WHO ARE T SMEARERS P

The right-wing Economic League has circulated thousands of leaflets smearing the Young Socialists' Right-to-Work on the other it is hardly necesmarches.

They repeat an allegation levelled at the five nationwide marches made by only one other political tendency-the Stalinists of the Communist Leaflet No. 10 of the 1972 series asks: 'Who are the Young Socialists? The support they received in some areas indicates that a number of workers and union officials came up with the obvious, but wrong, answer that they are the youth movement of the Labour Party.' In other words the considerable support from the labour movement and the working class, without which the marches would not have been possible, was all obtained under false pretences.

The same slanderous argument was used by the Stalinist leaders of Upper Clyde Shipbuilders back in February.

But the Economic Leaguers go further. Not only do they suggest that the Young Socialists obtained cash by 'posing' as a bona fide organization but also that they represented nothing more concrete than a band of conspiratorial, evil disrupters.

This accords with the Economic League's conspiracy theory of history in which society is classless and but for the activities of groups of nihilistic wreckers all would be well.

The suggestion that workers and employers are merely different faces of the same coin explains their accusation that any who supported the Rightto-Work marches must have been deceived and their charge later on in the leaflet that no one would join such an organization 'wittingly' Since every worker knows from the cradle on that he is on one side and the employer on the other it is hardly necessary to refute this particular We say to the Economic League as we said to the Stalinists that the Young Socialists never made any secret of their links with the Socialist Labour League.

Quite the reverse in • fact. The last thing the young Socialists wanted was to be associated in any way with the ultrareformist and entirely subservient youth wing of the Lab. our Party.

Nor was any secret made of the fact — as the Economic League suggests — that the object of the five marches was to prepare the ground for the launching of the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists as a mass In a section of the leaflet headed 'The Real Aim', the Economic League suggests the marches had nothing at all to do with the right to work.

The leaflet says: *. ... the marches had nothing to do with the right to work. They did not and could not create one extra job.

'The real aim was described by the leader of the Socialist Labour League when he contemptuously turned down an attempt by another revolutionary group - the International Socialists - to climb on the bandwagon.

'He made it clear that the main object of the demonstration was to build the Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists.' The quote is carefully left unfinished. To complete it would be to put the YS and the SLL into a social and political perspective in direct contradiction of the Economic League's conspiracy theory.

The full statement by Gerry Healy reads: "The Right-toWork marches have been organized for the purpose of building the Young Socialists and the Socialist Labour League as the centre of the national campaign to make the lory government resign. In our opinion such a campaign is an integral part of the fight against unemployment.' Only by ignoring the political and social context of the marches are the Economic League able to say: In short the whole thing was a Trotskyist propaganda stunt.' And only in this way are they able to conclude: Be clear about this, the Trotsky: ists, like other revolutionaries, are not interested in helping to boost employment or in achieving greater prosperity for workers and their families. Their business is to disrupt the production of goods and services upon which our standard of living depends'.

A question to which we feel the readers of the Economic League's poisonous distortions should know the answer is 'What is the Economic League?' It was founded two years after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 to preserve personal freedom and free enterprise and to oppose all subversive forces 'that seek to undermine the security of Britain in general and British industry in particular'. One of its first acts was to launch a 'crusade for capitalism'.

The Economic League has an annual income of over £65,000 and more than half the firms which donate also give money to the Tory Party.

Firms which contribute up to £4,000 a year are Barclays Bank, Rank Hovis McDougal, British-Leyland and Guest Keen and Nettlefold.

Firms in the £1,000-a-year bracket are Commercial Union, Legal and General, Sun Alliance and London,_ Vickers, Imperial Tobacco, Tate and Lyle, Taylor Woodrow, Turner and Newall, ICI, Whitbread and Boots.

Hard on their heels in £700-a-year class Arbuthnot Lathan, Gerrard and Lazard Bros, Union Commercial Investment Co, Industrial and General Trust and United Dominions Trust This is followed in the same class by Guardian Royal Exchange, British and Commonwealth Shipping, Swan Hunter, Allied Breweries, Courage, Barclay and Simonds, British American Tobacco, Gallaher, Wiggins Teape, Reyrolle Parsons and Stone and Platt Industries.

The Economic League has dozens of smaller contributors sending them sums ranging from £10 to £500.

Its governing council includes some of the wealthiest men in Britain with exclusive public-school backgrounds.

The President is Tory peer and William Deacons Bank director Lord Rochdale. Two of the three vice-Presidents are also directors of banks-Lord Runciman (Lloyds) and the Earl of Selborne (National Westminster).

The Earl of Selborne is also a member of the right-wing Monday Club.

The chairman is Eric Turner. chairman of Birmingham Small Arms, director of Alfred Herbert and 19 other companies.

The council of the Economic League is comprised of: Sir Harry Brittain, former Tory MP; Mr Raymond P. Brookes chairman of Guest, Keen and Nettlefold; Sir Nicholas Cayzer, chairman of British and Commonwealth Shipping Co and director of 59 other companies; Lieut-Gen Sir John Evetts, former chairman of Rotol; Mr James D. Fraser, director of A. R. Stenhouse and Partners, part of the big Scottish insurance group, Stenhouse Holdings; Mr Daniel Gardner, retired; Sir Kenneth Hague, former chairman of Babcock and Wilcox and on six other companies; Mr Robert Henderson-Tate Rawdon Hoare: Col Robert John P. Hunt, on the Midland Bank, Philblack, Newton Chambers and four other companles, W. George Ibberson, 'industrialist; Mr Michael C. Lloyd, managing director of F. H. Lloyd and on seven subsidiaries; Mr Alastair P. Low on Lead Industries and three subsidiaries; Sir Michael Malcolm, former coalowner; Mr Hay 1. Matthey, managing director of Morgan Crucible and on Johnson Matthey; Mr Anthony E. . Minns, former shipowner, now retired; Mr Anthony M. Mould, director of Liverpool Letterpress and two others; Sir R. Alistair Murray, chairman of London & Montrose Investment Trust and on 12 others; Mr Morton D. Oliphant, director of Tate and Lyle, Cammell Laird, Martins Bank, Brown Brothers, etc.; Mr John J. Parkes, chairman of Alvis and on four others; Mr Charles U. Peat, former Tory MP, now chairman of Cleveland Trust and North Eastern Improved Dwellings Co; Lieut-Col H. H. Peile, chairman of Washington Engineering and on three others; Mr J. Murray Prain, on six companies including Royal Bank of Scotland, Alliance Trust, etc.; Mr Cyril G. F. Pritchett, director of Chloride Electrical Storage Co and four others; Sir Halford Reddish, President of Rugby Conservative Association, chairman of Rugby Portland Cement, and on Il other companies including Hawker Siddeley, Alfred Herbert, Granada Group; Mr James F. Simpson, on Scholfields Holdings and three others; Sir Eustice Smith, chairman of Smith's Dock and on nine others includig Swan Hunter, Shipping Industrial Holdings, etc.; Mr J. Alan Thompson, director ot Woolcombers (Holdings) and on 13 others; Mr Philip J. D. Toosey, on Cammell Laird, Martins Bank, Ocean Steam Ship Co and five others; Mr Murray Vines, director of Evershed and Vignoles; Mr Raymond H. Wilkins, chairman of Francis B. Wilmott and on three others.

is no question which side the Economic League is on.

Many if not all the firms which donate money to the Economic League and all those on its governing council share at least one outstanding characteristic - uncompromising hostility to the working class and its organizations, from the trade unions to the YS and the SLL.

Press, Tuesday 30, 1972