The Newsletter, vol. 4 no. 148

By OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT BY 336 votes to 4, delegates to the Scottish Trades Union Congress reaffirmed their belief in nationalization and demanded that the next Labour government take over the basic industries. This is the most important defeat Gaitskell has suffered since the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party accepted his new clause designed to eliminate Clause 4.

A foretaste of things to come in the trade unions was provided by the composition of the anti-Gaitskell vote. It included delegates from the Electrical Irades Union, Foundry Workers, Transport and General Workers’ Union, and the National Union of General and Municipal Workers. Those who voted against came from the Clerical Workers’ Union whose Easter conference went on record in support of Mr. Gaitskell.

The fight against Gaitskell around Clause 4 is building up to what must inevitably be a powerful opposition by the time the Labour Party holds its conference in the autumn.

Throughout the country campaign committees are embracing

local trade union branches and district committees as well as The American puppet Syngman Rhee, butcher of the constituency Labour Parties. The initiative for this activity Korean people, is at his murderous work again. Having comes entirely from the rank and file. Despite Victory for rigged the March elections as he has done consistently in Socialism’s declared intention to resist Gaitskell on Clause 4, the past, his latest action is to instruct his policemen to it does absolutely nothing in practice. Although the situashoot down defenceless student demonstrators. tion is wide open for the development of a movement uniting the rank and file of the trade unions and the Labour Party, It will be remembered that it was the Labour government people such as Stephen Swingler, MP, and Sidney Silverman, in alliance with Wall Street imperialism, who condemned MP, remain silent. 1,500,000 young soldiers to die so that the rule of Syngman More and more trade unicnists and Labour Party members Rhee could continue. Korea is a divided nation. Unless it are now coming to the conclusion, consistently urged by the is united and its people allowed to decide freely the governSocialist Labour League, that it is necessary for the rank and ment of their choice, this appalling bloodshed will continue. file to play a major part in the rebuilding of Labour’s left wing. The Scottish TUC decision shows the powerful support The guilty men sit in Washington and London. Syngman™ which exists for this move. The trade unions are moving Rhee’s government is an example of what happens when against Gaitskell. Without their support no left wing can Labour sponsors Tory foreign policy. be successful in the Labour Party. Now we have all the ingredients for a successful struggle. Gaitskell Snubs Aldermaston What is necessary is for the local campaign committees in defence of Clause 4 to intensify their efforts to mobilize the trade unions in the local areas into action alongside constituency Labour Parties. They should set about the unification

of afl their efforts for a national campaign throughout the Mr. Gaitskell, now touring the United States where summer. Unity in action is now absolutely essential. The he appears to spend most of his spare time during Socialist Labour League as an integral part of the left wing Parliamentary recesses, has declared that the Alderof the Labour Party will do all in its power to assist every maston marchers do not represent public opinion effort in this direction.

Mr. Gaitskell is rapidly becoming the only true deSCOTS APPRENTICES STRIKE FOR fender of Tory defence policy at a time when the Tories are being driven by events to recognize the abForty thousand apprentices defied threats of suspen- surd nature of this policy.

sion and dismissal on Wednesday, April 20, to stop The Observer, in a leading article last Sunday, declared that work in support of their wage claim. Unless the em- in the opinion of the Pentagon militarists the best thing that ployers agree to this pay rise by April 28, all the could: be done in Britain in the event of a war was to invest apprentices will come out on strike. in a few fire engines! This is not enough for Bulldog GaitThere were 10,000 involved in Glasgow and _ their skell. He wants Britain to have its oven rockets, even though committee, the Clyde Apprentices’ Committee, obtained they may never get off the ground.

an interview with the spokesmen for the employers. Gaitskell’s attack on the Aldermaston march is one more They were joined by 2,000 in Clydebank. proof that the Labour movement must redouble its efforts to This great movement taken in conjunction with the get rid of this disciple of Ramsay MacDonald as soon as predominance of youth on the Aldermaston March, is possible. It should also be a reminder to the thousands who one further proof that the youth of today will be in marched from Aldermaston that they must become active the vanguard of the coming struggles against the Tory inside the Labour. Party and the trade unions to strengthen this effort. They canot remain on the sidelines now that the fight is on.

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186 Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4 Telephone Macaulay 7029 SATURDAY, THIS year’s Aldermaston march was infiltrated by powers. Writing in the Labour Monthly for July, 1938, R. Palme Dutt described a possible alliance between britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States as ‘a practical question governed by the realities of the present political situation.’ In the same article he denounced the leaders of the Peace Pledge Union in the following words: ‘lt is necessary to state plainly

large numbers of members of the Communist Party ‘and Young Communist League. Here we have, a very important development. It is, in fact, an admission that the British Peace Committee, the stooge peace organization of the Communist Party, has now been forced to concede the leadership of the peace movement to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

It is indeed highly desirable that this broad united front should continue under conditions where each organization has a right to present its own point of view and at the same time demonstrate together. There are, however, indications that the Communist Party is not going to tolerate such a state of affairs. It is rumoured that they have already succeeded in capturing a number of local CND organizations and that they intend before long imposing their opinions 5n the CND.

As everybody knows the Communist Party is opposed to the unilateral abandonment of the H-bomb and supported Aneurin Bevan at the 1957 Brighton conference of the Labour Party. The first sign that it is gradually pushing the leaders of the CND away from their original support for unilateralism was seen in the march last week-end. References and slogans concerning unilateralism were almost completely absent from the march, instead we had the Communist Party slogans for a summit cenference accompanied by the weak-kneed and pious demand to ban the bomb.

In addition, a number of hatchet men for the Communist Party were able to occupy positions as marshals along the route. Some of these gentlemen constantly attacked supporters of the Socialist Labour League for raising slogans of opposition to the Tory government. Under the formula of ‘no politics’ the Communist Party set out to mobilize the demonstration behind the summit talks, which are, of course, a very political issue. All their efforts were, therefore, directed towards placing a gag on those who are critical of the summit talks.

This is the type of activity which is going to split and destroy CND, unless the Communist Party is forced to abandon it right here and now.

For the record it is necessary to state that the Communist Party commented with approval on the dropthat in the leadership of the Peace Pledge Union there Is, consciously or unconsciously, an alliance with fascism in practical policy.’

In August, 1939, the Soviet Union deserted the peace alliance and lett stranded without a policy tens of thousands of the same peace-loving people who today suport CND. The Soviet Union signed a pact with Hitler’s Germany and the policy of the Communist Party of Great Britain was turned upside down. This did not deter the Stalinists in King Street. Writing ia the Labour Monthly of September, 1939, the late William Rust, then editor ot the Daily Worker, hailed the signing of the German-Soviet pact when he wrote, ‘in the face of the power and unity of the Soviet Union, Hitler has been compelled to make a formal renunciation of his aggressive aims against the land of socialism.’ Twenty-one months later, in June, 1941, Hitler marched his armies into the Soviet Union and the second world war entered its bloodiest stage.

Writing in World News on April 19, 1958, Mr. George Matthews, editor of the Daily Worker, declared that ‘the right wing welcomed the argument on uniJateralism.’ Mr. Matthews conveniently forgot that it was the right wing which defeated the Norwood resolution for unilateral renunciation of the bomb at the 1957 Labour Party conference. At that time Nora Jeffrey, a leading member of the Communist Party, declared that ‘the resolution for unilateral banning of the bomb at the Labour Party conference was a diversion.’

The intervention of the Communist Party in CND at the present time is not an accident. It is in accordance with the party instruction revealed by William Wainwright in World News on July 4, 1959. He announced that ‘large numbers of our members and supporters took part in the Aldermaston March at our request’—in other words under party direction.

Let the Communist Party take its stand in the CND on its policy and record. The Socialist Labour League must be allowed to do the same. There must be no attempts at gagging. Let all those who want to judge the differences between us have an opportunity to do so without the interference we experienced during the Aldermaston March last week-end.

PRPBPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPEPPPPPPPPLPLPLA (with apologies where due)

ping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima. The Daily Worker of August 7, 1945, said: ‘Valuable lives in the allied nations will have been saved by the new discovery. When the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the Daily Worker again declared: ‘the use of the atom bomb has immensely shortened the war with a consequent saving of human life.” The enthusiasm of the Daily Worker for the atom bomb was again shown on August 8, 1945, when speaking about Russia, America and Britain it declared, ‘It would enormously increase the strength of the three great powers in relation to all other countries.’

The Communist Party has a long record of treachery in relation to peace movements. In 1938 they called for the peace alliance against Hitler and the fascist ‘Sporting isolation—above all if applied to rugby football—might, strangely enough, hit the South Africans harder than anything else.’

—New Statesman, April 16, 1960.

‘Now the Spring has brought reassurance. In East and Central Africa Mr. Macleod has shown a clear grasp of the fundamental problems, and great courage in opening the road to their solution.’

—New Statesman, April 16, 1960.

‘, . . Dr. Banda, rumbustious, sometimes witty, tempestuous, a real high wind from Nyasaland.’

—Tom Driberg, New Statesman, April 16, 1960.

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THE appointment of a ‘Railway planning board’ which will work out in detail Macmillan’s proposals for the ‘Radical reconstruction of the British Transport Commission’ is the first of a series of moves intended to ensure that the nationalized railway system of the future will function as a well-oiled point within the framework of British capitalism.

Tory control over the railways has given them the power to obtain this. therefore, be prepared to break this power and exercise their own control where hard-won conditions and security are affected by the reorganization.

Two days before the announcement in the House of Commons of the Board, Heathcoat Amory (Chancellor of the Exchequer) had outlined in his Budget speech his proposals to ‘consolidate economic. progress’. ‘progress’ when measured in terms of profits and dividends has never been greater. The part the railways have played in it has merited the attention which they are now receiving.

In the Budget particular emphasis was placed on the special subsidy given to the railways for the next year. It is hoped, by the Tories and employers, that this investment will reap rich rewards in terms of ‘economic progress’. The ‘Railway planning board’ is there to see that this hope is fulfilled.

Not so naive Those who accuse Macmillan of conspiring to wreck the railways by setting up the Board are naive. Not so naive are others, such as the Labour MPs who raised riot because the Trades Union Congress and the BTC were not represented on the Board.

Far from wrecking the railways it is the aim of Macmillan, supported by the employers, to provide the most up-to-date means—technically and managerially—of railway transport for raw materials and finished products. The. proportion of money being spent at present, in the modernization programme, on the Goods and Freight section, supports this contention.

If British capitalism is to recover its position in the markets. of the world, then such a system is essential at the point of production—that is Britain.

Hence the note of urgency about the reorganization programme.

In reaching this goal the old-fashioned bureaucrats of the BTC and trade union leaders are an obstacle. As_ the Economist of April 7 points out, a member of the BTC could hardly ‘offer disinterested advice . . . which would almost inevitably effect his own job and _ position.’

‘On the other hand’, the article goes on, ‘there are obvious advantages in associating with the TUC.’

Many railway workers remembering the recent threatened strike would perhaps agree. The TUC has been ‘associated’ with Tory dirty-work before, so why draw the line now.

The cold shoulder Railway trade union leaders are given the cold shoulder completely. Perhaps they, too, couldn’t offer disinterested advice. Brother Greene of the National Union of Railwaymen, for example, who knows that his next wrong move will land him back pushing a truck at Paddington.

What Robens and the Parliamentary Labour Party are concerned about as everyone knows, is burying nationalization. Their outcry came because the Tories don’t share the Economist’s and Gaitskell’s confidence in the TUC to do this job properly.

Railway workers, too, are an obstacle. The Tories know that they can rely on the right-wing trade union leaders, but since the Dining Car Strike and the sight of Greene being led by the scruff of his neck into a fight on wages the Tories must have grave doubts on what to expect from rank-and-file railway trade unionists.

Railway workers must, Willingness on the part of the Tories to concede the 5 per cent. interim increase and give the go ahead for the implementation of the Guillebaud Report, must not be seen as a weakness on their part.

It is true that a rail strike would have upset ‘economic -recovery’ and made the Tories think twice before bringing about a strike.

The increases awarded from the Guillebaud recommendations have succeeded in lowering militancy for the time being. In this period Macmillan has been busy laying the foundation for the next offensive.

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During the threat of strike action, advice from various sec. tions of the employers and their press to ‘take on the railway workers’ was rejected.

Obviously quite a number of calculations came unstuck. The main one being Greene’s abilities to hold back his rank and file.

Tory long-term planning .

Macmillan and the employers have no intention of letting the railways go to ruin, whilst the possibility of making them serve capitalism still exists.

Obstacles like the BTC and right-wing trade union leaders can be disposed of like tame mice. But railway workers present a different problem.

The pill for them to swallow, therefore, must be sugarcoated. The Guillebaud findings provided such a coating.

Fifty million pounds is a cheap price for what the railways can return in the future.

If militancy can be quenched and Greene and company put back on the ‘Throne’ the task of ‘reorganization’ becomes easier.

It is only by understanding the long-term aims of the Tories and employers that railway workers can have a stake in future struggles.

The drive for increased production and efficiency is aimed at strengthening the position of British capitalists in world markets. These people will stop at nothing to achieve their ends. Evidence of this is seen every day in struggles on takeover bid and mergers. Greater wealth and power is being concentrated in the hands of fewer people. An employer today who takes on 5,000 workers, tomorrow takes on 500,000.

Such people stand behind the Tories and their reorganization plans for the railways.

By Leaders retreat The retreat of Gaitskell from Socialism and the betrayal of leaders like Carron of the Amalgamated Engineering Union (the expert on greater productivity), shows how they react to this pressure.

The leaders of the three railway unions are hand-in-glove with Gaitskell and Carron.

Instead of pointing out the obvious dangers and preparing for struggle they join in with witch-hunting shop stewards and other militants.

Already redundancy and transfer schemes are in operation on the railways which don’t allow for a fight against the hardships that are brought about by reorganization. The

leaders of the three railway unions, for their part, have agreed to these schemes and co-operate in carrying them out.

Hundreds of men are leaving the industry each week, forced out through poor conditions and additional hardship created by the ciosure of branch lines and the effects of modernization.

Men who have given 20 or 30 years’ service to the railways and who have gone through bad times before, are starting fresh jobs because they see no future on the railways.

This is what the Tories wish. Disillusionment, once created, becomes a strong weapon with which to beat down militancy, and launch into a reorganization programme.

However, recent events show that in spite of poor leadership and efforts to sow apathy, railway workers are prepared ' But an understanding of what the fight is about and how to win it will bring greater striking power in struggle.

Every thinking railway worker knows that the railways cannot carry on without some changes, and far from being - Luddites, most welcome the change.

But being in favour of change doesn’t necessarily mean being in favour of worsened conditions.

Need for a policy There is a need today for a policy which will safeguard and improve the conditions of railway workers and counter the proposals of the ‘Four wise men’.

It is accepted that less men will be required to run the industry in the future. But does this mean that sackings or forced resjgnations are the only ways of achieving this objective?

Today the Tories are giving consideration to all but the railway workers. Even less will be given in the future. Millions of pounds every year are paid to ex-share holders for railway ‘assets’ which are being torn down every day. Further millions are paid in interest to the City of London on money borrowed to finance re-building.

Yet railway workers have to threaten strike action for a decent wage.

This contradiction becomes magnified when men who have given their lives to the railway are thrown on the scrap heap because they are no longer required after the introduction of new techniques or the closure of uneconomic parts.

Yet, compensation and interest parasites live in ease through the sacrifices made by these men in the past.

No compensation or interest The first demand, therefore, to be made by the railway trade unions should be that no compensation or interest should be paid during the period in which the railways will be overstaffed and redundancy is threatened.. This money can be used to bring the 40-hour week, longer holidays and an earlier retiring age on a decent pension. If this cannot absorb the surplus labour then otherwise redundant workers must be kept on the books until a suitable vacancy arises or they can be trained for jobs outside the industry.

Rank-and-file committees should be set up to control the transfer of staff between depots to ensure that conditions don’t suffer at either end.

Plans for closures or the introduction of new methods must be kept in check by such committees. Books and accounts must be opened for their scrutiny and the Unions should employ professional technicians and accountants who are sympathetic to trade unionism to assist rank-and-file workers in understanding such books and accounts.

Full control must be established over all the plans of the BTC to ensure and safeguard jobs and conditions.

The full industrial strength of railway workers must be used to back up these demands.

Unity between depots and regions irrespective of union or grade can only be won in such a fight. .

Rank-and-file railway, trade unionists can make up for lack of official leadership by pressing forward demands which ase aimed at solving a problem Greene & Co. refuse to face. fs

WHILE James Baker’s articles on South Africa in the past issues of The Newsletter have cogently posed the identity of interests between British and African labour, and have made some penetrating assessments of the situation, certain important aspects have been insufficiently explored, and in some cases even misrepresented.

A failure to understand the pass laws in the context of South African economic relationships, leads to the startling assertion that these laws ‘will never be reimposed unless the Nationalists are able to defeat the working class in a full-scale civil war’. This concept was echoed in the editorial of the same issue (April 2): ‘The pass system has gone’, and reiterated in the article of April 16. But, of course, the pass laws were suspended (not abolished) for only a few days, and pass raids have been resumed.

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From the outset of industrialization in South Africa, th ruling class was faced with a dual problem: that of harnessing the Africans to the economic machine, while at the same time preventing their development as an organized urban proletariat. Attempts to ride this problem run like a thread through the subsequent history of South Africa. It’ was Cecil John Rhodes who in his ‘Native Bill for Africa’ (the Glen Grey Act of 1894) formulated the pattern for the migrant labour system: already dispossessed of their land, the Africans were to be crowded into ‘reserves’, from which land and cattle hunger would drive the adult males to labour for the white man for contracted periods. The pass laws are an integral part of the migrant labour system, whereby hundreds of thousands of Africans are shunted from the reserves to the mines, farms and industry, and back again. For the laws are an attempt to control the free movement of labour and to force the Africans to work in those sectors of the economy where the labour shortage is endemic, the mines and farms. ¢ * Because Africans are naturally attracted by the relatively higher wages and less servile conditions in industry, there is a stream of ‘illegal immigrants’ (i.e., Africans without a pass to seek work) from the reserves to the urban areas. After pass raids they are obliged to return to the reserves, from where they will be redirected through the ‘legal’ channels to the mines and farms. It is not suggested that the pass system serves the economy in a smoothly mechanized way; it does not. Industry has asserted a claim to a labour force, and to a great extent this has been met. But like other sectors of the economy, it continues to be run largely on migrant labour, despite the fact that this hampers efficiency. _The abandonment of the pass system would mean the collapse of apartheid, and would reflect a tremendous political and economic revolution in South Africa. This has not yet been achieved.

Another aspect which requires much more enquiry and discussion is the leadership of the national movements. The essential feature of the present stage of struggle in South Africa is that the existing tendencies are in the melting pot;

A New Pamphlet on. Clause Four From MacDonald to Gaitskell.

Price 3d. from 186 Clapham: High Street, London, S.W4

not one tendency has yet emerged as the leadership. The relationship of the masses to leadership in Africa can too easily be deduced from experiences and observations in the metropolitan countries, and thereby misconstrued. Many of the big struggles in the past years have been spontaneous. The strength of this is that they spread as quickly and fiercely as the African veldt fires, the weakness, that they are easily dissipated. The bus boycott of 1957, which had a sharp effect on the economy of Johannesburg, was born in Alexander Township spontaneously; the various political tendencies later intervened, and the African National Congress ‘attempted to claim it as their child—and incidentally helped to sell it out. Pass demonstrations, boycotts and stay-at-home protests have been called for many times before, with varying degrees of success. When the Pan-Africanists,- with a small following, called for protests against the pass laws in March, they found themselves with monster demonstrations and Sharpeville on’ their hands. But this does not mean that the Pan-Africanists have won the leadership of the people. There has been a qualitative leap in the objective situation, to which the increasingly repressive rule of the past 12 years, the Chinese revolution, Indian and Ghanian ‘independence’, the struggles in Nyasaland and the growing political maturity of a population increasingly drawn into the complexities of industrial and urban life, have contributed. Hence the present upsurge.

As in countries of Europe, a political tendency in thecolonies cannot be assessed on its paper programme alone. Noble words clothing naked class treachery are a commonplace. Thus while scrutiny of the programme of a group and their role in the present upsurge is imperative, a study of its history, its traditions, its social composition, and its past record of struggle is essential. Baker is correct to designate the leadeship of the African National Congress as a moderate and reformist tendency. The history: of their befrayals has been admirably told in a book ‘The Awakening There are other examples of too facile formulations in Baker’s articles. For example, on what basis does he assert that there is a growing unity of purpose between the African middle class (a questionable term in the context of South African class relationships, presumably intended to cover the petty traders, small slum landlords, teachers and clerks) and the working class? It is likely that he is correct, but the analysis culminating in the conclusion is wanting.

Altogether, much more analytic study is required on the South African situation and its perspectives. Many more questions have to be asked and answered before assessments are made. It would be most valuable if the comrades who have some knowledge on Africa could pool their information so that a debate might be opened and the salient controversies published, perhaps in Labour Review.

BENITA TEPER.

The Dennistoun. Ward (Glasgow) Labour Party passed a resolution to its Constituency Labour Party and to the National Executive Committee, calling for a boycott of goods from South Africa and of arms and military equipment to South Africa.

‘I think the working people ... have a right to say where their labour and how their labour should be used, and if we are being called upon either to make munitions or transport munitions for purposes which outrage our sense of justice, then I think we have a right to refuse to have our labour prostituted to carry on wars of this character.’

—-Ernest Bevin, May 1920, quoted in ‘The Life and Times of Ermest Bevin’, Volume I, by Alan Bullock (1960). :

of a People’, which is, unfortunately, not readily available in England. But much more discussion, both on Congress and the other tendencies, is needed. For example, the prominent members of the Pan-Africanist Congress were previously organized in a small group known as the Africanists. At that time they were pledged to fight on a chauvinist basis for Africa for the Africans, to the exclusion of non-white ‘minorities. At that time, too, socialism was treated as an unwelcome foreign ideology.

The movement which gets almost no publicity in the British press, the Non-European Unity Movement and the All-African Convention, has also led struggles, and the members have also suffered banning and arrest. Of all the existing groupings, this is the only one which has links with working-class ideology, which has maintained a principled _ Stand since its inception, and which has a conscious and scientific ‘&ttitude towards the training of a leadership. Perhaps, despite a correct theory, it will become divorced from the struggle and fail to lead. The situation is not determined. Again, more information is necessary before venturing an assessment.

The Daily Worker of Tuesday, April 19, incorrectly claims that the presence of trade union banners were ‘an innovation on an Aldermaston demonstration.’ This is not so. There were a number of trade union banners at last year’s march. The most significant innovation of the 1960 Aldermaston march was the mass, though partly disguised, participation of the Communist Party, together with the slogan of ‘To the Summit.’ This new banner was blessed by Canon Collins on the plinth of Trafalgar Square to the cheers of the Communist Party members.

The slogan of unilateral: disarmament which has revolutionary implications has been strangled. ‘To the Summit’ is a slogan which deliberately blurs the understanding of CNDers to the consequent revolutionary steps required to get rid of the bomb unilaterally. The unilateral demand contains the seeds of internationalism. But Summit talks are the false substitute for internationalism which Lenin exposes in his criticism of the Zimmerwald International.

The tactics of the Communist Party Have betrayed the rank and file of the policyless CND. Only the Socialist Labour League by participation in all three marches has aided the political development of CNDers into Marxists by showing the relationship between the fight against the bomb and the fight against capitalism.

MARK JENKINS INDUSTRY WEEK

By B. Green Four thousand night-shift workers in engineering factories in the Midlands have for the last four weeks refused to work Friday evenings in an endeavour to win more leisure time for themselves.

A resolution passed by the Coventry District Committee >of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions at their meeting last Tuesday, to be submitted to a special meeting of all District Secretaries and Presidents of the Confederation on May 12, calls for a 38-hour week spread over four nights, the resolution also deplores the action of shift workers in

— staying away from work on Friday nights.

The officials of the Confederation want the shift workers to work normally and leave the question of hours to them to negotiate with the employers. -At a meeting of nine hundred night-shift workers at Bristol Siddeley Engines Ltd. last Wednesday ‘night, they were left in no doubt about what the rank and file think of their ability to get shorter hours by negotiation. ‘' The meeting rejected the Confederation’s advice, and decided by a large majority to continue their ban on overtime and their refusal to work on Fridays.

After the shameful compromise of the Union leaders over the 40-hour week, when they asked: the employers for a £1 rise and the 40-hour week, and then accepted 42 hours and no pound, the workers at Bristol Siddeley trust only themselves to gain anything more from the employers.

The Stewards’ Committee at Bristol Siddeley should immediately contact all other factories where the night-shift is taking similar action, and form a common policy and strategy. A part of this strategy should be a big deputation of all nightshift workers from the Midlands at:the Confederation’s meeting on May 12. of the shooting was achieved by subterfuge. I suppose one should swallow one’s distaste at the cynicism of the distributors who, hastily climbing on the band-wagon, present it with screeching sensationalism as a preview to the coming South African revolution.

It is primarily a documentary, though continuity is heightened by a simple plot. Zacharia, driven from the ‘reserves’ by famine, comes to the mines in Johannesburg. When his contract is completed, he gets temporary permission to seek work in the city. He is hounded from one menial job to another, always suffering indignities from the white bosses. His wife and children join him. Their lives are dominated by poverty, insecurity and the threat of violence. Everything that happens to them is possible; the people and situations they meet are credible, as is the tragic ending.

The actors are not professionals and this has both weaknesses and strengths, for while the acting is sometimes that of naturalism based on a lifeless average, the speech of the Africans is frequently in poetic (not pidgin) idiom, and the crowd scenes boisterously alive.

Darkness and violence From the summer storms which plunge the city into short,

For Marxists, revolutionary theory and revolutionary practice are intimately interlinked. Certain recent events suggest that ideas and practice are similarly linked for those who break with the Marxist movement.

In his document ‘The 1959 situation in the SLL’ Peter Cadogan spoke of the need for a ‘vast united front for peace— a front that cuts across class boundaries’. It is interesting to see how rapidly he has derived the correct and logical organizational conclusions from this ‘non-Marxist theoretical premise.

Peter Cadogan attended last Monday’s demonstration in Trafalgar Square, disguised as a CND despatch rider. The Marxists also participated in this rally, in their own formations and under their own slogans : ‘Out with the Tories, out with the H-Bomb’.

One can understand that this may not have been to the liking of certain people in the CND leadership. These people shelter behind the slogans of ‘no politics’ and ‘no slogan shouting’ in their attempts to silence those terrible Trotskyists who keep raising the class issues.

What is significant, however, is that Peter Cadogan, now blissfully free of the ‘sectarian’ atmosphere of the SLL, had so immersed himself in his vast front for peace that he saw nothing incongruous in allowing himself to become the mouthpiece of this same CND leadership. How else can one interpret his ‘instructions’ to the Marxists ‘not to sing or shout in Whitehall’ ?

In a Popular Front, Left-wing organizations are asked to forget the class boundaries and to submerge their independence in the struggle for a programme ‘acceptable to all’. This is of necessity the lowest common denominator of the pz grammes of all the organizations participating in the Front.

Peter Cadogan has found new political friends. It would be interesting to hear where they stand on this matter! International Film Theatre, Westbourne Grove, London. thunderous mid-day darkness, to the hard-drinking and brittle parties of the English-speaking white intellectuals; from the degradation and brutality in the townships, to the perverted callousness of the oppressors; everything in Johannesburg, the heart of South Africa’s darkness and promise, is violent. And Rogosin has shown us something of this.

What emerges also is that it is the African who is dignified, and who is the innovator. Amidst frenzied deprivations, there is creation, in the rituals of the religious sects, in the traditions of marriage and family life, where tribal custom is curiously blended with that of urban life, and in the music —creations sometimes crude, but struggling and vibrant. Within white domination and because of it, new modes of expression are fashioned, and this in microcosm symbolises the political creation which the Africans will make.

In the music is the expression of the arid, dusty grounds on which .the townships crowd. The sounds, returned to Africa from the Southern States are transmuted to the rhythms of industrialized slum life. The whites in the city streets watch transfixed as the ragged little Pans make their piercingly sweet music on the penny-pipes.

Uncouth, uncultured, vicious Rogosin is not over-simplifying when he depicts the whites as uncouth, uncultured and vicious. For it is only in stifling hot-houses that a thin layer surround themselves with the plants of world culture to which they can add scarcely one new bloom.

And yet . . . why does the film fail to scald and arouse? —and that is its intention. South Africa is more terrible and heroic than this film is able to suggest. Primarily, I think, it is because we do not see the tremendous power of the people, and even before Sharpeville the past years have provided many examples: the bus boycott, when thousands of men and women walked 24 miles a day in protest not only against a penny increase in fares, but against their oppression; that too-quiet day, when after months of resistance, the army and the police moved the sullen people from Sophia-

In the struggles of the early thirties, to the tune of ‘Clementine’, the people sang ‘Mayibuye Africa’—Let Africa Return, or Come Back Africa. The film which bears this title is a tribute to the sincerity of its makers, headed by Lionel Rogosin, and to their guts, for much town to Meadowlands. We glimpse this power only obliquely, in the brilliant shots when the men descend to work in the mines, or crowd in their hundreds of thousands from the trains to labour in the golden city.

In his day-to-day struggle for life, the African may appear to be a slave of outside forces. And this we are shown, poignantly and protestingly. But the film fails to stress the potential of the African people to abolish their exploitation, and this is central to the reality of South Africa.

Perhaps because of this weakness the African intellectuals . whom we see, while bitter and cynical of white liberalism— that South African twin to phoney Fabianism—are either not

conscious of, or are uninterested in involving themselves in the struggle. There are other coloured intellectuals who drink less, think more purposefully and act more decisively. forget. He makes us remember. New horrors threaten men. We must remember, and ‘we must act. In the tortured bodies and broken morale of the inmates, there is a terrible image of defeat. Possibly this film was coupled arbitrarily with ‘Come Back Africa’; yet it has links. For despite suffering,

In the same programme is Alan Resnais’ documentary on the German concentration camps, ‘Night and Fog’. The naked horrors are simply recorded. As in ‘Hiroshima Mona Amour’, Resnais speaks his purpose. Wounds heal, and we indignities and oppression, the people of Africa are unvanquished. Both films strive to express a ‘message’.

It is a pity that that of ‘Come Back Africa’ remains inchoate.

BENITA TEPER.

‘NOW look here, madam’, said the marshal to the Quaker, ‘you ¢an’t carry that placard in this march— it isn’t campaign policy.’ And he pointed to the poster she was carrying, which said: ‘Quakers say no to all war. ‘This is a march against nuclear bombs’, he bd ‘went on. ‘We are not against ordinary bombs, you know. In fact, we say nothing against conventional means of war—or war itself. I’m told that there are some Tories here, supporters of the Suez affair, in‘cluding the raid on Port Said when so many women and children were killed. You mustn’t antagonize them, you know.’

At this point another marshal noticed the placard carried ‘by another member of the Quaker contingent. ‘What’s that? “For Christ’s sake, disarm!” Oh, I say, apart from this not being a march for general disarmament, don’t you realise we have Moslems, Hindus, Jews and people of no religion at all taking part in this march? How can you make a sectarian ‘issue out of this great human problem? How would you like it if somebody came carrying a placard: “For Anti-Christ’s sake, disarm” ?’

And then I woke up.

What Is Poverty For?

During the Aldermaston march I had a talk with an earnest New-Left type who felt that we of the Socialist Labour League still failed to realize how much capitalist society— in Britain at any rate—has changed for the better since the war. When I quoted to him the appalling cases of poverty discussed by Audrey Harvey in her pamphlet ‘Casualties of the Welfare State’ (Fabian Society, 2s. 6d.), his reply was that such cases were marginal—deplorable, of course, but affecting, after all, only a minority, and therefore not typical.

This argument reminded me a little of the argument which used to go on among Soviet writers about what sort of people were ‘typical’ Soviet citizens. Obviously the inmate of a concentration camp was not typical in the sense of being representative. Equally obviously, however, his presence in the camp was not without potent influence on the behaviour of people not so situated.

The same is true of the destitute in our society. Why has the government allowed the real value of insurance benefits to lag and lag behind the rising cost of living, so that National Assistance now plays such a big role in so many people’s lives when they fall sick, lose their jobs or reach old age? The money needed to make up the benefits to subsistence level would be very little by comparison with many items of State expenditure which are never questioned. Is it meanness that explains why they don’t do this? No, I think it is not. During the 1920s and 1930s it was often pointed out that the amounts saved by keeping the dole down to starvation level were comparatively trivial—but the answer always came that that was not the point, the important thing ‘was social discipline.

Capitalist society, like Christianity, needs a hell. There may not be terribly many people in it at any given moment; but the mere danger of falling ino it can help to keep the masses on the straight and narrow path prescribed for them by their pastors and masters. If social insurance is in practice inadequate to safeguard the workers from the effects of misfortune he will (it is hoped) be all the more careful to live his life in a way that will enable him to save money against a rainy day. The poverty of a few is to ensure the docility of the many.

Professor R. M. Titmuss, in another recent half-crown Fabian Tract, ‘The Irresponsible Society’, shows how, parallel with the increasing inadequacy of the provisions of the ‘Welfare State’, a whole system of private pension and benefit schemes have developed, whereby the social security of the individual worker is conditioned by his loyalty to the firm which employs him, in a way that recalls one aspect of the feudal order. There’s a chastening thought for our historyrepudiating friends of the New Left!

Ghosts Walk in Carron’s Castle A recent episode at the London headquarters of the Amalgamated Engineering Union has led to inquiries about the historic ‘siege of Peckham Road’ shortly before the first world war.

That was a period when technical changes in industry were altering rapidly and fundamentally the position of skilled engineers, and changes in the union (then the ASE) were needed to meet the new problems. The executive council showing itself unwilling to make these changes, a delegate meeting called upon them to resign and face a fresh election in January, 1913. When it became evident that the executive meant to defy the members and hold on to office, the delegates appointed a provisional executive council to take over.

James Jefferys, in the official union history ‘The Story of the engineers’ (1945), tells how ‘the executive council locked themselves in with provisions at the new head office in Peckham Road, London, and refused admission to the provisional executive. The wall of an adjoining house was broken through and after an undignified skirmish the executive council were ejected into the street.” They took legal proceedings against their ejectors, but failed—after their efforts had brought a lot of unpleasant publicity upon the society.

Are We Red Teds ?

‘The Socialist Labour League was the worst thing which came out of the reforming of the “Left”.’ Thus Tom Jackson, who is, I believe, a member of the executive of the Union of Post Office Workers, writing in that union’s journal ‘The Post’ for March 26. His subject is: ‘The New Left; An Important Development’, and he discusses developments in the Left in Britain since 1957.

Fortunately, he points out, ‘at the same time that juvenile delinquents of politics were coming together in the SLL, another far more important group was developing’. This was the so-called New Left, now gathered round the journal ‘New Left Review’, to which he proceeds to give a puff. No analysis of our own ‘Labour Review’, of course—or even so much as a mention of it in the course of several paragraphs of generalized abuse of our doings.

This may not be juvenile but it seems to me pretty delinquent as a political method. The ‘New Left’ are welcome to their patron and fellow-humanist.

John Horner, secretary of the Fire Brigades’ Union, could only call on the summit _ conference. _Briginshaw, secretary of NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF LABOUR CAMPAIGN: AREA ASSEMBLY BOOK THIS - BIRMINGHAM : April 24, 10.30. Typographical Hall, Bath Street, Birmingham.

DATE NOW!

Four thousand and ninety-nine copies of the Socialist Labour League pamphlet ‘Africa, the H-Bomb and the Summit’ were sold on the Aldermaston : March. Other literature sales during the four days were 1,080 Newsletters, 71 ‘End White Terror in. Africa’, 861 ‘Aldermaston Specials’ and a number of ‘Labour Reviews’. Already six applications for membership of the Socialist Labour League’ have arrived in the central — office as a result of these literature sales.

Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (TU), r.0. 180 Clapham High St, London SW4

When the last Aldermaston marcher strode into Trafalgar Square, the mammoth assembly totalled 100,000.

On Friday, 7,000 marchers began to trek past the electrically wired, heavily guarded atomic research centre. By 2 o'clock on Monday afternoon, after three and a half days' marching through Berkshire countryside, in rain-swept Reading, along suburban Hounslow and through working-class Hammersmith, 30,000 were marching.

From the Albert Memorial the demonstration swelled with every step it took. In Whitehall, shadowed by the lofty white buildings of the establishment, the crowds lined the pavements six deep to greet the demonstration.

The Square was a seething mass of people and a veritable sea of banners and posters.

Glinting in the brilliant afternoon sun was the bright red baner of ASSET (technicians' union), the red, blue and gold baner of the Bradford Trades Council, and the blue and white of NATSOPA (printers' union). Numerous trade union branches from the Amalgamated Engineering Union, the Painters' Society and shop stewards' committees were also there.

A large green, white and red banner from the young socialists' paper, 'Keep Left' read: 'Throw out the Tory H-Bomb Government'. Behind it marched Young Socialist Groups from, Hendon North and South, Wembley North, Hornchurch, Harrow East, Shoreditch and Finsbury and Westminster.

No work on rocket bases—No work on H-Bombs

Applause greeted the Socialist Labour League contingent as it marched down Whitehall shouting: 'No work on Rocket Bases—No Work on H-Bombs'.

Then came the international groups—Algeria, France, Eire, Switzerland, the USA, Australia and many others, including the Israeli students and the Arab students' union.

This year there were more Labour Parties and trade unions than ever before. But above all Aldermaston was a youthful demonstration. Thousands of young people marched as a striking condemnation of the cynical sneers of the senile old men who lament that youth today is delinquent and cares for nothing.

Here were thousands of young people, apprentices and students, industrial and professional workers and even school attenders marching against a system that can only offer annihilation.

Youth and the future

This tremendous gathering embraced all the great potentialities, hopes, aspirations and zeal of a youth that wants to shape and decide its own future. Their presence on the march was a demonstration, that they want to construct a different world than the one bequeathed to them by capitalism.

Their preparedness to read the diverse literature that was being sold during the demonstration, illustrates that amongst youth there is the feeling that simply to march is not enough.

Here was the most positive side of Aldermaston. But here also was the paradox of Aldermaston. For these young people when they arrived at the Square were fed on a diet of stale clichés and over-baked platitudes from the speakers on the plinth.

John Horner, secretary of the Fire Brigades' Union, could only call on the summit conference. Briginshaw, secretary of NATSOPA, urged the movement to turn its attention towards a successful summit. None explained how at those summits at Potsdam, Yalta, and Tehran imperialism and the Soviet bureaucracy had made their deals which had bred the conditions which made the Aldermaston march necessary.

Horner spoke wistfully of a 'new popular front' whilst Spain (a tragic example of how the Popular Front leads to defeat) groans under a Franco negotiating with Germany for nuclear bases. Only one speaker, Michael Foot, brought out the revolutionary significance of Aldermaston when he linked it to the Chartists. Otherwise all was prayer and pleas.

Leave it to the statesmen . . .

No one spoke to the youth about socialism. No one tried to show them how war, insecurity, colonialism and racialism are the natural products of a diseased capitalist system.

All the speakers could suggest was to 'leave it to the statesmen'. The enthusiasm began to drain from the crowd. People began to remember their tired feet, and started to drift away.

Another march was over. Another demonstration had finished. Canon Collins blessed the banner: 'Aldermaston to the summit via Geneva.'

In the chancellories the imperialist statesmen breathed a sigh of relief, they are not unduly frightened of prayer.

Despite the tired old men and their pathetic shibboleths and frayed formulas the Bomb still remains. Imperialism still continues its nuclear toboggan ride. Across humanity's future lies the grim shadow of nuclear destruction.

With all its enormous potential the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament still has not overcome its main problem. Unless it is able to direct the youth's desire to fight nuclear war, against imperialism, the movement will remain one of pious protest.