UNIONS UNDER FIRE Beatings will FROM BANGLA DESH continue, warns South

for a confrontation with th A presidential decree at the end of last month imposed a penalty of up to five years jail for strikes and so-called 'unfair labour practices' in the nationalized industries and other state enterprises.

This has met with powerful resistance from the workers, who are determined to protect the rights they won in the struggle against Pakistan. Their militancy is increased by the rapid increase in basic commodity prices —some have risen 200 per cent since independence.

The government is already applyıng repressive labour laws. BY A FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT The loss of jobs will practically all sections industry, apart from tood motor manufacturing.

The election to solve the mentary crisis down the last bankruptcy of democracy is ! bourgeois poli the face of 1 extremé right.

The fascist. e Bengali working class. Dacca home service announced earlier this week that the government took a serious view of recent incidents at a Dacca textile mill.

The mill workers had won an agreement from the management to pay 150 takkas (about £8) to every worker as relief and full arrears of pay for the lay-off period.

The government stated officially that such action was quite illegal under existing laws and added thát 'anti-social elements involved . . . will be appropriately dealt with.

The government is going to measures oUT the statement said.

Tajuddin Ahmed, the Finance Minister, has said the government will not tolerate any acts of indiscipline and lawlessness in various factories and official establishments.

Unless employees worked regularly, he threatened, they would not be paid from the public exchequer.

These threats are already being put into operation.

Earlier this week the government decreed that the former president of the left-wing Labour Federation, Mohammed Toha, must surrender to the authorities by Friday or suffer confiscation of all his property.

Toha, -. who once served as secretary to the peasant leader Maulana Bashani, was a consistent fighter against the Pakistan Big jobless rise forecast AS premier-designate Giulio Andreotti embarks on his search for a new Italian government following the May General Election, the Labour Ministry has forecast a rise of up to 100,000 in the number of industrial al unemployed by the end of this year.

hit and The Ministry expects the building industry to be particularly hard-hit; it estimates 7.7 per cent of the countrys 1.8m building workers will lose their jobs by December.

The building industry is the biggest employer in Rome and other areas of central Italy. But the decline will also be felt in the heavily-industrialized North, the Ministry says.

Unemployment and underemployment affect more than a million workers in Italy.

Problems are already piling up on the Ministerial desks even before the Ministers are selected.

has done nothing chronic parliawhich brought government. The Italian bourgeois nderlined by the hreats from • in icians' panic in leader Giorgio Abdul Mannan: 'subdue miscreants'. occupation who remained in Bangla Desh throughout the period of the repression last year.

Toha's property includes the important ' left-wing newspaper 'Gana Shakti' ('Peoples' Power'), which the government is anxious to suppress.

The Awami League has its own 'yellow' trade union, the Swamik League Federation. opposition Its leader, former strikebreaker Abdul Mannan, is an MP in the National Assembly. He has urtis government to arm 50,000 followers in order to 'subdue the miscreants'.

He said: 'All these should be hunted out in a purging campaign and brought before people's courts.' Headed by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Awami League government still enjoys the uncritical support of the pro-Moscow Stalinists.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Bangla Desh called last week 'on all patriotic peeple to help implement the nationalization programme and other progressive measures (!) taken by the government towards the establishment of socialism'!

for Italy Almirante, whose Italian Social Movement won almost 10 per cent of the votes last month, is reported to have said that if the government continues to fall short of its functions 'we are ready to replace the state' Almirante added that these were not mere words: 'I invite French bid for influence in market FOREIGN Ministers of the European Common Market began talks in Luxembourg yesterday to prepare the Common Market summit due to be held in October.

President Pompidou of France has already cast a question mark over the summit with his statement that there is no point in holding it unless is produces results.

Pompidou's statement is likely to. be discussed-at least informally - by the Ministers at their two-day meeting.

The French president's statement is interpreted in EEC circles as part of a French bid to retain national influence BY OUR FOREIGN SIXTY-EIGHT people, including a number of Anglican clergy, appeared in court at Cape Town yesterday charged with attending an illegal assembly banned under the Riotous Assemblies Act.

Friday.

apartheid regime.

be outlawed. both races began last month. out again during the night.

ur opponents them as such,' These threats produce a call lican Party-a partner of And Democrats-for administration fascism.

Those arrested were among thousands who gathered outside St George's Cathedral on Monday, to protest against police brutality in breaking up an anti-apartheid demonstration on the cathedral steps last Despite threats from the Nationalist government, the student leaders are planning to continue their campaign of demonstrations, which has drawn in hundreds of workers against the Another demonstration is planned today in Johannesburg, where student leaders are determined their movement will not Hundreds of students • walked out on Monday night from the African University of the Northmat Turtloop, near Pietersburg in the northern Transvaal, where the movement among students of The university registrar, W. N. Galloway, said that between 300 and 400 of the 800 students who ttended lectures yesterday afte 'registering following the closure of the college last month walked not to consider he said. were enough to from the Republikely coalition reotti's Christian an emergency based on antiwithin an enlarged Common Market.

The different nations are already jockeying for positions within the enlarged EEC.

The French are particularly anxious that the political secretariat of the Market be situated in Paris, where it can come firmly under Pompidou's influence.

Trade topics are also prominent on the Foreign Ministers' agenda - in particular the question of relations between the enlarged Common Market and the remaining countries of the European Free Trade Area.

The Common Market monopolists want a special relationship with the European capitalist countries that are outside the Market. This demand is bitterly opposed by the United States, which fears its goods will be discriminated against in Europe.

The students who walked out were protesting against a decision of the university council not to readmit 22 students involved in mass sit-down strike which originally began the current wave of student demonstrations.

Premier Balthazar Vorster has publicly supported the police brutality last Friday and blamed the demonstrations on 'agitators, subversives and communists'.

He said police actions like that on Friday did South Africa 'a great deal of good' and would be repeated 'every time law and order is threatened'.

When opposition MPs demanded an inquiry into the police brutality, to he replied: 'I am not prepared waste anybody's time' This kind of talk may go down well with the Nationalist die-hards, but its only effect on the student movement so far has been to strengthen it.

The movement among the South African students is of extreme importance-it indicates that the youth are no longer prepared to tolerate the repression of the Vorster regime and are repared to come out openis and challenge its brutal police.