The Newsletter, vol. 3 no. 108

Gaitskell and Gollan Want H-Bombs Kept Socialists Want Them Swept Away!

Weekly Journal of the Socialist Labour League _Vol. 3, No. 108 Threepence By WILLIAM HUNTER © SEVENTY-EIGHT Africans, members of the crew of the Another accusation was that the three officers had plotted Elder Dempster liner M.V. Apapa, berthed at Canada with the ship’s doctor to sack men who had protested. A no. 1 dock, Liverpool walked. off the ship on list was drawn up, the petition said, naming those who Wednesday evening when the chief steward,’ the second were to be failed at. the next medical. examination.

The petition warned that if the crew’s demands were not steward and the chief storekeeper came aboard.

met they would withdraw their labour.

The men, all but three of whom are Nigerians, had been An Elder Dempster director, in a paternalistic letter to on strike since Saturday morning demanding the transfer the crew, said that difficulties could be settled by ‘a sensible of these three officers for discriminating against African approach to senior officers’, or, failing that, by an approach members of the crew.

to the shipping master ‘on your return to your home port’.

The Apapa walk-off was the climax of a week of protests The letter was rejected by the crew, who knew that if which began with a petition to the company and included they waited till they returned to Lagos they would be waiting a picket round its offices last Saturday morning.

until they were discharged.

On Monday morning the captain and a Board of Trade ‘Step kicking Africans around’

official told them they had been docked two days’ pay ;

The pickets carried placards bearing slogans such as ‘African for stopping work and ordered them back. seamen demand better working conditions’, ‘Stop kicking On Monday and again on Tuesday, Board of Trade officials . Africans around’ and ‘End cheap labour’. visited the ship and asked to see the crew one by one. The The petition alleged: men refused.

Police visited the Sailors’. Home making inquiries about THAT the chief steward instituted a new rule for Africans the dispute. Elder Dempster officials also went there to only, which cut down on the brands of cigarettes they Task for men to work on the ship. They had no success.

could buy; THAT on June 13 the ‘chief steward stopped the chief dockers’ ‘sunport’

Appeal for docke ppo butcher from giving steak to the African crew, saying that ah ORY only EF: meropeans cou ould be serveg Way d with steak; Sia The Apapa men are determined to hold out, and the crews of West African ships berthed in Liverpool have THAT the chief steward was abusive, and pushed Africans sent protest telegrams to the company and to the Ministry around;

; of Transport saying they are resolved to support their fellowTHAT the second steward threatened to black-list men who countrymen.

.

refused to wash down his motor-car during working hours The seamen have issued a leaflet appealing for the support.

on June 16. and sympathy of Merseyside dockers.

By The Editor WHILE Gaitskell and Bevan have been fighting at various meetings this week to curb Labour opposition to the H-bomb (and to find some way of getting anti-H-bomb trade unions to switch their votes behind their members’ backs) a much less publicized meeting has taken place at Geneva. It was the hundredth meeting of the conference on the prohibition of nuclear tests.

You might think that after a hundred meetings this conference has made—well, a little bit of progress, at least, towards ending the pollution of our air and our food and the hazarding of future generations. national filibustering match started.

You would be wrong. Dead wrong. Here’s an Reading the report of the hundredth session, which took international conference on one clear-cut specific place on Monday, is like reading a transcript of a conversation among madmen. They say that Nero fiddled while Rome question that after one hundred meetings hasn’t made burned. At Geneva they’re repeating the same things over an inch, or a centimetre, or a verst of progress.

and over again while the strontium level rises, while the.

In fact Sir Michael Wright and Mr Ormsby-Gore and Mr radio-active fall-out over Britain has doubled in twelve months.

James Bosworth of America and Mr Tsarapkin, as far as The topic at the hundredth meeting was the problem of anybody can tell. are right where they were when this inter(Continued on back page)

ae THE NEV) SLETTER 180 Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4 Telephone Macaulay 7029 SATURDAY, JUNE 27, 1959 From Our Merseyside Correspondent

been rushed out at breakneck speed. The reason is plain. There are three major trade union conferences in a fortnight’s time at which the H-bomb will be discussed. With the National Union of General and Municipal Workers already on record against the bomb, the Labour leaders are seeking to head off the growing demand for unilateral renunciation of the bomb by Britain. Between now and the Labour Party conference every trick in the book will be used _to prevent a majority for the opponents of the bomb.

The plan for a so-called ‘non-nuclear club’ is one such trick. What imperialist country will voluntarily renounce nuclear weapons? Is de Gaulle likely to abdicate the glory that in his eyes a French H-bomb would bring to France? Labour’s plan would leave Britain inside. NATO: it would retain Améfican rere A nuclear bases and stockpiles” on ‘BritisW soil. In short, the plan is a device whereby a Labour government would continue imperialist war preparations while proclaiming itself virtuously ‘non-nuclear’. It would ' be like one member of a gang of robbers, in whose . house was discovered an arsenal of machine-guns, ’ protesting that he personally was pledged to fire only a revolver. It is a shoddy and shady substitute for a fighting socialist policy on this question, a policy of . mobilizing international working-class action against ' H-bombs and their makers.

It is clear that the fake ‘Lefts’ on the Labour Party executive failed to put up any kind of fight against this plan. They are good at making hand-on-heart speeches; but when it comes to a fight these people’s spines turn to jelly. It is equally clear that there is now practically no difference between official Labour Party apd official Communist Party policy on the H-bomb. ‘The Daily Worker emphasizes the demand for summit talks, and goes out of its way to~stress the ‘positive points’ in Gaitskell’s document. The Communist Party leaders share the Labour leaders’ fear of working-class action against war preparations. Communist Party and Labour Party leaders alike are for the H-bomb, and against its consistent opponents, the Socialist Labour League and The Newsletter.

We were proscribed, among other things, for proclaiming that only the strength of the organized Labour movement can end the menace of nuclear weapons and rocket bases. Those who bid us pin our faith on statesmen and their top-level meetings— gatherings of robbers discussing a redivision of the loot—are disarming the working class in face of its enemies. The answer to the H-bomb and all its perils

L ABOUR’S new document on nuclear weapons has THERE was a ‘sorting-out’ by the firm when suspended men presented themselves for work at Cammell Laird’s, Birkenhead, on Wednesday.

After keeping the suspended men believing they would be reinstated when the boilermakers’ strike ended, the firm curtly told large numbers that they were sacked. Others were told they were still suspended.

Approximately 150 boilermakers were sacked or suspended when they refused to work on the job that was in dispute before the strike.

An ‘unofiicial’ meeting held in Liverpool on Sunday unanimously passed a resolution demanding that the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions convene a meeting of all Cammell Laird workers immediately to decide on a policy of resistance to sackings and suspensions.

The need was stressed for a strong shop stewards’ committee in the yard which would strive to overcome sectional differences by militant policies. ;

By Our Industrial Correspondent PRINTWORKERS employed by the Co-operative Wholesale Society printing works at Longsight, Manchester, are angry because the CWS, which is claimed to be a part of the Labour movement, is a member of the British Federation of Master Printers.

The federated chapel, representing all print unions at the Longsight works, has sent the following resolution to the CWS:

“We, the federated chapel of the CWS Longsight printing works, call on the CWS directorate to consider, at this late hour, the withdrawal of notices, and, further, to reconsider their position on being members of the British Federation of Master Printers.

‘It is our belief they are leaving our democratic movement open to criticism. They are being pawns in the hands of big business, and their position is incompatible with the beliefs of Co-operators.’

A union militant told me: ‘Seeing the Co-operative movement was founded by working men to replace exploitation by a co-operative society, it is a scandal that the CWS directors should be in the same camp as the enemy.

‘The master printers, backed by the British Employers’ : Confederation and the Tory government, are out to smash the unions. And the CWS is with them. Robert Owen would turn in his grave.’

The 500 workers at the Longsight printworks are solidly together with the other printworkers in dispute. The only department working is the box-making department, which was instructed by officials of the National Union of Printing, Bookbinding and Paper Workers to continue working.

There is a feeling among the workers, including those instructed to work, that this weakens the fight.

Though covered by a separate agreement, which lays down conditions lower than in printing, the CWS box-makers in fact receive the higher rates operating in the printing section and will benefit from any improvements won by the dispute.

By Our Industrial Correspondent

is to bring the working class into action against imperialism, for a socialist programme. The fight against the H-bomb is the fight to ‘black’ work on its manufacture and on the construction of rocket bases, and for the overthrow of the capitalist system that has fashioned this dreadful weapon as its ultimate protection. ATTEMPT by the South London Press to beat the print strike was literally torn to shreds on Friday.

Newsagents collecting a scab edition had their papers torn from their hands and ripped up by pickets.

There were many scuffles with police. One white-faced

policeman, mistaking me for a picket, grabbed my arm and shouted: ‘If you bastards don’t want to work, I do.”

One enterprising picket turned a fire extinguisher on a bundle of papers in one van.

One shopkeeper brought his Alsatian dog. But he lost both papers and dog, which disappeared rapidly up the road.

It Right becomes more and more evident, so does it become more and more imperative for the Right to destroy the genuine Left alternative.

What is at stake in this struggle is nothing less than the future of the British working class. Are we to go back to the misery of the thirties, or are we going to take advantage of the crisis of capitalism to go forward to working-class

Woolwich branch of the Electrical Trades Union has unanimously passed a resolution calling on the executive to instruct members not to maintain machinery where ‘black’ work is being printed.

From Our Hull Correspondent power?

Common programme of demands Now if the employers and the Right wing are to be defeated, we need an alliance between the Left trade unionists and the Left members of the Constituency Labour Parties, on

HuLt dockers went back to work on Saturday. For the time being the cargo is being worked by the old handfilling method that caused the dispute, but the men have won certain advances.

A new rate is being fixed for the job; there should be a special award for arduous working conditions; and the agreement between the employers and the Transport and General Workers’ Union is to be scrapped after three months at the most.

Recommendation for a return to work was made by the strike committee in order to prevent a wedge being driven between ‘blue union’ members and TGWU men.

One docker summed up the dispute like this: ‘The average age of Hull dockers must be nearly 50. I don’t want to die by the side of a rotten, filthy basket.’ RANK-AND-FILE BUILDING WORKERS’ PAPER By Our Industrial Correspondent a common programme of demands.

The Right wing hates the Socialist Labour League because it offers such a programme and campaigns for it inside the Labour Party and trade unions.

The basis for a real Left movement now exists.

The problem at the moment is how to unite the struggle. against the H-bomb with the defence of wages, jobs, conditions and shop stewards.

A Marxist movement based on the industrial working class, and striving to unite the workers’ struggles with the activities of the local Labour Parties, is far more powerful than a Left isolated in the constituencies (as the Bevanites were) or in the trade unions (as the Communist Party is).

Overcome by own experience The defection of Bevan: and the Khrushchev revelations have made many Left-wingers search for an alternative. :

One. of the problems is that in rejecting the Communist: Party many of these Left-wingers tend also to reject Marxism.

This problem can be overcome only by their own

CONFERENCE of building workers in London last Sunday decided to launch a rank-and-file builders’

paper. Elected to the editorial board were: Brian Behan, John Byrne, Alan Courtnay, Eddie Grimes, Peter Hendrie, David Mahoney. Joe Ralph and Terry Scott.

One resolution emphasized the need to build a powerful rank-and-file movement in the industry, ‘because the present trade union leadership is absolutely incapable of facing up to the problems’.

Aims would include the fight against non-unionism; protection of stewards and militants; extension of direct labour: nationalization of the building industry; opposition to witch-hunts.

Another resolution supported the stand of the men on the: Token Construction site, Southwark Street, in fighting sackings aimed at breaking trade union organization.

ASSEMBLY a

THERE is a direct connexion between the increasing attacks of the employers in industry and the violent attempts of the Labour Party and trade union Right wing to halt the growth of a Left-wing movement around the Socialist Labour League.

As in the past, the Right wing hopes to ride out the storm and retain its control over the Labour movement.

As the class struggle sharpens, and the bankruptcy of the

experience of the deepening crisis of capitalism, coupled with the growth of the Socialist Labour League.

By taking the most active Left-wingers out of the Labour Party, the Communist Party has helped the Right to maintain its control of the party. It has walled off many trade unionists from participating in the struggle against Rightwing policies and Right-wing leaders in the party.

The Communist Party leaders’ adherence to Khrushchev’s wishes has prevented the party from making use of its influence in industry.

A striking example is on the question of the H-bomb. Everyone knows what great feeling there is in the Labour Left for the unilateral abandonment of the bomb by Britain.

7 Good for the bureaucrats Instead of utilizing its strength in the trade unions to back -up this fight, the Communist Party launches a ‘March for Life’ this week-end, whose main aim is the winning of ttre “Peacé movement away from the concept of unilateral aban’ donment to that of all-round agreement of heads of States.

The Communist Party leaders have fundamental differences :

with the Left on the question of the H-bomb, because they do not start from the standpoint of what is good for the working class, but what is good for the Soviet bureaucracy.

The Socialist Labour League. by its adherence to a policy of principle, is increasing its influence on the Left.

‘Our paper The Newsletter was the first in the Labour movement to campaign for unilateral abandonment of the -H-bomb and industrial action against it—at a time when these demands. were branded as ‘disruptive’ by the Stalinists -.and others.

_-Now our League must redouble its efforts to show the Left why only the Marxists, for whom there is no solution :.to capitalism’s problems short of working-class power, have « been able to put forward a correct and realistic programme on the fight against war and fascism.

Unfortunately, the Right wing is being helped in its witchhunt against the Socialist Labour League by the conduct of some so-called ‘Lefts’ in the Labour Party.

Refuse to fight proscription These people refuse to fight the proscription. They argue that the Left must wait until the crisis between the Right wing and the rank and file sharpens.

But the outcome of the struggle between the Left and the Right will be decided by whether or not the working class in industry can beat back the employers’ attacks.

The employers are not waiting for any crisis to mature in the Labour Party. They are deciding class questions in industry. , Unless the Left intervenes boldly to help the working class in its struggles, and to link those struggles with the struggle against the Right wing in the Labour Party, there can be no victory for socialism.

If the workers are defeated, then the Right wing will throw even the kept ‘Lefts’ out of the Labour Party. And a fake ‘Left’? could emerge around Bevan that would head off the real Labour Left.

This is why it is impossible for Marxists to abandon their right to an open organization within the Labour Party, exposing both the Right and the fake ‘Lefts’.

These questions will be fully discussed at the National Assembly of Labour on November 15, which will play an enormous part in the construction of the Left movement in which Marxists will play an integral part. be opposed to the expulsions that have been taking place in Leeds.

They therefore had their credentials withdrawn, and were replaced by delegates mandated in advance to vote in favour of the expulsions.

They were told that once the expulsions were over they could have their credentials back.

This was the main talking-point at last week’s meeting of Leeds Labour Party, which considered an executive recommendation that Mrs Mary Archer be expelled from the party.

Mrs Archer walked out of the meeting when the chairman, Clir Denis Matthews, refused to give her any assurances that the meeting would be conducted in a democratic way.

Mrs Archer had asked for adequate time to state her case, that she should be presented only with charges of which she had received notice, and that if any new points were raised in discussion she should have the right to reply.

' FOOTNOTE. There are now five branches of the Socialist Labour League in Leeds. Membership has almost doubled since the expulsions from Leeds, Labour Party started.

‘The following resolution was passed with one abstention at the quarterly meeting of Coventry branch of the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers:

‘This branch, observing the worsening conditions of building workers generally, and noting the attack against organized labour by the employers nationally, stands. firmly for the defeat of the Tories and the return of a Labour government at the coming general election.

‘It however wishes to protest against the banning of the Socialist Labour League and The Newsletter by the national executive committee of the Labour Party.

‘It feels that the action is undemocratic and aimed at stifling criticisms of its policies, and is done in order to stifle the alternative socialist policies presented by the Socialist Labour League for the Labour Party.’

* BRIXTON BUILDING WORKERS CONDEMN

OF LABOUR—I

LEFT MOVEMENT GROWS IN FIGHT AGAINST Brixton general branch of the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers has condemned the action of the Labour Party national executive in suspending and trying to reorganize the Streatham and Norwood Labour Parties.

The Brixton resolution says this action is an attempt to prevent discussion and the putting forward of socalist ideas, and to conceal the leaders’ lack of policy, at a time when it is vital to present a socialist policy.

The resolution adds: ‘We welcome the decision of the members of the Streatham and Norwood parties to resist the reorganization and support them in_ their fight against the suspensions.’

HEADS I WIN, TAILS YOU LOSE IN LEEDS LABOUR PARTY From Our Leeds Correspondent Two delegates from South Leeds Constituency Labour Party (Gaitskell’s constituency) to Leeds City Labour Party’s general management committee were known to

AGAINST THE NEWSLETTER

From Our Merseyside Correspondent SUPPORTERS of the misnamed ‘Socialist Fight’ on Liverpool Trades Council and Labour Party last week continued their capitulation to the Right wing.

They again attacked the Socialist Labour League and The With Right-wing support, they had pushed through the executive an amendment to a resolution condemning the proscription of the League and The Newsletter; the amendment declared that the ‘forming of separate political parties, such as the Socialist Labour League, can only hamper the political development of the movement in its struggle for socialism’. (See The Newsletter, May 30, 1959, p. 156.)

The two ‘Socialist Fight’ supporters who spoke when the discussion on this amendment was resumed at last week’s trades council meeting concentrated all their fire on the. Socialist Labour League.

Cry of ‘finger-man’

Councillor Deane declared that at a meeting called by The Newsletter in Liverpool speakers had declared that the League was a new party. That, of course, was untrue.

He roused a protest and a cry of ‘finger-man’, and was forced to withdraw, when he referred to a trades council delegate as if he were a member of the Socialist Labour League. ;

The amendment was carried by 41 votes to 23 with a number of abstentions.

The trades council thus failed to go on record sharply and unambiguously against the proscriptions. And the blame for this rests squarely on the shoulders of the Socialist Fight ~ supporters, who helped the Right wing.

But in the long run this will be a gain for the Liverpool Labour movement. For this small greup of people will no longer be able to masquerade as Marxists or militant .

socialists as they used to.

.

Their r-r-r-revolutionary phrases are a cover for some pretty cowardly deeds. oo - co EABOUR COUNCILLORS DODGE TENANTS From a Correspondent Rent increases for Wandsworth Borough Council tenants were agreed at the Council meeting on Tuesday. In October 1958, when the Tories were forced by pressure from tenants to withdraw their rent increase proposals, they warned that they would ‘review’ the position in twelve months.

After the Council meeting councillors were invited to address the tenants outside the Town Hall. Some pushed past, with police protection; others—including Labour councillors—went out at the back to avoid the tenants.

Councillor Peter Hendrie was the only one of the seventy members of the Council to address the crowd. He called for more demonstrations, resolutions and meetings until the increases were withdrawn. able, which is a comfort in discomforting weather.

Capitalists dependent on the tourist trade thought otherwise. People might listen to that ‘Discomfort Index’, feel unhappy about travelling—and then what would happen to profits?

The bureau found itself in a storm that combined blasts of hot air, claps of thunder and lightning bolts. It had not foreseen-that kind of weather, and it found the discomfort index unbearable!

They struck out ‘Liver’

However, America’s fighters on the spade-is-a-spade front have just won an encouraging, if hard-fought victory on a different sector of the battlefield.

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME— From Our New York Correspondent PEOPLE who like to calla spade a spade lost’ a round last week when the U.S. Weather Bureau painted out the name of its ‘Discomfort Index’ and agreed to call it ‘Temperature-Humidity’.

The weather forecasters were proud of their ‘Discomfort Index’. It enabled people to tell when they were uncomfortIn 1956 the Federal Trade Commission, after 149 sittings, ordered the word ‘Liver’ struck from the advertising of Carter’s Little Liver Pills.

The pills, said the Commission, are not made of liver. And they do not affect your liver. All they do is speed up what your lower intestine does.

Carter Products, Inc. appealed against the decision to strike out the magic word. On June 16 the Court of Appeals upheld the Federal Trade Commision.

‘Who says capitalism is beyond reform?

Once more the frustration and anger of South Africa’s oppressed people have burst through The Durban riots were precipitated by police destruction of illicit beer stills.

The women in the urban locations brew beer to subsidize the men’s low wages. The demand is immense, for Africans are forbidden by law to purchase liquor except in the municipal beer-halls.

Liquor brewing and ‘shebeens’ (illegal pubs where alcohol is sold) are part of location life, and white police have been known to organize the ‘shebeen’ trade—the same police who afterwards conduct the brutal liquor raids.

Herd them into ghettos The other immediate factor in the Durban riots was the threat of slum clearance.

These clearances are not conducted for humanitarian reasons. Shanty-towns like Cato Manor—where there were fierce riots ten years ago—are mushroom growths, and it is the government’s segregation policy to herd the people into controlled tribal ghettos.

The moment when the removals are made is determined by the fact that the land has become valuable for industrial purposes, or that the shanty-town lies in the midst of a white residential area.

The people have therefore resisted these further attempts to regiment their lives, and have defended their right to live where they choose—even though this means living in tin shacks.

When the people of Sophiatown, in Johannesburg, resisted the removal scheme, the police and the army, with Sten guns and armoured cars, removed them by force.

The brutality of South Africa’s ruling class has its own momentum. But its roots lie in the necessity for systematic exploitation.

Supply of cheap labour Apartheid is a scheme to ensure the supply of cheap black labour, and to retard the political development of the non-white peoples.

When, as in Cato Manor ten years ago, the people turn not only against the whites but also against the Indians who live in the location as petty traders and landlords, this is the result of the government’s deliberate fostering of divisions among the oppressed peoples.

Government agents stoke up anti-Indian feeling, provoking the Africans into seeing the small shopkeeper—who lives by profits of halfpennies—as the big exploiter.

* * * IN spite of vast industrial growth, the South African economy is dominated by the mines and agriculture.

Farming is still largely unmechanized and methods are backward; this is both the cause and effect of cheap labour.

The owners admit that they overcome the problems of low grade ore and difficult access to the deposits in the mines by means of cheap labour.

Small wonder that last month Harry Oppenheimer, in his - chairman’s statement to the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa, expressed his confidence in the Union’s future and made an elaborate apologia for the ‘positive’ aspects of apartheid.

As early as 1894 Cecil John Rhodes proposed that the Africans be herded into reserves and compelled to pay taxes, thus forcing them out to work.

This is the basis of apartheid: about half of the 8,500,000 Africans are crowded on to the reserves, which today comprise only 12 per cent. of the Union’s total land surface.

Why the pass laws?

Here are the reservoirs of cheap labour. From here the _men go to work in the mines, or on the farms, for periods ‘ranging from six to eighteen months.

This is the migrant labour system which determines the condition of the majority of the Africans as ‘peasantworkers’, thus retarding the growth of a permanent urbanized working class.

Africans are naturally attracted by the relatively higher wages and less servile conditions in industry, and so a steady move towards the urban areas has asserted itself despite restrictions and control.

The pass laws are an attempt to redirect and regiment the . free movement of labour, and to force men to seek work in the sectors which suffer from labour shortages—i.e., the mines and the farms.

The South African mines are owned and controlied by the City of London. According to the supplement to the Quarterly Bulletin of Statistics on the results of the 1956 census,

THB NEWSLETTER published by the South African Reserve Bank:

‘The United Kingdom was the Union’s most important creditor, as appears from the total foreign liabilities of £865,600,000 towards that country . The mining industry was responsible for the largest share of foreign .

investment in the Union, viz., -£453,600,000.’

‘Top’ newspapers’ murmured revulsion The extent of British capital’s influence on the apartheid policies of South Africa is not specially stressed by the ‘top’ newspapers in Britain when they murmur their revulsion at what the South African government is doing.

It is easy for the liberal do-gooders to protest against a government 9.000 miles away. Apartheid is presented as a moral issue.

We have to understand the nature of capitalist exploitation in South Africa, and the stake which international finance capital, especially British capital, has in the oppression of the non-white peopies.

* * * To call on the British consumer to boycott South African products is not only impracticable but individualistic. It obscures the international character of the working class.

A call must be made to organized labour to show its solidarity with the African people. ee The refusal of dockers and transport workers to handle South African goods would strike a blow not only at the South African ruling class but also at British capitalism.

Internationalism begins at home. The British working class can most effectively help the African people in their struggle by fighting and weakening their ‘own’ ruling class.

Destruction of Labour movement The first practical step we should take is to demand, through local Labour Parties and trade union branches, that the National Council of Labour organize a central London protest demonstration.

British workers should be: made aware that apartheid is THE sanctions imposed by the printing workers on the News Chronicle last week recall the historic action taken by the machine-men of the Daily Mail in 1926, the ‘first shot’ in the General Strike.

The General Council of the Trades Union Congress had been empowered on Saturday, May 1, to call a general strike in support of the miners.

But on the evening of Sunday, May 2, they were still negotiating with the Cabinet, and had agreed to urge the miners to accept the possibility of a reduction in wages.

They had made it quite plain to the other side that they did not want to fight, and a section of the Tory leaders, headed by Churchill. were keen to force a show-down, being confident that they could beat such half-hearted opponents.

Late that night Baldwin, the prime minister, sent for the representatives of the General Council, told them that ‘gross interference with the freedom of the Press’ had taken place and demanded that they repudiate this.

Bewildered, they went into a huddle to confer; and when they came back later to tell Baldwin they would do what he asked, they found he had gone to bed.

They had to go ahead with the General Strike whether they wanted to or not. As we know, they headed it in order to behead it, with disastrous consequences for. the whole working class.

JUNE 27, -1959 the British fascists’ policy for Africa.

The division of Africa into black and white States means no more than the segregation policy of South Africa extended to the whole continent.

British fascists and those who finance them have a policy for Britain too.

Cheap and. controlled labour is the basis of a fascist economy. Cheap labour in Britain means the destruction of the Labour movement; controlled labour means a_ police State.

Constant Reader When Printers Censored a Capitalist Paper MARXISTS LEAD THE WAY IN PROTEST AT Within hours of the news of the Durban massacre the Socialist Labour League had organized a protest. Pickets with posters were soon on the pavement outside South Africa House, Trafalgar Square. Leaflets were distributed calling for a boycott by dockers and railwaymen of all South African goods and advertising a protest rally that evening in Hyde Park.

A special supplement to The Newsletter was duplicated and soon over 360 copies were sold on the streets. At the evening rally almost 300 people listened to League speakers denounce apartheid and the brutal. murders of coloured people in Durban.

With only two votes against the meeting carried a resolution “ endorsing the League’s proposals, and urging ‘trade union branches, trades councils, shop stewards’ committees, local Labour parties, Labour youth sections and Communist Party branches to call on the National Council of Labour. to organize a massive central London protest demonstration’. On Saturday morning, members of the Paddington and north Kensington branch of the Socialist Labour League sold 150 copies of the special in the crowded Portobello Market. Another 126 specials were sold, as well as 58 copies of The Newsletter, at the League’s regular Saturday afternoon meeting in north Kensington, — On Sunday, besides holding a further meeting in Hyde Park, tube stations in west London were covered with leaflets, specials and The Newsletter.

For King and capitalism The incident which had indirectly forced the General Council’s hand sums up the whole story of the great strike.

The Daily Mail was going to press for Monday, May 3, with a leading article (entitled ‘For King And Country’) which called on ‘all law-abiding men and women’ to be ready to act as strike-breakers.

The stereotypers cast the plates for the article, but the machine-men refused to print it. George Isaacs, secretary of Natsopa, was sent for and told the men to resume work.

But they refused.

As soon as he heard of this rank-and-file initiative—and of the line taken by the trade union bureaucrats concerned— Churchill demanded that Baldwin at once issue an ultimatum to the General Council.

Ever since the betrayal of the General Strike the Daily Mail has carried at its masthead the slogan ‘For King and Country’ (now metamorphosed into ‘For Queen and Commonwealth’) as a sort of trophy of victory over the printing workers and the working class as a whole.

As we move into a new period of intensifying conflict between the classes, it becomes more and more urgent that the principal lesson of 1926 be put into. effect—that strong rank-and-file organizations be set up throughout industry to make sure that the Isaacses of our time are rendered incapable of

mn Youth Don’t Want the Old Kind of Politics swim rHE NEWSLETTER F you get around with young people you will find that politics is a dirty word. Those who have grown up in the last few years have got nothing to thank the Tories or the Labour Party for, and plenty to curse about.

Take the business of finding a job. Official figures give the number of under-eighteens without work as over 36,000.

But: thousands are not registered at the Labour Exchanges. And they are not registered for the very good reasons that they will not get a job there and they will not get any dole because their cards are not stamped.

Take the coppers. In any group of adolescent boys you find at least one with a tale of how he has been mistreated or threatened by a policeman.

In south-west London recently a 17-year-old was picked up by two policemen and accused of shopbreaking.

Tv MADE TO ‘CONFESS’... Hauled before the magistrate next day, the boy told him that he had been frightened into signing a ‘confession’, and the case was dismissed.

This boy had been off work sick, but when he got back to his job he discovered that the police had been to see his boss and he had been sacked.

Young people are angry about the police. They are angry about the hanging of Ronald Marwood. They are angry about the H-bomb. playing the bosses’ and the Tories’ game and selling out their members.

Of educational interest

The other day I came near to arranging, through mutual friends, a debate with an old acquaintance, Jack Cohen, who works in the education department of the Communist Party.

Unfortunately the plan fell through: the Communist Party has imposed, it appears, a blanket ban (or proscription?) on debates between its officials and people connected with The This was all the more of a disappointment to me as I had been looking forward to discovering whether Jack Cohen’s controversial methods have changed much since twenty-odd years ago, when I first knew him. (He was then in charge of Communist Party work among students.)

At the time of the first big ‘anti-Trotsky’ trials in Moscow. Cohen contributed an article to the communist monthly Discussion (issue of September 1936) entitled “Heroes” of Fascism and Counter-Revolution’.

In this he referred to an article by Trotsky, pointing out the need for a political revolution in the Soviet Union, which had been published ‘in the German paper Weltbiihne at the end of 1933’, and went on to write: ‘No wonder the German Trotskyists are in such favour with the fascist movement.’

The headman’s axe The ‘favour’ of the Nazis for the German Left Oppositionists was, of course, expressed by means of the headman’s axe.

But the insinuation is clear: that Trotsky published an attack on the Soviet government in a Nazi, or Nazi-tolerated paper.

In fact, the journal in question was an anti-Nazi German publication printed in Prague (and called Die Neue Weltbiihne).

As for Die Weltbiihne (correctly described in a recent issue of Democratic German Report as a famous Berlin radical magazine of the 1920s), its editor, the pacifist Karl von ——.

The Labour Paty seeks to turn this anger into docility. That is why all the youth commissions and sub-committees in the world will not get many young people into the Labour Party.

The Communist Party, too, seeks docility—to a party line which was preaching cutting the call-up to one year after the Tories had undertaken to abolish it!

The fascists seek to turn youth’s anger and frustration to their own purposes. First against the coloured immigrants, later against trade unionists and socialists.

Tv What is needed—and urgently. too—is an organization which will harness’ our

energies and direct them towards improving our position in society.

This organization would have to have in its programme higher wages for apprentices, work or maintenance for schoolleavers, and a host of other demands to improve our working And that is without mentioning the H-bomb, the abolition of capital punishment and the vote at 18.

Remember politics is a swear word to young people. It will take an organization like the Socialist Labour League to change that.

VIVIENNE MENDELSON Ossietzky, had been put in a concentration camp by Hitler immediately after his accession to power; he died in 1938 from the effects of his treatment there, after being awarded the Nobel Prize for peace.

As a. practitioner of what the lawyers call suggestio falsi Jack Cohen is—well-qualified to be a Stalinist ‘educator’.

_ a ee PUBLIC MEETING Coloured and white workers unite against unemployment, landlordism, fascism and racialism Hear GERRY HEALY (general secretary, Socialist Labour League)

Thursday, July 2, at 8 p.m. London Co-op Hall, 234 Westbourne Park Road, North Kensington a eT LETTER THE NEWSLETTER SHOULD BE SHOUTING

Why has there been no mention in The Newsletter of the recent decision taken by the National Union of General and Municipal Workers to support unilateral nuclear disarmament?

Despite the fact that there was no organized campaign inside the union for nuclear disarmament a majority of the delegates voted for nuclear disarmament at their annual

Now that ‘we must have nuclear weapons’ barrier has been broken through by the third largest trade union in the country all possible encouragement should be given to all workers to obtain the backing of their unions in a fight against nuclear weapons.

As The Newsletter was the FIRST voice to call for industrial action against the H-bomb it should now be shouting the loudest in support of the NUGMW decision and against the bitter attack which the Right wing is now aiming at the NUGMW and other unions which they think might try to take similar action..

Stonningley, Leeds Gerry Kitchen {Reader Kitchen will find the NUGMW decision referred to in the Editorial Board statement on the National Assembly of Labour, published in last week’s issue.

The decision was a step in the right direction. But only a step Verbal opposition to manufacture of the H-bomb is not enough. What are needed are decisions to mobilize the working class to halt its manufacture.—Kditor.] GENEVA (Continued from front page)

staffing static control posts. And the conference, we are _ told, is understood to have ‘displayed some movement—though the direction is in dispute’.

In plain English, nobody knows whether they went forward or backwards.

First the western side said that of a control post staff of thirty-two, four technicians could come from ‘the host country.

Then the Russians said they would accept six or seven.

Then there was one of those amusing little international misunderstandings, part of every diplomatist’s stock-in-trade, when Mr Tsarapkin claimed that on April 15 Mr Ormsby-Gore had indicated that fifteen to sixteen could be foreigners, the other fifteen to sixteen host-country nationals.

This gave rise to ‘some western mirth’. Western quarters said Mr Tsarapkin’s assertions had been ‘too fantastic for words’ and ‘a naughty schoolboy’s claim to misunderstand’.

When the howls of mirth subsided, Wright and Bosworth said the British delegation had submitted tables on January 26 (five strontium-packed months ago) illustrating the international staffing of the control posts, and it had been specified that there would be no host country personnel in them at all. THE Out Next Month Capitalism, Socialism and the Class Struggle— The Crisis of Working-Class Leadership—The Policy of the :

When Ormsby-Gore talked of sixteen to seventeen foreign staff in relation to Tsarapkin’s four to five foreign specialists from ‘the other side’, he referred to nuclear guests—not hosts.

(Ten to one he really said ‘nuclear ghosts’. That's what we'll be if we rely on these ghouls to sort things out.)

Then the west made a handsome concession—that there should be one host country national in each of the four sections of the technical control post.

Then Mr Tsarapkin demurred that even under his latest figure the head of the control post would still have to be a national of the host country.

Then—well, anyway, there’s lots more. As one naughty schoolboy to another, and not making any ‘claim to misunderstand’—whatever language that might be—I cannot for the life of me believe that this conference is serious.

-It looks like a farce: like Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll and the Marx Brothers and Salvador Dali and the Goon Show and The Times crossword puzzle all rolled into one.

But it’s not funny at all.

The terrible thing is that while these highly-paid professional Summiteers are putting forward proposals and snatching them back and going through the hundred postures of their endless -diplomatic dance, children are dying of leukaemia contracted

as a direct result of the nuclear tests that their countries are carrying out.

Does anyone expect they will ever reach agreement? Why on earth should they? Their job is to discuss, while the gruesome war preparations, including germ war experiments on Rhesus monkeys, go on.

To throw dust in people’s eyes, to appease public anxieties, to head off any real working-class activity that would stop the tests, halt the building of rocket-bases and the production of H-bombs.

It’s worse than a farce. It’s a conspiracy, against you and me and the American workers and the Russian workers.

British, Russian and American workers who. met together wouldn’t take a hundred meetings to decide to stop murdering their own and each other’s children.

Come to that, they wouldn’t take a hundred minutes, The working-class answer to this statesmen’s dance of death at Geneva is not a ‘March of Life’, however well-intentioned . many of the participants may be.

The working-class answer is to use its own strength to stop the manufacture and testing of nuclear weapons.

Professional diplomatists cannot and will not do the job. Neither will Bevan and Gaitskell, who are determined to retain the H-bomb. Neither will the Communist Party leaders, who are opposed to the demand for unilateral nuclear disarmament by Britain.

‘Send Macmillan to the Summit’ is a piece of eyewash.

The job of the Labour movement is to kick Macmillan out and put in power a Labour government pledged to do away with the H-bomb and make a socialist appeal to the workers of other countries to take similar action.

MARCHING.

A contingent from the Socialist Labour League will be participating in the March for Life demonstration in London on Sunday, June 28.

The League will march with its own banners and slogans: ‘Black all work on rocket-bases*and H-bombs’, ‘For international working-class action against nuclear war’, ‘End secret diplomacy’, and the demand that British Labour goes on record for the unilateral renunciation of nuclear weapons.

League members, trade union branches, local Labour Parties, Labour Youth sections, readers of The Newsletter and all others who support these policies are asked to assemble in the area west of Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park, at 1.30 p.m. on Sunday.

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