The Newsletter, vol. 8 no. 347

of Mods and Rockers 1a Magistrates in Margate and Brighton had a fielc day on Whit Monday.

At Margate fines amounting to £1,800 were imposed and in Brighton teenagers were sent to jail and detention centres for periods of up to three months. le press and the entire Establishment went wild with joy.

Fleet Street raved. The 'Daily Express' turning its editorial guns from the Radfan Mountains, blazed away at the Margate rebels. It crowed: 'Dr. Simpson imposed terms of detention and some heavy fines. He does well.' He does well indeed! If he has done nothing else, the learned Doctor and his Fleet Street cronies have shown the youth - mods and rockers alike - that they can expect neither justice, humanity nor understanding from the capitalist courts and the venal press. r. Simpson in his histrionic outburst summed up the attitude of the capitalist class to youth when he compared the teenagers to 'rats hunting vily in pains, and up me infected with this vicious virus. i the same time that the 'Daily Express' was applauding the hard-faced magistrates, the British government was preparing to send another battalion of infantrymen to Arabia.

• can rest assured, however hat no one in Arabia will be fined-nor will there be any jail sentences for any damage done. Nor will we hear squeak of protest from the 'Daily Express'.

Why? Because there is one for the oil monopolies another for the mods rockers.

In capitalist society the working class youth are treated as disfranchised, propertyless pariahs to be conscripted in war and exploited in peace. Their instinctive rejection of society takes on bizarre and unconventional forms and leads them into direct conflict with state authority.

Hence Clacton, Margate and Brighton. no scapian for vandals, noo canasm or deane uency . Capitalism spawns these things surcly as it breeds wars and crises.

The Whitsun events are theretore a symptom oi a deepseated social crisis. But they are also an ominous warning to the Labour leaders.

If the next Labour government does not nationalize ine monopolies, free the colonies and rid Britain of the spectre of unemployment, insecurity, homelessness and poverty then asmusiounchll of the youth will be complete. Such a situation will only assist the racialists and fascists. or these reasons The News.

Letters agests in the tricoss sentences and fines handed down on these victims of capitalism.

calls on the youth, mods rockers and, Yes. ever the 'sawdust Caesars' and 'odious Labs' to in with the Sis against the real enemy of youth-—British imperialism law and and

AROLD WILSON is a menace to the Labour Party. The signs in slipped, are a condemnation of his mis-leadership.

Less than a year after the Profumo crisis rocked the Tory government, of returning to power after the October election.

While the solid working class core of Labour support remains intact, the middle class voters show signs of returning to their old allegiance-the ruling class party.

The Labour leaders seek power to run capitalism on behalf of the monopolies. That is why they can offer no solutions to the difficulties of either the workers or the middle class.

Meanwhile they argue that the labour movement must at all costs avoid frightening away the timid middle class electorate.

This was their excuse for persuading steel workers, power workers and postmen to call off industrial action and wait for their respective committees of inquiry to report.

Last week the power industry enquiry reported that there was blame on both sides. How right The Newsletter was to call the betrayal of the power men by its real name.

Tactician

Wilson is hailed by his disciples as the master tactician. By avoiding definite commitment on every issue, he is supposed to annoy the smallest number of voters.

"Tribune', Wilson's publicity organ for worn-out letts, explains that he is really a socialist, but he is just waiting for a chance to show it.

Just what rubbish this "theory of masterly evasion' really is, can be seen from the way the Liberal vote has tended to switch to the Tories. Far from attracting the middle class Wilson's failure to provide real answers to their economic and social problems has led to disillusionment with Labour.

The middle layers of socie —professional men and sm: shopkeepers for example-a increasingly pushed around the big monopolies.

Swing

Traditionally dependent on the ruling class, they can overcome their snobbery in times of crisis and look to the working class movement for help. In 1945 many of them voted Labour.

But unless they can see that Labour means to make real changes in society, they will lose confidence in the strength of the working class and swing back to the right, as happened in the late 1940s.

At a time when the Tories themselves are in grave difficulties, this can lead to the growth of extreme right-wing tendencies, inside and outside the Tory party.

The decline of the Liberal vote from its Orpington highpoint in 1959 was inevitable. It only rose at that time because Gaitskell held back any move to socialist policies.

But Wilson's effective continuation of the Gaitskell line has ensured that this support now swings again to the right.

The fiasco of Crossman's education plan shows that even on the question of how to look after the five-year-olds, the Labour leaders cannot make any definite proposals.

Prelude

The only clear statements Wilson has made recently are about Cyprus, Aden and Malaysia — on all these he backs Tory policy.

The fight for a socialist programme to break the power of the monopolies is a life and death question for the labour movement. The electoral contest in October is only the prelude to much sharper conflicts between Labour and big business.

Tiwarast to Mr. Wilson, the Young Socialists have already taken up this challenge from big business at their Brighton conference.

The labour movement must follow this example otherwise Labour's strength will be frittered away and the working class will be left unprepared for the coming struggles.

the has force

EXPEL THIS RENEGADE!

ACCORDING to reliable information we learn that a leader of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party of Ceylon, A. Moonesinghe, has recently been negotiating with Italian Stalinist leaders.

'Unita', the Stalinist daily reports in its issue of October 23, 1963, that Mr. Moonesinghe stated in his talks that 'the majority of the LSSP' supported the Moscow leaders but the party was in a minority within the Pabloite Fourth International.

Who gave Moonesinghe a mandate to negotiate with these reformist traitors and why? What conference of the LSSP did so? We should like to know.

In 1950 the British section of the Fourth International expeiled Mr. and Mrs. Moonesinghe for their public breach of discipline in refusing to publicly detend the line of the Fourth International on the Korean War.

They then returned to Ceylon and, against the advice and insistence of the British Troskyists, these avowed opportunists were permitted to enter the ranks of the LSSP. Moonesinghe became a Member of Parliament and a leader of the right wing of the LSSP.

The International Committee of the Fourth International urges members of the LSSP at their forthcoming conference to follow the example of the British Trotskyists and expel this worthless renegade and his colleagues from the party for violating the programme and traditions of the Fourth International.

DESPITE all the talk last week of closing 'uneconomical' pits in north-west Spain, where over 40,000 miners have joined a month-old strike, the Franco regime has been forced to offer large wage increases and better working conditions.

By this move the regime has also been forced to recognise the illegal strike.

The decree, which talks of immediate pay rises and a 40 per cent increase over three years, applies to all Spanish mines, but is being withheld in the Asturias until the miners return TO WOrK.

The regime, hard pressed by unrest throughout the country among, workers and students, now gives the impression of being 'moderate'.

But whatever concessions are made to the Spanish workers, there is always an extreme right-wing section of Franco supporters ready to use police and troops against them.

In fact, police had surrounded most of the mines in the Asturias and were ready to move in on orders from Franco.

KHRUSHCHEV WITH THE MURDERERS OF COMMUNISTS KHRUSH HEN is seen above with Presidents Nasser of Egypt (left), Aref of Iraq and Sallal of the Yemen (right) at the opening of the first stage of the Aswan dam project.

In his speech Khrushchev promised arms to Egypt, Algeria and Iraq.

The same Khrushchev denied atomic weapons to the People's Republic of China in the name of 'peaceful coexistence'.

Colonel Aref is one of those who will surely appreciate this gesture. He has slaughtered more communists and trade unionists than even the hated dictator of Iraq, Nuri Es Said, who ruled until the 1958 coup.

With Khrushchev's arms he will be able to continue his genocidal war against the Kurds and repress communism even more severely in Iraq.

Not even the grandiose proportions of the Aswan dam can hide the hideous reality of this latest betrayal of the Arab working class by the Soviet bureaucracy.

Vol. 8, No.

EDITORIAL In defence Price EXCUTIVE members of the Nate 280. Union of Minenkers have accepted made by the Coal Board to the 280,000 day wage men in the industry.

This offer - only sixpence more • than that previously rejected-means that the increases will range from 7s. 6d. to 12s. per week, much less than the previous claim of 15s. for all day wage men.

The award is an insult to the miners, particularly when it is remembered that £428,000,000 has been paid out to the money lenders and former coal owners since nationalization, and that Robens himself recently received a wage increase of £50 per week.

The leadership of the NUMboth right wingers of the Labour Party and Communist Party members-will have difficulty in getting away with this capitulation.

Already the leadership in the South Wales area have faced a demand for a strike.

Strike Call At the conference of the South Wales NUM last week the wage offer was rejected.

The leadership managed to avoid a call for strike action in Wales by carrying a resolution for a national strike to a special conference in London on May 29.

But this 'national' call is not militant as it sounds. Rule in the NUM rule book states:

'National Action. In the event of national action being proposed by the Union in pursuance of any of the objects of the Union the following provision shall apply"That a national strike shall only be entered upon as the result of a ballot vote of the members taken in pursuance of a resolution of Conference, and a strike shall not be declared unless two-thirds of those voting in the ballot vote in favour of such a strike.' As one militant Glasshoughton miner pointed out:

'How long will that take with a leadership who don't want a strike at all? They can play it out for six months at least?

It is clear that the Coal Board has nothing but contempt for the leaders of the NUM. What has become of the old argument that wage increases had to be tied to higher productivity?

Each miner today is producing 30 per cent more coal than six years ago, and production has gone up another 4 per cent in the first quarter of this year.

Blames Workers Yet the day wage men cannot have their 15s. and the Coal Board Industrial Relations Officer, Mr. W. J. P. Webber an ex-Transport and Salaried Staffs Association official) has the cheek to blame the piece workers for getting too much!

Mr. Will Paynter and the other Union leaders meekly accept all this without anything remotely resembling a fight.

That is left to the rank and file miners who have to build up unity between day wage men and piece workers and betwen the areas. Reject pay offer DELEGATES to the Yorkshire National Union of Mineworkers' Council have been mandated by the Doncaster Panel to reject the Coal Board's pay offer.

The panel also recommended all its branches to operate an overtime ban until the National Coal Board agrees to pay the full 15s. to day wage workers.

With 13 pits in the Doncaster panel, which is one of the largest in Yorkshire, production in that area could be seriously affected.

Overtime ban by busmen BECAUSE their new pay rates have not yet been sottled, busmen at Bromley, Kent, will begin an overtime ban next Tuesday.

The men hope that their action will be supported by a ban at Muswell Hill, Battersea and Kingston garages.

When they were offered a weekly rist of 13s. plus f1 for co-operation in methods of improving efficiency, the busmen said it was not enough. GEER with the most important section General Gorbatov's memoirs (see report on page 3) in 'Novy Mir', April 1964, there appears a review of two recent books: 'Army Commander Yakir: recollections of friends and fellow-soldiers' and 'Army Commander Uborevitch: recollections of friends and fellow-soldiers'.

The fates of these two commanders, says the review Both born in 1896, and both Bolsheviks from Spring 1917, they both formed part of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party in the final years of their lives.

RED GUARDS

"They both began military activity with the organisation of Red Guards detachments in Bessarabia, and later did much for the building of the all-Union Army, occupying responsible positions of command in the military field. And both of them tragically perished in the flowering of their strength and talents in June 1937, falling victims to Stalin's arbitrariness.?

The names of many present-day prominent Russians feature among the authors of articles about the hitherto discredited commanders: S. I. Aralov, V. V. Popov, Marshal I. K. Bagram yan, Colonel P. N. Alexandrov, Colonel M. S. Medansky, Colonel V. P. Malishev, Air Lieutenant General P. S. Shelukhin, Lieutenant General A. I. Cherepanov, Lieutenant General M. F. Lukin, Marshal M. V. Zakarov and Marshal K. A. Meretzkov.

The publication of these two collections, which like Gorbatov's memoirs call into question the fates of many other military leaders, is illustrative of the pro. found crisis now affecting the Soviet Union as the bureaucracy desperately tries to disassociate itself from its murky past.

SORTERS in the mail trains in France went on strike last week. They were followed by workers in all other branches of the post office on Friday. These short strikes, together with the Whitsun delays have thrown the French post office out of gear for at least a week.

Postmen are demanding an increase in the number of workers, a shorter working day, a five-day week and wage increases.

Sit-in Workers in the shipyards at Dunkirk staged a sit-in strike last week. On Wednesday, the workers still occupied the yards as the management had refused to negotiate with them.

In Nantes strikers from the shipyards and engineering works held a demonstration and meeting in the centre of the town. Workers from the Sud-Aviation factory and from the Fortes de l'Ouest in Saint Nazaire called a sympathy meeting in their town for the same time.

Back up

On Thursday, the General Confederation of Workers called a national strike of a few hours to back up the claims of engineering workers. In Maubeuge, in Northeast France, 10,000 engineering workers demonstrated in the streets. Fifteen thousand workers were estimated to have followed the strike in North France, and 10,000 in the Loire valley. strike was also widely followed in the Lorraine steel industry.

Page May 23 from Stalin as

THAT was the reason for the political degeneration of of Frank Haxell?

The Communist Party leaders refuse to answer this question because it is related to the political degeneration of their Party under Stalin's guidance.

The Soviet bureaucracy required a bureaucratic clique to rule the British Party and within that clique people like Haxell could thrive, since all that was necessary was for them to blindly support Stalin.

Those rank and filers who dared criticise the Haxells were brutally expelled. You could remain a member of the Communist Party only in so far as you blindly followed Stalin and his coterie of British leaders.

To examine, therefore, the political reasons for Frank Haxell's behaviour is to examine the Party's attitude towards the struggle between Stalin and Trotsky. Generally speaking, over the past decade they have endeavoured to maintain a discreet silence about this struggle.

~ Now, however, because of the growing differences within their student and youth organisations they are being forced to open up some political discussion.

Mahon Falsifies History In their weekly publication 'Comment, Supplement No. 5, May 16, 1964, John Mahon, an old Stalinist leader in the Party, speaks about the expulsion of Trotsky from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1927.

In the next paragraph he talks about the violations of socialist legality which resulted from the cult of Stalin'. But these two developments are inseparable.

The consolidation of Stalin's bureaucratic power over the Soviet Communist Party reflected itself most sharply through the expulsion of Trotsky and the physical annihilation of the majority of the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party during the Moscow Trials.

The first to be destroyed was the group known as the Left Opposition which supported Trotsky in his fight against Stalin after Lenin's death.

Mahon tries to separate these two events because he is very conscious of the weakness of his case.

Khrushchev, likewise, speaks about Stalin's misdeeds but fails to explain what political reason drove him to these acts.

The phrase 'cult of the individual, which was first used by Khrushchev, is simply an admission of his inability to examine the political requirements served by Stalin's tyranny. Khrushchev cannot politically explain Stalin because to do so would be to condemn himself since he, like Mahon, loyally carried everything that Stalin demanded.

Likewise, the major question, before the leaders of the British Party, is also to explain what Stalin's 'cult of the individual' represented politically. What class forces did it represent? Only the Trotskyist movement has analysed the political reasons for Stalinism.

The 'cult of the individual' represented the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Communist Party under Stalin's leadership.

To maintain the bureaucracy in power, Stalin employed the use of unlimited terror.

Of course, neither Khrush chey nor Mahon are confused. They know full well that a pre-condition for The Platform of the Left Opposition This document is a landmark in the development of 20th century Marxism. It sums up the experience of an entire period of struggle against the Soviet bureaucracy. This Platform also represents the highest point in the fortunes of the Joint Opposition (Trotskyist-Zinovievite) to Stalin. It is the programme of the last of the Bolshevik-Leninists who insisted that they remained communists despite all the persecution, jailings, violence and slander inflicted on them. But this document also represents a watershed-the end of one phase and the beginning of another-in the evolution of Trotskyist politics. iew Park Publications Ltd., 186A Stalin becoming a dictator was the physical annihilation of the Trotskyists.

After the expulsion of the Trotskyists in 1927, says Mahon:

'... they formed their own organisation, which supported Trotsky's advocacy of the armed overthrow of the Soviet Government.' The military vehicle through which Stalin, Mahon, Khrushchev and company allege that Trotsky was going to overthrow Stalin was Tukhachevsky and the Generals who were shot with him (1937). In 'Soviet Policy and its Critics' (1939), J. R. Campbell writes:

'Sedov [Trotsky's son] spoke a lot about the necessity of the maximum, the closest possible connections with Tukhachevsky, inasmuch as, in Trotsky's opinion, Tukhachevsky and the military group were to be the decisive force of the counter-revolutionary action.' But Khrushchev has now habilitated Tukhachevsky who Tukhachevsky: shot in 1937 brutally murdered by Stali whole thing was a fram Mahon and Campbell are liars when they speak about Trotsky's plans for the military overthrow of Stalin's regime. All they know about Tukhachevsky is what they learned from Stalin.

Mahon and Factions John Mahon poses his denunciation of factions within the Communist Party on the grounds that Lenin banned factions at the 10th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in March 1921:

"The Trotskyites,' he writes, 'do not scruple to distort and falsify Lenin, for example, on the question of factions within the Party. They take isolated quotations from the period of preparation for the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party, when factions and opposition groupings were permitted. They completely suppress the fact that in his political report to the Tenth Congress Lenin uncompromisingly condemned factionalism and that the Congress adopted a resolution, drafted by Lenin, which in the strongest possible terms condemned factional groupings and ordered their dissolution on pain of expulsion from the Party?

The Tenth Congress was meeting under exceptionally difficult conditions for the young Soviet republic.

After the civil war and the wars of intervention its economic life was almost at a standstill. Under these circumstances the Soviet leadership had to retreat economically and this was done through the introduc112 pages, 5/St London, S.W tion of the New Economic Policy. This policy allowed the peasantry and the urban capitalists freedom for individual trading, in order to stimulate some economic activity.

The Bolsheviks were, however, in no doubt that later these elements would seek ways and means to politically influence reactionary sections of the party and opposition groups in the country.

The ban imposed by Lenin was made necessary by the extremely critical stage through which the movement was passing. It was in itself a purely temporary measure to prevent the Kulaks and Nepmen from taking advantage of the conditions in the Party.

Mahon fries to imply that oppositions and factional groupings only existed during the preparation of the 10th Congress but this is, of course, untrue. Such groupings were always a feature of the life of the Soviet Communist Party, as anyone who cares to study the history of the Party will be able to see.

Lenin forms

Faction By the time of the llth Congress of the Party, in March 1922, Lenin was preparing an all-out attack against Stalin's bureaucratic behaviour.

This came into the open when he wrote his Testament in two parts, the first on December 5, 1922, and the second on January 24, 1923 (see last week's Early in 1923 he proposed a bloc with Trotsky to fight Stalin, when it became clear that the latter was preparing to rig the 12th Congress of that year, by packing it with delegates who were completely loyal to him.

Lenin was so alarmed at Stalin's behaviour that he sumHE Latin American re- American re publics are in the grip of a continuous and mounting crisis accompanied by widespread political ferment. In many of them a pre-revolutionary situation exists, or is in the making.

The crisis in the ruling class finds expression in two main ways. The first is for the landed oligarchy and the big bourgeois, closely tied with American interests, to rule through a military dictatorship, backed by the Church and all the agencies of reaction.

Such a regime is corrupt from the start because the basis of its political existence lies in opening the national resources to be plundered by imperialism in return for a share in the loot.

Its inner decay grows from the time of its birth. In time it gives place either to a new group of politicians with the same social basis or it is replaced, or overthrown, by a new group of 'reformers' REGIMES The regimes which set out to carry through some kind of 'national' revolution are based on the younger army officers, the middle class and sections of the bourgeoisie which are anti-American and want to see a growth in the home market.

The record of these movements is one of false hopes and ultimate failure resulting either in a sell-out to the USA or to their overthrow by a military dictatorship which brings back the old oligarchs to full power.

The failure of national revolutionary and reformist attempts has been amply demonstrated in Argentina and Brazil.

The illusions which bring Trotsky: 'danger in splits' moned Trotsky to his room in the Kremlin where he spoke about 'the frightful growth of bureaucratism in our Soviet Party apparatus'.

He asked Trotsky to advocate that a special commission of the Central Committee be set up to fight the growth of bureaucracy. Lenin was, in fact, preparing to launch a faction, which included Trotsky, to fight Stalin.

In other words, the pressure of events had already shown that the decision of the 10th Congress to ban factions was extremely dangerous and would have to be removed.

Stalin in the main profited from that decision and had Lenin lived, there is little doubt that he would have continued to organise his faction to fight Stalin, just as the Left Opposition were forced to do after his death.

Mahon, naturally, calls upon the authority of the 10th Congress since he still maintains that Stalin, who took advantage of what was a temporary measure, was right.

The Kirov Affair By the time of the 6th Congress of the Communist Inter- Stalin: hypocriucally mournea national in 1927, Stalin had Kirov NO REFORMIST them into being are still far from dead and further efforts on the same lines are certain. Many 'lefts', including the Communist Party, are ready to back such reformist type movements.

The history of the Argentine is a case in point. For ten years from 1945 the country was ruled by dictator Peron, an army officer. His movement won control over the trade unions and built up mass support in the working class by various concessions in social legislation and wages.

Peron's regime was of a bonapartist type. It excluded the landed oligarchy from political power, without dispossessing it of its estates.

NATIONALIST

It alienated sections of the bourgeoisie but never pursued an anti-capitalist policy.

The regime was intensely nationalist but was unable to prevent the country becoming dependent on American imperialism after throwing off the leading strings which had hitherto kept the country as a preserve of the City of London.

Peron, in the end, was unable to fulfil the promises made to the workers and the economy slid down from bad to worse. After he had been forced to take the path of increased concessions to the American corporations he was overthrown by an army coup with the support of the middle class.

The new regime's only policy was a purge of the Peronista supporters. It was unable to resolve the growing economic crisis and, in 1958, gave way to Frondizi, a Radical President elected with Peronista support. driven all factions underground inside the Soviet Party.

The GPU (Soviet secret police) had, under Stalin's instruction, tried to infiltrate the Left Opposition with one of its ex-Wrangel-White-Guard agents, in order to create the impression that the opposition were collaborating with the White Guards.

In the winter of 1934, Kirov, a close supporter of Stalin and leader of the Party organisation in Leningrad was murdered.

This became the signal for a brutal onslaught against the remnants of the opposition groupings within the Soviet Party. It was the real start of the terror that led to the Moscow Trials, which Mahon tries to explain as the outcome of the 'cult of the individual'.

Khrushchev has now revealed that Stalin arranged the murder of Kirov in order to create a provocation, behind which he could give free rein to his brutal suppression of the Opposition. He has also said that one of the reasons why he (Khrushchev) did not oppose Stalin was because he was frightened and powerless to do So.

We will ask Mahon a simple question. How would it have been possible to overthrow Stalin without the formation of an illegal faction within the Soviet PATH Frondizi knew what the problems were all right. In December 1958, in a presidential address he laid them bare: a massive and growing foreign debt, virtual state bankruptcy, inflation and material and moral impoverishment at all levels.

Four years later he was thrown out by the army which feared the militancy of the working class which, in the absence of real revolutionary leadership, still placed its hopes on Peronism.

In fact neither Peron, nor Frondizi, nor his successors have come near to solving the problems of Argentine society.

In Brazil the story has been similar. The strong - man, nationalist dictatorship of Vargas who, like Peron, enjoyed wide popular support, came to a final end in 1954 when the oligarchy forced him into suicide.

PROJECTS

For the next decade, despite spectacular projects, like the new capital, Brasilia, the economy limped badly.

The cost of living went up and up as the government resorted to the printing press to meet its needs.

A first need for any advance in the country was an agrarian revolution. The masses live in hovels, soil erosion spreads every year and dependence on coffee ties the economy closely to the price changes on the world market. In the countryside discontent is rife, breaking out into sporadic revolt Communist Party time?

He will not answer this question because, for the same basic political reason, it is impossible to remove the present leadership of the British Communist Party without the formation of a faction.

Like Stalin before him, Mahon distorts Lenin's resolution on factions at the 10th Congress in order to justify the infallible rule of the present Stalinist King Street leadership.

It is a lie to suggest, as the Communist Panty leaders do, that Trotskyists are factionalists. If it has been necessary for our movement to form factions then these have always been organised on a principled political basis.

Inside the Communist Party, the leadership, under Stalin and since, are irremovable: They constitute a clique devoted not to principles but to maintaining K frightened of Stalin their control over the party all costs.

Under these conditions it impossible to make any change within the Communist Part without forming a faction.

This is a democratic rigl entirely in conformity with th principles of democratic centra ism which cannot be given u under any circumstances.

A familiar trick of Stalinis like Mahon is to accuse thos who want to change the polic and the leadership of the Parl of being splitters. This metho is borrowed • straight from tr Stalin school.

The Platform of the Le Opposition published in 192 resolutely opposed Stalin attempts to seize upon tr struggle of the Opposition i order to split the Party. Tr provocation for a split cam FOR LATIN AMERICANS against the landlords: 8 per cent of the population owns nearly three-quarters of the land.

In Brazil, as in Argentine, political leaders promising reforms can sweep to power on a popular vote.

Thus, in 1961 Janio Quadros was elected President on reform programme, clashed with the army and resigned after eight months. This opened the way for the vice-president Goulart who, despite the opposition of the reactionary forces, was endorsed as President.

LANDOWNERS

In the meantime the growing economic difficulties had brought into being a powerful coalition of the big landowners with a large section of the bourgeoisie, resigned to dependence on US imperialism.

The kind of reformism represented by Goulart could have no place in the situation:

which was leading to a direct confrontation between the workers and peasants and the ruling class. Accused of being pro-communist, in fact, Goulart's policy was characterised by extreme timidity.

As Andrew Gunder Frank wrote in the New York 'Nation': 'There was much talk about reforms, followed by consistent sell-outs to the domestic and foreign forces that oppose any change at all.' Nothing serious was done to resolve the land problem. Over the past three years Brazilian political life was one long crisis.

In this, Frank says: 'Goulart talked loud and on the quiet gave in to right-wing pressure.' Like his predecessor he was it does now Mahon.

'The most important, the most actual, question' says the Platform:

• and the one which troubles all the members of our Party, is the question of party unity. And in truth it Is upon this question that the further fate of the proletarian revolution depends. Innumerable class enemies of the proletariat are listening intently to our inner-party disputes and with unconcealed delight and impatience are awaiting a split in our ranks.

A split in our party, a formation of two parties would mean enormous danger to the revolution.

We, the opposition, unqualifiedly condemn every attempt whatsoever to create a second party. The slogan of two parties is the slogar of the Stalin group in its efforts to crowd out of the All-Union Communist Party the Leninist Opposition. Our task is not to create a new party, but to correct the course of the All-Union Communist Party. The proletarian revolution in the Soviet Union can win through to the end only with a united Bolshevik party.

'We are struggling within the Communist Party for our demn slogan, parties", as the slogan of adventurers. The slogan "Iwo parties" expresses on the one hand the desire of certain elements in the party apparatus for a split, and on the other, a mood of despair and a failure to comprehend that the task of Leninists is to win the victory of Lenin's ideas within the party, notwithstanding all difficulties.

Nobody who sincerely defends the line of Lenin can entertain the idea of "two parties" or play with the suggestion of a split. Only those who desire to replace Lenin's course with some other can advocate a split or a movement along the two-party road.' This is the tradition of Trotakyism so far as factions are concerned. We always fight for unity on a principled Marxist basis. It is precisely hose who do not desire such unity but want to maintain their bureaucratic positions at all costs who are guilty of splitting the Communist Movement.

was unable to break the close relations between the army and the US, while dependence upon US financial aid grew.

The removal of Goulart was a mere episode. To quote Frank again: "The only new thing is the speed and out and out callousness of American official support for the military coup' The forces of reaction in Latin America know that much is at stake. They have lined up behind the screen of the 'Alliance For Progress' to maintain their privileges and wealth. Their only policy is to take American aid and make the best of things while they can.

As for the Americans, they must understand that Latin American conditions do not permit economic and political stabilisation under reformist leadership. At the present time such leaderships are likely to be the most unstable.

PROMISES

Elected by the workers and peasants they are not able to fulfil any of their promises. There is, therefore, a constant risk that they will be outflanked by the entry of the masses onto the scene in a revolutionary way.

Reactionary and repressive dictatorships continue to offer the best hope of safeguarding the interests of American capital.

But such regimes decay and fester, become torn by inner feuds and prepare the way for their own overturn. In the meantime the basic problems remain unsolved and bear down upon the masses with increasing force.

May 23, THE NEWSLETTE Three

/ on Tuesday this week was marred by threats of new attempts to overthrow the Castro regime.

Last week a Cuban sugar factory at Peurto Pilon was shelled from a ship lying offshore. Under cover of this attack, small groups of counter-revolutionaries managed to land on the island.

Rumours among Cuban exiles in the USA suggest that a larger invasion is planned.

Cuba's anti-imperialist government has alerted its troops to deal quickly with any attempt that might take place.

Behind the new threats are two men very dear to the heart of the US government. They are Manuel Artime and Manolo Ray who were trained by the American Central Intelligence Agency for the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961.

Fiasco

During that fiasco they were taken prisoner in Cuba, but the Us government valued their services so highly that it paid Castro close on £357,000 in ransom money for their release.

The CIA is now strongly denying that it is involved in the new wave of anti-Castro activity. If this is true, can they explain where Ray and Artime obtained their funds for setting up headquarters and training camps in Nicaragua and Costa Rica?

And who paid for their weapons and explosives?

Last year the US government discouraged repeat performances of the Bay of Pigs invasion. This did not mean a change in policy.

It was done in order to help Khrushchev carry out the terms of his back-down in 1962, when he promised the withdrawal of Soviet military personnel from the island, without any hitches.

Withdrawal

Disturbances might haver slowed down this process. But now that the Russian withdrawal is nearly complete there has been a resurgence of imperialist - inspired anti - Cuban activity.

Worried about its widespread interests in Latin America, the US is prepared to give support, whether open or secret, to anyone who aims to stamp out the challenge that Cuba has presented to its domination.

Thus, the outcome of Khrushchev's 1962 manoeuvres, first putting missiles into Cuba and then taking them out again, is to put the Cuban revolution into still greater danger:

FOLLOWING the successful overthrow of Senhor Goulart in Brazil and encouraged by the lack of resistance, right-wing military and political leaders in Chile are toying with similar ideas in order to frustrate the election of Salvador Allende as President.

The right wing do not trust Ällende because he is being sponsored by the socialists and trade union organisations in Chile. They are constituted into a front calling itself the Revolutionary Front of Popular Action (FRAP).

According to the constitution of Chile the successful candidate must receive an absolute majority of votes in the presidential election.

If he does not win a majority, the Congress elects the president.

Senator Allende probably will not receive 51 per cent of the votes in which case a right-wing nominee, with the backing of the armed forces, could become President.

MUTINEERS SENTENCED TANGANYIKA-Fourteen NCOs and men of the Tanganyika Rifles who took part in the mutiny last January were sentenced to terms of imprisenment ranging from three to fifteen years last week. to the Congress were searched in case they were concealing copies for distribution inside the hall.

Pierre Kahn was refused admission to the Congress.

Officials have now closed down the UEC as a separate organisation and merged the students with the other youth sections in the hope that their criticisms will be stifled.

During the pre-conference discussion one branch (19th arrondissement-Stalingrad) supported the students and condemned the Party's action. Maurice Thorez was criticised and a number of other branches nominated candidates for the Central Committee who were not favoured by the Party leadership.

Some of those nominated included previous members of the committee who had been removed for 'deviationism'.

These branches did this in spite of the presence of party officials sent to discourage them from straying from the party line.

The measures of "democratisation' by the leadership are attempts to head off the criticism which expresses the dissatisfaction of the rank and file at the lack of any political discussion in the party since the thirties and the inability of the Communist Party to take any decisive action against French capitalism, in spite of the many opportunities that it has had.

Fou 23,1964

French CP's neu image is smashed Student section disbanded Communist Party did everything they could to make their 'new democratic image' as obvious as possible it was clear that such actions were only a cover for the repression of any criticism that is now taking place.

A week before the congress the Union of Communist Students (UEC) brought out the latest edition of their magazine 'Clarte' It contained two articles which caused the leadership some concern.

One was a reprint of part of 'Rinascita', the official theoretical paper of the Italian Communist Party by Palmiro Togliatti.

In it he condemned the Chinese Communist Party, but also criticised the French proposal for an International Communist Congress to excommunicate the Chinese.

The second article, by the secretary of the UEC, Pierre Kahn, criticised the way in which the party leadership maintains itself through the control of the Central Committee elections.

Party leaders did all they could to stop the journal from appearing. Funds were cut off, but the students raised the cash through a national appeal. Officials visited the printers and threatened to withdraw party custom from the firm — this threat was withdrawn when the students said they would expose the move.

SEARCHED

The leadership refused to hand over part of the copy which was being printed on the official party press-the students simply went elsewhere.

Once the magazine had appeared the officials concentrated their efforts on preventing the party members from seeing it. Student delegates and visitors Nothing from Rochet i a nve-nour speech at ln L 17th Congress of the rrenc. Communist Party, Waldeck Rochet, the recently - elected secretary presented the 'new look' party line.

But his speech contained much that the party has said before.

He accused the Gaullists of failing to defend the country's interests.

They claim to defend France's independence, said Rochet, but, at the same time, they allow foreign companies to install themselves in the 'very heart of the French economy'.

The party, he added, must ally with Mollet's socialist party (S.F.I.O.) against the anti-social policies of monopoly.

Alliance

Rochet is, in fact, calling for an alliance with a man who was prime minister at the time of the Suez campaign.

Is it this proof of Mollet's Willingness to defend the interests of France that commends him to Rochet?

The Congress showed that there is no change in the party's image or in Rochet's personal traditions.

During the last war he was liaison officer between the resistance movement in France and the Gaullist government in exile in Britain.

It was this government — in which three CP members sat— which prepared the destruction of the resistance militants and the rebuilding of the French state under capitalism at the end of the war.

The CP played an active role in the campaign for 'one state, one army, one police force' in which workers were persuaded to hand back their weapons. Rochet's policies today are a continuation of these actions. All talk of change and a 'new look' is mere sham.

Reappear

Many of the party's traditional themes reappear-the attack on the common market, demands to be admitted to its ruling institutions and the condemnation of the French bourgeoisie for failing to defend the country's interests.

Rochet and his colleagues fail completely to analyse imperialism. This is shown in their patriotic horror at the idea that foreign companies are operating in France.

They are totally unrealistic in their hope that socialism will be achieved in France through peaceful transition.

UNLOADING DISPUTE ITALY-Dockers staged a one-day strike last week in protest against big shipping firms by-passing the dockers and using their own labour for loading and unloading cargo ships. Further strikes are planned for next week. W an end to war in Laos, President Johnson HILE US diplomats frantically appeal for decides to pour another £50,000,000 into the million-pound-a-dav war in South Vietnam. 'We are pledged before all tr are pledged before all the world to stand with the free people of Vietnam Secretary of State, Dean Rusk asked Britain to make representations to Peking to use its influence on the Pathet Lao (communist) forces, who have already overrun neutralist installations on the Plain of Jars.

Britain is as anxious as the US to preserve the neutralist government of Prince Souvanna Phouma as Laos borders part of the Malaysian Federation, and has agreed to approach Peking.

A State Department spokesman said it was not clear whether the US was contemplațing military action in Laos. But it is obvious from Johnson's move that the war there and in Vietnam is seen as one and the additional military aid will be used against both the Pathet Lao and the Vietcong.

CH Phong "Mue Tạo.

Sgly ong Hángi NAM THÀ NORTH Sam Maur VIET Luang Probangz Vientia Khammouang At this critical stage for imperialism in South-east Asia, Johnson also begins a tubthumping campaign.

'By our words and deeds in a decade of determined effort we are pledged before all the world to stand with the free people of Vietnam. Sixteen thousand Americans are serving our country and the people of Vietnam,' he says.

7th Fleet Johnson forgets to add that the infamous 7th Fleet has moved from the Pacific into the Indian Ocean — within striking distance of Saigon and Vientiane.

He continually talks of the 'free' and "peaceful' people of South-east Asia.

These same people are, in fact, helping the guerillas and, in South Vietnam, were trying to free themselves from suppression when they deposed puppet ruler Ngo Dinh Diem.

The reason for more aid, says Johnson, is because 'the Vietcong guerrillas, under orders from their communist masters in the north, have intensified terrorist actions against the peaceful people of South Vietnam. The increased terrorism requires increased response' It is this 'response' which will take more terror, in the form of napalm (fire) bombs and other highly destructive arms, into South Vietnam. All foreign troops must be withdrawn from South-east Asia now.

PRAGUE-On his arrival in Prague last week, Ben Bella was met with the kind of welcome usually reserved for leaders of other communist countries. Met by President Novotny and Premier Lenart, Ben Bella was praised for having chosen "the road of socialism'.

Bulgarian leader Zhivkov also praised Ben Bella and spoke of a 'complete identity of views' between the two countries.

At the French Communist Party Congress last week-end, the FLN sent fraternal delegates.

Presumably all this praise and agreement extends to Ben Bella's banning of the Algerian Communist Party? world to stand with the he said this week.

many weeks now critics of the LSSP (Lanka Sama Samaja Party) of Ceylon have waited for some sign of animation from the Unified Secretariat of the revisionist Pabloite Fourth International on the strange and undignified flirtation between the LSSP and the capitalist SLFP (government party) in Ceylon.

After all, the Unified Secretariat has in the last four years consistently covered up the shameful retreat of the LSSP leaders on the basic class issues in Ceylon.

As recently as June 1963 the Unified Secretariat boastfully declared:

'Our Ceylonese section has progressively corrected the wrong orientation adopted in 1960 of supporting the liberal bourgeois government of the SLFP:

Of course nothing could be further from the truth.

In the course of the last 10 years the leaders have quietly dropped the action programme of the party summarised in the slogan of 'a workers and peasants Samasamaja government with an anti-capitalist programme'.

In 1953 the Party split precisely on the issue of the anticapitalist government or Democratic (i.e., coalition) government.

Now the situation has changed and coalition • is not an extravagant hope of Dr. N. M. Perera but the immediate prospect before the party. Thus the stage is being set for the complete liquidation of the LSSP as a working-class party.

RESOLUTION

The 1964 May Day resolution adopted by the LSSP and other parties of the ULF (United Left Front) brought liquidation a step nearer when it stated unequivocally:

"This rally welcomes the growing realisation within the SLFP that the present crisis should be solved in co-operation with the ULF. This can be achieved to the extent that the progressive forces within the SLFP in addition to opposing the UNP-led reaction also successfully oppose reactionary right-wing forces within their own ranks.' This is classic formula in Sovie published to demonstrate how different things are under Khrushchev from Stalin's day.

But the case of Brodsky, reported by Victor Zorza (The Guardian', 13/5/64) shows that the considerable changes which have taken place since Stalin's death in 1953 have not basically altered the relation of the bureaucracy to the workers' state.

Brodsky, a 24-year-old poet was, in 1962, under suspicion of being associated with Shakhmatov and Umansky, two men arrested for preaching 'yoga philosophy and anarchoindividualism' to young people in Leningrad.

ATTACKED

Some of his manuscripts and diaries were taken away by the KGB (security police), but he was not touched.

During 1963, his work came to the attention of leading Soviet writers who regarded it as of very high value. Then last November, he was attacked in a Leningrad evening paper as a 'dissolute and cynical parasite.

Poems he had not written were attributed to him and quotations from his own writings were distorted to give them an anti-Soviet slant.

He was tried in February this year and sentenced to five years' forced labour. At present he is carrying manure on a state for popular frontism, which must be fought and exposed ruthlessly.

But what does the Unified Secretariat have to say on this vital question?

It neither fights anybody nor exposes anything. Instead it collaborates and connives with the leaders in this latest act of treachery and deception. In volume two No. 20 (15/5/64) of 'World Outlook' we read:

'Most of the points made are excellent, although the text does contain some weakness and even errors [sic!] from the Marxist point of view.' And what are the errors the Secretariat wishes to combat? The danger of liquidation? Illusions in Parliament? No! Much worse and more reprehensible things are at stake. The ULF, it seems, is wrong to demand a guaranteed price system to ensure 'that the cultivator gets the full value of his product.

DEDUCTION

The Unified Secretariat is quick to point out that even under socialism a deduction must be made from the 'full value to cover social expenditures . • The traitors, it seems, are guilty not of treachery but of a faulty economic knowledge!

The reason for this shameless and scandalous indulgence shown by the Unified Secretariat can only be explained on the basis of opportunism.

Wracked by crises and rent by splits [the latest being the defection of Pablo with his own publication in Algeria] the Secretariat strives deserately to maintain a facade of unity.

Rather than expel the Menshevik leaders of the LSSP it tolerates them in the hope that nobody will notice that the corpse is beginning to stink.

The time is now ripe for all genuine communists in the LSSP to rally round the banner of Marxist Internationalism and reject the cowardly policies of their leaders and their patrons in the Unified Secretariat.

The fight for Marxism in the LSSP is inseparable from the struggle to build the Fourth International on Marxist foundations. farm near Archangel.

Several important writers and artists, including composer, Shostakovitch and poet Marshak, have protested to the Central Committee.

Sections of the bureaucracy, the real parasites who run the Soviet state, have seen the need to loosen the stranglehold on all aspects of Soviet life which was exercised in Stalin's time.

This is a defensive move on their part to head off a growing pressure from the working class, especially the younger generation.

SENSITIVE

Far from being a return to the methods of • Lenin and Trotsky, it is an attempt to stop such a move.

Thus the bureaucrats remain acutely sensitive to any activity in the ideological sphere which might challenge their supremacy.

This is why young intellectuals may be driven to express their protests at the contradiction between Soviet reality and Marxist theory in ways which may not directly help to resolve the problems.

Whatever form the ideas of men like Brodsky may take, the freedom to develop them must be seen as part of the preparation for working class struggles to remove the bureaucrats and re-establish workers' democracy in the Soviet Union.

AS part of his intensive pre-election campaign, democrat president Lyndon Johnson has made it his business to pay do-gooding visits to see how the other half lives in the United States.

With his face set in a suitably grim and sympathetic line Johnson travelled 2,500 miles on a whistlestop tour, shaking hands with poverty stricken miners in Maryland and telling workers in the dole queues that he 'really cared'.

In preparation for the president's visit, a poor farming family in the Rocky Mounains • had to harvest their oat crops earlier than usual on orders from the White House to make a landing space for Johnson's helicopter.

The President, whose wife is a millionairess, claims he will start an anti-poverty campaign in the US.

Meanwhile in his wife's own back yard there are tenants who live in mere shacks with leaking roofs and no paint on the walls.

British national • newspapers carried photographs of wooden huts on the Johnsons' estate in Alabama, where their employees are expected to live.

Whilst Johnson carries on a hypocritical campaign for catching votes under the guise of a War on Poverty, his tenants rot on his wife's huge estate.

Lady Bird Johnson, as the president's wife is so very fondly known in the rich circles of America, is reported to graciously deliver little bundles of clothes to her tenants every now and then.

It is not really surprising that she has been able to amass such a large amount of wealth. Lady Bird Johnson and her husband obviously do it by keeping the wages and conditions of their employees down to rock bottom.

TWO reports from Russi last week illustrale vividly the past and present character of the Soviet bureaucratic regime. One refers to the memoirs of General Alexander Gorbatov, published recently in Moscow by 'Novy Mir'. • The other tells of the persecution of a young poet, Josif Brodsky.

Gorbatov was arrested in 1938, after he refused to give false evidence against other Red Army leaders, purged for "Trotskyism' the previous year.

His memoirs recount how he was tortured and sentenced to three years' exile in a Siberian labour camp. This was the period when Stalin decimated the Red Army general staff, weakening the defence of the Soviet Union just before Hitler attacked.

MISSION

When Gorbatov was released he had to swear not to reveal where he had been and was issued with papers which stated that he had been on a prolonged and dangerous' military mission.

During the war he played an important part in the campaign of the Red Army. He was decorated and later elected to the Supreme Soviet and the Party Central Committee, still keeping his secret.

Now, his autobiography

Tyneside are using the threat of loss of work in an attempt to keep the area as a source of cheap labour.

Over 3,500 ship repair workers—members of the recently amalgamated Boilermakers & Shipwrights Society — are now banning overtime in support of a wage claim.

Last week the district committee of the shipwrights' section of the Society decided that 2,000 shipwrights should ban overtime. One thousand five hundred boilermakers were already operating a ban.

So the press intervened. 'Dispute Costs Tyne Big Repair Contract declared a banner headline in the Newcastle 'Evening Chronicle' over a story reporting that a ship repair contract had gone to the conlinent because of industrial unrest on the Tyne.

Then the chairman of the North-East Coast Shiprepairers Association issued a statement declaring that the Tyne is likely to lose its reputation for dependability, quick delivery and good prices.

Statement

Local leaders of the overtime ban have made militant statements. Chairman of the shipwrights district committee, E. Brooke told the press: 'For too long we have been working for peanuts. It is cheap labour and the only way we can get something is to ask for it and do something about it. We always have to fight for it and that is What we are doing now.' But the union has no positive policy for fighting the employers' plans for reorganising the yards.

The Shipwrights are demanding equal pay with the boilermakers, but they are left to fight through their separate committees instead of jointly.

Members of the union should demand now that the leaders organise a united national blow against the employers. A victory on Tyneside would mean a raising of conditions in other ship repair yards in the country.

in Manchester the most militant 17.

The strike began on May 11 when four workers were sacked for talking in working hours. Included in the four, who all work in the B-Turbine shop, was convenor Clifford Renshaw.

Immediately 200 men in the shop came out, demanding reinstatement of the sacked men. The following Thursday these men received telegrams saying they should return to work and give no-strike assurances to their supervisors, or take their cards.

As a result of this ultimatum, the Manchester District Committee of the AEU decided to call out all their members in the five factories.

By Monday, May 19, shop stewards claimed 7,000 were on strike. Many more join the strike daily.

The action of AEI is almost identical to that of Ford and is the preparation for reorganisation and speed-up.

The pretext of dismissing four men for talking is farcical.

But the management are not really concerned with talking. They want a docile labour force that will accept automated plants, already being installed in the Leonard Street factory at Trafford Park, Manchester.

They have already said automation will lead to a 10 per cent reduction in the labour force.

RESISTANCE

They have also had their first taste of resistance from workers to such action. Three months ago they tried to dismiss maintenance men and bring in contractors. A strike of maintenance men at all their factories in Britain forced them to retreat.

And, at a mass meeting last Tuesday, Mr. Bob Wright, secretary of the Manchester District Committee of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions said: 'Under no condition will we tolerate a demand by any employer that workers should forfeit the right to strike. Their demands would, in effect, make that a condition of employment." mittee (a shop stewards-management comprised body).

Without inviting seven members of the committee, who are on strike, to attend a meeting, the committee put out a statement calling on all workers to return to work.

The management and Tory press are playing on what appears to be a split among the shop stewards.

PICKET LINES

In the face of these tactics the picket lines have swelled considerably this week.

Picket lines, three-deep, line up outside the firm and put up a continual barrage of speeches and slogans with loudspeakers and megaphones.

AEI strikers and all engineering workers must be left with no illusions about the nature of the struggle with which they are faced.

AEI is one of Britain's biggest monopolies. Its tentacles stretch out into an empire worth over £150,000,000. Head of its directors is Lord Chandos, who is connected with dozens of other giants of British capitalism.

In fighting this combine, the workers in Trafford Park are fighting the British ruling class. A defeat could strengthen the determination of all employers and seriously demoralise thousands of engineering workers.

STOP PRESS:

The strike was called off just before The Newsle' iter went to press.

ELECTRICIANS on the huge Piccadilly Plaza site in Manchester have won a significant victory against the Federation of Electrical Contractors' Association.

Over 65 electricians and mates working for the two contractors on the site-Drake and Gorhams and Associated Fire Alarms--went back to work last week after two weeks on strike. They have won a wage increase of Is. an hour.

The site, which has been four and a half years under construction, is one of the biggest in Manchester.

In spie of attempts by the area secretary of the Electrical Trades Union to force them back to work, the men showed that by a determined stand the employers could be made to climb down.

Al first the management of Drake and Gorhams refused to negotiate while the strike conlinued.

The area secretary appeared on the site and persuaded 15 electricians who work for Associated Fire Alarms to return to work.

Fifty men remained on the picket line and finally won the agreement.

This is thought to be the largest amount ever conceded by a member of the employers' National Federation of Electrical Contractors Association.

Registered at the G.P O. as a newspaper Published by The Newsletter. 186л Clapham High Street, _London, S. W.4 Printed by Plough Press Ltd.

The management, he said, had refused to negotiate with the union until the strikers returned on the company's terms.

"This is a challenge to the whole trade union movement. Our objective is, therefore, a 100 per cent strike,' said Wright.

Linwood

THE ROOTES company at Linwood have called in two trade union leaders, John Boyd, executive member of the AEU and Les Keeley of the Transport and General Workers' Union, in an effort to stop unofficial strikes at their car factory.

Boyd has announced that he possesses "plans' , but has not stated if they are to give the car workers the step-up in wages which they have been fighting for. Nor has he stated how he stands in relation to the Rootes company's introduction of a variation of the Emerson 'efficiency' plan which has been imposed at the Pressed Steel plant across the road with such ill-ellect.

It is doubtful whether Boyd will raise with the Rootes workers at Linwood the question of the stand taken by his union's national committee for the nationalization of industry.

This would be an eflective way to end differences with Lord Rootes—-for the factory to be run for the benefit of all workers.

OVER 1,000 porters employed at the famous Covent Garden market have been given notice by the employer-members of the Tenants' Association following a dispute over working conditions at Dennis and Coopers Ltd. The notice takes effect on May 23.

Nine men in the tirm retused to work a new escalator-used for carrying goods from the cellar to the top floor.

For the porters' convenience escalators have previously been installed at the front of the shopthe new one was put at the back.

Porters claim that, since most shops are about 50 yards long, putting the escalator at the back of the shop has made the carrying of goods much more difficult.

Porters at the ofher premises of Dennis and Cooper Ltd. came out on strike in sympathy with the nine men who were dismissed. LIC ASIA RAGE TIRIU A representative of the Transport and General Workers' Union has refused to enter into negotiations with the management unless an arbitrator is present.

UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

The employers claim that he is supporting unconstitutional action and that the dispute cannot be allowed to continue 'in the interests of the market's future'.

Notices will be withdrawn, say the employers, when assurances are given that the union and the porters are prepared to honour an agreement made in 1957.

Porters feel strongly about the actions faken by the market bosses. "They all get together and hold a whip over us, one man told The al Denis and Claim are Boods transported by salesmen. Workers on the market have, of course, refused to touch the firm's produce. snown wal to take on their way.

This dispute could have serious implications for porters. If the men lose this case they will be wide open to attacks from the Covent Garden Tenants' Association in the future.

The market is expected to move south of the Thames to larger premises soon.

The employers will want to streamline sections of the work. They could be attempting to weed out militants now in preparation for this.

The actions of the Tenants' Association in this dispute have shown that they are quite willing nila marres that thaer nas marita milline 1,000 workers to get London engineers for the sack FOLLOWING trade losses in the past two years, nearly halt the labour force at Dewrance Company Ltd., Southwark, London, will get the sack.

The firm—an engineering company--claim that losses amounted to £780,000 last year.

Workers have not yet been told details of pay-off or when the dismissals will start.

The management are having talks with the Ministry of Labour about finding jobs for the 400Strong labour force.

In addition to these sackings in London 400 workers at the company's factory in Dumbarton, Scotland, will also be dismissed. was a general feeling of dissatisfaction among members at the recent turn of events.

There was great anger and bitterness at what scemed to be an inability of the union leaders to cope satisfactorily with main issues.

Mr. Fox said that the remarkable similarity of resolutions from various districts this year indicated that members were frustrated and disappointed with the way the union had dealt with matters like the 40-hour wiek, realistic holiday pay, national wage values, redundancy and severance pay.

Out-gunned

He suggested that the union had allowed itself to be outmanoeuvred and out-gunned by the employers too many times.

They had not grasped their opportunities and had accepted work-study to be used in some factories.

The general feeling among delegates was that the union leaders had been taken in by vague promises from the employers and that the union membership was now having to pay for this failure of leadership.

As one delegate pointed out, there had been a return to night working and other changes that had worsened their conditions of employment to the point where members were crying 'halt' Job timing 250 out LONDON — Workers who came out on strike at United Glass Company, Charlton, last Friday have not gone back to work yet.

Two hundred and fifty engineering workers walked out after a dispute over the proposed use of a stop watch.

OXFORD - After a driver was dismissed at the Vehicle Collection Ltd., 60 men went on strike, demanding the unconditional геinstatement of their mate.

EMPLOYERS and the press on MANY of the The management are determined to follow the lead of the Ford bosses who, 18 months ago, broke the power of shop stewards and sacked workers Associated • five Manchester factories are Joining Attempts to win support of other workers have been made difficult by the activities of the leadership of the works comSHOP workers who were sacked after coming out on strike at Decorwall, Coventry, are maintaining a daily picket outside other shops in the city owned by the firm - Wallpaper Manufacturers Ltd.

The workers walked out of the shop after their manager Eric Black was dismissed in March.

Black put forward a number of demands to the management and later, after he asked the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers-of which he is a member-to take the matter up, he was sacked.

The management brought in new staff to fill the vacancies at Decorwall. In this way they hoped to end the matter and prevent their staff from becoming organised by USDAW.

CONTRACTS

Maurice Edelman, MP for Coventry North asked the Minister of Labour not to place further orders with, or give government contracts to Wallpaper Manufacturers Ltd. in view of the company's attitude to the workers on strike.

In reply the Minister told him that Black was not sacked for joining the union.

Mr. Philip Hocking, Tory MP for Coventry South is reported to have repeated smears which were made against Black when he received his notice of dismissal from the firm.

The Coventry branch of USDAW has challenged Hocking to produce evidence for his statement.

The union regard this whole affair as an attack on trade unions and on the rights of workers to join a union of their own choice.

Trade union members Coventry have been advised to buy at shops controlled the company.

Steps have now been spread the strike.

APPEAL

Black told a Newsletter reporter: 'It is most important now that all the company's products should be blacked by the trade union movement nationally and that other unions, whose members carry goods from Wallpaper Manufacturers Ltd., should see that the company's communications are halted.' The Transport and General Workers' Union regional office has been approached.

Pickets are appealing for more support and a committee has been set up to organise large numbers of pickets on Saturday. Hosiery workers condemn leaders FULL-TIME officers and the national executive of the National Union of Hosiery Workers were rebuked in a motion carried by delegates at the union's conference at Dunoon last week-end.

The altack was led by Mr. George Fox, of the Southern District, who claimed that there

A Yorkshire mining area NEWSLETTER reporter investigate housing conditions. LOSCOE, May 17 legs.

Damp walls, leaking roofs, Life is full of broken-down lavatories, flies Loscoe people. in hat weather rate dancerans particular, worry falls for children ... these are the conditions under which working-class people have to live in this pit village.

Mr. Fred Dimmock told me that, because of leaking roofs, tarpaulins had been fixed to the houses, but the walls were so weak that the tarpaulins blew away pulling more slates off.

Mr. Dimmock's neighbour, Mrs. Smith showed me a damp patch on her wall. Since moving into Alabany Street three years ago, Mrs. Smith's five-year-old daughter has been in hospital five times with a chest complaint.

One woman told me the pipe under her sink has no U-bend and the waste goes straight into the cellar.

Smelly stream

I inspected a nearby stream and found it full of rubble. It smells horribly in hot weather. Women say it is inhabited by rats.

There is a 25-yard gap in the wall at the end of Alabany Street behind which the stream runs. This gap leaves the street open on to a six-foot drop.

Only last week two-year-old Terry Gill fell down this drop and badly cut and bruised his Gorbals tenants form committee TENANTS from Oatlands, the Gorbals, Glasgow, area (featured in The Newsletter recently) have set up a committee to continue their fight against slum housing.

At a meeting held by the tenants a young speaker urged that the fight be taken up inside the labour movement.

He stressed that the fight against slum housing was a fight against landlords. In order to take this up a Labour government should introduce legislation to take over property and bring housing under the control of local authorities.

In Scotland there has been a crisis in the building industry due to a shortage of bricks. Some workers have been laid off for temporary periods.

Planning

Nationalization of the building indusiry and proper planning would prevent such situations arising.

A member of the audience suggested that the tenants unite with the churches, who are carrying out a survey of housing conditions in the area.

The chairman, Mrs. Josephine Collins said the tenants were willing to co-operate with any organisation against slum housing. She pointed out, however, that the ellorts of the church were confined solely to official channels and that tenants had learned by hard experience that this was not sufficient.

The committee will contact trade union branches and the Trades Council for support and Co-operative shops will be asked to display posters announcing the committee's activities.

Gia:

Speaker:

Secretary, Socialist Greet The Newsletter Sunday, June artick Burgh Hall (Lesser Hal Burgh Hall Street (Underground to Merkland St. Station) children —about their health living in damp houses, about the danger from flies and from the stream.

The only people who don't seem to worry are the local councillors.

Commented Mr. Dimmock: "They always promise to rebuild that wall at election times, but you hear no more about it after the voting....' PONTEFRACT, May REPAIRS have been carried out at some of the worst houses in Halfpenny Lane, but this is only after the public. health inspector had been called in and the landlords were threatened with legal action by the Pontefract town council.

But the problem is not solved.

Mr. Ron Downham told me he had received notice lo quit after complaining to the sanitory inspector about his house. Some repairs had been carried out and floorboards had been replaced. But the main beams were still rotten and Mr. Downham showed me a large piece of one beam which had come off in his hand.

No electricity Mr. Downham, a process worker, and his wife have three children aged 6z, 4ž and 14 months. The eldest is ill and is supposed to have a hot bath every day as part of his treatment, but there is no hot water -and no bath-so Mr. and Mrs. Downham have to heat the water in a washer and pump it into a tin bath.

When the family moved in four years ago, the house was lit by gas. Mr. Downham says he paid for electricity being installed himself.

Nearby, Mr. and Mrs. Whitham have eight children. Five boys sleep in one bedroom and three girls in another. Mr. and Mrs. Whitham sleep downstairs.

Once, when she was pregnant, Mrs. Whitham fell through the floorboards and dislocated her shoulder. On another occasion her 12-year-old daughter, Sheila, fell through a hole in the floor.

Here, too, floors have been repaired and walls plastered. But this has been done four or five times in the 12 years that the Whithams have lived there.

Solution

The only solution to the problem of bad housing conditions in Loscoe, Pontefract and all over the country is not hasty patching-up jobs, but complete re-housing at rents working-class families can afford Voters, like those in Loscoe, should not shun Labour. They should help return a Labour government, then fight through organised tenants' associations for the implementation of policies of nationalization of the building industry and land. ¡gow MEETING 14, 7.30 p.m. worries for Mothers, in about their