CP Members Angry at Expulsions

Industrial RESENTMENT is growing • drivers. The work is get low. Prior to 1956, 8-wheel and restricted to 20 m.p.h.

In 1956 the Use and Construction Act increased the weight to 16 tons. Then in 1960 — following intensive pressure from employers in the private sector-the speed limit was raised to 30 m.p.h.

Drivers in the private sector gained no corresponding increase in pay except in some individual cases due to militancy). BRS men did get a 15 per cent bonus when the speed limit was raised but at the same time the working day was reduced from 11 to 10 hours, which drastically reduced this increase.

" Bonus' — 4/9d.

For instance an average week's pay on a big vehicle (including overtime) might be about £15. Loss of 5 hours overtime at 7/- an hour would reduce this to £13 5s. Od. The 15 per cent bonus then brings this up to f15 4s. 9d. Thus the bonus-described by the union as a 'substantial increase'-amounts to precisely 4/9d.

No Mates And, of course, the shorter hours are not much of a gain since the increased speed limit means that drivers are doing the same amount of work-and sometimes moreonly in a shorter time.

Another grievance is the tendency which appears to be developing in BRS of not enlevysletter amongst BRS heavy goods lorry ting harder and the basic pay is vehicles were limited to 14 tons replacements for men who leave the industry. This makes a driver's job harder since he is now doing more work in less time and without a mate. (Except on scheduled night trunks, drivers unload and load their own lorries.)

Men at Water Lane BRS depot in Leeds are threatening not to shunt wagons which they consider require a mate, unless a mate is provided.

Excessive Hours Lorry driving is a hard, dangerous and responsible job. It is not made easier by the presence on the road of drivers employed by private firms being compelled to drive excessive hours.

Yet the basic rate for a BRS driver of an 8-wheel 24 ton gross vehicle is only f10 6s. 3d. (plus 15 per cent bonus). Drivers of smaller vehicles-6 and 4 wheels get substantially less than this.

When we struck work in 1960 at the time of the speed limit increase, we carried banners saying: 'More Work for Less Pay. That has been proved to be right.

Nationalization

The real answer is the renationalization of the whole of the Road Transport Industry. Meanwhile all lorry drivers— BRS and private sector-must unite to fight for better conditions on the roads.

OMMUNIST Party members are becoming angry and resentful at the expulsion from the Party of three Electrical Trades Union members, Jack Fraser, Pat O'Neil and Harry Wolf. The terse statement in the 'Daily Worker' charges them with activities detrimental to the interests of the Party'.

Rank-and-file members are demanding to activities are. According to reliable reports, given at a special meeting of ETU members called by the London District Committee of the Party.

One was in connection with the recent court case involving the Elecrical Trades Union. The second charge was that they continued organising a separate faction of ETU members to fight against the Right wing in the union in opposition to the official Party policy.

John Mahon, the London District Secretary, was contemptuously howled down at the meeting when the charges were made. So strongly did members feel against the expulsions that no decision could be taken at this meeting and Mahon judiciously refused to put the proposals to the vote.

The expulsions were carried out instead in the guarded enclave of the District Committee.

HYPOCRISY

For the leaders of the Communist Party to level these charges is the height of hypocrisy. The activities of Gollan, Mathews, Campbell and other Party leaders in covering up the crimes of Stalin have been far more detrimental to the Party than anything these three workers may have done.

The responsibility for the decimation of the Party's leadership in the ETU must rest squarely on the shoulders know what two reasons of Gollan, Kerrigan Mahon.

The methods of work carried out in that union are no different, in essence, from the methods of Stalinist trade union work in general. This method stems from a lack of confidence in the ability of the working class to fight the employing class and defeat it.

From this pessimism flows the intrigues and manoeuvres, sometimes based on tacit agreements with the Right wing, designed to maintain positions in the unions. These methods often fly in the face of rank and file requirements, and struggles undertaken by workers have often been sidetracked or callously betrayed when they appeared to jeopardise the immediate position of party trade union officials.

CYNICISM

These are the methods which Fraser, O'Neil and Wolf were trained in and staunchly defended in the Electrical Trades Union. Many Communist Party members are sickened by the cynicism with which these expulsions have been carried out by leaders like Peter Kerrigan, The members in the ETU see these expulsions as a concession to the Right wing in the union. Instead of rallying the Left in opposition to the Byrne-CannonChapple leadership around policies which will prepare the rank and file to fight the employers' and Tory attacks, the CP leaders here try to wriggle out of their responsibilities and The Curious Case of Mr. Cousins AT the Scottish Delegate Conference of the Transport and General Workers' Union, a delegate, Mr. I. McCrory, referred to the National Economic Development Council as a "Torysponsored body, which would promote practices hostile to the trade union movement.

He called for the immediate withdrawal of the TUC representatives from the NEDC. The council, said Mr. McCrory, was an attempt to cast a cloak of respectability over the pay pause and use trade union leaders for this purpose.

The motion was defeated after the intervention of Frank Cousins. He said the TUC representatives had no intention of becoming tools of the Tories'. Moreover, it was ridiculous for the delegates to imagine that they had the right to instruct the TUC what to do. 'The conference could not tell the TUC to get out of the NEDC?

Frank Cousins went on to say that the NEDC 'would be worse: without our influence'. . This is like the petrified rabbit which, as it disappears down the wolf's. jaws is heard to murmur, 'this animal would certainly be worse without my influence'.

Mr. Cousins would not even have us warn the rabbit of its. danger. In fact the wolf, he thinks, will respond to persuasion.

Frank Cousins' arguments turn out to be very confused. He said, 'We are not there as watch-dogs but as people with positive ideas of what should be done to solve economic problems.' What these ideas are he did not say. Nationalization? Even Gaitskell will not listen to argument about such policies. Does Mr. Cousins think that Macmillan's representatives are likely to be more attentive?

Moreover the economic problems of the employers and those of the members of Mr. Cousins' union have solutions which are diametrically opposed. The one means slashing wages in the interest of improving profits and the other means taking over the