LABOUR MUST LEAD

Just over two months ago the Socialist Labour League organized the National Assembly of Labour. There were over 700 delegates, observers and visitors present at the St. Pancras Town Hall on November 15, when a resolution unanimously endorsed a national campaign on the following five points :

1. An end to the manufacture and testing of the H-bomb as well as the destruction of all existing stockpiles of atomic weapons; 2. The strengthening of the fight for the 40-hour week, higher wages, defence of jobs and defence of shop stewards, against rent increases;

3. A fight for the extension of nationalization; 4. A fight against oppression in the colonies and against racialism in Britain;

5. A fight against the bans and proscriptions inside the entire Labour movement and the trade unions.

The Assembly also unanimously decided to convene local assemblies during the spring and a recall assembly in the autumn of 1960.

Events on the industrial and political scene since these decisions were taken, underline their urgency in a manner that could not have been conceived of at the time.

The Blackpool conference at the end of November revealed the deep-going split inside the Labour Party and the trade unions on the question of nationalization. This has now developed to a point at which the Right-wing proposes to drop nationalization and any reference to public ownership from * the Labour Party constitution altogether. The Left, on the other hand, are demanding that Gaitskell should be removed and that the party should advocate more nationalization and resist the attempts of the Croslands and Jays to transform the Party into a mild reflection of the Liberal Party.

Meanwhile, however, the witch-hunts against Marxists in the Labour Party have continued to grow and over 50 people have been expelled from the Norwood and Streatham Parties for refusing to abandon their right to be Marxists in the Labour Party. In other parts of the country such as Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and Coventry, industrial militants have also been expelled for similar reasons. Gaitskell goes to the Right and the apparatus of Transport House proceeds te weaken the ranks.

A new tension in industry On the industrial front there is a growing tension between the trade union rank and file and the employers. The struggle for the 40-hour week is unresolved, the cost of living has increased, and demands for higher wages have become more urgent. Even Right-wing trade union leaders such as Carron have been forced to call for substantial wage increases.

The recession of 1958 has given way to an upswing in the economy and a spate of speculation on the Stock Exchange. Share values of light industrial undertakings connected with the export drive have inflated by millions of pounds resulting in enormous profits for the speculators. But wage rates are at a standstill.

Week after week shop stewards have to fight attempts to cut bonus and piece-work earnings, with the result that there is constant friction in large factories, particularly in the motor car industry.

In heavy industry the resistance of the employers is tougher. In the Scottish shipbuilding yards there is a continuous attempt to victimize militants and clamp down on working conditions. The sacking of Ian Clark, a leading shop steward and member of the Socialist Labour League, in John Brown Land Boilers, is a case in point. More than at any time since the end of the war, sections of heavy industry such as coal-mining and shipbuilding are threatened with a slump. The conflict in industry is therefore determined by conditions which reflect both the boom in the export trades and a tendency to slump in heavy industry.

The growth of monopolies and the appearance of the swastika Inside industry itself, ownership and control continue to monopolize into fewer and fewer gigantic industrial concerns. The Tory government has openly intervened in the aircraft industry which is now merging almost entirely under the control of a handful of enormous industrial corporations such as Hawker-Siddeleys.

Take-over bids continue merrily to gobble up new industrial concerns in the electronics industry.

The growth of monopoly is not simply an accumulation of millions of pounds of investment and reserve capital, it is the regroupment of the most reactionary sections of the ruling class into more concentrated strategic industrial and political positions than they have ever occupied in the past. This means that future struggles between capital and labour will be of a sharper nature than anything previously experienced by the British working class. The greater the monopoly the harder it will fight.

It is no accident, therefore, that swastikas have once again appeared on the walls and hoardings of Britain and Western Germany. This tendency towards monopolization goes on all over Western Europe and in the United States. It was the big monopolists of Germany and Italy who financed Hitler and Mussolini to power. It is only natural to suppose that, since so much wealth is controlled by the monopolists today, a slight trickle of this is now falling into the hands of the Fascist gangsters of the future.

There is in fact a direct connexion between the swastikas of West Germany and Notting Hill. Only a few weeks ago the Rt. Hon. Duncan Sandys appeared in ~ photograph with one of the former high functionaries of the Nazi party on a boar hunting expedition in West Germany. This functionary was a leading official in the German Embassy in London before the war and used to parade the strecis with a swastika prominent on his car. The press reported that he and Duncan Sandys have been friends over a long period and were in fact friends before the war. The ghost of the pre-war Cliveden set re-appears on the horizon.

There are people who seek to blame the German working class for the swastika-daubing. They try to convey the impression that the German workers were responsible for the Nazis. To their eternal credit the German youth have given a resounding answer to this pernicious propaganda. In their tens of thousands they have demonstrated on the streets under the slogans of ‘Nazi Raus’ and have shown that they are the real allies of the British working class.

The government of Adenauer is over-loaded with ex-Nazi party members, but that is only part of the picture. The

United States documents centre in Berlin has complete records of the ten million members of the Nazi Party, but they will not make them public. On January 12 these authorities banned all information for the press about former Nazis on the grounds that any information that might be given might embarrass the West German government. Such is the reactionary role of Wall Street imperialism.

The re-appearance of the swastikas is a reflection of the growth of reaction in the capitalist world and not the crazy activities of some mixed-up thugs.

From swastika daubing to witch-hunting There is a connexion between the appearance of the swastikas and the intensified witch-hunt of the Right wing. The aim of the witch-hunters is to destroy democracy in the Labour movement. Reactionary oganizations such as Catholic Action and Moral Rearmament have stepped up their propaganda against militants inside the trade unions in recent months. These gentlemen do not bother whether you are a Trotskyist or a member of the Communist Party. During the South Bank strike when members of the Socialist Labour League were being attacked by the Right wing, the Communist Party were accusing’ us of splitting the rank and file from the leaders. When we attacked the Trades Union Congress for covering up for employers, such as McAlpines, the Communist Party again accused us of the same crime. Yet all this has not stopped members of the Communist Party from being attacked and witch-hunted by these same Rightwing leaders. On the contrary, the Communist Party is now paying the price for their own witch-hunting of the Socialist Labour League. It is the T.U.C. which is now in the vanguard of the Right-wing attack against the Communist Party.

Inside the Labour Party, supporters of the Communist Party fell into the Right-wing trap and voted for the expulsion of members of the Socialist Labour League from the Labour Party. This was the action of Councillor Grimshaw at the Salford Labour Party meeting which expelled Harry Ratner as a member of the Socialist Labour League. Councillor Grimshaw wrote in the Daily Worker about lifting bans and -proscriptions and then proceeded to expel a comrade on the grounds that he was a member of the Socialist Labour League. Every serious member of the Communist and Labour Parties will realize that this is playing the game of the Right and weakening the Left. The fight against bans and proscriptions demands unity in action between all Left forces in the Labour Party and the trade unions which will refuse to endorse, and will fight against expulsion of any militant because he has differences with the Right-wing.

By weakening the Labour movement through expulsions, the witch-hunter supplements the foul work of the anti-semitic swastika dauber.

The local Assemblies of Labour will have as their main task the mobilisation of the Labour movement against antisemitism and racialism and the fight against all bans and proscriptions inside the Labour movement Labour must go on the offensive The situation has greatly changed since our National “sembly on November 15. The slight economic recovery ' <ucouraged workers to go forward into struggle for less hours and more wages. This is a time for leadership. Workers are ready for action, but the old leaders of the trade union movement will not lead. Railwaymen are showing magnificent enterprise in the struggle for more wages by a nation-wide campaign for a 24-hour stoppage unless they are granted their just demands, but their leaders, such as Sidney Greene act as a drag upon their initiative.

The offer of the engineering employers of a 424-hour week demonstrates that the 40 hours can be won if the leaders of the engineering unions would lead a struggle.’ Here again Carron and company instead of providing leadership witchhunt members of the Communist Party like George Caborn, whose only crime was to attempt to call a conference to implement the 40-hour week policy of his union.

Building workers in London and Manchester have told their leaders that they will not be content with a miserable handout when their wage claim comes before the employers. They want a substantial increase—or else.

There is an offensive spirit abroad in the ranks of labour and never before have Marxists had such an opportunity to provide leadership which will meet with great response. We believe that this can be done through the organization of rank-and-file committees embracing workers of different unions employed in large-scale industries. These committees can mobilize the maximum support to force the employers to concede to their demands on hours and wages. We believe that they would also provide a powerful rejuvenating force inside the trade union movement; that they are part of the trade union movement and in no way can they be conceived of as something separate from it.

These committees would provide an opportunity for new leaders to come forward and their struggles would encourage the application of socialist policies. Once the rank and file begins to organize in such committees then their emergence in politics is almost instantaneous, in this epoch of the Tory government and large-scale monopolization.

The local Assemblies of Labour will discuss and plan ways and means whereby (a) every job connected with the struggle for wages and hours would immediately form its own campaign committee, drawing the workers into action and explaining the problems posed by the struggle. and (b) how they would be linked together as rank-and-file comittees to form a real foundation from which an industrial and political offensive can be based.

For unity between the Left-wing in the trade unions with the Left-wing of the Labour. Party Mr. Gaitskell, Tony Crosland and Douglas Jay are determined to destroy the Labour Party as a socialist party, that is what is meant by their struggle to remove reference to public ownership from the constitution and ditch all nationalization policies. Tribune and Victory for Socialism have begun a fight for the removal of Mr. Gaitskell as leader of the party. The Local Assemblies of Labour whilst supporting this struggle will consider ways and means to win the approval of the Labour- Party for a real socialist policy.

We believe that the struggle in industry must be made part of the struggle for socialist policies inside the Labour Party. It will be a serious mistake if industrial workers do not see the connection between their economic problems and _ the policy crisis of the Labour Party.

The Socialist Labour League is part of the Labour movement. We stand for the right of Marxists to organize inside the Labour Party. All those Left-wingers who deny this right are, in fact, surrendering to the Right-wing. There are people who call for a more humane (sic) policy for expulsions. These well-meaning people are just begging the question. Have not the Marxists of the Socialist Labour League just as much right to organize in the Labour Party as the Tony Croslands and the Fabian Society? ‘That is the issue and not one of minor constitutional changes. The fight for lifting the proscription on the Socialist Labour League and the ban on The Newsletter must be the cornerstone of all Left-wing policies inside the Labour Party.

The Socialist Labour League maintains that the struggle in industry will form the background of the crisis inside_ the Labour Party. All active trade unionists must see to it that their demands are adequately expressed in local constituency Labour Parties. As soon as they embark upon local industrial struggles they must also seek ways and means to mobilize local Labour Parties and draw Labour Party members into action behind them.

This is the only way the Right-wing of the Labour Party can really be defeated. Rank-and-file organizations in industry must become powerhouses of socialist ideas for changing the policies of the Labour Party. .

The local Assemblies will seek out ways and means to

strengthen existing socialist organizations such as Victory for Socialism inside the Labour Party.

They will provide a rallying ground for the real Leftwing of the Labour Party, by drawing together people who are involved in all types of progressive struggle, from the fight against anti-Semitism and for Nuclear Disarmament, to the struggle for hours and wages in the factories. All roads lead to the coming showdown inside the Labour Party, in the fight for a socialist policy that is the thread which will firmly bind our local Assemblies.

This is a time not only of great opportunity but also one of { INDUSTRY A 40-HOUR WEEK WITH A DANGEROUS SNAG Under a new agreement, Massey Ferguson, the Canadian tractor firm, will cut hours to 40 and raise pay for 14,000 of its British workers. The fly in the ointment is that the unions concerned, The Transport and General Workers’ Union and the Amalgamated Engineering Union, have agreed to dispense with teabreaks and washing time. Moreover they pledge ‘cooperation in maintaining production and improving efficiency.’

This is the latest in a number of agreements with sections of the employers in the more profitable sections of industry. Just recently I.C.I. agreed to a reduction in the working week and similar increases in pay. : , Agreements like these fit in perfectly with the employers’ strategy. When sections of industry are booming, with profits at a record level and with a real scarcity of labour, particularly in the Midlands, the employers are in no position to withstand an all-out offensive by the working class for shorter hours and higher wages.

Agreements with snag Agreements like these not only safeguard the employers’ profits and make the workers pay for their own increases, they also work another miracle. At a time when the employers in certain industries are most vulnerable to a drive to improve conditions, they secure a speed-up in the labour force. The strength of the workers’ bargaining power can be gauged by the fact that the employers are coming to the unions with such proposals.

Another consideration must be that if the employer can secure an agreement now in boom conditions that makes his workers keep at it without tea-breaks and up to the whistle then what will he want when unemployment grows? It is true that now the workers will have their tea while they work, but everyone knows that the meaning of a tea-break is not simply that tea is drunk but also the break in the pressure on the workers for production.

Abolishing tea-breaks can mean, as it has done in the United States, that the shorter hours become an even greater and more killing burden than the old 44-hours.

Such agreements assist the employers in the other sections of the engineering industry. They lay the basis for the ‘ettlement of an agreement with strings for the 3 million engineering workers.

Such agreements have nothing to do with the original demands for increased wages and shorter hours made by the rank and file of the T.G.W.U. and A.E.U. These demands were tabled on the grounds that they could be paid for out of the employers’ profits and not the increased sweat of the working class.

Both Carron and Cousins are on record as favouring cooperation with the employers in improving efficiency and increasing production. Indeed, Carron, as chairman of the British Productivity Council, does not spare himself in seeking ways and means of getting his members to work harder. serious danger. Just as the working class can win important concessions and take big steps forward along the road to a socialist Britain, so the employers can retaliate if we fail in our struggle. De Gaulle’s France must be a constant warning to British’ Labour.

It is impossible therefore to tolerate Right-wing policies any longer. The struggle is speeding-up. Hesitations today will mean defeats for us tomorrow. We call upon all workers everywhere to support the local Assemblies of Labour. Come and help in working out local programmes of action to defeat the employers and rout the Tory government.

Just recently, however, at the wage negotiations with the engineering employers, he had to say that the effort was largely to one side, the employers making no effort to imprcve wages and conditions as a result.

The real interest of the rank and file was voiced last Sunday at Birmingham. There at a meeting called by the Birmingham. district committee of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions, demands were made for action on the wage claim which included a call for a total stoppage if the claim is again refused on January 26.