MINERS' BLOOD ON RHODESIAN COAL PROFITS

BEHIND the tragedy which has claimed the lives of 428 miners at Wankie Colliery, Rhodesia, is a brutal reality of starvation wages, ruthless exploitation and a relentless drive for profit.

Only eight men have been pulled out alive from the pit since it exploded and filled with poisonous gas on Tuesday.

Rescue operations were halted by two secondary explosions yesterday morning, and the rescue teams have virtually abandoned hope of bringing any more miners out alive.

392 black miners and 36 whites are entombed i"300 feet under. filled galleries ground.

The Number Two colliery where the explosion occurred produced about 40 per cent of the total output of the Wankie colliery complex.

The disaster pit is owned by the Wankie Colliery Company, a subsidiary of the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa.

Anglo-American is the largest mining company Southern Africa, with a capital of £650m; much of it raised through the City of London from British investors.

Last year the Wankie Colliery Company declared a pre-tax profit of 3.5m Rhodesian dollars about £1.75m) and paid out nearly Elm in dividends.

As a whole, Anglo-American made a profit of over £20m last year.

The basis of these backed Profits is cheap labour, up by apartheid-style legislation and police repression.

The black workers under the Smith regime are denied virtually all trade union rights and the mining companies are not slow to take advantage of the situation.

According to figures recently published in the 'Economist' black mineworkers earn an average yearly wage of £215 year-just over f4 a week.

By contrast, the wage of Front-runner McGovern SENATOR George McGovern has won the democratic presidential primaries in California, New Jersey; New Mexico and his home state of South Dakota.

With 56 per cent of the crucial California votes in— there was a legal snarl over the closing hours cf the pollsMcGovern had 48 per cent; his chief rival, Sen Hubert Humphrey, 36 per cent; and Alabama Governor George safety standards and regulations in the interests of greater production-greatly increasing the dangers of catastrophe in the mines.

The Wankie disaster is not the first mining holocaust in Southern Africa. Over the past I2 years, the death toll is lengthy.

In January 1960, 437 miners, all but six of them Africans, died after being trapped by rock falls in the Lydesdale North Colliery, South Africa.

In February 1961, 30 men died in an undeground explosion at South Roodeport Mine. And in December 1962, 29 Africans died at West Driefontein gold mine when a crushing plant collapsed.

Four years later, in January 'Smash CP'-fascist call ITALIAN fascist leader Giorgio Almirante has invited youth to prepare for a 'physical dash' with the Communist Party.

Italian youth should not be educated to violence but equally should not be taught resignation, he wrote in his party's newspaper, 'Il Secolo d'Italia'.

'If prevented from entering the schools and factories it must know how to enter them and to stay there,' he declared.

Almirante also said that if the government 'abdicated its duties,' the fascists had the task of 'creating within the armed forces and the police a climate of solidarity which allows them to do their duty in the defence of Thousands join Paris TENS of thousands of demonstrators marched through central Paris yesterday to back a 24-hour strike called by the Stalinist-backed CGT trade union confederation. • The marchers demanded a minimum wage of 1,000 francs (£75) a month and the lowering of the retirement age to 60. There were several scuffles with members of left-wing groups along the route of the march.

The one-day stoppage was yet another stunt by the CP to fritter away workers' militancy in blind-alley protest actions.

Behind a smokescreen of prodrops liberal mask Wallace, a write-in candidate, about 6 per cent.

Humphrey also ran second place to McGovern in New Jersey, where he was not expected to win.

And with 60 per cent of the precincts in New Mexico finished counting, McGovern had 32 per cent-putting him hairsbreadth in front of Wallace with 30 per cent. Humphrey was tail-ending them both at 26 per cent.

He took all 17 Dakota.

McGovern will thus take all of California's key 271 delegate votes at the Democratic Party convention in Miami on July 10, and is now well ahead in the race for the party's choice of a candidate to challenge President Nixon in November.

McGovern already has 561 votes and if his predictions are realized in the next few hours he will have around 950 of the 1,509 delegate votes needed to secure the nomination.

As this sought-after prize draws near, McGovern has more 1967, 17 miners were killed when the Virginia gold mine in the Orange Free State was ripped by a methane explosion.

Similar accidents have taken a steady toll of miners' lives since then.

The worst in recent years was the cave-in at Mufulira on the Zambian copperbelt in September 1970 when 89 miners died.

Shareholders in Anglo-American need not worry too much, however. Their shares slipped by only 5p when news of the Wankie disaster reached London.

And with the current rise in gold prices they will soon overcome this trifling setback to their drive for profits.

everybody's freedom against subversives.' The fascists and their Monarchist allies increased their seats from 30 to 56 in the Chamber of Deputies (lower house) in the election last month.

His threats to smash the workers' organizations and organize strikebreaking have struck panic into the capitalist politicians now trying to cobble together a workable coalition government.

His statements demonstrate the acute dangers of the Communist Party's policy. During the election, the Stalinists condemned attacks on the fascists and posed as the protectors of parliamentary democracy.

protest test against government policy, the Communist Party is in fact jockeying for electoral advantage in its current discussions with the Socialist Party.

The two parties are trying to agree a common platform and slate for the forthcoming municipal elections, and the strike is a means by which the CP can demonstrate its strength in the working class without seriously challenging the Pompidou governand more emerged from behind the screen of liberal rhetoric in which he has so far cloaked his campaign.

The last hurdle separating him from winning the nomination is persuading big business that despite everything he is on their side.

In reality, of course, he always has been.

He did not vote against single defence appropriation despite his anti-Vietnam war stance. He backs the Pay Board and the Taft-Hartley Act, with all that this means in terms of freezing wages and industrial relations. And he has announced he will vote for the anti- bussing provisions in the new education bill.

Although he has sniped at Nixon's economic policy-and talked about unfairness in everything ranging from the Pay Board to education— his proposals to sort out these and taxation, the welfare system and foreign aid look more and more like plain old-fashioned, hard-headed 'business realism'.