The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 400

IT has long been the practice for renegades and revisionists of all shades within the socialist movement to deliberately label themselves 'socialists' and 'communists', whilst at the same time they carry on a relentless struggle against Marxism. is is now the case with the self-styled United Secretariat of the Fourth International in Paris'. The small clique of ageing gentlemen, who administer the organisational remnants of this revisionist wing of the movement, like to call themselves 'the world organisation founded by Leon Trotsky'. • perpetuating this fraud, the 'United Secretariat enjoy the 'fraternal support of the Socialist Workers Party of the USA which, because of the reactionary Voorhis Act, cannot participate in its work. 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated, Farrell Dobbs, the Secretary of the SWP, sent on behalf of his party a telegram of condolences to Mrs. Kennedy. It will be recalled that Kennedy upheld the same fundamental principles on all matters affecting American imperialism as President Johnson upholds today on Vietnam. Not long after he became President, he helped to instigate the abortive landing of mercenaries on the island of Cuba.

le Socialist Labour League drew the attention of the world movement to the betrayal of Marxism which Dobbs and his henchmen were guilty of. The 'United Secretariat' in Paris remained silent as is the custom with those who have such 'fraternal relations'. few weeks after this disgraceful episode, a group of young people, under the leadership of Comrade James Robertson, were expelled from the SWP, not because they had violated the discipline of the party, but because they held views within the party, which according to Dobbs were against 'its. interests'. scently, Robertson and his group heard that the 'United Secretariat' would be calling an international congress, and, in anticipation, they sent an appeal to this body against their expulsion. Mr. Pierre Frank who calls himself the Secretary of the United Secretariat, replied in a letter from which we produce the following extract.

6 In reply to your letter of May 18, we call your attention first of all to the fact that the Fourth International has no organisational connection with the Socialist Workers Party and consequently has no jurisdiction in a problem such as you raise; namely, the application of democratic centralism as it affects the organisation either as a whole or in individual instances.

Therefore, we limit ourselves merely to an observation of a fraternal nature: the SWP provides for appeals to higher bodies; the proper place to direct your request is, consequently, to the next convention of the SWP 9 early, Frank's rejection of Robertson's appeal is designed to create the impression that the latter might be contemplating involving the SWP in an infringement of the Voorhis Act. This is nothing more than a contemptible smear on the Robertson group. ank is also very well aware that there are no democratic rights whatsoever in the SWP for Robertson and his friends, so he ducks behind a legal formula for cover. Vol. 9, No. 400

by The Editor W Britain? Virtually nobody has any more HAT are the prospects for socialism illusions in the right-wing Wilson government. Every important decision that it takes is in one way or another directed against the working Its programme of parliamentary legislation consists retreat alter another betore big business.

Following close on its heels comes the weekly paper, "Tribune', and its supporters in the parliamentary party. Not only have they covered up for Wilson, they have, in fact, assisted him in implementing his pro-Tory policy.

Behind them, of course, follows the Communist Party, who can at least boast that the age group of its political leadership is higher than any other of the left organisations in Europe. It has completely lost touch with the working class in struggle and contents itself in calling for peaceful co-existence between capitalist powers and the Soviet Union, whilst, at the same time, it calls upon Wilson to move a little more to the left. YS leadership Surely if the prospects of socialism in Britain are to be left to these kinds of leaders, there will never in fact be any socialism here. Fortunately, the opposite is the case.

The Young Socialists, who have led thousands of young people over the past year in campaign after campaign against the sell-out of Wilson, are now enjoying considerable support. They are, in fact, on the threshold of becoming a real alternative leadership for the labour movement to follow. There are several reasons for this.

Firstly, because of their youth, they have not undergone the painful experiences which the betrayals of the past have inflicted on the older generations of the Labour Party and trade unions. • Secondly, they are much closer to the age of automation and the enormous impact which it is having on their thinking. • Thirdly, they have complete contempt for the betrayals of the leaderships of the older parties. • Fourthly, and most important of all, they accept the advice of and fight di ay after day alongside the Socia list Labour League. build strong Marxist cadres within the unions.

Perhaps not since the early '20s has there been such a favourable opportunity for carrying out such work. There is absolutely no room for pessimism about the future. The youth are moving in their thousands towards the building of the Marxist revolutionary party.

Confident future In the vanguard of this movement is the Socialist Labour League. Its plans to launch a daily paper to coincide with an insurmountable capitalist crisis which cannot be resolved by either the Tory or right-wing Labour government. It will be the youth, above all, who will build the basis for the daily paper.

Great Britain, we are confident, will be the first metropolitan country in the world where the mass revolutionary party is going to be constructed in the coming years. YS given no explanation GLASGOW City magi strates committee on Thursday banned a Young Socialists demonstration against the war in Vietnam, which was to have been held on Saturday.

The committee, controlled by the Labour right wing, refused to give any reason for this ban.

Police had recommended acceptance of the demonstration.

Young Socialists who went to City Chambers to VIETNAM THE United States government took another major step towards escalating the Vietnamese war this week with the dispatch of 21,000 more U.S. troops and Mr. Wilson took another major step in committing the British labour movement to this reactionary and counter-revolutionary war by refusing ask the reasons for the ban were refused an interview. They were told to write to the chairman of the committee.

Later the same day Young Socialists submitted a request for an open-air meeting in North Hanover Square —a traditional meeting place in Glasgow-but they were told that the magistrates' committee had banned not only the demonstration, but also any meeting.

This is unheard of Glasgow since the war. i to even dissociate his government from U.S. imperialism.

Mr. Stewart's statement in the Commons and his nauseating statements in Oxford reveal Jack Gale

• is also well aware that throughout their entire history, Trotskyists have always fought for democratic rights, firstly within the Stalinist organisations, and later within the parties of social democracy. Within its own organisations it has always protected these rights by having them written into the constitution of the various sections.

Well and good. We would like an answer to a simple question. Bearing in mind the Voorhis Act, what 'fraternal observation' has the United Secretariat to make to the Socialist Workers Party on the expulsion of Robertson? Is it for or against the way in which this was carried out? ily a direct answer to this question will remove the smear which has been directed against. these comrades.

It is their generation which will usher in the forthcoming Trotsky era of world politics.

At the Seventh Congress of the Socialist Labour League, which recently met in London, the vast majority of delegates came from the Young Socialists movement.

Immediately after the conference they launched their own recruiting drive for 5,000 new members. A special feature of this drive is to draw into the trade unions thousands of youth who are at present unorganised.

The purpose of this concentration on trade union activity is not to behave as left trade unionists but to

Page NTRODUCING the British, but an international ism, an understanding of its role against the bureaucracy there

STEWARDS kicked and punched Young Socialiss whom they flung out of George Brown's meeting at Belle Vue, Manchester, last Sunday.

It was a display of violence against socialists only equalled in fascist meetings.

One Young Socialist was surrounded by a group of stewards, dragged by his hair across the seats, kıcked and beaten up the Bangway, thrown down 12 concrete steps outside the hall, and left unconscious. It was ten minutes before he came round.

A l6-year-old girl was flung down the steps after him, groaning with pain from a big bruise on her thigh. Unable to stand through shock, she had to be carried to a Later that night, she collapsed at a Young Socialists meeting, and had to be taken to hospital for treatment.

About 30 Young Socialists were in the meeting which was a North West Region Labour Party 'Victory Rally'.

They had picketed outside the hall. Their banners and placards called for an emergency Labour Party conference. Placards also had slogans like: "The Labour Government must support Viet Cong' and "George Brown scabbed on printers.

Inside the hall there were large empty spaces. Noticeable was the high average age of the audience.

The youth at the meeting was in opposition to Brown. The brutal assault upon them ‹ ame after they shouted 'Support the Vietcong', 'Get out of Johnson's war'. When • Brown declared support for the trade unions, there was an instant cry of: 'Why did you betray the printers then?' - After the meeting, Mr. Reg Wallis, Regional Serretary 'of the Labour Party, toid the press: "The stewards acted with appropriate restraint.

But then why were young people who were demanding socialist policies from a Labour Minister thrown out with such brutality and force that some of them suffered concussion?

Brown's gall

It was a week-end when Brown, both at the Miner's Gala on Saturday, and at Belle Vue on Sunday, tried to appeal to class instincts to cover up the government's role as an agent of big business. He talked of 'sinister conspiracy' against the government.

He had the gall to tell the miners that he supported the socialist aim of: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

This speech was shown up the following day. The brutal ejection of Young Socialists from his meeting marked the vicious hostility of the Labour Party right wing to a force which seriously fights for socialist principles. statements in parliament or asking the same questions and getting the invariable answer from Mr. Stewart. This is no time for parliamentary games.

ACTION

The deadly logic of escalation can only be stopped by action-organised action of the working class throughout the world. The example of the Australian dockers who risked a £74,000 fine for industrial action over Vietnam is the kind of action that is going to stop the war. But that is precisely the action that Lord Brockway and his fellow centrists do not want.

They want to sidetrack the growing opposition to the Vietnam war into parliamentary lobbies and a humanitarian exercise for sending medical aid and blood donations instead of making a political onslaught against Mr. Wilson even at the risk of bringing down his government.

Medical aid is good, but a motion demanding that Labour recognise the National Liberation Front as the legitimate government of South Vietnam and a countrywide campaign against all imperialist alliances would be infinitely more important and noble.

Stop ducking, stand fight or get out!

Price ban Vietnam demonstration the Socialist Labour League in a fight for a new leadership.

But no real struggle for a decent wage In In In In In In The Miners in pits like this one at Tonypandy, South Wales, must look to THE National Coal Board's offer of 11s. 6d. a week more for the daywage miners. carried out by the present leadership of the their record over the last seven vears:

they October 1958 claimed accepted 7s. 6d. January 1960 claimed accepted 5s. they January 1961 claimed accepted 8s. 6d. they April 1962 they claimed fl and accepted 7s. 6d. April 1963 they claimed f1 and accepted 9s. April 1964 they claimed 15s. and accepted leadership of this union is Labourites and the Communist combination 0I right-wing Party. The role of 'communists' like secretary Will Paynter is to act as a left cover for the right wing.

All miners should study the lessons of last year's wage claim. The right wing would have been completely incapable of forcing through the Coal Board's offer of 7s. 6d.

But at a special delegate conference, after the Coal Board offer had been rejected by Yorkshire, Scotland, Wales, Derbyshire, Lancashire and Kent, it was Paynter who urged acceptance of the offer.

He also said miners could not strike because it would be against the government!

This conference resorted to a national ballot to avoid having to fight for the full claim. Paynter and Sidney Ford, the union president, toured the country speaking against a struggle for the full claim. Right-wing officials in Lancashire had Paynter's speech circulated to every branch in the area in order to influence miners against strike action.

At the annual conference of the NUM last year, Paynter spoke against submitting any further wage claim. The execuUnion of Mineworkers has rejected the 15s. 12s. 18s.

increase will be NUM. Look at and and 7s. бd.

tive urged the defeat of a Yorkshire resolution calling for a £2 12s. 6d. wage increase for day-wage men.

It was at this conference that £12,500 a year Lord Robens declared: 1 agree entirely with the conclusions of Will Paynter.' Leading positions in the National Union of Mineworkers have been held by the Communist Party since 1947. Not only the office of general secretary (held ürst by Arthur Horner and then by Will Paynter) but also the leadership of the Scottish and Welsh NUM has been held by the Communist Party.

No fight Yet there has been no struggle against pit closures, no fight for wages, no real effort to secure guarantees for miners in face of the advance of mechanisation. Moreover, miners today work longer hours than were recommended by the Sankey Commission of 1919!

This is the direct result of the political programme of the Communist Party. This is the product of "peaceful co-existence' and 'parliamentary roads to socialism'.

A struggle for decent wages for miners cannot be led by Communist Party union officials who are the products of these Stalinist theories. These men are bound within the limits of the bourgeois state. This is the political basis of their collaboration with the right wing.

Replace leaders

Miners need leaders who can defeat and replace both the right wing and the Communist Party. This cannot be done overnight, but the growing strength of the Socialist Labour League, particularly its success in attracting youth, and the development of The Newsletter into a daily paper, point the way forward.

All miners-particularly young miners-who want a real fight for better conditions should consider the programme of the Cointiat"Labour League.

for the umpteenth time how utterly compromised, corrupted and politically degenerate the Labour government is.

Therefore, there is neither political virtue nor dignity in people like Warbey and Blenkinsop making platitudinous strike THE strike at Foyle's bookshop is in its fourth week and the strikers, who now number 90, are determined not to return to work until the management sign an agreement covering wages, conditions and sickness.

On Wednesday, there were negotiations with the management, who said they were prepared to discuss with the unipn, but not sign an agreement.

The Executive Committee of the strikers' union, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, which met last weekend, gave the strike its full support and donated f1,000.

This week-end the London area of USDAW holds its annual conference. As well as giving full support to the strike, financial aid must be promised along with help on the picket line.

There has been little picketing help so far, but delegates to this week-end's conference must think seriously about the contradictions that this strike is creating in relation to the Labour government's incomes policy, which USDAW supports.

The unity and determination of these young people many of whom have had no previous experiences in the labour movement - shows the possibilities of building a movement to answer the betrayals of the Labour government.

Financial support for the strike should be sent to The secretary, Foyle's Strike Committee, c/o USDAW, Duke House, Malet Street, London, W.C.1.

TWENTY-SIX miners at Glasshoughton colliery, Yorkshire, including Trevor Parsons. a member of the Socialist Labour League, were injured when ihe cage in which they were descending to the face, fell for a short distance down the halfmile shaft. • Thirty-nine men had boarded the cage in No. 1 shaft at 5.50 a.m. on Wednesday when it dropped without warning and was then pulled up abruptly by steel-wire safety ropes.

Detained in hospital atter the accident were George Chappel (suspected spinal injury), Albert Brudhoe (fractured ankle), Matthew Murphick (fractured leg) and Trevor Parsons (fractured foot and suspected pelvic injury).

Pabloites?

The prevalence of revisionism was not always apparent in discussion on abstract principles or general programme, but became so when people were asked to build a movement in the class struggle.

Britain, are turning now to the building of a mass party and we can expect to find our work obstructed by these aspects of revisionism in our own movement,' Slaughter said.

Revolutionary theory is not something to be preserved and polished. In Britain, we find revisionism expressed in lazy and sloppy methods of work, in hostility to theory, and to centralised organisation.

Danger

"The danger for the Fourth International now is that there will take place militant trade union work, together with a certain amount of repetition of theory, but a neglect of building of the revolutionary party as the centre of militant trade union work and of the development of theory.' Such methods would gain ground in a period of an upsurge of working-class militancy, and impede conscious development.

"This struggle for revolutionary theory and centralism, against old methods of political work, is not just a Stalin collaborated with the imperialists to divide the European workers at the end of the Second World War, and the West European Communist Parties made sure that Western Europe remained in the imperialist grip, ie stated.

'Only by building the Fourth International in opposition to Stalinism and the bureaucrats is there any possibility of unifying the workers?

struggle in separate countries.

The Socialist States of Europe is now a living slogan and must have new content, drawing the political revolution of the workers of Eastern Europe against the bureaucracy.

'We are faced internationally with a favourable objective situation for the development of the Fourth International. The crisis of world capitalism has been deepened by automation, which increases the. contradictions, and by the crisis of the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia and all over the world.

"The growth of automation requires new markets and presses capitalism towards the reconquest of markets in Eastern Europe and China. The bureaucracy is parasitic, but it depends on the nationalized property relations, which objectively reach out towards a planned use of the international division of labour.

international report at the seventh National Congress of the Socialist Labour League, held in London on June 5, 6 and 7, Cliff Slaughter said the discussion on Britain (reported in last week's Newsletter) and the international discussion were not rate issues.

'An international report is not just a survey of events going on outside our movement,' he said. 'For us, international perspectives are a consideration of the development of the Fourth International as part of the international class struggle, the decisive part of the winning of that struggle. We will not understand our own struggle without understanding it in that way?

The struggle against revisionism internationally would enable the Socialist Labour League to fight with a greater appreciation of its situation. At the same time, Slaughter problem, he added.

'Unless the comrades in Ceylon are to start from the building of an alternative revolutionary leadership, then the new revolu#ionary section of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party could degenerate completely.

*Pablo himself now adopts the view that Mrs. Bandaranaike's party can evolve in a revolutionary direction. Hansen asks the United Secretariat not to ignore the fact that mass support for the 'United Left Front' is "a fact.

They have abandoned the conscious building of the revolutionary party, and try to find someone outside our own forces and the working class to rely on. Those who allow the new party to run on in the old methods are in danger of acquiescing and sharing in this liquidation of Bolshevism, which has been the task of imperialism since October 1917.

'We are faced with the task of the reconstruction of the Fourth International, and of taking the central responsibility in that reconstruction. If we do not understand that clearly, the reconstruction will not be carried out.

Leadership The basic foundations of the Fourth International were abandoned and overthrown by the Pabloites in their own ranks.

It is no longer sufficient to speak of imperialism as an epoch 'Re-unification of the world market is necessary and so is workers' control in the Soviet economy, but this is impossible by small reforms. We have a linked crisis of the bureaucracy and of imperialism. It raises problems of the struggles of workers internationally as part of the same crisis, and requires fundamentally the same solution -the re-building of Leon Trotsky's Fourth International' New relations Of course, the Soviet bureaucracy, said Slaughter, had proceeded in its own way with the restoration of relations with world capitalism, which had meant the castration of the Communist Parties and the suppression of revolutionary movements in other countries. The bureaucracy in Eastern Europe had sought agreement with the capitalist powers of the European Common Market.

But capitalism itself, he added, was not a single unified system. It had its contradictions, both inside each nation, and between the different national contingencies. The unity of the struggle in both sections was a pressing need which only the Fourth International could meet. if it was to be successful building in its own country.

In the split between the Chinese and Russian Communist Parties, the Pabloites had argued on the false basis of whom they supported, the Chinese or the Russians. i The Soviet bureaucracy, he added, was determined on doing a deal with imperialism, and the Chinese were not able to lead the working class, because they could give no historical explanation of the line of the Soviet leaders.

The Sino-Soviet split could not be explained without an understanding of where Khrushchev came from, and the fact that the Chinese said that Stalin —Khrushche's mentor-was a revolutionary all his life, or that Chou En-lai had made himself an intermediary • between the various new nationalist bourgeois powers.

World struggle Only the Fourth International was capable of giving leadership to the working class. The real task was to unify all the different struggles which could not be successful unless they were unified as part of a world struggle. physically terrorised the revolutionists, entry into the social-democratic party in France had been correct in that particular situation.

Later, entry, instead of becoming a part of a fight to expose social-democracy, had become a way of life for Trotskyists.

In Algeria, the section had liquidated into the nationalbourgeois movement and took with it the French and Dutch sections. In Latin America, the Trotskyists, influenced by that revisionism, had become the left wing of movements like Peron's.

'Our task, said Slaughter, 'should be to build a movement to give leadership in all aspects of national bourgeois revolution, accepting the leadership of the national bourgeoisie in none of this, and especially leading the peasants to taking over the land. When this has not been done, it has left the peasantry leaderless, eventually to respond to petty-bourgeois nationalists.

'Having abandoned the Marxist method in the first place, and now confronted with a split between the workers and peasants, the revisionists now face in all countries, is necessary if we are going to understand the class nature of Pabloism. Its essence is the same in all coun tries, even if it varies in form.' Trotsky had warned, for example, that unless the Americans fought against pragmatism, they would eventually fall victim to it.

Trotsky's death had left the Socialist Workers Party exposed to that development.

J. P. Cannon and others had made many correct empirical approaches to the class struggle, but their limitations in Marxist theory had exposed them to the pressure of American capitalism. When President Kennedy was assassinated, the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party had sent a message of condolence to the widow.

They had tailed behind every religious and nationalist leader of the Negro movement. For the defence of the Negroes in the South against the racialists, they had called on Kennedy, and then Johnson, to send Federal troops.

It was not surprising that they had moved towards unification with the Pabloites in 1963, or that it had been without discussion. There was now an immediate danger of complete liquidation of the Socialist Workers Party in the USA. could not be any Trotskyism. There was a crisis of working-class leadership. The objective conditions for defeating the bureaucratic leaderships existed now, that could clearly be seen from the intervention of the Socialist Labour League in Britain.

The revisionists had made Cuba the basic issue for their reunification' in 1963. They had condemned the Socialist Labour League and its supoprters in the International Committee as sectarian and doctrinaire.

Their argument had been that Cuba was the acid test. They had said that because many industries were nationalized, Cuba was, therefore, a workers' state.

On this basis, that the nationalization of property implies a workers' state, a number of the followers of Pabloism had already decided Egypt, Syria, Burma and Zanzibar were all workers' states.

'We have insisted that the relation of nationalized industries in those countries to the world economy, the class nature of the state apparatus, whether the bourgeois personnel have been removed, whether working-class democracy exists, all have to be taken into account. Otherwise, we have the contradictory and nonsensical notion of socialism exerting itself over the heads of the working class.

said, the experience of building the Socialist Labour League in Britain was decisive for the whole international movement. The organisation had an international responsibility.

Preparation

The international resolution before the conference was part of the preparatory work for the international conference to be held early in 1966. The discussion would begin at the Seventh Congress and would continue within the Socialist Labour League until next year. There would also be a League delegate conference later this of wars and revolutions, but we must say that mankind cannot emerge unless the working class solves the crisis of leadership. When the Pabloites hand over to forces other than the working class, they abandon the whole founding basis of the Fourth International,' said Slaughter.

Since Pablo had developed his theories about positive forces within the Stalinist bureaucracy and the bourgeois-nationalist forces, Stalinism had, in fact, more and more, played the role of attempting to politically siabilise the situation to allow imperialism to continue, on the basis of the theory of peaceful co-existence.

Pabloism had helped the Slaughter 'facts', and conclude, for example, that Castro is 'a natural Marxist'.

The Latin American Pabloite sections split in two. Posadas and others left the Fourth International and started afresh in sectarian movements. The balance sheet in Latin America is the loss of revolutionary opportunities and the liquidation of the revolutionary movement.' In Britain, the Pabloites had consistently supported the rightwing Labourites against the Young Socialists and the Socialist Labour League.

In France they had abandoned independent politics for the French working class.

In Belgium they were supposed to have given a lesson in how to work in a social-democratic mass organisation. But they had been expelled and then just walked out, without any fight or preparation, and had collaborated in setting up a new party which was not at all a Trotskyist Party.

Splits in this party, which had a strong nationalist and reactionary wing, were only a matter of time.

In the Lanka Sama Samaja Party in Ceylon, from 'no contest' pacts to coalition was only a short step away from the mobilisation of the working class behind the revolutionary party, and of the peasantry behind working class.

'At its next world congress, the United Secretariat is faced with the balance sheet of entry and with the expulsion of 500 members of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, of Pablo himself and his faction, which has suppporters in several countries, said Slaughter.

'We can only turn the tables with the reconstruction of the Fourth International through the International Committee. The International Secretariat was as responsible for Ceylon as was anybody in Ceylon. Unless there is a turn by the Ceylon comrades away from those who sanctioned the acts of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and towards the Fourth International, there can be no way forward.

'Our taotic of entry is different, and the success in this work part of the international struggle against false Pabloite conceptions.

'An all-round The building of independent revolutionary parties was the essence of Trotskyism, to break the working class from bureaucracy.

Pabloism started from tendencies within the bureaucracy, but had never made an independent drive into the working class to win the leadership of the working class.

The United Front did not mean unity with the existing leaderships. There was never a united front without the construction of the independent revolutionary party.

The aim of the United Front was to win leadership of the whole working class and to destroy the false leaders.

The British Labourites in the government, who had fought unsuccessfuly to destroy the Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists, were the most loyal supporters of imperialist United States, against the revolutionary youth in the U.S. and Vietnam, at a time when the capitalists face a worsening crisis.

Wars become more bloody, precisely in the context of peaceful co-existence. The classic act of co-existence had been carried out in Vietnam after Dien Bien Phu, when the Geneva Conference had partitioned the country. The present war was the result.

Responsibility 'Our responsibility is plain. We should hail the Vietcong viatories, and hope for a complete liquidation of the interventionary forces,' said Slaughter.

Revisionism had attempted to completely liquidate the Fourth International. The revisionists said the theories of Trotskyism were being 'confirmed', but always by somebody else besides the Trotskyists.

The forces of the International Committee fought against that and said that without a fight

year, where the discussion would continue.

"We have reached a crucial point in the development of our movement which coincides with a crucial development in working class. The importance to world capitalism of the Labour government should emphasise for us the importance of the struggles of the Socialist Labour League to build a party to lead the working class against this government,' he said.

'Our most important task is the reconstruction of the Fourth International. This implies not just a reaffirmation of principles. A real break from revisionism in all its aspects is what is implied if we are to make the necessary leap.

'We shall see this more clearly if we understand what the essence of Pabloite revisionism has been.

"The essence of Pabloism is the elimination of the conscious vanguard of the working - class movement, abandonment of revolutionacy perspectives. This has been implicit for the last 15 years in the arguments of counter-revolutionary bureaucracy in another way.

Within Eastern Europe and Russia itself, there had been a massive re-emergence of the class struggle, a struggle to reestablish links with the world working class, which could only be done by the overthrow of the bureaucracy.

In the same period after 1952, there had been massive struggles in France and Western Europe, and in colonial countries, such as the crushing defeat of imperialism at Dien Bien Phu.

"There is only one way to give expression to the united struggles of workers in Eastern Europe, the advanced capitalist countries and the colonial countries. There can be no real expression of unity, unless the Fourth International is rebuilt, said Slaughter.

Until that was done, the workers in those countries would remain under the tutelage of the leaderships which wanted to restrict their struggles and eventually make deals with imperialism and its agents.

The Hungarian Revolution had sustained defeat at the hands of the Stalinist bureaucracy and military, but judged from the basis of the unity of the class struggle all over the world, this Revolution produced not just a workers new situation in the defeat for the Hungarian workers, workers movement internationally. It had produced big changes and had opened up big opportunities for the Fourth International.

During and since that time, the workers in advanced countries had suffered no major defeats, so that the lessons of the 1956 Revolution could be learned.

The Fourth International, said Slaughter, was not simply the organisation which was set up by Trotsky. It had gone through extremely difficult and contradictory struggles since its foundation.

By 1952-53, the majority of the Fourth International had succumbed to the revisionism and liquidationism of Pablo. This had, in fact, destroyed whole sections of the organisation.

The revisionism of Pabloism, and then the Socialist Workers Party, had aided the class enemy because it had provided an obstruction to the building of the Fourth International, substituting the conception that the Sureaucracy of Eastern Europe could really reform itself.

Workers in struggle had tended to go through a stage where they thought that, in Hungary, for example, it would have been possible to reform the bureaucracy.

They were strengthened in that by the fact that there is no revolutionary movement in existence to sustain them.

The Pabloite theories of the reform of the bureaucracy sustain these ideas and push us back to spontaneity. The most conscious of Stalinist revisionists and bureaucrats.

such as Lukacs, adopt precisely these theories of the Pabloites,' he said.

Under Pablo's guidance, the International had become more than a publishing office in Paris with no real life in the sections. Every national section required a struggle against the international revisions of Pablo

June 9 Three

by Unified leadership was something the Chinese Stalinists, as Stalinists, could never provide. The position of the Pabloite revisionists on the Sino-Soviet split was, therefore, another important aspect of their revisionism.

In the advanced capitalist countries, Pabloism had had similarly disastrous results.

The tactic of 'deep entry"

into the existing workers' parties in these countries received its most conscious expression in 1953. During the following years, there had been, in fact, a move to the right, not to the left, by all the official movements, Stalinist and social-democratic. In this situation, Pablo's insistence on the abandonment of independent parties had subordinated the revolutionary forces to those official movements, which, at the same time, had become more directly subservient to imperialism.

'Correot slogans are often turned into their opposites if clung to as astract. conditions? se truths when develop theory to grapple with changed reality,' said Slaughter.

Lenin had not gone into Russia in 1917 with a correct programme waiting for things to happen—in fact his hardest struggle had been against those who clung to old, outdated theories.

The whole history of the Communist movement had to be studied carefully.

FI. founded

The Communist Party, by the middle 20s, was already being liquidated by Stalin. The betrayals in China and Britain had followed, then the victory of fascism in Germany.

In the purges in the Soviet Union, which followed, almost the whole of the Bolshevik Old Guard had been physically wiped out.

The Fourth International began in a period of defeats. In 1936, Trotsky had elaborated a turn in the work. Since the class struggle was at an ebb and since the working class was in the grip of the Stalinists, who

Iwo pamphlets which contain the reports from Ceylon by the representatives of The Newsletter. G. Healy covers the developments leading up to and including the formation of the Bandaranaike-LSSP coalition government and the subsequent split of the LSSP. M. Banda covers the period up to the downfall of the coalition. Together, these accounts constitute a searching analysis and a devastating exposé of revisionist politics as practised by that rump which calls itself the Unified Secretariar. Illustrated and packed full of documents-resolutions, conference CEYLON The great betrayal Two reports from Coylon by 0. Healy Price: 1/NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS LTD., New Park Publications Ltd., 186A Clapham High St., S.W.4 CEYLON The great betrayal By G. Healy decisions, statements and correspondence.

CEYLON The logic of coalition politics By M. Banda The logic of Coalition CEYLON politics Price:

'In fact, the reliance of Cuba on the Soviet Union for aid and the buying of sugar almost destroyed Cuba during the missiles crisis. Strong forces inside the Soviet Union are pressing for an end of aid to Cuba.

*The revisionists say that Cuba "confirms" the theory of Permanent Revolution?

That theory said the tasks of bourgeois revolution could not be carried out by the bourgeoisie or its representatives in this epoch. These could only be accomplished by the working class, which would be forced to break with the national bourgeoisie and go on to the task of the socialist revolution.

'We can say that the pressure of imperialism has placed all the tasks of the permanent revolution before the Cuban workers, but they must build a revolutionary party. Without that leap in consciousness these tasks cannot be carried out and the existing gains cannot be preserved. If one looks towards the reforms in Cuba as sacred and untouchable, this is a capitaulation and abdication of revolutionary leadership, and helps the enemies of revolution; it isolates the Cuban workers from the struggles of the international working class, which can only be united under the leadership of the Fourth International.' In 1917, Lenin had been able to change conditions in the Bolshevik Party in a severe struggle. Today, the Socialist Labour League had the task of defeating revisionism in struggle.

It depended on the conscious intervention and development of Marxist theory. This was the responsibility of the Seventh Congress and of the forthcoming international conference.

'A re-constructed revolutionary international is the fear of the Stalinists and reformists, as well as the capitalists, all over the world. This Congress must make its contribution towards the rebuilding of the movement.'

Cuban authorities that their tour of Cuba this summer has been cancelled.

Last summer, 45 students made similar arrangements and visited Cuba for eight weeks in July and August. The cancellation this year came only two weeks before the first party was due to leave, and was announced on June 3 by Vernel Olson, National Chairman of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and chairman of the Directorate of the Student Tour to Cuba.

Statement

The tour was arranged !!

ment from the Cuban Institute March after a firm commit for Friendship with Peoples. In response to the cancellation, and after Olson had visited Cuba, a joint meeting of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, the Student Tour to Cuba Directorate, a leading member of the Toronto Selection Committee which chos he delegations, and two repre sentatives of the students, adopted the following statement unanimously:

"The cancellation of the student tour to Cuba after three months of intensive preparation, and just as the first students were getting ready to leave Canada, constitutes a grave blow to efforts of Canadians to establish the truth about Cuba and is a blow to the revolution itself. The decany consciouse of the im- the tour were portance of 100 Canadian youth visiting Cuba this summer, in view of the increasing isolation of the island and its people from the North American continent. The tour was doubly significant in view of the total isolation of Cuba Pm the United States due • restrictive travel b "The unprecedented response to the tour by students from coast to coast was a high point in over four years of activities by the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and student campus The Canadian Fair Play for Cuba Committee has been the only committee in the western capitalist world that has been able to establish real understanding of the Cuban revolution on a broad non-sectarian basis. The impressive response to • this year's tour is testimony of the respect which the Committee has earned, and is living proof of the interest in the Cuban revolution which its activities have inspired. Further evidence of this respect and interest is the fact that over thirty eminent persons from Canadian universities participated in the selection process.

'It is a serious matter that the results of over four years' work in defence of the truth of the Cuban revolution has now been jeopardised, not by the external enemies of the revolution, but by the arbitrary action of an institution of the Revolutionary Government. We believe that the best interests of the Cuban people have not been served by this action.

The widening Canadians in the struggles che cuban Deodie tor a bette ule will undoubtedly be greatv retarded. The increasine interest of Canadian youth in the committees on Cuban and Latin-American affairs in the past year will inevitably suffer a serious setback. only to the 1 was a blow not "The withdrawal of previous students, who gave up the remuneration of summer employment in order to witness the Cuban experiment first-hand, but was also a blow to at least 100 people from all parts of Canada who gave time, energy and money to assure the success of the tour in every respect.

AIler serious consiaeraton of all available information, we only "conclude that student tour was the victim of sectarian forces within the revolution itself which have been measurably strengthened in recent months as a result of the critical international situation This problem is not new for the Cuban revolution. Only a few years ago Fidel Castro found it necessary danger when he attacked the methods Anibal Escalante (former General Secretary of the United Party).

"The cancellation Background of government can be a source of satisfaction only to the sworn enemies of the Cuban revolution, or to hopeless sectarians. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee has been struck a harsh blow, but our confidence in the Cuban people and their cause, and the pressing need to continue our activities in defence of the revolution, is unshaken. The real friends of Cuba will not diminish their efforts to bring the truth about the Cuban revolution to the Canadian people.' Those who passed this resolution are right to draw attention to the relationship between the future of the Cuban Revolution and the international political situation.

It is not just a matter of isolation of 'the island and its people from the North American continent' but of the Cuban revolution being endangered by the petty-bourgeois leadership of Castro and his followers: they isolate the Cuban workers from the international working class and the struggle to build a revolutionary international.

Substitution

In the Canadian movement, as in every other country, it must be realised that the idolisation of the Castro leadership actually provides a cover for actions of this kind.

Collaboration with radical friends of the Cuban people' has been substituted for working-class internationalism and a changes Newsletter Correspondent fight to assist the working class of Cuba to go beyond the Castro leadership.

The arbitrary actions of the government, which endanger the conquests of the revolution, do not arise from small groups of sectarians or enemies within the state machine, but from the whole class character of state and government in Cuba. Blindness to this will only lead to further 'disappointments'.

Those politically responsible for the leadership of the Trotskyist movement in Canada and the USA in the last few years have, in fact, played their own important part in preparing for this blow by the Castro government.

The revisionists like Hansen in the Socialist Workers Party and Dowson in Canada condemned the International Committee and the Socialist Labour League as 'sectarian' for insisting on the construction of an independent working-class revolutionary leadership in Cuba. They refused to protest against the suppression of the Trotskyist press and imprisonment of Trotskyists in Cuba, accusing the group concerned of irresponsibility'. • They hindered the development of the working class in their own countries by covering up for these actions by the Castro government and not laying the main emphasis on the construction of alternative leadership both in Cuba and in other American countries.

This was the essence of the differences in the in the international Trotskyist movement over Cuba-the need to build an independent revolutionary leadership. By their subordination to Castro, and their abandonment of this perspective, the so-called Trotskyists of "The Militant' and "The Vanguard' have in fact prepared the way for just those actions against which they now protest.

Did they not tell their followers that Castro was in fact a Marxist leader, and that it was 'sectarian' to criticise the actions of his state machine, or to insist on the construction of an independent leadership?

Clarification

Present developments in Cuba promise material for a rapid theoretical clarification on these issues.

There is little doubt that the cancellation of the Canadian tour is connected with the internal divisions in the Cuban leadership. Some months ago the veteran Communist Party leader Rodriguez was removed from his post in the government. Since then there has been a bitter dispute over the future of the Cuban economy, restricted, as it is, by ster of Industry, has been replaced. He has not appeared in public since returning from his tour of Africa and Asia in March, and his Ministry is at present under the direction of another member of the Government, Guzman.

While in North Africa, Guevara made a number of statements attacking the terms of the sugar agreement with the USSR, intimating that it amounted to little more than the subordination of Cuba to the capitalist world market.

Castro's recent boasts about Cuban economy going ahead at 'supersonic speed' and his dire warnings about the 'millions' of casualties which will result from U.S. aggression, have the demagogic ring which so regularly accomplishes a lurch to the right by petty-bourgeois politicians.

When the Castro government cancels the Canadian trip to Cuba, they make a definite gesture to the American imperialists, one of a number of such gestures made at various junctures by Castro himself.

Such gestures are not playaction, but are responses by the petty-bourgeois leadership to the blind-alley consequences of building up the Cuban economy under the umbrella of Soviet sugar purchases and peaceful co-existence.

Only the building of an independent proletarian leadership can take the Cuban workers and peasants away from this impasse to the unity of the revolutionary struggles of the workers, throughout America, north and south.

THa Tute Journal of ter the Banner of Socialism' has been published in Ceylon. Its publisher, S. Nagendra, was the secretary of the Lanka Sama Samja Party group in London. He attended the 7th World Congress of the Pabloite International as an observer.

Along with other members of the London group, he endorsed the stand taken by the Revolutionary Marxist minority of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party at the conference held in June 1964. But when Nagendra returned to Ceylon, via Algiers, he joined the Revisionist Lanka Sama Samaja Party. Now he is publishing the Pabloite journal with the assistance of Osmund Jayaratne.' An article entitled 'Ceylon— the elections and after', signed by one Mohan Tampoo, appears in this issue. He savs:

'But this rightward shift has only been possible because the United National Party appeared to be moving "left" by publicly claiming that they have changed their views.' This is a unique explanation for the United National Party victory. They had only to announce publicly that they had changed their views, and the country voted them to power.

Coalition rejected

On March 22, the Ceylonese electorate rejected the middle of the road politics of the Lanka Sama Samaja PartySri Lanka Freedom Party Coalition. The ' voters, disgusted with the corruption, nepotism and inefficiency of the regime, and enraged by the rank communalism of the government, turned to the United National Party in despair. The record of the shortlived coalition not only left them with no other alternative but also completely shattered the faith the oppressed people had in the traditional left.

Mr. Philip Gunawardena2 is 1. Osmund Jayaratne: one-time representative of the LSSP on the United Secretariat. (See Newsletter, 30/1/65). referred to as one who was 'considered to be on the left', Pabloites have a very short memory. They forget that despite the differences with the Pierre Frank group, they joined hands with them to welcome the formation of the popular front under the guise of the United Left Front. Mr. Gunawardena's MEP (People's United Front) was a constituent of the United Left Front.

"The government seeks to cover up these contradictions by calling itself a "National Government" and labelling anyone who questions these contradictions as "communalist"?

It is not that the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Communist Party have turned communalist. Oh no! Their opposition the United National Party-led coalition is being misconstrued to be communalist! Mr. Jayaratne should enlighten his friend by translating the Sinhalese newspapers of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Communist Party - the Janasathiya,3 Janamathaya4 and the Attha.S Political rights The question of disciplinary action against the teachers must be viewed in its broader perspective-political rights for government employees. Both the Communist Party and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party accepted the United National Party-Sri Lanka Freedom Party policy on this question after the coalition. Pabloites seem to forget the stand taken by the Lanka Sama Samaja Party in the Senate on the question of political rights to teachers.6 That is how they influenced the Sri Lanka Freedom Party to turn left-by themselves turning right! If the teachers, let alone the rest of the government employees, had been granted political rights, these interdictions would not have taken place.

The United National Party-led government does not need to 'fight for time to reorganise the state apparatus' so as to be able to clamp down on the workers. This has already been achieved 2. Philip Gunawardena: Founder of the LSSP and now Minister in UNP government. 3. Janasathiya: People's weekly. 4. Janamathaya: People's thought. 5. Attha: Truth. 6. LSSP Senators opposed tical rights for teachers. by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party. The amendments to the Public Security Act give the government sufficient legal authority to act in case of any mass action. The police and the armed forces have been sufficiently strengthened to meet any emergency situation. The armed forces were given ample training during the prolonged periods of emergency.

The 'socialist' Sri Lanka dom Party showed how he armed forces could be used to break up strikes. Top army officers were given training in guerrilla warfare in Yugoslavia. Thus the United National Party has only to use the apparatus that has been streamlined by the previous regime.

Reference is made to the increased vote of the Lanka Sama IN the message of greetings to the World Trotskyist movement endorsed by the Seventh National Congress of the Socialist Labour League (see Newsletter 12|6/65), it was pointed out that Michel Pablo, leader of the revisionist clique in Paris called the United Secretariat, and sometimes Re-unified Secretariat, had publicly separated himself from the Secretariat and criticised it for not executing the complete liquidation of his movement into the Stalinist and social-democratic bureaucracies, as well as the bourgeois national movements.

There is no principle involved in this attack, since his fellowtribalists, Germain, Maitan and Frank, are conducting on a retail basis what Pablo is doing wholesale.

Nevertheless, Pablo's latest evolution-so clearly defined in Ceylon-should serve as a timely warning to all those supporters of the Secretariat who seriously desire to defend the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International.

The article published here was written by a Ceylonese Trotskyist supporter of the International Committee of the Fourth International. His vivid analysis shows that the path of Pabloism in Ceylon is the path to ruin and disaster.

Moreover, the fact that Pablo has been able to recruit the services of Germain's one-time right-hand man in Ceylon, Osmund Jayaratne, to help edit his journal, reveals clearly the irreversible decomposition of the revisionist group.

Although the author does not draw the conclusion, it is implicitly evident that it is only by joining the ranks of the International Committee, and fighting for a thorough discussion of all disputed principled questions and their resolution at an international conference, that the future of World Trotskyism will be assured. In the interests of such a discussion, we publish NIHAL GOONATILAKE's article.

Samaja Party and the Communist Party. But the increase in the size of the electorate is forgotten. If one analyses the percentage vote polled by these parties in successive elections, they will find that there has been a gradual decline, despite the fact that these parties began to accommodate themselves more and more to the views of the electorate. About the radical wing of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, the less said the better.

We are told that 'the defeat of the coalition is a blow to the aspirations of the masses'. We indeed grant that it was a tragic blow to a number of careerists, but we repeat that the working class, which had suffered under the continuing wage freeze and has been at the receiving end of the batons of the Sirimavo-Perera combination; the plantation workers, who have been subjected to a barter agreement, which envisages the forcible repatriation of 550,000, the vast mass of jobless and slum dwelling people; the linguistic and religious minorities, who have been openly discriminated against, and been subjected to direct oppression under pressure of the Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism, have no tears to shed at the fall of the Sirimavo-N. M. Perera coalition.

Doric de Souza's assistance is sought to explain the defeat of the coalition. We are told that 'the entire state apparatus, which remained in the hands of the old bureaucrats, who grew up during the earlier regimes', - was instrumental in this defeat.

But the Lanka Sama Samaja Party would have it that a revolution' occurred in 1956. Therefore this old guard must be of pre-1956 vintage. But from 1956 onwards permanent secretaries, heads of departments and provincial administrators had all been hand-picked by the People's United Front, Sri Lanka Freedom Party and latterly by the Lanka Sama Samaja Party.

The public sector expanded after 1956. New appointments were all made under the patronage of these parties. The Coalitionists had the active support of a large section of government employees, most of whom had benefitted under their regime. There were a large 7. Doric de Souza: LSSP 'theoretician' and one-time SenatoI. number of government servants who took leave to work for the coalition candidates.

It was alleged Ceylon Transport Board vehicles, even Board petrol was used freely by the coalitionists. It was the same with the Co-operative Wholesale Establishment. In this situation, to talk of old bureaucrats - who turned the tables in United National Party's favour is utter nonsense.

It is easy now to call for the 'full participation of the masses in the running of the administration, when the coalitionists themselves opposed the granting of political rights.

We are told that the 'establishment of workers' councils in public enterprises must be a central slogan in the struggle against the United National Party. We await the mobilisation of the masses on these issues by those who failed to do it for nine years with governmental power in their hands.

Ironic talk

The erstwhile Marxists question and oppose the United National Party - Federal Party tie-up from a communal standpoint, without pointing to the class basis of this alliance. With their recent record, to talk of a just solution of the grievances of the minorities by the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Communist Party is the height of irony. Pabloites should recognise the Lanka Sama Samaja Party for what it is now-a party of the Sinhala-Buddhist pettybourgeoisie-thanks to Pabloite guidance and leadership.

We are told:

"The Marxists in the meantime have publicly pledged their support for any legislation which redresses any of the grievances of the minorities.' If this reference is to the revisionist Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Communist Party, then the Pabloites are guilty of brazenly flying in the face of facts. The Revisionist Lanka Sama Samaja Party has recently gone on record as being opposed to any concessions on the language question, opposed to appointments of Christians, Catholics and Tamils to public office, and firmly opposed to any concessions on the Indian Question.

*They [Buddhists] voted for the coalition essentially for class reasons, not essentially religious ones.' The pledge to make Buddhism the state religion, the pledge to protect the culture, religion and language of the Sinhalese, the pledge to implement the Sinhala only act to the very letter, the (Cont. page 4, col. 7)

Four

'ITHOUT explanation, Canadian students nave been informed by the its dependence on markets for sugar, now sold almost exclusively to the USSR and Eastern Europe.

It is now reported that Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, Miniby JEAN bibliographical bulletin. 'Novy Knigi' (New Books) announced the publication in the Soviet Union of a Russian translation of the book 'L'apparition de l'homme', a work by the Reverend Father de Chardin, a member of the Society of Jesus, who died in 1955.

This book, which is to be sold at the low price of 96 kopeks, will be prefaced by an introduction by Roger Garaudy, a member of the political. . bureau of the French Communist Party.

Garaudy, who has for some time been • extolling collaboration between Catholics and Communists, was invited a few weeks ago to address a conference at the Catholic University at Louvain, in Belgium, and, of course, accepted.

DEBATE

After a debate on the subject of materialism and humanism, which took place in Geneva on April 9, 1965, he stated:

•Marxism would be impoverished if Saint Augustine or St. John of the Cross to become foreign to it.' - One can •guess the manner in which he will present the philosophy of the Reverend Father Teilhard de Chardin to the Soviet public.

Thus, in the Soviet Union, the fatherland of 'socialism', the Marxist works of Leon Trotsky, G. Zinoviev, L. Kamenev, E. Preobrazhensky, C. Rakovsky and N. Bukharin, not to mention Bolsheviks of lesser standing, are not published; but they do publish a work by a Jesuit priest, they spread the ideas of a representative of religious thought, a member of a Catholic organisation which has been, since its creation, one of the most formidable instruments of the Papacy against all movements of emancipation, whether spiritual or material!

Thus, a member of the Political Bureau of the French Communist Party, a pillar of international Stalinism, presents to the Soviet people a system of ideas which fundamentally denies historical materialism, pretending to see in it some contribution to Marxism, REJECTION But naturally Marxism is not impoverished when one cuts out from it Trotsky, Preobrazhensky or Bukharin!

The Stalinists shout loud their rejection of 'the •coexistence of ideologies when they unleash more or less terrorist campaigns against the young revolutionary poets and against abstract painters or sculptors (although it is difficult to see how abstraction or formalism in poetry can be instruments of the bourgeoisie) but apparently they accept it when it comes to the ideas of a Jesuit father.

Aside from the sphere of metaphysics, this co-existence takes on grotesque forms elsewhere. Thus, the same publishers, Progress, under which the Reverend Father Teilhard de Chardin's book is to come out, have announced the publication in Russian in the very near future of a book by the German journalist Ruckmann entitled "Their Watchword: Murder'.

The way this book is presented in 'Novy Knigi' shows the degree 'of shamelessness that political amalgam can reach. The book, says the résumé, is devoted to the activities of terrorist organisations in the last years of reaction', and it describes four great crimes by these placing all murder Solomon Bandaranaike, prime marde minister of Ceylon, the murder of Felix Moumié, leader of the Union of Cameroonian Peoples, the murder of -Patrice Lumumba, the leader of the Congolese nationalist movement and the murder of John Kennedy, President of the U.S.

ASSASSINATION FACTS Lumumba was, in fact, assassinated, because he was in the way of imperialism-be it Belgian or American-the head of which was John Kennedy.

Moumié was assassinated by the terrorist services of French imperialism, and Bandranaike, a valet of imperialism, was assassinated by a Buddhist fanatic.

That is the de-Stalinism of today. They publish a Jesuit father, they present John Kennedy and Solomon Bandaranaike as martyrs to 'reaction', and they continue to ban knowledge of the thought of the most eminent leaders of Bolshevism after Lenin.

This is not an accident: these facts show each in their own way, the desire of the Soviet bureaucracy to come to agreement with imperialism.

THREE strikes took place last week at the BMC factory at Bathgate, Scotland. At one stage 4,000 men, involving all the trade unions at the factory bad stopped work. Workers at the plant see the strikes as a result of management pressure in preparation for the signing of a new factory wage contract in August.

Trouble began in the toolroom where 110 Amalgamated Engineering Union members were involved when men working on truck assembly walked out. The stoppage spread when the management approached other union members to do the work of the vehicle builders.

Shop stewards immediately called on workers on the day and night shifts to down tools.

The dispute in the toolroom occurred when, on the day shift it was claimed that a night shift foreman had changed a 24-inch grinding wheel.

Toolroom workers claim that not only is the foreman not allowed to do such work, but that he is not trained to do it.

PRODUCTION

In another part of the factory on the same day, members of the National Union of Vehicle Builders complained that the management had speeded up the production track.

They point out that although employing only two-thirds as many men, the night shift is expected to turn out the same number of vehicles as during the day.

Bathgate workers must expect attempts by management to boost output further. Workstudy is already in operation at the factory, operating what is called the measured day-scheme, from which bonus is calculated.

New automation machinery is at present being installed starting with modern transfer machines in the production line. This indicates that, after its initial running-in period, and taking advantage of Wilson's exhortations to "modernise", BMC is preparing to fully rationalise its production in competition with the big American, German and French car combines.

They will try and take advantage of the notorious 'package deal' agreement signed by the union's leaders for the engineering industry. This lays • down specifically that the miserly increases which it contains must Our Scottish Correspondent be accompanied by increases in output.

Another clause of the package deal, which provides for the introduction of a 40-hour week, is being used by the BMC management to tighten up working conditions in the toolroom at Bathgate.

STATEMENTS

The employers will fully back such reactionary statements as those emanating from George Brown, Minister of Economic Affairs, at the Lancashire Miners' Gala last week-end.

Ordinary people, said Brown, must 'stand and fight' against, among other things, 'silly strikes'. "This is the moment,' he said, 'when ordinary people exert themselves in every way. The government will change the face of society so that what one does becomes the passport to what one earns?

Brown appealed to workers to fight. When they fully realise the treachery of the Labour leaders and link up their factory struggle with a political fight against the reformist leadership, then it will be a bad day for the George Browns, and also for the employing class.

As one car worker said at Bathgate: 'We have to build an international working class movement to do this.' Welder sacked - 1,800 strike ONE thousand, workers at Massey Ferguson, Kilmarnock, stopped work last week following the dismissal of a welder.

The management stated they had sacked the welder for faulty workmanship. The shop stewards' convenor claimed that the error was easily rectified and the work had subsequently been passed.

He said that before the welder was dismissed, a work's conference should have been called to discuss the matter, and they wanted the welder to be reinstated.

At a mass meeting of strikers last Friday it was agreed to continue the stoppage and to meet on Wednesday, June 16. T shutdown of public transport services • HE Irish Republic is faced with a the lock-out of 1,700 busmen on Sunday.

Railmen say they will support the busmen, who are employed by the government-owned transport authority, the CIE.

The lock-out was in reply to last Saturday's one-day stoppage in support of the National Busmen's Union demand for a 40-hour week and a substantial wage increase.

The union, with 1,700 members out of a total of about 5,000 busmen in the Republic, was formed only 18 months ago as a result of the dissatisfaction of busmen with leaders of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union, who failed to lead an effective fight against the employers during the 1963 bus strike.

The busmen began picketing all CIE premises and were attempting, earlier this week, to extend the strike to railways, and road freight haulage.

As might be expected, the officials of the Irish TGWU and the Transport Salaried Staffs Association, are displaying great hostility towards the busmen's union, and are urging their members to cross the picket lines.

Perspective

Army lorries may be used in an attempt to defeat the busmen.

It is important that this lock-out should be seen in its political perspective. The Irish government, itself the employer in the dispute (and, incidentally, the largest employer in the Republic), sees the futility of a nation based on a backward agricultural economy trying to compete on the world market.

It is trying desperately to entice foreign capital into the country. To this end, it offers potential foreign investors large and attractive loans, five years' tax-free profits and, above all, a cheap labour force.

Such a government can ill-afford to allow any substantial increase in wages and is eager to show potential investors that it knows how to deal with workers who challenge INDUSTRIAL CORRESPONDENT complete following their employers. In this situation, any hard-fought industrial dispute must lead to a political struggle against the government.

In order to win this dispute, the busmen must gain the support of all workers. Pablo WOOS the Reformists

MONG the thousands of workers who see that everything runs smoothly amid the coming and going, whining and roaring, and general hubbub at London Airport, there is an intense feeling of dissatistaction over and conditions.

Any new industry suffers growing pains during its infancy, but there seems to be no prescription for the explosive atmosphere that hangs over the airport at the present time.

Continually workers in all sections, and they are many and varied, are forced by the tough attitude of managements into making demands to maintain their standards of living.

In a future article we will deal in more detail with the airport as a whole. This week our reporter investigates the position of the BEA porters.

RUMOUR

It was the rumour that officials of the Transport and General Workers' Union were about to sign a "package deal' agreement for BEA workers that sparked off the Whitsuntide strike of porters at the West London air terminal. The subsequent 'second wave' of the strike, of porters at London Airport itself, was in support of the colleagues dismissed by BEA chairman, Milward.

Although many workers feel that the strike should not have been called at that particular time, it did express the utter frustration of the workers over the deadlock in negotiations on the "package deal.

Some also feel that the strike was purposely prolonged, through the refusal of the management to deal with the local union officer, John Cousins, in an attempt to weaken union organisation.

"SAVIOUR'

Cousins appeared, through his militant statements, as a kind of 'saviour' in what had been a long, drawn-out affair over the 'package deal'. But, as reported in last week's Newsletter, he placed a great deal of importance on the results of the National Joint Council for the air industry.

This Council, in fact, agreed that the men return to work and sign the management's 'no unofficial strike' document.

The return occurred at an opportune moment for the management. If the dispute had continued for a few more days, there could have been a much larger, much more paralysing strike, than Milward and company envisaged.

For, despite the lack of liaison among union officials, and the conditions on the airport, which are not at all helpful to any organisation among workers, an 'unofficial' committee of shop stewards from many sections met By Robert the day before the Joint Council meeting, and heard of mass support among sections for the porters.

But the matter was taken out of their hands by the decision to return.

The porters had put up a tremendous struggle against the management, the attacks made by Minister of Labour, Gunter, Minister of Aviation, Jenkins, and the barrage of distortion from the press, radio, and television.

The previous week, wage awards had been granted to some of the more skilled sections, including pilots, without question. But, when it came to dealing with one of the poorest paid sections, the management opened fire.

The attack was all the more significant in view of the fact that in the last nine months, the porters' section at London Airport has become virtually a closed shop.

In an interview with The Vewsletter, a shop steward explained how nine months ago, out of 150 BEA porters, only 40 per cent were in the union. Since then there had been a fight for extra clothing and om undermanning, this had brought men into the union.

Undermanning is a constant battle with the management. Two months ago, the BEA porters stopped for an hour and a half until one section was made up to six men. The previous day a complaint had been made that only five men were on the section, when the rules said six.

The stoppage was called when, on the day of the strike, only four men were put on the section.

Porters are, at the moment, engaged on a 42-hour week, with rigid shift systems, for a basic wage of fll 1Is. a week, but, in tact, work a 31-hour week-the rest being compulsory overtime.

EXTRA HOURS

Even then, the steward told our reporter, màny have to work extra hours to make up a living wage.

'You have to work more. Where would a man stand on £11 Ils. basic, with two children after income tax and insurance?' he asked.

He was on a 2.30 p.m. to 10.30 p.m. shift, but had begun work in the morning for an extra four hours' overtime.

On top of this, porters also only have one week-end (Saturday and Sunday) off in every six weeks.

The steward claimed that if this amount of work was not done, there would not be enough porters to carry out the duties at the airport.

Last week, he said, a new sorting area should have been opened, but it could not come into operation because of the conditions.

Ten men should have been working the area, but the management had attempted to reduce the staff to six, with two supervisors, instead of one for ten men, and a head loader.

He felt the union organisation was strong enough to oppose this speed-up.

Under the package deal, he said, he would be expected to go on to do the work of a loader on the apron. For moving into worse conditions and carrying out different work, he would receive 3s. 6d. a week extra.

Also porters now earning double time for Sunday work would receive time and two-thirds under the deal.

ORGANISED

It is against this background that the porters have become organised and willing to put up a fight against the package deal, which TGWU officials have tried to "sell' to them.

The high feeling and frustration of these men was shown by the jostling welcome union and management representatives received when arriving for the Joint Council meeting. Among the slogans were 'Milward Must Go' and 'A Gun for Gunter". Union officials were greeted with the cry 'traitor'.

This militancy, which is expressed by many workers of many employers on the airport, must be harnessed to closed shop sections, and become more closely organised in a body like the year-old liaison committee of shop stewards.

BACKGROUND TO BEA PORTERS' STRIKE IMMIGRANT workers on strike at Courtaulds Pres ton works decided at a mass meeting last Sunday to return to work. They went back into the factory to work on one and a half machines.

During the strike, there were demands for the removal of the three white stewards and one Ceylonese steward, who were in office when a speed-up agree. ment was made with the management.

After electing new shop stewards they will ask for a time-and-motion study of this agreement.

The men have returned under the conditions they struck against in the first place.

Result

This end to the strike is certainly not the result of lack of fighting spirit. It results from the efforts of union officials, spokesmen for the West Indian and Pakistan High Commissioners, and of middle-class opportunists, who came into the strike as 'advisers' and 'spokesmen' for the Action Committee. Because of the itexperience and language difficulties of the strikers, these people took over the running of the strike.

Soon after the strike began, a formula, which would have meant a return on one and a half machines, was put by Malik Newsletter Correspondent A. Khaliq, an Indian economist from Bradford, who took on the role of chief spokesman for the strikers. The formula was rejected when it became clear to the rank and file what it meant.

A week later Khalik announced a fast to the death, by selected leaders, outside No. 10 Downing Street. This stunt never started. Negotiations with the Transport and General Workers' Union officials eventually ended with the decision to call the strike off.

"Storm'

As it ended 'The Guardian' reporter called the strike a 'storm in a teacup'. It was far removed from that. It is no 'storm in a teacup' when 800 immigrant workers are in the forefront of the fight against speed-up plans of big business.

With their militancy, which was certainly not equalled by the quality of their 'advisers' they deserved the support of all workers.

The real meaning of the strike was brought out in the Courtaulds annual report which was published as the strike was ending, this week.

The first thing that is shown is that this company has done very well indeed out of its workers, including the large number of immigrant workers it employs. Profits have doubled in three years, rising from no less than £18 million to £36 million.

A KU KLUX KLAN type 'fiery cross' was thrust into the door of an Indian inimigrant's home in Leamington during the Whitsun week-end. Last week three similar burning crosses were fixed to houses in Birmingham, two in Handsworth to the homes of Jamaican families, and the third in Balsall Heath. to the premises of a Pakistani shopkeeper.

THREATENING

On Saturday two threatening letters with Ku Klux Klan headings were received by Mr. William Dawkins, the Jamaican steel worker who purchased a house at Rowley Regis, near Smethwick, and upon whom pressure was put to move out by the local all-white residents' association.

Reports that a Ku Klux Klan meeting was held in a Birmingham public house at Whitsun were followed by information that a second meeting took place last week-end, attended by members of the Klan from Birmingham, Coventry, Leamington and Wolverhampton.

•PROTECTING Mr. Narinber Dosanjh, National Culture Secretary of the Indian Workers' Association of Great Britain, says: 'Our organisation should call forthwith on the trade unions here, and on other workers' organisations, to join with us in protecting immigrant workers against fascist violence. I feel confident that the labour movement will not allow fascist attacks on immigrant workers.' The Labour government's cowardly retreat on racialism has produced swift repercussions in this new wave of fascist arrogance and violance.

The protecting of immigrant workers from such violence must be done by the united action of the working class. White trade unionists and socialists, working-class youth and immigrant workers must combine to defend the lives, homes, families and rights of all victims of fascists and racialists.

UTMOST

The right-wing Labour leadership, along with the Tories, will do their utmost to prevent workers from understanding the class nature of such racialist disturbances. 'Leave it to the police and the forces of law and order'; this is certain to be their line.

But six years ago, when race riots and hatred flared in Notting Hill and Nottingham, it was shown that the police and forces of law and order were quite unable to prevent the murder of Kelso Cochrane, a West Indian, or to find his murderers and bring them to justice.

They were unable to protect other West Indians from being beaten up.

week THE first major stoppage since 1926 took place at the Imperial Chemical Industries' factory at Ardeer, Ayrshire, last week, when 4,000 workers staged a 24-hour strike.

The dispute arose over the delay in the management introducing a 40-hour week without loss of pay. An agreement was reached between ICI and the unions early this year that the working week would be reduced from 42 to 40 hours with no loss in earnings.

The management at the Ardeer plant claim that it has not been possible as yet to apply the agreement locally.

Workers at ICI allege that this is a breach of national agreement and that 1,300 non-shift workers are losing wages. Because of their dissatisfaction they staged a one-day strike and were supported by the continuous shift workers.

The management claim that with the introduction of the 40hour week, personal protection payments would be made to the non-shift workers to maintain the pre-40-hour week differential between them and continuous shift workers, whilst discussion with the unions proceed. However: they are reported to have agreed that it is now necessary to review the position and a meeting with the unions is being arranged. Pablo has out-manoeuvred the Germain12, Maitan13 and Pierre Frank14 clique.

It is clear that Pablo's local stooges are making a valiant effort to hide the betrayal perpetrated by the reformist Lanka Sama Samaja Party leaders, in order to defend their petty-bourgeois, vested interests in continuing the Sri Lanka Freedom-Lanka Sama Samaja PartyCommunist Party Coalition. In this they are only assisting Pablo who has moved faster than his rivals of the so-called United Secretariat in taking its opportunism to its logical conclusion.

8. ULF: United Left Front. Formed in 1963 between CPLSSP and Philip Gunawardene's MEP. The ULF broke up when LSSP entered coalition. 9. Leslie: Leslie Goonewardene, secretary of the LSSP. 10. Colvin: Colvin R. de Silva, leading figure in LSSP and its loudest demagogue. 11. IEC: International Executive Committee, one of the leading bodies on Pablo's international organisation. 12. Germain: Leader of the Belgian revisionists (see Newsletter 9/1/65). 13. Maitan: Livio Maitan, leader of Italian revisionist group, member of United Secretariat. 14. Pierre Frank: Leader of French revisionist group, member of United Secretariat (see Newsletter, 27/7/65).

Published by The Newsletter, Clapham Hish Street, London. 8. W.4

pledge to solve unemployment by sending 550,000 plantation workers to India must have been class issues raised by the coalitionists to help the Sinhala Buddhist voters to decide on class lines!

'Any attempt by the left parties to champion the cause of Buddhism would greatly assist the United National Party. ... It is necessary on the other hand to critically support the demands of the lower and reformist ranks of the Buddhists for the removal of the most exploitive privileges of the top priesthood.' Pabloites forget that the Lanka Sama Samaja Party election campaign was started at the Vidyalankara Pirivena (the Buddhist Educational Institute) and that Buddhist priests figured prominently in their election meetings. To divide the Buddhist priesthood into progressive and reactionary is false. The entire lot are reactionary. They are the most conservative elements in our society. They are the biggest obstacle to social progress.

RECRUIT

Pablo's latest recruit in Ceylon is indeed an acquisition, since he does not know his left from his right. He wants to push the so-called right wing of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party into joining the government. Now one of the constituent units of the United Left Front8 is already there, another, the Communist Party, is moving in that direction. It is now left for the Pabloites in Ceylon-the Revisionist Lanka Sama Samaja Party to follow suit.

The present article under review and the one that appeared in the previous issue under the caption 'Ceylon-a New Situation', is part of Pablo's campaign of wooing the Reformist Lanka Sama Samaja Party.

Pablo's secretary, who spent nearly a month in Ceylon, met a large number of their members and set up an organisation to publish his English magazine in Ceylon.

By their refusal to expel Leslie° and Colvin1o from *he IECI until after the coalition had fallen, by their disapproval of the voting of two Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary) MPs on December 3, by their disapproval of the political line adopted by the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary) for the elections, the United Secretariat was also attempting to keep the door open to the Lanka Sama Samaja Party revisionists.

PUBLICATION

The publication of Pablo's magazine by those within the ranks of the Revisionist Lanka Sama Samaja Party shows that