THE STRIKE AT THE WHITE RIVER VINE YARDS WHITE RIVER VINEYARDS

SOTTAN

A CAVI ю 9.

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The caption goes on to describe the delightful shift system designed by Lucas to make sure the plant stays In production night and day:

'The alternating shifts give him plenty of time to tinker with the car, take Mum out to the January sales, finish the odd jobs about the house and have a pint with the lads at the local and study the horses.' (Note the way the advertising world treats the working man as some kind of caged baboon with all kinds of quaint habits and customs.)

'Besides good wages and a pension scheme there are numerous fringe benefits which include' ... etc, etc.

Two weeks ago the happy CAV workers occupied their plant after the jolly-old management toid them they would all be redundant by April. Dad is still laughing inside the gates. He takes promises about a bright future seriously-unfortunately for Lucas.

GOD'S PLAN A solution to the problems of unemployment and inflation is contained in the October issue of 'Challenge'.

BOOKS phasis in original.)

PRIEST POWER The Abbé Desbourges of the small French village of Le Bertenoux in the Department of the Indre is no ordinary priest.

It is not only that he drives a plush Peugot 504 while many priests manage with a moped.

Or that he has a secretary, also provided with a car. Or even that he keeps a good table; many ecclesiastics do.

Perhaps not so many enjoy piloting a light plane from the local airfield.

The Abbé has another claim to fame — he exorcises spirits and ghosts. It appears that he is in great demand; indeed business is booming. Ghosts have, apparently, never been so plentiful.

The Abbé is a virtuoso in his trade. He can exorcise evil spirits which curdle the milk or kill the chickens. He can release people from obsessions and cure those who are possessed.

The Abbé has very little stock-in-trade. He operates with a bottle of holy water and a few prayers. Despite a Vatican decree abolishing exorcists, he is still in business.

And it pays ...

LEON TROTSKY :

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NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS 186a Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UG. The almost certain reelection of President Nixon will give the American bourgeoisie the go-ahead for a full-scale attack on trade union rights in the United States.

To a certain extent the cat was let out of the bag recently with a speech by Labour Secretary James D. Hodgeson to leading shippers and port employers.

He told them that the outlawing of strikes on the docks, for example, will be a top priority of the Nixon administration after the elections on November 7.

One agency for the attack will be the so-called National Commission for Industrial Peace-the setting up of which Nixon announced in his Labour Day speech earlier this year.

Shippers meeting at the exclusive Propeller Club in Houston, Texas, were told by Hodgeson: 'One of the problems I am sure we will be tackling is that of the massive and frequent strikes that have so long plagued the transportation industry, including Îongshore strikes.' Then in tones sinisterly similar to those spouted by the Tories here, he added: It has become increasingly apparent that the public will no longer tolerate them.' Edward J. Heine, president of the powerful United States Line, threw in the shipowners' agreement with Nixon's strategy: 'We must rethink the fundamental labourmanagement relationship in the maritime industry?

In no small way the Nixon regime is already beginning to test its all-out offensive against the unions in practice.

With the reactionary and Abovi racialist Governor Reagan libera racianst Governor ntagall Darrena of California, they have in- Laura Dreac stituted a systematic reign of terror against the United Farm Workers' Union.

In the last few weeks over 300 TIFW nickets have heen JUV UL TY vuvas arrested in the bitter five-week strike at the White River grape vineyards on the West Coast.

It was there that in 1966 the first farm labour contract in American history was signed after the heroic struggle of the Now the new owners, the Butte Oil and Gas Company, with the full support Reagan, have mobilized all the forces of the growers, together with the courts and the police in a vicious drive to break Negotiations with the company broke down in late August when the directors demanded revisions in the disputes procedure, the introduction of harvesting machines which replace 40 workers a machine and the elimination of a union-organized farm from the contract.

As soon as the strike began, the company obtained an injunction from the courts requiring the pickets to stand 50 feet apart and allow police to take scabs into the fields.

Farmworkers from throughout the 'grapes of wrath' state poured down on the area to establish mass picketing on a scale never before seen among the industry's workers.

It was at this stage that the police moved, arresting hundreds who stood in their way.

The heroic fight of the farmworkers is now in great danger because of the leadership's refusal to break with the Democrats and fight for the full mobilization of the trade union movement in support.

Only in a limited way has there been any real support. The picket line has been backed by two local trade liberals and The church and preaches pacifism. union leaders representing the area trades council and dock clerks.

But both these men are committed to presidential candidate George McGovern and have so far refused to do any more than protest for fear of breaking up their fragile alliance with the Democrats.

The farmworkers' leader himself, Cesar Chavez, has appealed to liberals and the church and preaches non-violence and pacifism in answer to the repressions of the employers and the state machine.

It is here that the wretched American Communist Party has come in to praise the section of the trade union bureaucracy rallying behind McGovern. These counterrevolutionary Stalinists have cheered every time Chavez has tried to liquidate the fight of the UFW into the campaign for the McGovern candidacy.

At the same time the revisionist Socialist Workers Party, in its Californian campaign for the presidency, has refused to bring politics into the struggle, opposing all the time the construction of a Labour Party in the United States.

Only the Workers League has refused to bow to the spontaneity of the farmworkers. In a recent San Francisco demonstration by the UFW, they successfully intervened with banners calling for the building of a Labour Party to take the struggle forward to smash the power of the growers.

And over this last weekend, the Workers League held a successful conference of trade unionists and youth in Chicago to step up the campaign to make the trade unions call a congress to establish a Labour

Above: partners in fame and fortune Steven M. Powers with Harold Goldstein (right) who established the outfit, First Leisure Corporation of Beverly Hills. 23, 1972