The Newsletter, vol. 2 no. 34

‘ N Editorial Board has been set up to direct the work of The Newsletter, decide its policies and deyelop it as an independent socialist weekly. Brian Pearce and Michael Banda are joining Peter Fryer as Editers. The Board has seven-.other members, among them a number of well-known militant workers.

There is to be no alteration in the original function of providing information, of value to socialists which other papers tend to suppress or distort. Nor will Tue NEWSLETTER’s columns cease to be Open to the sharpest and freest. controversy.

The members of the new Editorial Board, while holding different opinions on many matters, have in common the view that the most serious problem now confronting the British workers, if they are to be armed for the impending class battles, is the problem of leadership.

The Editorial Board does not see itself as giving such leadership, though several of its members have earned the confidence of their workmates; its aim is more modest.

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The central task to which THE NEWSLETTER will be dedicated is to help the building of a socialist working-class leadership on the job, in'workshop, pit and trade union branch. In this way the paper will help, to the best of its ability, towards the arming of the working-class movement.

The Newsletter will provide a weekly forum in which militants can-exchange experiences, draw the lessons of defeats and victories, thrash out their problems, collectively chart the road ahead.

The Newsletter will seek contributions from all who, whether Marxists or not, have something serious and thoughtful to say about the British Labour movement’s problems and tasks.

The Newsletter will analyse each aspect and stage of the struggle, and will seek to tell. its readers in par(Continued on -back page) From Our. New York Correspondent

MICHAEL BANDA jis a London printer, author of articles on China and an active participant in the Socialist Forum movement. : , BRIAN BEHAN is a weil-known militant in the building industry. A former member of the executive committee of the Communist Party, he resigned from the party last June.

HARRY CONSTABLE was one of the seven portworkers’

leaders charged with conspiracy during the 1951. strike, He has played an active part in every dock struggle since 1945. .

HARRY FINCH was shop steward at Norton Motors, Birmingham, for six years and convener for two and a half years, and led the Norton strike against redundancy. He is now shop steward at the General Electric Co., Birmingham, "secretary of Saltley Ward Labour Party and a Birmingham City Councillor. oS PETER FRYER was sacked from the Yorkshire Post in 1947 because he was a member of the Communist Party; resigned from the Daily. Worker in. 1956 because it refused to print-his dispatches from. Hungary; was expelled from the Communist Party last April.

PRICE JONES is chairman of Atherton (Lancs.) Trades Council and Labour Party, chairman of Leigh Divisional Labour Party, secretary of Atherton’ National Council of Labour Colleges. He has been a Councillor at Atherton’

since 1954.

TOM KEMP has been active in the Labour movement for twenty years, served in naval landing craft during the war, holds a degree in economics and lectures in economic history at Hull University.

PETER KERRIGAN is a well-known militant portworker in Liverpool, BRIAN PEARCE is a translator and historian who has just been expelled from the Communist Party.

CLIFF SLAUGHTER teaches sociology at Leeds University.

Recently suspended from membership of the Communist Party, he has now announced his resignation.

~ WILLIAM Z. Foster and the other Stalinists in the leadership of the U.S. Communist Party are trying to do what McCarthy and the FBI could not do-—kill the New York Daily Worker, , The party’s national executive committee voted to close down the paper, whose editor John Gates has been branded a ‘revisionist? by the American Stalinists and attacked by Soviet spokesman B. Ponomarev, Grou.

Gates and his fellow-critics are determined to keep the paper going if they can get enough funds from supporters to do so. Said Gates:

“In the 31-year history of. the Daily Worker there have been many predictions of its death, but it has proved ‘to have more lives than the proverbial cat. I am opposed to the suspension of the Daily Worker. and: intend to fight for its continued existence’

ws - Circulation of the New York Daily Worker has fallen from a peak of about 20,000°in 1938 to 7,395 a year ago and 5,574 today... 6. ae The .party’s national executive: has refused to endorse the 1. declaration issued in Moscow in November by twelve-Communist and Workers’ Parties, which said the main danger within the Communist Parties of the world was revisionism. This reversed an earlier 4-3 endorsement of the declaration by the national administrative committee.

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against war should be waged. If the Trades Union Congress were to do as these workers have done, and declare every scrap of work on American rocket launching sites black, not a single rocket site could be built on this island with British labour. And this would be a. thousand times more effective in preventing the nuclear annihilation of Britain than a ton of petition forms.

‘ Working-class action against war, of the kind the Aberdeen plumbers have taken, puts teeth into the fight for peace. The need now is for organized workers elsewhere to draw inspiration and encouragement from Aberdeen’s example. A nation-wide campaign to black every installation and job that is part of the U.S. war drive is the way trade unionists can protect their cities. Make Britain too hot for the American generals to hold! That is what the workers of Britain have it in their power to do, At the same time the Labour Party should show that successful working-class action. against war does not mean unemployment. It is a scandal that men’s livelihood should depend on the production of armaments, whether for German imperialism or not. Labour must stand pledged to end this scandal by nationalizing the arms industry under workers’ control and replacing the arms programme with a programme of useful public works, * THIS is a very wicked animal. When you attack it,

-it defends itself.’. Such, it would appear, is the principle by which the Edinburgh Evening Dispatch judges the preparations being made by militant workers in Britain’s industries to defend themselves against the Tory offensive. That this newspaper, stable companion of the august Scotsman, contrives to find a fiendish King Street plot in the éfforts of THe NEWSLETTER to assist these preparations is very funny indeed. Miss Helen Bailey has missed her vocation. She should Submit ‘a script to the BBC Goon Show.

If only the 8,000 former members of the Communist Party were in fact receiving, accepting and acting on what Miss Bailey is pleased to call our ‘battle orders’ —-what a difference that would make to the industrial scene! Alas, the Left is only beginning the task of constructing a vigorous rank-and-file movement under militant leadership. However, we hope by our efforts in the coming year to give Miss Bailey and her employers, and the rest of their class, substantial cause for the concern she expresses. We do indeed hope to inflict ‘considerable damage’—as much as lies in our power—on the employing class and their Government. We regard this Government. as a menace to the ordinary folk of Britain, and we are certain that ‘loyal trade unionists’ will display their loyalty to trade unionism by bold and resolute action in reply to the Tories’ ‘declaration of war’. defections from the party was that a very large number left at the same time, and that many of these formed themselves into small rebel groups.

It. is these. groups, composed both of intellectuals trained industrial agitators, which are now the basis of an organization concentrated on the factories, docks, building sites, and transport depots.

‘Reads like battle orders’

I have been reading a recent issue of a Newsletter published by ex-Daily Worker reporter, Peter Fryer. One. could be forgiven for thinking that some of,‘the material in this issue resembled battle orders’ ‘for these people.

In what read like a typical Communist Party directive, it attacked the ‘downright treachery of certain of the rightwing trade union leaders,’ and urged the strengthening of liaison ‘between shop and shop, between factory and factory, between industry and industry’. ;

It then outlined the ‘elementary steps which shop stewards committees, trade union branches, and trades councils should be ready to take at a moment’s notice’.

These steps include sending squads from the ‘embattled sections’ to gather financial and, if necessary, other aid from workers clsewhere and to achieve embargoes on the handling of commodities deemed to be ‘black’.

This is obviously a recipe for turning small disputes into 1The commentary -here referred to, together with articles by Brian Behan, Bob Potter, Tom Kemp and others, has been reprinted as a threepenny pamphlet, ‘Into Battle’, available from The Newsletter, 180 Clapham High Stréet, London,

big ones, perhaps involving strikes as well.

To do this it is necessary to wrest control from responsible trade union officials. and concentrate it in the hands of militant leaders of what The Newsletter described as a “combative rank-and-file movement’.

There is, however, an even greater danger. The communist leaders will not stand by while their ex-comrades, whom incidentally they helped to train, build an unofficial organisation powerful enough to undermine the party-controlled machine which now reaches out into every corner of our industrial life.

Acting on the well-established communist principle that what they cannot destroy they must control, it is certain that trusted under-cover party members are already busily infiltrating into the new set up.

Sooner or later their experience and discipline will be decisive. No one with a knowledge of communist manoeuvres in industry and the unions will doubt that eventually the new groups will find themselves incorporated in the bigger organization, and that the Communist Party will emerge more strongly entrenched in industry than it has ever been.

‘Extremist struggle in industry’

The power of the communists to hold their positions in times of trouble has already been amply demonstrated.

They survived the wave of public indignation which resulted from their support for the Nazi-communist alliance during the war. Similarly their control of various trade union organizations weathered the Hungarian storm.

While the struggle for eventual control of extremist forces in industry is being played out. we can be sure of one thing --these groups are capable of inflicting considerable damage during the coming months, when relations in industry are bound to be difficult.

Only effective action on the part of loyal trade unionists can prevent these self-appointed leaders from sacrificing workers’ wages in pursuit of their political ambitions.

One essential is that trade unionists learn to differentiate between official and unofficial action. When urged to down tools they should ask: ‘Can you authorize strike pay?’ That is a simple and very fair question. TO MAKE LABOUR LEAD

THE Aberdeen plumbers have shown how the fight THE NEWSLETTER IS PART OF.A KING ST AN Edinburgh: newspaper, the Evening Dispatch, has discovered the existence of ‘extremist groups’ in ‘the factories; docks, building sites and transport depots’ which receive their ‘battle orders’ from. THE NewsLETTER!

These ‘rebel groups’ of former members of the Communist Party are especially dangerous, it seems, because there are ’ ‘intellectuals’ among them as well as ‘trained industrial agitators’.

But ‘it turns out that the whole thing is a King Street . plot, for ‘trusted under-cover party) members are already busily infiltrating into the new set-up’. ~ ; ;

The article is called ‘These rebels are cause of TU con‘ cern’, and it comes from the pen of one Helen Bailey. Here, for our readers’ edification and amusement, is the full text:

Many trade union leaders are seriously concerned about. the activities of extremist groups recently established inside Britain’s key industries. \ oS This is understandable, for leading these new unofficial ; organizations are skilled agitators, most of whom served their apprenticeship inside the Communist Party.

These people were among the eight thousand or so men and women who left the Communist Party in protest against its slavish acceptance of Soviet policy.

‘Not retreating from communism’

The great exodus from the party began after the debunking of Stalin, and reached flood dimensions following the Russian brutality in Hungary.

What tended to be overlooked, however, was that a considerable number of these so-called ‘dissident communists’ were not in retreat from communism.

They had lost faith in the leadership of the Communist Party, but they remained avowed Marxists. Their belief in the use of the strike weapon and other forms of industrial action to achieve political ends was undiminished.

The essential difference between this situation and previous

A COMMITTEE of twelve scientists, under the auspices of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, has been reconsidering the hazards from fall-out of Strontium 90. reports The Lancet (December 28).

Strontium 90. one of the components of radio-active fallout. accumulates in bone. In sufficient concentration it is likely to produce bone tumours (sarcoma) or cancer of the blood (leukaemia).

The American scientists believe that fall-out is not uniform over the globe but tends to concentrate. or ‘band’. in the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere.

It is estimated that if H-bomb tests continue at the present rate over ‘the next several years’, the concentration in people’s skeletons in the so-called ‘banding’ areas will be of the order of 10-25 Strontium units.

A concentration of 10 units, it has been estimated by the Atomic Scientists’ Association. will produce bone sarcom1 in one in 20.000 of those affected. or over 500 cases in a city the size of London.

PORNOGRAPHY INSTEAD OF POLITICS?

‘A “slightly spicey” [sic] midnight cabaret show is to be put on in Budapest’s Gaiety Theatre. Hungarian Press reports say.

‘French and Hungarian one-act plays will be shown to over-eighteen’s.’

(New Hungary. no 41, p. 9. December 1957:

Surely. if a man is clever enough. or lucky enough, to make a profit in this way, you would not grudge it to him?

I cannot remember much of the meeting after that, I was so busy recovering from that answer and drawing conclusions from it.

Only way of fighting My conclusions were these: whatever internal disputes we may have with our leadership, the Labour Party and the trade unions are our only way of fighting the employing class, and that is the reason for the very existence of our organizations.

Our leaders are in danger of forgetting this, when they play their polite Parfiamentary game of ‘Who can run capitalism better?’

This is why, of course, the rank and file instinctively distrust the policy document ‘Industry and Society’, and why the Tory press called it ‘statesmanlike’.

The proposal that a Labour government should buy shares in industry means that it would acquiesce in the continuation of the gamblers’ society, and in the end strengthen it against the onslaughts of the working class.

It is because our leaders are evading this issue, and others. that we had a 52 per cent. poll at Leicester.

DALY BEATS KING STREET MAN AGAIN Publicly declaring himself ‘a communist—of the anti-King Street type’. Fife miner Lawrence Daly again beat Communist Party candidate Tom Stewart by 468 votes to 272 in a ballot for the key union position of pit delegate.

Stewart held the job for nine years until December 1956.

The Tory Central Office has sent out to all Tory MPs a tion. After three years as a student nurse and seven years

RECENTLY our local Tory organization brought down a national MP for some celebration. He was afterwards to address a public meeting on general Tory policy, and of course, several Labour stalwarts turned up to take the chance of asking questions.

Perhaps it was no accident that only the Left-wing element of our party took the trouble to come, for we are the ones who are concerned with exposing the vital differences between the two parties.

The speaker was a rising junior Minister, very smooth, and a practised speaker His talk was laced with racy anecdotes and genial cracks. as though he thought of public speaking as an after-dinner accomplishment rather than a fighting task.

He did not mention rents, pensions, or Suez. but he said the Government would curb inflation by preventing increased wages without a corresponding increase in productivity.

_ Naturally there were several questions, which the Minister dealt with easily, without answering them.

Why let spivs flourish?

For instance. to a question from a Health Service worker. ‘How can we increase productivity?” he said, “These incomes are being considered separately’.

To me, however. the Moment of Truth came with the answer to my own question, which was:

‘How can you claim to be a government which represents the whole country, when your wage freeze policy attacks only the working class who produce all the wealth. while letting flourish the spivs who make fortunes by buying and selling shares, bonus issues. take-over bids and hidden expense accounts?”

And this, believe it or not, was the answer:

‘I should have thought that the lady would realize that if someone sells a share at a profit someone else must have bought it at a loss, therefore the market evens itself out.

‘confidential’ survey giving seven basic reasons for Tory unpopularity. The rise in the cost of living is listed as reason number one—and this gives point to the wage claims now being demanded by the Trade Unions.

But for us in the Labour Party, what is of great importance is that the Rent Act is not even included in the sever.

Not because there is no: oppsition to the Act but because ‘socialist propaganda on the’ Rent Act appears diminishing.’ ‘On the other. hand,’ -says ‘this document, ‘fear of eviction no is arousing considerable concern among many tenants, especially the aged.’ as a staff nurse—that is after ten years full time nursing—a male nurse will receive just over £48 per month, a female staff nurse somewhat less.

So let’s have a little less of the sob-stuff and a bit more money in the nurses’ pay packets!

Writing in Tribune, Nye Bevan states that he ‘did not see

With the second rise in rents due in April, and thousands facing eviction in October, the Labour Party should now be organizing a nation-wide campaign. ‘ ;

Every eviction should be fought; rent strikes should be encouraged and the strikers given the full backing of the Labour movement locally and nationally.

But this is not what Transport House is advocating. In a circular sent out to constituency and local Labour Parties, affiliated trade unions and women’s sections Morgan Phillips wrote:

‘While continuing to oppose the Act and Government policy generally by all legitimate means, support should not be given to unofficial. campaigns and rent strikes. These can only embarrass individual tenants, and may cause them to be threatened. with eviction.’

Tf there were a militant campaign OFFICIALLY organized by the-Labour Party in conjunction with the trade unions, there would be no need for unofficial campaigns. And a nationally organized refusal to pay the increased rents would paralyse all efforts on the part of the landlords to evict.

. ‘WHAT PRICE DEMOCRACY?

It was only to be expected that Tory crusader Charles Curran of the London Evening News would join in the hue and’ cry against the leadership of the Electrical Trades Union. He remarks on the fact that only one member in five votes at ETU elections.

‘Take Boss Haxell,’ he writes. ‘When he was elected secre-

After the recent tragic railway disaster at Lewisham, the Press was full of praise for the work of the nurses at Lewisham Hospital, who worked round the clock tending the injured, Te would be much more to the point if these newspapers carried on a sustained agitation for decent wages and conditions for nurses.

Nurses in Britain still work a forty-eight hour week and work split-shifts which cut into their time for rest and recrea-

tary two years ago he got 27,935 votes, his opponent 14,924. That is not democracy; it is 20 per cent. democracy.’

What then does Mr Curran think of the situation in the West of England?

During the recent debate in the House of Commons on the Local Government Bill, it was revealed that at the last local elections in Somerset 77 per cent. of the council seats were not contested. In Cornwall the situation was even worse—only 2.8 per cent. of those entitled to vote went to the polls and 93 per cent. of the seats were not contested.

These two counties are Tory strongholds. What would Mr Curran call the system prevailing there—2.8 per cent. democracy? any objection to the Western nations concerting among themselves for their mutual defence.’

This statement shows how far Nye’s thinking is removed from socialism when it comes to foreign policy.

What on earth can a Labour Britain have in common with the capitalist USA or with Adenauer’s Germany? And a study of history. should teach Bevan the lesson that ‘defensive’ alliances can-very soon become ‘offensive’ in character, just as it is impossible to differentiate between weapons of offence and weapons of defence.

A Labour Government must look for its allies among the people of the former (we hope) colonies and the working-class movements of all countries. ‘New thinkers’ may call this ‘old-fashioned’ socialism. But it is the only realistic approach toward a socialist foreign policy.

PAISLEY AEU STEWARDS DISCUSS ETU QUARTERLY meeting of the Paisley district Amalgamated Engineering Union shop stewards, embracing Rolls Royce, Remington Rand and other Hillington estate factories, asked the AEU executive by 50 votes to 7 to protest at BBC interference in Electrical Trades Union affairs.

An amendment protesting at Tory attacks on the. union and calling for a national committee of inquiry to be elected by the ETU rank and file to investigate the union’s machinery, and for recent rule amendments to be suspended in the meantime, was ruled out of order by the chairman.

There was discussion on a petition circulating in Remington Rand. Addressed to Macmillan, it condemns the Tory Government’s representatives at NATO for accepting U.S. rockets and demands that no rocket sites be erected in ScotSome delegates felt that a petition was not enough, and that factory mectings, to be addressed by Labour MPs, should be arranged, and that the stewards should launch a joint campaign with the Trades Council and Labour Party.

LONDON YCL OPPOSITION TO WORK OPENLY THE opposition’ group in the London Young Communist League has decided to work in future as an open group.

This decision, says the second issue of its duplicated bulletin, ‘has been prompted as a result of two of our group members being called up to the London district office to answer allegations of participation in the group’.

A statement by these two members, Doug Little and Ken Weller, in the form of a letter to Communist Party gencral secretary John Gollan, is being circulated (and will be printed in The Newsletter next week).

The bulletin says that if the YCL is to become a mass youth organization truly representative of Britain’s youth, it must break with Stalinism once and for all.

“The brutal murder of the Hungarian workers, students and peasants during their revolution symbolizes what Stalinism will stoop to ... If we .. . remain silent we ate lining ourselves up with a leadership whose only interest is to follow the lead from Moscow.’

In London the ¥YCL has fost 44 per cent. of its members between its last two congresses. The bulletin accuses the Communist Party leaders of letting down the workers’ struggles, and demands a principled policy of opposition to conscription.

In 1957 the great capitalist boom, which had taken on a new lease of life some four years before, faltered and spluttered to its end. In the second half of the year the third, and ‘what seemsicertain to be the most far-reaching, American recession since the war declared itself.

In the. same’ period U.S. prestige also ~ suffered serious setbacks. in the diplomatic ‘and technical fields.. A full-scale economic crisis in 1958 will blast what remains and overshadow the whole political :development of the coming year.

About the. reality of the recession—some already speak bluntly of a ‘depression’—there can be no doubt. And, unless unforeseen factors intervene, the continuation of the downward course can be counted upon for some months. :

According to estimates made in September, outlays on plant and equipment—indicating investment ability—will be down by nearly 7 per cent. on the corresponding period last year for the final quarter of 1957. It is unlikely that the actual figures will show a better performance: they may well fail to attain it.

Steel output—vital key to the well-being of the economy —continued to fall in December, when it was running below 68 per cent. of capacity. Big cutbacks have been made in aircraft. Further decreases in car production may be unavoidable in 1958. Building and textiles have shown marked symptoms of the slackening trend.

Dole. queues are lengthening Conservative estimates anticipate a further one million unemployed in 1958. Others speak of 8 per cent. of the labour force likely to be jobless.

The queues for unemployment compensation in steel and auto towns are lengthening. But they are still composed of reasonably well-fed, well-dressed workers, with years of relatively regular work behind them.

The bread lines and soup kitchens have not reappeared; ‘Brother, can you spare a dime?’ doesn’t figure in the fop ten. More than 27 years separate 1958 and 1931; but the differences may turn out to be of only secondary importance.

Meanwhile there are irregularities. Profits keep up. Some’ sectors remain prosperous, ‘in others recession is only in-cipient; ‘there are seasonal movements; ‘ The investment industries, leaders in- the boom, are like- ; wise the most. seriously hit’ by the recession. The effect in other. sectors is bound to be delayed. It is significant, too, that the seasonal upturn in the latter part of the year did not show itself.

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forward if it is to keep in balance—it cannot stand still for long or it will soon fail back - . :

‘Unless investment or other elements. of effective demand can be continually increased to match the growth in capacity excess capacity and unemployment are likely to. emerge. :

It is not enough for investment to remain constant in volume: it must continue to rise if the system is to keep in balance. Everywhere in’ the. capitalist world to-day, and most forcefully in the American’-citadel of capitalism, this uncomfortable truth is being demonstrated.

What does not move forward slips back:. how far, is: the burning question which agitates the journalists of the capitalist Press to-day. :

Those who have tried anxiously to suggest that ‘contemporary capitalism’, even under the Stars and Stripes, had changed its spots, were very careful not.to exclude the contrary’ hypothesis entirely. : ar ;

Strachey is too astute for that, and events are justifying his caution even as they disprove his own chosen prognosis.

Public-spirited managers, responding to democratic pressures, __ This is the first of two articles by Tom Kemp on the economic situation in the USA.

have not. gone on piling up equipment unlikely to yield the accustomed rate of profit.

They (if ‘they’ exist as a distinct species) have behaved. very . much like the old-style capitalist—perhaps a little ihore speedily—translating revised expectations into reduced investment outlays. This is the harsh truth behind the 30 per cent. fall in. steel output. oO ; :

Indeed, under monopoly capitalism the tendency will be for output to be cut to maintain profits, while reductions in prices are avoided (thus the negative response of the auto manufacturers to Walter Reuther’s proposals for a cut in selling prices).

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Such is the situation developing in important sectors of American industry.

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Falling investment. Below capacity working. Unemployment and short time. Less take-home pay and _less spending money. Difficulty in meeting higher purchase: payments—with all that means for the huge consumer credit total outstanding and‘for -the. manufacturers of consumer durables. A new phase in the struggle of American Labour is on the horizon. :

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The great boom was based on. high-flying investment, : bolstered by armament spending and nourished’ by the unprecedently high level of world demand. American. businessmen, gripped by the psychosis of expansion and inflation, vied with each other in expanding. productive capacity, renewing obsolete equipment and piling up stocks.

“How far?’. they ask Profits ran high, and while optimistic expectations of future profits continued to prevail the process fed on itself. This pressure from business investment, plus arms expenditure, lay behind the inflationary movement. But the rate of expansion could not be sustained.

’ The piling up of new productive potential, and the running out of expansionary forces in the whole capitalist world, threw into question the profitability of further additions to capacity.

Further, as the last ‘World Economic Survey’ of the United Nations. pointed out: , ;

‘An ‘industrial economy [read ‘capitalism’-—-T.K.] is con:

fronted with the dilemma that it must continually .move This is the text of a letter sent by BRIAN PEARCE to the Appeals Commission of the Communist Party on December 24: ‘ Dear COMRADES, 1 understand from Comrade Mahon that it has been decided to expel me from the Communist Party.

In view of the fact that I lapsed from membership in mid-October, when I fell thirteen weeks in arrears with dues payments; that nobody since then has subjected me to the régime of ‘repeated visits’ prescribed in the Rules; and that over a month ago I announced my intention not to feregister but to join the Labour Party—the party leadership’s action in expelling me seems to-be a work of supererogation, -to say the least. : (Continued overleaf)

BRIAN PEARCE (Continued from previous page)

However, I suppose you have your compelling reasons for making this gesture.

J certainly have no intention of wasting your valuable time with any involved discussion about this matter.

Doubtless you will recall, in expelling me, the long list of good communists who have been expelled since Stalinism first set in; and how sometimes those who did the expelling were later themselves expelled—as in the case of J.T. Murphy, mover of the resolution expelling Trotsky from the Comintern.

Incidentally, may I say that.one of the things I most regret about my twenty-three years‘in the Communist Party is that I allowed myself to be miseducated into helping in the vilification of Trotsky and his ideas—ideas which I now see to have constituted a very great contribution to the treasure-house of socialist theory?

tf in the last few months I have done a little. through sundry talks and writings, to encourage others, in or recently out of the Communist Party, to study and discuss the works of this eminent Russian revolutionary, I think that should be accounted to me for merit.

Only through what you call ‘Trotskyism’ can people who have rightly become disgusted with Stalinism be saved, so to speak, for Marxism.

Tf you were a real Communist Party you would appreciate euch efforts, instead of expelling members for them.

All that remains is to wish you the season’s greetings and express the hope that 1958 will see a mighty advance of the working-class movement, in'the course of which the numerous honest men and women still in your ranks will at last understand and shake off the incubus of Stalinism, in time to play their part in the real battle for socialism in Britain.

[ LETTER DID ‘ORGANISER’. EDITOR WRITE THIS?

In your last issue.George Cunvin, referring to A. L. Williams, editor of The Labour Organiser, describes him as ‘a one-time left-winger who is now employed as the Labour Party’s National Agent’.

& - Could this. be the same A. L: Williams who in 1933 wrote a pamphlet called ‘What js Marxism?’, published by" the National Council.of Labour Colleges, which included such passages as these:

‘The “Communists”, i.e., socialists, are to be the van_ guard of the, working class, organizing the sporadic struggles _ of the workers into a’ direct assault against the bourgeois state.” (p. 2)

‘The growing movement back to the political ideas of Marx is an indication that those ideas are charged’ with life and are full of meaning for thé Labour movement. The gap between the classes is wider than ever . . .’ (p. 29)

‘Class conflicts are not being blunted, but are becoming keener than ever before in history |. : The possibility of gaining socialism by peaceful means gets proportionately less as the number of capitalist countries which openly discard democratic methods of government increases ...

‘The main issue is that of the winning of political power by the proletariat and the overthrow of the capitalist state machine as a preliminary to the introduction of socialism.

(p. 30)

‘Marxism which the revisionists thought they could bury is more vigorous than ever. Each year adds to its adherents.

It inspires the organized workers of the world: it haunts the capitalists and guides the destiny of one of the world’s largest states.” (p. 31)

Beckenham (Kent) Individual Applicant Published by Peter Fryer, 180, Clapham High St., London, S.W.4. Printed by the Plough Press Ltd. (T.U.), r.o. 180 Clapham High St., London, SW4. EDITORIAL BOARD (Continued from front page)

ticular what the workers themselves are saying, how they are living, how they arc resisting the employers’

offensive, The Newsletter will campaign for a political programme of socialist demands, a list of fundamental political objectives around which all workers anxious to wage the fight against Toryism could unite. The exact nature of these demands will be the subject of discussion in our columns.

The Newsletter will consider the political and social ideas abroad in the working-class movement and , subject them to one basic standard of criticism: the needs of the workers as a class in achieving clarity and unity of action in struggle.

In the first issue it was stated: “THE NEWSLETTER has no sectional axe to grind.” That remains the case. This paper is unreservedly in the service of the working-class struggle for socialism.

Honest and lively reporting; industrial and political militancy; a clear, forthright, robust class approach; proper attention to foreign affairs and to the principle of solidarity with the workers of other countries; respect for socialist theory: these are the aims of Tus NEWSLETTER in 1958. - If THe NEWSLETTER is to develop along these lines, however, more is needed than an Editorial Board. The readers have their part to play.

First, we ask for the supply of information from worker-correspondents in all parts of the country and in all industries. THe NEWSLETTER cannot command the services of highly-paid professional journalists, and must rely on workers themselves to send: in a ceaseless flow. of news. * Week by?week we want to conduct an inquiry into the condition of the working class in Britain. We want accurate facts and figures, and statements by workers themselves, Secondly, we ask for efforts to double and treble the paper’s circulation in the next three months. As the struggle develops the value of such a weapon as THe NEWSLETTER will become more and more apparent.

Because of political prejudice the bookstalls will not display the paper. It is up to readers to introduce it to their workmates and build up regular factory sales.

Thirdly, and most important of all, Tue NEWSLETTER has only its readers to rely on for financial help. Costs are steadily rising, and the continued existence and development of the paper as a fighting working-class weekly depends on regular guarantees from as many supporters as possible.

NEWS, SALES and DONATIONS: these are the three pillars on which Tur NEWSLETTER can be strengthened, improved and built up.

We send the warmest New Year greetings to our readers. We are certain that the plans here outlined will be welcomed. We are determined to make the utmost contribution to the socialist cause.

MICHAEL BANDA BRIAN BEHAN TOM KEMP