We must build are new leadership

W one European country after another is grappling with a labour shortage TAGES have been held back here at an opportune time-just when and increasing wage demands. It would be a tragedy if this opportunity was missed in the next few months, for with Common Market competition likely next year everything must be done to keep down costs.' ('The Times' editorial, These sentences from the top ruling class newspaper express very clearly the line of the British employers. The militant demands of the workers in other countries employers their British rivals bring difficulties to their hope to profit from this.

What the British working class needs is the direct opposite: an alliance with the reviving workers' movement in Western Europe.

Only a determined struggle against wage-freezing and against redundancy together with a campaign for a socialist government can defeat the employers' plans.

LABOUR LEADERS

But our Labour and trade union leaders stand in the way of such a campaign.

Gaitskell, in the House of Commons, supports the witch-hunting recommendations of the Radcliffe Report.

The TUC leaders have joined the Tories National Economic Development Council.

Gaitskell's hope of a Labour election victory is based on capturing the middle-class vote by preventing strong working-class action.

The fight against redundancy and wage cuts is being carried out by the workers themselves. We need to understand this and Plumbers' Militant Motions THE published agenda for the Biennial Conference of the Plumbing Trades Union meeting at Whitley Bay next week shows that almost every key issue facing the Labour movement will be debated.

Resolutions include opposition to any form of pay pause, the Common Market, for withdrawal from the NATO war alliance, opposition to racialism and to bans and proscriptions in the Labour Party.

Support will be urged for unilateralism, defence of shop stewards and repeal of the government's Rent Act.

It is clear also from the agenda that the Left forces in the PTU are on the offensive and whilst some of the resolutions are ambiguous, the one on racialism indicates the presence of delegates with a clear class outlook. It reads 'Conference opposes any form of racialism and condemns legislation designed to restrict immigrants from the Commonwealth countries. Conference rejects the government's immigration bill, which is an attempt to introduce the colour bar in Britain and divide the working class.' to find the rank-and-file methods of organization, between members of different unions, which can give this movement real striking power.

In the BLSP engineers' strike, in the car factories like Jaguar after the engineers' token' strike, on the Mersey docks in April, the workers showed their determination to preserve their fighting organization.

Some trade union leaders and 'socialists' have wasted a lot of breath in recent years in talking about 'mindless militancy'.

Writers of the 'New Left' persuasion have said that rank-and-file militants, fighting for their own wages, have only made it worse for the low-paid sections and for those who are unorganized or poorly organized.

Instead, they have suggested BALAZS NAGY: 'La formation du Conseil Central Ouvrier de Budapest en 1956' (Correspondances Socialistes, 17 Av. de Paris, Vincennes [Seine] France).

THE Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was one of the most significant events of the postwar period. Many people are interested in concealing its true character and importance.

According to the official Communist Party line it was a reactionary uprising instigated by Western agents. Official propagandists in the West present it primarily as a nationalist movement against the Russians and their Hungarian underlings.

On the Left it is often seen essentially as a bid for freedom on the part of the students and intellectuals.

In fact, in a real sense, as this pamphlet, published in French, shows, it was a working class attempt to overthrow a discredited political regime while defending the social basis represented by nationalized property.

Balazs Nagy, the author of the pamphlet, took an active part in the events which he describes. A member of the Communist Party from the age of 17, he was expelled under Rakosi, forced to give up his post as university lecturer and become a worker; in 1955 he was rehabilitated.

Nagy shows that, at least in Budapest, the workers in the main factories served as the back-bone of the revolution.

As in Russia in 1917, they formed representative councils.

Slower moving than the intellectuals, the implantation of the the movement must have a system of 'priorities' in its demands. This would then prevent low-paid sections from turning away from the organized labour movement.

The sympathetic strikes by many workers in support of the nurses pay claim shed a clear light on these issues.

Lorry drivers, engineers, building workers, electricians and others have shown the way to enforce 'priorities!

The organization and militancy they have built up through workshop and shop steward committees to fight for their own conditions is now turned against the State on behalf of the nurses! Is this mindless militancy and 'selfishness?

Let us see the reactions. 'The Juardian' of May 5 condemned The Commune that Haunts Khrushchev movement in the factories enabled it to stand against the second Soviet intervention, which overthrew the Nagy government, and carry on a general strike against the Kadar regime.

By this time, no doubt, the struggle was lost, but that does not mean it was waging.

Nagy traces in detail the formation of the Central Workers' Council of Budapest, which became an embryonic type of dual power in the early stages of the Kadar government.

He shows how the intellectuals became aids and supports of this essentially working class resistance movement.

He points out how warily both Kadar and the officers of the Red Army dealt with the workers' representatives. While some of the latter were veteran communists or socialists, the remarkable thing was the prominent role played by young workers who had grown up under 'People's Democracy'.

All were steadfast on the close ties which should exist between the workers in the factory and the councils- there was even an exaggerated respect for democracy, not of course in its parliamentary sense, which reflected the complete absence of any response to popular demands under Rakosi.

All, and especially these young workers, were adamantly opposed to the restoration of private ownership of the means of production and identified themselves whole-heartedly with the cause of socialism.

They demanded for the councils, but also the establishment of workers' militias to keep order and oppose the forces of reaction.

No doubt the Hungarian workers made many mistakes, but they were understandable in the circumstances.

They were forced to submit by the overwhelming power of the Soviet forces. Isolated in a single small country and with no prior organization, the movement was driven back to seeking concessions from the ruling power.

At the same time, it effectively demolished Kadar's claim to be a workers' and peasants' government.

LABOUR REVIEW out now the Spring number contains articles on F Cuba and Lenin's Philosophical Note together with a Spring books section. 2/- (postage 6d.) from New Park Publications, 186a Clapham High St., London, S.W.4 It showed that the main struggle in 1956 in Hungary and, in the future, throughout the Soviet bloc, is a political one, and that the working class has nothing to gain by changing the social base which exists in these countries.

In fact, to enable the planned, nationalised economy to realise its full potential the political rule of the working class, organized in its councils must be established.

The central fact of the Hungarian Revolution, as this pamphlet shows, was the formation of the Central Workers' Council.

Undertaken without prior preparation, at a time of great stress and despite the Russian intervention, this was a great achievement by the Hungarian workers.

We may be sure that the Commune of Budapest still haunts Khrushchev and his satellites and that its lessons will be learned by those who understand the need for their political overthrow by the working class.

Rance, oks,

BY M. BANDA Th