200 items go up 8 to 12 per cent Bangers and bacon join price rise list

JANUARY

16 DAYS TO GO THERE IS not a moment to waste. We are a long way yet from completing our target. Raise everything you can immediately and help us turn the situation around.

We are confident you will do everything possible to complete our January Fund. More and more sections of the working class are being stirred into action to defend their basic rights. Workers Press was the first daily paper to warn that the Tory government would attempt to take away every one of these hard-won gains.

In this political situation, we are sure thousands and thousands of trade unionists will be rallied around our pageant of History at a mass rally at the Empire Pool on March 11.

to build that revolutionary leadership necessary today to force the government to resign. Let's therefore go all out and raise extra amounts for January's Fund. Post these immediately to:

January Appeal Fund 186 Clapham High Street London, SW4 7UG THE PRICE of about 200 branded foods went up yesterday between 8 and 12 per cent and more increases will take place later this week.

The Ministry of Agriculture is still refusing to name the firms concerned. This is in sharp contrast to the publicity the Tory government encourages over workers fighting for wage rises.

THE TORY government has abandoned all attempts to control meat prices. Farmers' leader Henry Plumb said after a meeting with the Tory Agriculture Minister Joseph Godber that there would be no attempt to 'freeze' farmers' meat margins which have rocketed since entry into the Common Market. Farmers are now getting 50 per cent more for their beef than they were a year ago.

Almost all the increases are in canned and sliced meat lines. The biggest company involved so far is Spiller Foods which is raising the price of its Tyne Brand canned meats and pies.

Other increases • include: Scot Meat Products (hams, sausages and pork); Porky Boy Products (hams, bacon and sausages); Baron Meats (ham, pressed beef, continental sausages); S. Daniels nis ies pledged to socialist policies. This is how the Stalinists began their campaign to give 'mass leadership' The reaction continued. At decisive stage in the campaign to deprive the working class of the democratic right to a decent standard of living, the Tories were faced with a wave of industrial action in defence of the engineers.

How did the Stalinists lead this Three of the national executive members participated in the fight-James Reid and James Airlie of UCS and Kevin Halpin, chairman of the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions.

he one area where no mass action was taken against the AUEW fines was Clydesidewhich includes the 'kingdom' of Reid and Airlie, both members of the engineering union.

irlie failed to move any resolution for industrial action at a shop stewards' quarterly meeting the day after the fine was imposed and the Stalinists on the Clyde failed to organize mass meetings to bring workers out. As a result the right wing was able to cancel all le Liaison Committee for its part did nothing to mobilize the working class. On the contrary, Halpin voted against a call for a national stoppage throughout engineering at a shop stewards' meeting the day London struck one day.

it above all the Stalinists never Many of these campaigns raised the political question of forcing the Tory government to resign by mass industrial and political action. Presumably this is not part of 'challenging capitalism'.

This is no longer news to many workers who are coming to regard the Communist Party with a degree of healthy cynicism.

Such cynicisms and anger must be developed into a political campaign against Stalinism. It is a • force bound entirely to the bureaucratic caste in the Soviet Urion which is now the main bulwark of imperialism throughout the world.

CONSUMER ROUND-UP

(pork shoulders, hams, hot dogs, processed chicken, canned fruit); Primecut Foods (sausages, pies, pasties); and John Morrell hams.

These increases will be the green light to other smaller manufacturers in the field. They will not have to apply to the Ministry for permission to increase the price of meat products and it will be entirely up to the shopper to complain if profiteering is suspected-a near impossible task as the names of the brands increasing prices are kept A spokesman for 'The Grocer' said that more price increases in sausages, meat and pie lines were inevitable this week. Big firms considering taking this step are Bowyers and Walls, the largest manufacturers in this field.

Many of the increases are a result of the 37-per-cent increase in fresh meat prices over the past year. The government has now launched a determined campaign to put beef beyond the range of the working-class household and substitute other foods like pig meat and chicken.

But big prices are expected here as well. The government campaign against beef as well as the pig slaughtering caused by swine disease will send the price of pork and ham rocketing.

Bacon is also likely to be much SIX HUNDRED men on the pay-roll of Redpath Dorman Long withdrew their labour yesterday in support of striking electricians at Scunthorpe's Anchor steel works site, Lincolnshire.

Over 2,000 contractors' workers on the 4,000 man site have downed tools since the dispute began on January 9.

Trouble first flared on December 21 after Watson Norie Ltd sacked 38 men, including all the shop stewards and known militants, following the electrician's work-to-rule. 'Casuals' threat to dockers' jobs The management's plans, however, have run into immediate trouble with the port shop stewards' committee.

Norman Wright, the stewards' convenor, told Workers Press that the committee had instructed dockers not to let any casuals onto Preston docks.

Although men on the supplementary register are paid the same as permanent dockers, they enjoy no similar job guarantee under the Dock Labour Scheme. In fact they can be fired with only one week's notice by either their immediate employer or the Dock Labour Board.

Men on the permanent register fear that casuals could be used to break up their solidarity and act as a wedge for speed-up. A LEADING haulage and warehousing company appears to have retreated on plans to get rid of registered dock labour at Bermondsey. Cold Store, south London.

Following a High Court ruling last year, that the jobs at the cold store were not necessarily dockers' work, it had been feared that the store's owners would try to dismiss their six dockers.

But at a meeting with union officials and shop stewards yes•MAATIÀ InAnA The men have agreed to drop their maximum safety campaign in _return for a reinstatement of the sacked workers, but Norrie's have rejected the offer.

The company attempted to carry out a secret ballot and advertise the strikers' jobs in the local press.

Strike leader Mr Stewart Stevenson told me they had imposed the maximum safety campaign at the beginning of December after management had used iron fist tactics. dearer. Because of the switch to pork, the bacon producers are not getting the supplies they need. Farmers are selling their animals to pork producers.

The Common Market will also have an effect. Bacon is not a common food on the continent, therefore subsidies that farmers get on the price of pig feed stuffs favour animals that produce more pork than bacon.

When these regulations apply here on February 1, there will be an incentive to concentrate on pork instead of bacon producANOTHER warning of big food price rises was issued yesterday by the Food Manufacturers' Federation.

Spokesman for the Federation said that margins had gone down from the usual 16 to 17 per cent to about 12 per cent.

'Now profit margins have declined to a point where we cannot allow them to go any lower. We hope that the government will give permission for price increases, he said.

In addition, special marketsharing agreements between the UK and Denmark will disappear in Europe. This will boost exports to the continent and push up prices at home.

Mr L. W. Wright, president of the Manchester Provision Exchange, has predicted that these factors will mean five years of rising bacon prices.

He added that in the last three years seven men had died and over 200 had been injured on the site.

Anchor electricians have been pressing the union for three years to take action against the company on a variety of issues.

Finally the men elected shop stewards who were immediately recognized by Watson Norie's and the British Steel Corporation, but not by As soon as to-rule began terday, the management indicated that the owners, Transport Development Group, intended to retain the registered men.

A letter to this effect is to be sent to the Transport and General Workers' Union and, if the terms are acceptable, it is expected that notice of strike action from the end of this week will be withBut the company still has to settle the problem of three men who it is keeping at home on full pay after they took severance from the register last June.

THE FUTURE of at least 500 dockers at the Royal group of docks in east London is expected to be finally decided this Friday.

Shipping lines in the South American conference are due to reply then to proposals from union officials and the Port of London Authority for keeping the valuable meat trade in London docks. The lines are threatening to transfer to Southampton.

A transfer could close Thames Stevedoring (1965) Ltd, the Vestey-owned firm which employs more than 800 men in the Royals.

Thames' work has already been cut by the transfer of much of the New Zealand meat trade to Sheerness—a decision in workweeks which the Vestey organization itself had a powerful voice.

The proposals to which the South American lines will réply on Friday are believed to involve considerable speed-up.

SOUTHAMPTON dockers met yesterday, but did not discuss their shop stewards' recent statement that they would work South American meat ships unless the London men could guarantee the trade would not go elsewhere.

Instead they voted support for the hospital workers' fight against the Tory pay-control law. MIDLAND Cold Storage yester= day formally withdrew the legal proceedings that last summer led to five London dockers being jailed.

TONIGHT

Trades Unions Meeting SOUTHAMPTON: Tuesday Janu ary 16, 8 p.m. 'The Bay Tree Inn,' New Road. 'The Tory State Pay Plan' Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office. Published by Workers Press, 186a Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7UG.

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