The Newsletter, vol. 6 no. 271

Nehru THE American government has lost little time in deciding to send arms to India. Together with his British, Canadian and French allies, Kennedy is only too pleased to help Nehru in the border war against China. hrushchev, on the other hand, has made no statement on the question. While Izvestia and Pravda welcomed some Chinese proposals for ending the fighting, the Russians have remained neutral between capitalist India and the Chinese workers' state. le statement issued last Wednesday by the British CP is also an evasion of the real issue. It refuses to take sides in the conflict which, it alleges, has been fostered by the Americans. eanwhile Nehru and Menon stir up an atmosphere of patriotic hysteria. They have called especially for an end to all strike action. The state of emergency declared on October 26 gives them the right to arrest any opponents without trial. le Communist Party of India has declared its support for 'all necessary measures of defence'. It will pay a heavy price for this betrayal of internationalism, for it will itself be a victim of the wave of jingoism. ne border dispute has been presented by the world press as an act of Chinese agression. It concerns mountainous territory in the Ladakh area on the North-west and in the North-east Frontier Agency. nis territory has been traditionally regarded as Chinese. In 1914, the British delegate to the Simla Conference, McMahon, agreed a frontier with a local Tibetan delegate. At no time was it agreed by the Chinese government. le Indians now claim that this 'McMahon' line is the legal boundary, and also allege it to be further north than the Chinese say. Nehru, on October 12, called for the Chinese to be 'thrown out' of this area.

THE defence of the Cuban revolution against US imperialism is now the acid test for the world Trotskyist movement.

For us in Britain, this defence can only be accomplished by the most resolute struggle against the Tory government, the class allies of Kennedy's administration.

This fight against our own ruling class must, of course, be part of international action carried out by the Trotskyists of all countries. We are fighting to establish the independence of the working class from capitalist war diplomacy.

SEPARATES

It is this class approach which separates us sharply from the pacifists and the Stalinists. They look to the United Nations, which is an agency of imperialism, and talk about the establishment of peace by summit discussions between the great powers.

The liberals, pacifists and even Stalinists who only yesterday were condemning the Soviet H-tests are now hailing Khrushchey as a great man of peace, because he has agreed to dismantle the rocket bases in Cuba.

DEFEAT

They are not really concerned about the Cuban revolution and they would be perfectly agreeable to seeing the revolution defeated rather than fight• the real class enemy.

These quitters from the class struggle always show up sharpest in times of war danger. They have no faith in the working class to defend the conquests of the revolution either in Cuba or in the Soviet Union.

They look for a way out through compromise between the classes and generally wind up with the bloodiest of wars on their hands. So it was in the past, so it will be in the future.

The Stalinist bureaucracy of Khrushchev rests on the nationalised property relations in the Soviet Union established by the October Revolution.

The need of this bureaucracy is to defend its own selfish and parasitic interests, but in doing so it has to defend the property relations from which it gets its privileges.

OPPOSED

The Soviet bureaucracy genuinely seeks peaceful coexistence with the imperialists. They are opposed to the extension of the revolution in any part of the world under conditions which will upset the equilibrium of their struggle for class compromise with the capitalist class.

The conditions created by such a struggle would lead eventually to the overthrow of the bureaucracy itself.

The Stalinists defend the Soviet Union in order to protect the interests of the bureaucracy; the Trotskyists defend the Soviet Union against the interests of the bureaucracy.

We fight to extend the revolution in the countries dominated by world imperialism, and in doing this we strike a blow against inperialism and the interests of the Soviet and social democratic bureaucracies simultaneously RELIES The power politic diplomacy of the Soviet bureaucracy is designed to defend its interests and needs. To do this it relies on the United Nations.

Thus the Soviet Union joined hands with American imperialism in calling the United Nations into the Congo. UNO helped murder Lumumba and destroy the movement for genuine independence.

In the case of Cuba, Khrushev has provided Castro and s people with food supplies, stewards who were involved in the strike of the paint, trim and assembly workers had been taken back.

In a television interview on Monday, Mr. Lesley Blakenan, the Labour Relations Manager, emphatically stated hat the labour force is to be educed by "several hundred" ind that the Company has 10 intention of re-engaging roublemakers'.

This is the showdown that las been threatened for many nonths. In the course of the ast two weeks Fords have hit jut with a ruthlessness which urpasses even the actions of Rootes at British Light Steel Pressings last year.

They have not attempied to hide he course of victimisation upon hich they are set.

Ihis will be the pattern which nore and more engineering em›loyers will take in the coming nonths.

The trade union leaders who lave been closeted with the Ford nanagement in negotiations over he past few months must be held esponsible for this state of affairs. For them to complain and weep rocodile tears over the good conluct letters is the height of hyporisy.

Their vacillations and manoeuTes and their condemnation of he stewards and unofficial strikes n the past 12 months have been . direct encouragement to Fords • go ahead with their present policy The Amalgamated Engineering Jnion has called on Fords to renstate Bill Francis, the shop teward who's sacking sparked off re strike two weeks ago. What hey intend to do when this is urned down they don't make lear.

The stand of the shop stewards committee in demanding official strike action to prevent any victimisation is much more forthright and correct.

Fords must be faced squarely • the trade union movement. Sir trick Hennessy once again this back page, col. 3

After the liberation of Tibet from theocratic and landlord rule, it was across the northeast frontier that the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan reactionaries were able to pass to take refuge in India. ehru's actions are dictated by the need to combat the attractive power for the Indian masses of the Chinese revolution. Whatever radical phrases he may find it convenient to utter from time to time he is still the leader of the party of Indian capitalism. icialists must fight against the anti-Chinese propaganda campain and give all possible support to the Chinese republic. A march of 500 people through Leeds in a 'Hands off Cuba' demonstration last Saturday was marred by the deliberate splitting tactics of the Communist Party.

Yorkshire Area Organiser, Bert Ramelson, was determined that the Young Socialists' contingent, which headed the march, should be isolated from the rest of the demonstration. In collaboration with pacifists and anti-communists, he twice halted the main body of the march in order to leave the YS contingent isolated.

At the end of the march, Jim Roche—until recently a manager at a local clothing factory-used a loud hailer in an attempt to drown the YS speaker.

Ramelson and Roche shalled the crowd away from the Young Socialists to a rival meeting in another part of the square.

Communist Party members should ask themselves why Ramelson was so viciously antagonistic to those people who were linking the defence of Cuba with the Labour and trade union movement.

They should ask why a leading Party official is so bitterly opposed to Young Socialists who are in the middle of a struggle against the bureaucrats of Transport House, and why he is prepared to associate with known anti-communists, renegades from the Labour movement and avowed enemies of the Soviet Union in order to try to isolate a contingent of Young Socialists.

Defend the Cuban Revolution THE US imperialists are bent upon the destruction of the Cuban revolution and have shown that they are even prepared to risk the danger of world war. The Cuban Revolution, expropriating US capital in Cuba, makes it necessary for US imperialism to take these measures in order that their stranglePage EW STATEMENT BY COMMITTEE OF THE November 3, 1962 962

No victory for de Gaulle THE referendum of October 28 was arranged in the best style of Gaullism. The issue posed, should the President be elected by universal suffrage, had the demagogic ring of bonapartism. The government had a virtual monopoly of radio time.

Opposed to de Gaulle were the discredited politicians of the Fourth Republic. To cap it all, the Cuban crisis seemed to prove the need for a strong man.

The result of this virtual plebiscite, carried out under such favourable conditions was hardly a great victory for de Gaulle. One in five of the electors stayed away from the polls-from apathy or because they sincerely felt that it did not matter one way or another how the head of the state was elected.

Sixty-two per cent voted for de Gaulle — the smallest 'yes' vote he has yet received. In the southern departments an antide Gaulle majority appeared.

At the same time, the united efforts of the parliamentary opposition together with the Communist party and the sympathisers of the OAS could only muster a vote of 38 per cent.

Evidently the supporters of the Communist Party and the Socialist Party did not all follow the advice of the party leaders. They have, of course, no intention of mobilising the working class for a struggle against the regime, to which, in their own way, they have given shamefaced support.

Elections are shortly to follow. What is certain is that the pro-de Gaulle UNR will lose votes heavily.

De Gaulle's ministers are clearly angry at the result. If although in inadequate quantities. At the same time he has utilised the Cuban revolution to further his power-political diplomacy with the White House.

The establishment of rocket bases in Cuba could not possibly defend the Cuban revolution. This can only be done in the immediate future by the struggle to win over the solidarity of the American working class and to extend the revolution in Latin America.

Of course the Cuban government had every right to accept these rocket bases and sign such agreements as it wished with the Soviet Union.

But it was most inadvisable that it should have exercised this right by permitting Khrushchev to place under the control of Russian technicians rocket bases which were plain for all to see on a small island.

Having a right and exercising it are two different things. One does not necessarily follow from the other.

WEAKENED

Even from the standpoint of military defence, it was impossible for the Soviet Union to provide adequate cover without launching the Third World War.

Thus on the eve of invasion by the United States, Khrushchev calmly admits to the existence of the rocket bases and says that he will dismantle them if in turn he can get agreement on other matters, no doubt concerning Berlin and US bases close to the Soviet Union.

Khrushchev's act strengthened reaction in the United States and gravely weakened the Cuban revolution.

Castro is forced under the most difficult circumstances to demand the withdrawal of the American marines from Guantanamo. Lacking an understanding of the Leninist nature of defence of the Cuban revolucont. from page 1 The Stalinists, pacifists and fellow-travellers would be happy and would declare that such Russian non-intervention was a mighty blow for peace.

They would let Cuba bleed to death just as they did in Spain rather than wage a class fight against imperialism.

Cuba is another grim warning Khrushchev. of the predominantly reactionary nature of the Soviet bureaucracy and its politics.

The construction of revolu- countries. tionary Trotskyist parties all over the world fighting constantly against the main enemy which is their own ruling class and in defence of all revolutionary movements, like the Cuban revolution, are the only answer to the terrible crisis which now confronts mankind.

•Defend Cuba' its defence. factory gate meeting class action of the workers can defend.

150 workers at the Executex clothing factory in Leeds attended a lunch-time factory gate meet- the Stalinist bureaucracy and its methods. ing last Thursday to hear a protest against the American threat to Cuba.

Socialist Labour League speakers, including a worker at parations! Executex, stressed the common interests of the British working class and the workers and peasants of Cuba.

Police refused to act when three lorry drivers — one of whom boasted that he would never join a trade union- tried to drown the meeting by revving up their engines. action in defence of Cuba.

But they soon intervened at the close of the meeting when workers from the audience, which had clearly shown its support for the speakers, went up to remonstrate with the drivers. THE INTERNATIONAL FOURTH INTERNATIONAL the official to support their own 28.10.1962

they see a chance of creating a provocation to stampede the electors they will take it.

But even if the party leaders succeed in sending back a critical Assembly, the President iwill not need to worry very much. They cannot break with Gaullism and carry on a struggle outside Parliament. Nor can de Gaulle or the parties resolve the crisis in the French state without a direct attack on the working class and its organisations.

Newcastle march over Cuba 100: Labour Party members, Young Socialists, YCLers and CND supporters marched through Newcastle last Saturday in a 'Hands off Cuba' demonstration organised by the North-east Cuba Committee.

In a press statement the committee declared that its aims were to arouse support for the Cuban Revolution in the British Labour movement and to collect money to send food and medical supplies to Cuba. tion, he went along •with Khrushchev to the brink of disaster. He then belatedly realised what Khrushchev was up to and tagged on legitimate demands about withdrawal from Guantanamo.

LIKE SPAIN

The Khrushchev bureaucracy in essence has done nothing fundamentally different from what the Soviet bureaucracy did in Spain in the period before the Second World War.

They gave military aid and food, but these supplies were inadequate. The one thing that Stalin could not and did not give was a revolutionary orientation to the Spanish people.

Thus the Soviet Union joined the non-intervention pact with capitalist powers and left Spain wide open for fascist victory.

If Kennedy were to decide to invade Cuba-and he may still do so—the Soviet government will not lift a finger in its defence. Now available to English readers in John G. Wright. The volume includes Results and Prospects published for the first time in an These fundamental works on the Russian Revolution in relation to the world socialist revolution fill a longstanding gap in Marxist literature, and will be welcomed by all students of Communism and Marxism. They are of special relevance to the present controversies within the world's Communist Parties, in particular China and Russia.

Cloth 25s. Paperback New Park Publications Ltd, 186A Glapham High St, London S.W.4

A. Rykov M. Tomsky Chairman Trade union Council of Led Soviet Economy. TU delegation Council of TUC, 1925 Right Oppositionist. November 3. 1962 Y. L. Piatakov Founder Ukrainian Soviets.

Head of Soviet industry.

Left Oppositionist. Capitulated to Stalin.

Shot. K. B. Radek Founder German CP. Secretary EC of Comintern. Left Oppositionis Capitulated. Murdered in prison. Supreme leader.

Chairman, to British Commissars. Right Oppositionist. Deposed. Deposed. Shot. Suicide. N. I. Bukhari Party theoretician. Ultra Left and later Right Oppositionist. Leader Comintern. Deposed and shot.

/ HAT could the most recent crop of 'rehabilitations' have to do with the debacle for Soviet foreign policy in Cuba? Cuba has proved one thing: that Soviet foreign policy has arrived at a hopeless impasse.

This latest fiasco underlines how completely Soviet foreign and military ('war is only the continuation of diplomacy by other means') policy is divorced from the fundamental interests of the international working class.

The communist movement has no leadership. The Communist International of Lenin's day, which founded most of the Communist Parties of the world. was cynically used by Stalin to instal his regime in all the Communist Parties thereby destroying any vestige of Bolshevism they might hi •ve acquired from the Russian party and converting them into mere border patrols for his bureaucracy At its inception this process took the form of the struggle against the Lef : Opposition. All the names of th e rehabilitated are in one way or another conne ted with either this or the later sti ges of this struggle.

According to the report of the Moscow correspondent of the Belgrade daily, Politika, the following have been rehabilitated: Bukharin, Rykov, Piatakov, Radek, Tomsky and 'others'.

Families of these men have been offered compensation!

Bukharin's son is to return to Moscow-from Asiatic Russia, to which countless thousands of the old Bolshevik's children and relatives were consigned before, during and after those trials.

Trotsky's first wife, Alexandra Lvovna and his younger son Sergei both disappeared in this wilderness. All the appeals of Natalia, Trotsky's lately deceased widow, to the Kremlin bureaucrats never received so much as an acknowledgement.

Stalin played cruelly on the most intimate family loyalties when it came to extracting confessions for his trials.

The decree of April 8, 1935, which made children of 12 years liable to the full force of the law including capital punishment, was aimed in particular at Zinoviev and Kamenev, then undergoing 'interrogation'. In the case of Bukharin, he exploited the fact he was greatly attached to his Butcher and his apprentices—the apologists, the loyal' liars, the professional lawyers speaking to a brief, the clerics and other human rubbish.

These five rehabilitations now debunk in entirety two or three big public show trials. Radek and Piatakov were included in the trial of January 23-30, 1937, known as the trial of the 17.

Bukharin and Rykov were 'tried' in the "Trial of the 21' from March 2-13, 1938. Tomsky shot himself when he heard that he was to be arrested.

This now leaves the first big trial of the 16, known as the Kamenev-Zinoviev Trial of August 19-24, 1936. But even this has

FTER an advance fan- FTER an advance fanfare from the Daily Worker concerning previously unpublished writings by Lenin on "peaceful coexistence' , we have now been able to read these in English for the first time.

They are extracts from an article written in 1918 as the first draft of 'The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government' and were recently published in Pravda. They have now appeared in English in World News of October 13.

If the article was intended as a weapon for use against those who criticise Stalinist policies of peaceful co-existence with world capitalism it has turned out in the reading, to be a remarkably damp squib. Although the World News introduction states:

"This new document once again demonstrates how even at that early stage Lenin was thinking in terms of peaceful coexistence, competition and economic cooperation with capitalism?

The document itself says absolutely nothing on these subjects. The nearest it comes is to quote Lenin as saying:

'Now, in an actual situation in which the onset of the socialist revolution in the West has slowed down and is delayed, while Russia has to take accelerated measures to reorganise herself-simply even to save the population from hunger and subsequently to save the whole country from possible armed invasion - now we have to borrow from the advanced countries not the help of socialist organisations and the support of the workers, but the aid of the bourgeoisie and capitalist intelligentsia in those countries?

As is suggested here and confirmed in the rest of the World News article and in The Immediate Tasks' as it was finally published, the 'aid of the bourgeoisie' referred to by Lenin was the technical know-how of American industry (particularly the Taylor system) and the temporary employment of highly-paid specialists, both GEORGE TRAIN Russian and foreign, in spite of their doubtful attitude to the new Soviet regime.

To claim that this is relevant to the discussion of peaceful co-existence as practised by the Soviet leadership is sheer trickery. In fact Lenin mentions the responsibility of the Soviet Communist Party in 'The Immediate Tasks' when he says:

'It goes without saying that we shall be able to render serious assistance to the socialist revolution in the West, which has been delayed for a number of reasons, only to the extent that we are able to fulfil the enir No help for To hi King Street ling organisational task that fronts us?

The kind of peaceful coexistence which the apologists for the Soviet bureaucracy fail to defend in World News is that which involves holding back the socialist revolution in other countries in the interests of diplomatic deals with capitalist statesmen.

It will need more than this article to justify the division of Eastern Europe and the Balkans into spheres of Soviet and Western influence at Yalta, the betrayal of the socialist revolution in Spain, the insistence that the Communist Parties of Western Europe participate in 'national' governments at the end of the last war and the many other consequences of peaceful co-existence in the political sphere as practised by Stalinist Communist Parties.

It is certain that this type of attempt at justification is a result of growing doubts among Communist Party and YCL members on this question.

They are constantly urge They are constantly urged to work for broad, 'non-political' peace and anti-fascist movements, petitions and other appeals to capitalist politicians to carry out anti-capitalist policies, and, as was shown by Gollan's recent Daily Worker article, the unqualified conception of winning socialism through Parliament.

All this, and the demands for 'summit' meetings to end international tensions, have been propogated in the face of U2 flights, Polaris, the NATO build-up, intervention in Guatemala and Cuba and numerous other signs that imperialism is not prepared to peaceably coexist with socialism or anti-imperialist revolutions.

This is why King Street's attempts to ideologically disarm its members are becoming more desperate and transparent.

IN May 1959 most of the land in Cuba was nationalised so that now there are nearly 800 co-operative farms representing 59 per cent of the total land under cultivation of some 20 million acres.

Cuba, of course, is the world's largest producer of tobacco and sugar, and these commodities account for about 90 per cent by value of her exports.

But there is also a substantial production of coffee, cocoa, maize, rice, potatoes and fruit.

So far as minerals are concerned, Cuba is important for iron ore, copper, nickel, manganese, cobalt and some gold and silver. Up to 1958, these mineral deposits were almost entirely owned by American steel interests but are now controlled by the Cuban Mining Institute, a government agency. These deposits represent a vast potential of wealth not yet begun to be tapped.

In fact, Cuba is second only to Canada as a source of the valuable metal, nickel, with a potential capacity of 100 million pounds yearly.

As a measure of importance to both countries' economies, here are some figures of mutual trade. In 1958 exports to the USA were young family. In the case of Piatakov, his wife was forced to denounce him to save their son. What has happened to this son?

And was all this the work of just one villain, or do his heirs live? It is interesting to note that the rehabilitations extend only to their alleged acts of plotting and treason and not to their politics.

Stalin's heirs have decreed that their politics are taboo. But what was the purpose of those trials other than to forge an amalgam between these men, already broken by Stalin's inquisitors, and the politics of Leon Trotsky, the intransigent proponent of Bolshevism.

To this end, the resources of the entire state, the Comintern and its 'sympathisers' were prostituted.

But the Twentieth and TwentySecond Congresses of the CPSU, the considerable volume of interim 'honourable mentions' of hitherto unmentionables in Soviet literature and the formal rehabilitations of political and military personnel, have completely demolished all the efforts of the Smoke gets in your eyes " Once again the more fainthearted socialists are beset with doubt and anxieties (but) once again we can feel confident that when the smoke has rolled away from the battlefield of controversy it will be realized that the charge was true, the confessions correct, and the prosecution fairly conducted' D. N. Pritt in The Moscow Trial', 1936 been cor npletely undermined by the revel ations of the Twentieth Congress.

It will not be enough to put paid to lies or let bygones be bygones. The urgent and burning need is to correct the record, repair the damage, re-trace the true line of development of Leninism and restore the Communist movement by a relentless fight against every survival of Stalinism. The Palme Dutts, Kerrigans, Gollans must answer for their crimes or be thrown out of the movement.

555 million dollars; in 1961, 30 million dollars. In 1958, imports from USA were 491 million dollars; in 1961, 20 million dollars.

In 1958, 72 per cent of exports were to America and 67 per cent of imports came from America.

But came October 14, 1960, and 382 American companies were nationalised, including 105 sugar mills 5n textile fartarias 16 rice plants and 8 railways. The USSR since that time has guaranteed all surpluses of exportable sugar.

But Cuba is by no means self-sufficient. An immediate result of the nationalisation move was that the US issued instructions that no oil was to be sent from Venezuela, the main source of Cuba's supply. President Betancourt expressed his satisfaction at the American action.

The cash crop system of the imperialists whereby the land of colonial countries is used basically for the production of one or two primaries (sugar and tobacco in Cuba's case) on which the people cannot maintain themselves, has meant a grave shortage of cereals chance and livestock for Cuba. Though the land is rich and fertile, 15 per cent of all Cuba's imports from America used to be in cerealswheat, rice, barley, etc.

These facts and figures reflect the reasons for the US's apoplexy over Cuba. Its per capita income is the highest in Latin America.

To millions of South Americans, the Cuban revolution points the 41. -way to their own future. It shows them that it is possible to despatch their own tyrants who carry out the commands of the US capitalists on all matters and rule in their interests alone.

Thirty years ago the Americans had invested in Cuba nearly one thousand million dollars. By 1960 that figure had grown many fold. In one day they lost the lot.

No wonder the American capitalists look anxiously at the rest of South America which they control. No wonder that even nuclear war is contemplated in an attempt to preserve their right to exploit the whole of the American hemisphere.

WSL

Industrial lewsletter of frauds.

400 delegates attended the fifth meeting of the campaign in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, last Sunday. A statement which was issued to the delegates showed that the threat of high unemployment is real enough.

The figure for Scotland is now 84,749, an increase of 12,000 since the STUC began its campaign in June and 20,000 more than a year ago.

Unemployment ranges from 2.1 per cent to as high as 8.9 per cent in parts of Ayrshire where there are eight unemployed for each vacancy.

The plans of the Coal Board in the area are for the closure of eight pits in the near future with 11 more on the borderline and likely to close due to 'uneconomic working'.

There will be 3,500 miners made redundant in the coalfield by this operation, not all of whom will find jobs again in the pits.

During recent months, hosiery, engineering and other factories have closed in the area and at SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE other factories such as Massey Ferguson, sackings have taken place.

From a relatively prosperous area with new factories brought in since the war, Ayrshire is likely to become a depressed and high unemployment area in the near future.

WORK' When workers like those at Massey Ferguson strike to prevent sackings they are told by the trade union officials to get back to work and leave the matter to joint negotiation.

In fact the officials will oppose at all costs any attempts to fight unemployment by militant action.

The STUC leaders have one solution and one only: to persuade Macmillan to direct industry to Scotland and thus not only to miraculously give everyone work but also to transform the Tory Party into a charitable organisation.

The Tory government, with all the financial, legal, persuasive powers at its command is intent on creating conditions for attack on workers' wages in such areas By OUR INDUSTRIAL CORRESPONDENT THE magnificent one-day Izaders of the unions to - do this or advance any railway workers.

The withdrawal of furt] silence of the engineering uni and file with no alternative but to push forward the fight themselves.

At the giant Stratford railway workshops in East London a campaign committee representative told THe NEWSLETTER that they could not wait for the union leaders to work out a policy, and that, in any case, they had no confidence in their fighting for a policy-even if they had one.

MARCHES

Over the past few weeks this committee has held a number of mass marches and meetings. 40,000 leaflets have been distributed at stations in the area answering the claims of the Tories.

All railway workshops and branches nationally have been circularised and letters have been sent to MPs asking, them to take up the fight.

Fred Bint, treasurer of the committee, said that the first job is to show that if the workshops and railways are inefficient and uncompetitive it is because of the disastrous policy of the Tories.

The picture that has been painted in the national press of dilapidated buildings and inefficient poorly-equipped shops is completely misleading.

The Stratford shops which are due to close in November 1963 have been completely modernised in the past few years at a cost of a quarter of a million pounds. The British Transport Commission themselves claim that it is 'the most efficient and most modern diesel repair shop in the country'.

Stratford has been the main repair shop for South-west England for years, serving the big marshalling yards at Finsbury Park, Ely, March, Cambridge, Norwich and Stratford.

The closure will result in 1,750 of the 1,850 workers being sacked. Despite the closing of several large strike of railwaymen on October 2 gave a powerful mandate to repare a fight against closures and sackings. Their failure to policy to counter the Beeching plan is causing alarm amongst let strike plans by the National with members involved in tl factories in the area and the steady growth of unemployment, workers will not be compensated, since according to Sir Stewart Mitchell, Beeching's assistant, Stratford does not fall into one of the scheduled hardship areas.

Railwaymen are confident that if a union team of investigators could examine the books and accounts of British Railways the reasons for losses amounting to £187 million last year would soon be uncovered.

The Stratford committee believes that the real plans are to give more lucrative contracts out to private firms like English Electric, Rolls Royce and AEL.

The examples of wasted expenditure must be uncovered. There are many cases where parts which have been made for 3/- in Stratford workshops are now being purchased from private industry sometimes for as much as f8 each. There are six Baby Deltic locomotives in Stratford which were bought last year for £80,000 each which are being completely scrapped because of minor engine faults.

CAMPAIGN

What is now required is a national campaign to link all railway and transport workers affected by the Tories' modernisation plans into a fight against redundancy. This fight should take up as policy: • Open the books to investigate the losses, paying particular attention to the lucrative contracts of private concerns.

Suspend the compensation payments to ex-owners and interest payments to the moneylenders.

No sackings—full maintenance until alternative work is found.

A fight to remove the Tory government, return a Labour government and insist that the railways are planned as part of an integrated transport system linked to a planned nationalised economy.

have restricted to strike and conditions.

Last year German engineering unions fought for and won a wage increase of 11 per cent.

It will not be much advantage to Fords to move to Germany where a confident trade union movement is once again climbing to its feet to take on the employers.

Shop stewards must be defended today in order that wages and working conditions can be defended tomorrow.

If the unions capitulate and refuse to take official action then the shop stewards' committee must act on its own.

If such resolute action is taken, the full backing of the Labour movement must he given to them. The offensive started by Fords can be turned back in this way. Union of Railwaymen and the le workshops has left the rank NoT content with their programme of pit closures which threatens the living standards of mineworkers, the National Coal Board now intend to put up the rent of houses on the mining estates.

The move is already causing indignation in the Midlands coalfields. Miners recognise that in actual fact it represents a cut in wages, for lower rent for miners' tied houses has always been considered a part of the mining wages structure.

The rent increase threats must be seen as part of the Tory programme being operated by the Coal Board. The Tories are in the process of attacking the nationalised industries.

The programme of 'rationalisation' of railways and mines and the attacks on wages and conditions in these industries are part of the preparation of the British capitalist class to enter the Common Market.

Pool

Along with the employers' attempts to discipline workers in engineering, as at Fords last week, this preparation is aimed at cutting wages in industry generally and creating a pool of unemployed to keep wages down.

The NUM Midlands Area Executive, in a circular on the rent increase dated October 2, 1962, says, however, that they have negotiated with the Coal Board and have succeeded in delaying the full increase until October 1963.

But nevertheless they have accepted that there shall be increases and that a third of the increase shall be paid immediately.

In many pits this agreement has not yet been revealed to the men by the union officials. There has been no reference to the NUM branches, and the NUM circular concludes by saying that "branches are urged to accept that the best possible had been done on behalf of that section of the membership living in CIHA houses'.

No Action The fact that the NUM Executive Committee say that no action can be taken by the men, and that any unofficial action would not receive the support of the union is virtually allowing a wage cut to be imposed.

How is this sort of leadership going to deal with the struggles which will arise in all areas when the next stage of the Coal Board's plan is revealed?

Miners have to prepare an alternative by forming pit committees to fight on the rent issue and link it wih the question of sackings.

Liverpool

G. HEALY LEADERSHIP AND THE WORKING CLASS How to fight unemployment, hatred, witch-hunts)

Stork Hotel, Queen Square, 7.30 p.m., Sunday, November Admission 1/Subscription Department, The Newsletter, 186a Clapham High Street, London, S.W.A. 7s. for 12 issues, or £1 8s. per year Name Address Registered at the G.P.O. as a newspaper Published by The Newsletter, 186л Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4 as Scotland. For this unemployment is necessary and is to a large extent deliberately and coldbloodedly engineered.

The trade union leaders know this very well. They hope, however, to obtain some small concessions which enable them to check the rank and file and to retain their own plush jobs.

WAGE CUTS

'Direction of industry', say the STUC leaders. In Bathgate it has taken place. This is still a high unemployment area, so that BMC can drop wage rates by f6 to f8 a week.

The only solution is to fight in factory committees, district councils and trades councils to expose the plans of the General Council, operate a ban on all overtime working in each area, force the employers to concede a reduction in the working week with no loss of pay and all workers to be paid in full by the employer whilst unemployed. Cont. from page week bluntly stated that the drive is on in order to raise profits by increasing efficiency.

Supervisors have this week been instructing workers returning to the paint, trim and assembly shop that they must increase production by 32 per cent. Shop stewards can see clearly that this speed-up is to make up for the work of those who will not be re-engaged.

The firm is demanding an equivalent speed-up throughout the Dagenham plant. At the same time they hold over the heads of the employees the threat that production will be moved to Germany.

These tactics and threats should be answered. Workers at Fords should take careful note of the decision taken by the German trade unions last week in rejecting the constitutional changes demanded by Adenauer which would