TUC continues wage freeze line Woodcock helps Wilson help the Tories

WEEKLY JOURNA WEEKLY JOURNAL Vol. September B/OSL FILE LEAGUE BEING only six weeks away from the general election Labour government, this year's Trades Union Congress, Blackpool on September 7, may well appear a tame affair.

But, behind the facade of unity and camaraderie, the Congress will carry out a vicious ROLLS' CORPSE DISMEMBERED WHEN Rolls Razor went into liquidation the press depicted John Bloom as a heroic figure, overtaken by fate In" form of Mr. Kenneth Cork, the liquidator. The creditors and shareholders were informed that the firm had an estimated deficit of £4 million.

Nearly half of this is owed to Barclays Bank, Pressed Steel and Tallant Engineering. Until the Stock Exchange cancelled dealings in them, Rolls Razor shares were one of the few objects on which one penny could be spent.

Cork explained that undercapitalisation of the company was the main reason for its collapse. The second was the failure to meet competition when automatic washing machines were marketed by rival firms.

Expenditure

Rolls' sales had dropped from 17,000 a month in January to 7,000 in June this year.

Some small shareholders at the meeting had opposed liquidation, and, in fact, the motion for it was defeated at first by 74-72 on hand vote. However, when shareholdings were counted, this was reversed by nearly two million to 41,030.

Cork gave some information on recent expenditure by the company. A financial adviser had been engaged at £25,000 a year.

Bloom himself got £15,000 plus a Park Lane flat and a Rolls Royce. The company also had a £6,000 yacht and a converted motor-torpedo boat.

Crumbled

Whatever the immediate repercussions of the Rolls Razor collapse it is symptomatic of the changing economic climate, based on the consumer goods boom of the MacMillan era. The Bloom empire crumbled when the established monopolies decided to estroy it.

The dismemberment of the Rolls corpse is now in progress. A final post-mortem will be conducted by a Board of Trade inquiry appointed in July.

An Election Series Newsletter correspondent will be on the spot to report the Trades Union Congress at Blackpool all next week.

Look out for his despatches which will be of vital interest to all trade unionists.

Between now and the General Election a series of articles are being prepared on problems facing the labour movement.

They are as opposite -Robert James CEYLON BALA TAMPOE CRITICISES PRESS BILL BALA TAMPOE, a leader of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary wing) in Ceylon made a trenchant criticism of the Press Bill (another report on page three) when he said:

"The entire policy of the present Government should put the working class and the socialist mass movement on guard against any attempt on its part to interefere with the freedom of the Press under the pretext of breaking up existing Press monopolies.

The trade union movement and the revolutionary mass movement no doubt suffers from the control of the big daily newspapers by capitalist companies. But it suffers also at the hands of the capitalist State in all kinds of ways.

Any attempt therefore on the part of the capitalist State to substitute itself as the arbiter of what shall be the ownership and control of the Press must be fought tooth and nail by the working class movement and all those who value democratic liberties.

The trade union movement in particular should seck to establish its own Press instead of allowing itself to be deceived by any move which will involve or result in control of the Press by the capitalist State.

The Government that is to the demand for the takeover of Velona and that refuses to take over the property of the capispheres, clearly has no socialist intentions in regard to the take-over of this or that capitalist Press. real aims are reactionary and sinister and must be defeated if necessary by direct mass action.

This is a question that will be taken up by union movement and by the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary) as a major issue for the masses to face and resist.' SEPTEMBER 12*** Socialist Policy for Labour by G. Healy SEPTEMBER 19 Economic Policy SEPTEMBER 26 Labour and the Trade Unions by John Crawford OCTOBER 3 Socialists and Loyalty to Labour by Cliff Slaughter OCTOBER 10 The Left and the General Election by J. Gale and a possible which opens at • attack upon the wages and conditions of rank and file workers by guaranteeing Harold Wilson full support as prime minister of a capitalist Britain.

Since taking over from Gaitskell, Wilson has made it clearer as the election nears that he will uphold capitalism by what he called in his book, 'The Relevance of British Socialism', 'economic dynamism'.

An integral part of a 'dynamic' Wilsonian Britain, which will safeguard the interests of his capitalist friends in monopolies like ICI, is the National Economic Development Council. To facilitate profit-making this body suggests bigger investments in industry, automation and wage restraint.

In the present balance of payments crisis these policies become more significant.

STABILITY

The report of the General Council of the TUC says that to overcome the balance of payments crisis and retain a 'broad stability of costs and prices: "the employer members of NEDC would indicate the importance of reducing prices wherever possible and increasing prices only where unavoidable; and the trade union representatives would declare that those responsible for putting forward wage claims should take into account the vital necessity for keeping down costs and prices and the likely eflects of particular wage claims'.

To avoid inflation, says the report, the NEDC discussed adopting: 'a formula which toreynecised the nod io avoid inflation and the importance of keeping wages and salaries in line with productivity through a prices commission, and lif profits rose more than wages, the balance should be redressed by taxation'.

BOSS TALK

The so-called 'trade unionists' of the TUC (Woodcock, Cousins and company on the NEDC talk in the same terms as the bosses they sit with.

To talk of 'redressing' profits by taxation is farcical considering the $72,000,000 credited to the National Coal Board.

The report couldn't make a clearer statement of the TUC's role in aiding Wilson to run capitalist Britain than when it states: "The NEDC's proper function, they urged, was to aim at as high a growth rate as possible, to identify the obstacles to growth and to act in such a way as to resolve the problems that stood in the way of the programme?

The only obstacle to capitalist development under Wilson will be the demands of workers like the postmen, dockers, building workers, etc., for a decent living wage.

HARNESS UNIONS

To 'resolve the problems' it is obvious that people like Woodcock hope to harness the unions by tying them even tighter to the capitalist state through a more powertul bureaucratic strata by 'amalgamation'.

The only sharp discussion at the Congress will be over the legal position of the unions following the Rookes v. Barnard and Stratford v. Lindley cases.

Rank and file trade unionists must completely disregard any calls for 'unity' at this late stage and take up the demands of resolutions to the Congress from unions like the Sheet Metal Workers, the Electrical Trades Union and the National Union of Printing, Bookbinding and Paper Workers, which reject any form of wage restraint and call for the nationalization of the monopolies.

Only by fighting for these socialist demands at the Congress and in the labour movement generally, will rank and file trade unionists be able to forge a Marxist leadership to crush capitalism and its rightwing friends in the Labour and trade union movement.