Workers Press no. 874

workers press

REID AND AIRLIE REJECTED BY SHIPYARD WORKERS

SWURK-IN

COLLAPSES

INCORPORATING THE NEWSLETTER • THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 21, 1972 • No. 874• DAILY ORGAN OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE

FROM IAN YEARS IN GLASOW

PANIC MOVES by the Com- munist Party-led shop stewards' co-ordinating committee to hold a mass meeting of men at all four former Upper Clyde Shipbuilders discuss the developing yards to crisis at Clydebank have met with complete failure. After two hours of talks on Tuesday afternoon the committee called for a mass meeting to be held at Govan at 11.15 a.m. yesterday. the Only hour before all men due to assemble WelC Clydebank leader and Stalinist James Reid was told by phone from Govan: 'You can't have your meeting.' By 10.15 was clear Govan and fellow Stalinist James Airlie that none of the 4.000 strong workforce at Govan Shipbuilders Ltd except the would attend engineers And he gave order for a message to be The sent to Reid. The revolt was led by 1,300 WE boilermakers smarting Keros taunt unar unev the rat race fighting for wage rise after 14 months freeze.

WANT

the bodie makes after attaad lea Reid's unwarranted Clydebank workers InTO clea Manu- with the Marathon

WORK

facturing Co which gave them fl upset a majority of an nournas the men at Govan. has been brought about by the policies The collapse workers into futile protests like the one at last year's Tory Party conference.

After boulermakers stewares said their men would not attend labourers the joined the work-in, underwritten agreements has between the wave As vare QuIcK Tollowed SUlT ov men at al tour varos. but a bickerine

LWO

they streamed out of the yard condition of both deals was that groups of yards. for dinner yesterday, Govan the work-in should end. Meanwhile the claimed WOrKers une peneld The themselves- plan to halve work- Clydebank darcelcals opinion was Un31 until published by Workers Press and retain only would have to go it alone.

force eneck ao thority of shipseen operation Govan goes have become i key Reid had intended to ask the smoothly ahead. Govan men to raise a 50p levy workers • nave Deconse issue in the wave of hostility to Unrest at is at. boiling-point. Clydebank

SUDDONE

a new WOrK•U the Stalinist leadership.

Clydebank is at stand The boilermakers' few Apart from a hastily- One bulk-carrier was towed to and focused attention notices scribbled there Princess dock, Glasgow, on Mon- little the exact wording of the agree- end night, and sion in the near-deserted onces dav by ments. that any vigorous new operation next two others week WOrk fears have spread At Govan has been begun. will be nearing completion. rapidly the work-study- unal It is understood even stewards The immediate crisis has been based incentive schemes to which triggered by the completion of the co-ordinating committee concerned that are increasey few people business circles agreed are not the same thing as and a New Zealand one carmen know anything of appear to to be sacked meet and 300 men are expected bonuses. alone Friday week. Marathon's With up to 1,000 workers fight- its reputation. Before final ins for their lives at Clydebank, signatures were Stalinists decision split With barely a week

DUL

two separate arreements at Clydebank,

UCS

before crunch day with Govan Shipbuilders and workforce Ene Marathon, these men would have two. different, but equally vague the joint co-ordinating committee 121, 1972 • No. 874• 4p

THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE

Reid and Airlie (top) who led the UCS plunged into emergency session yet again yesterday afternoon.

They were still trying to find way of calling a mass some meeting, but the chances are slim. At Tuesday's conference of 200 stewards the meeting was split three waysfor a four-yard meeting, against the boiler- makers, who, although they opposed the meeting, appeared to feel something should be done to help Clydebank. The only suggestion that has emerged so far is that if the Clydebank men hand back their redundancy this might pay persuade workers at Govan to agree to a levy. But even if the levy came off, any new work-in would be very the last one. different from Marathon work crews are already busy razing the shipyard to the ground and there will soon be nothing left to work at.

BY JACK GALE

IF THE shipyard workers of the upper Clyde appeared split yesterday, the respons- ibility rests squarely with the Communist Party and its leading members in the yards: James Reid and James Airlie.

Opposition to Reid's plan for a second work-in at Clydebank, financed by a 50p levy of all four yards, came first from boiler- makers at the Govan yard, whom he said on September 4: 'We are in no doubt that the majority of boilermakers have deceived by people who been want to apply the concept of the rat race to the trade union move- ment' It is not the boilermakers' fight for wages which has undermined trade unionism on the Clyde, however, but the policies of Reid, Airlie and the Communist Party.

Reid's attack came as the full fruits of the Stalinist betrayal at UCS were beginning to be reaped -in the form of 3,600 jobs lost, reduced wage claims, union- management co-operation, speed- up, mobility of labour, no-strike pledges and a divided labour force. From the outset of the Clyde- side jobs struggle last June, the Communist Party has collabor- ated with the imposition of all the recommendations the original 'Butcher' report of Tory Nicholas Ridley. Ridley's plan, essentially was to split the yards and split the men. The Ridley document said: 'We could put in a govern- ment "Butcher" to cut up UCS

TURN TO PAGE 12

workers press

BEID AND AIRLIE REJECTED BY SHIPYARD WORKERS

WORK-IN

COLLAPSES

INCORPORATING THE NEWSLETTER • THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 21, 1972

DAILY ÖRGAN OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE SO

FROM IAN YEATS IN GLASGOW

PANIC MOVES by the Com- munist Party-led shop stewards' co-ordinating committee to hold a mass meeting of men at all four former Upper Clyde Shipbuilders' yards to discuss developing the crisis at Clydebank have met with complete failure. After two hours of talks Tuesday afternoon the committee called for a mass meeting to be held at Govan at 11.15 a.m. yesterday. the Only hour before all assemble due to

LICI

Clydebank leader and Stalinist James Reid was told by phone from Govan: 'You can't have your meeting.' By was crea Govan convenor and fellow Airlie that none James of the 4.000 strong worktorce al Govan Shipbuilders Ltd except the would attend engineers And he tour-yard meeting. Laye the order for a message to sent to Reid. The revolt was led by 1,300 still smarting from boilermakers the rat race fighting for a wage rise after 14 months' freeze. Reid's unwarranted attack the boilermakers, after he had led debank worker with the Marathon Manu- facturing Co which gave them £1 upset a maiority of al noul. las the men at Govan. The collapse has been brought about by the policies of Stalinists Reid workers into futile protests like the one at last year's Tory Party conference.

After boilermakers' stewards said their men would not attend labourers at the a mass meeting joined the work-in, underwritten agreements has produced a wave the followed suit. between yara ov men at at tour or bickerine they streamed out of the yard condition of both deals was that groups of yards. for dinner yesterday, Govan the work-in should end. Meanwhile the original Tor workers claimed Lne The agreements themselves- plan to halve the work- Clydebank opinion was ThaT until nublished bv Workers Pres: and retain only would have to go it alone.

1UILC

week ago they had only been goes obedien of shipyard minority Reid had intended to ask the seen by a smoothly ahead. key Govan men to raise a 50p levy workers - dave become issue in the wave of hostility to Unrest workers at all bles Support a new the Stalinist leadership.

Clydebank is at boiling-point Clydebank. stand The boilermakers' from few Apart a hastily- One bulk-carrier was towed to wages and focused attentior is there little Princess dock, Glasgow, scribbled notices the exact wording of the agree- and sign in the near-deserted ofices night, by the end day ments. that any vigorous new operation next week work on two others Govan have spread At fears has been begun. will be nearing completion.

rapidly the work-study- It is understood even stewards The immediate crisis has been based incentive schemes to wnic!

triggered by the completion the committee that few people in business circles and a New Zealand agreed are not the same thing as one carrier appeal to know anything ferry, and 300 men are expected bonuses. Marathon's existence, let alone to be sacked next Friday week.

With up to 1,000 workers fight- its reputation. Before final signatures ing for their lives at Clydebank, were split Stalinists' decision With barely a . week to on wo separale decence Govan Shipbuilders the UCS before crunch day at Clydebank, with and worktorce Marathon, these men would have two. different, but equally vague.

the joint co-ordinating committee 121, 1972 O No. 8740 4p

THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE

Reld and Airlie (top) who led the UCS ve plunged into emergency session yet again yesterday afternoon.

They were still trying to find way of calling • a mass some meeting, but the chances are slim. At Tuesday's conference of 200 stewards the meeting was split three ways-for a four-yard meeting, against the boiler- makers, who, although they opposed the meeting, appeared to feel something should be done to help Clydebank. The only suggestion that has emerged so far is that if the Clydebank men hand back their redundancy pay this might persuade workers at Govan to agree to a levy. But even if the levy came off, any new work-in would be very different from the last one. Marathon work crews are already busy razing the shipyard to the ground and there will soon be nothing left to work at.

BY JACK GALE

IF THE shipyard workers of the upper Clyde appeared split yesterday, the respons- ibility rests squarely with the Communist Party and its leading members in the yards: James Reid and James Airlie.

Opposition to Reid's plan for a second work-in at Clydebank, financed by a 50p levy of all four yards, came first from boiler- makers at the Govan yard, of whom he said on September 4: 'We are in no doubt that the majority of boilermakers have deceived by people who been want to apply the concept of the rat race to the trade union move- ment'. It is not the boilermakers' fight for wages which has undermined trade unionism Clyde, on however, but the policies of Reid, Airlie and the Communist Party.

Reid's attack came as the full fruits of the Stalinist betrayal at UCS were beginning to be reaped -in the form of 3,600 jobs lost, reduced wage claims, union- management co-operation, speed- up, mobility of labour, no-strike pledges and a divided labour force. From the outset of the Clyde- side jobs struggle last June, the Communist Party has collabor- with the imposition of all ated the recommendations of original 'Butcher' report of Tory Nicholas Ridley. Ridley's plan, essențially was to split the yards and split the men. The Ridley document said: ment cother to cut up vers a govern-

TURN TO PAGE 12

PAGE 2 Workers Press, Thursday September 21, 1972

BY JOHN SPENCER

A NEW American trade war "bombshell' is being pre- pared by President Nixon who is expected to spell out its terms when the International Monetary Fund meets in Washington on Monday. Pierre Rinfret, the President's economic what will happen to its economy and the economies of the Common Market, Japan and Canada if it launched a 'far- reaching and brutal' trade war.

He warned that Nixon is bluffing and said if the Europeans not they were kidding themselves: 'This is not an election thought this fundamental posture.' Rinfret described the tariff gambit, this is a reductions of the Kennedy round agreed during the 1960s as 'a funda- And he said that mental mistake-a disaster for American trade'. in the efforts to world trade agreement American new negulale 15 had aftermath of Nixon's August measures last year 'won no support, no help and no sympathy'.

He spoke with contempt of the Japanese agreement to take $1,000m- of the US 'emergency exports' and the Washington worth currency Everyone, he said was realignment agreement of December last year.

doing his best to undermine the Washington deal.

The measures under Washington include a 150 per discussion in cent import surcharge on cars, textiles and steel which contribute $8,500m to the $10,000m US trade deficit. America is far and away Europe's largest overseas market and such punitive tariffs would devastate European industry.

Rinfret warned that counter-action against companies like Ford and General Motors with plants overseas would be met by the freezing of foreign assets in the United States.

Thirteen months ago, Nixon abruptly ended the convertibility of the 10 per dollar with gold and introduced cent surcharge on all imports. In December, European countries and Japan were forced big revaluations of to accept the their currencies against dollar. But these measures-acclaimed Nixon at as the _the time ov deal- greatest ever economic have failed the to overcome US balance-of-pay- enormous deficit and ments open up markets for US products.

BY OUR OWN REPORTER

These can only be obtained at STRIKERS in Vigo, northern the expense of America's com- petitors, primarily Europe, Citröen employers refuse to t Canada Japan. The and new men and grant workers a 44-ho of intensified economic threats warfare come at a time of great demonstrators yesterday near 1 crisis in the world economy when a large number of arrests.

the value of all currencies openly question and the Negotiations between the world's reserve gold holdings are employers and representatives effectively frozen in central bank of the fascist union have not vaults. yet been able to find solu- Share prices the London on which tion to the strike is stock exchange have fallen by the middle 50 points since paralysing industry in the of August, raising the prospect northern port. of big All commercial crashes. The union's daily 'El paper, eyes are on the IMF meeting in 44-hour Pueblo', the week says Washington if and Nixon's demand is 'not unreasonable', and speech is anything like Rinfret's that it is surprised that such forecast it could well result in an 'should arise overnight'. dispute immediate share collapse.

They ignore the fact that the shorter week part of earlier agreement. Protectionist presi- The engineering union director of dent and the central Social Affairs flown from have Nixon is driven by a powerful Vigo to intervene Madrid to in protectionist lobby in the United the discussions with provincial States which wants even more civil governor. stringent measures to export un= The witch-hunt against strikers employment and crush foreign by the Social Affairs department competition. One of the lobby's is paralleled by the statement by Senator Vance spokesmen, the new Rector of Madrid yester- Hartke, said yesterday that the day 'politics' in the against economic US facing 'an was university. Vietnam'. Munoz called the Alonso on those teachers state to remove But Rinfret indicated, the as did not loyally teach their US plans who are not just an elec- subjects and those students who they tion gimmick, are entirely did not want to learn but pre- with Nixon's policy consistent "clandestine ferred to work in In the since August last year. laboratories', elaborating 'the Nixon's likely event of alchemv of political semantic election the plans are certain to prejudices'. be operated with increased rather than decreased vigour. THE SOVIET news agency Tass The consequences for Europe has issued a laconic communique round of trade-war of a new acknowledging the signing of the United States measures from the trade-pact with Franco's govern- would be catastrophic-mass un- ment. employment, wholesale bank- Spain will foodstuffs, export and inflation ruptcies roaring leathergoods, textiles, tobacco, amid a full-scale slump. and ships, while cars, lorries The break-up of the post-war Russian will include exports system entails a ruth- machine tools, crude oil, aircraft, monetary and aircraft. less struggle for supremacy be- plant machinery Tomorrow, a 13-man Rumanian tween the main capitalist nations will end three and poses the working class of trade delegation Spanish of. with the Europe with revolutionary tasks days talks Chamber of Trade in Madrid.

on a scale never before seen. NOT SINCE the Tory govern- ment came to office in June 1970 has the question of leadership in the trade unions Disc been posed so directly in front of the working class.

That is why the national con- ference of the Trades All Unions Alliance at Birmingham Town Hall October 22 on assumes such historic im- portance. At the centre of this conference will be the vital lessons of recent industrial struggles and problems political this hated government. On the question of leadership there is much to be discussed!

In the past eight months there have been a series of crucial struggles against the pay government which forced the Tories on iwo occasions to introduce state of emergency powers. First the miners staged their powerful wages showdown with the government and smashed the pay 'norm'. Then the railwaymen confronted the government and this time the brought into government force, for the first time, the cooling of its off provisions Industrial Relations Act.

And then the dockers went on national strikein the first orthern Spain are hardening as ise to take on nine dismissed a 44-hour week. Police shot at y near the shipyards and made

PRESENTADO POR LA

THE outgoing Dutch government has called for wide-ranging tax increases to meet the worst in- flationary spiral in the Common Market. Finance Minister R. J. Nelissen told Parliament that there would still be a budget deficit if his tax measures were accepted.

They consisted of increases in the rates of many direct and in- direct taxes including VAT. He proposed higher car licence fees and social insurance contribu- tions. The tussle over the budget is . pol instance against the jailing of five of their brothers and then for the right to work. Discussion with miners, railway- men and dockers today reveals in a flash that they have totally lost confidence in their union leaders. Hardly were they back at work when the miners' pay award was eaten up by huge price increases and hit by the announcement of more pit closures. Railwaymen returned only to hear news that British Rail was pressing forward ruthless plans to close workshops, branch lines and introduce super trains thus cutting more jobs.

And now the dockers. In the immediate aftermath of the strike there are big merger plans on Liverpool docks and in the Port of London the international meat traders, A Spanish stand at a Leningrad trade fair. NA Espat expected to be hard since it comes • at atime when the political situation is extremely unstable. Having heard the budget proposals and the Queen's speech, which emphasized the seriousness of situation, parliament will dissolve in pre- paration for the General Election to be held on November 29.

The likelihood is that election will produce a coalition between the reformist Socialists and the Catholic party, with a • deepening of the economic and • is. political crisis. Vestey's and Borthwick's, are to completely remove the meat trade to ports like Sheerness and Avonmouth where non- dock labour is used. For workers in these three industries , the conclusions are they inescapable. Although moved into conflict with . the enthusiasm government with were sold out. Their have been short-circuited by the unwillingness of their own leaders to lead. en This question of leadership in the trade union movement is not new. At the turn of the century Lenin described pre- cisely. the crucial importance of building such a political leadership. 'It is not enough that the class struggle becomes, real, con- and developed only sistent when it embraces the sphere of politics ... Marxism recog- nizes a class struggle as fully developed, "nationwide", , only if it does not merely embrace politics, but takes in the most significant thing in politics- of the organization state power? In complete contrast to Lenin's fighting perspective to lead the working class to smash .. the bonds of capitalism, are the utterly bankrupt views of Smith, people like George TUC president and building workers' leader. At this month's TUC congress at Brighton, Smith warned delegates that the trade union movement 'must never imagine that we are an alternative form of government'. Smith and his ilk not only decline to lead the trade unions against the government, they actually throw themselves enthusiastically into the job of helping the Tories to shore up their bankrupt and desperate rule. Workers throughout the country have watched on television the grisly scenes as Feather, Jones and Scanlon cross the thres- hold of No 10 Downing St to prostrate themselves before Heath. The answer to this treachery expresses itself in various ways. At Liverpool on Tuesday 8,000 building workers rejected the return to work, attacked the Stalinist leaders who had been recommending acceptance and decided to strike on.

This vote came only five days after men at the Royal docks in London rejected the advice stewards and of their own showed that they wanted to overtime ban continue an until the Temporary Un- attached Register (TUR) is abolished. On both these occasions the workers showed a healthy con- tempt for their present leaders.

It is a shift in the feeling in the rank and file which should not be underestimated. It shows that workers are no longer content with the so- called leaders who represented them in the boom period. As British capitalism plummets into deeper and deeper decline and tries to stay afloat by more vicious punishment on the backs of the working class, trade unionists will demand leaders who fighters. are Fighters to the finish. to the What finish' does mean? It means a leadership rooted in the working class which will not sell out and will always tell the truth to the working class. But above all it is a Marxist leadership which knows where it is going-on to the conquest of state power.

Next month's ATUA conference, on October 22, is a milestone in the building of just such a leadership. Every factory, pit, dock, every trade union branch and every trades council must immediately take steps to send delegates to this crucial meet- ing in Birmingham. Trains and coaches from all over will be bringing workers from all industries to this con- ference. It is your duty to be there.

Pits: Aid blackmail By DAVID MAUDE Our Industrial Correspondent By Tim Devlin MINERS' leaders have been told that unless they pledge to hold down the wages of their members the industry. This blackmail threat was issued by Minister for Industry Tom Boardman in reply to a joint plea for aid from the unions and the National Coal Board.

Before recommending that large sums of money should be to the industry, Boardman said, given he wanted to be sure any government contribution towards 'getting the industry back on course' after the strike would not lead to further demands in the future. In other words, if the unions fail to come up trumps the Tories will let pits die. They will wield the jobs axe yet again in the coalfields without compunction. There have been continual rumours in recent months of government plans to use its financial grip on the coal industry to whip the miners, who blew a gaping hole in their pay policy last winter into line with unemployment this autumn.

At the National Union of Mineworkers' confer- ence early in July one delegate warned that between 30 and 40 of Britain's present 290 pit: might be in jeopardy. Later that month Lawrence Daly, NUM general secretary, claimed in Scotland that there had been secret talks about a new round of closures between the NCB and the government.

NCB chairman Derek Ezra denied the claim. But in August Yorkshire miners' MP Edwin Wainwright was telling the House of Commons that 50 pits were rumoured due for shutdown over the next two to three years. of the rumours is this: the industry The basis lost f157m in the financial year ending in March, and is likely to show a further loss of £100m in the consumption current year; of down in nearly every sector to get the Tories out of once, market: productivity, on the the but to submit joint plans with the other hand, is rising. NCB for the Tories to implement.

And these contain the danger- In this situation the Tories see of slashing back proposal for 'fair and ous an opportunity effective' productivity scheme in the labour force still further while the industry. fulfilling all their needs in terms was immedi- and at the same time This, of course by of output, ately seized Boardman, to a minimum the price paring who said after meeting the the has to government to pay unions and the NCB on Tuesday provide the employers with cheap night: coal. It is accepted by all concerned The union leaders' answer to that prices cannot be increased.

this, however, is ... not to fight Therefore much depends on in-

BY AN EDUCATION CORRESPONDENT

TWO OUT of with the 104 forecast by three pared every an NFER children are still undergoing survey four years ago. Only 24 out of that 104 have selection for secondary schools, completely ahead and gone and 111 out of 164 educa- abolished selection in their tion authorities are still using areas. selection procedures for trans- The picture for the next few fer to secondary school, the Foundation, the is years, says National Foundation for Edu- one of only very gradual move- ment towards fully Research cational discloses comprehen- education, with sive many today. authorities continuing to main- Three Labour's days after of selective tain mixed systems Edward deputy leader, Short, comprehensive schools. and attacked 'appalling injustice' the While the major move has not of the 1l-plus and promised to materialized, it there has says 'thoroughly end evil and been a considerable increase in she sation, e immoral system' the number authorities--106, of document published compared with 68, in 1968-that Foundation discloses evidence of have abolished selection dares in at least part of rocer down the move slowing 111 towards fully comprehensive edu- areas. cation. There are 117 with some com- "Transfer at Eleven', the latest prehensive schools. in a series of NFER surveys Of 108 authorities which were how local education authorities not comprehensive, allocate secondary pupils to that per cent) said had schools, shows that the plans for comprehensive reorgan- change to comprehensive educa- ization for September 1972. 1968 tion forecast in survey There were 79 authorities with Its has not materialized. beyond comprehensive plans (This, of has a lot to 1972-1973, but 13 indi- course, only do with the cated a specific year when they election of Tory government in June 1970 expected the plans to be an com- administration of grammar school pleted. advocates who have tried to run The NFER says it seems likely down the comprehensive schools that there will be only a slight the number of com- system.) increase in At present, only 50 authorities prehensive' authorities 1976. by have fully comprehensive Transfer Eleven', C. J. Hill: sys- at without NFER, 63p by post. tems. selection, com- of the pianos in private homes creased productivity to increase real earnings ... I made it clear to the industry that costs must be contained.'

This is dangerous ground.

The responsibility for thẹ Coal Board's losses rests not with the miners, but with the crippling interest burden on the industry and the Tory dictive to settle the miners' last pay claim. The only possible answer to the Boardman blackmail lies in mobilizing the unions to force the Tories to resign and elect a Labour government pledged to workers' control of the pits and workers' nationalization under control, without compensation, of coal distribution, the mining machinery industry and the banks. ROLLS ROYCE have announced they are to close their Tennant Avenue factory at East Kilbride and transfer work and the 125 hour-paid and 31 staff employees to their Hillingdon plant, Scot- land within a year. Rolls have said there will be no redundan- cies, but they have also made it clear that anyone not wishing to move will not get severance pay.

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TOTTENHAM CT RD

Workers Press, Thursday September 21, 1972 PAGE 3 rivate homes are THE CRISIS in the West months of this year the loss was £41.2m. German coal industry may be Many pits have been closed aggravated if cheap greatly and a rationalization programme being applied. British imports flood in after ruthlessly Despite a fall in output there are the extension of the Common large unsold stocks. Market next year. West Germany imports about 1.6m coal tons of year at Dr Hans-Helmut Kuhnke, of it going present, most to chairman of Ruhrkohle, told a stations. The German committee of the North Rhine- industry has been unable to get Westphalia state parliament down that costs to compete with British sold British prices. coal was being to German 25 stations power at The miners' union leader, (£3.15) a ton mark below the Adolf Schmidt, predicted that domestic price. Britain's the consequences of The Ruhr coal industry, which entry would be more drastic than owned, making appeared. He called for the cur- is privately iS heavy losses and is supported by tailment of imports from state subsidies. In the first seven Common Market countries.

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S • PERIODICALS • NEWSPAPERS

: a PAGE 4 Workers Press, Thursday Septe Part 20 of a series on Picketin The Industrial Relations Act is a vicious piece of anti-working class legis- lation. Nothing less than opposition and total repeal will suffice to maintain the hard-won rights which the Act sets out to destroy. By March this year the government was already say- ing that the scope for legal proceedings against picketing has been effectively widened since the Industrial Relations Act became fully operative at the end of February'. (Speech by Sir Peter Rawlin- son, Attorney-General, March 10, 1972.) At the same time, a Home Office review of the picketing law was said to be under way 'and will continue'. On the face of it, the Act has little to say on picketing.

The 1906 Trade Disputes Act is entirely repealed, but its main formulas on the subject are apparently more or less reproduced in section 134 of this Act. In fact, other sec- tions of the legislation place a large number of new restric- tions on the right to picket, as well as giving enormous en- couragement to strike-break- ers, company spies and others.

It would be extremely dangerous to take the special picketing section as the only part containing strictures on the subject. Some of the indus- Act's trial Relations powers affecting picketing are: Peaceful picketing Section 134 allows peaceful picketing of the workplace, but withdraws the right to picket a person's place of resi- dence, i.e. it is legal to 'in contemplation or furtherance of an industrial dispute, attend at or near: (a) a place where a person works or carries on business, or (b) any other place where a person happens to be, not being a place where he resides' The Act says that this shall be only for the purposes of: 1. Peacefully obtaining in- formation, or II. peacefully communicating information, or III. peaceful persuasion to work or not to work. It adds that such picketing shall not be an offence under the 1875 Conspiracy and Pro- tection of Property Act or any other enactment or rule of law and shall not itself constitute a tort (wrong or injury to per- son or property remediable by a civil action for damages, e.g.

libel). points follow from Five this: day September 21, 1972 Picketing by Bernard Franks • The obtaining and com- municating information and "persuading' allowed in the Trade Disputes Act of 1906 continues - though with restriction which will be looked into later. • Picketing—under this sec- tion—is not illegal even for a strike called 'unfairly. • Protection is for an 'indus- trial dispute' only, so does not include political strikes.

• Some Tories say that even section 134 of the Act would have invalidated much of the picketing of the miners' strike as mass picketing itself must count as intimidation beyond normal peaceful persuasion.

• The present Act cuts down the 1906 law by prohibiting picketing of a person's resi- dence. is not last point This necessarily a small one. Numerous cases have occurred in the past of employers pro- viding living accommodation to try to avoid their scabs having to pass picket lines.

In the 1880s and 1890s the shipping companies regularly housed blacklegs on ships in the docks for use in breaking strikes by merchant seamen.

in 1900 For example, the Shipping Federation lodged 37 men, part of a force of 'free labour' on a depot ship and paid daily wages until they were needed to ship in place of union labour. Men picketing the ship were found guilty of 'watching and besetting' under the 1875 Con- spiracy Act-not for compel- ling the scabs to refrain from taking the work, but for trying to prevent them living on the depot ship. (Farmer v Wilson, 1900) Farm, docks and building employers have also used living-in systems avoid to pickets and to 'protect' low- from union paid labourers organizers. But in any case, a scab does not cease to be one merely because he has gone home. Livelihoods are at stake and workmates may decide that. he still needs to be informed and persuaded of the damage he is doing to his own community. Pickets must • have the right to necessarily pay a visit as they think fit.

One example, during the 1926 General Strike, was of the Swindon workers who went from door to door of the blacklegs' houses in a mock funeral procession carrying nine coffins which were ceremoniously burnt on the municipal rubbish dump. Such methods of making a point may seem drastic, but they are nothing compared with the loss of a strike with its con- of sequent victimization everyone by the employers.

dock strike. Centre: mass picketing at action and many arrests. Above: Sir Peter Strike-breakers and company spies The outlawing of the closed- shop, the right to union membership and the pro- given to scabs against tection disciplinary action by workers, agenham Cold Storage in the early days of the picketing at Neap House Wharf brought police Above: Sir Peter Rawlinson, Attorney General.

all provided for in the Indus- trial Relations Act, must surely encourage strike-breaking and directly weaken the unions.

closed- For example, any prospec- old no tive scab refused employment because of a pre-entry closed- he pro- shop agreement can go direct against orkers, to an industrial court to have closed-shop agreement the declared void. He may also complain of this as an unfair industrial practice industrial to an tribunal. Also, an employer forced by workers' action to dismiss a blackleg can com- plain to the industrial court.

Even the suggestion of action can justify court pro- ceedings. Section 33 of the Act refers to inducing dis- missal as 'unfair industrial practice' when brought about "(a), calling, organizing, pro- curing or financing a strike, or threatening to do so; '(b) organizing, procuring or financing any irregular indus- trial action short of a strike, or threatening to do so The fact that the employers require evidence for the courts for, of preparation or even mention of, an illegal action by workers means the further encouragement of company spies and informers. In 1971 the TUC gave evidence to the Committee on Privacy about existing systems of plant spies in factories and at union meet- ings and the compiling by companies of blacklists of trade unionists. The case of private detec- tives obtaining evidence on pickets at Midland Cold Storage Ltd, east London, and the details of the general use of surveillance methods given in the Younger Report are types of activity that will increase a hundredfold if the Act continues to operate.

CONTINUED TOMORROW

The cold-blooded mass. acre of 16 political prisoners at the Trelew air force prison has focused attention on the brutal military dictator- ship which rules Argen- tina. The prisoners, members of various urban guerrilla groups, were killed at the prison a week after they had surren- dered to the military following a daring prison break-up.

With great cynicism, the Argentine government put out an obviously fabricated story to explain the massacre, saying that the prisoners were shot while attempting to escape'.

The government spokesman made only perfunctory at- tempts to substantiate this im- plausible story with melo- dramatic details about a guard whose gun was taken and who supposedly asked his fellow guards to open fire regardless of his own safety. The official story is flatly contradicted by the three sur- viving guerrillas who were wounded in the fusillade. They accuse the guards of sys- tematic murder. The guerrillas included mem- bers of three groups devoted to terrorist attacks on the re- actionary regime and its func- tionaries. These are the People's Revolutionary Army (ERP), which has close connections with the Pabloite revisionists, and two Peronist commando organizations, the Montoneros and the Peronist Armed Forces

(FAP).

These organizations, reject- ting the organized power of working class, have turned the to 'urban guerrilla' tactics in isolation from the Argentine masses, hoping in this way to stimulate an upheaval against the regime. Despite their heroism the guerrilla organizations ignore the powerful force of the workers' movement which re- mains in the hands of Peronist leaders, many of them corpora- tists who collaborate with the military to restrain and hold back the workers. The merciless struggle be- tween the guerrilla groups and the military regime takes place of necessity behind the backs of the masses, who are reduced to waiting impotently for the latest spectacular coup by the commando organizations. f At the same time their isolation from the workers leaves them open to the most repression, torture ferocious and massacre by the military regime. The killings led to protests and strikes all over the coun- try. Hundreds of militants were arrested and held with- out trial in the main working- class areas. Students who tried to or- ganize demonstrations were met with huge forces of armed soldiers, as at Cordoba, where the army turned out ten as- sault cars, two trucks and a van from the explosives brigade. In Rosario, another main working-class centre, the popu- lation were formally warned by the military commander to remain calm and pay abso- lutely no attention to appeals for demonstrations, drive care- fully and stay clear of 'dis- turbances' There were similar warnings . in other parts of the country where some students succeeded in holding lightning protest demonstrations, despite the heavy military guard. In Cordoba, workers at the Renault, Fiat and General Motors car plants walked off the job when the local branch of the powerful CGT labour confederation ordered a general protest strike. In response, the CGT head- quarters was closed down and the police issued warrants for the arrests of all the union's local organizers. In a state- the military command ment, accused the union of departing 'entirely from the proper func- tions of a trade union' to un- dertake political actions.

The CT's statement pro- testing at the Trelew massacre as 'an incen- was described diary incitement to crime' and the army recalled that the CGT had organized 13 strikes last year and six this. They smashed into the build- ing and took away the coffins, obviously terrified that the bodies of the dead guerrillas would become the focus for a big popular demonstration against the regime. The biggest outcry came two days after the shootings, when troops with Shortland tanks attacked the Buenos Aires headquarters of the Peronist Party, where the bodies of three of the guerrillas were lying in state. Faced with rampant infla- tion and growing discontent among the powerful working class, the Argentine military rulers have little option but intensify the repression, to hoping at the same time to reach an accommodation with the right-wing of the Peronist movement. The Trelew killings, how- ever, have exposed the phoney character of the attempts to win over sections of the Peron movement, and the ageing former dictator, now in exile in Madrid, has cannily refused to be drawn into Lanusse's game. Leonardo Franco, a young Peronist lawyer recently in London to campaign for politi- cal prisoners in Argentina, described the regime as the third most repressive in Latin America, rivalled only by Brazil and Uruguay. And this is not because the Argentine military are more polite or less brutal than the Brazilian counterparts. The Argentine military have been unable to eliminate the opposi- tion of the population. They have less possibility of repres- sion than, say, Brazil,' he said in an interview with Workers Press. Mr Franco belongs to the MRP, the left wing of the which Peronist movement, claims to be fighting for socialism and advances the need for a 'prolonged people's war to achieve this aim by 'stages. *They have tried to corrupt the popular masses and incor- porate and domesticate them.

But this has proved impossible.

The mass strike in Cordoba last year was the end of this by the Argentine attempt military, he said. "The new tactic is to divide Peronism in order to be able to work with the more bourgeois elements and the men we call "traitors". This backed up by a has been policy of "selective" reptes- sion. Workers Press, Thursda "The army bears down with all its weight on three sectors: all guerrilla groups are fero- ciously repressed as are their "links", ; for example, the law- yers who defend them and who may be liberals but stand up for the rights of people in jail.

The same fate awaits prom- inent trade union leaders who refuse to be bought off by the regime. One such man is Agustine Tosco, well-known leader of the Cordoba light and power workers, who has been held in prison without trial for two years. "The third prong of the at- tack is against student leaders who are treated with great severity by the regime. The regime's actions against these groups correspond to Lanusse's policy of seeking a "great nat- 1onal agreement" through miltary hopes which the to perpetuate its rule. The military rulers have offered elections to put in a civil government, but they have warned that they will "keep an eye" on the new gov- ernment "until social and economic stability has return- ed" They were hoping to have Peron as their ally in this policy and asked him to ap- prove the call for an election on these lines, without him- self standing as a candidate.

They also asked Peron to con- demn the left-wing groups, and particularly the guerrilla fighters. Though he was offered cer- tain advantages by the regime, refused these demands. Peron He said he would accept the elections only if they were really free and refused to con- demn the left-wing groups.

*The terrible Trelew events came just two days after the deadline expired for Peron to return and contest the elec- series of tions. There was a popular demonstrations an- nounced for those days and the country was in consider- able ferment. "Trelaw represents a new stage in the repression of the country. It has been accom- panied by a series of measures.

, Thursday September 21, 1972 PAGE 5 A new crime has been estab- lished under which every pub- lication making reference to the guerrillas can be punished with six months to three years in prison. *The reaction from the people to the massacre was fantastic. Even those who did not support the type of opera- tion which the fighters were carrying out joined in the pro- tests against their deaths.

massacre selves up at the commercial airport at Trelew in a situation 50 where they were holding hostages. How could they then try to escape from the most secure prison in Argentina in an ex- tremely isolated place, on an treeless extended almost with no villages plateau around? In this so-called break-out none of the guards were even injured. The survivors say they were taken from their cells and suddenly the guards shot them down. The three who escaped death jumped back into their cells. "Though the army com- muniqué claims they were shot with automatic weapons, one of the survivors has normal pistol bullets in his body. This prisoner says he was shot at close range in his cell. The idea of a cross-fire put forward by the army is absolute non- sense. 'Despite these obvious dis- crepancies the government is making no effort to put out a more plausible version of the at Trelew. The mas- events sacre has lost the government a great deal of sympathy, especially among liberal and middle-class circles. It will be no surprise if the repression is now considerably stepped up. The prisons are already full to the brim. Prior to the massacre there were perhaps 1,200 political priso- ners in Argentina, now there are at least 1,500. Many of them have been sentenced by special tribunals, arbitrary courts set up in violation of the constitution. The big fear now is that the military will attempt what we call an "autogolpe" , a coup to purge the regime and move it furthen to the right,

The cold-blooded mass- acre of 16 political prisoners at the Trelew air force prison has focused attention on the brutal military dictator- ship which rules Argen- tina. The prisoners, members of various urban guerrilla groups, killed at the prison a were week after they had surren- dered to the military following a daring prison break-up.

With great cynicism, the Argentine government put out an obviously fabricated story to explain the massacre, saying that the prisoners were 'shot while attempting to escape'.

The government spokesman made only perfunctory at- tempts to substantiate this im- plausible story with melo- dramatic details about a guard whose gun was taken and who supposedly asked his fellow guards to open fire regardless of his own safety. The official story is flatly contradicted by the three sur- guerrillas who viving were wounded in the fusillade. They accuse the guards of sys- tematic murder. The guerrillas included mem- bers of three groups devoted to terrorist attacks on the re- actionary regime and its func- tionaries. are the People's These Revolutionary Army (ERP), which has close connections with the Pabloite revisionists, and • Peronist commando two organizations, the Montoneros and the Peronist Armed Forces

(FAP).

These organizations, reject- ting the organized power of the working class, have turned to 'urban guerrilla' tactics in isolation from the Argentine masses, hoping in this way to stimulate an upheaval against the regime. Despite their heroism the guerrilla organizations ignore powerful force of the the workers movement which re- the hands of Peronist m iny of them corpora- collaborate with the military to restrain and hold back the workers. The merciless struggle be- tween the guerrilla groups and the military regime takes place of necessity behind the backs of the masses, who are reduced to waiting impotently for the latest spectacular coup by the commando organizations. I At the time their same from the workers isolation leaves them open to the most ferocious repression, torture and massacre by the military regime. The killings led to protests and strikes all over the coun- try. Hundreds of militants were arrested and held with- out trial in the main working- class areas. Students who tried to or- ganize demonstrations were met with huge forces of armed soldiers, as at Cordoba, where the army turned out ten as- sault cars, two trucks and a van from the explosives brigade. In Rosario, another main working-class centre, the popu- lation were formally warned by the military commander to remain calm and pay abso- lutely no attention to appeals for demonstrations, drive care- fully and stay clear of 'dis- turbances'. There were similar warnings in other parts of the country where some students succeeded in holding lightning protest demonstrations, despite the heavy military guard In Cordoba, workers at the .

Renault, Fiat and General Motors car plants walked off the job when the local branch of the powerful CGT labour confederation ordered a general protest strike. In response, the CGT head- quarters was closed down and the police issued warrants for the arrests of all the union's organizers. In a state- local ment, the military command accused the union of departing 'entirely from the proper func- tions of a trade union' to un- dertake political actions.

The CGT's statement pro- testing at the Trelew massacre as 'an incen- was described diary incitement to crime and the army recalled that the CGT had organized 13 strikes last year and six this. They smash red into the build- ing and coffins obvious bodies i would become the focus for a big popular demonstration against the regime. The biggest outcry came two days after the shootings, when troops with Shortland tanks attacked the Buenos Aires headquarters of the Peronist Party, where the bodies of three of the guerrillas were lying in state. Faced with rampant infla- tion and growing discontent among the powerful working class, the Argentine military rulers have little option but the repression, intensify to hoping at the same time to reach an accommodation with the right-wing of the Peronist movement. The Trelew killings, how- ever, have exposed the phoney character of the attempts to win over sections of the Peron and the ageing movement, former dictator, now in exile in Madrid, has cannily refused to be drawn into Lanusse's game. Leonardo Franco, a young recently in Peronist lawyer London to campaign for politi- cal prisoners in Argentina, described the regime as the third most repressive in Latin America, rivalled only by Brazil and Uruguay. 'And this is not because the Argentine military are more polite or less brutal than the Brazilian The counterparts. Argentine military have been unable to eliminate the opposi- tion of the population. They have less possibility of repres- sion than, say, Brazil,' he said in an interview with Workers Press. Mr Franco belongs to the the left wing of the

MRP,

which Peronist movement, to be fighting for claims socialism and advances the need for a 'prolonged people's war' to achieve this aim by 'stages'. 'They have tried to corrupt the popular masses and incor- porate and domesticate them.

But this has proved impossible.

The mass strike in Cordoba last year was the end of this by the Argentine attempt military,' he said 'The new tactic is to divide Peronism in order to be able work with the to more bourgeois elements and the we call "traitors". This men has been backed su of "selectiv policy sion. Workers Press, Thursda "The army bears down with all its weight on three sectors: all guerrilla groups are fero- ciously repressed as are their "links", for example, the law- yers who defend them and who may be liberals but stand up for the rights of people in jail.

'The same fate awaits prom- inent trade union leaders who refuse to be bought off by the regime. One such man Agustine Tosco, well-known leader of the Cordoba light and power workers, who has been held in prison without trial for two years. "The third prong of the at- tack is against student leaders treated with who great are severity by the regime. The regime's actions against these groups correspond to Lanusse's policy of seeking a "great nat- through agreement" 1onal which the miltary hopes to perpetuate its rule. 'The military rulers have offered elections to put in a civil government, but they that they will have warned "keep an eye" on the new gov- "until social and ernment economic stability has return- "They were hoping to have Peron as their ally in this policy and asked him to ap- prove the call for an election on these lines, without him- self standing as a candidate.

They also asked Peron to con- demn the left-wing groups, and guerrilla particularly the fighters. "Though he was offered cer- tain advantages by the regime, refused these demands. Peron He said he would accept the elections only if they were really free and refused to con- demn the left-wing groups.

'The terrible Trelew events came just two days after the deadline expired for Peron to return and contest the elec- series of tions. There was a popular demonstrations an- nounced for those days and the country was in consider- able ferment Trelaw, represents a new a in the repression of the AJIt has been accom- byla series of measures. , Thursday September 21, 1972 PAGE 5 A new crime has been estab- lished under which every pub- lication making reference to the guerrillas can be punished with six months to three years in prison. "The reaction from the people to the massacre was fantastic. Even those who did not support the type of opera- which the fighters were tion carrying out joined in the pro- tests against their deaths.

"The army's story about the absurd. These massacre prisoners had just given them- selves up at the commercial airport at Trelew in a situation where they were holding : 5.0 hostages. 'How could they then try to escape from the most secure prison in Argentina in an ex- tremely isolated place, on an treeless extended almost with no villages plateau around? 'In this so-called break-out none of the guards were even injured. The survivors say they were taken from their cells and suddenly the guards shot them down. The three who escaped death jumped back into their cells. "Though the army com- muniqué claims they were shot with automatic weapons, one of the survivors has normal pistol bullets in his body. This prisoner says he was shot at range in his cell. The close idea of a cross-fire put forward by the army is absolute non- sense. 'Despite these obvious dis- crepancies the government is making no effort to put out a more plausible version of the Trelew. The mas- events at sacre has lost the government a great deal of sympathy, and especially among liberal middle-class circles. 'It will be no surprise if the repression is now considerably stepped up. The prisons are already full to the brim. Prior to the massacre there were perhaps 1,200 political priso- ners in Argentina, now there are at least 1,500. Many of them have been sentenced by tribunals, special arbitrary courts set up in violation of the constitution. "The big fear now is that the military will attempt what we colpe™, coup to and move it

21, 1972

PAGE

old V-bomber force left: workers Deptford paign of overtime bans, work- bring the Here are just two examples TOr Union leaders represent- Royal Naval Yard on strike. Workers Tor ing to rule and selective strike back out of mothballs to cover collected collecters of the real-ife sitess Press ing in- inustrial Workers right: which the nuclear strike lobbying parliament on July 13. workers will chiefs have tried to confine role at present filled by the tions those fighting the claim Right: another section of workers of them. meet today to plan their recent metlilg 13 lobby. Far right: shop stewards from all On Tuesday the dispute had over 1 semi-skilled worker in Westminste next moves in achieving immediately the called even more ance workers on their one day country the middle at pay strike last Tuesday. the 'substantial' for escalation of the barrassing, if slightly less in- mously pay Portsmouth dockyard, married campaign. tactically serious, effects demanded by why creases

WITN

two chilaren, takes nome London. after months of inde One demonstration of this £16.50 a week for 40 hours.

their members. workers inadequate There maintenance cisive, Scotland totally in Canne His rent is f8.15 and is to the Palace of West- of their stopped action on the part The 194,000 workers in- Monday Fastane when 1,200 workers rise even further when the for a day in support union leaders their militancy is minster volved have been locked in at the Housing Act of rinance the claim. Cones growing marine base walked out on in- struggle with the Tories over operation on October 1. into Blackleg clerical workers It would be difficult to find definite strike with 300 other the claim since the beginning the usual-sized of 194,000 couldn't raise nich will Immealalely axe i from armaments a single workers £7.35 the sum on which he is of June. over St Stephen's flag lobby. workers involved in the depots at Arrochar and Coul- feed and clothe expected to So item approximately the wants anything Workers in dockyards, ord- dispute port. himself and his family and get size of a postage stamp went to do with arbitration-appar- Some 4,000 men at Rosyth nance research acrones. to and from work. ently favoured by some of the depart- been out for up. centres, government dockyard have Civil Service 2 a storekee marrie De ord officials who will get together of The Depart- ments and the past six weeks in support Tae houses Parliament of the claim. which negotiates dockyard married with today. itself, are often ment, pay With an hour a day one child. What rank and file paid with the government industrial the extremely low having This in the situation overtime he can earn £17.50, workers' leaders, claims that wants is all-out action, and long hours of over- could mean a malor change in

WULA

in the service but without the extra five they want it now. a decent living the Tories' front-line defence time to where range from £20.87 at the lower hours his take-home But in the service, pay strategy, the only three ware. government is the direct the scale to over £36 dropped to £12 the Civil Service Depart- yards the key end of The servicing a week. On the day the government's employer, it is impossible to ment's latest offer of £1.75 a Polaris submarine are Rosyth, escape the implications of from offer. -estimated the week, in fact, would not even Faslane and Chatham, Kent. But basic rates range last worth about £17.30 for unskilled cent fight against the Tories.

. Which Strikers from Deptford per bring the lower-paid within mere received why the the TUC's £20 minimum wage establishment are workers up to only £23.35 for came through naval storage ne And that his was to union leaders must call all-out Chatham craftsmen. many notice rent target. picketing in many, with other attempt to bring it out, too. If end up taking much, rise 99p. action, in And of late dissatisfaction much less than this This is why the government force the Heath to their sections, Ministry has been growing amongst the this happens the to families. industrial workers are fighting; government out. Defence could be forcec rank and hie the

BASE

TAMA

COMMITTEEL

NAVA-

WHITLEY

Workers

1972 PAGE 7

SOUTH WALES

GLASCOED

RO ceN

GOVT INDUSTRIAL

PAY CLAI

WORKER

SEAL

PEANUTS

ARE WE THE MONK!

GOVERNM

OFFICIAL

STRIKE

ORIGINS OF RACIALISM

PAGE 8 Workers Press, Thursday Septi By a special correspondent The proposed admission of several thousand Ugandan Asians into Britain is sending sec- tions of the political right into well - controlled frenzies. From Enoch Powell's dire warnings of riot and bloodshed, and the National Front's cruder hysterical screams, to the more "moderate' hypo- cricies about unemployment and housing shortages, all are united in trying to give the impression that immigration is the root-cause of all the ills facing the British working class. If only immigration was stopped, so the argument runs, we would be able to solve our problems. Unless this is done a bad situation will only get worse and desperate British workers will turn in a fury on those who come here to com- 'our" pete for jobs, live on 'our Social Security and inhabit 'our' homes. Of course, everyone wants a job and a home and certainly everyone should be able to have both. However, there is one detail that those who express such concern for the well-being of the British worker fail to mention. When it comes to unemployment and housing shortages, immigrant workers, like their British brothers, are the victims and not the causes. Tory Unemployment is government policy. It is the weapon with which the em- ployers hope to curb the militancy of the working class and cow it into submission. It is not immigrant workers who are closing factories, mines, railway lines, shipyards and docks, or who are introducing new technical methods of work which require fewer men. It is our own, home-grown, lilly-white employers, British almost to a man, whose only concern is their profits.

For all their talk of patriot- ism, they are currently invest- ing in the region of €727m a year in Europe in order to take advantage of the large mass of cheaper unemployed labour there. Housing is becoming more and more scarce as the property speculators move in, tearing down existing houses and building hotels, luxury flats, shopping centres and office blocks, many of which remain empty for months if not years. Council building, already practically at a standstill in areas, will become many virtually non-existent with the implementation of the Housing Finance Act which, as wen as raising rents, also ends govern- ment housing subsidies to local authorities. If all immigration was stopped immediately, and if all immigrants were repatriated, there would still be unemploy- ment and housing shortages.

There always will be under capitalism. And as the world monetary crisis grows worse, the Tory government is driven towards a confrontation with the working class in a desper- ate attempt to solve its wresting problems by away every basic right fought for and won in the past. sday September 21, 1972 This confrontation is being The opening prepared now. shots have already been fired.

There have been the legal moves against trade unions, such as the Industrial Relations Act, the rulings of the National Industrial Relations Court and the House of Lords, which led to the imprisonment of and the picketing dockers imposition of a £55,000 fine and £25,000 costs on the Transport and General Workers Union which was held responsible for the actions of its members. As well as this, there have also been the moves towards repressive legislation more generally, the proposed alter- ations to the Judges' Rules and harsher the sentences now being regularly meted out in the courts. There are the open clashes on picket lines in which strik- ing miners, dockers and build- ing workers find themselves attacked and run down by organized scabs, arrested and beaten by swarms of policemen and confronted in court by paid industrial spies and in- formers. There is the constant barrage of press and TV propaganda against strikers, directed 'reds'-anyone who is pre- pared to stand up and fight for his or her rights. There is the wooing of trade union and Labour leaders, willingly allowing themselves to be groomed for the role of policemen against their own members. The decisions of the TUC at Brighton, aided and Communist abetted by the Party, which amount to accept- ance of the Industrial Relations Act and continued talks with the Tory government, means that they are moving closer to corporatism and the imposition of a legal wage freeze on the working class as the cost of living zooms upwards. And then there is racialism.

'Divide-and-rule' was the strategy in every colony in the Empire. Catholics British against Protestants in Ireland, Hindus against Moslems India, tribe against tribe in Africa-any difference will do to set one section of oppressed people against another so they cannot unite against the com- mon enemy who exploits them This policy has also been used in Britain itself time and time again. Before the war it was the Jews and the Irish.

Today it is blacks and Asians.

Peter Rachman, the west London landlord, whose activities and connections with some of the highest circles of the ruling class came to light during the 'Profumo scandal' which rocked the Tory govern- ment ten years ago, employed this tactic with some success for a number of years. It was alleged that he would deliberately install a noisy, troublesome coloured tenant in a houseful of white tenants, and vice versa, in order to inflame racialist feelings.

He was able to stave off for some time the formation of an tenants' association active which could fight his high rents, appalling conditions and the gangs of thugs he employed to collect the money from white and coloured families alike. If deliberate attempts are being made now to make racialist capital out of the im- migration of Ugandan Asians, with front-page coverage given in the Tory press to every anti- and immigrant statement demonstration, however small and insignificant, it is precisely because the Tory government is setting out to create more unemployment and to worsen the already terrible housing situation. Racialism is a deliberately- cultivated attempt to divide the working class and weaken its struggle to defend and im- •prove its conditions. It feeds on the desperate competition among workers for a diminish- ing supply of jobs and homes.

and on the demoralization of those workers and middle-class people who see no way out of their dilemma, find no leader- ship capable of showing them their true enemy, and feel that the only thing they can do to fend off impoverishment and ruin is to fight each other for the few crumbs left. trade union leaders, The both right and left' , and the Communist Party and revision- ists who cover for them, bear a big responsibility in this situation. By holding the work- ing class back from an all-out struggle to force the Tory government to resign they add to the demoralization and desperation of workers and the middle classes facing the brunt of the Tory attacks.

They are helping to create a Frankenstein monster which could rend them limb from limb. For racialism is more than just a diversion to turn workers' anger away from the Tory government. It is also the spearhead for the coming con- working frontation with the class as a whole. The same people who organize marches against coloured immigrants today will be organizing attacks workers' picket lines on tomorrow. The trade union leaders in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s talled to give any lead in the fight against unem- ployment, inflation and anti- allowed semitism. They the Nazis to come to power while they tried to carry on with their policy of collaborating with the ruling class, right up to the very gates of the con- centration camps in which Hitler incarcerated and murdered the majority of them.

Today in Britain, if these so- called leaders are not replaced by a revolutionary leadership, the growth of extreme right- wing movements here, which will attempt to destroy the trade union movement as a whole, including its leaders, cannot be combated. The racialists do their best , out the most back- to bring ward ideas in sections of the middle and working classes.

They speak as if all whites have a common aim, regardless of class. They call for defence of 'our British heritage'. But just what does the 'British heritage' mean for Tories?

For their political pre- decessors, the Tories of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the 'British way of life' was very nice indeed. They amassed their fortunes, built their stately homes, sent their sons on world tours, and lived in pampered luxury surrounded by well-trained servants who anticipated their every want.

working For the British class, however, and the mass and of colonial workers life short. peasants, was brutish, exhausting, plagued Above: some of the first expe Ugandan Asians to arrive.

and with hunger, disease misery. Families in Britain were driven from the land, forced into the overcrowded city slums and had to work until they dropped in the factories, the mines and on the docks.

Those who had no work were arrested as rogues and vaga- bonds-if they did not actually starve to death first - and whipped through the streets at the tail end of a cart.

They were branded with hot irons or hanged for the most minor offences. Children were bought and market, sold on the open starved, raped and flogged by their masters with impunity.

Orphans could be hired out to masters who were paid a sum of money by the parish for their keep. There are several recorded instances of masters taking in such children, working them to the point of exhaustion for months, and then several murdering them so they could go back and get paid to take in a few more. British ships sailed to Africa, Asia and the New World, bringing the so-called "advantages' of civilization and Christianity. They also, course, brought such other in- cidental 'advantages' as the slave trade, the forcible break- up of a number of complex quite highly-developed and societies and the suppression of any social or technological advances so that the colonies could be turned into lucrative suppliers of raw materials and markets for the goods pro- duced in the 'mother country'.

The slave trade, in particu- for massive lar, laid the basis fortunes among many of the prominent businessmen most in Britain. If they were not actually engaged in slaving di- rect, as many of them were, they built the ships, fitted manufactured the them out, iron manacles, fetters and branding irons, or traded in the sugar, cotton and rum pro- duced with slave labour in the West Indies and the southern states of America. ed CONTINUED TOMORROW

ORIGINS OF RACIALISM

PAGE 8 Workers Press, Thursday Septi By a special correspondent The proposed admission of several thousand Ugandan Asians into Britain is sending sec- tions of the political right into well - controlled frenzies. From Enoch Powell's dire warnings of riot and bloodshed, the National Front's cruder hysterical screams, to the more 'moderate' hypo- cricies about unemployment and housing shortages, all are united in trying to give the impression that immigration is the root-cause of all the ills working facing the British class. If only immigration was stopped, so the argument runs, we would be able to solve our problems. Unless this is done a bad situation will only get worse and desperate British workers will turn in a fury on those who come here to com- 'our' pete for jobs, live on 'our Social Security and inhabit 'our' homes. Of course, everyone wants a job and a home and certainly everyone should be able to have both. However, there is one detail that those who express such concern for the well-being of the British worker fail to mention. When it comes to unemployment and housing shortages, immigrant workers, like their British brothers, are the victims and not the causes. Tory Unemployment is government policy. It is the weapon with which the em- ployers hope to curb the militancy of the working class and cow it into submission. It is not immigrant workers who are closing factories, mines, railway lines, shipyards and docks, or who are introducing new technical methods of work which require fewer men. It is our own, home-grown, lilly-white employers, British almost to a man, whose only concern is their profits.

For all their talk of patriot- ism, they are currently invest- ing in the region of £727m a year in Europe in order to take advantage of the large mass of cheaper unemployed labour there. is becoming more Housing and more scarce as the property speculators move in, tearing down existing houses and building hotels, luxury flats, shopping centres and office blocks, many of which remain empty for months if not years. Council building, already practically at a standstill in areas, will become many virtually non-existent with the implementation of the Housing Finance Act which, as weii as raising rents, also ends govern- ment housing subsidies to local authorities. If all immigration was stopped immediately, and if all were repatriated, immigrants there would still be unemploy- and housing shortages. ment always will be under There capitalism. And as the world monetary crisis grows worse, the Tory government is driven towards a confrontation with the working class in a desper- ate atfempt i to solve problems a ** wresting away acht fought for and every the past. won in aday September 21, 1972 This confrontation is being The opening prepared now. shots have already been fired.

There have been the legal moves against trade unions, such as the Industrial Relations Act, the rulings of the National Industrial Relations Court and the House of Lords, which led the imprisonment to and the picketing dockers imposition of a £55,000 fine and £25,000 costs on the Transport and General Workers Union which was held responsible for the actions of its members. As well as this, there have also been the moves towards legislation repressive more generally, the proposed alter- ations to the Judges' Rules and harsher sentences now being regularly meted out in the courts. There are the open clashes on picket lines in which strik- ing miners, dockers and build- ing workers find themselves attacked and run down by organized scabs, arrested and beaten by swarms of policemen and confronted in court by paid industrial spies and in- formers. There is the constant barrage of press and TV propaganda against strikers, directed 'reds'-anyone who is pre- pared to stand up and fight for his or her rights. There is the wooing of trade union and leaders, Labour willingly allowing themselves to be groomed for the role of policemen against their own members. The decisions of the TUC at Brighton, aided and Communist abetted by the Party, which amount to accept- ance of the Industrial Relations Act and continued talks with the Tory government, means that they are moving closer to corporatism and the imposition of a legal wage freeze on the working class as the cost of living zooms upwards. And then there is racialism.

'Divide-and-rule' the was strategy in every colony in the Catholics British Empire. against Protestants in Ireland, Hindus against Moslems India, tribe against tribe in Africa-any difference will do ato set one section of oppressed people against another so they cannot tte Ai aspst the com- xploits them mon c all. This policy has also been used in Britain itself time and time again. Before the war it was the Jews and the Irish.

Today it is blacks and Asians.

Peter Rachman, the west London landlord, whose activities and connections with some of the highest circles of the ruling class came to light during the 'Profumo scandal' which rocked the Tory govern- ment ten years ago, employed this tactic with some success for a number of years. It was alleged that he would deliberately install a noisy, troublesome coloured tenant in a houseful of white tenants, and vice versa, in order to inflame racialist feelings.

He was able to stave off for some time the formation of an tenants' active association which could fight his high rents, appalling conditions and the gangs of thugs he employed to collect the money from white and coloured families alike. If deliberate attempts are being made now to make racialist capital out of the im- migration of Ugandan Asians, with front-page coverage given in the Tory press to every anti- and immigrant statement demonstration, however small and insignificant, it is precisely because the Tory government is setting out to create more unemployment and to worsen the already terrible housing situation. Racialism is a deliberately- attempt to divide cultivated the working class and weaken its struggle to defend and im- • prove its conditions. It feeds on the desperate competition among workers for a diminish- ing supply of jobs and homes, on the demoralization of and those workers and middle-class people who see no way out of their dilemma, find no leader- ship capable of showing them their true enemy, and feel that the only thing they can do to off impoverishment and fend ruin is to fight each other for the few crumbs left. trade union leaders, The both right and 'left' , and the Communist Party and revision- ists who cover for them, bear a big responsibility in this situation. By holding the work- ing class back frok struggle to forcet government to resign the demoralization and to desperation of workers and the middle classes facing the brunt of the Tory attacks.

They are helping to create a Frankenstein monster which could rend them limb from limb. For racialism is more than just a diversion to turn workers' anger away from the Tory government. It is also the spearhead for the coming con- frontation with the working The same class as a whole. ' people who organize marches against coloured immigrants today will be organizing attacks on workers' picket lines tomorrow. The trade union leaders in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s failed to give any lead in the fight against unem- ployment, inflation and anti- semitism. They allowed the Nazis to come to power while they tried to carry on with their policy of collaborating with the ruling class, right up to the very gates of the con- in centration which camps Hitler incarcerated and murdered the majority of them.

Today in Britain, if these so- called leaders are not replaced by a revolutionary leadership, the growth of extreme right- wing movements here, which will attempt to destroy the trade union movement as a whole, including its leaders, cannot be combated. The racialists do their best to bring out the most back- ward ideas in sections of the middle and working classes.

They speak as if all whites have a common aim, regardless of class. They call for defence of 'our British heritage' • But just what does the 'British heritage' mean for Tories?

political For their pre- decessors, the Tories of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, the 'British way of life' was very nice indeed. They amassed their fortunes, built their stately homes, sent their sons on world tours, and lived in pampered luxury surrounded well-trained servants who by anticipated their every want.

working For the British class, however, and the mass colonial workers. i ane peasants, : lite was (brutish, exhausting, plagued Above: some of the fret expell ed Ugandan Asians to arrivo.

with hunger, disease and misery. Families in Britain were driven from the land, forced into the overcrowded city slums and had to work until they dropped in the factories, the mines and on the docks.

Those who had no work were as rogues and vaga- arrested bonds—if they did not actually starve to death first - and whipped through the streets at the tail end of a cart.

They were branded with hot irons or hanged for the most minor offences. Children were bought and sold on the open market, starved, raped and flogged by with impunity. their masters Orphans could be hired out to masters who were paid a sum of money by the parish for their keep. There are several recorded instances of masters taking in working them such children, to the point of exhaustion for several months, and then murdering them so they could go back and get paid to take in a few more. British ships sailed to and the New Africa, Asia World, bringing the so-called 'advantages' of civilization and Christianity. They also, course, brought such other in- cidental 'advantages' as the slave trade, the forcible break- up of a number of complex quite highly-developed and societies and the suppression of any social or technological advances so that the colonies could be turned into lucrative suppliers of raw materials and markets for the goods pro- duced in the 'mother country'.

The slave trade, in particu- lar, laid the basis for massive fortunes among many of the prominent businessmen most in Britain. If they were not actually engaged in slaving di- rect, as many of them were, they built the ships, fitted manufactured the them out, manacles, fetters and iron branding irons, or traded in the sugar, cotton and rum pro- duced, with slave labour in the s and the southern : West Ind heerica. states b

CONTINUED TOMORROW

The differences between the French Communist Party and the Commun- ist Party of the Soviet Union, over the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czecho- slovakia in August 1968, apparently extend into the field of culture. In the course of a TV debate with Alain Peyrefitte, Party secretary Georges Marchais re- ferred to the case of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and admitted to a difference on the problem.

This amounted to a condem- nation of Soviet policy. question is whether The there is • a real. difference or whether Marchais has simply adapted himself to pressure intellectuals the Party from wishes to attract to its side.

Certainly a verbal difference has existed for some time. A more 'liberal' attitude on cul- tural and artistic expression than had prevailed in Stalin's time appeared after 1956 and may be seen as an attempt to deal with the opposition in the party which appeared in the wake of the CPSU's 20th Congress. Initially, however, the policy change did not go very far. No debate was permitted and when it was challenged by the Union of Communist Students in 1965 the Party moved in swiftly against the critics. By this time there had been a marked tendency for the Party bureaucracy to find its own base in French bourgeois society. Whether or not t Soviet bureaucracy liked this state of affairs, its own diffi- culties and the crisis in the communist movement world prevented it from reacting.

So the French Party leader- ship had a freer hand to elabo- One of the first acts of the Bolshevik govern- ment after the Revolu- tion of 1917 was to secret diplo- denounce macy and to publish the contents of the archives of the Tsarist Foreign Ministry. One consequence of the Stalinist degeneration was that the bureaucracy adopted the habits and practices of bour- geois diplomacy which Lenin had denounced, from the wear- a cultural policy which rate would not alienate left-wing intellectuals in the same way that hard-line Stalinism would have done. In 1966 it pro- claimed a policy of non-inter- vention by the Party on matters of science, literature and the arts. Now, while the Soviet bur- eaucracy suppresses Solzhenit- syn's book, the Writers' Union expels him, preventing him from earning a living as a writer, and he is under pres- sure to leave the country, CP- controlled journals in France publish extracts from his works. Certainly the Party could not sustain and defend the Soviet Party's action and preserve any credibility.

The electoral pact and com- programme with the mon Socialist Party has made this shift towards 'liberalism' all the more necessary. SP leader Francois Mitter- and's followers are uneasy about the alliance. They are afraid that they will be swal- lowed up in the event of an electoral victory.. They have to be re-assured by the Stalinist leaders, so tame intellectuals have to be harnessed to write articles defending and explain- policy on ing the liberal' culture and the arts. Controlled Marchais' In word, a declarations can be summed up simply - opportunism. The Stalinist leaders have no inten- tion of permitting real discus- ion or debate inside their concessions oks and the made to the intellectuals do not amount to very much. In the Soviet Union litera- ture and art has to be strictly controlled to prevent it from becoming a vehicle for a ing of tails to the making of treaties with capitalist secret states. Stalin's pact with Hitler in August 1939, with the sudden abandonment of the 'struggle fascism', was against nego- tiated in complete secrecy and came as a complete surprise not only to communist work- ers, but to the leaders as well.

The understanding contained secret protocols for the supply of commodities which Nazi Germany needed for its war effort. After Nazi Germany's attack on the Soviet Union in June, 1941, which came as a com- plete surprise to Stalin despite many warnings by secret agents-Soviet diplomacy en- tered into private deals with the other capitalist countries.

The practice has continued since. Stalin bargained away the revolution in Greece in discussions with Churchill and his successors use the blood of the Vietnamese people to pre- criticism mobilizing power and him as a only of the which he was a victim-but of

LOC

of the bureaucracy. Danger cannot permit

TOCKON

While explain Stalinism - a carelully it is Irom Coullel Dall. The real the at the ena ol with its Lalicc. Lilals ll Marty André author would as a for the even author having est secrecy. discussed role in Peking, between iness-like Secret ing class Wished Stalinism and opposition to its privileges. syn's novels reveal powerful critic not e Stalin terror—-of as a victim-but of t and parasitic rule use the bureaucracy historical own past presses the novels the writer. paper are politically i represent a danger. does not Soviet bur- he is unable either, because raise the question ins and growth of key question excluded from the f the French Com much as just as that of its Sovie analogy would be ut French Stalinism, ithfully and dealing cover-up for r in grasping complicity Europe (the thur Londva) in the rounding of veterans Charles and its ranks and so on. I doubt that if such re to be written its be denounced agent and that he me an untouchable most lineral If Marchais ezhnev's position of can guarantee that fare would Solzhenitsyn? ay for a deal with y Kissinger, Nixon's irs adviser, has been s with Soviet lead. Cremlin in the great- Only the topics to hinted cluded Vietnam and were the go- also the last attempt to secret deal • end war. The bureau- negotlate discreet and bus- functionary after can only etrayal of the work- for support Bol- The that re clear about hey said and did in foreign policy is as ¡demnation as could shady ot the • bureaucracy today. The National Indus tions Court came vacation two weeks Friday from one of hearings ever. But the brevity o ing in which a Cypri firm withdrew a co unfair industrial pra cealed source cotential the present the Torie between union leaders. Kornot Shipping 20 Costi Palama, N to apply for interir the court under Sect of the Industrial Rel It would have bee foreign-based comp for the Marcus Edwards, the court immediate ing began, however dispute which had vaLe for the Tory Cabin and the TUC Gener too. The Law Lords h responsibility for bers' actions back so the union leaders' had

KOTOOT

proceeded been

T&GWU

at least court la sented in would have chance of having Workers Press, Thursday September 21, 1972 PAGE 9 dal Industrial Rela- made against it. t came back from The would certainly court vo weeks early last have had to judge the case of the NUS, which is registered none of its briefest under the Industrial Relations brevity of the hear- Act, differently from that of h a Cypriot shipping the non-registered T&GWU.

rew a complaint of None of which would make it any easier for the union strial practice, con- leaders to cuddle up to the source grave Tories as they tried to embarrassment it round of talks Chequers last week. he Tories and the shipping_Co Ltd, of Joke of last week from a press alama, Nicosia, was conference with George Smith, or interim relief to million the man who led a nder Section 101 (1) builders into a two-year pay strial Relations Act. 'We've had a hard day trap: have been the first this out of the em- wringing ed company to do ployers. tor the company, intormed nmediately the hear- however, that the given rise ing had been settled. therefore sought ithdraw the applica- riginal case, Kornof respondents Transport Federation, the nion of Seamen, the and General Work- George Smith: two year trap and Bristol Corpo- Some less well-informed reporters wondered why one nembers at Avon- nattily-dressed individual with ks had been black- a military-cut grey moustache otor vessel 'Elikon' much on the was laughing so mber 6, refusing to top table. Turned out he was k gates or provide Sir Kirby Laing, chairman of it out of the docks. National Federation of the npany also claimed Building Trades Employers.

inions had induced induce to f contract between ny and members of The combined effort of the crew by inducing right wing and Stalinists in take other Croydon, Surrey, failed to pre- vent the Council of Action named the ITWF meeting last weekend. taken action at All trade union branches in 1 appeared to be in the area had been circulated o a call from the with copies of a letter from to bring the ship in the TUC and the secretary of s agreements regard- Surrey Federation nd manning scales. 'instructing' Trades Councils to the of les now appear that setting-up the speedily got out of Council of Action was uncon- stitutional because it invited certainly very con- all working-class organizations for judges included the Com- and this lips, R. E. Griffiths munist Party, which was pro- field, who can now scribed. • their holidays, but The irony of the situation ry Cabinet, the CBI was that the Stalinists on the JC General Council, trades council had opposed the Council of Action and • Lords have thrown refused to send delegates to ty for union mem- Saturday's meeting and sup- is back squarely into ported the witch-hunt. The second irony is that court, and Kornof application there has not been a proscrip- the tion on the CP attending the with it least (not repre- trades councils national con- court last Friday) ference for And years. only a good stood two weeks ago the TUC lifted having an order its own ban on the CP.

LEON TROTSKY:

Germany 1931/1932 Paperback £1.25—cloth £1.87½ Where Is Britain Going ? Paperback 371p Revolution Betrayed Paperback 624p-—cloth £1.05 Problems of the Chinese Revolution Paperback £1.12½-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 trom :

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PAGE 10 Workers Press, Thursday September 21, 1972

SHEFFIELD:

Septem- ber 21, 7.30 p.m. Street. Nurserv note. uilders' pay claim and the figh against the Tory Rents Act.

MANCHESTER:

Thursday, Sep- tember 21, 7.30 p.m. The Milton 'Defeat Deansgate. the Hall. Tory Rent Act'.

WATFORD:

Monday September p.m. Union (upstairs Woodford (opposite Junc Road Tories station). "Force the resign.' are bout between Floyd Patterson The Inner of tonight's Madison Squ channels might

SOUTH

WEST

LONDON:

Tues. Independent get and Muhammao All (above) day September crack at world heavyweight champion Joe Frazier.

Manor Small Hall, Clapham 600 Bristol University students in "The Dave Cash Radio Baths. Clapham Manor Street, on most independent channels.

rogramme

'ATUA

ence.' BASILDON: Tuesday September Community 26, 8 p.m. Laindon Centre, Aston Road, Laindon. conference'

•ATUA

national WANDSWORTH: Tuesday Sept- ember 26, 8 p.m. serk note. Selkirk Road, Tooting. "Lessons of the builders' strike'.

Wednesday

LUTON:

September 27, Recreation centre Old Bedford Koae

REGIONAL TV

Septem- OUNSLOW: Thursda

CHANNEL: 9.30-12.00

5.25 5.50 ber 28, 8 p.m. jo-op Hall, Bat! London. Crossroads. 2.00 Golf. 4.23 Puffin 4.25 London. 6.15 nueu 4.50 5.20 Lon- Report Wales 6.30 Dick Primus. 7.00 And mother makes •on werner LVe. Sports round 6.35 tree. .su or neves. roads. 7.00 mother makes London. 10.30 Gallery. 11.00 Clerks to 11.45 12.45 Spyforce. 7.30 8.30 London. Champions London. 10.30 Golf. 11.15 Marcus vealer. Cymru/Wales 7 and reject new Welby MD. 12.05 News, 4188 above except: 2.30-3.00 Hamd- weather. 1.10-4.25 Miri mawr. 6.01- den. WESTWARD. As Channel except: 10.30-11.00 Ryland 6.15 y dvdo 12.15 Gus 12.25 Davies with John Morgan. Party. Liberal 4.23 HTV West as above except: 6.15- 1,100 AN OFFER of an extra 6.30 Sport West. 6.00 Diary 11.12 staff in Social Security offices News life 12.05 Faith for clerks operating watte al c Golf. ANGLIA: 9.30 London. 3.00 overtime ban over stallings SOUTHERN: 9.30 London. 12.05 4.20 News. 4.25 Lon- 4.10 Sean. certain to be rejected. About 6.20 Liberal Party. 1.00 6.00 Anglia Social Security policy Loncon. 6.35 7.00 Houseparty. Crossroads and Pub- 471) Aren& committee of the Civil London. 5.20 Bugs Bunny. 5.25 Sale of the century. 7.30 Jokers lic Services ACcocianon 5.50 6.00 wild. 8.00 And mother makes London. ordered its 45,000 members Crossroads. 10.30 Golf. 7.05 8.30 London. Monday-is from start the ban 11.45 Avengers. Film: 11.15 Cinema. _oncon to discuss ure oner loddy 10.30 And mother makes three An spokesman Association News. 11.5!

MIDLANDS:

9.30 London. 11.00 London.

ATV

commented: 12.45 Golf. 2.30 2.35 12.00 Horoscope. certain to reject the offer alleline.

IL IS

12.30 Weather. Women today. 4.vU .. which was made in respons Golf. 4.25 London. 6.00 Today. an extra 5,000 6.30 Crossroads 7.00 And

HARLECH:

9.30 London. 2.30 history. three. 7.30 Cade's Minutes of the Assoc-

TACT

Mone makes Kenresenlalves London. 3.00 4.10 county. iation and the 18,000-strong Soc- 8 Loneon 4.25 Merry melodies Cinema 11.45 Film: 'No ment. iety of Civil Servants, which is My Darling Daughter'. Weather.

4.50 Elephant boy. 5.20 also operating a ban, are to meet the officials of Department Health and Social Security on Friday or Monday. Fewer schools THE SEAMEN'S union, of the SCOTLAND had more children LOCAL AUTHORITIES are deregister under at school last year, fewer refusing failing to back the free tele- Act; schools, statistics released by the Relations phone scheme for the elderly, Scottish Department decided yesterday not Educatior taKe legal action against the TUC. At revealed yesterday. the chronically sick and the 18 union Primary schools dropped by 27 London, said Hugh Faulk- meeting ir disabled, 32 to S4l cosepared with 1970 unanimously Help precince director of the ner, carried the recommendation from

NUS

Primary to 636,350 Aged, in London yesterday.

general secretary „niinis rose not from 631,181 from 630 32,514 frems307,027 Hogarth that they should He said unnecessary deaths 317,027 from

TUC.

take action against the and suffering would continue was pro- the service unless _ < It is necessary for the govern- ment to urce loco dalsonues l make telephones for the aged told a press priority, the Help the Aged lerence report, "Telephones Aged of and death.' The report shows that in one year a group of old people with telephones the deaths without tele- dollie! phones. Fill in the form below and send to NATIONAL Mr Faulkner said people work-

SECRETARY,

LABOUR

LEAGUE,

SOCIALIST

were either not ing at local

186A CLAPHAM HIGH ST, LONDON, SW4 7UG.

aware of the guideline laid down by parliament, or had decided their own criteria in Name making grants. Aged has received requests by every • post from Address quite desperate need, people said. But the disturb- been those ing letters have ceived from local authority

ITV

BBC 1

9.30 Schools. 12.00 Nuts and 9.42-11.45 Schools. 1.00-1.25 Tele- 1.45-1.53 1.30 The herbs. wele. 12.15 Liberal Party bones. 2.05-2.25 News and weather. Assembly. 1.00 Wills open golf 2.50 Racing from As- Schools. cot. 4.10 Play school. 4.35 Pars- tournament. 2.05 Castle haven. 4.50 Deputy ley. 4.40 Jackanory. 2.30 Good afternoon. 3.00 Wills dawg. 4.55 Blue Peter. 5.20 John golf tournament. 3.30 5.25 Yogi open Craven's newsround. bear. 5.45 News and weather. Marcus Welby MD. 4.25 Land of

6.00 NATIONWIDE.

the giants. 5.20 Dave Cash radio 6.50 TOM AND JERRY. Mouse programme. 5.50 News. in Manhattan. 6.00

TODAY.

7.00 TOMORROW'S WORLD.

6.40 CROSSROADS.

7.25 TOP OF THE POPS.

8.00 SYKES. Uncle. 7.05

AND MOTHER MAKES

EXPERTS IN ACTION. For THREE. Father Figure. 8.30 Peril. Three Those in

THEATRE

OF

STARS.

7.35 months with the Bridling- Peter Falk, Four Kings. ton Lifeboat. Susan Strasberg

O'CLOCK NEWS.

9.00

NINE

INTERNATIONAL BOXING.

8.30 Weather. v Floyd

MAN WHO

WAS

Muhammad Ali 9.25

THE

HUNTING HIMSELF.

Roberto Sec- Patterson and Duran v Carlos Ortiz. part of a three-part ond thriller by N. J. Crisp.

THIS WEEK.

9.30 10.15

NAIRN

ACROSS BRITAIN.

10.00

NEWS AT TEN.

Trans-Pennine Canal. 10.30

CINEMA.

10.45

MIDWEEK.

WILLS OPEN GOLF

11.00

THE

11.30 LATE NIGHT NEWS

TOURNAMENT.

11.35 PLACES

FOR

PEOPLE.

12.00 THAT TO DEC

Playgrounds for the Ruhr.

•TOO

12.00 12.00 Weather.

BBC 2

9.30 Liberal

GRAND

Party Assembly

9.15 INDUSTRIAL

11.25-4.30 11.00 Play school. TOUR. Tolaus Tin Liberal Party Assembly. 9.25 SACHA'S IN TOWN. Sacha

.05 OPEN UNIVERSITY

Olivia Distel with guests

.30 NEWSROON

AND CON-

Ted Rogers Newton-John,

FERENCE REPORT.

and Sammy Cahn.

8.05 EUROPA.

Britain As She 10.10 NEWS ON 2. Weather.

Is.

8.30 LOVE AND

MR LEWIS.

10.15 FILM:

'THE

IDIOT'.

HAM. Part 4 Directed by Kuro- of the dram- Akira atization of H. G. Wells' sawa. With Toshiro Mifune, Setsuko Hara. story.

ULSTER:

11.00 London. 1.30 TYNE TEES: 9.30 London. 2.59 News. 1.32 Cartoon. 1.40 Schools.

3.00 Liberal Party. 3.45 2.40 Golf. 4.00 Romper-room. Junior Cowboy 4.20 News. 4.25 in showtime. 5.20 London. 6.00 To- Africa 5.20 London. 6.00 7.00 And day. 6.35 Crossroads. Reports. 6.35 Crossroads.

7.00 7.30 FB1. mother makes three. 7.30 Ham's 8.30 London. 11.15 Protectors. wide 10.30 Golf. call. 11.50 world. 8.00 And mother makes Cinema. 11.45 Police 8.30 London. 11.45 What's News. 12.05 Division four. 1.00 three. it all about? Revolving chair. Women today. YORKSHIRE: 9.30 London. 2.30 Women Horoscope. Funky phantom. 4.50 Junior show- 3.00 London. 4.25 Lost in space.

5.20 London. And mother 10.30 Golf Something about. 1.05 Weather. 1.00

GRAMPIAN:

10.58 London. 1.30

GRANADA:

9.30 London. 2.42 2.57 1.30 Grass- Schools. Cartoon. Galloping gourmet. News. 3.00 London. 4.25 Elephant 1.45 Joe 90. 2.15 hopper island. 4.50 Junior showtime. 5.20 of Jeannie. boy. Golf. 3.55 | dream 4.50 London. 6.00 News, weather. 6.10 News. Lone Ranger. 4.20 Pevton Mr and Mrs. 6.35 Crossroads. Rainbow 5.20 country. Place. 5.50 7.00 And mother makes three. London. 6.00 News. 8.30 Police file. 6.30 Dave Cash. 7.00 7.30 Miss Grampian 72. Golf. 11.15 three. 7.30 London. 10.30 And mother makes 11.45 Police news. 11.50 Nichols. 8.30 London. 11.45 Odd Cinema. Meditation. couple. the plight In another case a man with workers who realize of many old people in their care heart trouble often needed they are powerless to help.?

urgent medical help. At night his Cases included elderly wife had to walk a quarter of a an mile to a farm to phone unfit to live alone who woman Mr Faulkner said: 'The distress had been waiting to enter residential home for three years.

of both imagined, and Det toty fall betside within their local There was no neighbour and the local authority authoritv guideline for the pro.

call was unable to help provide a phone.

vision of a telephone. wages strike pays up NEARLY 19,000 monthly-paid THE FERRY service across the staff of the British Broadcasting Mersey between Birkenhead and Liverpool used daily 10.000 by Corporation will receive an av- will be halted commuters for erage 8 per cent increase with the five days by next an un- slightly more for lower-paid official strike 40 seamen, workers, under an agreement stagehands, assistant en- mates, announced by the BBC yesterday.

gineers and toll collectors.

The stoppage began vesterday They are within a wide salary of the end period. at the scale and include producers, The men will return to work at journalists, secretaries and other Monday morning. a.m. office staff. that there They are claiming The last increase was of just has been undue delay in talks under 8t per cent from October on a new and conditions pay 1 last year. agreement.

Behind campaign on terror

BY CLIFF SLAUGHTER

WHAT is the reason for the complete unanimity yesterday in condemning violently the bomb attack which killed an Israeli diplomat? Every single capitalist paper made this its main story. The Tory government denounced 'this underhand act of terrorism'. And of course Harold Wilson chimed in against what he called a 'murderous and outrageous attack'. Wilson could not his mouth against the vicious and murderous reprisal open carried out on the Palestinian emigre camps by the Israeli air force after the Munich killings.

He has nothing to say about the thousands of Arab guerrilla fighters incarcerated in Israeli jails, or the hundreds of thousands driven off their land. The Israeli Ambassador, the Chief Rabbi, and other Jewish bour- geois leaders, added their voice.

Behind all this is a plan of imperialist reaction on an international scale. Those who join in the chorus are adding their weight to these with which imperialism in Europe and all over the world is plans, whipping up the bue and cry over terrorism and hijacking in order to devise entirely new, legalized systems of terror against the working class. On the same day as the Embassy the Interpol Con- assassination, ference in Frankfurt was discussing strengthening the police and the law in every country. They hope to use police repres- sions beyond anyone's control to Brickback deal with the working class on the grounds that who anyone ALL THE 7,000 London Brick fights capitalist governments is a Company 'terrorist'. men-99 per cent of Mr Arie Schurr, head of the the workforce-who walked out Israeli CID and delegate the over a pay claim nine days ago, to are expected to be back at work Interpol Conference, said: today. 'A killing is a murder in this Some of the men had claimed field and murder is crime 16-per-cent increase to bring which should be dealt with first.

secondary them in line with a recent per- The motive is of rise for men importance.' who stack centage bricks and load them, Delegates are hoping that the the but when offered 4.4 per around the London struck cent outcry on the basic rate. After national bombing will enable them to negotiations, shop stewards from successfully for allowing Bedford, all the yards—in the police free reign, internationally, Bletchley, and deal with political offenders. Bucks., Peter- to borough -heard that Reformists Brandt and Wilson areas the London Brick Company have taken the front rank in was offering 4.4 differ- preparing the ground for this. per cent on ential and piecework rates These are not lone voices.

The as Interpol conference follows well. last

THE

NEED

to involve the A DEMONSTRATION of 800 peop trade union movement in the the Tory Rent Act in Kirkby, rent struggle was emphasized resolution wast passed calling for a t on the demonstration. I took dustrial actiot if any councillor or te part in the rent strike cam- ment the Act was threatened.

paign in Liverpool in 1968 dene, Westvale, Towerhill, Bootle and isolated to the those Labour councillors on Merseysi which was mentation of the Act and called tenants. Labour Party. We fought on the principle of In this letter to Workers Press, MPs making 'left' the The the Southdene Action Group and of t We Labour Party fight. de- mittee, explains the background to manded that the Labour govern- ment should nationalize the land building and the societies and the trade union movement and cut out the property speculators.

turn the clock back 100 years.

Today we are fighting the same On all the major issues the battle, this time we only leaders prop Labour Party up faced with a Tory government the system they are supposedly hell-bent on smashing organized against. labour as unemployment grows Now they are in opposition and workers are pushed into the they say they'll throw out these Common Market. unfair Acts when they return to power. I can't believe this. They They must do this to preserve ought to throw out Jenkins and their In the factory system. where I work, the the others who kept the Tories is company moving its computers into in power when they voted with and all on the Common Market. the orders Europe them the factories When Kirkby's Labour- are going to in Europe, and the workers in our controlled council voted 10 to 9 factory are going have to implement the Tory Housing to to face up to redundancies. When Finance Act, there were many Europe, capital is moved into excuses. There was talk of going of whole sections workers will to jail or even being surcharged.

be thrown on the dole. They were not alone-Liverpool Council also voted for implemen- The north west has already tation. I condemn all the suffered. Whole communities de- coun- cillors who voted for implemen- pendent on shipbuilding, steel dissolved tation. and cotton are being dole queues. Our local action into long-stretching groups, through our The Tories use the dole as a rod co-ordinating com- mittee, are calling for the beat the workers, together ex- to the r: Industrial these traitors from with Relations pulsion the Labour Party. Act, which legally ties the unions the state. When a councillor is elected to We look to our leaders inside he ceases to be an individual; the labour movement and what he represents tenants, owner- and do we occupiers, workers find? Vic Feather runs unem- ployed alike. down to Chequers for a cosy chit-chat with Heath, while other The tenants should not fight It should leaders say Ignore the Act'. How alone on this issue. be taken into the workplaces and can we . ignore carefully there should be immediate action thought-out piece of vicious legis- Tory gov- lation like this? The if any tenant is threatened or evicted, if any 'attachment of ernment is determined to smash The Israell Embassy after Tuesday's bombi week's meeting, EEC economic attended by Barber, of the ministers. While they met, a sub-commit- tee from all ten countries agreed to submit a working paper on international to measures their actions against ordinate "terrorism'. The Israeli ambassador gives an invaluable clue to the think- ing of the ruling class and its servants. He says: 'What is required is vigorous action by the British and other governments to combat terrorism and hijacking of planes, which have become an international menace. These terrorist groups now find it much easier to operate in western countries, generally because of the traditional free- dom and tolerance in these coun- tries, and the difficulties they have encountered in the Middle East? What is actually being pre- pared is to transform the capi- talist Bonapartist states into dictatorships. Within these countries, workers and students from abroad as well as the native working class will be subjected to crippling surveillance, and an atmosphere will be built up where imprisonment, exile and 800 people_demanded action against kby, near Liverpool, last Sunday. A ig for a total rent strike and for in- illor or tenant who refused to imple- ed. Tenants from Northwood, South- Bootle and Fazakerley also condemned Merseyside who voted for the imple- called for their expulsion from the s Press, Mike Downes, a member of p and of the local Co-ordinating Com- ound to the demonstration.

earnings' is slapped on anyone or if any councillor is threatened for refusing to collaborate with the Act. At our meeting the call was workers and to unite tenants, unemployed to defeat the Act and bring down the Tory govern- ment. Eddie Loyden, who heads the Liverpool Trades Council and is a councillor who voted against im- plementing the Act, said: 'There is a crisis of leadership inside the labour movement. What we should be working for is the mobilization of the work- ing class to kick the Tories out.'

Housewives also spoke of un- employment, of inflation, of the struggle to make ends meet and also of the need for the unions and tenants to take up the fight for the old age pensioners.

I believe a fair rent for an old-age pensioner is no rent.

But what I think was missed was the role of the TUC. On the rents issue alone they should be mobilizing the trade union movement to bring down this Tory government. Big trade unions have already backed the tenants in words, but this is not enough. They must force the Tories out and a Labour government in, pledged to nationalize, with- out compensation, the building the building industry, land and societies. Workers Press, Thursday September 21, 1972 PAGE 11 perialism. It condemns devoted and self-sacrificing heroes of anti- imperialist resistance to frustra- tion and defeat. The working class in Europe and America, however, has interests identical with those of the Arab workers and peasants in the Middle East-and with those of the Jewish workers.

The social-democratic and trade union leaders of the Jewish workers in Israel are tied hand and foot to imperialism just as Brandt. Wilson The are and common struggle is to expose y's bombing the reactionary plans of the shouters against terrorism, to legal assassination will be build the international unity of grounds of 'justified' on the the working class in the major suspected terrorism. capitalist countries and in the The position of the Trotskyist Middle East, and to win from method the most devoted fighters against movement against the individual acts of imperialism those elements who of terror iS well known. We consider that it will build revolutionary leader- ships of the Fourth International is no substitute for the mobiliza- tion of the masses against im- in every country. The case for nationalization of the docks and transport industry Stephen Johns' and lan Yeats' timely articles on

SEA LAND

CONTAINERIZATION

now put together in a useful

SEA J/LAND

pamphlet which makes vital and all reading for dockers workers fighting for the right

SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE POCKET LIBRARY NO 5

to work. Available as below 30p Workerie which appeared series in Press in June, 1972 is now available as a pamphlet in the Socialist Labour League Pocket Library.

'WHY A LABOUR GOVERNMENT?

A Reply to some centrist critics.'

By Cliff Slaughter Price 5p Other titles in this series include: The Case for a General Election A reply to some By Alex Mitchell. The Ulster Dossier centrist critics The Social Security Swindle All which includes the Trades Unions Alliance Draft Manifesto and the Charter of Basic Rights.

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PAGE 12 Workers Press, Thursday Septe THE USUAL paranoiac demands for flogging, hanging and birching litter the con- ference agenda of the Tory Party, meeting in Blackpool from October 11 to 14. There are 78 resolutions on law and order. In addition to the calls for corporal punishment, including birching, and the death penalty, Tories want 'spartan conditions' in jails with "all forms of luxury' (!) cut out.

There are also resolutions urging that 'the the crime, Punishment should fit Concern at the rising militancy of the working class is reflected in a number of local Tory parties who want picketing to be made illegal. Housing and education are the two other main questions exercis- ing the minds of the reaction- aries. The 100 resolutions on housing the Housing largely applaud Finance Act, which has increased living for thousands the cost of of working-class families. But even some of the middle-class Tories are getting uncomfortable at the soaring price of houses.

resolutions reflect this Several anxiety. On education (94 resolutions) the emphasis is on retaining the selective principle (See p. 3.)

operates in This, of course, favour of the middle-class child workers' the expense of at children. The pattern is to preserve privilege and wealth by means of repressive state strong, a apparatus. But these Tories gather at the sea-side as their system slides into ever-deeper crisis. It would take more than words to save them.

SEPTEMBER

FUND £560.29

ONLY 10

DAYS LEFT

WE'RE getting very close to the end of the month and there still is a long way to go to complet- ing our target. Over these last ten days, we need every effort to raise the outstanding £1,189.71.

We must not slip back this month. More than ever before, Workers Press must remain out in front. Workers everywhere are looking for an alternative revolu- leadership. Our paper tionary must be used to mobilize trade unionists from all over the coun try to attend the ATUA Confer- ence on October 22, and show them that such a leadership is being built. Our Fund therefore, must be kept in front of everything we do.

We know If we step up the figh now, we can complete our total in time. So don't waste a moment.

Rush all your donations to : Workers Press September Appeal Fund 186a Clapham High Street London SW4 7UG. ПЛІНИНИ STRIKERS from Deptford naval storage establishment in London and the Rosyth dockyard, Scot- land, picketed dockyard workers at Portsmouth yesterday. The 40- strong contingent was trying to escalate the government indus- trial workers' struggle for substantial pay increase on the eve of key strategy discussions between union leaders today.

Govern-. • See pages 6 and 7, ment workers in revolt'. Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office. Published by Workers Press, 186a Clapham High Street, London,

SW4 7UG.

Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (TU).

180b Clapham High Street, London.

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day September 21, 1972

FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT

DISPUTES have flared on se sites despite the general ret 26-month, pay-trap settlement leaders. Pickets from the World's End site, Chelsea, were out at the nearby Ashburnam Primary. School site yesterday.

World's End came out com- pletely within four hours of the return over the refusal of a sub- contractor to pay the new rates to their bricklayers. Since the walk-out two men working for another sub-contractor have been sacked. ENGINEERS on strike at the shipyards Lower Clyde have voted by a two-to-one majority to continue their 14-week-old stoppage. The 750 men on strike are claiming a substantial wage increase and improved con- ditions. Several weeks ago they rejected the national settlement signed by the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers leadership stating that it fell short of their demands. Yester- day's voting was 230 to 108.

Soclalist Labour Loague

LECTURES

THE THEORY AND

PRACTICE OF MARXISM

given by

G. HEALY

(SLL national secretary) Historical materialism today Tuesday September 26

AEU HOUSE

Mount Pleasant Liverpool 1, 7.30 p.m. TEXTILE WORKERS occupy- ing their Great Yarmouth factory for the right to work hope their action will inspire the rest of the working class in this Norfolk town. Over 340 of them occupied the Gainsborough Cornard factory nine days ago when they found out by accident that management intended to shut down im- mediately. In fact the plant is part of the giant Carrington-Viyella group, which in turn is 49 per cent owned by the monopoly ICI.

It is one of the few stable places of employment in this small town on the North Sea and has been established there since 1812. •Yarmouth people have always been told what to do, to work in the summer and be unemployed in the winter, be laid off and not to strike-often by the boarding- house keepers', convenor Dave Arnold told me yesterday.

Now we sincerely hope the rest of the working class here will say "You lit the torch and we'll carry it on"? added Dave, a Labour councillor. Unemployment in the winter at the end of the tourist season rose to over 2,000 last year-8 per cent of the male working population. The only other big employers in the town are Bird's Eye and the Erie electronics company, who give work to 4,000 between them. 'Our policy is clear', added Dave. 'We are fighting for our jobs-we want work and will • here until something is stay decided' The morale of the occupiers- mostly members of the Amalgam- ated Society of Textile Workers I on several London building ral return to work on the tlement agreed by the union Yesterday's picket was designed to bring out bricklayers employed by the first sub- contractor on the primary-school site. The dispute has been backed by the building workers' London action committee. Official backing from the Transport and General Workers' Union may be given to a five- month-old dispute at Guildford Street, London, now resumed following the general return.

There a steel-fixing firm is trying to force two steel-erectors sub- onto labour-only contracting system, the 'lump'.

But the Fulham Hospital site returned to work yesterday after dismissed shop steward Charlie Kelly was unconditionally • re- instated. • Merseyside building workers, who are still on strike against the national deal, will meet again today. Development of Marxism through working-class struggle Sunday September 24 Nature of the capltallst crisis Sunday October 1 Historical materiallam today Sunday October 8

EAST HAM

TOWN HALL

Lister Room Barking Rd, 7 p.m.

FROM PHILIP WADE IN GREAT YARMOUTH

and Kindred Trades—is extremely high. It soared on Tuesday when local Tory MP Anthony Fell, a Monday Club member, paid a visit and accused them 'industrial anarchy'. 'We've since felt more deter- mined to fight because it was clear he was not interested in us. No one wants to be paid off.

How cheaply do we sell our- selves? For two or three weeks' pay?' said Dave. The men feel there has been a deliberate and planned atterpt to shut the plant down. Since the take-over by Gainsborough Cornard two years ago they have shifted out several new, advanced machines. Another suspicion is that the 14-acre site might be involved in a property deal. The factory is situated in a prime position from MINERS and youth turned out to greet enthusiastically the Right-to-Work march at Sacris- tan, Co Durham, on Tuesday.

Sacristan, a colliery town of 2,000 people, suffers from the scourges of unemployment, de- population and a lack of any facilities for youth. One housewife supporting the march said that she had to pay £2,000 for a terraced house built more than a century ago Police question pickets at the World's End site, London, yes- terday. Swan men SWAN HUNTER boilermakers on Tyneside yesterday decisively voted down a personal bid by union leader Dan McGarvey to end their fortnight-old pay strike.

By a five-to-one majority in a secret ballot, they decided to stick out for a 17t-per-cent cost- of-living rise despite McGarvey's warning that the Industrial Rela- tions Act might be used against them. The company has told the 3,800 men that it will not negoti- ate their claim 'under duress'.

the real estate point of view just back from the sea-front.

Local estate agents have esti- mated that the land could fetch up the f2m on the open market.

'We want support from the entire trade union movement, textile including all workers the industry. We throughout must remember that the back- ground to all this is the mass unemployment of million workers', said Dave. workers' representatives The will be meeting management on September 27 and plan a mass march through the town • this Saturday. Financial for the support textile workers' sit-in can be sent to: c/o Dave Arnold, 15 Forsythia Road, Gorleston, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. and sold by the colliery 40 years before. 'On top of that I had to pay £500 house to have the modernized,' she added. Two girls joined the march at Sacristan and walked four miles to the next town, Chester- le-Street. Wallace, 15, Olwen an apprentice hairdresser in the village, works 48 hours a week for £4. 'In two years' time l'Il get only 73p more,' she said.

FROM PAGE 1

and sell (cheaply). to Lower Clyde and others the assets of

UCS.'

. at This is what has happened Clydebank-Marathon. For the rest of UCS, Ridley envisaged a possible closure of one or two yards, and a new chairman for the company which would 'stand or fall on its own'.

This is basically what has happened at Govan. The Stalinists have permitted this split of the work force by their collaboration with Marathon and with the Tory government's Govan consortium. new with the This is consistent Stalinists' strategy of splitting off the fight against the Industrial Relations Act from a fight to force the Tory government. to resign. At all times, the Stalinists have striven to sabotage such a fight. • of 'the peaceful The theory road to socialism' begins by re- fusing to fight to bring down the Tories and inexorably leads to collaboration with them. The UCS workers have learned the hard way that compromise and conciliation with the employ- ing class cannot save jobs and conditions. The same strategy in the building workers' strike blocked the movement for a national, all- out strike to win the claim.

But it is significant that the rebuff to Reid followed Govan shortly after the almost unanim- ous rejection by 8,000 Merseyside building workers of an appeal to return to work made by Billy Jones, Stalinist chairman of the local Action Committee. As the economic crisis of capi- hundreds of talism deepens, thousands of workers are thrown into conflict with the employers and the Tory government. Everything theworking class established in decades has of struggle has to be defended. In course of this, the real the nature of the reformist and Stalinist leaders will emerge.

The question of those workers who are now rejecting these leaderships is: who must replace them? A policy for a new leadership will be discussed at the Confer- ence of the All Trades Unions Alliance at Birmingham on October 22. We urge all shipyard workers to attend this conference and participate in this discussion.

• See What We Think p. 2.

BRITISH-LEYLAND Austin Morris division has suspended 302 production workers on the Adderley Park East, Birming- ham, assembly line in a dispute the plant's closure. All over production at the plant was stopped yesterday. The suspensions followed man- agement warnings that unless the men dropped their two-month- old work-to-rule and overtime ban, the assembly tracks would stopped. In the past few men have inten- weeks the 302 sified their action with a series one-day stoppages of every Monday. rationalization plans Under announced 18 months ago assembly is to be moved to the Birmingham Common Lane body plant. Five hundred jobs have been guaranteed there for the displaced from Adderley men Park. The reception that the marches received at Chester-le- Street was easily the best of whole march. Factory the workers from the new housing estate turned out to welcome them and to buy Workers Press. Forty papers were sold in 20 minutes. One building worker, only days back at work after the 12- week strike, said: ' support movement to get the Tories any out.' He donated 35p to the march fund.