YOUNG SOCIALISTS' REGIONAL RIGHT-TO-WORK CAMPAIGN

FROM STEPHEN JOHNS ON THE MANCHESTER - LIVERPOOL MARCH THE MARCH is getting into its stride and morale is high-even though we're campaigning in drizzling rain.

The day began well with a quick visit to the Oldham factory of Mather Platts. The 900 workers there were just back off their two weeks' annual holiday. Convenor Eddie Holland promised to call a meeting of works committee and raise a donation.

But the climax of the day came at Langley-a huge overspill estate for Manchester. The marchers got a great reception from the tenants and scores of local youth followed it to the edge of the scheme. Nearly 100 Workers Press were sold and £2.50 collected.

Later in Bury the campaigners aimed their main appeal to building • Young Socialist branches and a good public meeting was held at night with the Bury youth.

Our thanks to Mr Bramah, AUEW district. secretary for his £5 donation.

Earlier we saw the first stretch of countryside-about half a mile of moorland sandwiched between Langley and Heyward. But for the most part we campaigned in the endless mill-town streets of the North West.

When we came over the hill past Heyward, Bury appeared almost lost in the mist and drizzle, only the great black hulking mills rose up out of the gloom.

The town was founded on cotton and paper. The first masters to come to this damp and inhospitable moorland, eight miles north of Manchester, were the Peel family.

They exploited the deep and powerful rivers, the Irwell and the Roch and soon the valley was dotted with the dark mills. They founded their empire on dying and printing cloth and later-after 'borrowing' ideas from Sir Richard Arkwright— on textile manufacture itself.

The Peels (whose offspring included Sir Robert, architect of the police force) turned the two rivers stinking black.

The textile riches were based on slave labour. Local families were held under contract to the mills—a family of boys and especially girls was prized because the cotton magnates valued female labour above all. The other source of profit was the parish children, bought by the mill owners in centres like Birmingham and London, then shipped by the cart-load to the North West.

These defenceless orphans underwent merciless exploitation in the lonely mills of Bury, Bolton and the other cotton towns.

This is history-but in towns like Bury it is impossible to get away from history. Even in its physical appearance the community is still dominated by the 19th and 18th century— many of the same mills still stand and are in use.

While the working class is still deeply marked by past harrowing experiences. There is a great prejudice still against female labour. In one way the bad experiences of the past broke up the working class and destroyed the little community they had. Eventually this produced a sort of conservatism (Bury has a Tory MP) based primarily on a fatal acceptance of exploitation. The reverse of this is an overpowering class identity and solidarity.

And old troubles are beginning again. Both the textile and the paper industry are in their biggest slump since the 1930s. This also affects the allied engineering industry.

The Bury president of the Chamber of Commerce warned recently:

•Profits, unemployment, industrial unrest, inflation and competition have all reared Youth from the area join Tenants and youth give big support their heads to a higher degree that I personally, in the whole experience of my industrial life, have ever before experienced.' The three big industries have all suffered from slump. The Chamber of Commerce yearly verdict on textiles is: Coventry trade unionists to build Council of Action A PUBLIC meeting called by Coventry Trades Council has passed overwhelmingly a resolution to build a Council The resolution passed Monday night's meeting to discuss unemployment in area states:

This meeting requests that the trades council set up, in conjunction with district committees of unions, a Council of Action. This is to be composed of representatives from shop stewards committees, trade union branches, tenants associations, and unemployed, the Labour Party, Socialist Labour League and all working-class socialist parties and groups; to be united in struggle against the Tory government and to carry out the trade council's policy of : (1) Recall the TUC to reaffirm total opposition to the Industrial Relations Act and the National Industrial Relations Court. (2) Expulsion of all who collaborate with the NIRC. (3) For the TUC to prepare for a General Strike to force the Tories out. (4) For the election of a Labour government that must carry out socialist policies, restore full employment, and immediately repeal the Industrial Relations Act.

The meeting also resolved to send a deputation to Tuesday evening's meeting of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers' district committee and called on everyone to fight for the Council of Action in their unions and factories.

The meeting of some 50 people, passed the resolution after having been addressed by four prominent members of the labour movement.

AUEW district committee member Harry Finch demanded

Mort

I-fo-Work it passes on its way to Bury.

'Concern was expressed for the future, but the depth of the present depression was never anticipated.' 'Almost every member of our association has experienced short-time working and in weeks when mills have been running full time they have some straight-talking about where the labour movement was and what it must do. He spoke of the bankruptcy of reformist methods of trying to keep jobs, in the midst of a chronic world economic crisis that made the present level of I million unemployed look like a storm in a teacup.

He said: 'Every day the Tory government remains in power means enormous dangers for the working class. They cannot save their system unless they break the power of the working class.

"The trade union leaders who do the dirty work for the Tory government inside the labour movement must be removed. That means the only way workers can go forward is with Councils of Action to organize resistance to the Tory attacks, force the PAPERBACKS CENTRE 28 Charlotte St London W1 BOOKS • PERIODICALS • NEWSPAPERS rarely been able to capacity' On paper: 'Not since the mid-1930s has the paper and board industry experienced such depressed market conditions as those of 1971. It was, to quote the "World Paper Trade Review" , a year Tories to resign, and move toward the taking of power?

Prospective Labour candidate for Coventry SW, Mrs Audrey Wise, thought she had a more radical critique to make.

'We need a Labour government which tries to link hands with workers instead of betraying them.

I shall unreservedly oppose the next Labour government if it tries to run capitalism like the last one.' She called on the trade union movement to agitate for a national ban on overtime. As for the demand for the right to work 'this slogan upsets me: I agree with it only up to a point.' Bill Warman, Communist Party executive member and the district secretary of the sheet metal workers' union condemned the industry wants to forget.' On engineering (which is directly tied to plant production for the paper industry and textile manufacture): 'Unemployment showed an unprecedented rise and new orders were significantly lower.

It seems doubtful whether any possible recovery in trade will be sufficient to completely restore previous levels of employment and certainly our share of the exports field can only be restored if our competitive position relative to overseas competition is improved.' The Bury employers openly recognize that their crisis is just a localized version of an international slump in the level of business activity.

In Bury it causes the highest unemployment since the 1930s in January when 984 people were unemployed. The figure was only slightly better in May, when 930 were on the dole with 165 vacancies in the area.

Worse is • likely to come. The textile industry has been temporarily reprieved. The government has extended the import quotas on cheap foreign supplies to the end of this year. But in 1973, in preparation for the Common Market, they will come off. Then this decrepit sector of British capitalism faces virtual extinction-only the giants like Courtauld's can possibly survive the competition from abroad.

This, of course, will have a ripple effect throughout the engineering industry-for Bury the Common Market will mean a return of the 1930s.

Paper too is in crisis. The Scandinavian supplies vastly undercut the British products and again the Common Market poses a threat. If the EFTA block is allowed in on equal terms the British paper miller will also be decimated by Norwegian and Swedish imports.

the 'shameless betrayal"

TUC General Council.

It is something we cannot stand for, he said.

Of UCS steward James Airlie's congratulatory speech to the Tory government last Friday, he said: It is not a statement I would care to support.' While speaking of the 'general crisis of capitalism' he thought the immediate issues were those of increasing wages and a shorter working week.

In the discussion which followed, many speakers expressed the support of their branches and factories for the formation of a Council of Action, and further demanded to know why the previous calls for such a council had been bureaucratically ignored by trades council chairman McClusky.

NOW OPEN Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs Fri 9 a.m.-7.30 p.m.

Sat 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Pross, Wednesday July 5, 1972