Brandt survives- -but only

• verman coanion gover The vote, on an opposition motion of no confidence in Brandt, was 247 for the motion and ten against. This was two short of the absolute majority of 249 votes needed if the opposition Christian Democrats were to succeed.

The result implies that only one coalition MP voted with the opposition. He is thought to be Baron Knut von KuehlmannStumm a millionaire cattlebreeder who sits • for the Free Democrats, Brandt's coalition. partners. Most members of Brandt's own Social-Democratic Party abstained on the confidence The no-confidence motion was the climax of a right-wing campaign to oust Brandt and install Christian Democrat leader Rainer Barzel as chancellor in his place.

But Brandt's troubles are not BRANDT: Another crisis next week over. Next week he faces another key vote, this time over ratification of treaties signed with Poland and the USSR in 1970. The Christian Democrats have been whipping up opposition to the treaties on an antiS Vietnamese driven back on three fronts THE war in Vietnam reached a new pitch of intensity as the Fosions one assisted boats indeera missed dad positions. The bomber raids and the town has been largely evacuated.

Hanoi claimed big succosses in the battle for the city which was being battered by artillery fire, some of it from captured American 105mm howitzers left behind by the fleeing S Vietnamese.

Hanoi claimed that the defence line to the N and NW had been destroyed and that dozens strategic hamlets had been liberated. Many prisoners had been taken and the command staff of Saigon's 22nd Division had been wiped out.

On the northern front, Quang Tri was under heavy rocket and artillery attack as tanks moved on the city. A S Vietnamese battalion suffered heavy. losses in an attempt to repulse an attack from the SW. S Vietnamese sources admitted that the situation was critical.

Hundreds of rockets have been fired into besieged An Loc and two Hercules transport aircraft trying to drop supplies have been shot down. A relief column of paratroops had been forced to dig in eight miles s of the town, when they came under heavy fire.

The Paris peace talks have resumed after President Nixon's announcement. He said that American troop withdrawals would go on, but threatened continued bombing of N Vietnam as long as the offensive continued.

Big increases in US naval and air forces in the Vietnam area have been ordered by the President in a frantic effort to prop up the Saigon regime. Nixon warned that there would be several more weeks of very hard fighting in which some battles would be lost and others would be won by the S Vietnamese.

It is likely that Hanoi Politbureau member Le Duc Tho will fly to Paris for secret talks on ending the war. The way for them may have been prepared by Dr Kissinger during his trip to Moscow last weekend.

JAPANESE ambassador Nobuthe United States of using Japan Ushiba yesterday accused as a whipping boy for its own economic problems. He argued that Japan has already gone out of its way to aid American exporters, both by cutting tariff rates and by revaluing the yen. Japan's overall tariff rates compared favourably on average with the US and EEC, he said. communist basis and winning some support among the Free Barzel has attacked the government's economic policy, saying the time has come to turn away from paths of illusion and promises and tread the course of stability. If Brandt remained in office, he said, Germany would be plunged into a long period of instability.

The anti-Brandt campaign is aimed at imposing a more vigorously anti - working - class government - a fact which is clearly understood by the German working class. On the eve of the decisive vote in the Bundestag, workers in different parts of the country staged protest stoppages against the CDU campaign.

There were strikes at steelworks in the Ruhr, engineering plants in the Rhineland and at a motor factory on the Dutch •border. At the Duisburg, Ruhr, Part of the massive demonstration of Overney THE killing of former Renault worker Rene-Pierre Overney by an armed factory guard caused widespread indignation and big solidarity demonstrations in Paris.

To read the comment on the event in the May issue of the British Communist Party theoretical journal 'Marxism Today', which was unable to get Overney's name right, one would think that he deserved what he got. There is not a single word of condemnation of the practice of using armed factory guards. The only regret seems to be that more "leftists' are not roughhandled.

Basing itself on a report in the French Communist Party's magazine, 'L'Humanité-Dimanche', the ampression st athe stuari false Imnression the situation in the Renault factory.

It claims that the management favours the 'leftist' groups while in fact it is the communiststeelworks, workers urged leaders of IG Metall, Germany's largest union, to call a General Strike in support of the Brandt governUnion leaders in Dortmund, another steel town, warned in letters to parliamentary party leaders that 'calls for a General Strike are becoming loud'.

These actions proved an embarrassment to the social-democratic leaders.tu. Brandt appealed on Monday for 'friends of the coalition' to 'avoid illconsidered actions'. However, the organized workers have shown in action they are prepared for a real fight against the party of big business.

This week's actions were the first major political strikes in W. Germany since the Adenaucr government began re-arming in the early 1950s. They are extremely important as an indication of the political resurgence of the W German working class.

three-front drive by on S Vietnam :se ent on despite 1 against shooting Rene-Pierre led CGT trade union • which works hand-in-glove with the management to control the It is not the CGT and the Communist Party officials that are menaced by the armed guards but any militants who oppose their domination of the factory.

To try to add some credibility to a series of falsehoods and slanders, 'L'Humanité-Dimarche" trotted out the old story that the student revolt and General Strike of May, 1968, were the result of a police provocation in which 'anarchist and ultra-left groups' were manipulated to spark off violent incidents.

That the organs of the French Communist Party should stoop so low to conceal its counterrevolutionary role is not surprising. Nor, for that matter, is it any more surprising that •Marxism Today' should spring to its defence. A para for oil FROM DAVID MAUDE IN EASTBOURNE NATIONALIZATION of all major industries-and Britain's North Sea oil resources was urged yesterday by leaders meeting in Eastbourne.

The engineers' section National Committee of the Amalgamated Union of Ëngineering Workers reaffirmed its resolution passed last year pressing the Labour Party, when returned to office, to nationalize private industry and take back into state ownership any hived-off interests.

Middlesex delegate Arthur Gibbard drew attention to the urgency for Clause 4 of the Labour Party constitution to be implemented in a period of rising unemployment.

And Aberdeen delegate John McConnachie spoke of the need for public ownership of the North Sea oil industry to ensure the 'most efficacious use' of these important resources.

The committee accepted an addition to the nationalization resolution on these lines.

Delegates went on to approve a motion calling on the AUEW executive to 'press for and support action which improves women's social, economic and political status'. The motion also asked for greater emphasis on the recruitment of women workers into the union.

Lancashire delegate Len Brindle pointed out that the wage claim for which the union is noW fighting at plant and district level provided an opportunity to involve women workers in action of this sort.

No hint of delegates' anger at the TUC General Council's retreat before the National Industrial Relations Court was expressed in the conference proceedings, however.

PRESIDENT Bordaberry's Uruguayan government is intensifying its repression of trade unionists and Tupamaros under a state of emergency soon to be extended Enrique Maganai.

Already 1,000 oppositionists have been arrested by the 30,000 troops and police involved in house searches and raids on the headquarters of left-wing organizations in operations 'Hunt and 'Surprise'.

Since the murder of • seven Communist Party workers, at least eight Tupamaros guerrillas have been shot.

During the one-day strike, called by the trade unions on Wednesday, the Tupamaros kidnapped the President of the Chamber of Deputies, Hector Gutierrez Ruiz. He was released after agreeing to support the demand for an 'independent investigation' into the wave of murders put forward by the Democratic Broad Front.

This Broad Front, including urban . guerrillas, Stalinists and Christian Democrats, turns away from mobilization of the working class in defence of its organizations and a standard of living, destroyed by monthly 6 per cent price increases.