The Newsletter, vol. 1 no. 21

HE PURPOSE of the increase in Bank Rate is to break wages. standard of living, and it will be successful if we don’t fight back—as energetically and as effectively as Mr.

Thorneycroft is fighting.

Ttlis thé, Of course, that its purpose is also to stem !inflations+to solve the problem of constantly rising prices;and to halt the run on sterling. But all these questions las din whe! gourse of smashing wages. They do not are to be solved at the expense of the working I .

/ ven hide \it.\/ The Financial Times, for instance, wrote leading article on September 21:

ma ‘The vital question is therefore still the question of wages. If in two or three months’ time the Government is prepared and able to stand up to the unions, then Mr. Thorneycrott’s measures can be seen as a reasonable preliminary to such a determination. ‘If, however, the Government is not prepared to stand fast but is going to run away again, then these measures are largely useless and in some ways obviously harmful. By ‘stand up to the unions’ is meant ‘support the employers in a strike’. Not to ‘run away again’ means not to do as they By Our Economic Correspondent-- + + It is part of the Tory offensive on our [ PRESS iiedt CHOP GOES THE AXE AT THE THE TUMBRILS are rolling in Covent Garden this week. © Well-groomed heads are plopping into plush-lined baskets. The great purge at the Daily Herald has begun.

Expected ever since the Trades Union Congress handed over full control to the Odham publishers, the delay has been so long that some observers had begun to thing the purge would never happen. But at last the pale pink blood is flowing.

fronically. editor Sidney Elliot was summarily executed just as he had begun his own personal purge. He had sacked his own deputy, and had dispatched another senior executive to Manchester—the Odhams equivalent of a Siberian powerstation.

_But no sooner had Mr. Elliot relaxed than the axe fell on him. too. And to complete his humiliation, the man chosen to replace him was the very man he had sent to Siberia.

There was pathos. too. in the physical departure of Mr Elliot. The story told in Covent Garden is that he received his marching orders at a moment's notice. Sadly. he sat down to write a farewell note to be posted on the office notice-board.

He left the note with his secretary. telling her to give him ten minutes’ start before pinning it up. And with that he walked out, for the very last time. He had gone long before his staff realized what had happened.

His successor. Mr. Donald Macrae, is now busy clearing up the dead wood collected in the dreary years of the Elliot regime. A short. sharp purge is believed fo be his intention. Many spare executives are understood te be on his list.

And the policy of the paper? Who knows? But I give you this clue: the man who fired Mr. Elliot, Mr. Harry Ainsworth, is the man who built The People; the Odhams sexSunday.

Mr. Ainsworth is not thought to have changed his views about what is a winning formula in Fleet Street.

Threat of strike action by bricklayers and labourers building the Chiswick by-pass soon stopped a suspected case of victimization this week.

Five labourers who reported for work on Tuesday morning included well-known militants Brian Behan and Paddy Healy. Three hours later a representative of the employers, the Alderton Construction Co., said there had been a ‘mistake’—there were too many labourers already.

The bricklayers’ and labourers’ stewards said they would call out their men if the five were not reinstated.

Reinstatement followed within an hour.

did at the time of the engineering strike—i.c.. encourage the employers to fight and then run away after the strike started.

The Financial Times is saying, in other words, that the Government has embarked upon a deliberate strike-breaking tole. And it-is correct. In fact the Government will provoke strikes and then break them if it can.

This policy is not being undertaken lightly. The Tories are risking the possibility of slump — and they are taking the chance with their eyes open. Again, see what the Financial Times wrote in the same leading article:

‘The whole policy does. of course. also raise wider economic considerations. The classic pattern of a recession induced by a shortage of world reserves is that in succession different countries impose restrictions on trade .. . which lead to a cumulative slowing down of world trade as a whole.

‘The process of decline becomes accelerated as exports become difficult to sell, and further restrictions are imposed.

‘Each batch of restrictions. is caused by an outflow of (Continued at foot of next page)

THE party magazine Nowe Drogi says the Polish workers “cannot be deprived of the right to strike’. But to organize strikes often means acting against the interests of party and country.

Admitting that strikes have been numerous, and in some cases “justifiable. the magazine urges union leaders and the government to deal more rapidly with the workers’ demands.

Local party organizations are blamed for losing contact with the masses by their passive and indifferent attitude towards wages and working conditions.

In one instance: a strike_arose in a factory because the workers had no water for Washing their hands.

the class it represents, and on their shoulders alone, lies the responsibility for the coming industrial strife. An attack on living standards is a political act; the working class has no alternative but to use its industrial

HE TIME for defensive actions is over: The hour has come for the entire working-class movement to go over to the counter-offensive against the employers and their government.

Either we do this, or they will thrash us. The seven per cent Bank Rate is the clearest possible warning that the Tory attack on wages and conditions has entered a new stage. Heartened by Sir Tom Williamson’s declaration at the Trades Union Congress against ‘unofficial’ strikes, Morris Motors threaten their workers in the most arrogant and provocative way. Equally arrogant are Alexander Stephen and Sons on Clydeside. On the London docks the victimization of militants has begun. The Times wrote on Monday, September 23:

The possibility is envisaged that the new economic position resulting from the Government's drastic measures may make it possible to restore industrial discipline. It would be idle to hope that this can be achieved without a widespread struggle between employers and labour such as has not been known for a generation.

Every militant worker in the country knows that to this threat there is only one possible answer: /f they want a struggle, they can have it!

What are ‘unofficial’ strikes in Britain today? They are the workers’ only real answer to the unconstitutional actions that Macmillan’s government is preparing against the working class. The Tory Government has no mandate to create unemployment. It has no mandate to attack wages. It has no mandate to attack trade union organization. It has no mandate to drive small businessmen to the wall to make a field-day for the monopolists. The workers cannot afford to let themselves be smashed piecemeal; they must prepare to meet the attacks blow for blow. Industrial action in defence of wages and jobs is the necessary and inevitable result of the government’s own vicious measures. Those who cry out against strikes are saying in effect: ‘This animal is wicked: when you attack it, it defends itself... On the shoulders of the Tory government and BANK RATE (Continued from front page)

reserves . . . It -scarcely needs to be observed that Mr.

‘Thorneycroft’s measures fall precisely into line with this view of the situation.”

‘To take a calculated risk of a slump at a time when almost all basic commodities have been overproduced and in consequence the income of the primary producer countries has fallen is either arrant stupidity, or else it shows they are determined on a showdown.

It would be a mistake for the workers to assume that it is stupidity. The Labour and trade union movement must sce strength for political ends.

These coming struggles are bound to call in question the continued existence of the Tory government. The Right-wing leaders of the Labour Party and TUC do not want such a struggle for power. That is why they have merely demanded the recall of Parliament. Such a demand is meaningless unless there is at the same time a call for mass demonstrations to express the people’s loathing of the Tory government and their determination to unseat it—and unless the opposition expressed by Labour spokesmen to the Tory measures outspokenly presents the socialist alternative. Let Labour proclaim to the whole nation the fundamental truth about the present crisis: that there is no lasting solution except the removal of industry from the hands of those who are placing in jeopardy the whole future of the British people: that only nationalization with workers’ control can safeguard the right to work.

The Labour Party conference, if it is to act in the interests of the vast majority of the British people. must declare for an end to Tory rule. It must call on Britain’s eight million organized workers to prepare for a showdown, in which their enormous strength will be brought into play against those who want to solve the crisis at their expense. Let us teach these would-be champions of ‘industrial discipline’ a long overdue lesson. Let us seal up every gap in the ranks of trade union organization by securing one hundred per cent trade unionism on every job, in every shop. No. case of victimization should be allowed to go by default. Every active trade unionist should be an active member of the Labour Party. Rank-and- file organization should be strengthened and consolidated in every industry and firmly linked locally and nationally. Immediate and powerful solidarity action with every sector that comes under fire will hearten the embattled workers and stiffen their will to resist. The movement is going into battle with high morale and an unfaltering determination to force a speedy general election, the overthrow of the Tories and the return of a new Labour government with a fully socialist policy.

has not been able to get another job.

‘The Ford Motor Company made him their symbol of attack against militant trade unionism. and the sacrifice that this entails is more than one member should bear.’ says the appeal, which is signed by Briggs convener A. S. Moore.

At least one branch of the AEU has criticized the executive council for not doiing more for McLoughlin.

Donations should be sent to the treasurer, H. Friedman, 63 High-road, Seven Kings. Ilford (Essex).

By Our Industrial Correspondent

this, not only as an economic crisis, but as a political crisis as well. It has got to fight back. 63 INTERVIEWS, BUT CANNOT GET WORK Briccs River Plant Joint Shop Stewards’ Committee is appealing to Amalgamated Enginering Union branches for financial help for Johnny McLoughlin, victimized by Fords.

Since his dismissal McLoughlin has had 63 interviews, but Since I wrote last week on the London busmen’s wage claim the General Executive Council of the Transport and General Workers’ Union has decided to call a delegate conference of London busmen to discuss the position.

What is there to discuss? If they have agreed to support the claim, why the secrecy? It looks very much as though the

Council has decided that no claim should be made at this time.

What game is Cousins playing? First he tells us that he is for a fighting -policy, and will not allow the standards of his members to fall.

Then, in the very week that his General Executive Council is meeting. when the Tories put the bank rate up to seven per cent, and thus threaten unemployment and an all-out attack on the unions, he tefuses to make a forthright statement on behalf of his members!

The London busmen must surely demand that Frank Cousins answers for this himself at their conference. He has been called a great leader—well here’s a chance for him to lead.

By a Scottish Correspondent nationality or creed. Raise your voices now before it is too late.

MATT McGINN (Transport and General Workers’ Union shop steward, Glasgow)

The H-bomb is a tremendous weight on our minds and our work. It will not be lifted by pious resolutions. at the Trades Union Congress or elsewhere.

Rank-and-file trade unionists would welcome a really mass campaign. led by the TUC, on the scale of the Suez movement. and backed if need be by industrial action.

Coun, ALBERT JONES (Chairman of Salford and West Salford CLPs)

Reapers will remember that some time ago the workers and shop stewards at the Scottish Rolls Royce factories objected to the introduction by the management of a ‘blue-eyed boys’ contract scheme.

Under this scheme the firm offered a contract to selected employees giving death benefits, sick pay. extra holiday pay, etc. In return the favoured employee had to undertake to loyally obey the instructions of his superiors’.

The shop stewards saw in this a manoeuvre to undermine trade union solidarity by creating a “privileged” category of After workers’ meetings had endorsed this stand. and the Paisley and Mid-Lanark district committees of the Amalgamated Engineering Union had endorsed the shop stewards decision, the AEU executive council reversed the local decisions and instructed the district committees and shop stewards to withdraw their objection to the scheme.

A storm of protest arose. Several branches asked for the soting record of the EC members. The reply was that the EC decision was unanimous.

Communist Party militants are asking why Claude Berridge and Les Ambrose. the two communists on the AEU executive, voted. with the Right wing to ignore — the feelings of — the Gistrict committees and shop stewards.

One of the Rolls Royee Communist Party factory groups has written to the party’s industrial organizer. Peter Kerrigan, asking for an explanation.

Communist Party militants want to know whether this is just another ‘mistake’. or whether, together with the Standard, BMC, Norton and Covent Garden record, it continues a cer‘sin trend in the party’s industrial policy.

Why should mankind the world over have to suffer the mental tortures of trying to imagine what horrors will befail them in the events of a war with hydrogen bombs and nuclear weapons?

“ Let the mothers and wives all over the globe raise their voices, with church leaders of every denomination, and say STOP!

Stop the manufacture of these hideous weapons NOW, and let this country’s attitude be written in history as the new light at the dawn of a new day.

(Secretary, Hillhead (Glasgow) Constituency Labour Party)

As an active Labour Party member I hope the coming Labour Party conference will declare that the next Labour Government will unconditionally cease the testing and manufacture of nuclear weapons.

T do not agree with the manufacture and testing of H-bombs by the Soviet Union. You cannot defend socialism by wiping out the working class of America or Britain.

But this is no excuse why British Labour should refuse to campaign against their own Government's preparations for mass destruction.

If the National Council of Labour were to launch a sationwide campaign of meetings and demonstrations against the British Government's policies it would encourage the American and the Russian workers in their respective fights.

Here are some more replies, received too late for inelusion in our last issue, to the questions addressed by The Newsletter {o Labour MPs, Labour councillors and prominent local trade unionists. The questions were:

1) What is your opinion about the continued manufacture and (esting of the H-bomb by Britain, the U.S.A.

and the USSR?

2) What do you think ordinary people can do about it?

Coun. D. E. GABB (Leeds) 1) I believe that aggressive war as a whole is immoral and s-Christian. Nuclear weapons are aggressive in their intento produce them they must be tested: to test them they eto be detonated.

The poison spread knows no frontiers. Peoples which are Members of power blocs will be infected. Children not born will be afflicted.

Testing nuclear weapons by any nation is an aggressive en against the other nations of the world, and against future of mankind.

The people of this country can by sheer weight of public on force the Government to abandon its suicidal policy clear weapons by sending protests to their MPs, resoens through trade union, political and church organizaThis is the concern of all people, whatever their politics,

From Our Los Angeles Correspondent PKI it will follow this road.

‘It is convinced that this road can lead to the general completion of the August Revolution. to the power of the Indonesian people in an entirely free. democratic and progressive republic.’

INDIA: Seven hundred demonstrators against the rise in the price of rice were arrested in Calcutta.

U\S.A.: President Eisenhower sent troops of the 10ist Airborne Division in full battle order into Little Rock (Arkansas) to protect Negro pupils attending the High School. NORTHERN RHODESIA: Police made a baton charge and fired tear-gas shells at Africans in Ndola supporting the African Congress boycott of municipal beer halls. GHANA: Prime Minister Nkrumah announced that the Ghana Attorney-General. Mr. Geoffrey Bing, QC. did not propose to continue proceedings against Mr. lan Colvin of the Daily Telegraph.

RUMANIA: Zoltan Vas and Zoltan Szanto. veteran communists and colleagues of Imre Nagy, exiled to Rumania with Gyorgy Lukacs last November. were said to be at liberty in Bucharest.

USSR.: Tass announced the explosion of atomic and hydrogen warheads: the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission said a hydrogen-bomb »“th an explosive force equivalent to a million tons of TNT had been exploded in Russia.

YUGOSLAVIA: Dedijer was refused a Passport to permit him to come to Britain to take up a senior fellowship at Manchester University. The public prosecutor is reported to have begun a new investigation into the case of Djilas in connexion with his recent book ‘The New Class’. Djilas is serving a three-year prison. sentence.

USSR: The allegations of an Israeli diplomatist. Aliahu Chazan, that he was detained while on holiday in Odessa, questioned without a break for 26 hours and threatened with dire consequences to himself and his family unless he became a Soviet spy. were denied by the Soviet Foreign Ministry, It called the story a ‘provocative fabrication”

Five Communist Party workers in Los Angeles have published a letter addressed to their fellow members protesting against their suspension by the local county leadership of the Communist Party.

They describe themselves as ‘union members and CP members since our teens with an honourable record of participation in strikes and other working class struggles for the past two decades’.

The five say they were suspended from the party without formal charges. a trial. or the right to present witnesses in their behalf.

Their written appeal against these procedures has gone unheeded by the higher bodies, although under the new constitution adopted by the last Communist Party national convention the higher bodies were supposed to act within sixty days.

Although no formal charges were ever lodged against them, the five were accused of combining ‘in a conspiracy organized under the discipline of the [Trotskyist] Socialist Workers” Party by “paid agents” to destroy the Communist Party.’

In reality, they point out. they have been penalized for being critical of the official policies from a Leninist standpoint and for associating with SWP members.

This is the first action of its kind since the new party constitution was adopted early this year, they say. and provides a ‘clear test of the genuineness of the promises made by the national and local Jeaderships of the party to give full democracy to the ranks’.

They call upon other party members to intervene and demand that the party leaders abide by their own constitution.

Although the case of the five is well-known in Southern California, the facts of their treatment have been hushed up.

Having elaborated the strategical line of the PKT, Aidit then outlines its major tactical task:

‘As an important political step to reach the strategical goal. the PKI has proposed the formation of a nationalcoalition government, in which the ‘Big Four and other parties would participate—a government pursuing a policy of national independence, extension of democracy and peace.”

Who are the ‘Big Four’? The PKI, the Nahdatul Ulama (peasant party), the PNI (the party of the Indonesian capitalists) and the counter-revolutionary and communalist Moslem party, the Masjumi, which at present is backing the reactionary coups, Thus instead of preparing the people of Indonesia for struggle the PKI is pursuing a policy of collaboration which can only end in defeat.

HUNGARY

THE SWEEPING victory of the PKI (Communist Party of Indonesia) during the recent municipal elections in Java has made it the strongest party in the most densely populated islands in the Archipelago.

It owes this victory to the complete failure of the bourgeois nationalist parties to solve any of the major problems raised by the revolution of August 1945, Since the election the political situation has continued to deteriorate. The Sukarno government has forbidden strikes. Persons and organizations calling strikes in vital enterprises oe to a year’s imprisonment or a fine of 10,000 rupiahs (£315).

Strikers can get nine months’ jail or a fine of 7.500 rupiahs (€236). Military commanders in the outer provinces will decide whether an enterprise is of vital interest for the national economy.

Already in North Celebes thirty communist and Left-wing jeaders have been arrested and the Menado headquarters of the PKT has been sealed by the military forces of Lt-Col. Ventje Sumual, leader of the separatist movement in North Celebes.

The PKI-controlled federation of labour (SOBSI) has protested against these arrests and demanded an end to inflation.

It has to be said that the biggest brake on the Indonesian people's struggle against capitalism so far has been the policy of the PKT leaders. . A week before Sukarno began his policy of repression this is what Aidit (leader of the PKI) wrote in the Dutch Communist Party daily De Waarheid (August 17):

‘Repeatedly the PKI has expounded its standpoint that if it depended on us the Parliamentary road would be chosen.

As long as Parliamentary methods are still possible for the

‘Events in Komlo from 23rd October, 1956. were given as follows. The counter-revolutionary movement commenced from the hostels occupied by unmarried workers.’ (Report of Scottish Miners’ Delegation to Hungary, April 1957, p. 5).

“Work went on as usual in Komlo until October 26. Then some strangers from Budapest appeared and certain loca! characters emerged from the obscurity in which they had been living.” (Walter Holmes, Daily Worker. September 21, 1957.)

Holmes adds: *“They were old police officers of the Horthy days and suchlike,” a miner explaimed. “You never noticed them in the ordinary way. They went about dressed like miners off work”.

Has no one told Sir Laurence Olivier? Here. surely. is a wealth of theatrical talent!

L.D.

THe ‘THESES’ on the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution, issued for stedy and discussion by the Soviet Communist Party, deserve close examination for changes in content and tone in comparison with previous historical pronouncements from the same source.

There is some evidence to be found in them that the type of unbridled lying and slander which characterized such publications in the Stalin era is now ‘out. and that some caution, at least, is being shown in the approach to the facts of history.

For example, take the following passage:

‘The Sixth Congress of the party [July-August -1917jadopted a course. in accordance with Lenin’s directions towards the preparation of an armed uprising.

‘The Congress gave a decisive rebuff to the anti-Leninist, capitulatory line of Preobrazhensky. who opposed the party’s course towards proletarian revolution because he regarded as impossible a victory for socialism in Russia before the victory of the proletarian revolution in the West.”

Formerly it was de rigueur to write of Preobrazhensky’s ‘Trotskyite view that a victory for socialism in one country alone was impossible —sce, e.g.. the “History of the Civil War in the USSR, vol. 1. published here in 1937 (pp. 315-16).

In fact Preobrazhensky was waging. along with Bukharin and others. a rearguard action on behalf of the ‘old Bolshevik’

conception that the revolution in Russia could only be bourgeois-democratic in character until the workers had triumphed in the West.

This idea had been repudiated by Lenin in April 1917 in favour of the necessity for a revolution that would ‘grow over’ from bourgeois-democratic measures to socialist ones.

Lenin’s proposal had come as a great shock to most of the ‘old Bolsheviks’, Stalin included. Kamenev had spoken indignantly of Lenin's ‘Trotskyism’ and remarked with bitterness to Trotsky: “You have the laugh on us now.

It was Stalin. therefore. as Lenin's mouthpiece. who was putting forward a ‘Trotskyite’ line at the Sixth Congress. if anybody was. and Preobrazhensky who was trying to uphold the traditional ‘anti-lrotskyite’ view of the revolution!

While we may perhaps see a sign of grace in the fact that the epithet ‘Trotskyite’ is no longer applied to Preobrazhensky’s famous amendment. the formulation in the “Theses” still leaves room for misunderstanding as to what the dispute was really about.

Neither Preobrazhensky nor Stalin nor anybody else in the Bolshevik Party in 1917 thought in terms of the building of socialism in Russia. taken in isolation.

All trends were agreed that the building of socialism was inconceivable except in conjunction with workers’ revolutions in the advanced Western countries.

The very resolution. moved by Stalin. which Preobrazhensky wished to amend, spoke of the workers of Russia taking power in order, ‘in alliance with the revolutionary proletariat of the advanced countries’, to move ‘towards the socialist reconstruction of society’.

It was a matter. in Stalin’s words, of taking ‘steps towards socialism’. of ‘laying the road to socialism’; and the significance of his famous contrast. in reply to Preobrazhensky, between “dogmatic and ‘creative’ Marxism is to be understood in telation to his statement on the same occasion:

‘It would be rank pedantry to demand that Russia should “wait” with socialist changes until Europe “begins”. That country “begins” which has the greater opportunities . . .

‘The workers [of Russia] will raise and rally around them the poorer strata of the peasantry, will raise the standard of workers’ revolution and usher in an era of socialist revolution in Europe. (See J. V_ Stalin, Works, vol. 3 pp. 182-200.)

Not until the autumn of 1924. after the death of Lenin. the setback to the revolution in Germany and the growth of bureaucratization in the party and State to a definite level, did anybody presume to come Out—as Stalin then did—with the nouion that socialism could be built in an isolated Soviet Russia.

Socialists who wish. in connexion with the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution, to clarify their understanding ot what actually happened in 1917, as compared with the Stalinist version of events. cannot do better than read the appendix. “Three Conceptions of the Russian Revolution’, to Trotsky’s ‘Stalin’, and the appendix, ‘Socialism in a Separate Country?’ to his “History of the Russian Revolution’.

Your letier, printed in the Daily Worker on September 12, was, I believe, your first open communication to the British Labour movement since your imprisonment, I'm glad that you deplore the hypocrisy of the capitalist Press and those only interested in raising anti-Soviet feelings.

But you would be wrong to think that the comrades in the progressive movement who tried to speed your release do not also fight against injustices in Kenya etc.

As you may know, it was the dissident members of the Communist Party who were foremost in asking questions about your fate.

At the time we were outraged by the exposure of Stalinist imjustices and shocked by the case of Dr. Edith Bone (mentioned in the Daily Worker only after her release by the Hungarian revolutionaries); our questions only met with evasion from the officials of the Communist Party and the Soviet Embassy.

Were we deserting the ship of communism to proDISTURBING DECLINE—NO LESSONS DRAWN i Have in front of me the Report to the Fifth West Middlesex District Congress of the Communist Party. which has been received by my borough committee. f find it a most disturbing document.

The Report purports to cover the period from April 1955 to Avsust 1957. Membership has decreased from 1.349 in Feb1956 to 1,023 in July 1957. Three members of the district committee resigned for political reasons after the Hungarian ovens.

Sales of World News are down from 666 in July 1955 to 462. Over the same period sales of Party News have dropped from 950 to 412. of Labour Monthly from 329 to 234 and of Soviet Weekly from 317 to 214. Woman Today is down by over 200 copies.

Of the six papers listed the only one to increase its circulatest at the crimes which smeared the name of socialism for which you blame ‘Beria and his friends"?

We would like to hear your views on who are exactly included in this phrase. A recent announcement front Moscow has informed us that Beria liad more friends than we had heard about before.

The harbour that these pilots are steering into may be a different one from the destination that Lenin and the Bolshevik Party set sail for in 1917, so 1 hope that you will have the opportunity to study other analyses of the unfortunate events that you haye witnessed first-hand, for many communists do not accept the ‘cult of personality’ as being a Marxist explanation.

Before closing I wish to say I hope that you will be returning to. Britain for a visit soon. I'm sure that you will wish to see your home again after so long, and I sincerely wish to hear your full account of your experiences and present opinions.

Best wishes, Yours fraternally, Ashington (Northumberland)

tion is Challenge—it has gone up by seven copies over the two years (we now sell 300).

Daily sales of the Daily Worker have decreased from 1,030 to 816, and weekend readers have dropped from 1.087 to 647.

One would have imagined that with such a depressing record our Report would have attempted to draw some political conclusions. A meeting of the district committee discussed the November 1956 Executive resolutions—and out of 29, one abstained and eight voted against.

Yet such indications apparently mean nothing to comrades that I have worked with and trusted over many years.

The Hungarian events are noted in five words: ‘In Hungary, reaction was defeated.” Yugoslavia and Poland are not mentioned at all in the political introduction, although a reference 10 ‘Polish’ events does appear once—in reference to the Executive Committee’s resolution—in a section headed ‘Discussion following the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU’.

Ruislip (Mx) ‘Bolshevik’ “149

LETTERS (Continued from previous page)

ARTICLES in The Newsletter have helped to explain that

one big cause for the recent upheavals in the USSR and Eastern Europe is the people’s disgust at the high living standards and privileges enjoyed by their leaders.

There seems to be a similar discrepancy in this country between the incomes of some trade union heads and those of their members.

A winning entry in the New Statesman ‘This England™ . column relates how Sir Tom O'Brien's daughter says she finds trade union conferences boring after Cowes and West End night clubs!

One feels prompted to ask where this young lady works. and to what trade union she belongs? Are her wages and conditions so good that she can afford Cowes and night clubs by her own exertions?

Or is it the trade union movement which finances her activities via Papa's emoluments?

The answer might well be sought in the accounts, or by questions at branch meetings. of the unions graced by this circle of colourful figures at the top.

Let us seek those leaders who take the same ‘rate for the job” as their members. They will not be sensitive about having their sources of income made public. nor will they accept so readily the employers’ arguments in favour of ‘restraint’. S for the reason that his music is only music. So long IBELIUS was the greatest musician of our time as we look for extraneous ideas in music, so long shall we miss its important formative influences.

Music can be associated with extraneous ideas. and express the emotions which those ideas evoke in a single person or in many persons; but its prime function is to order human emotions so that they exercise, and greatly strengthen. the intellect.

The process is subconscious, in developed as well as in primitive forms of music: the only difference between them is one of degree.

* SADNESS, RAGE AND RESOLUTION. In England we first knew of Sibelius as the composer of Valse Triste and Finlandia. in which works the emotions are of extreme sadness, rage and resolution; and those emotions dominated all his music.

They were almost certainly caused by the loneliness of the Finnish landscape and a national fear of tsarist Russia.

The development of Sibelius as an artist was associated with an intensification of the loneliness and a relaxation of the anger; but that intensification was not due to a

A CORRECTION should, I think, be made to the otherwise excellent article by your medical correspondent on the Wolfenden Report on Prostitution and Homosexuality [September 14, pp. 131-2].

The article states in effect that prostitution is a phenomenon occurring in all societies. 1 find it difficult to see how this can be true on any accepted definition of prostitution.

Normally the word refers to the acceptance of money by a woman in exchange for sexual satisfaction.

_But the introduction of money is a comparatively recent historical event in the advanced societies. Societies have existed for half a million years, money for perhaps 3.000 years.

It might then be objected that other forms of wealth are equivalent to money as payment to prostitutes. Of course this is true, and it would push farther back in time the origins of prostitution.

It is still true however that the existence of a definite group of women living on their earnings from prostitution dates from the origin of urban, class-divided and commercial society in the eastern Mediterranean.

Primitive peoples not promiscuous Early observers of societies still at a primitive level of social-economic development often described their sexual behaviour as promiscuous, but certainly did not suggest the existence of prostitution. _ Even if sexual.relations were promiscuous, this would not involve the degradation of a woman selling herself to the highest bidder.

Contrary to the theories of Westermarck. primitive peoples are not promiscuous, despite their common lack of insistence On monogamy or pre-marital chastity.

Many Australian peoples. before their present disintegration, allowed intercourse between men and women who were in fact ‘married’ to others.

Closer study showed these relations to be not promiscuous but very strictly regulated. For example only people related to one another in a specific way could have intercourse. and only on particular occasions.

Extra-marital relations in our society are either truly promiscuous (‘illicit’) or resort by the husband to a prostitute. This suggests, quite correctly, that the legally-regulated monogamous family, the moral insistence on fidelity (of the wife particularly!) and the spending of money on prostitutes, are closely connected things.

Private property, the need for undisputed heirs, the growth lonelier landscape, nor the relaxation to the disappearRance of the Tsar.

They were due to the growth of a personality which discovered an illimitable range of emotion in: his reactions to nature, and the mellowing of his genius as he became aware of increasing power.

:

* COMPOSERS’ THREE PATHS. Since the elements of music were completed in the nineteenth century three paths have been open to composers:

1) The path of experiment in the hope of discovering some hitherto unknown faculty:

2) The application of music to external ideas; and 3) A steadfast exploitation of music’s own values. Sibelius ignored the experimental way, lightly touched on the second alternative in his songs and patriotic allusions. but realized his integrity in his symphonies, which contain neither experiment nor allusion, but rank with the noblest expressions of human capacity.

In them fear and anger have been outgrown, and the early resolution reaches serene confidence.

Whether Sibelius would have been a greater man if. like Bach and Beethoven and Wagner, he had consciously related his art to the life of his time. is too controversial a matter to be discussed in an obituary appreciation.

of commercial towns and the use of currency are the basis of both monogamous marriage and prostitution.

} Only when the social inequalities, insecurities and frustrations of class-divided societies are cleared away will the problem of prostitution disappear.

Clearly then my objection is not a mere academic quibble By exposing the social origins of prostitution it is possible to show the social prerequisites of its abolition. though of course this is not the whole answer.

Tf it is claimed that prostitution is universal. then there is the danger of concluding that it is ‘natural’ for sexual desire to be satisfied in this form.

Of course sexual needs are universal, but the way in which they are met is always a matter of the social and economic framework.