Boilermakers out

interested in Left-wing ideas. But the millionaire Press was unwilling to let him think things out for himself.

The Socialist Labour League and The Newsletter believe that the treatment of David Williams is a matter of serious concern to all who value civil liberties. The Press Council should be asked to investigate the facts.

David’s headmaster is well satisfied with his record as a student. There is no suggestion that he has neglected his school work. GUTTER JOURNALISM Unscrupulous men If he had spent his spare time drilling in an officers’ training corps, there would have been no witch-hunt, no persecution, no nervous collapse.

The case of David Williams is an example of gutter journalism. It is a calculated attempt by highly-paid and unscrupulous men to inflame public opinion against the Socialist Labour League and a direct continBy Our Industrial Correspondent Over 1,500 members of the Boiler- involved in the dispute. makers’ Society employed in Cammell Six hundred workers have already been laid off. One of the first to go on Monday Laird’s shipyard at Birkenhead went was a shipwright steward. The firm on strike last Monday. threatened to lay off another 5,000 this week-end. The men laid off have been They walked out when the firm refused refused unemployment benefit. to give two boilermakers another job pending settlement of a demarcation problem Expelled by 9 votes involving boilermakers and shipwrights.

VICTIMIZED The strikers feel that the two workers have been victimized by the employers, who By 13 votes to 11, the general have provoked a dispute that could have Management committee of Finchley been settled between the two unions.

Constituency Labour Party decided on As usual Cammell Laird’s have been quick to use the Press in an attempt to Tuesday night to accept Transport create antagonism towards the strikers. The House’s ban on The Newsletter, with Manchester Guardian wrote on Tuesday as its consequence the ‘termination of that the stoppage was over who should chalk a line. membership of the party’ by Brian , ‘Basically, this is a demarcation dispute,’ Pearce, a member of the paper’s alleges the firm’s Press officer. Editorial Board.

_ The Chairman, Councillor A. E. Tomlinson, of the Union of Shop, Distributive W. Kerr, Merseyside delegate of the and Allied Workers, said they had no Lawrence and Wishart’s review of forthcoming publications.

Lawrence and Wishart are the British Communist Party’s publishers, and in offering a book called ‘Kerala—Past and Present’, by A. K. Gopalan, to be issued this summer, they write:

‘We are left with the conviction that whatever the future may hold for Kerala, the answer to this question of communism through the ballot box lies in the events that are taking place there.’

. was instructed to prepare a letter to Transport House deploring the method it had chosen for dealing with The Newsletter.

A motion from Pearce’s own ward protesting against recent expulsions was not on the agenda. It was explained that it had ‘got lost’ in the party office.

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Brian Pearce joined the Labour Party in December 1957 on his expulsion from the Communist Party, after twenty-three years’ membership of that organization.