The Newsletter, vol. 2 no. 41

Die water that eight million Londoners drink every day MAY be radio-active. The Metropolitan Water Board is carrying out regular tests to find out. This fact can be revealed—but all details of the tests are secret. SOQ ARE THE RESULTS THAT HAVE BEEN OBTAINED.

The radio-active water danger is not confined to London. The Government is making similar tests in various parts of Britain. Again, details and results are a closely-kept secret. You may be drinking poison with every sip of water and every cup of tea—but the authorities won’t tell you.

These facts, more ominous even than the steadily mounting radio-strontium threat, have been discovered by Labour councillors in the London borough of Hornsey. Ir is understood that Gordon Cruickshank, Daily

They were revealed during a discussion in the Borough Worker correspondent in Warsaw, has severed his conCouncil’s General Purposes Committee, when a request was nexion with the paper and has left the Communist Party. being considered from the Council for the Abolition of Cruickshank disagrees with the party’s fundamental politicai Nuclear Weapons that the council should receive a deputation.

line, and in particular with its attitude to the treatment of Wanted the borough monitored Jews in the Soviet Union.

Since the Poznan events in the summer of 1956 his disThe deputation wanted to ask the council. to monitor patches from Poland have given Daily Worker readers an Hornsey for radio-activity. The committee recommended that insight into the Polish workers’ struggle against Stalinism— the deputation should be received. In the course of the dis- but have often caused chagrin and dismay at King Street. cussion one councillor let slip the information about. the At the time of the Eighth Plenum of the Polish United monitoring of London’s water.

Workers’ Party, in October 1956, when Russian troops were Then the Tory line changed, for some reason or other. The on the move in Poland and Russian leaders were descending Tories turned savagely against the deputation’s. being received, on Warsaw, Cruickshank in the news columns and-J. R. and the Borough Council voted accordingly. Campbell in editorials were taking very different lines.

The hostile attitude of such diehards as John Mahon, At the next meeting of the council, when the Labour Party George Matthews and R. Palme Dutt towards Gomulka and again raised the demand for the monitoring of Hornsey, Tory This ‘revisionism’ was extended to. Cruickshank and his articles.

Councillor Waley Cohen accused the Council for the AboliOn his return to Britain a few weeks ago no meetings were tion of Nuclear Weapons—a highly respectable body, which _arranged for him—not even the customary Daily Worker includes several clergymen—of ‘unscrupulous immorality’.

editorial staff meeting.

The hush-hush testing of London’s water ties in with two Cruickshank, who is 42, has been a member of the Comother facts about the Government’s secret preparations for munist Party for 21 years. At the end of the war he did thermo-nuclear devastation. industrial organizing for the party in east London and Middlesex.

Deep shelters under Whitehall HYMAN LEVY’S BOOK OUT ON FRIDAY In Fleet Street it is an open secret-—-though somehow or Professor Hyman Levy’s new book, on ‘Jews and the other it never gets into the newspapers—that a warren of deep National Question’, is being published by the Hillway Press shelters exists under Whitehall. Every major Government denext Friday. partment is duplicated down below, and there are sleeping Tt is understood that the Daily Worker refused to accept quarters as well as office accommodation.

an advertisement for this book until they had read it.

Another recent revelation, made in the fortnightly Socialist Review, is that the National Coal Board has instructed all pits in Britain to prepare for a fourteen-day shift. THIS IS A TEN-PAGE NEWSLETTER!

Supplies of food, water and diesel oil are already- being The London H-bomb demonstration: page 52 assembled underground, and each pit is to be made selfSTEPHEN SWINGLER on Victory for Socialism:

sufficient so that no further supplies would have to be lowered during the fortnight.

Industrial struggles reported on page 55 The NCB is acting on the assumption that the people living PAT DOOLEY—a tribute: page 56 round the pits will have been wiped out by an H-bomb attack.

Review of ‘Julio Jurenito’: page 59 (Police Kick Demonstrators: overleaf)

MERCIA EMMERSON on ‘Paths of Glory’: page 60 SALFORD’S ANTI-H-BOMB CAMPAIGN SPREADS Following on its campaign against the H-bomb in Salford; RAKOSI:; A DENIAL Salford City Labour Party has now invited Labour Parties; The Hungarian Legation in London has stated that. the trade unions and Co-operative organizations in the greater teport of Matyas Rakosi’s return or impending return to Manchester area to-a conference on March 2 to discuss a Hungary, referred to in The Newsletter last week; is without joint campaign throughout this. wider. area. foundation. We are very glad.

.

Monpay’s great central London meeting, with its four

the Tory decision to build rocket bases in Britain. The Labour movement could stop the building of these bases immediately, if the Trades Union Congress and the trade unions concerned blacked all work on them. Without the skilled labour of British trade unionists no bases can be built. Many unions will not shirk a strike if the standard of living of. their members is seriously threatened. But the threat. to human lives from nuclear poison will be multiplied a hundredfold if these bases are constructed. If strikes are justified over wages and conditions, why not over the building of rocket bases?

Consider the way the King Street Stalinists and Rightwing Labour leaders are dodging the issue. At the Brighton Labour Party conference they ganged up to defeat a resolution which urged that Britain should stop making H-bombs. Now they confine themselves to purely verbal opposition to rocket bases by whipping up an anti-American campaign. The unions controlled by the Communist Party remain silent when it comes to urging the TUC to stop all work on rocket bases. Instead they call for marches on U.S. air bases under the slogan of ‘Yanks go home!’ What exactly will be achieved by such tactics? There are two Americas: the America of the sixty families, and the America of the ordinary folk; the America of the Washington brass hats and the America of the working-class cons~-cripts.

Soe ap . pe Our real allies in the fight against war are the American workers and conscripts. Marxists must appeal to the American conscripts in Britain to join in the struggle against the war-makers, to demand that they be sent home. Many of these lads will be unemployed when they go home and will be thrust almost immediately into the struggle for jobs and for a working-class solu-

FL VERY socialist and every serious worker is against tion to the slump. It is a crime against working-class internationalism to lump them with the American ruling class. -TWO WAYS TO PROTEST REGARDLESS of .Rochdale the Tory offensive presses on. A few minutes before McCann took his seat the Government announced a further increase in health charges. According to the Manchester Guardian Macmillan ‘was debonair, cool and looking fit’. Some Labour MPs shouted protests about a breach of the ‘Constitution’ because McCann was not introduced before the Chancellor announced the increases. Jolly bad taste, wasn’t it, not to stick to the Constitution which protects such honourable institutions as the Bank of England and the Stock Exchange—and gives Macmillan the legal right to slash living standards and make war on the unions? Small wonder that the Tories treat these future MacDonalds with contempt. Labour’s reply tc Macmillan must be swift and clear. The Trades Union Congress should call together all unions with wage claims pending, to-plan common strike action. The national executive of the Labour Party should organize. conferences and meetings to plan the utmost support for these unions. This is the only language the Tories will understand. ‘packed overflows, and the Downing Street demonstration that followed. it, were the beginning of an answer to Duncan Sandys and his ‘deterrent’ madness.

Only the beginning—because the great weakness of the meeting, at which the ‘Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament?’

was launched, was that the industrial workers were represented neither on the platform nor, to any great extent, in the audience of 5,000.

But the enthusiasm and determination with which Bertrand Russell and Michael Foot and the others were greeted— especially whenever they referred to unilateral renunciation of _ the H-bomb by Britain—showed which way the tide of public ~ opinion. is ‘flowing. _ : : << /The-Downing Street demonstration, in which about a thousand young people took part, was entirely spontaneous.

Cries of ‘Ban the bomb!’ and ‘We don’t want nuclear war!’ were echoing up and down the street before the policemen on duty outside No. 10 had realized what was happening.

Riot squad and dogs.

A riot squad of at least a hundred police, with dogs, arrived, A cordon was thrown across the lower end of Downing Street, preventing the demonstrators there from being joined by at least a thousand more.

Slogans like ‘No work on rocket bases!’ were taken up readily by both sections of the crowd. Other slogans were ‘Out with the Tories!’ and ‘Sack Mac!’ while some chanted ‘Summit talks!’ and ‘Negotiate!’

When the police tried to push the Downing Street crowd towards Whitehall dozens of people sat down on the parapets, on the pavement and in the road. This enabled the crowd to hold its ground for another twenty minutes. _ The forces of law and order eventually decided to advance into the seated crowd, kicking and pushing with their knees with what-many considéred~quité unnecessary force:

At length they succeeded in clearing Downing Street, though not without several quite violent scuffles and eight arrests, among whom was the novelist Mervyn--Jones, who. was remanded on bail on charges of obstruction and assault. He will appear again at Bow Street on Wednesday.

RENTS ‘YOU MUST NOT LOSE, SAID COUNCILLOR DALKIETH tenants, whose fight against rent increases is backed by the Town Council, have set up a defence This was decided at a meeting addressed by Coun. David Smith and Baillie William Moffat.

The committee has written to the secretary of the Scottish Special Housing Association informing him that ‘all tenants will be urged to stand together. and collectively to refuse to pay any increase should the Association attempt to force the measure through’.

The committee is seeking the official support of the trade union movement, and has congratulated Dalkeith Town Council ‘on their decision to pledge full support to the tenants and their declaration of intention not to Operate the scheme’.

At the tenants’ meeting Coun. Smith ‘told the tenants: ‘Show strength, determination and unity and you will win.

Show weakness, hesitation and division and you will pay another 7s. 6d. a week.

.

‘More than that, if you lose this battle it will give encouragement to the Government to take further measures which will surely lead you back to the poverty and depression of the inter-war period.’

‘This is an issue which must be fought all the way,’ said Mr D. J. Pryde, Labour MP for Midlothian, in a letter expressing his ‘complete sympathy and support’ for the tenants.

on Victory for Socialism Here are the answers given by Stephen Swingler, MP, to questions put to him by The Newsletter on the aims and activities of the newly-reconstituted Victory for Socialism organization. What are the aims of Victory for Socialism?

The two aims that we have adopted are:

To advocate ‘forthright socialist policy at home and abroad;

fo reaffirm that it is the object of the Labour Party to secure for the workers by hand and by brain the full fruits of - their labour on the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange.

This, of course, is merely a paraphrase of clause 4, section 4 of the original constitution of the Labour Party.

And ‘so the prime. purpose of Victory for Socialism is to make basic socialist propaganda and convert people to belief in common ownership and thereby to galvanize the whole Labour Party.

How many MPs support it?

’ This re-formed committee—which is what it is at the moment——has. been brought into existence by the initiative of a number of socialists, some of whom belonged to the old Victory for Socialism group, some of whom didn’t.

At the momient there are eight MPs on the exécutive council, but next week we propose to establish a House of Commotis branch’ of the new organization, and hope to gain the support of at least forty or fifty MPs for the campaign.

What activities is it going to carry out?

Two sorts. of activity: first; the publication of manifestos and pamphlets designed to stimulate discussion of the Labour Party’s aims and policies; secondly, the holding of meetings on dramatic - issues.

There is going to be a policy manifesto on both domestic and international affairs, which will be out on March 6, when we hold in the Caxton Hall the inaugural public meeting for Labour Party members only, to launch the campaign in London.

Thereafter we shall have a programme over the next six months of meetings in all the main centres of the country to recruit individual members, form groups in all the main centres and start discussions, issue leaflets and so on.

Will Victory for Socialism have a constitution?

Yes, we shall be issuing a copy of the constitution on recruiting leaflets, which will include these two principal aims I have mentioned.

We hope. that within the next six months we shall hold a ; democratic conference to discuss policy and agitation and to elect an executive council in place of the present temporary provisional council.

Will there be a membership fee?

We are recruiting individual members at five shillings a year.

te What will local branches do?

' That is up to them. In the constitution we. have adopted. the branches will be completely self-governing on the basis that all the members have subscribed to the aims and. objects of the organization, pledged themselves to be active and devote themselves to invigorating the Labour movement.

.Otherwise we are prepared to leave it to the branches to adopt. their own standing orders and, according to their own local conditions, to put into practice socialist principles.

Will Victory for Socialism have its own regular publication?

Not at the moment but we shall be regularly issuing policy documents for discussion.

Have you a target for the number of members you hope to win? Must they be members of the Labour Party?

We aim to get 5,000 members as quickly as possible. It is a condition of membership that they shall all be Labour Party members.

What is your policy towards (a). British manufacture and _ testing of the. hydrogen bomb; (b) Rocket bases on British soil; (c) Nationalization; (d) Repeal of the Rent Act and reduction of rents increased under it; (e) Wage claims under a Labour government?

On (a) and (b): at the present moment we have an international policy committee drafting a statement on a socialist foreign policy.

I am certain that this policy committee will declare for unilateral nuclear disarmament by Britain, and against rocket bases.

:

On (c): Since it is one of the prime purposes of Victory for Socialism to reaffirm Labour Party members’ belief in the principle of common ownership of the means of production, we are specially concerned with the subject of nationalization and shall.be producing a document on how we think the principle of common ownership should be applied in. the present situation, for discussion in the movement.

On (d): this is one of the things that is being considered by the home policy committee, and no doubt it will find a place in the manifesto we are issuing on March 6.

We shall have something to say on (e) in the near future; this, t6o, is being considered by the home policy committee.

Will you accept affiliations from trade union branches? Do you contemplate organizing a group in the trade unions, in view of the importance of the block vote?

’ No. This organization will be entirely based on individuals who pledge themselves to be active in every part of the Labour movement.

Are you considering any statement of industrial policy?

That will be covered in.a general statement of home policy.

Our purpose is to stimulate discussion on all such issues throughout the movement; we think it is necessary to create a ferment of ideas.

Have you any plans for winning industrial workers for the more vigorous socialist policies you advocate?

One of the things we are. concerned about is that there are a large number of people who believe in socialism who for one reason or another are staying outside the Labour Party. -.

Either they are frustrated, or 1 they find the Labour Party too respectable or too orthodox in some respects.

We want to. attract these people to come into the Labour Party, both to make a contribution: to its intellectual life, the discussion of ideas, and principles and policies—and to

gain some political experience in the democratic life in the party.

.

Therefore we are making an appeal to these people to join the Labour Party and join Victory for Socialism, because they are people who are prepared to be intellectually and - physically active in politics.

It has been suggested that the national executive of the Labour Party may not view Victory for Socialism in a favourable -... light. The word ‘proscription’ has been used by one news- _ paper. Have you any comment on this?

It may well be that some of the leaders of the Labour Party don’t like the idea of a ginger group.

Personally I believe that the leaders and organizers of the Labour Party at the moment are well aware of the need to ginger up. the organization, and to convert more electors to socialism if we are not merely going to have a marginal vote for the Labour Government at the next election but a will to support socialist measures.

Rochdale is the proof of the pudding. We are not positively RANK AND FILE, NOT TOP ‘IDEAS MEN’, converting the electors to believe in socialist policies; we are merely gaining by a Tory default.

Iam sure that the sensible leaders of the Labour Party know that this job can only be done if full scope is given to independent initiative within the movement.

-What do you think of the label ‘Bevanism without Bevan’?

‘ It is not an accurate one. The whole aim of this organization is to bring the rank and file into the centre of the picture. Although we have started at the top as it were, we are fully conscious that we have got to get down to the grassroots, that the success of the venture depends on not merely enlisting support but on getting the show conducted by the ‘ , We are neither’a party within a party nor a Parliameiitary fraction. ; -The keynote of Victory for Socialism is reviving faith in the power of the rank. and file to help make policy and run the organization, not leaving it to the top bureaucrats.

That kind of independent effort for a real socialist initiative in the country has not been attempted in the post-war years.

The document was not available earlier in the year when local parties were submitting resolutions for the conference,

AT the annual general meeting of our constituency Labour Party the MP makes a speech, rather like a bishop at a school prize-giving. This year we followed the usual procedure, but the delegates raised many vital points from the floor.

Our MP quite correctly stressed that the keynote of the present’ time is the offensive of the Tories against the workers and that 1958 will be_a year_of struggle, - He was not unduly worried about this because he thought the Labour Party was ‘united as never before on policy’ and could therefore look forward with confidence to victory at the next election.

This puzzled us until we realized that he was not referring to the struggles about Labour’s programme for the next election, but to the resounding speeches against the Government which, we understand, Labour MPs make in the House of Commons.

He was also taking comfort from the fact that none of our ; leading figures have been falling out in public recently, - Delegates were anxious to discuss what they considered to be policy—that is, what is the Labour leadership proposing to do to solve such problems as the H-bomb menace, creeping unemployment, and the ever-increasing cost of living.

‘ Who decides our policy?

One rank-and-file member suggested that the Parliamentary Labour Party were responsible for policy-making and that it was their fault that the Labour Party. had no clear-cut policy on nationalization.

Our MP replied that the national conference was responsible. Immediately delegates reminded him that when the constituency party opposed German rearmament and urged him to do likewise, he excused himself by saying that the Parliamentary Labour Party had already agreed to support German rearmament, and he was guided by that body only.

Another delegate pointed out the unfair weight that the national executive committee has at each annual conference. They burked the vital issue of nationalization at Margate in 1955 and did not produce their policy document ‘Industry and Society’ until just before Brighton last year.

The discussion on nationalization took place within the framework of this statement, giving the NEC the right both to open and close the discussion. and had not been properly studied in advance.

This method of initiating discussion means that policy is handed. down to the conference rather than coming up from the rank and file.

We decided that our constituency party must be the meeting place of all those who are seeking a socialist solution to their problems.

We agreed to discuss problems of special interest to trade union delegates, to offer the services of our political education officer to speak at trade union branches, and ___. Above all,..to do what.we- can_to help. in any. local industrial struggles.

The political struggle to get rid of the Tories will be linked . ; up with the necessity of fighting back against the Government’s offensive in industry.

”

This will open the way for more rank-and-file policymaking. Industrial workers who experience the inability of capitalism to ensure them work and security will join in our discussions on the need to nationalize the basic industries.

Policy will surge up from the membership, who will be ~ pounding into the heads. of the leadership the truth that socialism is not only desirable, but also necessary.

We hope that this will help us to put an end to the fiction that only a few ‘ideas men’ at the top really know what is good for us, and at the same time lay the old ghost ‘apathy’, the alibi of the Right wing whenever -they want to do nothing.

THE TIMES ON THE NEWSLETTER AN article by the Labour Correspondent of The Times last Monday on the activities of recent ex-communists says ‘the various publications which have sprung up with ex-communists grouped around them’ will possibly be more lasting in their influence than the socialist forums.

After mentioning Forum, ‘the well-produced 4s. quarterly The New Reasoner’ and ‘an intellectual rival. . . The Universities and Left Review’ the article goes on:

‘Of quite a different type is The Newsletter, edited by Mr Peter Fryer, who resigned from the Daily Worker in 1956 because it refused to print his dispatches from Hungary, and was later expelled from the Communist Party.

‘His editorial board of 10 includes four other ex-Communist Party members—Brian Behan, Brian Pearce, Cliff Slaughgain some political experience in the democratic life in the party.

.

Therefore we are making an appeal to these people to join the Labour Party and join Victory for Socialism, because they are people who are prepared to be intellectually and - physically active in politics.

It has been suggested that the national executive of the Labour Party may not view Victory for Socialism in a favourable -... light. The word ‘proscription’ has been used by one news- _ paper. Have you any comment on this?

It may well be that some of the leaders of the Labour Party don’t like the idea of a ginger group.

Personally I believe that the leaders and organizers of the Labour Party at the moment are well aware of the need to ginger up. the organization, and to convert more electors to socialism if we are not merely going to have a marginal vote for the Labour Government at the next election but a will to support socialist measures.

Rochdale is the proof of the pudding. We are not positively RANK AND FILE, NOT TOP ‘IDEAS MEN’, converting the electors to believe in socialist policies; we are merely gaining by a Tory default.

Iam sure that the sensible leaders of the Labour Party know that this job can only be done if full scope is given to independent initiative within the movement.

-What do you think of the label ‘Bevanism without Bevan’?

‘ It is not an accurate one. The whole aim of this organization is to bring the rank and file into the centre of the picture. Although we have started at the top as it were, we are fully conscious that we have got to get down to the grassroots, that the success of the venture depends on not merely enlisting support but on getting the show conducted by the ‘ , We are neither’a party within a party nor a Parliameiitary fraction. ; -The keynote of Victory for Socialism is reviving faith in the power of the rank. and file to help make policy and run the organization, not leaving it to the top bureaucrats.

That kind of independent effort for a real socialist initiative in the country has not been attempted in the post-war years.

The document was not available earlier in the year when local parties were submitting resolutions for the conference,

AT the annual general meeting of our constituency Labour Party the MP makes a speech, rather like a bishop at a school prize-giving. This year we followed the usual procedure, but the delegates raised many vital points from the floor.

Our MP quite correctly stressed that the keynote of the present’ time is the offensive of the Tories against the workers and that 1958 will be_a year_of struggle, - He was not unduly worried about this because he thought the Labour Party was ‘united as never before on policy’ and could therefore look forward with confidence to victory at the next election.

This puzzled us until we realized that he was not referring to the struggles about Labour’s programme for the next election, but to the resounding speeches against the Government which, we understand, Labour MPs make in the House of Commons.

He was also taking comfort from the fact that none of our ; leading figures have been falling out in public recently, - Delegates were anxious to discuss what they considered to be policy—that is, what is the Labour leadership proposing to do to solve such problems as the H-bomb menace, creeping unemployment, and the ever-increasing cost of living.

‘ Who decides our policy?

One rank-and-file member suggested that the Parliamentary Labour Party were responsible for policy-making and that it was their fault that the Labour Party. had no clear-cut policy on nationalization.

Our MP replied that the national conference was responsible. Immediately delegates reminded him that when the constituency party opposed German rearmament and urged him to do likewise, he excused himself by saying that the Parliamentary Labour Party had already agreed to support German rearmament, and he was guided by that body only.

Another delegate pointed out the unfair weight that the national executive committee has at each annual conference. They burked the vital issue of nationalization at Margate in 1955 and did not produce their policy document ‘Industry and Society’ until just before Brighton last year.

The discussion on nationalization took place within the framework of this statement, giving the NEC the right both to open and close the discussion. and had not been properly studied in advance.

This method of initiating discussion means that policy is handed. down to the conference rather than coming up from the rank and file.

We decided that our constituency party must be the meeting place of all those who are seeking a socialist solution to their problems.

We agreed to discuss problems of special interest to trade union delegates, to offer the services of our political education officer to speak at trade union branches, and ___. Above all,..to do what.we- can_to help. in any. local industrial struggles.

The political struggle to get rid of the Tories will be linked . ; up with the necessity of fighting back against the Government’s offensive in industry.

”

This will open the way for more rank-and-file policymaking. Industrial workers who experience the inability of capitalism to ensure them work and security will join in our discussions on the need to nationalize the basic industries.

Policy will surge up from the membership, who will be ~ pounding into the heads. of the leadership the truth that socialism is not only desirable, but also necessary.

We hope that this will help us to put an end to the fiction that only a few ‘ideas men’ at the top really know what is good for us, and at the same time lay the old ghost ‘apathy’, the alibi of the Right wing whenever -they want to do nothing.

THE TIMES ON THE NEWSLETTER AN article by the Labour Correspondent of The Times last Monday on the activities of recent ex-communists says ‘the various publications which have sprung up with ex-communists grouped around them’ will possibly be more lasting in their influence than the socialist forums.

After mentioning Forum, ‘the well-produced 4s. quarterly The New Reasoner’ and ‘an intellectual rival. . . The Universities and Left Review’ the article goes on:

‘Of quite a different type is The Newsletter, edited by Mr Peter Fryer, who resigned from the Daily Worker in 1956 because it refused to print his dispatches from Hungary, and was later expelled from the Communist Party.

‘His editorial board of 10 includes four other ex-Communist Party members—Brian Behan, Brian Pearce, Cliff Slaughter and Tom Kemp—and “militants” from the docks and the Midland engineering industry.

‘Two members are Labour councillors. Mr Slaughter and Mr Kemp are two more of the university Marxists from Yorkshire.

‘The paper devotes much attention to the support of workers involved in strikes. .

‘The group seems to be closely associated with the Trotskyist faction centring round a bi-monthly called Labour Review.

‘They advocate the continued association of those who have left the Communist Party and urge them to join the Labour Party as individuals.’

The article goes on to say that most of the well-known trade unionists who left the Communist Party seem to have joined the Labour Party, but relatively few of the intellectuals. . ‘The active ex-communists who do not join the Labour Party,’ it adds, ‘will disappear into the revolutionary twilight in which so many sects have their almost unnoticed existence.’ and the financial reward is negligible.’

Briggs Joint Shop Stewards’ Committee spent £2,066 IIs. {id. on incidental expenses of shop stewards in 21 weeks, according to the report. There were 130 shop stewards on the committee.

The whole sum divided among them would give them 15s. 6d. a week each. Hardly a ‘good thing in terms of creature comforts’ and a sum easily lost in wages by a shop steward carrying out his duties.

The author of this article, however, has no use for facts. Shop stewards’ organizations are denounced as _ ‘self-perpetuating committees’, Yet shop stewards stand for election far more readily and frequently than most of the trade union leaders he pays tribute to—some of whom do not come up for election at all.

The purpose of this article is to prepare the atmosphere foz legislation which will bind the militant rank and file of the trade unions.

It is not some isolated Tory backwoodsman that is whipping up this campaign, but the august organ of the City of London. The reason is not far to seek. It has nothing to do with corruption or ‘self-perpetuation’.

It has to do with the fact that these shop stewards’ organ-

TooLroom workers and millwrights at the Raleigh cycle factory, Nottingham, have won a £1 wage rise after a three-day sit-down strike.

Lengthy negotiations had failed to improve the management’s offer of a. 16s. increase.

The 350 workers had demanded to be brought up to the level of the tool setters, who were earning about 30s. more.

Despite advice from Amalgamated Engineering Union officials to return to work, and the victimization of one of the millwrights, who was suspended for refusing to start up the plant, the strikers sat it out.

The Raleigh firm has been enjoying big profits lately. One of its recent expansions was made possible when Nottingham Corporation turned over a children’s playing-field to factory By Our Industrial Correspondent izations have immediate and continuous links with the men in the shops.

For that reason they are far more responsive to the men’s wishes, and far more-dangerous than ‘respected leaders’.

That is why the employers’ organizations and the Government would dearly like to smash their power.

SHop stewards’ committees and local trade union organizations are the target of a much publicized series of articles now running in The Economtist.

The series is entitled, “[rade Unions: Where the Danger Lies’. The danger, we are told, is in the activities of bodies of ‘spare-time officials—call them shop stewards or what you will’.

Most of the ‘respected leaders’ of the trade union movement possess better than average ability, honesty and idealism. But down below, in the rank-and-file committees, there is a cesspool of corruption, a ‘plain and powerful racket’.

The Economist accuses the spare-time officials of ‘makinz a good thing for themselves in terms of power over their fellows’, and then goes on to make its most vile assertion:

‘In some cases—especially where organized factory floor lotteries or football pools to finance local activities have grown up—there is reason to suppose that they have occasionally begun to make a good thing in terms of creature comforts, if not of hard cash.’

The report of the Court of Inquiry into the Briggs dispute last April gave details of how factory lotteries were quite legitimately used to raise money for Briggs’ shop stewards’

expenses.

The author of the Economist article evidently used that report as a springboard for his imagination.

But even in that report, which is hostile to Briggs shoo stewards’ organization, we read: ‘The day to day duties of a shop steward are responsible and important. often thankless,

THERE is a problem of falling coal output and ‘lazy miners’ are responsible. So we were told in the Press campaign which preceded the setting up of absentee committees in the Lancashire coalfield.

Among the miners themselves, as Price Jones wrote on February 8, there was feeling that these committees were part of a ‘get tough’ policy by the National Coal Board.

Now listen to Economic Editor of The Observer, Andrew Shonfield. The Coal Board have about six million tons of coal in stock, he wrote last Sunday, ‘an unusually high figure even by pre-war standards.’

And note this comment: ‘The one thing that would really cause trouble now would be a sudden burst of high output from the British miners.’

The NCB has now rejected the miners’ demands for a sick pay scheme, a forty-hour week and 10s. increase for surface This rejection is of a pattern with recent attempts to ‘discipline’ miners.

Twice in recent months the British Transport Commission has rejected railwaymen’s claims for higher wages. Now the Railway Staffs National Tribunal is to consider their demand.

Recent railway accidents at Lewisham and Dagenham have brought before the public the question of safety. precautions on the tracks.

The much-discussed automatic train control system could have been far more widely installed if there had been a real drive by the railway management. It is relatively expensive to instal, but it gives real help to drivers in locating distant, or warning, signals.

The railwaymen are being blamed for accidents. Inquiries usually place the blame on the driver or the signalman, and a serious accident can cast a shadow over their lives.

The management gets off lightly; its argument is that shortage of capital is slowing down the installation of safety equipment.

For a dangerous and responsible job the railwayman averages £11 9s. id. a week. Adjusting the figures to give a true comparison, that is 29s. less than a factory worker.

Basic wage for a top-rate driver is-£11 2s. 6d. For a guard the rate is £8 10s. 5d. and for most-signalmen it is under £9 a week. - M.T.

A MASS meeting of dockers from London’s Royal group of docks, held last Monday, expressed concern at the growing shortage of jobs.

It was agreed to send a deputation to the Transport and General Workers’ Union and to the National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers.

The dockers in this area are demanding a ban on overtime, an increase in fall-back pay and pensions for old dockers (so that they can afford to retire).

The West India and Millwall Dock Liaison Committee, a dockers’ rank-and-file: committee, has now published a leaflet calling for greater union control on all overtime and for the introduction on the docks of a forty-hour, five-day week, with a daily basic wage of £2.

It also demands a fall-back guarantee of 85 per cent. of the basic wage.

HUNDREDS knew Pat Dooley; hundreds respected and loved him; hundreds are mourning the passing of a fighter and a friend.

For thirty-five years he laboured for freedom, mastering in turn the arts of oratory and journalism, not to flaunt his talent, but so that he might serve the working-class movement more worthily and raise his voice and wield his pen on behalf of the inarticulate, the weak and the dispossessed.

He hated tyranny with every fibre of his being, and when in latter years he found tyranny where he least expected to find it, he refused to wear the blinkers that some of his con-temporaries wore for the sake of expediency or safety or comfort.

His heart, he wrote, was broken in eastern Europe. Yet it never ceased to beat in tune with the hearts of the common people.

Pat died as he had lived, and as he would have wished his death to come, in the midst of full-blooded public debate, relishing the cut-and-thrust of opinions. The doctors had told him to take it easy. But he did not know what rest meant.

Neither for doctors nor for those who said ‘Keep your mouth shut’ was Pat willing to quench the flame that burned within him, that burst out in his laughter, in his love of life, of his fellow-men, of controversy, of music and the theatre, and, above all, of truth.

Born in 1903 in a mining village near Doncaster, Pat went down the pit at the age of 124. In his mid-teens he ran away from home and joined the Tank Corps. Here, in a Dorset military camp, he met T. E. Lawrence, who awakened in the boy a love of literature.

Learning about capitalist society Released from the army, he made his way to London, where he worked in a Battersea factory, as a barman, in a dozen other jobs.

He was learning about the society in which he lived. He saw unemployment, poverty, hunger, degradation. His protest led him into the St Pancras branch of the Independent Labour Party and into the Revolutionary Policy Committee within that organization that was advocating closer relations with the Communist Party.

The Communist Party itself Pat joined in 1932, plunging into its activities with all his zeal and energy.

He mounted soap-box after soap-box, learning the fundamental rule of street-corner speaking that ever afterwards he would teach to novices:

‘First put your audience in a good humour—then smite Dem. And don’t forget the collection!’

A prominent figure in street demonstrations, Pat soon became a target for the police. In 1935, when Mosley’s blackshirts were causing trouble in Camden Town, Pat was arrested in a fight with the police and sent to prison for six weeks.

Another spell in jail came after a hard-fought by-election in the Rhondda. Pat was driver for the candidate, Harry Pollitt, helped with the speaking, and was arrested the night the result was declared.

Then came other jobs for the party—at the communist bookshop in King Street and as guide to parties of International Brigade recruits crossing France to the Spanish frontier.

Karly victim of witch-hunt Apart from a short period as lecturer in the army, Pat served in the ARP throughout the second world war. Soon after the war he gained journalistic experience on the Manchester Evening News, and later became editor of the National Coal Board’s magazine.

It was in this capacity that he found himself an carly victim of the Attlee Government’s ‘security’ witch-hunt. They suspended him, then sacked him.

The job the party gave him of going to Bucharest to edit the English edition of For a Lasting Peace, For a People’s Democracy! (so named by Stalin himself, it was said) was a chance both to serve the ‘international movement’ and to ‘see the future’, He did not expect to find a land flowing with honey and youth railways; he knew that Rumania was backward, that the party was decimated in the war: that the Cold War meant sacrifice and hardship.

But he did expect comradeship, equality among communists, respect for professional standards of work, freedom to criticize, the spirit of abnegation and devotion he had known among English and_ Irish revolutionary workers.

The reality sickened him, shocked him, drove him into tempestuous arguments with the Russian editors, while John Gibbons, Russified and docile, sat at his side white-faced, plucking at his sleeve.

The Cominform hierarchy, meticulously graded from ‘Soviet comrades’ at the top, who got the best of everything, down to the Cinderellas of the moment—Spaniards, perhaps, or Greeks, or Englishmen—disgusted Pat.

So did the Philistine contempt for journalistic technique. For a Lasting Peace looked like Pravda done into English. In vain did he try to brighten it up a little, His proposal for the use of drop letters to make its solid

pages more palatable to British readers was scorned as ‘Comrade Dooley’s invention’.

The corruption (‘Are your material circumstances all right, Comrade Dooley?’ asked one Russian editor, rubbing his hands, when Pat had been particularly critical), the hermetically sealed isoiation from the Rumanian people, the ignorance about British conditions: all this enraged him.

But worse was io come. As English editor of Czechoslovak Life, which he transformed into the best magazine of its type, Pat found in ‘Czecho’ fear, officially-fostered anti-Semitism and a pampered aristocracy of officials.

He came back to Britain ill and weary. He went to Polliti and told him all that he had seen.

Pollitt gazed out.into Covent Garden for a minute or two, smiled and said: ‘My advice to you, Pat, is to keep your mouth shut.’

Pat Dooley had no time for the writers of disillusioned ;

biographies. He knew capitalism too well, and hated it too much, to take the easy road of the renegade. So he poured out his heart to a few friends.

Some of them believed him. Some shook their heads sadly and told each other that ‘poor old Pat’s illness is affecting him’. Some fled in dismay from his presence as soon as they decently could.

After the Twentieth Congress and the Khrushchev speech many turned to Pat Dooley. He told them the truth. He wrote eloquent letters, which were duplicated and circulated by ‘oppositionists’ and which played their part in the revolt against the Lie and the Liars.

As sub-editor on the Romford Recorder and then as its editor Pat Dooley carved out a new life. But he neither buried himself nor turned his back on the stormy waters of the controversy over Hungary.

Those who could no longer be silent, and who felt on their cheeks the breath of slander, received encouragement and counsel from Pat Dooley. _ The time had come, he felt, to ‘uncover the sores of Stalinism which have poisoned political life in Hungary and elsewhere’, as he wrote in a characteristically generous review, From the moment it was founded, Pat Dooley was a staunch friend of The Newsletter. This paper carried the last article he wrote—a trenchant challenge to-J:.R. Campbell and the other ‘Canutes of King Street’.

Campbell, he wrote, ‘could and should have been Britain’s Dijilas’-—yet he defended. the. officials ‘whose political iniquities and private luxuries miust inwardly disgust and repel him’.

Fi The abuses he flayed Many of us hoped that Pat Dooley’s finest contribution to the revolutionary movement in Britain was still to come; that he would help in the building of a new Marxist movement, cleansed of the abuses he flayed in that last article. .

But it was not to be. We have lost a beloved comrade, a man cut out of the whole cloth,,who enriched the lives of all who knew him; who proved every day of his life that nothing worth while is done without passion.

Let pygmies pretend that his political life ended in 1953, when he left the Communist Party. But Pat Dooley’s name is one that no slime will ever stick to. Right to the end he held to the ideals that had guided his life, and never faltered, nor doubted their triumph. P.F.

SALFORD shop stewards’ forum, a body of active stewards, has distributed 3,000 leaflets in local factories declaring that Government policy is creating unemployment.

J. Gardner’s, the big diesel engine makers in Eccles, has been on a four-day week since November, and there is redundancy at Salford Electrical Instruments Ltd. and at the De Havilland stock factory.

The Salford stewards’ main demand is ‘Absorb redundant workers by a shorter working week’. They call on engineering workers to ‘organize now for the right to work and the fortyhour week’. .

They are asking the district: committee of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions to call mass meetings of stewards to work out a plan of campaign for resisting sackings.

In the last two years two large factories in the greater .

Manchester area—Platts and Crossley Motors—have closed down, and over 3,000 engineering jobs have disappeared as a resuli.

FRANCE gained control of Tunisia in 1881 by a Protectorate Treaty. Rivalries among the European powers in the 1880s were already so acute that naked military conquest (as practised in Algeria, fifty years earlier) was no longer feasible.

The Protectorate Treaty, which recognized the ‘nominal sovereignty’ of Tunisia, precluded the more obvious forms of direct French rule. French authority had therefore to base itself on Tunisian shopkeepers, professional people and the like.

The development of the country was distorted by enforced and one-sided ties with the economy of metropolitan France. Sheep farms, cereal fields, vineyards, olive groves and date plantations remained for years the backbone of the Tunisian .

economy.

A small native bourgeoisie gradually arose. Taking advan- . tage of external commercial rivalries they brought what pressure they could on their French ‘protectors’. They became . the first timid mouthpieces of Tunisian autonomy.

The. political party: of modern Tunisian. nationalism, ‘the Neo-Destour, was formed‘in 1934: From the outset its aim was a secular, bourgeois-democratic State, maintaining — close economic ties with France. Its agrarian programme has always been extremely vague. ;

Tunisian: national consciousness developed rapidly during the war ‘and just after it. The Tunisian working class grew quickly.

“Between 1945 and 1947 the French Stalinists, the French Socialist Party and the CGT were all supporting the National Government, which was attempting, often by military means, to restore the domination of French imperialism over the North African territories.

;

The Tunisian working class was forced to seek a political outlet along nationalist lines. A national trade union organization, the UGTT (General Association of Tunisian Workers) was formed at Sfax in 1947. Up to the present the UGTT has worked in close collaboration with the Neo-Destour.

Continued betrayals by the traditional working-class parties in France of the colonial struggle -on- their doorstep. have delayed the growth of socialist consciousness and a Marxist leadership among the Tunisian workers.

On the one hand the leaders of Neo-Destour wish to obtain from French imperialism a settlement favourable to themselves. On the other hand they are reluctant to launch. the Tunisian mass movement in a direct onslaught against the French.

They fear they would. be unable to limit the scope of a mass struggle. This explains the devious methods used by Bourguiba in his relations with the French. - It explains his statement to the Right-wing French weekly Paris-Match that the Neo-Destour is ‘the only party that deals the cards for France and that struggles against all demagogy’.

And it explains his warning to the UGTT militants against Marxism, ‘whose essential aim is to arouse the workers against the rest of the nation’.

In the famous ‘seven points’ proclamation of April 1950, Bourguiba and the Neo-Destour put ‘internal autonomy’ (not independence) as the immediate objective.

This phase of the struggle ended early in 1952 when the Tunisian ‘Ministers’ were arrested by the French and the Bey capitulated to the French Resident, General de Hauteclocque.

Vast armed struggle possible Tn 1953 and 1954 the national struggle threatened to get out of Neo-Destour control.

The ‘fellagha’ (partisan) movement grew rapidly, mainly ; among the poorer peasants.

An armed struggle on a vast. scale was a real possibility. ; It would certainly have engulfed the whole of the Maghreb.

French imperialism, still staggering from the body blow of Dien Bien Phu was in no position to embark on such a war. Premier Mendés-France rushed to Tunisia to confer with Bourguiba.

The leaders of the Neo-Destour seized at the straw offered

to them. They too were for peace-at almost any price.

Franco-Tunisian ‘conventions’ guaranteeing ‘internal autonomy’ were negotiated. Bourguiba’ toured the country urging the ‘fellagha’ to surrender their arms.

Mendés-France sent massive military reinforcements to Tunisia. Conscripts, who had never been used in IndoChina, were sent to North Africa for the first time.

The ‘conventions’ contained staggering stipulations. The Tunisian market was to remain an. almost exclusive field for the investment of French capital, over the quantity and composition of which Tunisia would’ have no effective say.

.French industrial holdings were guaranteed against any threat of nationalization and French landholdings against any threat of agrarian reform.

Algeria gave big impetus The Algerian insurrection in November 1954 gave a terrific impetus to the Tunisian national struggle. New concessions were forced from French imperialism, now dreading an extension of the insurrection beyond the confines of Algeria. ' In March 1956 Bourguiba signed an agreement with France which endowed Tunisia with ‘independent, sovereign status’, a French naval base at Bizerta, and the right for France to retain tens of thousands of French troops on Tunisian soil.

Tunisia was to remain in thé ‘franc’ zone—and in a customs union with France.

A General Election took place on March 23, 1956 and the first Tunisian Constituent Assembly met a fortnight later.

In July 1957 the Assembly deposed the Bey, abolished the monarchy and elected Bourguiba first President of the Tunisian Republic.

Bourguiba seemed to be sitting pretty. He had taken advantage of circumstances with considerable skill.

The bombing of Sakiet suddenly showed how hollow was his compromise with French imperialism. His reactions to the event have also shown how precarious are his relations with the mass movement of the Tunisian. people. Ce _ The popular demand for arms has been repeatedly refused by Bourguiba. A détermined call to action would have got the French out of Tunisia in a week.

To allay mass indignation Bourguiba called, instead, for a one-day general strike. He promised to bring pressure to bear on the French garrisons, but ensured in the next few days that such pressure was both incomplete and ineffective.

Throughout, Bourguiba and the Neo-Destour have desperately sought solutions to the crisis along diplomatic lines and have done everything to avoid a real struggle.

From Our Paris Correspondent [ ANNIVERSARY RED ARMY DAY IN MOSCOW, 36 YEARS AGO At eleven o’clock the slim, well-knit figure of Trotsky appeared on the tribune...

He spoke of the first beginnings of the Red Army, that tattered group of determined workers who banded themselves together at the outbreak of the Revolution and constituted the Red Guard; of the first year’s struggle to organize a new army out of the disintegrating masses of the old tsarist fight‘ ing machine; of the trouble and confusion and inexperience of those early days when, for lack of adequate knowledge of military sciencé, many lives were uselessly sacrificed, ‘and not quality but quantity was made to count in the fierce battles against counter-revolution and the invading armies from. abroad.

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‘Many of us,’ he said, ‘lacked the advantage of previous training’ and those-who heard knew that he spoke of himself among them.

Then, turning from the past to the future, he declared that the fifth year of the Red Army’s life must be a year of strenuous study.

‘We must abolish illiteracy-in our army by the coming First of May’, said Trotsky earnestly. ‘Let us see to it that every soldier knows how to read and write; each soldier must be able to read the Oath of Allegiance and to understand fully the meaning of that glorious promise to our Republic.

‘The .reduction of the army will be in proportion to the qualitative improvement of its elements. The army must be well fed; warm and clean first of all; a soldier with a “vosh” (louse) is only half a soldier.

Raise the moral standard ‘Ignorance and prejudice is the inner “vosh” that weakens the human. being -much: more than -the: outer one; we_must therefore raise the moral standard and enlightenment of the army; it must understand the Soviet Constitution and its internal problems as well as foreign politics and the contingencies that may give rise to future wars; more, our soldiers must understand the material laws that determine the history of mankind and the universe, ‘We must so improve our military training that every Red soldier will in case of need be capable of taking the command. All this cannot be done by the waving of a magic wand, but by the hard, patient mosaic of daily work.

‘The fifth year of life of the Red Army will be a year of strenuous study.”

To see this erect, soldierly figure in his severely simple uniform, without a hint of decoration or a sign of rank beyond the general’s stars on his sleeve; and to remember that

THE communist candidate retained the seat at Marseilles in the second ballot last Sunday, although with a smaller proportion of the votes. cast.

‘This is a class-vete, not an expression of confidence in the present: policies and. personalities of French Stalinism. ~ In the workers’ districts support for the party is solid and rung to 80 per cent. or more but ‘the :party of Maurice Thorez’ can no longer mobilize the workers as it once could.

It has-been losing membership. The party-line newspaper has to struggle to keep going. Unsold copies of pamphlets and journals accumulate in the bookshop.

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The one-time vigour of the party has disappeared. It retains its electoral: support because workers see no alternative. But its compromises: in 1944-46 and its alternations of adventurism and. moderation’ since have drawn a veil of suspicion between it and the ordinary people. - In fact, for all their ‘militancy. the Marseilles workers are still politically raw, for which the often crude, and: sometimes chauvinistic,, dernagogy of the Communist Party leaders carries a heavy load of responsibility. at the outbreak of the October Revolution, in 1917, he knew nothing of military science, even to the handling of a rifle: then to recall his war record of the past four years in building up the most rremendous fighting machine of the modern world, in the teeth of insuperable difficulties; to enumerate the list of battles won, of enemies captured and invading armies driven back defeated, is to see embodied in the flesh one of the many great achievements of the Russian Revolution whose child he is and which has made him a-man.

Undreamed-of responsibilities The anti-militarist orator and agitator Trotsky has been moulded in’ the fiery crucible of war and. revolution into a ripened leader and beloved commander with a sure grasp of himself and of the- forces that stand obedient. to his behest.

‘ :

Trotsky has risen splendidly equal to ‘the undreamed-of exigencies and responsibilities so suddenly thrust upon him.

He stands to-day not merely as a national. but as an international symbol of ‘revolutionary achievements accomplished under the -niost - difficult conditions; small wonder that: the proletariat look to him as the leader of future victorious

hosts against the minions of the world reaction and counter-. revolution.

As he finished his brief but eloquent address, the sky was suddenly filled with a distant humming, and a squadron of aeroplanes appeared in the transparent: blue, circling, diving and climbing joyously above the multitude, and.as the thunderous applause began_to die away, a flutter of leaflets began to float gently down in zig-zag spirals upon the expectant, upturned faces of the happy throng.

Trotsky descended from the tribune and made his way to the front line of spectators where the soldiers would pass in review to give and take the salute.

Eager comrades pressed to greet him as a fellow-soldier, and were met with simple cordiality; one old veteran, crippled in the service, approached him hat in hand, and Trotsky asked him to-cover himself, shaking his hand with comradely good fellowship.

It was very cold standing there; the men had been on the march and had stood already for hours with true Russian patience. ~ Before the review commenced, a group of speakers from the Communist International ascended the tribune to greet them in. the name of their own proletariat.

International character of struggle The Russian leaders, who have never for a moment forgotten the international character of the struggle they are conducting, invariably include the representatives of the fighting proletariat of other lands in every celebration of the Red Republic.

The broader issues of the contest now being waged on Russian soil are constantly held before the people.

The Red Army, on its fourth anniversary, must not forget that it is serving first and foremost as the vanguard of the world proletariat in its advancing march towards freedom; while the mémbers of the Communist. International know that in hailing the triumphant-forces in Russia, they can rejoice at the closer approach of the ‘world révolution . .~.

(From The Communist Review, published by the Communist Party of Great Britain, June 1922, pp. 96-8.) away by this, did not notice. that the novel was at the same time a pamphlet attacking. Communism.’ -One chapter displays Lenin in the role of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor.

Socialism. appears.as-a-kind..of militarism, ‘made in Germany’: the student Schmidt, one of Jurenito’s ‘disciples’, remarks that ‘both [Kaiser] Wilhelm and ariy socialist realized that the world. was. not organized. and must be organized by “means of force’.

Anti-Germanism clearly revealed Ehrenburg’s anti- Germanism, which flared up so fiercely in 1945 that it had to be checked by official party intervention (Alexandrov’s article ‘Ehrenburg Exaggerates’), is very clearly revealed in this. early novel.

The fraternizing between Russian and German troops -in 1917-18 is cynically described as a swindle put over by clever : Germans on simple Russians.

The translation reads very well, as one expects of Anna Bostock, and few faults can be found. On page’ 40 ‘beginazhi’ should perhaps have been rendered ‘nunneries’ rather than ‘alms-houses’ in the given context, and on page 46 the Guards should be wearing ‘bearskins’, not ‘busbies’.

The printer is presumably responsible for the omission at the top of page 132 of the words: ‘There arise before me now those stormy nights when my .. .”.

Collaborating in the translation was Yvonne Kapp, who edited the series of Soviet novels published by Lawrence and Wishart.

“The dust- jacket originally catried the “inscription: ‘Suppressed in Russia!’ but this has been changed to ‘A Brilliant Satire’, which should at least make things easier for Central Books.

If ‘Julio Jurenito’ sells well and the publishers are disposed to tackle other neglected Russian fiction of the 1920s;° one which should be considered is Pilnyak’s ‘Tale of an Unextinguished Moon’, inspired by the rumours around the death of-Frunze-on-the operating table in 1925.

Tue publishers Macgibbon and Kee, who a year ago rejected Dudintsev’s Not By Bread Alone on the grounds that it ‘would not have a sufficiently wide appeal’, have -just brought out a new English version of Ilya Ehren-burg’s. 1922 novel Julio Jurenito. (18s.)

‘The first English translation of this work appeared in New York in 1930; there have been French and German versions, and also a Spanish one, with an introduction by Bukharin.

‘Julio Jurenito’ is a fantasy about an adventurer who proclaims himself a sort of Messiah-in-reverse and goes around fostéring and. encouraging, in ‘the spirit of an_agent provocateur, all the worst tendencies in modern society, with a view to hastening its self-destruction.

Reminiscent both of Chesterton’s ‘The Man Who Was Thursday’ and of the last part of Anatole France’s ‘Penguin Island’, it-was characterized by the late D. S. Mirsky as ‘a serious and significant book, genuinely subversive and nihilistic’.

Laid inthe period just before and during the first world war, ‘Julio Jurenito’ is first and foremost a satire on militarism, together with sallies against big business, organized religion and so on. It is not, however, a critique of capitalism only.

In 1933 the writer of the article on Ehrenburg in the Large Soviet Encyclopaedia observed that: ‘The criticism of capitalism fin ‘Julio Jurenito’] was so plain that some people, carried

Tue NEWSLETTER

BOOKS WorLD peace can be preserved if the. workers— especially key workers—refuse to play the game of the warmongers.

The ideal thing of course would be for the workers to take matters into their:own hands and refuse to lift a finger for the Americans in this country—boycott-them, as the Irish did to the landlords in the days of.the Land League—refuse to serve them, drive them, or even deliver letters, and so force them to go!

But short of that, any union that blacks rocket-launching sites is doing excellent work for world peace.

The main thing -is direct“action by the rank and file. It cannot be left to the Labour leaders. The leaders are thinking of their own petty careers and the chances of their wives and daughters being presented at ‘Court. Kicking them in the Pants is the only way. : James Douglas Young London, N.6.

THINKING UP EXCUSES FOR BELLOUNIS?

I have heard supporters of The Newsletter speak in a superior way about The New -Reasoner, but it is the latter which, in association with others, has brought out the timely and effective pamphlet about Djamila Bouhired.

- Perhaps I should explain to Newsletter readers that this girl is an FLN supporter who is under sentence of death in the hands of the French imperialists.

The New Reasoner’is the paper that defends Djamila: the Newsletter is the paper that thinks up excuses for Bellounis.

Jersey (C.1.) P. Le Sueur [A note on the pamphlet mentioned will appear in next week’s issue ——Editors.]

T is not often one is deeply moved in a political -_f sense by an American film. 1 can recall only one or two where love of people and hatred of oppression and poverty were combined with direct political insight. A Salt of the Earth’ and ‘Viva Zapata’ were two such.

And now must be added a third, ‘Paths of Glory’, a film which made me so angry that all other matters seemed trivial: .

The story is one of military ambition on the part of ; a general, risking soldiers’ lives in an_ assault which, even if success were not out of the question, would have lost the greater part of the battalion.

GREED FOR POWER. When the assault fails the General, in a fury of frustrated greed for power, calls for fire to be directed against some of his own troops whom circumstances force not to advance at all; and then, after the battle, hé demands a court martial of all three companies concerned. .

Jt is only with great reluctance that he can agree to this being reduced to one man from each company. Their Colonel, in civilian life a celebrated lawyer, undertakes their defence.

The court martial on a charge of cowardice is one , of the most spirited protests at bureaucracy (not just Army bureaucracy) that I have ever seen ina film.

The military court is just not interested in the truth. The men must die as compensation for the General, and as a lesson to the troops.

ONLY ONE RESULT. What use is it for the well-meaning Colonel to question the court’s ‘legality’? He knows, and we know, that a trial held in secret with no outside observers. can have only one result.

The scenes of the three men’s reactions to their death sentence and their walk, in full military style, to the posts to’ ‘be-shot, are among thé most powerfully moving I ever remember seeing.

The tension is superbly sustained and the acting and _ photography in this scene (as indeed throughout the whole film, except that the Colonel was a little too coldly reticent for my choice) are terrifyingly real.

The story’s weakness, for me at any rate, was in not hinting at the real reason for the Colonel’s failure to secure a reprieve, and in not showing that the men themselves have seen through the sham of the court martial and know the real motive for the shooting of their comrades.

Surely, one argues, the Colonel could have done some- . thing a little more effective? ~ Now, if he had been a trained revolutionary leader . ... or if the men.had been politically educated, conscious of their united strength and possessed of the right kind of leaders, they themselves might have done something to prevent the crime.

Just as we argue today that it is not primarily summit ; talks that will prevent war, but the united action of But are not these if’s the product of political romanticism, of wishful thinking? Real life in France in 1916 presented a Liberal lawyer with a challenge which led to an inevitable failure; soldiers had no effective leaders and apparently no recognition of their own ‘crisis of leadership’. History, as we know, is full of such failures.

THEY ARE TRANSFORMED. A film like this can help many workers to see the lesson more quickly than words could.

When the battle is over and the death sentence carried out there is a. remarkable scene where dirty, bearded men crowd a local bar, whistling, yelling and ogling the girl the proprietor produces for them—a _tearstained, frightened, dishevelled German servant girl who begins to sing a touching German folk-song.

We watch the transformation of those men. from soldiers to real men. We see the tears come into their eyes as they remember their mothers, wives and sisters, their individual human lives.

To see this transformation and to understand its meaning is to hate war, hate capitalism, hate every brass hat—because we love humanity.

_CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE. Write tg your local cinema manager and “ask for a return of ‘Paths of Glory’. Write to the British Film Institute and ask for a 16mm. copy for your trade union, your film club or your local party.

Treat this film as the political weapon it is; keep it . alive, or else the virtual ‘conspiracy of silence’ on the part of the critics, as someone has called it, will succeed.

ALL SOCIALISTS WISH THIS BILL SUCCESS was due to receive its second reading yesterday.

' All Socialists will wish the Bill success and hope it will end the useless torment of animals for the pleasure of the ladies and gentlemen who, pantomime squire-like, ride to hounds.

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Unfortunately the numerous. Tory opponents of Fred Messer’s humanitarian move plan to prevent the Bill being debated by. raking up so many speakers for the preceding motion as to talk out the anti-hunting one.

Oo Antony Steel ;

. London, N.W.11 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.

R. P. Dutt’s tribute to Marcel Cachin in the Daily Worker of February 14 makes me wonder—if that other ‘grand old man’ of the French Communist Party, André Marty, had died before the order to expel him came through, would not Dutt have ‘written in similar moving style about him?

As it was, Marty’s death was ignored by the Stalinists.

Could they riot have recalled his unquestioned services to the revolutionary movement, and his equally unquestioned services later on to Stalinism, while ending, if they chose, on their disagreements with him at the end of his life?

No, that is not their way. And in the same anti-historical spirit Dutt writes as he does about Cachin without mentioning his role in the first world war, when it was he who conveyed the Allies’ bribes to Mussolini to encourage him in his campaign for Italy to enter the imperialist war. ;

London, SE. . affected. Are there no bachelors involved Mr Cunvin?

Vienna VIII Nigel Leigh Pemberton {I confuséd Lady Docker with another notorious lady— Nancy Astor. I am grateful to Mr Pemberton for his correction. -The existence of millionaires, and their enrichment, was pointed out to counter the tale that we are approaching an egalitarian society. , Even bachelors have at least a father and mother. Mr Feather, assistant general secretary of the TUC, last week put the number of trade unionists.and members of their families in this country at 27 million—George Cunvin.] Fred Messer’s private member’s Bill to abolish deer-hunting

Your correspondent Mr Cunvin seems to be slipping a bit.

Apart from the fact that it has long been a rather sterile form of socialist journalism simply to point out the existence of millionaires (The Newsletter, February 8), surely he is the only man in England who doesn’t know. that Lady Docker’s name is not Nancy, but Nora.

And in his second -paragraph he claims that because five million workers have wage claims pending and because the average family consists of four people, twenty million are