HE TOOK A POLICEMAN TO COURT

AFTER his three-day visit to Kerala (June 22-25) he told a Press conference: ‘When I went to Kerala the overwhelming A CHARGE of assault was dismissed at Nottingham impression I got was of people, meaning not individuals magistrates’ court last week. But 19-year-old Kenneth only but large masses of people, in a state of very high Barnaby, who brought the case against P.C. Colin excitement bordering on hysteria . . Clearly in Kerala, Westwood, does not regard the decision as a defeat.

whatever the reasons, there is tremendous mass upsurge.’

Ten days before, Barnaby had been charged with being drunk and disorderly. He accused the police of assaulting More progressive than ‘communists’

him and was told he would have to take out a summons.

No doubt the mass agitation had begun around the contro- When I saw him at his home off St Ann’s Well Road the versial Education Act; no doubt the Catholics began it.

day after he lost his case, Kenneth told me:

But it grew to mass proportions, and assumed the aim of ‘I think I’ve won, and so do lots of other people, because (Continued overleaf) I’ve made public the things the police do.’

During the whole of the court proceedings it was obviously * A lathi is a long heavy iron-bound stick used as a weapon a case of Barnaby’s word against the police—although a by Indian police. (Continued on back page)

186 Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4 Telephone Macaulay 7029 SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 1959 - THE MINERS AND THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY LAT week Ernest Jones, president of the National Union of Mineworkers, reported to his national executive on the latest cuts proposed by the National Coal Board. Miners’ leaders listened mournfully as Jones told them that by 1965 between 205 and 240 pits are due to close. From Ernest Jones on the Right to the ‘communist’ Will Paynter, not one member of the executive produced one solitary idea on how to fight the cuts. “The remarkable feature of the three-hour discussion’, wrote the Daily Express, ‘was the absence of any suggesion of reprisals against the drastic streamlining.” The Coal Board’s decision virtually to end opencast mining by 1965 has apparently left Paynter and his fellow ‘communists’ bereft of any ideas on how to fight pit closures. What did Jones suggest? Only that fuel oil should be taxed to make competition with coal fairer. With his eyes cast hopefully in the direction of heaven and the Tory government, he said: ‘We remain absolutely convinced of the need for a national fuel policy and will continue to press for one.’

What a wretched figure these so-called leaders of a one-time militant union are cutting! In less than twelve months thirty pits have closed. In the same period the industry’s manpower has declined by over 20,000. Yet all Jones can do is express the hope that the Tories will start taxing their millionaire friends in the oil refinery business. It is obvious that these leaders are completely incapable of defending their members’ jobs. They are pathetic errand-boys who are summoned by the National Coal Board from time to 1ime and told to inform so many more miners that they are going to get their cards.

Among the rank and file however there is a determination to fight back. Now is the time for that determination to be translated into action. Every NUM branch should go on record in the next few weeks demanding a special recall conference of the. union. Paynter’s promise at this year’s annual conference that there would be a special conference to ‘consider the implications of the revised Coal Board plan for the industry’ seems to have been conveniently forgotten. It is up to the rank and file to jog the leaders’ memories. Campaign committees should be set up linking one pit with another, one area with another, and eventually uniting all miners on a national scale. These committees can put teeth into the demand for the shorter working week without loss of pay. By mobilizing the working miners and preparing them for struggle they can bring into action the only force capable of defeating the Coal Board’s plans. But the miners cannot win this struggle on their own. They need the active backing of the entire Labour movement, and they have the task of campaigning for support, of convincing other sections that if the miners go down in disarray then these other sections will find it harder to beat back the employers’ offensive. Participation by rank-and-file miners in the National Assembly of Labour on November 15 will enable them to forge strong links with workers in other industries.

AuGustT 29, 1959 KERALA (Continued from front page)

overthrowing the government. All the political parties in the State, except for the Communist Party, were participating in one way or another. All trade unions and students’ organizations, except for those controlled by the Stalinists, were participating.

Do all these people oppose the Education and Agrarian Bills, opposed by the Catholics? No, ‘they do not.

The fact of the matter is that certain political parties in Kerala are more progressive in their outlook than is the Food prices rose enormously For instance, the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the Lohia group of the Socialist Party agitate for more progressive legislation on education and agrarian problems.

The Praja Socialist Party, during its short term of office in Travancore-Cochin State, had tried to pass a similar !and legislation Bill to the one passed by the Communist Party government in Kerala.

Chandrika, the daily paper of the Moslem League, wrote an editorial welcoming the present form of the Education Act. And the Moslem masses stand to gain from the Agrarian Act.

Fundamentally, Congress is not opposed to this legislation either.

In short, the mass agitation here against the Stalinist government had very little to do with the Education and Agrarian Bills. Why then the ‘terrible excitement’ in Kerala?

The answer is simple. From April 15, 1957, when the Communist Party formed its government, that government failed in all respects to administer in the interests of the working people.

The two main problems of Kerala are lack of food grain and unemployment. There has been no marked change in food production. The prices of food grain and other essentials have risen enormously. And the unemployment problem has got worse and worse.

Favouritism a common feature The communists failed to introduce any progressive measures to improve the conditions of the labourers and poor peasants, although this was one of their promises to the electorate in their election manifesto.

They also promised to eradicate corruption and nepotism from the administrative machinery of the State. They did nothing of the kind.

Favouritism in appointments, promotions, transfers, committee selections and grants of loans—such favouritism was a common feature of the Stalinist régime.

And there were many complaints of the government’s frequent interference in judicial matters in favour of Stalinists and fellow-travellers.

Apart from all this, before its first year of office was out, the Communist Party government brutally suppressed the strike movement of the workers at the Sitharam mills, Trichur.

It brutally evicted some backward community families from Kattampilly and destroyed their huts.

About a dozen poor peasant families were brutally driven out by the State police at Kizhippilly, in north Malabar, and their homes were smashed up—in order to placate a landlord of the area.

They shot down strikers Stalinist-controlled police opened fire on strikers, led by a Revolutionary Socialist Party union, at Chandnathope, and killed two. Two plantation workers, one a young woman, were killed in similar circumstances in the Munnar area last they were members of the Communist Partycontrolled All-India Trades Union Congress.

These are just a few examples of the atrocities committed by a government of a so-called working-class party, which has

minut The Politics of the Belfast Aircraft Strike wiuu.0080 brutally suppressed almost all strikes led by political parties other than the Communist Party.

To complete the picture of class collaboration, it should be added that the workers under Stalinist leadership were on many occasions forced to act as blacklegs.. Thus the Communist Party régime became a menace to the majority of the organized workers in Kerala.

This was why the agitation spread, till it reached the proON August 20, 6,000 workers at Short Brothers and Harland Ltd decided to end their strike against redundancy. The history of this strike is important both because it illustrates the nature of the fight which faces industrial workers in Britain and because it might prove a landmark in the struggles of Irish workers.

The Six Counties of Northern Ireland suffer from unemployment far above the rate for England.

In recent years a limited amount of capital, some of it American, has been invested in new industries. Duponts have a new factory near Londonderry, Asilon are outside Coleraine. English Electric are at Larne.

The typical new industries are those where a high rate of technical progress and the inability of capitalism to plan for consumption lead to a continual displacement of labour. This is also true of the older-established aircraft industry.

At the same time shipbuilding is showing signs of slump and the traditional linen industry is contracting: factories in Portadown and Lurgan announced that they were closing while the aircraft strike was on; the future of another in Belfast is uncertain.

EVEN LESS LIKELY. So that not only are workers likely ‘to lose their jobs, but they are even less likely than are English workers to find new ones.

In this situation Shorts, in which the British government owns a 70 per cent. interest (Labour’s policy of buying shares in private industry is not as new as it looks, after all) announced that by the end of the year 1,200 men would be redundant.

After 130 of these had received notice on Friday, August 7, the men decided to strike.

This was not an easy decision when long-standing shortage of work had made workers chary of militancy. The shop stewards argued that the strike was necessary, and produced and distributed in Belfast 10,000 leaflets putting their case.

But what did they demand? Here the weakness of a nonpolitical approach to industrial action becomes clear.

They demanded only a suspension of pay-off notices until further discussion of work-sharing possibilities had taken place. And they approached Lord Brookeborough. the Tory prime minister of the Six Counties, and asked him to intervene with the management.

EMPLOYERS’ OWN PARTY. That is, they approached the very political party whose interests are identified with those of the management, and asked it to plead with the workers—the very political party whose ‘defence’ policy caused the redundancy, for it was the British government’s changes in air power policy that led to a reduction in orders at Shorts.

You cannot attack redundancy at Shorts without attacking the whole capitalist organization of the aircraft industry You cannot possibly hope to be effective on a sectional basis in one factory, or even by trying to fight redundancy in Aucusr 29, 1959 portions of a mass upsurge. Volunteers were planning to march to the State capital. A detachment of Revolutionary Socialist Party volunteers had in fact begun to march on July 26. They were prepared for a bloody struggle.

The Communist Party and its government said the movement was petering out. But on July 25 chief minister Namboodiripad made a public appeal for help to the central government and the Congress high command. P.T.O. a single industry as an isolated issue.

But that is what the shop stewards did.

What did Brookeborough do? He first snubbed the union officials and refused to meet them. At once Unionist officials (Unionist is the Tory label in Northern Ireland), worried about the fate of Belfast constituencies in the election, were in an uproar.

So Brookeborough changed his mind and met the union officials and would be graciously pleased to put the union’s proposals to the employers.

NEED EVERY SUPPORT. As their contribution to goodwill the shop stewards proposed to the men that the strike be called off, and the men agreed.

Shorts suspended redundancy notices for two weeks. Sixty workers are covered by this, as well as clerical staff who were to be laid off while the strike was on.

In effect the Confederation of Shfpbuilding and Engineering Unions, and also the Labour Party, have tried to solve the problem at Shorts by urging that new contracts be brought to Belfast rather than elsewhere.

This would be to move the problem of redundancy, not solve it. Nothing important can be done about this problem until workers become aware that it is the whole economic system that creates recurring unemployment, not the chance fate of a particular industry.

The shop stewards at Shorts need every support in the fight that they are going to have to continue. The Newsletter says to them: , ‘Wait and see what help you in fact get from the employers, from the Unionist Party, from the national officials of the Confed. Then join in discussion with militant workers in England about the possibility of concerted action against redundancy. Come to the National Assembly of Labour on November 15 and thrash it out there.’

Many Belfast workers vote Unionist. They do so because religious issues are used to