The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 382

London, Thursday TEARLY 200 London building workers who stopped work to join last Thursday's pensions lobby have been sacked.

The men, from a Wimpey site in Draper's Gardens, Throgmorton Avenue, in the City, struck on Friday after 19-yearold Nick Cole was sacked for alleged 'sabotage' Several weeks ago Cole was appointed by the management as the sole handler of a lift on the site after a joint meeting with shop stewards.

On Thursday, February 4, the day of the lobby, work on the site halted at midday so the men could support the lobby.

Cole carried out his usual practice of removing the fuses from the motor of the lift and putting them in the electricians office on the site, but, the workers claim, the following day he was accused of "sabotage' and was sacked on the spot.

The Federation steward told the management the whole site would stop again if the youth was not re-instated. They struck soon afterwards. On Wednesday the men from all sections were sacked.

A picket line has been set up and the men are visiting other sites seeking support.

The management are reported to have told an Amalgamated Union of Building Trades Workers' official they would abide by the decision of a disputes panel convened to investigate the strike. The men claim it would take five weeks to convene a panel.

Air industry: The case is clear THE case is now quite clear.

Britain's armaments industry must be nationalized.

Even as the Hawker Siddeley workers began their march on Tuesday, the company was announcing mass redundancies because the Wilson government has cancelled several bombers and fighters.

Like the TSR2 workers, the 2,000 people who marched to Parliament to lobby MPs over the matter were against the Labour government, for 'a buy British' policy ... and for armaments. But once the fabulous profits the armaments firms make are threatened, it is the workers who suffer.

The workers should not be aiding the bosses and the Tories by blaming Labour. They should demand that the government nationalize the industry, and turn it over to the production of civil aircraft and other work, and open the books to unveil the immense profits made by the armaments industry.

Once again, The Newsletter arges aircraft workers not to vent their anger and frustration on their party.

Neither should they make demands like that echoed in Wednesday's 'Daily Worker' ('There is strong support for the argument that, while the urgent need is for disarmament, any military planes that Britain does have should be British made').

hey must demand the nationalization of their own industry along with shipbuilding, chemicals, engineering, etc. It is the only answer.

men of Fleet Street SO blino last Thursday that they could not see 1,000 Young Socialists, trade unionists and old people marching through London to lobby Parliament?

Or is it only The Newsletter that can scoop the lot? With only limited resources our editorial staff had a full story and pictures of the magnificent lobby on the streets only hours after it happened.

But from Fleet Street, haruly a sound was heard.

A small paragraph appeared in the last cdition of a certain London evening paper and the following morning the three so-called 'quality' papers and the 'Daily Worker' carried similar uninformative stories.

Splash

Yet only two weeks before, and five days later, marchers from aircraft factories demanding a buy British military aircraft' policy were splashed across the pages of every single sheet produced in Fleet Street.

This might be put down by most people to the whims of the news editors and their unpredictable news sense.

Why, then, do they all ignore the pensions lobby, organised by the Young Socialists National Committee Majority, yet make as much as they can out of the aircraft marches.

The answer is quite simple. Fleet Street journals, and those employed by them, are an integral part of the capitalist system.

The traditional administrators of this system, the Tories, are quite happy to allow the Labour government of Wilson to take over the financial crisis of capitalism —which now erupts in the aircraft industry and old age pensions crises.

When aircraft workers march behind banners with slogans sounding like the nationalist nonsense bandied around by Churchill during his lifetimeand by Fleet Street after his death-and blames the Wilson government for their plight, the qualified cheers of the Tories ring through the pages of the press.

Betrayal

The Tories will gladly criticise Wilson and put down motions of censure on his government as long as they do not quite succeed and he continues to betray those who put him in power.

Because of his refusal to govern Britain with socialist policies, he gradually paves the way for the return of the Tories with a weakened working class -disunited and split over issues like the TSR2 and the P1154 aircraft and completely open to stricter incomes policies and discipline in the factories and offices.

So, when Young Socialists Apprentices and old age pensioners walk down the steps from the Stormont (N. Ireland Parliament) after lobbying, and gaining the support of several MPs. 35 apprentices from Harland & Woolft stopped work to join the lobby.

make a popular demand for the immediate rise and backdating of the pensions through socialist policies of nationalization and workers' control, the press is silent.

The pressmen recognise the tremendous support received by Young Socialists from thousands of adult workers. The youth are posing themselves as an alternative socialist leadership. Their policies are gaining more and more support every day through the pensions campaign. Daily they become a greater danger to the capitalist system.

This is why the press is so silent.

Once again the youth demonstrated their strength at a 800strong meeting in the Central Hall, Westminster, after the lobby of MPs last Thursday.

Welcoming the Young Socialists, trade unionists and old age pensioners to the meeting, Dave Ashby, chairman of the National Committee Majority of the Young Socialists, stated:

'We have shown today that we are not prepared to have one part of the working class insulted. We are not going to sit back and watch old people be ignored and we will not allow the Labour government to play fast and loose in this country?

Correct He said that the Young Socialists were correct in calling for the Socialists in the campaign.

Editor of the socialist youth paper, 'Keep Left', Aileen Jennings said that the only way that the backdating of the old age pensioners' increase could be won was by workers uniting in action as they did on the lobby.

Right

She stated that no one should take any notice of those MPs who said that it was none of the Young Socialists' business.

'We say we have every right to take up the question of the old age pensioners and the young workers because the Labour leadership will not do so?

Speaking on behalf of thousands of dockers on Merseyside Peter Kerrigan of the National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers said that one sure way of fighting in the campaign was for the dockers throughout all the ports to stage a token stoppage.

Mike Hughes, chairman of the Manchester Apprentices' Direct Action Committee gave support for the campaign on behalf of the national apprentices' movement.

He said that the fight of young workers for higher wages was the same as the fight of the old age pensioners for higher pensions.

Bill Dow, Parliamentary candidate for South Paddington, in the last General Election gave his support for the lobby and future campaigns. Feelings THE Shop Stewards' Committee at the English Steel Corporation, Manchester, have passed a resolution of support for the pensions campaign being organised by the Young Socialists National Committee Majority and have sent the resolution to the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions. A number of stewards in the works are collecting money for the campaign.

Paddington LP disbanded

We will continue to recruit says AFTER losing the byelection at Leyton, the right-wing leadership of the Labour Party, which daily sinks into deeper and deeper crisis, is now attempting to solve its problems by further witch-hunts of the left wing.

On Wednesday this week, the Labour Party announced that it had disbanded the South Paddington Labour Party and that a new organisation would be set up in its place.

But such an action is a mere flea bite to the strong South Paddington Labour Party.

EXPEL BROWN

Secretary, Bill Dow, has announced that the next action of the general management committee will be to consider expelling George Brown who, Dow says, has broken Labour's election pledges.

'He is one of the chief architects of this government's disastrous policies, stated Dow to the national press.

South Paddington Labour Party is planning to hold a recruitment campaign and 'increase its membership by tremendous numbers'.

Bill Dow explained: 'We shall recruit trade unionists, Young Socialists and workers from all round. Our membership is 600 at the moment and we shall go on from strength to strength. Newsletter Reporter 'We will not give up the fight agairist this Labour government's Tory policies' BREAK UP Transport House's Sarah Barker, who has played a leading role in many witch-hunts up and down the country in the past, told the South Paddington Labour Party earlier this week of the decision to break. up the branch.

The decision is reported to have been taken by the national executive committee of the Labour Party because South Paddington Labour Party refused to expel Young Socialists before the last General Election.

Such panic measures by the Labour Party leadership can only be regarded with contempt.

Workers in South Paddington will judge this measure on the basis of who lost the election at Leyton, and who is fighting to build up the Labour Party's strength in Paddington.

Sarah Barker and her cronies at Transport House were not even able to organise a success for Labour at Leyton, whereas Bill Dow and his members have shown their determination to go from 'strength to strength'. Labour's Foreign Secretary, in the House of Commons on February -When asked about the dangers of military intervention in Vietnam this is what he said in reply:

'I would not want to say anything, or take any course of action, which could be construed as suggesting that there was no danger inherent in this situation when United States' forces were attacked, but that there was a danger when they took measures in reply.' (Opposition cheers) "The Times', 9/2/65 action is a desperate Hands off Vietnam!

Withdraw all Troops Immediately! 7.30 p.m. SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 14 ARTILLERY ARMS' 102 ROCHESTER ROW (off Vauxhall Bridge Road), Vitoria, London, S.W.1 Speaker: Cliff Slaughter Chairman: Mike Banda and callous attempt to spill the blood of workers and peasants in order to get the best out of a situation where the final victory of the Viet Cong is only a matter of weeks.

The role of the international working class must be to assist in the completion of this victory as a blow against world capitalism and to break completely with Wilson's assistance to the imperialists. Kosygin's visit is calculated to persuade the North Vietnam government to reach a quick settlement and to rescue

demonstration. The demands were that the old age pension be increased and backdated.

The campaign must be continued with Young Socialists and adult workers working together to fight for socialist policies-the banks and monopolies to be taken out of the hands of the employers and run for the benefit of workers.

A representative of old age pensioners on. the Merseyside described the conditions in which many old people in his area lived. One woman died because she had no fire.

Describing the campaign carried out in Glasgow, Bob Hamilton, National Committee member for Scotland, said that the local MP had refused to support a fight to backdate the pensioners' increase to November 1.

Expressing her support for the lobby Mrs. Joyce Wilson a delegate from Tyneside busworkers said that people in North Shields were right behind the Young EVERY 220 omen chess ter's 4,200 busmen was out in a 24-hour strike last Saturday-the day after the national wages claim for municipal busmen was settled at 15s. a week.

The Manchester busmen have held a strike one day each week for the past three weeks in support of a local claim for an extra 14s. 3d. a week for working split shifts and for wo™k before 5 a.m.

They plan to continue with the strikes until the claim is met.

An emergency meeting of the Joint Industrial Council was being held in London this week and any further action was to be decided on at report-back meetings on Thursday night at the city's seven bus depots.

Apart from the continuing dispute on the local claim, the men are far from satisfied with the national award.

Even the Transport and General Workers' Union official. Alderman Robert Thomas, has been forced to say: "The 15s. award has been greeted with very mixed feelings. When you compare it with the 38s. give n to London busmen, it does not sound so good.

I feel sure many of the men will be disappointed by the amount given.' LEIGH:

Busmen also came out on strike on Saturday in s pport of a claim for an improv d bonus system and working c nditions. Johnson from a predicament in U.S. politics.

NO SECRET DIPLOMACY! DEMONSTRATE TO STOP THE U.S. BOMBING ATTACKS! STOP THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT'S SUPPORT FOR THE WAR IN VIETNAM!

WITHDRAW ALL BRITISH AND AMERICAN TROOPS FROM SOUTH-EAST ASIA! HANDS OFF THE PEOPLE OF VIETNAM!

MEETING

Glasgow Partick Burgh Hall (Lesser Hall)

Merkland Street ground station) ay, February 14, 7.30 Speaker: G. Healy

a ge Two 13, 1965.

from the working class.

WEEKLY ORGAN OF-THE CENTRAL_COMMITTEE-OF-THE-SOCIAL ISTILABOUR LEAGUE Vol. 9, No. 382 February 13, 1965 Price 6d. WERE the gentleB/OSL FILE his Week Meaning of YTON age 2)

Manchester steel workers back pensions campaign Newsletter Reporter Withdraw South-east Asia LAST Sunday, at least 49 U.S. bombers killed and injured hundreds of North Vietnam workers and peasants in raids from three U.S. aircraft carriers in the South China Sea.

Far from denying this act, the American imperialists have boasted full responsibility. These rulers regard it as their right to kill and maim the people of any country who fight against oppression.

The U.S. is not 'officially' at war with North Vietnam, and President Johnson is never tired of telling the world how he is continuing the "peace' policy of Kennedy. And yet these bombing raids are carried out quite openly.

In justification, Johnson says the raids are 'reprisals' for attacks made on U.S. servicemen in South Vietnam a few days earlier.

But what are the facts?

In South Vietnam the people, led by Viet Cong rebel forces, are successfully concluding a civil war against their native landlords and capitalists.

The Americans have sent 21,000 troops, thinly disguised as 'missions' and 'adviser piese defend the native rulers. troops, heavily armed and supported by modern air power, are said to be there to save South Vietnam from Communism.

ISOLATED

The corrupt ruling clique cannot even reach agreement among themselves. Saigon, the capital city, it utterly isolated from the rebel-controlled countryside and only survives with U.S. support; and yet now the U.S. favourite, premier Huong, has been ousted by the right-wing General Khanh.

Against this rotten and corrupt gang of generals and politicians, the Viet Cong are all troops from fighting great battles every day, and in the course of this they last week inflicted losses on U.S. troops. This was the pretext for the air attacks.

We are now told that President Johnson, who recently appointed himself personal Commander-in-Chief in the area, planned two months ago to take advantage of such an opportunity as an excuse for bombing the North.

While there is a group of American capitalists led by Nixon who are for total war as the only solution in Vietnam, Johnson's aim is to have all that can be saved for capitalism through negotiations.

As the capitalist weekly, 'The Economist', wrote on anuary 9, 1965:

'But even this extension of the war would now be aimed at encouraging a negotiated settlement on the argument that bloodier noses for the North Vietnamese delegates would strengthen the position of the anti-communist delegates when they eventually get together at a conference.' Two months ago, Johnson decided on this attack. Two months ago, Labour Premier Harold Wilson consulted on foreign policy in Washington with this same Johnson. He agreed to accept heavier British commitments 'east of Suez' under unified U.S. command.

Wilson shares Johnson's responsibility.

NAUSEATING

Any misunderstanding on this subject has now definitely been cleared up by the nauseating statement of Mr. Michael Stewart,

F there is one lesson to be learned from Wilson's '100 Days' it is that there is no future for reformism in Britain. From the by-election results at Leyton and Nuneaton, following hard on the full-scale retreat of Wilson before the banks, a break-up in the old pattern of two-party politics becomes a possibility.

Unlike any other major European country, Britain has, since the First World War, been ruled by an alternation of Labour and Conservative governments, each resting in part upon mass support amongst the electorate.

In no other major European country has this alternation of governments been possible for such a period.

Eastern Europe has passed out of the capitalist sphere altogether, while France, Italy, Greece and Germany have all experienced fascism and the complete liquidation of even formal democracy.

The reasons for this apparent stability in the British political system, and the processes that are now bringing it to an end, have to be understood if MarxStricter control of immigration Labour strengthens racialists denounced the racialists of Smethwick as 'degrading politics to about the lowest level I've known in my lifetime. Yet in the same television programme in which he used those words, he also announced an about - turn from Labour's position of all-out opposition to the Tory Immigration Act. By giving the Act their support, the right-wing leadership have strengthened the position of every racialist in the country. Attention was drawn away from Labour's miserable retreat by the attack made in Parliament by Wilson after the General Election on Peter Griffiths, Smethwick's new Tory MP WARNING ne Newsletter warned at the time that 'it would be a great mistake to shout too soon over Wilson's attack on the Tory victor at Smethwick' We also said: 'As the crisis of capitalism continues to grow, so also will racialism.

The racialists of Smethwick are now a national issue for the entire labour movemenr.' How has the leadership of the Labour Party faced up to this challenge?

Last week their retreat from principle turned into a rout as the government's new measures for the stricter control of immigration were announced.

In themselves they represented a cowardly surrender to racialist pressure; they threatened worse to come with their hint of 'any further steps' to be taken in the future as might be considered necessary.

is useless for labour leaders to think they can buy off the ists are to be able to intervene in this crisis and build the leadership that the working class needs in order to take power.

Men like Churchill, and those who carried his coffin, were the lifeblood of the system that took such a hammering at Leyton. A large section of the working class at Leyton and Nuneaton said that they had no confidence in the policies of Wilson, and that neither did they wish to see the Tories return.

Search

But the whole stability of the political system in Britain relies upon support swinging back and forth between the Labour and Tory parties.

This new trend in the working class, that of a search for leadership outside the traditional boundaries of British polities, poses serious problems for both Marxists and the ruling class, and will be resolved by struggles that must break through the old framework of parliamentary manoeuvring and collusion that we saw at the time of the Profumo crisis and the resignation of MacMillan.

The death of Churchill, utilised as it was by the ruling class and their hangers-on to whip up national as opposed to class feeling, has a deeper significance that has yet been examined.

Without Churchill and the Empire he helped to conquer racialists by making a limited retreat because the racialists promptly step up their pressure and demands. A second defeat for Gordon Walker at Leyton altogether crushed the will of the right-wing leadership to resist such demands. For ail the talk of 'parliamentary lepers', ', Peter Griffiths has defeated them all, as he did Gordon Walker.

His triumph over them has been summed up in these words: I would feel that both parties are moving closer to the position that was expressed in Smethwick during the election.' Yet only four months ago Labour leaders were castigating this position as shameful and sordid.

Smethwick's leader of the Labour group on the town council, Councillor Ernest Lowry, is dutifully following his national leaders.

He is reported as saying: 'We want to see tighter controls on the issue of labour permits and more stringent health checks.' This was the man who announced that the Labour Party would discontinue meeting at Smethwick's and defend, the right wing in the Labour Party could not play the treacherous role that we see it carrying out today.

The enslavement of hundreds of millions of Africans and Asians by the British ruling class brought tremendous wealth to the employers, a section of whom drew the largest part of their income from property abroad.

Through the use of cheap colonial labour and raW materials, British capitalism undersold its rivals on the world market, and by so doing, could allow above-average wages and conditions to the more skilled and better organised workers in British industry.

Among the privileged craft workers there developed a very conservative approach to trade union and political activity, the emphasis being placed on the SYLVIA colour-bar Labour Club because Harold wouldn't like it' Now that 'Harold' appears to like measures directed against immigrants, he is quite ready to fall into line.

Smethwick Tories are, predictably, only too ready to approve the stricter controls.

Alderman N. C. Niven, leader of the Tory group, said: 'We naturally welcome these measures, but they are still only a drop in the ocean.' r. John Sanders, chairman of the Birmingham Immigration Control Association, also welcomed the measure, 'particularly if it helps to curb immigration from the Afro-Asian countries'.

NO QUARREL ne leader of the Indian community in the West Midlands, Dr. D. R. Prem, said: 'We have no quarrel with the British government in this matter. . . . It is in the interests of the immigrants themselves that these regulations should be enforced.' (!)

icialists see racialism as a device for splitting the working class, British workers from immigrants, and so weakening their power to fight their enemy-the system of monopoly capitalism.

Wilson and Co. were socialists they would be leading an all-out fight against it, explaining to workers why they are in fact attacking their own interests if they listen to racialist propaganda.

it if they were socialists they would also be governing in the interests of workers. They would be getting tough with the bosses and bankers, not with old age pensioners, working-class youth and trade unionists.

that case they would have no need to worry about losing votes. securing of better conditions within the capitalist system and not upon its replacement by socialism. Separate from the trade unions in the late nineteenth century there developed a middle class counterpart to craft conservatism.

The very barbarity of British ruling class in colonies, exemplified Rhodes and his successor Churchill, produced within Britain the Fabian conception of the peaceful, Parliamentary road to socialism.

Worked out in great detail by middle class intellectuals such as the Webbs, Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, Fabianism transmitted, via the middle class, the ruling class's fear of revolution right into the workers' movement.

Socialism, in the minds the Fabians, was not to be brought about by the actions of the working class. This they feared like the plague.

Writing in her diary on the General Strike of 1926, Beatrice Webb said:

When all is said and done, we personally are against the use of the General Strike in order to compel the employers of a particular industry to yield to the men's demands, however justified they may be. Such methods cannot be tolerated by any government -even a Labour government would have to take up the challenge.' Capitalism instead was to be gradually whittled away by the infiltration of central and local government bodies by people loyal to the cause. The working class was to be the beneficiary but not the creator of socialism.

LP formed

These ultra-reformist theories, derived from the middle-class illusion of the "peaceful' nature of British capitalism and its willingness to be gradually transformed into socialism without the need of a 'foreign'-style revolution, found a sympathetic hearing in the uppermost layers of the working class, who, from about 1850, experienced a slow but real increase in their wages and living standards.

This section of the working class, craft as well as class conscious, formed the most politically active section of workers at the turn of the century and played a big part in the formation of the Labour Party and the shaping of its very moderate early policies.

Only after the impact of the Russian revolution on broader layers of workers and big industrial actions by semi and unskilled workers did the Labour Party adopt, in 1918, an openly socialist programme Clause Four.

The Labour Party was therefore created by the working class with conflict of the classes built right into it: at the bottom, the workers seeking, through the formation of the Labour Party, a political solution to their class section of the working class, problems, while at the top, the introduction of ruling class ideas through the middle class and the labour aristocracy and the betrayal of struggles through parliamentary intrigue and corruption and the preserving of bureaucratic privileges.

The struggle between the classes, and the corrupting effect of British imperialism on a and those drawn towards it from other classes, is the basis for the perpetual fight between left and right inside the Labour Party and trade unions.

It is because this fight is rooted deep in the conditions of British capitalism that this fight breaks through all bans, proscriptions and expulsions.

Strength

The Marxist tendency inside the Labour Party cannot be crushed by the right wing because it draws its strength from the class struggle, while the right wing is weakened by any sharpening of this conflict.

It is, therefore, no surprise that social democracy, whether of the Wilson or MacDonald variety, should undergo its deepest convulsions when the system it clings to suffers its periodic crises. The two world wars found Labour ministers side-by-side with Tories and Liberals in capitalist cabinets, when the existence of British capitalism was at stake. The General Strike of 1926 and the crisis of 1931 found the same line-up of forces — the classes in bitter conflict at the bottom while the representatives of each conspire at the top to defend the interests of private property.

Churchill, the organiser of capitalism on a world scale and the bitter enemy of socialism, was very much bound up with the rise of reformism, the doctrine of the peaceful and gradual evolution to socialism. And this paradox can be explained.

The super-profits that Churchill defended by the sacrificing of hundreds of thousands of men's lives, cushioned the capitalists at home and provided the luxury of debate, corruption and compromise for several generations of Labour and trade union leaders.

The corruption and slavery that Churchill defended in India and Africa produced its counterpart in the Labour and trade union bureaucracies, in the political careerism of the MacDonalds, Snowdens and Gaitskells, and hatred of the working class brought into the labour movement by Fabian intellectuals.

The alliance proposed by millionaire Woodrow Wyatt with the Liberals is but a continuation of the old Fabian tradition of isolating the working class from political action by parliamentary alliances carried out over the heads of the workers.

But now the same capitalism that threw up both Churchill and MacDonald is threatened on all sides, both by capitalist rivals and by the international working class.

The very advantages of the early development of British capitalism, which placed it first in the field of colonial expansion, have now turned into a grave liability.

Changes

Having lived for over half a century partly on tribute from its colonies, a big section of the employers has fallen behind in the international race to develop and harness the most advanced productive techniques. With all its limitations and betrayals of leadership, the colonial revolution, now bursting out in Nigeria and the Congo with the working class to the fore, strikes at the heart of a vast section of traditional income of the British ruling class.

The slow disappearance of the British colonial system, coupled with the introduction of automated processes that cut across the craft traditions of skilled workers, undermines all the old patterns of politics that derive from creation of a Labour aristocracy.

Both at home and overseas, blows are struck against British capitalism which weaken not only the Labour right wing but all those political tendencies, from the Stalinists and Pabloites to the "Tribune' group, which flourish in the absence of sharp class conflict.

This conflict manifests itself in contradictory ways.

Fed on government contracts for years, the aircraft workers, who include a big slice of the labour aristocracy, now march against Labour in defence of their jobs.

Youth

Older workers, lifelong Labour voters, now abstain; old age pensioners threaten the right wing with voting Tory unless they act on the pensions increase, while the youth, never a happy hunting ground, moves on to the industrial as well as political scene under a Marxist leadership.

Youth, under the banner of Marxism, can provide the answer of leadership to.

all the problems posed by the break of the old two-party system, as we have seen in the Young Socialists' campaign on behalf of the old age pensioners.

Groups of workers now turning away from the right wing in disgust at their broken election pledges do not have to vote Tory or succumb to racialist ideas. They must be won for socialist policies, in a fight both against the right wing inside the Labour Party, and against the Tories as the open enemies of the working olass.

Realising the temporary nature of the Wilson government, the failure of the Tories to resolve their own internal conflicts poses big problems for the employers.

Needing the right wing in office to weaken the working class and discredit Labour through the economic crisis, the employers still have to prepare for the removal of Labour and the institution of a far more open form of class rule in order to extract a higher rate of profit Employers need to do this if they are to finance their drive for automation, necessary for survival on the world market.

Leyton casts its shadow, therefore, over the Tory as well as the Labour Party. Germany is a chastening example to those Tories who toy with ideas about the 'liberalising' of their party The Nazis purged not only the working-class parties, but also all those capitalist politicians who opposed the most ruthless dictatorship over the working class. •Leyton demands new thinking in the ranks of the Tory party if they are to be able to harness the increase in racialism that showed itself at both Smethwick and Leyton.

For the working class, however, the implications are even deeper.

Social democracy, whose capitalist policies rest upon a conservative layer of the working class, is now breaking up. Racialism, like the labour aristocracy a product of imperialism, is now becoming the new weapon of the employers in dividing and weakening the working class, and is given added strength by the nationalism that was whipped up at the Churchill funeral.

Racialism

All four Labour governments have been distinguished by their defence of colonial possessions conquered by their parliamentary opponents, even though, as in the case of MacDonald, the Prime Minister might be a declared pacifist.

The Attlee government was notorious for its use of troops throughout the Empire. Ex-Stalinist Strachey supervised the head-hunting of Malayan communists as Minister of War for British imperialism, while partition in India was used to set Moslem against Hindu to weaken the movement for genuine independence from British rule.

British armies, recruited from the working class and staffed by the most reactionary middle and upper class elements, have always been trained to treat all men and women with darker skies as animals-or worse.

Over the generations, a century or more of military experience and training in the colonies enters into the consciousness of the working class, and lies dormant ready to be whipped up as overt racialism by the employers when the ruling class needs to divide the working class on a racialist basis.

Smethwick and Leyton was not just a defeat for Walker, it was a blow aimed at the very heart of the working-class movement.

It is because Walker and the rest of the right wing are committed to the defence of capitalist interests that they cannot fight racialism and prevent its growth into fascism, no more than can the "left' Brockway, who, having failed to halt the advance of the racialists in Slough, crawls into the House of Lords-the very heartland of British imperialism and colonial brutality.

Preservation

Fascism and racialism can only be defeated by the working class acting as a united force against the employers—but this is precisely what the employers want Wilson to prevent. And over all the major policy questions that have faced Labour in office, the right wing have tried to do so.

Now, in an attempt to get even closer to the monopolies in order to avoid the fate of German social democracy in 1933, Callaghan's incomes policy is linked to a tightening up of immigration laws, this being prompted by a speech by the Tory leader only a few days before.

Fearing both a repetition of 1931, when even the most modest demands of the right wing could not be conceded by the bankers, and even more, the Nazis completely liquidated German reformism, the right wing hope to preserve their power and privileges by tying the working class to the state, thus dispensing with the need for violent fascist regimes.

Thus hoping to ingratiate itself with the racialist elements within its own ranks and meet the long-term demands of big business, the right wing take another step along the road travelled 32 years ago by German social democracy.

WORLD NEWS ROUND-UP February Th

Longshoremen's strength sapped by piecemeal WITH settlements already reached in some of the ports in the North Atlantic, Now Orleans and the Eastern Gulf, American dockers are being forced by their union leaders to accept an increased wages deal which ties them down to reduction of work gangs and flexibility of labour.

In an attempt to smash the strike earlier, President Johnson asked leaders of the International Longshoremen's Association to break the long-standing tradition of 'one-out all-out' in relation to ports no longer involved in the dispute.

Thomas Gleason, President of the ILA, promised this week to give 'special consideration' for ending the dock strike in North Atlantic ports after settlement was reached in Philadelphia.

Such strike-breaking activities have been carried out by the ILA leadership throughout the strike in an effort to crush the tremendous militancy of the American dockers.

The agreements being reached in the various ports are nothing more than efficiency measures for the employers with a tew extra cents payment ior the dockers in return.

PACKAGE DEAL

In Philadelphia the new settlement provides for a guaranteed year of 1,500 hours, a reduction in working gangs from 22 to 19 and greater flexibility in working rules.

In exchange for this dockers receive an increase of 80 cents an hour. over four years.

The agreements are based on the recommendations of the Wirtz Commission, appointed by President Johnson, which included the reduction of gangs from 20 to 11 and flexibility of labour. Its aims are very much like those of the British port employers' 'new deal'.

Gleason hailed the recommendations as the most glorious contract in the history of the labour movement.

Few dockers will strike agreements him, especially when the reduction of gangs is introduced and, as in the case of Philadelphia, three out of every 22 are probably sent on to the dole queues.

As in the case of the British port employers, the American dock bosses wish to speed up and streamline their docksides in the interests of bigger profits. They have been able to do this with the connivance of the ILA leadership.

British and American dock workers have much in common. Both are fighting against the introduction of new schemes which will mean redundancies, and the all-out treachery of their so-called leaders, who act in the employers" interests.

CUBA'S LARGE DEBT TO COMECON LUBA was becoming a heavy liability without bringing any return, economic or political, a permanent official said in a speech to a meeting of the Comecon last week.

Figures of Cuba's debts to member countries of the Comecon were said to be as follows:

Soviet Union, 250m. dollars; East Germany, 77m. dollars; Czechoslovakia 63m. dollars; Hungary 21m. dollars; Rumania 19m. dollars; Bulgaria 8m. dollars — a total debt of 443 million dollars.

The official is said to have added in his speech: 'All Cuba has produced in the past few years is a bigger and bigger police force, and a bigger and bigger army.'

THE food of full and partial unemployment has swollen to more than a million French workers, according to the economic report of the Le Monde' weekly. A few weeks ago, it was reported that several hundreds of thousands were affected, but this was grossly underestimated at the time and the numbers have been increasing sharply. - The National Institute of Statistics, which provides much of the information on which the Fifth Plan is based, has no reliable information on this grave problem.

'Le Monde', however, estimates that the figure of a million is the lowest possible.

Closures

Each day more jobs are closed down, and more and more workers affected by severe reduction in working hours. The textile and leather industries are the hardest hit, especially in the regions of Vosges and Fourmies and at Roubaix-Tourcoing.

In. December alone, the 140,000 textile workers in the Northern department lost more than a million hours in wages.

Three-quarters of the 200,000 motor industry workers are suffering from reduction of hours. In shipbuilding, hundreds of workers have been laid off at Saint-Nazaire, Nantes and Toulon. It is expected that hundreds more will be laid off in April at Nantes.

Various branches of the metal industry have also been affected, though less seriously.

The enormous loss in wages, not to mention jobs, is the price the working class is being made to pay for the sake of a few months of 'price stability'.

If the deflationary policy is continued, there will be a terrible reduction in living standards, and far more unemployment.

De Gaulle's cry for a return to the gold standard is the wail of despair of the employing class locked in its own contradictions. REPORTER The key to the French crisis is the onslaught of American competition, which is causing grave concern amongst important sections of the West German ruling class as well.

Leading banker, Dr. Hermann Abs, suggested last week-end that Germany should follow France in changing some of her dollar holdings into gold.

Dangerous subsidies

This means going against the agreement the Americans had forced on the Common Market The Americans forced the agreement that it should not be done because of their own balance of payments deficit.

But the French consider the American policy of subsidising exports to be dangerous. It is a far more serious blow to them than Britain's import surcharge.

In fact, with the development of automation, which is the driving force behind the U.S. monopoly onslaught into Europe, the French employing class is unable to maintain its position of resistance American penetration.

The Germans are worried because the crisis which has broken the surface in Britain and is rapidly spreading in France, is pulling them in as well.

American economic penetration into Europe is not just powerful foreign competition. It is the arrival of automation on European shores, exported by the gigantic monopolies who are trying to solve the inextricable social and economic problems it has created in the USA.

The French working class is bearing the brunt of this at the moment.

But there is no indication that the French labour movement, or any section of it, is able to effectively raise demands for nationalization of the monopolies under workers' control as a means of solving the problems of automation.

Demands for compensation for lost hours and for higher dole money are insufficient by themselves. sion to attack is the fear that such an attack would seriously damage their prestige and would set off a chain reaction of world public opinion against them.

The stage is set for some bribe-giving and taking.

Negotiations?

Is it to negotiate a deal that Premier Kosygin is visiting Hanoi via Peking?

The international working class must demand that both the USSR and China give all aid to the Vietcong rebels and refuse all offers of secret diplomatic horse-trading behind the backs of the rebels.

World labour must tell the U.S. imperialists-hands off the Vietcong force and be prepared to wage an all-out struggle against them if they refuse.

bureaucracy up to in North Vietnam? A high-powered delegation headed by Mr. Kosygin, USSR premier, is now engaged in discussion with the Ho Chi Min government of North Vietnam.

The United States-backed South Vietnam government is in a bad way. Vietcong guerrillas are said to control 80 percent of the country by night and 60 per cent by day.

Civilians are at loggerheads with the native military ruling circles who are hard pressed in preserving private property and the 'rule of law' in their rapidly shrinking periphery.

Opposed

The military officers are mostly drawn from Catholic propertied circles and therefore tend to have interests diametrically opposed to the poor peasant masses who, incidentally, are of an indigenous religious faith, namely Buddhism.

The U.S. forces headed by Maxwell Taylor are 'browned off with the local officers who, faced as they are with martial law problems, cannot see eye to eye with Taylor's flirtation with Buddhist leaders and his compromising behaviour towards rebellious coupminded splinter groups.

These contradictions and conflicts are necessarily exploited to the full by anti-United States, pro-Communist elements in this region. The population itself is completely opposed to the policy of the military rulers of South Vietnam, whose rape and plunder in trespassed areas generate more animosity than the tactics of 'peoples's frontism' of the Vietcong forces.

In the context of this situation, the Johnson government in Washington is playing with the idea of using its nuclear fire power to put a swift end to all aid that the Vietcong is receiving from both North Vietnam and Peking.

Subs ready

To give effect to these ideas if necessary, the U.S. government has ordered several Polariscarrying nuclear submarines to be in readiness for an attack in the China Seas.

Peking has indicated that it will not remain idly watching if an attack is launched by U.S. forces on North Vietnam, and there is reason to believe that the Western powers do not regard this warning as mere idle words. A group of young Vietcong freedom fighters with a collection of American arms captured during battles in Vietnam.

The consequences of starting a flare-up in North Vietnam are likely to be very serious, and even the Soviet bureaucracy, in words, has indicated that it will pit its strength on the side of North Vietnam.

However, it is in no mood to give up its comfortable non-combatant position in today's skirmishes and engagements between colonialism and the forces of liberation.

Wherever possible it tries to use its economic and military might to stand aloof and bring about settlements, or, in other words, to postpone the inevitable day when it will be drawn into the cataclysmic collision of the two conflicting systems.

Use missiles?

The Soviet Union has the guns, the rockets and the intercontinental ballistic missiles, but will she use them for the defence of North Vietnam in the event that the U.S. chooses to launch a limited nuclear offensive in South-east Asia?

It must be remembered that it is only the USSR that has the fire power to counter the U.S. nuclear offensive.

Other members of the nuclear club cannot be said to have the nuclear weapons to compare with those of the USA and the Soviet Union.

In such a situation the USSR is in a stronger position to enforce a ceasefire on the part of the Communist forces in Vietnam than are the Chinese.

The United States is being gradually forced to the wall in South Vietnam and a plain and simple evacuation will have the consequence of shattering U.S. prestige globally.

At a time when her prosperity is high as the sky and she has hardly any Korean-type commitments anywhere else in the world, she is not likely to favour a withdrawal from Vietnam without using her great economic potential to do it in such a manner as not to lose face.

The Soviet bureaucracy, like all reactionary agencies, could be bribed to betray the real interests of the Vietnamese people at a time when the U.S. colonialist forces are on the verge of getting kicked out for ever from Vietnam.

Ceasefire?

Parting nuclear shots, if they are inevitable, do not deter the inevitability of their getting kicked out.

such an advantageous situation for the liberation forces, will the USSR, like the supervisor of a duel on behalf of a losing combatant (the USA), stay the fight to agree on ceasefire and maybe another 38th parallel? (the frontier between North and South Korea).

Is it the fear of getting involved alone that would make a leading Soviet bureaucrat fly to Hanoi? Certainly not! Soviet bureaucrats have confidence that they can wriggle out of any situation that requires their involvement.

Soviet leaders also know that the Chinese bureaucrats themselves would think twice before inviting bombardment by poking their fingers into the Vietnam pie.

As things stand, it seems very likely that the U.S. is toying with the idea of making an attack on North Vietnam bases and does not seriously fear the Chinese threats. (This was written before last Sunday's attacks—Bd.)

The Soviet bureaucracy, too, could be expected to neatly wash their hands of the affair as they did in Cuba.

What actually prevents the U.S. from taking a quick deci-

by WHAT is the Soviet ON January 7 the Supreme Court in Madrid heard the case of the three Spanish trade unionists, Francisco Calle, José Cases and Mariano Pascual, for review of the sentences handed down by the Tribunal of Public Order. A few days i |1- treatment and NEXT WEEK-BELGIUM Next week The Newsletter will print the first of ARNOLD's articles on Belgium, where he has been out a two-week investigation into the country's later sentences were confirmed.

The three men were arrested in February 1964 and accused of "illegal association and propaganda' for their efforts to organise free trade unions in Spain. They were condemned to prison terms of 6, 5 and 3 years respectively, and ordered to pay heavy fines. Subsequently the defence filed an anneal appras The court room where the hearing was held was overcrowded, an indication of the tremendous interest which the case has aroused both in Spain Francisco Calle:

6 years, 4 months and abroad. Many outstanding Spanish jurists and lawyers were present.

In a statement which lasted five minutes, the prosecutor limited himself to uphold the ruling of the lower court, without submitting any supporting argument.

Defence lawyers, Mr. Cortezo and Mr. Gayo, vigorously attacked the legality of the tribunal's sentence. Mr. Gayo emphasised •the indefinite character of the grounds on which the ruling was based and torture of students - Portuguese opposition claim CITING inhuman' practices by political police against professors, students and school children, 13 members of the Portuguese democratic opposition have called for the dismissal of Dr. Salazar, the country's Prime Minister, and his government.

In a letter to President Tomás, the leaders express solidarity with students who demonstrated recently against the jailing and ill-treatment of other students.

'SORRY SITUATION' The letter deplores the 'sorry situation created for Portuguese youth and in particular the university crisis, which, as is well known, has been getting dramatically worse since 1962'.

It claims that the government has attempted to 'mould the spirit of the younger generation through the use and abuse of the 'monopoly of information' —press, radio, etc.

Students, the letter adds, have been imprisoned, ill-treated and tortured in political prisons, beaten in the streets, attacked with guns, and hindered from expressing their view publicly. Sympathetic professors have been similarly treated.

'The evil has now spread from the universities to the schools to the point where PETER carrying political situation. _confirmed. a Newsletter Correspondent José Cases:

5 years the complete disregard of the evidence in favour of the defendants.

Citing numerous cases of the Supreme Court, he contended that any rulings which failed to clearly state facts allegedly proven were void.

The lawyer of Calle and Pascual argued that the acts said to have been committed by his clients did not .constitute crime in most European countries.

Mariano Pascual:

3 years, 3 months He examined various procedural violations committed by the Tribunal of Public Order in the preliminary hearing and subsequent proceedings when important evidence was_refused.

The hearing of the Supreme Court lasted 45 minutes. children of 15 and 16 have been imprisoned and accused of crimes against the state?

The letter claims that recently three students had to be taken to hospital after being arrested. One attempted to commit suicide.

Arrests in Catalonia LAST month the Barcelona police arrested four people accused of issuing illegal propaganda in favour of democratic freedom and civil rights for the Catalonian: people. Lawyer Ferrer Mallol and painter Casablancas were among those arrested.

The lawyer Ferrer Mallol was released one day after. He showed clear signs of physical exhaustion as a result of a 10-hour 'interrogation' session by the police. However, he was again arrested on January 15.

The other two detained are Carlos Castellano Llorent and

THE NEWSLETTER of February 6, 1965, in its article on 'Points system-next step in Emerson Plan' said the following in the eleventh paragraph:

When this demand was raised by militant stewards at a recent meeting, sneering reference was made by the convenor to a reduction to 35 and then to 25 hours.' The word 'convenor' should be replaced by 'manager'. We apologise to the convenor concerned.

hot under the collar' 1964 TUC SUPPORT DENSI KAYL

Streatham Tenants' Fight EIGHT hundred militant Midland "Red' husmen brushed aside full-time union officials on the platform and voted overwhelmingly to extend their unofficial strike for better pay and conditions.

This took place last Sunday in Birmingham's Digbeth Civic Hall, at a mass meeting of crews from garages in many parts of the Midlands. The forecast before the meeting'there will be no holding this lot; they are all of one mind and hot under the collar'-proved to be accurate.

Unanimously the bus workers decided to strike again on Saturday and to stage lightning strikes on unannounced dates in the ensuing weeks if their claim is not settled.

In addition they will consider any other measures put forward by the garage comittees, such as overtime bans and work to rule.

To organise this extension of their strike action they have set up a co-ordinating committee with two delegates from each garage.

Rank and File

Union leaders admitted that the decision to form this committee was taken from the ank and file in the body of the hall, and not as a result of leadership from the platform.

Garage delegates insisted that the dates of the mid-week strikes should not be announced. They stressed that this new move would hit industry as well as shoppers.

It is reported that as many as one and a quarter million people travel on the company's buses each day, many of them travelling to and from work, and that a strike on a working day would seriously disrupt production at many factories and offices.

The Transport and General Workers' Union was strongly pressed by delegates to make the strikes official.

Employers have offered a miserable pay increase of 8s. 6d. a week in settlement of all the bus workers' claims, which include a 40-hour week, sickness and bonus payments and a holiday bonus. The busmen want double the sum offered.

Union leaders make no secret of the fact that they have tried to hold back the militancy of the bus workers. One union official said he had been against such action from the start but had been outvoted.

He is also alleged to have said: 'I shall continue to fight against any form of wild-cat strikes or banning of overtime?

Committees

Midland 'Red' workers show their determination to win this fight for long overdue improvements by setting up the co-ordinating committees to organise the future course of the struggle.

Last Saturday - the fourth successive week-end strike-only three garages out of 34 continued to work as usual. Of these three, Shrewsbury garage Rebel councillors oppose Mosley march cillors in Salford, who refused to sign an undertaking to abide by group decisions, narrowly failed to win majority support from the City Party this month.

The row arose when 12 Labour councillors opposed the use of the Public Order Act to stop a threatened march in the city by Mosley supporters. The Labour group on the council decided to invoke the Act to ban all political demonstrations for a period of weeks.

The 'rebels' urged that Salford people should oppose the Mosleyites. Tory : councillors expressed fear about rumoured threats of violence to the marchers.

The Labour group later issued an ultimatum to the 'rebel' councillors to sign an undertaking not to oppose group policy. has decided to strike next Saturday and Banbury and Leicester Sandiacre announced at the mass meeting that they would reconsider their position during the week.

If they decide to give their support, next Saturday's strike will be 100 percent solid.

Lessons of former defeats and sell-outs have been learnt.

Before the Sunday meeting one delegate told The Newsletter: 'We shall get what we're after. There will be no sell-outs this time!

YORKS

BUSMEN CONTINUE MILITANT ACTION FOLLOWING the rejection by the unions of the employers' offer of an increase of 8s. 6d. in basic rates in settlement of all claims, including the claim for a 40-hour week, busmen in Yorkshire are continuing their militant action.

In Dewsbury last Saturday 276 buses and coaches were off the road due to a one-day strike by workers of the Yorkshire Woollen Transport Co.

These workers have threatened to strike every Saturday until the pay deadlock is settled.

The overtime ban operated by men of the West Yorkshire Roadcar Company continues in Leeds and Harrogate.

West Riding 1,500 drivers and conductors of the West Riding Automobile Company are also continuing their overtime ban, which affects Wakefield, Pontefract and Castleford.

While many workers on the Leeds Corporation buses are continuing their overtime ban. only 41 buses were off the road at peak hour on Monday, compared with 100 on Friday, and crews at York have ended their overtime ban.

The weakness of the union leadership can lead to busmen taking isolated, sporadic actions which ultimately lead to demoralisation. What is required now are joint committees from different depots and different companies to plan joint actior.

Three councillors signed it.

A delegate meeting of the City Party has now decided by a small majority to adopt a 'peace formula' under which the 'rebels' must give an undertaking, but have the right of appeal to the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party.

This decision shows dangerous confusion in the City Labour Party. Irrespective of constituțional rights and wrongs, the important issue is how to deal with the Mosleyites.

MOBILIZE

Labour councillors and rank-and-file Party members should mobilize youth and trade unionists to form a defence squad to deal with Mosley marchers. • The Public Order Act was introduced by Chamberlain's government and reinforced by Dye-workers demand action over Denby's DYE workers at the factory of Lister & Co., Bradford, are calling for a 24-hour token strike throughout the dye industry in support of the workers at the Denby Dyeworks (seen above lobbying dyers' union secretary, Leonard Sharp, at last year's Trades Union Congress at Blackpool), who have been on strike for almost 15 months. Lanarkshire workers go back, but not satisfied By Mickie Shaw Company's factory at 1 to return to work after a t convinced that anything would come of further negotiations.

Production was brought to a halt at the factory on Tuesday, February 2, when 150 production workers on the day and night shifts downed tools.

The men, members of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, are incensed by what they consider to be an attempt by the management to restrict trade union activity in the factory• A shop steward explained that on January 7 the men bad stopped work when the management insisted that supervisors with stop watches should carry out checks on the production line.

NEGOTIATIONS

On that occasion an agreement was reached between management and AEU representatives that 14 days should be set aside for negotiations.

One hour each day was to be taken up in hammering out a policy acceptable to both sides.

A few years ago it took a Henry Brooke.

On both occasions the excuse was that it would be a safeguard against racialist groups, and yet the Act makes no specific reference to racialism.

Its real purpose has always been against the labour movement. Under the last Labour government too, the Act was invoked in the Metropolitan Police area in 1949 following clashes at fascist demonstrations in Hackney.

In this way the London Trades Council May Day march was banned and mounted police went into action against London trade unionists who attempted to march.

Socialists must oppose any legislation or bans which threaten to interfere with the rights of labour organisations. We stand for working class organised action against the Mosleyites. Instead of invoking the Public Order Act we must demand its repeal.

When the Denby's strike began, workers at Listers wanted to come ouț in support but a union official is alleged to have told them that it would be an 'injustice' as the Lister's management had always 'played the game' Now, however, the shop steward, Billy. Delaney, says that the men are clamouring for action. the giant Caterpillar Traction 'annochside, Lanarkshire, voted hree-day strike, few men were ten-week strike to secure trade union recognition in the factory.

Workers interviewed by The Newsletter felt strongly that the convenor should work full time in that post.

They did not want him to be restricted by his supervisor. If this took place workers would only be able to take up their grievances with the convenor if the supervisor agreed.

TIME RATES

The workers also explained that there is no piece-work or production bonus, the men are paid on time rates.

On the assembly line much of the work is reported to be semi-skilled although time - served men are employed on the line. They are engaged at a rate of £14 per week.

The men claim that according to the management it is possible to reach the top rate of approximately f15 in three months. In fact, the men say it is often as long as 12 months before the top rate is reached.

One worker said he had been on the job for seven months and still did not receive the top rate.

As in other sections of the engineering industry, the main concern of union leaders and full-time officials was how quickly they could get the men back to work to enable a deal with the employers to take place.

MEETING

On Thursday morning, Mr. Jack Service, District Organiser of the AEU, addressed a mass meeting of Caterpillar workers to get them to return to work on the basis of a temporary agreement reached with the management on the disputed issues.

The meeting was stormy and although it was reported that there was finally a unanimous vote for a return to work, many of the men standing around in groups after the meeting were not at all convinced that any good would come of further negotiations.

It is no use relying on fulltime union officials to fight for trade union rights. The only way in which the workers at the Caterpillar factory can organise is by fighting for 100 per cent trade union membership within the factory and building up a strong factory committee.

It is felt throughout the trade that nothing has been done by the union to support Denby's men,' said Delaney.

There is to be a meeting of men in the dyeing and finishing departments at Listers this week to demand that the executive of the National Union of Dyers, Bleachers and Textile Workers take action.

Staggered strikes by platers shipyards in the lower reaches of the Clyde have refused to accept the 3d. an hour increase offered by the employers. They are demanding that this be stepped up, although 3d. has been accepted by the other trades in the yards.

The platers say they will continue to hold staggered one-day strikes each week until they get a better offer from the employers.

This militant stand by the platers is worrying the employers. Mr. John Belch, a director of Ferguson's shipyard has said: 'If we offer them (the platers) another halfpenny we would open the floodgates and there would be cries of 'bad faith' from those trades who have accepted the 3d. We just cannot do it. I think 3d. is a very fair offer.' OVERTIME BAN To secure an improvement on the 3d. increase offered by the employers, the platers came out on strike on Wednesday, January 27 and banned overtime.

This week platers at Lithgow's Kingston Yard, Port Glasgow, and Ferguson Brothers, stopped work on Tuesday. At other yards, platers were to stop work for a day later in the week.

The employers have threatened that if the platers continue the stoppage of work, they will close the yards on the days the platers do not report for work.

Included in the agreement offering the 3d. an hour increase, which has been accepted by other trades as part of a two-year contract, is a 'no strike' assurance.

Remote control mining in Yorkshire AN automatic machine—a prototype of the Collins Miner —is to be installed in Rothwell Colliery, near Leeds.

This machine is operated from a cab on the underground roadway. It can bore 100 yards into the coal face, load the coal onto the conveyor and return to its original position ready to make another cut.

It can bore holes 6 ft. wide in a 2 ft. 8 in. seam. Coal Board officials plan that the machine will do two cuts per shift, using only five men to operate it.

Registered at the G.P.O. as a newspaper 186 pam His Sure, London, S.H. 4 180 Clapham Hush Street, London, S. WA

Secretary, Streatham Tenants' and Residents' Association 'EVICTION TODAY?

window at 104 Sternhold asks this question of passers-by and anyone interested in the property.

It annoys the landlord, who wishes to sell. Other people have suggested that the notice and the pickets were quite unnecessary as the tenants 'enjoy the protection afforded by the provisions of the Protection from Eviction Act 1964'.

Now the Deputy Commissioner of Police has indicated that the police will 'perhaps' report any infringement of this law (which makes it an offence to evict tenants without a court order).

But it will be up to the tenant, or perhaps the local authority, to take proceedings in a civil court.

The excuse is that the policeman might not know whether he is looking at a luxury dwelling rated at f400 a year, or business premises, or an ordinary home from which a family had been evicted.

This only goes to show that when the Labour government does put through a measure which is contrary to the interests of big business and the landlords, then the legal and executive side of the state machine will seize up and fail to function.

The only way to prevent landlords taking advantage of this state of affairs is for residents to enforce the law themselves through tenants' associations with up-to-date legal knowledge.

LEGAL ADVICE

The National Association of Tenants and Residents legal advice and practical help forming Streatham Association, that Charles Swole and his family were able to stay in their flat in Sternhold Avenue.

Wandsworth Borough Council Housing Committee have now, after much correspondence, deputations and petitions, agreed to give the matter further consideration.

The housing situation gives a concrete and massive illustration of the contradictions of our system.

Travelling in South London from the Elephant and Castle out to Croydon in Surrey, we see gigantic towering blocks of empty offices, the modern "prestige buildings or speculator's follies.

In between them lie the rows of overcrowded and unhealthy tenements which house the creators of all this wealth-the building labourers, transport and factory workers, clerks and dockers. Become a regular subscriber to IN the fight for socialism, The Newsletter' is playing a vital role. Do you get it regularly? Don't leave it to the chance encounter, fill in this form and send it to:

Subscription Department, The Newsletter, 186a Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4.

8s. 6d. for 12 issues Name Address large placard in the upper Avenue, Streatham, London, In the property market there are numerous fields of investment in which a man can speculate.

He can buy and sell while prices rise, so that antique houses now fetch ten times their original selling price. Or he can let flatlets, applying a roughand-ready child tax of fl per head per week, or let furnished rooms to students.

Desperate tenants rush in without legal agreements, and often spend their money on decorations as well as rent.

HARASS

Then, it the owner wants to make a change, he can give notice and begin to harass the occupants.

"Take Advice before you Act' it says on the recent notice to landlords and tenants, but anyone taking this seriously will find it can • become one long trail. There is the Citizen's Advice Bureau, the town hall, the Law Society's Legal Aid Office, or the sanitary inspector or the Rent Tribunal.

In the Unhappy Families Game, there always seems to be some other body to whom you should have gone, and the commonest phrase you hear is: I'm afraid there's not much we can do?

Solicitors seem keen to help, but the law is really not for the tenants, but the landlords.

Agreements generally include a clause for the tenant about 'quiet enjoyment' of the premises, but 'quiet enjoyment' is a flexible term, less easily measured and counted than £6 10s. a week.

Negotiations

over concrete workers' rate THREE hundred men employed by Concrete (Scotland) Ltd., of Falkirk, received dismissal notices on February 3, after being on strike for ten days.

They claimed that their rate of pay had been cut by 93d., but the management stated that originally only 14 men were affected and they were asking excessively high rates of pay for the job.

Official

Strikers endeavoured to obtain official recognition for the strike from the Transport and General Workers' Union. At a meeting in Falkirk on Tuesday, February 2 they called for more union action and claimed that nothing had been done since the strike began.

When the union did intervene, and official recognition of the strike became a possibility, the management agreed with union officials to reinstate the men at the rates prevailing before the dispute, so that negotiations could begin.

Painters vin

Is. rise A SHORT, sharp strike of painters working on the hotel at the Piccadilly Plaza building site in Manchester won them their full demand of Is. an hour increase in pay. The men stopped work on Friday and by Monday they had received a guarantee that the bonus would be paid.