AUGUST PLANS FOR RULE BY DECREE? DANGEROUS DAYS IN SHOWDOWN WITH TORIES

GREAT DANGERS face working class as the showdown with the Tory government begins. These dangers must be squarely faced and urgently prepared against.

At the end of the most enemy than their sending of momentous week in Bri- 4,000 extra troops to Ulster. tish political and indus- This brings the total to 22,000 for a population only one seventh trial history since the of that of Greater London! This should leave no doubt about the 1926 General Strike, the scale of the repressions they will lines of combat are now prepare for Britain. clearly and tightly drawn.

profound in its historic significance, is the way in which Heath Britain's 42,000 dockers came out on national strike on TV last Wednesday insisted yesterday and on Monday they arrogantly on the authority of the House of Lords as 'the highest wil be joined in a massive onecourt in the land'. day stoppage by workers in the West of Scotland, the Midlands hereditary and life peers elected and two unions in national by nobody and answerable to nobody, a survival from the days newspapers. of medieval oppression, retained The country is headed inescapby the capitalist class as a bulably for General Strike-the only question is on what day wark for its own power. is now used to confirm with The Tories, waving the black flag of 'law and order'. , are every finality the authority of the new day provoking the working class National Industrial Relations into new battles. The working Court, a court with the powers and purposes of a new 'star class itself, driven by hatred and contempt for a Tory Government chamber', designed to apprehend which openly sets out to destroy and jail all those who challenge 1TS basic rights, is rejecting in the power and decisions of the employing class. action the class-collaboration of the trade union and Labour paper after another, appearing leaders. yesterday after the newspaper On August 9, parliament goes into its nine-week summer recess. strike, compared the trade unions During that period the Tory and the dockers with lawless government will rule without 'feudal barons' who must be subjected to state authority. even the check of parliamentary debate and public accountability.

decay, the bourgeoisie tries to Heath and his Cabinet will not hesitate for one minute longer summon up the force, the inspirthan necessary to resort to rule ation, the mission, which its by decree through the Privy ancestors had in the 16th and Council. The first step will be a 17th centuries. state of emergency next week in answer to the dock strike. The dying class, crisis-ridden, lashing out desperately rather than conuse of troops recalled from Germany, to move essential fidently. It does not face outsupplies, is in preparation. moded and corroded feudalism, The background to these but a powerful working class with the future in its hands. prospects is ominous and the greatest treachery of the Labour, trade inion and Stalinist leaders fending democracy from the is that they do not warn the power of the unions is designed working class of this situation. to lay the foundation of a reNothing could reveal more pressive right-wing dictatorship. brutally the real face of the Tory Not so obvious, but more The Upper House is a body of This decaying, parasitic peerage Hundreds of police arrived outside Robert Horne's factory In Southwark late yesterday to clear away a big picket line of dockers and printworkers supporting the occupation at Briant Colour Printing.

Dockers set up solidarity This is why one capitalist SEVERAL HUNDRED dockers marched from a Tower Hill rally yesterday afternoon to join print workers from Briant Colour Printings In the writhings of its senile Ltd, Peckham, after they claimed police brutality against pickets.

A large force of police stood three deep outside the gates of an But it does so this time as a associated company Robert Horne's, Southwark factory, facing 400 print workers and dockers.

A team of negotiators All the Tories' talk about de- headed by Bill Freeman, the Briant work-in committee leader, talked with the management behind the gates.

They were asking with printers management to use the influence which they had when they closed down the Briant plant to get it reopened.

While the pickets stood outside, four printers from Prestige, another Horne company, walked out in solidarity.

When the talks ended the pickets were told that Horne's would only promise to halt lorries at the picket line until 4 p.m. on Monday. This was a breach of previous verbal guarantees, the pickets said.

The fear now Horne's will take legal action against the trade unionists who are demanding the right to work.

Earlier at a Tower Hill rally Freeman claimed that on Thursday night 30 pickets had been despatched to the associated company of Robert Horne's after rumours that several lorries were going to attempt to break the picket line of two men and two women who were there.

Police had : claimed that the larger picket picket was illegal and moved in to break it up.

'We got such a hiding off the police it's not true, Bill Freeman said.

He also alleged that SOGAT official Norman Pennington had been assaulted by police in the back of a police van.

About 250 Briant Colour workers have been occupying their Old Kent Road factory for six weeks in a bid to stave off closure.

Horne's are Briant's largest creditors. The picket at Horne's had been reduced while talks with the company on the future of the work-in at the plant were in progress.

PAGE Workers Saturday 29, Press,

'The Times' inpoks fair spoke ruling class editorial yesterday:

.. the trade union claim is much more than to say that this is a bad Act, it is to say that their affairs, and their affairs alone, cannot be legislated for and that they will not accept any such legislation.

'This again is a claim which is anti-democratic because it sets the rights of a powerful minority [the working class is a minority!] above the rights of the whole. It is the same as the claim of the medieval church that clerics could not be tried in lay courts; it would create, if it were accepted, two jurisdictions, one the law of Britain and the other the law, such as it is, of the TUC.' What this really means is that the ruling class recognizes that a situation of virtual dual power has been created. The warning is unmistakable. The Tories will try to rally all their forces to put an end to this situation. They are looking for the opportunity to spring an election on the issue: 'Who rules Britain?'.

They will try to frighten the middle class through inflation and the fear of 'chaos' into a 'lawand-order' stampede.

They will try to use the trade union and Labour leaders, everwilling, to confuse and divide the working class, to disarm them in face of the blows being prepared.