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Moscow Trials Anth‹ Paperback, 62}P MAX SHACHTMAN:

Behind The Moscow Paperback 75p Stalinism In Britain Paperback £1.12y—cloth £2 LEON TROTSKY:

Death Agony of Capitalism (The Transitional Programm Pamphlet 5p Class Nature of the Soviet Pamphlet 20p In Defence of the October Revolution Pamphlet 15p The Theory and Practice of Revisionism Pamphlet 15p Postage 10p per book, 3p per pamphlet. Order from : NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS 186a Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UG. 1 LE 2227Top: R. Clark lett and Joe Levy of Slock Conversion (Eusion Centre In background). Above: I: Walker. Said Hyams of Walker's statement: 'It is based on no evidence of any kind... no such evidence exists.'

Press, BY WADE, HOUSINC The so-called "threats' made by Environment Minister Peter Walker against the owner of London's empty offices, Harry Hyams, do not amount to much.

As far as Hyams is concerned, it's one of the nicest warnings he's had. For seven years now he has been look. ing for an expensive tenant for Centre Point-the giant empty tower block at the Oxford StTottenham Court Road juncIf friend Walker can assist him in this search, Hyams will be that much closer to netting the f15m profit on the building.

Meanwhile, just down the road from Centre Point, at Piccadilly Circus, the Tories and their property friends are on the road to a gigantic coup which will net millions of pounds in profits for the developers.

There are five parties involved. The two government agencies are the Tory-controlled Greater London Council and Westminster city council.

With an amount of horse-trading and wheeling and dealing an agreement has been reached with three companies to "redevelop' Piccadilly at a fantastic profit.

The plans, published last month, include the building of 544,000 square feet of offices and at least two hotels right in the centre of London.

And as shadow Housing Minister Anthony Crosland pointed out in the Commons last week. the whole deal has been cooked up behind closed doors.

'It is simply part of a horsedealing agreement with Westminster city council whereby the GLC keep out of Piccadilly and Westminster keep out of Covent Garden,' he remarked.

High-flying property nadar Joe Levy one interested party with his company Stock Conversion. In 1957 the company was unknown on the stock market and only valued at £360,000. Today it is worth £60m. 1951 Levy bought the £60m.

Cafe de Paris site adjacent to Piccadilly. His company now holds leases on the Trocadero site together with a few other properties in the area and the freehold of the Palace Theatre.

Levy's secrecy about the current deal was the sort of characteristic that enabled him to accumulate all the property he needed for the Euston Centre, that mammoth structure of glass and metal which has made him millions.

Controversial City man Sir Charles Forte hopes to develop the Criterion site on the south side of the Circus.

In 1953 Forte paid £800,000 for the Criterion cafe and banqueting rooms. Today they're probably worth f7m on market values.

The biggest plum, ORRESPONDENT naturally enough, will be swallowed-without the stone-by Britain's largest property company, the Land Securities Investment Trust.

In 1967 they took over the late Jack Cotton's City Centre Properties and with it the choice Monico block. Sir Harold Samuel-the first property developer to win a knighthood-has built a company with almost £800m worth of assets.

Samuel, interestingly enough, is also a member of the Covent Garden Market Authority.

In 1968, after an exhibition Circus of the Future, the developers insisted on 800,000 square feet of office space. The final figure of 544,000 square feet followed a strange sort of deal.

Above: Anthony Crosland Westminster council suggested Land Securities buy Artillery Mansions near Victoria Station. The property had outline planning permission for mixed development of 377,000 square feet, including a hotel.

Land Securities was to buy the mansions, build offices there and switch the hotel scheme to Piccadilly. It worked.

The Tories on Westminster council are quite frank about it all. Said Hugh Cubitt, chairman of the town planning committee:

'We're not pretending there isn't some benefit to the developers. We're acting as the catalyst to get public and developers together.' It is estimated that the scheme will cost the ratepayers £5m. The developers will put in another £100m to finance the project.

If and when the Circus is transformed into a speculators' paradise it will be worth many times that figure.

So the scheme rolls on. The GLC says the Circus is an 'action area' under the 1968 Town and Country Planning Act which requires 'comprehensive treatment by development, redevelopment, or improvement' Peter Walker talks about a 'public inquiry'. There is no reason to think it would stand in the way of another orgy of property speculation.

Oll refinery in fraq: the French reap large profits from this supposedly 'nationalized' Industry. Massive lay-offs are continuing to hit the aerospace industry in southern California. Since 1968 the level of employment has dropped 30 per cent and the outlook is for further sharp declines in jobs.

McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach is stopping production of DC-8s in September, and this will cause heavy layoffs, even though production has started on the DC-10. Employment stands at 26,000, down from a peak of 35,000.

Economists in Los Angeles who have surveyed the situaing down Of a 'general windand point to a decline in commercial orders, the phasing out of the large Apollo programme and the lack of sufficient federal conMonday July 3, 1872 approvals from some modification engineer, to do anything but build airplanes.' The United Auto Workers' bureaucracy has completely accepted this attack.

Indeed some union officials have even taken to using the language of the management speed-up experts to explain the loss of jobs by the so-called 'learning curve'. Management uses this term to refer to the process of eliminating jobs as more and more efficient measures are brought in.

The situation is now so critical in southern California that the fate of the industry is said to depend upon one or two up-coming contracts, most notably the B1 bomber.

It is no accident that a good portion of the debate in the Humphrey-McGovern California campaign was devoted to demagogic appeals to aero-