The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 390

the Tory Aubrey Jones in collaboration with George Brown's Department ot Economic Affairs.

Taken together with the changes of last Autumn, two of which, the increases in national insurance contributions and the increase in PAYE income tax, are now being felt by working-class families, the Budget represents a cut in real wages.

A number of deflationary measures, together with the cancellation of the TSR2, will produce unemployment and help to provide industry with a more 'mobile' labour force.

Callaghan has obviously paid attention to those business interests who pointed to the big risks in too heavy a dose of deflation. But purchase tax has not been increased even on luxury items, though power to vary rates at-short notice remains.

Through the Capital Gains Tax and the Corporation Tax, the impression is created that the Budget knocks the rich.

The very fact that the Chancellor expects the Capital Gains Tax to bring in f20 million in the first five years gives an idea of what is left in the hands of a relatively small number of rich people since the tax takes only 30 per cent of their gains.

Not socialist Their hoards in the past decade have been fabulous. What Callaghan does is to admit their right to these hauls on condition that they make a contribution to the national revenue, which is still at a lower rate than the standard rate of income tax.

The Capital Gains Tax, which is used by a number of other countries, including the USA, is no more a socialist tax than the income tax.

It does not, in any sense, prepare to expropriate big property owners. It only makes for greater equality in taxation between different sorts of capitalists.

As for the Corporation Tax, Callaghan describes it as a 'business tax incentive'. It amounts, in fact, to a reduction in profits tax.

The cessation in income tax concessions on entertainments and motor cars also pays lip-service to the idea of equality of sacrifice. Within the context of the tremendous inequalities of capitalism, these measures are quite phoney.

Skilful

There is a considerable difference between business firms which can no longer pass part of the cost of lavish entertainment on to the taxpayer, and the old age pensioner who now sees part of the recent increase going on higher prices for beer and cigarettes and all things whose prices have been going up in recent months.

The Budget changes have been skilfully presented to enable the government to oppose wage increases in the months ahead by claiming the measures taken were against the rich.

They will assist capitalism to face its crisis by holding down wages increasing the cost of living, cutting consumption and thus, they hope, increasing exports.

The Budget should not be isolated from the whole policy of the Wilson government since it came to power.

Some steps have had to be taken in the interests of business efficiency to begin a reform of the tax structure.

The working class is too strong to be taken on openly at this stage. If it can be offered no concessions or improvements, it still has to be approached with caution. As for the millionaires, monopolists and bankers, whatever some of their hot-headed representatives may say, they must be reassured.

Mr. Callaghan has certainly gone out of his way to do just that.

B/OSL FILE passed - by NALSO Correspondent AT their annual conference last week, the National Association of Labour Student Organisations passed a number of resolutions criticising the policies of the Labour government, calling for a programme of socialist nationalization and an end to the bans and proscriptions of working-class organisations at present operated by the Labour Party.

The main resolutions condemned the reactionary acti vity of the Home Office under Sir Frank Soskice, and deplored the anti-working-class attitude of the Labour government in its support of the glorification of Sir Winston Churchill.

Vietcong supported It deplored the actions of Wilson and Stewart, the oreign secretary, m supporl g the United States nolicv o aggression in Vietnam, and supported wholeheartedly the struggle of the Vietcong and the National Liberation Front to gain independence.

(Delegates strengthened their stand when they made North Vietnam's leader, Ho Chi Minh, an honorary president of NALSO.)

It strongly attacked Reg Underhill, the Labour Party Youth Officer, and Harold Simms, Yorkshire Regional Youth Officer, for their vicious witch-hunting activities in connection with the Young Socialists and Sheffield Labour Society (see last week's Newsletter).

Full support was given to Dr. Victor Allen and the three Nigerian Socialists in their fight against working-class opThe New A significant event trade union movement. ery day that the government of Harold Wilson is allowed to continue discredits the labour movement. In its attitude towards Vietnam it enjoys the full support of the Tories.

ALSO has indeed placed the blame where it rightfully belongs. It must now throw its full weight behind the struggle to change the policy of the Labour Party before it is too late. ' adopting Ho Chi Minh as its honorary president for the coming year, the Labour students have openly defied the right-wing witch-hunters at Transport House. They are following closely on the heels of the Young Socialists who long ago refused to Callaghan's crisis budget Ho Chi Minh made honorary president of NALSO pression in Nigeria. Conference also decided to support the campaign being conducted on their behalf by students of Leeds University.

A further resolution also recommended that the activities of Labour students should be directed mainly to the labour movement in general including the Labour Party, trade union movement and Young Socialists.

An emergency resolution which called for the NEC of the Labour Party to call a national conference, so that there can be full discussion of the Labour government's policies with the rank and file, was narrowly defeated.

Divided vote

THIS WEEK Page Page Page The right wing of the Labour Party has no organised support in most universities, but as the class struggle intensifies the right wing will make a bid for the control of the organised Labour students, employing the negative and destructive tactics used in the witch-hunt of the Young Socialists.

Win support

Thus the fight put up by NALSO against all bans and proscriptions must be fought through to the end, all the time winning support from politically conscious students as well as from the wider labour movement. Wilson-de Gaulle entente Trotsky confronts scribes Pacifism, Revisionism and the Negro Question Attack on Cowley strikers The seamen's struggle on Vietnam UN April 1, Labour Foreign Secretary Stewart received the highest paeans of praise from the Tories after opening the debate on the war in Vietnam. He reaffirmed complete support for the American counter-revolutionary war, and, as "The Times' put it, gave an 'almost clinically exact justification and defence of American policy in Vietnam'.

To quote from the Parliamentary record:

'Sir Alec Douglas-Home said that the House was immensely grateful to Mr. Stewart for the manner and the matter of his speech.... He found himself agreeing with almost everything that Mr. Stewart said....

'Sir Robert Cary (Conservative) said he wished to add his praise to the Foreign Secretary for his speech. When there was a fusion emerging between both Front Benches on the conduct of foreign policy, there was greater hope for the future' COMPLIMENTED Stewart was similarly comimented from the far right the Tories:

'Sir Tufton Beamish (Conservative) said that so lóng as the Foreign Secretary continued on these lines he would have the support of the Opposition. He himself had always been a strong believer in a bi-partisan foreign policy. He welcomed the fact that many aspects of foreign and defence policy were broadly along the lines on which the previous government conducted them.' The Tories recognise very well that the Labour government has sold out completely to the service of imperialism, and is prepared to go the whole hog in defending the bloody repressions and brutal experiments with chemical warfare which are being used in an attempt to beat the workers and peasants of Vietnam into submission.

They welcome, too, the sickly hypocrisy of Mr. Stewart's peroration in the House, when he ended his justification of this war with this passage:

It is the combination of imagination and resolution that can bring us up the long road that leads from a world disorganised, excessive in armaments and defective in prosperity, to a world so organised that the creative energies of man can leap forward to exalting the welfare of nations and the dignity of human life?

[sic] (Cheers).

This humbug was nicely unded off by Sir Alec Douglasame, who likes things repeated ce and simply; he pointed out:

'The critics of the United States should remember that Britain was in precisely the same position in Malaysia as the Americans were in Vietnam.' He might have added that there are 50,000 British troops in Malaysia, more than twice the U.S. force in Vietnam, all to assert the dignity of man.

Throughout the labour movement, opposition to the Vietnam Just two of the many trade union and Labour Party branches to join the tremendous opposition to the Vietnam war and anger at the Labour government's support for U.S.

action are the Brixton (London)

G/S branch of the ABU and the

EMPLOYERS at the Southall, Middlesex, factory of Duratube, which makes cables for the GPO, have been forced to recognise the union organisation in the factory and reinstate 57 men sacked recently.

There have been three unsuccessful attempts to form a union in the firm since 1946. But this time the men, the majority of them Indians, began organising and were on their way to 100 per cent membership when two men were sacked.

Fifty-seven members of the Transport and General Workers' Union struck, and were sent their cards. The strike was not declared official by the same men who handled the Rockware and Woolf strikes, also in Southall, but the immigrant workers, by their perseverance, have won a victory.

Meanwhile, at Rockware, officials told 200 men at a recent, stormy meeting that the management will only take back 40 of those sacked from the sorting room a month ago.

The employers had originally agreed to take back all the men. But it was reported, they had changed their minds, and may announce other 'redundancies' from other sections.

The immigrant workers were highly critical of local TGWU officials at the meeting.

HAT a refreshing contrast was the annual conference of the National Association of Labour Student Organisations to the wishy-washy stand taken by fake-left members of Parliament towards the war in Vietnam.

›ung students, many of whom are closely related to leading members of the Labour Party, declared unequivocal ly their support for the struggle of the Vietnamese people against the forces of American imperialism. They condemned in forthright terms the support which the Wilson government provides for the State Department in Washington.

ere is a lead which will have the support of all serious members of the Labour and

Supporters of the paper 'Young Guard' were divided on this question, some of them voting with the right against the resolution because it was very similar to demands put forward by the Young Socialists and its paper 'Keep Left.

If the Labour Party intends to form a new Young Socialists based on University students who are completely subservient to Transport House, they are going to find themselves with a real fight on their hands.

sletter accept the bulldozing policies adopted by such political bankrupts as Reg Underhill, Assistant National Agent.

leir conference was, in fact, a continuation of the struggle of the Young Socialists. It recognises that young people can no longer politically work within the stultifying atmosphere created by the right wing.

le great success of the Young Socialists has certainly inspired the Labour students.

The way it not only open to build a mass Young Socialist organisation but also the largest Labour student organisation possibly in Europe.

other factor of great importance for the developSEVEN AN ENE with an axe il attack' on a group Socialist dance in ment of students has been the rebellious attitude of American students against the Johnson administration.

The recent struggles on the campuses of the large universities in the United States has certainly inspired worldwide repercussions amongst students.

le youth are now treading firmly along the road to the coming revolution within the major capitalist countries.

It is an inspiring experience which will have repercuscussions far beyond what the delegates to the NALSO conference may have anticipated.

le Newsletter wishes NALSO every success in its struggle with the Labour Party bureaucracy. -old Roy Smith was hit over the head of West Indian youths leaving a Young North Kensington Mr. Oliver Nugent a 'particularly vicious and unprovoked (prosecuting) told the West London court last week.

Mr. Nugent said it would be doubtful if the boy would ever be fit to give evidence.

Before the court was Thomas Richard Hughes, 24-year-old fitter, charged with wounding Roy Smith with intent to murder him.

Hughes was committed in custody to the Old Bailey for trial. He pleaded not guilty and reserved his defence.

Told by police who visited his home that he was believed to have been concerned in the attack Hughes is alleged to have said:

'You know I did him. Ill the do him again. I hope - dies. If I find out who grassed, I'd kill them.' Detective-Inspector Mooney told the court that Hughes 'went wild' when he and other officers went to arrest Hughes.

Hughes pushed several policemen, jumped on to a bed and opened a window. He was eventually held down, handcuffed and dragged out of the house.

Hyde Park Ward Labour Party (Leeds). Resolutions passed have been sent to the ABU conference and Leeds NW Division Labour Party.

war is mounting, and anger is growing against the 100 per cent commitment of the Labour government to imperialist policies. The so-called 'left' of the Parliamentary Labour Party (Harold Wilson was one of these until two years ago!) is playing a reactionary role in trying to head off this opposition.

'Left' Labour MPs are teaming up the Parliamentary Party to lay down 'conditions' for continued support to U.S.

policy.

Apparently they would agree to not using poison gas and to silencing General Maxwell Taylor, and going back to the 'normal' bloody repressions of the last ten years. This was the meaning of Silverman's recent speech about the bombings going beyond what he and his friends were earlier prepared to 'tolerate'.

MODERATE SPEECH Michael Foot, after what "The Guardian' called an unusual degree of silence in the controversy over Vietnam', made a speech which 'is understood to have been moderate in tone'. His speech was summed up by the 'Daily Telegraph' in this way:

While maintaining general support of U.S. policy, the government should make it clear in the debate that there are limits to this, and should assert its right to consultation.' (Our emphasis).

Zilliacus is said to have put rward the most left-wing views, intinued back col. 3

Page AP

THIS year's Budget expresses, in a concentrated form, the nature of the Labour government. It will stand as an epitaph on reformism in Britain.

From its inception, the Wilson government, elected by a working class looking for real improvement after 13 years of Toryism, has shown itself to be the servant of the monopolists and bankers.

At their behest, Callaghan's autumn Budget carried through measures which had the effect of increasing the cost of living. Even before his second Budget, all workers, from the beginning of this month, began paying higher National Insurance contributions and many will be paying higher PAYE income tax as well.

The arms bill continues to rise so that even "The Times' wondered the other day whether some cuts could not be made there. In fact the preservation of the stake of British capital round the world makes this impossible. Indeed, the servility of the Labour government to U.S. policy has surprised many foreign newsmen who had not been alerted to the real nature of social-democracy in Britain.

All commentators are agreed that the Budget must impose immediate cuts in home consumption by higher indirect taxes. In effect that means a cut in real wages.

- The standard of living built up during the boom now proves to be incompatible with the declining world position of British capitalism.

Britain is now heavily in the red to foreign banks and the International Monetary Fund. Sterling is under constant daily pressure from foreign and British speculators who see devaluation as the next step if other government measures fail. The gold and foreign exchange reserves are down below the safety level. Only a rapid growth in exports could prevent another big balance of payments deficit this year.

Not only is British capitalism deeply in debt, but the signs are that it will have to borrow more soon.

Creditors want to be sure that their money will be safe. They look to the Labour government to do that by disciplining the working class. A stiff Budget, aimed to cut spending by consumers, is only the first step here.

As Budget day approached, however, business showed signs of anxiety, not that the Labour Chancellor could make serious inroads into its profits but rather that if deflation went too far it could produce a serious recession. This, after all, was the result of Selwyn Lloyd's Budget in 1962.

There were also serious doubts about the idea that exports could be increased by cutting down home demand. There is no mechanism to make certain that goods not sold at home are sold abroad.

In industries which are highly mechanised, competitive sales abroad cannot be sustained unless there is a large volume of output, a great part of which has to be sold at home. Moreover, in all markets, competition is becoming ever sharper and British industry, weighed down with a higher proportion of obsolete equipment than its rivals, is at a disadvantage.

Some right-wing Labourites have not woken up to the real facts about the position of British capitalism, or they are trying to conceal them. This is shown, for instance, in the discussion of the Budget in the April issue of 'Socialist Commentary'. The editorial in this journal says:

"The government has absolutely no political alternative but to follow an expansionist policy.

Any radical government can only survive by fulfilling the hopes it has quickened; our present government stands or falls by whether it can redeem its election pledges to carry out a far-reaching social programme based, not on increased taxation Epitaph on reformism but on a high rate of growth?

Edmund Dell, a right-wing MP, riting in the same issue, takes le same line and includes the atement:

"The real question against the second Callaghan Budget is whether it will improve or damage the prospects for increasing exports' These people are right in seeing that the Wilson government will be judged by whether it can give the electors what they voted for. So far, however, the policy actually being carried out is quite different from that which was presented to the electorate.

Everybody knows that the government is at the mercy of British and foreign capital and especially the foreign bankers. It is no secret, the press says it every day and has done ever since the government took office. Unless the 'Socialist Commentary' people are blind and deaf they must know it too.

Off f If they have underestimated the seriousness of the crisis facing Britain they have made a serious mistake. The crisis now excludes 'expansionist policy' and 'a far-reaching social programme'. The bankers will have none of it.

Perhaps 'Socialist Commentary' represents a group in the right wing which • is closer to George Brown than to the Chancellor. Edmund Dell is fulsome in his praise of Brown.

Callaghan has capitulated to the City of London. His policy is first and foremost to save sterling. That policy is incompatible with expansion and with honouring election pledges. The expansionists, looking more to industry than to finance, hope to avoid deflation: in that case they must run the risk of a weakening of sterling which would culminate in devaluation.

SOVIET historians are continually obliged to re-write historv to meet changes in the political line or in political personnel. Generally they bow this with docility.

In this way since the death OI Stalin, and particularly since the 20th Congress, Stalin has tended to be purely and simply blotted out of Soviet history: since the unfortunate efforts of Burjalov, chief editor of 'Questions of History, suppressed in 1956 for being a little too far inclined towards the real politics of the Bolshevik leaders in Spring 1917, no historian has been prepared to undertake an examination of delicate questions.

Thus Krassnikov, the •HE collapse of the power system, based on the predominance of the United States of America, is what lies behind Mr. Wilson's trip to Paris.

From the beginning of capitalism until the First World War Britain was the strongest capitalist power, dominating the world market.

British capital financed industry all over the world, sterling was accepted everywhere as the universal currency, and the British Navy ruled the waves— to ensure that nothing should interfere with this state of affairs.

The First World War, however, gravely weakened the economies of Britain and of all the European states. Millions of pounds worth of equipment was blown to pieces monopoly of production of computers and other automated equipment indispensable for the development of any modern industry.

But this expansion of United States imperialism has led, in the long run, to the concentration and deepening of the contradictions in the capitalist system. It alone has to undertake the defence of the whole world imperialist system and it alone has to bear all the strain of the weaknesses of the other capitalist systems that it has absorbed.

This, in turn, has led the United States into the same kind of dead-end reached by the European imperialist states at the end of the First World War.

If the system is to survive, the problem of disciplining the working class can no longer be avoided-but this task for the United States ruling class is immeasurably greater than it was for the British or French bourgeoisie in 1918. For the American imperialists the problem is to confront the working class all

THE bestial murder Page

In business circles, among economists and the right-wing intellectuals in the Labour Party, remains the fond hope that a way can be found between deflation and devaluation. Nothing has so far turned up but a few hopeful phrases about 're-deployment of resources'.

It could be, of course, that by emphasising the political need for expansion, such people hope to obtain more lenient treatment from the American and other bankers.

What they will say is that unless they get more loans on favourable terms they will have to face a strong and militant working class. In the big class battles which will then take place the very survival of capitalism in Britain will be at stake, with dangerous consequences for other capitalist countries too.

In the meantime there will be no relaxation of the pressure on the working class. The contradiction between / the promises held out by the Labour leaders before the election and what they are actually obliged to do will become more apparent.

PARALLELED

Dell's point about exports, already quoted, is paralleled by every article on the Budget which has appeared in the capitalist press before Budget day.

"The Statist' says, for instance, that:

"The crux of the operation, and also the touchstone by which it will be judged, must be its ability to swing resources to the export market.?

But the people who will be judging it in these terms are the capitalists and bankers, not the working class who will be called upon to make the sacrifices.

The Budget is presented as a national question, but it is really a class question.

The job of the Budget is, in fact, to provide the state and the employers with means to face their problems at the expense of the workers.

Consumption has to be reduced so that more commodities can be exported and more resources can go into industrial re-equipment. Both these operations are very profitable for the capitalists. The workers pay more for a whole range of goods in the shops either because they are taxed at a higher rate or because increased costs are passed on to them.

PROFITS

But the exporters make profits (though they may be a little less than if the same goods were sold in the home market) and the new investment which firms undertake increases the value of their assets, bringing capital gains to shareholders and increased profits in the future.

In short, the working class is being asked to work harder for less in order that employers shall be able to improve and enlarge the means of production which they own. In the course of this many workers will become redundant and the unemployment rate will rise: the franker advocates of capitalism admit that this is desirable.

A Budget designed to facilitate these changes is one opposed to the interests of the working class. It shows that the hope of big social reforms, still clung to by 'Socialist Commentary' and others, is dead. It serves to expose the real role of the Labour leaders as loyal servants of capitalism.

By TOM {EMI and never replaced, machinery and plant was run at full speed without thought of replacement, in the four years that British and German capitalism fought for world domination.

Run-down At the end of the war, the productive plant in these countries was not renewed. This would have meant an offensive on the working class, which the ruling class was too weak to undertake. Consequently, the run-down on productive plant was continued, in order to produce an artificial boom.

Although this enabled the bourgeoisie to remain in power, it weakened yet further the economies of the European states.

The economy of the United States was also weakened by the war, but to a far smaller extent. The USA had only intervened in the war towards the end, and its main role had been that of supplying goods to the European armies.

The inter-war years saw the rise of the United States as the dominant power in world capitalism. The U.S. Navy and merchant marine grew more than Il times in the period immediately following the world war, and U.S. investment throughout the world expanded similarly. -But this great expansion of American capitalism did not represent an expansion of the capitalist system. The enormous growth in United States shipping, for example, was accompanied by a decline in world trade. Trotsky confronts Soviet scribes Academicians still dodge issues of Party history of a recent biography of S. Kirov, was so frightened at the prospect of having to say something about the latter's assassination that he merely reproduced the passage concerning this affair from Khrushchev's speech at the 22nd Congress and added not a word to it.

A recent huge anthology, 2,000 pages long, of texts concerning the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union managed not to quote a single text by Stalin, even on the period of the Second World War, which was illustrated by three texts... one by Lenin, one an extract from a resolution of the Central Committee of June 29, 1941, and the other a quotation from Khrushchev. It is therefore not surprising that the period 19451953 was dealt with in 28 pages while the years 1953-1962 took 750!

The basic problem is posed by the treatment of the oppositionists and particularly of Trotsky. The latest edition of the 'Encyclopaedic Dictionary', in two volumes, edited by professors Vvedensky, Gerchberg, Petrov, Struve and Chaumyan, contains not the tiniest note on Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin or Piatakov.

It contains nothing on Trotsky either, but this is made up for with a long note on Trotskyism. Here the Soviet reader is told that:

"Trotskyism is a current hostile to Leninism inside the working class movement, a current which hides its petty-bourgeois and opportunist nature behind "left" phrases;

it is a variety of Menshevism in Russia and of centrism in the international arena. ..?

So our professors resume the definition of Trotskyism from before the Moscow Trials.

In 'For a Bolshevik Education' (March 3, 1937) Stalin explained that in fact:

'In the some Imperialism meant that capitalism had expanded as far as it could go: to encompass the whole world. The expansion of United States capitalism could only take place at the expense of European capitalism.

The only European capitalist power to undertake the replacement of the productive plant destroyed in the First World War was Germany. In order to impose the suffering on the working class that this involved, German capitalism had to resort to the ruthlessness of fascism.

In fact, the re-equipped industry of Germany was then smashed by the combined forces of French, British and American capitalism, in alliance with the USSR, in the Second World War.

The end of the Second World War left the capitalist system in an even more critical state than it had been in 1918.

Marshall aid European capitalist states could only be maintained at all by an enormous inflow of credit from the United States-the so-called Marshall aid. expand yet further until it alone American capitalism nad encompassed the whole world outside the USSR and the workers' states. The defence of the whole capitalist system was in the hands of the United States.

Since 1945, the system has weakened still more. Because of continuous colonial wars and the fear of the militant working eight years ago, Trotskyism was a political, anti-Leninist, and as such a deeply mistaken current inside the working class, but nevertheless a political current. ... The Trotskyism of our days is not a political current in the working class, but a gang, without principles or ideology, of saboteurs, agents of diversion, informers, spies, assassins, etc.

To this the authors add:

"The little groups of Trotskyists which exist in various countries (England, Argentina, USA, France, Japan, etc.) continue their anti-Soviet and disruptive work. In 1938 various Trotskyist groups set up … an international organisation which they called the Fourth International!

Such is the admitted "truth' today. But some can go even rther. Thus, a vast biography Lenin, edited by a commission which included Ilyichev, deviates from the official leadership's version of the struggle against the armed counter-revolution, which was presented as follows in the latest version of the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union:

'The Central Committee, led by Lenin, resolved all the basic problems of the war, drew up the strategic plans, and took measures to ensure the execution of military operations, to form and make use of the reserves, and to mobilise and distribute resources Lenin's new biographers write:

'The President of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic at that time was Trotsky!

It is, of course, necessary for them to mitigate the impression such a statement makes on the reader. To do this our authors forthwith call upon Gorki, the man who wrote at the time of the class at home, the French bourgeoisie remained completely unable to carry out any of the renewal of industrial plant necessary since 19181 By 1958, this brought the system to complete bankruptey and only the betrayals of Stalinism weakened the working class sufficiently to enable the French bourgeoisie to survive with the introduction of a 'strong' regime.

De Gaulle's role was to bring an end to the colonial wars and settle accounts with the militant workers at home.

Capitalist 'order' De Gaulle has been able to do this to an extent. But it would be wrong to see his success in this sphere as a result of any strength in French capitalism. It has merely given some sort of 'order' to its weakness: the real problems remain, the rebuilding of the country's productive resources.

In Britain, the situation was similar, for different reasons. Here too, the ruling class had failed to renew and re-equip industry. A large number of capitalists in Britain became entirely parasitic, relying entirely on the super-profits from overseas investments to make up for the real poverty and backwardness of industry at home.

This process was to make a whole section of the British capitalist class entirely incapable even of thinking of industrial renewal in Britain.

October revolution:

'Lenin and his associates believe any crime to be permissible ... Lenin is not an all-powerful miracle-worker but a cynical conjuror who cares for neither the honour nor the life of the proletariat!' Ilyichev and his collaborators ake use of a passage from his collections of Lenin:

'While doing justice to his talents as an organiser, Lenin never considered Trotsky as a real Bolshevik, he disapproved of his Bonapartist ways and his presumption. Gorki, recalling his discussions with Lenin, wrote:

"I was very surprised at the deep esteem in which Lenin held L. D. Trotsky's organisational qualities. Lenin observed my astonishment:

'Yes, 1 know, quite a few lies are going around about my relations with him. But what is—is, and what is not is not, that I know also. He knew how to organise military specialists.' He was quiet for a moment d then added more softly d sadly: 'And yet he is not one of ours! He is with us, but he is not one of ours. He is ambitious. He has something bad in him... something of Lasalle. "

What the authors do not say is that this passage-while a step forward from the traditional judgements or just plain silencewas added by Gorki to his recollections 6 years after the first edition, in which the text read as follows:

'Show me another man capable of organising in one year an almost exemplary army " and furthermore of winning over the sympathy of the mil litary specialists. We have this man.

We have everything. And At the same time, the British capitalists maintained some kind of class equilibrium at home by granting concessions to the working class. But this was achieved only on the basis of overseas super-profits combined with those resources that should have been devoted to the renewal of industrial plant!

0, today, tar from being two 'robust' (to use Mr.

Wilson's favourite expression)

and dynamic powers, capitalist Britain and France are, in fact, tottering on the verge of complete bankruptey.

This situation has come to a head at this time because of the critical state of United States imperialism itself.

Since the Second World War, the only real industrial development carried out anywhere the capitalist world has been by United States capital. The new industries of Germany, Italy and Japan, as well as the few dynamic sectors of French and British industry, are, in fact, based on American capital.

Virtual monopoly Ford has works not "only in Detroit, but also in Dagenham, Halewood (Britain); Cologne (Germany); Genk (Belgium), and has assembly plants in many other countries of Africa and Asia. American finance companies and banks control the destinies of millions of men on all five continents.

As well as this, United States capital has a virtual world there will be miracles worked!

In any case silence about Trotsky seems to be more and more difficult to maintain. Moreover it seems that the army has a role to play in breaking that silence. The 'Ministry of Defence Publications' have just published the selected works of Tukhachevsky (with certain cuts!), and recollections about Yakir, Uborevich, Eideman, Putna, Rasskolnikov (together with certain of their writings) of Blücher, Vatsetis, S. Kamenev, Dybenko, etc.

This desire to complete and renew its history, so apparent in the course of the last two years, must inevitably lead the army to confront the problem of Trotsky's place—in the purely military field, of coursein this revaluation, which is far more serious than the revision of the history of the Party.

It is obvious that the Trotskyists can only be reintegrated under cover into Soviet historiography, in a form tailored to the taste of the day.

Hence there has been much talk of Voronsky these last few months in the Soviet press with regard to his 80th birthday, but nobody has pointed out that he was a Trotskyist. In the bibliography of his recent work "The revolutionary crisis of 1923 in Germany'l Davidovich quotes a work by Elzear Solntsev, leader of the Left Opposition in the Stalinist concentration camps, but Davidovich's reader is not told that Solntsev was a Trotskyist, and it is highly doubtful whether it is in reality possible to refer to his writings in Russia.

The present situation of Soviet historiography in face of the problems of the history of the Bolshevik Party is absolutely unstable; the equilibrium achieved through the reduction in depth of the lie and through the 1. We must remember that as far as Stalin was concerned there was no revolutionary situation in Germany in 1923.

over the world!

It is at this moment of weakness of the American imperialists that the decaying French ruling class sees its chance to reassert itself within the capitalist system.

Gold standard The defence of capitalism has involved a great drain of the resources of the United States. The present international credit system, in fact, works so that these dollars are immediately returned to the United States banks in the form of a 'loan'.

De Gaulle, and his economic adviser, M. Jacques Rueff, now propose to change the system so that the financial drain on the United States shall be to the advantage of the capitalist powers of Europe. This is what is contained in the proposal to return to the gold standard.

Instead of the dollars being returned to the United States, instead of the world economic system being based on the dollar, Rueff proposes that world trade should be based on gold and that any trade deficit should be paid in gold.

In this way, he hopes that the deficit in the United States balance of payments, will flow into the coffers of the Bank of France. It is a kind of gigantic leech on the dying body of American imperialism.

As well as this, de Gaulle realises that if Europe is to take advantage of the U.S. weaknesses there must be an attempt by the European bourgeoisie to renew European industry. This will intense use of silence is placed in question by the desire to reintroduce into historical life an ever-growing number of important members of the party, from its inception to the great purges.

It becomes, therefore, more and more tricky to harmonise the complex scaffolding of official lies.

It must, however, be realised that the tendency towards greater 'objectivity' in the field of strictly historical facts will be inevitably accompanied by a growth in slanders against Trotskyism as a living political current.

Thus the preface to the first volume of the monumental 'History of the CPSU' in six volumes, published under the direction of Ilyichev, Ponomarev, Pospelov, Satiukov and othersthe first volume being less inexact factually than the normal works -contains a whole page of attacks against Trotskyism, in a tone which recalls a not-toodistant past:

•Finally the Trotskyists have changed into a harmful and anti-Soviet group of splitters and traitors, who boast noisily the name of the Fourth International and who for many years have attacked the CPSU and the other Marxist-Leninist parties, the Soviet government and the socialist camp, and in this way fulfil the social requirements of international imperialism.' The bureaucrats who provided the Indian bourgeois government with MiG fighters to attack China may be able to lie a little less or a lot less about the history of their party, but they are still obliged to lie just as much, if not more, about Trotskyism; if they feel less fear for the ever more distant past of the Bolshevik Party, the bureaucrats have still just as much fear for revolutionary Marxism.

leading French philosopner and novelist, who last year turned down the Nobel Prize for Literature, has cancelled a visit he was to have made to Cornell University in New York State. He has done this to show his opposition to what he describes as the open and cynical aggression of American imperialism in Vietnam.

Sartre explained in an interview with the weekly 'Nouvel Observateur' that there can be no discussion with Americans who are not willing to question the whole policy of U.S. imperialism. He thus condemns all those American 'lefts' who voted for Johnson as the lesser evil and who still give shamefaced support to the administration the grounds that it supports civil rights.

As Sartre points out, this has become a hypocritical cover for the aggressive policy pursued in Vietnam. Moreover, this is only part of the whole policy of American imperialism which has to be condemned in other areas too, notably in Latin America and Korea.

Sartre maintains correctly that U.S. imperialism is weaker than it seems. It is only able to maintain its position by force. Only defeats in Vietnam and elsewhere, says Sartre, will shake American opinion and show where Johnson's policy is leading.

Significant as an indication of how U.S. policy is seen today by many intellectuals, Sartre's position leaves no way for the intervention of the working class in a real struggle against imperialism. It still rests upon individual gestures and misses the significance of the class character of the Negro struggle. violence in Alabama did not die in vain, that, in fact, they died 'for all of us'.

But is it not self-evident that Mrs. Liuzzo alive would be of more use to the Civil Rights movement than Mrs. Liuzzo dead. And if Mrs. Liuzzo had been travelling in an armed motorcade, would this murder have taken place?

Self-defence

The failure- or rather refusal—to promote the principle of armed self-defence was in itself an invitation to terror. This constitutes a terrible indictment of the insane logic of Martin Luther King's policy of non-violence and passive resistance.

(When Malcolm was murdered by Black Muslims, this canting hypocrite blamed it on the 'futility of violence'. But what can he say now about the murder of his own followers?)

Dr. King's policy is a curious combination of Providential trust and Presidential intervention.

When Supplication to the Almighty fails-as it has always—Dr. King unfailingly tries to solicit the help of Federal power.

Let us : listen again to King:

'Are demonstrations of any use, some ask, when resistance is so unyielding? Would the slower processes of legislation and law enforcement ultimately accomplish greater results more painlessly? Demonstrations, xperience has shown, are part ment. (King's emphasis). The Federal government reacts to events more quickly when a situation of conflict cries out for its intervention.' For the Marxist, demonstrations, sit-ins and strikes are an inseparable part of the struggle for the overthrow of the 'power structure' and an indispensable means for raising the consciousness of the masses and preparing them for the conquest of power.

For Dr. King and his

Industrial By OUR INDUSTRIAL CORRESPONDENT Pa. ge Four April 10, 1965 1965 April

involve an attack on the working class.

It is Wilson's intention also to do this that makes him so attractive to de Gaulle. Wilson's government's problem is precisely to carry out that vital renewal of British capital that the ruling class has been afraid or incapable of doing since 1918. De Gaulle's intentions in France are the same.

The measures already taken by the Wilson government, and especially this week's Budget, are the first steps in this long-delayed confrontation with the workers. And it is these steps to 'put the house in order that pleased de Gaulle so much during his conversations with Wilson last weekend.

Integration De Gaulle intends to use British capitalism's weaknesses to ensure that the new developments in Britain reinforce the French bourgeoisie with regard to the Americans and not vice-versa. Hence, the agreement that France would not encourage any speculation against the pound as it is now doing against the dollar.

The next move would be to integrate the two capitalist powers more closely by admitting Britain to the Common Market. This would no longer be on the same conditions as when the affair was discussed by the Tories three years ago: its result now would be to impose drastic cuts in living standards of the working class, which de Gaulle and Wilson see as necessary if they are to confront the United States.

But the situation in the working class is not the same either. The attacks already carried out by the Wilson government have given rise to stirrings in the British working class.

And this class is not in the same state as was the German working class when similar plans were put into effect by the German capitalists in the late 20s and 30s.

Undefeated workers The working class has suffered no major defeat since the Second World War. It has experienced a relatively high standard of living and can see no reason why it should give it up.

All of the major imperialist powers can only turn now to an attack on the workers throughout the world in this battle between the decaying imperialist bourgeoisies.

But the working class is not at all in the same state as the ruling class. It is undefeated and confident. It lacks only the conscious leadership that can turn this capitalist onslaught into the suicide plunge of a rotten system.

This leadership is now being built. As the imperialist system lurches into the biggest crisis in its history, it will ensure that it is the last.

of a white woman and civil rights fighter by members of the Ku Klux Klan has forcibly and tragically underlined one thing. It has proved that the ONLY effective deterrent to Klan violence and the provocations of racist thugs in uniform is the organised and violent resistance of Negro and white workers.

More and more events in the Deep South are demonstrating the incontrovertible fact that the ballot can and will be secured only by the bullet.

Servitude

That even the wily Rev. King is not entirely unaware of the Alabama situation is revealed in an article reproduced in 'Peace News' (23/3/65). He has this to say about Negro servitude in this benighted backwater of the United States:

'Yet if Selma outrages democratic sensibilities, neighbouring Wilcox County offers something infinitely worse. Sherift P. C. Jenkins has held office in Wilcox for 26 years. He is a local legend because when he wants a Negro for a crime, he merely sends out word and the Negro comes in to be arrested. This is intimidation and degradation reminiscent only of chattel slavery.' Yet hundreds and thousands of unarmed people (like the Rev. James Reeb and Mrs. Liuzzo) were persuaded to march and risk their lives in Alabama. For what? For little, or nothing!

Despite the immensity of the march and the wide interest it aroused, millions of Negroes still remain voteless, segregated and terrorised. They will remain in this position until capitalism in America has been overthrown and the basis of racial discrimination destroyed.

The organisers of this moral and religious charade will no doubt try to console their followers with the happy thought that the victims of Negro question pacifists, however, demonstrations are nothing more than a necessary and inseparable supplement to the legislative activity of the capitalist state.

To whom the power, to him the petty-bourgeois!

This policy of 'rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's' has already boomeranged in the face of Dr. King as when he appealed to the Federal executive to investigate the murders in Alabama.

President Johnson, who, incidentally, promised during his election campaign to disrobe the Klan, made a frenzied verbal assault on the Klan and then cynically passed the investigation on to the House Un-American Activities Committee!

To ask this bunch of labourhating, Communist-baiting reactionaries to conduct an investigation into the Klan is the ultimate in fraud and hypocrisy.

Why, we might as well ask the Klan to investigate itself!

Riff-raff

Not even the New York Times' could swallow this canary with equanimity. In its editorial (31/3/65) it stated bluntly:

'We are equally dubious about the projected investigation of the Ku Klux Klan by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Everyone already knows all that is necessary to know about the Klan, which that its racist notions are nonsense and its members are bigoted riff-raff. Even if an inquiry were needed, the committee, with its staff bloated by over-paid time-servers, has never demonstrated any investigative competence. .

'If legislation is needed to control the Klan, the Justice Department can prepare it without the bumbling intervention of this discredited committee which should have been abolished long ago' No wonder the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan's United Klan of America welcomed the investigation!

There is no end to the chicanery of Dr. King. Now he appeals to Wall Street and Northern big business - the very same forces who are stepping up the Vietnam war— to put an economic squeeze on Alabama. Thus, continued reliance on pacifism and religious ecstasy in the Deep South is synonymous with support for the most reactionary capitalist forces in the north.

To ridicule and expose humbugs and charlatans like King, Shuttleworth and Forman is not enough though. The only answer the pacifistreligious confusion amongst Negroes is a renewed and relentless struggle for the creation of a revolutionary communist party with deep roots amongst Negro and white workers on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line.

This task would be more than fulfilled if those who claim to be Marxists in the United States-like the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party —had followed a consistent revolutionary policy.

The Communist Party long ago gave up any claim to liberate the Negro masses because of its treacherous policy of support for the Democratic government of Roosevelt and its cynical attempts to manipulate the Negro movement to suit the foreign policy of the Soviet the bureaucracy.

The Socialist Workers Party, however, because of its antiwar position during the Second World War won the sympathy and support of many Negro militants.

Trotsky, who recognised the absolute importance of finding a road to the Negro masses, warned the Socialist Workers Party about the consequences of failure to find such a road.

Retrospectively, we can say that his warning was almost prophetic:

"The characteristic thing about the American workers' KU KLUX I ney look me out Da șai alien in ine great white race.

I said. "Mister benet anyt li you d just turn me The white man said, Gandir Youinain : 1 ney nit me in the neac And then they kicked me Ontite gramad, date La ANTACH Thignel A poem by Langston Hughes from "Harlem, U.S.A.

parties, trade unions and organisations and so on, was their aristocratic character. It is the basis of opportunism.

The skilled workers who feel set in the capitalist society help the bourgeois class to hold the Negroes and the unskilled workers down to a very low scale. Our party is not safe from degeneration if it remains a place for intellectuals, skilled workers and Jewish workers who build a very close mileu which is almost isolated from the genuine mass. Under these conditions, our party cannot develop — it will degenerate.' (Excerpt from Trotsky's discussion with J. R. Johnson, 1939.)

Despite some episodic successes in recruiting Negroes, who were never trained theoretically, this is precisely what happened to the Socialist Workers Party. Today its centrist degeneration — gangrenous and awful to describeis most glaringly revealed on Lincoln Rockwell (centre), leader of the American Nazis, sitting the Civil Rights front.

Not only have the party leaders failed to give any kind of leadership or directive to the Negro masses, but they have also consciously deceived and disorientated the vanguard of the Negro workers with a policy which oscillates between downright paternalism and outright opportunism.

(Last week in The Newsletter Cliff Slaughter showed how the Socialist Workers Party was helping the capitalist state by raising the demand 'Send Federal troops to Alabama'.)

The opportunistic policy was formalized in its July 1963 resolution and passed at its convention. It marked decisive break with, and an abandonment of its stated policy of giving independent Marxist leadership to the Negro workers. The relevant section of the resolution (Freedom Now- the New Stage in the Struggle for Negro Emancipation and the Tasks of the Socialist Workers Party') reads:

'Our attitude towards separatists, including the Muslims, is a friendly one. We recognise that the mere existence of the Muslims has had healthy effects, pushing rival Negro tendencies to the left and thereby imparting an impetus to even purely integrationist battles. We note with interest that, far from being a hardened sect, the Muslims have shown a capacity during the last year to change in a direction that better serves the interests of all Negroes. However, they have still to develop a programme of action the struggles now taking place.' The last sentence in the light of subsequent events has a grimly ironical ring.

Irony apart, the . explicit support for separatism contained in this resolution is completely unhistorical and violates the deeply ingrained eelings of the overwhelming najority of Negroes who ar ruggling for total assimilatic 1 American societ Mushima in aran ur on he Bles of the Northern States was a danger signal to the communist and labour movement. It revealed a grave crisis of leadership in the whole working class movement. The Newsletter gave repeated warnings about the counterrevolutionary potentialities of this mystical organisation.

Surrender

The duty of Marxists was to analyse its class basis and its history in order to combat it openly and unreservedly and at the same time show in practice how white and black labour should fight against landlords, capitalists and their police.

This the Socialist Workers Party and its paper, 'The Milia Black Muslim meeting. become "a, criminal organisation—in the hands of a man who's senile"....

•.. Malcolm X went on to accuse the Black Muslims of having friendly relations with the Ku Klux Klan and Lincoln Rockwell's Nazis, and of getting money from the same sources which support those racist organisations' (Our emphasis He described a meeting in Georgia he attended in December 1960 between the Black Muslims and the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan. At this meeting there were negotiations to give the Black Muslims a county-sized tract of land to be used by them as a showcase for their programme of a separate nation...

He asserted that Jeremiah X, head of the Black Muslims in the South, attended Klan rallies. ...

Malcolm X declared that Rockwell corresponded regularly with Elijah Muhammad and was permitted to attend Black Muslim meetings, despite the resentment of many Black Muslims. . . . Malcolm X charged that the Black Muslims had been ordered to attack any of their members who defected to Malcolm. He cited a series of such beatings and shootings that had taken place recently. ... (The Militant', 22/2/65. Report by David Herman.)

tant', did NOT do. Instead it gave uncritical and flattering support to the activities of this reactionary mob.

A pseudo-scientific justification for this shameless. surrender was provided not so long ago by William F. Warde, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party, in "The Militant'. Writing on the Harlem riots he stated:

"The revolt of the black freedom fighters is moving forward under our eyes from one stage to another in obedience to the objective laws of every great national and social and revolutionary process?

('The Militant', 10/8/64)

Did Warde include the Black Muslims in this irreversible process of revolt?

He presumably did. Certainly he wrote nothing to indicate even remotely that the Muslims were excluded.

Malcolm X

A little later (28/1/65), Harry Ring, staff writer of "The Militant', who had been delivering …a series of news commentaries over radio station WBAI-FM in New York, interviewed Malcolm X and, in introducing his guest, implicitly defended the Black Muslims from the justified suspicions of many white supporters of the Freedom Now Party.

'I think this is due in good measure to the lack of unbiased information (1) as to what those described as Black Nationalists really stand for (Ring, in the early part of the transcript associated the Black Nationalists with the Black Muslims of Elijah Muhammad)

and I think this . . . is the product of a deliberate policy of distortion. ..:

The 'unbiased information' that Ring was so anxious to acquire came in a rather dramatic and unexpected fashion when the Black Muslims firebombed the home of Malcolm X in New York a few weeks later.

Here is what 'The Militant' was forced to report (without comment, of course):

The former follower of Elijah Muhammad declared that the Black Muslims had A week after this statement, Malcolm X was a corpse, brutally murdered by Negro assassins.

There is no doubt that around Malcolm X there had gathered some fine militants and potential revolutionaries. But the Socialist Workers Party leaders were blind to these. Instead of developing Malcolm X and weaning him away from nationalism, they adapted themselves to his level of consciousness.

And when he died, they remained inscrutably silent about the crisis within the Negro radicals as well as the pernicious role of the Black Muslims.

They could not help him when he lived and they betrayed him when he died.

The betrayal of Malcolm X, in fact, was the betrayal of 18 million Negro workers and farmers.

To the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party who slanderously allege that the Socialist Labour League is capitulating to imperialism we say:

Balance sheet "Take a good, hard look at the balance sheet of your work on the Negro question. If you do you will learn the bitter truth that a party that is incapable of fighting in a principled and courageous way for civil rights today is equally incapable of fighting for socialism tomorrow.

Your betrayal of the Negro workers is only the prelude to your betrayal of the white working class.' The future of the Civil Rights movement as well as the struggle for a socialist America does not reside with the pacifists like King or the revisionists like Hansen and Dobbs, but with the new generation of Negro and white workers who are assimilating, in the heat of battle, the principles of Trotskyism advocated by the International Committee of the Fourth International.

WITH tactics which could have been planned union officials broke up a meeting of seamen in South Shields last week to prevent Liverpool seamen from being heard.

Seamen claimed afterwards that in the crowd were officials from all over the country.

A leaflet from the National Union of Seamen had already been distributed to South Shields seamen.

It declared that the seamen on strike were trying to 'manufacture' a mass meeting of support in South Shields by bringing two busloads from London • and eight car loads from Liverpool!

At the meeting were ten Liverpool seamen with placards Budget declaring Liverpool seamen call on South Shields brothers for support.' Immediately, Gordon Norris, South Shields seaman, opened the meeting a union official is reported to have shouted: 'Go home, Commie.' This was the signal for the rest of the officials to start barracking.

They prevented any discussion on the recent agreement and on the strike by shouting about Norris' Communist Party membership.

Their tactics, and the weakness of the leadership, resulted in breaking the majority of the seamen from the meeting. As they moved off Norris declared: 'Well, we know where you stand' and closed the meeting.

No fight Because no fight was put up to keep the meeting going the officials won that round in South Shields. But it would be wrong for Liverpool militants to think that is the end of it there.

It is not that South Shields seamen are willing to take anything that is handed out to them. The feeling against the agreement three weeks ago was quite as strong among them as it was in Liverpool.

All the branches of the union in the North-east rejected the agreement. Not one seaman around the Shipping Federation offices in South Shields or in the public houses nearby had a good word for the agreement when asked about it by a Newsletter reporter.

Why then did the South Shields men not support the Liverpool men last week? The answer lies in leadership.

Turnabout

First, the South Shields seamen experienced the turnabout by Jim Slater. He was one of the leaders of the 1960 strike in which South Shields was one of the strongest areas. As a result of his mili-

From By our Northern Iri ON • Monday, April 5, Belfast seamen called off their unofficial strike against the new pay and hours agreement which raises the compulsory working hours at sea to 56.

About 150 men had been on strike since the previous Tuesday. They only agreed to return to work after word was received that seamen in Liverpool and the North-east ports had decided to wait until the agreement was discussed at the National Union of Seamen's conference next month.

The strike was 100 per cent strong amongst deep-sea men, who calculated that, on an average they would lose £27 per year under the new agreement.

Aberdeen

refused to work of an Aberdeen trawler, the Admiral Mountbatten, last week refused to work because they were being asked to change the trawl too often.

Second fisherman, 23-yearold Andy Robertson, said the men had slept for only six hours out 48 when they were asked to change the trawl yet again, which is almost a day's work.

They were tired and refused to work. They claim they were given no food after they stopped work and it was three days before the ship berthed. Pay was suspended.

Mrs. Margaret Whyte, wife of a deck hand on another ship, the Admiral Hawke, said she and several other wives went to the Board of Trade offices and the trawler owners, the Mannofield Fishing Company, last Saturday, because their husbands' pay had also been suspended. They were told there had been trouble on the boat.

Both trawlers are owned by the Mannofield Company.

The trawlermen are to ask the Transport and General Workers' Union to back their action. land Correspondent Attempts had been made to stop sailings of cross-channel steamers but strikers failed to get support from sailors for whom the 56-hour week agreement does not apply.

Feeling against the leadership of the National Union of Seamen is very high amongst the Belfast strikers, who are particularly incensed by practices which, they claim, are contrary to regulations.

LETTERS A strike leader claimed that Hogarth, general secretary of the NUS, had threatened disciplinary action in letters to the members.

The seamen in Belfast are calling for a mass lobby of delegates to the NUS conference in Dunoon next month, to be arranged.

Glasgow

tenants protest the rents of corporation houses in Glasgow • in the autumn is meeting with opposition from the tenants.

Cardonald Tenants' Association decided to, ask representatives trom all municipal housing estates in Glasgow to attend a conference in protest against any proposal to increase rents.

At a preliminary conference, tenants representing a number of housing schemes agreed that a campaign should be started to oppose rent increases.

A deputation from the conference was to attend a meeting of the Glasgow Council of Tenants' Associations on Wednesday, March 31, to ask them to support the campaign.

Linthouse Ratepayers' Association have announced their intention to stage demonstrations against rent increases and two branches of the Amalgamated Engineering Union in the Govan area have passed resolutions of protest against the proposal to increase the rents of municipal houses.

lefts' in Vietnam debate 'A large number of backbench Labour MPs, including many signatories of motions critical of American policy in in Vietnam, went out of their way yesterday to express their horror at the bomb outrage against the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Two of them, Mr.

Eric Heffer and Mr. William Molloy, called at the American Embassy in London to deliver a letter....

"The letter included the words, "We would like you to know how much we deprecate this senseless act of violence, and we express our profound sympathy for the victims and our abhorrence at this wanton act."' 'SOCIALISM' Heffer is the MP recently reported as demanding 'more socialism' from the Labour government. He is, in fact, a political faker of the most predictable British variety.

While imperialism is murdering and torturing class-struggle fighters all over the world, and above all in Vietnam, this 'socialist' comes forward in condemnation of the barbaric acts of ... the oppressed people themselves!

Heffer and these 'lefts', as well as the Wilson leadership, will have to be hounded from the labour movement before the British working class can really take its rightful place in the fight against imperialism.

Some of these 'left-wingers'

tancy he was elected to the Executive Council of the union.

He is reported to have voted against the recent agreement on the union's executive committee, but since then has attacked rank and file action to fight it.

This man opposed strike action and declared that seamen should take their grievances to the union conference.

The second important point about South Shields is that there has been no alternative leadership to fight the sell-out of these leaders.

Clear

It was painfully clear at the meeting last week that Norris had been dragged into support for the Liverpool men. He tried to put a brake on militancy at the London meeting a fortnight ago (see Newsletter, March 27).

The only way to rout the officials' tactics was to go into the offensive against these men who show greater energy in opposing militant action than ever they do in dealing with their members' grievances.

These men did not want to discuss the agreement with their members. A fighting blast could have exposed their lies about Liverpool. and yet even he, although calling for the government to publicly dissociate itself from American policy in Vietnam, also suggested that Wilson should warn Washington privately that a continuation on the present course would lead to Britain's withdrawal from the alliance'.

It is clear that these left-wingers are now part of the subordination of British Labour to U.S. imperialism. Their concern is only to suggest better conditions under which to stay in this reactionary alliance.

Small wonder that with this policy the Labour lefts' were unable to mobilise more than 1,500 people at last Sunday's rally in London. Contrast this with the recent march of the Indian Workers' Association and the Young Socialists, where 3,000, only a week previously, demonstrated on an anti-imperialist policy against the repressions of the 'neutralist Indian government and the imperialist war in Vietnam.

NAUSEATING

The nauseating opening speech in the Vietnam debate by Stewart was prepared for by the so-called 'left' • Even worse than the failure of Zilliacus, Foot and the others to challenge in any way the imperialist alliance, was the action of Heffer, Molloy, Paul Rose and other 'lefts' over the recent bomb attack on the American Embassy in Saigon. "The Guardian' reported:

BOTH the press and national trade union leaders combined this week in an attack on the 800 engineers out on strike at Pressed Steel Company, Cowley.

By building up the fact that the strike is affecting production and by playing on the number of men who have had to stop work as a result of the stoppage, they hope to isolate the strikers and break up any moves towards solidarity in the Amalgamated Engineering Union.

There are now reports that Malcolm Young, secretary of the AEU district committee, may have to face disciplinary measures from union headquarters.

The union leaders have steadfastly refused to make the strike official and no call has been made. to other workers in the factory to support the strike.

What is involved in this strike is a direct challenge to the AEU leadership which signed the package deal with the employers tying engineering workers down to a three-year agreement.

Demanding

The men are demanding substantial wage increases but so far the management has refused to discuss a wages review, without the other six unions involved in the firm's production.

(In 1959 an agreement was signed by six unions on • joint negotiations affecting wages.)

Now, because the engineering workers have taken action, the officials of the Transport and General Workers' Union are afraid that demands may snowball and their own members may take action for higher wages.

These officials have relied on 'friendly negotiations' and are worried that such an still further to the build-up of frustration amongst workers of all sections in Pressed Steel.

Now Young is reported to have a 'compromise' formula to put to the strikers.

What faces engineering workers at Pressed Steel and all over the country is a fight against an attempt to keep down their wages through the package deal agreement.

When the National Committee of the AEU meets in Blackpool this will most certainly come up for discussion.

Condemned

Many union branches and engineering workers have already condemned the package deal.

At a national meeting of apprentices a few weeks ago called by the Direct Action Committee it was decided to lobby the National Committee when it meets on April 27.

Engineering workers at Pressed Steel and all the other factories throughout the country should support this lobby and tell the AEU leadership that the package deal must be rejected.

have been no moves so far to settle the official strike of 500 draughtsmen at the Belfast shipyard of Harland and Wolff.

The men went on strike after the alleged dismissal of a union official on the grounds of indiscipline.

Last Friday the men staged a demonstration through Belfast when Roy Mason, Minister of Shipping, visited the shipyards.

The Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions has already recommended to its members not to handle any work coming from the drawing office until the strike is settled.

LEAFLET

A leaflet issued by the strike committee points out that this alleged action against the official comes after five months of negotiations on a wage claim.

The wage claim, which is for a new minimum rate of £24 18s. at 30 years of age and a 15 per cent increase for others, was lodged during October 1964.

It has proceeded through a works' conference to a central conference and back finally to a works' conference arranged for March 25, which was reported to be cancelled by the company at the last

arrangement may now be changed.

Meanwhile Boyd, general secretary of the AEU, chartered a plane to Oxford for the purpose of appealing to the strikers and asking them to let him negotiate with the management.

But the strikers have to accept this offer.

'Agreement'

Boyd is reported in the press as having reached a 'satisfactory agreement' with the management before the strike started.

However, the employers then became afraid that if an increase was granted to the skilled men, production workers would also demand a rise and the annual review of the day worker's earnings, which should have taken place this week, was called off, adding now complaining about the completeness of Stewart's support for the U.S. administration. But their own cowardly crawling to the U.S. Embassy prepared the way for Stewart's smooth passage.

After this, they went into the House of Commons and made hardly the slightest showing against official policy, all having been silenced in the backbenchers' meetings on the Wednesday, where Foot and the others made their peace with the right wing.

If this 'left wing' in the Parliamentary Party had been worth anything at all, they would at least have divided the House on the Vietnam question and voted against the Wilson government.

Does loyalty to Labour mean acquiescing in unadulterated Tory policies of support for colonial wars?

REAL FIGHT

It is better that a real fight against the Wilson leadership should begin and the government should fall. In this particular case the Tories would have voted along with Wilson against the Labour 'left', thus demonstrating to the working class the plain fact that Wilson, in any case, rules with Tory consent in every aspect of policy.

The task of real socialist MPs would be precisely to expose this situation and to build from this exposure the working - class leadership to change it.

council CROYDON, Surrey, Young Socialists are to lobby the next meeting of the town council to demand a reversal of a decision, taken at the last meeting, to end the free sweets and tobacco handed out to old people in council homes.

The East Surrey Federation of Young Socialists has called on all sections of the labour movement to support the lobby and already the South Croydon Labour Party has 'strongly condemned the action of those Labour councillors who left the meeting in the middle of the debate to attend a Crystal Palace cup tie!' Support A leading member of the Labour group is reported in a local paper as saying: 'We would not have won the vote anyway' A Young Socialist spokesman said that representatives from old age pensioners' clubs had attended the recent annual general meeting of the Federation and that they were working together for the lobby on Monday, May 3. Already several union branches have promised support.

'As far as we are concerned,' said the YS spokesman, 'there is no difference between the Tory councillors who voted for the sweet and tobacco cut and the Labour councillors who walked out. We are demanding that the Labour Party in the area takes action against those who saw their football as more important than the Tory attack on old people's welfare.

Betrayal

"The Labour government's failure to pay the pensions rise until the end of March and this betrayal by the Croydon right-wing councillors can lead to Labour's defeat and a victory for the Tories, and this the Young Socialists will fight? moment.

Everything is pointing to big struggles in the shipbuilding industry. As more and 'more orders are lost to Japan and Germany the blame is placed more heavily on the workers.

Mason talked glibly of 'cheaper and cheaper methods' and 'the challenge of demarcation'.

MILITANCY

There is, however, a growing militancy among shipyard workers, who are aware that a package deal similar to that foisted on the engineering workers is being pushed through.

In Belfast shipyards there are 16 separate wage claims at the moment. This is undoubtedly a big factor in the attack on the draughtsmen.

Already the 'Belfast Telegraph' is carrying some stories about redundancies and saying that the draughtsmen's action is 'madness'.

The only demand which carries any sense now is the demand for the nationalization of the shipbuilding industry. The pensions struggle WHILE pensioners all over the country were waiting for the long-promised rise in their weekly income, only the Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists took up the demand for an increase before Christmas backdated to When the rise finally was received millions were bitterly disappointed. Here is an extract from a letter written by an old age pensioner in Crawley to the local paper:

•Without any ostensible help, save from the Young Socialists, those of us throughout the town who have not died through lack of fuel or warming food now hail The Day.

'March 29, 1965! f4 a week or f6 10s. the pair.

Every day food, clothing, fuel go up and up. By next winter our glorious f4 (or 130 shillings the pair) will be shrunk to less than last winter's pittance.

"To whom shall we be grateful? To whom can we appeal?

OLD AGE PENSIONER, Crawley.

Registered at the G.P.O. as a newspaper Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (TU),