The Newsletter, vol. 1 no. 22

WO THINGS helped the National Executive of the Labour Party te win the support of the Brighton conrw Jerencé for “Industry and Society’ on Wednesday. One was the block vete—the other was the speech made by Aneurin Bevan at the Tribune rally on Tuesday.

Six unions—the Transport and General Workers’

Union, the National Union of General and Municipal Workers. the miners, the woodworkers, USDAW and the Amalgamated Engineering Union—made up a large part of the NEC's 5,309,000 votes.

The vote of 1,276.000 against the NEC document did not fully reflect the widespread opposition to the NEC’ policy.

Although William Carron, AEU president. spoke for the document. and although bis union’s vote was cast for it. this tradiction to AEU policy as defined by its national past two years. gids U the ABU delegation meeting on Tuesday any? of Mike elected delegates strenuously. opposed this _spie_and were defeated by 18 votes to 12 (four of the 18 \ at i 1 of Exgdutive members).

who were delegates or yisitors intend to mers} fake) upthis4violation ef AEU policy in their branches or districts.

Beyan’s deJault partly responsible It was obyious that many delegates were confused by a combination of the assurances given by NEC speakers—e.z., Frank Cousins—that the document was not a substitute for nationalization, and of the failure of the Bevanites on the NEC to present a clear alternative.

Ont of our readers has received a letter from Len Wincott, whom he last met in 1934, giving Wincott’s address. as:

Moscow. lst Khoroshevskaya St..

House 7. Block 132, Flat 222.

USSR.

About’ the past Wincott writes: “What has been is to be forgotten’. He asks for English books:

‘Besides books I don’t need a thing. but I can’t get them here so I have appealed to all my friends and well-wishers in England to remember my address and that books come through without customs or any other duties‘My tastes range from “who done ils” to Vergil. Dickens is out first ball because here we print him more than in England, and not only in Russian but in the King’s!

Wincott writes cheerfully about his present personal situation, and the reader to whom he wrote comments: “I should be very surprised if he would write that to me if it were net true,”

S IDE BY SIDE in Monday’s Daily Telegraph were the country just because we want them to’ are the epitaph—if such were needed—of tricky ‘Left demagogy.

Labour must lead. The time is ripe for a gigantic

_ The swing to the Right revealed by the conference resulted trom Bevan’s default and the common fears which the party leaders. both Right and Centre. have of the coming struggles that the Tories are provoking.

Tt is above all this new wave of class struggle which is gong to be decisive in shaping Labour's policy in the future.

(Continued overleaf)

As forecast in The Newsletter on August 31 national newspapers (other than the Daily Worker, the Manchester Guardian and The Times) are to increase their price.

Despite rising costs, Whe Newsletter, though 2 new publication, is able to REDUCE its price—FOR THE SECOND TIME IN THREE MONTHS!

This is because The Newsletter has been sirikingiy successful in filling a gap in socialist journalism.

Not being a capitalist paper, it does nof seek a profit, and is content to pass on to readers the benefi! that comes from a steadily rising circulation.

From issue No. 25, on October 26, the subseripiion tate for twelve issues will be reduced to 8s. post free. Single copies will cost sixpence.

Together with the first price reduction, which took effect on A 3, this is a cut of 25 per cenf in the cost of The Newsletier (not counting postage, which cannot be cut) since publication started on May 10.

MACHRAY MAKES HERALD GRIMLY ‘GAY UNper its new editor the Daily Herald began the week with “a NEW look, a new purpose, a gaiety of heart . revitalized. streamlined. modern .. . yet still the paper with a tradition and a responsibility unique in British journalism.

Front page néws in Monday's Herald included these items: “Schoolgirl battered in park’. “Grannie goes job hunting at 80°. ‘Driver leaves victim to die and ‘Doctors stay up to save her beauty, Page two made its main item “Love-knot for Lynn: 12-yearold played Cupid to parents’ and included ‘Oh! Those so-rude Englishmen’ (‘Well. what do YOU think of Englishmen? Tell us—on a postcard ... A guinea to the writers of the best six-), The gambling menace comes clickety-click’. “A wife lest her husband’s love’ and “Divorcees: Rector quits’.

Page three had a picture and ah about a nine-year-old girl who danced a ‘sort of sexy ballet’ at a cocktail party. and “Vice-girls saved by vigilantes’. ‘Jayne floors TY man” and ‘Too wet for [Prince] Charles’.

Page four had an “intimate profile—The riddle of a girl called Sagan’, as a curtain raiser to Francoise Sagan's “Bonjour Tristesse’. which the Herald is serializing.

So much for the streamlining. The tradition presumably came in an article by Francis Williams—Cut the wrangles— let’s get on with our job —trying to:sell “Industry and Society” to Brighton: delegates.

The responsibility? A story on Little Rock. and a pretly thin one at that.

The Herald's ‘new purpose’. under Mr. Dotiglas Machray. is clearly to take readers away from the Daily Sketch. But not to make socialists of them.

two articles that underlined the gravity of the crisis of leadership confronting the British working-class movement. An editorial, frankly admitting that the government is deliberately engineering a rise in unemployment, added: “But then Mr. Gaitskell’s own policy, so far as it can be discerned. would have just the same effect. The paper’s political correspondent, discussing the growth of Mr. Bevan’s influence in the past two years as a result of his ‘playing with the team’. prophesied: “One effect of his solidifying influence should be the adoption of the new policy on public ownership with much less than the expected dissension.”

The rank and file of the Labour Party, and the many trade unionists who are facing big industrial battles. deserve better leaders than those whose policy would be scarcely distinguishable from Tory policy, or who are more concerned with being statesmanlike than with socialist principles. Final judgment on Brighton must of course be postponed till the conference is over. But i is already very clear that neither Gaitskeil nor Bevan is ready for power, psychologically, politically or organizationally; that neither of them can readjust his thinking to the new, sudden and yery real possibility of the widespread loathing of the Tory government being focused into a movement which could sweep that government away long before its two more years of vicious class rule are over. And as for that great ‘Left champion Mr. Frank Cousins. his words ‘the general election may be a long time ahead, don’t let’s kid ourselves’ and ‘the government would not go to BRIGHTON CONFERENCE (Continued from front page)

At the pre-conference rally Hugh Gaitskell said: “This conference meets af a time of serious national crisis and of greal opportunity for the party.”

But as early as the first day's debate it became clear that the leadership of the party has neither the policy to solve the crisis nor the will to seize the opportunity.

Labour spokesmen said the government had declared war on the unions, But behind the screen of anti-Tory phrases the NEC avoided taking up the Tory challenge.

The speeches of Wilson, Cousins and Carron showed that the leadership has no intention of waging any real campaign at all.

Frank Cousins, reviewing the accusation that the unions and wage claims were responsible for inflation, said ‘the government would not go to the country just because we want them to” and that “the general election may be a long time ahead’.

This echoed Gaitskell’s statement at the pre-conference tally; “Let this 1957 conference be remembered as the one which laid the basis for the 1959 election victory.”

Wilson said: “The Tories are not in a hurry to go to the country” But none of these people suggested that the movemovement that will weave together in one sturdy cable all the threads of popular resentment: the harassed tenants; the old people who have forgotten what it is like to have a full belly; the professional people and small businessmen whose futures are clouded by Tory (ie., monopoly) ‘freedom’; the mothers who fear the evil that hydrogen-bomb tests may do to their children; above all the millions of workers whose jobs and wages are coming under ruthless attack from the employers-and their government, - One good. strong pull at this cable—mass demonstrations, mass strikes. mass pressure of every kind—and Macmillan can be ousted.

* ORDS. ALONE. however militant, will never achieve this aim. In every organization of the Labour movement, on every workshop floor, there should go forward the most searching discussion and analysis of the Labour leaders’ incapacity. In particular the workers want to know why the leading Bevan_ites seem to prefer to confine the struggle to the Parliamentary arena and the top committees of the party. Why do they seem willing to shelve basic planks in the socialist platform? Do they really believe that the Labour Party can win the next election. by watering down socialism and presenting a mild. ‘respectable’ face to its potential middle-class allies? If so they are profoundly mistaken. Only strength and militancy and firmness on principles will rally the workers. attract the marginal yoters and bring nearer the achievement of socialism.

the rostrum to ask that the points in their resolutions calling for a nalion-wide campaign be accepted as an addendum they were refused.

It was left to rank-and-file delegate G. Gale (Leeds E.) to Say:

‘The Labour movement has tremendous strength. If a real lead is given and this strength is mobilized we are too strong for the government and too strong for the employers, ‘We can bring the Tory government down before 1959 and bring in a Labour government with a socialist programme.’

The NEC resolution on the Rent Act was criticized by several delegates for failing to give a definite undertaking to put rents back to the former Jevel.

The NEC resolution will apparently leave rents as they are afler the Tory-imposed increase. and will put the onus on tenants to apply to rent tribunals for a ‘reasonable’ rent.

There was no call for action now, before 1959. fo’ support tenants and make the Act unworkable. The resolution from Birmingham (Small Heath) which called for such action was manoeuvred off the agenda, ‘Quests and Hopes’. by Venyamin Kaverin. sequel to ‘Open

ment should be mobilized to ‘hurry’ them up.

Several local parties had sent in emergency resolutions condemning the recent financial measures and asking the NEC to organize a nation-wide campaign to force the resignation of the government.

The NEC, however. submitted its own emergency resolution, which said nothing beyond a pious condemnation of the Tory measures.

When the delegates from Leeds E. and Salford E. went to Book’. an English version of which was published by Lawrence and Wishart two years ago, is the target of a sharp attack in Literaturnaya Gazeta of September 21.

The noyel deals with log-rolling in scientific circles in the Stalin era, and the frame-up and arrest of a young scientist who gets in the way of a powerful Lysenko-type ‘monopolyscientis'—a plot strikingly similar in outline to Dudintsey’s ‘Not by Bread Alone’.

From ao Industrial Correspondent two and a half feet thick. To keep up the production rate in these pits the face worker must average an output of 18 to 20 tons per shift.

Yet the East Midlands district shows a profit of eight shillings per ton, one of the highest in the country.

For MANy Derbyshire miners the future is a big question mark. The pits from which they earn their livelihood are threatened with closure. During the next twenty years six mines will be closed down completely and something like 5,000 men will have to move to other areas.

The National Coal Board plans to re-employ the men in other pits in the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire areas and the--union~officials are-hopeful-that this-can--be- done. ----— The miners agree that the pits are coming to the end of their useful life. having been in operation for 200 years.

But the news of the threatened closures and the proposals to transfer labour to other pits have raised problems which were discussed at two meeting recently held in Heanor and Ilkeston.

To the general public the piecemeal closure of a number ef pits over a period of twenty years. does not appear startling. But for the miners at Woodside Colliery. Ripley, which employs 1,600 men and which will begin to shut down in two years’ time, the issue looms large.

Some of the younger men are willing to move provided houses are available as soon as possible. There are others however who are buying their own houses and have a twenty year mortgage to pay off.

For them, removal to another area is a big headache even if alternative housing is provided.

The older miners have deep roots in their own localities. They have sons and daughters working in local industries. and moving to a new area means finding new jobs for them 2s well as breaking the old ties.

Twenty miles to travel The miners from Woodside Pit,gfor instance, would be absorbed in pits beyond Mansfield, in the Nottinghamshire coalfield, a distance of twenty. miles. To travel there and back daily would add two hours to the shift. even if special NCB transport were laid on.

This means an early rise of 4.30 a.m, for the day shift with late turn men coming home about midnight.

One of the anomalies is the severing of their rights with the old pension scheme. The Derbyshire miners have their own scheme which is not transferable to other areas.

The miners speak of narrowing seams which they now have se work in many of the pits. Besides the harder conditions, this means also that the stint is increased and the work must be speeded up to maintain production.

At Cossal Pit, Ilkeston. there are seams of two feet to Can other pits absorb the men made redundant by the working out of old pits? What will be done in the way of special housing and allowances for the families. that may have to move? How much of the eight shillings per ton profit is the NCB prepared to spend on assistance schemes?

And how much of the eight shillings profit goes to the exshareholders?

ENDIA: Iniport into India of many consumer goods was banned, of many others greatly reduced, for six months beginning October I.

TURKEY: National Party demonstrators. stoned police who tried to remove chains from a portrait of the party leader.

Mr. Bolukbashi. illustrating the fact that he is in prison for contempt of Parliament.

FRANCE: After four months the government of BourgésMaunoury fell when the vote of confidence asked for on the Algeria outline law was defeated in the National Assembly by 279 votes to 253. Bourgés-Maunoury is to stay in office until a successor has been found. PAPUA: Former district officer Frederick David Anderson ‘was sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment for unlawfully keeping a native in jail for four months. The sentence will run concurrently with one of 18 months’ imprisonment imposed for assaulting two natives and handcuffing them te a flagpole. HAITI: Four policemen were killed in an attack by men believed to be supporters of Mr, Louis Dejoic. defeated candidate for the presidency.

ITALY: Eighteen members of the Communist Party. in Sicily resigned together because of ‘the incapacity of the Italian Communist Party and the subordination of its every action to the needs of the Soviet State’.

SAN MARINO: Ministers called for armed volunteers to counter an attempt at a reactionary coup d'etat. Opponents of the communist-socialist united front government have set up a ‘Provisional Government’ recognized by Rome and armed their supporters with pistols and machine-guns.

JAPAN: About 155.000 miners staged a 24-hour strike in sympathy with the 59-day-old strike at Kishima mine. where collicrs are striking for a summer bonus and in _ protest against planned dismissals. A nation-wide strike in symFaby with a single local strike is unprecedented in Japanese abour history.

By Our Industrial Correspondent Fre National-Union- of -Railwaymen's-application—for a ‘substantial’ wage increase is the first major wage claim cf the autumn.

It marks the end of the short-lived agreement between the Britsih Transport Commission and the NUR executive committee, made early this year as part of the last wage award.

The ‘strings in this agreement, although vague and ambiguous. implied that future wage claims would be less frequent and tied more closely to productivity industry.

‘ This has now been rejected by the NUR annual general meeting, and within a year the demand is again for higher wages.

The two railway unions which accepted the strings that went with the Jast award, the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association and the NUR are both pressing for wage and salary negotiations.

The third rail_union, the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen. repudiated the strings and refused any discussion upon them. (It has just put in its own claim for a ten per cent increase.)

Although it will be three. months at least before the NUR claim reaches a decisive stage the capitalist Press are already interested in it.

The government's deflationary measures are to be made at the expense of the working class and wage claims arising from the higher cost of living will be the battlefield.

Railwaymen have for long been badly paid and depend on extensive overtime to make a living wage.

Even so the BTC has been attacked in the past for yielding . too easily to union pressure, and the Tory Press campaign is being renewed.

_As_ this may well be the first battle on the wages front Big Business considers it essential that this claim be rejected —weakness at this time will not be tolerated.

The News Chronicle quoted a foreign banker as saying that the Tory government's ability to deal with the financial gris would be decided by its handling of the NUR wage claim.

There is an important passage on the hydrogen-bomb, It says ‘States possessing these weapons should be obliged immediately to stop their tests’.

It makes none of the implied distinctions between the western powers and the Soviet Union that have marred the Stalinist parties’ anti--H-bomb campaigns.

There was much more that was of importance in the various speeches. Gomulka’s reference to the ‘militant solidarity that linked the Poles and Yugoslays fighting often in the same units’ in Spain will be appreciated by those Polish International Brigaders who spent years in Polish prisons.

Cultural and scientific co-operation Agreement on internal matters has been left in the broadest terms. The final document talks of ‘cultural and scientific” co-operation. information centres, an economic commission and nuclear energy co-operation for peaceful purposes.

For indications of future internal developments in both countries it is necesary to look elsewhere.

The dilemma of the Polish leaders over workers’ councils has been mentioned in a prevous article. The Yugoslavs have grasped the importance of the commune, powerfully strengthened by workers’ councils.

The Polish visit to the Litostroj turbine factory, with its virile workers’ council and its high level of political consciousness, will have left its impression. The Polish Press has given this much publicity.

Zycie Warszawy, in an article on the Litostroj yisit, emphasized that Yugoslav workers’ councils understood that living standards could be stepped up only by developing production. , Polish workers’ councils remain in their present halfimpotent, half-experimental position. Litostroj may have an effect on future developments in Poland.

There are still things wrong in both countries. While the Yugoslav authorities apparently prepare for a new trial of Djilas the Poles are afraid to try security officials in public.

These are symptoms of a bureaucracy that will not lie down. or of fear of the Soviet Union. The importance of the PolishYugoslav accord is that it pushes both countries towards Leninism and, one day. a real workers” international.

CAPITALIST papers, and even the New Statesman, have implied that in every speech Gomulka made during his visit to Yugoslavia he “always included a few sensad praising Russia’. (New Statesman, September This is exaggerated, and gives a false picture of a meeting of great importance to European socialism.

In Gomulka’s final speech at Belgrade Airport he referred to the ‘creative and selfiess work’ ‘of the Yugoslav peoples. He emphasized ‘sincere proletarian internationalism’ adding:

‘The result of these talks will also be helpful to this internationalism. They will. accordingly, be useful both to Yugoslavia and to Poland, to all the socialist countries, to the cause of socialism and the strengthening of world peace.”

Both delegations had agreed on fundamental issues: the meeting had strengthened ‘the unity of the international workers’ movement and of all the socialist and democratic forces in the world’) There was no mention of the Soviet Union in the speech.

Healthy reference to October The final joint Polish-Yugoslay declaration made only two teferences to the USSR. The first was a healthy reference to October 1917 and the second said that the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was ‘an important date in the history of the international workers’ movement’ and that its decisions were an important contribution to socialism.

It is the emphasis on workers’ internationalism that makes this joint document important. It calls for the “building of the unity of the workers’ movement’, not asa formal dogma but as a desperate necessary for both countries, and for socialism everywhere.

;

Co-operation, it says, ‘ought to be based on the principles of © proletarian’ internationalism, solidarity. mutual aid, sovereignty, equality. friendship “and non-interference in internal affairs’:

Test TT

‘The Moscow correspondent of the New York Times, Frankel. after perusing the Bill for intensifying the struggle against anti-social and parasitic elements. sent a report to his paper.

‘It would seem that Frankel has no closer friends and relatives than beggars and speculators.

‘But his grief is understandable enough—henceforth it will be a hundred times harder for him to seek out a drunken tramp and photograph him as a typical inhabitant of the Soviet capital.’ (Sovetskaya Rossiya, August 27.)

* * * A study of the Soviet ‘provincial’ Press shows that it is not only against beggars that the Bill is directed. but also against idle and well-to-do speculators. whose activities are based on the shortage of consumer goods.

Thus, in Kazakhstanskaya Pravda. we read of persons who crowd in front of the shops long before they are open.

‘Why are they there and why are they not afraid that they will be late for work?

‘It is because these people do not work anywhere. but live by teselling goods in short supply at three times their price. _. Exiling these speculators, even if it involves directing them into work of national importance, will not provide the missing consumer goods . . . A REVIEWER JIBS AT

‘One comrade said “We saved the party twice.” We sayed the party first from Browder in 1945, and we went down from a membership of 75,000 to 17,000, ‘And now we've saved the party from Gates! we've gone down from 17,000 to 10,000.

‘The more we save the party, the more the party is disappearing. There's something wrong with the way we're saving the party when that happens.’

(John Gates at the last meeting of the U.S. Communist Party’s national committee, Party Affairs, vol.

1, no. 1, p. 9, August 1957.)

The trend towards whitewashing tsarist colonialism which became dominant in Soviet historiography under Stalin. still _ has its supporters.

This is shown by a review in Kazakhstanskaya Pravda (August 31) of a book entitled ‘Literary Ties between Russia and Kazakhstan’, published by the USSR Academy of Sciences.

The reviewer finds it necessary to comment: ‘We consider as a shortcoming the fact that the author, while showing the influence of progressive Russian literature, does not say that at the same time the subject of struggle against tsarism, against colonial oppression, became strongly pronounced in Kazakh literature.’

There are numerous Voroshiloysks, Voroshilovgrads. Voro-

A HINT as to why Soviet publishers prefer issuing large editions of Dumas and Conan Doyle to issuing books on present-day native writers (see “What They Read in the Suburbs’, THE NewsLetter, July 27. p. 87) is given ina fewilleton in Literaturnaya Gazeta for July 25.

A publisher with a strictly-business approach to his job 1s explaining to an indignant young poet why he cannot publish his verses—there is a shortage of paper.

Why not eut down on the large prints of Dumas and Conan Doyle? demands: the poet.

Ah. the publisher explains. these are the authors who keep the concern afloat—no political mistakes have been discovered in their works’, and the public is always ready to buy them.

Sales of Dumas and Conan Doyle help fo cover the losses on ‘pamphlets by approved writers’ which the firm is obliged to put out... shilovos, etc.

The decree is signed by . . . Voroshiloy.

A pEcREE of the USSR Supreme Soviet dated September 11 forbids institutions, enterprises, towns or districts to adopt the name of any living person, and directs that places which now bear such names are to take steps to change them.

The preamble recalls that Lenin always set an example of modesty and made a point of protesting against any exaltation ef his name.

The many places named after Molotov and Kaganovich had already moved to seek new names. and it appears that the name which will be most affected by the new decree's retrospective bearing is that of Voroshiloy-

Atison Macieop's reactions to the Gollan interview on television [September 14, p. 136] were interesting, but surely incomplete.

To me the whole thing was like a political morris dance. sith Gollan and Denis Healey performing masterly evasive ements while Calyorcoressi ran round them like the tradisenal clowning wolf.

Gollan had to dodge many awkward questions about Soviet Key. and Healey withdrew sharply when Gollan talked about ““H-bomibs and colonial policy. The camera consider+ moved away from Healey when Gollan talked of prospereas ¢areerists in the Labour Party.

What a chance this might have been for Healey to affirm = British Labour Party's intention to fight for world socialsm and to do the job that the Communist Party leaders so ‘sively claim to do, Bot of course he did not, because nothing is further from S& intentions.

The moral of the interview is simple—no one can honestly seack the Communist Party except the Left wing of the L2bour Party. Only we have been consistently correct in our snalyses and our remedies.

Healey and Gollan alike have too much to hide. Before the ssasion cameras they waved white, unctuous hands. but in Se eye of history their hands are red with workers’ blood.

DS. Stalinist Press from the current bitter conflict going on in China between the communists and the Right-wing groups based on the ‘national bourgeoisie’.

The Peking newspaper Jenminjihpao wrote on September “At the present time one can either stand firmly for capitalism—and that means fighting for the liquidation of the leadership of the proletariat and the Communist Party, for the liquidation of socialist property; or one can stand firmly for socialism—and that means fighting to defend the leadership of the proletariat and the Communist Party and for the defeat of all the forces striving to restore capitalism.”

Fersey (C1) P. Le Sueur

Ps PUTTING across their reformist, class-colluborationist esogramme of the British Road to Socialism, the ‘eders of the Communist Party made free use of the ‘oese talk about advance to socialism in China through Sseadly co-operation with the capitalists which was current until recently.

1: is significant that no conclusions have been drawn in the

LETTERS (Continued from previous page) are far more than merely interesting. for we Jack any coherent and satisfactory theory of nuclear processes at high energy,

LITERATURNAYA GAZETA of September 21 carries a feuilleton directed against the law on ‘illegitimate’ children.

A small boy is made to tell about his perplexity because on his birth certificate, instead of his father’s name. there is a dash, His father lives with his mother, but as they are evidently not married for some reason the fact of paternity cannot be officially recognized.

The mother, embittered and cynical. goes to the social security office to claim her allowance as a ‘lone mother’, buf is refused it on the ground that everybody knows her son’s father is living with her and maintaining her and the boy.

_ Eventually a way out is found by ‘the father formally adopting his own son.

The speech made by L, Soboley at a meeting between Russian writers and party officials held in the Kremlin on September 11 demolishes the myth that all writers in the USSR ee the privileges well known to be enjoyed by a famous cw.

Urging that local party organizations should look after the welfare of ‘rank-and-file’ writers. Soboley mentioned that in Chelyabinsk a certain writer for children is ‘living with her family in a semi-tumbledown hut’, while a poet who is an invalid lives in a damp little room in Yaroslavl. a bedridden woman writer ‘lives (or rather lies) in one room with all her family’, etc. (Literaturnaya Gazeta, September 17).

Tito’s statement, in the joint declaration following the Polish-Yugoslay talks in Belgrade. that Yugoslavia recognizes Poland’s frontier with Germany along the Qder and the Neisse, is one of historic importance.

I cannot understand why the Daily Worker and the Communist Party have not seized the opportunity to launch a campaign for British recognition of the frontier.

With the increased popularity of Poland here since Gomulka came in, the demand should have a good chance of succeeding, and Britain’s lead might well be followed by other Western Slates.

Whatever views one may hold on the original creation. over a dozen years ago, of this problem, Western recognition of the Oder-Neisse frontier would today contribute mightily to the stabilization of Europe.

Incidentally. it would reduce Poland's dependence on Russia and give her people greater scope for independent development. Perhaps that is just why King Street is so lukewarm on this question?

Wareham (Dorset) J. Williams (More letters overleaf)

James Tepp adds a valuable contribution to the discussion of the Wolfenden Report. 1 am sorry that compression of my material should have Jed to an unforgivable vagueness when dealing with the origins of prostitution.

The phrase I used was that it ‘remains a phenomenon of social] mankind. unrelated to its class structure’, which does not contradict—nor, I think. is contradicted by — James Todd's more elaborate analysis.

The use of prostitutes does not depend on the class origins. of the user; the occurrence of prostitution in a society does nol appear to depend on whether its structure is slave-owning, feudal, early or late capitalist, or early socialist; and the Wolfenden Report underlines the fallacy of the prostitute as the Golden Hearted Working Girl Fallen Victim to the Wicked Capitalist, These are the points I wished to underline in my previous comments. and I apologize for not being more explicit.

Todd’s list of factors forming the basis for monogamous marriage and prostitution also appears to me to suffer fram inadequate space.

The growth of the family as the basic social unit coineidentally with the pressures which tend to disrupt that unit. together with the ertificial snd arbitrary ‘age of consent” different by several years from the achievement of biological scX maturity, are potent sources of insecurity and manifestaUions of sexual instability in society.

1 hope the discussion will not stop at this point Wolfenden Report obviously raises many problems of socialist ethics which have not hitherto received the attention they demand.

Your Medical Correspondent It is several years too soon to say that Bohm has found the right theory: certainly the right theory. when found. will be of unparalleled practical importance.

Einstein’s theory of relativity was published in 1905; the new quantum mechanics was founded jn 1927. Both were indispensable to the building of a nuclear pile (1942) and an atomic bomb (1945). Their authors did not foresee. and could not have foreseen. the uses of their theories.

Today a theory of nuclear reactions and nuclear properties would not wait fifteen years for application, but about one day! The economics of the process are very important: there are not more than a hundred physicists likely to contribute materially to the work.

Most profitable in history Jf each was paid £5,000 a year for twenty years. the total project would cost £10 million. This is about one-tenth of a penny per person in the world. and about two-thirds of the annual expenditure of this country on nuclear research.

It wouid therefore be the most profitable investment in the whole of human history. for we should then know how to develop H-power and more advanced methods without part of the present expenditure on experiments.

David Bohm’s work is part of the break-up of the two dose matic camps (‘schools’ is not the word) in physics.

fhe Western camp had several different points of view. bur in practice all its rnembers treated quantum mechanics as incapable of improvement and abandoned strict causality, Yet more fundamental laws The various Soviet schools asserted causality as a fundamental principle. and mostly tried to maintain a quasi-classical picture. in which all the important classical quantities (position, velocity, time) were all exactly measurable simultaneously.

Terletskii. Blokh and others tried to take a wider view, but

Tue Daily Worker recently carried a profile of D. NPritt. QC. who is 70 this year. Bukharin would have been 6% this year. Zinoviev and Kamenev 74, Rykov 76 and Rakovsky 84.

Pritt deserves honour for his work in defence of men like Jomo Kenyatta—but we should not forget the efforts he put in. by way of pamphlets, articles, letters to the Press. speeches and private communications. to prevent a successful international Suenpaiat to defend these other men when they fell victim to Stalin's frame-ups in the Moscow ‘trials’ of 1936-38. _ Especially as Pritt—unlike Dudley Collard, similarly involved—has still. so far as 1 know. shown no sign of regret for that episode in his career.

London, N.W.3. J.E. only Terletskii managed to avoid rounds of abuse.

Now Bohm suggests that the randomness of atomic phenomena derives from the causal action of the laws of something yet more fundamental. just as the laws of mechanies are slightly upset by the random motion of molecules (which motions, however, obey the laws of atomic physics).

The indications are that physicists are becoming more willing to consider this middle point of view.

In my letter last week about the report of the Communist Party's West Middlesex district committee to the district congress (which takes place on October 26-27) I transposed two digits in one of the figures.

Sales of Party News in July 1955 were 590 and not 950 as Stated. This means that the total fall of that publication was 178 copies from July 1955 to July 1957.

Ruislip (Mx) “Bolshevik”

[ BOOKS PHILOSOPHY AND PHYSICS: A NEW THEORY Ry J. H. Bradley Davip Boum’s new book Causality and Chance in Modern Physics (Routledge. 21s.) does far more than fill a large gap in the English literature of physics: it is the most promising current attempt to answer the philosophical problems of the nuclear world. _ One of the best features of the Marxist movement has been its interest in philosophy. The problems of nuclear physics Printed py Punun Pres. Lid. ro 180. Clupham High St.. Loudon. S WA

THE NEWSLETTER is anxious to build up a small reference library. Readers who haye suitable books or back numbers of socialist periodicals they can spare will be doing us a great service if they can put them at our disposal. In particular we urgently need:

A good atias and gazetteer;

A copy of “Post Offices of the United Kingdom’;

Fowler's ‘Modern English Usage’ and Partridge’s ‘Usage and Abusage’ and similar standard reference books; Labour Party conference, Trades Union Congress and Communist Party congress reports; Back numbers of Labour Monthly, Communist Review, International Press Correspondence, World News and Views, World News, Modem Quarterly, Marxis Quarterly, Science and Society, etc.

Works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and other socialist writers in English, French and Russian.

All books received will be acknowledged, and duplicates will be returned to the senders.

A certain number of new books have to be bought, including Whitaker's Almanach, which needs to be replaced each year. Readers who cannot send books can help by sending donations, addressed Library Fund, The Newsletter, 180 Clapham High Street, London, S.W4.

Tanashed my Pere: Prver im Clapham Hien St. Londen, SW a A 3)