The Newsletter, vol. 3 no. 110

J VERY trade unionist worthy of the name unhesitatingly supports the struggle of over 100,000 printworkers for the 40-hour week and a 10 per cent. increase in wages.

The numbers involved may be small compared with Britain’s total labour force; but the principles in- — . volved are the property of the entire Labour movement.

A great number of trade unions have gone on record for the 40-hour week. Others, like the miners, are faced with unemployment, which the introduction of the 40-hour week would help to alleviate. INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF MARXISTS If the printworkers are defeated in this struggle it will be . a defeat for the entire working class. NEXT YEAR .

Every serious worker who faces facts knows that the print- AN international conference open to all revolutionary workers can be isolated and defeated by a combination of parties and groupings that are seeking to build Marxist powerful reactionary forces, who believe the time has come to movements in their countries is to be held in the autumn ‘teach the printers a lesson’.

of 1960.

The printing employers, the newspaper proprietors and the ink manufacturers, supported by the Tory government,. are This is announced in the July-August issue of Labour . engaging in an operation which is a threat to the whole future Review, which will be ready in a few days’ time. of trade unionism in Britain. The international conference is being called by the Socialist Labour League in association with the International Committee of the Fourth International.

The purpose of the conference, says an editorial entitled ‘In Employers choose to fight

Defence of Trotskyism’, is to assess the present state of Two years ago, in its very first issues, The Newsletter was Marxist forces throughout the world, and elaborate ways and characterizing the employers’ strategy as one of testing and means ‘whereby the common experience of these forces can probing the workers’ strength. help each national movement to develop as a revolutionary The situation has now changed. Instead of probing, the force’. employers are passing over to definite action. They have chosen to give battle in the printing trade, for three reasons: Defence of Soviet Union (1) A stoppage in the printing industry does not affect the The conference ‘will be a step towards the eventual unificproductive life of the country as a whole. ation of the international revolutionary forces into a world.

(2) So much misleading propaganda about high wages in party on a realistic basis’. the printing industry has been circulated that the employers It will be open to: feel that a show-down would: help rally the middle class and ALL who stand for the building of Marxist working-class. the more uninformed and backward workers to the side of parties in the capitalist countries, in the colonial and semi-the Tories. colonial countries and in the countries under the rule of the:

(3) For quite a long time an organized drive has been ‘Stalinist bureaucracy; under way to create a pool of scab labour in the printing ALL parties and trends which stand for the defence of the industry so that what the employers and the government con- Soviet Union, China and the countries of eastern Europe;. sider to be ‘essential’ work can be continued.

ALL those directing their efforts to the construction of a Martell’s organization is not a music hall joke by any means.

revolutionary leadership ¢apable of organizing the working: (Continued overleaf) (Continued on back page):

Trade unionists, Labour Party members, youth sections Demonstrate Your Solidarity with the Printworkers March with the Socialist Labour League from Finsbury Park to Cross Street (site of Martell’s print-shop)

FOR THE 40-HOUR WEEK!

FOR THE FULL 10 PER CENT! AGAINST ‘BLACK’ SHOPS!

Assemble main gates Finsbury Park 12.30 p.m. Sunday July 12 Organizations are asked to bring their banners

180 Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4 Telephone Macaulay 7029 SATURDAY, JuLy 11, 1959 ON another page Alasdair MacIntyre refers to the tiePRINTWORKERS (Continued from front page) It is a factor of sinister import. Large sums of money are being made available to enable scab-herding to proceed on the widest possible scale.

The Right-wing Labour leaders are doing nothing but hamper the printworkers in their struggle.

To read Monday’s parliamentary debate, you would

up between the Right wing and the leaders of the Communist Party against the demand for unilateral renunciation of nuclear weapons by Britain. This is illustrated in the proceedings of the annual conference of the National Union of Mineworkers this week. According to The Times, ‘the executive were placed in the unusual position of recommending acceptance of a “moderate” proposal of communist origin in preference to a more extreme resolution which the communists opposed . . .. The communist-led Scottish miners had tabled an amendment in general conformity with the Communist Party line on nuclear weapons...

.

Regardless of its source, the executive seized on this with relief, realizing that it did not actually clash with the new official policy, and gave it their support.’

When two weeks ago The Newsletter’s headline said “Gaitskell and Gollan want H-bombs kept: want them swept away!’ this was received with puzzlement. and incredulity by many of those on the British Peace Committee demonstration. Margot Heinemann said it was ‘rubbish’. Let the honest rank-and-file communists look again at their party leaders’ policy on the H-bomb. Whoever does not support the demand for Britain to give up H-bombs is supporting the British H-bomb. That is the position Abe Moffat and the rest have got themselves into. CATCHING UP WITH ROTHSTEIN SC ATCHING up with History’ is the title of a review by Andrew Rothstein in Thursday’s Daily Worker of the new history of the Russian Communist Party, which he finds ‘balanced’ and ‘adult’ compared with its predecessor, a ‘textbook for beginners’. Being himself no beginner in anti-Trotskyist witch-hunting, Rothstein has some explaining to do. This is how he does it: ‘For those who are interested: there is no softening of the political exposure and condemnation of the anti-party factions of the thirties, but no repetition of the personal denunciation of them as spies and foreign hirelings.’ Rothstein is a communist who helped hound fellow-communists to their deaths. ‘The criminals have received their well-merited sentences,’ he wrote in the Daily Worker on February 5, 1937. Now that his masters have given the word, he changes his tune. But there is not one word of regret for his slandering of the tens of thousands of revolutionaries who, branded as ‘fascists’, perished in Stalin’s jails.

The Russian bureaucrats, having murdered all the Russian Trotskyists, now discover that they were not ‘spies and foreign hirelings’ after all. British Trotskyists are still being called ‘fascists’ by Rothstein’s friends. You do not have to discuss with the dead; with the living there is always the danger of discussion—unless you surround them with a barrier of slander. That is much harder to do today than it was two decades ago. The discussion will go on, till the wrongs done by Rothstein and his friends are righted and the historical record straightened—to the very last syllable. imagine that the real issue in the dispute is not the 40-hour week or the 10 per cent. but the need for the two sides to ‘sit round the table’ and talk.

Robens did not defend the printworkers’ claims. Instead he talked about independent arbitrators and negotiations—as if these things were important. This is an insult to the printing trade unions’ negotiators, who carried through negotiations with very great patience for a very long time.

Has there not already been a great deal of talk? The employers have spoken thousands of words—most of them simple and straight to the point. “We are not going to concede the 40-hour week or the 10 per cent. increase, and we are prepared to fight’—that was the gist of what the employers said.

A lesson in strategy And so the parliamentary debate was a fake. It was typical of all such debates in Parliament over the past few years.

It is important for all workers to realize the fact that Fleet Street is not an impartial observer of the printworkers’ battle.

Monopolization of the magazine and newspaper trades has proceeded on an enormous scale over the past year—and this in itself was for the print employers one of the essential pretequisites for this struggle.

Fleet Street today, with few exceptions, stands at the top of the printing trade pyramid. The ink. manufacturers are a classical example of the employers’ closed shop, 90 per cent. of the ink being controlled by a handful of directors, several of whom have close ties with the national Press.

The printing trade employers have in fact given a lesson in strategy to the trade unions. When the British Federation of Master Printers. was threatened it promptly extended the dispute and brought in the Society of Ink Manufacturers, who in turn promptly extended the dispute to the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association.

Lesson for whole movement

The jdea was to use a lock-out to break a strike. employers have not hesitated. They have been tough.

There is a lesson here for the entire trade union movement. The time has come to stop dithering when a struggle faces us, and to get down to work in such a way that the employing class as a whole will be forced to concede the printworkers’ just demands.

We repeat what we have insisted on in The Newsletter ever since it became clear that a stoppage was inevitable: the printworkers cannot win by themselves, on their own financial resources—nor on the basis of donations from other trade The whole might of the organized working class must be brought to the aid of the printworkers immediately.

Electricians and engineering workers employed in the affected sections of the trade should be instructed by their executives to withdraw their labour. Unions such as the Transport and General Workers’ Union, whose members handle paper and other materials used in the print trade, should do likewise.

TRADE UNION PRINCIPLES Contravened or blurred over One of the points of confusion in the strike is the differences among the various unions about whether certain local newspapers are to be considered ‘black’. It is a disturbing

fact that several of the most powerful of these papers have been appearing regularly since the strike began.

This could not happen unless trade union principles were being contravened or blurred over.

For instance, the Printing and Kindred Trades Federation has agreed with the. National Union of Journalists that papers produced by directors, apprentices and NUJ members are ‘clean’ papers.

This fantastic position enables apprentice labour to work alongside non-union directors on work normally done by union members.

The Kent Mercury proudly announced in its last issue that it is produced by apprentice. labour despite picketing outside its office. (This does not prevent the Royal Arsenal Cooperative Society from advertising in it, nor the Deptford Labour Party from sending news of its activities to this paper produced at works where men are on strike.)

Is it not perfectly clear that while the union leaders refuse to withdraw apprentice labour this kind of thing will continue to weaken the strike?

organizes in such a way as to mobilize the maximum possible ’ strength.

_ Rank-and-file committees in the printing trade should be set up, not as an alternative to the existing union machinery, but as an indispensable backbone for the unions, making sure that there is no retreat whatever on the 40-hour week and the 10 per cent.

These rank-and-file committees could become the means of rallying hundreds of thousands of workers directly or indirectly

The argument is used that a withdrawal of apprentice labour would lead to legal difficulties over indentures. But surely the whole future of apprentices in the print trade is at stake in this dispute?

In fact one of the twenty-two ‘suggestions’ presented by the employers is directed towards a drastic revision of apprentices’

The printing trade unions must put their house in order and say plainly that apprentices must join their adult brothers wherever they are out.

As is now their custom, the police have been hostile to pickets in a number of areas, and the unions have protested. But the protest is inadequate.

Martell’s offices and works are heavily guarded by policemen, who ensure that ‘black’ goods and blacklegs pass in and out.

It is claimed that the police are there to prevent a disturbance of the peace. But by guarding Martell they are ensuring that the peace is disturbed—because they are siding with the employers, who are seeking to injure the printworkers by reducing their living standards.

Other side will crack

Peaceful picketing cannot be left to a handful of printworkers. All active trade unionists should join the picket lines and give the strikers a helping hand.

The more pickets there are, the more peaceful will be the picketing, for the less likelihood will there be of the police intervening. .

Trades councils should make themselves responsible for organizing fraternal picketing, on a rota system.

The printworkers are fighting a body of employers who are pretty solidly united. Therefore there should be no argument at all about whether or not to close down Fleet Street.

The divisions that have already appeared among certain newspaper proprietors are a very healthy sign for the future of this struggle. If the workers squeeze hard enough, the other side will crack and, split and crumble.

Rank-and-file committees On the eve of a general election the Tories are at their weakest. They cannot afford a show-down in industry.

Bold and aggressive fight

Fleet Street, with its huge profits, will be hit hard. To shut down Fleet Street, and keep it shut down until the printers win their fight, is to ensure a speedy and successful end to the dispute.

This is a decisive battle. for British Labour. We can win— provided the rank and file of the trade union movement

BIRMINGHAM Organized by the printworkers’ central disputes committee, it drew cheers and claps from the crowded pavements.

Marchers carried hundreds of slogans with the central theme

Trade unionists should help Over the last five years Amalgamated Press has paid its shareholders tax-free dividends totalling well over £500,000.

In 1958 alone the happy shareholders coined a sweet £637,000 free of tax. These hard-done-to fellows are liable to surtax, however.

The Amalgamated Press subsidiary. Imperial Pape Mills made a trading profit of £1,588,000 last year.

Another of its subsidiaries, Kelly’s Directories, who own Associated Iliffe Press, made a consolidated group profit of £1,391,000.

Odhams, number two in the print world, rolled up a trading profit of £2,878,000 in 1958. Odhams recently paid £1,800,000 for Hulton’s.

George Newnes, producers of Woman’s Day, made - £1,808,000 last year, and their eight directors divided out £98,000 between them in remuneration.

connected with the printing industry.

They could organize mass demonstrations in all the major cities and avoid the frittering away of energies on small ‘sectional demonstrations.

Federated house chapels should seek to forge links on an area basis, with the aim of setting up liaison committees with other trade unionists from whom solidarity action is to be sought.

Rank-and-file initiative is the key to a printworkers’ victory. Speed is essential. The employers have declared war. The trade unions must mount a crushing counter-offensive.

Doubtless, however, they calculate that a dispute confined to the printworkers, and ending in defeat for the latter, would foster feelings of irritation and resentment against trade unionism among the middle sections and the backward workers and bring them some votes.

The way to frustrate any such scheme as that is not for the printworkers to surrender but for all sections to rally round them—as all sections ought to have rallied round the busmen last year—to impose the workers’ terms swiftly and _ effectively, impressing all with the power of Labour.

If the printing unions go forward now in a bold and aggressive fight, drawing in all possible allies, with the aim of bringing the employers to their knees, they can win. To fail to do so is to court disaster.

There will be no issue of The Newsletter on August 1 or August 8, while the Editor and printing staff take their summer holidays. Normal publication will be resumed on

BLACKLEGS producing a four-page edition of the Birmingham Mail have free tea, lemonade and meals all day long.

They have been told they can ask for anything—even chicken—and it will be provided free.

And they are allowed to smoke in the publishing room.

‘We would be sacked on the spot if we did it, Bro.

Harry Escott, father of the chapel at the Birmingham Post and Mail, told me. ‘It takes us all our time to get a piece of toast when we are working—and we have to pay for it.’

The blacklegs were being ‘treated like lords’, he added. ‘There were office typists on the linotype machines and directors and clerical staff on printing machines.

Bro. Escott and Bro. Jack Perry, secretary of Birmingham branch of Natsopa, were giving an exclusive interview to The Newsletter. Prominently displayed on the wall of the strikers’ ‘signing on’ room, with other Press cuttings, was the front page of last week’s Newsletter.

‘We are the shock troops going over the top in the fight for the 40-hour week and an increase in wages,’ said Bro. Perry. ‘If we fall down on our claim then so will every other trade union that tries to follow us. _ ‘All our members are solid. We firmly believe in the justness of our case. We are not asking for the moon.

“We believe it is part and parcel of Tory policy, through the various confederations of employers, to refuse all wage claims and claims for the shorter working week.

‘Arbitration is the red herring the employers are using to . confuse the public and trade unionists. What is there to arbitrate on? The employers will not budge from their offer of 23 per cent.

Highest profits in history ‘You notice they do not tell the public the nature of the twenty-two points they demand the unions accept before they give even a 24 per cent. increase.

‘Chairman after chairman of newspaper combines, including the Birmingham Post and Mail, have recorded in speeches that profits are the highest in their history.

‘Before this dispute they always thanked the staff for their loyalty and co-operation, which have helped to make these record profits possible. We give a fair reply: how about a share of this cake in return for all our labour?’

Birmingham printworkers are angry at Moffat’s, a building firm, sending its labourers to deliver paper to the Mail.

Demands for the Amalgamated Engineering Union and Electrical Trades Union maintenance men to withdraw their ‘labour are increasing.

Birmingham Trades Council has called on all trade unionists to boycott the Mail, and has barred Mail reporters from trades council meetings.

COMMITTEES ARE NEEDED

that the printers’ fight for the 40-hour week is a fight on behalf of every worker.

Building .workers and engineers were there with their banners alongside the printworkers.

Several minutes’ mighty roar The electrifying moment of the march came when the half-mile-long, six abreast procession slowed almost to a halt passing the Liverpool Echo building. For several minutes there was a mighty roar of: ‘The Echo’s black!’

Main features of the march were the linking of industrial and political slogans, the great numbers of young men and women obviously in a working-class demonstration for the first time, and the presence of a number of colonial workers.

It was a glorious occasion. That is—until the procession reached St George’s Plateau, where another thousand men and women awaited it, and where the speeches began.

Mrs Bessie Braddock began by promising to convey the best thanks of everyone to the police for the way they had behaved. She would do so as vice-chairman of the watch committee (she was careful to tell us that).

After telling the demonstration at great fength all about herself she ended by promising to raise certain points in Parliament.

The chairman, Bro. Kinsella, of the National Union of Printing, Bookbinding and Paper Workers, called for three cheers for Bessie. There was a ragged response—lukewarm compared with the full-throated roar outside the Echo Not one loudspeaker van Liverpool’s small central disputes committee, consisting of representatives of the various unions on strike, and liaison delegates from Liverpool Trades Council and Labour Party, has organized picket-lines as far afield as Widnes and St Helens.

Strikers have been surprised to find that among all the unions in Merseyside it is fot possible to find one solitary loudspeaker van.* Militant trade unionists have demanded a mass picket of Merseyside workers around the Liverpool Echo offices and works.

The Echo’s managing director and editor-in-chief is Alick Jeans, president of the Newspaper Society. He is producing an eight-page paper with apprentices and blackleg labour.

The local branch of the National Union of Journalists— refusing to co-operate in the production of ‘black’ papers—has decided that none of its members will co-operate with any journalist working on the Echo. :

Guarantee against sell-out There is no link yet between the dispute committees in Manchester and Liverpool.

This lack of contact, and the slowness in developing a mass picket around the Echo, are the two most serious shortcomings of the struggle on Merseyside from a rank-and-file point of

MERSEYSIDE’S largest and most militant labour demonstration since before the war wound its way, 2,000 strong, round Liverpool’s main shopping centres last Saturday. view.

Only the coming together of the various disputes committees * The Charter of Workers’ Demands adopted by the National Industrial Rank-and-File Conference on November 16, 1958 contained the demand: ‘An end to the practice of squandering union funds on large motor-cars . Union officials to travel in. cheap, economical vans, carrying loudspeaker equipment for factory-gate and other meetings, and with the name of the union prominently displayed.’

ree can provide a guarantee against sell-out, now that the frenzied search for a ‘formula’ has begun among top-level union WATFORD LIAISON JuLty 11, 1959 Many of the delegates—who came directly from factory level but with only one or two from each factory—had come equipped with figures and examples of pay sheets ready to argue it out with the union president and secretary.

One knitter from Liverpool’s Bear Brand factory said his wages had dropped in recent weeks by £4 per week. In his opinion the management was now pressing home its advantage

Behind the Liverpool lads came the reg and gold banner of the London district committee of the paper workers’ union. Following them, glinting in the brilliant afternoon sun, was the orange and black banner of the Watford branch of the Typographical Association. in all sorts of ways. , Forty ‘spare’ knitters had been sacked at his factory that week. When the knitters had gone to clock out half an hour before their normal time because their machines had stopped the manager stood by the clock taking names down in a book.

Each time there was a breakdown on a machine a tussle would start over the payment rate for ‘standing time’.

In other areas men have been ‘warned’ by managements for taking an active part in the fight against the wage cuts, which neatly dovetailed with Moulden’s attack on leading militants as ‘agitators’ and ‘Trotskyists’.

Refused to work overtinie At Mansfield Hosiery Mills the factory has been put on a 36-hour week as a result of the knitters’ refusal to work overtime.

Too General opinion of the hosiery workers was that nothing of value had come out of the conference.

The militants in the industry know that the action that is needed to fight the employers—a national strike—would mean a very tough battle indeed.

But they also know that unless they fight now, then in a year’s time the employers will come along with yet more wage cuts.

me This kind of strike action would meet opposition, not only from the employers and the government, but also from the union leaders.

This would mean extending the unofficial rank-and-file committee which now functions in the Mansfield and Ikeston area, and linking up with hosiery workers from every factory in the country.

FIVE DAYS’ STRIKE WON SPARKS AN EXTRA By Our Industrial Correspondent

'HANG Martell!' 'The Watford Observer is "black"!' 'For the 40-hour week!' roared over 2,000 printworkers as they marched through the streets of Watford on Tuesday.

Right at the front of the demonstration marched a group of printers from Liverpool.

'We came down because we consider it necessary to develop more liaison among the various districts,' explained Bro. Vince Crawford.

Bro. Crawford, who is chairman of the Liverpool disputes committee of the Printing and Kindred Trades Federation, told me:

'We sent an official delegation of eight from Liverpool, but at least another twenty travelled down on their own initiative. We need more joint activity to win this fight—not pious resolutions.'

He was disgusted at the activity of the Trades Union Congress in the dispute.

'They ought to be bloody well ashamed of themselves,' he declared.

Bro. Tommy Taylor, who is full-time assistant secretary of Liverpool branch of the National Union of Printing, Bookbinding and Paper Workers, expressed the opinion that there should be no retreat from the demand for the 40-hour week and the 10 per cent.

Behind the Liverpool lads came the red and gold banner of the London district committee of the paper workers' union. Following them, glinting in the brilliant afternoon sun, was the orange and black banner of the Watford branch of the Typographical Association.

Women marchers were militant

Among the London marchers I met Reg Brady, chairman of the Natsopa chapel at the Sunday Graphic, and a member of the executive of the Holborn and South St Pancras Labour Party.

He too was for more liaison.

'What we need are local rank-and-file committees linking up the jobs,' he declared. 'This is particularly needed in the big combines. The bosses have a united front. The working class needs one too.'

Bro. Brady was critical about the attitude of the Labour Party leaders.

'They should be giving us every possible support. Instead, they remain neutral.'

Many of the marchers were women, and they were just as militant and forceful as the men.

One girl from Odhams said: 'I am for stopping the national Press. Cut all their ink supplies off. After all, Odhams print the Daily Herald, and they own Hultons and Newnes, both big magazine printers. We've got to hit them where it hurts most.'

One girl from Odhams said: ‘I am for stopping the _ Memaers of the Electrical Trades Union employed on the Marryat and Place job on the Kodak. site; Harrow, dissatisfied with the penny an hour increase:negotiated nationally between the union and the employers, without a shot being fired, lodged their own claim-with the firm.

On Wednesday, July 1 they downed tools. By last Monday the boss was ready to talk.

As pickets arrived at the job they were met by a management representative.

He offered them threepence per hour and..payment for time. lost by men over the previous fortnight, when they were holding meetings on the claim. The concession was backdated to the beginning of June.

NOT ALLOWED TO DISCUSS WAGE-CUTS —BY ORDER OF THE OFFICIALS AT a recent conference of hosiery workers in Notting- . _ ham the question of the wage cuts imposed by the employers during the last few months was not allowed to appear on the agenda—by decision of the National Union of Hosiery Workers executive. .

FLOOR

A CIRCULAR from the management awaited each worker returning to the mills of J. and P. Coats, Paisley, following the strike of five and a half weeks, Claiming that the stoppage had gained the Workers nothing, the circular denied the points of agreement on which officials of the National Union of Dyers, Bleachers and Textile Workers had recommended a return to work.

Though conceding that certain trade union procedure would oC be recognized it made clear that this may not be permanent.

While letting the union’s work study officer examine the disputed work load, the employers would not necessarily take

his. findings into account. The threat of disciplinary: action against, operators failing to complete the new work loads: was not. definitely removed.

According to union officials, this. is contrary to assurances received through the Ministry: of Labour conciliation officer.

It must be assumed therefore that. the employers once. again tried.the double-talk game to break the strike—and succeeded. They had tried it earlier during the strike, and managed to delay for. about two. weeks attempts to extend support for the Joe The fight. now passes to the ‘mill floor. The success. or failure of the management’s threats depends on how quickly the workers’. organization can be built inside the mills.

The workers have shown that they are ‘prepared to fight and will not easily be intimidated. .The weakness lay in the.large number. of..non-trade. unionists and the lack of support from the maintenance -men... This can: be changed.

A branch of the Socialist Labour League is ‘being. formed in Paisley, and will give every possible help to the millworkers in their preparations for the next, struggle.

FOOTNOTE. Paisley Labour’ Party has expelled the wife of a local Labour councillor for‘ failing to be a member of her trade union and continuing to work in the mills during the strike::

Juty 11, 1959 meeting opposed a motion from the floor that the trades council should sponsor a meeting of solidarity called by the suspended Norwood Labour Party in aid of the printworkers.

‘We don’t want to get into difficulties with the TUC by supporting unofficial meetings,’ Davis said. He was vigorously opposed by Jeff Farquhar, the trades council’s secretary.

‘They need our support’

‘It’s nothing but a witch-hunt,’ Farquhar told the meeting. A. well-known militant meat driver, Farquhar himself was witch-hunted after the last Smithfield meat strike when he and another steward were ‘named’ by a stooge tribunal as ‘troublemakers and agitators’ and were attacked by the Press.

‘The printing workers need the support of the Labour and trade union movement,’ Farquhar said.

‘It is our duty to rally to their side and it doesn’t matter one bit who calls a meeting in their aid. .

‘All we are called upon to decide is whether the meeting is to aid the printing workers, and as it is, we should be there. Furthermore, this trades council doesn’t take its orders from the Labour Party leadership.’

However, Davis succeeded in confusing the meeting, and his amendment that the trades council call its own meeting—at the same time and place as that planned by Norwood—was carried.

- PROSCRIPTIONS From a Correspondent IMMEDIATELY after expelling Peter Cadogan for refusing to resign from the Socialist Labour League, Cambridge City Labour Party went on:to propose an amendment to the party constitution aimed against proscriptions in general.

The proposed amendment, carried by an overwhelming majority during a discussion on resolutions to the annual conference, would take the power of proscription entirely out of the hands of the national executive.

This amendment was not only supported By the Right, but actually :drafted by them, following the submission of an even stronger resolution on the same subject from Cadogan’s own ward. — Cambridge Labour Party has been hostile to proscriptions for some years.

- SOUTH LONDON WITCH-HUNTING

LAMBETH Trades Council last week protested against the witch-hunt in the Norwood and Streatham Labour Parties and called on the national executive of the Labour Party to withdraw its decision and discontinue its attacks on Left-wing Labour Party members.

Harry Davis, vice-president of the trades council, unsuccessfully opposed the motion.

It said that the reorganization of the Norwood and Streatham parties ‘has as its declared intention the expulsion of members who .are largely responsible for winning both parties to progressive policies’.

These policies, ‘such as opposition to H-bomb tests,. manufacture and bases; extension of nationalization; support for workers struggling to improve or defend living standards and their trade unions; and opposition to racialism . and imperialism’, were ‘necessary if the Labour. Party is to gain ‘support in the coming. election and in the struggle against the ‘Tories and the employers’.

This resolution was a rebuff for Davis, who. earlier - in, the

JuLty 11, 1959

Birmingham Midland branch of the Electrical Trades Union has protested at the proscription of The Newsletter and the Socialist Labour League, declaring it to be ‘a deliberate suppression of minority socialist views within the Labour Party’.

The branch has also protested at Birmingham Borough Labour Party officials’ blocking all discussion on this and other similar resolutions—for the second month running.

Aston Constituency Labour Party has protested at the actions of full-time Labour Party agent Nash to prevent Birmingham Borough Labour Party from defining its attitude to the bans.

MANCHESTER AND SALFORD

A campaign against racialism, organized by Manchester and Salford branches of the Socialist Labour League, has been met with enthusiasm in Moss Side, Manchester. There is a large population of coloured workers living in overcrowded slums. Two groups of fascists are trying to whip up hatred against them among the poorer and more backward sections of the white population.

Sales of the pamphlet ‘Workers’ Defence Squads for Notting Hill’ and street corner meetings are attracting the attention, not only of coloured and white workers, but of fascist cameramen.

A West Indian engineer said: ‘There is a great need for coloured workers to wake up to the threat of fascism, and to realize that only the Labour movement can beat the A Nigerian railwayman and member of the National Union of Railwaymen, who bought two dozen pamphlets, said:

‘We ask no more than the white worker, but because of the colour of our skins we become the bait of fascists, who will use our presence here to sow disunity in the ranks of the working class.’

A Jewish marketman, who suffered at the hands of the fascists in the 1930s, told us he believed the only way to stop racialism was to get rid of fascist thugs and fight harder - tor socialism.

The League is calling a meeting on July 19 and inviting trade unionists, members of the Labour Party and Communist Party and other workers living in Moss Side to form a joint defence committee.

A BOOKLET is being prepared by Bryant and May Ltd, the match firm, to commemorate in 1961 a hundred years of their works on the same site at Bow.

I wonder how they will deal with the great strike there in 1888, which assured Bryant and May a place in the history of trade unionism and of independent working-class politics?

. The group of socialists around the journal Labour Elector organized a campaign exposing sweating and unhealthy conditions in unorganized London industries.

Annie Besant and Herbert Burrows helped to bring out on strike 700 girls working in literally poisonous conditions in the Bryant and May. factory—girls with no tradition of trade unionism and no funds behind them.

Thanks to the girls’ solidarity and spirit, and the support given them by other sections as a result of the publicity promoted by the socialists, the firm was forced to surrender to their demands.

The jostle and the avalanche Engels said that the victory of an apparently helpless group proved to be the ‘light jostle needed for the entire avalanche to move’.

It was followed by a wave of organization among the unskilled workers of the East End, who had hitherto been outside the charmed circle of trade unionism.

In 1889 the Gasworkers’ and General Labourers’ Union was formed, ancestor to the immense and powerful National Union of General and Municipal Workers we know today.

Bryant and May were pillars of the Liberal Party, then still supported by the bulk of the politically-minded workers, and the exposure of their workers’ conditions and the unsuccessful battle fought against them helped forward the campaign the socialists were waging for an independent party of the working class to be set up in opposition to both the capitalist parties.

The Bryant and May strike contributed to the process which led to the formation of. the Independent Labour Party in 1893 and then of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900.

It is an outstanding example of the interdependence of industrial and political action, something which Labour’s present leaders want forgotten.

How to lay a myth Distributing Socialist Labour League leaflets at Communist Party (or communist-front) demonstrations mittee. nowadays brings one up against a remarkably variegated spectacle of uneven development.

At Marble Arch the other Sunday, when the British Peace Committee’s supporters were gathering for their ‘March for Life’, I encountered, at one end of the spectrum, a bemedalled ex-serviceman-for-peace who came back for another copy of our leaflet ‘for the branch’ and, at the other, a dour Scotsman who hustled his friend away from me, saying: ‘That’s a ization—say, the Society ‘for Cultural Relations with the USSR—where there is a set of the Large Soviet Encyclopedia, second edition, and ask for volume 51.

This was a supplementary volume, published last year, and an editorial note at the beginning explains that it includes, among other things, biographies which ‘for various reasons’ were not given in the main.volumes. (Mr D. N. Pritt, Qc, is among these afterthoughts!).

On page 299 there is a biography of Marshal Tukhachevsky, who was executed in 1937.:..The article, which. is -ilkustrated with a photograph of the marshal, recites his services: to the Soviet Union and lists his. principal works; it says. nothing of the charges of treason brought. against him, or of the ciréumstances of his ‘death.

I suggest that the Communist Party member who still thinks Trotskyists are fascists ask for this article to be translated to him; that he then ask himself whether the publication of such an article in the Soviet Union is compatible with continued belief there in Tukhachevsky’s guilt; that he then ponder the implications for the trials of the ‘case of the generals” being discredited. After all, the existence of the Tukhachevsky ‘ group. of: conspirators’ was ‘revealed in the course of investigating evidence secured during the previous trial’ (of Radek, Pyatakov. etc.) as no less an. authority than Andrew Rothstein reminds us on page 241 ‘of his well- known. Pelican ‘History — of the, USSR’ (1950).

The trials were all interlinked. When Khrushchev admitted that the charges Stalin brought against Tito were lies, in his famous Belgrade Airport speech in 1955, he thereby knocked the props from under the case against Rajk.

“Let the implications of the ‘rehabilitation’ of Tukhachevsky be considered by every honest member of the Communist Party. t feael BRIAN . PEARCE i ae wee LETTERS .

pops THEY TRY TO CONFUSE THE WORKERS The Daily Worker of June. 30 contained a report. which attempted to represent the Campaign for Nuclear-Disarmament demonstration against the rocket bases in Yorkshire as a sequel to the London march organized by the British Peace Com-The report was so ambiguously worded that the reader might easily suppose that the Yorkshire demonstration was not one in favour of the unilatéral renunciation of the H-bomb.

This kind of report is typical of ‘the link-up between the Right and the Stalinists in the attempt to confuse the working class about what the CND is in fact demanding.

Alasdair MacIntyre

fascist organization.’

Now, for many of them ‘fascist’ is just a word, like ‘revisionist’, which means ‘nasty, wicked, sinful’, and nothing more precise than that.

But for others the use of it in relation to Trotskyists is based on a particular card-castle of lies which was built up between the years 1936 and 1938, by means of the notorious Moscow trials.

How can one shake the confidence of such people in the myth they have accepted for over twenty years? They are often the armour-plated type for whom Khrushchev’s antiStalin speech is still a ‘State Department forgery’.

Well, here is a simple little exercise which I suggest be recommended by anyone who has contact with them. Let them go along to the office of any Stalinist-controlled organSELLERS of the youth paper Rally were told by Arthur Johnson, assistant regional organizer of the Lancashire and Cheshire Labour Party, that they could not sell their paper inside the King’s Hall, Belle Vue, Manchester, where the Labour Party was holding a meeting.

Rally is published by a Liverpool youth section, and supports the paper Socialist Fight, whose adherents joined with the Right wing at the Liverpool Trades Council and Labour Party to witch-hunt members of the Socialist Labour League.

Nevertheless, members of the Socialist Labour League present at Belle Vue defended the right of the people selling Rally to do so at that or any other Labour Party meeting.

Manchester

eee £2,000,000 CUT IN EDUCATION GRANT De VALERa’S élection to the post of Ireland’s president

THE Minister of Education says that the ‘battle of the was marred for him by the rejection in a national bulge’ has been won and all schoolchildren are getting plebiscite of his pet Bill abolishing proportional full-time education. What is really happening? representation. ee In Renfrewshire, under the new block-grant system, the This was a blow against those who want to set up a semiestimated grant for education will be £351,700 for 1959-60. fascist State in the twenty-six counties. ' Compared with the probable grant for 1958-59 this is a But what of the Irish working class? Is it to remain for reduction of some £2,300,800. And what are the consequences? ever the tool of native and foreign capitalists?

Roy At a recent headmasters’ conference in Glasgow, the Director Of course not. Like downtrodden people everywhere the of Education gave notice that, because of the absolute shortage Irish will. conquer their class enemies.’ But to do this they of qualified teachers, headmasters were to make their own need a Marxist party following in the revolutionary proletarian arrangements for dealing with their problems. tradition of James Connolly and containing all the vital knowledge and dynamism of the tradition of Lenin and Trotsky. The ‘better’ pupils, and those in the critical years of their schooling, were to be given preferential treatment, and where To speed the day when such a party can be formed in it was ‘necessary’ pupils were to be released from attendance Ireland, Irish workers over here should join the Socialist Labour League, which sees workers all over the world as when no suitable members of the staff were available to members of the same class, with the same enemies and the teach them. , same aims to be fought for and won.’ The news was, of course, not to be divulged to the Press.

London, W.9 Pat O’Donovan CONFERENCE (Continued from front page)

The editorial delivers a trenchant attack against the ideas of class for the socialist revolution; a body called ‘The International Secretariat of the Fourth ALL those who, seeking to be in the forefront of the national International’, which has attacked the Socialist Labour League liberation struggle in the colonial and semi-colonial countries, and developed anti-Marxist theories which have undermined base their activity on the need to build independent working- the very foundations of the Fourth International.

class revolutionary movements as the only leadership able to carry through the struggle for national independence to Trotsky on military specialists the end by fusing the national revolution with the socialist The new issue of Labour Review also contains an article revolution; on the inaugural conference of the Socialist Labour League, ALL those who oppose the idea that Stalinism and social adopted by that conference; an article by Cliff Slaughter on democracy can be transformed into revolutionary forces and who consciously intervene in mass movements for the ‘The “New Left” and the Working Class’; and an article by purpose of winning leadership and smashing the bureau- Trotsky on ‘military specialists’, translated in full into English for the first time by Brian Pearce.

crats’ hold over the working class.

There are five pages of book reviews, including reviews by _ ‘The time has come,’ Labour Review declares, ‘to reorganize Douglas Goldring, Stanley Evans’ and John Byrne. the Fourth International and build it as a powerful international party linking the vanguard of the working class Labour Review can be obtained for 2s. Sd. post free from throughout the world. We are confident that the proposed New Park publications Ltd, 186 Clapham High Street, London, international conference will be a milestone along this road.’ S.W.4 (please note new address).

_ Out Next Week

STRUGGLE—The World We Live In—The Two Nations—Hard Times Ahead—Towards a Slump— The Growth of Unemployment and Short-Time Working—The Hydrogen-Bomb and the Threat of War—Oppresssion in the Colonies—A System in Decay—The Socialist Solution—Class Struggle the Only Road to Socialism LABOUR AND LEADERSHIP—The Crisis of Leadership—The Labour Bureaucracy—Centrism— The Communist Party PETER FRYER THE MARXIST MOVEMENT—What Is 190 pages: 3s. 6d. Marxism?—The Evolution of British Marxism— ‘Marxists and the Labour Party—Marxists and the Published by the - Trade Unions—Principles and Programme of the Socialist Labour Marxist Movement—The Marxist Press—Towards a League. Revolutionary Working-Class Party A2B OBS Oe Printed by Plough Press Lid (1.U.), +0 180 Cipham High Su, SW. Published by The Newsletter, 180 Clapham High St, London, SW4.

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