The Newsletter, vol. 4 no. 150

More and More Trade Unions Say With the Socialist Labour League:

~ STOP MAKING THE H-BOMB!

THE National Committee of the Amalgamated Engineering Union has unanimously decided to demand the ending of all testing, manufacture and stockpiling of nuclear weapons. This is a tremendous victory for the Left-wing of the Labour Party and in particular the Marxists, who have fought since the Labour Party conference of 1957 for this policy to be adopted by the party.

During these three years the campaign has swept the country. Union after union, constituency party after constituency party are now going on record for precisely the demand that members of the Socialist Labour League advocated at the time.

Policy must be made by the affiliated bodies in conjunction We reproduce the Norwood resolution. It was for advowith the NEC. There must be no documents presented by cating resolutiens on policy such as this that the National the national executive which are not open to amendment.

Executive Committee of the Labour Party proscribed the It is this practice which in the past has done more than Socialist Labour League. We ask all Left-wingers, indeed, we ask all members of the Labour Party’ was the Socialist anything else to make the Labour Party a laughing-stock throughout the country. The people responsible for this are Labour League right or wrong to say ‘Stop the manufacture the Right-wing. We call upon all active trade unionists and of the H-bomb’?

members of the Labour Party to fight with us for the lifting Is it not now perfectly clear that the whole movement ts of the proscription of the Socialist Labour League and the advocating this policy.

.

Gaitskell and his vicious clique who dominate the top of ban on The Newsletter. the Labour Party have been successful in confusing the party and banning the Socialist Labour League. They have proscribed the one organization that is consistently fighting for WHAT THE NORWOOD RESOLUTION a socialist policy inside the party. Meanwhile, they continue SAID to advocate policies which are almost indistinguishable from at Brighton 1957 Labour Party Conference those of the Tories.

This clique has persuaded the NEC to adopt an amend- This conference, believing that the time has come to ment to Clause Four which in effect nullifies this clause in abandon the pretence that there can be any protection the party constitution. in a nuclear war, records its belief that in a major conThe struggle for Clause Four and the fight against the manu- flict there will be neither victor nor vanquished, yet facture of the H-bomb are inseparable parts of a socialist without war starting the tests of nuclear weapons may policy. Just as the movement is tutning against Gaitskell on well doom countless numbers yet unborn to an inheritthe H-bomb today, so it will tomorrow in the case of Clause 4. ance of insanity, blindness or malformation. Here, again, the Socialist Labour League has demanded con- Conference therefore : tinuously that Clause Four should remain in the party consti- (a) Opposes the further testiag or manufacture of tution and, if at all possible, be strengthened in content. nuclear weapons by all countries;

(b) calls upon the National Executive Committee Gaitskell has got away with his attack on Clause Four the to mobilize the whole of the movement against same as he got away with his policy on the H-bomb. The nuclear weapon tests by organizing through forthcoming annual conference must decide on this question the National Council of Labour a national as well as the H-bomb. Gaitskell must be removed immedicampaign, using all means including mass ately as leader of the Labour Party. The whole party must demonstrations in Trafalgar Square and other begin a discussion on socialist policy. There must be ro more acceptance of resolutions and statements from the NEC. centres throughout the country along the lines of the Suez campaign last November; (c) pledges that the next Labour government will take the lead by itself refusing to continue to

test, manufacture or use nuclear weapons, and By Our Industrial Correspondent that it will appeal to the peoples of the other When Andrew McGillivray arrived for work on countries to follow their lead; Thursday, May 5, at Turners, engit:eers and electri- calls on the National Executive Committee, cians, Anderston, Glasgow, he was met at the door in co-operation with the international socialand handed him his cards. by the manager who told him that he was redundaat ist and trade union movement, to enter into discussion on how best the full force of the international working-class movement can he Turners has been a non-union shop, but recently McGillivmobilized to stop any further tests. ray who ‘s a member of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, (Continued on back page)

186 Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4 Telephone Macaulay 7029 SATURDAY, May 7, 1960 WITCH-HUNT Despite appeals by Confederation leaders, threats from the employers, and smears published in the local press, confidence is growing and with it support from the men. Already £3 10s. has been donated by one AEU branch. At Metropolitan Vickers, shop stewards donated £10 out of funds to send 1 delegate to the apprentices’ meeting in Glasgow. Collections are taking place in other factories.

AS the Labour movement turns more and more to the Left, the Right-wing trade union leaders and the professional witch-hunters become desperate. This vile pack has now been openly joined by the Catholic Church in the person of Bishop Heenan of Liverpool. The Bishop has seen fit to raise the red bogeyman, alleging disruption by Communists in industry.

The Bishop stands, of course, for the maintenance of the capitalist system because without poverty and its attendant miseries there would be no support for the teachings of the church. Generally speaking, the poorer the people and the more backward they are as a result of the evils of capitalism, the greater is the power of the Roman Catholic Church. Bishop Heenan is very fearful of the day when human beings through their control of the productive forces will begin to establish a heaven on this earth and in doing so ‘decisively reject the mythology of ‘Pie in the sky when you die.’

The most sinister side of the witch-hunt is the activity of Catholic Action who work closely with such organizations as the Economic League. In a recent edition of Christian Action, produced by the Society of Jesus, there is a long witch-hunting attack against the Socialist Labour League. This appears at a time when the Economic League, which is financed by the big employers, produces a full- scale pamphlet which, among other things, provides names and addresses of members of the Socialist Labour League throughout the country.

Is it not time, therefore, for all workers on the Left, irrespective of whether they are members of the Labour Party, the Communist Party or the Socialist Labour League, to stand firm together in resisting the Bishop Heenans, the William Carrons and the Economic League.

The fight against bans and proscriptions is now a foremost political issue. The Socialist Labour League says once again that it will unite with all those who are willing to fight on this important question.

By G. Gale Men at several factories have threatened to walk out if anyone is transferred to work normally done by apprentices, even though some jobs are completely held up.

‘It is solid’, said a spokesman. ‘If any apprentice is victimized no one will go back throughout England and: Scotland, and the men will join us. We have been asked to wait till Friday, but we have been waiting for eight years.’

The apprentices have a cast-iron case .and one striker I spoke to is aged 20, a married man with one child. His basic rate is £6 9s. per week.

By Our Industrial Correspondent

Led by a banner carried by lads from Millspaugh Ltd., apprentices marched today through the main factory districts to bring out more on strike. At one time over 400 strikers gathered outside English Steel shouting ‘Out, out, out.’ Cheers went up as some of the English Steel lads walked over to join the strikers.

From there the march went on to Firth Browns and at one point I saw a policeman grab one young lad round the throat and push him against the wall.

Already 2,000 apprentices are out in Sheffield and Rotherham. Newton Chambers, AEI Traction Division, W. Green & Co., Wombwell Foundry and Engineering, Cravens Ltd., Brown Bayley Steels, Shardlows, Millspaugh, Metropolitan Vickers, Arthur Balfour and Co. are all affected. for that one to succeed. The size of the dispute has also ensured that the union leaders are powerless to break it.

What is now required to ensure a most decisive victory is the final extension of the dispute to the London factories. This must also be joined by a national token strike of all the adult workers with the threat to the employers that unless they settle with the lads now that token strike will become a complete national stoppage.

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

Foliowing Saturday’s conference of engineering apprentices in Glasgow the strike is extending rapidly to all the main industrial centres in Britain. Represented at the conference were delegates from Sheffield, Manchester, the Midlands, Tyneside, Northern Ireland and South London.

Spokesmen of the Scottish strike committee confidently said after the conference: ‘Now we are really going to slam the employers.’

He added, ‘this week will see the apprentices’ strike nationwide.’

Enthusiasm amongst the lads is high. Their spirit and determination puts to shame the official leaders of the union who still have not made one real declaration of support for the strike never mind given it official backing.

Short of funds the lads have not permitted this to frustrate their efforts. For days now teams of lads from Scotland and England have been hitch-hiking ali over the country seeking fresh support.

In Merseyside 1,000 apprentices pushed police to one side at the entrance to the big shipyards and marched through the gates bringing out apprentices still working. At every shipyard they met with an instantaneous response.

In Manchester the Metro-Vickers strikers, true to past traditions, are out solid. On Monday, they mass picketed the Taylor Brothers’ steel works and brought out 200 apprentices by dinnertime.

The lads at the Metro-Vickers’ factory in Sheffield are also out and climbed over the walls of the firm’s smaller factory in the city to bring their mates out with them.

On Wednesday, adult workers all over Clydeside streamed out of the factories in a half-day token strike of solidarity with the lads.

This action, of course, sets an example to the entire movement. The employers know that their threats to withdraw the lads’ indentures have failed. ' The movement is too big

ARE there among our readers any who took part in the engineering apprentices’ strike of 1937? It would be interesting to hear from them about the lessons which they think should be learned from that experience, in relation to the struggle now developing on the same front.

Beginning on Clydeside and extending all over Britain, the 1937 strike made a great sensation in its day. Together with such other disputes around the same time as the London busmen’s strike and the miners’ strike at Harworth, and such ‘non-industrial’ incidents of workers’ struggle as the street battle fought in Bermondsey to prevent a Fascist march, and the refusal by the dockers at Southampton and other ports to load scrap-iron on Japanese ships, it marked a stirring in the British labour movement after a longish period of quiescence.

And this attracted all the more attention because it coincided with an extremely gloomy phase in Labour’ political fortunes, with a whole series of disastrous by-election results.

Some hoped (and others feared) that the revival of militancy would keep on growing and spreading into ever-fresh fields, and so in a short time transform the whole situation in Britain for the better. Had that happened, it could have produced tremendous world-wide consequences. But it did not happen: the wave of militancy broke and was not renewed. The great negative circumstance of those days made itself felt—the absence of a revolutionary Marxist leadership, of anything comparable to the Socialist Labour League.

The Clydeside apprentices came out at the beginning of April and there were soon 15,000 of them on strike. Increases of pay had recently been given to journeymen, but there was nothing for apprentices; the boys demanded an increase and also recognition of the right of the trade unions to negotiate on all matters concerning apprentice conditions. Feeling in support of the boys was very strong, and the Confederation ‘of Engineering and Shipbuilding Unions bowed to this in calling a one-day strike on April 16 of every member employed in the Clyde area. There, however, industrial action in solidarity with the boys was allowed to stop.

YCL’s ambiguous role The Young Communist League was fairly influential among engineering apprentices in those days, but the overall Stalinist policy of the time caused it to play a most ambiguous tole. The Stalinists were keen to display their power; but at the same time they were cultivating the idea of a broad alliance with Liberals and ‘patriotic’ Conservatives against the Chamberlain govenment, and this meant that naked manifestations of class struggle were embarrassing to them. Also, seeking, as they were, supporters for their international policies among trade union leaders, they had found a ‘fellow-traveller’ of sorts in Little, the then general secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering Union; and this meant that their criticism of his behaviour had to be blunted, to say the least.

‘Challenge’, the YCL weekly, concentrated mainly on calling for collections of cash to support the Clydeside ‘strikers, and pointing out the need for new legislation to protect young workers. When the AEU ordered the boys back, ‘Challenge’ reported (May 6) that they returned to work ‘as united in their return as they were in their strike’, but later admitted that mass meetings showed strong feeling against return. The union leaders had promised to do their best for the boys in negotiations with the employers, but weeks and months dragged by without any progress being made. Unrest grew, not only in the Clyde area but elsewhere, and there was talk —but nothing more at this stage—of setting up an unofficial organization of apprentices.

A second outbreak of apprentices’ strikes began in September, first in Manchester and Salford, then rapidly spreading throughout Lancashire and Yorkshire. Just as the Clyde boys were preparing to join in this new wave of struggle, the unions ordered the strikers in Manchester and the other North of England centres to go back-—and they went. Mounting frustration now broke through in the actual convening in Manchester (on the initiative of the Clydeside apprentices’ committee) of a conference of representatives of 84,000 engineering and shipbuilding apprentices in all parts of the country. This conference decided to call a nation-wide strike on October 18 if the employers persisted in ignoring the boys’ demands. The YCL agitatedly appealed to the union leaders to do something to prevent matters getting out of hand: ‘We call upon the leaders of the national unions . . . you will never regret it. The unions will be flooded with fresh young forces.’

The national strike threat compelled the engineering employers to agree in principle to recognize the unions’ right to negotiate on behalf of apprentices, and a number of firms granted wage increases. But the increases rarely went as far as the boys wanted, and actual negotiations were postponed and delayed again and again. In November, the apprentices came out at the big Siemens works in London, and there were signs of similar moves in Birmingham.

Alibi for third round At this moment the Stalinists, manoeuvring to avoid a third upsurge starting in London and the Midlands, were able to seize for alibi purposes upon the decisions of the trade union bureaucracy to ‘support’ the proposals for better factory legislation in relation to young workers which the Stalinists had for some time been advocating (see Gollan’s book ‘Youth In British Industry’). ‘Challenge’ of December 2, wrote, starry-eyed: ‘Now that the great TUC has entered the arena with a youth charter, and will be calling together all executives of affiliated unions, the guarantee of success has been given to the whole campaign, and by the end of next year at the latest, the position of youth in Britain will be radically improved all round.’ Not strikes, but applause for Transport House, that was to be the method!

All through 1938 reports appeared in ‘Challenge’ which reflected the discontent of the apprentices with the way they were being fobbed off by employers and union leaders—for instance, in the issue of March 10, S. Watson, chairman of the Clydeside committee, declared that not a single apprentice on the Clyde understood the new agreement which had been made on their behalf, and in that of March 31, W. Maitland, secretary of the same committee, was quoted as saying: ‘Plenty of promises have been made to us since the strikes. They’ve not been kept.’ But the editorial comment on this bitter feeling was always to the effect that the union leaders were doing their best, and the only contribution the boys could make was to step up union recruitment.

Beware of the Trots Plus, of course, the grim warning against you-know-whom, though they were at that time neither so numerous nor so well-organized as today. ‘Challenge’ of September 17, 1938, after acknowledging that the apprentices hadn’t got all they asked for, and were restive, went on: ‘But it is necessary at this stage to issue a warning against a number of individuals who are known as Trotskyists. They are attempting to put a wedge between the lads and their unions.’

Would those who took part in the 1937 struggle agree that the Young Communist League used its high standing among

Ges not to develop and extend the ‘sttikes but.10‘contain’ ‘then’ and “divert the’ boys from ‘the ‘true read‘*d — weyers 4 Ma¥®7,- 1960 ~ They went “on to’ instruct. the ‘executive: council: to. apply for...

an immediate-£1a- week “increase’for all shop dnd distributive -_.

ES, De

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By Our Derby Correspondent After almost eight weeks’ strike, platers and welders em- =“ National Executive of the Labour Party. ‘It: must have... ployed at the Interiational Combustion’ Cotmpany, Derby, have returned to work. The.men,:all members of the Boilermakers’ Society—which made the strike official—were out inprotest at the firm testing a man for welder’s work which was not in’compliance with the union’s agreement with the © firm.

At the end of the seventh week the ‘firm issued ‘an ulimatum: ‘Return, otherwise you are all sacked.’

This certainly had its effects on the union leaders. Charlie Wise, local secretary of the Boilermakers, told me: ‘AIthough all the other unions concerned agreed at York 10 support the strike, nothing has been done. The Amalgamated Engineering Union, because of Carron’s absence, abstained.

‘Then Ted Hill came down here and made a defeatist speech which didn’t help morale.’

It has been this appalling failure on the part of the unions concerned to give real help to the strike which has forced the return. During the course of the dispute the rest of the 2,000 workers in the firm continued working. Only !ast Saturday did Ted Hill, general secretary of the Boilermakers, say he ‘would get in touch with all other unions concerned at the Derby Works of International Combustion and the High Marnham power station site—(where the dispute first started) wih the object of ‘blacking’ work normally carried out by the society’s members.

The International Combustion strike has illustrated once again the need for a leadership that will attempt to extend disputes and which will ensure that the rank and file are not driven into isolation through lack of funds and support.

DISARMAMENT

ritepyf This is “Labour's Africa Year’—by ‘decision of ihe... ee By: Tom Kemp...) > -..% got around, because no one can deny that, without per-. mission from anybody, even in Transport House, : Africans have been .on the move.

For the occasion, however, discussion notes have been produced entitled ‘British Africa’ and with the _ usual proviso that they are not a statement of Labour . Party Policy. There are 47 fact-packed pages, and yet, for anyone seriously desiring to know what is at stake today in Africa this pamphlet is of little help.

Take South Africa. There is a discussion of the pass laws and repressive legislation but no real explanaton of how British capital benefits from the cheap labour which they make possible. How much British capital is invested in the South African economy? How much income is derived by the City of London from its relationship with the Golden City? There is not a single figure on this matter. Yet how can ward members be expected to answer the question posed for discussion of ‘Are there any means by which we in Britain can help the Africans to resist the racial policies of the South African Government’ without such vital information?

This is not a policy pamphlet—or is it? For if an examination is made of the economic inter-connections betweea British capital and South Africa can the conclusion be tesisted that only by ending capitalism in Britain can effective aid be given to the people of South Africa?

Not one word And what goes for South Africa goes for the other territories discussed. There is a good deal about the ins-and-outs.

At the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers’ annual delegate meeting recently, there was an _ interesting illustration of how the Communist Party is prepared to make common cause with the most reactionary Right-wing trade union leaders in order to further the interests of the Soviet bureaucracy.

During a debate on a proposition by North-West London calling for USDAW to give active support to a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament, speaker after speaker went to the rostrum to support the resolution and to pour scorn on the idea that summit conferences would bring world peace and an end to the nuclear menace. .

Dan Huxstep, a member of the Communist Party, went to the rostrum and ‘said he was shocked by the delegates’ apparent lack of faith in international agreement and Four-Power talks. He called upon the conference to support the reactionary emergency resolution of the union’s executive. At the end of his speech he also asked conference to support the resolution from North-West London, after having done his utmost to. see: that it was . defeated.

Pcs Alan ‘Birch, USDAW general ‘secretary, replying to the debate; said he was in agreement with Huxstep, he was also ‘shocked by the sentiments of the delegdtes’. It was not surprising that Birch found himself in agreement with Huxstep; Stalinist Huxstep had just done the Right wing a good service.

Despite this alliance, however, the conference carried a resolution calling for unilateral nuclear disarmament, as well as one calling for an end to foreign missile bases in Britain. of Federation, two pages on Labour’s attitude to the Monckton Commission and much about constitutional arrangements in other parts of Africa. There is not one word about the extra-territorial companies such as Unilever, Anglo-American, Rhokana which dominate the economic life of British Africa; not a single figure about their investmients or the tribute they draw from African labour.

In fact, there is no explanation of now Britain came to be in Africa, anyway.

. What about European settlers? Those in Kenya get a pat on the back. Of course they took the best land but ‘they have invested their . . . capital in the land’, introduced new and im-. portant crops, ‘produced the major export crops’, etc. But the capital has come from the unpaid labour of dispossessed Africans—and the export crops go to swell the profits of capitalist concerns in Africa and Britain.

Philanthropy or self-interest?

In Rhodesia the big mining companies are praised—‘On the Copper Belt, where job reservation is the practice, the copper companies have fought hard to enlarge the numbers of higher jobs to which Africans may aspire.’ What, is this philanthropy—or enlightened self-interest in big opportunities for the exploitation of labour with a dark skin and playing him off against his privileged white brother? This pamphlet blames the white trade unions for what is ultimately the inevitable result of imperialism.

Since this pamphlet gives no attention to the economic stranglehold which big business exercises over the African economy it is not surprising that it sees the future merely in terms of political self-government, with some agrarian re--. forms thrown in for good measure and ‘help in social and

THE NEWSBETTER WETS . In-other words, let Africans. play at... mic‘ development’.

Parliament, while: labour continues. to. be. exploited. - Find some moderate middle-class leaders to play ball with—give . them a share of the spoils if they insist. Delude the people -t with paternalism by giving them back, as ‘aid’, a tithe of * what is taken from them by exploitation:and sit back and _ -discuss questions like ‘Can the colour bar and racial prejudice be overcome by legislation?’ AUP ie, MLE It would be difficult to avoid all the main issues in Africa's future more adroitly than this: product-of Transport House's. -Uncle‘ Toms of both colours does.

. re Agrarian reform is suggested tentatively along the classic lines of the bourgeois democratic solution, The ‘compre-" — hensive and revolutionary land reform’ which is spoken of ~ -for Kenya means only buying out some of the white farmers, if they will sell, on generous terms. a Whether or not this pamphlet is about policy—and in fact, it exudes reformist and paternalistic policy on every page—. we can be sure that Africans will not long pause at the stage in the African revolution which the writers of this pamphlet, and many African leaders, regard as definitive. When the winds blow up into storms there will not be much left in Africa of the kind of problem with which Labour Party discussions are supposed to concern themselves.

May, 7, 1960...

charges and the tendency could be higher prices which, linked Yes ang we te fey [ prices which, il ..

At 10 o'clock on Monday morning, in the big white jail across the Bay from San Francisco, the American State legally murdered Caryl Chessman.

After 12 nerve-wracking years, which included eight stays-of-execution, the gas chamber claimed its victim. The 'humanitarians' of capitalism guaranteed that Chessman would have a swift and merciful death, provided he breathed in deeply and let the gas get into his lungs.

But how many men have so rejected that deep instinct of self-preservation that they can calmly hasten their own death? Chessman certainly didn't. For eight minutes 45 seconds he tried desperately to live. When the poison gas began to rise around him he writhed and struggled against that inevitable death which his executioners had so scientifically prepared for him.

Chessman's end was violent and agonising. It shatters into a thousand hypocritical pieces the sickening platitudes of those who deny that capitalism is a society based on violence. Capitalism establishes the sacrosant rights of property and enforces its rule by means of the jail-house and the gas-chamber.

For 12 years they killed a little bit of Chessman each day. In his last letter he wrote: 'Death Row is always a place of horrors even for those who are able to hold the horrors at arm's length. For death itself is always your mocking, obscene companion.'

Death Row

In the film 'I Want To Live', Susan Hayward portrayed the unfortunate Barbara Graham—another victim of St. Quentin's green-painted death cell. Who could ever forget in that tragically accurate film, the pathetic hope, the dull resignation and the trapped animal-like helplessness of Barbara Graham as the months of her long wait went by. For that near demented woman they were months that passed so slowly, but yet too fast. No one could wait in Death Row and not die a little under the experience.

Chessman's life stands as a shocking indictment of capitalist society, with its cruel wastage and savage destruction of human beings. Under-privileged, inadequately educated, he turned early to petty crime. He learned quickly that for the children of the poor, Reformatory Schools are places made to break young people's spirit and intimidate them into conformity. It wasn't long before he found himself one of the 'outs'—a reject of society. Capitalism prefers its crooks to work in the State Department and its murderers to wear three stars.

Only when he was in the death cell did society learn that Chessman was a talented human being. With no literary training and no legal experience, he showed that he was capable of defeating the Californian State's best legal brains on eight occasions. During his time in the cells he wrote five books, all best sellers.

In capitalist society there are many people like Chessman, their talents frustrated, their abilities squashed, their aspirations denied. To these people capitalist society offers only the role of the obedient wage slave. It turns with barbaric ferocity on those who will not conform.

ECONOMICS Apart from the general economic consequences which may take time to develop, what is likely to happen in the immedi‘ate future as a result of the re-imposition of the credit squeeze?

First, the banks will formulate a policy of where to cut its lending. In the month to mid-April the banks had increased this by some £98 million and total loans had reached the normal maximum percentage of deposits. The banks are not likely to reduce overdraft facilities to the big business corporations but more likely to cut personal loans to small businesses.

They will consider the adequacy of securities deposited with them for accommodation. Obviously on this basis the big corporations will still qualify for the banks’ generous support. Recently there have been indications that, particularly so far as small businesses are concerned, in many cases banks have lent money on personal guarantees only, Now that the banks have to prune overdrafts, inadequately secured loans will be out. The banks take the view that if they have to” cut what is, in effect, their revenue, they might as well minimize their bad debts. And so the weaker business will have to look elsewhere for accommodation or go under.

Many of them are under-capitalized. That is to say they have taken advantage of boom conditions, have produced — more and increased their turnover, but in order to finance the increased cost of materials, work in progress and additional plant, building, etc., resultant on such expansion, they have had to have bank loans in the absence of sufficient capital. These loans have been forthcoming in the last year or so. But a reduction of, say, 10 per cent. bank facilities, could prove fatal to the small to medium manufacturer or distributor. — . Po, If the new ‘hire purchase restrictions are severe enough to reduce. consumption substantially, some small manufacturers may also be faced with a declining turnover at a time when the banks are pressing for a reduction in overdrafts. And so some may have to find other ways of raising money or sell out to the larger capitalist.

Some will go to the Discount Banks (whence money is advanced against specific debts due to traders), but their interest charges are much higher. Some will raise money by debenture issues and similar high interest money borrowing schemes. Any future increase in bank rate could also aggravate interest 143. Chessman certainly didn’t. For eight minutes 45 seconds be tried desperately to live. When the poison gas began to rise around him he writhed and struggled against that inevitable death which his executioners had so scientifically prepared for him.

‘Do you know what it’s. like to have someone spit in your face and you can’t say anything or do anything except to keep walking, knowing they'll spit at you again? ’

This question was asked of me by Laurette Williams, a pretty 18-year-old North Carolina University student here in Durham, who has suffered these indignities in the struggle against segregated lunch counters.

Laurette Williams also told me about how she had been dragged out of a store and arrested on charges of ‘assa:lt and battery’.

But as she was about to leave for a mobilization of students to picket three stores, her twin walked into the room to join her, and I thought how good it was that trouble for the racists should come in pairs.

New spirit A feeling of solidarity, of sacrifice for the common good and of purposiveness; confidence, determination and unbounded hope for the future—all these have become ‘part of the make-up of every Negro youth in the South.

The Negro students are not afraid. The racists spit «at them, taunt them, curse them and even try to run them down with cars, but the demonstrations go on. When the police jail the sit-in students they are proud to be in jail.

At Hampton Institute in Virginia, the students have lit a blow-torch while a more permanent torch is being constructed. The flame at the college gates will burn until Negroes can live in equality with whites in every corner of the land. The students have taken an oath to wait no more for ‘gradual implementation’ of the anti-segregation laws, but to resist all degradation now.

* At Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., Jim Lambrecht, national secretary of the Young Socialist Alliance, and I talked with the editor of the campus paper, Shaw Journal, and with the student body vice-president. We met in the headquarters of the sit-in movement. It looked like the strike headquarters that were common in the thirties.

In a small room at the back of the office were stacked .he picket signs, some quite worn with use, some carefully printed, others bearing hastily painted slogans inspired by the news of the day. The walls were covered with clippings, posters and leaflets, recording the progress of the movement and expressing its spirit.

At Hampton Institute, in Virginia, one of the young student leaders expressed some worry over the fact that they have been able to mobilize only about 40 per cent. of the students for sustained activity.

‘If something happens like an arrest or some other kind of attack, we get close to 100 per cent. response, but for daily work, it stays around 40 per cent.’ I assured him that it was a very high turnout for the daily picket grind. I don’t think the union movement got that much respense even in its best days.

Jim Lambrecht and I have visited five cities, and in each one we have met young student leaders who are being tempered in the fire of struggle. They: have all been eager to tell us about their experiences, their tactical problems and their perspectives.

* We asked what would happen to the movement during the summer vacations when the students will be dispersed. We were told that leaders in all six cities are preparing the student bodies to scatter over the countryside as educators and organizers for sit-in actions in their home towns. In many places the high-school students have constituted the most active forces in the struggle, and they will still be on hand.

The demonstrations have been very effective in getting ithe Negroes in the various communities to boycott the stores that are picketed. The white community, too, seems to be responding to some extent. Only hate-bitten racists can enjoy eating lunch under the conditions created by the management of the stores to combat the sit-ins.

Walgreen’s Drug Store in Durham, for example, has stacked merchandise around the counter to keep Negro customers out. Whites have to sneak behind the counter to get service. At another store, the manager hired a white woman to sit with one of her legs stretched into the aisle. She raised it for Negroes and lowered it for whites.

Many counters, of course, have been shut down completely, and the affected stores have had the rest of their buisness curtailed. Thus some stores in Durham advertised Easter candy at one-third reduction in price—before Easter.

A few courageous white students have helped to picket. Their presence on the line always shocks the prejudiced whites and forces them to look at the demonstrations and to think about them. But we have not yet found any evidence of material help from the North Carolina State AFL-CIO, which passed a motion in support of the sit-ins at a recent State convention. The labour movement can help the embattled students score a quick and decisive victory if it mobilizes its membership and its financial resources in back of the sit-in movement, But if the unions do nothing, they will find the reactionary Southern State gevernments and the racist gangs are just as prone to visit terrorism on the labour movement as on the Negro people.

(Reprinted from The Militant, the American socialist weekly.) .

SOME Communist Party members objected loudly when a speaker from the Socialist Labour League’s platform in Hyde Park on May Day criticized the Soviet Government for not having done more against the rulers of South Africa, to help the Algerian revolution, and. so on.

Now, the Marxist movement has traditionally taken a realistic attitude on this question of what the Soviet Union can be expected to do by way of participation in the struggle inside other countries. When, for instance, in 1933, Fenner Brockway, then a spokesman of the Independent Labour Party, called on the Soviet Union to break off trading and diplomatic relations with Hitler’s Germany, and referred to something Trotsky had written two years previously, Trotsky took him up sharply on the matter. The forced collectivization of the peasants in Russia had thrown that country into such a crisis, economic and political, that any such action as Brockway advocated would now do more harm to the Soviet State than to the Nazis!

The main alibi for the Soviet Union in relation to the world revolution all through the 1930s and 1940s was the country’s relative weakness. On this pretext the Soviet government did much less to help the revolutionary movement abroad than it had done when in some ways even weaker, in the middle 1920s, when Soviet aid to the Chinese revolution was famous or notorious according to one’s point of view. After three months’ support of ‘non-intervention’ in Spain in 1936 the Soviet government, it is true, began sending arms and technicians to help the Republicans—but it soon became apparent that the purpose of this was more to keep Spain from taking the path of social revolution than anything else, and Soviet intervention in its political aspects played a major role in ensuring the victory of Franco.

Today, we are constantly being told by the Communist Party, and not without justification, how strong the Sovict Union has become, what a tremendous world power it now 3s, etc. Very well, then, the arguments for ‘non-intervention’ which are based on Soviet weakness no longer have any validity. Why does not the Soviet government do those things which were advocated from the SLL platform on May Day?

It is appropriate to quote here some words spoken by a Soviet leader in 1925 criticizing those who failed ‘to understand the elementary demand of internationalism, by virtue of which the victory of socialism in one country is not an end in itself, but a means of developing and supporting the revolution in other countries... .’

‘Support the liberation movement in China? But why? Wouldn’t that be dangerous? Wouldn't it bring us into conflict with other countries? Wouldn’t it be better if we supported “spheres of. influence” in China in conjunction with other “advanced” powers and snatched something from China for our own benefit? . . . Such is the new type of nationalist “frame of mind”, which is ‘trying to liquidate the foreign policy of the October Revolution and is cultivating the elements of degeneration.’

The speaker, of course, was the late J. V. Stalin; and the passage will be found on pages 169 and 170 of the English edition of Volume 7 of his Works. I reccmmend it for consideration by honest internationalist members of the Communist Party, in relation to the foreign policy of Khrushchev.

Gallagher versus Tom Mann Willie Gallagher’s article in the Daily Worker of April 22, on the occasion of Lenin’s birthday, was notable for his bringing in, amid his reminscences of Lenin in 1920, of a reference to Trotsky. ‘Lenin’s contemporary Trotsky was also a brilliant, striking figure, but full of vanity. In conversation you couldn’t think of the Revolution for thinking about Trotsky.’

Nobody else but Trotsky gets a mention alongside Lenin in this article. That reflects, of course, the actual situation in 1920, when all over the world men spoke of ‘Lenin and Trotsky’ together, and nobody but Trotsky was ever linked in this way with Lenin. -Not so long ago, Gallagher would have had to bring in a phoney reference to Stalin in this connection—as in fact he did in his autobiography. Let no one deny that there has been progress in respect for truth since 1956!

But as-regards Gallagher’s impression of Trotsky’s personality—well, perhaps that tells us more about Gallagher than about Trotsky. One can at any rate set against it the impression carried away by another old-timer, Tom Mann, as recorded in his pamphlet ‘Russia in 1921’, published by the British Bureau of the Red International of Labour Unions.

‘I was introduced to comrade Trotsky’, recalls Tom Mann. ‘Much more like his portraits than is the case with Lenin. Trotsky is different in type from Lenin, yet similarly lovable, quiet and kindly in conversation, equal at any moment to light pleasantries or the weightier matters of State. Fate has rendered service to mankind in bringing along two such men as comrades, the one the complement of the other.’

No Menshevik He A reader has kindly sent us a collection of pamphlets published by various British working-class organizations in the period just after the first world war. Among them is one by Maxim Litvinov, later Stalin’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, entitled ‘The Bolshevik Revolution, Its Rise and Meaning’, which was published in 1918 by the British Socialist Party— the nucleus around which the Communist Party was formed two years later.

I wonder how this pamphlet would strike the average Communist Party member of,today, brought up on the legend that Trotsky was a Menshevik, Litvinov explains that the Menshevik position was ‘that the revolution must be regarded essentially as one similar to those which had preceded it in Europe, that is, as a bourgeois revolution destined to bring the capitalist class to power and establish a bourgeois State.’ The Bolsheviks, however, ‘were of the opinion that inasmuch as the hegemony in the revolution belonged to the working class, with which the landless peasantry was in alliance, it must and should lead to the establishment of the proletarian rule, and at least to a considerable modification of the bourgeois State in a socialist direction. Trotsky went so far as to assert that the State could be directly established on socialist lines.’

Trotsky thus, on Litvinov’s showing, took up a position which, far from being ‘Menshevik’, was actually in advance of the Bolshevik position down to Lenin’s return to Russia in April, 1917. And when Lenin, in his ‘April Theses’, moved to Trotsky’s standpoint, this at first shocked the other Bolshevik leaders: in Litvinov’s words, ‘Lenin’s own closest friends shrank from it and refused to accept it.’

Bevin And Stalin

When a colleague put it to me that there were points of similarity between the career and role of Stalin in the Russian labour movement in the 1920s and those of Bevin in the’ British labour movement in the 1930s I did not at first sce what he was driving at. After reading Alan Bullock’s ‘Life and Times of Ernest Bevin: Volume 1, 1881-1940’ (Heinemann, 50s.), I now see his idea.

Stalin emerged to play his distinctive part in Russia against a background of exhaustion of the working class following the efforts of the civil war years, accompanied by apathy and demoralization due to the failure of the revolution in Germany. The basis of ‘Bevinism’ was similarly provided by the consequences of the failure of the General Strike in 1926, ihe mass unemployment of the slump years and the betray! by MacDonald and Co. in 1931, together with the crushing of che German and Austrian labour movements by fascism in 1933 Bullock quotes Bevin’s reply to Arthur Cook at the 1928 Trades Union Congress: ‘It is all very well for people to talk as if the working class of Great Britain are cracking their shins for a fight and a revolution, and we are holding them back. Are they? There are not many of them as fast as we are ourselves.’ And at the 1932 Trades Union Congress he was able to oppose a resolution for workers’ action to stop the transport of munitions to Japan, then in the early stages of her invasion of China, by jeering: ‘I have heard the nonunionist say: “Why don’t the dockers hold up munitions?” while he is looking for a job to make them.’

Bevin used the circumstances of the defeat of the German labour movement as an argument in favour of heresy-hunting and proscription: ‘If you do not keep down the Communists you cannot keep down the Fascists’, he told the 1934 Labour Party conference. ‘Our friends on the continent failed at the critical moment to maintain discipline as we propose to do now. This is where they went wrong and they got eaten out and undermined; when they had to take action, half of their members were in one party, half in the other.’

At the crucial Labour Party conference of 1935 he played upon panicky awareness of the contrast between the advance of fascism on the Continent and the apparent incapacity of the labour movement to resist, so as to break down the movement’s traditional attitudes to imperialist war: ‘People have been on this platform today talking about the destruction of capitalism. The thing that is being wiped out is the trade union movement. It is we who are being wiped out and who will be wiped out if Fascism comes here.’

Bevin’s notorious ‘anti-intellectual’ obsession falls into place here. Because of the temporary weakness of the working class itself, the Left in Britain in the 1930s (as in Russia in the 1920s) presented a disproportionately ‘intellectual’ appearance. Bevin, like Stalin, exploited this situation to the full to prevent the growth of support for Left tendencies among the workers. Surely no true horny-handed son of toil would be so lacking in self-respect (he loved to bellow) as to listen to these lawyers, historians, journalists and such-like rubbish, who were by definition a mob of cranks without any knowledge of the realities of working-class life?

BRIAN PEARCE.

A crowd of about 70 young people—mainly students from the University Labour Society—waited to greet Mr. Gaitskell on his arrival at Leeds Town Hall last night.

But Mr. Gaitskell’s pleasure at this unusual experience—he has never been known to arouse enthusiasm before—soon turned to pain. For he was greeted, not — with cheers, but with cries of ‘Ban the Bomb.’ And when this turned to chants of ‘Resign, resign, resign’, his discomfiture was complete. of The judgment of this reception committee was entirely correct. For Mr. Hugh Gaitskell, Leader of Her Maijestys Loyal Opposition, pillar of the Commonwealth and Defender of the (Fabian) Faith, gave a display of political bankruptcy such as the Labour movement has not seen since the days of Ramsay MacDonald.

Chums After a few preliminary remarks about the humorously- : named ‘Socialist International’ (he gets on very well with Mollet, president of De Gaulle fan club, and with the leaders of German Social Democracy who recently recorded their final break with socialism), Mr. Gaitskell went on to reveal his. concern at the armaments crisis of British capitalism.

Should we try to produce our own rockets (‘ours’, please note) or should we (who are ‘we’?) buy them from America? Should ‘we’ share nuclear weapons with other NATO countries, or should ‘we’ rely on the Americans to supply and control them? , This constant use of ‘we’ and ‘ours’ shows how completely Gaitskell identifies himself with the Tory government. Like them, he seeks a solution only within. the framework of the economic and military policies of world capitalism.

We're sorry ...

This came out clearly when he spoke on South Africa. All he could say about the brutal treatment of Africans by Verwoerd’s bunch of murderers was that it should be ‘discussed’ at the conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers.

How those who languish in South African gaols will cheer at his words! How the shanty town poor—kicked, whipped and shot by police thugs—will be uplifted by his message!

Listen to the leader of the largest Social Democratic Party in the world. Listen to this small-mirided, mean-spirited, but well-paid bureaucrat. Here is the message he sends to South SEE HOW WE CAN HELP.’ e lateralists as pacifists, naugeating and patronising appeals to youth to be ‘humble’ and listen to ‘those who have devoted their lives to the movement’ (‘What a mess you made of it’ came a voice).

Above all, this slick politician tried to bypass unilateralism by supporting summit talks instead.

Of course he’s not opposed to disarmament—‘in general’. But it must be ‘all-round, comprehensive and controlled’. The Summit talks must ‘get down to brass tacks’. “The world cannot afford delay.’ In other words, keep your eyes on the Summit, comrades, but don’t demand action here and now.

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It would be wrong to write this speech off as vague, uninspiring and inept. It was all these things. But this vagueness masks the iron determination of Gaitskell and the rest of the right wing to tie the Labour movement to imperialism.

This meeting was tragi-comedy. Political bankruptcy glaringly exposed—and the Party Leader heckled from beginning to end by the very youth that the party wants to recruit. Unfortunately for the right wing, the more youth they recruit, the more problems they get.

A blue future When Gaitskell attacked. Tory nuclear policy, they cried ‘You voted for it.’ When he spoke vaguely about the future, they yelled ‘What future?? When he asked what held the Commonwealth together they shouted ‘Profits’.

Barred from bringing their banners into the hall, they detached the sticks, came in with the flags in their pockets, and waved them violently whenever Gaitskell mentioned NATO.

Best of all, when Gaitskell asked ‘Why do I say these things?’ a single, clear voice rang out, linking Gaitskell’s nuclear policy and political leanings in six devastating words: ‘BECAUSE YOU’VE GOT A BLUE STREAK.’

Worried stewards—paunchy gentlemen trying to look im-. posing—gathered around in anxious impotence. After trying to eject ene young man—he simply refused to go—they gave up and were obviously relieved when the meeting ended.

But it wasn’t the end for Gaitskell. He was given a rousing send off as he left the hall. Nuclear disarmament flags waved in his face, Aldermaston march stickers decorated his car, cries of ‘Resign’, ‘Get out’ and ‘Youth doesn’t want the bomb’ dinned in his ears.

But the Gaitskells are a fighting family. By gad, they've got spirit. As a red-faced Mr. Gaitskell drove thankfully

But all is not lost. Mr. Gaitskell has a policy. Mr. Gaitskell has principles. Mr. Gaitskell stands firm.

‘We must stay in NATO.~. ... We must stand by our alliances. . . . We must retain our defences.’

This is the banner of Gaitskellism. It will never be torn down while he remains at the head of the Labour Party.

Of course, he avoided any definite statement of policy. "That is because he hopes to wangle a compromise for Labour’s Annual Conference—like the abortive ‘Non-Nuclear Club’ idea, buried in the fall-out from exploding H-Bombs. And he hopes the Right-wing trade union leaders will be able to secure a majority for him by manoeuvres like last year’s recall conference of the General and Municipal Workers’

* “What a mess.’

Meanwhile, every dirty trick was used to discredit those ‘who opposed him. Side swipes at Tribune, classing all uniPublished by Socialist Labour League, 186 Clapham High St., London, SW4 Registered at the GPO as = newspaper away, a window of the car was lowered, Mrs. Gaitskell poked out her head. Her face purple with anger, she made one of the few political remarks she has ever been known to utter, ‘Get back to the Kremlin’, she squawked.

CLYDE MILITANT VICTIMIZED—(Contd. from page 139) has been recruiting workers to the union. The firm has refused to grant the 42-hour week, claiming that as members of the Scottish Motor Traders’ Association, they are not bound by the agreement made with the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions.

_ The apprentices at Turners are on strike in support of their demand for higher wages and McGillivray has been active in their support.

This is a clear case of victimization. McGillivray has worked at Tusners for 12 years. But his activity in recruiting union members and in helping the apprentices has brought the wrath of his employers on his head. This must be fought by all AEU members—and by the workers at Turners.

Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (TU), r.o. 180 Clapham High St, London Sw4