The Newsletter, vol. 8 no. 372

by G. HE Labour movement had better wake up over what is happening in Smethwick. In the 1945 General Election, Mr. Patrick Gordon Walker had a majority of 12,000 over his Conservative opponent. After holding the seat for 19 years he lost it in the recent election, having been defeated by the Tory who now enjoys a majority of nearty 2.000 votes.

The answer to this sharp setback for Labour lies in the growth of racialist feeling in Smethwick. It has taken hold of important sections of the white working class, who previously voted Labour and as a result are now voting Tory.

This is by no means the end of a sordid story. The racialists of Smethwick are now a national issue for the entire labour movement.

When Gordon Walker, the Foreign Secretary, wished to organise a reception for his election workers, he was refused permission to use the infamous Labour Club, which for so long has been the local headquarters of the Labour Party, unless gave an undertaking that no coloured workers would be present at his reception. The proracialist managers of this club have now strengthened the hand of every incipient fascist tendency throughout the country.

They have done more by this one decision to endanger the labour movement than any amount of marches or comic opera parades by Mosley and his chosen few. How to fight racialism is therefore a key question before the labour movement.

Close examination

During the past two years, thanks to the vigilance of the students and Young Socialists, several public-house keepers who wanted to introduce a colour bar in their establishments have been defeated by popular demonstrations.

But much more is involved in Smethwick. You cannot defeat what is taking place there by one or two sit-downs on the entrance to public houses. The struggle in Smethwick is not one that can be solved by simply making a good propaganda case against the racialists. We must subiect it to a much closer examination.

The purpose of racialism is to divert attention away from problems which arise from the class struggle to a phoney conflict between immigrant and white workers. This is what Hitler did in Germany when he persecuted the Jews.

Socialists are just as hostile and contemptuous towards a coloured factory owner or landlord as they are to a white factory owner or landlord. It is not a question of race, but that, as factory owners and landlords they operate as a class who exploit the working class, both coloured and white.

Solidarity

The owners of property and wealth have one thing in common, whether they be coloured white, and that is that through i this ownership they exploit the working class both coloured and white.

The real issue of race is introduced by the employers and their agents in order to divert the attention of the working class away from the fundamental issue of the class struggle.

To defeat racialism, it is therefore necessary to restore class solidarity in action between all workers who are exploited by employers, irrespective of the colour of their skins. But this is precisely What the right-wing Labourites cannot do.

Gordon Walker and the rightwing Labour have long since rejected the idea that there are two classes in society. They have replaced the class struggle, which unites all workers, with class collaboration, which always favours the employers and the racialists.

This is also the policy of the big right-wing trade union chiefs. They see themselves as administrators of capitalism in the ranks of the working class, and as such do everything in their power to National Secretary of the Gordon Walker: rejects idea of two classes dampen down unity in struggle between the immigrant and white workers who desire to improve their wages and working conditions.

It is they, and Gardon Walker, who are responsible for the Tories winning Smethwick because through their policies they have helped the racialists destroy the class consciousness in the town which has in the past been responsible for Labour's victories over the Tories.

As a consequence, the more responsible members of the Labour Party in Smethwick are trying to fight the racialists with their hands tied behind their backs. It was precisely such class collaboration policies which are at present being pursued by right-wing Labour that were to no small extent responsible for their colleagues in the German social-democracy allowing Hitler to come to power in 1933.

Unity in action

The defeat of the racialists in Smethwick can only be accomplished when the labour movement builds up a unity in action on the issues affecting both white and coloured workers in a way that they will see each other as part of the working class and not people with a different skin.

If the racialists have succeeded in influencing a section of the workers by replacing instinctive support of different coloured skins, then they can only be defeated when activities based on the class struggle become once more an integral part of the process which determines the political life in the town.

The Young Socialists should play a big role all over the country in this struggle. As they recruit more and more young people into their ranks, they must turn these youth into the trade unions, where they can give leadership on the issues concerning all sections of the working class.

We must avoid like the plague, adventures such as illprepared demonstrations in which the police can intervene and use their considerable strength to demoralise young people. All this has to be replaced by a carefully prepared plan of work inside the trade unions, in order to draw the big battalions of labour into the fight.

Effective leadership It involves the building of the Socialist Labour League as the only organisation which today provides effective leadership inside the trade unions and Labour movement against the racialists.

As the crisis of capitalism continues to grow, so also will racialism if we do not act against it now. If the lesson of Smethwick is learned then we can quickly turn what is undoubtedly a serious defeat into an important advantage in the struggle for socialism in the days ahead. NOT since 1931 have we seen anything combanks. Labour MPs meeting on Tuesday evening, November 24 were startled when they were suddenly told by government spokesmen that there would be no increase for old age pensioners at Christmas because of pressure of outside financial interests. It was an intervention of just such interests that was responsible in 1931 for forcing a reduction in the dole to 15s. 3d. a week for a single, unemployed man.

As usual, these Labour MPs have no answer because they have undertaken to administer capitalist government which has inherited the the Tory economic crisis.

Because of the increase in he cost of living as a result of the uaget and import surcharge ld age pensioners now actuall race with the rest of the working class, a further reduction in the purchasing power of their pensions at Christmas. So more will die premature deaths as a result of the economic brutality of a capitalist banking system.

Bigger shocks are to come.

If this economic crisis continues to grow, then the Labour government will be forced to take more and more action against the working class since it completely refuses to do anything about big capital.

There is now a conspiracy between the City of London and the foreign banks, in order to force right-wing Labour along this road.

Control

Mr. William Warbey, the Labour MP for Ashfield, was right when he denounced the financial institutions of the City of London and urged that they should be taken under gove nment control.

But again, just in case the Labour government should take any action against the City, the men who gamble daily with the lives of millions on the money markets of the world, have now ganged up with their friends in Zurich and New York to blackmail the Labour government. It is not only action against the City which is called for, but action against all those monopoly capitalists who own the means of production.

The Wilson government is without a policy to deal with to these threats and operate a full impact of blackmail has paid ously.

The Newsletter has continuously insisted and called for a new leadership inside the Labour Party and trade unions which will be willing to wage a real struggle against Toryism. The answer to blackmail is to fight for the nationalization of all the basic industries. If this is done, the labour movement will be in a position not only to plan along Callaghan: his corporation tax revealed as a fraud socialist lines but to introduce monopoly of foreign trade which alone can deal with foreign and domestic banking interests.

Willson, Callaghan and the rest of this crew should now come out and tell the labour movement that they have no policies to deal with the crisis and they are resigning in order to go to the country to seek such policies. That is the only way to answer the blackmailers. By REG I betrayod. In voting to accept the Devlin proposals of fight for a decent living wage has beer 19s. 2d. and 5 per cent on piece-work, the delegates to the National Docks Conference of the Transport and General Workers' Union have betrayed the confidence of 60,000 dockers.

Many of those delegates who voted to accept the proposals were mandated to fight for the claim in full and accept not a penny less. A large number were on branch instructions to fight for sums which would have increased the basic weekly wage to f12 10s. or to £15.

Instead, after a wage freeze lasting nearly three years and a long protracted struggle throughout the past year, dockers are to now accept a paltry increase which will make the basic weekly wage up to the princely sum of £10 8s.

That is the reality of the betrayal which is glossed over by all those who are trying to disguise the increase in terms of percentages.

Yet this piece of arithmetical gymnastics is repeated lock, stock and barrel by the 'Daily Worker', which described the proposal as employers. Even in the history of deception practised by the Stalinists, there has surely never been such a shameful tole exposed as that on the dockers' wage issue this year.

From the standpoint of the port employers and the ruling class, the wage proposals of Lord Devlin are the carrot of enticement designed to take dock• workers' attention away from the whip of decasualisation which is contained in the second part of the Devlin Committee's enquiry.

OFFER TOO LOW

Instead of making this clear to dockers the Communist Party and the 'Daily Worker' have lined up with other papers and the leaders of the TGWU in persuading dockers that the 19s. 2d. and the 5 per cent on piece-work are 'high' figures and a 'vindication' of the dockers' fight.

The offer is neither high nor a slap in the face for the port employers. In fact, "The Times' at the beginning of October insisted in an editorial that the employers' offer, at that time standing at 12s. 6d. and 2} per cent on piecework, was too low and that the port employers could afford much more.

But what 'The Times' and the port employers wanted was some agency through which the dockers could be persuaded into accepting the reorganisation of the docks industry. That agency has been found by Minister of Labour Gunter in the guise of the Devlin Committee.

Dockers have been puzzled by the continual reference by Devlin to the number of workers who take home less than £12 a week.

CHEATED

Just why was the figure of f12 included? If f12 a week is considered to be too low a wage why was the basic for all dockers not improved to that amount? The facts of the matter are that by quoting £12, the real scandal of the £9 9s. basic wage was obscured.

So with the aid of Devlin, Gunter, the TGWU leaders (not forgetting Mr. Cousins), and Communist Party the dockers have once again been cheated. The way has been opened for the reorganisation of the docks on the employers' terms.

This has been made clear by a statement, not surprisingly kept quiet in the national press, that Devlin is now considering 'a decasualisation scheme jointly prepared by the port employers and the TGWU'. This is no doubt the one prepared by Cousins and Crichton.

It is now urgent that dockers see the danger which looms in the second part of the Devlin enquiry.

With • British capitalism facing the most serious economic crisis of its existence, the reorganisation and modernisation of the docks is one of the most urgent tasks for the employing class.

Steps should now be taken to organise a national port workers' committee determined to throw out any so-called decasualisation scheme which follows the pattern of those already suggested by the employers and the TGWU.

The dockers have too long suffered the backwardness and inefficiency of dock work. The Labour government must be told forcefully that the time has come when the employers must pay. The docks must be taken out of the hands of profiteers and nationalized. ett Arnol

those who are now blackmailing it. Under pressure from the bankers in the City of London, Zurich and New York, they are prepared to retreat.

Concessions

Mr. Callaghan has already assured big business that he will reduce the period of uncertainty as to what he proposes in relation to the corporation tax.

Such talk, is an uncalled for concession to the blackmailers. Callaghan has already taken steps to increase the cost of living for every worker in the country.

When dealing with the people who voted Labour he takes the roughest measures. He dons the kid gloves when he deals with the City. The Wilson government is, in fact, retreating before the blackmailers.

The proposed corporation tax is now revealed as a fraud. Callaghan has now informed the international bankers that their friends in the City will have no more extra to pay in the form of tax than they are paying now. The main burden of the crisis, is being placed, as we said it would be, on the backs of the working class. The bankers' TLabour Party is proposing paign by the Tory stooges-the Northern Ireland Faced with a Vicious camto expel three leading mem- religious division of the working bers who voted in the Belfast class, the Labour Party refused City Council against the to fight. Sunday opening of children's playcentres.

They are Alderman William Boyd-who is also an MP in the Northern Ireland Parliament— and councillors John Black and David Walsh.

Boyd and the councillors have SO far refused to sign an ultimatum which demands a complete capitulation to the right-wing executive.

The seemingly small issue of Sunday opening of play centres is reflecting a big crisis inside the Party which springs from the disastrous results in the General Election.

Four deposits were lost and their vote fell in every constituency which they had previously contested. From our Belfast Correspondent Unionist Party-to maintain the As with the Divis Street riots where they attempted to sit on the fence and call for "inquiries, they offered no leadership to the working class and failed to win their support.

OPPOSITION

Boyd and the others are being made scapegoats for the election fiasco. Sam Napier, the rightwing secretary of the Northern Ireland Labour Party obviously thinks that this will put a stop to the growing criticisms and frustrations among the rank and file.

The three are all members of Woodvale Divisional Party and have been picked upon because of their long history of opposition to the right wing.

Boyd explains his vote against the Sunday opening of play centres by saying that the people who live beside them don't want them open.

This opposition is not for religious reasons but as part of their discontent with their cramped housing conditions and lack of facilities and open space.

Boyd should have voted for Sunday opening and linked it with a call for a crash programme of house building.

The attempted expulsions occur at the same time as the economic crisis in Britain. As this crisis deepens, it will lead to more unemployment in Northern Ireland and a sharpening of the class struggle.

By campaigning immediately against the proposed expulsions and the lifting of all bans and proscriptions, a new leadership can be created which will fight for socialist policies. he Labour Club in Smethwick.

•We must put these silent people on the spot, we want to appeal to everyone to help us in this big campaign demand the freeing of Allen and the Nigerians' A resolution was passed asking the National Committee of the Socialist Labour League to write to the Nigerian Embassy asking them to receive a dele. gation, which would demand the immediate release of Dr. Allen, Jonas Kiomasekenagh, Oleshengun Adebayo and Sidi Kayam.

It was also agreed to ask the Commonwealth Secretary, Arthur Bottomley, to take the matter up.

SHOUTING Free Vic Allensupport Nigerian Workers!', 150 students, workers and Young Socialists marched through Leeds last Saturday behind a huge banner which proclaimed 'Free Vic Allen, Jonas Kiomasekenagh, Olenshengun Adebayo and Sidi Kayam'. Other banners demanded action from Harold Wilson and called for trade union freedom in Nigeria.

The march followed speeches mittee Member of the Socialist Labour League; John Wells, a factory convenor; Mike Heym, President of the Leeds University Labour Society; and a spokesman for a group of students from (Cont. page 4, Col. 1)

Page solution. Its programme was November 28,1964

retreat Devlin's year's hard labour sentences passed by the Nigerian court against Leeds University lecturer Dr. Leonard Victor Allen and three trade unionists, Jonas Kiomasekenagh, Sidi Kayam and Oleshengun Adebayo, the Socialist Labour League held a successful meeting last week-end.

To an audience of predominantly working class and student youth, Gerry Healy, national secretary of the Socialist Labour League described the hardships suffered by both Dr. Allen and the three Nigerians during the trial for alleged sedition.

In London, he said, the Socialist Labour League had been refused permission by the police to hold an evening demonstration in the West End protesting against the imprisonment of Allen and the three Nigerians A seditious| document was alleged to be the basis of the charges and there was also reported to have been a letter from Cliff Slaughter, a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Labour League, which was refuted by Slaughter himself.

The three imprisoned Nigerians "The only crime of Dr. Allen was that he was taking advantage of his holidays to go to Nigeria to write a book.' Healy said that the reactionaries in the City of London wanted to crush the militant strike movement which had won certain demands from the Nigerian government just before Allen arrived in the country. They were frightened of a strong leadership which might be built up in that country.

It was impossible to get money to Nigeria,' he added.

Healy asked why there had been a cloak of silence over the whole trial from the trade union movement.

This silence was, he said, a failure to rouse the working 'ass and tantamount to racialn. Keeping quiet was just s offensive as those who sat on

N 1914, in order to get the working class to fight the war to redivide imperialism in favour of the most powerful capitalist country, the German ruling class, like all ruling classes, put out massive patriotic propaganda to obscure the different interests of German workers and German capitalists.

The majority of the German social-democrats, like their comrades in every other Western European country rallied to their ruling class and were active in the propagating of 'national' instead of class interests.

On August 1, 1914, Friedrich Stampfer, editor of 'Vorwarts', Social-Democrat paper, wrote 'when the fateful hour strikes, the workers will stand by the promise given on their behalf by their representatives, the "men without fatherland" will do their duty, and in this they will let themselves be outdone in no way by the patriots.

One year later, Paul Lensch, a leader of the party, wrote, to spur on the workers, 'the German army is fighting for World Revolution against British Imperialism'.

In the same year, the 'Metallarbeiter Zeitung', the metal workers' trade union paper, justified the wartime restrictions with 'A new day has dawned. In a very short space of time the war has made new men of us all. This is true without exception, high and low, rich Hitler's proclamation claiming success for the November 1923 putsch.

ran das deutsche Volki Die Regiezung fer Sevembet: seeredet in Berlin iff beate au absejest erflort momen It sebillet weeben.

Beeral Let ent on Aboff ele and poor ... socialism wherever we turn our gaze'.

The social-democrats had chosen to serve German capital, and to do so they would not hesitate to propagate the most reactionary capitalist ideas: the 'men without fatherland' had become patriots and the war to redivide the world had becorne "socialism'.

The choice made by the party leadership is well summed up building workers, who wrote in 1915: "The working class cannot oppose Germany's imperialist development, for that development is conditioned by strong, even compelling, economic necessity'.

By 1917, the more far-sighted sections of the German ruling class realised that the end of the war might jeopardise the very existence of capitalism, and that the preservation of the system as a whole was more important to them than winning the war.

The end of the war would be accompanied by a revolutionary wave, wrote General Groener, "consequently, the steersmen and the course must be so chosen that we may be carried on this wave into harbour, even if the war goes against us' Capitalists' plan The plan that they devised was to force the Kaiser to abdicate, so that the responsi'bility for the war might be thrown onto him, without involving the whole ruling class. He was to be replaced by the social-democrats who would both control the workers' revolutionary aspirations and take the blame for the hardships that the end of the war would bring. The German army would then surrender, in order to avoid defeat, so that it could be kept in a condition to back these plans with the necessary force.

All worked according to plan. On November 8, Prince Max of Baden asked the emperor to abdicate and on the next day a government of six "people's commissars' was formed. In order to give the new government some prestige, this affair was dubbed the 'November Revolution'® These 'November and how the Nazis used racialism to destroy the labour n aries' then proceeded to use the army against any genuine workers' revolutionary movements.

In December 1918, 'People's commissar' Ebert greeted the returning German army at the Berlin Brandenburger Tor with the words 'I salute you who return unvanquished from the field of battle' '. A secret telephone was installed from Ebert's cabinet to General Groener's headquarters.

In January 1919, under the direction of the 'People's commissar' Noske, the same army bloodily put down the Berlin workers, winning the approval of Winston Churchill who called Noske 'a son of the people. acting without fear in a public cause'. The uprisings in Bavaria, Thuringia, Saxony, Hamburg and Kiel were dealt with in the same way.

Death penalty

The death penalty was introduced for the carniage of arms, and was applied by the courts against workers and not against members of the right wing 'Free Corps'.

The murderers of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were tried by a military, not a civil court, which the social-democrats had permitted to be reconstituted.

Now that they had ensured the continued existence German capitalism against the workers, the social-democrats turned their attention to rebuilding it so that it could take on its imperialist rivals once again.

After tour years of war, it appeared that the combined forces of British, French and American capitalism had dealt a decisive blow at German capitalism.

The 'Allies' shared out among themselves the former German colonies and redrew the frontiers of Europe with the aim of crippling this new and dynamic capitalist rival.

The loss of Lorraine, Luxemburg Silesia deprived German capitalism of 25 per cent of its coal capacity, 74 per cent of its iron ore, 41 per cent of its pig iron, 51 per cent of its steel ingots and 39 per cent of its rolling mill products. It also disrupted industrial complexes as, for example, the Ruhr-SaarLuxemburg and Lorraine had formed one industrial unit.

To compete once again, German industry needed to make up in technique and efficient organisation what. it lacked in resources.

The social-democrats applied themselves to this task. Articles 161-165 of the Weimar constitution, drawn up in 1919, recognised the need for centralisation and cartelisation of industry.

Instead of the nationalization of coal and steel, the Ebert government decreed 'social control. This meant that the entire coal industry was organised nationally with state help and organisation, but remained in private hands.

Sop The only sop to 'socialism' was the joint management boards of workers and employers that were supposed to run the industry. In fact, the boards were completely ineffective and the state funds and organisation simply meant that the one industry that was vital for all German machine tool produotion, on which the economy was founded, was reorganised and rapidly brought back into efficient production But it was in 1921-23, with the policy of the great inflation, that the German capitalists managed to re-equip industry to Thousands of German workers joined the queues of unemployed during the inflation of the 1920s. labour movement the detriment of the foreign rivals and at the expense of the German working class.

Between these two years, the value of the Mark dropped rapidly from one dollar = 50 Marks to one dollar = one million, one hundred thousand Marks.

This devaluation caused prices to soar in Germany. The workers suffering enormous cuts in the value of their wages. Money wages did rise, but as Dr. Schacht, who advised the social-democrats and who was to become president of the state bank in 1923 and Hitler's 'economic genius' in 1933, said:

'Nevertheless, wages and Thousands of Mark notes being bundled up during inflation. salaries lagged considerably behind the actual prices of goods, being based mainly on the Reich's index of the cost of living ..: which was calculated on a very misleading basis.' * In the second half of 1923, wages had sunk so low that many employers found it necessary to pay their workers with foreign currency or supply them with foodstuffs instead of money wages.

This inflation was not only welcomed by the government and the banks, it was actively fostered by them.

The state bank maintained the rate of discount at 5 per cent until July 1922 raised it to 30 per cent in August 1923 and to 90 per cent in September 1923— which was far less than the rate of depreciation of the currency.

Easy credit

In 1922, when government borrowing from the banks fell off and it seemed that this would check the inflation, Havenstein, the chairman of the state bank offered easier credit to private industry, to substitute private for government inflationary pressure.

One of the big factors in the inflation was the issue of banknotes by private industry, municipalities and the private banks, as well as by the state bank. In 1918, the social-democratic government had made it law that these privately issued banknotes must be accepted. By 1923 there were 400-500 trillion of them in circulation.

An indication of the rate of inflation can be gauged from the fact that in 1923 the printing of government banknotes employed 133 printing firms with 1,783 machines and kept 30 paper factories working to full capacity.

If the effect of the inflation on the working class was catastrophic, it was the very reverse for the big monopolies. Their labour costs were reduced to virtually nothing and they were able to borrow money from the banks which would become so devalued by the time it had to be paid back that they virtually got it for nothing.

Consequently, retooling and re-equipping of industry forged ahead at a great rate, together with ever-increased monopolisation.

It was at this period that the vast monopolies of Siemens, Stinnes and AEG were built.

Stinnes' monopoly

Stinnes, for example, used the inflation to build a monopoly starting from the compensation that he had received from the loss of his interests in Luxemburg, which spread from coal, steel and electricity to all forms of the processing of electrical material.

His mining interests led him to spread into buying forests for pit props. This led him into paper and cellulose production and journalism, to shipbuilding, vehicle production, hotels and advertising.

He then expanded to buy the largest iron ore mine in Europe, in Austria, and iron, steel and engineering works in Hungary, together with chemical, aluminium and timber interests in Rumania.

He staffed this industrial empire with former officers of the Prussian army. One of his hotels was managed by Captain GERMANY Kessler, the murderer of Rosa Luxemburg.

'Vorwarts' hailed him as bringing 'capitalism into the chrysalis stage, from which one day the socialist economy will emerge as a full grown butterfly. Let us not disturb him in his work. Socialists may yet acclaim him as one of their greatest men'. Written at a time when workers were starving, that these empires might be built.

It was from vast monopolies like Stinnes that the funds for the Nazi Party were to come.

Inflation useless

By the end of 1923, it became clear to the German ruling class that the inflation had outlived its usefulness. The working class was fighting back, to bring the attempted revolution at the end of the year.

At the same time, the vast monopolies were becoming so powerful that they threatened to break up the national state.

If German capitalism were to challenge its rivals once again, it must organise nationally, with the full economic and military co-operation of the state. Without that, the biggest monopoly would not stand the pressure from foreign rivals.

General von Seeckt was given full powers at the end of the year to end the economic crisis. Schacht was appointed president of the state bank. The Mark was revalued so that one new Mark = one million old Marks and pegged at a rate of 4.2 to the dollar.

At the same time, the 8-hour day was abolished and compulsory arbitration of industrial disputes was decreed.

Power curbed

The vast power of Stinnes and the like was curbed in the interests of the German capitalist class as a whole and the Hitler putsch was put down for the same reason. Nothing which threatened the unity of the German state, which alone could guarantee the full rebuilding of German capitalism, could be tolerated.

As Schacht said in a speech in 1925: 'Stabilisation was not a technical task but must be seen inside the framework of a great national, political task ... as a brick in the great edifice that we must and we will re-erect in a national sense in the face of the world.' The inflation had enabled the big monopolies to build up great concentrations of new capital and to eliminate their weaker rivals. It now remained to 'rationalise' what remained.

A three-point plan was introduced, to increase productivity at factory level, to simplity relations between firms, and to co-ordinate research into new techniques and processes.

In 1919, the rival employers' federations had •amalgamated into one organisation. In 1921, 'Reichskuratorium für Wirtschaftlichkeit' was set up in which government and employers co-operated to study the 'scientific organisation of labour', and to produce blueprints for industry.

In 1926, the Deutsche Normen Ausschuss' was set up to introduce standardisation of equipment throughout industry.

Firms and cartels were amalgamated and harmonised". Machinery and equipment was scrapped if it did not conform to standards and replaced by standardised plant.

The entire coal and 1. steel industry, with the exception of Krupp's, was amalgamated into one gigantic firm, producing about 50 per cent of Germany's entire needs for coal and steel (the Vereinigte Stahlwerke A.G.). The entire chemical industry was merged into one firm-I.G. Farben, which, with a capital of 900 million Marks, became the largest firm on the continent.

These firms were later to put Hitler in power.

Production rises

Between 1927 and 1929 the productivity of German mines rose by 100 per cent, that of the blast furnaces by 200 per cent.

These moves were, of course, welcomed by the social-democrats. 'Gewerkschaftzeitung', the paper of the social-democratic trade union confederation stated on March 6, 1926: 'Rationalisation is one of the most impontant conditions for the growth of the standard of living.

At the 1927 Kiel congress of the social - democratic party, Hilferding put forward his theory of 'organised capitalism': 'Our generation finds itself confronted with the task of organising and regulating the capitalist economy with the help of the state, and of transforming the economy organised and directed by capitalists into an economy organised and directed by the democratic state.' Same servants But there was nothing democratic about the German state of the Weimar Republic. At the end of the war, the social-democrats had left the civil service, trained by and loyal to the Prussian empire, quite intact.

The plans for 'social ownership, of thee oal and potash industries was, in fact, worked out by this civil service and subsequently published under the title of Konservativer Socialismus' (conservative socialism).

They had left the judiciary intact, and the courts were consistently between 1918 and 1933 to pass heavy sentences against left-wingers and to let rightwingers off with light sentences. (The actor J. Gaertner, for instance, was sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment for reciting pacifist poems, whilst Rosa Luxemburg's murderer was let off.)

They had left the Prussian army intact, and indeed, by using it in 1919 against the workers, had increased its power and prestige. The army was to use this in order to destroy the very social-democrats that had helped them to survive.

Most important of all, they had accepted the policies of German capitalism wholesale. This meant that they had to propagate its myths of national unity and German supremacy instead of showing how different were the interests main classes.

The irony of this reached a peak during the inflation when even Schacht admits that a painful impression was made on "the public mind by the spectacle continually paraded before their eyes of particular undertakings and firms expanding their concerns, acquiring new works or erecting new buildings, amid the monetary collapse, with the aid of paper mark credits that they were able to obtain at will.

The slump of 1929 revealed that even the organised and 'rationalised' German industry was not strong enough to face its rivals.

Based on machine tools and heavy industrial products, for export, the German industry suffered severely from the restriction of markets that followed the 1929 Wall Street crash.

Unemployment

By 1932, industrial production had sunk to 60 per cent of the 1929 level. . Unemployment rose rapidly to reach about seven million in that year.

The slump cut industrial wages by half and reduced the German working class to the misery that it had known in 1923 during the worst year of the inflation.

The slump determined the German capitalists that they could no longer accept the restrictions of the "democratic state. Direct control over investment spheres in Eastern Europe was necessary and the elimination of all forces that. could organise the working class against their plans also.

The Nazi party provided the intensely nationalist, raising German nationalism to the point of racialism. Its programine was also radical, in that it included demagogic appeals that could appeal to the working class, and especially the unemployed, and the petty-bourgeoisie.

Money from the big industries poured into the Nazi coffers and Nazi representation in Parliamenı shot up from 13 in 1928 to 107 in 1932 to 288 in March 1933 when Hitler became Chancellor.

With the Nazi party the employers were able to make use of the misery that capitalism had plunged the German working class into, channel it against the Jews and replace the weak 'democratic' state with a strong highly centralised one which would both keep the workers in order and prepare German capitalism to meet its rivals militarily.

Obscure divisions

The racialism of the Nazis was only one facet of their programme that made them useful to the ruling class. It was one of the things that was used to obscure the real class divisions and replace them by racial ones. It was the logical successor of the nationalism that the ruling class had previously peddled and which the social-democrats had zealously propagated for them.

It was necessary if German capitalism was to survive the attacks on it both from its own organised working class and from the rival capitalist powers.

German capitalism demanded racialism to survive, the acceptance of this was merely an extension of the acceptance of all the previous conditions that the ruling class had laid before the social democracy.

Gint Elt bloni? Zonu ind Ett Saltur-Sdipia mnd Saltu-Brboler! Srien Cir baber bie „Ditara", 1, Büderai ber 2Slonben amb ERonneitecbtier!

Safe unb dufere Delitif Ten 3.

Bind Bie blond? Dann Drobeu 3bneu (Bejabren! frien Gir Dahri sie, Fitana Bidirret ber Elonern end Wantestroter Dir Blenern ai6 Ruif-Sdopint tieber Dest Zimgang mic Cicasbolen, cin deuce, Rulgge" L. Zeit.

Ton 3 Cna = Ciomfels Selalt Retamet aed sen Stibiabnie an Sit bann cel en &isabim am Cirl Ser Ridurtale in se Saiubeibal Thea cilie alr fie hot mn 3e ciñeg Be Siberhofen Idulk, hağm femen Fenatiben Sol soses hie Zibanzalen, fostom sue arges anea totim qa Migal de Sioracanies Criponé ma Sein Saframm im bed Dteded Ber Simeifderr siles Sear Sale l Saua(dalt ann Soitaidalt tf Organitatioem Teccnm anb Berufe 2ie Ebie/ eai lid 494 --pr helel ceane? Oar Shegong ime Sechagapare K03. 4T odagtormn arm sates E ber bübiten Rale Above: Sections from different books 'proving' the superiority of the blond Aryan race and below anti-Jewish slogans on a shop window.

(The diagrams above are supposed to show the different bone structure of the Aryan and Jewish races. These were pseudo-scientific quackery inherited from previous anti-Semitics by Hitler.)

i Jardends sade Rinde sfou To noon wick seem buyiı groce hazy lish, and shop Pictures above show the furnace of one of the main factories in Smethwick behind new Council houses in Great Arthur Street and the daubings on the front of one of the houses allocated to an Indian.

Country towns, Smethwick, near Birmingham, is highly industrialised and overpopulated. To most people who read the sensational stories in the capitalist press Smethwick also means an 'immigration problem', a Tory MP who cut a Labour majority by I2,000 and a 'Labour Club' which bans coloured people.

the Saturday aftershopper in Smethall these things worlds apart from ig the week-end ries in the noisy, High Street; EngIndian, Jamaican Pakistani workers at the same shops, buy the same goods at the same prices with the same hard - earned money.

To the casual observer, everything appears quite normal.

But, behind this facade of normality lies a tenseness. This is something which has generated over a number of years into a now explosive situation.

Who is responsible for this situation? ROBERT JAMES and SYLVIA PICK spent two days last week interviewing people in the town in an attempt to answer this question.

• METHWICK is a risen. In the same shop true product of the to f4 below those earned HE NEWSLETTER » the German = to power November 1964 solution. Its programme was intensely nationalist, raising German nationalism to the point of racialism. Its programme November 28,1964 was taken by Councillor Badham, Party treasurer.

He estimated that at the General Election as many as factor in the situation. Smethwick Labour Party tł that the nationalization i building and supply indust

Kessler, the murderer Luxemburg.

'Vorwarts' hailed him as bringing 'capitalism into the chrysalis stage, from which one day the socialist economy will emerge as a full grown butterfly. Let us not disturb him in his work. Socialists may yet acclaim him as one . of their greatest men'. Written at a time when workers were starving, that these empires might be built.

It was from vast monopolies like Stinnes that the funds for the Nazi Party were to come.

Inflation useless

By the end of 1923, it became clear to the German ruling class that the inflation had outlived its usefulness. The working class was fighting back, to bring the attempted revolution at the end of the year.

At the same time, the vast monopolies were becoming so powerful that they threatened to break up the national state.

If German capitalism were to challenge its rivals once again, it must organise nationally, with the full economic and military co-operation of the state. Without that, the biggest monopoly would not stand the pressure from foreign rivals.

General von Seeckt was given full powers at the end of the year to end the economic crisis. Schacht was appointed president of the state bank. The Mark was revalued so that one new Mark = one million old Marks and pegged at a rate of 4.2 to the dollar.

At the same time, the 8-hour day was abolished and compulsory arbitration of industrial disputes was decreed.

Power curbed

The vast power of Stinnes and the like was curbed in the interests of the German capitalist class as a whole and the Hitler putsch was put down for the same reason. Nothing which threatened the unity of the German state, which alone could guarantee the full rebuilding of German capitalism, could be tolerated.

As Schacht said in a speech in 1925: 'Stabilisation was not a technical task but must be seen inside the framework of a great national, political task ... as a brick in the great edifice that we must and we will re-erect in a national sense in the face of the world.' The inflation had enabled the big monopolies to build up great concentrations of new capital and to eliminate their weaker rivals. It now remained to "rationalise' what remained.

A three-point plan was introduced, to increase productivity Machinery and equipment was scrapped if it did not conform to standards and replaced by standardised plant.

The entire coal and steel industry, with the exception of Krupp's, was amalgamated into one gigantic firm, producing about 50 per cent of Germany's entire needs for coal and steel (the Vereinigte Stahlwerke A.G.). The entire chemical industry was merged into one firm-I.G. Farben, which, with a capital of 900 million Marks, became the largest firm on the continent.

These firms were later to put Hitler in power.

Production rises

Between 1927 and 1929 the productivity of German mines rose by 100 per cent, that of the blast furnaces by 200 per cent.

These moves were, of course, welcomed by the social-democrats. 'Gewerkschaftzeitung', the paper of the social-democratic trade union confederation stated on March 6, 1926: 'Rationalisation is one of the most important conditions for the growth of the standard of living.

At the 1927 Kiel congress of the social - democratic party, Hilferding put forward his theory of 'organised capitalism': 'Our generation finds itself confronted with the task of organising and regulating the capitalist economy with the help of the state, and of transforming the economy organised and directed by capitalists into an economy organised and directed by the democratic state' Same servants But there was nothing democratic about the German state of the Weimar Republic. At the end of the war, the social-democrats had left the civil service, trained by and loyal to the Prussian empire, quite intact.

The plans for 'social ownership, of thec oal and potash industries was, in fact, worked out by this civil service and subsequently published under the title of 'Konservativer Socialismus' (conservative socialism).

They had left the judiciary intact, and the courts were consistently between 1918 and 1933 to pass heavy sentences against left-wingers and to let rightwingers off with light sentences. (The actor J. Gaertner, for

Navember 28, 1964 solution. Its programme was intensely nationalist, raising German nationalism to the point of racialism. Its programme November was taken by Councillor Ron Badham, Party treasurer.

He estimated that at the General Election as many as factor in the situation. But Smethwick Labour Party thought that the nationalization of the building and supply industry was shopkeeper which now consolidates the Tory hold there.

'In another ward there was a fight between personalities which came into the country up to 1961, two had left, he maintained. Since the Immigration Act, the ratio was one to three.

to strophic, it was the very reverse for the big monopolies. Their labour costs were reduced to virtually nothing and they were able to borrow money from the banks which would become so devalued by the time it had to be paid back that they virtually got it for nothing.

Consequently, retooling and re-equipping of industry forged ahead at a great rate, together with ever-increased monopolisation.

It was at this period that the vast monopolies of Siemens, Stinnes and AEG were built.

Stinnes' monopoly

Stinnes, for example, used the inflation to build a monopoly starting from the compensation that he had received from the loss of his interests in Luxemburg, which spread from coal, steel and electricity to all forms of the processing of electrical material.

His mining interests led him to spread into buying forests for pit props. This led him into paper and cellulose production and journalism, to shipbuilding, vehicle production, hotels and advertising.

He then expanded to buy the largest iron ore mine in Europe, in Austria, and iron, steel and engineering works in Hungary, together with chemical, aluminium and timber interests in Rumania.

He staffed this industrial empire with former officers of the Prussian army. One of bis hotels was managed by Captain at factory level, to simplity relations between firms, and to co-ordinate research into new techniques and processes.

In 1919, the rival employers' federations had amalgamated into one organisation. In 1921, the 'Reichskuratorium für Wirtschaftlichkeit' was set up in which government and employers fic orated ton of liber", and to produce blueprints for industry.

In 1926, the 'Deutsche Nonmen Ausschuss' was set up to introduce standardisation of equipment throughout industry.

Firms and cartels were amalgamated and harmonised". instance, was sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment for reciting pacifist poems, whilst Rosa Luxemburg's murderer was let off.)

They had left the Prussian army intact, and indeed, by using it in 1919 against the workers, had increased its power and prestige. The army was to use this in order to destroy the very social-democrats that had helped them to survive.

Most important of all, they had accepted the policies of German capitalism wholesale. This meant that they had to propagate its myths of national unity and German supremacy instead of showing how different Racialism 1964 bers, leaves the same impreswere the interests of main classes.

The irony of this reached a peak during the inflation when even Schacht admits that a painful impression was made on 'the public mind by the spectacle continually paraded before their eyes of particular undertakings and firms expanding their concerns, acquiring new works or erecting new buildings, amid the monetary collapse, with the aid of paper mark credits that they were able to obtain at will'. The slump of 1929 revealed that. even the organised and "rationalised' German industry was not strong enough to face its rivals.

Based on machine tools and heavy industrial products, for export, the German industry suffered severely from the restriction of markets that followed the 1929 Wall Street crash.

Unemployment

By 1932, industrial production had sunk to 60 per cent of the 1929 level. . Unemployment rose rapidly to reach about seven million in that year.

The slump cut industrial wages by half and reduced the German working class to the misery that it had known 1923 during the worst year of the inflation.

The slump determined the German capitalists that they could no longer accept the restrictions of the 'democratic' state. Direct control over investment spheres in Eastern Europe was necessary and the elimination of all forces that. could organise the working class against their plans also.

The Nazi party provided the was also radical, in that it included demagogic appeals that could appeal to the working class, and especially the unemployed, and the petty-bourgeoisie.

Money from the big industries poured into the Nazi coffers and Nazi representation in Parliamenı shot up from 13 in 1928 to 107 in 1932 to 288 in March 1933 when Hitler became Chancellor.

With the Nazi party the employers were able to make use of the misery that capitalism had plunged the German working class into, channel it against the Jews and replace the weak 'democratic' state with a strong highly centralised one which would both keep the workers in order and prepare German capitalism to meet its rivals militarily.

Obscure divisions

The racialism of the Nazis was only one facet of their programme that made them useful to the ruling class. It was one of the things that was used to obscure the real class divisions and replace them by racial ones. It was the logical successor of the nationalism that the ruling class had previously peddled and which the social-democrats had zealously propagated for them.

It was necessary if German capitalism was to survive the attacks on it both from its own organised working class and from the rival capitalist powers.

German capitalism demanded racialism to survive, the acceptance of this was merely an extension of the acceptance of all the previous conditions that the ruling class had laid before the social democracy.

Eind Eit blond? 20m0 ind Eir Sultar-Edepict and Stallat-Grialtet!

Erien Bir baber bie „Diara", ', Búdetei bre Blonden und IRonneitehtler!

Stafe und dußere politif adorati se sties Suite Gind Gie blond? Sann proben 3buen Gefabren!

Erjen Gir bahre die, Ditasa Slidera ber Sonden anh Wanneertehtler REPS Dir Bienben alt Suit-@dipier Heber ben Umgang mit Simonbalen, ein sener aRnigges 1 Tell.

Con 3 Ines 3 Lidrafele in tif Zeidet Dr Sinalitbers sile Se titane Berenon ant Berufen Sie (tuer man de gegen Selp Beladen Ce en Sar Imane mit Pectonspatien singese bite spee BE DIE ANTRA ERRE Above: Sections from different books 'proving' the superiority of the blond Aryan race and below anti-Jewish slogans on a shop window.

(The diagrams above are supposed to show the different bone structure of the Aryan and Jewish races. These were pseudo-scientific quackery inherited from previous anti-Semitics by Hitler.)

9. Jolene windin Rena dan noon wick seem buyil groce hazy lish, and shop Pictures above show the furnace of one of the main factories in Smethwick behind new Council houses in Great Arthur Street and the daubings on the front of one of the houses allocated to an Indian.

Country towns, Smethwick, near Birmingham, is highly industrialised and overpopulated. To most people who read the sensational stories in the capitalist press Smethwick also means an immigration problem, a Tory MP who cut a Labour majority by 12,000 and a 'Labour Club' which bans coloured people.

To the Saturdar aftershopper in Smethall these things worlds apart from ig the week-end Tries in the noisy, High Street; EngIndian, Jamaican Pakistani workers at the same shops, buy the same goods at the same prices with the same hard-earned money.

To the casual observer, everything appears quite normal.

But, behind this facade of normality lies a tenseness. This is something which has generated over a number of years into a now explosive situation.

Who is responsible for this situation? ROBERT JAMES and SYLVIA PICK spent two days last week interviewing people in the town in an attempt to answer this question. industrial revolution. before automation. Within the boundaries Unlike the rubber workers at of this county borough who also supply the motor in(twn miles wide hv twn dustry, immigrant workers have BERETUO and a half miles deep) are 90 factories and works based mainly to the north around the Birmingham and Wolverhampton canal and railway lines, and many old houses.

The present population figure. according to the local health department is 68,000. between 4,000 and 5,000 of these are immigrants (Indians, West Indians and Pakistanis).

Industrialisation of the area was begun in 1762 by Matthew Boulton who was later joined improved steam engine. Together they built one of Smethwick's first foundries to produce metal castings needed by other manufacturers.

Today, as the official industrial handbook of the town says: "The emphasis of industry is still on the metallic manufacturers and on glass; but within these limits a great many changes have taken place during the last few years. A greater degree of automation has, of course, been introduced, and several works have been extended; while modernisation does not consist of dramatic reorganisations as it did years ago, it is, rather, a continuous process.' As Mr. Aytar Jouhl, a leading member of the Indian Workers' Association, told The Newsletter, Birmid Ltd., a group of companies which employs most of the Indian workers in Smethwick is very modernised.

"There is a new furnace at the Dartmouth Auto Casting Company, which has the most modern automatic casting plant in Britain,' he said.

Producing small parts and castings for the motor industry about 50 per cent of the workers at the Birmid group are Indians. The factories are run on two 12-hour shifts employing mainly unskilled labour on low rates of pay.

Worst jobs

Mr. Jouhl claims that it is not hard for Indians to obtain jobs in the foundries. They are, in fact, the backbone of the industry working as moulders, grinders, dressers and casters— the worst jobs.

Aill the casters are Indians. This is an extremely dangerous and dirty job.

Because of automation, less men are needed on the jobsthe number of skilled men is even less-and wages in the automated shops are less than those in the manual plants.

As the company is running two types of plant and is obtaining more work, there have not been any redundancies, though Mr. Jouhl agreed that later, when automation is introduced throughout the group, there will probably be mass redundancy.

At the moment, a manual plant needs 16 moulders compared with one operator and three moulders in an automated plant. Even though the automated plant produces more castings, the wages of the workers are less than those working at piece rate in the manual plant.

In one automated shop, the staff has been reduced by half, but production has Woolfs in Southall, Middlesex, not yet been involved in a struggle for higher wages ard better conditions.

This is probably due to the availability of work in the area (Smethwick's unemployment figure is somewhere in the region of 0.2 per cent, while that of the Birmingham area is 0.8 per cent), and to the attitude of local union officials (it is hoped to investigate union activity more fully in a later article).

Workers in the roundries can dilaearn between f9 and f14 basic a week. The majority who are unskilled labourers earn a basic of £9 4s. with a possible bonus of f2 to f3 a week. All the workers have a 42-hour week, but there is no lack of overtime and they can earn anything up to f18 to £20 working long hours in what Mr. Jouhl says are the most 'gruelling conditions'.

Most of the foundries are 'closed shops' of the Amalgamated Union of Foundry Workers, with some Amalgamated Engineering Union and Transport and General Workers' Union men.

The workers, coloured and white, strongly defend their closed shops, but, so far, this strength has not been developed to fight the profiteers of sweated labour.

This may be due to the whole racialist attitude and atmosphere that has built up in Smethwick —although it is only the labour movement that can break this down in a principled fight for socialist policies.

It is reported that one union branch secretary in Smethwick went to protest about the number of coloured immigrants in the town when Harold Wilson held a pre-election meeting there. A censure motion was put down against him in his branch, but this was not even seconded!

Although our reporters were not able to contact Mr. Cyril Short, secretary of the Smetihwick Trades Council, it was reported earlier this week that Mr. Short is to ask the bouse committee of the Smethwick Labour Club in Coopers Lane to deny it has a colour bar. The Trades Council may also cease to hold their meetings in the club.

Electrical Trades Union delegate, Mr. Leaford Hay South, a Jamaican, has been refused entry to the club—someone was posted on the door to keep him out when the Trades Council met.

Angry

Other ETU members in the town are angry and determined to fight back. Those who work at the Mitchells and Butlers brewery in the town will consider at their next branch meeting urging the brewery draymen — members of the TGWU-to "black' deliveries to the club. Ansells brewery workers at Aston, Birmingham may also be asked to ban the deliveries to the club.

Smethwick Labour Party is also to cease holding its meetings at the Labour Club because of the colour bar there. They took this decision unanimously, because they felt they 'could not be true to their socialist principles' if they stayed in the club as long as the colour bar operated.

Probably the most significant statement was made after the meeting at which this decision 75 м per cent of the Labour Club's members had voted for Peter Griffiths, the Tory candidate who won Smethwick from Patrick Gordon Walker Coun. Badham declared that Labour Party members had been aware that the friendly atmosphere towards themselves had changed to one of hostility. He said Gordon Walker was also conscious of this change on the part of club members.

Labour had a majority of 12,000 when Gordon Walker was elected as its MP at a bye-election in 1945. At the General Election this autumn that majority had vanished, and Peter Griffiths won by 1,776 votes. On the local Council, Labour had an overwhelming majority when Griffiths first won his seat in 1955. Last May the Tories won control.

Since his election Griffiths denied he is a racialist.

Exploit fears

What is the explanation of the gradual loss by Labour of such massive support in a preponderantly working-class district? Labour Party members all cite the same reason: the sustained and vicious campaign of racialist hate waged by local Tories.

There is no doubt that for the last four years this campaign has been ceaseless. Every opportunity has been seized to exploit local fears and prejudices.

Yet it is an over-simplification to imply that no share of responsibility for the present situation rests on any shoulders but those of the racialists.

A talk with members of the Labour Party, whether leading officials or rank-and-file memworkers and rally many of them to the Tory Party.

Labour, meanwhile, has countered with a negative, hesitant response, backing away from their principles in the face of what they imagined to be local feeling and failing to explain with any firmness why coloured and white workers should unite against Tory and racialist candidates.

Surprised

Councillor Ernest Lowry, President of Smethwick Labour Party, stated that most party members were "surprised' to learn that the club where they had been holding their meetings operated a colour bar. He thought some 30 to 50 paid-up members of the party were also club members.

It is surely hard to believe that in a club which is the local dentre of working-class social activity, it had never occurred to party members to wonder why no coloured immiorants ever entered its doors to join in the amenities.

Lowry was asked if, since the (many of them in a very fact of the colour bar had come way indeed) who, in to light, any approach had been Country towns like Sme made to local trade union and West Bromwich, tra branches, with the object of ally give the party their si getting • the rule lifted. He When Labour had an replied that there had been none. whelming majority on He thought more could be done Council they tended to bi "by gradual persuasion' than by their decisions through such an approach.

Lowry said there were three 'In part of the main shi immigrant members of the centre, Cape Hill, the I party. No special effort had Council had a plan to been made to recruit immigrant pletely demolish the 1 workers into membership, since shops and houses then ir 'it was not Smethwick Labour large property company Party's policy to recruit any one develop the area. This n special section of the com- possible for the Tories t munity'. gest that this would res He agreed that the housing shopkeepers losing ever shortage was an important Labour lost the vote of th‹ The Smethwick Labour Club where officials refused Patrick ( only a solution 'as a lon; policy. Labour's plan speeding up municipal bi was seen as better in the term.

Our reponters asked 1 about the activity of groups in the town. He of an incident nearly three ago, when there was a strike of council tenants in test against the allocation flat to a Pakistani family that occasion Labour coun had seen fascist leaflets had been pushed throug doors of municipal flats.

BNP intervenes In the recent General EI the British National Part given support to the Tory paign, though this had been denied by Griffiths. local Labour Party had issued any condemnatio their intervention as such.

At a press conferen‹ announce the Labour would not be using the L Club after December 31, 1 quipped that 'Harold wo like it' if they continued 1 the club. So much fo serious statement of being to our socialist principles' A young Smethwick w a Labour supporter who cl to have been a alose obser political trends in the during the past five years. this view of the situation:

'The Labour Party here difficult position since its ranks are riddled with rac Many of these people have in the party for years, always thought of themsel good socialists and trade 1 ists, and held correct about the international soli

sion.

The racialists have been The racialists have been allowed to make the run- allowed to make the running with a positive, aggres- ning with a positive, aggres sive campaign designed to sive campaign designed to split white from coloured Coun. Ernest Lowry, presid the Smethwick Labour sitting in the Party's colo Labour Club office. of workers—until they wer fronted with this situati their own town.

"Their concepts were to the test and they r not " sufficiently clear stand up to it. This m it possible for raci propaganda to cut 1 across their class loya and make it seem more portant to them to get of immigrants or cor their numbers, than to si with them and fight for interests of all workers.

He also explained: 'A section or voters lost to l were the small shopk plaining nothing.

Walker to hold a party with coloured guests.

Reich with ino (left), ed to 15 : for res, whilst murderer | Prussian deed, by ainst the its power ny was to ¿stroy the Ithat had 'all, they slicies of wholesale.

harto upremacy i different reached a ion when that a made on spectacle fore their dertakings their conworks or amid the h the aid i that they will.

revealed lised and industry b to face tools and lucts, for industry • the rethat folill Street ent roduction Int of the ment rose jut seven industrial duced the is to the inown in 1 year of ined the hat they it the reImocratic over inEastern and the irces that. king class vided the was also radical, in that it included demagogic appeals that could appeal to the working class, and especially the unemployed, and the petty-bourgeoisie.

Money from the big industries poured into the Nazi coffers and Nazi representation in Parliament shot up from 13 in 1928 to 107 in 1932 to 288 in March 1933 when Hitler became Chancellor.

With the Nazi party the employers were able to make use of the misery that capitalism had plunged the German working class into, channel it against the Jews and replace the weak 'democratic' state with a strong hughly centralised one which would both keep the workers in order and prepare German capitalism to meet its rivals militarily.

Obscure divisions

The racialism of the Nazis was only one facet of their programme that made them useful to the ruling class. It was one of the things that was used to obscure the real class divisions and replace them by racial ones. It was the logical successor of the nationalism that the ruling class had previously peddled and which the social-democrats had zealously propagated for them.

It was necessary if German capitalism was to survive the attacks on it both from its own organised working class and from the rival capitalist powers.

German capitalism demanded racialism to survive, the acceptance of this was merely an extension of the acceptance of all the previous conditions that the ruling class had laid before the social democracy.

Eind Elt bond? Enm ind Eit Sultar-§dipie iad Saltur-Erbelie!

Erinn Bir baber bie „Sitara", , Bidetei ber Blonben anneteobtiet!

Stails and duiere Delitif ma 34a cha Tunt Walennie Grublann Tom 3ai Dir Cind Bie blond? Dann broben Shueu Befabren!

trien Ole baher bie State Malkhere ber Sloaben and Ranseshier Dir Blenhen dis Ruff @deplor HI CIpEKTHE Seber ber Elmgang mit barbalen, cin never Rulesce 1 Cal Ren 3 Con CCaratele 6-comed a Sebade Did bone um bed Odesterm soote Sections from different proving' the superiority of the blond Aryan race and below anti-Jewish slogans on a shop window.

(The diagrams above are supposed to show the different bone structure of the Aryan and jewish races. These were pseudo-scientific quackery inherited from previous anti-Semitics by Hitler.)

JeSudessin Minde afoulen To noon wick seem buyir groce hazy lish, and shop Pictures above show the furnace of one of the main factories in Smethwick behind new Council houses in Great Arthur Street and the daubings on the front of one of the houses allocated to an Indian.

Country towns, Smethwick, near Birmingham, is highly industrialised and overpopulated. To most people who read the sensational stories in the capitalist press Smethwick also means an 'immigration problem, a Tory MP who cut a Labour majority by I2,000 and a 'Labour Club' which bans coloured people.

the Saturday aftershopper in Smethall these things worlds apart from ig the week-end ries in the noisy, High Street; EngIndian, Jamaican Pakistani workers at the same shops, buy the same goods at the same prices with the same hard - earned money.

To the casual observer, everything appears quite normal.

But, behind this facade of normality lies a tenseness. This is something which has generated over a number of years into a now explosive situation.

Who is responsible for this situation? ROBERT JAMES and SYLVIA PICK spent two days last week interviewing people in the town in an attempt to answer this question. • METHWICK is S wages have dropped by £3 true product of the to £4 below those earned industrial revolution. before automation. Within the boundaries ...Unlike the rubber workers at of this county borough (two miles wide by two and a half miles deep) are 90 factories and works based mainly to the north around the Birmingham and Wolverhampton canal and railway lines, and many old houses.

The present population figure, according to the local health department is 68,000. between 4,000 and 5,000 of these are immigrants (Indians, West Indians and Pakistanis).

Industrialisation of the area was begun in 1762 by Matthew Boulton who was later joined improved steam engine. Together they built one of Smethwick's first foundries to produce metal casungs needea by orner -1^1 atleau manufacturers.

Today, as the official industrial handbook of the town says: 'The emphasis of industry is still on the metallic manufacturers and on glass; but SMETHWICK within these limits a great many changes have taken place during the last few years. A greater degree of automation has, of course, been introduced, and several works have been extended; while modernisation does not consist of dramatic reorganisations as it did years ago, it is, rather, a continuous process.' As Mr. Avtar Jouhl, a leading member of the Indian Workers' Association, told The Newsletter, Birmid Ltd., a group of companies which employs most of the Indian workers in Smethwick is very modernised.

"There is a new furnace at the Dartmouth Auto Casting Company, which has the most modern automatic casting plant in Britain,' he said.

Producing small parts and castings for the motor industry about 50 per cent of the workers at the Birmid group are Indians. The factories are run on two 12-hour shifts employing mainly unskilled labour on low rates of pay.

Worst jobs

Mr. Jouhl claims that it is not hard for Indians to obtain jobs in the foundries. They are, in fact, the backbone of the industry working as moulders, grinders, dressers and casters— the worst jobs.

All the casters are Indians. This is an extremely dangerous and dirty job.

Because of automation, less men are needed on the jobsthe number of skilled men is even less-and wages in the automated shops are less than those in the manual plants.

As the company is running two types of plant and is obtaining more work, there have not been any redundancies, though Mr. Jouhl agreed that later, when automation is introduced throughout the group, there will probably be mass redundancy.

At the moment, a manual plant needs 16 moulders compared with one operator and three moulders in an automated plant. Even though the automated plant produces more castings, the wages of the workers are less than those working at piece rate in the manual plant.

In one automated shop, the staff has been reduced by half, but production has Wors risen. In the same shop Woolfs in Southall, Middlesex, who also supply the motor industry, immigrant workers have not yet been involved in a struggle for higher wages ard better conditions.

This is probably due to the availability of work in the area (Smethwick's unemployment figure is somewhere in the region of 0.2 per cent, while that of the Birmingham area is 0.8 per cent), and to the attitude of local union officials (it is hoped to investigate union activity more fully in a later article).

Workers in the foundries can earn between f9 and f14 basic a week. The majority who are unskilled labourers earn a basic of £9 4s. with a possible bonus of f2 to £3 a week. All the workers have a 42-hour week, but there is no lack of overtime and they can earn anything up to f18 to f20 working long hours in what Mr. Jouhl says are the most 'gruelling conditions' MOST OI ine lounaries are "closed shops' of the Amalgamated Union of Foundry Workers, with some Amalgamated Engineering Union and Transport and General Workers' Union men.

The workers, coloured and white, strongly defend their closed shops, but, so far, this strength has not been developed to fight the profiteers of sweated labour.

This may be due to the whole racialist attitude and atmosphere that has built up in Smethwick —although it is only the labour movement that can break this down in a principled fight for socialist policies.

It is reported that one union branch secretary in Smethwick went to protest about the number of coloured immigrants in the town when Harold Wilson held a pre-election meeting there. A censure motion was put down against him in his branch, but this was not even seconded!

Although our reporters were not able to contact Mr. Cyril Short, secretary of the Smetihwick Trades Council, it was reported earlier this week that Mr. Short is to ask the house committee of the Smethwick Labour Club in Coopers Lane to deny it has a colour bar. The Trades Council may also cease to hold their meetings in the club.

Electrical Trades Union delegate, Mr. Leaford Hay South, a Jamaican, has been refused entry to the club-someone was posted on the door to keep him out when the Trades Council mel.

Angry

Other ETU members in the town are angry and determined to fight back. Those who work at the Mitchells and Butlers brewery in the town will consider at their next branch meeting urging the brewery draymen - members of the TGWU-to 'black' deliveries to the club. Ansells brewery workers at Aston, Birmingham may also be asked to ban the deliveries to the club.

Smethwick Labour Party is also to cease holding its meetings at the Labour Club because of the colour bar there. They took this decision unanimously, because they felt they 'could not be true to their socialist principles' if they stayed in the club as long as the colour bar operated.

Probably the most significant statement was made after the meeting at which this decision 75 per cent of the Labour Club's members had voted for Peter Griffiths, the Tory candidate who won Smethwick from Patrick Gordon Walker Coun. Badham declared that Labour Party members had been aware that the friendly atmosphere towards themselves had changed to one of hostility. He said Gordon Walker was also conscious of this change on the part of club members.

Labour had a majority of 12,000 when Gordon Walker was elected as its MP at a bye-election in 1945. At the General Election this autumn that majority had vanished, and Peter Griffiths won by 1,776 votes. On the local Council, Labour had an overwhelming majority when Griffiths first won his seat in 1955. Last May the Tories won control.

Since his election Griffiths denied he is a racialist.

Exploit fears

What is the explanation of the gradual loss by Labour of such massive support in a preponderantly working-class district? Labour Party members all cite the same reason: the sustained and vicious campaign of racialist hate waged by local Tories.

There is no doubt that for the last four years this campaign has been ceaseless. Every opportunity has been seized to exploit local fears and prejudices.

Yet it is an over-simplification to imply that no share of responsibility for the present situation rests on any shoulders but those of the racialists.

A talk with members of the Labour Party, whether leading officials or rank-and-file members, leaves the same impres- leaves the sion.

The racialists have been The racialists have been allowed to make the run- allowed to make the running with a positive, aggres- ning with a positive, aggres sive campaign designed to sive campaign designed to split white from coloured workers and rally many of them to the Tory Party.

Labour, meanwhile, has countered with a negative, hesitant response, backing away from their principles in the face of what they imagined to be local feeling and failing to explain with any firmness why coloured and white workers should unite against Tory and racialist candidates.

Surprised

Councillor Ernest Lowry, President of Smethwick Labour Party, stated that most party members were 'surprised' to learn that the club where they had been holding their meetings operated a colour bar. He thought some 30 to 50 paid-up members of the party were also club members.

It is surely hard to believe that in a club which is the local dentre of working-class social activity, it had never occurred to party members to wonder why no coloured immigrants ever entered its doors to join in the amenities.

Lowry was asked if, since the fact of the colour bar had come to light, any approach had been made to local trade union branches, with the object of getting the rule lifted. He replied that there had been none. He thought more could be done 'by gradual persuasion' than by such an approach.

Lowry said there were three immigrant members of the party. No special effort had been made to recruit immigrant workers into membership, since 'it was not Smethwick Labour Party's policy to recruit any one special section of the community.

He agreed that the housing shortage was an important only a solution 'as a long-term policy. Labour's plan for speeding up municipal building was seen as better in the short term.

Our reponters asked Lowry about the activity of fascist groups in the town. He spoke of an incident nearly three years ago, when there was a rent strike of council tenants in protest against the allocation of a flat to a Pakistani family. On that occasion Labour councillors had seen fascist leaflets which had been pushed through the doors of municipal flats.

BNP intervenes

In the recent General Election the British National Party had given support to the Tory campaign, though this had since been denied by Griffiths. The local Labour Party had never issued any condemnation of their intervention as such.

At a press conference to announce the Labour Party would not be using the Labour Club after December 31, Lowry quipped that 'Harold wouldn't like it' if they continued to use the club. So much for the serious statement of being 'true to our socialist principles'.

A young Smethwick worker, a Labour supporter who claimed to have been a close observer of political trends in the place during the past five years, gave this view of the situation:

"The Labour Party here is in a difficult position since its own ranks are riddled with racialists. Many of these people have been in the party for years, have always thought of themselves as good socialists and trade unionists, and held correct views about the international solidarity Coun. Ernest Lowry, president of the Smethwick Labour Party, sitting in the Party's colour-bar Labour Club office. of workers—-until they were confronted with this situation in their own town.

"Their concepts were put to the test and they were not sufficiently clear to stand up to it. This made it possible for racialist propaganda to cut right across their class loyalties and make it seem more important to them to get rid of immigrants or control their numbers, than to stand with them and fight for the interests of all workers?

He also explained: 'Another section of voters lost to Labour were the small shopkeepers (many of them in a very small way indeed) who, in Black Country towns like Smethwick and West Bromwich, traditionally give the party their support. When Labour had an overwhelming majority on the Council they tended to bulldoze their decisions through, explaining nothing.

In part of the main shopping centre, Cape Hill, the Labour Council had a plan to completely demolish the present shops and houses then invite a large property company to redevelop the area. This made it possible for the Tories to suggest that this would result in shopkeepers losing everything. Labour lost the vote of the small Walker to hold a party with coloured guests. split the vote and lost the Ward for Labour,' he added.

On the subject of fascist intervention, he said: "There used to be a small fascist group meeting in Smethwick. Perhaps significantly, they ceased to meet when the Tories adopted a more rigid racialist line. The Tories were doing their work for them. Colin Jordan's people came down before the recent General Election.?

Our reporters asked Councillor Lowry if the Labour Party was 'riddled with racialists'. Predictably he denied it, though he conceded that there were people who 'were not happy about the situation'.

He said it was not possible to attempt to put over to them a socialist solution unless they were active members and came to party meetings. He and other officials had 'written dozens of letters to the local press' in reply to racialist attacks.

Racialists

The Smethwick worker also stated that Smethwick Young Socialists, at one time about 200 strong, had been 'regrouped' last year after it was discovered that all but two of the members held racialist views.

Both Councilor Lowry and Derek Harper, Young Socialist Chairman, denied this. They said the former large YS was 'purely a social club' without political content, and a political youth organisation was what was wanted in Smethwick.

On the issue of racialist views among YS members, Lowry said he had 'heard that Gordon Walker was asked some questions by the YS which were certainly peculiar coming from the Labour Party'. He supposed that "they got these ideas from their parents'.

Derek Harper said the present YS had about 15 members. None of them were immigrant youth, though some coloured boys had visited one of the YS meetings. He repeated the line taken by Lowry that no effort had been made to recruit young immigrants because the party made no appeal to 'any special section of the community' Asked whether they supported the mational YS policy on the Tory Immigration Act, he said: We have got to get up and face it. There is no cure in sending immigrants back where they came from.' Did they agree that nationalization was the solution to the housing problem? They believed there was no one simple solution; health and education were aspects of equal importance which should also be taken into consideration.

'Tolerant' youth

Harper appears to view racialism more as a monal than a class issue. He said 'Young people here are far more tolerant and understanding than their elders, because the elders are trying to preserve a way of life not before affected by immigrants' He thought it was not up to the YS to give a lead in uniting workers of all ages against the splitting tactics of the racialists. He saw it as 'an idea for all the youth organisations in Smethwick to get their heads down over this, and win their elders from present backward attitudes.

Should not the YS, as an organisation of socialist youth, give the lead to the other clubs in doing this? "At present the YS is engaged in a membership drive. We could not do much else before Christmas.' Even if the Labour Party, unions or Young Socialists were willing to attempt to act with coloured workers, they would find some difficulties.

The Indian Workers' Association, according to Mr. Jouhl, is not affiliated to any party. Like the Indian Workers' Association in Southall, where the Woolf rubber strike was brought to an end by joint militant action between a strong union and Young Socialists making socialist demands, the Smethwick Indian Workers' Association tends to separate Indian workers from activity amongst white workers.

Mr. Jouhl stressed that the Indian Workers' Association was against any form of racialism within the Labour Party. "An acceptance of control,' he said, "means that they think the cause 8T They y "They are not the cause of of all the problems are immigrants. unemployment, bad housing, lack of other social services, be stressed. "These are due to the present situation.

For every immigrant that One of the chief causes of racialist feeling, he said, was the housing problem. "This is a national problem. It is brought about mainly by the attitude to land speculation; the building of so many offices instead of residential houses and less subsidies to local councils.

Nationalize building This problem will only be solved through the nationalization of the land and the building industry which should be in the hands of the government, who must begin a speed-up of housing.

'I don't agree with the Labour Panty that it can be solved by building 400,000 houses a year, he added.

The government, . he also claimed, were spending less on social services and improving conditions, yet were spending $2,000,000,000 on armaments A more militant member of the Indian Workers' Association, Mr. Jouhl said the biggest efforts should be to put members into the British trade unions. "The strength of the workers lies in the trade unions. This is a practical way to integration,' he said.

If Harper, chairman of the YS, wanted to get together with other youth clubs in the area to 'win their elders from backward ideas he would also come up against a brick wall.

He would come up against elders like ex-Labour councillor Ken Bunch, furniture shop dealer and leader of one of the Ex-Labour councillor, Ken Burch, outside his Smethwick shop with the chairman of his colour bar youth club.

Midlands better known youth clubs, the Sanwell Youth Club, which has a colour bar.

In between serving his Saturday customers Bunch, who is also chairman of the town's youth committee, told The Newsletter there were about 30 youth clubs in Smethwick and most of them had a colour bar.

Because his club is in the industrial area of the town it caters for 'the rough type of white person and would cater for the rough type of coloured person. They would not mix.

We'r re not against colour of the skin. If they come here and live the same as us, I don't think anybody would say anything about it. But it's their dirty ways.

He had resigned from the council in 1960 after serving on it for six years.

'But I'm still a Labour man,' he said proudly.

"Dirty ways"

Mr. Bunch admitted that the 'dirty ways of many of the immigrants was caused by the numbers living in houses. He claimed there were coloured landlords who had bought single houses for £1,500 and were letting them to 30 people at f2 a time.

In the redevelopment sahemes being carried out on contracts made during the term of the Labour council, many immigrants are being moved from the Spon Lane area.

One, an Indian shopkeeper has been rehoused near a noisy foundry. He has not yet moved in, but on the walls of the house written in chalk is the message, "Go Home Wog' The Indian and his family will be the only immigrant family in the road, Great Arthur Street.

But the Tory council have stepped in. By stating that people with other property cannot be rehoused, they are indirectly attacking the Indian. At the moment there are many rumours about him owning other property.

D. Finney, Tory councillor for Spon Lane Ward and vice-chairman of the Estates Committee, lives in White Street.

He told The Newsletter of the tremendous housing shortage in Smethwick and the problem of having no building land The council are having to build tall flats—-some 20-storey blocks near the town centre are (Cont. p. 4, col. 1)

Industrial Page our ovember 28, 1964

the tallest in the Midlands-by carrying out several redevelopment plans.

He said he stood up for the English people in Smethwick. The town was too overcrowded 'If you have got to have immigrants, we feel that where there is no housing they should be made to go to certain areas instead of being concentrated in aye or six areas as they are DOW.

'Nobody is against a coloured doctor. There is nothing personal in this. Eskimos would have created the same problems,' he added.

He said he had to deal with many personal problems of white people afraid to be in a minority.

There were also problems of shortage of maternity hospitals and shortage of beds. Ninely per cent of the maternity cases, he claimed, were coloured women, because midwives refused to go into the homes of coloured people. Coum. Finney felt that in many other cases coloured people were given priorities.

SEPARATE CLASSES

There was a danger of children contracting tubercolosis from immigrant children in schools-although teachers had fought a "separate classes plan' to segregate children.

«We are a second-rate nation because the coloured man is given first place every time, he maintained.

Coun. Finney complained that following interviews with the press his statements had been twisted to enable newspapermen to sell more papers through sensational headlines about racialist counciliors.

'But I'm not a racialist,' he said.

His statement about the capitalist press is probably true to a centain extent. One cannot pick up papers in the Smethwick area without reading most nights some story with 'colour or 'immigrant' in the headline.

One paper quoted a member of a coloured and white darts team as saying: 'We cannot understand what the fuss is about in Smethwick.' But this article did not in any way play down the racialist feeling that the papers have helped generate in the town. Also quoted in the article was a Punjabi University student, now a toolsetter. who said trouble in Smethwick was that most of the Indians were older, rougher and more illiterate types.

Such articles are aimed at not only splitting white and coloured workers, but also use one class of Indian against another.

(Next week: What racialism and how is used?)

Dr. Allen From p. 1 Lancaster University.

The speakers stressed that the trial was the result of the successful general strike in Nigeria and that it was an attempt to make Nigeria safe for imperialism by beheading the labour. movement. They called for action by the British labour movement and condemned the government for its failure to act.

A noticèable feature of the demonstration was the absence of many so-called 'lefts', including members of the Communist Party.

Both the Leeds lith AEU branch and the Leeds South ETU branch have passed resolutions protesting at the imprisonment. Leeds Central ETU branch voted to accept a letter from the Leeds University Marxist Society asking for support for a committee to defend the four in jail.: A collection of f2 was taken.

FIFTy students and Young Socialists marched through Newcastle last Saturday in protest against the sentences.

The students were from Newcastle University, Rutherford College of Technology and Durham University. They marched to the offices of the 'Evening Chronicle' and to the BBC where the defence committee presented press statements.

Twelve hundred students at Newcastle University have now signed the demand for the immediate release of the prisoners.

Smethwick® From BOB SHAW, Our Scottish Correspondent As a result of pressure bry workers at their actory in Linwood, Scotland, Rootes Company have conceded that they will operate a work-sharing plan for the production workers.

The plan, which, of course, requires little sacrifice for the Rootes bosses and a lot of sacrifice from the men, means that during a cycle of five weeks, production workers will be laid off for one week.

As part of the bargain made with the stewards the Linwood workers are to acoept greater mobility of jobs in the factory; some workers will also be further downgraded in pay and the skilled sections will remain on full time.

The first point to be made about this agreement is that suspicion is raised by the praise which has been made about tne plan both by management, trade union leaders and the capitalist press.

When the track workers went on strike earlier in the year for higher earnings, which they claimed were fully justified by the increased output of the factory, they were attacked viciously by all these officials for their lack of responsibility. Rootes management have not undergone any change of heart. nor have the press.

HARD-PRESSED

Now it is the hard-pressed production workers who will have their wages cut for a further period in order to "save jobs. They will also be subjected to pressure in the factory during which many will be forced to find other jobs.

A convenor claimed that

the redundancies will now be met by 'natural' wastage. The track workers know what that means.

Skilled sections and production workers will be even further divided by the agreement. The whole faotory should have taken a common stand to work the shorter week and to fight for an agreement with no loss in pay.

MANOEUVRE

Rootes management will manoeuvre to sufficiently weaken any opposition to their plans so that the next boost in production will be pushed through without opposition. In the future the Rootes workers can be sure that the conditions which will be imposed will be worse than before.

But the management may not have it all their own way.

There is now circulating in the Rootes factory a rank and file sheet called Impfact. In its pages it puts down all the feeling which the workers have for the management.

It shows that militant opposition to Lord Rootes and Company is growing and that development of leadership which will fight for socialist policies is beginning to come forward.

STRIKERS at the Salisbury ¡ ransmission axe racior voted to return to work on Monday morning after a twohour meeting to discuss terms, on Saturday.

This strike, which the press claim has 'dislocated an export section of the motor industry for nearly a month', involved 250 members of the Amalgamated Engineering Union.

Men at Salisbury Transmission were claiming an all-round increase in piece-work rates. According to the district organiser of the ABU the management had proposed a revision of some of the rates'. (Our emphasis)

Although the strike was declared official by the union leadership in the AEU no fight was put up to call on support from other sections of the industry.

STRONG

The axle workers were in a very strong position since the parts they supplied to other factories were essential before a car could be exported.

But instead of seeking to involve the men in the factories which were affected by the strike, the union officials merely left the axle strikers to fight on in isolation.

Now the management of Salisbury Transmission is probably in the position to arrive at a settlement on its own terms and not those of the strikers.

A win for the axle workers on the question of increased rates would have strengthened the position of other car workers in the Midlands in the future, this is what the car monopolists were so afraid of.

COMPLETELY frustrated by the long, drawn-out negotiations at national level over pay and the introduction of the 40-hour week, bus workers in Glasgow and other West of Scotland towns decided to operate a work-to-rule-the midnight last Saturday.

The national negotiations, which affect 92 cities and towns throughout Britain, have nuw been going on for two months with no sign of an agreement to improve the rates of pay, introduce bonus payments and a 40hour working week.

Glasgow bus workers are demanding that the City Transport Department should meet the claim independently of the other parties concerned in the negotiations.

In April this year Glasgow bus workers fought a tenacious struggle for improved conditions in a strike which lasted for a week. On that occasion they had to fight against the City Transport Department, local officials of the Transport and General Workers' Union, anú a scurrilous witch-hunt by the press.

CONVINCE

The employers and the press are once more trying to convince the general public that the bus workers are entirely responsible for the chaotic transport conditions arising from the overtime ban.

On this occasion, however, the action of the bus workers has the support of the local union officials. This is an indication that the workers' cause is so strong that the union officials are not able to oppose it.

But the bus workers must see that no compromise is reached between the union officials and the employers which may weaken their fight. Already an agreement has been made with the Transport Depantment to operate the modified schedules which are worked during the Glasgow Fair holiday when about 40 per cent of the population are away.

This is an attempt by the Corporation to minimise the effect of the overtime ban.

Mr. Alex Grant, secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union agreed to meet the Transport Committee on Monday and is reported to have said, 'If the committee look at it in the right way the whole thing can be resolved.' The only way in which the Transport Committee can look at the matter to the satisfaction of bus workers is to immediately concede their demands for improved pay and the shorter working week, in full.

STRAIN

With 500 unfilled vacancies it can be imagined what strain is placed on the city's 6,000 bus workers to man all the services, particularly during the winter months when the incidence of illness is high.

The present dispute does not only involve Glasgow Corporation bus workers. Scottish Omnibuses, S.M.T.,, W. Alexander & Sons are also affected by the ban which is being operated in Lanarkshire, Dumbartonshire and Stirlingshire.

In West Lothian, workers at the Broxburn Garage are reported. to have come out on strike after a conductor refused - - division is generally known to ban all overtime working and ban came into operation at to operate the ban. In Aberdeen bus crews say they will be meeting this week since the negotiations are getting nowhere.

Late news ON MONDAY, Edinburgh bus crews decided to support the demand for an immediate: settlement of the busmen's claim by direct action.

Iwo hundred bus. workers attended a meeting on Monday morning and 500 attended a similar meeting in the evening.

Union officials were unable to give any lead into action from the platform.

A motion for a token strike on December 22 was thrown out in favour of a decision to stop work every Friday starting on November 27 until a settlement of the claim has been reached.

Union officials put the motion to a vote without allowing any discussion and closed the meeting immediately the vote was taken.

No preparations for the strike were made or discussed. Rank and file bus workers, however, ure raising the question of a demonstration and how to link up with other areas already in dispute.

MPORTANT moves are afoot in the Plumbing Trades Union which may well be passing unnoticed in many parts of that union, but which could have serious implications in 12 months" time or less.

Many PTU members were puzzled earlier this year when an article in the June issue of the union journal by Hugh Kelly, General Secretary, appeared, suggesting in a veiled way that the union's voting procedure should be changed. Under the cloak of claiming that the percentage returns of ballots in the union were dismally low, Kelly hinted at the possibility of 'once and for all' elections. That officials should not have to stand for re-election.

Whilst this article caused barely a stir in the union, circulars which have been appearing at branch meetings since then show clearly that there are some people in the union who are seriously campaigning for changes in the system of elections. Latest and most serious proposal

being canvassed advocates a change of Section 2 Rule 3 of the union's rule book. Under this rule at present Executive members are nominated and elected by members within the division for which they sit on the Executive Council The campaign now afoot seeks to change from that procedure to one where each EC member is elected by a national ballot of members.. The effect of such a change would indoubtedly work against left-wing candidates. In an industry where contracting work is ar mportant section of the union's activity and militancy generally high, a candidate standing in ¿

most of those eligible to vote, but may well be hardly known outside the division.

If the system of voting were changed, night-wing candidates from outside the division could stand, and more important still, with backing from national newspapers could gain more support than a left wing candidate who would either be villified or ignored in the press.

Featured

Something along these lines occurred recently in the election of the Scottish executive committee member where the local press prominently featured attacks on the left-wing candidate who was surprisingly defeated.

What makes the present moves of such importance is the fact that both the General Secretary and Assistant General Secretary of the PTU are due for retirement in about 18 months time, thus leaving not only these two seats vacant but two seats also on the executive.

It is obviously feared in rightwing quarters that these seats may well be taken by left-wing candidates.

Perhaps there is no coincidence in the fact that the PTU is at the moment in advanced stages of negotiations over amalgamation with the Electrical Trades Union whose right-wing leaders have had much experience since taking control of that union on advantageously securing alterations to election procedures. Docker:

get lesson in

FOUR hundred Newcastle dockers had a lesson in the nature of arbitration last week.

An arbitration panel of the National Joint Council of the Port Transport Industry rejected their claim for extra payment when employers sent them home before the end of a shift.

This has meant that the dockers work at piece-work speed for a good part of the day and then get little more than the national minimum.

Last September the men decided that they would stop work at 2 o'clock every day in support of their demand for extra payment, which is given in other ports..

They ended this action when the union put the claim to arbitration.

REFUSE

The fight is now back where it started and a meeting last Monday decided that dockers will now refuse to work on a shift system when this is required by their employers.

In Middlesbrough, dockers are still being penalised when they leave work after dealing with a certain amount of cargo in accordance with a traditional practice.

For the third time, last week, the Dock Labour Board suspended bundreds of men. And for the third time the entire labour force of over one thousand dockers on Teeside stopped work for three days with the suspended men.

strike

be taken ALthough the union officials of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen persuaded men in the South-east Division of the British Railways to call off their go-slow, railwaymen have warned that unless future talks yield their bonus they will take further action.

This warning came late last week after Albert Griffiths, general secretary of ASLEF, appealed for a return to normal working and stated that the union was prepared to fight for a high productivity bonus for all footplate staff.

TALKS

The British Railways Board has apparently agreed to hold talks at a national level to discuss a demand for a £3 3s. bonus a week.

What the railmen now face is the possibility that their union representatives will be fobbed off with just any kind of bonus.

With the Labour government appealing for restraint on the the question of wages whilst the monopolies continue to make their millions of pounds profit, the railmen will no doubt be asked to be content with a small increase.

But the locomotive men, who showed a militant determination in the face of continuing Tory press attacks during their goslow, must unite their struggle with that of the London busmen who are fighting against the introduction of winter time. talles.

Registered at the G.P.O. as a newspaper 80 Clapham High Street. London. S.W.4 rinted by Plough Press Ltd. (TU), Published by The Newsletter. 1964 Clapham High Street. London. S.W.4

A PACKED meeting of Coventry bus crews last week decided to continue to ban overtime and to refuse to carry standing passengers.

Bus workers are taking this action in their fight to win a bonus scheme which will bring their earnings in line with the skilled work that they do, and make it possible to earn a living by working their shifts without the necessity of working long hours of overtime.

A Coventry driver told a Newsletter reporter: 'We think that there are special conditions which ought to be taken into account in Coventry. Therefore we want a bonus agreement separate from the National Joint Industrial Council for the industry.

SLOW

'While we are tied to the NJIC, progress towards what we want will be very slow.

'Already there is a huge yearly turnover of drivers and conductors. This year we think that there have been more crews resigning than crews engaged.

We feel that working consistent overtime is bad for our own health, bad for our nerves and a danger to other road users.

'We have a striot medical before being allowed to drive, then the way we work makes it certain we don't stay fit for long. The Transport Committee would not allow the well-maintained bus engines to be pushed to the Correspondent limuts to which their crews are pushed.' Negotiations on Coventry busmen's claim have been stretched out over two years and so far the crews have only got an increase of 18s. 9d. which was granted after the Transport Committee had carried out an investigation into all sections.

The economies resulting from the investigation made a saving of £46,000 which was used to pay the bonus.

Busmen feel that their claim for f3 per week bonus is fully justified and therefore want a quick settlement to the dispute. They are prepared to take further action to win their demands.

NEGOTIATE

Following their mass meeting the busmen have instructed their union officials to arrange a meeting as early as possible with the Labour-controlled Transport Committee to see whether the committee is prepared to negotiate separately from the NJIC.

The solidarity of the bus crews when they held a series of one-day strikes and stopped any blacklegs taking buses out of the garage, will be needed again to force the hand of the committee.

Coventry bus workers should call for the support of all trade unionists in the engineering factories in the oity.

The Labour Council has a mandate to run an efficient public transpont service, to do this they will have to make wages and conditions worthwhile.

shipyard on Monday, November 16, the walk-out of apprentices on the Clyde reached a peak of 3,000 by Thursday.

The strike call came from individual apprentices from Manchester who told the lads on the Clyde that thousands were out on strike in Manchester and Liverpool.

these figures apprentices that By Friday it was becoming clear to the • apprenaces ina were untrue and many factories were preparing to return to work over the week-end.

The strike was not only premature but completely unorganised. The demonstration which was scheduled to take place on Thursday in the centre of Glasgow ended in chaos. Only 500 apprentices turned up for a mass meeting and march from Fairfield's, Govan, on the following morning.

RETURN

By this time the apprentices themselves were beginning to raise the question of a return to work in order to build factory committees and support for the national strike call on March 29 made by the Manchester Direct Action Committee.

At the meeting of the apprentices strike committee on Saturday, "leaders' admitted the truth of the reports that the majority of the apprentices were back at work in Manchester, but claimed that they had a letter from Bristol giving support—-this letier was not produced.

They also said they had received messages of support from Southern Ireland, indicating the the apprentices there were coming out.

In spite of the premature nature of the strike, tremendous enthusiasm was shown by the apprentices for the demands for improved rates of pay, 35-hour week, longer holidays and trade union negotiating rights.

In many factories apprentices have returned determined to build their committees and recruit all apprentices into the unions and to build a big organisation in preparation for the big fight in March.