The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 396

By Newsletter reporter Tuesday. Clydach Vale, Tonypandy, Rhondda Valley, South Wales AS the sensationalised story of Monday's horrific and tragic explosion at the Cambrian pit, Clydach Vale, faded from the pages of the capitalist press, angry workmates of the 31 miners blasted off the coalface spoke bitterly of 'scrabbling' to keep their jobs.

Speculation about the pit closing high as an investigation team, led H. S. Stephenson, probes the cause of from which only 13 men escaped.

The pit is now highly mechanised and for men have been transferred to other pits. At men worked in four pits. There are now just Cambrian No. 1 pit, a smaller number in No. 4 pit, with Nos. 2 and 3 closed.

Several months ago the National Coal Board threatened to close the Cambrian, but a new seam was discovered— the 2 feet 8 inches high face where the 31 miners died.

Today the pit is silent. Valley in the stark and wind- above the Rhondda swept Clydach Vale only the murmur of the numbed neighbours of the dead is heard as weeping widows and relatives of the dead walk away from the Vale's assembly hall where 31 coffins lie in rows.

Output rises

In the Cambrian National Union of Mineworkers' Social Club in Tonypandy, where all entertainments have been postponed indefinitely, fathers, brothers, uncles and cousins of many of the dead join in the talk ... of the disaster and their jobs.

Twenty-five-year-old John Williams, who has been in the mines since he was 15, said that since the transfers in the last two months, output at the pit had shot up.

Men at the Cambrian had fought to increase and keep the output up in order to keep their jobs, said Williams. 'They don't have to think about safety, but output is now 30 cwt. per man-shift-the third highest in the Valley?

'We are scrabbling to keep the pit open.

goes from the workmen up to the officials, said Williams.

Though still dazed and upset after informing relatives of the deaths, treasurer of the NUM club, Trevor Hopkins echoed the feelings of many miners in the valley when he said that Cardiff's Tory MP Donald Box should visit the Clydach Vale issembly hall and see the 3. offins laid out Three weeks ago Box made a statement that miners were shirking work and were receiving concessionary coal they were not entitled to.

Looking round the club Williams, who was working on the disaster face only eight weeks ago, said: 'We send him an open invitation to the funeral' The bitterness of men of all ages in the Valley is an expression of the years of struggle by the working class in the area to eke a living out of digging coal. The Tonypandy miners have a history of struggle, particularly the tremendous 1911 strike during which Winston Churchill sent in troops and police against the miners in the village.

In another club on the steep hill leading to the pithead, 75-year-old Tom Jones showed our reporter a scar on the back of his skull which, he claims, was caused by a policeman's truncheon in the famous strike.

completely is running the mystery explosion, several months one time 4,000 over 800 in the He said the Cambrian pit was once known as 'the slaughterhouse because there were so many accidents there. Sixty years ago, almost to the day of Monday's explosion, there was a similar blast which also killed 31 men.

Sitting in the same club was elderly miner Gwilym Davies. Full of emotion he told how on Monday he had changed his day off with 25-year-old Gwilym Thomas. Thomas, a married man with an 18-month-old child, died in the explosion.

Davies, who has worked in the mines for 20 years, under varving conditions, thought conditions on the disaster face were quite good.

But others told of damp and muddy conditions.

A pithead baths attendant said most days men had come off the face dripping wet with their clothes caked with mud.

Killer dust

Dust is also a problem--and a killer. In the public house nearest to the pithead William Nicholas and Vic Thomas claimed that thousands were laid off through silicosis, but few received compensation from the National Coal Board.

Nicholas gave up mining -through choice-many years ago and prefers to work for £9 10s. as a council labourer.

It'is under these conditions that the National Coal Board introduces speed - up, automation, redundancies and transfers, where the drive for profit through high output from small faces leads to mistakes and slips in safety regulations, where men still sweat for hours in filthy conditions on the surface and on the face for wages ranging between f9 and f18.

It is not surprising that so many young people are refusing jobs in the pit (unlike their fathers and grandfathers who used to go to the pithead 'cap in hand') and are turning to light engineering. Continue fight Meanwhile the men who have to work below ground have to continue their fight nationally for jobs, work-sharing, better conditions administered by workers' control of the industry, and reject statements by South Wales' NUM leader Will Whitehead that 'we are not going to avoid these disasters until everyone —management, under-officials and workmen-learn to recognise quickly that there is danger and how disasters can be avoided' (My emphasis.)

But this is not possible under capitalism-the system which is based exclusively on profit. All those right-wing Labour and Communist Party leaders who believe in compromise and "peaceful coexistence with capitalism' share responsibility for the disaster. TWENTY-ONE vears ago the Second World War came to an end. Millions of people lay dead on the battlefields of Europe. Millions more perished in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany whilst hundreds of thousands were homeless. This war, according to the ruling classes of the world, was needed to defeat fascism.

As in the case of the First World War, the people who suffered most were the international working class. Much of the responsibility for this enormous betrayal lies on the shoulders of the Labour Party and Stalinist leaders who, by describing the war as la war against fascism', assisted the big monopolists and capitalists who were fighting the war for profit.

The Trotskyist movement declared that the Second World War was a war not against fascism, but to protect sections of the capitalist class against their German rivals led by Hitler. In Germany today there are tens of thousands of members of the old Nazi party in high positions. Most of the 'old gang' are back in the saddle so far as the ownership of industry is concerned.

The Trotskyists were right in Royal Saturday, May 22, 1965 denouncing the war, and those in the labour movement who upheld it were nothing more than contemptible traitors. If further proof about the class nature of this war is required, take the present royal visit to Germany.

In 1940 when there was an imminent danger of Nazi invasion of England, the Royal family kept their bags packed at Buckingham Palace with adequate air transport to take them to Canada when the invasion began. Everyone also knows what the Nazis would have done to the rank and file of the labour movement if the invasion had taken place.

Now the worthy descendants of this same Royal family of 1940 show their real class teeth. They travel around Western Germany hobnobbing with Nazis and their protectors in high places.

Many of their family ties can be traced to the ruling class of Germany. British Royalty is the most class-conscious and perfect representative of monopoly capital in all its pomp and

GEORGE BROWN's statement to the rump movement claiming to be the 'official' Young Socialists, to the effect that Labour had 'taken a toss' in the local elections, is the understatement of the year. What happened was a massive vote of no confidence in the two-faced, treacherous policies of the Wilson government.

Seven months after Labour's General Election victory, the Tories gained 562 seats in the Borough elections in England and Wales. There was a swing of 10 per cent to the Toriesthe biggest since the end of the Second World War. A similar swing in a General Blection would mean a massive Tory majority.

In many key industrial areas the swing to the Tories was over 10 per cent. Labour even lost seats in the safest of safe districts-such as Wakefield, Pontefract and Featherstone in the Yorkshire mining area. Due to the rates to T from this 1 9s. for 12 Certainly, no tears need be shed for the displaced councillors. Many of them have been leading right-wing witch-hunters for years. The fact is, these people allow the Tories to regain power.

BROKE PROMISES Wilson and Brown broke their promises to the old age pensioners and the aircraft workers, they give massive handouts to the steel profiteers who spend millions on anti-Labour propaganda, they • crawi servilely behind American imperialism in Vietnam and the Dominican Republic and they attempt to force a wage freeze down the increased postal charges, he Newsletter will have veek. The new rates are: issues. £1 16s. for a ye: throats of the working class.

Then they and their right-wing supporters (and also those on the so-called 'left') talk about 'apathy' and 'ingratitude' when they are rejected at the polls.

The lesson of the local election results is the need for a socialist alternative to Wilson and Brown.

Many hard-working rank-and-file Labour Party members suffered bitter disappointment as a result of the policies of their leaders-policies over which they have not been consulted.

Every Labour Party member must now ask: Would not the clear socialist policies of the Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists have given the working class something to vote for?

the subscription to be increased

large units in automated plants. May 22

decadence. It is backed up by a prostitute press, whose millionaire owners year after year vie with each other in order to get their names on the honours list.

As the Queen and her husband took their plane for Western Germany, this millionaire press rapidly switched away from the Tonypandy mine disaster to a spate of patriotic propaganda. From being news on page one of the morning newspapers, Tonypandy slipped into pages 12 and 14 of the evening dailies.

Of course, the miners of Tonypandy in 1940 had no plane transport ready to take them to Canada. They would have had to languish, the same as other members of the labour movement, in concentration camps, and perish as millions did in Eastern Europe and Germany.

So far as the Fleet Street monopolists are concerned the Tonypandy disaster is now forgotten. All they can think of at the moment is an obscene glorification of the old Nazi and British Royal family fraternity.

Now, as in the Second World War, it is class against class. The ruling class and its royal servants against the working class, both of Britain and Western Germany. THIS week the official index of retail prices showed its biggest monthly increase for ten years—a rise of 2.I points.

Brown, Gunter and Co., with their friends in the trade union official machine, are busy insisting that workers must moderate their wage demands, keeping them below 34 per cent, while price increases have already increased the cost of living by more than that amount since the Labour government came into office last October.

The real meaning of the government's 'incomes policy" is now making itself clear. Wages are to be held down while prices increase to ensure the maintenance of high profits.

Index rising

One building workers' leader at the union conference this week acclaimed the incomes policy as 'socialism', because it helped to bring up the lower-paid workers.

On the contrary, the Labour government's policy helps the operation of capitalist profit-making.

Prospects for the future are luch worse, if the employers nd their government are llowed to proceed. The Financial Times' of Wednesay noted:

'All the signs are that the Trades Council condemns YS expulsions MEMBERS of Southall Trades Council have conemned the expulsion of trio 'oung Socialists by the SouthIl Labour Party.

Gwilym Evans, Trades Council 'resident, opposed . the expulions, which he called undemoratic. Other members said: Today we need these young ellows, who in their opinion had ieen steamrollered out of the arty.

The Trades Council meeting vas an indication of the growing pposition in the unions to the olicies of the right wing and of he growing support for the foung Socialists.

The two Young Socialists were xpelled without notice. They vere not informed of the Labour ›arty General Management Comnittee meeting which expelled hem, although both were delesates.

At the following GMC meeting hey, and another Young Socialist who was a delegate, were refused idmittance. A reference back of he Minutes of the previous neeting dealing with the expul¡ions was defeated by 4 votes to 3. All the other delegates ibstained.

Roy Smith case

man acquitted TWENTY-FOUR-year-old fitter, Richard Hughes, of the White City Estate, Shepherd's Bush, London, was found not guilty at the Old Bailey on Thursday of wounding 17-year-old Roy Smith with intent to murder him outside a Young Socialists dance in Barlby Road, Kensington, in February.

index, which paused momentarily in February for the first time since last autumn, will continue its upward rise.

Among dearer items yet to be reflected are postal charges, electricity, tyres and footwear,' In other words, the figures do not tell the whole truth. At the same time the bus companies announced that in response to the recent busmen's pay award they will increase fares.

All these are basic items which affect the working class directly, but make only very petty differences to the upper classes.

Burdens

These burdens upon the workers and their families must be fought tooth and nail in the trade unions and factories, in the context of a fight for socialist policies in every section of the labour movement. So long as the capitalists own the property, and the state machine is used on their behalf, then the system of exploitation must come first.

By the end of the year a growing measure of unemployment, resulting from the recent drastic credit restrictions, will be used to hold down and even reduce wages.

On Tuesday the leading AP firms met and announced that rigid restrictions would be placed on instalment buying of cars, electrical goods, and so on. Quite apart from the direct blow at the working-class buyer, this will cut down the volume of production, and hundreds of thousands of industrial workers face the sack by the winter.

Printing inquiry

Meanwhile Brown orders an inquiry into the pay award to printing workers, and does not even mention in the terms of reference the profits being made in the industry. Minister of Labour Gunter agrees with the Tories in the House of Commons that the closed shop is an interference with individual liberty - liberty to weaken the working class against the boss.

Every day brings home more clearly the need to sack these capitalist agents who occupy the seats of governmental power in the name of the working-class movement. An emergency Labour conference must be called, to decide on policies to take the wealth from the bosses and to forge a new working class leadership.

" HE steel indu presents one of clearest cases for tionalization.

This giant industry effectively controlled by the ten largest firms, who control 80 per cent of the total steel output.

Nearly all these firms, apparently independent, are linked together in a multitude of ways-by common directorships, by the banks and insurance companies, by families and personal ties.

Thus there are many overlapping directorships: -10 United Steel, the Steel Company of Wales, Stewart and Lloyds, John Summers, and Guest, Keen and Nettlefold.

Sheffield firms are an indication of the closeness of these ties. The United Steel Company, of steel, is with pla Rotherhar Several sonalities its Board.

the largest producer centred on Sheffield, at Scunthorpe, 1 and Workington. of the leading perare to be found on Asset Past and present directors of this firm, with assets of over f15 million, include Sir Walter Bewton Jones (educated Repton), with directorships in John Summers and Westminster Bank; Alan Peach (Wellington), with directorships in Stewart and Lloyds, Steetley Company, Tinsley Wire Industries and National Provincial Bank; Kenneth S. Peacock (Oundle), Chairman of Guest, Keen and Nettlefold, director of the Steel Company Lloyds Bank.

Other firms in Sheffield steel are very closely linked. Firth Vickers (makers of stainless steel) is jointly owned by the English Steel Corporation and Firth Browns, which in turn owns the large engineering factory of Cravins, makers of railway rolling stock.

Hadfield, another large engineering firm in the city, is under the chairmanship of Sir Peter Roberts (Harrow and Cambridge) who is also chairman of Newton Chambers.

Roberts.. is Conservative Member of Parliament for Heeley division of the city and director of the Guardian Assurance Company.

The steel industry thus represents the most tightly organised monopolies in the country.

The British Iron and Steel Federation is undoubtedly one of the most powerful industrial associations in Britain, acting as the principal link between the companies and supervising their programmes of capital expenditure.

The Federation is dominated by the directors of the largest companies, who regulate the industry for the benefit of private profit.

Ruthless

Despite the pre-election talk of ruthless competition within the industry, there is, in fact, very little. Even the Restrictive Practices Court was forced to declare that the heavy steel price-fixing agreements were 'contrary to the public interest'.

Numerous agreements operate to allow the most backward firms to make handsome profits.

The steel industry remains one of the centres of monopoly capital in Britain. The Labour government's nationalization proposals, issued in the recent White Paper, do nothing to break this power.

(1) By offering over £600,000,000 in compensation —a sum which "The Economist' readily agreed was much more generous than last time -the Labour government strengthens the hand of private capital.

Compensated

Capitalists are to be richly compensated with ample funds to invest outside the industry. Meanwhile the state, using money raised in taxation from the working class, will modernise the industry and representatives and of the capitalist class.

Wilson's plans for the steel industry have nothing in common with socialism. They are designed to modernise and rationalise a backward and inefficient industry so that it can serve the needs of capitalism.

Why is the British steel industry in crisis?

(a) Numerous small plants:

Many mills in Britain are small and outdated, unable to take advantage of the latest technical developments. The United Steel Company of America produces as much steel as the whole of the British industry, and nearly ten times as much as the largest British firm!

Scrap

Wilson's plans mean that the state will step in and scrap much of this plant and reorganise the industry in a few Stalinists make overtures to Jesuits beginning of May, the palace of the Archbishop of Salzburg was the scene of an interesting meeting.

Gathered there were leading Catholic theologians and philosophers, together with Communist Party 'theoreticians'.

These 250 scholars had an amicable discussion on Christianity and Marxism. Jesuit thinkers were backed by three observers from a 'secretariat for unbelievers', recently set up by the Vatican.

Roger Garaudy, French Communist Party leader, was joined by Walter Hollischer from East Berlin and Asari Polikarov from the Bulgarian Communist Party.

Anxiety

The discussions were marked by the extreme anxiety of the self-styled 'communists' to demonstrate the affinity between their own ideas and those of the Catholics.

Accarding to the report in the "Time' magazine (May 14), Garaudy tried to argue that Marx's atheism was related to the specific form religion had taken in ments have been pioneered abroad. The new oxygen processes were first developed on the Continent; the Kaldo process in Sweden, the Rotor furnace in Germany and continuous casting in the Soviet Union.

Change has been slow in Britain-for example in the case of the oxygen process. As much as £150 million may be needed to establish a new modern mill, and only the state can find such money to bring the British steel industry up to the level of rival capitalists in Europe and America.

(c) Productivity:

These two facts are seen in the low levels of productivity in Britain. Recent measures of output per man-hour indicate that productivity is lower than in Britain in only two countries: Eastern Germany and Poland. This has pushed costs up in Britain and forced the steel bosses out of many markets abroad, including the once-sheltered Commonwealth area.

Outdated

This is why there has been no real outcry against Wilson's nationalization proposals. British capitalism, as it faces increasing competition, cannot tolerate an outdated steel industry, which pushes export prices and costs upwards. Once the state has carried through the necessary modernisation of steel, which will cost millions of pounds, it can be given back to the private owners.

For nationalization to he fective socialists must reject 'ilson's proposals and deand:

That no compensation be paid to the rich steel shareholders. They were lavishly compensated after 1951 and have since made huge profits.

All questions of reorganisation in the industry must be within the hands of workers' committees elected in each plant. These committees, within a national plan, would be responsible for all decisions about wages, output targets and the deployment of labour.

For the socialist nationalization of steel, all the other basic industries and the banks! his time. Today, things have changed. 'In 1965 we can ask: "Do not the most advanced Christians begin to walk on the same road as we do?"' he said.

The churchmen, of course, were much firmer in their principles. They demanded bigger revisions in Marxism before co-operation was possible.

Softening

A softening attitude to religion, and to the Catholic church in particular, has been a feature of the international Stalinist movement for several years. The Salzburg meeting marks a new stage in this process.

The 1962 visit to the Pope by Khrushchev's son-in-law was followed by statements from Communist Party leaders calling for co-operation with Catholics in the peace movement'. The appearance of George Matthews and John Gollan of the British Communist Party on Sunday evening religious television programmes became a familiar sight recently.

The main motivation behind these tendencies was the attempt to get the Catholic church's battle on behalt of the rung Class: the Papal Nuncio of Munich greets Adolf Hitler in 1933. 'For a long time I have not understood you, but today I understand you?

Vatican's blessing for a 'peaceful co-existence' deal between the Kremlin leaders and world imperialism.

The church has great influence, it will be recalled, with the governing parties in France, Germany and Italy, not to mention the USA.

Meanwhile the Catholic Church continues its centuriesold battle on behalf of the ruling class. In both Vietnam and in Santo Domingo, to take two topical examples, the Church is the main bastion of the social forces allied with U.S. imperialism.

Whatever the so-called Communist Party may say about Christianity, the Hierarchy carries on its unrelenting fight to stop the workers and peasants taking control of their own conditions of life.

Step up

As reported in last week's Newsletter, the Pope called on the Jesuits to step up the fight against atheism only a few days after the Salzburg discussions.

The Stalinists would justify their opportunism on this question, by declaring the necessity to unite with Catholic workers in the trade union and labour movement.

It is certainly important to draw Catholic militants into united class actions and • to prevent the religious issue from being used by the employers to divide the working class.

The struggle for a materialist, scientific world outlook is a vital part of the struggle to end the power of the capitalist class. Only as the workers become conscious of their ability to break that power and take control of the means of production, can the conditions which give rise to religious illusions be eliminated.

Opportunism

But it is precisely the opportunism of Communist Party policies which assists the priests in their fight against socialist ideas.

The Stalinists bend towards the manufacturers of those illusions, which try to reconcile the workers to their exploitation on earth, by pointing to some imagined paradise in a world to come.

In this way, as in so many hers, they betray the workg class and help to mainin capitalism.

VIETNAM Stalinists and 'peacelovers' boycotl demonstration EIGHTY Young Socialists marched behind the ba-ened the Socialist Labour League in Leeds last week-end another demonstration against imperialist aggression Vietnam.

This march was boycotted by the Peace in Vietnam Committee'-a motley collection of pacifists, Christians and Stalinists in Leeds University.

This committee, last week. passed a resolution 'condemning' the Marxist Society for its 'opportunism' and 'disruption' during the previous week's demonstration.

CONTINGENT

This 'opportunism' and 'disruption' consisted of bringing a large contingent of working-class Young Socialists on to the demonstration and going ahead with a meeting at the end of the march, while the pacifists and Stalinists walked away. (See last week's Newsletter.)

Four Communist Party members who brought this condemnation into a Marxist Society meeting apparently see nothing opportunist in collaborating with State Capitalists, Catholic Action, Liberals, and various other breeds of anti-Communists.

When one Communist Party student was asked why he did not move a resolution in the 'Peace in Vietnam Committee, declaring full support for the revolutionary struggle of the Vietcong, he replied that it would be 'splitting'.

UNCONDITIONAL

This latest march showed that, once again, the only people to declare their open hostility to imperialism and their unconditional support for the Vietnamese Revolution, were the Trotskyists and their supporters.

At the end of the march loud cheers greeted Socialist Labour League members who declared that the campaign against imperialism in Vietnam was directly linked with the struggle to build a revolutionary movement in Britain.

Copies of this pamphlet are available, price 2s. 4d. this pamphlet are available, price 2s. Park Publications Ltd., 186A Clapham from New Park Publications Ltd., 186A Clapham Higl hand it back to the private owners once the Tories return.

(2) The White Paper contains no proposals for any form of workers' control. The industry will remain dominated - like the existing nationalized industries — by

OT on the heels of the events in Selma and the massive demonstrations on civil rights in Washington and New York, has come a new wave of protest demonstrations and 'teach-ins' throughout the United States, which have considerably embarrassed the President and revealed a deep and widening gulf between the administration and a large section of the intelligentsia.

For the first time in many years, perhaps decades, the centres of learning in the United States of America are rapidly becoming centres of dissension, doubt and revolt.

At first the U.S. Government leaders tried to dismiss the growing anti-war sentiment in the universities with contempt. NEWSLETTE e Three

(b) Technical developments: Nearly all technical developPolice attack demonstrators MORE than 30,000 voxAkers gathered outside the Akropol theatre in Athens on May Day.

Although the leaders of the 115 bodies affiliated to the EDA (Stalinist front organisation) asked the workers to be satisfied with their lot and remain silent, the workers pressed their claims for higher wages and higher pensions, in view of the recent increases in the incomes of the ruling class.

The pickets and placards of the various workers' organisations were dominated by demands for higher wages, a seven-hour working day and full employment.

DISAPPROVAL

Also the masses showed their disapproval of capitalist domination in slogans such as *Hands off Vietnam and Cyprus', "The Sixth Fleet Should Go', 'Down with the organs of capitalism'.

The reply to the leaders" call to 'go home quietly' was a demonstration proceeding towards University Street and Omonoia Square.

Trotskyists (of the 'Labour Movement Pioneers') were at the head of the demonstration with the slogans 'Don't be Newsletter Correspondent deceived by Capitalist Democracy', and Work for a Workers' Democracy'.

This fighting spirit enraged the police, who brutally attacked the crowd and wounded scores of people. Some Trotsyists were among the first to be attacked and wounded.

STONES

But the workers replied with stones, and three policemen were sent to hospital.

Many workers now face prosecutions. Among them were three who were distributing leaflets for the 'Workers' Democracy' - an organisation which was recently proscribed by the Pablo group, and joined the 'Labour Movement Pioneers' No newspapers of the ruling class reported the fighting, not even 'Avgi', the EDA newspaper.

Throughout the meeting and demonstration, the bureaucratic leaders of the working-class movement were asking the crowd to disperse quickly.

But the angry workers still keep their fighting spirit and are full of hopes that one day they will rid themselves of both the traitors of the working-class movement and of the exploiters of the workers.

Party

MAY DAY is tradiestablishment of a Republic but cunningly combines it with tionally celebrated a demand to amend Section 29 the world over as a day of the Ceylon Constitution Order in Council so that it of international work- would incorporate constituing-class solidarity. tional guarantees to Buddhism'.

Not so in Ceylon. Here the reformist "leaders' of the theocratic state. working class, for the first time in 30 years, transformed May Day into its opposite: into a pogrom against Tamil workers in Colombo.

This disgusting incident, in which a number of Tamil workers were hurt and one killed, is the continuațion of a vicious anti-Indian, antiTamil agitation condoned, if Agreement of 1964... not led, by leading rehegade Trotskyists - until recently supporters of the Sri Lanka ous issues the reformistFreedom Party-Lanka Sama racialists hope to drive a Samaja Party coalition govern- wedge between the United National Party and the Federal ment.

Having failed to win the Party, which is wholly Tamil election on reformist policies in composition. these renegade scoundrels been joined by some of the from Trotskyism have thrown aside their reformist-socialist masks and revealed their true racialist features.

The orgy of Indian baiting unleashed by them has only one purpose-to win back a section of their lost votes.

CONDEMNED Many left-wing parties and trade unions have condemned this racialist campaign categorically, all except the Lanka Sama Samaia Party.

In the middle of April the situation became critical. The pro-Chinese Communist Party pointed out, in a statement, that a policy of alienating minorities would strengthen Perera: leader of divergent wing the United National PartyFederal Party coalition govern- most reactiunary capitalist ment and provide it with a politicians - one of whom convenient pretext to institute Mr. R. G. Senanayake-spoke Emergency Rule. on the same platform as Dr.

Dudley Senanayake turned Perera on May Day and was the hate campaign to his warmly applauded for his advantage by posing as the evocation of the 'Sinhalesedefender of minority rights, Buddhist nation'. while at the same time assuring the Buddhist masses that he the Lanka Sama Samaja Party was the only bulwark against is once more split between communism. tWo divergent wings:

Thus the cynicism of the one of them led by N.

opposition is more than M. Perera and Colvin R. de matched by the duplicity Silva, gravitating towards the of the government! Sri Lanka Freedom Party of That Dr. Perera and P. Mrs. Bandaranaike and the Keuneman (leader of the pro- other section led by Moscow Communist Party) Leslie Goonewardene heading are out to exploit the for the pro-Moscow Communracialism and religious bigotry ist Party. in Ceylon, is clearly borne out by the amendments proposed a rout. The disappearance of to the Throne Speech of the the Lanka Sama Samaja Party government by the opposition. is now only a matter of One of these calls for the weeks. Ceylon: racialism a diversion from the eradication of appalling poverty as seen in this picture. They were "talking nonsense,' said Dean Rusk.

The 'New Frontier' and the the 'Scientific Revolution' of the Kennedy era, they thought, would keep the students spellbound.

But the movement remained American people during the missiles crisis over Cuba; there is no precedent in U.S. history.

Fed up with witch-hunts, angered by lynchings and outraged by imperialist adventures abroad, a new generation of

and, with the despatch of more troops to Vietnam, it grew in scope and intensity. Letters, petitions and resolutions continued to pour into the White House.

Senator Robert Kennedy admitted that for every one letter he received favouring war in Vietnam there were three for withdrawal and eight for negotiation.

Then on April 17 20,000 students and civil rights workers inundated Washington in a march organised by the Students for a Democratic Society. In its official appeal the SDS openly proclaimed its This would make Ceylon a support for the Vietnamese people:

On the question of the notorious Indo-Ceylon Pact, Sympathy which envisages the repatriation of 500,000 Indian "The current war is workers, the opposition being waged on behalf of amendment reads, in part:

La succession of unpopular •.. but regret that your South Vietnamese dicExcellency's government has tatorships, not on behalf failed to give a categorical of freedom. ... The war assurance that it will impleis fundamentally a civil ment the Indo-Ceylon war waged by South Vietnamese against their By raising racial and religi- government. ... The people and the guerrillas are inseparable Never, not even at the height of the Korean war, had Washington witnessed a demonstration of such proIn this campaign they have portions which openly proclaimed sympathy with the 'enemy'.

Compare this with the fantastic ticker-tape welcome given to General MacArthur in New York when he was fired as United Nations commander during the Korean War, or contrast it with the questioning 'loyalty' of the American youth is beginning to articulate its hatred and distrust of a rotten system.

Concealed

More and more it sees the hitherto carefully concealed connection between imperialist repression abroad and the denial of civil rights at home, between the insatiable machine of militarism on one side and the growing power of the corporations on the other, between the dynamic rise of automation and the growing pool of misery and unemployment which has accompanied it.

Paul Potter, organiser of the march, put it simply and directly when he said at the rally:

"The people of Vietnam and the people on this demonstration are united in much more than a common concern that the Berkley, California, university campus: A section of a massive crowd at a Free Spech meeting earler war be ended. In both countries there are people struggling to build a movement that has the power to change their conditions. The system that frustrates these movements is the same.

All our lives, all our destinies, our hope to live, depend on our ability to overcome that system?

Disenchantment It was against this background of generalised hate and disaffection on the campus that Johnson and his advisers took the decision to continue bombing North Vietnam, send additional marines to Da Nang and blockade the coast.

The disenchantment of the students with Johnson has become complete. The best proof of this is the booing and hissing of Averell Harriman this year. at a recent students' meeting and now the humiliating nonappearance of McGeorge Bundy at the celebrated debate in Washington between the intellectual critics of the government and the administration.

Inescapable

Whatever reasons Bundy will advance for his absence from Washington the American youth will draw the inescapable conclusion that government policy is bankrupt and indefensible.

Some people in Britain try to argue that such a situation would never have arisen if Kennedy were alive, for he, they say, was a master of subtlety and nuance.

Johnson, they allege, has muffed the technique of decision taking. Such people err.

What matters in this instance is not the individual character of the president but the over-riding and all-pervasive interests of the capitalist class.

Kennedy's reaction to the Cuban missiles was no less visceral and no more sudden than Johnson's reaction to Pleiku and Da Nang.

There are neither hawks' nor 'doves' but hard-hearted businessmen and their military bureaucratic advisers who take the fateful decisions in such situations.

What is of interest to Marxists, however, is the fact that the continuation of the present trend against war and racialist oppression at home, and the inflexible course of the government, must lead inexorably to a complete loss of confidencé, not only in Johnson, but in the Democratic Party and the two-party system as a whole.

'Lesser evil'

In the last Presidential elections many or most of these students and professors voted for Johnson in the mistaken belief that he was a 'lesser evil to Goldwater. Now the whole fraud of the tivo-party system has hit them between the eyes and it will be a long, long time before they forget it.

In other words the most effective answer to the Vietnam war is the construction of a new party representing the interests of labour, minorities and student-youth—a third, Labour Party. colonial countries, without the development of a revolutionary leadership, which unites the struggles of the workers of all countries.

The difficulties of capitalist policy only reveal how favourable is the present situation for such a genuinely revolutionary leadership.

INTERVENTION in the Dominican Republic by United States marines was justified by the U.S. State Department on the grounds that the 'rebels' were in the clutches of Communists.

Neither the action of the Johnson administration, nor the fabricated evidence brought forward to excuse it, The logic of all this is that has found any support in Latin America, and within the United States itself public opinion is rapidly bulding up against the Dominican and Vietnam wars.

The dominant position of Wall Street in world capitalism has another side to it, besides the vast wealth which it allows U.S. capital to accumulate from the labour of the world's workers.

The retreat has turned into Consequences It means that the American ruling class is faced with the consequences of all the contradictions and conflicts of a world capitalism in decay. The crisis in Johnson's policy is above all a reflection of this crisis of world imperialism.

In Vietnam Johnson continues the policy of ruthless destruction of the people, but every attack he orders only hardens the determination of the popular forces of the Vietcong and their supporters.

The weapons rushed into Vietnam have been powerless to prevent the concentration of Vietcong forces, which now threaten a major attack before the beginning of the rainy season, in a few weeks' time.

It is certain that under such an attack the puppet South Vietnamese forces will collapse completely, and then Johnson will be faced with the decision of employing the 40,000 U.S. troops in open combat with the Vietcong.

Such a battle would be militarily necessary if the policy of 'saving' Vietnam (for imperialism) is to succeed, and yet it opens up the awful prospect for Johnson of collapse of his support within the United States, even if the thousands of U.S. casualties resulted in a temporary victory, which is by no means certain.

'Satisfactory'

Meanwhile, then, the bombing of the North is renewed, even though the Americans have run out' of military targets, and peace approaches made indirectly to Hanoi have been turned down by the North Vietnamese.

Even though, as "The Times' reported on Wednesday, 'there is even greater confidence that China will not intervene', and 'the Soviet attitude, in spite of official condemnation, is said to be satisfactory, U.S. imperialism finds itself faced with the insoluble problem of a colonial people determined to achieve liberation.

Crisis accentuated

By taking 'responsibility' for the defeat of the revolutions in the colonial countries, and even with the assistance of the "peaceful co-existence' line of the Stalinist apparatus internationally, U.S. capitalism finds its crisis severely. accentuated.

The colonial struggle serves as a spur to the political struggle against capitalism inside the U.S. itself.

The Dominican Republic promises to provide • an even more ignominious failure for the 'Johnson policy'.

'Respectable'

'The Times' Washington correspondent reports that a 'frantic effort is under way to assemble some kind of respectgovernment'. The reasons he gives for this reveal that the U.S. administration will find difficulty in emerging from the intervention without a severe reverse for all its policies in Latin America.

"The communist menace has suddenly disappeared and the junta which earlier enjoyed the protection of American arms is now seen to be the stepchild of the murdered dictator, Trujillo [see last week's Newsletter].

"This reversal, or modification of the (Johnson)

doctrine can be variously explained, but clearly the situation in Santo Domingo was misjudged, as was reaction within the hemisphere and elsewhere abroad. Bad intelligence as much as the Castro psychosis is part of the explanation. The efforts to prove that the rebel constitutionalists were about to be captured by Communists is now seen to be ludicrous.' Ready to pounce The intervention in the Dominican Republic showed that the U.S. capitalists had armed strength ready to pounce in any area where the reactionary regimes, defending investments, are threatened, and it must be a warning to the working class of world.

But it has also shown that the capitalist ruling class is not all-powerful.

Riddled with international contradictions it can find no consistent policy which carries with it political stability internationally or within the U.S. itself.

Same crisis

The abject subservience of the British Labour government to U.S. policy, in both Vietnam and the Dominican Republic, is only another side of the same crisis.

There is no way forward for the workers of the advanced countries, any more than the

America is in Bolivia, where by Wednesday of this week, the country was completely paralysed by a general strike. Following the miners and transport workers, the whole of the working class came into action against the government, which responded by declaring a state of siege, alleging that a group of revolutionary plotters were trying to overthrow the regime.

These strike actions were sparked off by the arrest and deportation of the tin miners' leader, Juan Lechin Oquendo, who is also president of the Workers' Federation and leader of the 'Revolutionary Party of the Nationalist Left' Lechin, leader of the original revolution of 1949-51, recently made several attempts to adapt the workers' organisations to the bourgeois-nationalist ruling cliques, but eventually met with exile. In 1960 he became Vice-President, but was forced to resign because of the plans to rationalise the mining industry, which would have cut away his own base among the miners. The Barrientos regime which took over last year has forced through the rationalisation plan and postponed all elections.

This week the barricades went up in a number of mining centres, and management representatives were taken hostage. Students have joined the workers in demonstrations and a number of deaths had been reported by Wednesday of this week.

Four

COLLAPSE OF EMERSON PLAN Newsletter Industrial TWENTY-EIGHT workers section of the Pressed Steel Scotland, were arrested when out by the management and last week. They had clocked stood by their machines.

The management called in such force that the workers in the trim shop were outnumbered.

So incensed were the other workers in the factory at the calling of the police that they surrounded the building in hundreds. Only the intervention of the shop stewards prevented a violent clash when the 28 men were taken away in police vans.

The police are reported to have had difficulty in finding a suitable charge to bring against the 28. They were finally charged with disturbing the peace and appeared in court this Friday.

Behind the incident is the laying off of 1,400 workers due, the management say, to the strike of 40 die-setters.

PACE INCREASED The die-setters had struck work the day before in protest against the suspension of one of their fellow workers who, the management said, had refused to do certain work. "At Pressed Steel demands are being made that the pace , production be increased. The workers feel on the other hand that they are being cheated of part of their wages due to the collapse of the Emerson Plan bonus scheme.

No bonus was paid between in the Ford trim factory at Linwood, they defied a lockreported for work in as normally and the police, who turned up in union was being pressed very strongly to give the men legal aid. The management had agreed, he said, to a return to work if the die-setters also ended their strike.

BONUS IN RED

The introduction of workstudy would be postponed, but the management were looking for an increase in production.

Since the die-setters had meanwhile agreed to return under protest, the men were to resume work on Wednesday.

The trouble at Pressed Steel, Linwood, is due to the fact that under the Emerson Plan the company, with the agreement of the shop stewards at the time, 'persuaded' its workers to abandon piecework rates and substitute a bonus which was to be paid according to the savings on manpower.

Now the bonus fund is more than €100,000 im the red. A claim for a 2s. an hour increase has been applied for in the factory but this is being blocked by negotiations.

Matters will not improve until there is a determined and united struggle to throw out the Emerson Plan and force the management to increase wages. attack

November and March with the result that wages have dropped by as much as f12 per month for men on the production track.

The track workers allege that the laying off of workers following the dispute with the die-setters was a deliberate provocation aimed at turning the majority of men against the die-setters and thus weakening their strike.

So the action of the men in the Ford trim shop was absolutely correct. They signified that they were not prepared to accept a lockout and said that there was in fact enough work for them to do for at least a week.

The importance which the management attached to the action in the Ford trim is shown by the scale of their reaction.

No less than two Ministry departments were involved: that of the Scottish office and that of the Ministry of Labour, TOKEN PROTESTS The press were, on this occasion, forced to admit that such action had not been known since the General Strike. Everyone must 'keep their heads' said the 'Daily Record'.

But the Pressed Steel management and the police knew what they were doing.

To allow workers to occupy locked-out factories is dangerous for the employers.

Wilson's ministers would back thèm on that.

Only token protests against the arrests have been made by the trade union officials. The organiser of the National Union of Vehicle Builders, Mr. Gibson, was booed when he got up to speak to a meeting of 400 locked-out men at the factory on Monday.

He announced that the Registered at the G.P O. as a newspaper 780 Clapham High Street, London, S. W.4 Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (TU), Published by The Newsletter. 186A Clapham Hieh Street. London. S.W.A ONE hundred thousand provincial busmen have been shamefully sold out in spite of the militant struggle they have put up in support of their five-point claim for better pay, shorter hours, holiday bonus and sickness and pension payments.

After a two-month delay since the setting up of Ray Gunter's enquiry into these claims, the findings have been published and have aroused bitter dissatisfaction among busmen.

The Committee recommends an increase of 15s. instead of 35s. as suggested. There is no retrospective payment of increase in spite of the long delay since the claim was first put forward. The 40-hour week will not be implemented until 1966. A sick pay scheme is to be discussed by unions and employers.

The committee also urges employers and unions to 'discusS restrictive practices, which the employers complain were being operated at some garages' INSIDIOUS ATTACK This wretched report contains an insidious attack against the six militant Black Country garages of Midland 'Red', which have continued the unofficial Saturday strikes throughout the committee's sittings. *These irresponsible stoppages, declares the report, 'have caused undeserved inconvenience to the public and have done no good to the interests of busmen themselves.' Midland 'Red' delegates to the strike co-ordinating committee in Birmingham said they were 'very, very dejected' over the committee's findings.

'We have all been sucked in with their verdict, was their comment. They felt they had no alternative but to agree since union officials had told them they were under a moral, though not legal, obligation to accept the findings of the committee.

DISSATISFACTION

Mr. R. H. Buckley, chairman of the Black Country strikers' co-ordinating committee, explained: "There is a lot of dissatisfaction over the way our wage claims have been treated. We could hear that the other busmen seemed to realise they had made a mistake and should have supported us. If all the garages had been represented, we should have had a decision to extend the strike throughout the company's garages.' Before the setting up of the committee of enquiry in March the Saturday strikes paralysed all 34 garages, but except for the Black Country crews at Oldbury, Dudley, Sturbridge, Brierley Hill, Cradley Heath and Wolverhampton all garages resumed normal working on the advice of Transport and General Workers' Union officials, when the enquiry was set up.

support tor "special rate' dockers NEWSLETTER REPORTER OVER 1,100 dockers on the Contre No te montrol, Liverpool, came out on strike on Tuesday afternoon in support of a gang of men involved in a dispute on the vessel "Galway'.

At the same time the mass meeting warned the officials of the Transport and General Workers Union and the employers that if no answer was given to the claim of the men in dispute by the next day, support would be sought along the whole line of docks in Liverpool and in Birkenhead.

The dispute began on the 'Galway' when dockers unloading paper bags of china clay asked for extra payment of 2s. 6d. per hour and pro-rata for overtime on this abnormal cargo.

The employers first offered 6s. a day, and later amended this to 12s, a day plus a lump sum payment of fl per man on completion of the job.

The men struck when negotiations reached a deadlock.

DISCONTENT

This strike is only one expression of the growing discontent on the Merseyside waterfront with the pay scales and with constant probing by the shipping employers.

More and more dockers are expressing dissatisfaction with the 19s. 6d. wage award made last year after the report of the Lord Devlin Committee of Enquiry:

up by the rapid increases in the cost of living.

Speaking at the meeting, Peter Kerrigan of the National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers union, warned the employers that dockers were under no obligation to accept the second part of Devlin's report which is due to be published this month. This section is to deal with proposals for decasualisation and reorganisation of the docks industry.

OPPOSE NEW DEAL' Recent reports in "The Times' and 'Daily Telegraph' that dockers seem to have dropped their opposition to the 'new deal' were angrily rejected at the meeting.

A number of dockers reported that approaches are being made by some dock employers to individual dockers inviting them to sign up for a permanent job anticipating the Devlin report.

Meanwhile, dockers in the No. 5 area strike action over a case victimisation of dockers involved on unloading a cargo of wet hides on the West Canada dock.

The men refused to work on this obnoxious cargo until supplied with overalls and boots. Later they were sent back into the pen and attempts to fill their jobs with other men from the control were unsuccessful.

The ship was declared in dispute.

The employers, Smith Coggins, and the Port Labour Board have been given till next Monday to withdraw charges against the gang involved and to pay all those others who refused the job a minimum rate of pay, i.e., £3 per shift.

NEWSLETTER INDUSTRIAL HE Executive Council of Union, which is dominate wing leadership of any union strengthen its position at the conference at Douglas, Isle week.

The main recommendations, if standing of the Council and weaken members.

But the blatant right-wing evident for some time. It has been among the most prominent in advocating an "incomes policy' with higher paid workers waiting until lower paid workers are brought up to their wage standard. (Meanwhile, the salaries of the General President and General Secretary are to be increased to £1,600-£2,000, plus expenses.)

On foreign policies, the Council is rabidly anti-communist and anti-socialist. It supports the line of the right-wing Labour government in Vietnam.

The Council has banned Communist Party members from holding office and others from holding office sine die and it has closed down the Camden Town branch.

Decisions flouted

Conference decisions of 1963 opposing a wage freeze and participation in the National Economic Development Council have been flouted by this same Council.

But these activities are not enough. The employing class expect and want a docile, disciplined trade union movement tied to the state through development councils and various state agencies.

Therefore, several recommendations of the Executive Council to the conference weaken the rights of members and give the Council more power.

The main recommendation will mean that instead of a two year rank-and-file Executive Council, there would be a five-year, full-time paid Executive Council, without any right of appeal against its decisions. Appeals against disciplinary action could be taken only when members were expelled or deprived of the right to hold office. There would be no appeal, therefore, against fines, and failure to pay could mean expulsion.

Members can only stand for full-time posts if they can satisfy a panel, not members of the union and appointed by the Executive Council, that the canSmith attacks Postmen IN an effort to sweep the boards clear of any militancy, General Secretary, Ron Smith, and the right-wing of the Union of Post Office Workers moved into action at the annual conference in Blackpool this week.

After the events of last year, when postmen throughout the country fought 'unofficially" against their conditions and low wages, an amendment is to be presented to the conference giving only the executive the right to call industrial action.

Still not finished with his attack on militancy, Smith gained conference's support for the executive's decision to expel seven members of the London district council, who called for a ban on overtime during the pay dispute last year.

the Electrical Trades d by the most rightin Britain, intends to union's rules revision of Man, in the next carried, will alter the the democratic rights of nature didate is competant.

'Competancy' may well mean servility to the Executive Council and the establishment.

A • new principle of nunelection of full-time officials is also to be introduced by the Executive Council.

'If a full-time official (other than an executive councillor) has held office continuously for 10 years immediately prior to attaining 55 years of age, he shall continue in office without further election until attaining 65 years of age.' Area Committees are to be scrapped, branch secretaries and treasurers are to be elected every two years (one year at present); full-time secretary/treasurers are to be set up when the 'industrial branches' are established.

The 'industrial branches' will be branches which separate out the various trades (contracting members in one branch, supply members in another, engineering members in another and so on).

There will be a sectionalising to divide the members into trade branches, thereby weakening the whole structure of the union by playing ofi one section against another—in fact, the opposite of "industrial branches, the name given to such branches by Cannon.

Proud record

Even the power of the branch to call a special meeting setting out the 'nature of the business' is to be withdrawn. The Executive Council is recommending that the branch may only call such a meeting 'in 'a manner approved by the Executive Council...

The ETU rank and file has a proud record of militancy and of socialist principles At this conference members must fight back.

They must reject proposals for wage freeze dressed up as an 'incomes policy'; restore the rights of members; fight for socialist policies and adequate wage demands; reject any amendment which reduces the members' democratic rights.

In short, they must lay the basis for a fight to remove the existing right-wing leadership in this and other unions and the Labour Party and their replacement by a new, independent and anti-capitalist leadership.

Board on two estates at Widnes, Lancashire, are angered by the announcement of a 12s. rise in their rents.

A letter to the miners' houses from the Divisional Estates Department in Tyldesley announces that the National Coal Board is entitled to charge 44s.

Said one woman: We may as well have a council house as pay 44s. for this place.' A miner commented: I know these houses, they were built for the National Coal Board after the war by various big firms and they were thrown up' Another tenant showed our reporter a photograph of Harold Wilson standing and talking to her husband at a miners' gala— 'Just let me see him again. I'll have a few things to tell him,' she exclaimed.

The increase comes into effect on June 2, but the miners are to discuss it in the National Union of Mineworkers.

Significantly, some tenants have have been told that only those who have occupied a house under eight years will be liable to pay the rise. None of the other tenants have been informed that they been excluded. but if it is true, the tenants should not let themselves be divided. It is vitally necessary for them to form a tenants' committee of miners and wives from both estates to fight through the union not only to stop the increase but to demand an investigation into the management of National Coal Board estates.

foundrymen A BOUT 1,400 members of the Foundry Workers' Union at West Yorkshire Foundries (Leeds) gave 100 per cent response to a call by shop stewards for a one-day strike last Monday in support of a pay claim.

Despite an attempt by one chargehand to split off some of the several hundred Indian, Pakistani and West Indian workers, the only people to report for duty were maintenance men, who are members of the Electrical Trades Union or Amalgamated Engineering Union.

Production workers at West Yorkshire Foundries rely on piece-work earnings to make a decent wage, but when machinery breaks down, they are paid only the minimum rate of about 5s. an hour or the equivalent of approximately £I0 a week.

Recent breakdowns and the rise in the cost of living have resulted in tht men taking action to defend their standard of living. They are demanding that average earnings of 8s. 9d. be paid to men awaiting work due to breakdown of machinery.

Shop stewards and other workers are confident that they can win the fight and scornfully reject the management's claim that they cannot afford to pay the rise-last year the Leyiand Group, of which West Yorkshire Foundries is a subsidiary, made a profit of £64 million!

London, 140 assistants and packers struck on Wednesday when 22-year-old Marcius Webb was sacked-he has been attempting to organise the workers in the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers. • The workers at Foyles were to have held a one-day strike on Saturday over pay and conditions, but the management's action brought them out immediately.

At present the shop staff work from 9 till 6 each day and all day Saturday. Girls at 16 receive f7 a week and boys at the same age receive £7 IOs. No sick pay is paid when they are ill.

At the moment the shop is about 60 per cent organised and for many of the strikers, it is their first experience of action-many of them are students from the continent.

Goods blacked'

The . union immediately declared the strike official and the London divisional organişer said he we quite prepared to have talks with Miss Foyle, owner of the shop.

Already Transport and General Workers' •Union drivers have declared all goods entering the shop as 'black', and a Union of Post Office Workers' branch is to ask its members to stop deliveries to the shop.

It is through actions like these that the strike can be won. Although the shopworkers' union has accepted George Brown's Declaration of Intent, such strikes challenge the whole basis for such declaration.

Betting shop

clerks seek recognition YOUNG clerical workers marched through Cardiff on Wednesday after picketing the Womanby Street headquarters of the South Wales' betting organisation of Shermans for union recognition.

The Clerical and Administrative Workers' Union has declared the strike by the 100 workers, most of them teenage girls, official.

The strike is particularly important in, view of the victimisation of strikers in Merthyr Tydfil last week.