NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF LABOUR

The Brixton. branch of the AUBTW at its meeting: on September 4, passed a resolution calling on. the Lambeth Trades Council to support the forthcoming National Assembly of Labour and to elect delegates to attend.

The branch elected a delegate to attend the pre-assembly meeting at Lambeth Town Hall on September 21.

A resolution was also passed calling on the Executive Council of the Union to reinstate Brian Behan to full membership.

I should like to point out that I was rather disturbed by some of the remarks made by your correspondent about the present day youth of Poland.

As a student myself, I was most interested in the younger generation and their hopes and problems when I visited Poland recently and my observations have led me to arrive at some rather different conclusions that may be of interest to you.

Your correspondent records that because the membership of the Communist controlled ZMS and ZMW has fallen there is therefore apathy amongst the youth of Poland but I do not think this to be the case. As a result of the events of 1956 the people received considerable freedom and the youth of the country made use of their freedom by seceding from youth organizations which had hitherto been virtually compulsory. The fall in the membership of the ZMW and ZMS could be more reasonably attributed to a reaction away from Stalinism and all the hardships and privations that it entailed.

seen RAIL UNITY NEEDED NOW! SEES THE Tories, confident of an election victory, and fighting hard to keep up their industrial offensive, have announced a ’re-appraisal’ of the modernization plan tor the railway industry. This Government White It means that by the end of 1960 hardly a depot in the country will not have seen redundancy notices served Paper is the biggest challenge ever issued to railway workers.

to one grade or another.

On top of the cuts and closures already made it is intended that by 1963 over 1800 more miles of track and another 1000 stations will have fallen under the hatchet. By 1964 a further 250 signal boxes, 300 marshalling yards and 250 goods depots will also have been closed.

What this will mean in terms of redundancy cannot be readily estimated but even at the present rate more than 120,000 jobs will disappear by 1964,.and huge numbers of workers will be thrown on the dole.

SEPTEMBER 19, 195).

By this it can be assumed he means the slump in coal, steel, and other basic industries. It is only by controlling—and’ this means extensive nationalization—major sections of the economy, and planning the distribution of profits from the. lucrative sections, using them to assist the development of nonprofit-making concerns, such as the railways, that this problem can be overcome. Along with this compensation payments and interest charges could be written off. a This means, however, a long and bitter struggle against the Tories and employers, a-struggle which neither the railway union leadership nor the next Labour government are pre-’