The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 379

Vol. 9, No. 379 January 23, 1965 Price 6d. SERIOUS concern is being expressed by university colleagues and relatives of Dr. Victor Leonard Allen at the delay in the lodging of his appeal.

Dr. Allen, the 41-year-old Leeds university lecturer, was sentenced with three trade unionists, Sidi Kayam, Jonas Kiomasekenagh Abam and Oleshengun Adebayo, to a year's hard labour last November by a Nigerian court on charges of sedition.

Recently the High Commissioner in Nigeria informed economics lecturer at Leeds, Mr. R. K. Wilkinson, that Dr. Allen's lawyer was still acting for him and the appeal would probably be lodged next week.

ALLEN'S LETTER

Mr. Wilkinson received a letter from Dr. Allen on January 8 saying he had not heard from his lawyer since the trial.

Mr. Wilkinson has complained of the apparent failure of the Commissioner to investigate the position. Leeds, London and Manchester professors have joined many British trade unionists and students in demanding the release of Dr. Allen and the three trade unionists. The professors are concerned at the reported deterioration in Dr. Allen's health.

BRANCHES BACK

PENSIONS LOBBY TWO Manchester branches of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, the Clayton and Gorton No. 7 branches, have passed resolutions of full support for the lobby of Parliament called by the Young Socialists National Committee Majority for February 4.

The resolutions which will go forward to the next meeting of the District Committee also demand that the Executive Committee of the AEU presses the Labour government to increase the old age pensions immediately and backdate the increase to November 1, 1964.

MEETINGS Labour Must Stop Retreating!

No Wage Freezing!

Backdate the Old Age Pension Increase Now! Full Support for the Dockers! Il Support for the Docke Liverpool Lecture Hall, Walker Art Gallery, William Brown Street Sunday, January 24, 7.30 p.m.

Speaker: Chiff Slaughter

Leeds City Museum Sunday, January 31, 7.30 Speaker: G. Healy Leicester Co-op Hall, 168 Belgrave Gate lay, February 7, 7.30 saker: C. Slaughte Glasgow Partick Burgh Hall (Lesser Hall)

(near Merkland Street underground station)

Sunday, February 14, 7.30 p.m.

Speaker. G. Healy

• HE press and the Tories are trying to the working class for the pitiable performance by the Wilson government in an attempt to split the labour movement, said Gerry Healy, national secretary of the Socialist Labour League, at meeting in London last week-end.

Every cynical member of Fleet Street's staff would be employed, on the occasion of Wilson's '100 Davs' television appearance, to poke fun at Labour in order to sow disunity in the working class.

'This is a very dangerous time for the labour movement, Healy said.

It is not the Labour Party rank and file which is responsible for the present crisis. The Labour Party consists of millions of working people in the trade unions, the co-operative moveinent and locai constituency parties, who want to have socialism.

'We would be falling into a terrible trap if we believed the lies of the capitalist press that it is the Party these workers want to have which is responsible for the crisis now. It is not,' he added.

The Socialist Labour League had continuously criticised the right-wing leadership of the Labour Party who did the dirty work for the Tory Party, but it had also separated this leadership from the millions of working people who made up the labour movement and wanted socialism in Britain. 'Expose arms bosses' Referring to action by the TSR2 workers Healy said: 'It is not a source of joy to see workers marching in the streets asking to make armaments or to see young apprentices confused and saying they are marching with their boss.' Aircraft workers should be told their fight is not bound up with the boss and that the Labour Party has power to expose armament manufacturers who make millions of pounds every year out of human beings.

'All the Labour government has to do is to nationalize the aircraft industry, place it under the control of the people who work in it and open the books so we can all see what BAC has been making, he said.

The real crime of Wilson and the right wing was that rather than explain this to the workers, B/OSL. FLE Tories Kerrigan: "crucial period for dockers' they supported the employers. •Brown says there is one thing he won't do and that is nationalize the industry,' said Healy.

It was also disturbing that the old people did not receive their pension rise before Christmas, he said.

Britain • was run by a small group of about 200 monopoly capitalists whose only concern was to make more profit. 'As soon as a person gives up making profit, the main concern of the employer is that you should die.' Young people, too, were affected by this situation, because the monopolists hope that before you get organised in trade unions, they can discipline you with a strong police force to push you into sweat shops, make profits off your backs, so that when you get old they can do the same to you as to the old age pensioners today!

The Socialist Labour League applauded the decision of the Young Socialists to campaign for the old people.

Racialism was also being used by capitalism to break down and destroy class consciousness among workers.

Labour leaders had created confusion with their support for the Immigration Bill and the lack of serious struggle against fascism.

'We should unite to put an end to the Jordans and that gang who came out of their holes like rats to try to sow division in the working class,' he said.

SOMALI LABOU National Secretary of the SLL, Gerry Healy, speaking at the meeting This was tied up with the Congo where, with the Belgians and the Americans, the British government was fighting to keep Tshombe in power. The right wing had supported the United Nations and, 'if men and women are being kicked to death today (he had referred to a picture in The Newsletter showing a freedom fighter being stamped on by a Congo mercenary), the responsibility is with all those who said this organisation (the UN) is for peace'.

"The right wing, said Healy, 'have opened the door to a growth of nationalism and racialism, made the working class discontented with the Labour government and allowed the big employers to go scot free.

'When the international bankers moved into action against the Labour government, the only answer was to take over the lot and publish their secret correspondence.' He stressed the need for young people to go into the trade unions and Labour Party.

*If 70,000 dockers do not work, they can hold the whole capitalist country up to ransom. If the railwaymen support them and if the miners support them and the youth are in the vanguard, we can take the power. The longer we postpone that, the nearer we

OVERTIME BAN

DOCKERS SUSPENDED DOCKERS on Merseyside have this week begun to feel the backlash of the press campaign against them. Port employers have opened their attack and along the waterfront mass meetings are being called to prepare the dockers' reply.

The employers have begun their offensive by handing out in the last two weeks, notices of suspensions to 57 dockworkers. Both the harshness of the disciplinary actions and the issues involved show quite clearly the determination of employers to have a showdown.

The suspensions involve two separate incidents. In the first case 45 dockers working on the 'Port Philip' in No. 5 area have been given two-day suspensions for refusing to work overtime on Friday evening between 5 and 7 p.m. In the second case 12 dockers who refused to work Saturday morning on a bulk ore carrier in No. 6 area have been suspended for seven days. All the dockers have appealed against these vicious decisions and are now waiting for their appeals to be heard.

Zinoviev on Lenin — page 2 The Merseyside dockers know well from experience that they can expect little mercy from the appeals tribunal. The employers, who sit side by side with the right-wing trade union representatives on this body, win the majority of cases. It is because of this that dockers are meeting this week to warn the employers that they • will not tolerate the suspensions and will take action if they continue.

- - In the case of the bulk ore come to dictatorship, he said.

The power of the working class had to be understood.

'We must fight against all those forces which divide the working class. We must fight for a new leadership and come forward ourselves. We shall not get anything through Parliament alone. The employers will not give their power up peacefully. So you have to fight.' 'Take the power' The movement pinned its hopes on youth. He appealed to youth to join the SLL to 'help us build up a revolutionary leadership to take the power and introduce a system where the vast majority of people will own and control the means of production, instead of living like animals'.

Docker Peter Kerrigan said the period ahead was crucial for dockers. There would probably be a big attack on this section of workers in the spring.

The Devlin Commission, he said, was set up to deal with wages-and delve into the question of decasualisation.

The docks were big business and the aim of any reorganisation via decasualisation would be to implement mechanisation at the expense of the dockers.

(Cont. p. 4, col. carrier the gang was not told until 2.45 p.m. on the Friday that they were being ordered to turn out for work on Saturday morning The foremanmecho asued The foreman who issued ship was proceeding coastwise to Glasgow and was due to sail over the week-end.

The men claim that under the port regulations they should have been informed before 12 noon or the Friday.

The Journal of Commerce sailing schedule reveals that the ship was due in Glasgow on Monday. The dockers had previously worked the Sunday before and four nights overtime until 7 p.m. in order to facilitate the turn-round of the ship. They quite correctly maintain that they have the right to decide their leisure on Saturday.

Other dockers may strike if the suspenatever are con is naden it is vy natever action is taken it 1s quite clear that the employers' councils of war are meeting, and Inese alacks are part or a deter minea pial l break the solldarity dockers and secure conditions for the introductior of decasualisation under the em ployers' terms. This Week The News etter pp.ps.st.he mr. wotori.lud/ictfei Saturday, January,

DAY-BY-DAY the economic wage packet. Adding to the effect of the steady rise in retail prices comes the jump in home loan interest rates.

George Brown's pre-election promise of lower mortgage rates and Callaghan's statement that the bank rate would not affect housing, go the way of the rest of the Labour leaders' pledges. Callaghan's so-called 'attack' on the building societies for increasing their interest rates is no 'concession' to the working class when in the next breath he announced in Parliament on Tuesday that building societies would be able to build up their reserves under the proposed Corporation Tax.

The Council of the Building Societies' Association had decided on a rise from 6 per cent to 67 per cent in mortgage rates to be paid by 24 million families. This means, for example, an packet increase of fl 7s. 6d. per month in the repayments of a £3,000 loan over 25 years.

Meanwhile George Brown, Her Majesty's Minister for Economic Affairs, continues to ask the monopolies why they are asking for more money from shoppers. He will shortly announce his plans for a 'review body' on prices and wages.

This will look at price increases after they have taken place. Presumably Brown will then appeal to the conscience of monopolists and ask them not to do it again.

This would have no effect as monopolists like Paul Chambers, head of ICI, have made it quite clear what the monopolies are demanding when he said that consumption must be restricted.

If the basic conditions are unsound and inflationary, the control of internal prices and wages by an 'incomes policy' will only make temporary scratches on the surface of the balance of payments,' he said.

Rising prices (to which ICI has made its own contribution), are one way of restricting the consuming power of the working class.

Firms like ICI not only make bigger profits this way, but are handed several million pounds 'export rebate' on a plate by their servants in the Labour government.

The only answer to higher mortgage rates, rising prices, financial boosters for the monopoly exporters and lower living standards, is to nationalize the financial institutions and basic industries. Trade unionists and Labour Party members must step up the fight for such a policy before the leaders take the movement into catastrophic defeat.

ON January 21, 1924, Lenin died. The present occasion, 41 years later, seems appropriate for revolutionary Marxists to remind themselves once again about his greatest of all contributions to the international working class— the building of the Bolshevik Party in the Soviet Union.

In his remarkable book, 'One Step Forward, Two Steps Back', written between February and May, 1904, he records the intense conflict between himself and the opportunist social democrats of the day. 'In its struggle for power,' he said, 'the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation.' Many years later during the debate at the Second Congress of the Third Communist International over the problem of party control of parliamentary representatives, he once more insisted:

'Unless you prepare the workers for the creation of a really disciplined party which will compel all its members to submit to its discipline, you Will never prepare for dictatorship of the proletariat.' After his death, the worldwide counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism tended for many years to distort and obliterate the genius of Lenin's theoretical contribution. These were dark days for the handful of BolshevikLeninists organised around Trotsky who continued the uphill fight for the Leninist conception of the party.

Isolated from the mass movement which itself in the pre-war years was defeated by the bourgeoisie in one country after another, especially in Western Europe, these small revolutionary groupings nevertheless fought to continue the Leninist tradition. Trotskyism was, and is today, the true heir of Lenin.

The building of the Leninist party is not solely a question of organisation. It involves a continuous struggle between the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism and all brands of revisionist idealist thinking which a decaying social order continuously injects into the workers' movement and in particular its middle-class leaderships.

In the difficult years immediately after the defeat of the 1905 revolution, Lenin returned continuously to his struggle against idealism and the many forms, including 'God-seeking', with which it attempted to destroy the Bolshevik movement.

Thus his philosophical struggle against revisionism was constantly related to the historical role of the working class as the only class which could build the revolutionary party, take the power and establish socialism.

For him, this theoretical struggle was inseparable from a continuous and detailed study of the international and Russian workers' movement, from whose experiences he drew lessons and conclusions which continuously strengthened his Party's theoretical armoury.

The Bolshevik Party to Lenin was much more than an organisation. It was the highest goal that could be reached in the fusion of theory and practice.

We repeat this, especially for those self-styled Marxists who think that it is possible to flounder about within the centrist and reformist movements without a continuous check on their activity from the standpoint of the construction of the party. There are no Marxists outside of those who consciously fight to build the party.

But this conclusion is not one-sided. The struggle to build the party is a struggle for men and women who join the party to change themselves and conform to the principles and discipline of the party. Such a change is in tself impossible unless those who are involved see the need to consciously break from all forms of idealism and the mechanical, formal and empirical methods of working and thinking which flow from this.

This especially applies to the revolutionary party in Britain which is now being built by the cadres of the Socialist Labour League.

We fight day after day in a labour movement where petty-bourgeois politics predominate, where the oldest ruling class in the world constantly strives to force people to conform to the establishment in a dozen different ways.

Some join the party believing that this by itself is enough. In practice, they refuse to make a change, although they periodically solidarise themselves in wordy speeches with the aims of the party. It is in conflict with such tendencies that the cadres are trained and the Leninist theory of the party is expanded and developed.

The party, which in its day-to-day work unifies theory with practice, is also the cockpit of a continuous struggle within its leadership and ranks—a struggle which reflects the historical requirements of the working class to emancipate itself from capitalism.

The development of theory can only emerge from such struggles, even if from these struggles there emerge from time to time the most painful political casualties.

The petty-bourgeois runs away from the complexity of such responsibilities. He separates the organisation, which is the party, from the theory, which is the Leninist application of Marxist principles, that is the life-blood of the party. He believes that all that is necessary is to build up propaganda circles and make good arguments against opponents.

Such gentlemen occupy the now rapidly dwindling ranks of the Unified Secretariat in Paris. They hate especially the leadership of the Socialist Labour League because it stubbornly fights both inside and outside its own ranks for the Leninist conception of the party.

Each time the Labour Party expels one of our supporters they howl with glee. Their most enthusiastic supporters in Britain even joined hands with the rightwing Labour leaders to help expel youthful supporters of the Socialist Labour League.

Such miserable wretches can never be associated with the building of the Leninist party. They have sold out lock, stock and barrel to the corrupt centrist and social democratic bosses. In the days ahead they will be despised and hated by the hundreds of thousands of young people who will take the revolutionary road.

The great significance of this, the 4lst anniversary of Lenin's death, is the mass movement of youth in Britain towards revolutionary politics and away from the politics of the right wing Labour Party leaders.

Scores of young teenage Marxists, following in the footsteps of Lenin, worked day and night for four years to make this victory possible. They are now surrounded by many thousands of youth all over the country. They lead campaigns which unite young and old in the struggle for a socialist Britain.

In doing this they have constantly studied the Leninist theory of the party. Without discipline and one of the best trained factions which ever worked in a reformist organisation they would have been crushed many times over since 1960.

Without a knowledge of the history of Lenin's Bolshevik Party to guide them, there could have been no real gains.

The organisational and theoretical genius of Lenin lives on today in the Young Socialists.

We are not really concerned about whether or not the so(Cont. p. 4, col.

VLADIMIR ILYICH LENIN-ULIANOV is now 48 years old, He was born in 1870, on the 10th of April, at Simbirsk. And out of the 48 years of his life, Comrade Lenin has devoted nearly 30 years work to the cause of proletarian emancipation.

The father of Comrade Lenin, by birth a peasant, was director of N. K. Krupskaya the elementary schools in the Volga provinces, and enjoyed great popularity among the teachers of the town and village schools in his district.

The mother of Comrade Lenin I knew personally. She died in the ar 1913. Czar Alexander Ill had executed her eldest son, Alexand ianov. From that time she concentrated her maternal tenderness o Vladimir Ilyich. And Comrade Lenin, in his turn, tenderly loved his broken-hearted little mother.

After graduating from the 'gymnasium', Lenin entered the faculty of Laws at Kazan University. The universities of the capitals were closed to him as the brother of an executed terrorist. A student, however, Vladimir Ilyich remained but a very short while. Within a month he was expelled from the University for taking part in the students' revolutionary movement. Only after the lapse of four years was it possible for him to take his final examinations.

Comrade Lenin stands, as it were, on the borderland between the old generation of Narodnik [Populist] revolutionists and the new school of Marxist revolutionists. Comrade Lenin himself took part in the student Narodnik circles, but already, even at that time, he stood with one foot in the camp of the Marxists.

Vladimir Ilyich, however, is bound by ties of blood with the early generation of revolutionary terrorists, those glorious fighters, whose names to this day shine like dazzling stars—because they laid low not the friends of the people, like the wretched cretins, the Right Socialist Revolutionists, bul the tyrants and hangmen He is connected with Vladimir Ilyich them through his brother Alexander Ilyich Ulianov, who was a prominent figure in the Narodnaya Volya (People's Will), and who was on that account hanged by the Czar's Government in the year 1887.

In the eyes of Comrade Lenin, such workers as Zhelyabov and Sophie Perovskaya stood transcendently high—people who raised the flag of revolt and went forward with bomb and revolver against the Czar at the end of the 'seventies and in the beginning of the 'eighties, when Russia was a prison-house of nations, when every friend of freedom drew breath in pain, when the workers of Russia were still only beginning to form themselves into a class.

Vladimir Ilyich specially loved and was proud of the figure of the first great working-class leader, the carpenter Stepan Khalturin. Lenin did not know him personally, he knew him by hearsay and books as we all do. You know the biography of this proletarian of genius, who not only blew up the Winter Palace, but achieved something greater— he was the first to unfurl the banner of political struggle against Czarism in the name of the working class.

Comrade Lenin's affection for proletarians who in any way show capacity is especially striking. A fighter whom Lenin most valued and loved was the worker Ivan Vassilyevich Babushkin, with whom Comrade Lenin here, in Petrograd began his work in the 'nineties, together starting the first worker circles, together leading the first workers' strikes, together taking their part in the organisation of the This comrade played a prominent part in the revolution of 1905, and it was only by accident that in 1907 Vladimir Ilyich learned from friends among the Siberian exiles that Babushkin had been shot by General Rennenkampf in Siberia.

The first period of activity of Comrade Lenin, as of many other revolutionists who came from the ranks of the intelligentsia, was passed in student circles. When Comrade Lenin was expelled from Kazan University he went to Petrograd. And he used to tell us how, having already been slightly infected with Marxist ideas in Samara, he walked about Petrograd searching for a Marxist. Vivo voca! But the 'breed' of Marxists was at that time extremely rare.

And now there comes this young Comrade Lenin, builds up, after a year or two, in Petrograd the first working-olass circle and rallies around himself the first Marxist intellectuals.

Lenin (under the pseudonym of Ilyin) comes forward with a series of brilliant economic articles which at once win for him a name. And immediately in the ranks of the Populist intelligentsia there could be observed a certain alarm. Somebody powerful and strong has disturbed the petty-bourgeois swamp. The movement of the water begins.

In Petrograd, Comrade Lenin together with other Marxist activists and together with the first workers of whom I have spoken, founds the 'Union of the Struggle for the Emancipation of Labour'. He was entrusted by this organisation with the conduct of the first strikes, and wrote the first simple, unassuming, hectographed leaflets, in which were formulated the economic demands of the Petrograd workers. It was at this time that Lenin published his first illegal pamphlet 'On Fines' -a pamphlet today forgotten, but which for lucid and popular exposition is a classic example of the popularisation of Marxism.

At that time this was precisely the nub of the whole situation: to agitate against the system of fines, to excite economic conflicts, TO RAISE EVERY ECONOMIC STRIKE TO THE LEVEL OF A POLITICAL EVENȚ. And Vladimir Ilyich, with all his passionate nature, gave himself up to this work. He spends days and nights in the working-class quarters. He is hunted by the police. He has only a tiny circle of friends. Nearly all so-called revolutionary intellectuals 1" enin in 1903 Lenin in disguise Summer 1917 of that time meet him with hostility. Not so many years had elapsed since the Populists burned the first Marxist writings of Plekhanov, on which Lenin himself was brought up.

Towards the end of the 'nineties Comrade Lenin, after a long confinement in prison, was sent into Siberian exile. There he developed an immense scientific and literary activity. There he wrote several works, out of which I will dwell upon two only. The first work was a little pamphlet, 'Problems of the Russian Social Democrats' At the present time, comrades, all this seems as simple as ABC. But in those days this question was far from being so clear. The celebrated 'Economists', ', the predecessors of our Mensheviks, contended that the political struggle must be left to the Liberal bourgeoisie, and the only concern of the working class must be the struggle for an extra kopek in the rouble. Comrade Lenin, following the late Plekhanov (here it is necessary to say that he took a great deal from Plekhanov) gave a magnificent analysis of the contending social forces in Russia. We must not defer, Lenin argued, the formation of the working-class party in Russia until we have won political freedom. No, we have not lagged behind Europe a hundred years in order to hang back with the organisation of the workers' party until our bourgeoisie has risen to power. No, now is the time, under the leaden lid and yoke of Czardom, to build up in spite of these desperately difficult conditions, an independent Socialist class party of the workers, fighting from the outset both against Czardom and against the bourgeoisie.

Still in exile, Comrade Lenin wrote a truly scientific work, "The Development of Capitalism• in Russia'—a book which is bound to become, and in a great measure has become, a handbook for every worker. In this book Comrade Lenin settled accounts with the Populists, who. 'then reigned supreme in the minds of the whole generation of our intelligentsia. He brilliantly proved in this work that Plekhanov was right in asserting that Russia also would not escape the stage of capitalism.

This book of Lenin's was acknowledged by bourgeois professors as a great scientific achievement.

During the same period of exile, and on the eve of his departure into exile, Comrade Lenin launched a struggle on the other front as well. Fighting with one hand against the Populists in the person of Mikhailovsky and others, he at the same time began a theoretical struggle against the so-called 'legal' Marxism.

In the struggle against the Populists the legal Marxists were for a time our allies. They also, like ourselves, fought against Mikhailovsky.

Tamin melanne a student And at one time we were united with them in a definite bloc. But the sharp ear of Comrade Lenin had already discovered false notes in the very first writings of P. Struve and Co. Lenin immediately said that this was an ally only for an hour, that they would in the end betray us.

Lenin was twice in emigration. He lived abroad several years. His second period of emigration I and other comrades shared with him.

But let us return to his first emigration.

In 1901 Lenin, together with a group of then kindred persons (Martov, Potresov), entered upon the publication of the paper Iskra (The Spark). This Iskra is an historical paper closely interwoven with the name of Comrade Lenin. Both friends and enemies spoke of the Leninist Iskra. This was often the case. Everywhere, whenever and wherever Lenin worked, in organisations, as an editor, in the Central Committee, or, finally, now in the Council of People's Commissars, to all these organisations inevitably stuck the appellation Leninist. Yes, 'Iskra' was Leninist, and it did not lose by this, it only gained. (Applause.) The first important article of Lenin in the Iskra was called 'Where to Begin'.

Already in this first article of Lenin you will practically find virtually the whole quintessence of Bolshevism. But this article served merely as a synopsis to the remarkable book of Lenin which was called 'What Is to Be Done'.

Round everything that Lenin wrote there is always seething strife. Nobody can remain indifferent to his writings. You can hate Lenin, you can love Lenin to distraction, but you cannot remain neutral. In the book 'What Is to Be Done', Lenin stated and solved in a revolutionary spirit all the vexatious questions of the movement of that epoch. And for many months and years this book was challenging Lenin in 1918 Lenin shortly before his last illness thought, was the centre of raging passions, was the subject of controversy, and ultimately led to the formation of a split into two irreconcilable camps.

The Iskra declared a fight to the finish against the so-called 'Economism'. It fought with every variety of opportunism, including Economism, i.e., future Menshevism. It conducted a most energetic fight against the adventurism of the Social-Revolutionists, and never yet has it been so plain how clear-sighted in his attitude towards the Social-Revolutionists was Comrade Lenin, who predicted as far back as 1902-3 the fate of the Social-Revolutionary Party.

When Lenin said that the party of the Social-Revolutionists was a party of the petty bourgeoisie there descended upon him thunder and lightning. It was said that Lenin had a bad character, that he was a misanthrope, and so forth.

Lenin's Iskra carried on not merely a political struggle, it also carried on an immense work of organisation. The Iskra was gathering the scattered segments of our party. Only in the beginning of the 'nineties arose a situation in which it was possible to think of the formation of a workers' party. Comrade Lenin placed himself also at the head of this practical organising and formed the Organisation Committee Attached to the Iskra. And Comrade Lenin, who bore the chief brunt of the literary labour in the Iskra and in the theoretical journal Zarya (The Dawn), at the same time became the soul of the Organising Committee.

The wife of Comrade Lenin, Nadezhda Konstantinovna KrupskayaUlyanova, was the secretary of the Iskra, and secretary of Organisation Committee. How much our party is indebted to her; of this one might and ought to speak separately. Here I will only say that, in all the work of Comrade Lenin as organiser of our party, a good deal of the credit is due to Nadezhda Konstantinovna. written intercourse fell on her. At one time she carried on a correspondence with the whole of Russia.

Comrade Lenin is often represented as a man who cuts, carves, uses nothing but the surgeon's knife, who does not spare the unity of the proletarian ranks. But when the first signs of a fundamental split became apparent at the Second Congress it was Comrade Lenin who at first used his influence to prevent a rupture. Lenin as a matter of fact places the highest value on the unity of the labour movement. But on one condition-provided this unity is a unity for the struggle for Socialism. The ideas of Socialism are to him dearest above all. And so at the Second Congress, as soon as he saw that his divergence from Martov, Axelrod and the others was not a slight casual divergence; that there was a resurrection of the old opportunist tendency under a new flag; that there was rising again that same "legal' Marxism which Lenin had fought at the end of the 'nineties, that his former friend Martov, with whom he had been intimate, his bosom friend, with whom he had been together in exile, that this Martov began to sing flat; that Plekhanov, whom until that time he had highly valued, began to surrender the principles of Marxism; that this Plekhanov was already extending a finger to opportunism and opportunism would soon have his whole hand; when Lenin saw all this, then the question was decided for him irrevocably. He said: 'I shall stand alone, but I raise the standard of revolutionary Marxism.' And he separated from Plekhanov.

'One step forward, two steps backward' - such characterisation, which Lenin gave of the evolution of the Menshevik wing of the party. One step forward - that was the advance from Economism to Iskraism; two steps back-that was the retrogression from Iskraism to the liberal ideas of "legal Marxism' had found their resurrection in Menshevism. No wonder Comrade Lenin took up a merciless fight against this relapse into the opportunist disease. Ás a counter-weight to the new 'Iskra', which passed into the hands of the Mensheviks, and of which Lenin ceased to be co-editor, he established the first Bolshevik paper Vperyod (Forward). It was at first a very small sheet which was published on the pennies collected abroad. At that time the Mensheviks had in their hands a tremendous machinery, as well as the whole authority of Plekhanov and other 'ikons", innumerable papers and pamphlets as well as the Central Committee, the Central Organ and the Council of the Party.

In the summer of 1905 the first congress of the Bolsheviks (its official name was the Third Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party) took place, the first historic meeting which laid the foundations of the present Communist Party. It was then that Lenin for the first time observed that in the forthcoming revolution we would not stop at and with a bourgeois republic.

It was hard in those days to be a Bolshevik. Not only the Russian, but also the international conditions, pressed heavily upon us. Bebel, for instance, who was respected by Lenin as a working-class leader of On August 30, 1918, Lenin was badly wounded by a shot fired by a 'Social Revolutionary', Fanny Kaplan, when leaving a meeting of workers at the Michaelson factory. His life was in danger for a period but because of his powerful constitution he recovered sufficiently to resume work on Sep- G. Zinoviev tember 17. Here we present excerpts from a speech delivered by Gregory Zinoviev on September 6, 1918, to the Petrograd Soviet on Lenin's life and work. This text is taken from a revised translation by the late John G. Wright. It is hoped to print the whole of this speech in pamphlet form at a later date.

genius, would use every suitable and unsuitable occasion to reproach Lenin for being against Plekhanov.

Already in the revolution of 1905 Lenin was playing a leading part. This, to the outward gaze, was not so noticeable at that time, as it has been in the present revolution. You are aware that the first Petrograd Soviet of the Workers' Delegates in 1905 was formed by the Mensheviks, but in all its practical actions it followed, on the whole, the lead of the Bolsheviks.

The Moscow armed insurrection, though defeated and crushed, had nevertheless been the apotheosis of the Bolshevik tactics during the revolution. We were defeated, and Plekhanov's only comment on the event was the philistine phrase: "These people ought not to have taken up arms? Lenin's attitude towards the Moscow insurrection was different. To him there was no nobler and more honourable page in the history of the revolution than the Moscow armed insurrection. The first thing he did was to collect all the material relating to it.

I repeat that the part played by Lenin in the revolution of 1905 was colossal.

Already in those days of 1905 Lenin was teaching that the Soviets were not a fortuitous organisation which had sprung up the day before yesterday and would vanish the day after tomorrow; that they were not a common everyday organisation somewhat similar to a trade union, but an organisation which was opening a new page in the history of the international proletariat, in the history of the entire human race. (Applause.)

No one was more interesed in the history of the Petrograd Sovie than Comrade Lenin. Though he formally had taken the least direct path in its labours, he, nevertheless, appreciated better than any of us what it meant. For that reason he treated the slogan of the Soviet with the utmost circumspection.

I have dwelt but little on the work of Lenin in the years of the counter-revolution; yet this period was one of the most brilliant in his activity. One had to live through those hard times in distant emigration in order to appreciate all the services rendered by Lenin to the cause. Think for a moment of the foul atmosphere, our emigration in the years 1908-10. Lenin went into his second emigration in 1907, while I and other comrades were summoned abroad in the autumn of 1908, after we had been released from prison. It was mainly owing to the efforts of Lenin that we established our underground papers, first at Geneva, and then in Paris: the Proletarian and the Social Democrat. All round there was a complete debacle. There was gangrene in all emigrant circles.

At such times true leaders are recognised for what they are worth. Lenin was at that time (as throughout his exile) suffering great personal privations and living in poverty; was ill, undernourished-particularly during his stay in Paris; but he remained as cheenful as anybody could be. He stood steadfastly and bravely at his glorious post. He alone contrived to collect a close and intimate cirole of fighters, whom he would cheer up by saying: "Don't be disheartened; these dark days will pass, the muddy wave will ebb away; a few years will pass and we shall be borne on the crest of the wave, and the proletarian revolution will be born again.' The emigres of that time, more particularly the Menshevik intellectuals, who formed the prevailing element, treated us with marked hostility, declaring that we were a small sect, the members of which could be counted on the five fingers of one hand. There was a special comic paper published in Paris, which jeered at Bolshevism and exercised its humour on such subjects as that 'a reward would be offered of half a kingdom to the person who could name a fourth Bolshevik in addition to Lenin, Zinoviey and Kamenev.' In those days Comrade Lenin carried out a tremendous piece of theoretical work. Those days were marked by a sort of literary spoliation of the dead, by an unprecedented literary demoralisation.

March 1917: Lenin and party in Stockholm, en route to Russia Attempts were made to smuggle, under the flag of Marxism, the rotted ideas of bourgeois philosophy into working class audiences. Lenin spent two years in the Paris National Library, and carried out such a mass of work that even bourgeois professors who attemped to sneer at the philosophical studies of Lenin, themselves admitted that they could not understand how one man contrived to read such a mass of books in the course of two years.

In those two years Comrade Lenin was able to write a serious work on philosophy, which will occupy an honourable place in the history of the struggle for revolutionary Marxism. He fought as passionately for communism in the most abstract domain of theory as he fights now in the field of practical politics. Perhaps but few amongst the Petrograd workers have read this philosophical work of Lenin,* but know you all that in this book too, the foundations of Communism were laid. He fought in this book all the bourgeois influences, in their most subtle and elusive forms, and succeeded in defending the materialist conception of history against the best educated representatives of the bourgeoisie, and those writers among the Social Democrats who had succumbed to those influences.

Then came the year 1910-11. A fresh wind began to blow, and it became evident in 1911 that the labour movement was being reborn. The Lena day [The wholesale massacre of strikers at the Lena gold mines in 1910] opened a new page in the history of our movement. At that time we had already at Petrograd a legal paper called Zvezda (Star), at Moscow a monthly periodical, Mysi (Thought) and a small labour fraction in the Duma. The principal worker in these papers and behind the Duma fraction was Lenin, Lenin managed to teach a few worker deputies of the Duma the methods of revolutionary parliamentarianism. You ought to have heard the conversations between Lenin and our young deputies when he was propounding to them the lessons of this kind of parliamentarianism. Simple Petrograd proletarians (Badayev and others) would come to us abroad and say: 'We want to engage in serious legislative work; we want to consult you about the budget, about such and such a Bill, about certain amendments to certain Bills introduced by the Cadets,' etc. In reply Comrade Lenin laughed heartily, and when they somewhat abashed, would ask what was the matter, Comrade Lenin would reply to Badayev: 'What do you want a budget, an amendement, a Bill for? You are workers, and the Duma exists for the ruling classes. You simply step forward and tell all Russia in simple language * 'Materialism and Empirio-Criticism'-Editor's note. Leni the I Lenil consI to Pi Avxe while insur vacil of tr Octo Leni: meas my r. State orga: theol Leni week unsc: knov of tl had disal time happ coul over of o Com to in by er was woul fluor about the life and toil of the werking class. Describe the horrors capitalist slavery, summon the workers to make a revolution, ar fling into the face of this reactionary Duma that its members a scoundrels and exploiters!' (Applause.) 'You had better introduce "Bill" stating that in three years' time we shall take you all, Blac hundred landlords and hang you on the lamp-posts. That would be real Bill!' (Applause.) Such were the lessons in 'parliamentarianisı which Comrade Lenin would propound to the deputies.

In 1912 a new life began. As soon as it became possible to publi here in Petrograd a legal paper, we migrated from Paris to Galicia order to be nearer to Petrograd. At the January (1912) Conferenc which took place at Prague, the Bolsheviks consolidated the ran which had been broken by the counter-revolution. The party can back to life again, and, of course, Lenin played a leading part. Attl insistence of the new Central Committee, Comrade Lenin and myst went to stay at Cracow. There we began to receive visits fro comrades from Petrograd, Moscow, and other cities. Communicati‹ was established with Petrograd, and the arrangements were soon perfected that it was very seldom that the Pravda would appear witho some contribution from Lenin.

I should like to add a few words about Lenin's attitude on the wa ... When the war broke out we were living in a god-forsaken litt mountain village in Galicia. I remember having had a bet with hil I said: 'You will see, the German Social Democrats will not dare vo against the war, but wil! abstain in the vote on the war credit Comrade Lenin replied: 'No, they are not such scoundrels as all tha They will not, of course, fight the war, but they will, to ease the conscience, vote against the credits lest the working class rise 1 against them.' In this case Lenin was wrong, and so was I.

I remember the first manifesto of our party on the war. Naturall it was drawn up principally by Lenin, as were all our most importa party documents. When we translated it into various European la guages and when it was read by various comrades, even the Sw internationalist Grimm and the Rumanian revolutionist Rakovsk who is now in our ranks, were very indignant. They were almo horror-struck when they read the words that the imperialist war mi be transformed into a civil war.

Yes, at the beginning of the war Lenin found very little sympat even among those Socialists who were opposed to the war. But how it now?

At present we can say without exaggeration that all that is hone in the International regards Lenin as its leader and banner-bear‹ Comrade Lenin became the leader of the Third International, whi is now being born. At first many virtuous self-styled Sociali: ridiculed the idea that Lenin should put forward his candidature f the leadership of the Third International, saying that he is aspiri to the honour of being the successor of Bakunin. But who will laug now when we say that the leader of the Third International is no other than Lenin?

The part played by Comrade Lenin from the beginning of the w has been absolutely exceptional. He was the first to begin collecti circles of Internationalists, and it was a remarkable sight how he w devoting his inexhaustible energy to this work in Switzerland.

In March 1917, Comrade Lenin returned to Russia. You rememb comrades. the witches sabbath which broke out when Lenin and u his diskiples, came from abroad through Germany. What a howl the was about the celebrated 'sealed train'. As a matter of fact, Len entertained towards German imperialism a hatred as fierce as towar the ather ngerialisms. At the beginning of the war the Austria government had arrested Lenin, and he spent two weeks in a Galici: house of detention. When a prominent member of Scheidemant party wanted to enter our carriage (which, as a matter of fact, was n sealed) in order to welcome us, we told him unequivocally on Lenir suggestion, that we never discuss with traitors, and would give him thrashing if he came to us.

In the July days our entire Central Committee was opposed the immediate seizure of power, Lenin was of the same opinion. when on July 16 the wave of popular revolt rose high, Lenin becam alert, and here, upstairs in the refreshment room of the Tauride Palac a small conference took place at which Trotsky, Lenin, and myst were present. Lenin laughingly asked us, 'Shall we not attempt now and he added: "No, it would not do to take power now, as nothi will come out of it, the soldiers at the front being largely on the oth side would come as the dupes of the Lieber-Dans to massacre t Petrograd workers.' In the same way as Comrade Lenin in July 1917, wisely declari that it was impermissible to seize power, so after the Kornilov days. especially by the end of September 1917, Lenin began urging t workers to seize power, or else it would be too late.

When, following the Kornilov days, the so-called Democra Conference assembled at Petrograd, Lenin at first came out with i article on 'Compromises'. He invited for the last time the Menshevi and Social Revolutionists to break with the bourgeoisie, to renoun their policy of treason, and to make a compromise with the worki class against the Kornilovists. But these two parties were rotten the core.

Lenin and Zinoviev (right) in conversation with Bukharin at Comintern Congress Jur Central Committee at that time did not agree with Comra n. Almost everybody thought that it was still too early, and th Mensheviks and Social Revolutionists still had a large followin n then, without hesitating long, left his hide-out, and witho ulting anybody, without considering the fears of his friends, car etrograd in order to preach an immediate rising. Kerensky al entyev were at that time issuing writs for the arrest of Leni = Lenin, from his underground hiding place, was preparing t rection, arguing with those who hesitated, castigating those wl lated and writing and agitating for an early rising. And he got It present everybody sees that Lenin was right. It was all a matt ouch and go. If we had not taken power into our hands ber, Savinkov and Palchinsky would have crushed us in Novemb learness, precision, concreteness—-such are the chief features n's work, and he alone has generalised all these individu sures in his work on the State ('State And Revolution) which, nind, is the most important one after Marx's 'Capital'. The Sov : has found in Lenin not only its chief political leader, practic niser, ardent propagandist, poet and singer, but also its princip retician, its Karl Marx.

t is now as clear as noonday that if the working class, und n's leadership, had not seized power in time, we should, a fr is later, have had the dictatorship of the most ruthless, mr rupulous bourgeois rascals. (Loud and continued applause.) It wn now that it had been decided to massacre all of us by the tir he convening of the Constituent Assembly, and if the gener:

had more soldiers at their disposal, they would have done so.

And what about those memorable days of Brest, the days of bitt ppointment! How difficult, how painfully difficult was it at th to make a decision! I cannot even imagine what would ha sened if we had not had Lenin with us at the time. Who el d have assumed this terrific responsibility of acting against t whelming majority of the Soviets, against a considerable porti ur party, and at one time against even a majority of the Centi mittee of the party?

That is why the man who has accomplished such work is entitl mortality. That is why a blow directed against him is receiv verybody as a blow directed against themselves. Comrade Trots right when he said in Mosoow: 'When Comrade Lenin lay crue nded and struggling with death, our own lives seemed so supr Is, so unimportant. ..

about the life and toil of the working class. Describe the horrors of capitalist slavery, summon the workers to make a revolution, and fling into the face of this reactionary Duma that its members are scoundrels and exploiters!' (Applause.) 'You had better introduce a "Bill" stating that in three years' time we shall take you all, Blackhundred landlords and hang you on the lamp-posts. That would be a real Bill!' (Applause.) Such were the lessons in 'parliamentarianism' which Comrade Lenin would propound to the deputies.

In 1912 a new life began. As soon as it became possible to publish here in Petrograd a legal paper, we migrated from Paris to Galicia in order to be nearer to Petrograd. At the January (1912) Conference, which took place at Prague, the Bolsheviks consolidated the ranks which had been broken by the counter-revolution. The party came back to life again, and, of course, Lenin played a leading part. At the insistence of the new Central Committee, Comrade Lenin and myself went to stay at Cracow. There we began to receive visits from comrades from Petrograd, Moscow, and other cities. Communication was established with Petrograd, and the arrangements were soon so 23, Three

the rotted out such i to sneer thait they a mass of ious work he history issionately fights now the Petrobut know lism were :, in their the matesentatives crats who ow, and it ig reborn. theoretician, its Karl Marx. Lena gold ment. At id Zvezda id a small sse papers Duma the t to have ities when parliameners) would legislative 1 and such ed by the when they Committee of the party? ade Lenin endement, the ruling e language fluous, so unimportant. ..?

HUNDRED and some years ago, Marx wrote that every mouse in France was under police surveillance. Under de Gaulle's authoritarian state, the situation has become worse. This was confirmed by the police themselves in a series of reports on juvenile crime in the Paris region.

According to "The Times" (13/1/65), the police are chiefly concerned with large gangs, averaging 16-17 years of age, which include girls. They come from new working-class estates in the suburban areas of Paris, as well as from the older slum areas.

Although they do not seem to be interested in drugs or alcohol, the press and police describe them as young hooligans (jeunes voyous). The main charges against them are fighting, thefts and burglaries, which are done with considerable organisation and boldness.

Looked at more closely, it is evident that the main charge against them is their attacks on property, particularly commercial and industrial premises.

The police reports try to explain this by invoking psychological motivation. They would do better to have a look at themselves. The police are a para - military armed force, carrying out the front-line tasks Newsletter Reporter against the working class for the monopoly capitalists.

In his struggle for power, de Gaulle greatly increased the size of this force of vicious racialists. In order to maintain his position as the Bonaparte of the monopolies, he has to use this force against working class youth.

Police methods of dealing with young people are designed to provoke them. They make detailed lists of the names of young people. They constantly patrol the streets and the places where the youth go. When the youth retaliate to provocation, the press gangs up with the police to justify police violence. They call the youth hooligans.

The revolt of the youth against the conditions imposed on them by the prolonged crisis of French capitalism is expressed by gang attacks on property and sporadic assaults on the police. It is their fighting spirit the press condemns and the police want to crush.

The police reports do not, of course, analyse these conditions. At best they refer vaguely to the war and the new blocks of flats. They do not analyse the political and economic crisis of France, and its effects on the working class.

With the large influx people from the rural areas the cities, the size of the French working class is increasing rapidly. But its share of the national income is not increasing.

Long hours of work are rewarded by low wages and high food prices. The housing situation is intolerable. The average wage, including overtime, is under f12 a week (677 Francs per month) for manual workers. It is slightly higher for office workers.

In the whole of France there are only 90,000 council blocks, and it has been estimated that at least 300,000 must be built within the next five years, but there is no prospect of this.

The police reports must be seen in the context of these conditions. They are aimed to discipline the youth, not only to maintain them in such conditions, but to soften them up for the coming massive introduction of automation with its speed-ups and unemployment.

These youths must be recruited into the socialist movement. They are the fresh forces which can batter down the Stalinist bureaucracy. It is necessary to win them and to train them.

This cannot be done by leaving them in isolation as prey for the police and press. Work amongst them should begin with a vast campaign for the disarming of the police and against police violence. policies. Whiist they have formally split from Pablo they retain his policies in all essentrais.

In the history of the Fourth International the experience of Ceylon will never be forgotten. It will take much more than one or two articles by Germain to get over this one. What happened to Osmund Jayaratne was only a continuation of the same type of relation which they had for many years with Colvin de Silva and Leslie Goonewardene.

The story of his degeneration is, in fact, the whole story of the United Secretariat's relations with Ceylon. In 1963 they retused to join in a serious international discussion with the (Autumn/Winter issue)

Editorials Book Reviews Communications Documents 68 pages (double issue). NEW PARK I 186A Clapkam Hi

EWSLETTER

oviev speech , 1918, work. by the whole some contribution from Lenin. • date.

reproach ling part. as it has 'etrograd by the le whole, crushed, is during iment on . to have ition was : page in be transformed into a civil war. ion. The • it. 1905 was it now!

e Soviets ly before hey were a trade e in the he entire ad Sovie other than Lenin? ast direct uny of us ›viet with rs of the int in his t emigrain to the migration In 1907, tumn of owing to pers, first le Social here was thrashing if he came to us. re worth. personal rticularly ›dy could He alone whom he lark days pass and roletarian nore par- Petrograd workers.? prevailing e were a ve fingers in Paris, 1 subjects le person oviev and piece of f biterary ralisation. the core.

The secon of three articles THEN it comes to analysing the reasons for the betrayal in Geyion, Ernest Germain evades the issue by referring to matters in different parts of the world which are really not relevant.

The architects of the betrayal, Colvin de Silva and Leslie Goonewardene, were not newcomers to the international Trotskyist movement. They had been regular visitors to the International Secretariat in Paris since the late 1940s.

Genmain himself must have spent considerable time with them both when they came to Europe and when he visited them later in Ceylon in the early 1950s.

The theoretical reasons for their actions last summer were clearly discernible when the party of Mr. Bandaranaike was founded in 1953. Leslie Goonewardene characterised it as a centrist party, when in fact it was a capitalist party.

The split in the Fourth International with Pablo, which took place at the end of the same year, became, almost simultaneously, the occasion for covering up Goonewardene's basic theoretical error. Germain knew all about this error because he enjoyed regular direct contact with him.

Unprincipled

compromise Both he and Pablo remained silent about Goonewardene because they wanted his support in the fight against the forces of the International Committee, who, towards the end of 1953, openly defied their revisionist line. This kind of unprincipled compromise is the hallmark of centrism, moving in a rightward direction.

The pre-war history of the Independent Labour Party's 'London Bureau, and its international relations, which Trotsky described as the three and three-quarter international of squeezed lemons, was remarkably similar.

In order to avoid serious discussions which would draw out and establish the real differences so as to educate its cadres, the ILP leadership, which included as secretary Fenner Brockway Bukharin at Comintern Congress (now Lord over them.

Class struggles released by the Second World War practically blew the Independent Labour Party off the map. Immediately after the war its three remaining members of Parliament rejoined the Labour Party. One of these, John McGovan, who retired sometime ago, recently joined the Tory Party.

The same process is now happening to the Unified Secretariat of Ernest Germain and his friends in the Socialist Workers Party.

They attack the Socialist Labour League, who want to develop theory, as "sectarian'. They aicuse us of wanting to 'split hairs' and endanger their 'unification'. In doing this they lean on the theoretical backwardness of those who join them.

All that is required in their circles is to subscribe to some vague form of political agreement and to construct out of this flimsy patch-work quilt what may appear from time to time as a solid international front, which makes all sorts of exaggerated claims about the support that it enjoys.

Impression

Thus at a time such as this when they are undergoing split after split in one country after another, they call themselves the Unified Secretariat' in order to try and make a favourable impression on those who are not in possession of the real facts.

From 1953-1960 Germain, Pablo, Pierre Frank and the Latin American, Juan Posadas, managed to get agreement on resolutions which contained formulae vague enough to allow all of them to collaborate, although there were basic disagreements in the background.

As a result of such centrist practice, almost overnight, Posadas and his Latin American group left, to be followed later by Pablo and the Ceylonese majority.

The present agreement between the Socialist Workers Party and Germain is based on just - such vague and doublemeaning formulations. The role of the Unified Secretariat is, in fact, not basically different from the London Bureau of the ILP.

Centrists who are drifting away from revolutionary politics end up by serving the agents of capitalism in the labour moveBy ment, the bureaucratic leaderships of Stalinism and social democracy.

Pablo began his revisionism with the idea that the Stalinist bureaucracy would be forced to take power on behalf of the workers. From this developed his whole policy of subordinating Trotskyism to the bureaucratic leadership of the trade union and labour movement, and to the nationalist leaderships in the colonial countries.

In the last few years, imperialism's own problems, together with the struggle of the workers against bureaucracy in the 'socialist' countries, have severely shaken the bureaucrats as their bankruptcy in the face of the mounting class struggle is more and more clearly revealed.

The crisis of the Stalinist and social democratic bureaucracies is today responsible for the crisis inside the ranks of the 'Unified Secretariat'.

Ernest Germain and the Socialist Workers' Party have, in reality, no theoretical cohesion between them. They are united around vague resolutions which leave each of them free to carry out their own opportunist policies in different countries. The Socialist Workers Party sent a message of condolence to Mrs. Kennedy, when her husband was assassinated and then asked Germain to cover up for them over Ceyion.

Adaptation

Germain himself leads the trend on the Secretariat towards adaptation to social democracy. In his own section he tries to bridge the gap between participation in the top leadership of the left centrist movement with the training of a cadre at the base.

His politics of adaptation preclude thel atter, with the result that over a period of time a process of political degeneration has set in.

You cannot be a centrist by day and a revolutionary by night.

Since the split of 1953 his centrist politics have come more and more to the fore. For a period he was the chief 'formula finder' for Pablo. He was responsible for the behind-the-scenes overtures to the old conservative leadership of the Socialist Workers Party.

Now, with the change in the international workers' movement and the ibreak-up of centrism, all his previous political activities are being exposed.

This is really the politics behind the story of Osmund Jayaratne. He came to London as a young Ceylonese student and almost immediately became involved in the political life of Germain's Paris Secretariat.

He was young and impressionable. Instead of being trained in the struggle to build a party against capitalism, he was educated in the school of centrism.

Used Jayaratne When Germain spoke to the outside world he stressed that they had a full-time representative of the Ceylonese section in Paris. Behind the scenes the same Germain, when speaking to critics of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, would tacttully remind them that Osmund was a supporter of the revolutionary minority of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party.

In other words, he used Osmund Jayaratne like he used Leslie Goonewardene and Colvin de Silva to cover up for the split of 1953.

This young student gradually began to adapt himself to such politics. In the summer of 1964 he was specially instructed to go back and win away the Lanka Sama Samaja Party Revolutionary Minority from any contact with the Socialist Labour League.

On his return he took up a university academic post and immediately came into contact with all the poisonous political riff-raff amongst whom are many of his former political colleagues, who now support the coalition. It was only a matter of weeks before he completely capitulated to them.

Germain, Hansen and Pierre Frank will hold up their hands in horror, but it was they basically who were responsible for his miseducation.

At the moment they are busy shouting from the housetops that they are not responsible for what happened in Ceylon and that the Socialist Labour League is slandering them when it claims that they are.

Pabloism retained

We are not speaking about them as individuals except in so far as they reflect revisionist OUT NOW-Order your copy —double issue Fourth International incorating The Struggle for Marxism in the United States The Strategy of Betrayal-Wilfred Pereira The Intelligentsia and SocialismLeon Trotsky Trends in Soviet Literature (2)—Jean Simon International Commitee o the Fourth International which included the Socialis League. At the same unne as the crisis wa in they • claimed tha such a dis would When the Socialist Labour League wrote to the Socialist Workers Party on June 12, 1963, concerning events in Ceylon the following passage was included as a warning:

*Recently we have read in 'The Militant' that 100,000 people attended a May Day rally in Colombo. "The huge turn out," says "The Militant', "was attributed to enthusiasm among the masses at the prospect of a united front between the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Trotskyist), the Communist Party and the MEP (a smaller group led by Philip Gunawardene."

'Here we go again. Just at the moment that you are splitting from the SLL and are reaffirming Peng as the leader of the Chinese section you turn the attention of your membership towards "the great LSSP remain discretly silent abou in Ceylon". course, the proceedings at that meeting. You did not tell your membership that when the three left parties, that is the the CP and the MEP were discussing the preparation of the meeting Philip Gunawardene insisted that only political parties should be represented on the platform. His motive was simple and quite reactionary. He wished exclude the Indian working class from being represented through their trade unions.

"The LSSP to its eternal shame agreed to this farce. It must be remembered that in the past the LSSP was the only party in Ceylon to stand unconditionally for the equality of the Indian Tamil working class. It always sharply opposed Philip Gunawardene of the MEP whose role at this meeting was utterly reactionary.

'You remain silent about what Philip Gunawardene said.

With a slip of the tongue he used the word "race" instead of "nation" and then corrected himself. His supporters in the audience shouted "No, not nation: race!" All this time the LSSP sat silent on the platform. Here is the price for such unity.

It is now freely admitted in the LSSP that the leaders are prepared to make real and large concessions on the question of parity of status for Tamil and Singhalese. This is the logic of the capitulation which has led them to support the capitalist government of Mrs.

Bandaranaike. You should have told your membership that N. M. Perera, Anil Moonesinghe and other leaders of the LSSP are practising Buddhists who worship regularly at the temples.' Needless to say the leadership of the Socialist Workers Party never replied. They were too busy in pursuing the policy of no discussion behind which they were rapidly consolidating their centrist adaptation to Pabloism. The degeneration in Ceylon took them all by surprise, just as the break-up of the London Bureau in its way undoubtedly took Fenner Brockway by surprise.

The record of the United Secretariat is a record of centrist politics moving away from Trotskvism in a rightward direction.

incorporating LABOUR REVIE Contents include:

Illus. Price 4s. Available from: UBLICATIONS LTD. gh Street, London, S. W.4.

Streatham Tenants' fight Coventry workers have no faith in Labour leaders R that all shop stewards at the Bristol Siddeley EPORTS circulated by the Midlands press Engines, Coventry, have complete faith in the Labour government's handling of the present crisis in the aircraft industry, are completely false.

Bristol Siddeley shop stewards have never met as a body to discuss the present crisis, or the role of the Labour government. This statement, in fact, comes from some shop stewards who live in the Nuneaton constituency, which is at the moment being fought by Frank Cousins.

These men are reported to present crisis in the industry. He in turn is alleged to have promised to pass their views on to the Minister of Aviation.

But such an offer is not something that the Bristol Siddeley workers can hang their faith on, particularly if the situation with the TSR2, the P1154 and the ill-fated Concord, are taken as examples.

Frustrated

Workers in the aircraft industry are far from satisfied with the way in which the Labour government is dealing with the problems.

As a result, many of them are becoming frustrated at the lack of any strong leadership in the face of the increasing drive for profits made by the aircraft employers.

The Labour government is well aware that for years, the whole aircraft industry has been nothing more than a gigantic swindle to line the pockets of the shareholders.

Workers have benefited very little from the £4,000 million of the taxpayers' money that has been poured into the industry over the last 13 years.

Wages in the main aircraft firms have only been around the national average, in some cases they have even been below that average.

The bosses themselves have gained in every way. One group has used the profits from aircraft to invest in other industries such Coventry Correspondent have seen Cousins about the as building and all types of engineering. It is no longer dependent on just the profits from the aircraft industry.

All major contracts in aircraft have usually been on the basis of costs plus certain percentage profit.

Hence the more percentage cost, the bigger the profit. This is the main reason why over the years the estimated costs have always risen.

All these points are well known to the Ministers in the Labour government, yet according to George Brown they intend to do nothing about it.

Over the past few years the concentration of the industry has grown. Hawker Siddeley and British Aircraft Corporation dominate a whole section of it.

Profit is the driving force in these industries.

Machinations

Workers making the TSR2, the engines of which are made at Bristol Siddeley's, have never been told of the machinations of the armaments bosses.

As a result these workers instead of seeing that their employers and the Tories are to blame for the crisis, 'in fact turn and say that the manufacture of armaments must keep going SO that they can keep their jobs.

Throughout this dispute over the TSR2 not one Labour leader has called on the aircraft industry to turn its manufacturing force to things that are necessary.

on London docks NEWSIETTER sellers are reporting increasing support for the paper in London's dockland.

One docker from the Royal group said that The Newsletter could be relied upon to give a true account of the docks struggle.

He told sellers that the 'Evening Standard' had been asked to send a reporter one morning to see for themselves that 300 men were 'bomping on' in the Royal group. No reporter turned up and the following morning four coach loads of dockers were sent to work in Tilbury.

His father, also a docker, was angry that dockers were being blamed for hold-ups.

•We have a right to a 40-hour week, but we are expected to work 50 hours. The employers do not go without their weekends off.

If we work at the week-ends, we will be 'bomping on' the whole week. 200 men 'bomped on' last week in the Surrey dock and 300 men in the Royal group and eight berths were empty.

"The employers want the days with two men in work one out,' he said.

The Newsletter's docks reports are well received by other readers too. A member of the Balham Transport and General Workers' Union and a conference delegate, said he particularly welcomed the industrial news.

"There are dockers in my union too, but it is through The Newsletter that I have been able to follow their struggle? • 'bomping on'-having employment book stamped. Miners to fight pit closure AFTER being told ten days previously that a partial closure of their pit had been deferred, 450 miners at Lambton D colliery, County Durham, have now been informed that their pit will close "immediately'.

This closure comes shortly after the closing down of Clara Vale pit, 15 miles away, which was reported in the last issue of The Newsletter, and the proposed closure of Sherburn Hill pit six miles away.

After a mass meeting of miners an official stated: 'We will fight to keep the pit open.' The men will probably hold a demonstration when Lord Robens comes to open a new £70,000 training centre at Seaham.

ONE of the cases the Association is taking up with the local council concerns a ground-floor flat in Salford Road, off Sternhold Avenue. (The case of Mr. and Mrs. Swole of 104 Sternhold Avenue was reported in last week's Newsletter).

Ten years ago Mr. and Mrs. Grout and their four children moved into four rooms and scullery at 35s. a week in requisitioned property in Salford Road. It was damp then and the floor was rotten, but they were desperate and accepted it "just for a while' In 1956 the requisitioning was lifted, and in recent years the house has changed hands a few times and the rent has crept up, but the dampness and dilapidation remain. The sanitary inspector knows them well and has served several notices on the owners.

Mrs. Grout now has five sons —one, Alan, has asthma and has entered an open-air day school-and a daughter of 18 months. So last October they were given notice to quit on the grounds of overcrowding.

Eight people in a twobedroomed flat sounds like overcrowding (although in the technical sense it may not be), and the council have put the family on the list for five-bedroomed accommodation.

ORGANISATION

But categories and points on the housing list count for little unless we back them up with a strong tenants' organisation.

Last week Mrs. Grout carried the baby up to County Hall to try for the London County Council list. It was too late the LCC no longer has a houseing list, Mrs. Grout was told, "but the man very kindly gave me the addresses of three reception centres' (!)

Eighty years ago houses like that which the Grout family occupy were built for families with a couple of maids apiece. Now they are not so much homes to live in as a way of making money. and Residents' Association When a row of houses reaches retiring age it is time for it to be sold, often to a company, as an 'investment"

Speculators will invest only if they can make a high rate of profit, and that means high rents and no repairs.

The government is going to bring in a new Rent Act, aimed at keeping rents down and providing security of tenure.

REAL VALUE

How can these rents be assessed? What is the real value of a house (now selling at over £4,000) which just about survived two wars, but now looks as if the next strong gale will blow it all over the pretabs next door?

We need a strong campaign to bring rents down and give security of tenure, and to increase municipal housing.

But more than that in the long run we need a national movement through the unions and local organisations for the nationalization of land and the building industry, to provide modern flats and homes for workers like the Grout family.

called Unified Secretariat in Paris condemns the cowardly S. Mani who supported the right-wing bureaucracy of the Labour Party in the expulsion of Young Socialist supporters of the SLL.

History is dealing such people and their tendency much more powerful blows.

Having followed Pabloism since 1953 they have in fact liquidated themselves into the camp of reformism, an experience which is the direct opposite to those who fight for the Leninist party.

If there are supporters of the Unified Secretariat who want to break from such treachery, then let them do so and they will be taking a big step forward toward the camp of Leninism, which is where so many of them wanted to be in the first place.

In this England, whose outmoded capitalist economy staggers from one balance of payments crisis to another, where the Labour leaders are the most faithful servants and lackeys of the ruling class, the youth have already learned one lesson-if if we fight under the banner of Lenin, we can win.

Registered at the G.P.O. as a newspaper P80 Clapham High Strest, London, S. W.4 Published by The Newsletter, 186A Clapham. High Street, London, S.W.4 SLL meeting

From Our Spec THE government survey of school buildings - which was held back by the Tories for years-was finally published last Wednesday.

As a report it is out of date and inadequate, as its figures are those of 1962. Nevertheless, it reveals a picture of chronic neglect and squalor in the education system.

5,000 schools are obsolete and should be closed at once. Nearly 20,000 schools out of a total of 29,074 need rebuilding of some kind. One quarter of all the schools in use in England and Wales date from before 1875 and only 19 per cent have been built since 1902.

The worst defects are sanitation and bad siting. 17,272 schools have outdoor sanitation and there are 3,090,000 children I Correspondent in these schools. There are 10,764 schools on serious substandard sites and there are two and a half million children in these schools.

(A school site is regarded as seriously sub-standard if it is two-thirds or less of the minimum area prescribed in the Building Regulations for the school at its existing size.)

There are 8,200 children in schools with no piped water supply at all and 824,500 children in schools with no warm water supply. There are 532,200 children In schools without central heating and 10,700 children in schools without electricity. There are 58 300 children in schools without water-borne sanitation.

Other widespread faults include: no kitchen or scullery on site (5,138 schools and 845,300 children); no staffroom (8,845 schools); half or more of school temporary premises (742 schools and 197,900 children); buildings on more than one site (2,594 schools and 851,300 children); dining in the classroom (2,574 schools, not including primary schools); in hall (4,402 and 935,000 children).

When these figures are broken down into regions it is found— as might be expected--that the most working class regions come off worst.

The worst region is the Nort Vest which includes Liverpool Manchester, Wigan, Bolton, Salford, etc. Here 2,288 primary schools out of 3,162 and 566 out of 821 secondary schools are unsatisfactory.

This report, of course, does not cover Scotland or Northern Ireland. These areas would probably turn out to be in an even worse mess.

To bring all existing schools in England and Wales up to modern standards would cost £1,368 million. This figure does not include building new schools, yet a huge expansion in school populations is expected over the next ten years.

For the 35,000 workers in the Coventry district, parliamentary lobbies and vague assurances about stop-gap work are not enough.

If the industry is left in private hands, further amalgamations, closures and redundancies are inevitable, because Labour leaders are still operating the Tories' plans in the industry.

As long as aircraft remains in private hands, profit will come before the workers' interests.

What faces aircraft workers is the fight to organise a national conference of shop stewards, which can organise the industry's labour force in a campaign that will compel the Labour government to nationalize the industry.

Our demand should be: Workers before profit!

Labour be loyal to labour!

Dockers, both Blue' (NASD) and 'White' (TGWU), were, contrary to what certain 'lefts' had said, united in Liverpool, Hull, Manchester and on the Royal Albert Dock, London, where there is a mixture of 'Blue' and 'White' dockers.

Kerrigan said it was possible a commission would be set up to reduce the number of employers on the docks. 'Surely if we are going to do away with small employers, this is a cast-iron case for nationalization of the docks industry, he said. What is Clause 4 for if not to be implemented?' He said the NASD had put forward alternative proposals for the docks to the employers but added, 'do not believe this particular programme can be achieved under private enterprise. It does unite all dockers, which is an answer to our particular problems.' Kerrigan said there had been a tremendous surge of youth on the docks. They were now in the forefront of the fight. If we could organise around the docks a lobby in London, this would really put Wilson on the spot, he suggested.

41 years on THE refusal by 300 skippers and mates to accept conditions reminiscent of feudal times, completely halted the sailing of Aberdeen trawlers for ten days recently. One hundred and twenty trawlers were tied up in the port. On Wednesday, January 6 two ships put to sea, both manned by other skippers.

The Lord Provost of Aberdeen and Sir John Ure Primrose, chairman of the White Fish Authority in Scotland both intervened to try to bring about a settlement of the dispute.

Mr. James Crockett, secretary of the Skippers' and Mates' Association stated that there was a possibility Sir John Primrose might have had some success. but the action of the trawler owners in sending two vessels out to sea put any hope of a settlement at that stage 'right out of the window.

GRIEVANCES

The grievances of the skippers and mates are: 1. That a skipper is not allowed to change from one employer to another without a letter of clearance from the trawler owner. 2. That By supervise the landing of the catch and the moving of the vessel from the fishmarket after the landings have been made.

Mr. Crockett described the rule relating to the skippers as 'oppressive and against natural justice'. . He said that the duty imposed on the mates placed them in a position of responsibility, but they had no authority.

WAIT AROUND

If they live any distance from the port, it may also mean that they do not get home whilst they are ashore.

If a ship arrives in port at 2 a.m. the mate may wait around until noon and then learn that the catch is not to be put on the market that day because it may fetch a more favourable price on the following day. He has to be at the market at 3 am. the following day and may not be free until 11 a.m.

By this time it will be too late for him to travel any distance to his home, since he has to be available to supervise the icing of the ship ready for the next trip.

Last August the Aberdeen Skippers' and Mates' Association informed the trawler owners that they were not prepared to continue operating under these conditions. Mickie Shaw They demanded that the rule applying to skippers, which is a private agreement between the trawler owners, should be scrapped. They say that the owners should employ shorebased men to supervise the landing of the catch and the moving of the vessel. This appears to be the practice in every port except Aberdeen, and is permitted by Aberdeen owners when their vessels land in English ports.

Trawler owners consistently refused to negotiate new contracts of employment and when the old articles expired on December 31, the mates and skippers refused to sign new articles.

DEADLOCK

Deadlock was reached-the owners refused to negotiate until the new articles were signed and the men had put to sea. The skippers and mates refused to negotiate until all ships at sea had returned to port.

An attempt was made by some 'public spirited' individuals to hold the skippers and mates responsible for the hardship which would be caused to the 20,000 workers employed, directly or indirectly, in the fishing industry.

But Mr. David Ross, chairman of the Skippers' and Mates' Association said: "IVe are sorry if this happens, but we've suffered this system for 30 years or more, and it is time we did something to put it right.' The real worry of the employers, of course, was not the hardship to workers in the fish industry, but the loss of profits to the trawler owners.

FORCED

By their determination the skippers and mates forced the trawler owners to retreat. By January 9 the owners said they were willing to meet the demands of the skippers, but still refused to negotiate on the complaints of the mates until the vessels were at sea.

The skippers would not accept any attempt to split the solidarity of the men. Only when the owners indicated that they would give serious and sympathetic consideration to the mates' demands, did they agree to leave for the fishing grounds, and negotiations began almost immediately the first ships had set sail.

The Aberdeen Skippers' and Mates' Association must use the strength they gained through this initial victory to press their claim to complete success.

support for THERE is high iceling over wages among the 1,800 hus conductors and drivers employed by Newcastle Corporation. They are angry at the protracted negotiations over the pay claim for provincial municipal bus crews and have decided to fight for a local bonus over and above any national wage award.

The national claim, which was first made last August, has now gone to arbitration. Some bitter comments are made on this in the January issue of 'Fare Play', a rank-and-file bulletin, published by busmen in Byker depot-the biggest in Newcastle.

'When the employers suggested arbitration, the union said that this was not the best means of settling the claims,' declares 'Fare Play'. "Then the Ministry of Labour was called in to see if they could help. Unfortunately, they could find no way out of the deadlock....

"Then our officials decided to refer the matter to the union executive. We thought, at last they were showing a bit of fighting spirit. But no, back they come and tell us they have decided to ask the Minister of Labour to appoint an Arbitration Tribunal to look into our claims.

"This was the very thing they were not having, yet, here we go, two months after the employers offered this suggestion, seeking to resolve the problem by the very means which our officials said were not the best way of solving the problem.

It is easy to see who has this fight.' HELD BACK• Busmen at Byker told The Newsletter that they had held back from local action when the wage increase was refused in December, because they fully expected the union to organise action nationally.

'The union,' they said, 'has a good case, but it wouldn't fight?

They emphatically declare that their demand for a bonus means a bonus without any strings attached. They have pointed out to the Transport Committee of Newcastle's Labour Corporation that bonuses are paid in Birmingham, Coventry and Luton.

Bonuses were paid in these towns because of shortage of labour owing to the wages in the car factories, they were told.

'Is it Labour policy then, to exploit areas of high unemployment?' asked Bob Waugh, the Newsletter Correspondent shop steward at Byker.

George MiGreavey, a member of the committee at Byker, stated: 'Over the years the union has let the employers get away with poor wages and long hours. Busmen throughout the country are showing their disgust, not only with the employers, but with their own representatives.

"The action which has been taken by individual towns is, unfortunately, the only way left, in which the rank and file can express their concern at the way in which we are being treated.

'No workers have yet received their just entitlement without a struggle, We have moaned and groaned over the years, without getting anywhere. Now it is time to show a bit of fight.'

DISCONTENT over wages is rife amongst provincial busmen employed by private companies.

Their demand for an increase went in at the same time as that of municipal busmen and the National Council of the Omnibus Industry referred the claim to a sub-committee, which reports back to the full council this week.

Frustrated by the delay in settling the claim, members of the Transport and General Workers' Union employed by the Tynemouth Company put a resolution last week to a meeting of delegates from 14 depots of the Northern and Associated Companies.

The resolution demanded an interim increase on a • bonus scheme pending the national settlement.

It was deferred until the report of the National Council this week.

The meeting of the council was lobbied by busmen from Tynemouth, Sunderland District Omnibus and Northern companies.

They came in response to a call from The Northern and Associated Busworkers Vigilante Committee.