A Policy for the Railways

In the forefront of coming struggles against the Tories will be the nationalized industries. The problems, therefore, will be political as well as industrial problems. The present leaders’ method of separating political and industrial action is a backward step.

In the main it is political decisions that determine the future of the nationalized industries. Therefore the workers in these industries must play a decisive part in the taking of such decisions. more cheaply with a smaller labour force after modernization, then why cannot the present labour force do the job but work shorter hours?

Contributed to its downfall The 40-hour week without loss of pay can be introduced. Longer holidays can be given.

And if that does not absorb all the surplus labour after modernization, the retirement age cafi be lowered.

Many problems on the railways are due to Tory policy. Will they be solved by a Labour government? Not with Labour’s present policies.

— The rejection of broader nationalization with real workers’ control contributed to the downfall of the last Labour government. : ;

So, :

The Labour government’s policy of placing ex-employers, brigadiers, generals and high Civil Servants—all of them Tories and full of hatred and contempt for the working class —in charge of the nationalized rai!ways and pi’s has made it impossible for them to be run in the interest of the working — We see from the present crisis how forces outside the nationalized industries can affect their working. Just taking the control out of the hands of private capital has not solved the basic question of unemployment in these industries.

On the railways redundancy threatens through loss of traffic. This is due to decreased demand outside. Sir Brian Robertson, in a letter to Harold Watkinson, the Tory Minister of Transport, tells of ‘a violent unexpected blow by the sharp setback in the output of steel, coal and other basic industries’.

This is the price Labour has paid for leaving the majority of our economy in the hands of private capital and therefore subjecting it to the capitalist crisis.

Kick out ex-owners It is impossible to build a defensive shield around nationalized industries unless the economy is planned and controlled in a socialist manner.

Therefore the first task of the next Labour government must be to nationalize the rest of the basic industries.

Kick out the ex-owners of these industries and allow the workers in them to elect committees and councils to run them. Only then will real socialist planning be possible.

We have been put off for long enough with compromise talk and the Right-wing ‘sacred cow’ of joint consultation. Many trade unionists have given up this one-sided farce long ago.

It is high time that the workers took a hand in the running of their own industries, so that the fruits of their labours are shared justly and the workers at large receive the full benefit of public ownership.

JANUARY 31, 19.59 ~ COLONIAL PEOPLES NEED NEW, SOCIALIST LEADERSHIP A cruciaL factor in the colonial and semi-colonial countries is: the absence of a real, independent working-class political leadership able to present an alternative policy to command the support of the peasants and the middle classes of the towns.

Economic backwardness is decisive: it means that the working class is small, still raw, emerging from its peasant or tribal shell.

Its ‘natural’ leaders tend to gravitate into the national movement and lose their class identity. But the correct policy is also lacking, and that is no less important.

It is in this light that the part played by the Communist Parties must be assessed. There is no doubt that these parties constitute a powerful pole of attraction, especially in Asia and to some extent in the Middle East.

Prestige of USSR and China Social-democratic and ‘liberal’ solutions have no real relevance in backward countries. Moreover the prestige of the USSR and China—backward countries which developed industrially—constitutes a tremendous capital for the Communist Parties.

But the fact is that these parties are largely middle class in leadership, composition and ideology.

And their policies have to be tailored to suit Moscow’s political needs, which do not necessarily coincide with those PLPDPD DL PDP PD IDL LP DPD ALD PP IP PIP IPI IID PLL PDS IRD DPSS This is the second of two articles about the class struggle in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. The first article appeared last week.

*. of the country concerned, to say the least. The capital may