The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 399

WEEKLY_ ORGAN OF-THEECENTRAL-COMMITTEE=OF-THESSOCIAL ST TABOUR LEAGUE Vol. 9, No. 399 June 12, 1965 Price 6d. IRRATINI TOWARDS OUR DAILY JURING his report to the Seventh National Congress of the Socialist Labour League, G. Healy, the National Secretary, outlined some of the technical arrangements which the printers of The Newsletter are now making in preparation for the daily paper. le typesetting on the daily paper would be carried out on a number of automated machines, manufactured by Linotype & Machinery Limited. The machine is known as the Elektron and was first manufactured by the Mergenthaler Corporation of the United States. Each of these machines would handle the output of two perforated CENTTARAR VIETNAM NEWSPAPER by MICHAEL BANDA a speed of 15 The first of these machines was being installed and would be in operation in early August.

The printing of the paper would be done by Web Offset and our printers, said G. Healy, were now studying the best type of press for installation. We are aiming,' he said, to produce a daily paper on the most modern equipment available and we feel certain we will get as much finance from the labour movement as is needed to do this.

• HE Seventh National Congress of the Socialist Labour League was held in London on June 5, 6 and 7. It was by far the most successful conference which the Socialist Labour League has had since its inauguration.

Not only has the membership of the League increased, but a considerable number of young people who recently joined the League are now playing a leading part in building the revolutionary party.

The Congress was opened by Comrade Cliff Slaughter, who outlined the terms of the International Resolution, entitled 'Rebuilding the Fourth International'. The first two paragraphs of this resolution say:

The class struggle is Bolshevik opposition prethe contradiction between

THE decision of the State Department authorising U.S.

troops to give 'combat support to South Vietnamese forces, as well as the massive airlift of another 20,000 troops to South Vietnam, should, despite Wednesday's contradictory statement from Washington, leave no doubts in anybody's mind that U.S. imperialism is preparing for an all-out war in Southeast Asia.

Such a decision not only shows the determination of the imperialist murderers, but it also makes a mockery of pacifists such as Lord Brockway and Eric Heffer, whose opposition to the war has been confined to idiotic and plaintive appeals for summit diplomacy, and a negotiated settlement leading to a 'neutral' Vietnam.

The centrists, the pacifists, and the Stalinists, all stand exposed by the actions of U.S. imperialism. Their monumental cowardice and treachery towards the Vietnamese people will not easily, or soon be forgotten.

DEMAND ACTION

Months ago, The Newsletter demanded that the 'left-wing' MPs should stop talking and do something about the war by voting against the Wilson government. It was the only paper to do so:

Today, however, hundreds and thousands of workers are beginning to realise the correctness and justice of our demand.

Wilson's support for Johnson's war—a war which is widely hated, even in the United States —shows that the 'Labour' government is not only a reactionary government, but a counterrevolutionary one as well.

CONFERENCE. NOW!

No socialist worthy of the name can or will support the foreign policy of the Wilson government. Only traitors to the working class do.

To Messrs. Mikardo, Foot, Heffer, Silverman, and all, we say: Either resign your seats or vote against Wilson before it is too late.

To the great mass of trade unionists and Labour Party members, we make this appeal: Call your traitorous leaders to order and replace them by demanding an immediate conference of the Labour Party.

Hands off Vietnam! Midland workers and, at the present time, there are a number of industrial struggles arising in what was considered a 'prosperous, contented area'.

Not only does the capitalist state hope its courts will tame the militancy amongst youth, but they use their press, once again, in an attempt to divide the youth.

Last year it was 'Mods' and 'Rockers'. This year the new names that the press play on are 'Greasers', "Thunderbirds' and "Trogs' As stated at the Congress of the Socialist Labour League, it is this kind of youth which is attracted to, and is uniting with the Socialist Labour League in action against the capitalist set-up. BEA porters determined Expose role of bureaucrats the air industry have shown their determination to win higher wages and better conditions in the strike which almost paralysed London airport and air terminal over Whitsun.

The strike of British European Airways' baggage porters and other workers, which began as a 48-hour token stoppage before the week-end and is to be discussed at a meeting of the National Joint Council for the air industry on Thursday, has also exposed, once again, the role of the bosses, the Labour government and trade union leaders.

Stranded for a time at the airport last Friday, Ray Gunter, Minister of Labour shamefully condemned the strike, which had, by that time, spread to apron loaders at Heathrow.

Union and the Comintern led eventually to the defeats in Britain and China in 1926-27 and the victory of fascism in Italy, Germany and Spain. Between 1933 and 1938 Trotsky and the THIS resolution will be submitted to the next Congress of the Fourth International, which will take place at the end of January 1966. The draft of this resolution is presently being discussed inside the Socialist Labour League.

A resolution on building the revolutionary party in Britain was moved by G. Healy, the National Secretary of the League and carried unanito fight Reporter "The present dispute, which has caused so much inconvenience to thousands of people, is a disgrace, Gunter commented.

"These men have flatly contradicted their own union and they pour their spleen upon ordinary folk. This is not just irresponsibility, this is just sheer viciousness,' he said.

Gunter ignores the 'sheer viciousness' of the Labour government's refusal to grant higher pensions to 'ordinary folk', and the number of his Ministry's inquiries that have turned down wage increases to other 'ordinary folk' Not surprisingly Mr. Gunter's statement-like so many of his previous outbursts-has met with unqualified approval from the ruling class and its kept press. Peterborough of "The Daily Telegraph' spoke for them all when he wrote: It was the first occasion within memory that a Minister of Labour has commented on a 'wildcat' strike in crisis of working - class leadership. All the economic and political developments since then have shown the correctness of insisting that the development of imperialism constantly deepens lously. considerabl umber of delegates took par a this discussion.

This resolution called for an all-out struggle against the right-wing leadership of Harold Wilson. It pledged its support to all sections of the labour movement who fight for their replacement leadership, which will fight for the nationalization of all the major industries, and the establishment of socialist planning under workers' control.

It declared its all-out opposition to the policy of the Wilson government in its support for President Johnson and his policy of sending American troops to Vietnam.

The Congress decided to do everything possible to expose the role of American imperialism in South Vietnam. The Congress declared its fullest support for the struggle of the Vietcong and sent its warmest greetings for a successful victory against the United States' intervention.

Against wage freeze A further resolution by Congress declared its intention of fighting for the victory of the South African people. It called for the release of Dr. Alexander and all those now imprisoned in South Africa by the semi-fascist regime which enjoys the tacit support of the Labour government.

Congress declared its opposition to the Incomes Commission and its fullest support for all those fighting for more wages and improved working conditions.

Several delegates referred to report on the discu for the Socialist Labor pages 2 struggles in the colonial countries-all of these international capitalism has survived because of the treachery of these misleaders who disarmed the working class.

the strikes now taking place at Foyle's and at London Airport.

Congress demanded the fullest support by the entire labour movement for all those workers who are fighting for an improvement in wages.

A highlight of the congress was a collection which reached the all-time high of $200. Delegate after delegate pledged to do everything possible to help launch the daily paper and to constantly fight for an increased circulation of the weekly Turning point Congress marked a big turning point from any other similar congress of the Trotskyist movement in Britain. Seventy-five per cent of the delegates consisted of young people below the age of 20 years, all of whom were members of trade unions, and active workers within most of the important industries.

In the course of some eight hours' discussion on international and British affairs, delegate after delegate expressed their determination about the possibility of rebuilding the Fourth International at the same time as they fought for the mass revolutionary party in Britain.

This was truly a historic occasion. British Trotskyism is now the most powerful organisation within the Fourth International. We are sure that in the months to come, thousands of revolutionaries will join in support of the International Committee of the Fourth International and its forthcoming International Congress.

ission of perspectives ir League appears on and 3

THE South African Supreme Court has again quashed an appeal by the 'Alexander 11' who were jailed in late 1963 for periods of five to ten years for alleged sabotage.

A previous appeal was dismissed on March 2 this year.

The I1, Dr. Neville Alexander, Dorothy Alexander, Pikele Bam, Lionel Davis, Dulcie September, Doris, Elizabeth and Leslie Van der Heyden, the Rev. Don Davis, Marcus Solomons and Gordon Hendricks, were arrested in July 1963 without charges under the 90-day detention law and charged in November with violations of the Suppression of Communism Act and the General Law Amendment Act.

A number of further requests for assistance to South African political prisoners now have been received by quashed the British Alexander Committee.

A statement issued by the All-African Convention (AAC) and Unity Movement, from their Lusaka headquarters informs us that former Unity president, Leo Linda Sihlali and Louis Leo Mtshizana of East London, have now been arrested by the South African government.

HOUSE ARREST

Sihlali was forced to resign as the Unity Movement president when the government slapped a five-year ban on him. He was placed under house-arrest; prohibited from membership of any of the affiliates of the Unity Movement; not allowed to receive visitors and compelled to make regular reports to the police.

Mtshizana, ex-chairman of the East London branch of the Society of Young Africa, one of the organisations affiliated to the Unity Movement, is a lawyer.

DEFENDER

His real crime is the prominent role that he has played in the defence of the victims of racial terror.

Readers prepared to help with the work of the committee, should write to: The Secretary, Alexander Committee, 27 Thursley House, Holmewood Gardens, S.W.2.

Further details of Sihlali and Mtshizana will be printed in next week's Newsletter.

The right wing of the Labour Party used police in the witch-hunt against the Majority elected at the 1964 Brighton Conference of the YS. Here two members of that Majority are ejected from Transport House. an explain that power and can rs, that capital• then take them t adherence of •king in the real e factories and uild the party, • they can take : are tail-ending ickwardness of youth, because if building the , he said, that nerations who de union moveally been desourse of a long, iod of boom, be rejuvenated = of the youth, nto the unions.

1965 for giving leadership.

The Foyle's strike had shown that the field of poorly paid workers was wide open for organising big trade unions among people who were affected more and more by the decline of the purchasing power and the rise in the cost of living.

There were thousands of trades where young people were crying out for union organisation.

'Make the trade unions a hive of activity for the youth to smash the Communist Party politically and win over the best militants. Don't go just for the poorer-paid workers, but in the skilled trades as well.

'Combine these fights in the struggle for political developand the working class in struggle with the capitalist class.

'No Trotskyist is worthy of the name unless he sees the winning of a daily paper, not as an organisational task, but the projection of everything we fight for politically.

It is an expression of confidence in the working class. We believe we can do it.

'We have to prepare to fight for the paper.: It is not just a fight for money.

In every activity, in every task we undertake, every article we write, and every strike we influence or take part in, the sum total of this work must be to build up into this paper. The paper is the whole essence of Leninism, the whole centre of the advice of We carry this out on behalf of the working class. Everything we do looks not just to the fight we are conducting, but beyond this fight into the working class and how to go into the working class.

'We have to carry out what is historically required-the building of this movement.

'We are the forward freedom fighters against capitalism.

'We have to look to the future. Can we have socialism internationally? Can we get rid of capitalism? Can we take the power? We say yes!

Resources

•From this fight we shall get the money. We won't get it by eloquent appeals. The gaining of resources in this movement is tied up with the Parliamentary Labour Party would do something. This was a conspiracy to keep the workcoalfield was one of the most mechanised and had the biggest output in West Europe.

The miners had led the fight against Wyatt and had ceased to pay the political levy to the Labour Party until Wyatt was removed.

In the hosiery town, the union leaders, who had actually accepted a major wage cut in 1958, and now supported Wyatt, were isolated from the rank and file.

The Newsletter sellers in the area heard workers express extreme bitterness about the actions of Wyatt, Wilson and Brown, and show open opposition to the whole Labour leadership.

Another delegate from the Midlands • said the working class was on the offensive and had won some of the biggest Three tional Conference in next year.

'We won't really realise the responsibility or aim of rebuilding the Fourth International unless we see the importance of building and training working-class youth into Marxist leaders.' This was the whole essence of the discussion, whether the working-class youth, Marxist youth, could be trained.

'We have shown that they can. From this youth between 16 and 19 there is tremendous force towards the revolutionary movement and understanding of Marxism.

In this present situation we have the strength of the working class pitted against capitalism, we have a hatred shown towards the policies of the Labour government. We get in the working-class youth a tremendous confi-

MR. RAY GUNTER, the Labour government's Minister of Labour, is quite the man for making reactionary statements. Following his attack on the BEA strikers (reported on this page), he went on to the Co-operative Congress in Edinburgh to talk of 'far too much indiscipline in every part of this nation'.

He went on: It is only when the nation realises and understands that there are underlying moral standards to which we should be obedient, that the labour movement is going to achieve everything it wants to achieve, or we will perish as a Labour Party?

What he means is that the working class is morally wrong to press for wage claims, which the Wilson government is desperately trying to crush.

But is it moral for the Labour government to cut down the workers' standard of living? Is it moral for them to let hundreds of old people die for the sake of a few shillings? Is it moral for them to support the liquidation of thousands of Vietnamese people?

Gunter went on to say that if there were no morals, then 'how different are we from the Tories, or anyone else?' ... Quite!

THE deepening crisis of capiItalism again expressed itself after last week-end with vicious fines and sentences on youths, following disturbances in seaside towns.

It is significant that the seaside towns on the East Coast are chosen for the main onslaught of £25, Afines and six month sentences, Great Yarmouth and Skegness are traditional holiday centres for international. World capitalism has long since played out its historical role of laying down the objective bases for socialism; the struggles of the workers of all countries have meaning only in terms of the world socialist revolution which began in October 1917 in Russia, as part of the world proletarian revolution. The Third (Communist): International was set up to answer the needs of the working class in this epoch of wars and revolutions. Following the betrayals of social democracy after 1918, the degeneration of the Communist Party of the Soviet pared to establish a Fourth International in response to the needs of the working class in a period of defeats, when Stalinism passed definitely to the side of counter-revolution.

The history of the class struggle since 1938 has proved correct the basic starting point of Trotsky and the founders of the Fourth International: the working class remains oppressed by capitalism because of the betrayals of the working-class leadership, particularly by the Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR; our epoch is the epoch of the productive forces and capitalist social relations. But at every critical stage in the development of this contradiction, the traitorous social-democratic and Stalinist leaderships and the Soviet bureaucracy have misled the workers; these petty-bourgeois formations have divided the workers along national and sectional lines and held back the development of a revolutionary consciousness. The post-war economic and political crisis in the advanced countries, the breakdown of capitalist rule in Eastern Europe, the victorious revolution in China, the mass

is of the ElecUnion and Engineering ot be solved in th the tired old ommunist Party Labour lefts'. em an historic nnot carry out, he new task, n, to change unions, train cadres in the h can only be nass scale by ho are ready h collaborates with imperialism.

ese struggles and their victory.

ernational, planned for early 1966. nal practices of Pabloism. period. nationalist movements. ment.' Urgent need for Communist daily paper The great demand of the hour, said Comrade Healy, is a communist daily newspaper that will fight, and summons people to fight, record and analyse every activity of the party, political struggles, views and the way in which it sees the vital questions affecting Lenin in 'What Is To Be Done' when he talks of an 'All Russian Political Newspaper' to develop the party and have a voice before the working class, he said. "The daily paper for us is the essence of everything. It is how to project the struggle to take power. We are going to fight all those tendencies, the Communist Party, the fake lefts and centrists, ruthlessly.

'Our greatest achievement is not just to defeat these people alone. We go beyond that. the Transitional Programme. the liquidationist revisionism of Pabloism. events.

Labour League. revisionists. national and a defeat of revisionism. political preparation and with the day by day struggle.

"The political situation will determine the time for launching the daily newspaper. But there is a note of great urgency Comrade Healy explained how the 'Daily Worker' and "Tribune' had lost circulation and the fact that the Labour Party was incapable of starting their own newspaper since the death of the 'Daily Herald'.

The Communist Party and the "Tribune'-ites were united in that they believed that the SCHl ing class from participating in building a leadership.

The Socialist Labour League fought them. That was why it was confident of a daily paper.

*If we can launch that paper at the height of the crisis in the leadership of the labour movement, we are set for a transformation. We can transform the Socialist Labour League from the present organisation into a mass organisation.

'We are really preparing for the mass revolutionary leadership in the youth movement, for the trade union and labour movement. You carry the responsibilities for this. You have to face up to them, he concluded.

Discussion

In discussion T. Sewell of London said discipline in the youth movement was not something which was just applied to the youth. The fight for discipline began from the real forces affecting the youth branches which existed in the whole crisis of capitalism. He explained how this was a world crisis. The working class in Britain had a real hatred of the Wilson government.

The youth movement existed outside the Labour Party, so they were not just fighting to expose the bureaucrats, but raising the whole question of power for the working class.

Discipline in the youth movement means that we have to implement this programme for power to show youth we mean business, he said.

F. Baines of Lancashire said that in the recent period people had been rallied to the revolutionary youth movement.

'We have got to attract the movement into industries and win new cadres and develop the youth around us into revolutionaries. But we have got to be very careful how we do this. In industry we will come into conflict with bureaucrats' Youth to fore The situation in industry with the struggle arising was totally different from before the General Election, he said.

In the recent Mersey dock strike it had been noticeable that the people who came to the front were not the old militants who had been around for years, but a completely new section of dockers aged between 20 and 30 years, who organised very quickly, giving real leadership to win the strike.

But it was not sufficient to simply go into the trade unions. Youth had to be taken in on real issues as they came up, such as strikes and completely sweep away others who wanted to hold them back.

'We should not be pessimistic about failures in the youth industrial work. We learn from our mistakes which enrich our theory. Youth are already confident in strikes, and, when they are fighting confidently, we must inject into them leadership and the need for the Party.' In the work over the past period, said D. White of London, youth had become more and more interested in politics and the Young Socialists. The Young Socialists were able to hold a series of campaigns starting with the September 27 demonstration, when they were able to bring 3,000 onto the streets. - 'This developed so we could have a The leadership of the French organisation, belonging to the International Committee of the Fourth International, has mandated two comrades to participate in the work of your Congress and bring the greetings of the French | Trotskyists.

During a long period of years, our two sections have I been harnessed to the task of rooting out Pabloite revisionism , from the Fourth International. Important steps have been made, but the principal thing is that, through this common struggle, a greater and greater homogeneity between our sections has been realised on a same line.

We have, together, understood perfectiy, which is the essential theory, that the struggle for the reconstruction of the Fourth International is inseparable from action to build the national sections of the Fourth International.

In other words, just as it is indispensable that the struggle for the construction of national revolutionary parties should take place on an international scale, so also active intervention of the revolutionary vanguard, organised in the national sections of the Fourth International, in relation with the concrete problems of the class struggle in each country, is the necessary discussion for the reconstruction of the Fourth International.

On this principled basis, the decisive battle for the Fourth International taken on by the International Committee will be deepened and enlarged with the second International Conference.

The combined crisis of world imperialism and the parasitic Soviet bureaucracy, which is beginning to produce the first manifestations of a new international movement, Ion the left, in the consciousness of wide masses of the • exploited and obbressed, despite temporary retreats in the varporton "rr. class struggle in one country or another, can now open positive perspectives for our organisational work.

Already, on the basis of this world conjuncture activities, Pabloism is in complete decomposition international scale.

We have no doubt that the principled struggle of our organisation of the Fourth International will finish with revisionism in all its forms, thus opening the way for the construction of powerful revolutionary parties in each country and the reconstruction of the World Party of the Socialist Revolution of which we established the basis, under the leadership of Leon Trotsky, in 1938.

Dear comrades, we wish the greatest possible effectiveness to the Socialist Labour League, which, in a few years, has become the strongest section of the Fourth International, the most important bastion which supports the struggle of the other sections and groups of the Fourth International. campaign against the right wing and the Labour government on the betrayal of old age pensions by uniting old and young workers in a demonstration, she said.

'From this campaign we achieved contact with adult workers in the trade unions and were able, in London, to campaign against racialism, which is a big achievement when you consider how racialism has penetrated the workers' movement and the youth. We held the demonstration through Mosley's area and got support from people, and trade unionists.' Struggles enriched Later the Young Socialists had marched with members of the Indian Workers' Association against the imprisonment of Indian communists and against the Vietnam war. This had culminated in May Day when many youth new to the Young Socialists shouted the slogan Workers of the world unite'.

This could not have happened last summer in the Mod and Rocker era, when youth would have treated it as a bit of a joke. This year a definite interest had been experienced and the youth were certainly not indifferent to Young Socialist leaflets.

This was because they had been through the experience of the betrayals of the trade union leaders and the Labour government, which had been enof our on an With Communist greetings, for the Central Committee P. LAMBERT.

riched by struggles of the adult workers. They could be further developed by bringing them into the Young Socialists and organising for the summer programme.

J. McEwan, who told how the miners in Bosworth had attacked Woodrow Wyatt for his position on steel, said Wyatt was merely the advance guard for the Wilson and Brown leadership, which was catching up very quickly with him.

Wyatt's constituency, said McEwan, was based on two towns, one a mining * own, another a hosiery town. The Youth under attack in the Mod and Rocker era. Voung Socialisis same youth is now attracted in great numbers to ol wage increases that it had won for years and years.

Capitalists weak

'We have come through a period of a Labour government which, with all its manoeuvres and betrayals, has been unable to solve any of the problems facing the capitalist class in relation to the working class,' she said.

'But I think that many comrades gained from these experiences of the working class on the offensive and undefeated, the impression that the winning of wage increases now has got something to do with capitalism's ability to give concessions to the working class, whereas quite the contrary is true.

'Giving concessions to the working class is part of the weakness of the capitalist class, its inability to form an organisation to come to terms, to work out plans and policies to defeat the working class.

'There is a paralysis of the ruling class and hesitation to take on the working class, to measure the real extent of its difficulties and to come to some solution,' she said.

The background to the discussion on the steel industry summed up the big problems facing British capitalism because of the developments affecting the productive forces.

Rationalisation

producuon several pounds produce the steel needed for British needs, bu his would need the rational or seven strip mills upon whic 0,000 workers are dependen his would mean taking o ne working class in all th areas duced.

1 ne behind tionalization was whether the with democratic sufficiently which are steel.

Merely to state and see he British working class as undefeated and on the offensive, winning wage increases and merely to see militancy of the working class, was a big danger. The working class could not solve its problems without the revolutionary party.

'We have the task of building a whole new layer of Marxist cadres of youth,' said a young London speaker. 'Our tasks are in fighting for the preparation rebuild the Fourth International and the preparation for the Internapolitical fight. dence.' This youth was now entering the political arena, was leaving school and coming into industrial struggles and really despising bureaucracy inside the labour movement and trade unions, she said.

'The various tendencies

who want to keep the status quo have nothing to offer this youth. We are showing quite successfully that only a revolutionary organisation fighting for revolutionary theory inside the youth movement can really attract youth at all and organise youth?

The important thing was to recognise that since the seven months of the Labour government the youth movement was facing a much different type of youth which readily discussed issues.

Theoretical training The newspaper of the youth movement had to reflect the theoretical training that the organisation wanted to give to this youth.

"To really reflect our drive to educate the working-class youth in the future, we want to produce political articles in the youth paper — articles dealing with the history of the working-class movement and ex the revoluton, and so ont she said.

"This is extremely important if we are really to explain and create the atmosphere for serious political education inside the youth movement.

This would be part of the training of youth to intervene in the trade union struggles.

'We have seen in the Foyle's strike, the tremendous amount of feeling there, and the contempt the youth had for the so-called leaders who i were trying to fob them off with all kinds of excuses, trying to tell them the strike was not a conflict. Experience in this strike will be important for future work in the trade unions.' With the intervention in the trade unions, the circulation of the paper had to be increased. It had a whole history of struggle and the defeat of the Labour bureaucracy.

NEXT WEEK:

The Newsletter will report the International Perspectives of the Socialist Labour League introduced at the Congress by

and 7th, 1965 THE NEWSI

Party of Great Britain, in May 22, he had talked decline in membership 1 sales of the 'Daily r', especially around and he General Election. ; contrast shows the of Marxism although embership is not as large e Communist Party.' said.

Communist Party had to gain circulation for laily Worker' after the of the 'Daily Herald'.

Communist Party had considerable amounts of on deposits in the I Election that were licalisation of working class ing about the present al situation, Comrade said that workers now nore determined to fight eir rights. There were strike experiences in Wales, London Airport ovle's. rallving support "J=-- --II de unions, while trade leaders signed economic statements behind the of their members and a different tune in front I members. le Frank Cousins sat in nent and supported the es Commission, a 7} per age increase was gained ransport and General rs' Union members. William Carron and all people seem to enjoy power, but we can see n open struggle. Young St hole policy before the wor and more that a deterstruggle of the working means breaking with cracy to take hold of own organisations and them work. This break important new trend we have to take up,' he a period of instability, are struggles to defend age and working conof the working class. is mounting pressure to ie wages. Despite all emands of the bureauin the trade union and movement to halt this, is movement which preates.

have maintained that uth is activated by the ed problems of autodo not subscribe to the en idea that the stanif living of the working as to be reduced to the f the 1930s before it will workers have become › the improved standard ng and we believe that ure prepared • to defend rade Healy said that neasure to cut living rds by a drastic increase is or devaluation of the would radicalise the g class to the point that outdo 1926. It was not ition of going back to isation. The working xpected more from life. Study the YS he great wave of calisation and big es will require not reportage in our » but the developt of the revolutionary v to prepare for bigger ns by the working and prepare for the ig of power, he • impossible to develop m in Britain without a lous study of the Young Socialists and the work they had carried out over the last five years.

At the Morecambe conference the Young Socialists had reaffirmed the policies carried at Brighton. Youth laid the ground work for building the mass revolutionary party.

"This is only done through a struggle for their policies and developing theory in the struggle to mobilise more youth. We find the political impact of the strength in the working class is reflected most in the age groups 17 to 18 to 19. We are bringing into the youth movement new people deeply interested in discussing, reading books and participating in the work of the Socialist Labour League consciously.

'We are begining to find now the material which will carry the movement to a mass party. It is not just a question of only a few people. The work of building the revolutionary leadership is a qualitative activity where we fight in the class for our policies and organisation. In our own organisation we continue this, fighting to organise, reorganise and change it.

Never retreat

'We have to be very firm on principles and in experiences, and always modest in this respect, that the enemy might have an unexpected knife to pull on us.

We must train in the critical school of Marxism.

"This is why we have so ocialists marched 3,000-strong to a rking class on September 27, 1964.

much success, because we are resolved never to retreat, even though we might be defeated on many questions, because we are convinced of the ability of the working class to take power.

'Any retreat in the youth movement is of serious concern. We can be driven back. We can have whole areas liquidated unless we make a turn to fresh, new layers of youth, especially in the age groups I have said.' Comrade Healy dealt with the age problem in the Young Socialists saying that those over 20 were divorced from teenagers and many did not listen to youth in strikes and demonstrations.

The purpose of the Young Socialist summer campaign was to attract youth from the schools, and those just entering work, not only to give them lectures and activate them politically, but to keep abreast of all their development.

Youth had very •idealist conceptions learned from . the schools. The Young Socialists had to turn them to socialism and socialist theory. They had to have the arguments at their fingertips.

Youth have power

'Young people do not join the movement as fully-fledged Marxists. Marxist ideas are at first accepted in an idealist way, they replace the ideas learned under capitalism. But this is a good start.

'We are not out just to be left-wing critics of the Labour government. We are the challengers and contenders for power,' he said.

But, he added, it was no use recruiting youth after breaking them from previous thinking and then leave them to languish in the Socialist Labour League, without understanding the next stage of their development.

'Unless we can explain that they have the power and can be the real rulers, that capitalism is bankrupt, then take them from an idealist adherence of Marxism to working in the real struggles in the factories and the fight to build the party, then show how they can take the power?

'Many people are tail-ending behind the backwardness of some of the youth, because the challenge of building the party is not seen.' It was clear, he said, that the older generations who were in the trade union movement, had really been destroyed in the course of a long, protracted period of boom, and could only be rejuvenated by the struggle of the youth, who must go into the unions. The problems of the Elec trical Trades Union and Amalgamated Engineering Union could not be solved in conferences with the tired old generation of Communist Party members and Labour "lefts'. 'Don't give them an historic mission they cannot carry out, he said.

"This is the new task, the new turn, to change the trade unions, train Communist cadres in the unions, which can only be done on a mass scale by the youth who are ready Revolutionary greetings to HIS Seventh National Conference of the Socialist Labour League sends its revolutionary greetings to all the force of the international working class who are in struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the defeat of the treacherous reformist and Stalinist leaderships of the working class.

Our conference declares its solidarity with the struggles of the workers in the United States, Western Europe and Japan against their capitalist exploiters, with the workers and peasants of the colonial and oppressed nations, particularly in Vietnam, against imperialism and its agents, and with the workers of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe against the parasitic bureaucracy which collaborates with imperialism.

Only the reconstruction of the Fourth International, with Trotskyist-Leninist parties in every country, can ensure the unity of these struggles and their victory.

We therefore send fraternal greetings to all sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International, and will give every support to its conference for the rebuilding of the Fourth International, planned for early 1966.

Our greetings go particularly to those who have fought revisionism under especially difficult circumstances in the USA, the American Committee for the Fourth International. They will receive every possible support from the Socialist Labour League.

From this conference we express especially our revolutionary greetings to the Partie Communiste Internationaliste in France, whose long fraternal collaboration with the Socialist Labour League has been the foundation of the International Committee and its work. The French section was first in the fight and bore the main brunt of revisionist attack on the Fourth International. They pioneered the fight against the theory and organisational practices of Pabloism.

In Ceylon, those comrades in the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary) who have taken up the fight to build the revolutionary party and defeat revisionism since the gross betrayal of N. M. Perera and the majority of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party in 1964, will continue to receive the wholehearted support of the Socialist Labour League and the International Committee.

The conference called by the International Committee will mark a qualitative stage in the development of the Fourth International. Revisionism in the Trotskyist movement has run its course from theoretical distortions to open class betrayal in the recent period.

The entry of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party of Ceylon into the capitalist coalition government of Mrs. Bandaranaike in 1964 was the most crushing proof of this degeneration. It followed hard on the heels of the unprincipled reunification' between the Pabloite 'International Secretariat' and the Socialist Workers Party of the United States. This re-unification was completed without political discussion deliberately to avoid the political questions confronting the international movement.

The struggle against revisionism carried out by the International Committee has hastened the process of degeneration of the Pabloite forces. Ever since 1951, these revisionists have in effect subordinated the working class and the building of the revolutionary party to the Stalinist bureaucracy, the reformist leaders and the bourgeois nationalists in the colonial countries. The forces of the International Committee have correctly fought for the political independence of the working class through the building of the revolutionary party and the application of the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International.

Pablo himself now separates publicly from the 'Reunified' Secretariat in Paris, and openly advocates the complete liquidation of Trotskyism into the Stalinist bureaucracy and the bourgeois-nationalist movements. This open break from Marxism by Pablo, supported by a for giving leadership.

The Foyle's strike had shown that the field of poorly paid workers was wide open for organising big trade unions among people who were affected more and more by the decline of the purchasing power and the rise in the cost of living.

There were thousands of trades where young people were crying out for union organisation.

'Make the trade unions a hive of activity for the youth to smash the Communist Party politically and win over the best militants. Don't go just for the poorer-paid workers, but in the skilled trades as well.

'Combine these fights in the struggle for political development.' Urgent need for Communist daily paper The great demand of the hour, said Comrade Healy, is a communist daily newspaper that will fight, and summons people to fight, record and analyse every activity of the party, political struggles, views and the way in which it sees the vital questions affecting the working class in struggle with the capitalist class.

'No Trotskyist is worthy of the name unless he sees the winning of a daily paper, not as an organisational task, but the projection of everything we fight for politically.

'It is an expression of confidence in the working class. We believe we can do it.

'We have to prepare to fight for the paper. It is not just a fight for money.

In every activity, in every task we undertake, every article we write, and every strike we influence or take part in, the sum total of this work must be to build up into this paper. The paper is the whole essence of Leninism, the whole centre of the advice of Lenin in What Is To Be Done' when he talks of an 'All Russian Political Newspaper' to develop the party and have a voice before the working class, he said.

'The daily paper for us is the essence of everything. It is how to project the struggle to take power. We are going to fight all those tendencies, the Communist Party, the fake lefts and centrists, ruthlessly.

'Our greatest achievement is not just to defeat these people alone. We go beyond that. number of old Trotskyists such as Santen in Holland and Vereecken in Belgium, together with half the French section, the majority of the Australian section and certain groups in Algeria and other colonial countries, should be the warning light for those Trotskyists remaining in the sections of the United Secretariat who want to fight revisionism and defend the Transitional Programme.

They should support the Socialist Labour League and the Fourth International in fighting for a discussion of all principled questions and the serious preparation of a future conference of all those who accept the Transitional Programme. This was proposed by the International Committee Conference of September 1963, and rejected by the United Secretariat.

The evolution of Pablo, and the events in Ceylon, Belgium and the USA, have proved the correctness of our proposals. Germain, Frank and Hansen have proved themselves utterly incapable of defending the programme of the Fourth International. Their theory and their 'politics' are in essence the same as those of Pablo. In America, the Socialist Workers Party's prostration before petty-bourgeois nationalism in the Negro movement is only one reflection of their acceptance of the liquidationist revisionism of Pabloism.

In Western Europe, the sections of the Unified Secretariat' have become mere appendanges of the 'left' social democracy. Belgium provides the proof. 'Entry' was used to opportunistic. ally abandon the construction of the revolutionary party, only to end in the adventure of proclaiming a new centrist party in alliance with the worst nationalist and petty-bourgeois elements, whose split from the new party itself is only a matter of time. The next United Secretariat Congress will expel Pablo and his supporters, expel over 500 members of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, as well as having to give an accounting of all these events.

The present stage is therefore a crucial one. It is the last opportunity to engage in a serious discussion and reconstruction of the International before the forces around the United Secretariat are completely liquidated by Frank, Germain and Hansen, who are rapidly following Pablo to the complete abandonment of revolutionary Marxism. All those who struggle against these revisionists will receive the support of the Socialist Labour League.

The successful fight of the International Committee against revisionism and the work of its sections in constructing a leadership of the working class provide the basis for the recontruction of the Fourth International. Such a reconstruction is the fear of Stalinists and social democrats everywhere, just as it is feared by the capitalist class. The responsibility for the split in the International rests squarely upon the Pabloite revisionists.

1963 showed that in the USA the Socialist Workers Party had succumbed to the same revisions. When the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party sent condolences to the widow of Kennedy, and called upon the U.S. government to defend the Negroes with Federal troops, the consequences of revisionism were shown no less starkly than they were in Ceylon.

The 're-unification' of the revisionists in 1963 without discussion of past differences was a part of the whole method of liquidationism. The proposals for international discussion put forward by the International Committee Conference in September 1963 were rejected by the Pabloite United Secretariat. Since then, the disintegration of the Pabloite forces, a reflection of the crisis of the reformist and Stalinist bureaucracies faced with the intensification of the international class struggle, has confirmed the political necessity of a thorough discussion in the world movement to prepare a real re-building of the Fourth International and a defeat of revisionism.

We call upon all Trotskyists throughout the world to support our efforts to re-organise the Fourth International on the programmatic basis of its 1938 Founding Conference. We carry this out on behalf of the working class. Everything we do looks not just to the fight we are conducting, but beyond this fight into the working class and how to go into the working class.

'We have to carry out what is historically required-the building of this movement.

'We are the forward freedom fighters against capitalism.

'We have to look to the future. Can we have socialism internationally? Can we get rid of capitalism? Can we take the power? We say yes!

Resources

•From this fight we shall get the money. We won't get it by eloquent appeals. The gaining of resources in this movement is tied up with the political preparation and with the day by day struggle.

"The political situation will determine the time for launching the daily newspaper. But there is a note of great urgency!

Comrade Healy explained how the 'Daily Worker' and "Tribune' had lost circulation and the fact that the Labour Party was incapable of starting their own newspaper since the death of the 'Daily Herald'.

The Communist Party and the "Tribune'-ites were united in that they believed that the such as santen in Holland an Parliamentary Labour Party would do something. This was a conspiracy to keep the working class from participating in building a leadership.

The Socialist Labour League fought them. That was why it was confident of a daily paper.

If we can launch that paper at the height of the crisis in the leadership of the labour movement, we are set for a transformation. We can transform the Socialist Labour League from the present organisation into a mass organisation.

'We are really preparing for the mass revolutionary leadership in the youth movement, for the trade union and labour movement. You carry the responsibilities for this. You have to face up to them, he concluded.

Discussion

In discussion T. Sewell of London said discipline in the youth movement was not something which was just applied to the youth. The fight for discipline began from the real forces affecting the youth branches which existed in the whole crisis of capitalism. He explained how this was a world crisis. The working class in Britain had a real hatred of the Wilson government.

The youth movement existed outside the Labour Party, so they were not just fighting to expose the bureaucrats, but raising the whole question of power for the working class.

'Discipline in the youth movement means that we have to implement this programme for power to show youth we mean business, he said.

F. Baines of Lancashire said that in the recent period people had been rallied to the revolutionary youth movement.

'We have got to attract the movement into industries and win new cadres and develop the youth around us into revolutionaries. But we have got to be very caretul now we do this. In industry we will come into conflict with bureaucrats.' Youth to fore The situation in industry with the struggle arising was totally different from before the General Election, he said.

In the recent Mersey dock strike it had been noticeable that the people who came to the front were not the old militants who had been around for years, but a completely new section of dockers aged between 20 and 30 years, who organised very quickly, giving real leadership to win the strike.

But it was not sufficient to simply go into the trade unions. Youth had to be taken in on real issues as they came up, such as strikes and completely sweep away others who wanted to hold them back.

"We should not be pessimistic about failures in the youth industrial work. We learn from our mistakes which enrich our theory. Youth are already confident in strikes, and, when they are fighting confidently, we must inject into them • leadership and the need for the Party?

In the work over the past period, said D. White of London, youth had become more and more interested in politics and the Young Socialists. The Young Socialists were able to hold a series of campaigns starting with the September 27 demonstration, when they were able to bring 3,000 onto the streets. - This developed so we could have a The leadersh the Internation has mandated t1 your Congress Trotskyists.

During a loi been harnessed t from the Fourti made, but the p struggle, a grea sections has been We have, to essential theory, the Fourth Inter the national secti In other wor for the construci take place on a vention of the national sections the concrete pro is the necessary Fourth Internati On this princ International tak be deepened ar Conference.

The combin parasitic Soviet the first manife on the left, in exploited and o class struggle it positive perspecti Already, on activities, Pablo international scal We have no organisation of revisionism in a construction of country and Party of the So the basis, under Dear comrad to the Socialist become the str the most importa other sections an campaign against wing and the Lab ment on the betr age pensions by and young worl demonstration,' she 'From this ca achieved contact workers in the ti and were able, in campaign against which is a big when you consider ism has penetrate kers' movement an We held the de through Mosley's a support from peopl unionists.' Struggles er Later the Youn had marched with the Indian Worke tion against the ir of Indian •comm against the Vietnan had culminated ir when many youth Young Socialists : slogan 'Workers o unite'.

This could not pened last summer and Rocker era, would have treater of a joke. This ye interest had been and the youth we not indifferent Socialist leaflets.

This was bec had been throus perience of the of the trade uni and the Labou ment, which hac

12, 1965

PENING the discussion on perspectives of the Socialist Labour League, Gerry Healy, the organisation's national secretary told the seventh national congress that it was taking place at a time of great dangers for the working class and .unlimited opportunities for the development of the party.

We have had seven months of a right-wing Labour government in power, he said. It is no secret that the Tory Party is on the way back.

"The recent council elections and the hostile measures taken by this government against its stalwart supporters in the trade union and labour movement, have divided and disrupted the working class and opened the way for the Tories, the direct agents of monopoly capital, to return to power and come back with a legislative structure they were unable to proceed with under the previous Tory government.' It was a mistake, he said, to think that a change of government would eliminate the capitalist crisis. The Tory party, before the general election, was in a constant state of crisis during which, for the first time since the Second World War, the disputes were in public.

Struggles open up Tore m sis tich wilson had been facing in the past seven MOnTOS When return to state not a where crisis abated, but The working class no aces great possibilities fo opening up struggles against the capitalists and the Tories, he added.

'Before the election we continuously warned against what they should and we fought the Wilson government and its policies.

"The only section of the labour which separated meit from the side we own Socialist ne waged a continuous struggle to orientate the working class along socialist policies.' The Young Socialists had defeated the right wing at the Brighton 1964 conference and adopted socialist policies. They elected a Majority to the National Committee of the Young Socialists and took the fight into the National Committee and the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party. Some the 4.000 who massed in Trafalgar Square, September 27, 1964, support of the policies of the Young Socialists National Committee Majority. G. Healy, national secretary of the Socialist Labour League: "This is a period of unlimited opportunities for the development of the revolutionary party' At the point where socialist policies were taken into this leadership, the right wing witch-hunted and expelled this Majority.

'When this witch-hunt began we had to make a vital decision. Should we capitulate to Transport House or should we fight them in the open,' said Healy.

The Socialist Labour League had fought the right wing , in the open and this had strengthened the working class and the Socialist Labour League.

Then the September 27 demonstration was held, where the Young Socialists marched behind the portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. This was the largest political demonstration of youth since the last war-3,000 marched and there were 4,000 in Trafalgar Square at the rally.

'This demonstration was not on a specific issue, it was organised on the whole policy front decided at Brighton,' be added.

The Young Socialists carried this fight into the constituency parties and fought the demand of the right wing to carry out the expulsions. The right wing brought the police in on a number of occasions and acted to deprive Young Socialist members of meeting rooms.

'We said we were for a Labour government that was loyal to the working class and carries out policies which would introduce socialism or behalf of the working class.' Open confrontation Then, when the Labour government turned its attention to attacking the standards of living of workers, specific issues, particularly on behalf of the old age pensioners, were taken up.

We were not content with passing pious resolutions which sympathised with the old people,' commented Healy.

"The Young Socialists demonstrated outside the Labour Party Conference in Brighton in December and carried their activities into the localities, gaining support from trade unionists. Later there was the lobby of Parliament Talking about the present and rally in February of this political situation, Comrade year. Healy said that workers now From that, an open con- were more determined to fight frontation with the right wing for their rights. There were was organised. recent strike experiences in 'The Morecambe conference South Wales, London Airport of the YS rallied 500 delegates and Foyle's, rallying support and 500 visitors. At a right- in trade unions, while trade wing rally in the same town union leaders signed economic in May there were 50 so-called policy statements behind the Young Socialists from the backs of their members and continent-over the age of 35 talked a different tune in front and one reported to be 50- of their members. and 135 of the faithful. That While Frank Cousins sat in is all this "mighty machine' Parliament and supported the could organise against us.

'We then turned our atten- cent wage increase was gained tion to going on to the streets for Transport and General for the first time as an inde- Workers' Union members. pendent force on May Day. 'Sir William Carron and all Throughout all the major these people seem to enjoy centres, youth and adults more power, but we can see The fight against the right wing became an open struggle. Young St Trafalgar Sauare meeting to present their whole policy before the wor organised mass demonstrations raising over and over again questions vitally affecting old age pensioners, the war in Vietnam, against the wage freeze, and against the incomes policy.

'These demonstrations made a profound effect on the Communist Party and militant workers in a number of areas,' he added.

Comrade Healy said

that in the period since the election of the Labour government, the membership and influence of the Socialist Labour League had grown and circulation of the paper had increased by 2,000 since January this year.

'Tribune' stood where it stood in 1959 by supporting Wilson, even though he did not have a scrap of policy. The 'Tribune'-ites said 'don't rock the boat'.

SLL and CP

They had slandered the youth movement and brought in Lord Soper to do a vicious literary job against the youth.

'Contrast this with small groups like the state capitalists and the Pabloite revisionists. Since the election the 'state capitalists' have split a whole number of ways amongst themselves on question of whether or not they should organise, whether or not they should have an organisation in the 20th century, in the era of automation!

"The Pabloites began with a fusion shortly before the election, yet they have split again and again às they are unable to make any contribution to solving any of the imminent questions affecting the working class.

*Perhaps the most important contrast is that between the Socialist Labour League and the Communist Party. These are old opponents.' In a recent report by John Gollan, secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, made on May 22, he had talked of a decline in membership and in sales of the 'Daily Worker', especially around and since the General Election.

'This contrast shows the power of Marxism although our membership is not as large as the Communist Party.' Healy said.

The Communist Party had tried to gain circulation for the 'Daily Worker' after the demise of the 'Daily Herald'.

The Communist Party had spent considerable amounts of money on deposits in the General Election that were lost.

Radicalisation the working class Incomes Commission, a 7} per - BEADEEN YOUNG FOCMEISTE more and more that a determined struggle of the working class means breaking with bureaucracy to take hold of their own organisations and make them work. This break is an important new trend which we have to take up,' he said.

'In a period of instability, there are struggles to defend the wage, and working conditions of the working class. There is mounting pressure to increase wages. Despite all the demands of the bureaucracies in the trade union and labour movement to halt this, it is this movement which predominates.

'We have maintained that the youth is activated by the unsolved problems of automation.

'We do not subscribe to the mistaken idea that the standard of living of the working class has to be reduced to the level of the 1930s before it will fight.

'The workers have become used to the improved standard of living and we believe that they are prepared to defend it.' Comrade Healy said that any measure to cut living standards by a drastic increase in taxes or devaluation of the pound would radicalise the working class to the point that would outdo 1926. It was not a question of going back to pauperisation. The working class expected more from life.

Study the YS

"The great wave of radicalisation and big strikes will require not just reportage in our press, but the development of the revolutionary party to prepare for bigger actions by the working class and prepare for the taking of power, he added.

It is impossible to develop Marxism in Britain without a continuous study of the Young Socialists and the work they had carried out over the last five years.

At the Morecambe conference the Young Socialists had reaffirmed the policies carried at Brighton. Youth laid the ground work for building the mass revolutionary party.

"This is only done through a struggle for their policies and developing theory in the struggle to mobilise more youth. We find the political impact of the strength in the working class is reflected most in the age groups 17 to 18 to 19. We are bringing into the youth movement new people deeply interested in discussing, reading books and participating in the work of the Socialist Labour League consciously.

'We are begining to find now the material which will carry the movement to a mass party. It is not just a question of only a few people. The work of building the revolutionary leadership is a qualitative activity where we fight in the class for our policies and organisation. In our own organisation we continue this, fighting to organise, reorganise and change it.

Never retreat

'We have to be very firm on principles and in experiences, and always modest in this respect, that the enemy might have an unexpected knife to pull on us.

'We must train in the critical school of Marxism.

"This is why we have so EXPAL SIONS -STE SEALE ocialists marched 3,000 strong to a rking class on September 27, 1964.

much success, because we are resolved never to retreat, even though we might be defeated on many questions, because we are convinced of the ability of the working class to take power.

'Any retreat in the youth movement is of serious concern. We can be driven back. We can have whole areas liquidated unless we make a turn to fresh, new layers of youth, especially in the age groups I have said' Comrade Healy dealt with the age problem in the Young Socialists saying that those over 20 were divorced from teenagers and many did not listen to youth in strikes and demonstrations.

The purpose of the Young Socialist summer campaign was to attract youth from the schools, and those just entering work, not only to give them lectures and activate them politically, but to keep abreast of all their development.

Youth had very idealist conceptions learned from the schools. The Young Socialists had to turn them to socialism and socialist theory. They had to have the arguments at their fingertips.

Youth have power 'Young people do not join the movement as fully-fledged Marxists. Marxist ideas are at first accepted in an idealist way, they replace the ideas learned under capitalism. But this is a good start.

'We are not out just to be left-wing critics of the Labour government. We are the challengers and contenders for power, he said.

But, he added, it was no use recruiting youth after breaking them from previous thinking and then leave them to languish in the Socialist Labour League, without understanding the next stage of their development. the working class in struggle with the capitalist class.

'No Trotskyist is worthy of the name unless he sees the winning of a daily paper, not as an organisational task, but the projection of everything we fight for politically.

'It is an expression of confidence in the working class. We believe we can do it.

'We have to prepare to fight for the paper. It is not just a fight for money.

In every activity, in every task we undertake, every article we write, and every strike we influence or take part in, the sum total of this work must be to build up into this paper. The paper is the whole essence of Leninism, the whole centre of the advice of Lenin in What Is To Be Done' when he talks of an 'All Russian Political Newspaper' to develop the party and have a voice before the working class,?

he said.

"The daily paper for us is the essence of everything. It is how to project the struggle to take power. We are going to fight all those tendencies, the Communist Party, the fake lefts and centrists, ruthlessly.

'Our greatest achievement is not just to defeat these people alone. We go beyond that. We carry this ‹ the working cl we do looks 1 fight we are beyond this working class into the workir 'We have to is historically building of this 'We are the f fighters against 'We have t future. Can we internationally? rid of capitali take the power Reso •From this fil the money. V by eloquent gaining of res movement is ti political prepar the day by day 'The politica determine the 1 ing the daily n there is a 1 urgency?

Comrade H how the Dail Tribune' had and the fact t Party was inca ing their own 1 the death of thi The Commu the "Tribune'-it in that they br

'Unless we can explain that they have the power and can be the real rulers, that capitalism is bankrupt, then take them from an idealist adherence of Marxism to working in the real struggles in the factories and the fight to build the party, then show how they can take the power?

•Many people are tail-ending behind the backwardness of some of the youth, because the challenge of building the party is not seen?

It was clear, he said, that the older generations who were in the trade union movement, had really been destroyed in the course of a long, protracted period of boom, and could only be rejuvenated by the struggle of the youth, who must go into the unions. The problems of the Electrical Trades Union and Amalgamated Engineering Union could not be solved in conferences with the tired old generation of Communist Party members and Labour lefts' 'Don't give them an historic mission they cannot carry out, he said.

"This is the new task, the new turn, to change the trade unions, train Communist cadres in the unions, which can only be done on a mass scale by the youth who are ready Revolutionary greetings THIS Seventh National Conference of the Socialist Labou Leacue sends rs revotomar greennes to au me corce of the international working class who are in struggle for the overthrow of capitalism and the defeat of the treacherous reformist and Stalinist leaderships of the working class.

Our conference declares its solidarity with the struggles of the workers in the United States, Western Europe and Japan against their capitalist exploiters, with the workers and peasants of the colonial and oppressed nations, particularly in Vietnam, against imperialism and its agents, and with the workers of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe against the parasitic bureaucracy which collaborates with imperialism.

Only the reconstruction of the Fourth International, with Trotskyist-Leninist parties in every country, can ensure the unity of these struggles and their victory.

We therefore send fraternal greetings to all sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International, and will give every support to its conference for the rebuilding of the Fourth International, planned for early 1966.

Our greetings go particularly to those who have fought revisionism under especially difficult circumstances in the USA, the American Committee for the Fourth International. They will receive every possible support from the Socialist Labour League.

From this conference we express especially our revolutionary greetings to the Partie Communiste Internationaliste in France, whose long fraternal collaboration with the Socialist Labour League has been the foundation of the International Committee and its work. The French section was first in the fight and bore the main brunt of revisionist attack on the Fourth International. They pioneered the fight against the theory and organisational practices of Pabloism.

In Ceylon, those comrades in the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary) who have taken up the fight to build the revolutionary party and defeat revisionism since the gross betrayal of N. M. Perera and the majority of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party in 1964, will continue to receive the wholehearted support of the Socialist Labour League and the International Committee.

The conference called by the International Committee will mark a qualitative stage in the development of the Fourth International. Revisionism in the Trotskyist movement has run its course from theoretical distortions to open class betrayal in the recent period.

The entry of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party of Ceylon into the capitalist coalition government of Mrs. Bandaranaike in 1964 was the most crushing proof of this degeneration. It followed hard on the heels of the unprincipled 'reunification' between the Pabloite 'International Secretariat' and the Socialist Workers Party of the United States. This re-unification was completed without political discussion deliberately to avoid the political questions confronting the international movement.

The struggle against revisionism carried out by the International Committee has hastened the process of degeneration of the Pabloite forces. Ever since 1951, these revisionists have in effect subordinated the working class and the building of the revolutionary party to the Stalinist bureaucracy, the reformist leaders and the bourgeois nationalists in the colonial countries. The forces of the International Committee have correctly fought for the political independence of the working class through the building of the revolutionary party and the application of the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International.

Pablo himself now separates publicly from the 'Reunified' Secretariat in Paris, and openly advocates the complete liquidation of Trotskyism into the Stalinist bureaucracy and the bourgeois-nationalist movements. This open break from Marxism by Pablo, supported by a for giving leadership.

The Foyle's strike had shown that the field of poorly paid workers was wide open for organising big trade unions among people who were affected more and more by the decline of the purchasing power and the rise in the cost of living.

There were thousands of trades where young people were crying out for union organisation.

'Make the trade unions a hive of activity for the youth to smash the Communist Party politically and win over the best militants. Don't go just for the poorer-paid workers, but in the skilled trades as well.

'Combine these fights in the struggle for political development.' Urgent need for Communist daily paper The great demand of the hour, said Comrade Healy, is a communist daily newspaper that will fight, and summons people to fight, record and analyse every activity of the party, political struggles, views and the way in which it sees the vital questions affecting number of old Trotskyists such as Santen in H Vereecken in Belgium, together with half the Frei the majority of the Australian section and certair Algeria and other colonial countries, should be t light for those Trotskyists remaining in the secti United Secretariat who want to fight revisionism the Transitional Programme.

They should support the Socialist Labour Leag Fourth International in fighting for a discussion of al questions and the serious preparation of a future co all those who accept the Transitional Programme. proposed by the International Committee Conferer tember 1963, and rejected by the United Secretariat.

The evolution of Pablo, and the events in Ceyli and the USA, have proved the correctness of ou Germain, Frank and Hansen have proved themse incapable of defending the programme of the Fo national. Their theory and their 'politics' are in same as those of Pablo. In America, the Sociali Party's prostration before petty-bourgeois national Negro movement is only one reflection of their ac the liquidationist revisionism of Pabloism.

In Western Europe, the sections of the Unified have become mere appendanges of the 'left' social Belgium provides the proof. 'Entry' was used to of ally abandon the construction of the revolutionary to end in the adventure of proclaiming a new centx alliance with the worst nationalist and petty-bourgeo whose split from the new party itself is only a mat The next United Secretariat Congress will expel Pa supporters, expel over 500 members of the Lanka S Party, as well as having to give an accounting ‹ events.

The present stage is therefore a crucial one. 11 opportunity to engage in a serious discussion and tion of the International before the forces around Secretariat are completely liquidated by Frank, G Hansen, who are rapidly following Pablo to th abandonment of revolutionary Marxism. All those v against these revisionists will receive the support of 1 Labour League.

The successful fight of the International Commi revisionism and the work of its sections in cor leadership of the working class provide the basis for truction of the Fourth International. Such a recon the fear of Stalinists and social democrats everywh it is feared by the capitalist class. The responsibi split in the International rests squarely upon ti revisionists.

1963 showed that in the USA the Socialist Wo had succumbed to the same revisions. When tl Committee of the Socialist Workers Party sent con the widow of Kennedy, and called upon the U.S. to defend the Negroes with Federal troops, the cons revisionism were shown no less starkly than they wer The 're-unification' of the revisionists in 1963 y cussion of past differences was a part of the whole liquidationisia. The proposals for international dis forward by the International Committee Conference ir 1963 were rejected by the Pabloite United Secreta then, the disintegration of the Pabloite forces, a refle crisis of the reformist and Stalinist bureaucracies fac intensification of the international class struggle, ha the political necessity of a thorough discussion in movement to prepare a real re-building of the Fr national and a defeat of revisionism.

We call upon all Trotskyists throughout the work‹ our efforts to re-organise the Fourth International grammatic basis of its 1938 Founding Conference.

Page other une 12, 1965

CLERKS at the betting shops of Sherman in Cardiff are in the fourth week of their strike for union recognition in the firm.

Shermans failed to get an unconditional return to work in time for the Derby and Oaks races last week when the clerks voted on Tuesday to continue the strike.

Attempts by the management to employ new labour through a quarter page advertisement in the local newspapers failed. This has been replaced by a small classified advertisement.

The strikers told The Newsletter that they felt this was intended to frighten them rather than recruit new staff. They said it would take two years before any new staff could be fully trained and new settlers, the clerks who deal with the actual bets, need at least two months' basic training and would not be ready tor the summer racing season. Although Shermans claimed hundreds of applicants, strikers claim that only four people turned up last week. : After the failure of the company to get the workers to return, 160 of the 300 clerks were given 'suspended sackBEA From page tune with the employers. The effect of this unison on the strikers is noteworthy!

On Sunday, before leaving for Washington, Aviation Minister, Roy Jenkins, said:

'Dealing with the strike is a matter for BEA and I have complete confidence in Mr. Milward (BEA's chairman, and in particuJar I support his determination to go to the root of the matter and not just postpone the trouble until next Bank Holiday. The public ust cannot be inconvenienced in this way' Mr. Milward, who sacked all porters who, as he put it, 'failed to take the advice of their union and return to work', said he was faced with a 'ludicrous form of anarchy.

He later claimed that 600 men had returned to work and signed a "no unofficial strike' document. Milward has been in constant touch with Harry Nicholas, acting general secretary of the ings'. Later they were sacked But this was met with the same solid resistance by the strikers.

One of them told The Newsletter: 'If we go back now, without the union, we won't last there 12 months?

The actions of these clerks has had a big effect on clerks in other betting shops. There has been considerable recruitment to the Clerical and Administrative Workers' Union and an appeal for collections for the Sherman strikers has had a big response.

The same support has not been forthcoming from union officials.

Last week, the Western area organiser of the CAWU, Saunders, negotiated with A. V. Penny, managing director of Shermans. This was followed on Tuesday by a visit to Cardiff by assistant general secretary of the CAWU, Roy Grantham, who offered the firm arbitration with an independent inquiry by the Ministry of Labour.

The strike secretary told The Newsletter that the union officials virtually offered Shermans the choice of their own negotiators. Arbitration was turned down.

WEAKENING

This weakening by the union officials led the way to the company taking a firmer stand during the week of the two big races, the Derby and the Oaks, when the strikers expected to win their demands.

Considerable discontent was expressed by many older strikers and led to a number taking on employment with other firms. But the mass of strikers are still solid in their determination to win the strike.

Tribute has been paid by the strike secretary to the solidarity and organisation of young girl clerks in their teens and twenties, who make it quite clear there is nothing to arbitrate on-they are fighting for the right to organise a trade union branch and there is no room for compromise on that. strikers COURTAULDS have now sacked 600 of the immigrant strikers at Preston, Lancs, but there have been no headlines in the press about this. Contrast this with the treatment given a few days before to stories that there had been intimidation on the part of the strikers. This way of treating the strike, like the plugging of the lie that these workers are striking on a racial issue, is part of the attempt to prevent the strikers from getting support from white workers.

It has been unsuccessful in breaking down the spirited determination of the strikers themselves. A small number of Italian, Polish and Hungarian workers, who came out at first, have now returned to work, but they are bound by special contracts.

The strikers are fighting speed-up. That is not a racial, but a class issue.

The Preston strikers are in the forefront of a struggle which faces millions of British workers as big business combines everywhere plan to increase production and maintain profits, at the expense of the men and women they employ.

Courtaulds employed these strikers on an arduous job, which, it is said, produces twice as much work as that produced in the Courtaulds' Wolverhampton factory.

Now Courtaulds want to increase the work by half as much again. These workers say quite simply: 'We don't care about the extra threepence an hour they offered us. We want to live.' QUESTION For every white worker in that factory there is the question: Where does speed-up end?

The workers on strike are employed in departments which feed the rest of the factory. Speed-up there means inevitable speed - up right throughout the factory.

But instead of tirelessly explaining to other workers their common interests with their brothers on strike, officials of the Transport and General Workers' Union, by their statements and activity, divide white from coloured worker.

They declared, first, that the speed-up agreement was a reasonable one, therefore the strike must be a racial issue. Now they imply that in opposing the strike they are defending the jobs of white workers, which are supposedly threatened by the strike.

SHAME

At the Preston Trades Council meeting, an officer of the Courtaulds' branch of the 'GWU declared they had to support the management otherwise the factory would be closed down and 2,000 other workers would sacked.

To their shame, the Preston Trades Council refused to allow a speaker from the Action Committee.

The Action Committee have put paid to the rumour that they planned to break from the TGWU and form coloured workers' union. Their spokesman made the following statement to The Newsletter:

'Anyone who advises the formation of a separate union for coloured workers is an enemy of the coloured worker. We need the help and support of white workers. They must understand the issues. If Courtaulds are allowed to go unchallenged then a dangerous precedent is set and it will fall heavily on white workers in the future.' DONATIONS By the end of last week £300 had been received in individual donations to the strike fund, mainly from immigrant workers throughout the country.

The Action Committee has decided that six of its members will sit down on hunger strike

WIDNES

TENANTS HOLD SECOND MEETING Newsletter Correspondent NATIONAL Coal Board officials attended a second meeting of tenants from the miners' estate in Widnes, Lancs., last Friday. This time they were accompanied by J. Gormley, area secretary of the Lancashire National Union of Mineworkers.

Again tenants expressed, in forceful terms, their opinions on the rent rises of up to 14s.

Gormley denied that nothing had been done by the union about the rise, although the area officials knew in advance. He said he had got in touch with the Divisional Coal Board.

But this, being no. answer at all, certainly did not satisty the tenants. Area officials who did not inform the miners beforehand were obviously afraid tenants would demand action from the union.

I thought the union was for the men, said one miner's wife. 'But Gormley speaks for the NCB?

One strong complaint from the tenants is that they live in tied' houses. "They only provide these houses like they used to provide stables for the ponies when we had them down the pit, said one miner.

strikers' union, the Transport and General Workers' Union, but has refused to meet John Cousins, divisional organiser of the union - and son of the Labour government's Minister of Technology.

Cousins said on Friday: 'Someone is going to have to back down. I am disgusted that this situation has arisen because it may have repercussions which could bring the State airlines to a permanent halt.' But by Wednesday of this week, over 500 of the strikers were standing firm. Their militancy and complete disregard for the reactionary statements of Labour Ministers and Airways officials had driven Cousins to the point of asking for the official strike, attacking Milward and questioning the role of Nicholas.

But the fact that Cousins places so much importance on results from the National Joint Council illustrates his subservience to those sections of the ruling class and their friends in the labour movement who are attempting to hold down the wages of many workers, especially the poorer paid sections, in order to bolster capitalism.

The strikers should press for support throughout the whole of the air industry for their demands.

ETERMINED to get an increased wage for unloading timber, Hull dockers have been operating a workto-rule for nearly three weeks. In a statement published by the Humber Area Committee of the National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers, following a mass meeting, the men were advised not to heave up " sets of timber 'until the stage is clear'; land men were not to go down ships' hatchways; not to leave 'the stage and rolling stocks'; 'bogies and wagons to be loaded to regulation heights' and to work 'in accordance with safety'.

Outdated

The men were also advised in the statement 'that the outdated method of sorting mixed bills of lading on general cargoes down ships' hatchways' should cease.

One docker work to rule NEWSLETTER REPORTER say about the timber dispute in a report to The Newsletter:

'Today in 1965 a gang has to discharge almost 21 standards of timber for a basic daily rate of f2 Is. 8a.-a standard of timber weighs approximately two and a half tons.

Hence the massive support last year by Northern dockers for the demand for f15 a week basic wage.

'To get an increase in wages man has to handle more tonnage. In a few years' time dockers will be working at a piecework pace to achieve their basic pay.

'Last year the port employers were told by the NASD that the members were demanding an increase in the timber rate from 2s. to 2s. 6d. per standard per man.

•Now, after 'several mass meetings a claim has been made by the dockers 2s. 9d. per standard plus existing differentials.

*The employers made an offer of 7t per cent for carrying at the Victoria Dock.

Failing a satisfactory settlement to this long outstanding claim there has been a work-torule on the timber ships. (This has been in operation since Monday, May 24.)

'There are now four ships discharging timber in the Alexandra Dock and another four ships in the Victoria Dock, with more ships due in. (The peak of the timber importing season is only a month away.)

'As each ship arrives it will be manned by dockers working for the daily basic rate until the employers are prepared to pay the modern rate for the job and stop being 20 years behind the times.

"This is only the first phase of the struggle and at a later date other dockers may be called upon to support the men on the daily rate.

S the strike at Foyle's bookshop in Chari • at Foyle's bookshop in Charing Cross Road, London, finishes its second we d, London, finishes its second week, young girls, who were taken on as assistants in io were taken on as assistants in an attempt to break the dispute, have walked out ak the dispute. have walked out to join the picket line.

Three girls, attracted by the offer of a good wage at 17 years old, applied for jobs. They found they were only to receive £7 10s. a week and immediately joined the strike, which is over a pay claim.

So far there have been no meetings between the management and the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, since a refusal to sign proposals put forward by the union.

The latest news is that managing director, Christina Foyle's husband, Ronald Batty, had agreed to meet union officials on Thursday at 11 a.m.

Unanimously, the young

strikers have agreed to fight it out with the management. Each day pickets man the entrances to Foyle's giving out leaflets explaining the dispute.

Their fight is showing the way for many other young people who work for low wages in the same conditions as those at Foyle's.

Support

Support for the strike from other trade unionists continues. Mail to and from the shop is being held up and drivers from publishers are refusing to cross the picket line.

On Tuesday a number of trade unionists from the post office and from the Ministry of Housing joined the pickets. Money is now beginning to reach the strike fund. Workers at Ford, Dagenham, have been levied, as have members of printing houses in London.

At Fleetway Publications, Southwark, £40 was collected over and above the official union levy.

USDAW officials report that they have been receiving letters of support from as far away as Australia from people who previously worked at the bookshop.

Conditions

Enquiries are being made by a number of European agencies about working conditions and pay at Foyle's. There is the possibility that unless conditions are improved, work permits for students wishing to work in London for a year may be refused.

Strikers are increasingly voicing criticism of the union leaders' lack of determination. They feel that much more could have been done to stop completely all supplies of books and paper to the shop.

Whilst drivers are not crossing the picket line, books are being loaded, often by union members, on to the 'scab' vans being hired.

A resolution calling for full support for the Foyle's strike was defeated at a meeting of the Central London branch committee of the paper workers' union last Wednesday in favour of an amendment, merely instructing members not to cross the picket line.

Approaches have been made by members of the strike committee to union representatives on a number of daily and evening newspapers asking them to refuse to print advertisements for staff inserted by the management, but this help has been refused on the grounds that it would interfere with the freedom of the press and the printworkers' contracts with the Newspaper Proprietors' Association.

Force

Active support from members of USDAW has been disgracefully lacking, Branch secretaries have been making meagre f5 and £10 grants to the strike fund and few members have appeared on the picket line.

It has been the Young Socialists who have strengthened the show of force outside the shop. On Whit Saturday members of : Young Socialist branches from all parts of London took part in the picketing of the shop and leafietting of prospective customers. Hundreds turned away. Who's breaking confidences George Brown?

MAKING excuses for his outrageous role in the negotiations of increase in pay for printers Labour Minister, George Brown, said talks with the management had to go on 'otherwise the job cannot be done'.

He made these remarks in the House of Commons this week when he was questioned about allegations that 'interventions' were made to persuade the print employers not to agree to a negotiated settlement of a pay claim.

La confidential circular Newsletter Correspondent '46,000 members of the National Society of Operative Printers and Assistants (NATSOPA), signed by Richard Briginshaw, general secretary, charges were made that Cecil King, owner of a chain of newspapers, intervened on behalf of George Brown in negotiations over a pay claim.

*People should respect the confidence when they ask for confidential talks,' was Brown's answer.

As a representative of the Labour government, Brown is not the person to talk of respecting confidences.

Workers who voted at the last general election never gave the Labour government their confidence so that it could freeze wages, operate increased speedup, or keep • the old age pensioners waiting through the winter for a pension increase.

In this case of increased wages for printers, it is obvious that Labour leaders wanted the pay claim to go before the Incomes Board so that only a 3} per cent increase would be offered. • In the NATSOPA circular, it was alleged that Brown stated the printers ought not to have received more than 2t per cent.

Brown's talk of confidences must be taken up by the trade union movement. Who is breaking confidence? The Labour government when it backs capitalism and attempts to keep wages down. in front of 10 Downing Street. But this individual action is no substitute for the support of workers throughout the country, for joint demonstrations and actions of support by British and immigrant workers.

FOLLOWING the lead of the apprentices, the workers in the Belfast engineering firm of James Mackie and Sons are demonstrating their willingness to fight the management.

Five thousand workers, including clerks and draughtsmen, came out on strike on Tuesday, June 8 after the sacking of clerical shop steward. This is the latest in a series of actions following the sacking of 400 apprentices (see Newsletter May 29).

The 400 apprentices had been sacked for striking against threatened victimisation and the introduction of a bonus scheme which would make it easier to replace tradesmen by apprentices doing the same work.

On Tuesday, May 25, the total apprentice force of over 1,000 came out in support of the ones who were sacked.

A leaflet issued by right-wing AEU shop stewards claimed that people who didn't work in the firm were on the apprentices' strike committee and that the Young Socialists were responsible for the strike.

It said that the Young Socialists were trying to dictate to the adult workers and this was a concentrated effort by the YS to •discredit the democratically elected shop stewards.

In the witch-hunt the right wing were, as usual, aided by the Communist Party. When apprentices, who were members of the Young Socialists, attended a meeting called to organise other apprentices in support of the strike, they were thrown out by members of the youth section of the N. Ireland Communist Party for 'talking politics.

YET another section of workers has challenged George Brown's incomes policy.

At a meeting in Edinburgh, Scottish miners rejected the 'wage freeze' in disguise and stated that nothing should be allowed to block legitimate pay demands.

Brown can expect little support for his policies from mineworkers, either in Scotland or England. In the mining industry large profits are made out of the exploitation of men thousands of feet below the ground.

Long time

It will be a long time before miners, anywhere, forget the Tonypandy mine disaster in South Wales. The actions of the Scottish miners show quite clearly that there is great opposition to the ruthless drive for profit by the mining employers and the tremendous hazards to men's lives that increased speed-up entails.

The rejection of the 'wage freeze' policy is an expression of opposition to this bulldozing drive for profit on the part of capitalism, which the Labour leaders support in such a servile manner.

CORRECTION

In our report of 'Police attack demonstrators in Greece on May Day' in the May 22 issue of The Newsletter, reference was made to the organisation 'Workers' Democracy' joining the Labour Movement Pioneers'. In fact the organisation did not join the 'Labour Movement Pioneers', but cooperated with them on May Day. The two organisations appeared jointly on the demonstration but each under their own banners and slogans. Registered at the G.P. O. as a newspaper Printed by Plough Press Ltd. P80 police Tre Newade 3.0% 186A Clapham High Street, London. S.W.4