MEETING

no use for the combination of East European émigrés, followers of the late Senator McCarthy and a sprinkling of social democrats who tried to organize ‘mourning’ demonstrations against the Khrushchev visit.

In Washington the ‘mourners’ tried to pass out black armbands marked with skull and crossbones to the crowd of 200,000 that lined the streets for Khrushchev’s arrival, but they found few takers. In New York, onlookers told members of

DAGENHAM

The Central Hall, (Methodist Church Hall)

Heathway, Dagenham 8 p.m., Friday October 9

vart Ii: The Sharpening Struggle THIS is a period in which the small unofficial strike is doomed to failure. It will neither smash the employer nor break the grip of the Right-wing. We also part company with the Communist Party and others who say that all that is necessary is to work within tne trade union machine, capture the top positions, and ignore tne. building of a rank-and-file movement completely independent of the union machine.

The living example of the bankruptcy of this thinking is the Amalgamated Engineering Union. Here is a union once led by Tom Mann and renowned for the militancy of its rank and file. Today in this union Catholic Action allied to rotten Right-wing elements chase the Stalinists all over the place.

We recognize that unofficial strikes reflect the desire. of the rank and file for alternative leadership. We are for the establishment of connecting links between industries so that unofficial strikes can be supported and extended and given a chance of victory. Right-wing treachery As the class struggle sharpens the Right-wing will become even more treacherous. Because they will bend more to the employers there will be more unofficial strikes.

Issues like the sack are now common problems to mining, aircraft and rails. There can be no serious struggle against these employers, who will be aided by the Right-wing and the government, without a powerful rank-and-file movement.

This struggle in industry is decisive for the future of tne working class. Parliament is designed to distract the attention of the working class while the real throat-cutting is done backStage.

The National Assembly of Labour later this year is the extension of last year’s national industrial conference to the rank-and-file members of the Labour Party and other organizations anxious to have a united front of struggle.

The rejection by both the Stalinists and the Right-wing of the class struggle as a means of solving problems explains how they find common ground in their condemnation and sabotage of unofficial disputes.

The condemnation of unofficial disputes is only one side of the coin. Inherent in this is their rejection of a rank-and-file movement essentially based on the class siruggle.

Communist role A sinister aspect of a number of recent unofficial disputes has been the strike-breaking activities of leading members of the Communist Party. Take for example the role of Etheridge in the Minicar strike.

This strike ended after the intervention of a team of motor car stewards led by Communist Party member Dick Etheridge. Up to then, the men had stood firm, despite the howls of the Press about ‘blackmail’ and ‘damage to the nation’s economy’, and official instructions to return.

Etheridge, justifying his intervention, said: ‘T have settled more strikes than I have led.’

Twenty-four hours after going back to work the men were forced to introduce an overtime ban because the discussions with the employers gained them nothing.

The conduct of Etheridge is not just a mistake. It flow: directly from the whole policy of the Communist Party if. industry.

The actions of these people flow from long years of thy British Communist Party bending this way and that to suit the Soviet bureaucrats. Such a Party is unable to prepare th¢ ‘working class to fight anti-strike legislation. On the contrary iLeir actions directly assist the employers and the Right-wing.

The abandonment of the class struggle by Khrushchev o¢ the international field has as its logical. corollary the develog. ment of peaceful co-existence in industry by the native Com munist Parties. If you can solve international problems by ‘getting together’. then it must also be possible to solve nationa’ ones, without a struggle.

So we get the development of peaceful co-existence not only between the Soviet Union and the capitalist nations, but between the Communist Party and the employing class, This suits the Right-wing, who more than ever want peaceful relations. The Communist Party finds common ground with them and expresses it in its wooing of people like Willis and Cousins.

Too It is more and more important as part of the raising of working-class consciousness to show that the so-called ‘left’ trade union leaders are really agents of the Right-wing and that in the coming difficult situation for the Right-wing they will use such ‘left’ people in an attempt to solve their problems.

(To be concluded)