EMERGENCY POWERS First London pay sit-in

EDWARD HEATH, his Cabinet and selected advisers meet at Chequers today to draw up plans to deal with a national emergency as the country surges towards a political confrontation of huge, historic proportions.

The Tories are holding this crisis summit to prepare for action on at least two fronts: • ON MAY 29, a week's time, the rail ballot will be completed. It will almost certainly be a massive vote against the government and • for further industrial action. • ON JUNE 2 a national strike has been called.

To meet the threatened closedown on the railways and the docks, the Tories will implement special measures under Emergency Powers Act of 1920.

Contingency plans for the use of this savage Act were prepared as long ago as mid-February during the miners' strike.

They cover the movement of fuel and other essential supplies and only need the authority of Privy Council to become activated.

For the past two months there have been behind-the-scenes diseus indicetry enemitary end the judiciary, the military, the Confederation of British Industry about the national emergency.

Heath and his ministers have been deliberately provoking the three rail unions as part of their strategy to inflict a major defeat on the working class.

The Tories' necessity to act ruthlessly against the working class in this period can be seen in any of the decrees made by Sir John Donaldson, president of the National Industrial Relations Court.

In the space of a few weeks Donaldson has completely disrupted the roost of compromise which the trade union leaders have lived on since the war.

Donaldson's class abrasiveness was also revealed by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Denning, when he gave his judgement in the rail ballot case last Friday.

He fully accepted Employment Secretary Maurice Macmillan's submission that the rail work-torule posed a national emergency:

There was 'overwhelming' dence that 'the country's economy would be gravely injured' by such industrial sanctions.

At the beginning of his judgement Denning was at pains defend the "impartiality' of the judiciary. It has been suggested,' he said, 'that the role of the Secretary is so vast that the courts are in danger of becoming a rubber stamp to carry out his decision. This suggestion must be emphatically rejected!

Trade unionists are entitled to form their own opinion on this statement!

What is important to grasp, however. is the next weapon in the Tories' legal arsenalthe Emergency Powers Act.

It was passed in the autumn of 1920 specifically to deal with a General Strike situation. It was brought into operation on May 1, • 'TURN TO P. 12 Workers at Stanmore Engineering's pay claim. See full story p. 11. Top general's Ulster battle-cry: Smash the 'no-go' HARD-LINERS in the army and the Tory Party backed at the weekend by a top-ranking general.

Gen Sir Walter Walker, 59, until a week ago C-in-C Allied Forces, North Europe, unveiled his plan for cleaning up the Ulster problem.

He said: "We have had this sort of thing before in other parts of the world with yellow skins, black skins and slit eyes. Why have one rule for the whites and another for the coloureds?' In other words the suppression of colonial peoples in the interests of imperialism is the same as the suppression of the metropolitan working class in the interests of capitalism.

Walker's remarks are a sharp warning that if the politicans fail the army is ready to step in.

Walker is described as having 'secured notable successes against terrorists in Malaya and as directorne operations in Brunei and tor of North London, sit-inareas Referring to Ulster he said: 'I hope Mr Whitelaw's way works, but I think we have got to make up our minds and shout it clearly from the rooftops. Are the "nogo" areas part and parcel of the UK or not?

'If they are let us treat them as such. Within the policy of minimum force I always had my battle-cry of the three Hs and the three Rs. You hit them quickly, you hit them hard and you keep on hitting them. And you are ruthless.

"I would cut off petrol, gas and electricity and stop food going in. Then I would soften them up and let them feel the pinch. Let them get the women and children out and then go in after them.

'You must dominate an area 24 hours a day, day and night, and everyone in that area behaves themselves or. else. These tactics, I think, would work.' Since they amount to wiping out whole sections they probably would.

Such tactics do, of course, involve riding roughshod over the civil rights • won over centuries by the working class.

While right wingers flex their muscles in the army, their counterparts in the legal profession from the Lord Chancellor downwards are not standing idle.

Behind a mounting chorus against permissiveness they are preparing for an all-out attack on workers' rights.

High Court Judge Sir Raymond Hinchcliffe said at the weekend he wants to curtail the right of defendants to elect trial by jury —others have said they would abolish juries altogether.

We already have rule by decree in the National Industrial Relations Court.

It may not be long before the pattern is repeated in the civil courts and the whole edifice of dictatorship underpinned by such generals as Sir Walter recent the SLL distortions about and YS are taken up by MICHAEL BANDA Rhodesia: Post-Pearce A special correspondent looks at the similarity in legal powers under Smith and Heath