The Newsletter, vol. 4 no. 147

For CND to place its hopes and expectations in the sumare now becoming obvious to many of its members. What Continued on Page 118 The following resolution was passed by the Scotstoun Branch of the AEU :

We call upon the EC to use its influence with the Labour Party to have a joint campaign (Labour Party Trade Union) in support of the South African workers. As a means of helping them we think there should be a complete boycott of all armaments destined for South Africa.

Vv The Guest Keen and Nettlefold, Hillingdon Factory branch of the Transport and General Workers Union has sent this resolution to the Scottish Delegate Conference for June 29:

‘This 7/183 branch of the TGWU calls upon conference to take steps to impose a complete boycott on all South African goods and that there should be no handling of goods from South Africa by TGWU members and all other trade unionists concerned, whether delivered by land, sea or air, until such times as the policy of But HE will not be at the Summit.... apartheid becomes 2 thing of the past.’

186 Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4 Telephone Macaulay 7029 SATURDAY, test and the Tories could have spent just about 2s ‘much as they liked. Did not Labour support the defence estimates?

This farcical state of affairs is the direct outcome of Gaitskell’s policy symbolized in the abandonment of Clause 4. The abandonment of this clause is in fact the removal of any semblance of socialist struggle from

The third Aldermaston march takes place under the shadow of increasing capitalist war preparations.

Eisenhower has announced a record breaking American defence expenditure of 40.6 billion dollars. France has tested her second atomic bomb. Adenauer's regime, staffed by 'ex-Nazis' is now negotiating for bases in Franco Spain. Alfred Krupp, like his father before him, assures us that his giant £600 million combine is producing for peace. No doubt, however, the junior Krupp will be only too pleased to make his 'patriotic' and profitable contribution to the needs of NATO.

British arms expenditure for the financial year beginning this month, will reach the staggering figure of £1,630 million. For the rocket and missile manufacturers such as de Havilland and English Electric, war promises to be an extremely lucrative practice. Even now no firm prices for missiles have yet been fixed. In November, 1958, the prices estimated by the Ministry of Supply were more than double those given to the War Office in 1956.

English Electric, who entered an original estimate for Thunderbird of £2,500,000 in 1950, now blithely state that it will cost £27 million. No wonder the shareholders consider Britain should pursue a firm nuclear policy.

Statesmen unmoved

Despite all the glib utterances and pious statements made by Macmillan, Eisenhower and de Gaulle about their peaceful intentions, the facts remain uncontestable. Along with their NATO and SEATO allies, the big imperialist powers remain completely impervious to world-wide feelings for peace.

The limitations of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament are now becoming obvious to many of its members. What next after the marches, the meetings, the leaflets and the lobbies? CND members are beginning to ask.

Conscious of the Campaign's limitations, a wide section of the leaders are becoming frustrated and casting a hopeful eye in the direction of the summit. Since its inception, CND has concentrated its time and activities on trying to convince the capitalist statesmen of the need to renounce their nuclear weapons. The statesmen have completely failed to respond to this activity. At the summit will be present exactly the very same statesmen, representing the capitalist interests that put them into power.

For CND to place its hopes and expectations in the summit conference will be to continue the policies that have led to the present impasse.

The real problem for CND still remains: how to bring the working class into action against these statesmen and their war plans.

This implies for CND a turn towards the organized Labour movement. This year, there will be more trade unions and Labour Parties on the Aldermaston march than on the two previous occasions, which is an indication of the anti-war feelings developing amongst the working class.

The test of the union leaders who lead their contingents on the trek from Aldemaston to London will not be the strength of their arches, however, or even the number of anti-Bomb speeches that they make, but will be decided by the resolute way that they lead the fight for socialist policies in the unions and the Labour Party.

In Britain today, thousands of railway workers live on wages that are barely above subsistence level. Many more are faced with redundancy. Miners are being sacked as the result of pit closures. The housing programme is totally inadequate to meet people's needs. Rents for both council and private tenants are constantly raised.

It is necessary for the Campaign to join with those in the Labour Party who are fighting for an extension of the house building programme, against rent increases, for more schools and modern hospitals, for higher wages and better conditions if it is to win the working class to the struggle against the Tory government's nuclear policies. Socialists in the Labour Party constantly attempt to show how money diverted to arms expenditure not only swells the profits of big business and prepares for war, but is done at the cost of lowering working class living standards.

To prevent nuclear annihilation the CND and its supporters must give their support to the struggle for socialist policies. This means placing the Campaign in the main stream of working class struggle against the Tory government and not depending on the summit politicians who can bring neither peace internationally nor social progress at home.

IT IS TIME TO ORGANIZE THE FIGHT THERE is really no end to the crisis inside the Labour Party. As Mr. Gaitskell tours the country assuring the faithful that everything is all right and from now on people will shut their mouths and get back to work in the constituencies, the opposite is happening.

The decision of the Transport and General Workers’ Union to put forward Mr. Nicholas for the position of Labour Party treasurer is not unrelated to their opposition to Mr. Gaitskell’s abandonment of Clause 4 and his continued devotion to the H-bomb. Of course everyone knows that Mr. Nicholas is also a right-winger but he is not Mr. Gaitskell’s nominee. Although Mr. George Brown, an MP representing the TGWU, would appear to be the most likely choice for such a job so far as the union is concerned, he has been brushed aside by the TGWU executive. Mr. Brown is separated from the Tories by a hairsbreadth. On matters of defence he is more vocal and more enthusiastice about the armed forces. It is quite clear that having to choose between Mr. Nicholas and Mr. Brown, the TGWU decided on what they thought was the lesser evil. , Thus we have looming up at the Labour Party conference next October a conflict of policy in relation to Clause 4 and a conflict on the organization field in relation to the treasurer.

These issues will be strengthened by at least two others; South Africa and the problem of defence. Gaitskell’s sympathetic telegram to Verwoerd is an example of the nauseating outlook of this right-wing clique. After the massacre of Sharpeville the only question that came into his head was to enquire in Parliament if -any damage had been done to British property and lives. Now he sympathizes with the gangster responsible. He has not uttered the slightest protest at the arrest without trial or charges of hundreds of the leading representatives of the Pan-Africanist Congress. His lips are sealed when it comes to youthful Philip Kgosane, 21-year-old student who has been exiled to an island which was formerly a leper colony. The Rt. Hon. Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell, MP, PC, is truly a man of the bulldog breed.

But wait, the noise is considerable! At last a parliamentary row. This Thames-side home for political Rip Van Winkles has suddenly been rent asunder by shrieks over the Blue Streak rocket. We haven’t got value for money, is the theme. Our banger won't work. We want rockets that will bring bigger and more substantial destruction. Labour’s protest is against Tory expenditure not against the rockets as the instruments of war, death and destruction. Had the Tories produced the goods, that is to say, had the Blue Streak rocket streaked to destruction faster than any other sinister instrument of this kind, then Labour would have been happy, there would have been no prothe Labour Party. The opposition of such unions as the TGWU must be joined by hundreds of constituency Labour Parties all over the country. Now is the time for constituency parties to take the initiative and call upon such unions to organize conferences throughout the country for the purpose of the showdown which is coming. Gaitskell can be defeated but only if the movement is alerted and mobilized on the terrible dangers to which his policies can lead. As part of the left wing of the Labour Party, the Socialist Labour League and its members will continue to fight unrelentingly towards this end.

A New Pamphlet on Clause Four From MacDonald to Gaitskell Price 3d. from 186 Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4

APRIL 16, 1960

(Joseph Hansen is an American journalist who was secretary to the late Leon Trotsky. He is at present the editor of the American socialist weekly, The Militant.)

AT a lunch counter near the Plaza Civica where Farrell Dobbs and I stopped for a sandwich yesterday, a Cuban youth, hearing me speak Spanish, struck up a conversation with us. He was curious to know our impressions and specially whether we had encountered any anti-American sentiment.

We told him that our impression of the Cuban Revolution is in such quiet rural areas that the small private planes from was very favourable and that we had not yet run into a single Florida strike with their incendiary bombs, setting fire to expression of anti-American sentiment in all our roaming of the cane fields.

Havana. In fact, we had found just the opposite: the greatest Last night in a suburb of Havana where we had dinner courtesy and friendliness. with some newly made friends, the latest incident came in ‘Yet the baseball clubs are afraid to come here,’ he said. for discussion.

‘They seem to think Americans are being killed in the Times fits the news streets.’

Tad Szulc, correspondent of the New York Times, reported We laughed at that because the streets of Havana are as that the Catholic hierarchs in Cuba had drawn up a pastoral peaceable as can be imagined—incomparably more so than in letter deploring Communist influence in the government. The any city of the southern United States where a Negro youth Times gave this a front-page play, handling it as if it were can at any time get his skull cracked if he sits down at a La fact. lunch counter reserved for the master race.

The Havana newspapers checked with the heads of the Let me cite a few more instances of the same kind to illusCuban Catholic Church. No such letter had been drawn trate the general feeling here.

up, nor is one contemplated.

We walked into a section headquarters of the July 26 Movement around the corner from our hotel. It was early in ‘How do you explain this?’ one of the guests asked. ‘Isn’t the New York Times supposed to be accurate?’ the evening and not more than a dozen had gathered. They We explained that the Times does generally try to be acwere much younger in appearance than one would expect in curate, the better to put over a monstrous departure from a youth movement in the United States. Girls and boys of all * colours were busy in the rather dimly lit place. A picture accuracy when political necessity, as this paper sees it, requires that kind of handling of the news. In addition its corresof Fidel Castro hung on the wall.

pondents are not all equally reliable.

The youth at the desk asked if he could help us and again Another guest told us that the great majority of Catholic the conversation shifted to our impressions. He talked someadherents in Cuba are solidly with the Revolution and the what excitedly and insisted, with an emphatic gesture toward new government and that this partisanship is reflected in the the picture on the wall, ‘Castro is no Communist. He is our hierarchy. The same holds for the Protestants, particularly friend.’

the Seventh Day Adventists who are rather strong here.

The others joined in the conversation, a Negro girl saying The Cuban government is taking a highly realistic attitude with a most friendly smile, ‘We only want to live in peace.’

toward the sinister anti-Cuba campaign, mobilizing the entire In another instance, a taxi driver, at first noncommittal, population to prepare for the worst. In this it resembles a warmed up when he discovered that we really talked the same capable, militant strike leadership that tells the membership language. He told us that the ones at the bottom of the what the company is up to and how the rank and file must trouble were the American monopolists who had been bleedclose ranks, depend on their own forces and prepare a militant ing Cuba. The bad stories about Cuba were due to them. defence against the projected attempt to smash the union. They own the big newspapers and they buy up journalists The clearest and most forceful expression of the governto tell lies about Cuba. He hoped the American people ment view was made by Prime Minister Dr. Fidel Castro, thought differently; they should come to Cuba to see for themMarch 28, in a four-hour speech carried over a nationwide selves how much good the Revolution is doing. TV and radio hook-up. This has been a topic of discussion An English-speaking taxi driver told us how things were during the week wherever we have been. It is quite revealunder Batista. ‘In one single day,’ he said. ‘I saw three -ing to hear someone on a street corner or in a park forcepeople shot by the police.’ He said it so quietly, in such a fully making Castro’s points, as if they were his own, to a matter-of-fact tone, that it shook us more than if he had group of ten or fifteen listeners. gone into the details. ‘Now everything is peaceful. It is hard to understand why the United States is against our Facts about Aguero revolution.’

The speech is of the greatest interest. One of its main Dobbs explained that there are two Americas. ‘The rich purposes was to destroy the illusion being fostered by the monopolists don’t represent the feelings of the workers, anti-Cubans that the revolutionary leadership is coming apart those that have had experience in strike struggles.’ at the seams. The latest defector, Luis Contes Aguero, sought Our driver obviously wanted to believe this, but he felt to picture himself as one of Castro’s most intimate friends, unconvinced. ‘The tourists have stopped comihg.’ , one of the leaders from the beginning, Who must now sadly At Vinales, a small town some 120 miles from Havana, part company because of ‘Communist infiltration’ of the where we went during the week to visit co-operatives under construction, we had the same type of experience with every- Castro, in response, told the true story of Aguero, and in one we talked with. There the impact of the State Depart- doing so provided fresh insight into the political history of the ment’s anti-Cuba campaign seems more remote than in Havana July 26 Movement. The two met in student days when with its many newspapers; but that might have been a super- Aguero was already a well-known campus figure and Castro ficial impression, influenced as we were by the somnolent a ‘nobody.’ sun, lush green of the fields; and fresh new buildings. It Continued on Page 120

Continued from Page 119 Castro backed him as a candidate for the presidency of the student youth organization. Later when Castro entered politics, he sought help from Aguero as an oppositionist against Batista.

But political differences prevented them from ever becoming really close. Castro’s line, which he persevered in without deviation, was that only a revolution could topple Batista. Aguero’s line was to function within whatever official opposition Batista permitted.

When Castro was condemned to prison for an attempted uprising in 1953, Aguero defended him over the radio, and this won Castro’s gratitude. In subsequent years, however, Aguero’s influence was demoralizing. He held that a revolution could not succeed, citing the economic prosperity, the world situation, the professional army, the relative quiescence of the masses, and the romantic, unrealistic, impractical course that Castro was following. Aguero committed some acts that were very damaging to the revolutionaries, which Castro analyzed point by point in his speech.

Finally, after the revolution, Aguero became a kind of leech, who sought to profit from the good things Castro had once said about him, putting those in a good sycophantic biography of Castro which he wrote without consultation.

Aguero’s role proved to be divisive when divisiveness could only hurt the cause. His final accusations of ‘Communism’ were timed to coincide with the anti-Cuba campaign.

The exposure is annihilating, but for one little acquainted with the internal development of the July 26 Movement, the greatest interest lies in what it reveals about the firmness and adroitness of the leadership.

The bulk of the speech is a careful analysis of the uses of red-baiting in the current campaign to convert Cuba into ‘another Guatemala’ or ‘another Spain.’ It would take an article just to report this with the necessary comments.

The same holds for Castro’s documented presentation of what the aims of the revolution were from the beginning and how much has been accomplished. Slowness in carrying out some of the promises, Castro explained, is due to the desire to make a smooth transition with the least disruption. Among the promises still to be realized are industrialization and a planned economy.

The main axis of the speech is to arouse the greatest energy in the defence of the Revolution against the attack now under preparation. In the civil war, the rebels acted with exceptional generosity. If an attack is launched on Cuba from abroad, no such generosity will be shown. The attackers will meet with the fiercest resistance in all history. ‘Let him who comes make his will.’

A democratic revolution Just to indicate the power with which Castro speaks, let me translate a few paragraphs dealing with the accusation that Cuba is undemocratic :

‘Are they going to impugn the democratic spirit of this Revolution? But who? Who is going to impugn the democratic spirit of this Revolution? Who? Trujillo? Somoza? The oligarchies and the camarillas who exploit the people there? Do they doubt that we are democrats? All right, I challenge those who say that we are not democrats to give arms to the students, to the peasants, to the workers. (Applause.)

‘I challenge them. Because the peasants, the workers, the students, the lowly sectors of the country are the majority. Is there anyone who doesn’t know this? Everybody knows it.

‘But we gave the majority something more than the vote;

we gave them guns, guns as an absolute proof of their support, of their confidence, of how they interpret their interests.

‘I challenge those who call themselves democrats, who believe that we are not democrats, that they simply buy guns for the peasants, the workers, the employees, and the lowly of the country (applause) and to demonstrate that they are democrats and that they believe the majority supports them, that they give them guns.

‘This is the supreme proof of democracy; to give guns to these lowly families, for then in truth we are equal, we are all democrats. When the people have guns, when a government gives guns to the people, this government is really democratic, and this is the supreme proof.’

With the formation last week of the Unified Socialist Party the New Left in France takes on its latest and largest organizational shape.

The new party is a rallying of groups which are diverse in origins and outlook. In its leadership‘are a number of individuals who have been in and out of the proliferating leftist groups in French politics for as long as the past 25 years. But it contains many sincere members who are striving to break out of the strait-jacket of the old party machines.

A central driving force in the new party is made up of the Party of Left Socialist Unity (PUGS), itself a fusion of distinct groups and tendencies less than three years old.

This is the most authentic ‘new left7—its forms of work, discussion theme and journals strongly influenced its British equivalent, though the political seriousness and _ intellectual level of the latter must, in all fairness, be described as altogether on a lower plane.

The leaders of PUGS—mostly seasoned in many another organization—are obsessed with their impotence. They have been unable to build a bridge to the French workers, still mostly followers of the Communist Party, and are repelled by the lack of principle of the Mollet gang in the Socialist Party.

Really they wish for something like the British Labour Party, whose nature and role they totally fail to understand (they say, for example, that it has one million militants—if only they knew). How can we be more effective, sigh the leaders of this group, especially since the advent of de Gaulle?

Reformist While many in the PUGS use the slogan of class struggle, the other main component of the new party is reformist in character. It consists of the same 8,000 members of the Socialist Party who broke with Mollet over his Algerian policy and set up a break away party (PSA). Its leaders are mostly old-line Parliamentarians, their aim to restore the tarnished reputation of social democracy, their guiding star the late Leon Blum.

Some of them, such as the former minister Andre Philip, put forward ideas which are similar to those of Crosland; in this country they would be on the right of the Labour Party.

Equally, if not further, from class struggle politics are the followers of former premier Mendes-France, who last year joined the PSA under the banner of ‘renovated socialism’. Mendes has close contact with certain financial circles. His ‘socialism’ is strongly suspect in the eyes of many militants.

Clearly he is seeking a new field for political expression now that his own political home has collapsed around his ears. He has been gladly accepted by the leaders of the new left, from whom he differs little in origin and outlook, after all.

He has some popular following and could be an alternative leader to, say, Soustelle when de Gaulle departs. Hence, in

NN the strategy of the big names and electoral calculations which dominate new left thinking he is quite an asset. Ex-Communists A smaller group which tags along with these is made up of mainly intellectual former Communists. Their general drift, since 1957, has been towards reformism. They remember from their Stalinist training the themes of the Popular Front and the parliamentary road; they have been impressed by the ability of French capitalism to modernise itself and expand in recent years.

They have never seriously analysed their experience with the Communist Party and have been fair game for anyone offering an occasional big meeting and a supply of discussion literature.

The new party can pride itself on not being monolithic or sectarian. In fact it is a Popular Front in miniature: it has everything except the C.P. and popular support. It contains the remnants of a number of left Catholic groups, looking over their shoulder at the Vatican, as well as case-hardened fellow-travellers who trim their sails to the Kremlin breezes.

It has many of the weaknesses of the British Labour Party (so much envied by its leaders) and none of its strength— deep roots in the working class and trade unions and a mass following.

Its leaders are accomplished phrase-mongers and political commentators. They seek a short cut. They are exponents of political arithmetic of the kind which adds up numbers, regardless of the fact that a succession of zeros adds up to nothing.

Their campaigns will be limited by the need to find a common denominator to keep together the discordant elements in their own ranks. They are full of expectations, waiting for the day when the regime will crack from its own mistakes, rather than building a movement which can deliver blow for blow now.

The crisis which blew up over events in Algiers last January shows the character of the leadership which can be expected from the new party. The new left groups in the university, for example, following the conditional support offered to de Gaulle, raised the slogan ‘No one behind de Gaulle. Everyone at his side!’

No wonder many of those seeking real socialist policies have drifted away from the party even before its official foundation. Others may follow them. But there will remain a considerable number of young workers and _ intellectuals who have been drawn to it by its apparent dynamism and freshness.

It is to be hoped that their experience will contribute to the building of the working-class party which French conditions demand. The new experiment in centrism must be seen in this light.

eee tion to London that ‘we will not be put off any longer and intend to meet in three weeks’ time when the Port Workers’ Committee will recommend forms of action for consideration, to achieve these demands.’

Numerous resolutions demanding an immediate wage increase have gone from dockers’ branches of the Transport and General Union.

However, Mr. Tim O’Leary, national docks officer of the T and G is reported to have said to a recent meeting of Birkenhead dockers that if they wanted more money then they would have to work harder.

A united front for a fight At the meeting last Sunday, A. McEchnie, secretary of the port workers’ committee, told the dockers present that if there was no response by the officials to the wishes of the rank and file then we must prepare to forge a unity nationally that will shut down the whole industry in support of overdue demands.

Said the closing speaker, Joe Cubbin: ‘We must have immediate contact with Birkenhead, Manchester, Hull and London, so that when we fight, we fight with a front as solid as the national port employers.’

By Our Liverpool Correspondent Despite pouring rain and blustering wind, 300 Liverpool dockers met last Sunday on Lord Street blitz site, and carried a resolution demanding an immediate increase in wages of 25s. a week. They also demanded a 40-hour and an increase of their fall-back guarantee to 85 per cent. of their weekly wage.

The meeting, called by the Liverpool Port Workers’ Committee, decided to send a delegation to Transport House, London, headquarters of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, and declared that it wished to indicate by the delegaof the Trade Union movement was ‘Unity is Strength’, and they should not carry the resolution. The men felt this was covering-up for the Right-wing officials.

The men also condemned the Barnsley officials for their refusal to come to the pit over this dispute. They contrasted this refusal with the arrival of the whole area committee to enquire into the activities of ‘Curly’ Owen.

This conflict at Brodsworth shows the way the wind is blowing in the coalfields today. More and more criticism is growing of vacillating, ‘double-talking’ leaders who are more concerned to collaborate with the management than to fight on behalf of the men. And it is becoming harder and harder to hold this criticism down.

INDUSTRY By G. Gale Three thousand seven hundred miners at Brodsworth Colliery, Yorkshire, were on strike last week because the manager cut the pay of 17 men from £3 to £2 per shift on the grounds that ‘they weren’t working hard enough.” This cut was a direct breach of the Power Loading Agreement.

At a mass meeting last Saturday, the men decided to return to work, confident that they would win their case in negotiation. However, the real fire at the meeting came with violent criticism of the branch officials, especially secretary Kellher and chairman Marshall, and of the Area leadership at Barnsley.

The branch officials were accused of holding discussions with the Management while the strike was in progress, without informing either the men or the rest of the Branch Committee. The officials made no attempt to deny this at the meeting, although they had previously denied it to other members of the Committee.

A resolution of no confidence in the officials was moved by another committee member. He criticized the actions of the officials over a long period and referred to the incident (reported in The Newsletter at the time) where they had signed, along with NCB officials, a notice condemning ‘Curly’ Owen, a leading Brodsworth militant.

They had been instructed by a mass branch meeting to carry out a pit ballot on their action, but they had never done that. The chairman avoided putting this resolution to the vote.

There was much criticism, after the discussion, of the contribution of committee-man Reuben Buffman, a member of the Communist Party, who said that although he was critical of the officials, the real enemy was the management, the slogan

‘An anti-Tory budget’ say some sections of the pie. ‘popular’ press. Do the proposed prohibitions on tax avoidance schemes mean that the Budget is directed at profits? A closer examination shows quite clearly that BIG business is not affected.

Specifically, there is to be legislation to end devices which are analagous to ‘dividend stripping’ (a process whereby income has been given the complexion of capital and therefore escaped taxation), and the end of lump sum payments to outgoing directors known as the ‘Golden Handshake’. These transactions have points in common in that they apply to the smaller or weaker capitalist. Heavy industry and the 600 companies that control the economy of the country are unaffected.

A small private company under the control of five or fewer persons is subject to sur-tax direction which has the effect of the greater part of the profits being assessed to sur-tax dependent on the total income of the individual shareholders of such a company. To obviate this such companies have ‘sold’ their future profits to a Finance House in the form of non-voting shares. The money received for such shares is not taxed and the company has escaped sur-tax direction. The proposed legislation puts a stop to that by a special clause forbidding artificial transactions devised to escape income tax and sur-tax.

‘Profits Tax’

What of the ‘Profits Tax’? Two years ago it was 30 per cent. on distributed profits; now with the increase it is 12} per cent. The large public company is still better off, particusidents, voices the opposition of the back benchers who may gain control. Cutting government expenditure, and less taxes are slogans dear to the heart of every Tory. With the threat of European competition in the markets of the world they favour deflation and lower wages.

But the rift is really only about timing, as Tom Kemp indicated last week. Big business knows it has a fight ahead and wants to be equipped for the battle.

LETTERS

The hypocrisy of MRA’s ‘absolute honesty’ was shown by their missionaries when they called on militant dockers in Hull recently, and declared they were friends of mine.

This is the slick salesman type of method these people use to wheedle their way into the houses of militants.

In my case, their approach was to leave shortbreads for the wife when they called and I wasn’t in. They called again and I made it abundantly plain that we had nothing ia common..

They are no friends of mine, nor of the working class, peddling as they do Big Business dope of the good old American variety.

To my real friends among Hull dockers, I would say, there is only one way to deal with characters like this and that is to send them away with a flea in their ears.

They drool a syrupy ideology. But their aim is to corrupt militants through very material rewards of holidays at Caux and other trips abroad.

larly since profits have increased by some 10 per cent..in the past year and much of the accretions in value to property, shares, etc., that have taken place in the past few years have escaped tax altogether.

Labour Party economic pundits have continually stressed the iniquity of tax dodging schemes and of course there is justification for this attitude, but it should be remembered that established large-scale capitalist industry does not have to avail itself of these methods. The directors and shareholders reluctantly pay their legal tax liability whilst they watch the growth in the value of their shares—all tax free. So that if tax dodging becomes more difficult the tendency will be for the small but successful privately controlled company to sell out to the big concern. But the new provisions serve the useful purpose for the Tories of seeking to give the impression that the rich alone are going to have to pay more.

Tory prosperity Of course the Budget is essentially an instrumént of Tory economic policy. Tory prosperity is geared.to arms production and consequently inflation is always lurking in the background. With this in mind Heathcoat Amory has given notice that other steps will be taken to restrain further expansion of private credit. Eyen without such government action there are signs of a credit pinch, if not a squeeze.

Now, when the banks loan new money they are influenced by their own liquidity or cash resources. (Liquidity means the amount of cash assets available to meet liabilities ‘o depositors). Consequently they have to sell their Gilt Edged stocks to comply with banking regulations, and due to ihe tendency of investors to put their money in industrial shares, gilt-edged have dropped in value, and the banks lose on selling.

These factors influence the Budget which has exposed a rift among the Tories. Nabarro as the spokesman of the disAs an active member of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, I feel I must comment on the policies being pursued by the leadership of this Union. In my opinion, Bro. Carron and his friends would be better employed in fighting the employers than conducting a witch-hunt of militants.

The delay in publishing the result of the election for North London Divisional Organizer because. of so-called voting irregularities, when the main reason is because Bro. Reg Birch has won, is only the latest in a series of attempts by the rightwing leaders of the AEU to disorganize any left-wing opposition.

The way to counteract the witch-hunt is to promote a real struggle for the 40-hour week and improved conditions.

It is time that the Knights of the Trades Union Congress took time off from advising the Tory Government and interfering with the Electrical Trades Union, and began to think of the time they waste. Because it is obvious that the real leaders of the trade union movement, indeed the very backbone, are the thousands of shop stewards who, day in and day out, carry on the fight for better wages and conditions.

I feel that they should be free of the shackles imposed by their leaders. I am in favour of them getting together to discuss their problems, and if they think it necessary, to form local rank-and-file committees to fight for their demands.

On the question of Clause 4, here is another matter for the attention of trade union members. Many people say why bother with the trouble in the Labour Party, as it is finished any way. This is a wrong attitude, because the Labour Party polled 12 million votes at the last general election, which still makes them the party of the working class. In my opinion, trade union militants should try to go to Labour Party meetings as delegates from their union branches, and join the struggle of the left wing against the reformists who want to abandon socialism.

ANDREW ROTH has provided an invaluable reference book for speakers and writers in the socialist movement with the new edition of his ‘Business Background of Members of Parliament’ (Parliamentary Profile Services, 34 Somali Road, London, N.W.2, price 10s.). The alphabetical and classified lists of MPs, showing the directorships and other business connections of each one, are preceded by an illuminating introduction which brings out some of the patterns to be discerned. In this Parliament, it appears, there are 282 directors or ex-directors, as against 269 in the previous one—three in five Tories, nearly one in five Labour MPs and one in three Liberals.

Engineering workers -will note with interest the remarkably heavy representation of metal-processing firms. ‘Their’ MPs include such figures as Sir Peter (‘why don’t they drop the bomb on Russia now?’) Roberts, Master Cutler of Sheffield, chairman of Newton Chambers and Co. and Wellman Smith Owen Engineering, and deputy chairman of Ransomes and Rapier.

I quote a very topical passage from the introduction: ‘Companies with investments in South Africa have done for the Empire-minded Right wing of the Conservative Party what the basic industries of South Wales and the Clydeside did for the Left wing of Labour at the end of the first world war: provided a base. We have already noted that the British South African Company had Julian Amery as a director until he entered the Government and the Marquis of Salisbury after he resigned over the release of Makarios. Captain Charles Waterhouse, long the nominal leader of the “Suez rebels”, was chairman of the Rhodesia-Katanga Company and the Zambesia Exploring Company, both with extensive mimeral interests in Central Africa; he only retired from Parliament in October, 1957, to give enough time to his new post as chairman of Tanganyika Concessions.

:

‘Mr. C. J. Holland-Martin, Mrs. Macmillan’s brother-inlaw and treasurer of the Conservative Party, is not widely associated with the ‘Suez rebels’, largely because he is one of the most silent men in the House of Commons. But he is chairman of the Rhodesia-Katanga Company and the Zambesia Investment Company Limited, and director of Nyasaland Railways, the Uganda Company,.the Assam and African Holdings Company and the Zambesia Exploring Company Limited.’

The Holland-Martin mentioned here is one whose death on April 5 is the cause of the forthcoming by-election at Ludlow.

British Workers and Negro Freedom In Trafalgar Square the other Sunday somebody opined to me that if we thought the British workers would ever ‘stick their necks out’ on behalf of the black masses fighting for liberation in Africa we were in for a big disappointment. Well, I wonder. My acquaintance probably knew nothing, after all, of the role played by the British workers in support of the North in the American Civil War. The Northern blockade of the Confederate States cut off supplies of cotton from Britain, causing much unemployment, and the British Government of the day, which wanted to intervene on behalf of the slaveowners, hoped that this would make intervention a popular policy. But they were rebuffed.

Karl Marx was London correspondent for New York and Vienna newspapers in those days, and his despatches reveal the profound impression made on him by the behaviour of the British workers in that crisis. When he first came here, let’s face it, he did not much like the English of any class; if by the time he died he had become quite an Anglophil, it was such episodes as this that helped to win his heart. ‘To them (the working classes of England) it was due that, despite the poisonous stimulants daily administered by a venal and reckless press, not one single public war meeting could be held in the United. Kingdom during all the period that peace trembled in the balance. . . . Even in Manchester the temper of the working classes was ‘so well understood that an isolated attempt at the ‘convocation of a war meeting was almost as soon abandoned as thought of.’

‘The obstinacy’, Marx observed in a later article, ‘with which the working class . . . breaks its silence only to raise its voice against intervention . . . is admirable. This is a new brilliant proof of the indestructible excellence of the English popular masses... .’ And he reports a great workers’ meeting in Marylebone where a resolution was passed unanimously in which the Confederate slaveowners of the Southern States were denounced as ‘the sworn enemy of the social and political rights of the working class in all countries.’

From Burglary to Slander Ex-Stalinist New-Lefter Christopher Hill manages to work in a dig at his political Enemy Number One in the course of a review of Deutscher’s ‘The Prophet Unarmed’ in the current Soviet Studies. ‘Mr. Deutscher makes extensive use of the Trotsky Archives. He nowhere in this volume discusses their reliability. . . . Since Mr. Deutscher uses them so confidently, he must be sure that they were never in the hands of, say, “vulgar Trotskyites”.’

Hill’s suggestion that the persons most likely to tamper with Trotsky’s archives would be Trotsky’s own followers is singularly impudent in view of the fact, presumably known to Hill, that these archives were the object of a burglary by agents of the Soviet political police in November, 1936. At that time the archives were deposited in the Institute of Social History in the Rue Michelet in Paris. The burglary was carried out with the most advanced technique (which convinced the French police that no local gang was responsible) and only papers belonging to Trotsky were taken, both money and other vaiiiable manuscripts being ignored. An account of the incident is given in ‘The Case of Leon Trotsky’ (1937), which is a transcript of some of the proceedings of the Dewey Commission on the Moscow Trials.

A Chance for Silence Missed Was it really necessary for Gaitskell to be in so much of a hurry to condole-with Verwoerd? Even Nehru, with the history of the Indian national struggle behind him (and present-day Indian opinion to take into account), saw fit to say he must wait for further information before making any comment. It is incidents like this that show up, as in a lightning-flash, how far some of our Labour leaders have gone in identifying themselves with ‘the Establishment’.

That Stale Smell Again Has somebody somewhere instructed the Communist Parties to resume their old-style anti-Trotskyist propaganda? After the Canadian piece I quoted recently there now comes to hand an article from the Australian ‘Tribune’ of April 6: ‘Portrait of a Trotskyist’.

It appears that a Mr. Short, said to be a former Trotskyist, is now connected with the Catholic disruptionist activity in the Australian labour movement led by Santamaria, and this is said to be ‘typical of Trotskyism the world over’. Rather a childish argument, one might think, when there are such cases as that of Douglas Hyde, British ex-Stalinist, now active for Catholic Action as a witch-hunter of both Communist Party members and Trotskyists.

But it provided the anonymous (editorial?) writer as a pretext to trot out (sorry) all the old stuff about ‘counter-revolutionary Trotskyism’, culminating even in the statement that Trotsky’s ‘followers in the Soviet Union were later, on their own confessions, convicted of treasonable crimes against the Soviet State’.

Names and dates would have been helpful here, but of course we don’t find them. When the British Communist Party gets around—if it ever does—to saying its piece along the same lines as the Canadians and Australians, shall we see greater frankness? I doubt it. Whether or not the British Communist leaders will be allowed by their members to get away with such stuff will tell us a lot.

As the repression continues in South Afzica it becomcs more and more difficult to find out what is happening. It is clear now that the African revolution is entering a new stage. The strike which paralysed industry in Capetown, Durban and Johannesburg for nearly three weeks has been called off, but the working class has not been defeated.

Many leaders have been arrested, but new forms of organization have been devised to deal with the situation. Plans have been laid for further protests and strikes. Under conditions of police terror a still greater degree of unity within the African working class has been forged. The degree of confidence in the African working class is creating panic among the ranks of the Europeans.

This is one explanation for the attempt to assassinate Verwoerd. Some of the English-speaking industrialists, middle begin. Already the African working class has issued the folclass and farmers, can see a little further than the blinkered lowing call to the world: African Nationalists. They realise that the present policy is ‘The present capitalistic South African State must be leading directly to social revolution.

completely destroyed and a people’s State must be built The Times has been calling for the removal of Verwoerd up. Our imprisoned comrades will want us to wrest the in more and more urgent tones and the figures published in country from our oppressors with armed force and that last week’s Economist make it clear why they should do so.

The United Kingdom has by far the biggest foreign invest- after victory we should march on to the establishment ment in the Union of South Africa with a tgtal stake in of the South African people’s republic. Workers of the industry and mining of almost £500 million. The Americans world unite.’ come next with an investment of £170 million. The future The British working class must support the Africans in their of these investments is in danger. struggles. By blocking aid to South Africa and refusing to handle South African goods, they can render full support to Big business disappointed the African working class in their struggles.

That is why there was a cry of disappointment from the * * * City of London when the assassin’s bullet missed its mark.

Even before the attempt on Verwoerd’s life it was being suggested that once some kind of order had been re-established

Verwoerd should step aside and make way for a coalition Under this coalition government concessions By A. Courtney would be made to the pass laws and discussions would begin In the last three years, power workers have only been able with ‘moderate’ leaders of the African National Congress. to improve their wages by 24d. per hour. Frustrated by the It seems likely however that the formation of this kind of failure of the union’s officials to improve on this the workers coalition will now be impossible. have built their own National Shop Stewards’ Movement It seems that Verwoerd may emerge from his convalescence in the Supply industry. a hero. He will attempt to impose further forms of oppres- The men are asking for a £10 per week minimum for ‘he sion on the working class in the name of apartheid. Thus lowest paid worker, with proportional increases for the the future perspectives for capitalism in South Africa are respective grades. poor. Even before the Sharpeville massacre there had been All of the TU leaders have been invited to address mass a steady fall in productivity occurring. Investors are now meetings of the rank and file called by the shop stewards’ trying hard to get their money out of the country as fast movement. These meetings have all been cold-shouldered by as they can.

all the leaders. Foulkes said ‘it would be embarrassing to Soon the African working class will be left with no choice. attend such a meeting.’ Mr. Berridge of the AEU said he A police force of 25,000 is made up of only 12,000 Europeans. would like to attend, but ‘only if all of the right-wingers No reliance can be placed on the Africans in the police force, also attend.’ only a few of whom are armed. To this force is added a It is true to say, that up till now, the National Committee small regular Army, Navy and Air Force. They are assisted of the shop stewards’ movement has not openly criticized by territorials and groups of armed citizens. They may suc- any of their union leaders, but rather have they tended to ceed in keeping order in the country, but the state of per- given them ‘whole-hearted support’, ‘full backing’, etc. But manent mobilization is bringing into being a huge economic this is certainly not true when it comes to the other way round.

For as soon as the national press begun a witch-hunt against The present ruling class of South Africa dare not abandon them, Carron of the AEU issued ‘warnings’ and Foulkes of apartheid, it is the only means by which it can control the the ETU told reporters that he was opposed to the token strike working class. It cannot share its power with the middle proposed by the men. class in order to stave off the revolution because of its racialist It is also true to say, that the anger of the men will prejudice. In fact the small African middle class is being rapidly turn to frustration unless more decisive action is taken drawn into close alliance with the working class. Even <he soon. There is a move by some shop stewards to have a tsotsies, the groups of African gangsters, have thrown in their national ballot of the men for an indefinite national stoppage lot with the working class. to win their claim. As Ken Jones, a Battersea shop steward When the South African government attempts to reimpose put it, ‘if the railwaymen could show their strength, why the pass book regulations a new stage in the struggle will shouldn’t we use ours.’

NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF LABOUR CAMPAIGN: AREA’ ASSEMBLY BOOK THIS BIRMINGHAM : April 24, 10.30. Typographical Hall, Bath Street, Birmingham.

DATE NOW!

Published by The Newsletter, 186 Clapham High &., Loadoa, SW4 Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (TU), r.o. 180 Clapham High St, London SW4 Registered at the GPO as a nowsoaper