The Newsletter, vol. 4 no. 137

The announcement late last Friday that the NUR leadership was calling upon its membership to take part in a national strike from February 15, came at the end of a period of intense agitation from rank and file railway workers in the NUR for action in support of their demand for increased wages.

Sir Brian Robertson who had met the three railway unions on behalf of the British Transport Commission earlier the same day, knew full well that a national railway strike would come if he didn’t grant some kind of immediate pay increase. Yet with this knowledge he used the backward attitude of the ASLEF and TSSA leaders at this meeting to prevent such a settlement.

This shows a ‘get tough’ attitude on the part of the BTC.

Railway workers are on a ridiculously low wage and to bring them up to the level of even the present rates in outside industry means an increase of somewhere in the region of 12 per cent. to 15 per cent. for the majority. The pattern of pay increases over the past 3 to 4 years shows that the BTC will fight to the last before anything like this will be granted.

The lessons of the 3 per cent. sell out in 1958 are still fresh in the minds of railway workers.

A similar situation could arise from the present struggle The BTC will give as little as possible so that the NUR leadership can call off the strike, and the months of preparation for an all-out struggle for a final settlement will be wasted.

This strike must take place if railway workers are, to achieve decent wages and lay the basis for struggles against the future redundancy plans of the BTC.

A BTC proposal for a compromise which involves acceptance of these plans cannot be ruled out. Any retreat in fact will strengthen the hand of the BTC for this crucial period in the future. These dangers mus. be guarded against. The Strike Committees which are being set up must prepare to carry forward the fight if the leadership retreats.

Railway workers in ASLEF and TSSA will suffer also if railway workers in the NUR are defeated or sold out. The leadership of these two unions has committed a disgraceful act in further dividing railway workers. Only the front action of their rank and file can repair this damage. They must renounce their leaders and join in the strike.

Workers in other industries also must stand by the railmen.

The united action of miners, dockers, engineers and other transport workers behind the railway workers will smash the resistance the employers are building against the fight for the 40-hour week and a pay rise.

By our Industrial Correspondent seven weeks’ was their comment.

In spite of such general feelings among the busmen, the call for a ban on overtime and rest-day working by the Central Delegate Conference (representing trolleys and diesels) met response, even though it was ‘unofficial’.

In the canteens on Monday, experienced drivers were saying they had never seen anything like it. The traffic jams, passenger queues, schedules dropped as buses lost time, have showed the bus crews what a rail strike means for them. This puts the question of aid to the tube men in a new light. A responsibility rests upon the Central Bus Committee to lead a campaign in the branches for united action on February 15.

Monday’s rail strike was a dress rehearsal in more than one sense. It demonstrated the power of the tubemen and what London busmen are in for if they carry on working in a prolonged dispute.

All last week, before the strike, busmen were handed leaflets from the Socialist Labour League pointing out who gains when either the tubes or buses carry on when the others are in dispute. The Transport bosses and the Tory government gained in 1958 when the railmen accepted 3 per cent. wage increases instead of joining the bus strike.

The great danger in 1960 is that the rank and file in both sections of the industry will fail to build a united front for their mutual wage claims.

The reaction to the leaflet was mixed. Some busmen got angry at the idea of helping the tubemen in any way—‘They should have thought of us when we were on the stones for

186 Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4 Telephone Macaulay 7029 SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1960 THESE are fateful days for the working class of France. Socialist Parties support de Gaulle; instead of rallying the working class to resist dictatorship, these wretches have politically chained the French working class to de Gaulle and his big-bourgeois backers, safe in the knowledge that it will be possible for them to set up exile parties in the safety of New York and Moscow as their counterparts did pre-war. Funk holes are always avail-

Describing it as ‘Monstrous’, Lord Chief Justice Parker on Tuesday squashed the sentence of five years jail passed last October on 23-year-old Irishman Patrick O’Toole at Nottingham Quarter Sessions.

Reporting the sentence in the November 7 issue of The Newsletter, we described it as ‘a mockery of justice’.

O’Toole had been acquitted of possessing explosives for an unlawful purpose, and had been described as being of exemplary character, but was nevertheless sentenced to five years imprisonment—‘as a deterrent’ according to the Recorder, Mr. Christopher Shawcross, Q.C.

On the previous day Mr. Shawcross had set free a man who had pleaded guilty to the same charge, but who said in answer to Mr. Shawcross, that he was not an Irishman, not a Catholic, and not a member of the IRA.

We are, of course, pleased at the successful outcome of Mr. O’Toole’s appeal, and at the confirmation of our original protest about this case provided by the Lord Chief Justice himself, but this raises a number of questions.

Mr. Shawcross had spotlighted the bias when he asked the questions : are you an Irishman, a Catholic, an IRA member?

We are entitled to ask how often the question of a man’s nationality, religion or political associations, or even the judge’s personal likes and dislikes are allowed to weight the scales of ‘British Justice’.

Mr. O’Toole was perhaps fortunate that the Recorder of Nottingham ‘expressed himself badly’ as he says, and stirred the Catholics in Nottingham, led by their Bishop, to protest, but how many other young Irishmen have had vicious sentences meted out to them which have passed unchallenged?

How many other ‘offenders’ with no money and no powerful religious or political organisation to back them, are suffering in this way?

We think an investigation into the working of the courts and into the machinery for appeal is long overdue.

For the second time in the last 20 months the country has been dragged a step nearer to fascist dictatorship. The colons in Algeria represent the beginnings of a fascist movement that will make Hitler’s brown shirts look like a schoolboys’ brigade. Indeed, a whole section of the human scum of wartime Fascist Europe, such as German ex-Nazis, are enrolled as French soldiers in Algeria. The correspondent of one of London’s daily newspapers has described how he was greeted by Germans in French army uniform who openly proclaimed they were Nazis. For them Deutschland tiber Alles is now replaced by Algérie Frangaise.

The torturing of Algerian nationalists has no parallel in the history of human sufferings, not even those of the Jews, socialists and communists in Hitler’s concentration camps. All the residue of capitalist degeneration is boiling over in Algeria. France today provides the grimmest of warnings for the world Labour movement.

True to the policy of peaceful co-existence, which means agreement with French capitalism and de Gaulle, the renegade Socialist party of Guy Mollet and the Stalinist party of Thorez have now virtually coined the slogan ‘defend de Gaulle’s dictatorship against fascism’. The servants of bureaucracy have also learned how to adapt themselves to dictatorship, just as they did to capitalist democracy before the war.

In Britain there are people in the Labour Party who call openly for support for de Gaulle. The Right and Left wings of the Labour Party are in fact united on this question, just as they were in mobilizing the working class to defend capitalist democracy in the second world war. Only the Marxists endeavour to explain the class politics of the present situation in France.

The crisis of French capitalism has sharply divided the big capitalists on the French mainland from the colons of Algeria. So far as they (the big capitalists) are concerned, de Gaulle is the only possible leader at the present time After all, he has done more to transform France into a dictatorship since May 1958 than any French politician in history. The. transformation of France into a dictatorship under de Gaulle means that the big bourgeois are more secure than ever before. Hundreds of new anti-working-class laws have been drawn up by the Right-wing politicians in de Gaulle’s cabinet. This is the reality of political life in France today. The bourgeoisie see in de Gaulle the best defender of their interests These interests are now being economically weakened by the prolongation of the Algerian war. A peace of some sort must be arranged in the not-toodistant future. Now that the oil of the Sahara is secure, the colons must take a back seat so far as the French capitalists are concerned The split in the French ruling class is therefore a domestic affair. To support one section of. this class against another is to betray the working class and its future. The fight for independent class politics in France is a real necessity, but the Communist and able for such traitors, whilst the working class pay a terrible price for their betrayals.

The division within the French capitalist class will not lead to the annihilation of the colons The Nazi Party was at one time made illegal in Germany, but the crisis of German capitalism transformed this into an advantage and the illegality was used as a cloak behind which the Nazis actually grew stronger.

The fight against Fascism is a class question. de Gaulle regime is stacked out with the friends of the colons who are only holding their fire because they are waiting for a more favourable opportunity. Frustrated generals and colonels may retreat under the shadow of de Gaulle today, only to return all the more strengthened tomorrow. The Hindenburg regime in Germany was ostensiby against the Nazis, but in such a way that it prepared the ground behind the scenes for Hitler to take power. Pflimlin in his time paved the way for de Gauile The question will be asked: “What should the working class have done in the last few days in France? ’ A real Communist leadership would have mobilized the workers independently of de Gaulle for a general strike. This, of course, would only be successful if the necessary preparatory work had been carried out in readiness for such an eventuality. The task of the working class of France is to strike independently of de Gaulle against the danger of Fascist attack from Algeria. A Communist leadership would constantly warn the working class of the dangers of the dictatorship which now dominates the country’s political life. It would unmask the real Fascist organizers inside the Gaullist political set-up.

The ‘self-determination’ policy of de Gaulle is a fraud so long as half-a-million French troops remain in Algeria. Only the withdrawal of the troops and the French administration, immediately and unconditionally, can bring peace and real independence to Algeria. carrying out of such a policy, however, demands the replacement of the de Gaulle regime by a government of workers and poor farmers. The French working class may have lost a battle, but they have not yet lost the war against bonapartism It is still not too late.

Working-class independence in struggle is a fundamental principle of Marxism. It is the only way that Fascism can be defeated in France. Those who do not realize this and line themselves up with de Gaulle against the colons will suffer the fate of the socialist fighters who now languish in the gaols of Franco’s Spain and the tens of thousands of socialists who died in the concentration camps of Hitler and Mussolini. This is the issue which divides the Stalinists and the reformists from the Marxists. Every effort must be made to assist the French working class to understand the terrible consequences of what is now taking place in Algeria. We in Britain must redouble our fight against collaborators such as the false lefts and the Right wing who would tie us to the coat-tails of imperiaism just as surely as their counterparts in France tie the French workers to the coat-tails of de Gaulle.

Two lone voices speak out in the Southern Irish Parliament against the reactionary bigots of the two main parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael.

Last week on behalf of the Socialist Labour League I talked to one of these men, 44-year-old Dr. Noel Browne, one-time Minister of Health in Ireland’s 1951 coalition government and a former leader in the Clann Na Poblacta Party.

The most outstanding figure in Irish Left-wing politics, Browne is now a member of the executive committee of the National Progressive Democrats and represents that party in parliament along with Jack McQuillam, MP for the rural County Roscommon.

Browne was forced to resign his position as Health Minister because of the opposition of the Church and big business to his new National Health Bill. The bill was designed to provide free—no ‘means test’ aid—to pregnant mothers and children under 16 years of age.

No less a figure than the Bishop of Dubiin sent for Browne and told him to drop his bill. High clerics argued that Browne’s Bill was encouraging legal abortion and the use of contraceptives. When he disproved these charges he was told that the bill would cost too much.

Not one member of the Cabinet supported Browne. His own party the Clann Na Poblacta repudiated him. Finally he resigned from the Government and since then has worked to build up the National Progressive Democrat Party which according to Dr. Browne works for ‘the creation of a properly democratic socialist republic’.

The Newsletter is pleased to print the following contributions from Noel Browne on Emigration and Partition. These will be followed by two further contributions dealing with Socialist revival and the Church in Ireland, both of which will appear in our next issue.—Editor.

Yet at the same time they have shown our people one thing clearly. Exploitation, the callous and pitiless neglect of the happiness and welfare of the masses in any nation is no monopoly of the British. It is an evil common to the British or Irish or any national ruling class alike and is inseparable from capitalism. Our home-bred Gaelic variety is as bad as the worst.

In short, then, to stop emigration and the consequent evils associated with it, let us answer James Connolly’s call of 40 years ago and work for the creation of a properly democratic socialist republic for the whole of Ireland. Take up the fight where he left it when they shot him.

PARTITION

Partition is maintained in many ways. ‘There are genuine fears, and there are artificially-fostered fears. Among the professions, businessmen, industrialists and, above all, the politicians both unionist and nationalist, Catholic and Protestant, there is a very powerful vested interest in the retention of partition. Each of these groups has developed and encouraged a_ beleagured ‘loyalty to your own’ mentality among their own sections of the population. There is some, but less of it, in the Republic.

In these circumstances, then, it seems clear that there is at least one basic pre-condition to the solution of a new desperately complicated problem. The people on both sides of the border must be able to be certain that in a united Ireland the government would not be the pawn of any of the great sectarian interests. In establishing this pre-condition they would be impressed not by constitutional guarantees or assurances, but by the activities of their working politicians faced with practical issues and decisions in government and Opposition.

It seems to me clear that with.so many differences, real or imagined, which exist at present, based on the older religious and political associations, unity can best be re-established by the declaration of a common aim and a common policy for its achievement. In the struggle to establish that the complete ownership and control of all the national wealth of the whole of Ireland is the rightful heritage of the people, north and south, the nation would be united ideologically. There _ could be no border in the united struggle against capital since its power and pattern of exploitation are directed equally against the worker, north and south, Catholic or Protestant, alike.

A true socialist can permit no barriers of nationality, creed or colour to keep him divided from fellow-socialists. In a united Socialist Republic neither side need have any fears of exploitation or victimisation by the other. That would be a negation of socialism., The creation of an all-Ireland socialist movement would surely be the first step, all else would flow logically from that.

We are at present being fed one of the brassiest bits of Lemass arrogance by the national press. ‘Emigration is already slowing down because of Lemass’s new policies.” Are we to take it that in the opinion of the Fianna Fail Party in general, and Mr. Lemass in particular, the only major obstacle to national prosperity and social progress has now been removed? Mr. De Valera has retired so now Lemass can get on with the job. If this is so, why did they put up with him for so long?

Is it not a fact that the main reason why emigration is falling is because the joint economic policies of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have made refugees of no less than approximately one million Irish men and women who have been made to emigrate There simply aren’t any more boys or girls in the ‘call-up’ groups for emigration Up to 1932 Cumann no Ghaedhal believed in the protection of the wealthy Irish shopkeeper selling the produce of English-based industries. So these distributing concerns of Protestant and Castle Catholic families lived on in the same luxury to which ‘they had been accustomed’ under the British just as if the Irish Citizen Army had never gone out under Connolly to fight for a workers’ socialist republic.

The pro-Treatyites under Cosgrave sold out. Mr. Lemass developed a ‘mixed’ economy. For the public utility enterprise he found state capital; for the simple profit-making industries he turned to the ‘rotten apple in the barrel’ the wealthy capitalist left untouched by the revolutionaries.

To the already wealthy Protestant Ascendancy and Castle ‘Catholic families were added the social quislings, the one-time revolutionaries. They were bought over for the purposes of evading the provisions of the ‘control of manufacturers’ act. The cloth caps became shapely, boardroom bowlers and the pregnant word ‘equally’ was consciously dropped from the phrase, “The government of the Republic will cherish equally all the children of the nation’.

To become directors and shareholders and branch managers in these pocket industries, subsidiaries of British companies, they made great sacrifices.

In the first place they sacrificed the ambitions and ideals of their murdered socialist comrades Mellowes and Connolly. Then, to preserve capitalism, they denied the right of a million young people to live, work and rear their families in Ireland. They denied the right of the aged to more than a subsistence existence on 27s. 6d. a week. They denied our young people a chance of a proper education, they have perpetuated all the evils of the old poor laws in our health services, they condemned thousands upon thousands of their fellow-Irishmen to the degradation and demoralization of months and often years of unemployment. They have broken up the homes and fragmented the families of thousands and thousands of Irishmen. Theirs has been indeed a great betrayal.

The threatened railway strike brings to the fore the urgent need for a resolute political leadership in the trade unions that can build rank-and-file unity and thereby win the claim.

As right wing trade union leaders shilly-shally over the engineers' pay claim and the demand for the 40-hour week the bosses make it very clear that there will be no £1 per week or 40 hours without a fight.

Every wage claim, every demand for the 40-hour week, every fight against victimisation and each phase of the struggle against the H-bomb confirms the timeliness of the programme adopted at last November's National Assembly of Labour.

Now the job is to strengthen the fight for the Assembly throughout the widest possible sections of the Labour and trade union movement. The local Assemblies of Labour due to take place next month in all the main centres can and must serve that purpose.

Already support for the London Assembly is coming in from diverse parts of the movement. Members of the Battersea 20BE branch of the Amalgamated Engineering Union have already elected two delegates. The letter from branch secretary, A. E. Bridger, says: 'This branch supports your efforts.

Stanmore Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament have written saying they are willing to sponsor the Assembly.

Students in the London University Marxist Society are also supporting the Assembly. Their secretary, Pat Bickers, informs us: 'We are sending delegates from the Society, and hope to conduct a vigorous campaign so that other students will come to the Assembly.'

From now, right up to March 6, London members of the Socialist Labour League and supporters of The Newsletter will be busy campaigning for support for the Assembly. Regular meetings will be held outside factories, docks and building sites. Speakers will address shop stewards' committees, trade union branches, coloured workers' organizations, etc.

Last Saturday and Sunday, teams of sellers were out in Brixton and North Kensington selling the edition of The Newsletter containing the exposure of employers' discrimination against coloured labour. Over 300 extra copies of the paper were sold and many coloured and white workers were acquainted with the Assembly programme for the first time.

Such campaigning and activity needs your help. We ask all our supporters to work in their organizations for the election of delegates. If you require a speaker, then write to us and one will be sent.

Money is always an urgent need. You can help tremendously the work of the Assemblies by sending us a donation. More money means more meetings, more leaflets and more propaganda in the fight against the employers and their Tory government. Try and send us a donation now and make sure that this essential fight goes forward.

$$ OOOO eee sO NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF LABOUR CAMPAIGN: AREA ASSEMBLIES Engineering workers from different Birmingham factories when questioned on their views with regard to the employers’ rejection of the engineers’ claim are all agreed on one thing—only determined action can make the employers beat a retreat.

Brother Alf Dawson, secretary of the Tractor and Trans‘ mission Shop Stewards’ Committee, exclaimed ‘It’s ridiculous for the employers to say they cannot find the money. Just look at the £49,000,000 BMC is going to spend on its expansion programme!

‘My personal opinion is an all-out strike to win the claim.’

In his own factory, in spite of the BMC management sending home thousands (allegedly because of the electricians’ strike for higher wages) a mass meeting of the laid-off workers held on Monday pledged full solidarity behind the electricians. , Harold Skipp, an Austin worker said: ‘every one throughout the engineering industry should be called out’, but he doubted very much if ‘Carron and Company’ would call them out.

Brother Carter from Exacta chipped in and said: ‘They must be forced to call for action. All shop stewards’ committees should call mass meetings demanding strike action’.

Brother Wilson, a press operator at Austin’s, told me that there is constant discussion in the factory in favour of fighting for the 40-hour week and the £1 raise. ‘The only way is for.a national stoppage and for us to remain out until we we get it,’ he added.

Brother James, Convenor of BG Machinery, a factory in the BSA group, felt that the Midlands workers should be the first ‘to take the initiative in a campaign for an all-out strike’. He said that a lot of his members are disgusted with the lack of action by Confederation leaders. ‘A lot of my members feel that the employers are taking the EC of the Confederation for a ride. Faith in the Executives is at its lowest ebb for being so tolerant with the employers.’

Recalling the 1957 ‘strings’ award which Carron forced through, he concluded the interview by saying ‘In the event of a stoppage we must see to it that any settlement is referred back to the various District Committees for their ratificaion before anything is signed.’

A leaflet produced jointly by the Coventry and Birmingham branches of the Socialist Labour League and distributed to engineering workers, showed that the cash is there. Quoting profits over three years it pointed out that Rootes boosted its profits from £942,525 in 1957 to £5,493,546 in 1959; BMC from £12,981,469 to £21,726,943; Standards from £3,145,146 to £6,861,102; and Joseph Lucas from £8,117,193 to £10,071,340. It pointed out that an average of £9 per week profit is made out of every motor worker.

Denison House, Vauxhall Bridge Road, S.W.1. 10.30 am.—S p.m.

Walker Art Gallery, William Brown Street. 10.30 a.m.—4.30 p.m.

Central Halls, Bath Street. 10 a.m.

Leeds Museum. 3.0 p.m.

Registrar’s Office, All Saints. 2.30 p.m.

‘Typographical Hall, Bath Street, Birmingham.

By our Industrial Correspondent

Fifteen hundred workers at the English Electric Company’s factory in Netherton, Liverpool, downed tools last Thursday. A one-day token strike had been held on the previous Monday in support of the claim for a 40-hour week and £1 pay rise. Two painters scabbed in this strike and one used a stacker-truck although this is properly the job of the Transport section.

On Thursday they struck work and the management stated it would be necessary to lay off the rest of the workers. Mick O’Neill, the Amalgamated Engineering Union convenor and chief shop steward stated: ‘We forestalled the management by striking in sympathy with the Transport section. We go back on Monday but the painters are still out. Their union Officials are taking action against the two blackleg painters.’

The significant point about this strike is that the management failed in its attempt to drive a wedge between the Transport section and the rest of the workers. trolled council after an overwhelming majority of the delegates to the local Trades and Labour Council had voted against the Labour Group taking the initiative ‘for raising further rent levels in the City’.

Braddock retorted to Trades Council delegates who opposed the increases by asking: ‘What do you know about the administration of the city?’ At a special meeting of the Labour Group which was considering the increases he moved that the Trades Council resolution not be discussed.

With 22 councillors voting against Braddock, the motion was carried.

Know your friends Braddock’s brush off to the city’s Labour movement and the tenants, contrasts sharply with his chummy approach to the representatives of local business.

Not long after the special meeting of the Labour Group, Braddock moved that Corporation representatives meet representatives of the Chamber of Commerce who wished to discuss the boycott of South African goods. Liverpool Corporation had decided to support the boycott.

The original propositions for rent increases which were put

The rent strike of St. Pancras council tenants has now reached its most critical stage.

Over the week-end the Tory council slammed in a new notice on rent strikers. This notice calls for the payment of all arrears ‘within three days’ and adds the threat that unless ‘payment is made ‘steps will be taken to recover the arrears’.

A reply from the Tenants’ Committee warns tenants that this is not a new threat from the Tories and that despite their threats the council have not yet dared to evict any tenants.

True as this is, it is not good enough. Over the last two weeks a certain dwindling of support for the strike has become evident. Now it requires more than demonstrations to defeat the council. Unless a big counter-offensive is waged by the tenants and backed by the entire London Labour movement there is a chance of the strike petering out.

The latest Tory circular is aimed at intimidating the remaining strikers. The word eviction or the visit of the bailiffs is spread around the area by the Tories with the intention of scaring people into paying up.

What will make the strikers stand firm and what will swell their ranks is the feeling that they are not alone and that they have the power and the protection to fight the Tories.

Rally in support of tenants _Every effort must now be made to win the local trade union movement for industrial action. This Saturday in the Clarence Hall, Clarence Way, N.W.1, the Central Tenants’ Committee is holding a conference in support of their fight.

Every socialist, trade union militant and working class tenant must support that conference. But it must be a conference of action. From that conference must go a call for strike action with a pledge to every tenant who has received a notice from the council that mass pickets will ensure that no evictions take place.

LIVERPOOL RIGHT-WING LABOUR RAISE RENTS By W. HUNTER Sixty-six thousand Liverpool corporation tenants, Hyde Park, Sunday, February 7, at 3 p.m. faced with a rent increase of two and sixpence a week, have received a curt snub from Alderman John Braddock, leader of Liverpool’s Labour Group on the City The decision to raise rents was taken by the Labour conforward a few weeks ago were for much more than 2s. 6d.

which has now been decided by the Labour Group. Obviously, the feeling in the Labour movement has forced the modification.

But this rise can only be a beginning. Even with these increases the income from rents cannot meet the interest and redemption charges arising from the council’s past and present borrowings.

These present rent increases will bring in £420,000, a little more than half the expected deficiency in the Housing Revenue Account for the current year, of £743,843. And the abolition of subsidies by the Tory Government has not had its full effects on Liverpool yet. , So that in a very short while, a Labour council acting as administrators for Tory Government will be proposing further increases in rents.

By refusing to challenge the government and lead a campaign of the labour movement against the toll extracted by financiers and building companies, the council must continually worsen the conditions of working class tenants.

The great majority of the delegates to the Liverpool Trades and Labour Council feel this.

Trades and Labour Council must organize resistance Following the Labour group’s decision last week trade union branches demanded a special meeting of the Trades Council and Labour Party. That meeting took place last Sunday—the first special meeting of the Trades Council since the end of the war.

The Trades and Labour Council decided once again to declare its opposition to rent increases and to send another deputation to the Labour Group, which was meeting the following day.

The right wing of the Labour group, however, is clearly determined to violate the policy of the local Labour movement. If opinions expressed strongly at the Trades Council meetings are to be taken seriously then the Trades Council and Labour Party itself must lead a fight against the increases.

It must call a meeting of all council tenants and assist in organizing them together with the local labour movement in demonstrations against the increase.

PUBLIC MEETINGS

Ireland and the Socialist Movement Speaker: BRIAN BEHAN.

Unite to Fight the Colour Bar Stuart School, Sussex Road, London, S.W.9. Monday, February 8, at 8 p.m.

Speaker: DAVE FINCH.

the Communist Party Eisenhower and Macmillan have become

ANTI-H-BOMB CAMPAIGN Where next in the campaign against the H-bomb? The danger at this point is that members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Direct Action Committee fall victim to belief in a political miracle. For it would be nothing less than a miracle if a Tory government were to renounce the H-bomb. Their defence policy, with the dropping of conscription, relies ‘more and more on nuclear weapons. Their foreign policy relies as always upon NATO. Their economic policies all take H-bomb politics for granted. Yet this is the government which many leaders of CND and Direct Action hope to influence by public opinion. Hasn’t it yet struck them that the last General Election result followed two Aldermaston marches and _ the Swaffham demonstration? Now they plan a third Aldermaston march and Direct Action looks for new gaols to rest in.

A misleading conclusion .

Some supporters of Direct Action draw a misleading parallel with the activities of Gandhi’s supporters in India. They argue that peaceful civil disobedience worked there and could work again here. What they ignore is that Gandhi’s supporters had the mass of the population to back them up. Obstruction, even passive obstruction, by large sections of workers can make the whole task of government impossible. It has some of the effects of a general strike.. It is utterly unlike demonstrations by small isolated groups. What the example of Gandhi should point us to is the necessity of bringing large sections of workers into the struggle against the H-bomb.

This can only be done as part of the general task of making the working class conscious that what opposes them is not this or that employer, but the employing class and the State power which represents its interests. For it is the same State power ~ which depends upon the H-bomb. And the enemy is the men who are prepared to use it and the capitalistic society which produces such men. The State which cannot find money for adequate old age pensions and dare not lay open the books of the nationalized industries before the workers in those industries is the State which can find all the money it needs for producing nuclear weapons.

The H-bomb and summit talks Sometimes workers ask, ‘How can capitalism be responsible for the H-bomb? The Soviet Union also relies upon the H-bomb and it isn’t a capitalist State’. The answer to this is that one of the evils of the rise of Stalinism is that the government of the Soviet Union ceased to rely on the international working class as its first line of defence. Instead it started to play the capitalist game of international diplomacy So the Soviet government negotiates treaties with capitalist governments, but never makes direct appeals to the workers in capitalist States over the head of those governments. Communist Parties in capitalist States then find themselves forced to defend the Soviet Union’s possession of the H-bomb. Consequently the British Communist Party cannot come out against the British H-bomb. For, if they did, workers would ask, ‘If Britain should give up the H-bomb, why not Russia?’

It is because of this that the Communist Party has to fall back on a policy of supporting Summit talks. This involves them in saying in domestic politics that Eisenhower and Macmillan are the worst enemies of the working class, men who represent the interests of the capitalist class at every point; but in international politics we suddenly find that for -men of peace, who must be supported. But to support them abroad is necessarily to strengthen them at home and therefore to strengthen the power of the capitalist class. Thus this policy ends by reinforcing the defenders of the H-bomb.

It would therefore be tragic if CND were distracted from its unilateralist aims in any way or to join the propaganda in favour of summit talks in any way. What is the alternative?

The alternative is for the strengthening of all those sections of the Labour movement who are trying to work out a unified policy against the State power of the capitalist class. Those in CND and the Direct Action Committee who are not yet playing a part in the Labour movement can here find the most important field for activity. As the industrial action of workers becomes more and more politically conscious, the possibility of effective industrial action against the H-bomb and the rocket bases comes nearer and nearer.

The next stage in the development of this will be the Assemblies of Labour which will be taking place in large cities throughout the country in March and April. Every CND and Direct Action member ought to make attendance at their nearest Assembly of Labour a top priority.

C.P. STUDENT LEADER BACKS DOWN ON

In common with many other universities and colleges, students at University College, London, passed a resolution last November, deploring apartheid in South Africa and urging a boycott of South African goods. This motion was proposed by Bob Williamson, a student member of the Communist Party.

A few days ago, the Union Council recommended the recission of this motion and that it be replaced by a harmless resolution, simply regretting apartheid in higher education.

With the active support of Communist Party students, an amendment was proposed to this new resolution calling for a total boycott. Those who opposed any action asked that this amendment be not put, arguing that we should confine ourselves to matters relating specifically to students, and horrify-, ing us with visions of being hauled up before the House of Lords and prosecuted for ‘organizing in restraint of trade’ if we had stuck to the original motion.

Among those for the amendment was Williamson, undoubtedly the most experienced speaker there. The faces around were expectant—here was the man to lay into the bureaucracy. But he was to do no such thing.

Williamson thinks again Yes, he began, he agreed with the president that we should deal only with student affairs as such. But we should remember that it is indeed South African students who are suffering the most from apartheid! Yes, we would all prefer a partial boycott, but a total boycott was so much easier to carry out. No, he did not want to harm the reputation of the Students’ Union.

In the atmosphere of bewilderment that followed, a vote was taken, and the amendment was lost. The pious resolution was passed, as also was a further resolution recommending individuals not to buy South African goods. Students left. the meeting having decided to do exactly nothing.

Marxists in the universities are as yet few in number. We hope to win support, not by scrambing for student positions, and sacrificing our principles to keep them, but by continually urging students to extend their protests as widely as possible. To link the fight for the abolition of the H-bomb with the fight against the system that produces it; to see the fight: against oppression in the colonies as the fight against imperialism; and to tie the specific question of apartheid to the general issue of discrimination against race and colour anywhere, ex-posing its essential class basis.

‘It is the Curragh situation all over again... .’ So wrote the Daily Telegraph’s Algiers correspondent in that paper for January 27. The officers’ mutiny at the Curragh (the Aldershot of Ireland) in 1914 was an event which bulked big in the thinking of Marxists of my generation about the problem of how power would have to be taken from the capitalist class. I wonder whether it means much to those now in their twenties. At a Socialist Forum discussion three years ago a mention of it was dismissed by a ‘New Left’ type as ‘ancient Clearly, the Algiers crisis is far from being merely a repeat performance of the Ulster crisis of 1913-1914 in new costumes and a different setting; but some similar elements are certainly present.

Lenin appreciated the significance of the Curragh affair in these words : ‘March 21, 1914, will mark a world-historical turning point, when the noble landlords of England, smashing the English Constitution and English law to atoms, gave an excellent lesson in class struggle. They showed for all to see that ‘real class rule lies outside of Parliament’.

The Liberal government of the time proposed to grant Home Rule to Ireland. In the province of Ulster the Tory opponents of Home Rule rallied a force of volunteers who threatened to resist by force the implementation of the government’s policy. When the government began moves to despatch troops to Ulster to protect arms depots against raids by the volunteers they found themselves confronted by organized “refusal of the officers concerned to carry out orders, an attitude in which they were supported by the generals at the War Office, by the King and by the Tory Party. The Liberals backed down and suspended their grant of Home Rule. The Easter rebellion of 1916 and the bloody Anglo-Irish war of 1918-1921 had to take place before it could be won, and then only for part of Ireland.

What could the government have done instead of surrendering? Lenin wrote at the time: ‘In order to suppress the rebellion of the aristocratic officers, the Liberal government ought to have appealed to the people, to the masses, to the proletariat, but this is exactly what the “enlightened” Liberal bourgeoisie were more afraid of than anything else in the world.’

The whole episode which culminated in the Curragh mutiny is instructive regarding the realities that underlie the ruling class’s talk of ‘patriotism’, ‘democracy’ and ‘loyalty’. A number of Ulster Tory MPs said openly that if Home Rule were granted to Ireland they would transfer their allegiance to the German Kaiser. The newspaper Irish. Churchman wrote (November 14, 1913): ‘We have the offer of aid, from a powerful continental monarch who, if Home Rule is forced on the Protestants of Ireland, is prepared to send an army sufficient to release England of any further trouble in Ireland by attaching it to his domain .. .’ In April, 1914, 35,000 rifles and 2,500,000 rounds of ammunition, German-made and passed through the Kiel Canal with the German government’s consent, were landed at Larne and elsewhere for the Ulster volunteers. It was the opinion of the American ambassador in Berlin that all this contributed materially to the Kaiser’s confidence in going to war that summer.

Bonar Law, one of the leaders of the Tory Party (and later Prime Minister) wrote to Carson, head of the Ulster volunteers, on September 18, 1913, that he had talked with Churchill, then a member of the Liberal govenment, about the situation in Ireland : ‘Does he suppose that the Army would obey orders to exercise force in Ulster? I said to him that in that case undoubtedly we should regard it as civil war, and should urge the officers of the Army not to regard them as a real government but to ignore their orders.’ Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, then Director of Military Operations, recorded in his frank diaries, published in 1927, how he and other high-ranking officers had intrigued with the Ulster volunteers, and referred to the final showdown at the Curragh, when the officers of the 3rd Cavalry Brigade refused to proceed to Ulster as ‘our action in the army’.

What made the whole affair especially educative to the working-class movement was that, only two years before, Tom Mann had been sent to prison as the author of a leaflet appealing to soldiers not to fire on strikers. After the government’s surrender to the Curragh mutiny, the Daily Herald, then the organ of the left wing, reproduced this leaflet on its front page.

TERRIBLE) Academy Cinema

Fed as we usually are on mediocrity, this film, like its predecessor ‘Ivan the Terrible, Part 1), shocks with its originality and grandeur. Following the complications of the plot may tend to detract from observing the revolutionary use which Eisenstein has made of cinematic possibilities.

Visually this film is a fresco, from which the characters emerge as portraits, fused with their background of Byzantine murals and ikons. The forms of painting, sculpture and architecture, opera and ballet, drama and the novel, are synthesised in a new harmonious whole Though the plot is intricate, the theme is essentially simple. The major character is derived from Ivan, Tsar of All Russia (1533-1584), who in fighting the boyars (great feudal lords) hastened the emergence of a centralised State power. In this, Ivan’s methods were no more humane than those of his Western European counterparts; he used ‘barbarous methods to drive out barbarism’. Ivan sees as his mission the unification of Russia. Plotting against him are the boyars and the Church; the boyars have ceded land to foreign powers and are preparing to collaborate in the planned Polish invasion. Around himself, Ivan has built a ring of steel, the Oprichniks (‘men apart’), chosen from the lower nobility, who have dedicated their lives and their ‘souls’ to Ivan’s cause. The internal struggle is resolved when Ivan foils the attempt on his life, and the boyars’ candidate for the Tsardom is killed instead.

Why was this film banned in Russia under Stalin? After all, the film breathes patriotism, justifies the historical necessity of brutality, and depicts the greatness of the relentness man of destiny.

Above all the idolatry accorded to Stalin would not permit of the ‘great man’ of history being depicted as beset with doubts—as is this Ivan, when in anguish before the massacre of the boyars, he questions his right to commit the deed; or, when driven by loneliness and lack of confidence, he is suppliant to a priest. Ivan develops through uncertainties and hesitations to iron determination. But, presumably, the ‘great man’ is allowed neither conflict no growth; god-like he leaps on to the stage of history with all the necessary qualities balanced in perpetual excellence.

Eisenstein the artist was a genius and neither his early revolutionary ardour (‘Battleship Potemkin’), nor his later patriotism were expressed in routine eulogies. Always he. created, experimenting with the medium, advancing it, and probing it to yet further limits. And so, too, in Ivan, he could not be content with a two dimensional vision of an epoch and a man’ He gave depth and perspective and for this he was condemned BENITA TEPER

FEBRUARY. 6, 1960 Cadogan justifies his united front for breaking through

LETTERS I have never said ‘that the world should unite in “a front that cuts across class boundaries” in the struggle against the H-bomb’. In ‘The 1959 Situation in the Socialist Labour League’ I wrote that ‘the workers of the world should unite for peace—a front that cuts across class boundaries because of the inclusive annihilation threatened by atomic warfare’.

There is all the difference in the world between these two statements! It is clear in the first place that the physical effect of an exploding H-bomb cuts across all class boundaries.

It is also clear from experience and more explicitly from the Marxist theory of allies and the united front (compare the cross-class unity of peasants, soldiers and workers in 1917), that the nuclear war prospect is calculated to bring to the side of the working class all sorts of people who are not workers but who will recognise working-class leadership in the struggle for peace. Some people in CND see this quite clearly.

Further, I did not open my article in The Socialist Leader with the statement that ‘the October Revolution of Lenin and Trotsky was the most successful failure’. This came at the end of the second paragraph and is unintelligible when torn from its context.

That paragraph read: ‘No political party or organization has ever succeeded in comprehending the nature and scale of the overall development (i.e. in politics, industry, science and trade unionism—P.C.) in terms of international relations and the State. The October Revolution of Lenin and Trotsky was the most successful failure’.

Is this not what Trotsky said, not only in the substance, but even in the very title of his book The Revolution Betrayed?

I have no connection with the Independent. Labour. Party. So far as I am aware, I don’t know a single member. That may well be a sectarian fault on my part!

I’m afraid that Healy’s well-known pre-disposition towards finding a dark secret, if not a positive conspiracy, in every situaton has led him up the garden. ... So much for revealing my ‘intention of snuggling up more closely to the Right Wing’.

It may interest readers to know that the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party considered my appeal against expulsion at its meeting on the 27th January. My appeal was rejected because of my association with the Socialist Labour League, the organization which the Executive knew very well had just suspended me once, and expelled me twice! So much for my ‘snuggle’.

Healy asks ‘What is this “Left” that Cadogan speaks of?’ That is easily answered. It consists of the people amongst whom the future recruits of the democratic revolutionary party are to be found.

Finally, so far as I’m concerned, what is ‘under fire’ is not Marxism but the original, time-honoured and permanent constitutional weakness of the revolutionary movement—sectarianism. This is something we have to fight against and live with, without cease.

EDITORIAL COMMENT The struggle for Socialism remains the only answer to the H-bomb. Socialism will be achieved when the working class led by the Marxist party seizes power and institutes the dictatorship of the working class All sorts of people may follow this action, but only the working class led by the Marxist party can carry it The Marxist party does not propose cutting across class boundaries. It stands for waging the class struggle and widening the gulf between the two main classes, workers and capitalists.

Published by The Newsletter, 186 Clapham High St., London, SW4 Registered at the GPO as a newspaper class barriers on the grounds that a lot of people in all classes will be killed by the H-bomb ‘In the last two world wars a lot of people from Ml classes: Se were killed but this did not mean that the gulf between the classes was bridged. On the contrary both these wars provided an impetus to the class struggle which led to revolutionary offensives in various parts of the world.

How can Cadogan argue that Trotsky’s ‘The Revolution Betrayed’ confirms his view that the October Revolution was a successful failure? That revolution succeeded, under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky; later, in definite historical circumstances, it was betrayed, by a social group at whose head stood Stalin. One had supposed that this was A, B, C to Cadogan by now.

The fact that Cadogan was expelled from the Labour Party is not decisive for his political evolution. All sorts of people have been expelled from the Labour Party at one time or other. Mere membership of the Labour Party does not automatically place one in the camp of reformism any more than expulsion from the Labour Party places one in the camp of Marxism. What we are concerned with is the direction of Cadogan’s political evolution, which in our opinion is towards the politics of reformism.

We note how he has deliberately avoided taking up our points in relation to his theory of transforming the State. This is because Cadogan does not call for the overthrow of the capitalist property relations in Britain but for ‘a political revolution in the fullest sense of the word’.

(See ‘Politics 1960’ by P. Cadogan, Socialist Review, February 1960.) A political revolution is correct in the Soviet Union where the property relations remain basically those established by the revolution in 1917. What is needed in Britain is a social revolution, precisely to destroy the property relations of capitalism. Cadogan’s ‘transformation of the State’ leads him to see the problem merely as one of rearranging the State instead of overthrowing it together with the property relations which it protects.

-Even the Caption Just a footnote to the discussion between Peter Cadogan Gerry Healy. Even the caption to the picture illustrating Cadogan’s article in the Socialist Leader was wrong! picture shows Healy addressing the National Assembly of Labour, while the caption says he was addressing ‘last year’s conference of the Socialist Tabour League’, a quite different occasion.

BRIAN PEARCE ALGERIA The article by Tom Kemp ‘Behind the Algiers Insurrection’ left out the most important point. Just what exactly is behind the insurrection?

Why has de Gaulle spoken out for ‘self-determination’? It isn’t because of any conversion to ‘liberalism’ or due to fear of peace petitions. Two factors have made the new course for French imperialism necessary, and it might be said that de Gaulle is supported in his new line by French big business. The first is the immense cost of the war on the French economy thus weakening de Gaulle’s bargaining power in Europe. The second is the discovery of oil in the Sahara. A pipe-line 450 miles long is a vulnerable weakness if there is a war going on around it. This is serious if, as de Gaulle is, an imperialist government is bidding for the oil monopoly of the European market. The cost of maintaining roops along the pipe-line would push the price of oil skyigh.

De Gaulle’s real ‘liberalism’ is to make peace with the: right wing of the revolution (FLN provisional government) at the same time as he calls upon loyal French soldiers to. hunt down the Moslem rebels.

The policy of ‘self-determination’ is followed up by an increase in dictatorial powers at home. The apparent shift. to the ‘left’ is only an accommodation for a shift to the right. to deal with the French workers.

Edgware, Middlesex. GEOFF KENNEDY‘Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (T.U.), r.o. 180 Clapham High St., $.W.4