Workers Press no. 835

workers press

RACIALISM STIRRED UP AS PRELUDE TO ELECTION

UGANDA ASIANS:

A TORY DIVERSION

BY DAVID MAUDE

BRITAIN'S 41,000 dockers are now in the most critical week of their strike so far.

Mass pickets will go out from the major ports early each morning in a bid to plug the leakage of supplies through un- registered ports and jetties.

London dockers will be out in force today at Hythe Quay, Colchester. Tomorrow the Liver- pool men will travel to the Hull's consistent the blackleg target will wharves along the Humber and the Trent. Later today Jack Jones, the leader of the docker's main union, will be meeting Port of London Authority chairman Lord Alding- ton with a quite different end in view. Aldington and the Transport and General Workers' Union sec- retary will be reviewing their progress in making more accept- able to a docks delegate confer- ence their interim report on the jobs crisis in the industry.

Eleven days ago it was rejec- ted because delegates felt it con- tained promises rather than guarantees. The aim of the Jones-Aldington committee is to split the ports and get official backing for the strike called off; it is here the main danger to the dockers lies.

Pressure has been mounted by the committee over the last few days on a number of employers including Midland Cold Storage, the Vestey-owned firm whose legal moves sent the five London dockers to jail. If Midland and a number of other firms agree to employ reg- istered dockers, the committee delegates' votes thinks, enough can be swung in favour of the report to get the strike called This would open the way to a massive witch-hunt against dock- ers from the big ports who would almost certainly stay out unoffi- cially. On this basis the Tories would attempt to whip up support for their anti-union laws as part of a law-and-order platform for a General Election. The T&GWU leadership's par- ticipation in this manoeuvre stinks in the nostrils of many thousands of dockers. In the first place Jones-Alding ton can solve nothing. The num- ber of container and depot jobs dockers could possibly win is at

TURN TO PAGE 12

INCORPORATING THE NEWSI

DAILY ORGAN OF THE CENTRA

BY ALEX MITCHELL

THE

TORIES are This is a ludicrous distor- tion of the situation. There are 20,000 British passport holders in the Asian com- munity in Uganda and not 80,000 as the capitalist press is suggesting. And many of these haven't the slightest intention of com- ing to live in Britain because of the hopeless employment position and the well-known hostility of the police and the authorities towards immi- grants. The majority of them will pre- fer to return to India or Pakis- tan. The attack on the Asian com- munity in Uganda was launched by the military president, Gen- eral Idi Amin, at the weekend. He accused the Asians of eco- nomic, sabotage and has given them three months to quit the country. His wild decision to expel the Asians is in direct contrast to the fraternal gestures he made towards the same community he came to power 18 when months ago. After seizing office in a bloody coup in January 1970, Amin went out of his way to repudiate some of the anti-Asian manifestations of the Milton Obote regime.

He promised the Asians a full role in the political life of the criticized Obote's country and policies of ostracizing them and turning the British passport issue into a case of friction with the British government. In reply, the Asians published in local fulsome newspapers statements of homage to the military regime, and Amin in particular. Amin is a complete tool of British imperialism. He was trained as a soldier by the British and he frequently recounts the story of how it was a British officer who chose him from the ranks to become a commissioned officer. It was the British who also groomed Amin to rise to become head of the army and eventually chief of the armed forces.

Obote, When he overthrew the country's ex-heavy- Amin, weight boxing champion, became the mouthpiece of the Foreign Office. He recommended a dia- logue with South Africa and told fellow African leaders to stop criticizing the racialist regime of lan Smith. He ended Obote's plan partly to nationalize foreign com- INCORPORATING THE NEWSLETTER • MONDAY AUGUST 7, 1972• No. 835 • 4p DAILY ORGAN OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE THE TORIES are deliberately stirring an immigrant campaign to inflame sections of the middle class and working class with racialism. Led by the Monday Club, they are raising the spectre of boat and plane loads of Ugandan Asians 'swamping' Britain.

General Idi Amin, tool of Foreign Office.

ponies and one of the banks equity menes DeT cent turned to it was Lord Aldington's National and Grindlays. of nationaliza- This smashing tion was completely in line with the requirement of Tory which was the first in the world to recognize Amin's bloody regime. The President's decision to the Aand plays directly

CADCI

the the Tory Into names Part As they are the brink General wards thev are desperate searching for issues to win the support of the middle class and backward sections of WOrKCES Ronald Bell, Tory MP, said on behalf of the Monday Club: *These so-called British Asiatics Jess British are no more ana no than any Indian in the bazaars of Bombay.' Another Tory MP, John Stead, yesterday wrote to une come Office calling for 'absolute firm- ness' in keeping the British pass- port holders out of Britain the scene is being set for a General Election. ST 7, 1972 • No. 835 • 4p

SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE

tions of the middle 70: En This vital, timely examination container trade and effect on d on Wednesday on our centre p Be sure of your copy of Workers Pr series which is essential reading for a workers. Telephone our Circulation ABERDEEN dockers could be the first to experience the Tories emergency powers-with troops manning a life-line to the north- ern islands of Orkney and Shet- . land. The dockers have voted to stop working the north boats and the vessels servicing North Sea oil rigs because of what their chair- man, Ron Findlay, described as 'deliberate provocation' by the Department of Social Security.

"The men agreed to do this work on grounds of humanity and to pay the wages to charity he told me. Now the Social Se- curity has said that this i means they are earning and will not receive the benefits they are en- titled to.' MERSEY dockers are to stage a mass lobby of Social Security offices in Bootle today in protest against harsh treatment of their and other workers' families while on strike. Tomorrow they will join forces with men from Manchester and Preston in a mobile mass picket to stop the breaking of their strike by workers at unregistered wharves in the Preston area.

A mass meeting at Liverpool Pier Head yesterday voted unanimously to continue the strike until the employers meet their stewards' demands for no redundancies, the right to con- tainer work and the bringing of unregistered ports within Dock Labour Scheme. mination of the growth of the fect on dock workers' jobs starts centre pages. orkers Press each day of this ten-parl ding for all dock and transport industry irculation Dept now on 01-622 7029.

workers press

RACIALISM STIRRED UP AS PRELUDE TO ELECTION

UGANDA ASIANS:

A TORY DIVERSION

BY DAVID MAUDE

BRITAIN'S 41,000 dockers are now in the most critical week of their strike, so far.

Mass pickets will go out from the major ports early each morning in a bid to plug the leakage of supplies through un- registered ports and jetties.

London dockers will be out in force at Hythe today Quay, Colchester. Tomorrow the Liver- pool men will travel to the Preston area. Hull's consistent the blackleg will be target wharves along the Humber and the Trent. Later today Jack Jones, the leader of the docker's main union, will be meeting Port of London Authority chairman Lord Alding- ton with a quite different end in view. Aldington and the Transport and General Workers' Union sec- retary will be reviewing their progress in making more accept- able to a docks delegate confer- ence their interim report on the jobs crisis in the industry.

Eleven days ago it was rejec- ted because delegates felt it con- tained promises rather than guarantees. The aim of the Jones-Aldington committee is to split the ports and get official backing for the strike called off; it is here the main danger to the dockers lies.

Pressure has been mounted by the committee over the last few days on a number of employers including Midland Cold Storage, the Vestey-owned firm whose legal moves sent the five London dockers to jail. If Midland and a number of other firms agree to employ reg- istered dockers, the committee thinks, enough delegates' votes can be swung in favour of the report to get the strike called off. This would open the way to a massive witch-hunt against dock- ers from the big ports who would almost certainly stay out unoffi- cially. On this basis the Tories would attempt to whip up support for their anti-union laws as part of a law-and-order platform for a General Election. The T&GWU leadership's par- in ticipation this manoeuvre stinks in the nostrils of many thousands of dockers. In the first place Jones-Alding.

ton can solve nothing. The num- ber of container and depot jobs dockers could possibly win is at

TURN TO PAGE 12

INCORPORATING THE NEWSI

DAILY ORGAN OF THE CENTRA

BY ALEX MITCHELL

THE

TORIES

This is a ludicrous distor- tion of the situation. There passport munity in Uganda and not 80,000 as the capitalist press is suggesting. of these haven't And many the slightest intention of com- ing to live in Britain because the hopeless employment position and the well-known hostility of the police and the authorities towards immi- grants. The majority of them will pre- fer to return to India or Pakis- tan. The attack on the Asian com- munity in Uganda was launched Gen- by the military president, eral Idi Amin, at the weekend.

He accused the Asians of eco- given them country. His wild decision to expel the Asians is in direct contrast to the fraternal gestures he made community towards the same when he came to power 18 months ago. After seizing office in a bloody coup in January 1970, Amin went out of his way to repudiate some of the anti-Asian manifestations of the Milton Obote regime.

He promised the Asians a full role in the political life of the criticized Obote's country and policies of ostracizing them and turning the British passport issue into a case of friction with the British government. In reply, the Asians published local fulsome newspapers statements of homage to the military Amin in regime, and particular. Amin Is a complete tool ot British imperialism. He was trained as a soldier by the frequently British and he recounts the story of how it was a British officer who chose him from the ranks to become a commissioned officer. It was the British who also groomed Amin to rise to become I eventually head of the army and chief of the armed forces.

Obote, When he overthrew Amin, the country's ex-heavy- weight boxing champion, became the mouthpiece of the Foreign Office. He recommended a dia- with South Africa and logue told fellow African leaders to criticizing the racialist stop regime of lan Smith. He ended Obote's plan partly nationalize foreign to com- INCORPORATING THE NEWSLETTER • MONDAY AUGUST 7, 1972 • No. 835 • 4p DAILY ORGAN OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE THE TORIES are deliberately stirring an immigrant campaign to inflame sections of the middle class and working class with racialism. Led by the Monday Club, they are raising the spectre of boat and plane loads of Ugandan Asians 'swamping Britain.

I Amin, 1o01 of Foreign Olice.

panies and one of the first banks Uganda Suveill 50• cent turned to it was Lord Aldington's National and Grindlays. This of nationaliza- tion was completely in Ine with the requirement of the Tory which was the first government, in the world to recognize Amin's bloody regime. The President's decision to the Asians plays directly expel the Tory hones Party. As they are pushed to- wards the brink of General Election ther desperatelv ale win the searching Ior • Issues of the middle class and backward workers. sections of Ronald Bell. Torv MP. said on behalf of the Monday Club: *These so-called British Asiatics British than any Indian in the bazaars of Bombay.' Another Tory MP, John Stead, yesterady LO une rome Office calling for 'absolute firm- ness' • ho keep out the British pass.

port We scene Is being sel for a General Election • 4p ST 7, 1972 • No. 835

SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE

tions of the middle This vital, timely examination container trade and effect on d on Wednesday on our centre p Be sure of your copy of Workers Pr series which Is essential reading for a workers. Telephone our Circulation ABERDEEN dockers could be the first to experience the Tories' powerswith troops emergency manning a life-line to the north- ern islands of Orkney and Shet- . land. The dockers have voted to stop working the north boats and the vessels servicing North Sea oil rigs because of what their chair- man, Ron Findlay, described as 'deliberate provocation' by the Department of Social Security.

'The men agreed to do this work on grounds of humanity and to pay the wages to charity' he told me. 'Now the Social Se- curity has said that this means they are earning and will not receive the benefits they are en- titled to' MERSEY dockers are to stage a mass lobby of Social Security offices in Bootle today in protest against harsh treatment of their and other workers' families while on strike. Tomorrow they will join forces with men from Manchester and Preston in a mobile mass picket to stop the breaking of their strike by workers at unregistered wharves in the Preston area.

A mass meeting at Liverpool Pier Head yesterday voted unanimously to continue the strike until the employers meet their stewards' demands for no redundancies, the right to con- tainer work and the bringing of unregistered ports within Dock Labour Scheme. mination of the growth of the fect on dock workers' jobs starts centre pages. orkers Press each day of this ten-part ding for all dock and transport Industry Irculation Dept now on 01-622 7029.

PAGE 2 Workers Press, Monday August 'HEATH OUT' is a resound- ing call to action through- out the provinces. On Satur- day 2,000 chanting workers marched behind eight MPs through lIkeston, Derbyshire, protesting against the closure of Stanton and Staveley steel- works (see report p. 11).

As the seriousness of recession has forced the employers' hands from the pruning shears to the axe, the of workers' pattern protests has changed from the rela- tively mild struggle against redundancies the bitter bread-and-butter fight to save whole factories. Redundancies affected the few — closures affect every- one. In the process, layers of ordinary and otherwise meek and mild rank-and-file workers, for years content to pocket their rise negotiated annually by the union, have been driven en masse into a political fight not just against their employ- but ers against the govern- ment. At towns like Ilkeston, Birchley, Shotton, and Kilbirnie, livelihoods the jobs and of sections of the popula- large tion depend on a single indus- try and in some cases on a single factory. Slump is dealing body blows to all major sectors of the economy, forcing brutal rationalization in foundation industries like steel, machine tools and engineering. At a time when many fami- lies are either bareiy able to keep their heads above water or have actually sunk beneath the waves, the irretrievable loss of all employment is pitchfork- ing thousands of workers onto the streets with their placards loudhailers for the first and time since the war and in many cases for the first time ever.

Once the protest marches get under way, it is only a mat- ter of minutes before the link is made between the inten- tions of their employers and the whole gamut of Tory- employer policy. Both faces are equally intractable and in his thousand days in office, Edward Heath and his bosses' government have drawn the lines of class interest in indelible ink on the minds of the working class.

sackings, stepped-up Mass productivity, factory stringent discipline, crippling living costs and the obvious determination of the Tories to use their anti- union law to smash workers' struggles for their rights, have coalesced to turn such yester- year slogans as 'Save Staveley' and 'Keep Birchley Rolling' into a heartfelt mass demand for 'Heath Out'. It is a deep-seated hatred which is shattering the con- straints of mealy-mouthed and reformist moderate counsel and sweeping aside the diver- sions of the Stalinists. Above their clamour, the finger of the working class points unwaver- ingly at the main enemy. The remorselessness of the onslaught by the employers and their government on the working class is beginning to be matched measure for mea- by workers' determina- sure tion, to boot them out of office and return a • Labour govern- ment. that will nationalize the so-called 'ailing' industries and operate those already nation- alized under workers' control.

Troops guard JVP 'trials'

THE

TRIAL

of 41 the accused cution to protested against the ensure CUl- Wijeweera, Rohan viction of the defend- conditions under which and are students ployed youth accused of of the Icauel oullawel lIal People's Liberation particularly the The Queen's Club plotling last aprils up- Front

(JVP).

They special court was set up rising Sri Lanka building where the trial being tried before after the uprising speci- (Ceylon) resumes Icia prevent newiv-esadisneo crimic The barricades strict security precau- tectec nal Justice Commission, cases going before and troops armed with tions in Colombo today. High Court panel of jury. rifles submachine- The Thousands of other trial opened on juazes azalasi WAOSe every- searen lulv 22. but was almosı decision there no youth said have one entering or leaving ap phe rules of evidence immediately postponed part in the April the courtroom. so that court documents being held uprising are the conservative Even camps could be uransated mto nave • geavily denu concentramon Sinhala. in favour of the prose- Ceylon Bar Council has without trial. Vietnam general swindled troops GENERAL Nguyen Van Each soldier was obliged 5,000 piastres (£5) to each soldier to pay 100 piastres (10p) into contributions over cover nis Vy, South Vietnam's De- the four years since the fund's the fund every month from foundation. tence Minister, has been his meagre army pay. dismissed for defrauding But as the head of the fund, President Thieu has a soldiers' pension fund the general up corrupt General Vv In a decree published in vast commercial empire Miany swindins associales 101 farming and PossiDie,

OUT

Inis parti- Saigon yesterday he was cular piece of corruption proved widows interess. Vv al walllle forbiden to travel abroad too blatant to cover over for payment from the fund never got it. until investigations into Thieu's gangster regime is fac- After widespread biggee problems on the fund had been com- protests even earlier this the saigor battleheld. At Ouang Iri. their pleted. ycal. finally disgorged were yesterday subjected covernment torces tọ the heaviest since they began the attempt to relake une clv. Japanese seek new More than 1,000 shells fired Vietna- IrON _conceaed well away mese heavy artillery from the front line landed among deals with China The Thieu government is also trying open the keep roac feita Sain Saigon to the Mekong west of the capital.

THE NEW

Japanese appears to be moving government rapidly towards establishment of close Liberation diplomatic and com- TORCeS estimated number threatening mercial relations with China despite opposition from its right- alc the brid ing cood to vite suppa.

road which is wing Asian allies. Kakuei Tanaka, the new thought Tokyo premiel, Peking alen Chile: Allende's drive and delegation year Democratic Irom Party is due there next Friday to pave the way. Other Japanese political figures who have recentiv visitec nina.

including chairman against the left... Buddhist Komeito Party, have been aven Peking leaders. One of Tanaka's first acts on office LaKINY was lo aDorove £60m low-interest government loan finance buildins of PRESIDENT Salvador Allende of Chile has warned that he will use force against China. synthetic fibre plant in groups to the left of the Popular Unity coalition unless there is an end to land occu- vulster Masayoshi Ohira, last week de- molished one of the last barriers pations and factory take-overs. At a public meeting in the port of Valparaiso he of diplomatic named the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), Revolutionary Settlers Move- anons derwen une two colares.

He said Japan would not be ment (MPR) and Revolutionary Countrymen's Movement (MCR).

able keep its diplomatic ties • to Chinese with the Nationalist Their activities, he said, had regime on Formosa after normal- damaged agricultural produc- izing relations with China. the Chiang Kai- tion and Formosa's dictator They had frightened industry. ...and new purge shek has farmers into not sowing their protests about Japan's detente with Peking. Japan of land and private investors into trade withholding their money from Formosa's Dartners investment for building projects. feared in Egypt a nela Japanese capital. MIR had taken He said the advantage of him are aware that out of convic-

THE

LEFT

WING

of tion revolutionary faith I Kremlin- Egyptian nationalism fears Callliol ust Teoressor. that President Sadat's deci- Onv a few hours previon o Nomea clashed police in the town sion to merge with Libya will No change' Nunoa with local inhab- lead to a new witch-hunt civilian dead Ilaillo UnIC against them along the lines and six wounded. More than 160 trial which of the Ali Sabry people were arrested in the raid, THERE has been no fundamental search polira con for Mila me police as a followed Nasser's death. in basic social change ideological structure of the USSR Libya's Col Muammar Gaddafi bers. sunce olales dento. says leading 2 -Contais! Soviet nuclear physicist Andrei Allende's coalition government and now that Sadat has ordered Sakharov statement of social-democrats, Stalinists Soviet military advisers to leave, pub- Radicals be ished in Paris by and • claims to the magazine nalonauss nave protection peaceful road whatever the - Express.

OST

socialism. Soviet alliance •Save them. He says: 'Our society is Over the past period, however, In Friday's Ahram', the with apathy, hypocrisy, ( short- it has deter- declared sighted and hidden newspaper egoism a montave their spokesman, Mohamed Sid minduon to protect caoilaust ano cruelty. lo cure this society it is landlord property. Ahmed, veiled gave scarcely poli- essental, above all, to ena tical persecution in its judicial warning that a witch-hunt is on and psychiatric forms, the way. and those He said that banish which of the Popular to coaltion Marxists Egyptian under the weeks been cracy ana intervention by a totall- nave tarian government in the lives of forcible action against the

MIR

would Peade yito - refusal of jobs, and other left-wing They unity the trap citizens- exclu- groups. set by those have higher succeeded drasti- who an from SIOn coucallon. lave also both the permits, cally trimming the recicence Coa Tons

ALCICOL

ODOSILE

obstacles to progress, etc.

programme of nationalization. national force and socialism'.

THE

CONFLICT between the coffee - producing countries and the main con- sumer countries, notably the United States, is reaching a climax over the coming fort- night with a series of meet- ings in Geneva and London.

The devaluation of the dollar in December spelled ruin for most of the producer states, which rely almost exclusively on coffee exports. Under an agreement reached a year ago, their prices were fixed in dollars and the devalua- tion meant a catastrophic cut- back in revenues. The US and other main con- sumer countries refused to alter the prices fixed under the 1971 agreement and the producer countries took unilateral action to fix a quota of 48 million bags and thus keep up the price by restricting coffee supplies.

The consumers are now de- manding a far higher quota, but refuse to give an assurance that prices will be adjusted to take account of changes in currency parities. In Geneva this week, the pro- ducer countries-Brazil, Colom- bia, Ivory Coast, Portugal, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Salvador, Guatemala, the Malagasy Repub- Mexico and Uganda-are lic, trying to work out a unified strategy to meet the consumers in London later this month.

Brazilian coffee industry chief Carlos Alberto de Andrade Pinto commented: 'We are embarking a veritable war, a struggle on without quarter.' The coffee-producing countries have memories of the 1930s de- pression when the plantation workers were reduced to penury and starvation as a result of the world economic crisis. d that he will use force against ess there is an end to land occu- g in the port of Valparaiso he Revolutionary Settlers' Move.

vement (MCR). Since he took office on Nasser's death, Sadat has already staged one major purge of the national- ist left. Ali Sabry, Mohamed Fawzy and other former Nasser aides were given heavy forced labour sentences for an alleged 'plot'. Not surprisingly, the Egyptian favour of the bourgeoisie is in plan for union with Libya.

They are particularly pleased that the plan will allow them to invest freely in Libya, where there are rich pickings in and around the oilfields. Despite Sadat's turn to the right, however, the Soviet leaders are trying as best they can to something from their salvage alliance. A top-level Soviet Communist Party delegation is due in Cairo later this month following the visit of an Egyptian parlia- mentary delegation to Moscow.

The Kremlin leaders told the Egyptian delegates they hoped relations with Egypt would con- tinue to improve.

IV!

YOS

1968: Ford sewing machine workers ca

BY STEPHEN JOHNS

A progress report on that traditional 'good cause', equal pay, has revealed that women workers are still far from obtaining a living wage. Prepared by the Office of Economics (suc- Manpower cessor to the Prices and Incomes Board), it shows that the steps towards equal pay are uneven throughout indus- try despite the promise by the government to make the prin- ciple compulsory by December 1975. Almost half a million women workers are still earning 80 per cent less than male rates more than two years after the Equal Pay reached Act the statute books. The report in concludes that progress manual jobs is particularly slow and especially bad in small companies. In agreements covering one- ninth of female manual workers there are no moves towards equal pay. At com- pany level, two-fifths have taken no action to introduce it nor have any plans to do so.

A survey of 200 smaller companies with less than 100 employees showed that only four were found to have laid any plans for equal pay-and these are, of course, the small back street operators who sweat their female workers the most. This news will mean another campaign by the unions to get the Tories to agree to some statutory interim stage which female pay rates by must reach a certain level of male earnings. This kind of reformist orkers came out on strike and demanded equa pleading however dodges the main issue. The TUC has been passing pious resolutions on the vicious exploitation of female workers since 1888—about 45 are recorded in the Congress minutes. The campaign, however, was • reborn in 1968 when the Ford sewing machine workers came out on strike and demanded equal pay. Their dispute hit the headlines and held up £50m worth of exports. Since that date the em- ployers have attempted to sidetrack the issue. One of the favourite weapons is to argue for equal pay for 'work of equal value.

This allows all sorts of sub- jective considerations — the quality of a woman's work, the time off operators' strength, work due to domestic demands etc., etc. If employers were allowed to bring in these con- siderations, many women, of course, would find themselves little better off. Another trick is to suggest that men and women workers are opposed to each other and that the 'greedy' men should take a wage-cut to help their sisters (a variation on the low paid versus high-paid worker story). Some employers' represen- tatives are quite blatant about this. For example J. C. Butler, secretary of the Retail Con- sortium, warned: 'In certain cases where there is a differing rate of pay between the sexes and mostly women are em- ployed, the men's pay will have to be reduced.' This kind of pressure has often worked to the detriment of both men and women nded equal pay workers, particularly in the retail and distribution indus- bers: 'You will not be march- equal pay row in 1969 the 'of Shop, Distributive Union and Allied Workers its got membership to accept a low pay award because of the con- cession on equal pay. In fact the amount awarded workers, male and the to female, was 25 to 50 per cent BELOW the original demand of fl for men and £2 for women. The 'palliative' was the Is extra awarded to female shop assistants. The other manoeuvre used by the employers is to slip in job evaluation and Measured- Day Work in the guise of a bid to establish a plan for equal Employers argue pay. that job-evaluation is neces- sary to assess whether women are doing work of equal value.

The result, in fact, is speed- productivity and redundancies more for all sections of the labour force. The whole question of 'equal pay' can be a trap for workers that the trade union leaders have already fallen into. Capitalism does not particu- larly discriminate against workers because of their sex.

Rather it uses women's weak bargaining power to create a pool of cheap labour that threatens all wage rates.

This is revealed by the em- ployers' determined opposition This, of to a minimum wage. course, would cut right across their plans of tricking women workers into accepting less because they doing work of equal value- are they would have to pay up, no arguments. Workers Press, A

BY PHILIP WADE

Salford city council, near R Manchester, is now defi- nitely committed to non- implementation of the Tory • 'fair rents' Bill when it is put into effect.

The controlling Labour group has voted unanimously to tell Tory Housing Ministers that Salford council 'intends to take no action' to imple- ment the Bill if and when it becomes law. At the same time the coun- cil is defying Tory orders Whitehall proceed from to with the sale of council houses. A meeting of three com- mittees-housing, policy and finance-had already rejected Conservative amendments in- structing council officers to take appropriate steps to im- plement the Bill. The committees had had to process the Labour group's decision in a hurry. The reason for this is that if it decided to operate 'fair was rents', tenants would have had to be given a full month's notice of fl rent increases from October 7. The council finally voted on July 26 by 33 votes to 14 not to implement the Bill which aims to double council house rents and smash the whole basis of municipal housing.

Councillor David Robinson told the council that the Act reduced tenants' rights. It would no longer be possible for them or their associations make representations to to individual councillors or to the city council or to influence policy on election day. Their rents would no longer be decided by elected repre- sentatives but by 'faceless civil servants'. The Labour Party, added Cllr s Press, Monday August 7, 1972 PAGE 3 Robinson, had fought the election on opposition to the Bill. And there had been a massive turn of the tide against the Conservatives.

The Labour group leader, Les Hough, said it was time for local councillors to stand up for local democracy. The Bill would make local authori- 'rubber ties merely a Stamp to civil servants in Whitehall' as housing was con- as far cerned. 'We are prepared to have a go on behalf of the people who elected us, he told the meet- ing. Tory councillors launched a bitter attack on Labour members, threatening those who happened to sit on the magistrate's bench. S. Franks, Alderman C. moving an amendment for im- plementation, said the Tories would vote against any resolu- tion seeking to disobey the law and to encourage civil disobedience among tenants.

They would use whatever means necessary to tell the government about those coun- cillors "who choose to fly in the face of the law'. He told the Labour mem- bers: 'You will not be march- ing down the road to Strange- ways. You will not be made martyrs, which is what you like? he added, they But, would be laying themselves to the severe penalties open contained in the Bill. These include heavy sur- charges on members, jail or disqualification. In neighbouring Manchester, the Labour council there has come out against fighting the Tory rent plans. Instead, they are pursuing the collaborationist line of implementing the Bill and seeing what they can get out of it. Moscow Trials Anthology Paperback, 62}p

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Stalinism In Britain Paperback £1.12½—Cloth 22

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Death Agony of Capitalism (The Transitional Programme) Pamphlet 5p Class Nature of the Soviet State 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 :

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PAGE 4 Workers Press, Monday August i An international discussior The Fourth International, the International Committee and Centrism The break with the VR' and the founding of the POMR?

did not represent a break with centrism but were basically a manifestation of the same centrism: they were an empiri- cal response to the political bankruptcy of a centrist party at the moment when there was a radical turn in the spon- taneous development of events.

The documents produced in internal struggle in VR the the documents worked and out by the POMR reflect faith- fully the extent of the empirical opportunist and consequently nature of the split and the extent to which our 'turn to Trotskyism' was but an act of desperation in the search for a 'theory of justification' for own spontaneity. The our faithfulness and adhesion to expressed in suc- the cessive POMR in this way, only had a formal character. By 'understanding' theory as empirical a model ordering facts through which these can dialectical explained, be materialism was totally denied complete ad- and there was herence to primitive forms of empiricism. way, we repeated In this old contemplative materialism which Marx criticized so much and which, logically, led to the 'revolutionary ignoring of critical-practical activity, activity'. Theory, in this way emptied of its transforming activity, of its revolutionary content, was thus relegated to the field of metaphysical speculation, to mere intellectual dilettantism.

Theory, elevated to the celestial spheres, was set free from its and connections material acquired its own independent dynamic in which 'facts' were atomized in 'abstract determin.

'. The divorce between ation' theory and practice was con- summated. The dualist conception of the world which underlies all has empiricist conceptions always led to complete capitu- lation to 'objective reality, which means that conscious activity is useless. The pessi- mists forecast inevitable social the optimists disasters and assert the existence of 'objec- tive processes' which lead to the 'universal panacea' or to the International Republic of Workers' Councils': both con- denying always by clude activity and, revolutionary consequently, by refusing to construct revolutionary leader- ship. by breaking with Only materialism could dialectical Stalin 'adapt' to the isolation of the October Revolution and work out his 'theory' of social- ism in a single country and, similarly, the Pabloites could capitulate to the apparent post-war boom. All conceptions of spon- taneity have implicit in them the rejection of Marxist method and adherence to empiricism or pragmatism. However, such a concession to empiricism has always been denied by its own who have always authors, declared themselves to be the y August 7, 1972 scussion article in six parts serious defenders of most Marxist theory. All this is possible precisely because they are empiricists, because for them theory is totally separated from practice and because their adherence to Marxism is a formal adherence from which they are unable to extract the necessary con- clusions. Having reached this point, it is necessary to understand clearly that the POMR may well have declared its very faithfulness to Marxism, but this is an attitude with only a formal content and conse- quently everyday it capitulates the basest forms to empiricism. The fetishist worship of programme was only the in- evitable complement of the rejection of Marxism and the dissolution of the party into By describing the centrism. crisis of VR as a 'programmatic crisis' and by giving it con- 'programmatic sequently solution', the fact that pro- gramme presupposes a theory and a method is completely left on one side. It was possi- then that ble to say VR, because of its "class-nature', could not work out a revolu- tionary programmethis is a conception which presupposes a base capitulation to spon- • since it implies that taneity revolutionary programme is spontaneously in the born proletariat. way, one of the In this of Marxist central aspects theory was denied: that class- consciousness does not arise spontaneously from the prole- tariat but is introduced into it from outside. It was not because of the VR's 'class-nature' that it could not formulate a revolu- in tionary programme; fact, did not arise from Marxism the proletariat since the spon- taneous development of the leads working class only to 'trade- Lenin called what unionist consciousness', or the politics and ideology the bourgeoisie in the working class. One has only to read the For see that. classics to example, Lenin affirmed in 'What is to be Done?': "The doctrine of socialism has arisen from philosophical, and economic historical theories elaborated by educated representatives of the i Proper- dea classes, by intellectuals.

Marx and Engels belonged because of their social position to the bourgeois intelligentsia.'

in Trotsky, to response Stalin, declared: 'Marx and Engels come from the ranks of the petty-bourgeois demo- as is natural, crats and were, educated in their culture and not in • the culture of the proletariat ... their theory was formed on the scientific and political basis of bour- geois culture, although they declared on the latter a war with no quarter given. Under the sharp blows of the con- tradictions of capitalism, the idea of generalizing bourgeois democracy is raised—in most honest and worthwhile representatives-to the point of genial self-regeneration, and for that end it was the whole critical arsenal prepared by the development of bourgeois Lenin: "The doctrine of soclalism has ar by educated representatives of the prop position, to the bourgeois intelligentsia.'

science. Such is the origin of Marxism.' VR could not formulate a revolutionary programme and develop revolutionary policy because its position was com- Marxism, outside pletely because it had broken with dialectical materialism. The POMR was not formed on the of the Marxist under- basis standing of the methodological bases of its centrism, so there that the was no guarantee 'turn to Trotskyism' was not precisely an opportunist mani- festation of that same centrism which it declared it was break- ing with. Today there exists more than sufficient evidence to affirm that, in effect, the POMR con- tinues to be a centrist organ- ization. Consequently the only solution to the pre- positive sent crisis of the party has its roots in the deepening and extension of the discussion until the methodological roots of its centrism are understood.

Only an implacable struggle the understanding for Marxist method, for the defence and development of dialectical materialism, Will be able to guarantee the future ot the POMR as the embryo of revolutionary party in the Peru. The POMR was founded as empirical reaction to the an crisis of the VR. During the whole of its existence its policy has reproduced the typical traits of centrism—the rejection of theory, expressed in the formal acceptance ol theory.

lhe break with the VR did not take place on the granite base of the understanding of dialectical materialism, so the was in- future of the POMR evitably in question. Thus, the rejection of Marxism would imply sooner or later the im- possibility of fighting for revo- Lenin: "The doctrine of socialism has arisen from philosophical, historical and economic theor lutionary leaderships movement, petty- Today, consequently, to go to the The laid the rise tendency placably break centrism, undertake a the only CO c revolutionary for struggle leadership. In joint bigger and enter scale, it take une against. all bourgeois struggle develops all will ever Hostile perspectives, left the InLU bourgeois

POMR

will • philosophical, historica Marx and Engel: leadership and to the traditional the workers' Stalinism and necessary that such a capitu- implicit the the PÔMR and that, ly, it is e roots in the under- f the methodological h engendered it. has struggle basis for total our 1 centrism and has Marxist to which struggles im- positive give crisis in the e must repeat with ness: it is necessal wiry completely necessary a ruthless fight for materialism. This for the ary parties, and it is nental weanon in the revolutionary ents in which the of imperialism and sharpens, and sectors struggle on a world necessary to under- biggest offensive I manifestations of ide defends and of gains id this struggle, the be marked the proletariat which terrible more • of the 1930s. to all international the

POMR

d to being converted of petty left wing The built as ary party only as a section of national. However, the POMR leadership has ple. the nationalist principle of principled of the leadership has lations with supports 'America alone, reactionary nationalist tune nariowesl benine bael hidden and matism International revolution. hostility ucccobal y liquidation of the national amalgam. group formed 1964. the Socialist

POMR.

Workers' Party. around supports the magazine (Indian vhich, in its name the most positions of the petty - bourgeoisie est national chau- racialism). le phrase relations nalist brotherhood' the crudest negation the world the the proletarian stations of its total It is Marxism. o struggle hing other than the and tion of the centrist based themselves on Peruvian evolutionary Marxist rty. A party form VR. The leade Ricardo Naipur of position

THE DOLLAR THREATENS

Will the dollar crisis wreck the EEC?' asked a recent issue of the 'City Press', the authoritative mouthpiece of business opinion. Com- Commenting on Ine mon Market Finance Ministers' gathering London in the middle of last month, it said: "he Lancaster House meeting has turned out to be •a com- piele non-event. 'Although a joint European currency float against the dol- lar was discussed, no attempt UK to railroad the govern- ment into a rushed new parity was made. 'Nor was any progress made towards working the Common Agricultural Policy with flexible national currencies.' The article added: 'Most of

EEC

Finance Ministers the agreed that pending the tion of a Common European Currency, individual currencies must be allowed to move up and down when countries hold the balance-of-payments prob- lems. 'This infuriates the French because the Common Agricul- Policy unworkable tural without permanently fixed pari- ties. 'Currency changes already taking place within Six TIne stopped the free flow of laye food across frontiers and agri- there are four separate cultural markets already in Europe? The effects of the inter- national currency crisis on the Common Market are threaten- ing to smash the increasingly shaky alliance of the European monopolies. The obvious conclusion from the London meeting is that the Market are DOWeLS impotent to the econo- resist mic onslaught from the United States. Europe with By swamping unwanted dollars and by step- ping their demands up Ameri- concessions, the laue force big Cans wall LUl" revaluations throughout rency Europe. This would enable US goods to be exported more cheaply European and markets of Euro- the price pean exports to the US. convention of the AL une General Agreement on Tarifis Trade month, the and Iasl Americans succeeded in forc- ing the Common Market to lift its tariffs on a wide range farm demands are ce are under discussion. The Common Market coun- held together now mies less by interest than mutual by tear-tear of the rapacious American demands and fear of the working class in Europe.

The 1958 waS the Com- formation. mon Market in en- by couraged and urged on had the United States. Holars been poured into Europe after the war to resuscitate capital- ism and stave off the threat revolution. The Market, in the was eyes of the Us employers, a further bulwark of the 'free world. The Market has always been an uneasy alliance. It grew out and old European ( Steel Community, established together giant the French and German cartels.

German capitalism, cramped the frontiers of West within deprived Germany and of than half the Reich more nationalized property relations, advance territory wanted free other markets in Europe.

THE MARKET

Left: Prof Raymond Barre and right, Prof The French capitalists agreed -on condition that the other Common Market tradi- peasant agriculture, the tional political base the French ruling class. food exporting As a major France wanted country, guaranteed markets for its agri- in the other produce Cullular To prevent its EEC countries. farmers being crushed by com- with efficient petition more agriculture abroad, a policy of dear food. Market The Common erected high tariff walls to keep food prices At the up. same time the French pressed for a common fund subscribed out of national budgets to sub- sidize the farmers. In this way French capital gained some compensation for its relative weakness in indus- West trial development. Ger- the Market many and other partners have been footing the bill for the continued exist- d right, Prof W. Haterkamp, vice-presidents of t ence of the French peasantry ever since. The policy, however, depen- ded on stable relations between the Common Market curren- cies. The fund contributions (which could amount to up to 20 per cent of national bud- each gets) were calculated year on the basis of a unit of account. The unit of account was the dollar-the equivalent before August 15 last year of one- thirty-fifth of an ounce of gold.

So long as the various cur- rencies-franc, mark, guilder, lira, etc.—maintained the same relationship to this basic unit, the policy could operate with- out snags. The break-up of the post- monetary settlement and war the increasing rivalry with the United States has radically changed this situation. All the attempts to establish a Common European Currency have broken down. In March this year, for example, faced Workers Press, M dents of the EEC Commission at Lancaster Ho with the imminent collapse of the internal exchange relation- ships, the six member _coun- tries and the four candidates (Britain, Ireland, Norway and Denmark) agreed to fix their currencies around the existing parties and prevent any fluc- tuations greater than 2; per cent. The effect of this agreement was soon nullified by the Tory Following government. the decision of the National Indus- trial Relations Court not to jail the original three London dockers — Bernie Steer, Vic Turner and Alan Williams — there was a run on sterling and Heath was forced to 'float'. This immediately led to heavy dollar selling on all the main European money markets, threatening the mark and the with revaluation and guilder forcing the German and Dutch central banks to introduce stringent exchange controls.

There were also fears that ed the lira might be forced to • Press, Monday August 7, 1972 PAGE 5 caster House of devalue, throwing the Common Agricultural Policy into even worse disarray. The latest scheme, put for- ward by the French and the Italians, is for a unilateral rise in the official price of gold for internal EEC transactions. This is a move towards the forma- tion of an entirely separate currency bloc standing in hos- tile opposition to the United States and the rest of the world. The reactionary alliance of European employers formed during the boom period will not solve its problems by monetary manipulations of this kind. Like capitalism through- out the world, it can overcome the crisis of value only by ruthless attacks on the work- ing class. The Tories' eagerness to enter the EEC is not an index of that organization's strength, but of the British employers' need to band together with their European counterparts to attack the working class.

PAGE 6 Workers Press, Monday August 7, 1972

BY JOHN SPENCER

The border between The White House in Wash- ington is protected by a West- Mexico and the United sensor system. inghouse States is now patrolled It is not the only home in the capital equipped with this against by smugglers of protection. Just out- kind remote-controlled drone side the city electronic sensors aircraft of the US Air are hidden in bushes inside a Force. fence enclosing 'maximum subdivision' of 67 security The formerly planes were costing houses, each over guerrilla used against the £70,000. liberation forces in Laos.

They Electronic sensors are now fly stretches of over remote but almost commonplace, the border, picking signals up there are even more startling from hundreds of electronic 'spin-offs' from the US war sensors on the ground and effort. US relay the the results to Engineers at the army's Infiltration Border Patrol's Land Warfare Laboratory in Surveillance Centre, where a Maryland have successfully huge computer keeps track of

PPS-14

modified the radar movements across the frontier.

which was originally system Like many other surveillance for developed spotting in the systems now in use guerrillas through the thick United States. the Border foliage of the jungles in Indo- Patrol's apparatus 1s a China. The new version of the radar can see through brick or ground sensors were cinder-block walls and is now originally developed to detect being made available to the sound or troop movements selected police departments.

along the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Indoors or outdoors, there's Their keep use to down no escaping the long arm of the -and the influx smuggling- of electronic Big Brother. Even in "wetback' Mexican poor the dead of night the police abourers seeking work-was New fork City and Kissimmee, the suggested Tustice 1970 by Department in the Florida, police departments are Sylvania Systems Electronic using night vision devices Corporation. develdped in Vietnam to carry Suraidiary lep the of the giant covert surveillance while out General and on night patrol. Electronics Sylvania empire, had just completed a fat con- produce sensors for tract to

SNOOPERS

the Igloo White' surveillance programme in Vietnam and no doubt found itself with

C1IT-

plus production capacity.

Tactfully, Sylvania explained: The devices amplify 'The political can implications light levels 40.000 times and using surveillance equipment used throughout the along a friendly foreign border were have been considered by select- 1960s in Vietnam. They were off taken the secret list in ing equipment that can be and avid police deploved attracting 1969 chiefs without them from attention and easily concealed.

can now obtain military suppliers such The Border Patrol are not as Raytheon, Radio Corporation the only users of the surplus and Viet- of America Aeroiet hardware produced for General at prices ranging from Prisons, factories and nam. $2.000 to $8.000 each, government buildings all over the United States are sprout- To aid police departments ing similar gadgets designed to which can't afford their prices, detect intruders. the Tustice Department's Law At his San Clemente White Enforcement Assistance Ad- House. President Nixon had a ministration hopes soon to available police detector installed make pressure 'snooperscope' at the bargain under the lawn. Unfortunatelv price of $600. it was set off by sea-spray from Local resi- But these are crude devices, the nearby beach. dents are now fighting a pro- requiring the police to actually change the shoreline step outside their headquarters posal to of so that the sensor can operate for purposes surveillance. Much better to be comfortably properly. ensconced in armchair an Sylvania's 'first watching police-operated low-light-level television system'. This piece of equipment can display man-sized object in extreme darkness from half a mile away now being used and is to watch over the citizens of Mt Vernon, New York. Justice The Department, which financed the project with a $47,000 grant, is hope- ful that the inhabitants of Mt Vernon will tolerate the eye-in- 24 the-sky watching them hours a day. But it adds: 'Only time will tell if citizens will "Big Brother" type object to a atmosphere.' Some of the proponents of devices-notably, these of course, the manufacturers-are not inclined to await time's verdict. Such a group is the National Academy of Engineer- ing, which comprises repre- sentatives of a number of key electronics firms. They recently urged the government to imple- ment a pilot programme using 140 low-light-level TV cameras deployed at every other road junction throughout a city district. Covering two square miles, the pilot project would cost about $1.5m a year, including the salaries of 175 men to watch TV the screens. American lawmen are already spending more than $400m a year on electronic surveillance gear, much of it bought with government grants. Apart from surveillance equipment, there are such goodies as laser voice- fingerprint analysers, print equipment and mobile digital teleprinters.

SERIOUS

All this is not enough, how- ever, to satisty Joseph Meyer, forward-looking engineer working for the National Security Agency in Washing- ton. Last year in the journal "Transactions on Aerospace Electronic Systems' he and outdid George Orwell with a proposal for electronic sur- veillance of all known criminals. Orwell, however, was writing fiction. Meyer is serious. He wants to see miniature devices electronic-tracking attached 20 million to Americans with police records.

These 'transponders' would be linked by radio to a computer which would monitor the wearers' locations and main- tain them under a curfew or prevent them leaving a speci- fied town or place. Like most of the electronic gadgetry being used by the US police, transponders were first elaborated in Vietnam. The Westinghouse Corporation was paid to test them for US troops to wear so that they could be tracked by computer, thus reducing the risk that they would be bombed or strafed by mistake. Meyer's transponders would be attached to their wearers as a condition of bail or parole.

Each "subscriber would be identified by a code trans- mitted several times a minute to a computer via a network of deployed around transceivers call-boxes. like police town record The would computer 'subscriber's' location and the somedate it beith his 'normal compare checking schedule checkint restric tions. If vicitim of this the electronic nightmare was out of line, the computer would the transponder to instruct 'warn' him that he was violat- ing the terms of bail or parole.

To make deception impossible, would be the transponders to the subscriber in attached such a way that they couldn't be removed without the com- Tampering puter knowing it. with or discarding the devices would be a felony and anyone who did so would be hunted by the FBI everywhere he goes' According to Meyer, the system should be applied to individuals lengthy over a period so they will acquire long experience in not com- mitting crimes'. In this way says Meyer, the police will be 'constrain criminals able to into behaving and arrestees like law-abiding citizens'.

In fact, the computer would control virtually every detail of their lives. It would keep them 'close to home to avoid being implicated in crimes'. At work 'human surveillance a system' will keep them under control. that the Meyer estimates number of transceivers needed for surveillance in a large city would be about the same as the number of policemen. He reckons that in Harlem, the New York black ghetto, only about 250 such devices would needed to monitor be the whole region on a street-by- street basis. Meyer, admits, in an un- characteristic bout self- questioning, that the police, law courts, media etc, are not pertect. Most people arrested are poor, black or 'products of deplorable circumstances', he However, law and order says. must be upheld. To dissuade these unfortunates committing 'criminal acts' it is necessary to 'persuade or condition' them to 'play by the rather arbitrary rules of the social system'

PAYOFFS

He wants a carrot-and-stick 'costs for mis- of system behaviour and payofis for compliance' The costs look like outweighing the payoffs by a long 'Attaching way. transponders to arrestees and criminals will put them into electronic surveillance an system that will make it very difficult for them to commit crimes even to violate or territorial or curfew restric- without immediate tions, apprehension.' It could lead to a 'police state', Meyer admits, but the same could be said of Workers Press, Monday I taxes and so on. courts, laws, The political implication also set Meyer's mouth water- ing. Transponders, he suggests, 'punitive could be used as devices' political against for example, in opponents, 'arrests following riots or con- frontations'. It could also be extended for 'monitoring aliens and political sub-groups'. After all, it's far more civilized than concentration camps. the whole And eventually, civilized world could be in- cluded. Transponders could be used 'for defence purposes, to monitor guerrilla or dissident activities in foreign areas, Meyer suggests. He also looks ahead for the possible snags: he fears that • profit: : 'to evade the street-surveillance system, tunnels could be dug under the streets or movement through the sewer system could be tried'. Even more worrying is the prospect of 'massive destruction' of trans- ponders in 'mutinies and large- scale confrontations'. Meyer cors Press, Monday Auguat 7, 1972 PAGE 7 Above: From Vletnam to America.

data-linked, Computer-assisted, Intelligence evaluated, located, tracked and targeted all in a matter of seconds. Continual tracking, the Orwellian aspect of Joseph Meyer's America. Twenty million devices to keep the police in contact with 20 million Ameri cans with police records.

says: "An outright revolt by million arrestees criminals would be trouble- some' To cover the costs of this exercise, estimated at $2,000m Meyer has another a year, bright idea. The transponders could be leased to 'subscribers' at a low rent of, say, $5 a week. In fact this would leave the system making a hefty s that • profit: 20 million subscribers at $5 a week comes to $5,000m a yeal. 'By placing the cost of the system onto the criminal popu- lation . . . and putting sub- scribers back into the economy to earn the cost of their free- dom, a certain poetic justice is achieved, Meyer concludes.

PAGE & WOrKArI Honday Auguel 7, 1972 The book by Roy Medvedev translated as 'Let History Judge: the Origins and Consequences of Stalinism' (Macmillan £5.75) is the first independent attempt in the Soviet Union to under- stand the Stalin era which has come out of that country. It is a damning indictment of Stalin and Stalinism which confirms about the bureaucratic everything which Trotsky wrote degeneration of the first workers' state. From the great tension under which it is written, its passion drawn from the sufferings of millions of people, is also a testimony to the fact that the October 1917 Revolution have not been conquests of the Medvedev writes as a communist intellectual, an destroyed. oppositionist who is harassed and persecuted for his struggle to tell the truth as he sees it. His book has great merits and deserves-a careful study both for what it provides in the way of corroboration for the Trotskyist analysis and what it leaves out. On some crucial questions the book is fundamentally wrong. This series of articles submit Medvedey's book to of pursuing aim detailed scrutiny with the the struggle against Stalinism to the end. It will deal in particular with way for a more his errors and omissions and point the rounded analysis which must begin with the works of Trotsky - Which are cited in the footnotes.

bureaucrat over hundreds of

BY TOM KEMP PART 8

thousands of smaller bureau- crats. passage and those This which follow it are particularly because they interesting reflect to certain appear aspects of Soviet reality in the They confirm Stalin period. that, despite the the vieW bureaucratic degeneration, the remained a Soviet Union workers' state. "The As Medvedev puts it: Unce the Left Opposition spread of proletarian ideology and communist morality had been broken and was most intensive at the end of defeated and the 1920s and the beginning the Bukharinite right wing and the of the 1930s, lower levels of society. During humiliated, Stalin was that fol- the mass repression able to establish his per- lowed, all levels of the apparat sonal dictatorship with suffered losses, but the lower the upper. suffered less than the full support of the Thus, even during the years of bureaucracy. the cult, genuinely proletarian The satraps who set them- Marxist-Leninist cadres and with apartments, Soviet selves up basically and dachas thanks to prevailed most cars 1n primary Party organizations?

inordinately large their Medvedev draws a distinc- incomes, placed themselves at Stalin's He had the corruption mercy. tion between the right of hiring and firing; in a 'sincere and the higher up real sense he was the boss.

error and honest self-decep- of the In the The corruption tion' lower down. bureaucracy became the basis he the middle layers, says, Stalin's dictatorship and more complex. situation was the key to his domination over As the repression struck, many When he removed officials it. of those who moved up were because their corruption and unprincipled careerists and the incompetence had become too filled by ranks were top obvious, or because he feared 'cruel, unprincipled Stalinists, were becoming that they too ready to destroy any- men, or too critical, those powerful thing that blocked their way who replaced them were cor- Some used physical to power. rupted all the faster. They that methods directly, a type became accomplices of Stalin's for the top Stalin preferred the punitive arbitrary rule. leadership of confirms, Medvedev agencies. Others were criminals As lip-service who did their while paying to of a new type, bloody deeds at a desk, jailing, socialism, the bureaucracy was torturing, and shooting by pen essentially petty-bourgeois In its outlook (we may ask why and telephone'. he then criticizes Trotsky who had pointed to this as a trend Stalin's absolute in the mid-1920s?). control 'It must be recognized,' he was decisive 'that the people who says, are familiar during the mass repres- Such rose men sion, who made careers out of the accounts of characters in of Stalin's persecutions and arrests, were survivors terror. hardly interested demo- But Medvedev claims that Uncontrolled cracy. dictator- there were other younger leaders who, while they shared ship suited these Stalinists, characteristic faults of Stalin's since they could retain the r power only under such fully con- informed of his crimes were not ditions. informed and Time-serving and complete wanted to serve the people.

submission to those above was It has to be emphasized all their those the time that Stalin's absolute etence against control of Thus the the apparatus of he people. cult of personality of the was not the party, and thus cult only a religious [?] and ideo- decisive. He was state, was able to play on loyalty to the logical phenomenon; it also had a well-defined class con- revolution and to the Soviet based Union in order to win support tent. It was on the for himself bureaucratic and to secure petty-bourgeois degeneration of some cadres blind obedience which found and the extensive penetration its apotheosis in those of his victims their of petty-bourgeois and career- who went to shouting 'Long Live ist elements into the apparat. deaths Stalin Stalin'. was not merely a dic- It is unfortunate that Med- tator, he stood at the peak of a of smaller veder is either ignorant of whole system dic- Trotsky's later writings (which tators; he the head was The Stalin cult: Stalin In the clouds over the Kremlin In Moscow is possible as they are gulle the Soviet Union) or deliberately disregards them.

also has Medyedev a tneory degeneration bureaucratic which he attributes to an abuse oi power and the use of cor- ruption of the leading cadres Stalin to build up by support. In other words he does not trace this degeneration to Its social roots, nor does he see clouds over the Kremiln In Moscow the bureaucracy as a definite social layer produced by a complex of historical condi- tions, establishing its control only through a prolonged and violent struggle against the Opposition and against the Soviet working class. Medyedev wants to attribute the degeneration, at least in part, to the Soviet masses. He says that Stalin had the sup- port of a majority of the people 'not only because he was clever enough to deceive them, but also because they were backward enough to be deceived'. Medvedev appears to be embarrassed with this explanation, as he does with the explanation of Stalinism by its connection with the Russian peasantry, for whom it was supposed to be a new

Cars for the upper-income bracket of religion. He says that the Stalin cult probably had tewest devotees in the rural areas. He claims that it was strong among the working class and among the new, young intelligentsia.

writes, 'Obviously,' ignorance, lack of education, defects in moral values, and an abundance of potentially authoritarian personality types played a very important role in the establishment of the Stalinist dictatorship? Medvedev separates his explanation from the historic- ally-concrete circumstances of the 1920s which were analysed time and again by Trotsky at the time and afterwards. What he fails to do, also, is to link up the degeneration with the theory of 'socialism in one ', though he moves in country', that direction. As he rightly points out: 'Both Marx and Engels expected that the socialist revolution would simultaneously triumph in the culturally - advanced most countries of Europe? The isolation of the revolu- in relatively backward tion Russia was one of the key conditions permitting the rise of Stalinism. But that isolation was made the basis for a policy completely which was at variance with Marxism: that socialism could be built in such a country which, accord- ing to Stalin, had everything necessary and sufficient for socialist construction. Med- vedev fails to criticize this aspect of Stalinism because it can only be done from the standpoint of someone who has an alternative to propose.

wrongly The Mensheviks said that Russia was too back- ward to begin a revolution and would have to have a more or less protracted period of capi- before the working talism class could take power: this 'two-stage theory' the was which Stalin took over and imposed on the Chinese and other communist parties in the less developed countries. What, then, was the alternative?

It was, of course, the theory of the 'permanent revolution', dismissed in a phrase by Med- vedev earlier in his book, of which Trotsky was the leading the protagonist, and which Stalinists anathemised from the time that the attack on the Opposition was fully launched.

It is not surprising, perhaps, that Medvedev remains of Soviet society at the Stalin Automob ignorant of what this theory and how it is really states relevant to understanding why Stalin triumphed. It was, first of all, a justification for the taking of power by the Bol- in 1917 and sheviks the establishment of the dictator- ship of the proletariat. It was working-class only under leadership that the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revo- lution could be carried to com- in the pletion backward countries. Secondly, it demonstrated that a continuous transforma- tion of all social relations would be required for a long period after the taking of power. Thirdly, the carrying through of the socialist revolution cannot be completed on national foundations, but only on the world arena; a conclu- sion which follows from the predominance of the world market over each national economy. The profound breach with Marxism by the Stalinists Stalinism, so far as it had a completely denied theory, and revised these premises Marxism, which it turned into the ideology (i.e. the 'false consciousness') of the ruling bureaucracy. As Trotsky put it: The epigones mechanically separate the democratic and socialist dictatorships. the separate the national They socialist revolution from the consider international. They that, in essence, the conquest within national power limits is not the initial act, but the final act of the revolu- after that follows the tion; period of reforms that lead to the national socialist society ..They proclaimed the possi- bility of the construction of and self-sufficient an isolated socialist society in the Soviet Union. The world revolution became for them, instead of an indispensable condition for only a favourable victory, This profound circumstance. breach with Marxism was reached by the epigones [i.e.

the Stalinists] in the process of a permanent struggle against the theory of the permanent revolution. when he wrote those Even words in 1929 Trotsky could not have foreseen the reaction- ary and utterly disastrous con- R , Automoblle Works which would flow sequences from the Stalinist theory of "socialism in one country'. Yet one does not have to look further in order to understand how Stalin was able to rise to mastery of the Soviet party and state and perpetrate the bloody tyranny whose course is concerned Medvedev describe and explain. off his Medvedev breaks explanation before taking into account at all the baneful of effects of the theory 'socialism in one country' in providing the theoretical cover for the bureaucratic degenera- tion and for Stalin's hold on the Party. Once this had been assured, all the most cunning brutal, as and well as pro- foundly pathological, traits in Stalin's character were able to have full play and wreak the havoc which we know about only too well. Of course, Medvedev is right in saying that under Stalin ignorant people—we might add able to psychopaths - were come to the fore. Stalinism was inherently anti-theoretical and anti-cultural; its keynote was a petty-bourgeois Philistinism the which characterizes bureaucracy to this day, and finds expression in its ferred forms of art, literature realism'), architec- ('socialist ture, music and drama. What passes for 'Marxism' in the Soviet Union is really a rigid orthodoxy tailored to the needs of the bureaucracy which crushes all creative Theoretical bank- thought. ruptcy is as complete today as it was in Stalin's time in fields such as history, political eco- nomy and the social sciences.

Scarcely a work in these fields worth translating on its is merits into a foreign language.

In fact even the stooges of the bureaucracy do not bother to translate more than a select handful. As for the literature which lays down the line for the world communist movement, it is a grey and indigestible pap constantly reiterating a few set Thus Marxism themes. reduced to a dogma, a form of ideology to justify the policies of the bureaucracy and its very existence.

CONCLUDED TOMORROW

" L. Trotsky 'The Permanent on- Revolution' p. 10. Workers Press, M Just as he was telling the Lords that the Industrial Relations Act * W an tremist charter', leader of the post office engineers Delacourt Smith was struck down. He died later in hospital.

Many of Britain's 200,000 Post Office workers will re- member him for his refusal, even in the face of pressure from his own members, to call his union out in support of Post Office the Union during their seven- Workers week strike last year. As Delacourt Smith sank to the floor, the Lord Chancellor Lord Hailsham flung down the рай on which he was making notes for a later reply. Не said afterwards: His speech was perfect in its logic and its restraint and as he sank back and the level of his voice faded his sentiments were perfectly illuminated.'

The Lord Chancellor, with all his associations with the law, was certainly a suitable person to pay tribute to his fellow peer, himself a Justice Peace and adviser to of the the Prison Officers' Associa- tion. The leader of the Lords, Earl Jellicoe, said the House had lost one of its "most valuable members' and Labour opposite number Lord Beswick added: 'We have lost somebody who could have making a made and was tremendous A Fabian socialist, Delacourt Smith was made a life peer in 1967 after holding ministerial rank in the Labour govern- ment. He believed that individual unions should fight their own wage battles and that industrial action to force even a govern- ment as universally unpopular the Tories to resign was as wrong. From the point of view of • Press, Monday August 7, 1872 PAGE 8 the imperatives of capitalist enterprise Delacourt Smith was well aware of what industry could and couldn't afford.

Apart from being Minister of State at Labour's Ministry of Technology, which was Lord Delacourt Smith spearheading the technological revolution, he also served on Civil Service National Whitley Council, the Ship- building inquiry Committee and the committee which in- vestigated the use of labour in the construction trades.

We shall never know what 'who the man was held in great affection by the staff at • Horse Guards Avenue' was planning to say at the end of his speech on the Industrial Relations Act. . During the Post Office strike the most he would commit himself to was amendment and he was very firmly in the centre of the section of the Labour Party prepared to say there were at least some good things in the Act. We leave it to the Post Office workers he could have helped and all those workers now smarting under the Tory legal heel to make their own tribute.

LEON TROTSKY:

Germany 1931/1932 Paperback £1.25—cloth £1.87% Where Is Britain Going? Paperback 37½p Revolution Betrayed Paperback 62}p—cloth £1.05 Problems of the Chinese Revolution Paperback £1.12t-cloth £1.87% Permanent Revolution : Results and Prospects Paperback 75p In Defence of Marxism Paperback 75p Lessons of October Paperback 60p Postage 10p per book, 3p per pamphlet. Order from :

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PAGE 10 Workers Press, Monday August 7, 1972 fied of human West German tax and celebration endeavour. rate payers will be pick- For one thing a ticket for ing up a f45m share of the opening ceremony can cost you up to £70 on the black the bill for the Olympic And once you're in, market. Games which begin at of coffee will knock you a cup Munich in just a few back 25p and a glass of beer weeks' time. 50p. But most of the profits from the £256m enterprise will land Meanwhile nearly every big of big straight in the lap German construction West business-those that have not firm had a hand in the build- found their way there already.

-400 all told-have ing work- And the remainder will for their been busily grabbing soon show up on the credit share of the gravy. of balance- side company Siemens got £84m worth of sheets in terms of spin-off from orders ranging from the flood- the new roads, hostels and facilities for the 60 lighting to other construction projects the television stations that will be Games have entailed. directly. the games covering The electronics giant also won the Games' the contract for direct Bonn computer system in What is more, some competition with IBM. economists calcu- government The bulk of the financing for extra tax revenue late that these firms' profits is to come from the new business they from the sale of special Olym- £49m will generate will reach federal pic coins (estimated to raise -more than offsetting on the national £83m), a levy spending on the event. lottery (£32m) and the sale of There is, of course, no sug- tickets and TV rights. of gestion that payers taxes million 2 and rates will get a refund on One to visitors are expected into the their contribution. city for the Games. They will The Games themselves are a pay through the nose for the from far the bit of a cry original conception of a digni- privilege. The daily paper that leads the fight against the Torles. £20.28 for 12 months (312 Issues) £10.14 for 6 months (156 issues) £5.07 for 3 months (78 Issues) If you want to take Workers Press twice a week the rates are: £1.56 for 3 months (24 issues) £6.24 for 12 months (96 issues) Fill in the form below NOW and send to: 186a Clapham High St., Circulation Dept., Workers Press, London, sw4 7UG. I would like to take out a subscription to Workers Press.

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BY DAVID MAUDE

Assets - stripper John Bentley may have run into his first spot of real industrial bother at Shep- perton film studios. Bentley's company, Barclay Securities, specializes in taking over ailing firms, rationalizing production so as to reduce the wage-bill to a minimum and then disposing of the surplus assets. In a series of recent deals he bought up three toy fac- Kent, London and tories in South Wales, closed down the Kent and London operations and thus left himself with two valuable sites available for profitable redevelopment. Pro- duction was pushed up at the Welsh factory, making Bentley a winner both ends up. Of course, in most such large number of deals a workers lose their jobs. But when Barclay Securities more recently took over film- British Lion makers a €5.5m bid, the firm's em- had already been ployees alerted by publicity of the company's previous operations.

became even more They anxious last week when British Lion disclosed a f1.2m loss in the year ending last March (compared with a depressed profit of £143,000 the previous year). £805,000 of the 1971-1972 setback was due to a 'write- down' of of the value company's library of old films, some of which are irreplaceable and, in the old owners' view, make money in certain to specialist showings and tele- vision rights.

FILM MEN RESIST

STUDIO CLOSURE

The 'write-down' (this simply means that the value of the library appeared less in the 1971-1972 balance-sheet than in the prevents year's) was Bentley's man at made 38-year-ola British Lion, Jeremy Arnold. Arnold's justification for this 20-30 action librarv films made under the previous management over the past five did badly the box years at of office and have no hope recovering their cost. But the 'write-down' also adds considerable power to Bentley's elbow in his talks with the unions about closing Shepperton, which British Lion concentrating film owns, and production in a smaller opera- tion centred on Pinewood studios in Buckinghamshire.

highly This would leave a in desirable, 60-acre site Middlesex open for redevelop- ment. Union resistance, however, is strong. Cinema technicians at Shepperton are pressing their leaders for action to force a 16-week Boulting feature, due into produc- in the autumn, tion there rather than at Pine- wood. And for the first time the millionaire assets-stripper may be thinking he has bitten off more than he can chew.

9.45 Mary, Mungo and Midge.

10.00 Flashing Blade. 10.25 Atten- 10.50 Tin borough and Animals. Tin. 10.55 Magic Roundabout. 12.55 All in Day's Work: Doctors. 1.30 Pogles' Wood. 1.45 News, weather. 4.15 Play School.

4.40 Jackanory. 4.55 Penelope

ITV

Pitstop. 5.15 It's Your Word. 5.44 Sir Prancelot. 5.50 News, weather.

6.00 LONDON THIS WEEK.

11.35 Seven Seas. 12.25 Women.

6.20 ANIMALS

AT

HOME.

12.50 Freud on Food. 1.15 Bell- Tropical Fish. bird. 1.25 Enchanted House. 1.35

6.40 THE MOVIE QUIZ.

Skippy. 2.05 Castle Haven. 2.30 7.05 Z CARS. Relative Values, Part 1. Good Afternoon. 3.00 Film: 'Perils

7.30 THE VIRGIN FELLAS.

of Pauline'. 4.40 Cliff's Kids. 4.55 7.55 THE OLYMPIANS. Peter Clapperboard. 5.20 Treasure Snell. Island. 5.50 News.

8.00 PANORAMA.

6.00 YOU AND THE WORLD.

9.00 NEWS, Weather.

6.20 CROSSROADS.

9.20 DOOMWATCH. Cause of

6.40 OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS.

Death.

7.30 CORONATION STREET.

HOUR WITH MIKE

8.00 WORLD IN ACTION.

8.30 LOLLIPOP.

11.10 NEWS.

9.00 MAN AT THE TOP.

11.15 ATHLETE. Part 10.

10.00 NEWS.

11.40 Weather.

10.30 NAME OF THE GAME.

11.55 OFT IN DANGER.

REGIONAL TV

BBC 2

All regions as BBC 1 except: 11.00 Play School. 5.35 Open Wales: 1.30 Ar Lin Mam. 6.00 University. Wales Today. 6.20 Telewele. 7.30 NEWSROOM, Weather. 6.45 Tom and 6.55 Jerry. 8.00 HIGH CHAPARRAL. Surtee.

Newyddion. 10.10 'Steddfod Sir Benfro. 10.40 Lasting Joy. 8.50 P.

HERBERT'S MIS-

LEADiNG 11.42 News.

CASES.

The Usual Channel. Scotland: Reporting Scot- 6.00 land. 11.15 Open to Question. 9.20

HORIZON.

The Missing 11.45 11.42 Athlete. News, Link. weather.

INTERNATIONAL

10.15

GOLF.

Ireland: Scene Northern 6.00 The United States PGA 11.42 Around Six. News, Championship. weather. 11.05 NEWS, Weather. England: 6.00 Look North, Mid- 11.10 MERE STRANGERS. John lands Today, Points Look East, Seymour walks in search West, South Today, Spotlight of the 'Landsker'. South West. Weather. 11.42

11.40 LATE NIGHT LINE-UP.

News, weather. THERE ARE 60 millionaires and their lordships have prop more than 5.6 million acres.

These are two facts to

BY OUR OWN REPORTER

emerge in Lord on the Board', the a book on THE PROPOSALS of the business interests of peers by Criminal Law Revision Com- Andrew Roth, published to- mittee, involving changes in day. legal procedures, represent a He says that MPs' business connections pale into insigni- to the civil 'grave threat compared ficance with the liberty of the individual, British lucrative stake that have in industry and peers pub. says a memorandum 'Peers MPs commerce. make boys,' look like barrow Mr lished by the National Coun- Roth says. cil for Civil Liberties today.

His latest book took ten years 840 to and runs into prepare The American born 'We strongly that pages. urge very no legislation be introduced un- author told a friend the other til it that there has day that one difficulty is certain in com- been for piling the book that his adequate opportunity was kept public discussion of the far- subjects dying and the book had to be reaching changes now proposed, continually re- like the edited over the years. and for organizations National Council for Civil Liber- Only last week Lord Delacourt ties to brief their members and Smith, trade union official, collapsed in the House, the public at large on the issues although involved, said the memorandum.

he appears alive and well in Mr Roth's pages. added: 'The Committee's It Roth estimates that there are report is often marred by the un- 60 millionaires in the Lords, 20 critical adoption of propositions times the number in the Com- for which little or no evidence mons. miste itself provides the com- exists and for which "The disparity between the On the right of a suspect not questions, the to answer memorandum that the says official committee proposes that failure strike picketing Cold may be treated as are corroboration of Storage at Dagenham, Essex, amounting to the him'. after being sacked by evidence against dockers' action pany because the The memorandum claims that has led to work drving up the changes The company, a subsidiary of suggests which would fundamentally the powerful Proprietors of Hay's duce the safeguards available to Wharf group, employed 16 Trans- while offering suspects no new and General Workers' port Union members. protections. Roy Dotrice as Albert Haddock in A. F

оп BBC-2.

CHANNEL: 2.55 Cliff's kids. 3.05 Puffin. 3.10 Yoga. 3.35 Film: 'Dangerous Voyage'. 4.55 London.

6.00 News. 6.10 Pursuers. 6.45 London. 11.55 Visages de France.

12.10 Weather. WESTWARD. As Channel except: 2.40 Gus Honeybun. 3.05 News.

6.00 Diary. 6.20 Sports desk.

11.50 News. 11.53 Faith for life.

SOUTHERN: 12.55 News. 1.00 Tennis. 1.25 My three sons. 1.55 Cook's trade. 2.15 Bellbird.

2.30 Good afternoon. 3.00 Let's face 3.30 Bird's 3.55 it. eye view. Houseparty. 4.10 Twizzie.

4.25 naires in the House of Lords ve property holdings totalling

BY OUR OWN RE

Lords and the Commons is also holdings. underlined by land Their lordships hold an esti- mated 5,655,096 acres as against 375,199 acres in the Commons, or 16 times the acreage. 'This estimate is arrived at by adding to the known 3,157,620 acres held by 184 peers the average of 17,106 for each of known to be 146 other peers landed. 'Peers are very modest about their possessions. Lord Margadale insisted he had only "a few thousand acres" ' which turned out to be 80,000 acres, including the whole of the Isle of Islay.

Countess of Sutherland "The complains that she is down to "last 150,000 acres". her . Both of them are among our top ten landowners.' Roth says the use of peers to add respectability to a board has long been used • by firms ranging from the 'dodgiest' up- wards. 'This habit is so distinctively British that visiting Americans have tried to cash in on it. One set up a sort of "rent-a-peer" outfit called "Noble directors".

'He would offer a list of vetted in the hope of securing peers After a meeting between man- agement and the T&GWU com- mercial services group, the men succeeded in postponing their dismissals until July 21. But when they struck in support of the five jailed dockers, they were told they would have to within five days of resuming work. Shop stewards met manage- Workers Press, Monday August 7, 1972 PAGE 11 the 4.40 Cliff's kids. professor. 4.55 Forest rangers. 5.20 Treasure island. 5.50 London. 6.00 Today. 6.45 Opportunity knocks. 7.30 London. 10.30 Joker's wild. 11.00 Aquarius. Weather. ULSTER: 4.00 Let's face it. 4.30 Romper room. 4.50 News. 4.55 6.00 News. Smith London. 6.10 6.35 Cartoons. 6.45 tamily. Lon- don. 10.30 Monday night. 10.35 Name of the game.

YORKSHIRE:

1.45 Bewitched. 2.15 Bellbird. 2.30 Good after- 3.00 Film: 'Bowery noon. Broadway'. 4.35 Calendar. 4.40 Cliff's 4.55 kids. Arthur. 5.20 6.00 Calendar. 6.05 Car- London. toons. 6.15 Shirley's world. 6.45 London. 11.55 Yesterdays.

12.25 Weather. GRANADA: 2.20 All our yester- 2.45 Pippi longstocking. days. News.' 3.15 Danger 4.10 man. Peyton Place. 4.40 Cliff's kids. 4.55 Clapperboard. 5.15 Treasure island. 6.00 News. 5.50 London. 6.05 Bugs Bunny. 6.15 European 'ourney. 6.40 Opportunity knocks.

7.30 London. 10.30 Film: 'Appoint- ment With Crime'. TYNE TEES: 1.45 Bewitched. 2.15 Bellbird. 2.30 Cook 3.00 book. Film: 'Forever Female'. 4.35 News.

4.40 Cliff's kids. 4.55 H.R.

Pufn- stuf. 5.20 London. 6.00 News. 6.30 Car- 6.05 Perils of Pauline. 6.45 London. 10.30 Brass ck in A. P. Herbert's Misleading Cases toons. 11.55 Spyforce. 11.00 tacks. News. 12.10 Us and them. Lucy. 4.55 London. 6.00 Day by Afloat. day. 6.45 London. 10.30 SCOTTISH: 3.35 Horoscope. 3.45 11.00 News. 11.10 Marcus Welby.

Women. 4.10 Casebook. 4.40 12.05 Weather. Guideline. Cliff's kids. 4.55 6.00 London. News. 6.15 Dick Van Dyke.

6.45 ANGLIA: 1.40 World war 1. 2.05 London. 10.30 At odds. 11.10 Arthur. 2.30 Good afternoon. 3.00 Late call. 11.15 Frighteners.

Houseparty. 3.15 Jokers. 3.45 Yoga. 4.10 News. 4.15 Cartoons. 4.25 Romper 4.55 London. room.

GRAMPIAN:

3.37 News. 3.45 6.00 About Anglia. 6.45 London. 4.10 Yoga. 4.40 Cliff's Women. 10.30 Brian Connell. 11.05 Spy- kids. 4.55 Rumblie jumblie. 5.20 force. 11.55 Reflection. 6.00 London. News, weather, farming. 6.15 Me and the chimp.

ATV MIDLANDS: 3.10 Good after- 6.45 London. 10.30 Watts on with 3.35 Horoscope. 3.45 noon. Elli. 11.30 Shepherd. Women today. 4.10 Nanny and

TWO THOUSAND

iron- workers, miners and Midland

R OWN REPORTER

trade chanting unionists, for them between 100 and 250 'Heat Out, marched through directorship, of guineas per Ilkeston, i Derbyshire, on retain 30 he would per Saturday behind eight MPs.

cent as his cut.' The author points out that few They against were realize that people over two- the Stanton and thirds of the titles in the Lords Staveles ironworks which will have been created this century.

hrow 1.500 men onto the dole ir Even before the industrial the next two years. shrewd- revolution commercial At an open-air meeting after did not go unrewarded, al- the march, local Labour MPs though Defence Secretary Lord Tom Swain, Raymond Fletcher, Carrington's first ancestor, the Concannon Donald and Eric Lord Carrington, got rough Varley cheered by the Were 1797, treatment in audience when said that All the peers walked out of everything must be done to force the Lords except for his spon- the Heath government to resign.

against sor in protest the But South East Derbyshire MP enoblement of a man in 'trade'. Rost Peter was howled down Other from typical snippets 'Lord on the Board': when he tried to justify the The former wife of the Ilth government's action and de- manded the denationalization of Earl Coventry was the industry. American ham- daughter of an burstre miar of Drogheda sold Stanton action committee R. secretary Dunbar told the eggs from his Surrey farm to his crowd that the action committee staff on the 'Financial Times'.

was non-political. • Baron Gladwyn for sold 'You start a sit-in and see how €8,000 a Ming Grey Jade water non-political it is,' roared a voice buffalo which had been removed from the crowd. from the Summer Palace outside Steelworkers from Teesside Peking during suppression of the Pledged support for the Stanton Boxer Rebellion. promised help in representative representative 'Lord Board' is pub- on lished by Parliamentary Profiles.

for two-and-a-half hours store for 12 weeks before the ment last Tuesdav but suggest work- sackings,

T&GWU

depot TO sharing and bringing forward the steward Tony Knightsbridge told holiday. Workers annual two weeks? This Press there was no was rejected. Now the men have between division his members struck. and the dockers. Later in the week an attempt 'We are both fighting for the the was made to split men by right work', 'The to said. offering some of them their job blew press the picketing and This was unsuccessful. back. counter-picketing up out of con- had text.' Dockers picketed the

PAGE 12 Workers Press, Monday Augus

BY STEPHEN JOHNS

MARATHON MANU-

FACTURING will be launched in the Clyde- bank shipyard on Wed- nesday on a tide of good- will from unions and shop stewards led by the two Communist Party members James Reid and James Airlie. Viewers in Scotland got a foretaste of the so-called new era for Clydeside on Friday when Reid, member of the Party's national Communist executive, grasped the plump Wayne Harbin hand of and paid tribute to this capitalist from Texas. The gesture symbolized the Clydebank settlement. Marathon of the negotia- have come out tions with nothing less than a blueprint for corporatism tucked safely in their pockets. More than this. They have a well- • founded belief that with the help of stewards like Reid they can make it work. This marks a new important in trade union bar- precedent gaining and vividly exposes the develop- extremely right-wing ment of sections of the Com- munist Party and the trade union bureaucracy. Marathon is a watershed that can be compared to the intro- duction of Measured-Day Work into Britain's car and engineer- ing plans. Everyone, in retrospect, recog- nizes that MDW was the key fac- tor behind the labour 'shake-out' that has devastated the two in- dustries since 1968. But what is not acknowledged is that the men responsible for

MDW

accepting the were Stalinists and the union officials.

For example, it took Rootes management 12 months to intro- duce the first MDW scheme in British industry at their Ryton plant, Coventry. At no time in battle did the Communist this Party members in the plant come four out square against system. They confined themselves to the national Party line, which 'resist' these deals, but was to concentrate in practice in nego- tiating safeguards. At the two Rolls-Royce plants in Coventry, Communist Party stewards did not fight MDW either, but spoke in favour of productivity deals for non- pieceworkers. Once management won this concession they forced pieceworkers to begin. trial MDW schemes at the Parkside plant. This phoney war by the Stalin- ists against MDW gave union leaders the vital cover necessary to get the deals past a suspicious labour force. Workers paid the price. Pro- ductivity was forced up and tens

AUGUST FUND

REACHES

£204.48 AT A time when workers every- where are determined to make this government resign, the wheel- ing and dealing of Victor Feather chiefs is more and the TUC treacherous than ever. Trade unionists all over the country must be mobilized in support of the dockers. Workers Press is vital therefore to lead this fight. We appeal to all our devoted readers. The target for August is £1,750. We know everything possible to raise this amount in good time. Your record so far has been magnifi- cent. Can we better it this month?

Let's try. Raise extra amounts, take collections at work, post your donations every one of immediately to: Workers Press August Appeal Fund, 186a Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UG.

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lay August 7, 1972 Reid (lett) shakes hands with Harbin for of thousands of jobs were sold for a few extra pounds in the wage packet. Now, of course, it is fashion- able to beat the anti-productivity drum. Everyone is against MDW.

But five years ago the Socialist Labour League stood in minority of one against the em- ployers' schemes. And it is the same today on the Clyde. Alone we can warn that the Clydeside working class will pay a bitter price for the Marathon deal. One clause in it establishes machinery for binding arbitra- tion. Another will mean Mara- entire six thon take can an months' bonus from workers who strike unofficially for any length of time. The icing of the cake is Reid's servile promises that the deal will be 'honoured' and that no one likes to strike for striking's sake, etc. The pattern is not difficult to discern. Disputes will be immedi- swallowed by a series of ately negotiations and committees, with the final prospect of outside arbi- tration. If the workers should dare to act independently, Reid and his honourable band of men will be down talking resolving about trouble without conflict'. If this friendly persuasion fails, there is always the threat of the penalty clause and a substantial loss of earnings. This is corporatism in embryo , attempt to deprive the •-an class of independent working action and merge its unions with machinery of monopoly capital. This is a direct result of the ideology now espoused by men like Reid. He has now con- verted himself to the belief that the class struggle can be abol- ished, that new arrangements can be with 'enlightened' made employers to resolve conflict.

It is the same ideology that allows Reid to share a platform with Enoch Powell before a businessmen's seminar. Apart from congratulating the Tory government and declaring himself a Reid said Christian, this about the future for Clyde- side: I am hoping that in the two companies that emerge that suffi- cient will be learned from recent experiences so that the structure of the company will allow latent abilities of the workforce to express itself.' And Saturday's 'Morning Star', the CP paper, was silent on the bonus clauses, silent on the binding arbitration. All emphasis was placed on the guarantees of employment won by the Clyde- bank workers. these What are concessions from the Texan oil rig builders?

Marathon are committed to employing only 150 workers. They say they will employ 500 by the end of September, they say they Harbin for the sake of the TV cameras.

will have jobs for 2,000 in 18 months' time. Meanwhile 1,000 men who are likely to be fired at Clydebank must live on promises-they are apart from the 2,000 who left the yards during the long demor- alizing months of 'work-in'.

All these terrible 'sacrifices' have been made so that a rump on in labour force can work the yard for £40 a week (the same as car workers in Birmingham get without MDW and certainly

FROM PAGE 1

a generous estimate 1,000, while even the interim report : admits almost 6,000 are needed now.

And the jobs shrinkage is a continuing one spurred on by changes in technique and the trade slump. Secondly the joint committee of union leaders and port em- ployers was a fraud from the outset. The Road Haulage Association, whose members initiated use of the Industrial Relations Act in the maintains bitter jobs row, hostility to the dockers.

The RHA has said it will fight any attempt to extend the Dock Labour Scheme. Heatons Trans- port summed up their attitude, after being approached by the committee, when they said they quite prepared to let were dockers stuff and strip their con- tainers as long as the port em- ployers paid. Just how seriously many em- take the committee is ployers indicated by the resignation of George Tonge, a director of Pro- prietors of Hay's Wharf, as chair- man of the National Association of Port Employers. Tonge apparently thought even the interim report too generous to the dockers. Hay's Wharf is also thought to be bitterly re- sisting employment of dockers ONE HUNDRED and eighty-four process operators, all members General and Municipal of the Workers' Union, are into the fifth week of their official strike at the International Synthetic Rubber Company plant at Fawley in Hampshire. The strike began when the com- pany, part of one of the largest synthetic rubber makers in Europe, sent home men operating a union ban on overtime. The ban was introduced after ISR refused to negotiate on a newly imposed grading scheme. During the 24-hour picketing the police are present in very large numbers. Sometimes they outnumber pickets more than two to one.

BY PHILIP WADE

BUILDING UNION leaders have already accepted the latest employers' pay offer and will try and call off offi- cial strikes for the £30, 35- hour week claim. However, rank-and-file workers feel that their claim has been sold out by the leadership. There possibility that the present 1s a selective stoppages will esca- unofficial all-out strikes late into up and down the country. Last Wednesday, union lead- employers ers met the at the national joint council. One thou- sand building workers stood out- side demanding immediate settle- ment on the basis of the full claim. Afterwards, George Smith of Union of the Construction, Allied Technicians, Trades and which represents most building workers, said there had been no settlement. But it now seems clear that something fixed was up at the following For the day meeting.

UCATT

the executive met London and recommended accept- ance of the latest offer at next Tuesday's NJC meeting. The settlement is nowhere near the original claim and betrayal represents clear by the union leadership. without acceptance of a four-year The claim, drawn and up corporate contract. fought for by the rank and file, The Marathon settlement, how- was for an immediate increase in ever,. must be taken as great £30 and five- basic rates to Worse can follow. Men warning. hour in the working week cut like James Reid and others In with another week's holiday.

the CP disarming The employers' offer is only for working class with talk of 'good an immediate rise the crafts- times'. men's basic to £23 from £20 and The struggle to force the gov- £2.60 rise for labourers ernment to resign, therefore, must £19.60. also involve a bitter fight against Next May, craftsmen would get Stalinism which the is most another £3 and labourers £2.40. treacherous force the body in Employers have also offered of the working class. higher guaranteed minimum of £24.80 for labourers earnings £29 for craftsmen. and Not a minute off the working day is offered and there are only days' and two holiday, only one this year. at its depots, Dagenham Storage Shortly before the seven-week and UK Cold Storage. sélective strikes began, employers Every moment Jones continues offered 18-month package an the on joint committee deal which gave basic rates just the Tories use to plan moment As the below the current offer. the dockers' defeat-as is every latest offer lasts for an extra six TUC spends moment the talk- months, it is in substance the them about pay and in- ing to dustrial relations. Transport and General Work- Union regional and national ers' Dockers must demand that building group officials meet in Jones leaves the committee, fights London today decide their for the complete ending of TUC attitude to the offer. talks with the Tories and recalls Meetings all over Britain have the T&GWU conference to mobi- condemned the union leadership lize the full strength of the union called for all-out stoppages.

and in unity with the dockers. In Leeds on Saturday there was There must be no redundancies demand for all-out strike an throughout Yorkshire. the docks or Workers on transport in- dustries. Every docker, Bristol and Birmingham container in have worker and driver must be passed similar resolutions. main- tained on full pay until the Tuesday, building in- On London workers will strike for half a day nationalized and dustry can be and march from Speakers' Corner planned lines. on socialist to the pay talks to demand 'no The TUC must be recalled on sell-out'. emergency basis Undoubtedly there will also be -as there were last week-calls George to resign. • Labour government must 1 ected to repeal the Industri General those who fixed up the new on- docks transport industrie ciliation' anti-strike deal with the Confederation of British Indus- tries.

SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE

CONWAY HALL, RED LION SQUARE

LONDON, WC1.

END THE TUC TALKS WITH HEATH

VICTORY TO THE DOCKERS

NATIONALIZE DOCKS AND TRANSPORT INDUSTRIES

MAKE THE TORIES RESIGN

Speakers: