The Newsletter, vol. 8 no. 370

T! was good to read two weeks ago of the appreciation of Tere in Rirkenhead. Garston and Liverpool ports, this tremenLIVIV IN dous weekly paper is a 'must' week by hundreds.

One docker in the Irish club some weeks back expressed the value of the paper when he said to all those around him-'Get this paper, it's the only one that gives you the real facts behind the news.' The editorial 'Organise now against decasualisation' (Newsletter, October 31) is no exception: especially the fact that one of the main authors of the 'new deal' for skinning dockers is none other than the "left' Mr. Cousins!

But there is one point which needs more explanation and that is the so-called dockers' wage demand for an increase of 25s. being turned down at the end of July.

Trickery

That 25s. exemplifies the trickery and treachery of the Transport and General Workers' Union officials and the London Liaison Communist Party-led committee.

TGWU branches in Merseyside, Manchester, Hull, Scotland and London, not to mention other ports, mandated the negotiating committee for £15, £12 10s. and f14 in Hull months ago.

No branch has mandated O'Leary for 25s. Neither has it been discussed at any branch. When O'Leary told the employers to start with 25s., that was a betrayal of the mandate and one of the biggest of many gifts to the employers over the years.

The London Liaison committee knew this very well, but at no time did they expose and is read eagerly week after Crichton: brains behind decasualisation O'Leary and Co. On the contrary, they kept on telling the dockers that the TGWU was changing for the better, that it was going to do the job.

On the very day that Jack Dash (a leading member of the Liaison Committee) called off the one-day token strike, because of the TGWU bluff of ending the national agreement and then proceeding obsequiously to carry out the agreed procedural force of four weeks and then two weeks' strike notice, one of the Stalinists on Merseyside was calling for unity behind the officials!

There is no end to their betrayal and servility, except the building of a national rank and file portworkers' committee.

Precisely because there is no national leadership, the TGWU have, up to this point, got away (Cont. p. 4, col. 6) A VICIOUS one year's hard I 41-year-old Leeds Universi throw the Nigerian government, The Nigerians, trade unir Oleshengun Adebayo received sir

J'WO hundred dockers were 'locked-out' of the Royal Docks on Wednesday following an early morning meeting to discuss a proposed claim foi a 50 per cent piece-rate pay increase.

Over 2,000 men were at the meeting called by the Royal Docks Liaison Committee. When the 200 arrived late at the Dock Labour Board to have their attendance cards stamped, they found the windows shut in their faces. Officials refused to stamp their cards.

During the lunch locked-out for being late dockers agreed that if the cards had not been stamped by the end of the day they would hold a meeting on Thursday morning to vote a complete withdrawal of labour.

The Wednesday meeting decided the pay claim be made through the individual unions.

At the Thursday meeting the men decided to strike, so bringing the docks to a standstill. However, they decided to return to work in the afternoon so that union officials could look into the matter. JONAS KIOMASEKENAGH OLESHENGUN ADEBAYO SIDI KAYAM

Page

Vol. 8, No. 370 Birkenhead docker November THE BUDGET:

BIG BUSINESS HAPPY THROGMORTON STREET *VERY worker and trade unionist kn Sigh system of profit-making and greed which of the standard of living of the wage worker, pensioners. elief If there is a balance of payments crisis it is not the trade union and labour movement that is responsible but the fact that private companies made four thousand million pounds profit last year and that their system is organised Mr. Callaghan's budget, like right-wing Labour's policy as a whole, has the avoided a head-on clash with the City of London. - He has instead introduced measures such as the 6d. a gallon tax on petrol and dearer National Insurance stamps which are bound to increase the cost of living for the wage earners £15 DOCKERS' WAGE ICKERS' WAGE committee B/OSL By The Editor to fit in with this gigantic profit grab.

and poorer sections of the population.

No wonder the City has breathed a sigh of relief at the contents of his budget. These proposals will not really effect them in any way. They have ample means at their disposal to raise prices so as to offset any increased costs.

Such means are not at the disposal of the working class who are to be asked by Mr. Woodcock and the right-wing trade union leaders to accept a wage freeze.

No wonder the City is relieved because they have the right-wing trade union and Labour leaders on their side.

Of course, everyone will support an improvement in standards of old age pensioners and the removal of the health service prescription charges. But why should the working class be made to pay through an increase in the cost of living for these measures? That is the real issue.

Hypocrisy

A policy of giving with one hand and taking back with another shows the hypocrisy of the reformists Callaghan and Wilson, who are in reality nothing more than the servants of big capital applying policies which will not in the long run make any difference to the working alass.

There is, however, a strategy behind the budget.

These concessions are designed to create a division in the working class between those who are poorly paid and those who through trade union organisation enjoy higher wages.

Both Tories and right-wi Alfred Dressler:

an appreciation THE Editorial Board of The Newsletter has learned with deep regret of the death of Alfred Dressler on Sunday, October 24.

Alfred Dressler ranked as one of the foremost and sincere intellectuals who left the Communist Party during the Prague trials. He was especially active in the Leeds branch of the International Society of Socialist Studies and will always be remembered for his production of the record of the Eighth Plenum of the Polish Workers' Party.

As a founder-member of the Editorial Board of the 'New Reasoner' he collaborated very closely with John Saville and Edward Thompson. Although critical of Trotskyism, he always provided serious and thoughtful arguments to those with whom he discussed.

The labour movement has lost a serious worker on matters of important historical and theoretical interest.

Price FILE ›ws that the Tories ic crisis. It is their constantly threatens widows and old age Callaghan: avoids clash with City Labour alike hope that the incomes commission will lie down all wages and salaries to longterm legislative agreement. The protagonists of the income commission speak about taking action over prices, but by the time the commission gets down to work, prices will have risen considerably over what they are now.

Wages, however, will remain the same, because it is anticipated that there will be an agreement reached between the Trades Union Congress and the government to freeze wages before Christmas.

Prices rise

Under a disguise of the improvement in the social services prices will go up and will be higher than they are today by April next year. Then, when the Incomes Commission proposals come up for decision, the Labour government is bound to introduce some curtailment of profits. But by that time big business will have plenty of time to prepare for any contingencies which might arise.

In other words, the first action of the Labour government, both on the 15 per cent surcharge and on the budget increases, is to attack the living standards of the working class.

This is the classical role of reformism tinkering with capitalism, whilst at the same time absolutely rejecting real socialist measures against big business.

Sleep sound

You cannot place the responsibility for the economic crisis on the backs of the Tories as long as they own and control the property. Callaghan, Wilson and their ilk have no intention of touching this property, so the City of London can sleep soundly.

Like all reformist Labour governments in the past, what they have done is to hit and defeat the very people who voted them into office.

Wilson and Callaghan are, in fact, the architects of defeat, miserable Parliamentary careerists who are at the moment only providing the role of a caretaker government whilst at the same time creating the conditions for the return of the Tonies. This Week Hard labour for government-by Cliff S The story of a centrist La Marxist Dr. Nig Tue nd Robert Leonard Victor Allen, the erians of plotting to oversday.

Sidi Kayam, and teacher

against the savage sentences passed Socialist Labour League calls on member British trade union and labour movement to A LOBBY OF MPs at the WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 6 p.m.

A PROTEST MEETING at the ST. BRIDE'S FOUNDATION INSTITUTE, BRIDE LANE, FLEET STREET, E.C.4 SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 7 p.m. Left: Oleshengun Adebayo Centre: Sidi Kayam Right: Jonas Kiomasekenagh labour sentence was passed or ity lecturer accused with thre at Ikeja, Eastern Nigeria, on onists Jonas Kiomasekenagh milar sentences.

after a six-month tour of Africa where, it is understood, he was gathering material for another book.

He arrived in Nigeria soon after the victorious general strike in which the workers gained substantial wage increases.

ARDUOUS

While he was detained on the original charge, Dr. Allen went on a hunger strike and also claimed, through the British press, that he was not receiving any help from the British authorities in Nigeria.

Later he was released, rearrested then released again on £500 bail.

The long and arduous trial has been a tremendous physical and financial strain on the four accused.

The Nigerians are well known among the working class of the country and it is almost certain that the arrests and trial were staged as an attack by the puppet government of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Belewa on the conditions and wages won through the general strike.

Olushengun Adebayo.

We demand that the three Nigerian trade unionists be immediately released and Dr. Victor Allen returned to Britain. G. HEALY, National Secretary Socialist Labour League We urge other members and organisations of the trade union and labour movement to send similar protests to the High Commissioner at Nigeria House, 9 Northumberland Avenue, London, W.C.2.

ROTEST HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT and three Nigerians

The trial opened on July 1 when the four accused pleaded not guilty to conspiring to overthrow the government, drawing up a plan for the same purpose and possessing a seditious publication.

Dr. Allen will begin his sentence at the end of a two-month term imposed last month for making a false statement and using a false document in... alleged escape attempt dressed as a tribesman.

DEPORTATION REFUSED Pleas by Dr. Allen's counsel, Mr. Michael Odesanya, for a deportation order on the grounds of the lecturer's deteriorating health due to separation from his family, allowing him to resume his academic work in Britain, were rejected by chief magistrate Ufnmilayo Wickliffe.

Arrested on June 16 on a charge of managing an unlawful society for the purpose of overthrowing the government, Dr. Allen was discharged, but immediately arrested on the present charges.

An authority on trade union affairs Dr. Allen was due to return to Britain last month THE following telegram has been sent by the National Committee of the Socialist Labour League to the Nigerian High Commissioner.

On behalf of trade unionists, Labour Party members, Young Socialists and students, the National Committee of the Socialist Labour League strongly protests against the sentence of one year's imprisonment with hard labour passed on Dr.

Victor Allen, Jonas Kiomasekenagh and Sidi Kayam and savage sentences on I LEONARD VICTOR ALL ANOTHER Enelish les.

turer has been sentenced to imprisonment in Africa. He is Alan Keith Brooks (24), who was jailed for two years for 'furthering the aims of communism', by the Supreme Court in Capetown, - South Africa, on Monday.

Brooks and student Anthony Trew (23), were each sentenced to four year's imprisonment, but two were suspended. A physiotherapist, 23-year-old Stephanie Kemp was sentenced to five years' jail - with three suspended.

All three pleaded guilty to belonging to an underground organisation, but denied committing sabotage.

The judge told the accused it was not an offence to oppose apartheid or take up the cause of the underprivileged, 'nor is it an offence to join associations with the view to bring about political economic or social changes.

'It is only so when it is sought to bring about such changes by causing disorder or disturbances or by the commissions of unlawful acts that crime is committed.' This statement looks ridiculous in the light of the repressive actions by the extreme Verwoerd regime which has sent people like Nelson Mandela and Dr. Neville Alexander into jails, where they are treated brutally, for opposing apartheid and taking up the cause of the underprivileged, which the Judge referred to.

Devlin makes interim report LORD DEVLIN has made his interim report on the docks dispute to the . Minister of Labour, Mr. Ray Gunter, who ordered a quick enquiry soon after the Election, in order to prevent an embarrassing dock strike.

Shortly before making his report-confined to the wage question—Lord Devlin, meeting the unions and the port employers, said the wage offer was too low, but the claim was too high!

Just how much difference can there be between the 12s. 6d. extra offered and the 25s. the TGWU claim that would m ean anything to the docker and his family?

6T HE TIMES of London has always been rightly regarded as reflecting some of the most informed and advanced opinion in ruling class circles.

Written for the 'top people', its pages cover a wide area of international news and provide considered opinions in the editorial columns upon the most serious questions.

Last week I dealt with the praise given to the Wilson government by the paper 'World Outlook', whose Pabloite editors referred to the Labour government as 'left social-democratic' and called upon socialists to support its 'progressive measures'. On Tuesday November 3, "The Times' provided a remarkable confirmation, in an indirect way, of our criticism of these revisionists.

In The Newsletter we said clearly that the Labour government represented not a gain by the working class so much as a reflection of the need of the bosses to use a Labour government for its own desperate purposes.

'Left trend'

Socialists must start from the strucele against the employart and against measures taken by the government in support of the employers.

'The Times' notes that the election of a Labour government coincides with similar developments in West Germany, France and Italy.

In West Germany the social-democrats made recent gains in local elections and may go close to a majority in next year's general election; after many years in the wilderness in France some sort of 'left front' is being mounted to fight against de Gaulle's Presidency; in Italy the socialists are near to taking part in government again, helped by the divisions within the Italian Communist Party.

It is wrong to think, says "The Times', that all this means a turn to the left in Europe: ... the trend is more in favour of the centre than of the left as such.' The editorial goes on to give a brief outline of the development of European 'socialist' politics since the end of the Second World War. After emerging powerfully from the war because of the upsurge of working-class desire for social change and the enthusiasm for Russia, these parties were replaced by 'centre' and 'Christian Democratic' parties during the anti-communist period of the Cold War.

Revival

"The Times' should add that this was only possible because of the deal made by Stalin with the capitalist rulers of America and Europe, followed out to the letter by the Communist Parties and fellow-travellers of Italy and France, and that the Korean war saw the beginning of a prolonged period of boom.

"The Times' notes two important developments which helped the revival of the 'socialist' parties: first, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, whuse suppression by Khrushchev weakened Marxism in Europe; and second, the decision of the German Social-Democratic Party in 1959 to remove all socialist demands from its programme.

The Newsletter insisted at he time of that social-democratic conference in Germany that this was a decisive turn by these agents of capitalism and that similar moves were afoot in Britain in Gaitskell's campaign to remove Clause 4 from the constitution of the Labour Party.

These were necessary in order to adapt these parties more adequately to the needs of monopoly capitalism. The capitalists themselves had long since abandoned any idea of pure competition, or property-owning democracies and recognised the need for more decisive state intervention in the economy.

"The Times' sums up:

"This rise (of the left), such as it is, derives less from the acceptance of traditional leftwing ideas than from their partial rejection by the left itself—as well, to be fair, as their partial acceptance by the right. ... The desire for change has been able to find expression only since the democratic left became respectable. If a swing is taking place it is a symptom of the growing consensus of the centre, where basic social and economic doctrines are no longer at issue . . a certain softening of political frontiers seems likely. Europe is not so much turning left as just turning.' What could be clearer? Capialism must make a turn in order to overcome its crisis. The counter-revolutionary policy of the Stalinist bureaucracy has helped prepare the ground for this turn to be possible through the capitalists' use of discredited parties like those of the social-democracy. No prejudice And 'The Times' more or less tells its readers, 'don't be put off by your past prejudices against people who call themselves socialists, they're in the club now.' Now the position of the revisionists within the Marxist movement over the last few years becomes clearer still. By Gaitskell: Attack on Clause 4 part of 'turn' selling Wilson as a 'left winger' they, in fact, assist the capitalists, who have decided that Wilson is all right by them.

For all its urbanity and sophistication, 'The Times' is unable to get to the bottom of the matter, however. Only the dialectical method of Marxism can do this, providing a basis for working-class political action.

As always, the spokesmen of the ruling class neglect the power of the working class itself. They constantly fall into the illusions of their own bureaucratic and parliamentary system, assuming that everything in the class struggle depends upon official programmes and combinations of people within the apparatus. It never strikes them that their very need for corrupting working-class parties arises from a crisis whose other side must inevitably be the heightening of the struggle of the workers themselves against all the results of this crisis.

Consequently, "The Times' does not consider, for examole, the other result of the crisis of Stalinism surrounding the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. From various Communist Parties came not only renegades from the movement but cadres who learned from that Revolution the lesson of the necessity of a Fourth International of revolutionary parties based on the teachings of Trotsky; this happened in Britain and in Times' ignores the crisis Stalinism Hungary itself, to name only two examples.

As part of the same process the Hungarian workers showed the path of political revolution to the workers of Eastern Europe through workers' councils, confirming the programme of the Fourth International, that the political bureaucracy of Stalinism must be overthrown, but not the planned socialist foundations of the economy.

All the crises and civil wars called up in the period of imperialist decay, to gether with their reflections within the camp of the Stalinist bureaucracy, provide revolutionary opportunities for a working class led by a Marxist party, based on the only scientific theory which can see the world system as a whole, in terms of one struggle between capitalists and workers. Such parties in fact are being built in the course of the real struggle against the capitalists and their agents in the Labour move.

ment.

'The Times' is unable to achieve this overall view of the contradictions of the system, because it remains within the bourgeois world view of formal logic and accepts the capitalist order as natural and eternal. Only the conflicts under its very nose call for treatment of a different kind.

Generosity

For example, in its first editorial the same day, a different question is taken up. "The Times' comments upon a speech communist president of the Electrical Trades Union.

In this speech to the ETU policy-making conference, Cannon pledged support to the incomes policy of Wilson and spoke strongly against 'restrictive practices'. The next day he had strong words for the unofficial strikes by ETU members on power station construction sites.

"The Times' welcomes his generosity but warns that fine words butter no parsnips:

'Mr. Cannon's sentiments do him credit, they cannot be too often urged by trade union leaders or too closely heeded by those to whom they are addressed, but it is possible to expect too follow from them.' 'The Times' is here drawing attention to the fact that whatever leaders might say, the workers will insist on fighting, and attention should be paid to this.

Doom

They cannot understand the workings of the whole capitalist system as one which is going to its doom through a series of international and inter-connected conflicts, with working-class leadership settling the historical issue-that would involve rejecting the whole bourgeois outlook-but they insist on being able to root out troublemakers in their own backyard.

They write:

'Trade union leaders are on the whole responsible and knowledgeable men willing to give their co-operation on reasonable terms. But they can be easily outflanked by unofficial leaders who are assisted by the fact that in an inflationary economy the interests of some employers join with the pressure for higher pay to defeat any prolonged attempt to hold earnings below the market rate.' This has the same meaning as the first "Times' article we analysed. Some employers must change their traditional attitudes and accept the vital role of the opportunist leaders in the trade unions and Labour Party in regulating the economy.

Limited

In this case "The Times' can see the immediate difficulties in the demands of rank-and-file workers. But that is the limit of their understanding; they only give the working class credit for being able to understand and fight for its immediate economic demands. They assume that the workers, like themselves, will continue to accept the limits of bourgeois society, only challenging for small adjustments within it (such as getting the 'market value' for their labour!).

Shrewdness, cunning, and the ability to corrupt many geneThe Hungarian Revolution, 1956: Many came from Stalinist movement to learn the lesson of the necessity of the Fourth International rations of labour leaders, have enabled the British capitalist class, with "The Times' always well to the fore, to ensure up to now that the working class does not go beyond reform demands and reformist leaders.

But the present crisis of British capitalism brings home to roost all the chickens of a hundred years of bloody exploitation and super-profit on a world scale.

The struggles it brings will see the downfall equally of the capitalist class itself and its faithful servants the Labour leaders, because from these struggles we have begun to build in the Socialist Labour League a revolutionary leadership which presents the challenge of Marxism in living, active form to the British workers.

tion from the Labour Party, the Independent Labour Party twisted and turned, trying out every policy to hand, avoiding only one-that of revolutionary Marxism.

It is a sad tale of failure and hypocrisy, ending where it began-back with the rightwith

WORLD NEWS ROUND-UP ovember Three

THE TIMES reassures its readers wing leaders of the Labour Party, who, in 1939, actually themselves initiated discussion for reaffiliation. Once again, Brockway was "surprised'.

Brockway's leadership over disaffiliation from the Labour Party had been unprincipled. He was unable to understand the hostility of MacDonald's successors to the Independent Labour Party and the pleasure with which they greeted its departure.

Of his visit to Lansbury he writes: 'I was disappointed ... he put the view that the departure of MacDonald and Snowden from the Party did not alter the situation'. . Similarly he was "surprised by Henderson's attitude ... He challengingly raised the issue of whether we had any real faith in Parliament . pressing the ILP further than it was prepared to go at the moment...

Unprincipled

His complete inability understand imperialism made him unable to fight the Labour bureaucracy. It also made him unable to fight the Stalinist bureaucracy or, indeed, to see the need for an international or even a party at all.

His relations with the Stalinists were as unprincipled as had been his relations with the Labour bureaucrats.

He describes without comment an interview between hirnself, Maxton and Pollitt, in which Pollitt said: 'Its all very well to have principles, but the test of any course is its success. The Communist Party has failed to build a mass revolutionary Party. So has the ILP. Together we can do it."

Happily Maxton was not satisfied with the offer, but nothing indicates that Brockway could fault it. After all, it resembled his own plans to unite the Second and Third Internationals in 1920.

He was 'disappointed' with the opulance of Soviet embassy life and the Moscow Trials 'disturbed my confidence in those who controlled Soviet Russia' Once again he was unable to understand how these were part of the struggle between the classes. They were simply events which 'disturbed' things.

The Dewey Commission for the Defence of Leon Trotsky disturbed him as much as did the Trials as he 'did not think that an enquiry initiated by a Defence committee could be accepted as impartial'. When he wrote this to Trotsky he was surprised to be denounced by the latter as 'Mr. Pritt Number But the implications of this denunciation were lost on Brockway, all that he could deduce was that 'Perhaps the "old man" (as his followers call him) was suffering from nerves. ('Inside the Left', p. 259)

Conclusion Fortunately though, an impartial enquiry was possible as 'I... decided for myself to make a thorough examination of the evidence. Only Brockway could stand above classes.

His conclusion is worth quoting in full for its complete lack of any class analysis, of indeed of any causes for the (in fact, quite erroneous) phenomena that he describes. Unfortunately, for reasons of space, we must confine ourselves to the highlights:

..• politically the state had never been an expression of workers' democracy and was becoming less so. The power •. had been transferred to the Communist Party, and control by the Party had become more and more coutrolled by a bureaucratic leadership?' His startling discovery that a bureaucracy existed in the Soviet Union (leaving aside the reasons that led him to this) outraged him and drove him to act. On March 9, 1938, he wrote a letter to (who? why the man who could stop the messy and Fascists business, of course) Stalin 'calling upon him to end the persecution'.

Brockway modestly comments, 'It made worldwide impression.

During the whole of the period, the Independent Labour Party was working closely with Stalin's representatives in this country, or as Brockway puts it in his inimitable manner:

'We slipped into a united front with the Communist Party • • . without considered attention.' The method of this united action is best summed up in the negotiations between the Independent Labour Party, Cripp's Socialist League (a group operating inside the Labour Party) and the Communist Party in 1936. Once again let us hear from Brockway.

"The first problem was the form ot organisational unity at which we should aim.' Only once that was settled presumably did they move on to 'the second problem' which was 'the programme of the campaign'. Brothers let us first unite and then think of something to unite about.

Collapse

The joint action was a failure throughout and finally collapsed completely on the issue of fighting the Labour Party bureaucracy. They threatened to expel the Socialist League for co-operating with proscribed organisations, and the League officially disbanded, the memMosley: his October 1936 march called off through actions of a terrified Brockway bers continuing to co-operale individually.

The showdown came when the Party leadership threatened to expel George Strauss if he went ahead to speak on the same platform as Maxton and Pollitt. The fight was called off, and the great unity campaign collapsed. The Independent Labour Party had again learnt nothing.

Indictment

Even Brockway has to admit: "Thus ended ignominiously the Unity Campaign. Its result was the destruction of the Socialist League . . . the strengthening of the reactionary right-wing leaders and the disillusionment of the rank and file?

A damning indictment one might think, yet Brockway still concludes: 'And yet if I am asked if the ILP made a mistake in entering the campaign, my answer is "No"' (Iibid., p. 269)

He then goes on to produce his analysis, which should be of lasting value to the workers of all countries: "The real lesson of the campaign was the need to limit action to specific issues? It should be written in letters of gold!

The way in which Brockway, as a true centrist, shied away from class action, is well illustrated in his encounters with the fascists.

The Independent Labour Party newspaper played a large part in calling out the workers of East London to prevent Mosley's march in October 1936. Brockway describes how he rushed down to Aldgate on the day and found a huge crowd of workers, already fighting with the police.

The sight terrified him. He dashed to the nearest 'phone box and got on to the Home Office to ask them to stop Mosley's march!

'I insisted,' he writes, 'that if the procession were allowed to approach Aldgate there would be bloodshed and that, after this warning, the responsibility would lie with the Home Secretary.' Naturally, the Home Office was only too pleased to oblige. The procession was called off. As one contemporary put it, it was a 'feather in Brockway's cap'.

Brockway's attitude to bloodshed, however, did not cause him to sever all connections with the fascists. At the time when the POUM was fighting the fascists (and the Stalinists) in Spain, Brockway, 'debated with Mosley's first lieutenant William Joyce Elater Lord Haw Haw during the Second World War] before the students of Aberdeen University. I am humiliated to say that on the vote I lost in the debate....

Impressed

He was obviously impressed with the fascists, as he writes: 'Joyce's indictment of the inqualities of capitalism might have been uttered by any socialist.' All ended in a traditional British way: 'After the debate, we both accompanied our supporters to a students' ball, but Joyce didn't dance.' (Inside the Left', p. 272)

Here is the man who describes himself as a 'revolutionary socialist' attending a dance with fascists and all that he can find for them is praise at their indictment of capitalism and concern at their failure to dance. How can these people hope to lead the working class, when they cannot even recognise the most naked of their enemies?

It must be stressed once again that this took place when the German, Italian and Spanish workers were being subjected to the most enormous suffering by fascism. To Brockway, fascism is not the class enemy in its most horrible form, but chaps with different ideas, which ought to be discussed.

Internationally his policy was as disastrous. But how could it be otherwise for this narrow English empiric. Describing his 'fight' to build what was to be known as the "3} international he makes no mention at all of political discussion with any foreign party. Presumably, this did not play an important part in what he calls his 'interesting visits to various parts of Europe' 'Knowledge' He does tell us a lot about himself though. Describing a meeting that he addressed in Poland in 1931 he writes: It was fiercely interrupted by Communists and there were scenes of fighting. I had not before seen such political ferocity' I should hope not, too. Just imagine that happening in Slough!

He also tells us that in Poland he 'found a knowledge of British politics and an enthusiasm for the ILP that surprised me. After all he knew

nothing of Poland, so why should the Polish workers know anything of Britain. Didn't they have enough problems of their own?

In 1932, after visiting Germany, he made another startling discovery, almost equalling his discovery about the British Labour . Party made in the previous year. I realised then that Hitler would make a bid for power at all costs, not excluding civil war. It must have been a shock.

In the Spanish Civil War, he refrained from any real criticism of the Stalinists (or of' the other Spanish parties for not fighting the bureaucracy) because, after all, 'British and French workers had no right to criticise whilst they were unable to compel their governments to allow arms to be sent.' As the then Tory government could safely be relied on not to allow arms to be sent for use against their friend Franco, and as the Independent Labour Party could be relied upon not to lead the workers against them, all criticism could be safely avoided when When the Stalinist GPU purges began against the POUM, the Independent Labour Party's sister party in Spain, Brockway's advice was for them to give in to the Stalinists 'not resisting the transference of power to the Popular Front State' Of course, they should try to keep alive the idea (now that they had been forced to abandon the reality, they should stick to ideas. They would have saved a lot of fuss and bother had they stuck to them in the first place) of the social revolution as the object accompanying Franco's defeat'.

Rejected FI

In any case, Brockway adds: 'I doubt whether any modifications of policy by the POUM would have made any difference.' Maybe he was drafting another letter to Stalin on the subject. Perhaps it got lost in the post. n any case it was just at this time when his Spanish comrades of the POUM were being tortured and murdered by the Stalinists that he was sharing the same platform in the abortive 'unity" campaign with the English Stalinist Harry Pollitt.

His other definite act in this inter-war period was to reject the Fourth International. Trotsky, he said, was a dictator. 'He had the same instinct for personal power as Stalin' and Brockway could see little difference in spirit between Mexico and Moscow'. There are none so blind.

In any case it was just at this on forming the Fourth International were quite wrong.

'His view that it was possible to form a "Fourth International" by a thesis thrown into a vacuum I regarded as nonsense.' he writes. His own view was that an international would 'come only from an upsurge of the workers arising from some historical development'. Naturally he does not specify what development, nor how it will arise, nor how the workers will be led.

For Brockway we must just wait and see. Man is powerless, the tool of the Gods, tossed hither and thither by 'upsurges' constantly 'disappointed' and 'shocked'. It is a perfect centrist's philosophy.

Aid from USSR

And this is why we find Brockway in 1938 confidently predicting the socialist revolution as coming spontaneously out of the Second World War because 'the armies would be fed up. The peoples would be disillusioned . . . There would be Social Revolution'. (Pacifism and the Left Wing', 1938)

This is why, in 1942, despite all his pre-war experiences, he can still write: 'Despite the Soviet Union's alliances with capitalist powers, it is difficult to believe that its assistance will not be used on the side of a European socialist revolution' Alas, as every child can tell him, truth is stranger than fiction, especially for the untheoretical.

From there it was an easy road to the frank and cynical opportunism of the post-Second •World War. As 'surprise' followed 'shock' with increasing rapidity, what better course than to join those right-wing Labour leaders who always seemed to get the upper hand.

But one warning is necessary. Be careful Brockway, and all those militants who want to transfer your history to the 1960s, there are other 'shocks' in store. This time, of a different kind. HAROLD WILSON has been ably assisted by the Tory press in his sham fight with the white supremacists of Southern Rhodesia.

Wilson has said that Commonwealth Secretary, Mr. Bottomley will not visit Rhodesia for talks unless he is also allowed to hear the views of the African leaders, Wilson is, however, prepared to meet Mr. Ian Smith, the Prime Minister, for talks in London.

Smith's government recently held a referendum on the question of independence from Britain, in which the vast majority of Africans were excluded from voting. The result, not surprisingly, was a vote for independence under continued white domination.

Nationalists jailed

The two leading African nationalists in Rhodesia, Ndabaningi Sithole and Joshua Nkomo, have been thrown into jail at Gwelo.

Now Mr. Wilson is making a great pretence at fighting for the rights of the Africans in Rhodesia and taking a stand against the reactionary Smith government. But this does Students Kerala food riots THE shortage of food in India has again led to demonstrations—in Trivandrum, capital of Kerala State. On Monday thousands clashed with police and looted shops and lorries carrying grain.

The government of the statethe most highly populated • in India-are demanding that the central government fly supplies of rice to the area.

Hundreds of students demonstrated throughout the state, demanding rice. Police at Quilon used tear gas to disperse stone-throwing students and in Trivandrum broke up a. crowd of 1,000.

Later the Indian government announced it would dispatch at least a thousand tons of rice a day to the State. They refused to send supplies by air because, they said, only small quantities could be moved.

On Tuesday Trivandrum city councillors and students led a 2,000-strong march on the government secretariat to hold a sit-down protest. Mounted police prevented slogan shouting students entering the building.

Military coup BOLIVIA has had another change of now familiar Latin American style, a military coup.

The new leader, General Rene Barrientos Ortuno was Vice-President in the ousted Paz Estenssoro government.

Barrientos is reported to have broken with Paz some weeks ago over widespread repressive measures introduced by the government after allegations of a plot to assassinate Dr. Paz.

With the support of sections of the army and police, Barrientos is now installed in power. His predecessor has taken refuge in the lush Country Club in Lima, Peru.

The chief of the armed forces has declared that there will be new elections in the near future.

DICTATORIAL LINE Victor Paz Estenssoro first came to power at the head of the MNR (Nationalist Revolutionary Movement) in 1952. His government considerably weakened the power of the old tin barons and military cliques.

However, since, after a short break in office, he was again returned to power in 1960, he pursued a steadily more dictatorial line.

He lost the support of the lettist movement of tin miners, largely followers of Juan in Bolivia Sorge award a warning RICHARD SORGE, the • Soviet Union's master spy in Japan before and during the Second World War, was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union on November 5.

Sorge, a German national and member of the German Communist Party, was summoned to Moscow in 1925, to be trained by the GPU. He became a Soviet citizen and member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

On GPU instructions he proceeded to Japan, where he became a prominent correspondent for a number of Nazi newspapers. He subsequently became press attache to the German embassy in Tokio.

INVASION WARNING From his position as press attache, he had access to secret documents, which he copied and sent to the Soviet Union. Among these were the German plan to invade Poland in 1939 and the plan to invade the Soviet Union in 1941.

This information was ignored by Stalin, who could not believe that his Nazi co-signatories could break the terms of the non-aggression pact.

Sorge's documents government. In this was effected Lechin, his former vice-president, and his party started to split up into numerous factions.

In this insecure position he resorted to building up the armed forces, which he achieved thanks to aid from the United States, GENERALS MOVE When this year he decided to change the Constitution to allow himself a third term of Presidential office, he found that the generals, whose power he had himself increased, were now in a position to lay down the law themselves. They have, in fact, completely removed him.

The new chief, Barrientos has not yet made his political position very clear. He has made a gesture to the tin miners by putting Juan Lechin's half - brother in charge of the nationalized tin mining industry but whether in order to pacify them or to encourage them is not known.

Judging by the lack of alarm in U.S. government circles, it is unlikely that the workers and peasants of Bolivia will find much to gain from the new regime. managed to put off the problem for months in order to place it in the laps of the Labour leaders.

The hard fact is that Mr. Wilson, far from being worried about the future of the Africans in Rhodesia, is more concerned with the needs of British imperialism in Africa.

Reason for 'stand'

For many years now the aim of British imperialism has been not to continue with white supremacist regimes but to reach an understanding with African nationalists and allow them to form stooge governments with some measure of African support.

That is why Wilson is making his 'stand' against Smith.

The Labour government is not arguing about whether Africans should be exploited by the imperialists but about how they can best be exploited. And that, of course, is the logical extension of their policy in Britain.

to Chou?

and ignored, and in the margin of his warning that Nazi Germany was about to attack, is written 'information of a doubtful nature from a drunkard' Sorge had long been worried by the reports of the purges that reached him in Tokio, especially as the GPU chiefs responsible for his work, Berzon and Borovich, were themselves liquidated.

In 1940, he wrote to Moscow, seeking information of his future, and requesting leave.

ARREST

In October 1941, five months after the Nazis had invaded the USSR, as he had predicted, Sorge was suddenly arrested by the Japanese authorities and executed.

It has now been revealed in the Soviet Press that he was denounced by a member of the Central Committee of the Japanese Communist Party, ito Ritsu. It is presumed that Ritsu acted on Stalin's instructions: the 'information of a doubtful nature' had become embarrassingly correct.

In its articles on Sorge, 'Pravda' comments: 'How many thousands and millions of lives would have been saved if the information of Richard Sorge and others was not walled up in a safe?' Sorge's rehabilitation, timed to coincide with Chou En-lai's visit, is a sign that the reconciliation with China, to the point of rehabilitating Stalin, will not be accepted by at least one section of the Soviet bureauNationalize coal, say West German MINERS demanding the nationalization of the West German coal industry are to march to the capital, Bonn.

Last Saturday 3,000 miners and their families from the Ruhr valley marched in different coal towns calling for nationalization as an answer to the announcement that 36 pits are to be closed by the end of the year.

The miners are particularly angry over the announcement by the pit bosses that production will be cut by 40,000,000 tons a year (a third of the output) because of growing competition from oil.

The 'over production' of coal in highly mechanised pits— many of these are scheduled for closure-—is being curbed by a compensation bonus of £2 5s. per ton of coal no longer mined. which is paid for partly by the government.

The unions are saying the coal should be sold to East Germanv.

Among the country's 60,000 miners are several hundred Greeks who joined the demonstrations. LETTER

Smith: His referendum for independence not mean that the Labour government is pursuing a socialist policy on the Southern Rhodesian issue.

On the contrary: the Tories too were unable to reach anything but deadlock with Mr. Smith, and no change of policy has been apparent with the change of government in this country.

The only change that has occurred is that the Tories have TT is now possible to dis- tinguish three main trend in the Communist Party bureaucracy.

1. THE ITALIANS', taking the Togliatti line, of whom Monty Johnstone is the main representative. These pseudooppositionists put forward a more 'subtle' line favouring the appearance of more open discussion in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the international communist movement because they realise that the Communist Parties ir the West have no future on the basis of discredited Stalinist monolithism.

It would be a mistake not to recognise that this trend may well develop in strength in the period ahead as a counterpoise to the develop. ment of genuine Communist ideas in the Communist Party and the Young Communist League.

The need to expose Johnstone and his line (as The Newsletter did last week) becomes increasingly important in such a situation.

On fundamentals he does not differ from Gollan, Betty Reid and company, to whom he is tied by many years as a full-time worker at King Street and by intimate personal links of the most varied kind.

It should not be forgotten that, whilst in 1956 appearing as an 'oppositionist' in the YCL leadership, he sat on the drafting commission for the new 'British Road to Sociatism' programme and helped frame this revisionist document. Our comment - This letter La welcome sign come as a sign that one section of the British Communist Party is moving towards revolutionary politics, as the bureaucracy breaks up in crisis.

Many more rank and file members should join 'Marxist in the CP', as the crisis of the bureaucracy deepens and the dissatisfaction of the ranks grows.

He is quite right to point out that basically, the interests of the three groups are the same, and that their different techniques are not in opposi.. tion to each other, but merely complement each other, in maintaining the dominance of Stalinism over the membership.

We believe that Monty Johnstone's fake opposition is the most dangerous and pernicious of these tendencies. Everything about that man is fake. He poses as a proletarian in the party-yet was educated at Rugby public school and Christ Church, the most aristocratic college at Oxford University (we do not here condemn comrades with this background, on the contrary, we merely mean to show how fake proletarianism is part of the Johnstone technique).

He was recruited into the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1943, whilst he was still at Rugby school. In 1947 he left the Trotskyist movement, later to reappear as a full-time official in the Stalinist movement, and editor •Challenge: "youth' paper 'Challenge'.

During this time, until 1956. he is not known to have opposed Stalinism on any major issue, or to have criticised any of the distortions of history and theory, that he rank and file Like the Italian CP leaders, he has consistently boosted 'peaceful co-existence' and praised Khrushchev's foreign policy, including Cuba and the atomic test-ban treaty.

He has long boasted his superior 'first-hand' knowledge of what Trotskyism was all about, only demanding trom King Street a more "subtle approach as the old Stalinist slanders about Hitler's agents were an embarrassment in the attempt to combat its ideas, which, then as now, were arousing increasing interest among YOLers.

At the 1956 YOL Congress, it was he who was the only leader to denounce Trotskyism from the platform, condemn factions and urge the delegates to keep genuine Communists off the new National Committee.

2. THE GOLLAN GROUP which leads the Party and thoroughly and opportunistic ally is attempting to make the most limited possible verbal concessions to the growing discontent by asking for more plausable explanations from Moscow about what has happened.

As with Stalin in the 1920s. they are prepared to manoeuvre from a centre position between 'right' and left' their key consistency being their desire to continue to control the apparatus and preserve their positions in it They hope to save the dav without going as far in their criticisms as the Italians.

At present, Gollan and Matthews are in Moscow trying to get the new Soviet leaders to help them by cook. knew existed, through his experience in the Trotskyist movement.

Even a renegade Trotskyist knows that Trotsky was not a fascist, that Stalin liquidated the cream of the Bolshevik Party and was responsible for counter-revolution throughout the world. But Johnstone preferred to keep his mouth shut-and his job safe.

1956, he suddenly emerged as an oppositionist. He created a sensation in his "fight' with Rothstein in the 'Daily Worker', in which he accused Rothstein of covering up for Stalin-but what else did Johnstone do?

To those comrades who were taken in by this role of Johnstone's we simply ask: How did Johnstone's letters get printed in the 'Worker'? What else did this exchange of insults between two hypocrites do, except prove just how 'democratic' the party organs are?

As our correspondent points out, he then sat on the commission that drafted the British Road-a document. which, as Khrushchev revealed when he departed from his prepared text in East Berlin in Winter 1962-63, was prepared according to the ideas of the /late lamented Joseph Stalin.

Johnstone will protest that the commission in 1957, changed the original Stalinist version. In fact all it did was to make it more palatable by removing the more blatant passages like the one in which it said that it was not the Communist Party but the Tory Party that was ruining the Empire!

This is what all of Johnstone's oppositional ventures are intended to do: to make the Stalinist policy more acceptable to rebellious members of the rank and file. ing up some planation for removal.

3. THE DIE - HARD STALINISTS like Andrew Rothstein, veteran Stalin pen prostitute, and Sid French. Surrey Secretary and CP parliamentary candidate.

French last week had a letter printed in the 'Daily Worker' under the headline 'Don't hurry to blame the CPSU', in which, by openly attacking Johnstone, he obliquely strictured Gollan for his mild criticisms of the way the Soviet government and Party changes were made.

In his opinion Moscow 'did the correct thing and in real life the only thing they could do.

This group, although not popular among the rank-and-file, enjoys a fairly wide sympathy among the old guard cadres of the Party trained in the ideology and practice of Stalinism.

They could serve as an embarrassment to Gollan by saying too openly and crudels what he really thinks.

Meanwhile the rank-and-file becomes more and more di,satisfied and ask more and more questions that none of these groups can answer.

Genuine Communists in tha CP and the YCL are equally opposed to all of them and are demanding , a break with the whole stick-in-trade of the British Road to Socialism which unites equally Gollan, Johnstone and French, and the adoption of a genuine revolutionary and interna. tionalist Communist policy.

A MARXIST IN THE palatable exKhrushchev'g Look at his record: supports the leadership over the Sino-Soviet dispute, supports the United Nations as a 'force for peace, covered up for Khrushchev on the grotesque episode over modern art ('Well, of course, we all know that Khrushcher is just a peasant).

All his opposition leads back to support of the leadership.

Meanwhile, he attends Pollitt's wedding, is on very friendly terms with J. R. Campbell, the Kerrigans and frequently knocks in and out of the 'Daily Worker' building. What sort of an oppositionist is this?

He also spends his summers in the Soviet Union.

This man should be looked upon with suspicion by all genuine oppositionists i inside the Communist Party.

Of course, he hates Trotskyism. This is the one threat to his fakery as he has discovered once - and • will do again.

On the other hand, I do not entirely agree with 'Marxist's analysis, as he omits one very real difference that exists in the bureaucracy, and which oppositionists must understand if they are to fight the leadership effectively.

As the crisis deepens, the conflict between those sections of the bureaucracy which support Moscow, come what may, and those who want to adapt more to the needs of the British bourgeoisie will grow.

These differences represent more than the differences of technique that "Marxist' speaks about and will cause real conflict within the bureaucracy in King Street.

We welcome any further contributions on this or on any other subject from "Marxist' or from any other CP member.

Industrial November 1964

From BOB SHAW working, 600 workers are to be sacked in the New Year at Pressed Steel, the company which supplies car bodies for the Rootes Imp car.

Rootes workers have been on a four-day week for some months and the Imp line workers at Pressed Steel are to start a four-day week in a fortnight's time.

Pressed Steel management plans in January to take off the night shift on the Imp line and to operate only a five-day day shift, resulting in a redundancy of 450 track workers and 150 other workers.

In both the Rootes and Pressed Steel factories during the last year the shop stewards leaderships have adopted a policy of collaboration with the management.

At the Pressed Steel factory they headed a move to collaborate with the management in introducing the notorious Emerson bonus plan which ties earnings to sales of the company's products.

They claimed that by this plan pay would go up and up EMERSON The Newsletter examined the Emerson bonus scheme in its issue of June 27 this year. The article pointed out that the object of the scheme was to scientifically exploit workers.

Dissatisfaction with the collaborating line of the convenor at Pressed Steel has led militants within the factory shop stewards' committees to press for the adoption of a policy linking a fight for a reduction in the working week without loss of pay with a vigorous campaign that Labour nationalize the car industry.

The demand that Pressed Steel be nationalized was put to the MP for West Renfrewshire, Mr. N. Buchan at a works' committee last week-end. His reply was that nationalization of the car industry was extremely remote and, in fact, not possible within the next two or three years.

Buchan, MP for West Rentrewshire, is newly returned to Parliament and is known to many as an occasional contributor to the centrist paper "Tribune'.

At a meeting in Linwood before the election, Buchan stated that the question of the nationalization of the car industry was irrelevant. Militants at Pressed Steel intend to make it very relevant for car workers.

40-HOUR WEEK The Pressed Steel works' committee has demanded that the firm should immediately introduce the 40-hour week and proceed to the operation of a four-day week without loss of pay to stop the sackings.

This is very different to supporting the Emerson plan which says that workers' pay and conditions can only improve if the profits of the company improve.

Pressed Steel management has replied to the shop stewards' committee that the operation of a shorter working week is out of the question.

The factory is then faced with a clear choice, either prepare for a fight with the management for the operation of a reduction in working hours with no loss of pay, or face wholesale sackings and a possible closure of the factory should Rootes motors decide to withdraw their production from Scotland.

To those who say that this is Registered at the G.P.O. as a nerspaper Printed by Plough Press Lid. (TO), f.o. 180 Clapham High Street, Loadon, S. W.4 Published by The Newsletter, 186л Clasham High Stroet, London. S.PV.4 not likely to happen we can only cite the case of Fords who closed a whole factory at Doncaster so that it could rationalise its production. The same firm sacked hundreds from its Dagenham plant.

RUTHLESS

The Chrysler combine to which Rootes fortunes are now tied will ruthlessly assess the profitability of the Linwood plant and decide in the interests of profit.

Pressed Steel workers must draw up the balance sheet on a year's working of the Emerson plan and throw it out. They have to prepare for a tough fight with the Pressed Steel management. Only militant policies will serve in this struggle linked with demands that the Labour government nationalize the car industry.

Motor

exports affected by strike the 270 strikers at the Witton, Birmingham, works of Salisbury Transmission Ltd. to continue their official stoppage over a claim for improved piece-work rates, factories throughout the motor car trade were affected by Monday this week.

This stoppage, now in its third week, must be the cause of some anxiety to the car monopolists whose export trade has suffered because of the lack of axles.

The men, all members of the Amalgamated Engineering Union are demanding 25 per cent increases in piece-work rates.

Laid off

Figures published in the national press at the beginning of this week stated that International Harvesters have laid off 200 men and another 350 were expected to be sent home on Wednesday; Jaguar cars had a two-day lay-oft of 950 and Jensen Motors have resorted to making their vehicles without the rear axles which will be added just before they are exported.

It can be expected that in the near future both the local press and the management will start to bring pressure to bear on the union officials about the hundreds of men laid off.

In every strike where the laying-off of men not involved in the strike occurs, the union officials have given in to the management.

Support

Strikers at Salsbury Transmission must not allow this kind of blackmail to weaken their stoppage. The only way that they can hope to win their piece rate demands is, in fact, to call for the active support of car workers in other parts of the industry.

They must not be hoodwinked by talk from the management about the laid-off men. After all, the only thing that the car bosses are interested in is the profits they are losing in the highly competative car export business abroad.

EVERY serious trade union member should study carefully the present struggle of apprentices to improve their wages and working conditions. It embraces a new generation of young workers, the vast majority of whom are involved in their first experience of a major class struggle.

Most important of all it involves a sharp conflict between those apprentices making a serious attempt to work out a strategy and tactics with which to defeat the employers, and a section led by Stalinists and Pabloites blindly relying on the unthinking kind of crude militancy to carry them through, which has done so much serious damage to the trade union movement in the past.

Attempts made by the Stalinists (under the cloak of a body calling itself the National Apprentices Wages and Conditions Campaign Committee) to involve apprentices in a strike during the past two weeks have met with little success.

The strike which began on November 2 has so far affected about 1,300 apprentices Man che eradea, 150 in Shepield 300 in Dundee, and probably 300 in Stockport, Bury, Accrington, Bolton, Oldham and Rochdale.

One day Those in Bury, Accrington, Bolton, Oldham, Rochdale, and many in Manchester struck Ior only one day. In Liverpool and Dundee they voted to return to work at the end of the first week.

As we go to press only 600 remain on strike in the Manchester and Stockport area. The vast majority of apprentices in the North-West and other industrial areas have either refused to become involved in what is obviously a disorganised shambles, or they have supported the decision taken on October 31 at the National Apprentices Conference to oppose this strike and prepare more thoroughly for a fight next March.

But although this strike has failed it has, no doubt, created much confusion and if it is dragged on, can seriously damage the apprentices movement.

Many apprentices in Manchester who have joined the strike did so in the belief that other factories and other areas were either on strike or would be joining the strike the next day.

The strike leaders have sunk to the lowest levels in deceiving workers about the numbers on strike. These distortions have been repeated in the reports appearing in the 'Daily Worker'. Cadco - a lesson on direction of industry CASHING in on the development of a new town at Glenrothes, Fife, where they hoped to run a profitable enterprise by exploiting a corporation contract and local labour, a firm known as Cadco has come badly unstuck.

One of the directors of the firm is George Sanders, the film actor. The firm is reported to have taken its name from his autobiography 'Memoirs of a Professional Cad'.

In 1962 Cadco announced ambitious plans for expanding food production in Glenrothes New Town and creating employment for 2,000 workers.

UNEMPLOYMENT

It sounded like good news for Glenrothes where Rothes pit was closed in April 1962 and many miners were put on the dole. The local population were looking to the New Town development and new industry to diminish unemployment and provide workers in the area with reasonable living standards.

The Corporation granted Cadco Building a £1 million contract to build a piggery and factory complex. Payments were made to Cadco by the corporation at various intervals on the basis of work completed.

The idea behind the project was that Cadco Building would build the piggery and factory premises and, when completed, other firms in the Cadco group would lease or buy the factories from the Corporation, operating Newsletter Industrial Reporter From the beginning the Stalinists have played upon the genuine frustration of apprentices over wages and conditions in the most dishonest way. It is time that these lies were answered and the issues behind the strike exposed.

It has been reported that at the national committee meeting of the Young Communist League, held on Sunday, November 1, Jimmy Reid, its National Secretary, stated: "The apprentices strike due to start on Monday is doomed to failure before it begins.' Why then was the strike called? No worker will disagree with the demands for which the apprentices are fighting. They are not only vitally necessary, they are long overdue.

It is also well known that apprentices in the Manchester area have been preparing to take action over these demands for some months.

Showdown

But throughout this year, as the Manchester Apprentices began to prepare for a showdown with the employers, the CP and YCL members saw the leadership slip out of their hands, as more and more apprentices soberly and determinedly began to extend the campaign on a national scale.

Into the strategy and tactics of trade union strike struggles must be worked the experience and lessons of previous class struggles, the economic and political strengths and weaknesses of the employing class which today has to take into account the centralisation of the state, the growing integration of the trade unions and the state and the intentions of the Labour bureaucracy. All strikes are political.

Those apprentices who have seriously sought to prepare for such a struggle have been correct and have acted in the best interests of apprentices.

All apprentices would do well to heed the advice of the Manchester Direct Action Committee and its national body.

Our Scottish Correspondent them for their various profit-making ventures.

Altogether five factories were to be established for food production and the manufacture and printing of food cartons.

Now it has been discovered that Cadco Developments, whose registered office is in Fleet Street, does not even possess a telephone. The paid-up capital of the Cadco group is reported to be only a few pounds. Cadco Building has a capital of £2 and a bank overdraft of $430,000.

The firm has gone into liquidation with a net deficiency of £611,000.

So ends a beautiful dream of bringing prosperity to Scotland.

So much for the efforts of the Scottish Council (Development and Industry) who organised the press conference through which Cadco first announced their development programme for Glenrothes.

LESSON

This should be a sharp lesson for all those who shout so loudly about directing industry to Scotland and constantly attempt to entice employers to exploit the resources of Scottish labour.

Instead of an industry the people of Glenrothes have been left with three empty factory buildings and the unemployed are still without jobs. Brown acts for big business Wants private enterprise to "flourish' November 7, Mr. George Brown, Economic Minister, declared: 'Labour's sensible plan for the proper allocation of our scarce resources will sometimes mean taking harsh decisions like the one I had to announce on the subject of office building in the London area?

Mr. Brown picked a very instructive example of 'harsh' decisions. The government announced a curb on new office building in the London area and who suffered? Who felt the harsh end of the decision?

Building • contractors? The 'Financial Times' declared that 'the immediate order book for further offices in London does not seem to have been very heavy apart from work already in progress'.

FOR THE RECORD In fact, complaints from the building contractors are mainly for the record. One more quote from this 'Financial Times' article makes that clear:

'Some control has long been expected, which explains why so much office building has already been started. By many companies this has been a conscious precaution.' Building contractors have already raked in fat profits. The office building boom got its last This follows the situation which arose in Dumbarton last year when an entire shipyard, owned by Dennys, was closed down.

Now the motor car firms— Rootes and Pressed Steel are on a four-day week and redundancy is expected by the workers in these factories.

Last week, Sternes of Hillington, who manufacture. refrigerators, declared over 100 workers redundant.

RESULT

These situations are the direct result of capitalist economy and the employers' mad scramble for profits.

Fiascos like Cadco and Dennys, and the ups and downs of the car industry and manufacturing firms like Sternes, place jobs in jeopardy and result in real hardship and impoverishment for thousands of workers.

This can only be prevented by nationalizing industry: by introducing socialist planning under workers' control. Only in this way can the development and expansion of industry take place in a way which will result in real material benent to the working class.

All the talk of the Labour and trade union leaders about developing industry in Scotland, and Mr. Wilson's promises of far-reaching technological advance are meaningless unless the Labour government implements a programme which includes the nationalization of all major industries.

Brown: Labour's sensible plan They positively gain from Mr. Brown's 'harshness' The 'Sunday Times Business News' last Sunday had a headline - 'Mr. Brown's ban stops the London rent slide.' Underneath this headline an article declared: 'Rents asked for empty London office blocks have been dropping as much d. 25 per cent because they could not be let. Now they will be pegged, if not raised.' Commercial estate agents 100k forward to higher rents for both old and new property.

So much for Mr. Brown's "harshness'. But he, like other Ministers, went out of his way last week to reassure the businessmen of this country that when he talks of harshness they need not be worried.

Workers will have to tighten their belts-as Brown declared in the House of Commons on November 4:

'We in the government want private enterprise to flourish.' letter

'Sold

the river' say Welsh miners LAST week the Stalinist "leadership' of the National Union of Miners in the South Wales area managed, against a tide of rising militancy, to maintain its record of never having called an official strike since 1947.

As reported in last week's Newsletter, delegates from 19 local lodges met their area executive in Cardiff on Monday, November 2, and called for an official strike against the Coal Board's threatened closure of the Rhigos and Glyncastle pits.

A special coalfield conference met on Thursday, November 5 to discusss the strike call. Beforehand Will Whitehead, NUM area president, and a member of the Communist Party said that his executive would have 'certain proposals to make to the conference.

PREDICTABLE

Whitehead's proposals were all too predictable: the issue of the closures would be pursued at national level and taken up with the union's national executive.

Support would also be sought from Jim Griffiths, Labour's Secretary of State for Wales and other Welsh MPs.

Thus the local leaders tried to sidetrack the miners from the struggles against closures into the wearying routine of the official machinery that has betrayed the rank and file time after time.

According to Whitehead, miners should put their trust in local patriotism and parliamentary careerists.. He also hinted on a call for the 'direction of industry' which is nothing but a substitute for the real fight facing the miners.

The proposals were accepted by a majority of the delegates which, of course, now enables

spurt from an expectancy of these measures announced by Brown—which are temporary in any case.

And what about the big property companies — already bloated with post-war property speculation and 'development"? with the unmandated 25s.

But it won't be for long because when the full significance of The Newsletter's report that the brains behind the decasualisation scheme were those of Cousins and Sir Andrew Crichton, then all the conning of the dockers and continuous stalling by the TGWU bureaucrats over the past nine months will become clear.

The Newsletter warns--it is time the 'Blue' (National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers union) acted and organised now against decasualisation and for £15 basic wage ... the majority mandate.

Every occasion

The dockers in all the northern ports look to the 'Blue' and have backed sit on every occasion it called for and went into action.

There is absolutely no point in waiting for the TGWU to lead a strike or to see what the next move will be.

There should be a call to prepare and organise for. a national strike in the New Year for f15 basic wage and the abolition of all overtime and a real 40-hour week.

Most important of all it must be a campaign to make the Labour government carry out the nationalization of the entire docks transport industry under workers' control in each port.

The 'Blue' should say clearly:

We reject the imposed 25s. and most of all the imposed enquiry which will come in favour of decasualization.

We reject a strike call by the TGWU at our weakest time.

We will choose our time for action and it won't be the case of giving the employers eight months to make up further profits at our expense.

If the Labour government are serious about modernising the docks, then they must nationalize lock, stock and barrel.

To do anything else is to do a job for the Tories and employers against and at the expense of the working class.

Make the employers pay. the executive committee to say that the whole thing was done very democratically, should any complaints be made by the rank and file.

UNOFFICIAL

Those lodges that issued the strike call were considering unofficial action. They held a meeting at Aberamman on the night after the conference and decided to defer the stoppage until the future of Rhigos pit is better known-the closure has been delayed, but only temporarily.

The area leaders of the men in favour of unofficial action bear some of the responsibilty for this decision to defer strike action and let the matter go through the official channels.

Spokesman for the miners in favour of the unofficial stoppage, Mike Griffin said: 'We were influenced by the tone of today's Cardiff conference and were satisfied with the expressions of opinion there, against the closure of Rhigos.

•... Mr. Whitehead clinched the matter with an appeal to us to defer any drastic action.' It is doubtful whether Whitehead will have clinched the matter in the minds of the 200 Rhigos men who stopped •work in order to lobby the conference in Cardiff.

They claim that Rhigos has ample coal reserves and breaking even financially.

QUITE CLEAR

One of the delegates made the view on the executive quite clear: I think that the executive has sold us down the river.

"The men felt it was necessary fo take a stand on colliery closures now, so that the board would think twice before coming to similar decisions in the future,' he said.

Miners at Rhigos, Glyncastle and elsewhere must now build an alternative leadership among the rank and file of the union. The fight against the policies of their union officials is an essential part of the fight against closures.