BOOKS

justification Bonapartism. Skinner's message is that the working class must give up its freedom (independent unions political rights) the no get of mean vie interest of the only real values, the public interest) and the survival of the culture' (capitalism). It should willingly accept such arrangements since, after all, they are preferable to punishment (fascism). major social work, his walden Skinner wrote his other Two', in 1948, during another period of working-class upHe now again finds a favourable opportunity to draw OUL the reactionary implications of behaviourism behind thin veil of psychological jargon.

Dear Editor, John Mathews (in his book 'Ford StrikeThe Workers Story' reviewed in Workers Press on June 2) certainly covers up for the Communist Party by omission and was obviously misinformed on many details.

Writing as a worker who was in the story, I would like to further clarify your industrial correspondent David Maude's report or ine conusion or tne a man aust of dha aallanian of tha CP in selling out the strike and in covering the tracks of Scanlon and Tones.

On the Thursday morning after the NJNC accepted the Jones-Scanlon secret ballot package deal, stewards reporting for picket duty found a strike bulletin, prepared by [CP convenor] Harraway and Company, waiting for them.

Printed on the reverse side of a panegyric of praise for [T&GWU official] Moss Evans, after the Sunday Basildon meeting, was the claim of a victory for the unions, with a personal statement by Brother Harraway stating why the offer was inadequate and why his vote would be 'No' The resolution of the body plant stewards was as much an indictment of Harraway and the CP as a hostile reaction to the sell-out. Harraway's subsequent statements about returning to work were made without the consent of the shop stewards' committee and helped to maintain the split in the ranks long enough to ensure an eventual return to work of all plants.

The convenors had no central strategy to fight the sellout. In fact, to question role of Scanlon and Jones during the strike was consid ered high treason. Yet they gave the Tories a trial run • of the working of the Industrial Relations Act with everything from a secret ballot to the disciplining of shop stewards. To this day the Liverpool steward John Dillon has not had his credentials reinstated nor has the promised inquiry taken place.

The approach of Mathews to the struggles of Ford workers nuan tha maare is naive Nona over lie yeals is daire. Irone of the tensions that exist between the union bureaucracy and the stewards, the stewards and the ranks, live in his book, which couples with admiration of mindless militancy and unconcealed contempt for the rank and file, the inevitable scapegoat for the sell-out of the union bureaucracy. (See 'Cracks in the ranks' p. 142.)

Mathews is unable to explain the collapse of the parity campaign in 1970 except with empty phrases about 'workers' lack of militancy at Dagenham', etc.

Ramsey's [Ford officiall statement that year was a frank exposure of the problems of monopoly capitalism, which the stewards could not answer and have not answered to this day.

The enormous, spontaneous response of the workers in 1971 was a result of the interference of the Tory government in wage bargaining and opposition to the miserable £2 offer. Mathews' imputation is that the rank and file had 'woken up' My suspicions are that International Socialists played a prominent part in writing this book. The only steward in Dagenham interviewed by Mathews is an IS member who Sid Harraway worked might and main to provide Harraway and the Stalinists with a smokescreen during the strike, only to denounce them when the ship began to sink Mathews, incidentally, did not consult Harraway or any other leading stewards in Dagenham and concentrates mainly on the statements of the Halewood convenor, Les Moore.

On top of this, see Sagall's sympathetic review in 'Socialist Worker'. (June 10.)

This book is the worst kind of bowing to spontaneity and the refusal of Mathews to interview the Dagenham convenors ensures that the essence of the story is missing. The puritanical insinuation of sellout by the rank and file at Dagenham is a slander and diversion: the outlook of a not too liberal gentleman. Let me leave you with the comments of Sid Harraway on the book: 'They must have shown him round the flannel shop at Halewood!' Alan Stares, T&GWU steward, body plant (Dagenham). Dear Editor, Concerning the Lydda airport massacre, John Spencer gave a lucid and cogent reply to David Mercer, whose feelings seem to have got the better of his reason, to say nothing of his style.

Spencer was accused of 'sick remarks' • 'pathologically twisted values' *nauseating puerilities', , 'mindless infantilism' and Stalinist antiSemitism.

Violent phrases usually express cheap emotion; it would be easy to suspect Mercer of allowing the spurious indignation of the bourgeois media to induce an attempt to prove his humanity.

But it would be unfair. Spencer's reply does leave something unsaid. Mercer has confused the issue by denigrating the heroism of the Japanese terrorists. The point is not whether what they did was heroic-it was. The point is whether what they did was horrible -and it was.

When Lenin and Trotsky argued against terror sm they had in mind the assi ssination of Tsarist ministers Above left: David Mercer. Above: John Spencer like. Such actions did immense damage to the working-class movement, but no man of sense felt obliged to waste much pity on the victims.

The classical, strategic arguments apply all the more strongly when the intended victims are innocents but in addition one need not be ashamed to register one's attitude to useless brutality.

Indifference to innocent suffering has nothing in common with the revolutionary hardness of the old Bolsheviks. It is not a question of delivering sermons to guerrillas. It is a question of stating the whole truth-the unique role of Trotskyism.

Even So, Mercer's indignation is quite unbalanced. The real crime of petty bourgeois terrorists is to mislead the course of world revolution and even this does not put them on the moral level of imperialist agencies like Zionism, which endanger the very safety of the planet.

Sally Kershaw

A lorry telonging to Panalpinaone of the firms still blacked by northern dockers makes its tentatively through a mass meeting at Chobham Farm SUPPIÉ S_* OAP-D TE ay 7.30 8.00 9.00 9.20 10.10 10.40 11.15 11.40 BBC 1 TALK ABOUT LONDON. Tour of the City with Michael Bentine.

PANORAMA.

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and weather.

DOOMWATCH. W

La Knighthood.

THE SPINNERS MER.

ATHLETE. High Weather.

BBC 2 11.00-11.25 Play school. 2.05 Cricket and tennis. Wimbledon and second test match from 6.20 6.40 7.30 8.00 8.30 9.00 0.00 0.30 9.20 June PAGE TV CROSSROADS.

THE DAVID NIXON SHOW. CORONATION STREET. WORLD IN ACTION.

ALCOCK AND GANDER. MAN AT THE TOP. Nobody Gets in My Way. NEWS AT TEN.

MCMILLAN AND WIFE. An Elementary Case of Murder.

HORIZON. Crab Nebula.