STALINIST LEADERS

CeyYLon’s Communist Party, led by Cambridge graduate Pieter Keuneman, has issued a self-critical analysis of recent policy and announced a ‘turn’.

From now on it will take a strongly critical attitude towards the government, it says, and will even be ready to join hands with the (‘Trotskyist’) Lanka Sama Samaja Party on specific issues.

The party admits that during 1957 it made a big mistake in soft-pedalling the question of official recognition of the Tamil language—the language of the biggest minority in Ceylon—and the rights of the Indian immigrant workers, and that it did wrong in trying to sabotage strikes led: by trade unions under LSSP influence.

This significant statement results from the success of a series of public Ineetings held by the LSSP to denounce the corruption and jingoism of the government.

It results also from the continued progress of the LSSP in the industrial field, and from increasing recognition by the middle class in town and country (on whom the Ceylon Stalinists’ eyes are always cocked) that the LSSP is the only non-communalist party, just when they are wearying of communal disorders.

There were said to be specially close ties between him and the government. In January 1918, some months before the King found himself raising McAlpine to his baronetcy, a question had been asked in Parliament about an ‘advantageous contract’ secured by the McAlpine firm for erecting army huts: -had. this anything te do with the fact that-a member of the firm was related to a Cabinet Minister? .This first Sir Robert McAlpine was a well-known racehorse-owner and lover of the good things of life.

When he died, in 1934, The Times recalled that ‘he did not believe in early rising, and it is said that he had got _up to breakfast a dozen times in thirty years’.

The story of the ‘Lloyd George creations’. and of Maundy Gregory, who was the go-between for these sordid deals; is told in ‘Honours for Sale’, by Gerald Macmillan (1954).

> The 1859. building lock-out THE disp ute on the McAlpine building site on London's South Bank has.come as we near the centenary of the historic building lock-out of. 1859.

It was from Fae struggle around this that the London Trades Council emerged, in 1860; this lock-out was a major landmark in trade union history—as the Shell-Mex dispute may well prove to be, tao.

In 1859 the London master builders tried to smash the men’s unions by means of a genera] lock-out, presenting. every 263 -Tue NEWSLETTER...

worket with what came to be known as ‘the document’—a declaration ‘he must ‘sign renouncing membership of.a trade ; Lt . : mG The entire movement rallied. to the builders’ support, and it was the standing committee of unions formed to organize this support. in the capital. that developed into. the London Trades Council.

- After. several months’ bitter struggle, the masters had to give in and. allow work to be resumed without any signing -of ‘the document’. .

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The building workers came through strengthened by their fight, uniting their two unions into the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters. and Joiners.

A feature of the 1859 trial of strength was the splendid support given the workers by their wives, in spite of the hardships involved.

A receiving “officer who visitéd the home of a locked-out .

builder reported:

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‘I visited this: man’s lodging; he was out, but his wife was in: bed, with scarcely a rag to cover her, evidently sinking— from--want; the room contained scarcely an article of ‘furniture and presented a most destitute and neglected and dirty appearance. - : ‘She said: “We are starving, sir; we have neither fire nor . food.” a ;

. - §€ “Why,” I replied, “does not your husband go to work?” * “What?” she exclaimed, with considerable energy, “to ' become worse than a slave?””’

Unfair to Red Clydeside?

Henry PELLING’s pioneer ‘The’ British Communist Party. A Historical Profile’ is a work that calls for serious criticism: not at the level of James Klugmann’s review in the Daily Worker of October 2.

Klugmann professes indignation because Pelling mentions that, at its foundation, the party ‘consisted to a memorable extent of persons of non-English origin’.

‘For .Mr Pelling; he witheringly observes, ‘men like Gallacher, MacManus, J. T. Murphy and Robin Page Arnot. are aliens.’

~I don’t think either Arnot or Gallacher would be pleased if’ Klugmann were to call them ‘Englishmen’. He is not likely to'try it on Murphy (characteristic English name, that), since the. latter was expelled in 1932:. - os -_MacManus is dead, his ashes in the Kremlin wall, but if h _were not, and Klugmann called him English, I expect he would reply as on a famous occasion he replied to another James (J..H. Thomas): “Ye mauna say that, Jimmy!’

The prominent part played by Scots, Irish and Welsh in ‘the militant Left of the British Labour movement is; of course, a long-noticed fact. ; :

Klugmann will find an illuminating discussion of its significance in Trotsky’s “Where is Britain Going?’, published in * 1926 by the Communist Party of Great Britain.

‘To beat the Reds, go for sterling’

HAROLD WILSON seems to have startled some people at the Labour Party. conference with his warning about a : possible run on sterling. being organized by the Tories in the event of another Labour government.

Yet Marxists have long since shown that history gives us every reason to expect the British ruling class will use all : is, economic power, at the very least,.to frustrate any serious “threat to its fundamental iriterests.

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Naive unawareness of this springs eternal in the Right-wing _Labour breast. wo ; “During ‘the General Strike the. trade union leaders were shocked to learn that for the workers to use their. economic power in opposition to government policy was ‘unconstitu_tional’, and hastily called the whole thing off. ~ Kingsley’ Martin, in his ‘The: British Public ‘and- the General Strike’ (1926) pointed out that the very constitution itself was founded on a capitalist equivalent of the General- -«: Strike.

~ In. 1832, when the Duke of Wellington began to. form a government opposed to the Reform Bill, Francis Place and ‘ his friends. plastered London with posters saying: ‘To beat the Duke, go for gold’—an open incitement to depositors to withdraw their gold from the banks and create a currency :

A real socialist government must expect atleast similar methods of struggle to be. used: against itself, if not also the sort of military blackmail-used against the Liberal government in connexion with Irish Home Rule in 1914; and the movement should prepare in advance to deal with such moves.

. BRIAN PEARCE