A legal

THE DECISION of the Union of Shop, Di stributive and • Allied Workers to challenge government's state control of wages in courts can only sow more confusion.

Of course, the 50,000 USDAW members who are on a basic wage of £15.35 and £15.90 ought to get the £l-a-week rise agreed last May.

Balion tion (which has refused to pay the increase on Indeed, they should get a lot more. But taking the Co-operative Employers' Associagovernment 'advice') before the London Area County Court, is not the correct way to get it.

SDAW's general secretary, Mr Alf Allen says they are challenging the government after consulting 'some of the best legal advice in the country. This' says Mr Allen, 'is the only way we can enable the rise to be paid. ne way to defeat the government's state wage control laws is not to search out legal loopMagee, with gun, outside holes in them. In any case, the cost of living hostage in August 1970. has gone up by much more than fl a week since last May as a result of the Tory government's deliberate unleashing of inflation by floating the pound in June. Other anti-working class measures, like the rent Act, have also sent costs soaring. uring this period Allen, sitting on the TUC EEC: French General Council, has been advocating and participating in talks with the Tory leaders! should also be remembered . that the trade union leaders consulted legal 'experts' when the Tories were preparing the Industrial Relations Act. But legal advice proved useless in the raise gold bogey face of the Tory determination to change the law. is not law books that in the last analysis determine history, but the movement of class forces. From that standpoint what is required is not legal procedure-even if small loopholes can be found in the law-but a united fight of all the unions to destroy the Tories' state pay laws altogether. This would inevitably lead to a conflict in which the unions could force the Tories to resign and replace them by a Labour government pledged to socialist policies. Suing the employer is really a way of avoiding ounce-to above the free market level. this fight. Manchester spokesman for Since the free market price is over: $60 USDAW let the cat out of the bag: 'We did NOT consider industrial action because we thought that was not the way to win this battle. Our advice is, we have a reasonable chance of winning on interpretation of the lis makes it clear, that, under the guise of cussing monetary reform. fighting the government, the USDAW leaders The French argue that neither dollars nor in reality accept the Tory Act. Their action can only help to create illusions among lower- special drawing rights (so-called paper gold) paid workers and spread confusion and divi- are an acceptable basis for international value.

This position simply reflects the fact that no sion among the working class which has fought one can now determine what is the actual the Tory goyernment on wages, rents, and value of these paper assets. trade union rights. The French proposal, of course, is ridiculed DAW members must tell their leaders: 'No by the editorialist of "The Times Business collaboration with the Tory Act, under News', , one of the last resting places of the Many guise whatever.' theories of John Maynard Keynes.

about gold, the editorial says. Nixon expects position is certainly not going to Hanoi response relative currency values. ..? PRESIDENT NIXON was yesterday reported to be expecting a response from Hanoi to his 'unilateral' action in suspending technical document for experts— the bombing, mining and shelling of North Vietnam.

nation in the Group of 20.

Observers in Washington ON THE same day Nixon called believed that the President off the bombing the Communist was expecting some sort of Party's 'Morning Star' announced a special role in the Common reciprocal action to demon- the participation of the Interstrate Hanoi's readiness to sign national Socialism group in its a settlement along the lines fraudulent 'sign now' vigil out- the British Tory government. worked out in Paris. side the American Embassy in London. bourg by the Finance Ministers on Nixon's envoy General Alex- This revisionist group has ander Haig is in Saigon to explain aligned itself uncritically with the the Paris draft terms to the Communist Party and become an be settled in gold in proportion Van Thieu, who has previously South Vietnam dictator Nguyen adjunct of the Kremlin's counter- to the amount of gold in the revolutionary pressure for a sell- lebtor countries' reserves. opposed a deal with North out deal in Indo-China.

Vietnam. have two safeguards against But according to Thieu govern- 'No genuine Vietnamese would made several concessions — in- ment sources, North Vietnam has recognize Viet- natu must reunified; one volving both the demilitarized typical commentary said. zone and the size of the inter- According to some Washington national ceasefire control force- sources, the draft deal will inin the course of the talks. clude a compromise formula The Hanoi representatives meeting both Hanoi's insistence debt. were negotiating under great that Vietnam is a single country duress, with pressure being and Saigon's demand that the applied from both Moscow and puppet government's sovereignty give their creditor an IOU payPeking to bolster Nixon's threats be guaranteed. of using guided missiles against This would be a major step North Vietnam. back compared even with the have been stabilized.

But they appear, if reports are demands being advanced in the to be believed, to • have accepted summer by the North Vietnamese at least for the moment the and the Provisional Revolutionary from actual monetary union. division of the country along the Government, which were calling 17th parallel. Hanoi Radio, how- for the removal of Thieu and the ever, continues to insist vehem- formation of a government of ently that Vietnam is indivisible. 'national concord'. Stalinist-Spain on repression THE EAST German government had full consultations with the Soviet Union before establishing diplomatic relations with the Franco regime, reports a correspondent of the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug in Moscow.

The matter was discussed *Really there is no problem Minister Otto Winzer on his 'Gold ... for more than a devisit to see his Soviet countercade has not had a central place in the monetary system: and its part Gromyko on January 8.

Gromyko gave his full support be revived in any negotiated re- to the step. form ... What matters are This latest diplomatic coup for Lopez Bravo, Franco's Foreign This fails to explain why the Minister, follows the signing of French proposals-described by the trade deal between Moscow Giscard d'Estaing as merely a and Spain on September 15, 1972. should have caused such conster- The growing links between the Spanish fascists and Stalinist Nor, for that matter does it bureaucracy are built on the explain why gold should be given suppression of the Spanish workWing class.

Market's new monetary reserve fund at the express insistence of FRANCO'S courts have been engaged in a very thorough anticommunist purge over the last This plan, drawn up in LuxemMonday, provides that debts be- The Madrid Public Order tween EEC central banks must Tribunal (TOP) has rejected the appeal by Lucio Lobato, Spanish CP Central Committee member and confirmed his 211 years' However, debtor countries will In El Ferrol TOP has demanded revaluation of gold: if they settle harsh sentences for those arrested according to the rules, they can during the March strikes in the claim the right to buy back their local shipyards. payment following a rise in the For Rafael Lista, 17 years; gold price at the price ruling Amor Deus, 15 years; Jose Millan, when they originally paid off the 14 years; Aneiros, 12 years; and the lawyer Varez, four years.

Alternatively, at the cost of a small interest payment they can THE military court martial of the Basque nationalists who kidable in 1975, when the ministers napped the industrialist Lorenzo hope that the price of gold will Zabala began last Saturday.

The prosecution has demanded This scheme reveals just how 25 years for Pedro Trincado and far away the Common Market is 21 years for three other Basques.

It demonstrates that the Mar- THE RECTOR of the Autonomket's much-heralded unity is con- ous University in Madrid says he stantly being disrupted by the has no intention of re-opening international monetary crisis. the department of Pure Philoof a San Francisco courtroom yesterday when a sophy, which he described 'centre of subversion'.

The department was closed at the beginning of the academic year as a result of a strike against the sacking of teachers.

A group of Spanish intellectuals has Issued a protest manitesto against the attack on freedom of They have been joined by a group of intellectuals led by Althusser and Sartre who sent a telegram to the Education Minister.

LOPEZ BRAVO • • Diplomatic coup for Foreign Minister IN VALENCIA, students are in conflict with the fascist university authorities who have closed down the university dining hall.

The management and staff have been sacked. There is no money for wages now that the Ministry has cut the annual £7,000 subsidy.

WRITER Luciano Rincon Vega was sentenced on Saturday to six years' imprisonment for 'illegal propaganda and extremist activities.

He used to write articles against Franco under a pseudonym for the French publishing house, Ruedo Iberico.

WITHIN A MATTER council at Clay Cross, banded for refusing to 'fair rents' Act. of hours the entire Labour Derbyshire, could be disimplement the hated Tory Wednesday lanuary