US lets currency slide in trade war skirmishes Dollar pressure on yen

ket opened for the first time since the German government imposed new currency controls.

In Tokyo the flood of dollar selling shrank to a mere trickle as dealers waited for the opening of the west European markets. But in both markets there was great nervousness and uncertainty about the future.

Trading in Frankfurt was described as "quiet and hesitant', while Tokyo was said to be 'anxious'. Both the Japanese and the German currencies were under heavy pressure last week for revaluation against the dollar. The United States government, which took last week's heavy selling, tried on Friday mark. instead imposed the new stringent controls. had been allowed to float. the Japanese. US ambassador Robert Ingerno measures to prop up the dollar through night to persuade the Germans to "float' the George Schultz, President Nixon's Treasury Secretary, was rebutied by the Germans, who Finance Minister Helmut Schmidt said the French would have 'hit the roof if the mark Strong pressure is also being applied to soll warned in Tokyo over the weekend that unless Japan altered the entire pattern of its trade with the US 'in the next few months' the administration would be in serious difficulties 'in its efforts to liberalize it or not.

Almirante received £35,000 for implicating the principal accused Pietro Valpreda.

Five left-wingers who had launched a counter inquiry died in a motor accident and lawyer Ambrosini, yet another witness, committed suicide in hospital.

Eventually public pressure and total lack of evidence forced the Italian police to declare accused Valpreda, innocent, but three years of ill-treatment in jail have so weakened his health that he may die.

This would leave only Ardau. It is highly likely that if he was sent back to Italy he would suffer the same fate as the other witnesses.

Ardau has led an orderly life and has worked regularly for two years in France and the deportation move has all the marks of a deal between the French and the Italian authorities. • . A support committee for Ardau has been established at 33, rue des Vignoles, 75020 Paris.

William Eberle, Nixon's chief trade troubleshooter, zum ine is message it kre tos morrow to rub this message ultimatum to both countries is unmistakable: revalue your currency or face even more vicious trade war measures.

The only question is, how long can Germany and Japan hold out? All the indications are that the crunch must come very soon. The Japanese central bank chief has already hinted that Tokyo will shortly have to bow to the inevitable and revalue whether it likes And in Germany the currency restrictions —which virtually outlaw foreign purchases of German shares, direct foreign investment in Germany firms-can only be a stop-gap and borrowing abroad by Gérman measure. They effectively cut off the German stock markets from foreign sources of funds and could well precipitate a sharp fall in share prices.

The measures, according to Reuter, were 'generally regretted in West German business and banking circles, though, like Finance Minister Schmidt they asked: 'What else could we do?' The measures sharply reverse the traditional West German policy of maintaining open frontiers to monetary movements.

In view of their general unpopularity and the difficulties they will create for big business, the measures cannot be maintained for long without a real risk of conculsions on the stock exchange.

But as soon as they are removed, West German capitalism will once more be exposed to the full force of the dollar influx and of US pressure to revalue.

The National Health Service is under attack. Along with all the other rights which the Tory government is trying to take away from the working class, the right to medical treatment when needed, regardless of cost, is being steadily undermined.

The introduction of the Health Service by the Labour government in 1948 was a great victory for the working class. It was the culmination of a fight which has been waged by socialists and trade unionists, particularly the miners, for many years to ensure that working men, women and children need not suffer or die because they cannot require.

That victory a great deal of powerful vested Aneurin Bevan, the Health Minister, left a loophole in the Act which national• ized the medical service which, because of the more rapacious need for profits today, is being exploited to the full by the Tories and their supporters in the British Medical Association.

Consultants today they run their own see private patients the treatment was not achieved without stubborn opposition from interests.

lead a double role: surgeries where they and charge whatever prices they like. But at the same time they also work part-time in the NHS hospitals and earn huge sums. The salary increase given to consultants in 1970 was in itself more than the entire weekly take-home pay of hospital porters and domestics.

Patients have to wait longer to see a consultant or to undergo operations they need because the doctors are busy seeing private patients part-time during the week. Hospital registrars and junior doctors have to work longer hours and take more responsibility than their experience sometimes justifies because the consultant is not there all the time.

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February Other hospital staff who are underpaid by the NHS-such as nurses, radiographers, physicists, pharmacists, laboratory technicians and others—have to spend hours of their time every week looking after private patients. Although the consultants gets paid for each service carried out for the private patient, the ancillary staff get no extra.

In the middle of this situation have jumped the businessmen eager to get their hands on the 'health market'. In this article a special correspondent exar nines the companies and Tory personalitie! ; be hind this private attack on the NH!