The Newsletter, vol. 4 no. 157

By OUR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT THE postponement by the Trades Union Congress of a decision on the Labour Party declaration on foreign policy emphasizes once again the deep-going nature of the crisis now facing the movement. This new declaration is nothing more than a hotch-potch of the old cold war ideas dressed up in generalities whose main purpose is to maintain a fake unity on the National Executive Committee.

The determination of trade union leaders who are opposed to the Gaitskell policy was sufficiently strong to persuade the TUC that it was not possible to rush into a decision. At the same time as the TUC was meeting, the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party approved the ‘declaration’.

Here we have an extraordinary state of affairs. Victory for Socialism demands that Gaitskell should resign, yet those who are supposed to be supporting VFS on the National Executive support a vote of confidence in Gaitskell at the very time when the trade unions are moving into action against him. The rank and file of the party and the trade unions have a right to know what these people are playing at.

Tribune presumably supports the policy of Victory for Socialism in relation to Gaitskell. Certainly its editor, Michael Foot, has been under attack constantly from the extreme Right. Yet Jennie Lee, a director of Tribune and a member of its editorial board, goes to the NEC and votes for Gaitskell’s defence policy.

Such disunity is weakening the struggle against the Rightwing. It is precisely in these Left circles that criticism of Marxists, who fight for principles in order to make firm decisions, is most frequently heard. But is it not better to fight for real clarification now of the policy on which the Left will struggle against Gaitskell than to allow this stupid relationship with people such as Jennie Lee to continue?

In private everyone says that it was Aneurin Bevan who sold out the Left-wing at Brighton in 1957. In public they remain silent.

The Socialist Labour League is of the opinion that we are now in the most critical stage of the Labour Party crisis. Powerful trade union forces are waiting for a lead from the Left in the Labour Party. The demand by Victory for Socialism for Gaitskell’s resignation was good as far as it went. It came at the right time. But it has been undermined by the activities of the Left on the NEC.

Tribune and Victory for Socialism have a responsibility to bring this confusion to an end. In our Opinion, the best way to do this is to organize a national conference at which representatives from the trade unions, constituency Labour Parties (Continued on back page, col. one)

By Our Industrial Correspondent The Rules Revision Conference of the Amalgamated Engineering Union have refused to pass an executive recommendation that members of organizations not eligible for affiliation to the Labour Party should not pay the political levy or take part in the management, control, nomination or voting relating to the union’s political fund.

Not one of the 52 divisional representatives voted for the proposal. This was a real blow for Bill Carron —darling of the employers and Tory press—who had hoped to use this to deal with members of the Socialist Labour League and the Communist Party.

It shows what can be achieved when the Left unite against all bans and proscriptions.

By Our Industrial Correspondent In the north end docks thousands of dockers stopped work on Tuesday morning after men who refused to go on night work were locked out and had _ their registration books stamped ‘Employment Refused’.

An ‘E.R.’ stamp disqualifies a man for fall-back pay. The men refused night work after a mass meeting of Liverpool dockers decided to ban overtime last Sunday. The ban was called for by the Liverpool portworkers’ committee to back a wage demand now being discussed by the employers.

This quickly spreading stoppage of Liverpool men is a measure of the feeling on the docks over this wages and 40-hour week demand.

The strike has also shown how correct were those militants who said the overtime ban was impracticable—that either it would be ineffective or would lead to a strike at the em. ployers’ initiative.

At the meeting last Sunday dockers from No. 5 Control sought to move an amendment to the proposition for a ban. They wanted a thoroughly organized token stoppage in the port from June 30th to July 4th. They called for immediate contact with other ports to get national backing for such action as a warning to the employers. In the meantime, they called for preparations to be made for a complete, united national stoppage in the event of the employers giving an unsatisfactory reply to the wage demznd. Their amend. ment was not put to the meeting by the chairman.

The present strike can only be continued if it is widened and concentrated on the central issues of wages and the 40hour week. Some militant dockers feel that the struggle has broken out without thorough preparation. Nevertheless, they argue, now that the men are outside the gate other dockers should be contacted, they want this strike extended to a powerful backing for the demand for 25s. a week increase and the 40-hour week.

Meanwhile, E. McEchnie, secretary of the Portworkers’ Commitee, is awaiting his appeal against seven days’ notice on a charge of going for an early breakfast. Dockers who were working with him allege he was singled out from a group of men and victimized.

(1) Macmillan Versus the ‘White Mau Mau’

By JAMES BAKER AND MASINDE MOTO THE simultaneous publication in Kenya and in Britain on May 3lst of the Corfield Report! should be a warning to the working class in both countries. This report was prepared on a motion from Group-Captain Briggs, the leader of the die-hard reactionaries in Kenya, the European settlers. It was delayed for some months at the insistence of Macleod and Macmillan, who want to come to an agreement with certain African leaders. Its appearance at this time is an indication that the ‘White Mau-Mau’ in Kenya and their supporters in this country have won out. They are preparing the ground for another campaign of frightfulness similar to that which they waged during the years of the ‘emergency’, which lasted from October, 1952, until the beginning of this year.

During that time more than 11,000 workers in Kenya selves to the sudden introduction of ‘the new civilising inwere brutally murdered; 27,000 were imprisoned, some fluences’ (by this a reference to British imperialism is intended). It is necessary to state in the most emphatic terms were starved and tortured, others were beaten to death that the effect of colonial exploitation was to shatter the social as at Hola; some are still in exile or in prison, including and political systems of the past, and to rule out any possibilboth ordinary workers and leaders such as Jomo KenCity of independent development. The Kikuyu now became yatta, Peter Mbui Koinange, and others. But 1960 a part of capitalist society and only through the overthrow finds the African Revolution much more advanced of that system could the people solve their problems. than in 1952. The ‘White Mau-Mau’ itself risks Slave raids by European and Arab marauders brought destruction if it insists on embarking on such an ad- about the depopulation of large tracts of territory. The annexation of large areas of the best agricultural land for venture.

In the first of this series of articles we will try to explain European farms followed. There has been a half-century of the background to the present situation in Kenya; in the exploitation of the local population on farms, and plantasecond we will seek to demonstrate the tangle of lies and tions and in factories. This has transformed groups of slanders of which the Corfield Report is composed; and in farmers, herders and hunters into a working class dependent the third we will indicate how the working class in Britain for its existence on the sale of its labour-power. So-called and in Kenya can help one another to solve their problems. ‘tribal’ differences are irrelevant: they have been created and fostered by the imperialists to maintain divisions among Kenya is a land of great potentialities; in its area it is those whom they rule.almost as big as Europe; in parts there is an ideal climate, thousands of acres of rich agricultural land, and untapped The present economic structure in Kenya mineral wealth. But the resources of this country have remained virtually undeveloped during 50 years of British Although almost equal in area to Europe Kenya contains rule. The great majority of the population live in conditions a population of only 6 millions. This population is concenof abject poverty. Hunger and disease walk in the streets trated largely in the two areas which have an adequate while luxury and privilege roar past in fast cars. This is rainfall and are, therefore, suitable for settled agriculture. @ still a working class hell and a ruling class paradise. A gang These comprise the Central and the Nyanza Provinces, the of double-barrelled, aristocratic bastards from Britain, to- areas of the so-called Kikuyu and Luo ‘Reserves’. Here, gether with the retired gladiators of two world wars, set up more than four million of the inhabitants of Kenya are to a kind of degenerate feudalism and treated the indigenous be found, or 66 per cent. of the total population. Large population like serfs. But the racialists’ days are numbered; parts of these areas have population densities exceeding 400 the working class in Kenya is becoming stronger, better to the square mile, and in some parts it is as high as 1,000. organized and more self-confident. There is no industry in the ‘reserves’ (the Government dismantled a. few factories which were built there during the last war). Here are people trying in vain to cultivate suffiThe remote past ' cient for their food requirements, and also to grow some Still very little is known of the history of the East African surplus to sell to meet their taxes, and to pay for clothing, people before Europeans arrived there in the middle of the schooling and consumer goods. This is impossible and large last century. Future generations of social scientists will have numbers of the men must seek paid employment either in the task of establishing this. What is certain, however, 1s the towns or on the European owned farms and plantations. that for more than a thousand years there had been Arab But since accommodation is scarce and wages are low they settlements on the East African coast, and: that there had cannot take their wives and families with them: women and been trade between the peoples of Africa and India and China children must remain in the villages growing food to supplein domestic slaves, gold, ivory, spices, gums, and pottery.

ment the wages earned by the men in the towns. This is the In the interior of the East African Continent were peoples basis of Kenya’s economy. living at many different stages of social evolution: some were Only a few miles from the crowded farms of the African hunters, others herders, others again lived as settled agriculturalists. Many different forms of political organizations ‘reserves’ are the European estates of the White Highlands.

Here about 16,000 square miles, much of it the best agriexisted also: from centralised feudal kingdoms containing many thousands of subject, to bands of kinsmen numbering cultural land in Kenya, are owned by about 2,000 white farmers. Much of this land is still unused, being kept in a score or so. None of these was a -tatic society: each conhand for future white settlers. tained the seeds of its future development. It is necessary to make this point because the Corfield Report writes of The total European population of Kenya is about 45,000; the Kikuyu as ‘a primitive people who had stagnated for this includes government officials, those employed in banks centuries’, and who, for that reason, failed to ‘adjust’ them- and offices, private commerce, some retired people, together with their wives and families. This forms about .7 per cent.

1 Historical Survey of the Origins and Growth of Mau- of the population of Kenya; most of them live in affluence in large houses, with several servants to each household.

Mau, HMSO, 1960. Cmd. 1030.

The important point to note, however, is, that the activities of all these Europeans are in some way geared to the needs of the still smaller minority of large farmers. The latter have opposed the development of secondary industry—except those which were related to the needs of farming and commercial agriculture.

No one bothers to count the numbers of unemployed in Kenya and there are no systems of social insurance. At any one time, however, it would seem that there must be about 835,000 unemployed or under-employed males of working age out of a total of 14 millions (this gives a figure of approximately 41 per cent.).

There is paid employment available for 415,000 only. Of this labour force there are about 105,000 employed as ‘squatter’ labourers on farms in the White Highlands; and about the same number is employed on the commercial plantations producing coffee, tea, sisal, etc., for export.

A further 40,000 unskilled and semi-skilled workers are employed in the manufacturing industries. The remainder of the labour force is employed in a variety of capacities, as drivers, porters, dockers, domestic servants, etc. (There can be few European households with less than two domestic servants, and may Indians employ African servants also.) There are statutory minimum wage rates for both industrial and agricultural employment. In Nairobi the present figure is 29s. 10d. per week. (Colonial Secretary in the House of Commons, 31st May, 1960.) No recent information is available about agricultural wages: in 1950, the figure was 3s. per week and in 1953 it rose to 4s. per week. It is now believed to be in the region of 6s.2 * An official commiftee of enquiry reported in 1954 that: ‘Approximately one half of the workers in private industry and one quarter of those in the public services are in receipt of wages insufficient to provide for the basic needs of health, decency, and working efficiency.’"3 The accommodation available for African workers in the town falls far short of the demand. An official estimate made in 1951 stated that there were 10,000 bed-spaces short in Nairobi every night. And by 1953 the figure had risen to 20,000. Since that time the situation has become much more acute. The lifting of the emergency regulations has enabled landless Kikuyu who previously were starving in the reserves to make their way to Nairobi in search of employment. The demand for employment so far exceeds the supply that 2The wage contract of the ‘squatter’ labourer in agriculture includes the right to cultivate a specified area of land and to maintain a certain number of cattle. Contracts of this kind help to keep the workers tied and subservient, as any increase in wages might be accompanied by a cut in land or cattle.

3 Committee on African Wages in: Kenya, Nairobi, 1954.

Continuing an important series of articles on workers can be engaged at starvation rates.

The crisis of the society of Kenya has become so deep that any attempt at piecemeal solutions can only have the effect of intensifying the problems. If more housing were available for Africans in the towns, or if wage rates were raised, this would have the effect of increasing the flow of people from the reserves into the towns.

Recently there have been unmistakable signs of increased militancy among the African workers in both agriculture and industry. Coffee and sisal growers are complaining of ‘wild cat’ strikes among their workers. The tenants of municipal housing in Nairobi are said to have organized a rent strike. African farmers offered the opportunity of purchasing land in the White Highlands have said that there is no need to do so as they will soon take it for nothing.

In our next article we will examine the solutions that the Kenya Government and the white farmers are likely to adopt in face of this situation.

Number 2—The Corfield Report and the ‘Emergency’ :

The truth about the Kenya Land and Freedom Army.

Number 3—Future Prospects in Kenya:

What Policy can Kenya’s Workers and Peasants follow?

In writing these articles James Baker has had the assistance of a young African Worker who was present in Kenya during the ‘emergency’.

Sa aI, tions would be felt if the car industry were similarly affected. Large export orders and an, as yet, unsatisfied home demand © have necessitated full employment in this industry. Falling values of second-hand cars must eventually affect demand for new ones. Fierce competition from foreign firms could aggravate the situation considerably.

Although the publication of company profits within the last few months show bigger increases than ever before, share values are falling. The capitalists are not as confident as they were six months ago.

Home demand, éncouraged by high spending on armaments, is not by itself an index to the country’s prosperity. Only an international socialist system can solve the problem of Britain’s periodic financial crises.

ECONOMICS Two months after the government impose the restrictions on hire purchase and bank credit, Hoover sack 10 per cent. of the workers. The time difference between ‘prosperity’ and depression is as marginal as that for us all. And it is important to know the reasons for this condition, probably more relevant to Britain today than any other capitalist country.

The spectre of an incurable adverse balance of payments position haunts the government again. An excess of imports over exports is now running at the rate of £1,000 million annually. This time the deficiency can be accounted for in part by the importing of a number of consumer ‘durables’ like French cars and German refrigerators, apart from the high cost of basic raw materials required for manufacturing consumer goods.

The problem facing the government is how to divert goods from the home market to the export market. This cannot be done at the drop of a hat. Hire purchases are all very well, but they do not discriminate between one type of product and another. That is, those goods that can be exported and those that cannot.

Just as the Germans, French and Italians have broken into the British market, so they have broken into our capitalists’ traditional markets abroad. The dilemma facing the government is that if they restrict home demand without an alternative market, they must create a high degree of unemployment. In former post-war years credit squeezes achieved their object. Imports dropped; exports soared. But 1960 is not 1950. European competition is a factor which could have far-reaching effects upon the economic scene. , Significant as the Hoover sackings are, the electrical ap-_ pliance industry is fairly self-contained. Wider ramifica- _

By G. HEALY THE defeat of the Hungarian revolution in 1956; the coming to power of De Gaulle in France: the abandonment of any reference to socialism by the German Social Democratic Party and the triumph of the Tory Party in the October, 1959, general election, were powerful indications of the growing strength of the Right-wing reaction over the continent of Europe.

The past few years have been anxious ones for European Marxists and in particular for our movement in Britain. Such events have, in fact, formed part of the background to recent Right-wing and sectarian defections from the Socialist Labour League.

Notwithstanding the dangers inherent in the situation, however, we patiently insisted that it would be wrong to characterize the victory of reaction in Europe as one which signified a definite defeat for the working class such as was suffered in the early and middle 1920s.

The colonial revolution, which has now spread from Asia to the continent of Africa, upset the equilibrium of imperialism to the extent that permanent stability is well-nigh impossible. But this conflict, important as it is, cannot by itself overturn world imperialism. For this we need great movements led by revolutionary Marxist parties in the advanced imperialist countries.

To faint-hearts whose opinions are formed on the basis of superficial impressions, it appeared that the construction of such parties was something to be ruled out for the next period. They looked for political gimmicks to answer difficult problems.

It was suggested that the de-Stalinization process in the Soviet Union, the rapid tempo of industrialization in that country, and the extension of the colonial revolution were a sufficiently powerful force in themselves to ensure the restoration of democracy in the Soviet Union. From these impressions the conclusion was drawn that the Stalinist parties, suitably de-Stalinized, might lead the working class to power and thus obviate the need for the construction of revolutionary Marxist parties. The Marxist movement was seriously endangered by these revisionist ideas, particularly in the countries of imperialism, where the struggle to con-— struct revolutionary parties was hardest.

Japan and Britain In the last few weeks two events which are of tremendous importance for the future of the struggle in the imperialist countries have taken place.

First, the great Japanese demonstrations where tens of thousands" of students, solidly backed by working-class organizations, brushed through the ranks of the Kishi police and created a situation where the arch-representative of imperialism, President Eisenhower, was unable to visit Japan.

It would be quite inaccurate to speak of the struggles in Japan as an extension of the colonial revolution. Japan is an advanced industrial country with a modern proletariat. It is the home of a ruthless and brutal imperialism. These great demonstrations have, therefore, much more _ specific weight than the extension of the colonial revolution, important though that is. What is being posed over the next period in Japan is a social revolution. _ This is the beginning of a great movement in the imperialist countries which will provide firm foundations on which the Marxist parties of the future will be: built.

The second event is the crisis in the British Labour Party. In its editorial of Monday, June 20, The Times described this crisis as follows :

‘The present disarray in the Labour Party is tragic. It ;

is not so much a struggle for power—the lines of fission criss-cross in the most bewildering manner—as a desperate flurry by a great party threatening fragmentation. Were this to lead either to Conservative rule for a generation or to the ultimate victory at the polls of a newly oriented By Opposition, our society would make a decided shift. The fight centred around Mr. Gaitskell is a fight involving the future of Britain.’

These remarks describe very effectively the serious nature of the conflict within the Labour Party.

The political log jam created by the division of labour ‘between the leaderships of the old parties of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, is breaking up. The process of change under the surface of political life in Britain is about to become transformed qualitatively into the emergence of powerful new trends. That is why all the King’s horses and all the King’s men, supported by the Fabian Society, cannot put the Humpty Dumpty of Transport House together again. The possibiliies of a satisfactory compromise seem remote indeed. A new stage in the long process of revolutionary change opened up by the election of the Labour government in 1945 is now on the agenda.

Youth pioneers the way What forces will supply the recruits for the new Marxist leaderships in the imperialist countries? In our opinion these will undoubtedly be drawn from the youth in industry and the universities. Was it not the tens of thousands of student youth who pioneered the Aldermaston marches in the fight against the H-bomb? Who made a powerful contribuion to the creation of a great anti-H-bomb movement? Is it not also a fact that these youth, who started out from universities and colleges are now more and more being joined by the big battalions of labour, the trade unions? Is it not this great change which has sparked off the present crisis in the Labour Party and prompted the thoughtful editorial of The Times?

Compare these events with the role of student youth in the recent Japanese demonstrations. The News Chronicle correspondent, Bruce Rothwell, writing in that newspaper on June 20, described an interview he had with two Japanese student leaders, Onda and Kurodi. They both ‘bitterly denied Premier Kishi’s charge that they and 30 other committee members leading the Zengakuren are Communists. . . .

‘The Zengakuren, covering 130 universities and schools and nearly a million students, was broken up by pre-war military officers. Banned during the war, it was revived by MacArthur in 1948 as a contribution to teaching Japan democracy. .

‘The Communists quickly infiltrated it. But last November —when Kishi tried to legislate wide police powers and students broke in to the Diet in protest—the Communist Party officially denounced them.

‘It called them Troskyists and expelled Zengakuren’s leaders from the party.

‘Few knew of Trotsky, but they held elections and confirmed their hold on the committee over “moderate” Communists, read Trotsky literature and began. denouncing Khrushchev as well as Kishi.’

The SLL looks ahead How much now for the worthless thinking of those who so optimistically declared that the Stalinist parties with the Khrushchev ‘new look’ may well be the Marxist parties of -the future. On the contrary, it was the youth of Hungary (Continued on back page, col. two)

THE busmen’s Central Road Services Committee has set up a sub-committee with London Transport to examine the staff shortage, now standing at 4,500. Meanwhile, garages around the fleet where staff shortages are particularly acute have had to officially cut services out by adjusting the schedules to fit the number of staff available.

The LTE has resurrected the busmen’s bonus proposals that it laid aside in February following the 10s. increase. The bonus proposal is being received less warmly on the Central Road Services Committee than it was six months ago. But having closed the wage negotiations last February by accepting the 10s. as a final settlement, and dropping completely the claim for shift pay, it will be difficult to win solid support from the bus crews to oppose the bonus scheme. The crews are faced with the choice of ‘nothing’ or a ‘bonus’.

If the Committee had settled for the 10s. as an interim increase (the claim was for £1), to be raised again later along with the shift payments, then the LTE’s bonus schemes would stand out as a plan to avoid giving the bus crews a real wage increase, a much more tenable position than that -which exists now.

There is, of course, more behind the timing of the proposals for a bonus than this manoeuvre by the LTE. London Transport is faced with a real staff shortage that arises out of the low wages and almost intolerable working conditions. The LTE’S own strategy of keeping a level of staff shortage (for reasons outlined in Newsletter, 25/5/60) is getting out of hand. Recruits on t® the buses are themselves victims of the immense shortage and its effects on the working conditions—gaps in service, long queues, intense traffic, ete.— hence turnover is of a shorter period, while the effects on the crews with longer service is such that men are leaving the job after 20 and even 30 years with the LTE. Staff shortage is becoming self-generating!

A trap for busmen A bonus scheme might hold crews from quitting. It might attract others to the job. But it is a TRAP for busmen. The LTE has never given anything away. Transport boss Burnell openly admits that the crews will actually pay for their own bonus. While the LTE will raise the cash to start it up, the efforts of the crews to excel themselves and boost their earnings will create a sufficient pool of cash to pay for the scheme and donate to the LTE’s bank balance, presumably for allowing the crews to work harder.

What effects will it have on the staff and the working conditions? Until the actual scheme is published that is hard to say, but a general outline is possible. Bonus will be paid to drivers for making up lost ‘ime in the peak hour. In certain cases this is possible but with present traffic conditions it may be dangerous and difficult. The overwhelming majority of ‘turns’ (i.e., curtailing of journeys before reaching scheduled destination) are through traffic jams, etc. This is obviously a speed-up which, judging by the way we have to race about now, is going to increase the accident risks several times over.

On the other hand, the conductor is to be paid a bonus for higher takings. This will cut across the union’s policy for eventually having ‘no standing’ passengers (by having sufficient buses on the road). Illegal overloading will be encouraged, which will cause friction between the drivers and conductors (the driver pays the police fine). And what is going to happen if the driver wants to make his bonus by racing along and the conductor his bonus by waiting for By A LONDON BUSMAN accepts a bonus scheme. There is no substitute for a proper bus service. This means decent living wages for its crews, not nominal sums of money supplemented by overtime and rest day working. It means putting buses on the road as a service and not a stop-gap measure because of the LTE’s present bungling.

While the Central Road Services Committee is sitting on a sub-committee with the LTE to discuss the staff shortage, they should put forward constructive proposals. These should include rejecting the bonus proposals as a way to recruit staff and demand that the sub-committee examine the proposal that the union become responsible for staff recruitment. The money offered by the LTE to start a bonus scheme could very well finance the expenses of this.

The CRS members should also demand, that in view of the emergencies in several garages where staff shortage has led to OFFICIAL cutting of services, that private hire work by crews and buses that should be in general service, should cease and be directed to cover the gaps where needed.

STRIKE

everybody within sight to pile on and push his takings up? Obviously more friction within crews.

Add to this the recent unofficial proposals from certain garages and from the LTE that the union should change its policy on wages and support differentials for drivers, and we can see the pattern.

The London busman will make a great mistake if he ever The strike of 47 maintenance engineers at the Lots Road power station was strengthened this week by the decision of 27 maintenance engineers at Greenwich to strike in support.

‘We didn’t even have to ask them to support us’, Bro. Wallace, chairman of the strike committee, told me. ‘They asked us to give a report of the strike and immediately decided to come out.’

The strike, which is over a claim for a £2 increase in wages to bring the men up to the average earned in the industry, has now entered its second week. ‘Support is coming in from other power stations and factories and the determination of the strikers is tremendous. I have never seen a more solid strike. There is no question of retreat,’ said Bro. Wallace.

The negotiating committee set up by the Amalgamated Engineering Union has started meeting again after many months of inactivity. The London North district committee of the AEU has endorsed the strike action and called on the executive committee to make it official.

The bargemen, who bring the coal up the river to Lots Road station, are also co-operating with the strike committee. The grabs which unload the barges are now unable to move along their tracks through lack of maintenance and the bargemen say it would be scabbing on the strikers if they moved their barges up and down the wharves. ‘The management at Lots Road have always praised the work of the engineers here for the way they manage to keep the machinery, which is nearly all old, going’, Bro. Wallace said. The feeling. is that if the machinery goes too long without maintenance then it could be seriously affected.

Although the strike committee has not found it necessary to picket at Lots Road, a slight alteration to the vacancies board outside the gates makes the issue quite clear. It originally read, ‘Vacancies, Mechanical Fitters and Turners’. Now it reads, ‘Vacancies, 40 Mechanical Fitters and 7 Turners AT CUT PRICES REQUIRED.’

In order to win this strike unity must be forged with other power station workers employed by the London Transport Executive and a common wages policy drawn up to form the basis of the claim. The example set by the Greenwich workers in supporting the stand at Lots Road, points the way to victory.

HITLER attacked the Soviet. Union in June, 1941, and Churchill broadcast a pledge of all possible aid to Stalin. The Communist Party in Britain at once ceased all political opposition to the Churchill Coalition Government. In “World News and Views’, July 12, 1941, Emile Burns called for more production and no strikes. Thanks to the memoirs published later, we know that neither Churchill nor Roosevelt expected the Russians to resist for more than a few weeks. munist Party, helped him to gain prestige among the workers, in return for promises which he did not expect to make good.

Even at that time, leading British and US statesmen were revealing what was in their minds. Col. MooreBrabazon, Churchill’s Minister of Aircraft Production, said on July 14, 1941: ‘If Russia and Germany do destroy each other, we shall have the dominating power in Europe.’ Churchill refused to dismiss or even rebuke him.

A few days before, Senator Harry Truman (later to be US President during the Cold War) said: ‘If we see that Germany is winning, we ought to help the Russians, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and in that way let them kill as many as possible’.

So much for a ‘war for democracy’! When US imperialism helped Britain, Roosevelt's mind was quite made up that British imperialism would have to surrender its world positions in payment for the American arms, food and finance, without which it could not go on resisting German imperialism When Roosevelt and Churchill met in mid-Atlantic in the autumn of 1941, they discussed very material quesions. The lofty phrases of the Atlantic Charter (and the Labour and Communist leaders’ speeches) have diverted workers’ attention from asking what pressure Roosevelt put on Churchill to make the latter write into the Charter the American formulae about independence of colonial countries.

Elliot Roosevelt reports his father’s remark: ‘The British Empire is at stake. It’s something not generally known, but British bankers and German bankers have had world trade sewn up in their pockets for a long time. . . . Well, now, that’s not so good for America’s trade, is it?’

Five months later, in the Lend-Lease negotiations, Churchill had to surrender the Ottawa agreement, by which since 1932 British exporters had enjoyed special advantages in the markets of British Dominions and colonies.

Here was the thin end of the wedge which opened the City of London’s empire to American business. Here were the war-aims of US imperialism.

The Second Front When it became clear that Russia was not going to collapse, Roosevelt and Churchill based. their Second Front strategy on similar selfish calculations.

They reckoned that, if Hitler won in Russia, he could then face Britain with his strength vastly increased, and Britain would collapse even despite US aid. Saving Russia was incidental to saving Britain.

Roosevelt held out hopes of an early Second Front to Stalin in April, 1942, but it is very doubtful whether at that time he intended to open the Second Front at all. Britain at that time was negotiating the alliance with the USSR, and he feared that Britain might escape from complete dependence on USA. In that event, Roosevelt might lose the dominating position in the peace settlement which he wanted.

But, most of all, Churchill feared the effects of Soviet victories. He wrote on October 21, 1942: It would be a measureless disaster if Russian barbarism overlaid the culture and independence of the ancient states of Europe.’

The Russian victory at Stalingrad terrified Franco with the spectre of Soviet armies on the Pyrenees. But the British Ambassador to Madrid, Tory leader Sir Samuel Hoare, consoled Franco’s Foreign Minister thus: ‘There will undoubtedly Churchill’s gesture, and the real backing of the Combe great British and American ‘armies on the continent. They will be composed of fresh-line troops, whose ranks have not been devastated by years of exhausting war on the Russian front. And for ourselves I make the confident prophecy that at the moment Great Britain will be the strongest European military power.’

Had Stalin and the Communist Parties no inkling of what was being said? They had, because many such statements were made publicly, and Soviet intelligence had more intimate sources of knowledge. What did they do about it? They ‘applied pressure’.

We have seen that Churchill and Roosevelt aided the Soviet : effort not at all out of generosity or progressive sentiment, but out of cold, calculated self-interest. Consequently,- they could not have been ‘offended’ or ‘frightened off’ if the Communists in Britain had spoken out and exposed the real aims of the imperialists before the working-class.

It is true that the Communist Party campaigned for the extreme Right to be driven out of the Government, against the release of Mosley and for the Stcond Front. But Churchill suited himself, taking as much or as little notice as he wished.

None of the campaigning could bring workers into conflict with employers, or support the Trotskyist demand for Labour to break the coalition and take the power.

Quite the reverse. The CP supported Government candidates in by-elections. It opposed strikes and slandered striking workers and the Trotskyist; who helped them as ‘Hitler’s agents’.

These policies covered the Allied leaders against criticism from the Left, however much Left phrases spiced them. These policies painted up ‘the imperialists as ‘democrats’, capable of providing lasting peace by their good intentions.

The ‘Grand ‘Alliance’ and the Cold War The Soviet, British and American people made measureless sacrifices in the hope of a lasting peace to follow. These hopes have been dashed. Poisonous and depraved anti-Soviet Cold War propaganda has destroyed much of the sympathy felt by British and American workers for the Soviet people.

But the Cold War propaganda fell on ears which Com- ~ munist propaganda during the war prepared for it. Who but the Communists spread the illusion that the imperialists of Britain and America are ‘democrats’? Who continue to spread the illusion that they can bring world peace by agreement? Who spread illusions about the workers’ State in the Soviet Union being a workers’ paradise on earth?

The four who confronted each other in Paris in 1960 may yet reach agreement, but, as in the past, such agreements as they can make cannot lead to lasting peace, and serve to endanger the Soviet Union because they weaken the undersand- -ing of the masses of the world of who their real enemies are. © THE DANGERS OF GERM WARFARE Will we all die tomorrow, the next day, next week, next month or next year? Some people think it will be done by the H-bomb, some think otherwise. But few people . know of a far more deadly weapon than a million H-bombs _ —germs.

Today, Britain is far ahead of any other country in the

research and production of germs for the mass destruction of mankind. At Porton, Britain’s giant research establishment in Wiltshire, germs in powder form are being manufactured. A thimbleful of these would kill everyone in London in Jess than a day. Half a pound of this deadly dust would leave this planet as deserted as the moon, with no living creature left to observe the havoc wrought by mankind on himself.

While Eisenhower, Khrushchev, Macmillan and De Gaulle are bickering about banning the H-bomb, their scientific backroom boys have perfected this horrible menace which makes nuclear weapons as primitive as the bow and arrow.

Another feature of this bug which makes nuclear weapons seem crude, is the fact that an attacking nation would find everything intact and would merely have to bury the murdured inhabiants. Even if. they retaliated with rockets, it would be the effort of dead men. Within two days any country could be over-run—just the amount of time it takes for the bug to become harmless. No deterrent is possible for this creeping terror and no one would know until the victims cough and splutter and fell like flies.

Even if some of us escaped this terrible horror, our fate would be worse than those who died. We might live like twisted wrecks, unrecognized as human beings. The effect of these germs on the reproductory organs is such that it would be a near-miracle for these people to have children who, like themselves, would look more like insects than humans.

Where will it all end? When will the greed of capitalism be satisfied? Will they stop at nothing to fill their pockets with bloodstained riches. When will the workers of the world stand up and say ‘Enough’. And stop this mass destruction before the inevitable end.

FRANK McCABE.

DISCUSSING with a friend the other day the reasons why the Socialist Labour League does not set itself up as a party in opposition to the Labour Party, but on the contrary supports the latter’s candidates in elections and seeks affiliation to it, I was confronted by the argument that the Labour Party is no more a workers’ party than was the Liberal Party which enjoyed the support of most politically-minded British workers until the rise of the Labour Party in the first ‘decade of this century.

The argument is a familiar one. In the 1950 general election, when the Communist Party put up a hundred candidates (and was responsible for the loss of a number of seats by Labour), 1 canvassed for the Communist candidate in Harrow East, and with other canvassers was given a slip of paper with the official answer to the charge that we were splitting the vote. This amounted to saying that the Communist Party in 1950 stood in the same relation to Labour as Labour had stood in 1900 in relation to the Liberals. I don’t think it helped the Communist candidate much; workers who were critical of the Labour Party’s leadership and policy seemed, nevertheless, to be convinced that it was somehow qualitatively different from any Liberal Party, past or present, and that people who tried to equate the two were out of touch with reality.

To old-timers, moreover, and those with some knowledge of Communist Party history, the 1950 ‘hint for canvassers’ echoed some old, unhappy, far-off things in the Party’s record —the alleged Left turn in 1929 which opened a period of extreme sectarian isolation when the Party came near not merely to physical extinction but also to complete political bankruptcy.

The ‘Third Period’

There was, of course, a theory of sorts attached to the fantastic things that were said and done in those days, though the real causes were to be found ouside the realm of theory. Following the First World War, it was said, there had been a ‘first period’ of revolutionary upsurge which ended with the failure of the German revolution in 1923. To this there had succeeded a ‘second period’ of capitalist stabilization. Now a ‘third period’ was opening in which a renewed upsurge of revolution would dominate the scene. (What actually happened instead was the victory of Fascism in Germany, with the crushing of the strongest Communist Party outside Russia. The ‘third period’ was never officially wound up, but the Communist International passed over, on tip-toe, so to speak, into a ‘fourth period’, never openly described as such, in which the slogans of 1929 were stood on their heads.)

Those were days when a Leftist logic of lunatic lucidity prevailed among British Communists. The Labour Party is ‘a third bourgeois party’, is it? Right, then, says R. P. Dutt (Communist Review, January, 1929), we must oppose payment of the political levy by the trade unions to the Labour Party: ‘Advocating the payment of the political levy means in its result, whether we like it or not, recruiting for the Labour Party, which we are engaged in fighting with all our force.’ And Pollitt brought back from a meeting in Berlin with the Comintern representative, just after the Labour Party’s election victory, the instruction that the British Communist must ‘emphasize’ that it is a crime equivalent to blacklegging for any worker to belong te the Labour Party.’

The real difference’

» When we claim that history has shown the Labour Party to be a workers’ party and that the tactics of Marxists in relation to it must be determined by this fact, what do we mean? In this connection, I make a free gift to our ‘Left’ critics of the following quotation from Lenin: ‘Of course, for the most part the Labour Party consists of workers, but it does not logically follow from this that every workers’ party which consists of workers is at ihe same time a “political workers’ party”; that depends on who leads it, upon the content of its activities and of its political tactics’ (speech on the Labour Party at the Second Congress of the Comintern, 1920).

But look more closely, friends, and notice the separate mention of three concepts: first, a workers’ party; second, a party which consists of workers; and, third, a party which is a political workers’ party, i.e., a party which fights politically for the workers’ interests. To have a lot of worker supporters does not make a party thereby a workers’ party. The Liberal Party was formed by capitalist politicians for capitalist purposes and has always remained a party directly dominated by capitalist ideas and interests, even in the days when it enjoyed a great deal of working-class support. The Labour Party came out of the working class and is organically bound up with that class through its distinctive structure and its fundamental ideas. Its strong and weak points are those of the working class.

Marxists face in relation to the Labour Party a proposition of a kind different in many essential respects from that which confronted Eleanor Marx when she carried on her work among the Radical Clubs of London’s East End, financed by Liberal businessmen. The work today has different prospects, for it is based upon, and therefore cannot mechanically repeat, the building of that party which represented, in Lenin’s words of 1908, ‘the first step on the part of the really proletarian organizations of Britain towards a conscious class policy and towards a socialist Labour Party’.

By W. HUNTER JAPANESE workers and students won a victory when they closed their country to Eisenhowér, How significant has been the effects of the mass demonstrations, strikes and protests of the past months is revealed by Vernon Bartlett writing from Singapore in the Guardian of June 17. ‘Observers here of Asian political developments,’ he says, ‘regard the Japanese government’s postponement of Mr. Eisenhower’s visit as presaging the crumbling of the entire American wail built around the Sino-Russian territories.’

In Korea, Synghman Rhee has gone. At his downfall America’s rulers considered they still had J apan as a keystone of their strategy in Asia.

Now, not only is the Japanese base slipping from If they wish to learn it, there is a Jesson here for all those their grasp, but they fear for their control over other whose eyes are fixed on ‘summits’. The progress in the breakparts of Asia. The Japanese events have been watched ing of war plans and war alliances which has been made on with hope, and perhaps thought of imitation, by the streets of Tokyo could never have been made in the conference chambers of Paris. workers and students elsewhere. They have been The struggle in Japan needs international backing. watched with extreme nervousness by other Asian Mr.

Michio Nagai, a Japanese intellectual, writing on the struggle governments. The Asian ‘experts’ whom Bartlett against the Treaty, in Tribune last week, declared: quotes are apprehensive of an increase in ‘anarchy’ in “We (the Japanese intellectuals—W.H.) expect, especially Korea as a result of what has happened in Japan.

from British people, an immediate and deep involvement In Korea, students and junior officers are demonstrating ‘in in the issue so as to prevent the United States administration spite of the speed with which the new democratic constitu- from falling into a hopeless position,’ tion has been adopted.’

The United States Government is worried that further British Labour must help trouble may result in Laos, Cambodia and Indonesia.

Whether or not Mr. Nagai is justified in claiming to speak For the record, Eisenhower and Kishi announce that the Mefor Japanese intellectuals (J apanese students, obviously, do opposition to the Japanese Government and to the ‘Security’

not share his concern to prevent damage to the US adminispact is the result of a plot by the ‘puppets of International Communism’. But the American Government knows very tration) the British Labour Movement must certainly get involved in the issues at stake in Japan. But in order to well that it was the great popular feeling in Japan which forced them to cancel Eisenhower’s visit, despite the fact that make the United States’ position even more hopeless. Kishi had mobilized in Tokyo 25,000 police, one-fifth of The Right-wing leaders of British Labour cannot be exJapan’s total police force, and 15,000 Japanese soldiers, pected to feel any sympathy with Japanese socialist and brought into Tokyo to protect the President. anti-war fighters who are opposing the use af their country as a war base. That is the very thing which the Right-wing The people will decide leaders of the Labour Party accepted for Britain.

The American Government also knows just how hollow The Left-wing of the British Labour Movement must further was the announcement last Sunday that the ‘Security’ Treaty the anti-war struggle by giving all possible support to Japanhad been automatically ratified because thirty days had ese workers and students and by intensifying the fight against elapsed since Kishi wangled it through the Lower House of such war alliances as NATO. Parliament.

The Socialist Opposition have declared the Treaty null CAUSE FOR REVOLUTIONARY .. .—(Contd. from p. 196) and void. And, notwithstanding Kishi’s declarations that the backed up by the industrial working class which led the great Treaty is now law, it will be the Japanese students and revolt against Stalinist bureaucracy. It is the student youth workers who will decide whether or not Japan is to be a of Britain who organized themselves under the slogan of base for American imperialism.

unilateral abandonment of the H-bomb, who pioneered the The mass movement in Japan continues, it has already caused havoc to American strategy in the Far East; if there way in the mobilization of the trade unions behind this are further blows at this strategy then it will be through the actions of millions of un-named workers, heroic students and It is the youth of Japan, also backed by the trade unions housewives, who have defied Kishi’s police. and workers’ organizations, who are paving the way for a resurgence of Marxism.

THE SPLIT GROWS WIDER—(Continued from front page) In no case have the Stalinist parties been in the leadership and affiliated bodies would be able to discuss the problems of these movements. In fact, in order to build it is necessary before the movement and arrive at decisions which should be to wage an irreconcilable struggle against Stalinist and Socialbinding on those who support them. democratic bureaucracy. This does not mean that Stalinists The Gaitskell clique meets regularly in his home at Hamp- have not participated in these movements, but unlike prestead. While resolutions are passed on the Left denouncing war Europe, the Stalinists have been unable to utilize these him as the spokesman of this ‘small unrepresentative clique’, movements for their own ends. In Britain the influence of he goes ahead and says and does what he likes. The Left the Socialist Labour League is at present enjoying a modest should take note of this and organize on the widest possible growth in the universities. A resurgence of Labour’s Young scale. Socialists and the great apprentices’ struggle, taken in conThe Socialist Labour League calls upon all supporters of junction with the anti-H-bomb demonstrations are drawing the Left inside the Labour Parties and the trade unions to many thousands of youth in the direction of Marxism. demand that Victory for Socialism and Tribune act now. To That is where the great confidence of the Socialist Labour wait until the Scarborough conference may well be to leave League comes from. We are not unduly bothered about things too long. In the next few weeks area conferences of desertions to the extreme Left or the extreme Right. Our the Socialist Labour League will be held in a number of im- task is to look reality straight in the face. The new crisis portant centres throughout the country. These conferences will in the British Labour Party will have decisive repercussions have as their special task the mobilization of the widest on the evolution of the struggle against imperialism in the possible support in the localities to strengthen Left unity in days that lie ahead. It is a great omen for the construction the fight against Gaitskell and the Right-wing. of the Marxists parties of the future.

enn en nnn css SS se SSsSsSseSsesshsSMGicsinsnsste Published by Socialist Labour League, 186 Clapham High St., London, SW4 Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (TU), r.o. 180 Clapham High St, London SW4 Registered at the GPO as a newspaper