breach between Iraq and Libya. lared olicy. estab der 'fig ht to fini 'as re plyin tl led last yeal ho FIERCE FIGHTING AROUND PHNOM FIERCE FIGHTING continues around Phnom Penh in Cambodia as an estimated three divisions of N Vietnamese troops clash with S Vietnamese ranger and armoured cavalry units.

Saboteurs blew a big hole in a heavily-defended concrete bridge connecting Phnom Penh with the other side of the Tonle Sat river.

The explosives, left in a car, shook the city and many people red, fearing a renewed rocket and ground attack. Eleven people believed to be concerned in the blast, which killed one soldier and one civilian, were arrested.

US officials in Saigon say a big offensive may be launched soon to discredit Nixon's Vietnamization policy Swedi Foreign Minister Foreign Indian troops in Bangla Desh battle INDIAN troops have been used in Bangla Desh to assist local forces to deal with a group of armed Mizo rebels.

It was claimed that the Mizos, who seek greater autonomy from India, had crossed the frontier into Bangla Desh. India accused them of receiving arms from Pakistan. : The Mizos overran two police checkpoints earlier this month, killing two policemen and injuring six others. Premier Sheikh Mujibur Rahman has repeatedly warned that 'antistate elements' are out to disturb the peace and set up a parallel government.

The Bangla Desh government and the Indian Embassy in Dacca have angrily rejected charges in the American press that Indian troops had never completely pulled out of the country.

ainst walk.

wage 14,00 ees le trade inio ns in It by un on 1 epreto a 5.! per cent PENH Krister Wickman described this policy as being aimed at prolonging the war, not at shortening it, when he outlined his government's policy in parliament.

The Indo-China war was the foremost example of how a super-power's global interests could conflict with the poor people's struggle for better conditions'. He claimed that US bombing raids were increasing in intensity.

A Defence Department spokesman has denied a charge by US Senator Mike Gravel that plastic bombs are used in Indo-China. Senator Gravel said that when pieces of the bomb entered the body they. could not be detected by Х-гауБ and made medical treatment difficult.

Elections may take plac = in Bangla Desh later this year a new constitution has been drawn up.

The constitution is to be prepared by an assembly composed of members. of the National and Provincial assemblies elected in December 1970. when Bangla Desh was part of Pakistan.

It will thus be dominated by members of the Awami League, whose leader is Sheikh Mujib. CEYLON'S INTERNMENT JAILS STILL HOLD 14'000 YOUTH FIRST anniversary of brutally-suppressed leftuprising in Ceylon • sees 10 young political detainstill languishing in the against the murders.

strators.

behind its new Ulster plans.

gramme:

End internment • Withdraw the troops from Ulster Defend democratic r ights A TORY TRAP IN THE House of Commons on Thursday, the Leader ol the House, Mr William Whitelaw, now Tory supremo in Ulster, was asked very directly the reasons for the police raids on homes of members of the International Socialists' group.

The question was put not by bench crank, but by the Leader Party, Harold Wilson.

This is the second time the Labour Party has tried to get the Tory front bench to make a parliamentary statement on why 60 homes were raided.

When Wilson was snubbed, Mrs Shirley Williams, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: 'It is not a crime to belong to the International Socialists and it is not a crime to express their views.' But this too failed to shift the Tories; Whitelaw said no statement would be made on the incidents. By refusing to comment Whitelaw is demonstrating the government is. completely behind the stepping up of political repression against left-wing groups.

Although our own differences with the 'state ists' are absolutely fundamental (see pp. 10 & reiterate our headline of last week: 'Hands government's prison coalition camps.

The detainees are held without trial because the government has no charges against most of them which would stand up in open court.

In the weeks after the uprising, thousands of young people from the rural areas were herded into prisons and makeshitt camps to break the back of the People's Liberation Front (JVP).

The JVP, composed mainly of students and young workers described as 'Guevarists', • took up arms against Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike's coalition because it has betrayed its election promises and tied Ceylon firmly to world imperialism.

Supported by the pro-Moscow Stalinists and the renegade Trotskyists of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), Mrs Bandaranaike sought military aid from Britain, the US, India, Pakistan, China and the Soviet Union to put down the revolt.

The LSSP, headed by Finance Minister Dr N. M. Perera, have beer entitlate Supporters he with the on the tollowing political prosome obscure backof the British Labour 11) we off IS' internment without trial. Perera recently visited London to seek aid from the Tories. for the Ceylon regime.

Since the revolt, arbitrary arrest, mass internment, censorship and suppression of democratic rights have been the order of the day. Newspapers regularly appear with blank spaces "censored by the Competent Foreign observers - even Liberals like Lord Avebury of Amnesty International - have been denied access to the prisons and even run out of the country.

The army has been placed on full alert and military forces are still combing the central jungles to try and root out remnants of the JVP guerrilla forces.

Popular hatred against the coalition is growing as continued inflation drives prices to astronomical heights, and workers are stripped of their basic democratic The international labour movement must demand the immediate release of the detainees in Ceylon and fight the conspiracy of imperialism and Stalinism to strangle the Ceylon working class: 1 fi