JONES-ALDINGTON: NO COMPROMISE

NATIONAL Liberation Bien Hoa, near Saigon, yesterday.

The attack, made 122mm rockets, killed one American and wounded 28 others—the highest US casualties since a rocket attack against Da Nang airbase in July last year.

Bien Hoa airbase is just 15 miles from Saigon city centre and the attack demonstrates the continued strength of the National Liberation Front, despite the relentless US bombardments.

Puppet president Nguyen Van Thieu now forecasts attacks on Saigon and attempts to cut off food supplies reaching the South Vietnamese capital.

His statements contrast markedly with his bombastic remarks on the eve South" of the unsuccessful Vietnamese attempt to retake the northern provincial capital of Quang Tri.

Thieu's prediction, made in a speech to the National Defence College, was that the communists would concentrate their efforts on cutting food supplies to Saigon and also try to capture land and "stir up discontent' among the city's population.

The discontent in Saigon hardly needs 'stirring' - high prices, corruption and military repression have produced a situation there resembling the last days of the Chinese Kai-shek, Kaishakist ecording Chiang journalists.

Thieu remains liant on US air off defeat. He speech by saying States must main raids against No 'paralyse' the cor and "cause the political system. THERE should be no shouts of victory even if docks shop stewards win their demand for a voice at the Jones-Aldington committee.

In a series of legal and negotiating manoeuvres over the last five days, port employers, warehouse owners and union leaders have attempted to create an atmosphere of conciliation and compromise around the committee.

But for any steward to assist this attempt in any way would be a betrayal of his members' interests.

The Jones-Aldington committee's job is to find ways of cutting the labour force in the docks industry, with as little industrial trouble as possible.

Its interim report aims at cutting the employment register —already slashed by 20,000 over the last five years-by at least a further 8,000. And as Lord Aldington made clear on Monday night: 'There is no suggestion of any alteration to the report.

With 900,000 thrown on the scrapheap ot unemployment, no trade unionist worthy of the name can have any truck whatsoever with this kind of policy.

For this reason alone the whole basis of the present Jones-Aldington discussions is NLF attack near Saigon scares Thieu completely repower to stave concluded his that the United ain its bombing rth Vietnam to intry's economy collapse • of its completely unacceptable. It is absurd and dangerous to suggest, as some stewards are apparently doing, that the writing-in of a few more 'guarantees' by the employers will settle the jobs crisis in the This crisis is an unavoidable feature of the crisis of the capitalist system on a world scale, not just of technological change within the industry.

Parasitic employers starved the industry of investment for years while raking off vast profits. When they were finally forced into investment in containerization competition, they found themselves overtaken by the gathering trade Abolition of the temporarily unattached register (TOR), as proposed by the report, is a smokescreen for solving this crisis at the dockers' expense.

Jack Jones and and his fellow-trade unionists on the committee accepted in the report the employers' claim that besides the 1,600 TUR men there are more than 4,000 attached dockers who are surplus to requirements'.

They hoped that this 'surplus' could be reduced by increased severance payments to older or unht men, with any residual problem dealt with Front forces mounted a big attack on attack site of a giant American air base, early Thieu has every interest in keeping the war going-North Vietnam • has refused to negotiate until the Americans force him out of office. Paul-Henri Spaak: 'a shoddy little PAUL-HENRI SPAAK, first president of the United Nations, former NATO secretary-general and one of the founders of the Common Market, died in Brussels on Monday aged 73.

Predictably his death was mourned by capitalist spokesmen all over the world. Edward Heath described him as 'one of the principal architect of European recovery after World War Il'.

Joseph Luns, the NATO secretary-general, said:

'All people who have known this great statesman will faithfully preserve his memory.' The State Department in Washington described him as 'a towering figure on the European scene during many decades of brilliant public service' Born into a liberal Belgian family, Spaak began his political career on the left wing of the Belgian Socialist Party, editing the weekly 'Action Socialiste He entered parliament in 1932. In 1934 he visited Leon Trotsky to 'ask his advice' about the situation in the Belgian party.

In his 'Diary in Exile' , Trotsky describes their discussion: through work-sharing.

On the longer-term rundown of the industry, all dockers are offered is a pious hope. We will try and get more container jobs for dockers, the committee said.

All this amounts to nothing more than a blueprint for further rundown of the industry with union collaboration.

amount of guarantees can alter its basic character. It is a charter for fatter profits for big employers who have continued to take millions out of the industry over the last few years while destroying thousands of men's livelihoods.

Maybe a few cheapjack firms will go to the wall as well, but the big bosses who sit on Jones-Aldington have no reason to worry.

There are good reasons why the Tories are pushing the union leaders to sell the Jones-Aldington report, and for the massive publicity campaign in its favour launched by the Tory press.

What is at stake in the dock strike is control of the whole transport industry. For it is not just dockers' jobs which are threatened by drivers, Containerization, but and warehousemen's as well.

Jones-Aldington is a cynical diversion from this basic issue.

The key question on the Papadopoulos strengthens hand in GREEK premier George Papadopoulos has installed a new cabinet including 12 of the military chieftains who helped to bring him to power the counter-revolutionary coup of April 1967.

The move gives the lie to publicists who claimed the Greek regime would liberalize itself. Previously, the colonels held only a few cabinet posts. It brings Papadopoulos closer to his goal of concentrating absolute power in his own hands.

Among the military men appointed to important posts are man' 'I was amazed by his political superticiality ., ,. All through our conversation Spaak kept "agreeing" and taking notes. But there was a little something in his agreement which made me dubious. Not that he seemed to me insincere...

people an honest "friend of the 'In general, he seemed to me from an enlightened bourgeois milieu, no more than that. But honest is just the word: he was visibly disgusted by the corruption surrounding . Vandervelde-Anseele Belgian social-democratic leaders].' Trotsky adds: 'And now this "revolutionary" hero has become the Minister of Transport in the "National Ministry". Shoddy little man! What was it that decided Spaak - the fear of further action on the part of the masses or petty personal vanity (to become a "minister"!)? In the end, the difference is not great since these motives so frequently reinforce each other!' When Trotsky wrote these lines, Spaak was only beginning career of treachery in the service of the employers. Vanity (of the most petty sort) was certainly one of his driving forces. On the basis of a certain physical under workers nationalization control, formally part of the nine-point policy put forward by the national port shop stewards' committee.

But lip-service to this demand is by no means enough. And it can certainly not be pursued by people who at the same time have their eyes turned to the possibility of a compromise through the joint committee.

The Socialist Labour League believes this demand must be placed at the centre of the docks strike: • No redundancies for dockers, drivers or container depot • A shorter working week, with workers whose jobs are threatened kept on full pay until the transport industry can be nationalized and planned on socialist lines; • Abolition of the TUR, no loss of earnings by any docker; and all Immediate side traDock all ports The T&GWU conference must be recalled to plan the fight to implement this policy, which can only be achieved if the Tories are forced from office and a Labour. government pledged to socialist policies elected.

Greece former army commander Vassilios Tsoumbas (Minister of Public Order) and Alexandros Hadjipetrou, former director of the Central Intelligence Service, who becomes deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Like his predecessor in this post, Christos Xanthopoulos Palamas, Hadjipetrou will have special responsibility for improving relations with the Stalinist states in the Balkans.

Palamas recently toured some of these regimes, where he received an enthusiastic welcome from the Stalinist rulers. spaak (left) seen with resemblance he liked in later years to be compared to Winston Churchill!

So was fear of the masses. At the Paris meeting of the UN in 1948, he spelled this out very clearly.

'Our policies are founded on fear', he told the assembled representatives of reaction.

His services to imperialism also erased every trace of the honesty Trotsky noted in 1934. By 1967 Spaak had given up most of his political posts (though not his connection with NATO) to become counsellor for Europe for the American ITT combine, now revealed to have organized