The Newsletter, vol. 8 no. 367

A S Mr. Wilson forms his cabinet and the newly-appointed Ministers jump for joy on the steps of No. 10 Downing Street, the capitalist press engages in sober speculation. In the top circles of the Tory Party leadership there is, it appears, much relief.

Whilst Wilson and his stooges carry the can, the Tories on the government and at the same time they can dodge into make a little on the side while the going is good.

Two arguments will now be used to put pressure on the right-wing Labour leaders. The first is that their majority is too small to do anything, and the second is that they have no mandate to take serious action against capitalism.

The Newsletter believes that it is perfectly right and correct for the Labour leadership to take over the government even if it only had a majority of one. It must use its term of office as part of a struggle against capitalism, by placing the interests of the millions of working-class people, who voted for the Labour candidates, first.

Sacrifices

Should these millions of people be penalised for the bankrupt policies of Tory capitalism? We say definitely, no. The Tories must be made to pay for the economic bankruptcy of their system.

If sacrifices have to be made, then they should be forced to make the sacrifices.

No attack whatsoever can be tolerated on the wages and working conditions of the working class. These must be improved and it is the duty of a Labour government representing the working class to encourage ways and means to improve them.

So far as mandates are concerned, the Labour government has no mandate to reduce the standard of living of the working class. It has got a mandate to put the economy on a sound footing — but this cannot be done under capitalism. No planning is possible without overall nationalization.

If Wilson and his Ministers do not place the blame for the economic crisis where it belongs —and the best way to do this is to take the property away from After the Electio What next?

THE result of the Genaral Election marks the beginning of one of those periods in history when a whole generation can learn big political lessons in the space of a few months.

Il the Labour Party careerists who expected this election to ensure a well-paid future for at least five years are doomed to bitter disillusionment. What they are really in Parliament for, and how long they will last, is determined not by their own ambitions and assumptions, but by the needs of big business.

fore the election, "The Economist', organ of the very right wing financial circles in the City, came out in favour of the election of a Labour government.

hey got the best possible result for themselves. They, want Labour in because the main task for big business is to discipline the workers, forcing them to accept a wages standstill.

long with this, they must increase production for export, while cutting the import of goods. To do this they must break the power of resistance of the organised workers at rank and file level and cut the Cousins: 'will cause hardship' the Tories--then they will continue with capitalism which means, inevitably, placing responsibility on the working class. If theý operate capitalism then they will have no alternative but to carry out Tory policy.

There are important indications that the Labour Cabinet is going to retreat before Tory pressure. The capitalist press support the stand taken by Mr. Gunter against the dockers.

The Daily Telegraph' ctober 21 writes:

'Mr. Gunter's dilemma is thus that of the new regime as a whole-whether meekly to surrender to all demands or to risk widespread industrial unrest by opposing some of them.' Cousins' role Speaking about Mr. Cousins' w role as Minister of Tech›logy "The Times' writes, also its editorial of the same date:

'Whatever his idiosyncrasies, he has been a useful member of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research and is seized of the need to modernise industry.

That laudable ambition is bound to cause anxiety if not EDITORIAL purchasing power of the workers' families.

le Tories are quite content to 'left-wingers, appoint so-called Wilson "lett-wingers to government posts. They hope that this will condition the workers to accept 'sacrifice' and 'unpopular measures'.

ec Douglas-Home said after the result was announced that if Wilson took wise measures to save the economy, the Tories would not take advantage of the difficulties of a small Labour majority.

Two days later 'The Times' was very explicit about the conditions of this agreement not to 'harry' the Wilson government.

In the leading editorial on Monday, October 19, 'The Times' virtually accused Maudling of lying about the state of the economy and called upon Brown and Callaghan to reveal the whole truth about the financial crisis.

The editorial poured scorn on Maudling's figure of £50 millions recently borrowed to meet pressing debts, implying that the figures must be much higher. "The Times' leader writer goes on to say that big loans from the are capable of powerful pressure the board rooms of the City and hardship among workpeople.' If these quotations mean anything, they indicate that the Tories believe that a Labour government is going to attack the working class. What of the fake left leaders around "Tribune'? Will they provide an alternative?

On the contrary. Mr. Wilson has seen to it that they are tied up in his new Cabinet!

Real struggles

The task of building this alternative leadership to Wilson is now the most important one confronting the rank and file of the labour movement. Conditions for real struggles in industry are opening up.

We repeat again, that a real socialist programme should have one object make the Tories pay for Toryism, nationalize the major industries and then start with real socialist planning.

QUOTE

of the week ..

FOLLOWING reports that the police in Quebec had used considerable violence on crowds during the Queen's visit, Mr. Claude Wagner, attorney-general for the province issued a statement white-washing the police.

After conceding that 'some unnecessary moves might have been made by officers who lacked judgment or who could not restrain themselves when exposed to 'the insults and sarcasms of agitators', Mr. Wagner stated that those affected had not been 'martyred or bludgeoned, but merely •• • pushed back with several light blows of a baton'.

International Monetary Furd might entail 'surveillance' of government policy. In other words, international finance capital will decide Wilson's policy.

More important, however, is whether the Wilson government can work an incomes policy, says 'The Times'. They conclude with 'the hard word': "The new government's precarious majority may preclude inessentials, such as steel nationalization; it need not interfere with efforts to produce a sound and prosperous economy.' This is "Times' language for saying: insofar as you hammer the working class we won't interfere; but if you attack private property, we'll make it impossible.

The reply of socialists must be clear. The Tories and big business are responsible for the crisis. They must pay and not the workers. The only way to do this is to take the factories and the finance houses from their owners and place them in public ownership under workers' control.

lis must be the organised workers' answer to Wilsor's 'crash programme'. Make the bosses pay!

7S0/8 FILE DR. ALLEN JAILED AGAIN DR. VICTOR LEONARD ALLEN, the 41-year-old Leeds University lecturer who was on bail in Nigeria awaiting sentence on sedition charges, was jailed for two months on Tuesday following an alleged escape attempt.

He was arrested at the weekend at Idiroko, a frontier post, where he had travelled with another man who fled when immigration officials stopped them.

Dr. Allen was said to be dressed in the robes of a North Nigerian tribe. His hands, face and feet were stained deep brown and he had a travel document in the name of a Hausa tribesman.

In court he appeared in a grey suit. He admitted making a false statement and attempting to use a false document.

SENTENCES

Dr. Allen and three Nigerians —trade unionists Sidi Khayam and Jonas Kiomasakenagh and teacher Olushengun Adebayo— will be arraigned, before the Ikeja court on November 10 to hear their sentences for allegedly plotting to overthrow the Nigerian governmen mäuring thre early part of June when a victorious general strike was staged by Nigerian workers.

Dr. Allen was in Nigeria collecting material for a book at the time of his original arrest. He went on a hunger strike at the Kiri Kiri jail early in July before the sedition trial and was later released on bail. Dockers and railmen pressing hard for pay and the port employers on Tuesday over a wage rise for 65,000 dockers, today's docks delegate conference in London decided to call a national strike for December 1.

And, as expected the Liaison Committee on the London docks called off its proposed 'unofficial' one-day stoppage.

Another faker hits the dust! THE announcement that Mr.

Cousins, General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union, had joined the government was greeted with derision in dockland.

Here was a man who posed as a left and a fighter for the rights of port workers. Now in their hour of greatest need for leadership, he becomes Minister in a Labour government. The dockers are right to conclude that this is, in fact, a get-out for Cousins. it what do the pacifists and Communist Party leaders think of their recent hero? The man who called for abolishing nuclear weapons is to sit in a government which will have under its control Aldermaston and other places where the H-bomb is manufactured. ue enough, he is to head a department devoted to technology — but everyone knows that under capitalism technology is above all needed for the instruments of war-making. It is in the defence industries that the greatest developments of technology take place because they have unlimited funds at their disposal. Ir. Cousins has deserted the dockers and joined the Establishment. There is not much else to be said. Just one more fake left hits the dust. We told you so. Trade gap widens even further DESPITE his strennous efforts to avoid the appearance of panic, Wilson's first economic decisions can only be an interim measure.

Within a few months further steps will have to be taken to deal with the crisis, whose existence he was denying only a few weeks ago.

The trade figures for September, announced the day after the election, showed on seasonally adjusted figures that British exports had fallen by a further £24 million. Sales in almost every market are dropping as competition gets fiercer.

BILL

Meanwhile, the imports bill stayed at the peak level of £471 million, leaving a widening trade gap of £111 million.

Maudling's assertion that last month's £50 million loan from foreign bankers would help to finance expansion is clearly seen to be nonsense. This short-term credit was drawn to make up for falling income.

The Labour government will now probably borrow from the International Monetary Fund in order to repay these loans. Maudling decided not to have recourse to the Fund in order Thursday The committee fell for what must surely be a bluff by acting assistant secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, Jack Jones—he knows that his national strike call would not be heeded by many dockers in six weeks time, just before Christmas.

Yesterday, Ray Gunter, Minister of Labour, intervened in the strike and called Sir Andrew Crichton, chairman of the port employers, and representatives of the four dock unions involved, for separate talks at the Ministry.

REJECT 5%

At its executive meeting yesterday, the National Union of Railwaymen decided unanimously to demand more than the 5 per cent pay rise offer of the Railways Board.

The Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen made a similar decision after meeting the Board on Monday.

The Transport Salaried Staffs' Association, the third railway union, meets on Sunday to decide on its position.

Sidney Greene, secretary of the NUR said yesterday: 'We have not rejected the offer, but we want an improvement on it.' • For comment on the important demands of dockers and railwaymen read Eric Neilson's reports on page four.

before JOHN CRAWFORD to avoid any close examination of the prospects for the British economy.

But longer-term borrowing will have deeper implications for Wilson's administration, since it must involve some measure of control by the International Monetary Fund administrators, and thus by Wall Street, over government policy.

Last week the value of the pound stood at $2.78, the lowest level since the 1957 post-Suez crisis, and the lowest usually allowed by the Bank of England.

The crucial issue for Wilson is the confidence of foreign and British financiers. The recovery of sterling after 1957 depended a great deal on the way the Tories tackled the 1958 London bus strike.

DRASTIC

Today, the Labour government, determined to run capitalism, will have to convince world capitalism that it is able to attack the working class.

Whatever immediate policies Wilson may adopt, however, the deep nature of the crisis will demand further, more drastic measures later on.

Devaluation is still a dirty word in many circles. But gradually it is beginning to feature, or to be hinted at, in the financial columns.

Devaluing the pound would mean a big cut imposed by Wilson in the living standards of those who elected him.

All the election talk of the new, go-ahead, scientific Britain is therefore exposed as a mockery, as the Labour leaders pursue their chosen course of resolving the Tory crisis at the expense of the workers.

'Izvestia':

Soviet government daily newspaper First moves towards restoration 'IZVESTIA', the Soviet newspaper has just announced that the Economic Council of the USSR (Sovnarkhoz) met four days after Khrushchev's fall, on October 19 and 20. At this meeting, recommendations were made that some Soviet firms should have more independence from the central plan, and should be allowed to work out their own production plans, based on market demand.

lese recommendations were accepted, after reports from two pilot factories (Bolshevichka in Moscow and Mayak in Gorki), which had been proceeding on these lines since last July, had been examined.

ris 'Izvestia' report would seem to confirm a statement made by a member of the 'Chinese' wing of the Italian Communist Party that 'Brezhnev is more right wing than Khrushchev'.

any case, whatever Brezhnev's opinions, the move indicates the mounting pressures towards the restoration of capitalism in the USSR.

AIT AHMET

AIT AHMET, the leader of the Front of Socialst Forces, the armed opposition to Ben Bella's government, has been arrested. He is expected to be tried by a military court very shortly.

One of the nine 'historical leaders' of the FLN, Ait Ahmet became permanent ambassador of the FLN to the United Nations while the war was in process and in 1956 was arrested by the French, together with Ben Bella, when their plane was forced down over the Mediterranean by the French Air Force.

At the end of the war, he refused a ministry in Ben Bella's government, simply becoming an MP. In 1963 he founded the Front of Socialist Forces which began an armed insurrection in the Kabyle region in September that year.

Of the nine 'historical leaders' of the FLN, three were killed in the war, four are living in exile from Algeria, Ait Ahmet has just been arrested. Only one, Ben Bella, remains at liberty in Algeria.

to be

THE Woolwich Arsenal, which was scheduled by the Tories to close within the next two years, may be reprieved.

There is to be an 'urgent re-examination' of the position of Royal Ordnance factories in Britain by Labour's Minister of Defence for the Army, Mr. Frederick Mulley.

Already some 800 of the workers have been laid off at the factory which has a total force of 3,800.

In May this year many of the Woolwich workers joined men from the South London factory of Projectiles, which is definitely closing, in a demonstration ard march against redundancy.

Last December the then Secretary of State for War Mr. James Ramsden said the closures would have to be carried out because the Woolwich and Nottingham Ordnance factories were 'overproducing' arms.

But the Woolwich workers had an answer then. - And it still applies. Mr. Mulley should note.

Why are non-profit-making government arms factories being closed? So that private arms firms can make excess profits. Remember Ferranti?' Victory for labourers THE Surrey building site labourers -who had been on strike for a week and two days following the dismissal of their shop steward (see story page four) returned to work on Wednesday following his reinstatement.

O view the Indian sonalities, the objective class October 1964 24, Students are now told that

scene is to witness a sub-continent of 450 million people in convulsion and agony.

This is a dreary panorama of food shortage and general starvation. It is a crisis created neither by the infertility of the soil, nor by the sprinkling of grain hoarders, and certainly not by the density of the population.

This is a crisis of Indian capitalist society caused by the frenzied force of the profit motive and the subsequent reigning anarchy in production.

The result is an increasing reduction of workers' and peasants' working conditions and living standards to an abject, sub-human level.

In the course of the anti-colonialist struggle, the masses of the peasantry rally behind the emerging urban middle class.

The driving force behind the attempted class unity between the peasantry and the national bourgeoisie is the intensity of feudal landlord exploitation.

Imperialist social relations, emerging from highly developed (technique and extensive character of the productive forces, imposes great strain on the national bourgeoisie to control its own home market and carry capitalist relations into the countryside.

Therefore, the old feudal form of production and social relations become a fetter upon emerging capitalist relations of production.

On this significant point, Frederick Engels, the cofounder of Communism states ('On Social Relations in Russia'):

'In Western Europe, including Poland and Little Russia, at a certain stage in the social development this communal ownership becomes a fetter, a brake on agricultural production, and was more and more eliminated.' The process of eliminating, in the Indian context, the old feudal forms of exploitation and introducing capitalist land ownership in the countryside, is the backbone of the present Indian food crisis. This manifests itself in diverse forms.

In England, Oliver Cromwell, the military arm of the emerging national bourgeoisie, sought to slay feudalism by fire and sword. In India, the weapons of struggle have been determined by the historical process of colonialism, by the British bourgeoisie. That weapon is the parliament, an Indian creation on the British pattern.

The Land Holdings Act of the ruling Congress Party was an attempt to break up the larger estates and so determined the maximum acreage a single person could hold.

Adjustment

Following from this, the Indian bourgeoisie was determined to appropriate a great part of the surplus produced by the small peasant holders; to help • anti-feudal landlords to develop into capitalist landlords and create a rich stratum of peasants acting as usurers, blood-sucking the agricultural labourer and the small peasant holder.

So the struggle for independence by the middle class in the economically backward areas of world imperialism has been a political act of adjustment, a change in a reactionary direction of developing the productive forces to be easily assimiliated by the world imperialist economy.

Mr. Morarjee Desai, the extreme right-wing spokesman in the ruling party, champion of this trend to speedily merge Indian business interests with other monopoly and banking interests of world imperialism. In spite of him, this process would develop in that direction.

Only by seeing the granting of political independence to the colonies manoeuvre of imperialism to adjust itself to the 'wind of change'; by seeing this as a stage of development characteristic of imperialist exploitation in the present period; by seeing this as an essential stage of the national bourgeoisie to develop into a violently reactionary monopoly capitalist class; by seeing, finally, the need to extend the 'national democratic revolution into a socialist revolution on the basis of proletarian - peasant unity, can we determine the nature of Trotsky's Permanent Revolution', and the In India recently, whilst thousands starved, Prime Minister Shastri announced an 'Untouchability Week' during which the masses were expected to let the 'spiritual message' of Ghandi fill their distended stomachs. In this article P. DESAI analyses the tremendous food shortage in India against the background of the drive for profit by world imperialism.

all paramount nature of the complex connection between the metropolitan imperialist countries and the toilers of the colonies and neo-colonies (actually the economically backward sectors of imperialism.

In a few words, the backward areas must pull up their socks, merge speedily with the apparatus of world imperialism by creating suitable material levels, and prepare against the impending tide of world proletarian revolution.

Let us view the Indian food crisis against this background.

Big landlords have circumvented the law calling for the breaking up of large estates and ceiling land holdings by distributing plots to their relatives. The plots have been rented to small peasant-holders who are tied to the prices imposed by the wholesalers' and retailers' associations stretching across the country.

The fate of the small peasant holder and his family lies in the decisions of the stock markets and the grain centres, nationally and internationally.

True to the laws of capitalism, sections of the Indian agriculture are developed according to the rate of profit they fetch. Therefore, most of the monopoly and petty-bourgeois enterprises rely on the production of non-food crops and the country relies on the import of grain.

Patching up

The growing crisis has brought forth many plans and useless attempts to stave off social revolution. Latest manoeuvres of the Indian bourgeoisie are a reflection of their attempts to patch up capitalism and accelerate its tortoise tempo.

According to the 'Hindu' newspaper of August 30, the resolution of the Congress Working Committee demanded the structure of food prices be fixed at the producers' , wholesalers' and retailers' levels, allowing for a limited margin of profit. Better less profit, than social revolution!

The ruling Congress Party leaders have managed to cook up some bright excuses for the crisis, The problem is caused by the soil, they say. Resolution after resolution is passed.

Facilities must be provided to increase food production, and efficient distribution.

There must be a distribution of fertilizer to small peasants. Give concessions on water rates.

In a few words, the food cnisis results in a further drive for profit. • The state becomes an 'honest broker' negotiating between the peasantry on, the one hand, and the giant fertilizer monopolies, merchant interests and landowners on the other.

On dealing with the question of fertilizer distribution, we note that the Indo-U.S. Corporation (with €500,000.000 investment) is to set up five large fertilizer factories.

Alliance

The news was dramatically broken to the Indian public on September 17, by a certain General Clay, a senior partner of Messrs. Lehman Bros.

General L. Clay, we believe, was once a military titan of the Pentagon. He was in charge of American troops in West Berlin and at one time threatened to crash the Berlin Wall with tanks.

The fibres of connection between the Indian capitalist class and the American business interests are strengthened by General Clay. Big business and the military often stand together to tame militant workers.

Another mild attempt to dampen the workers' militancy comes from the State of Punjab. The ruling class intends to grant remission on land to families owning less than five acres, provided three acres devoted to grain production.

Though this would mean a loss of 50,000,000 rupees to the State Exchequer, it would benefit 40 per cent landowners.

Concurrently 33 per cent of the landowners having plots between five to ten acres would also benefit.

Capitalist boom brings in its shadow the depreciating curve of crisis. The result is an attack on workers' conditions, greater rigours of poverty and unemployment.

The major notable result in the Indian context is the wave of rebellion on the part of workers and peasants.

On September 27 strikes were called by left-wing organisations against food scarcity. Police opened fire at Tutangange, Bengal. In Calcutta bus and tram services were crippled by a strike.

In Andra Pradesh workers were shot.

Police violence reached THERE would be no reason to select this book for review on the grounds of any quality whatsoever, since it is badly written, petty and unconvincing.

However, Brian Behan was once a member of the Socialist Labour League, before that on the Executive Committee of the Communist Party, and during all that time a well-known militant on building sites in the London area. Some explanation is therefore required of the rubbish he has now spilled out in this book.

In this review we shall mostly confine ourselves to the political content of the book. Behan's attack is against any independent political organisation for the working class, and particularly against revolutionary Marxist leadership.

His attack on Trotskyism is deliberately written in caricature terms. By making the whole chapter semifictional in character he is able to introduce fabrications about 'violence' and conspiratorial methods, without having the responsibility of substantiating these innuendoes, and without ever describing the real political differences and subsequent breaches of discipline which led to his expulsion from the Socialist Labour League in 1960.

When he left the Com.

munist Party it was without an organised political fight against the leadership. Behan describes his own individual protest against the Edith Bone case on the Communist Party Executive and gives a confused account of his own hopeless twists and turns on the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.

He describes, with dates and names, the discussions on some of the questions in the Communist Party Executive.

The reader gets the impression that whereas Behan roamed about in the Communist Party criticising as he pleased for a time in 1956-57, he was summarily ejected from the Socialist Labour League without a hearing.

Indeed, he repeats the old reformist slander, In fact.

they (the Trotskyists) possessed all the vices of the Communist Party and none of its virtues.' In point of fact the Communist Party allows no crisis national limits. The impulse to raid grain centres passed through cities like Patna. As the workers flocked in their thousands into business centres, the capitalist class summoned their police force to clear up the scene.

In Patna, 10 people were killed in baton charges by the police.

Unrest

This could not stop the wave of unrest and general cry for food. The increasing price of food and the quest for higher profits acted as a generator lo electrify the mass movement which discharged its revolutionary militancy.

Nebulous leftist organisations exploited the situation • calling for more strikes, but failed to achieve concrete results and led the working class into further emptiness and despair.

The political trauma and BOOK REVIEW by Cliff Slaughter Behan crosses organised opposition opinion to be expressed and its rules specifically ban the organisation of factions.

Behan never went beyond individual protest. In the Socialist Labour League, Behan, then Chairman of the National Committee, submitted in January 1960, a full programme of opposition to the League's policy.

That programme, in accordance with our rules, was circulated to the entire membership and a small faction was recruited on the basis of it. Behan addressed aggregate meetings of the membership on his programme and continued to speak and write publicly for the League.

All these facts are omitted •by Behan. He selects certain events and fabricates others in order to give a picture of soul-less political conspirators interested only in power.

There is little wonder that Behan does not say what his political programme was With the help • of a few clippings from the 'Financial Times', he confidently dicted a serious economic depression by the autumn of 1960, a depression in which the workers would turn away from the Labour Party and seek a revolutionary alter native.

We must, therefore, set ourselves up as an independent open revolutionary party to appeal to these disillusioned workers, he maintained.

The League rejected this sectarian nonsense at its conference in 1960. In the aftermath, Behan formed his 'Workers' Party, which has not been heard of since.

If Behan insists on writing about his political experience, then he will have to accept that we reply with the truth. Why does he give no full accounting of his own political tendency after 1960? What happened to his Wurkers' Party?

He gives no explanation because he feels responsible țo no one but himself, a 'free' individual in capitalist society. He no longer accepts the food shock of the killings, the general heated atmosphere of discontent and the revulsion of abject living conditions were not properly canalised in an organised direction.

The Indian scene is i reflection of the total world crisis of the need for revolutionary Marxist leadership.

Lack of leadership is shown in the parliamentary debates in the House of Commons (Lok Sabha). On September 18 the right-wing Communist leader, N. H. Mukherjee accused Premier Shastri of being a schizophrenic. This Moscow mouthpiece accused Shastri of departing from Nehru's progressive (sic) policies!

The injured Shastri spent two hours replying to the Communists, maintaining rigidly that he is no split personality.

While the Communist Party spent its energy attacking perWITH BREAS Macgibbon and discipline of the working-class movement in any sense and consequently his book becomes a weapon of the enemy class, appealing to individual freedom under capitalism.

From "super - militancy, Behan has slipped over into submission to the authority of the system. We will prove this from the book.

Behan plays the great hero in describing his role in the South Bank strike during the construction of Shell-Mex House, particularly his arrest and sentence to imprisonment.

Here again he indulges in slanders, making it appear that he was pushed to the front to get arrested, while his political comrades ran off to the cafe.

Quite apart from the record of Trotskyists in this country and all over the world in the face of police repression, there is another important point here. Behan's conduct of industrial matters was under constant criticism from the League. On this particular occasion, he was specifically instructed to avoid an obviously prepared police provocation, but his political bankruptcy left him no alternative but adventurism and individual heroics.

One of the most significant sentences in the book concerns the South Bank strike. It would do very well as a scab's testament:

'Our mass picket is pressed back, and slowly the gates yawn open to admit all those who have a mind to enter.

Then we see what's afool.

A coach comes belting down the road. At first we see it's empty and wonder why all the fuss about an empty coach. Then someone spots it. A cry goes up.

"The dirty scabby bastards.

They're lying down on the floor so we can't see them."

'Suddenly I feel afraid.

What is there about us to terrify anyone. Surely we are the brotherhood of love? Imagine me in that struggle notably developed, with no discernable leadership.

As the crisis developed, the military, educational and religious segments of the bourgeois state were properly mobilized. Negotiations were duly conducted with other governments.

The Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy speedily supplied equipment to the MiG aeroplane factories. To it will be added the generous gift of 20 helicopters, aircraft and light tanks.

Negotiations were also conducted with Nasser and the Egyptian bourgeoisie on the purchase of supersonic aircraft.

On September 26, Chavan, the Minister of Defence, in the midst of impending workers' demonstrations, announced calmly that a well-equipped army of 825,000 men and a 45 Squadron Air Force will be maintained.

Seeing this in relation to unprecedented police assaults, we can now guess what the Indian working class and peasantry are in for!

"Toil'

The bourgeoisie also is too slow in beckoning academicians and pedagogues.

The ruling class chirps in a chorus - recommend proper educational facilities in correspondence with the food crisis.

Mr. Harish Chandra (chairman) of the UP Universities Commission, states:

*Political parties should not carry their politics and rivalries into the campus of educational institutions .

There should be no objections to students establishing clubs of their own where they may discuss and debate ideologies from an academic standpoint [sic] ... Dignity of labour should be inculcated amongst them.' the line coach. Shouldn't a man be free to do what he likes, work or not? Is our dictatorship any less evil than the employer's? ...

And in the same paragraph he attacks 'politicals' for not getting arrested!

Behan is quite explicit about his break from the working class: 'I swore then that never again would I hold a union card and I never have' he says after describing being drummed out of the Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers.

This same Behan wrote last year in "Twentieth Century' magazine that John Bloom's trading methods opened up new possibilities for capitalism! It is clear that his political evolution is not conplete and that his opinions are close to the extreme right.

To colour his own political renegacy, he indulges in the lowest kind of muck in his writing against the politicallyconscious section of the working class, the Marxists. He describes one man as, 'Riddled, like most extreme politicians, with sexual frustration. The same morbid theme returns when he caricatures a Trotskyist during the South Bank strike, 'he cringes when he passes John Law. He will live, like the Voyeur, through the actions of others'.

Earlier in the book, he says of a political organiser that, 'He became a revolutionary in a fit of spite brought on by his failure to make a pile selling holy pictures door to door.

Like all bad and tiresome comedians, he cannot help repeating his jokes, and writes a hundred pages later about some other character, 'He was a small man made revolutionary by his failure to make a fortune selling floor polish door to door' Behind all this slander, behind the cheap stories about sex, so contemptuous of women, which recur constantly in the book, lies Behan's complete turn, not only against Marxism, but against the workers as a class Instead of recognising capipolitics must not be carried into the universities. They should toil and sweat—it is dignified— so that the purses of the capitalists are fattened. If this is not so, then the gun barrel of world imperialism will point hazardously between their eyes.

In conclusion, another paradox must be recorded in the chapter of working-class history.

Wail

While the Bombay stock exchange records bleak weather, while cash sections rule quiet, while working people live through the morass of humiliation and poverty, the Indian capitalist class has proclaimed an 'Untouchability' Week' to carry the spiritual teachings of Ghandi to the outcasts!

This is a 'do-good week"

—a revival of the 'HarijanSeva' campaign—in which the workers are taught to be spiritually conscious in the midst of material starvation!

In down-to-earth language, it is a petty attempt to teach the masses how to wail over their miserable conditions and how not to organise themselves under a perceptibly dynamic leadership a leadership which would be an iron fist of defence against ruling class onslaughts.

History calls on the Socialist Labour League and the British working class to play an important role in constructing the tap roots of a powerful Fourth Trotskyist International. The salvation of mankind, and especially the starving millions in Asia, lies in a world party of workers and peasants, and certainly not in the horrific Stalinist committee rooms in Moscow and Peking.

Thus flows the logic of the coming socialist revolution in all its structural, expressive and substantial senses.

talism and fighting like the capitalists for the bigger share, we pursued a mirage of Labour to power to solve our problems.' Yes Behan has 'recognised' capitalism, i.e., he has accepted it as an unalterable fact, and he turns his hate against those who want to change it.

He naturally, therefore, adopts the boss's line on important questions. He comes out clearly against nationalization.

Telling how four men met their death in building Shell Mex House, he says, 'It's not the firm's fault, but they are blamed just the same! His answer to the 'tyranny' of the trade unions is a secret ballot for all strike actions. 'In what other way can workers really make up their minds whether or not an issue is serious enough to jeopardise the future of their families?' How much farther is it possible to go? There is no limit, once you abandon the working class.

There is a strong racialist undercurrent in Behan's book. He describes Whitechapel as *A mixture of seamen, dockers Jewish clothing shops, and Indians who never seem to do anything much, and pontificates later, 'How inoffensive the Indian is'. He describes the sacking of an Indian worker and adds, 'one more Bengal Lancer hit the dust'.

Writing about the anarchists he uses the following interesting expression, 'At first all you could hear was the Spaniards jabbering away'. Britishers speak, but foreigners jabber It is very near full circle.

The Irish 'rebel' now mouths the common filth of British imperialist ideology without shame.

Theoretical backwardness, the attempt to substitute subjectivism and activism for serious attention to Marxist theory and organisation led Behan to impatience, superficiality and arrogance relation to the working class In our epoch where the lines are so clearly drawn between reaction and revolution, there is no stopping place once the road away from Marxism is taken. Behan's book should be consulted for purposes of political pathology, as an example of the descent into rottenness and political degeneracy which awaits the whole of humanity if we do not succeed in the building of a revolutionary Marxist leadership.

But we are building it. For every Behan, we shall win and train for the working class thousand young worker-revolutionaries.

Oct ber Farewell to K Three

THE continuous decline in the votes obtained by the Belgian Socialist Party in local elections since 1952 shows what happens when a working-class party enters a government as loyal executors of capitalist policy in home and foreign affairs.

In the municipal elections of October 11, this loss of votes was most pronounced in the working-class areas, including some of those in which support for the strike of 1960-61 was most solid.

Belgian workers have not been impressed by the results of the Socialist Party's coalition with the Catholics. They have gained nothing from this unholy line up.

Some have definitely looked for an alternative, as is shown by the significant increase in the Communist Party (pro-Moscow) vote in a number of working-class districts. Others have not bothered to vote or have been swung behind the Flemish or Walloon nationalist parties.

WOOING

The right-wing socialist policy of wooing the middle class has not paid off in increased votes in middle-class areas. Even the official Catholic (SocialUnristian) rary nas lost vores li stanas, in raci, on the policy even more heavily than the of 'structural reforms' adopted Socialist Party, its middle-class by the Party in the 1959-61 supporters going to the pro-big period when it was in oppobusiness Liberal Party or, again, sition. especially in the Flemishspeaking districts, to the nationalists.

The Belgian centrists of 'La Gauche' have been placed in a quandary by these results.

As political commentators they can draw some correct conclusions. They rightly point out that participation in the coalition government has lost the Socialist Party working class votes: but they give this as an explanation, instead of something which has to be explained.

In three pages devoted to the results of the elections in the issue of October 17, there is no explanation of the relation between Belgian social-democracy and the working class. The same kind of so-called analysis could be read in any bourgeois newspaper.

'STRATEGY

Tha nalu diffaranna ic that Luc Ully 'La Gauche' deplores the fact and thinks that something should be done about it.

What it suggests is a 'frank, open and fraternal discussion of general policy and long-term strategy' within the party. Who is to discuss: the right-wing collaborators with capitalism, supporters of NATO? What sort of open discussion can be carried on with betrayers of the Belgian working class?

It cannot be said, of course, that 'La Gauche' has no policy. Te strela 21. -are turning to the Communist Party on a bigger scale than at any time since 1945.

The centrists have been unable to do a thing about this. They share in the bankruptcy of Belgian social-democracy whose prisoners they are.

PRESSURE

Their paper is not a workers' paper, but an organ of opinion directed at certain sections of the established apparatus of the social-democracy. It is all for putting pressure on the right wing to adopt the reformist policies it accepted when in opposition.

It cannot go to the working class to find allies and is not seen as an alternative because its hands are tied. It can thus spend pages on deploring the election results without once glimpsing the root of the problem.

The disarray of the centrists is not confined to Belgium. Through various journals and regroupments this tendency finds expression internationally and in a number of countries, including Britain.

Here, as elsewhere, it opposes those who try to find a road to the working class through struggle independent of the bureaucracies. It advocates a 'left' reformist programme to be realised by putting pressure on the Labour Party leaders.

It thus fosters the illusion that people like Wilson are in some sense socialist, and not, like the Ralmion 'ennialict) Minictaro Inal

ITH the dismissal Khrushchev, the Soviet bureaucracy lurches from one impossible position to another. Khrushchev's fall, like his rise, will do nothing to solve any of the problems of the bureaucracy and certainly will do nothing for the Soviet working class.

The problems which the Soviet bureaucracy hope to solve with this dismissal are not the creation of Khrushchev as an individual, neither is his failure to solve them caused by his individual failings.

They are the product of the defeats of the working class in the twenties and thirties, which greatly strengthened imperialism temporarily with regards to the world working class. The growth of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR was both a consequence of these defeats of the working class and was, in itself, one such defeat.

Khrushchev's failures, his dismissal and the struggle which is presently taking place in the Soviet bureaucracy can only be understood in the context of the world-wide struggle between the working class and the imperialists.

In the epoch of imperialism, each branch of industry dominated by a handful of giant firms. These firms own and control the entire natural recources outside the Soviet Unioli, the countries of Eastern Europe and China, as well as the factories that process these resources, the transport systems and the shops that sell the finished products.

Closely linked with the handful of big banks and finance companies, the activities of these firms extend throughout the capitalist world.

In fact, the lives of all those who live outside the Soviet countries are directly controlled and dominated by a handful of giant firms like General Motors, Krupp, Nestle and Shell in conjunction with the banks like the Chase Manhattan, Barclays and the Credit Suisse.

But just as the activities of these giant firms are not confined to any single capitalist country, their power i.

not confined to the capitalist world either. Through their control of the world market, they also are able to affect the economy of the Soviet countries to a very great extent.

In order to deyelop the Soviet Union, it was necessary to use the most modern industrial processes. But these very processes demanded the world division of labour, denied to Soviet planners by imperialism.

Nonsense

Any talk of socialism in one country, therefore, is nonsense. The most that could be expected was the strengthening of the area that had freed itself from direct capitalist rule, by careful economic planning, as an interim measure until the final world overthrow of imperialism permitted the development to socialism.

In other words, even without taking the class struggle and the development of imperialism into account, the full economic development of the Soviet Union in isolation from the rest of the world was impossible.

In the real world of the class struggle, the situation is much worse. Imperialism itself is in a state of permanent crisis and the rich markets of the Soviet countries and the prospects for investment that these areas would offer are eyed greedily by the capitalists, who see in them a solution to the impe:ialist crisis.

The more the crisis in imperialism deepens, the greater the pressure the imperialists apply to the USSR to regain it for capitalist investment.

The imperialists use all the resources at their disposal in order to wage this baltle. Through their control of the world market, they can ensure that every international transaction undertaken by the USSR is very costly to the latter. And this process is developing to the detriment of the USSR - as productivity (and it is the level of this and not of overall production that determines economic efficiency) is increasing far more rapidly in the USA than in the USSR.

Through the arms race and the expenditure of massive sums on the development of ever more refined weapons, they can impose an unbearable burden upon the Soviet economy, as this sector must be as efficient, if not more efficient than that of the most advanced capitalist power, whatever the cost.

The space achievements of the USSR show that this has been maintained. The remarkable flight of the three spacemen last week, who flew without even wearing space suits, forced a United States government spokesman to concede that the Soviet Union was 'years ahead' in the space race.

But this achievement has been crisis in imperialism, and a made at the expense of the consequent increase in pressure development of agriculture, upon the Soviet Union. housing and, in effect, of the In his speech on agriculture entire economy not connected in September 1953, Khrushchev with defence. The Soviet work- revealed that the production of ing class has had the brunt of beef cattle in the Soviet Union by Peter Arnold the capitalist offensive passed on to its shoulders.

To all this must be added yet one more factor. The bureaucracy springs from the most conservative and backward layers of the Soviet working class and petty-bourgeoisie.

To the distortions imposed by imperialism it has added its own -the bungling 'hare-brained schemes' of which Khrushchev is accused, the violent zig-zags of policy which have characterised the rule of the bureaucracy from the beginning.

These include the famine entirely artificially produced by the "liquidation of the Kulaks' in the late twenties and the dust bowl in central Asia, produced hy Khrushchev's "virgin lands' enhama But disastrous though these bungles have been, they have only accentuated the distortions which inevitably follow from 'socialism in one country. They are the terrified scuttling of rats trying to escape from a trap they helped to prepare.

It is meaningless for Brezhnev and Kosygin to blame Khrush- TT 1. chev for these distortions. They were present when he came to power, and their aggravation is the product of the growing was shown in the strike of 1960-61 and has been amply proved since. The situation now is that militant workers had fallen from 58.4 million head in 1916 (the third year of the First World War and the year before the revolution!) to 56.4 million in 1953, and that total agricultural production had only increased by 10 per cent between 1940 and 1952, whilst the size of the working class needing to be fed has grown extremely fast (10.8 million workers in 1928; 56.3 million in 1959).

The Soviet worker has paid for Stalinism with shortages of food, clothes and housing and -as the bureaucrats struggle to 'solve the problem' by intenfying work in the factories— with strenuous working conditions.

All this has led to resistance in the working class, which, by raising the threat of revolution (and since Hungary this is known not to be just an idle threat) pushes the bureaucracy further into a corner.

In his report to the Central Committee of the Communist AS EXPECTED ...

the Brifish Communist Party produced a statement on Tuesday that should enable them to avoid any trouble from whichever faction wins this round of the Kremlin struggle.

It was 'glad to note the assurances from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that the general line of policy initiated by the 20th Congress of the CPSU remains firm and unchanged'.

On the other hand, just in case the swing is not irreversible, the British Communist Party also notes 'the big positive part played by Comrade Khrushchey in initiating and developing the policies of the 20th Congress'.

It also firmly warns the membership against engaging in any 'negative' discussion about foreign matters: The leadership of a Communist Party is an internal sovereign matter for the Party concerned, to be decided on the basis of its constitution and rules.

But even the 'best Stalinists that money can buy are worried by these events: "The explanation of the changes so far given does not remove the natural concern felt by Communists abroad about this development', the statement concludes pathetically.

Party of the Soviet Union, in December 1962, Victor Gryshin, chairman of the Soviet trade unions spoke of the '... poor vield hv some sections JUVUUMU workers absenteeism, violations of labour discipline, the abuse of the practice of overtime and the non-fulfillment of quotas, especially by young workers'.

In October of the same year, the Leningrad Party Committee discussed :.. 24 million working days lost in Leningiad industrial firms through unmotivated absences and late arrivals by the workers' Similarly, in a desperate attempt to flee from bad conditions, Soviet workers constantly move from one area to the next. So much so that Volkov, the chief of the State Committee for Work and Wages, reported to the Central Committee in November 1962 that this movement of labour had cost the economy about 2 billion roubles a year.

And Gryshin, in the speech The of art allowed in USSR to boost the 'cult of the individual'. Stalin and Khrushchey are the men in type mentioned above, revealed that 80,000 workers had left the factories in the region of Krasnoyarsk in the first nine months of 1962 alone.

In the summer of 1962 there were riots in the industrial cities of Rostov on Don and Novocherkassk.

The 'hare-brained' schemes.

the virgin lands and the labour passports were Khrushchev's attempts to avert the real alternatives that confront the Soviet Union: the restoration of capitalism or a working-class revolution.

Greed

They went hand in hand with the measures intended to pacify the restorationists, both intenal and external, which far from pacifying them, merely increared their greed.

The strengthening of the collective farms inside the Soviet Union, in the attempt to entice the peasants to deliver more food, has merely led to the strengthening of the private sector of the economy-to the extent that syndicates of collectives now employ wage labour in the Machinery and Tractor Stations that Khrushchev sold them in 1958-and which, incidentally, they were able to pay for cash down!

And these pressures are echoed in such 'events' as the 'Liebermann proposals' that the state planning commission be more or less replaced by a system employing the profit motive.

This struggle between the working class and the imperialists is reflected inside the Soviet bureaucracy. The reflection is extremely distorted as the various factions struggle to maintain a central position between the two classes, sone leaning on one side, some on the other.

Such a position becomes less and less tenable as the two classes come increasingly into conflict as the imperialist crisis deepens.

Both the Khrushchevites and the 'more revolutionary' 'Chinese', together with whatever other factions emerge, will be swept away by the two classes in conflict - when the chips are down, the bureaucracy stands in the way of both sides.

But as the bureaucracy disintegrates, the factional fighting inside it increases. The publication of the Togliatti testament recently was intended to strengthen the restorationists in the struggle which preceded Khrushchev's downfall.

The explosion of the Chinese nuclear bomb, is obviously intended to strengthen, the 'Chinese' faction in the struggle which now continues.

New crises But bureaucratic solutions merely lead to fresh crises. I ike every previous zig-zag of the Soviet bureaucracy, this latest move has merely added new difficulties without removing the old problems.

For Khrushchev's removal has been greeted with mixed feeling in the Stalinist movement. Kadar, Gomulka and Ulbricht (yes, even Ulbricht) have openly, and without hesitation, made statements which imply disapproval of the new Soviet leadership.

Gomulka praised Khrushchev's "great merits' at a meeting held on Saturday in honour of Kadar, and Kadar replied by • the shining white suits.

ying that it was necessary to ay hommage to Khrushchev'.

Ulbricht went even further.

At a time when Khrushcher's pictures were somehow deleted from a film on Soviet television showing the parade in honour of the two cosmonauts last year (they had stood next to him on the tribune, and when all his books have been removed from Moscow bookshops, the 'Berliner Zeitung' (the East Berlin newspaper) announced on Sunday that it would shortly be publishing an anthology of Khrushchey's writings and speeches.

Ulbricht himself spoke of the 'profound emotion' produced by Khrushchev's removal and of his 'great merits'.

In Italy, 'Unita', the official Communist Party newspaper, declared that the way in which Khrushchev had been removed was evidence of the shortcomings in the Soviet Union that Togliatti had pointed out in his Testament.

And Terracini, who, along with Gramsci, helped form the Italian Communist Party went even further in encouraging the khrushchev faction with the words: the replacement of Khrushchey has taken pilace in a way which the Soviet people itself will not approve.

The Czechoslovak party was received the news with 'surprise and emotion' and has expressed its 'appreciation for the activity of Comrade Khrushchev'. It has gone ahead with policies that must strengthen the restorationists in the country.

'Rude Pravo, the official Communist Party newspaper, announced on Saturday that the economy was to be reorganised in order to give far greater ... AND AS EXPECTED ALSO the leadership of the French Communist Party tried to weather this storm by denying that any crisis existed.

For a week after Khrushcher's fall the only reactions from 'L'Humanite', the official Communist Party newspaper, were an article merely reporting that Khrushchey had 'resigned', and an editorial warning the French comrades not to allow outside interests to distract them from their real tasks of carrying out the decisions of the French leadership in France.

However, this crisis has broken even the 'most Stalinist of all parties. The leadership that has survived so many crises without flinching has this time been forced to take the controversial step of sending a delegation to Moscow to find out what happened to Khrushchev.

freedom to individual firms, especially with production plans (which must correspond to the demands of the market) and with wages. Price control is also to be abandoned, except for raw materials and some consumer goods.

We will not follow those Kremlinologists and humbugs who anxiously scan the latest crop of leaders in search of "liberal' or "Stalinist' policies Whatever policies Khrushchev's successors may devise, whatever personality they may push to the fore, whatever alliances thev mav conclude. they cannot solve the Soviet wur, CrISIS.

This can only be done by that personality so rarely mentioned by the Kremlinologists— the Soviet working class, led by a revolutionary party with an internationalist • Marxist programme.

Khrushchev's departure will only be a 'positive' step if it facilitates these moves in the Soviet working class.

The third of Frank Williams' articles in reply to Peng Shu-tse 'Algeria, Cuba and the Fourth International' will appear at a later date ena

This is the classic social-democratic minimum programme brought up to date with a few ideas from bourgeois economics. It looks on a parliamentary majority as the instrument for such changes. It does not begin with the class struggle and the needs of the working class. For the workers, this programme remains mainly an abstract thing.

'REFORMS'

'La Gauche' calls for something else. "It is high time, it writes, 'that a programme of anti-capitalist structural reforms, corresponding to the real and profound preoccupations of the masses of the workers was put forward, and a vast campaign of propaganda launched in favour of this programme, that solutions of a federalist type are supported and all entry into a government refused unless it includes the realisation of this programme.

How and by whom these things are to be done is not clear. The right-wing leaders of Belgian social-democracy are not going to do them, no matter how much frank and open discussion is now carried on. In fact it is preparing to expel some supporters of 'La Gauche' right now.

The only force able to hunal thn winht minn in to ha found in the working class. custodians of capitalist interests. 'La Gauche' is unable to By threat of expulsion and bring any section of workers talk about party loyalty the into struggle against the right party chiefs keep such people wing because it has never in line and they play a useful done any preparatory work role in assisting the right wing in the working class. This to deceive the working class.

Industrial THE NEWSLETT October 24,1954

RAY GUNTER, Minister of Labour in the new Labour government, this week lashed out viciously at the country's dockers.

In doing so, he made it quite clear that a fight for wages and better working conditions has absolutely no place in Labour's plans for the British economy. He also made it clear that, as Minister of Labour, he intends to continue with the old Tory pattern on the docks of secret meetings, 'impartial' arbitration and Courts of Inquiry: all the trusted methods for ensuring that the port employers have their way. defend Discontent over low pay has been building up on the docks for months; this week it hit the headlines with the announcement of a one-day strike for Thursday and with the serving of notice of official strike action nationally.

The official strike notice came after the breakdown of talks between the port employers and the four dock unions over a pay claim of 5 per cent for piece workers and 25s. a week for time workers.

The most the employers would offer was 12s. 6d. a week for time workers and 32 per cent for piece workers coupled with an increase in fall-back rate and a further increase for the lowest paid workers.

Rejecting the offer on Tuesday, union leaders gave four weeks' notice of termination of the national agreement. This, they intimated, would be followed by two weeks' strike notice.

Agreement

But the union leaders' strike decision should not be taken as meaning that they intend to do battle with the employers.

Indeed, it is more than likely that, under Cousins' term of office in the Transport and General Workers' Union, some secret agreement covering not only pay but also crucial questions of reorganisation to the detriment of port workers has already been reached.

Why then have they called a strike? It is because they are simply scared stiff of 'unofficial' action being taken by dockers outside of their control. Tuesday's strike notice was, in fact, a red-herring to try and prevent the one-day stoppage followed by a possible work to rule, scheduled for Thursday, from taking place.

Mi. Jack Dash, Chairman of the Port Workers' Liaison Committee which called the one-day strike quickly tried to climb down after the official notice was given. The strike notice, he said, had changed the position and his committee would probably be meeting again to reappraise the situation' That, Mr. Dash, was just what the union leaders wanted you to do.

In point of fact the situation has not changed at all. Even if the union leaders did have the slightest intention of carrying out their strike threat, which is doubtful, this would mean that the strike would fall in the last few weeks before Christmas: the worst imaginable time to call a strike.

Inquiry likely

Gunter: Continues Tory pattern Yet despite this, they keep their mouths shut. Doubtless they are anxious not to embarass a government which features as a star turn Mr. Frank Cousins, who so recently abandoned his post amongst them.

Never mind the embarrassment. The Labour leaders sh.,w every sign of being ruthless, not coy.

At issue here are the vital questions of the dockers' miserable wages and the whole future of their employment. If the dock union leaders are unwilling to fight on these questions, then they must be forced to make way for those who will.

steward ABOUT 4,000 workers have rallied to the defence of a shop steward sacked two weeks ago from the Ferrybridge power station site in Yorkshire.

The steward, working for Kilpatrick Electrical contractors, was sacked for going to a meeting in working hours.

The men claim that stewards' meetings have been held in the firm's time for months without complaint; the firm's taking up this issue after such a long time was an obvious attempt at victimisation.

When the dismissal was announced, 1,000 men on the site came out on strike demanding the steward's reinstatement.

Electrical Trades Union area officials instructed the men to go back to work and demanded the return of the steward's credentials. But their instructions, which amounted to a cringing acceptance of the management's attack, were rot well received by the men on the job.

At a mass meeting they voted to stay out, and they have now been joined by men working on neighbouring construction sites.

Surrey

labourers fight victimisation NINETEEN building labourers on a 17-storey office block in Sutton, Surrey, stopped work on Monday, October 12 because their steward had been sacked.

The previous Wednesday, faced with a threat of a work to rule, the management had conceded minimum bonus payment of two shillings an nour On the Saturday, the steward, Michael Murtagh (Amalgamated Union of Building Trades Workers), was sacked on the spot when he returned from dinner ten minutes late. He had had to go out for his meal as there were no canteen facilities on the site.

Another labourer who returned at the same time was also sacked, but not until the Monday. Bro. Murtagh said: "They only sacked him to make my sacking look good.' The strikers regard this as open victimisation — we know he was sacked for his trade union activities' - and determined to secure the reinstatement of both men. The strike has been officially recognised by the AUBTW.

Become a regular subscriber to IN the fight for socialism, The Newsletter, is playing a vital role. Do you get it regularly? Don't leave it to the chance encounter, fill in this form and send it to:

Subscription Department, The Newsletter, 1868 Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4.

8s. 6d. for 12 issues Name Address

Linwood WORK ceased on Hillman Imp bodies at Linwood on Monday, after 30 men from the paint shop had come out.

The men stated that they were being asked to do too many frehicles an hour. They requested that more men be put on the job.

Postmen The Union of Post Office Workers has agreed 10t to replace the seven men tł at they expelled recently in any union office, whilst their action against the union is held over in the High Court.

Miners Between 600 and 700 representatives of the National Union of Mineworkers in South Wales boycotted Robens, chairman of the National Coal Board, when he addressed a meeting in Cardiff on Wednesday.

Italy 20,000 municipal workers, of all kinds, went out on strike on Tuesday. Municipal off. ices remained empty and dustl sins unemptied and, to gen eral surprise, some members of the police force tried to join the strikers.

When the negotiations broke down, a press conference was held, addressed by Tim O'Liary and Jack Jones, both of the Transport and General Workers' Union. While rejecting the independent examination' proposal of the employers, both of them would not give any clearcut answer when asked about a possible government Court of Inquiry.

They know that a Court of Inquiry, perhaps imposed by the Labour government, is now the most likely eventuality.

They aiso know that such an inquiry would be the obvious prelude to the implementation of the employers' plans for attacking the conditions of dockers through reorganisation schemes and increased mobility of labour. Its findings on the pay question would be a foregone conclusion, given Labour's general wages policy.

ending By BILL LAST Monday, 1,000 Middlesbrough dockers began a three-day strike as nearly 300 men were suspended from ene to three days.

The local Dock Labour Board had finally decided on a showdown with the dockers by sentencing men who finished their shifts early.

The strike began on the same day that Minister of Labour Gunter was giving his "Get tough with the dockers' signal to the port bosses. There is no doubt that the action of the Teeside Board is part of the same policy of screwing down the dockers.

Finishing a few dispute HUNTER after what is generally regarded as a 'good day's work' is an old tradition on Middlesbrough docks. Even the 'Northern Echo' was forced to declare editorially last Monday that there was "justice' in the Middlesbrough dockers claim.

The men themselves showed the depth of their feeling by tying up the port completely for three days.

At Middlesbrough and in every port in the country, notice is being served that big business is going to have a tremendous fight to carry out its plans for the docks-whatever assistance the Labour government may try to give it.

THE strike of Midlands tanker drivers and mates employed by Shell Mex and BP has gone on for over two weeks and is now spreading.

200 men from the Oldbury, Cakemore and Stourport depots came out on strike over lack of communication and to demand the removal of a manager.

Big Midlands employers are very anxious about the strike which threatens their production. One firm, Chance Bros., has already had to close down its glass-making works.

The men generally deliver about half a million gallons of fuel and gas oil per day.

Their union called for a return to work so that the management could hold an inquiry, but the men saw through this and the call was rejected.

Now they have been joined by a further 60 drivers from Earis Court sparks support Dave Finch SEVENTEEN Electrical Trades Union shop stewards on the Earls Court, London, Motor Show site last week sent a resolution to the Executive Council of the union demanding that they re-consider the position of Dave Finch. Finch was secretary of the Lambeth, London, ETU branch — one of the largest and strongest in the country—before being banned for life from holding office in the union by the Executive Council. The Earls Court stewards, who passed the resolution unanimously, deplored the harshness of the sentence on Finch, who is also a leading member of the Socialist Labour League. Pakistani workers walk out over wage reduction O Pa Pakistani workers walked off the night shift at a Bradford worsted spinning mill claiming they had been told to get out alter protesting about their pay.

Mr. M. I. Sethi, representing workers involved in the dispute at James Tankard's, said that two weeks ago the night shift was reduced from 13 hours to 11 hours. The management were attempting to obtain the Worcester, whose daily delivery is around quarter of a million gallons of paraffin and petrol.

The men are standing absolutely firm, and the only deliveries that are being carried out are to priority services such as hospitals.

COUNCILLORS VISIT LOSCOE TENANTS THE promises given by Featherstone, Yorkshire, councillors to the tenants of the Loscoe slums (see Newsletter, October 10), have so far come to nothing. No house repairs have yet been carried out and the beck wall is as dangerous as ever.

On Tuesday, October 13—two weeks after their glowing promises-six icar loads of Labour councillors arrived in Loscoe at 11 o'clock in the morning when most people were at work.

They promise to call again in the evening, but this was another typical council promise — they didn't come back at all.

'Slumming'

Tenants described their Labour 'representatives' as: 'Strolling around with homburgs and cigars, doing a bit of pre-election slumming.' Tenants also told The Newsletter that the councillors refused to enter any of the houses.

One angry tenant dragged the assistant Health Inspector into a house and showed him the appalling conditions.

When some Loscoe housewives came out and challenged the councillors, they said they weren't going to bother with Loscoe any more and drove off.

One councillor said they didn't care about Loscoe because 'your few • hundred votes don't count in a General Election'.

Bradford mill same amount of work out of the men and were not allowing even a five to ten minute break for a smoke.

Last Friday (October 16), when the men received wages for working 50 hours during the week they got f1l 14s. 2d. in place of £14 18s. 2d. for 60 hours a week previously.

When the men protested against the lower wages, alleges Mr. Sethi, they were told by the foreman 'Get back to Pakistan. Get your cards and get out? It was then that the 200 men walked out.

*The wages are very little, very short. No one is ready to go to work for these wages, said Mr. Sethi.

Mr. C. P. Hainsworth, managing director of the firm, said that the working hours had been reduced because those in force were not condusive to plant efficiency or employees' health.

DENIAL

'Obviously, if we can get the same production we shall be satisfied. But this is highly unlikely,' he said.

He denied that any derogatory remarks had been made to the Pakistani employees. When the men returned to work on Tuesday night, the management said the night shift had been stopped. The firm still maintained they would be happy to have them back at work.

mill yard seeking the jobs.

This is not surprising. The figures published on Monday show a sharp rise in unemployment in the Bradford area due to uncertainty in the wool combing industry.

Announcements have been made in, the last few weeks of proposals to close three mills in the town before the end of the year.

TEMPTED

Men who have been unemployed for a period, particularly immigrant workers with no experience of trade union or factory organisation, must be tempted to take jobs, even at these low wages.

The unwillingness of he leaders of the Textile Union to carry on the fight, as displayed in the Denby dispute (12 months old next week), creates no incentive to join the union.

It is important, however, that those involved in the present dispute do not just turn their backs on Tankard's and seek work elsewhere.

The men must go back to the mill and set up picket lines and begin a fight to increase pay and improve their conditions.

It is also important that they join the union, despite the present leadership, to carry on the fight which was tentatively begun at this year's union conference. existed at the Steel Company of Wales in Port Talbot. Against a wage claim, the company posed the question of reorganisation. The union leaders gave way.

Although they won an increase, they gave the company a free hand in reorganisation and redeployment of labour in the firm, paving the way for redundancies without resistance from the union.

NO COMPROMISE This must not be allowed to happen on the railways. The aim must be for the 13 per cent increase without compromise on other issues.

If it is left to the right-wing union leaders this will not be won. If they seem militant about the pay rise now, it is because they are frightened of losing the support of a militant membership.

Left to themselves they will back down, especially since they Will be up against so many old friends and colleagues in the government. For it is the Labour Party that is now responsible for the running of the nationalized rail industry.

In such a fight they would, for example, find themselves in confrontation with their excolleague Ray Gunter, until so recently President of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association.

For his part Mr. Gunter has already made his views on working-class action quite plain.

The only guarantee of a successful outcome is determined action by the rank and file. But it is clear that this will have to be carried out against the opposition of a Labour government that has every intention of continuing Tory policy on the railways.

Registered at the G.P.O. as a nemspaper 180 Clapham High Street. London. s. W.4 Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (TU).

Published by The Newsletter. 1864 Claphem Hish Street, London. S.W.4

IN the first few days of the Wilson government, mounting on British Railways.

It is clear that the insulting 5 per cent pay rise offer of the British Railways Board will be decisively rejected by railwaymen throughout the country.

Members of the railway unions want to hold out for their full 13 per cent pay claim, which would bring their wage rates up to those in outside industry.

So strong are the feelings of rank and file railway workers on this question that their union leaders made the rejection plain in the first days of a shaky government whose Minister of Labour had only hours before left his post as president of one of the railway unions.

The Board's 5 per cent offer would have meant increases of 10s. to 15s. a week for railwaymen whose wages at present range from a miserable f9 14s. to £15 Is. a week. The Board also offered a rise of 3 per cent for 90,000 salaried staffs.

Mr. Sidney Greene, general Secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen, said that wages on the railways had fallen 13 per cent below the point they should have reached according to the recommendations of the Guillebaud Commission.

EXCUSE

The Board itself, he said, admitted that there was a gap. They put the figure at 9.4 per cent. Nevertheless, they were still offering only 5 percent.

Their excuse was lack of money available. But it was announced on Monday by the Board that B.R. receipts for the nine months ending at the beginning of September were over £5a million up on the same period last year.

The excuse and the actual figures hardly tally.

Nor does the excuse make much sense alongside the suggestion of Mr. Alex Dunbar, member of the Board in charge of manpower, who hinted that there might be enough money available for a pay rise if the unions were willing to cooperate in unrestricted linertrain running and in singlemanning of locomotives. yard for jobs Within hours of the walkout, other men were reported to have been queuing in the Greene: Resistance is low He wants to break down the unions' refusal to permit free entry to liner-train terminals by private road hauliers. Single manning of locomotives has been resisted because of the obvious implications of redundancy.

Mr. Dunbar's suggestion is an example of the now rather familiar type of industrial blackmail.

So far it has been resisted by the union leaders. Albert Griffiths, general secrtary of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, said that his union would have no more to do with negotiations on these questions until the wage claim was settled.

'CO-OPERATION

Resistance from Greene was, however, less firm. He said that these issues had nothing to do with the pay question and that he would not deal with the Board in this manner.

But his decision, it would seemingse so to cough at of 'we would expect to co-operate in getting wages above the rate' -as from the fact that, as he put it, 'these are very touchy things with our blokes.

Railwaymen must be on the alert. The Board is trying to pose questions involving redundancy in conjunction with this long overdue pay claim.

A similar situation recently