US ships and planes threat as war rages

now.

'I'VE always considered myself middle of the road and I'm still middle of the road, but the middle of the road is going to have to move! This comment of a young actor who voted for strike action during Sunday's meeting expresses very clearly the impact of the Tories' West End wage-cut on the thinking of Equity members.

Maurice Macmillan's January 1 order banning a £5 increase in minimum rates-and taking back £7 granted last Novemberhas brought politics into the theatres in no uncertain fashion.

At London's Adelphi Theatre on Sunday night, the question 'to strike or not to strike' was argued out on clear political lines.

It was this development which was worrying the union's right-wing leaders when they met the Press after the meeting. And it is this which makes their job today so difficult.

After four hours of debate, the Adelphi meeting voted by 156 to 129 to: • Implement the decision ot Equity's annual general meeting to strike in defence of full payment of the West End claim. • Lodge immediate pay claims for every section of the membership, act on a policy of total opposition to government control of wages and defy the state pay laws. As fascists attack left wingers Italian CP blunts engineers' fight REPRESENTATIVES of over a million Ita resume negotiations today with employers' of Labour, Coppe, for the renewal of their Negotiations have been prolonged since last October of the Italian Communist Party leadership's refusal to coni fight against employers who threaten bankruptcies and 1 employment if they are forced to make big concessions.

The Stalinists' restraining of the mass movement is coupled with an enthusiastic defence of the forces of the state when they act against left-wing groups.

Fighting broke out in Turin last Saturday in front of the local offices of the fascist MSI after a group of MSI provocateurs had tried to disrupt a left-wing demonstration.

The police came to the aid of the MSI and two members of Lotta Continua were injured and four arrests made.

The public prosecutor who was put in charge of the case immediately gave the police perBLACK SEPTEMBER has claimed in Cairo that it had executed an Israeli intelligence officer by firing squad in Madrid. The man, Moise Hanan Yshai (36), was shot on Friday in the main street the Spanish capital. He is said , to have played a part in organizing the murder of the Paris and Rome representatives of the Palestine Liberation • Withdraw immediately the union's registration under the Industrial Relations Act.

Join with the whole trade union movement in a struggle to force the Tory government to resign and elect a Labour government pledged to repeal all anti-union legislation.

Both the executive's proposal pledging support tor *all lawful acts' against statutory wage control— and a centrist motion calling for rank-and-file 'action committees' were defeated.

So was a move by Communist Party supporters simply to delete the word "lawful' from the executive's motion.

The meeting opened with president Ernest Clark and secretary Gerald Croasdell telling confused about the were about the meaning of the government's Phase Two pay legislation.

It was 'anybody's guess' what parts of it meant, Croa Croasdell said. But he claimed that it was mission to raid over 40 houses and offices in Turin, including the Lotta Continua offices.

The police claimed to have found the remains of Molotov cocktails and other missiles in the vicinity of the MSI headquarters. They also identified' 20 leftists and arrested four The CP's provincial federation Party issued a statement condemning the 'provocateur acts of irresponsible groups who are mounting a campaign against the democratic and working-class movement of Turin'.

The Stalinists want all leftwing opposition to be broken up by the state because they are afraid of the attraction they have to Italian workers frustrated by continuous token protest actions. With a possible breakdown in the engineering negotiations could lead to strikes in the factories T...!- 1L - rn -- 11. ine ur comes defence of the guardians local MSI. certain actors would get their £7 from February 3 and their £5 from March 31.

He had been assured of this, he told a Press conference later, by someone at the Department of Employment, whose name he did not know, but who he thought was either an under-secretary or a senior civil servant.

What Croasdell did not make clear, either at and during the meeting or at the Press conference, is that if the Tories get their way, actors will never see again the money they have already lost.

The D of E's assuran-s that the Society of West End Theatre Managers could pay out from March 31 was the right-wing leadership's only argument.

Their 'alternative' to the strike motion, unveiled by Croasdell at the post-meeting Press conference, was a special committee of the executive 'to try and discover what the government's guidelines mean lian engineering workers federations and Minister wage contract.

because inue the lass unine Spain creeps closer to the SPANISH FOREIGN Minister Lopez Bravo yesterday paid his first visit to the headquarters of the Common Market in Brussels to sign a protocol to supplement the 1970 preferential agreement between the EEC and Spain.

The new protocol is a step on the road to establishing a free trade area with Spain and other Mediterranean regimes.

Bravo was received by Ortoli, warmly XavierGaullist then to see what position we are in under the legislation'.

The Stalinists' role in Sunday's meeting was to faithfully cover up for this thoroughly bankrupt policy.

Their leading spokesman, Declan Mulholland, voted against the successful resolution, moved as an amendment to the Council motion. His own amendment was simply to remove the word 'lawful' from the Council's motion.

In moving this motion, Mulholland appealed first tor unity, then for 'the Conservatives in the union to join their local associations and oppose the wage freeze from within'.

This left the centrist motion, moved by supporters of the International Marxist Group, which quite specifically and deliberately excluded all reference to removing the Tories and replacing them with a Labour government.

The defeat of these two motions is highly signifificant. Many of the 156 Eleanora Armando, hurt when attacked president of the EEC, and Sir Christopher Soames, the Tory delegate in Brussels.

A group of 30 Catalan engineering employers will shortly follow Bravo in order to research the prospects for the Spanish engineering industry in Europe.

Backed by the Franco regime, which outlaws trade unions, they are sure to meet with success. A worried Equity general secretary Gerald Croasdell speaking to the Press after Sunday's meeting. actors who supported the successful motion were clearly voting as much for the politics of the motion as for its call for militant action.

"This was not a general meeting with statutory authority', Croasdell rushed to tell the Press. 'The motion as carried has no binding authority. It represents the view of 156 members at the time the vote was taken.

I would hazard a pretty confident prediction that the governing body of the union will not consider this as authority or persuasion to launch into strikes in the West End or apandon our application for an approved closed shop' And Hugh Manning, vice-president, rushed in to tell the Press that a lot of those who had spoken in the debates had made much of their association with the Socialist Labour League.

An Equity Press officer later took the unprecedented step of informing the Press that one of the movers of the successful resolution was 'probably' an SLL member.

Sunday's meeting made clear, however, that no such moves can revive the ghost of Equity's past.

FOREIGN CORRESPONDEI However Franco does not intend to break his close ties with American imperialism.

At a meeting of the joint Spanish-North American Defence Committee over the weekend, Lopez Bravo excelled himself in his praise of General Burchinall, head of US forces in Europe which include bases in Spain.

He assured this 'brilliant prototype of the THE WAR has raged on unchecked through out South Vietnam since ceasefire agreement last Saturday.

The United States has threatened to throw its ships and planes back into the war if fighting continues.

Mr William Sullivan, the State Department's top official on Vietnam, said on • Monday that US air power remained in Thailand and US ships were being kept off : the coast of Vietnam. Hanoi 'can draw its own conclusions, he said.

Heavy battles are taking place in the central highlands, the central coastal region, the Mekong delta and in the provinces round Saigon. Liberation forces have captured more than 50 hamlets.

Meanwhile US planes are still launching combat missions Laos. Twenty B52s and about 100 Phantom fighter-bombers have been in action since the Vietnam truce.

The Cambodian puppet regime is reported to have called unilateral suspension of offensive operations, but bitter fighting was continuing in the Tram Khnar area.

In Saigon the government yesterday allowed 14 members of the Provisional Revolutionary Government into the country without completing immigration torms.

The PRG delegation had held the meeting of the joint military commission (consisting of the United States, North and South Vietnam and the PRG) for more than 20 hours because they claimed signing the forms would imply recognition of the Thieu regime as the sovereign government of South Vietnam. nation (Can ma, inland, he gary The first meeting ot the tour. and Indonesia) International Commission of Control and Supervision of the ceasefire held its first meeting yesterday.

Asked what the Commission could do if fighting broke out right now, across the street', the Commission's chief delegate, Canada's Michel Gauvin, replied: 'Nothing' United States that the Franco government was under no illusions about i ts links with eastern Europe: 'However great the dialogue is, we consider that we are radically anti-Marxist.' The Spanish Communist Party has yet to explain how Spain's 'integration into democratic Europe' constitutes a body blow against US imperialism.