The Newsletter, vol. 6 no. 227

• THE Socialist Labour League They scrupulously avoid a study of Stalin's political policies has a very special responsibility which the 'cult of the individual' served, because they do not for the work in the present great discussion taking place wish to make a serious examination of the sectarian and inside the international comopportunist nature of Communist Party policy in Britain. munist movement. We feel this This would apply, in particular, to CP work in the trade responsibility because we are part of that movement. unions. If we are to accept the Daily Worker statement of *We are an integral part of Monday, December 4, which claims that there were ballot the 1917 revolution. Our movement is bound up in its history malpractices' in the ETU, we must then ask ourselves: what is and struggle and actions with that revolution. We are the the political nature of such practices? continuators of the teachings of They can only be described Marx, Engels, Lenin and as opportunist, since they Trotsky: apparently have arisen A well - attended meeting through a determination to listened attentively to Gerry hold the union under the sway Healy, secretary of the Socialist of the Communist Party in Labour League in Caxton Hall circumstances where the polion Friday, December 1. tical policy of the party had We want to suggest to you', clearly lost support inside the said Comrade Healy, that what is union. involved is something very serious Is not the opportunist charin relation to policies which affect acter of the mistakes in the the work of the whole Labour ETU also related to the oppormovement in this country. The tunist character of the mistake Communist Party must begin a discussion on the whole history of which the party constantly makes in advocating the peacetheir party and the policies it has pursued." ful road to socialism?"

He appealed to Communist Was it not Stalin who personParty members to throw out the ally checked the draft of The Stalinist leadership of the British British Road to Socialism' in Communist Party. There would never be a proper communist 19522 If the Communist Party is movement in Britain until they correct when it implies that had been thrown aside.

Haxell has been guilty of malCliff Slaughter, a member of the League's National Committee, practices, then surely the question arises why he found dealt in detail with the events recalled by delegates to the 22nd it politically necessary to carry Congress of the Communist Party out these malpractices. In of the Soviet Union. He challenged John Gollan to tell the support for meetings to expose truth about what had happened the Moscow Trials. in the purges and trials of the Brockway had replied that if 1930s. Gollan was claiming that the skies had been clear of probhe didn't know any details; but lems, then he would have helped, he had sat in the hall at the 22nd but the problem of Spain was Congress and heard delegates looming on the horizon. * These speak of their own experiences in sort of people are playing the the purges. same role today', said Harry An informative contribution to Wicks. the discussion was made by At the end of the meeting the Harry Wicks, a founder member chairman, Mike Banda, called on of the Trotskyist movement the audience to sign the demand, Britain. He described how, as a now being circulated, for an member of the Trotsky Defence investigation into the Moscow Committee in 1936, he and others Trials and the murder of Leon had visited Fenner Brockway, Trotsky. then the secretary of the Inde- Left to right: pendent Labour Party, to seek G. Healy, M. Banda, C. Slaughter. other words, why did support inside the ETU?

The statement proceeds as if there was only one leading Communist Party member involved. But this is nonsense. The Party executive constantly extolled the virtues of Communist leadership in the Electrical Trades Union. They took all the praise when the party controlled the machine.

Why was it, for example, that they ignored the press barrage Gerry Healy of December 1959 which alleged that there had been malpractices? Why did not a commission of enquiry sit and investigate the activities of party members in the union at that time?

Indeed, this was not the first time that the rumour of malpractices had been spread, yet the party leadership remained silent, even though one of the most frequent attenders at the executive meetings was Frank Haxell himself.

CONTEMPT

It is, therefore an act of extreme contempt for Communist Party members in the ETU that this leadership now turns round and attempts to lay the blame on Haxell alone.

Communist leadership in the last instance must accept the responsibility for what its members do in the trade union and labour movement. Otherwise, how can it be called a leadership? Even if we grant that here and there members of the Communist Party can make mistakes of which the leadership is unaware, this cannot in any way apply to the ETU. There Frank Haxell situation inside the ETU in order to retain control in that union as long as possible?

Their real crime in our opinion arises from the fact that what happened in the ETU is directly traceable to the opportunist policies of the party, pursued under the guidance of Stalin.

What is now needed is not an investigation into Haxell, but an investigation into the entire history of the trade union policy over the past 25 years.

The Communist Party statement announcing the resignation of Haxell naively tells us that the executive have in the last few months been examining the facts. The delay, they state, has been necessary because of the appeals which are pending.

CONDEMNED

The publication of the statement, however, virtually condemns any appeal. But that is not the most extraordinary thing. Frank Haxell, who polled the highest number of votes for the CP executive in 1959, announces that he cannot proceed with his appeal because he is short of cash. Yet, according to the last published balance sheets of the party, a substantial sum of several thousands of pounds stands to the credit of the party in the bank. Surely ETU members will want to know why it is that the Communist Party failed to raise the necessary money to enable one of its most prominent trade unionists to appeal to the courts.

First the party leadership endeavours to lay the blame on Haxell, when everyone knows that it was well aware of what (Continued on back page)

ETUI GREATER LONDON CAMPAIGN

are some 2,000 members of the party involved, a considerable portion of the total membership. Was everybody asleep at King Street when Haxell and his supporters were engaged in upract or it is not more Ignored the Friday, December 8, 7.30 p.m.

Denison House, S.W.1

Speaker: FRANK HAXELL BUSE attended meeting in Trealaw, South Wales, on Sunday, a questioner asked about the discussion on Trotsky in the Italian Young Communist League and enquired if such a discussion was likely in Britain, Definitely not, snapped Gollan.

WALTER HOLMES, in the 10REZ On December 9, 196

FOURPENCE of the Communist Party. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1961 SATURDAY. DECEMBER 9, 1961 Vol. 6, No. 227 Mr. 5 percent at Barking THE Communist Party rally at Barking on November 30 was in some respects a refreshing contrast its predecessors, with the audience consisting largely of workers from local industry.

"Questions will be answered", said the chairman in his opening remarks, and he appealed for the co-operation of the meeting in view of what had happened at other rallies. This appeal did not fall on deaf ears, the tantalizing bait of question time was too strong to be spoiled in advance.

Gollan's speech was a nervous, half-hearted repeat performance of at least two previous efforts. - At 8.48 p.m. he reached the 22nd Congress; at 8.57 p.m. he hit the revelations. By 9.00 p.m. all the excitement was over.

Gollan explained all the crimes of Stalinism away as the necessary 'problems, pain and mistakes' that accompany social change, for was not the Soviet Union encircled, and constantly threatened by imperialism during those years?

Stalin, he declared, made a historic contribution to the revolution especially after the revolution. Whereupon there was uproar in the hall, the menaces of the stewards notwithstanding.

"How can Gollan and Co. continue to speak in the name of the CP now that the truth about the Kirov assassination and the Moscow trials is known?

"In view of the public, close, successful collaboration between Communist Party members, Trotskyists and Labour Lefts in the ETU Campaign Committee does not the speaker think it time to clear up all the misdeeds and errors in relation to the Trotskyists in the past and perhaps debate these differences with the Socialist Labour League?* There were more questions in the same vein, including one about the role of the ETU in the British Light Steel Pressings strike.

Replying, John Gollan said that the Communist Party would judge him. If it so wished, it could sack him. He was answerable to his party and would not debate with the Socialist Labour League.

'Weren't the Trotskyists right? ' 'No, only 5 per cent. We were right 95 per cent.

Gollan mentioned the constant preoccupation with the life and death struggle against fascism and was warming to his task when he was sharply challenged from the floor: • Do you still say that Trotskyists are Fascists? He did not reply.

"Definitely not!

GOLLAN doesn't like what is happening in the Italian Communist Party. At a thinly-

The Great Lie Buoyant, prosperous, productive, golden Western Europe.

These are the usual adjectives our economic experts use to describe member countries of the European Common Market.

So it was with considerable gloom that the economic review Can peace be attained by such discussions? of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research was welcomed last week.

At a time when the Export Council for Europe was holding its convention in Eastbourne to examine methods of increasing exports, the Institute was giving the tidings that the European and Stalin, that conflict goes on. boom was over anyway. Production in Europe as Polite discussions and diplomatic whole is declining rapidly, parsuffice to bring it to an end. ticularly in West Germany, so that it is unlikely that trading conditions there will enable of the available market.

Commodity prices continue to fall so that the primary producing countries have less income available to buy goods from Britain.

These factors lead the Institute to conclude that the future for a rise in exports is bleak but that there will be no corresponding fall in imports because stocks of imported raw materials have been allowed to run down and they must be built up again.

The conclusions to be drawn from the Institute's report are that the balance of payments situation will deteriorate still further, and Selwyn Lloyd's July measures, far from improving the position, will aggravate it.

But we were told that the reason for the pay pause was to "make Britain more competitive" and to keep productivity in line with wages. that wage rates here are not t igher than in most European cou and that wages, far from outstripping productivity, were tending to be left behind.

" The Guardian' has now published a productivity index. Mr. K. S. Lomax of Manchester University who prepared it, states ... from 1958 to 1959 generally, wage rates were noi rising so fast as productivity. From April 1959 to June 1961, there was again acceleration in the wage-rate increase with the result that productivity and wage rates, broadly, kept in step'.

So much for the great lie of the Tories on the subject of productivity and wages.

On the one hand, the Tories cry for greater productivity; on the other they institute credit controls to bring about economic stagnation.

be

'Daily Worker', Saturday, December 2, 1961, wrote:

In view of the activities of some of Trotsky's followers just now, what Maurice Thorez, December general secretary of the French Communist Party, has to say of Thieves Fall Out Again him is worth noting. "For Thorez is one of the few Communist leaders now living who can speak with personal knowledge of the conflict which Trotsky caused. 'As a clear summing up of Trotsky's position, I quote what Thorez said to a recent meeting of the central committee of the French Communist Party.

United Nations in the Congo. of their stooge, Tshombe.

In a statement printed in "The 'Brien said: HAT is most significant about the statement by Thorez which Walter Holmes were held by Belgians. W quotes in Saturday's Daily Worker' is what is not said. What about Trotsky the agent of the British, French, Polish, German, etc., bourgeoisies, the crypto-fascist, the police spy? If Thorez believes that all that was true, why doesn't he still say it? If he believes it was untrue, why doesn't he admit that frankly, and draw the political concluBouted. sions? Thorez, following Khrushchev, is withdrawing, in his critique of Trotskyism, to the positions of 1927-1931, when there was still some sort of attempt to discuss Trotskyism in From 1932 onward came the wave of expulsions on the slightest suspicion of interest in Trotskyist ideas, physical violence against Trotskyists, ever more fantastic allegations of links between the Trotskyists and the enemies of the working class —all designed to lay down an impassable screen of poison gas between Party members and Trotskyists. By implication, Thorez now acknowledges that all that was done on a false basis.

This is a very important admission: not only were a lot of personal injustices inflicted in the period from 1932 onward, but what is even more significant, a whole series of political actions were carried out under this artificial "protection' from variety.

Trotskyist criticism.

The key note for the new period of Trotsky-hunting was sounded by Stalin in his letter to the editors of the journal • Proletarskaya Revolyutsiyad ' published in October 1931, 3333333333333333333333333 EEEEEFEEEELELLLLLE been different.

*I took part in the meeting of the executive committee of the Communist International which in 1927, expelled Trotsky from its ranks. This decision was taken at the end of a political battle which went on for four years in the Soviet Communist Party and in the brother Parties.

"Trotsky was expelled because of his political position and because of his factional activity in the Soviet Union and in the international Communist movement.

"Contrary to the myths which have been put around, Trotsky never was a Leninist, nor a Bolshevik. He was a fellow-traveller at the start. of the Revolution. He joined the Bolshevik Party a few months before October (1917).

"He had been till then determined adversary of Lenin and of the Bolsheviks. He was in 1912 the instigator and principal leader of the famous August bloc which included all the Mensheviks, Trotskyites under the title ' Some Questions Concerning The History of Bolshevism'. It was in this letter that he wrote against rotten liberalism' in relation to he Trotskyists. Some Bolsheviks think that Trotskyism is a faction of communism—one which makes mistakes, it is true, which does many foolish things, is sometimes even anti-Soviet, but which nevertheless is a faction of Communism .. As a matter of fact, Trotskyism has long ceased to be a faction of Communism. As a matter of fact, Trotskyism is the advanced detachment of the counterrevolutionary bourgeoisie..:

Why did Stalin make this turn' at that particular period? It was a time of acute crisis for the whole Stalinist system. In Russia, Stalin's policy was bringing about a disruption of agriculture from which there has probably not been a full recovery to this day. In Germany, the largest Communist EEEEEEE British canital to increase its share All the evide British capital to increase its and other enemies of Leninism.

"And like a petty-bourgeois, who sprouts wings when everything is going well, Trotsky, when things became difficult, displayed at the same time the confusion and the lack of perspective of unstable elements, as well as a tendency toward bureaucratic and military methods to deal with these difficulties.

"He always failed to understand the peasantry. He proposed the militarisation of the Soviet trade unions. At the same time he endangered the unity of the Party as well as its principled basis and organisation.

"With his slogan of ' Neither war nor peace, correctly opposed by Lenin, he would have hurled the Soviet Union into adventurism and catastrophe. He had no confidence in the creative forces of the Soviet people, in the possibility of building socialism in a single country. He wanted to 'stimulate revolution by war."

Party outside Russia was being led along a path which led inevitably to the victory of Hitler. In nearly every Communist Party doubts and questions were arising.

By the drive against Trotskyism, using the most abandoned and unscrupulous methods, which opened in the months following this manifesto of Stalin's, he was able very largely to prevent any continuation of the political debate with the Trotskyists which had become too dangerous to be tolerated.

Communist Party members will draw the logical conclusion.

Whatever prejudices they may have retained against discussing with Trotskyists in the same reasonable way as they are prepared to discuss with, say, Right-wing Labour peoplesuch prejudices are without foundation. Let the debate broken off 30 years ago be resumed, and let the arbitrary and unscrupulous methods of Stalinism be eschewed for ever.

All the evidence would st ggest

MILITARY intervention by the United States South Vietnam is increasing quietly but steadily More and more equipment, including warplanes, is arriving, together with American personnel to service it and to train Vietnamese soldiers.

Ships of the Seventh Fleet are in the area with marines on board ready for combat. Still more military support is being demanded by Ngo Dinh Diem, the South Vietnam dictator.

The regime, installed with US backing when French influence was eliminated in 1954, is threatened by growing guerrilla activity. The guerrillas, led by supporters of the Viet Minh in the North, receive backing from the peasants in their fight against the corrupt government.

The area was recently visited His report to President Kennedy is now likely to result in still further stepping up of US military aid.

Washington wants the Ngo Dinh Diem government to make this assistance more palatable by giving the dictatorship a "liberal' face-lift. A few, minor reforms in Saigon, General Taylor had urged, would make the anti-Communist fight much easier.

The ruling group in South Vietnam has taken these helpful suggestions very badly. Saigon newspapers, influenced by the government, attacked these ideas as- foreign intervention in domestic affairs. The Saigon puppets know that they are indispensable to US strategy in SouthEast Asia.

As a cover for their military plans, the State Department puts out stories of Viet Minh "aggression' against South Vietnam. In 1954, when Khrushchev persuaded the Viet Minh leaders to accept the Geneva agreement, free elections were promised in the whole of what had been French Indo-China within one year.

Everyone knew that such elections would have meant victory for Viet Minh. They are still awaited, seven years later.

Thus the 'co-existence' deal of 1954 means further hard struggles for liberation from imperialism by the Vietnamese people. It is also the cause of war dangers in 1962.

It was not accidental that or decades we sad no works on political economy philosophy or history TH of any worthwhile signifiRevolution cance."

Ilyichov, at Betrayed 22nd Congress CPSU Read Trotsky's classic analysis of Soviet_Union, its origins, betrayal, its future.

Available from:

New Park Publications Ltd.

186a Clapham High St., S.W.4 Price 11s. 6d. (soft cover), 16s. (hard cover), postage paid.

VER 3,000 families are now homeless in the London area, Before the 1957 Rent Act there were only 1,200. Most of those now homeless have been evicted by landlords demanding higher rents. What chance have these and others on the waiting lists of local councils got of finding accommodation in the next few years?

The annual report of the Alliance Building Society published recently estimates that 400,000 houses a year for the next 20 years must be built in order to satisfy the present demand.

YEARLY FALL

In 1954, the peak year for housing construction, only 308,952 dwellings were built. Of these, 240,000 were built for local authorities to let.

Since then the figure for rented accommodation being constructed has fallen yearly, to a figure of 128,000 in 1960. Official statistics show that of this 128,000, over 50,000 has to be used for slum clearance.

This means that the total rented accommodation which becomes available each year is approximately only one-sixth of that which is conservatively estimated as being necessary by the Alliance Building Society.

These figures show the magnitude of the problem. They do not include the accumulating problem of slum clearance. Officially there are 600,000 slum properties in Britain, and a further 150,000 houses a year become more than 100 years old.

According to Dr. Charles Hill, Tory Housing Minister, there are a total of 4} million houses in Britain built before 1880. Professor M. Wise of the London School of Economics claims that of 6} million houses built before 1919, half could not be modernised to the standards required by the 1936 Public Health Acts.

SCOTLAND

In Scotland, where 700,000 houses are required immediately, only 26,000 a year are being built. This means that without any additions to the waiting lists and without any more properties becoming classified for demolition, the housing needs of Scotland will take 30 years to satisfy.

These figures show that unless steps are taken immediately, more and more families will be added to the homeless queue. The claims made by the Tories at the last election that living standards would be doubled in 20 years are blown sky high. While the housing scandal continues, the land speculators are continuing to get rich, builders and financiers continue to profit by speculative property development.

LUCRATIVE

While the value of housing construction work has been steadily falling for the past seven years, the value of property development work has been steadily rising. Builders such as Trollope and Colls can confidently claim that their investment in the last few years in property development has been far more lucrative than the normal building construction they carry out. Taylor Woodrows, Tokens, Tersons, McAlpines and other big builders have had soaring profits from the huge office development in London and elsewhere.

Local councils like the Islington Council are forced to abandon housing projects because the price of land has risen to £100,000 an acre. With the interest rate at 6 per cent and Government subsidies removed, it becomes almost impossible for councils to build flats for rents of less than £6 13s. a week.

The housing problem cannot be solved as long as the land, finances, building and building supply industries remain in the hands of big business. The refusal of Gaitskell and Rightwing labour to face up to this has made it impossible for them to present any alternative solution to the Tories.

THE SOLUTION The first step which should be taken by the LCC and other Labour Councils should be the requisitioning of all vacant properties and the conversion into flatted accommodation. But unless the plan for the nationalization of the land, building, building supply, and finance is fought for there can be no solution to the housing problem.

Challenge to the Daily Worker Copy of a letter sent 1 'Daily Worker' by a New reader.

ON November 23, a ceremony took place at Moscow University, when the degree of Doctor of Law was conferred on an outstanding British barrister. Mr. D. N. Pritt, QC, the recipient, was described as a selfless defender of the common people' and 'an active fighter against fascism and for peace.

Pritt recalled that he first visited the Soviet Union in the "30s. He did not specifically mention his visit to Moscow in August 1936.

OBSERVER

On that occasion, he was able to attend the hearing of the case against Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev and others. He heard those defendants who were in custody 'confess' to conspiring with Hitler against the USSR. He saw Prosecutor Vishinsky prove with the aid of these 'confessions' , that these Bolwww wwww shevik leaders had murder of Kirov.

On his return home, Pritt became one of the chief defenders of the genuineness of the trial and the authenticity of the confessions. In the Daily Worker' of September 3, 1936, he wrote a special article, afterwards reprinted as a leaflet called: * What are my impressions of the conduct of the Zinoviev trial?

REPORTER

"And throughout the hearing', he wrote, 'when the result was a foregone conclusion, and nothing that was or could be said could do much to lessen the guilt or the complete social worthlessness of the accused, they received the same courteous treatment, the same liberty to intervene at almost any moment and say anything they wanted at any length, as would any ordinary accused in any ordinary trial in the Soviet Union (and that is saying a very great deal).* In 1956, Khrushchev implied what many people in the labour movement had known: that this trial and its successors were monstrous frame-ups, gigantic frauds, mockeries of socialist justice.

And what did Mr. Pritt, QC, have to say? Nothing!

Now, Khrushchev's reférences to the Kirov assassination expose Pritt's 'guarantees' as worthless. All can see that this member of the Bar was helping to slander the finest representatives of international Communism. By quieting the fears of socialists about the first of Stalin's trials, Pritt aided in the preparation of the later purges.

SILENCE

Pritt and all those who acted like him must be forced to speak out publicly about their role in the '30s. His continued silence now is as shameful as the part he played 25 years ago. wwww ww The Editor, Daily Worker.

Dear Sir, —Walter Holmes* quotation from Maurice Thorez on Trotsky simply proves that the British, like the French Communist Party leadership, remains Stalinist at heart. They have learned nothing and are incapable of learning anything.

The quotation itself is an assembly of lies, half-truths and sentences torn out of their context. The "famous August bloc", for instance, never included all the Mensheviks'. Organisationally, Trotsky broke with the Mensheviks before Lenin did. 'He always failed to understand the peasantry." This is an old and hoary chestnut. Did the great Stalin understand the peasantry so much better when he introduced his policy of forced collectivisation? Three million peasant deaths and years of famine was the price the Soviet Union paid for this policy. That is why agriculture is today still - and admittedly so by Khrushchev— the weak spot in Soviet economy.

Without the background to the Brest - Litovsk negotiations the phrase 'Neither war nor peace" has no meaning at all. Thorez gives in quotes that Trotsky wanted to stimulate revolution by

After the 20th Congress CPSU in 1956, most Communist Party members expected a thorough discussion in the Party. A frank reappraisal of the international Communist movement, and of the relationship between the Communist Parties of the world and the CPSU was needed. The members did not get it. The Party heirarchy used their control of the apparatus to suppress all discussion in the Party, and lost thousands of members in the process.

Now, once again, startling revelations and admissions are being made in the Soviet Union. The present membership of the British Communist Party is wholly unprepared. A frank discussion after 1956 would of course have meant Gollan, Dutt and Co. making some revelations and admissions of their own. Now they are forced to try to seal off their members again, in a vain effort to stop the embarrassing questions.

The time has come for Communist Party members to demand answers, discussion and facts.

Ask your leaders for a record of their own actions when Stalin was in power. Demand to know why they are now preventing a full discussion of Stalin's crimes with the excuse that that is the business of the Soviet Union'.

Ask why you can buy in Communist Party bookshops, all kinds of books and pamphlets, including even the memoirs of Sir Winston Churchill and Viscount Montgomery, and yet AAAA not one book pamphlet Leon Trotsky.

You apparently cannot be trusted. Why are not the pages of the 'Daily Worker' and ' World News' seething with discussion of the latest revelations? Why is there not at least an internal discussion bulletin, with its pages open to all members?

Until the conspiracy of silence in the Communist Party is broken, it will remain a tame instrument of the Stalinists, incapable of waging a struggle against imperialism.

Glasgow, W.1 Alex McLarty (Formerly Scottish Organiser for the 'Soviet Weekly', and exmember of the Glasgow Committee of the Communist Party) war'. From which work of Trotsky's is this culled?

Lastly, "Trotsky was never a Leninist nor a Bolshevik is there a distinction?). He was a fellow traveller at the start of the Revolution.' How short-sighted of Lenin and the Bolsheviks to elect him to the Central Committee and the Political Bureau, and to give this petty-bourgeois fellow traveller the responsible post of Commissar for War at the most critical stage of the Revolution - when the young Soviet Republic was threatened by internal civil war and foreign intervention.

Yours truly, C. Matthews.

P.S. If this letter is published I will refuse to believe that the age of miracles has passed. Who knows, perhaps even Walter Holmes and Johnny Gollan may yet become Bolsheviks one day.

BLSP - Who are the Four ELOCKOUT ECOMMITTEE* E saw this coming could we get union officials to believe us? We 8 Victims?

By Our Industrial Correspo THE names of the 150 strikers who will not get their jobs back at British ial Correspondent ing the hardships ahead.

At the mass meeting last Wednesday, a resolution was passed unanimously pledging

were always told not to cross our bridges before we came to them." This was how Bro. Wal Spiddings, secretary of the Shop Stewards Committee, summed up the situation in Smethwick, near Birmingham, where Raleigh Industries Ltd. (taken over last summer by Tube Investments) are closing their Downing Street cycle factory next March. The jobs of 1,500 workers are threatened.

"This is a case where a handful of people sitting round a table in London are able to make decisions which affect the lives of hundreds of workers, declared Bro. Spiddings. *We are being sacrificed in order that the rule of, Big Business, by Big Business, for Big Business, shall not perish from the earth. First and last, it's profits that matter, not people."

He told how, when Tube Investments made their takeover bid, the shop stewards felt great concern for the workers' future and sought a top-level meeting with the management. They were then solemnly assured by Mr. Leslie Roberts, production manager of Tube Investments Cycle Division, that 'nothing would be done nothing moved' until they had been consulted.

He described the shock and anxiety felt by the workers when later a statement appeared in the press made by Sir Ivan Stedeford (Chairman and Managing Director of TI) that in future cycle production would be concentrated at the firm's Hacell from was going on inside the union and that the fault is not one of malpractice but of politics. Then it washes its hands of Haxell's appeal. What sort of cowardly leadership is this?

Every serious member of the Electrical Trades Union must examine his position in that union under the guidance of such leadership. The very first time they get into serious trouble, Kerrigan and Gollan run for cover saying in effect that their 'hands are clean".

We say that a leadership that cannot take the responsibility for its members in such circumstances is not a leadership but a cowardly clique educated in the Stalin school.

This evasion of responsibilities leads to opportunist compromise in practice. The Haxell affair is not so much one in which he is used as a scapegoat as one of compromise within the Communist Party leadership By OUR BIRMINGHAM CORRESPONDENT Nottingham factory. Mopeds and scooters would be made at Downing Street, Birmingham, and there would be some redundancy.

The shop stewards estimated that production of mopeds would only employ 200 of the 1,500 Raleigh workers, and that this was a flagrant breach of the promise made to them.

They sought an explanation from the manager of the Cycle Division, who professed surprise at Sir Ivan's statement, but admitted that 'his outline might be the one which would finally emerge!* ' Within a week of that, went on Bro. Spiddings, 'we saw that movements of work were taking place; we were told that some of our work was being done at Nottingham. There was a bit of unrest in the factory; the lads wanted to get a definite statement as to our future.

Then Mr. Leslie Roberts told us that Raleigh's at Nottingham were losing £50,000 a month, and that the management proposed to stop this loss by virtually concentrating on mopeds here at Downing Street. He painted a glowing picture of the wonderful future for mopeds. He foresaw that within three years they would be employing 3,000 men here instead of 1,500.

•We smiled openly when he said this; he was quite indignant with us. We told him we saw no future in the moped trade.

He came back last week and told us the bottom had fallen Ino of the market and the itself. This flows quite logically from the way they deal with the 'revelations' of the crimes of Stalin. There are people in the leadership who are well aware that something must be done to face up to these but they fear breaking off from die-hard Stalinists such as Dutt, Gollan and Kerrigan.

The ETU compromise will temporarily relieve them of the necessity to make a political examination of Communist Party work in the trade unions.

But like the evasion over Stalin it is only a sympton of a deep crisis.

The Socialist Labour League is the only Marxist organization in Britain today which faces up to these problems and draws the correct conclusions for Communist activists.

The present leadership of the British Communist Party sold out to Stalin after Lenin's death in 1924. They gave up all claims to be independent of his thinking. That is why they factory must close in March.

* Ours is a booming factory, said Bro. Spiddings, 'yet they propose to close it and take the work over to a factory which has been running at a loss, keeping the same people at managerial level. If this is sound economics, nothing makes any sense. The Tories keep talking a lot of nonsense about free enterprise, but if that can't ensure the workers a living, then industry must be nationalized.

Workers from the Raleigh factory are planning to hire buses to go to London and lobby their MPs.

Strike WORKERS at George Manns, Light Steel Pressings will be known by December 14. This is the deadline set by Rootes for re-employing labour and getting production into full swing at Acton.

One hundred of the strikers obtained permanent employment elsewhere during the struggle. Those who cannot be taken back immediately are to receive the guaranteed week. So will those who are victimized and made redundant. This, however, will last only for two weeks except where workers have been employed for three years or over. They receive three weeks' pay.

Those victimized by Rootes plan to meet in Acton Town Hall on December 15 to work out ways and means of alleviatWork-to-rule Motormen those workers who got their jobs back to donate one hour's pay per week towards a Victimization Fund. It is quite possible that the Amalgamated Engineering Union will also grant victimization benefit now there is no danger of this involving them in a serious struggle against the employers.

The strike is said to have cost Rootes £3,000,000 but they can have little doubt that it was worth every penny. By breaking the shop organization and reducing the labour costs at Acton, they can prepare to attack conditions throughout the combine and it will be all the easier for them to begin production at their new £22,000,000 (government subsidized) Scottish works at much lower rates of pay than in London and the Midlands.

e Motorme tinue with their plans. • The official stated that the union had received letters from railmen all over the country expressing discontent and disgust at the attitude of the management — but not indicating up to now unofficial action' At present it is estimated that only about 50 workers are involved in the dispute.

Elective action to combat the Transport Commission and, behind them, the Tories, must involve the strength of all three railway unions.

Although only a few motormen were working to rule, rush-hour travel from London to Kent was badly affected. Dense crowds waited at stations. One irate business man said: ' We travelled like cattle this morning.

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Leeds, struck on Thursday, November 30, against the threat of time-studies. The management intended to time-study a number of jobs, and a bonus payment for one man was being withheld in order to force through these plans.

The workers, realising that timing of jobs meant lower earnings, were prepared to make a fight of the issue.

At a meeting on Friday, December 1, the employers sent a statement to the strikers that they were prepared to pay the withheld bonus, and to have talks afterwards.

The men agreed to return to work after expressing their opposition to timing on jobs. They were assured that their shop stewards would put forward this opposition on their behair.

condoned all the crimes that went on in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. That is why they carried on in Britain not as a communist leadership, but as the stooges for Stalin.

How can such a leadership fight all the forces of the gutter press of Fleet Street which trains its foul weapons against the militant leadership of the Electrical Trades Union. Their sole interest in controlling the ETU in any case is to be able to boast to Moscow that they can influence peaceful coexistence in Britain because they have control of a trade union.

It will be a crime to allow Frank Haxell to become the victim for the policies of this leadership. In the history of the Bolshevik Party many communists made more serious mistakes and were for a time disciplined as a result. For Haxell to have to resign from the Communist Party becaus of the Stalinist policies of thi

ELECTRIC train drivers, members of ASLEF, hit at the pay pause and the drawn-out negotiations over the union claim for a 10 per cent increase, by working to rule this week on the London-Kent line. The campaign was started by workers at the Gillingham depot who said they will continue to work-to-rule until the claim is met.

The British Transport Commission has turned down claims from all three railway unions already this year and is now considering them again after re-submission to the second stage of the railway negotiating procedure.

An ASLEF official said the union entirely disapproved of the men's action which could only be detrimental to the efforts the union was making on their behalf. He said that the Gillingham men and others at Clapham Junction who were alleged to be supporting them had been told to stop working to rule.

This appeal had been refused; the men were determined to conleadership is one more example of how Stalinism sets out to destroy militant workers.

There is no future for a militant communist inside the Communist Party except one in which he struggles ceaselessly to overturn the King Street leadership by fighting for return to the policies of Lenin and Trotsky.

We do not blame Haxell for what happened in the ETU. We blame the political policy of the Communist Party. It is around this that the real in vestigation must take place.