The Newsletter, vol. 8 no. 355

Vol. 8, FOR WAGE RISE Big Lobby for £15 • HOUSANDS of Manchester and day token strike on wage. • Coachloads of workers from London to lobby the national Transport and General Workers' wage offer will be discussed.

Workers throughout the industry have been incensed this week by reports in the national press which claim that the offer is in the region of Ss. to os. a week.

They are also angry over reports in the 'Financial Times' that union leaders are 'reasonably satisfied' with the offer.

It is these reports and the secrecy surrounding talks on wages, the 40-hour week and decasualisation schemes that led to the strike being called.

Friday's demonstration must receive the support of dockers in all ports. The Newsletter calls on delegates to the docks' conference to reject the employers' offer—unless it brings the wage rate up to f15—and cut all the strings attached by the employers to the 40hour week.

These strings include increased mobility of labour, rate of flexibility in manning scales and compulsory overtime on Saturday mornings.

Unite.

The long record of retreats by the Transport and General Workers' Union must also be halted by creating a united front of both TGWU and National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers on a national scale.

A charter of demands on wages, hours and decasualisation must be worked out by rank and file dockers.

The Merseyside area committee of the National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers called the strike last Monday.

The committee condemned the failure of the union dockers from the Merseyside, Hull ports are joining a oneFriday to demand a £15 basic these ports are travelling to delegate conference of the Union where the employers' representalive: the National Joint Industrial Council to disclose the employers' July 7 wage offer.

The decision to strike comes after months of waiting for a reply on the wage claim.

In May, Merseyside dockers said they would take every necessary action to back up their demands for £15. This was endorsed later at a 7,000-strong meeting on Merseyside and dockers in other ports were consulted.

At Hull last week dockers endorsed this action.

Determined

Support for the strike at dock gate meetings in Liverpool, Birkenhead and Garston this week has been overwhelming.

Dockers are determined to show union officials and the employers that they are not prepared to accept a few miserable shillings increase.

For two years they have been subjected to a wage freeze. The last increase was in May 1962 when the basic rate was increased to compensate for the reduction in hours from 44 to 42.

It is expected the men will receive a further 9s. when, on July 27, the hours are reduced from 42 to 40 a week.

Although the hours have been reduced, production has increased.

Dockers suspect that the employers hope to keep any wage increase down to a minimum so that later this year, they can introduce their decasualisation scheme on the basis of a basic wage of f11 a week.

Socialist Labour Leaguo sug B/OSL FILE Ceylon unions to discuss next 21 demands Colombo, July 9 A • MEETING to discuss the next steps in the campaign for the 21 demands is being called by the Joint Council of Trade Union Organisations for Wednesday, July 15, at the Ceylon Workers' Council headquarters.

Mr. N. Sanmugathasan, • General Secretary of the Ceylon Trade Union Federation has invited the other 14 trade unions who support the demands to participate ir the meeting.

Untortunately, his co-secretary on the Joint Council, Mr. Prins Rajasooriya, who represented the Ceylon Federation of Labour as its General Secretary, has been expelled from that post by the Federation after he broke away from the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and joined the Revolutionary Section.

This is one of the many cases of bureaucratic action taken by ex-Trotskyist renegades who have joined the coalition government.

The secretary of the Public Service Workers Trade Union Federation and the President of the Union of Post and Telecommunication Officers, . Mr. Wilfred Perera, has said that his Federation is ready for any action that will help the Joint Council to win the 21 points.

ATTITUDE

A representative of the Ceylon Mercantile Union, is Bala whose Tampoe, declared that they 'had pressed for the immediate submission of the demands and have not changed their attitude'.

Mr. T. B. Dissanayaka, President of the General Clerical Service Union has said that the steps for Commonwealth prime ministers have no solution for Southern Rhodesia in southern Rhodesia has not been solved at the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Conference held at Marlborough House this week.

In a press conference following a communique issued at the end of the conference Prime Minister Home said he would give 'careful consideration' to the proposal of a constitutional conference at which all Rhodesian parties would be represented Problem child Home remains uncommitted on the question of Rhodesian independence, hoping to keep it in cold storage until after the October election when either a Labour or Tory government will have five years to deal with the problem child.

He was hard pressed by the African prime ministers throughout the conference to declare ETU right wing call for ban on Communists has come at last. Th executive Council of th Electrical Trades Union has decided to ballot the 280,000 membership of the union, proposing a ban on all communists holding union office. They have used the flimsy, and as yet unsubstantiated excuse, that members of the Communist Party have circulated a document containing suggestions for amendments to the rules at the forthcoming rules revision conference. Such conduct, they said, was 'outside interference'.

lis should not come as a surprise to anyone who has studied the behaviour of this small right-wing clique since they became the leadership.

When they talk about the dangers of 'outside interference', they must surely be laughing to themselves. For if anyone used 'outside interference' to gain control of the union it was surely them.

or years they enjoyed the most intimate support of the capitalist press, high-powered television interviewers and a coterie of Catholic trade union chiefs, who take their orders from the Church of Rome. They were instrumental in parading men with masks on their faces before television cameras denouncing those who at the time were in control of the union.

le present attack on the rights of members does not come as a sign of weakness on the part of the Executive Council but as a sign of the strength which has been handed to secretary Ron Smith being members by the police Britain's attitude to Southern Rhodesia.

But their pious programme for independence under majority rule will not solve the problems of African workers and peasants or bring about the immediate release of Nkomo and Sithole from Rhodesian jails.

Responsibility

These African prime ministers should learn to blow their own noses before alleging dictatorsup in olaer tertitories.

Nkrumah himself shares major part of the responsibility for the return of Moise Tshombe to the Congo. His own behaviour during the Ghanaian general strike and his treatment of all opposition is hardly a challenge to Smith.

Nigerian 'independence' has proved to be a farce. Abubakar's regime is a naked capitalist dictatorship which does not hesitate to throw trade EDITORIAL them on a plate by the corrupt Communist Party officials who occupied positions of authority up until the court case of 1962.

For legal reasons we cannot mention certain facts that are well known to union members and are being utilised by the right wing consistently. Mr. Gollan, the General Secretary of the Communist Party also remains silent about these matters although members of his party are involved. Instead he prattles on about fair play for Communists when he is confronted with this latest action.

the opinion of The Newsletter the Communist Party has every right to instruct its members pursue what course of action it wants inside the ETU. To publicly deny that it has this right, as Gollan does, shows the incredible depth to which the political bankruptcy the Communist Party has descended.

ne Newsletter calls upon members of the ETU to oppose all bans on Communist Party members from holding office.

If this is allowed to take place today it is not only the democracy in the union which is being destroyed but the hard-won standard of living of electricians.

pere is more to this latest move than meets the eye.

The present leadership are not frightened of the Communist Party. Something else is being prepared behind the scenes, which will, we are sure, reveal an attempt to tie the union more and more to the policies of the monopolists and the capitalist state. unionists and British socialists in jail on the flimsiest pretexts.

In Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda, the mutiny of the King's African Rifles and the predictable reactions of Obote, Nyerere and Kenyatta in calling in British troops have clearly demonstrated that their mutual fear of the workers and peasants transcends their hostility for the Smiths and Verwoerds of Africa.

Spectre

As Lagos showed recently, the spectre of a resurgent and militant African working class is haunting the Commonwealth prime ministers. Neither Home nor the African leaders can exorcise it.

The Newsletter calls on the British labour movement to demand the immediate release of all political prisoners and self-determination for workers and peasants in Southern Rhodesia.

Salute

the postmen THE wave of unofficial strikes now shaking the postal services is perfectly understandable. For years these men, who are amongst the lowest paid in the country, have been pushed from one government committee to the next, seeking an increase to their wages. ow the lid has blown off and their union leaders such as Mr.

Ron Smith, General Secretary, stand completely exposed. It was under their instructions that postmen time after time postponed a showdown with the government.

Ir. Ron Smith, like so many other right-wingers, is a well-known anti-Trotskyist, who in the past has denounced the Socialist Labour League. Such attacks on Trotskyism and a refusal to fight for the improvement of workers' conditions go hand in hand. he Newsletter salutes the great struggles of postmen all over the country who have now decided to fight it out with the Tory government. This decision is all the more important because it is an implied rejection of the requests of the right-wing Labour leaders that no action such as this should take place before the General Election.

The postmen have rejected this and rightly insist that it is only through strike action that they can substantially improve their wages.

Il trade unionists who want to really fight the Tories must support the postmen. We call upon all sections of the labour movement to do everything in their power to help the postmen win a decisive victory over the Tory government.

can win by The Editor POSTMEN can and must win their wage increase. They have been forced into battle against the powerful and reactionary forces of a Tory government. This strike is a political strike. It can only be won by defeating the government. It must be given, without delay, the fullest support from the labour and trade union movement.

Unfortunately, it must be said that right from the start of present dispute, the men had to fight on two fronts the government and their own union leadership.

When the claim was submitted for enquiry in April, The Newsletter said that Mr. Ron Smith, the general secretary of the union, retreated. We were the only paper on the left who warned postmen that the enquiry was a trap which would bring no results.

If the men had been given proper leadership and fought at that time, they would be enjoying their wage increases today. But Mr. Smith, who is horrified at the thought of militant action, embraced the enquiry with both hands.

He even sent a letter to the 'Daily Worker' on April 22 in which he said:

'We are most appreciative of the way in which our position was unatted aut presenica, and then went on:

'We sincerely hope that it will be a very long time before we have cause lo hit the headlines in the way we did recently.' Congratulated This so-called Communist paper is nothing more than a fraud which found itself at a most critical time of the postman's struggle rubbing shoulders and being congratulated by one of the most right-wing trade union leaders in Britain.

On this occasion, postmen would be well advised to be extremely critical of both Ron Smith and the 'Daily Worker'.

The policy of The Newsletter is not designed to please trade union leaders who refuse to fight on behalf of their members. Postmen have already paid a heavy price for the antics of Ron Smith.

We are sure that they will learn well from the bitter experiences of recent weeks by preparing immediately to extend their struggle. This means shutting down all the postal services in sympathy strikes. If this were done, then the wage increase would be won in a matter of hours.

The men employed at Mount Pleasant have shown the way. As we go to press, 7,000 are out on strike at Mount Pleasant with six carrying on the work of this, the world's largest sorting office.. One of the six, we understand is going to retire in three days, so he won't be around!

Big struggle

The magnificent struggle these men has put heart into post service.

Postmen must be on guard against Ron Smith and his right-wing cronies who urge, them to go back to work under the instructions of the union. These instructions, which include a one-day stoppage and an overtime ban, are inadequate.

One big struggle now by all postal workers, including telephone operators, could win the strike.

page

RELEASE Students and trade unionists picketed the Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference on Tuesday protesting against the detention and trial of two Nigerian trade unionists, a schoolteacher and British lecturer, Dr. Victor Leonard Allen. As Nigeria's Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar, swept in and out of the conference in London, 41-year-old Dr. Allen, trade unionists Sidi Khayam and Jonas Kiomasekenagh Abam and teacher Olushengun Adebayo were appearing in an Ikepa, West Nigerian court.

They are charged with attempting to overthrow the Nigerian government by subversive means, drawing up plans for the same purpose and having in their possession a seditious publication setting out their plans. Several documents have been produced in court. One described Nigeria as a 'semi-independent feudalist capitalist society in the midst of a national democratic revolution nearly two decades old'.

Early in June the country was paralysed by a general strike over wages and ented in victory when workers won a £10 a month minimum wage. But more militant sections are still not satisfied. The 100,000strong Amalgamated Union of Building land Woodworkers, The Amalgamated Union of Lagos Municipal Bus Workers and the Nigerian Plantation Workers, which has 6,000 members, have threatened to strike for full pay for the period when they were on strike.

Mr. Michael Imoudu, a trade unionist has called for a merger of labour organisations. It is only through unity the workers of this country can achieve something' The Newsletter gives full support to the Nigerian workers—one of the most militant sections in the whole of Africa.

We call on the British labour movement to give full backing to the latest attempts by the Nigerian workers to achieve a living wage and to demand the immediate release of Dr. Allen and the other accused in the sedition trial. FREE JONAS matter is being discussed within the leading committees of the Union.

This latest move will come as a welcome antidote to the policy of betrayal which is now being implemented by those who have joined the coalition government of Mrs. Bandaranaike.

In spite of much talk and promises nothing has been done and nothing will be done to alleviate the poverty-stricken condition of workers on the island. It is, therefore, understandable that the trade unions should be considering further action in relation to the 21 demands.

SUMMER BREAK Don't forget the fund NEXT week (July 25) will be the last Newsletter before our usual two weeks' summer break. The paper will appear again on August 15.

This week is the last chance for new readers to take advantage of our special introductory subscription offer.

Take the opportunity now.

Fill in the form on page 4 NOW and receive your Newsletter in the post at the reduced rate of 7s. for 12 issues.

We ask all our supporters and contributors to The Newsletter Fighting Fund not to relax during the holiday period.

Keep up your regular contributions. They are vital to the building of Britain's only Marxist weekly paper which plays such an important role in the struggles by workers like the postmen and dockers.

Moves by Fidel Castro to offer an 'Alliance for Progress' to the United States reveals the absolute bankruptcy of his petty-bourgeois ideology. This deal also lays bare the complete betrayal of the Cuban people by the Soviet bureaucracy in their eagerness to peacefully co-exist with the United States. The author makes a comprehensive Marxist analysis of the blind-alley into which the Cuban leaders have empirically led the Cuban people and the slow disintegration of a once-popular rebellion. It also shows how the ideas of the revisionists in Europe and America have been proved demonstrably false by events in Cuba.

age •ECENTLY Cuba's • Fidel Castro has made an extremely important move aimed at coming to terms with American imperialism.

In an interview with the correspondent for the "New York limes' Richard Eder, published on July 6, Castro proposed to halt all material aid to Latin American revolutionaries.

This was part of a whole than the radical rhetoric which he uses in common with other bourgeois nationalists like Ben Bella and Nkrumah. EWSLETTER a working class revolutionary programme.

It conducted isolated guerrilla operations and sporadic adventures of a terrorist nature in the major cities. The FALN's call July 8 964 the well-being of every Cuban. This decision of Castro's dooms Cuba to remain a subordinate part of the capitalist world market no matter what else the country does.

A recent visitor to Cuba, Ernst Halperin, writing in the February 1964 'Encounter' notes clearly an overall shift in Cuba away from dependence on the Soviet bloc and towards dependence on the capitalist nations.

Haiperin reports that more and more the Cuban press is de-emphasising its relations with the Soviet bloc countries while great emphasis is placed on its solidarity with Algeria. Algeria,

series of proposals whose end result would be the re-iniegration of Luba into the capitalist world market.

Central to Castro's proposals is the resumpuon of Cuba's traditional traae with the United States.

Richard Eder quotes as stating:

'If too much time goes by Cuba will nave acquired firm trading patterns with tastern and Western Europe and it will be too late to restore trade with the United States, even if relations improve' If trade was resumed, 'a later result would be discussions about indemnifying United States companies whose properties have been seized'. PreLiminary discussion on indemnifications are already under way with Shell Oil, a British-Dutch firm and with a French construction company. Farm policy Part of the conciliation move was the promise of a constitution of as yet undefined character by 1969 and a promise to release some 90 per cent of political prisoners, estimated at 15,000 persons, should better relations develop.

Eder also noted that 'during the interview and especially during tours of the countryside, Dr. Castro took pains to stress the special effort made to improve the condition of the small farmers. These cultivate 30 per cent of the farmlands'.

It seems that while a law was passed to expropriate farms larger than 160 acres, 80 per cent of such farms in the Sierra Maestra and 25 per cent in Havana Province were exempted from the expropriation decree.

This pattern should be clear enough. Castro is proposing first of all to turn his back on the struggling masses of Latin America if the United States will guarantee the security of his regime.

The old trade relations with the United States-based on the exchange of sugar for consumer goods-are to be re-established. Payments are to be made to US concerns for seized property so that the economy of the country is further drained for the benefit of the American capitalists and the Cuban economy is thereby even more closely integrated into the Amerioan economy.

Bolster The position of the small farmer is to be bolstered to give a small capitalist base to the government. Then, quite logically, the 15,000 counterrevolutionary pro-capitalist elements in jail are to be let loose. And why not? They will be perfectly content in the Cuba that Castro foresees for the future.

These steps, without a single de-nationalization, will mean the complete integration of the Cuban economy into the world capitalist economy and furthermore its integration as a subordinate, colonial, dependent section of this world economy.

Such nationalized property, within the framework of a world capitalist economy dominated by US capital, will have even less weight than does the nationalized coal industry within the framework of the dominant capitalist economy of Great Britain.

Just as the nationalized coal industry supplies cheaply an important raw material for Britain's giant capitalist establishments,• so nationalized economy in Cuba will supply an important raw material, sugar, for the American capitalists of the North.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the Cuban Revolution, though the most radical colonial revolution of the last decade, has not brought about a definitive break with world capitalism and in no sense has a workers' state been established.

Castro now admits this if one looks a little deeper As he looks back on his break with the United States, he sees it as anything but a definitive starting point for a new class society.

Rather he states:

'It is not true that these bad relations were completely imputable to either party.

There was the passion and extremism that characterizes the initial phase of any revolution, on our part. On the part of the United States there was the great prejudice about revolutions, the inexperience of the United States' political direction in facing the complex problems of the modern world.' Analogy In Castro's opinion, the 'Alliance for Progress' indicates that now the United States may be willing to deal with 'revolution'. Then citing an example of how the US lived with 'revolution' before, he comments:

'The United States has learned to live with Mexico, having first looked with displeasure on the Mexican Revolution in the nineteentwenties and thirties.' This analogy of Mexico is extremely revealing for it clearly shows the real character of the Cuban Revolution.

The Mexican Revolution was a very radical revolution led by petty-bourgeois elements and supported in the main by the peasantry. It took on a deeply anti-imperialist character and this led to a successful seizure of American oil wells and refineries which to this day are run by the Mexican government.

But for all its radical character, the Mexican Revolution remained within capitalist bounds. The working class continues to be mercilessly exploited and the country never really freed itself from the economic dominance of the American collossus to the North.

Thus, the United States was able to learn to live with the Mexican Revolution precisely because the revolution did not transcend capitalist bounds. Only in this way can the United States learn to live with Cuba which is almost as close to its borders as Mexico.

Deadly logic It is now becoming more and more clear that Castro himself realises this and that he is dedicating himself to this deadly logic with more and more energy every day.

Impressionists like the Pabloite 'United' Secretariat and its American ally, the Socialist Workers' Party, have been claiming since 1961 that Cuba is a workers state and have therefore given uncritical support to the Castro leadership.

This position has been central to their whole revisionist outlook for, by the Cuban example, they sought to bolster the concept that workers' states can be created by some force other than the working class itself and by their orientation to petty-bourgeois strata rather than to the working class.

These views are held in common both by the Pablo section of their international', now in the pro170 :

METICO EXICO NDURAS ROAT Pto.Barcioa HONDURAS ADOR fonseca NICARAGUA COSTA RICA CIPIC cess of being expelled, and by the Germain-FrankMaitan section, supported by the SWP. It is extremely important, therefore, for the defence of a revolutionary working class outlook, to understand the evolution of Cuba.

The present conciliatory position of the Castro regime did not develop out of thin air-it has a long history to it.

Following the United States' withdrawal of the sugar quota and the breaking of diplomatic relations, the Castro regime veered far to the left expropriating all holdings of foreign capital and most holdings of domestic capital.

At the same time it developed close economic relations with the Soviet Union and other Soviet bloc countries.

Burden Within this context the Stalinist movement in Cuba grew greatly in strength and began to penetrate deeply into the state apparatus. Superficially it began to look as if Cuba was going through the same process of transformation into a deformed workers' state as happened earlier in Eastern Europe.

However, this was not to be. A Soviet bloc country 90 miles off the shores of the United States would be a great economic burden to the USSR. It would be impossible to defend in the event of even a localised war and would be intolerable to the United States. It was, therefore, a major impediment to any deal the USSR would like to conclude with the United States.

For the Stalinists to consolidate their control over Cuba a struggle with Castro himself and his petty-bourgeois formation, which continued to control the Cuban state, would have been necessary.

This whole process came to a head in March 1962 when Escalante and a number of other Stalinists were removed from their positions in the ORI-the Integrated Revolutionary OrCHAT BANAMA!

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HOW CAYMAN CAYMAN ARAC HAITI, REPUBLIC Passa Ciudad JAMAICA Kingalon Pol ARIBBEAN SE A Cartagen Lake Caracas Maracaibo COLOMBIA ganisation—(as the ruling party was then called) and Escalante was quickly shipped to Czechoslovakia.

This was a fundamental move against the influence of the Stalinists both within the state apparatus and within the party. Castro and his supporters consolidated complete control over both the party and the state apparatus and the Stalinists who remained active in the regime were forced to play a subordinate role. Cover-up However, Castro was in no position in 1962 to break externally with the Kremlin. Therefore, in collusion with the Kremlin, the Escalante move was covered up as only a move against some "sectarians' and Escalante was safely flown to Czechoslovakia.

The next critical turning point in recent Cuban history was, of course, the Cuban missiles crisis. The Kremlin shipped missiles into Cuba in an obvious power play to force some kind of international deal out of the United States, a deal which would first of all sacrifice Cuba itself.

Caught in the act, Khrushchev retreated completely, making it crystal clear that he for one respected United States dominance over the whole western hemisphere including Cuba. 1963 was a most trying year for the Castro regime and for the Cuban Revolution. It recognised that in a showdown with the United States, it could count on the Kremlin-to be on the side of the US!

Castro searched everywhere for some other points of support for his regime in the international arena.

In part he sought support in revolutions in other Latin American countries. Of course, he did not envisage this revolutionary process as a working class struggle for power in alliance with the peasantry.

Rather, he sought to promote Cuban-type revolutions of the PUERTÓ RICO PANEGARA ANGUILA SLOBOLA EST MARTINE -OHN SAINT CROIF!" DANIIGUA DOMINICA MARTINIQUE S A SI LUCIA ST. VINCENTE BBAP GRENADIN PANARINTS ! •GREMARA Port-of:Spain MAGNITA TRINIDAD Violation Scale of Miles 100 200 300 American British French Netherlands Georgetowa BRITISH GUIANA/ SURINAM GU:

peasantry led by petty-bourgeois elements. Even so, these limited bourgeois revolutions went beyond Khrushchev, who seeks to come to terms with the capitalist powers that be and thus opposes any revolutionary developments, no matter how superficial they may be.

Castro's support for armed revolution in Latin America was not a universal matter. He favoured revolution against those regimes in Latin America hostile to Cuba not those which maintain any kind of diplomatic relations with Cuba.

He hinted at this in his July 26, 1963, address:

'But what has happened in Latin America since the Bay of Pigs invasion shows that those statesmen and governments which have taken an independent attitude, an attitude of respect for Cuban sovereignty, and who have not been instruments of Yankee imperialism in its aggressions against Cuba, are the most stable governments in Latin America?

What he hinted at last July he now states openly to Eder:

'If Cuba should finance a revolution against a government that respects her, it would be a violation of the norm.' Castro's policy was thus a sort of peaceful co-existence with a vengeance. Revolutionary developments in Latin America were totally subordinated to the diplomatic position of the Cuban government. Such a policy is deeply harmful to the revolutionary aims of the Latin American masses.

Even this partial support for limited revolutions was not to last for long. Venezuela was to be the turning-point for Castro.

There, he resorted to largescale military aid to the rebel National Liberation Front [FALN]. The FALN, however, made no attempt to reach the working class of Venezuela with for an election boycott was almost completely ignored by the Venezuelan masses, resulting in a resounding defeat for Castro's whole strategy in Latin America.

There can be no doubt that the Venezuela defeat had an extremely deep impact on Castro. This even partially revolutionary road now seemed futile to him. In fact the 'New York Times', in the issue following the one containing the Eder interview, reports US officials as admitting that they knew of no major instances of Cubanbacked subversion since last November'.

So Cuba began to look elsewhere for points of support. With the USSR at best an unreliable ally and revolution in Latin America not imminent, Cuba turned to the capitalist camp.

The first part of this year has been marked by ever-increasing signs of developing trade relations between Cuba and such Western European capitalist nations as Britain, France and Spain. It is clear that these trade relations were viewed by Castro as a way of re-establishing the traditional trade relations with the United States-through the back door so to speak.

economy Connected with these new trade relations was an important shift in the internal Cuban economy. In the 1961-62 period, the goal of the Cuban regime was to break with the colonialist economy of the past and develop within Cuba an economy which would permit its independent development. This required industrialisation and the diversification of agriculture so that the whole economy would no longer be totally dominated by the world sugar market.

By late 1963 this economic plan had been abandoned. Obviously the USSR was not willing to foot the bill for the industrialisation of Cuba and the diversification of agriculture.

Under these circumstances Castro was forced to cut back on industrialisation plans and put total emphasis on an expansion rather than reduction of sugar acreage in a land which is forced to import some of its foodstuffs despite its extremely rich soil and excellent climate What this means is that the Cuban economy is now more than ever dependent on the world market price of sugar for HE'S THREATENINS oUR IMPERIAL!" however, is a capitalist country whose whole economy is closely linked to France and whose national budget is largely supplied by the French.

Ben Bella calls this not at all uncommon mixture of radical rhetoric with dependence on imperialism 'Islamic Socialism' Uncomtortable Haiperin concludes his article with inis interesting prediction: :.. Castro may well tind the "Socialist Camp" such an uncomtortable place to stay in that he will try to edge out of it in order to obtain some sort of non-aligned, anti-imperialist, "Algerian"' status.' Ine role of the Soviet Union in all this is clear. Not only have they been counselling for better relations with the West, but undoubtedly, they have been bolstering their words with a good deal of economic pressure upon Castro, who is so dependent upon Soviet bloc countries for the economic survival of his economy.

Eder reports: 'Indicating

publicly what has been privately taken for granted for some time, Dr. Castro hinted strongly that the Soviet Union had been counselling a bettering of relations with the United States? This shows clearly the completely counterrevolutionary role the Kremlin is playing in the world today.

There is, of course, some question as to the attitude of the United States towards these developments. On the surface, the US stance seems to completely preclude any kind of coming to terms with Cubaeven though this would obviously be in the best interests of US imperialism.

Election year However, this is an election year and it would be foolhardy to give too much weight to public protestations of belligerency. Johnson, re-elected by what looks like a landslide vote, could very well be in a position to carry out some international wheeling and dealing that would make Kennedy look like a conservative.

The central point is, however, that if the defence of Cuba from the reassertion of imperialist domination is to depend on the thickheadedness of the US rulers, this is not a very firm defence. Intelligence is not totally excluded even in those quarters.

The recent events in Cuba have confirmed irrefutably that no petty-bourgeois leadership and party can establish a workers' state. The working class in Cuba have neither powernor the semblance of it—the militia, the agrarian reform and nationalizations notwithstanding.

Cuba can and will be defined as a workers' state only when a revolutionary party based on the programme of the Fourth International has successfully overthrown the capitalist stateat present represented by the bonapartist dictatorship Castro-and replaced it by the dictatorship of the working class. This is the supreme task and the major historical test facing the Cuban working class and particular, its vanguard. THIEVES, .SM KELF oUT/ Gray

Vietcong advance southwards July 18, 1 Thre

HE farce of the Spanish frigates affair took on a new face when it was revealed this week that more than 40 Labour MPs and trade unionists have been on free holidays to Spain in the last three years.

The Tories blamed Harold Wilson for losing the £14 million contract with Spain for building the frigates. But, as The Newsletter pointed out recently, it is doubtful whether there was a firm agreement with the Franco government. Wilson made his speech at a very opportune moment.

None of the 40 or so 'guests' of the Spanish trade unions, which are controlled by the Spanish government, spoke up in defence of Spain in the House of Commons debate on the frigate deal.

Were they too embarrassed by their association as Labour MPs with the fascist regime of Franco?

And why, if Mr. Wilson feels so strongly about selling arms to Spain, does he not take disciplinary action against these MPs?

Trips arranged

Mr. Ness Edwards, MP for Caerphilly and Mr. Albert Roberts, MP for Normanton, who are members of the allparty Anglo-Spanish Committee of MPs, have played an important role in arranging these sightseeing tours.

Both have refused to name others who have been on these trips.

Paid visits are generally aimed at creating sympathy for unpopular regimes like that of Franco.

By accepting these trips and supporting Spain, Labour MPs I saturday te afiernoon of one late anemoon Thorez, who had led the French Communist Party for 30 years, died, symbolically, on board a liner bound for the Soviet Union.

Thorez was born in April 1900, the son and grandson of miners. He joined the French Socialist Party when he was still in his teens, and this led to his being refused work as a miner.

At the Congress of Tours, in 1920, when the French Socialist Party was split, Thorez voted with the Communist wing which affiliated to the Third International.

By 1923, he had become secretary of the Federation for the mining area of the Pas-de-Carais. At this time, he supported Trotsky in the struggle that was growing inside the Third International.

He wrote a letter to Souvarine, the leader of the Trotskyist faction in the French CP, saying 'Perhaps you can use my modest contribution for the publication of Trotsky's pamphlet. May I take this opportunity to reaffirm, once again, my complete solidarity with you.' In January 1924, he was elected on to the Party's central committee. He played a leading role in the 'Bolshevisation' of the Party but left the Trotskyist faction, which he saw merely as a debating group and joined the Stalinist faction.

For the rest of his life, his boast was that he had built 'the most Stalinist of all parties'.

In July 1930, he was elected as General Secretary of the Party. From this position, he was ruthlessly to eliminate all tendencies that opposed him, or his faithtul following of the Moscow line.

The full implications of the degeneration which Stalinism imposed on the French CP became apparent in the period of the Popular Front, in the mid-1930s. endorse the vicious actions taken by Franco's regime against Julian Grimau, Granado, Delgado, intellectuals and workers.

Meetings

Many are swayed by these trips. Fraga Iribarne, the Spanish Minister of Informațion and Tourism, was actually welcomed by one Labour MP when he visited Britain in November last year and in May this year when 60,000 Asturian miners and metalworkers were on strike in Spain, the country's Minister-Secretary of the Falange, Solis, came to Britain and met several Labour MPs.

What did they discuss--the shipment of coal to Spain or other means of attacking the Spanish working class?

Rank and file trade unionists in Britain must defend the Spanish working class by demanding inquiries into the 'official' activities of their representatives in the House of Commons and take necessary action if they discover they have visited Spain.

In 1934, Thorez signed an alliance with Blum's Socialist Party His main aim became to prove to the Social-Democrats that he was a worthy ally.

The CP was vaunted as a patriotic party: 'the patriotism of the humble, the patriotism of Joan of Arc . . . shines through our history like a shaft of light. ('Fils du Peuple' ['Son of the People'l, p. 132.)

The Blum government, elected in 1936, was met with a wave of strikes throughout France. Half a million workers demanded better conditions and socialist measures that the Social-Democrats had long promised.

Blum had no intention of fulfilling these promises, but could see no way of ending the strikes either. Thorez solved this dilemma with his speech to a meeting of strikers on June 11, 1936, in which he called upon them to return to work.

'It is necessary to know when to end a strike' ', he told them. He justified this act by explaining that the Popular Front was not the revolution. (Fils du Peuple, p. 128.)

Not all the strikers returned, but the unity was broken and the movement eventually collapsed, with no concessions from the employers.

In the last war, after the invasion of France by the German army, and especially after the invasion of the USSR, rank and file communists played a large and leading part in the resistance movement.

The fight against the German army became the fight against he French ruling class, who under Petain, had pegged all hopes of survival as a class, on collaboration with Hitler.

The watchword of the communist-led resistance became 'prepare for the national insurrection', which was to drive out the German army and overthrow capitalism in France.

Another section of the French ruling class opposed the policy of collaboration with Hitler and, under de Gaulle, set up a government in exile in London, pegging their hopes for survival as a class on an Anglo-American victory in the war.

Throughout the war, this government carefully prepared the political resetting up of the French capitalist state.

The resistance then eliminated by calling the general uprising on June 4/5, 1944, much too long before the allied armies landed in France for any other outcome than their complete annihilation by the German army to be possible.

The most famous incident in this massacre of the French working class took place in the Vercors, where the resistance held the plateau for two months against overwhelming odds in the false belief that an Amercian Glider division was going to land there.

Almost the entire resistance movement was wiped out in the area—-the last message to be sent over the wireless by the Vercors maquis being one condemning de Gaulle for this act.

During this period, de Gaulle's government included three communist ministers. One of these, Fernand Grenier, accused de Gaulle of deliberately massacring the resistance movements, but was forced to withdraw the accusation after consultation with Thorez, who was then still in Moscow.

In December 1944, de Gaulle went to Moscow 'in order to obtain from the Communist Party the year's respite that I needed to take the situation in hand'. He had previously reached agreement with Stalin that Thorez should be pardoned for deserting from the French army in 1940 and allowed to return to France.

Thorez returned to France on November 17, 1944, and the whole line of the Communist Party was reversed. Until a month previously, Duclos and 'L'Humanite' had been supporting the call for workers' militias and for an insurrection.

But on November 30, in a speech to a massive audience in the Vel d'Hiv stadium in Paris, Thorez stated that the line was 'to build a powerful French army' and to , 'unite' behind de Gaulle.

This line was imposed upon the Party at the Central Committee meeting at Ivry, on January 21, 1945, where Thorez demanded the disbanding of the militias and their amalgamation into de Gaulle's army.

'Public security must be ensured by the regular police set-up for this end. The divil guards and, in general, all irregular armed groups must not be maintained much longer,' he said. All those who opposed this line, and there was a significant minority who did, were expelled from the party.

De Gaulle re-established the French capitalist state without having to turn to the discredited Vichy government of Petain.

The danger of civil war had indeed been averted and again, de Gaulle's own words provide the best description of why:

'As for Thorez, while he did try to further the cause of communism on many occasions, he was to serve the public interest. From the day he returned to France, he helped to put an end to the last sequels of the "patriotic militias' which some of his supporters persisted in maintaining in clandestinity.

those (many) workers who listened to his speeches, he constantly told to work as much as possible and to produce at all costs. Was this simply political tactics? It is not for me to work this out. It was enough for me that France should be served.' ('Memoires', Vol. 3, p. 101.)

The work to maintain the French capitalist state was continued by the French Communist Party after the war, when the panty accepted to participate in the government. Thorez became minister of State and subsequently vice-chairman of the Chamber.

During this period, the fight for higher production continued. At Waziers, on July 22, 1945, Thorez made a speech to the miners urging them to 'produce, and produce yet more, explaining that 'without coal, the economy paralysed... and the destiny of France depends to a great extent on the efforts of the miners'. This theme was often repeated.

In 1947, the Indo-Chinese war broke out, while a member of the Communist Party was minister for war. He did not resign. Similarly, although the communists abstained on the issue of the repression of the rebellion against the French in Madagascar in March 1947, they did not resign, or try to bring down the government.

But the most spectacular betrayal in colonial affairs was left to Thorez personally. It was at this time that he made the now little quoted speech demanding the execution of Ferhat Abbas and Messali Hadj, the leaders of the rebellion in Algeria with the words: The organisers of the rebellion must immediately, rapidly and without pity be punished, and brought before a firing squad."

(Cont. page 4, col. 1)

Industrial TENANTS in the Gorbals have won their first victory in

WHILST further arrests of anti-apartheid supporters took place in South • Africa last week, Wilson and the rest of the Labour leadership retreat from making a socialist stand in opposition to the policies of Verwoerd.

No call has been made by these leaders on behalf of the South African working class.

More than 30 people are now in solitary confinement under the 90-day detention law in Pretoria prison.

The arrests came after a series of police raids on homes in a number of towns.

Among those detained last week was Abraham Fischer, QC, chief defence counsel for Nelson Mandela and eight others in the recent Rivonia treason trial.

Fischer was later released.

The plight of the South African people and those white people who support an end to apartheid is a question that a future Labour government will have to take a firm stand on.

From every quarter the African people are suppressed by the Verwoerd government.

Verwoerd is determined to break up any resistance to his racialist policies by the most brutal methods and the only way that his regime can be defeated is through a struggle in the international socialist movement.

Trade unionists and Labour Party members must ensure that a future Labour government aids these courageous fighters in every way possible.

13 Belgian officers, were allowed to return to the Congo after Moise Tshombe became the country's prime minister last week.

These men were at one time in the Katangan gendarmerie, which Tshombe used to help keep his position when Katanga broke away from the Congo.

The troops, which have received extensive training in Angola during exile, return at a very significant time for the Congo.

Now highly skilled, Tshombe's army will no doubt be used to to suppress the impoverished workers and peasants should there be an uprising against his 'HICCUP' RAIL STRIKE ITALIAN railwaymen, who made a claim to the government for a re-grading of their status, will come out on strike on Sunday.

By a process of what is known as a 'hiccup' strike the union ensures a strong strike action since, not only are connections at a standstill, but the use of blackleg labour to, break the dispute is prevented. erialist interests regime.

As the 'Sunday Telegraph' of July 12 reported: 'Anyone who nas seen both the Katangan and Congolese soldiers in action has no doubt which is the better soldier.' This move has the approval of General Mobutu and President Kasavubu and will strengthen the position of the Belgian French and British imperialists in the country.

Tshombe is not taking any chances during this period in the Congo. The popularity of the recent rebellions in various parts of the country has been illustrated by the case with which rebel forces have taken over the towns.

With the withdrawal of UN troops the position in the Congo is reaching chaotic proportions.

Rebels advance

Rebels seized Kabalo, only 200 miles west of Albertville in the Katanga province and it has been reported that Wamazo, which is 30 miles east of Kabalo was also taken last week.

Meeting with only token resistance, the rebel troops are now expected to advance on Kindu in the Kivu province.

As European families evacuate the area, local officials resign their posts.

Tshombe's build-up of forces is a preparation for a showdown with these rebel armies in which blood and terror will once more sweep across the Congo. • It should be remembered that it was the United Nations who left the door wide open for Tshombe's return.

Labour Party members who champion the United Nations have kept silent on this question. They cannot answer the fact that the full role of the United Nations has been fully exposed.

Upheaval

This tool of imperialism which the so-called 'lefts' call a 'peace-keeping' organisation left the Congo in much the same state of upheaval as when it first intervened in 1960.

Through Tshombe, the imperialists have again obtained a hold on the Congo.

By backing the actions of the United Nations the 'lefts' betray all those Congolese people who suffered in the blood bath that followed the entry of UN troops into the country.

The Newsletter said in February 1961 that the United Nations was a 'thieves' kitchen' and a 'front behind which there is constant imperialist plotting against the interests of the colonial people and the international working class'.

Events in the Congo in the past four years have proved how true these words are.

Portuguese CPers trial FIVE alleged members of the Portuguese Communist Party were sent for trial on charges of attempting to cause disturbances in May last year.

Thirteen others, who were arrested at the same time, will go before the court shortly.

Portuguese police claim to have seized anti-government pamphlets and posters in one man's house.

KENYA WORKERS RIOT UNEMPLOYED Africans angrily hurled stones at the local Labour Exchange offices in Nairobi over the week-end during a demonstration demanding free food and housing until they could find work.

The crowd of 1,000 were broken up by policemen wielding batons.

New Soviet controversy over

arrests in in South Vietnam, the American imperialist troops, who prop up the Khanh government, face a fresh crisis.

For some time North Vietnam troops have been helping the Vietcong and prime minister Khanh's statement on Sunday that there was an armed invasion taking place from the north reflects the concern of the Americans in this situation.

The Johnson administration is extremely worried about the effect the South Vietnam position will have on their election campaign.

The war is costing a million dollars a day and the U.S. government cannot be at all sure of winning.

A report in the 'Daily Telegraph' on July 14, stated that Vietcong forces had been reinforced by three battalions in the mountainous Quang Nsam, Quang Tri and Thua Thien provinces.

"They can now move to the higher mobile stage of revolutionary warfare,' it said.

RESILIENCE

In answer to this General Maxwell Taylor-the militaryminded Ambassador who has recently taken over from Cabot Lodge in Saigon-has stated that he hopes to dis- knows that he will make himself courage intervențion by very unpopular if he pours any 'demonstrating maximum American power'. With great resilience, the So, as The Newsletter pointed ietcong, supported by the out last month, talk of an allruth Vietnamese peasants, fight out offensive is a bluff. And ck and, far from retreating, this bluff is cerainly not paying they have put the American off. troops on the defensive.

Commenting on the situation, William Bundy, the American State Department's expert on Far Eastern affairs said he did not think it would be useful to send American combat units into South Vietnam.

However, it is not a question of the 'usefulness' of troops. The American government cannot afford to base any more men in South-East Asia at the present time.

APPEAL

This was the reason for US Defence Secretary McNamara's visits to Europe in May when he appealed for other NATO troops to be sent to South-East Asia.

VAN.

It is now rumoured that a special commission has been set up in West Germany to find men in their forces who have experience of jungle warfare. In Germany there are many men who fought with the French Foreign Legion before Dien Bien Phu.

Anxious as he is to defend amentan unperansm, Jonnson Amarinan immanialiom more U.S. money into troops for the Vietnam war effort.

On Ju nis, the Soviet Communist Party daily, 'Pravda' launched a sharp attack on playwright and soriptwriter Alexander Stein.

His 'crime' is that his script for a new play, 'Between Cloudbursts' was guilty of "major ideological shortcomings' The play-not yet stagedwas to be about the Kronstadt Mutiny of 1921.

Stein is charged with not giving the Stalinist version of the causes of that mutiny; not doing justice to Lenin's personality and giving inaccurate, ambiguous and incorrect impressions of Trotsky's role at this time.

Stein is reminded that Trotsky was the 'sworn enemy of Lenin'. The reader is led to the conclusion that Stein thought otherwise.

These are the terms of reference for what amounts to an instruction to re-write the play.

FERMENT

It is now six months since the pre-viewing of the film 'Blue Notebook' which began the restoration of Kamenev and Zinoviev to their correct place in the history of the Soviet Union. (See 1 Newsletter, February 29, 1964.)

It was on the cards that sooner or later the role of Trotsky would be raised in a similar manner.

This recent development is only part of a considerable ferment in the Soviet Union. Major public libraries now provide students with access to the writings of Trotsky.

The struggle around the political victimisation of the poet Brodsky and, his subsequent release from forced labour also emphasises this point.

Farther afield in Italy, Togliatti, head of the Italian Communist Party, has admitted the existence of some damning items of correspondence between Gramsci (founder of the Italian Communist Party) and the Soviet CP in 1926.

In this letter, which was supposed to have been conveyed to the Stalin-Bukharin leadership of the Soviet CP, Gramsci, on behalt of the Italian CP, protested against the persecution of the Left Opposition.

Gramsci warned: 'By ignoring the international repercussions of your disputes, you risk destroying your own work and undermining the leading role which you acquired under Lenin's influence . . . a split ... can be fatal?

ERROR

At the time Togliatti took it upon himself to rap Gramsci for his sympathies. But it is an implicit admission of Togliatti's error that all this correspondence is published today by none other than Togliatti himself.

He goes further. In a personal note to this article, he refers to Trotsky, Zinovier and Kamenev as 'comrades' and Gramsci refers to them as his teachers of revolutionary principles.

Togliatti, who stands very near to the Soviet bureaucracy, is more exposed to the gnawing crițicisms of history and with less material resources to fabricate his version of that history.

The same process that affects Togliatti today affects the Soviet bureaucracy too.

Both face the pay-off from the working class of their respective countries. And this pay-off is long overdue and much in arrears.

THEY IT Krondstadt 1921 Two versions of the same story.

Above: gathering of Red Army soldiers and commissars with Lenin and Trotsky in centre of group.

Below: the same picture published in 'Ogonyok' in the Khrushchev era. Trotsky has been painted out!

• No conflict with the Coal Board over wages.

No policy to meet the growth of mechanisation.

HIS is the record of the Conference of the Mineworkers held at Blackpool last week The main issue at the Conference was wages. Seven districts had resolutions on the agenda on wages but they were asked not to press them in order to leave the executive free to spend the next six months in a study of how to relate pay to the age of automation 'unfettered by this or that particular pay policy.

This proposal underlines the complete hypocrisy of Will Paynter, who only a few weeks ago, when urging the miners to accept the Coal Board offer to the day wage men, said at the Lancashire Miners' Gala:

'In the circumstances such as we face in this industry the general policy of trade unions is to pocket the increase offered and then discuss the possibility of a future claim. In fact such a discussion will take place in this Union's annual conference in the first week in July.' He did not, of course, tell the miners that at that discussion he would be opposed to submitting another claim.

Resolutions

On the advice of the executive, six of the seven resolutions on wages were withdrawn. A Yorkshire resolution calling for an increase of £2 12s. 6d. on the minimum weekly wage for the 280,000 day-wage men went forward and was defeated by the conference.

How far can these delegates get from the feelings of the men • No fight for shorter hours. they are supposed to represent?

There is no doubt who is responsible for this betrayal. As 'The Guardian' said: 'It was Mr. Paynter's day.' The capitalist press certainly knows who its real friends are.

This conference saw a complete line-up between Lord Robens, Chairman of the National Coal Board, and Will Paynter 'communist' General Secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers.

Welcoming the Union's decision to submit no further wage claims this year (the decision to examine the possibility of a new wages structure means that there will be no negotiations with the Coal Board until 1965), Robens declared: I agree entirely with the conclusions of Will Paynter' Robens then went on to put the blame for the Board's failure to meet the day-wage claim on the militants in the industry by saying that unofficial strikes had cost £3,500,000 last year and that this money would have met the wage claim.

Incapable

Paynter: lined up with Robens 65 per cent of pits are on double or treble shifts.

The extension of mechanisation can only be a threat to miners as long as it is done under capitalism. There is a real danger that 150,000 miners could lose their jobs in the next six years.

For instance, the new fullyautomated pit at Beavercotes, Nottingham, will start with 500 men but the labour will be reduced to 300.

What is needed immediately is a real fight for shorter hours and longer holidays.

The conference unanimously passed resolutions calling for a six-hour shift for underground workers and three weeks' annual holiday. But there was no discussion on how these were to be won.

Ford made it clear that he did not consider shorter hours to be a high priority, because, he said, the industry had gone some way towards it by getting the seven extra rest days!

No fight This leadership is not prepared to fight Robens. Both Paynter and Ford accept Robens' arguments. As "The Guardian' said on July 10:

But by 1947, the French capitalists were no longer entirely dependent upon co-operation from the communists and so Daladier was able to throw out the communist ministers for refusing to support the Marshall plan.

It is significant that the Marshall plan was the issue on which the rupture finally came, for 1947 was the year of Indo-China, Madagascar, and the great Renault strike, yet none of these had been 'enough to dislodge the communists from Daladier's Cabinet.

Final verdict on this period was passed by the Yugoslav delegation at the Cominform meeting at Szklevsko-Poveda, September 2227, 1947. In one of their last acts as members of the Cominform, they accused Dudlos of parliamentary cretinism and forced him to admit that the French Party "had not been very effective since the liberation.

Marko-Ristic stated at the same meeting that Thorez had been nothing but a super-chauvinist in the years at the end of the war.

The subsequent history of the French Communist Party is one of decline and increasing ineffectualness From the purging of Marty and other militants in 1952, in order to impose "peaceful coexistence, to the logical conclusion of this policy expressed in the voting of special powers to Mollet in 1956, inorder to expedite a solution to the war in Algeria and to the absolute inability to oppose de Gaulle's second coming in 1958.

Tributes to Thorez have come from all parts. Mollet has declared that 'he was worthy of respect; Abelin, an ex-minister in the Fourth Republic said 'he played an important role in the Liberation, inside the government. When the nation was divided, he was able to overcome certain passions and bring a very useful collaboration'; de Gaulle has repeated that Thorez 'rendered great services for national unity'.

These tributes alone testify to the magnitude of the betrayals of Stalinism to the French working class. Thorez, Stalin's instrument in destroying the French Communist Party is dead. His death opens new possibilities for a rebirth of the revolutionary movement in France.

186A CH The fact that even on his figures t4,000,000 was paid out in interest payments (and if you include repayments on the origunal debt the figure is nearer tl3 million) and that this money could have met the claim, did not occur to him.

Instead, this supreme bureaucrat, safe in the knowledge that he is dealing with union leaders who are completely incapable of a fight, had the arrogance to declare: 'All the strikes in creation don't reduce my £12,500 salary by a single penny.

The fact is that not one single leader of the NUM is capable of standing up to this man and the government he represents Paynter puts forward the identical arguments himself. Ford devoted most of his presidential address to defending the Coal Board from charges of fancy book-keeping and manipulating the amount reckoned as depreciation in the annual accounts.

And when Robens attacked the 'Daily Worker', the only defence Alex Moffatt could put up was to deny that the paper had ever suggested a strike!

The leadership of the NUM is leaving the miners wide open to a drastic lowering of conditions. A complete change in the miners' leadership is required if the 'Robens Plan' is to be defeated.

Discipline

Robens wants more discipline in the pits to end absenteeism and unofficial strikes. His reference to 140 pits losing £28 million last year and his pious statement that 'nobody wants 100,000 men to lose their jobs' is a veiled threat to increase closures unless he gets the results he wants. Yet not a word was said by the union leadership resisting pit closures.

Robens also envisages a rapid expansion of mechanisation, with the machines working longer. In ten years' time 50 per cent of the coal in Britain Will be produced by remote control.

Already 70 per cent is mined by power loading, 18 per cent of faces are run with selfoperating power supports and

BRITISH poration workers, some of whom may either lose their jobs or part of their wages as a result of the rumoured Vickers VC-10 cancellations, marched in protest through London on Tuesday to lobby their MPs.

The demonstrators, including some from Bournemouth and Preston, afterwards held a mass meeting in the Kingsway Hall, Holborn.

PAY LOSS

Their enthusiasm was so great that 1,000 who could not get into the Kingsway Hall meeting later held a meeting in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

The 6,000 workers are well aware that a loss in orders will not mean the same level of ray for them in the future. 1be Corporation bosses are hardly BEA chairman attacks strikers out on a 24-hour strike li as 'irresponsible' by the chairr Milward this week.

In a letter to all the employees he said the strikers had shown great disloyalty to both BEA and the unions.

There have been a number of 'entirely disruptive' unofficial actions in recent years, the letter added.

The 1,670 men who came out on strike were demanding a minimum 30 minutes' travelling allowance. Postmen can win likely to keep on paying the same bonuses after a large order has been cancelled.

Many of the workers who marched on Tuesday are afraid that they will face the threat of redundancy and they would have to look elsewhere for employment.

JOBS SCARCE

As The Newsletter has warned, jobs for engineering workers in the south are becoming scarcer. With Projectiles moving to the North-east and several other engineering firms closing down workers from Vickers will find it difficult to get jobs with comparable wages.

Tory Minister of Aviation Amery has not yet made any statement on the matter, but whatever compensation he may pay out, workers at the Corporation are certainly not going to get the full benefit from it. European Airways, who came st week, were viciously attacked an of the corporation Anthony Workers at London airport now have to take a bus from the spot where they park their cars since their own car park was taken over for the construction of a multi-storey parking building which is expected to take 18 months to complete.

Because they were having to leave their cars about two miles away from where they worked the strikers demanded that a security guard should be employed to watch their vehicles during the day.

SUPPORT

The BEA bosses are, of course, very worried by this show of militancy. During the 24-hour strike the company lost £225,000.

On Thursday night last week, 1,300 engineers joined the strike and 300 BOAC loaders and warehousemen voted to come out in support.

We wonder if Milward and his colleagues have to park their cars two miles away and get a bus to the office.

No doubt Milward and his colleagues on the management board are afraid that this show of solidarity amongst the strikers and the hold-ups it caused will be repeated again in some other dispute for a longer period of time.

ACTION BY

'Many wise men in the NUM understand this (i.e., Roben's policy) as clearly as Lord Robens, but their efforts are often undermined by the wild demands of militants?

A fight against the Coal Board means a fight against these leaders. This must be done by building a new leadership amongst the ranks of the union.

The so-called "left' leaders are unable to provide an alternative. When the 'left-wing' pamphlet of Bert Wynn, Will Whitehead and others (reviewed in The Newsletter two week's ago) was attacked by Ford, they were unable to defend it.

According to press reports, The labour movement should come at once to the assistance of the postmen. The Trades Union Congress and the executive council of the major unions should be approached for large donations for a fighting fund for postmen.

A mass demonstration of the entire labour movement in London should be called at once where the men's case could be fully presented.

Such efforts would put teeth into the struggle against Toryism and help postmen win this vital political strike.

Wynn 'expostulated mildly' three times from his seat but at the end of Ford's speech he joined in the applause!

No policy He then told reporters that the pamphlet was a 'contribution to discussion' and not a criticism of the union leaders!

But more is required than "mild expostulations. The right wing, the Communist Party and the 'lefts' of Bert Wynn's type have no policy to meet the attack on the coalminers.

Miners must demand a real fight over wages and shorter hours, opposition to all pit closures, suspension of interest . Payments and the extension of nationalization by a Labour government to all basic industries.

The only organisation which fights for such a programme is the Socialist Labour League. Already there is a big expansion of The Newsletter in mining areas, and new branches of the League are being formed. All miners who really want to fight the Coal Board should now consider joining the Socialist Labour League.

All over Britain postmen have been taking militant action following Bevins miserly 4 per cent pay offer. Here are just two examples from Newsletter reporters of reactions in difierent parts of the country from the postmen, employers and union officials.

Birmingham FOUR thousand postmen joined the unofficial pay protest strike in Birmingham area last week-end.

The standstill was total in Birmingham City, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Tipton, Kidderminster, Redditch and Alcester. Within a few moments of the decision to strike being taken last Friday evening, GPO porters at Snow Hill and New Street stations were contacted by strikers and immediately stopped work.

All mail from Paddington, Crewe and other centres was stopped from coming to Birmingham by telephone message.

Clearly the strikers were determined to have no interference with their plans. Mr. W. Blunt, head postmaster at Birmingham, said he knew nothing about the proposed stoppage till 15 minutes before the men walked out, adding: It was a very well-kept secret.' Mr. Stan Tombs, Birmingham organiser of the Post Office Workers' Union, also declared that the strike came as a 'surprise' to local officials.

He said the determination to take strike action 'snowballed' when the men met to consider the breakdown in the pay talks, with the result that the walk-out was general and complete. Newcastle FIVE hundred Newcastle postmen crammed into the street outside the main sorting office on Sunday and decided on an immediate ban on overtime and a work-to-rule.

'Let's walk away like men, said a postman who moved a resolution calling for an imme. diate 24-hour stoppage as well as the overtime ban and workto-rule.

The feeling of the meeting was for strong militant action. were was a noisy reception for a postman who opposed the motion and declared: 'We have to remember this is a high unemployment area.

Another postman answered him: 'If you want anything you've got to fight for it. Like the dockers, it's not just a pay rise involved. If we fight now then Bevins will have to negotiate on the shorter working week in the future?

The branch secretary moved an amendment to the motion deleting the proposition for the 24-hour strike. The amendment was carried by a small majority.

But, very clearly, the majority of men at the meeting did not understand they were voting against an immediate 24-hour stoppage. The platform in calling for the vote asked for 'those in favour of the overtime ban and work-to-rule' Before the strike started Vickers Armstrong stated that because of a shortage of contracts, there would be redundancy.

Now the management is holding the threat of unemployment over the heads of the strikers and saying that the strike has put the firm out of the market and will not help the rundown in the labour force.

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the fight against slum housing.

Following the deputation to the City Charders, reported in last week's Newsletter, five properties are to be condemned. 108 South Portland Street, which is sub-let with several families living in one flat, has already been condemned as unfit for human habitation.

The condition of the property in South Portland Street had previously been reported to the corporation by local ministers of the church, but no action was taken.

Tenants from 108 then went along to the newly-formed Hutchesontown (Gorbals) Tenants' Association and their complaint was taken up by the deputation which visited the City Chambers last week.

Other tenements which have been placed on the list for condemning are 118 Caledonian Road, 100 and 106 Naburn Street and the property now owned by the corporation at 165 Camden Street (see last week's Newsletter).

INVESTIGATION

In addition to the closure of these properties, a number of additional sanitary inspectors have been drafted into the Gorbals and are carrying out an investigation of the conditions.

There is no doubt that this initial victory is entirely due to the way in which the tenants organised to carry their fight through and the determination of the deputation which went to the City Chambers to obtain action.

Housewives, accompanied their young children. refused CONTINUED SPEED-UP ANGERS FORD WORKERS WORKERS at the Halewood, Liverpool, factory of Ford are angry this week at the statement issued by the management and trade union officials following talks over the strikes which stopped the plant last week.

Posted on notice boards throughout the factory the statement promises future negotiations over individual grievances. Meanwhile work schedules, which led to the strike are to be maintained.

Action

The strike was not over individual grievances but over the speed of the belts, the men are saying.

It is clear that if workers are forced to take action in the near future over this issue, they can expect no assistance from the same union officials who betrayed the 17 shop stewards at Dagenham and are now collaborating with the Ford management in maintaining the lines at the speeds which Ford dictate.

The atmosphere at Halewood is still tense and on Tuesday night the factory was brought to a standstill again when the night shift was sent home.

POSTMEN be pushed around. They had gone to see the Medical Officer of Health or his Deputy and they flatly refused to see anyone else.

With the growing strength of their association to back them up, the tenants in the Gorbals are no longer prepared to accept vague promises and the passing of the buck from one corporation department to another.

The fruits of this victory will undoubtedly mean a greater increase in the membership of the tenants' association and will give a further impetus to the tenants to continue their fight.

One of the things the tenants will need to watch now is where the families from the condemned properties are rehoused.

RE-HOUSING

It has been reported in the Glasgow press that the speed with which the tenants are rehoused will depend on the housing situation and 'how choosy they are.

Tenants will not be satisfied unless they are re-housed in conditions which at least provide proper toilet facilities, bath and no overcrowding.

It would be adding insult to injury if they were merely transferred from intolerable slum conditions to other slum property. Such cases have been known.

One of the tenants at 165 "amden Street was re-housed in this property after the tenement in which she lived in another district of Glasgow collapsed.

Whilst the Hutchesontown Tenants' Association continues to tackle the many problems which come pouring in from the Gorbals area, they hope that their first success will encourage tenants in other slum areas of Glasgow to organise and take up the fight together with the Gorbals.

POLARIS

DRAUGHTSMEN "BLACK' DRAWINGS A WARNING was issued to workmen on the Polaris submarine at Vickers Armstrong, Barrow-in-Furness, that they would be dismissed if they refused to handle drawings which had been declared "black' by 130 of the firm's draughtsmen now out on strike.

Deputy managing director, Len Redshaw, is reported to have said that men who do not handle the drawings from the 20 draughtsmen who are not on strike will be 'dispensed with'.

No negotiations The draughtsmen involved in a wage dispute claim that the management have refused to negotiate properly. In comparison with wages in the northeast the draughtsmen's pay has not risen substantially.

The ship welders have also served strike notice of 21 days on the firm and production on the submarine covld be brought to a halt.