The Newsletter, vol. 3 no. 107

NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF LABOUR MEETS ON NOVEMBER 15—ONE YEAR AFTER THE NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL RANK-AND-FILE CONFERENCE—THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF THE NEWSLETTER IS SUMMONING A OF THE LABOUR MOVEMENT AROUND A COMMON POLICY OF INDUSTRIAL AND To the National Assembly of Labour will come delegates and observers from trade union branches, trades councils, district committees, shop stewards’ committees and rank-and-file movements in industry; from local Labour Parties and Labour youth sections; from the rank and file of the Communist Party; from all sections of the peace movement.

The Assembly will hammer out a common programme on five key questions now facing the working (1) The fight against the H-bomb; fight for shorter hours, higher wages, the defence of jobs and the defence of shop stewards; (3) The fight for the extension of, nationalization; (4) The fight against oppression’in the colonies and against racialism in Britain; (5) The fight for democracy inside the Labour Party.

The Editorial Board of The Newsletter has issued ; the following statement on the calling of the Assembly:

BritisH Labour is heading for its greatest crisis ON NOVEMBER [5 — ITS AIM WILL BE TO UNITE THE RANK AND FILE

since 1926.

Last November the National Industrial Rank-and-File Conference warned the working class of the need to resist the employers’ offensive if they were not to be driven back to the hungry thirties.

We said the employers were preparing for all-out attacks on the workers. Our warning is daily being confirmed by events.

The printworkers are entering a battle against stubborn employers. The miners have been told that ‘grave hardship’

ON A CERTAIN ‘HONOUR’

‘We are net ruled by murderers, but only by—their friends.’ —Rudyard Kipling awaits them if they press their wage claim—this threat is contained in a secret document which Sir James Bowman, chairman of the National Coal Board, has circulated to leaders of the National Union of Mineworkers.

The dockers are facing new attacks. The hosiery workers have sustained savage wage cuts. The Paisley millworkers (Continued overleaf)

180 Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4 Telephone Macaulay 7029 SATURDAY, JUNE 20, 1959 TT HE four basic facts about the printing dispute are strategy of our own, and bring the printing employers to their knees.

Capitalist newspapers are wailing that strike action was how disputes used to be settled in the nineteenth century; that workers should be content to accept the findings of arbitration courts (on which employing-

‘IF a communist is musical, if he goes to concerts and theatres, we cannot expect him to sacrifice these pleasures if the situation does not require such a sacrifice.

‘If he is the father of a family and wishes to devote part of his life to his children, although we may ask much of him we cannot demand that he should neglect his children.’

So spoke Trotsky at the fourth congress of the Communst . International, in 1922. This diary* reflects a period in the later life of the great revolutionary when he had all too much occasion to concern himself with his children—who were being persecuted in the Soviet Union—and to seek consolation frém the music he loved.

PROFOUND

This was the latter part of his stay in France and the beginning of his stay in Norway, between February and September 1935.

It was a period of extreme frustration for Trotsky when, under police supervision, hindered and prevented at every turn from direct political activity, he had to watch the passing of the communist movement into a new phase of degeneration, with the people’s front and the Stalin-Laval communiqué.

‘There is something particularly nightmarish in the fact that the oppressed masses searching for a way out are being offered, under the labels of Marxism and Bolshevism, the very ideas in the fight against which Marxism was shaped and Bolshevism developed.’

The diary is full of profound. reflections .en a variety of topics On the beginnings of the ‘purge’ frenzy in“ Russia following the murder of Kirov, the campaign which was to culminate in the notorious Moscow trials of 1936-38:

PROCEDURES ‘Something there is out of order, very much out of order; “disorder” lies somewhere deep within the bureaucracy itself, or more correctly within its ruling stratum; the “amalgam” of dregs and trash is directed against some third element, not (Continued on back page)

* L. D. Trotsky, Diary in Exile, 1935 (Faber and Faber, 21s.)

these:

(1) The 200,000 printworkers involved have a cast-iron case. Their claims for a 40-hour week and wage increases were repeatedly and totally rejected by employers who can well afford to concede these claims.

(2) Even when the union representatives said they were prepared ‘not to stick rigidly to their claims’, but were willing to bargain, the employers’ spokesman replied that he was ‘not empowered to move’. In short, the employers wanted a show-down. document handed to the unions on May 8—a ‘tentative list’ of twenty-two suggestions ‘improving productivity’, was in fact a charter for the abolition of union safeguards and the creation of unemployment in the industry.

(3) Behind the printing employers stands the whole employing class, as the call by the British Employers’ Confederation makes clear: ‘Self-interest alone demands that the printing employers’ policy should receive the maximum support from all other employers’, since if the printworkers win, ‘employers in other industries will find pressure from their own unions increased’.

(4) Though the employers are united behind the master printers, the Labour movement is not united behind the- printworkers. The employers have a strategy; the workers have not. If the printers lose, then the whole working class will feel the impact of their defeat. If the printers win, it will be correspondingly easier for other sections to press their claims. It is the duty of all other sections to rally behind the printworkers, to match the employers’ solidarity and strategy with a 100 per cent. solidarity and a concerted ASSEMBLY OF LABOUR (Continued from front page)

are in battle against speed-ups. In the Midlands the employers have plunged the motor industry into chaos.

The employing class and its government want a show-down with Labour. But trade union leaders fail miserably to prepare their members for struggle. These leaders are helping the employers in their offensive.

Labour’s political leaders are helping the employing class, too, by supporting British manufacture of the H-bomb.

The third largest trade union in the country, the National Union of General and Municipal Workers, has voted for nuclear disarmament. But Bevan bangs the table with his fist and insists that Labour retains the bomb.

Those who defend the bomb are defending capitalism.

It is high time for the working class to pass from the defensive to the offensive.

The cowardly, middle-of-the-road, do-nothing policies of the Labour Party and Communist Party leaders will only pave the way to defeat.

Defeat in industry. Defeat in the General Election—or, equally disastrous, Labour in office without a socialist policy. Nuclear annihilation. This is where the present mis-leaders . of the Labour movement are heading.

The workers have it in their power to defeat the employers. class representatives have a majority!). A stoppage on the scale of the printing dispute, complains the Manchester Guardian, ‘will be an experience new to a whole generation of trade unionists and employers’. There are many ‘new experiences’ in store for the employing class, as workers under attack face the alternatives of fighting it out or seeing their standards and conditions ruthlessly cut. The printworkers, the miners, the dockers, the railwaymen, the building all are finding that these are in fact the alternatives before them.

All the more reason, therefore, for the working class not to let the employers take on and smash one section after another. Let the dockers declare that not a single page of matter printed abroad will be imported while the strike is on. Let the railwaymen refuse to transport ‘black’ goods. Let the electricians cut off the juice from the establishments affected. Let rank-and-file committees spring up to build unity at the base. Let Labour use its full industrial strength to help the printworkers—and thereby the whole working class— achieve a resounding victory.

Look at the Manchester Guardian again. Its headline on Tuesday read: ‘Papers and ink. Keeping two disputes apart.’ Here is the employers’ strategy in a nutshell. Rank-and-file printworkers know that there is only one answer: to call out the Natsopa workers who make and distribute ink, so shutting down national newspapers and bringing pressure to bear on the employers at their most vulnerable spot. In reality this is one dispute. It should be fought as one dispute. Put an end to the shilly-shallying. The workers have immense power in their hands. If this power is used, a long-drawn-out conflict can be prevented and the employing class can be taught a lesson that is already overdue.

The idea of rank-and-file movements is gaining support inside the trade unions. The hosiery workers have formed such a movement.

But the industrial struggle is not enough. The need now is for unity of all sections of the Labour movement around a common policy of industrial and political struggle.

A great movement can and must be built, uniting the shop stewards in the factories, the miners, the dockers, the campaigners against the H-bomb, the local Labour Parties that want a socialist policy, the coloured immigrants: every section that is threatened by the employing-class offensive.

Millions of workers can be mobilized around a common policy, linking the fight against the H-bomb, the fight on hours, wages, jobs and stewards, the fight for extended nationalization, the fight against ‘oppression in the colonies and racialism in Britain, and the fight for democracy in the Labour Party.

Even if some workers disagree with one or other aspect of ; this programme, nevertheless these demands can draw together all those who want to see a vigorous struggle against capitalism and to avert the nuclear disaster that capitalism is preparing.

On November 15, one year .after the National Industrial Rank-and-File Conference, the Editorial Board of The Newsletter is calling a National Assembly of Labour to discuss this programme and how to fight for it.

This will be more than a recall of the Rank-and-File It will bring together the political and the industrial wings of the movement.

It will provide an arena where shop stewards, rank-and-file militants, active members of local Labour Parties, rank-and-file communists, young workers, women workers, members of the peace movement and coloured immigrants can discuss their problems, pool their ,experiences, and hammer out a common policy for a united battle against their common enemies.

The National Assembly of Labour will be a decisive answer to the Tories. It will call a halt to the Labour leaders’ retreat.

All who support the calling of the National Assembly of Labour should begin work now to ensure its success. No time should be lost in setting up local campaign committees to mobilize the widest possible representation from factories, pits, docks and organizations of the Labour movement.

EDITORIAL BOARD

THE greatest working-class demonstration Paisley has seen took place last Sunday, when 1,200 millworkers marched to the Town Hall for a mass meeting in support of their three-weeks struggle.

Determination to carry through their fight against speed-ups and reduced working conditions was clearly shown by the men, women, young girls and boys as they marched through the streets.

Yet the meeting revealed two weaknesses which—if the strikers do not take steps to remove them—could lead to the collapse of the struggle:

(1) Leading officials of the National Union of Dyers, Bleachers and Textile Workers have been conducting secret negotiations with representatives of J. and P. Coats.

(2) The leaders have made no serious preparations to campaign for the ‘blacking’ of all goods, at the docks and elsewhere, entering or leaving the mills.

Solidarity could cripple them Solidarity action by dockers, railwaymen and_ transport workers could soon cripple Coats’s. But it needs direct contact with rank-and-file workers to carry it through.

Failure to accomplish this by the fourth week of the strike is obviously connected with the secret negotiations with the employers, which lasted for about two weeks.

What reason can there be to keep anything hidden from the strikers?

First the employers raised the union officials’ hopes with a statement that a settlement could be arrived at. Then they blew these hopes to pieces.

Obviously the officials have been reasoning along these lines: if there is a possibility of a negotiated settlement, then why seek support from other sections for the strike?

The employers’ tactics were designed to hold back the officials from developing the necessary campaign to mobilize the maximum pressure on J. and P. Coats. And these tactics succeeded.

Socialist Labour League proposals Now the campaign must be got under way. In a leaflet addressed to the strikers, and to other workers in the Glasgow area, the Glasgow branch of the Socialist Labour League puts forward the following proposals:

(5) There should be an end to all secret negotiations.

(6) A broad strike committee, elected by the strikers themselves, should be set up.

By Our Industrial Correspondent

THE new body finishing shop at Standards, Coventry, came to a stop on Monday night when the management sacked all 120 workers employed on the new Triumph Herald.

They did this while stewards were in the middle of negotiations on piece-work prices, and after they had agreed to lift an overtime ban to allow the negotiations to continue.

In fifteen weeks of negotiations the management have refused to make any concessions.

Bill Warman, chairman of the joint stewards’ committee, told nre: ‘It’s obvious the management are looking for a show-down. They: have made preparations for a big fight. We are determined that they will not employ any new men in the body shop until every one of the sacked men is reinstated.”

The workers are angry about Press lies that they are demanding £50 a week. They are demanding piece-work prices comparable with those paid to men doing comparable work.

FourtH strike in a fortnight at Nuffield Metal Products, Birmingham, has brought the whole factory to a standstill.

The 500 crane drivers and other day workers who downed tools after four months of negotiations for an increase of sixpence an hour are paid an average of £9 10s. a week.

‘We will not return to work until the management make us a firm offer or agree to negotiate a raise for all our strikers’, Bro. J. Farrington, assistant Transport and General Workers’ Union convener, told me.

‘We went through the negotiating machinery right up to local conference, but they threw out our demand, although we proved conclusively that other British Motor Corporation firms were paying their day workers much higher wages.’

Bros. Johnstone and Fennel said: ‘We are only fighting a battle of justice for a decent living wage.’ Another striker said the charge-hands had just been given 15s. a week more —‘and we have as much right to our raise’.

(1) An immediate appeal should be made to the dockers to ‘black’ all goods to and from J. and P. Coats.

(2) An immedate appeal should be made to the Amalgamated Engineering Union, the Electrical Trades Union and all other unions whose members are still working on plant maintenance at J. and P. Coats, asking them to bring these members out straight away.

(3) A campaign should be waged throughout the length and breadth of Scotland to raise financial help for the strikers.

(4) Leaflets should be addressed to those still working, explaining why they should join the strike.

Sacking of fourteen Electrical Trades Union members on the H. F. Scrivens job (Ford site), Dagenham, Essex, has led to a protest strike by 130 electricians.

There was an eaflier dispute because of the management’s attempt to introduce a _ two-shift system without prior negotiation, and because of their refusal to negotiate the reinstatement of a member who was sacked when he came back to work after being five weeks off sick.

‘We consider this to be an engineered redundancy, because we were requested to work overtime after we resumed on June 9’, says a statement issued by the strike committee.

By Our Industrial Correspondent BRIXTON labourers’ branch of the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers is sending delegates to the rank-and-file meeting of building trade workers that is being held at London’s Holborn Hall on Sunday, June 21, at 11 a.m.

The meeting has been called by the campaign committee at the Token Construction Co.’s Southwark Street site, where seven sacked workers are staying outside the gate in a fight against an employer who ‘by constantly sacking and starting’ is trying to prevent militants from building a strong job organization.

‘We have remained outside the gate because we think it is time to call a halt to this racket’, says the campaign committee in a statement being distributed on jobs all over London.

The committee points out Tokens are still operating overtime despite the supposed redundancy, and demands the immediate withdrawal of overtime permits.

Sunday’s conference will discuss the fight against sackings and: victimization, and for higher wages and shorter hours. HULL DOCKERS FIGHT FOR MECHANICAL AS LIKE AS CHALK AND CHEESE HOW A UNION OFFICIAL HELPED

AN attempt to get Hull dockers to discharge a cargo of oil meal by hand-filling instead of mechanically led to about 3,000 men taking strike action on Monday. The whole port came to a standstill.

Policy of the Transport and General Workers’ Union officials was that work on the affected ship should continue— in spite of the long and bitter struggle in 1954 to end handfilling in the Port of Hull.

The stevedoring company and the ship were prepared to use grabs. But the cargo receivers—believed to be the British Oil and Cake Mills—insisted on discharge by hand so that the cargo could be checkweighed on deck.

When the gang walked off the ship, dockers on about twenty other vessels stopped work in sympathy.

Hull dockers are angry about the inability of the official negotiating body to reach any satisfactory decisions. For instance, one ship under dispute left the port five weeks ago, and the dockers have still not got a rate for the job!

Many militants believe it is high time for a show-down on the question of hand-filling.

GLASGOW DOCKERS FACE ATTEMPT TO From Our Scottish Correspondent

FRESH attacks on the conditions of dockers at the KGV dock, Shieldhall, Glasgow, including attempts by the employers to break the zoning agreement, are expected.

The agreement drawn up several years ago between the Scottish Transport and General Workers’ Union and _ the National Dock Labour Board allocated a given number of men to each dock, including 500 to the KGV.

What the employers want This number could be increased ‘only at the request of the dock committee, when there was available work.

At present there are 150 men stamping daily, because there is no work for them. Nevertheless, fifty more men were transferred to the KGV dock the week before last.

At a meeting between union officials and employers an answer to the dockers’ protest was promised ‘in two weeks’.

Peter Dane, a member of the dock committee, told me the men were prepared to take action if the employers do not withdraw their move.

Last Friday two of us took copies of the Miner to sell for the first time at Hatfield Main colliery, south Yorkshire—a coal-field which has anything up to 1,000 ‘unofficial’ strikes every year.

The Miner is a fortnightly paper written by working miners and published by Bradford (Lancs.) branch of the National Union of Mineworkers.

It calls for a policy of struggle against the closing of pits and against the National Coal Board’s attacks on price-lists. It criticizes leaders of the NUM for failing in this task.

After ten minutes at Hatfield Main sales were still slow. Only half a dozen had gone.

Then the union secretary, a local Labour councillor by the name of Kelly, came out of his box and advanced towards us, armed with a large piece of chalk.

Tv TWELVE INCHES HIGH. He proceeded to chalk on the ground in front of us, in letters 12in. high, the words: ‘THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL TRADE UNION PAPER.’

We assured him and the gathering crowd that he was saving us a good deal of breath, for we had been at great pains to explain to all our customers that we were not selling the Yorkshire Miner.

The Yorkshire Miner is the official organ of the Yorkshire NUM, and is largely written by officials— particularly by Machen, the president.

We tried to engage Bro. Kelly in discussion. But after a couple of sentences shouted across the yard he retired to his box, from which he did not emerge until we had left.

From then on, as the men walked up for their pay, we called their attention to the secretary’s warning and pointed out that the Coal Board and the local Tory Press were against the Miner.

Vv THE MAGIC WORD. And the men showed their opinion of the magic word ‘official’ by buying sixty copies in the next half-hour. _ The miners have seen the union, the Labour Party leaders, the Communist Party leaders, the NCB and the government in every ‘official’ statement, telling them for many years to work harder and help build towards future prosperity.

Now they are threatened with unemployment and wage cuts. Because the union has signed an agreement which makes ‘official’ strikes impossible, the men have to fight back with unofficial stoppages.

And Bro. Kelly thinks he can stop miners reading a paper by saying it is not ‘official’!

Another docker, Willie Burns, said it was a deliberate plan by the employers ‘to create a situation where five men are fighting for one job’.

;

Another grievance of the men at this dock is that they have to sign on three times on a Friday, and are paid only after the third signing—even though the bosses know there will be no work all that day.

Consequently some men have to spend 6s. to 7s. on bus fares there and back to collect around 12s. for the day.

Glasgow portworkers are discussing the possibility of forming an all-Glasgow docks committee to fight the employers’ attacks.

THEY’RE STILL MAKING BIG PROFITS THE recently-published report and accounts of the National Coal Board throw light on the crisis in the coal-mining industry.

The capitalist Press has gleefully used the final net loss of £3,500,000 in its preparations for the next phase of the employers’ offensive.

Though output for 1958 was down to 201,800,000 tons, as against 207,400,000 tons in 1957, output per man-shift of salable coal was a record 25.6 cwt.

Allowing for the ending of Saturday working, the cutting of overtime and the loss of 22,604 men from the industry in the year, this shows there was far greater exploitation of the miner during 1958.

This trend continues. It is one of the major factors in the growing wave of strikes and restrictions inside the industry.

More pit closures coming?

They want to get more work out of fewer miners. Reports that the next round of pit closures will involve 100 pits and well over 60,000 men have not been denied.

Colliery profits have gone up from _ £6,100,000 to £11,400,000. Opencast provided the Board with a further clear £8,200,000.

This does not include the even larger profits taken by the private contractors, which show the need, not for closing opencast working, but for the Board to kick out the private operators, work opencast sites directly and use the money gained to reduce the working week of all pitmen.

The figures show a tax accumulation of £10 million. In the * past the board has paid tax when it has had a recorded loss. For example, in 1952 it paid £5,100,000 tax and sustained a net loss of £16,500,000. The only other major outlay was some £32,100,000 paid for interest charges to the capitalist class via the Minister of Power.

In twelve years of nationalization £221,600,000 has been extracted in this way.

It seems a fair claim that if there are to be any economies in the industry, then this is the place to start.

INDECISION IS HAMPERING LONDON serious the union leaders are about fighting for the 40-hour week. The Right wing case will boil down to ‘Wait for the Labour government’.

If the answer to the LTE is anything short of preparing for struggle, with work to rule and overtime bans as a beginning, the LTE will win another round.

One obstacle to a united struggle needs to be noted: the open hostility of several prominent officials and representatives recently to the employment of coloured and women conductors.

This is an attempt to divert attention from their own failure to fight the LTE and the Tory government.

THE joint delegate conference representing London busmen will meet in a few weeks’ time, in an atmosphere of indecision.

The thirteen-man negotiating committee will come back from London Transport’s 55 Broadway headquarters with nothing positive. Nor are they likely to have any countermeasures to propose.

The London Transport Executive has said ‘No’ to the 40hour week. It has said ‘No’ to the demand that the driver’s wage be paid for one-man operation.

And now it has threatened to cancel the three routes affected unless negotiations proceed on a ‘different’ basis—i.e., unless the sell-out proposais for 51 per cent. of the conductor’s wages are cut down to nearer its own figure of 15 per cent, Several other conditions are under negotiation: 11-day fortnight amendment; trolley-bus practices and _ privileges when converted to Diesel operation; and so on.

Determined to carry on It is clear that the LTE is going to give nothing away, and is determined to carry on its offensive against the busmen and the inside staffs.

But the present attitude of the trade union officials and the elected representatives will not help the busmen to make a realistic counter-attack.

The biennial conference of the Transport and General Workers’ Union meets soon, and then we shall see how CLERICAL WORKERS TRYING TO CHANGE

Amalgamated Engineering Union stewards who met recently in Leeds pledged full support for their national committee’s demands for the 40-hour week and higher wages.

A resolution, carried unanimously, called for efforts to bring members full knowledge of all developments, by means of (1) full use of union journals; (2) meetings at district level; and (3) distribution of leaflets.

The convener who moved the resolution was expelled from the Labour Party the following evening for being associated with The Newsletter.

‘MANOEUVRES’

THE executive of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament has warned its supporters against helping the ‘hostile Press’ to spread the impression that the Stalinist-controlled British Peace Committee’s demonstration on June 28 is ‘a kind of half-hearted Aldermaston’, sponsored by the CND.

Pointing out that the Communist Party ‘agrees with Conservative and Labour policy in advocating that Britain should continue to concentrate on the hope of an. agreement, between the powers’, and that party secretary John Gollan had specifically reproached the CND for its unilateralism, the statement adds:

‘A vague demonstration for peace which goes no further than to press our government to press other governments to behave sensibly . .. . may or may not be worth while.

‘But if it came to be supposed that the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is so easily satisfied, the sharp cutting edge of our movement would very soon be blunted and we should eventually find it dissolving in a mixed sea of political manoeuvre and dangerously over-generalized aspirations to peace.

Members of the National Coal Board headquarters branch of the Clerical and Administrative Workers’ Union are trying to get their union’s policy on nuclear disarmament changed.

They are seeking the 5,100 signatures of CAWU members which are necessary for a referendum to be held reversing the 1958 annual conference’s rejection of a motion calling for nuclear disarmament.

‘Changes in scientific and public opinion since then have been so great that members may want another opportunity to express their views’, say the sponsors, who include two Labour MPs and one of the union’s vice-presidents, Peter Maurice.

U.S. BIG BUSINESS SURVEYS ‘ENDLESS CLASS WARFARE’

From Our New York Correspondent LaTEST issue of the big business weekly U.S. News and World Report forgets all that capitalist—and ‘new Left’—propaganda about there being no class struggle

ii Nigerian Seamen Work Almost Round the Clock ii By a Nigerian passenger on a British ship RITISH shipping companies still make Nigerian seamen on their ships like slaves. They do not care about the health work 12 to 16 hour a day, seven days a week. On of their African crews. carnival nights, the crews work an 18-hour day. Thus the white crews get two kinds of dress: one for There is no kind of overtime or bonus. The Nigerian tropical weather, the other for cold weather. But the African crews are issued only with tropical dress, which does not seamen start work at 6 a.m. and work an 84-hours stretch without any break for tea. They take their meals while they protect them when the weather is cold.

Nigerian seamen are deeply disappointed in our country’s work.

political leaders and students who have travelled on these At 2.39 p.m. they knock off. Some start work again at mail-boats and seen the appalling conditions under which our 3.30 p.m., others at 4.30 p.m. And from then on there is seamen work, yet have never made any kind of protest to the no more break until 10.30 p.m., and sometimes 11.30 p.m.

shipping companies.

On carnival nights, the public room crews do not knock off until 2 a.m: “By the time they get something to eat and have a bath another day is ready to start.

If there are two or more importunate passengers among the JUNIOR PARTNERS. How can they, when they want to twenty-seven that one may serve, he will scarcely get an hour’s become junior partners of imperialist firms? rest the whole of the day. He must wait for passengers who One seamen said to me: ‘Instead of helping us to fight come late for meals. these vultures who have brought nothing but poverty and insecurity to the mass of workers in the continent of Africa, they treat us just as the bosses treat us. ‘How can such people fight for freedom for the workers TROUBLESOME PASSENGERS. Neither the captain nor and farmers who are suffering? And how do we expect the the chief steward bothers to warn troublesome passengers, white man to respect us if our fellow-Africans look down because they do not have to wait on them. on us because we happen to be workers?’

For working around the clock in this way, my fellowcountrymen receive £20 5s. a month. Out of this they buy their own food, as they are not accustomed to English food.

BITTER FIGHT. There is a general feeling among the British seamen, however, work 8 hours a day for five and seamen that only a strong Labour movement in Nigeria will a half days a week. They get double time for Sunday and be able to fight for the interests of the working class, for a three hours free time after eight hours of work.

reduction in the long hours of work without loss of pay.

They break for meals. And they receive £28 a month, For four years the rank and file of the Nigerian seamen’s excluding overtime and bonus.

union engaged in a bitter fight against their corrupt leaders.

While British crews are served with turkey and chicken, the Last year they succeeded in throwing them out of office. Nigerian seamen, who do all the dirty and hard work, are They still have much to do to reorganize the union and denied the right to eat these. Never mind the flesh—they transform it into a fighting union. But since the change of are not even allowed to take the bones to make soup. officers, there have been signs of some slight retreat on the The shipping companies make big profits by using Africans part of the companies.

TT TUTDUQUQUUQQUTTETCUEUOQUQUUUEETEUULCLUQUOQOUEUOE TU CUOOUOUUUETHH HTC between workers and bosses in the USA. the open....

‘But the conference of the party that may shortly thereafter ‘There are signs of new and growing antagonisms between employers and unions,’ says its June 15 issue. ‘There is a be called upon to form Her Majesty’s government will not be war on that shows no sign of ending.’ the best place for exposing the muddle.

Stating approvingly that employers are holding out longer ‘It will be a minor national disaster if the last Labour against union demands, the magazine cites the following conference before an election votes down a proposal to evidence to support its view that class warfare is sharpening: renounce the western alliance by only the barest majority A strike of textile workers in North Carolina has dragged on and after a bitter battle.’

for six and a half months;. —Economist, June 13, 1959. A strike of cbal miners in eastern Kentucky has been going on since March 9; and TROTSKY’S DIARY (Continued from front page) A strike has been going on in Wisconsin against the Kohler belonging either to the princes or the Trotskyists—most likely Co. for five years, and there is no sign of settlement.

against liberal tendencies within the ranks of the ruling In addition, the steel barons ‘have taken a strong stand bureaucracy,’ against wage increases’. On the killing of the imperial family in 1918, instead of There is increasing solidarity among American capitalists.

bringing the tsar to trial as Trotsky had planned:

Six airlines will share profits if one is shut down by a strike.

' ‘It is possible that besides the time factor (we would “not The steel bosses are considering a similar arrangement.

have time” to bring a big trial to its conclusion, since the Statistics show that twice as many man-days have been lost decisive events at the front might intervene), Lenin had in strikes so far this year in the USA than in the same months another consideration with regard to the tsar’s family. of 1958.

‘Under judicial procedures, of course, execution of the family would have been impossible. The tsar’s family fell victim to that principle which constitutes the axis _ of monarchy: dynastic succession.’

‘If the Labour leaders can rise over this awkwardness [on And on many other episodes in the history of the Russian the growth of anti-H-obomb sentiment] without loudly and international working-class movement. advertising it, so much the better for both themselves and the It is to be hoped that more documents from Trotsky’s country. archives, now in the keeping of Harvard. University, will be ‘That may seem an improper thing to say in a democracy published as this diary has been, and so will be added to the that is based on honest differences of sober opinion, which available writings of the outstanding political thinker of the generally need to be publicly debated and brought out into Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (T.U.), r.o. 180 Cirpham High St Published by The Newsletter, 180 Clapham High St. London. SW4.

- S.W.4 Registered at the GPO as a newspaper