The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 403

CALL BY SOCIALIST

E VERY socialist must welcome the sucoesses of the national -liberation fighters in South Vietnam. A victory for these heroic workers and peasants over U.S. imperialism and its puppets will be a major blow against the enemies of the labour movement throughout the world.

The Labour leaders conspire with these enemies to help extricate them from their difficulties. Wilson's mission' had this as its object.

His pretended concern about peace' is exposed for what it is by his continued support for every brutal atrocity perpetrated by the imperialists against the Vietnamese people.

Those pretended 'lefts' who talk of the need for a 'negotiated Fenner Brockway Socialists must fight on the question of thi government.

We must fight to John Gollan Socialist Labour League calls on all the demonstration called by the Young Socialists on July 18.

The compromisers who would rob the Vietnam liberation forces of victory must not be allowed to mislead the growing opposition to imperialist action in Asia, and to the imperialist puppet, Wilson.

Statement by the Central Committee of the Socialist Labour League Who cares?

ALMOST daily, we hear of expulsions from the Labour Party of rank-and-file members, who, it is alleged, have done something or other to discredit the Party. But George Brown, Minister for Economic Affairs, is an honourable exception.

He just says and does what he likes. i After attacking the Tories, he rushes and apologises to them. These Honourable Gentlemen in the House of Commons know Brown for what he is, a political ally of theirs within the Labour Party.

We are not so much concerned about this, as about the fact that his antics and behaviour are continuously being utilised by. the Tory Party to discredit tens of thousands of ordinary sincere men and women who comprise the membership of the Labour Party and the trade unions Why should they be laughed at because Brown goes around acting the goat. Of course, it would be too much to hope that he will be expelled for discrediting the Labour Party. After all, in the history of this party not a single right-winger has ever been expelled, whereas hundreds of lefttry to peace settlement' and the re-call of the 1954 Geneva Conference, are only covering up Wilson's treachery.

Brockway and his associates try to prevent a real struggle against an de unal adi. annian the government's pro-imperialist line by calling for 'mediation' between the Vietcong and the Americans.

In this they are abetted by the called Communist Party. -After a fortnight's junketing Hanoi, John Gollan, secretary of British Communist Party, welcomes campaign of Brockway and suverman, which refuses to take the side of the Vietnamese revolution.

Despite all their suffering and hardship, the workers and peasants of Vietnam press on towards victory. Their struggle is ours also. for the defeat of the Labour government : Vietnam war. It is a pro-imperialist aken the ability of the British capitalists and their servants in the Labour government and call on our American comrades to do the same, so that the Vietcong will have more victories, so that the American, British and Commonwealth forces in Vietnam and South-East Asia will be defeated.

We welcome every victory by the Vietcong against these forces because that will weaken the capitalist enemy here at home as well as in Asia.

In these struggles, inspired by the fight of the Vietnamese people, we shall build a Marxist party in Britain, as part of the Fourth International, which will break the stranglehold of the Wilsons, Brockways and Gollans on the working-class movement, and smash imperialism once and for all.

The Central Committee of the sections of the movement to support July 3/4, 1965 Saturday, July 10, 1965 wingers have been severely with.

On top of all this, the party chiefs continuously claim that their difference with the Socialist Labour League is that they are a 'democratic party'. We know that this is a downright lie and George Brown goes on proving it. The National Executive Committee will remain silent because in fact they are more sympathetic towards him and the Tory Party than towards the rank and file who fight for socialism.

Speak up Prince! ONE of the misleading legends which is carefully spread around by Tory and Labour Party politicians is that Royalty stands aloot from political opinions.

Prince Philip has now blown that fairy tale sky high. By poking his nose into Rhodesian affairs and coming down, as he must do, on the side of the most reactionary wing of colonial oppressors, he has revealed for all Vietcong examine an arsenal of captured American Government of officers in Algeria ON Monday, July 5, third anniversary of Algerian independence, Colonel Boumedienne broke his silence on the composition of the new government. Since the removal of Ben Bella in the coup of June 19, Boumedienne has repeatedly said that he had no political ambitions, and that some non-military fire would beneme head of state.

„tact Shoumedienne now been pronounced Prime Minister. This military man leads a government composed almost in its entirety of other military men.

As last week's Newsletter pointed out, political control has been taken over by an army trained outside the liberation struggle which expelled the French. A small group of officers, with only one or two individuals from the Ben Bella government, now rules the country.

None of the exiled or previously deposed right-wing leaders have been persuaded, apparently, to act as front men the Boumedienne clique, whose strength at the moment is probably entirely dependent upon the support they receive from world imperialism.

No doubt the political 'personalities' are extremely unsure of the stability of the new regime, and are afraid of direct ırmy rule which will provoke opular revolt, especially in the present conditions of large-scale unemployment and land-hunger.

NO CLARITY Boumedienne's political declaration on the occasion of the independence celebrations did a little to clarify still further the nature of the new regime. Apart from the now standard description of Ben Bella as a personal dictator, Boumedienne's speech stressed the need for work and discipline.

This is ominous, especially when read in conjunction with his reported address to an audience of policemen some days earlier in which he called for action against revolutionists' and adventurers.

These, he said, were largely foreigners who had gathered in Algeria to try out their theories by influencing Ben Bella and other FLN leaders.

At the same time as preparing this attack against the left and the working class, Boumedienne insisted on the preservation of good relations with the French imperialists, and made it clear that he is making agreements with the most reactionary forces in North Africa.

The talk about the THE editorial in last week's Tribune' shows very clearly the real meaning of the kind of politics peddled in that journal.

With an emphasis almost amounting to hysteria it says: •.. the Vietcong, the Chinese, and perhaps even the bombbattered North Vietnamese, draw the wrong conclusion-the conclusion that given time and resolution on their part, the Americans can be driven into the sea and a total victory gained. ... It won't happen."

This principle dominates the thinking of these gentlemen: imperialism is invincible.

The bosses will always be bosses. Talk socialism now and again if you like, but never imagine that anything will come (North African Arab unity) is specifically designed to bring Algeria closer to the reactionary regimes in Tunisia and Morocco.

Politically speaking, Boumedienne hopes to consolidate army control as against control through the leading circles of the National Liberation Front (FLN) government single party, which Ben Bella represented. And so Boumedienne talks about a new assembly in which the party will 'control' government rather than substituting for government.

ARMY RULE

Whatever this seems to mean, it really means the army high command and Boumedienne will govern, using the party as an instrument of control where necessary.

Among the many lessons of the Algerian events for the international working-class movement is the clear light it sheds on the real political role of the Stalinist bureaucracy which leads the Communist Party of China.

In the interests of their immediate diplomatic moves towards the Afro-Asian conference in Algiers, they hastened to give uncritical recognition to the Boumedienne regime.

Their international manoeuvres take place completely abstracted from the building of an International of revolutionary parties, and as in this case, they end up by supporting the counter-revolution.

DEMAGOGY

Demagogic references to Lenin by the leaders of an established workers' state, as in China, are no substitute for the rebuilding of the Fourth International.

Without this there is, in fact, no 'return to Lenin'.

The Algerian events should help the militant workers who have welcomed the Chinese criticisms of the Kremlin Stalinists to see that they must go far beyond those criticisms.

The meaning of the Chinese adulation of Stalin now becomes clear also. Their politics, like his, are pertectly capable of sharp swings to the lett, but ouly within the framework of a bureaucratic abandonment of proletarian internationalism. of it.

That is why, to the applause of the Stalinists, Foot, Silverman and Brockway, and their like, talk about peace' in Vietnam. That is why the possibility of a victory of the Vietcong terrifies them.

That is why they will still attempt to cover over Wilson's betrayal of the labour movement.

For years they acted as a safety valve for rank-and-file discontent with the Labour leaders. Instead of a real analysis of the class position of the right wing, they offered piece-meal criticism, and that only when there was no danger of having to take responsibility for acting on it.

They blunted the edge of every attack on imperialism, substituting bucketfuls of sentiment about the sufferings of the colonial peoples for the slightest support for a real fight to end them.

Anyone who still reads 'Tribune' each week can discern several stages in the evolution of its attitudes to Wilson.

From the 1963 Labour Party Conference until after the election, we underwent the period of prolonged applause.

Each piece of feeble demagogy' from the leader was greeted as a major contribution to socialist thought.

Then, as the election promises fell thick and fast, 'Tribune' was silent on a growing list of topics (DELEGATES to the Trans-)

port and General Workers' Union conference at Portsmouth this week, passed by an overwhelming majority, a resolution ›calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Vietnam and for the Labour ( government to dissociate itself from U.S. policy over Vietnam.

The resolution said: "That this conference, recognising the need for the government to do all in its power to promote ›peace in Vietnam, urges the government in its capacity ast co-chairman of the peace con-/ "ference of 1954 to call for the ¡removal of all foreign troops jand to dissociate itself from American policy over Vietnam land to continue to press for immediate peace talks? ' In this issue of The Newsletter we state clearly our position on the role of the Labour government and 'peace talks'. But we are sure that the tremendous feeling over the ) Vietnam issue expressed by the TGWU delegates is indicative' lof the opposition throughout 'the labour movement in Britain and the rest of the world to imperialist aggression in SouthEast Asia.

from pensions to South Africa.

Next came some months of pleas and sighs. If only Harold Wilson would see the error of his ways...• Now, when the role of the government is too obvious to hide, they have to try to head off the opposition by making a few critical noises.

But while Foot may occasionally condemn Johnson's policies (referring as little as possible to those of his friend Wilson), the essential function of each criticism is to cloak an apology.

In fact, the campaign for a 'peaceful settlement' in Vietnam is an essential part of Wilson's efforts on behalf of imperialism.

It follows a regular pattern:

(Cont. page 4, col. 6)

VICTORY is in sight for the 70 strikers at loyle's London, who are now approaching the second their strike.

At a meeting on Tuesday between the management and the union, at the Ministry of Labour, Christina Foyle came forward with proposals which, though unacceptable, are a big comedown on her part. For two months she has struck rigidly to a 'no discussion' attitude.

The strikers are demanding a proper wage-for-age scale plus higher commission rates and a higher basic rate for office staff who cannot earn commission.

Foyle's are now offering fll at the age of 21 for men and f9 10s.

for women, a fl and fl 10s.

increase respectively. Christina Foyle said she would come forward with a scale for office staff at a further meeting at the Ministry on Thursday.

The strikers are still demanding increased pay, equal pay for men and women, a raise in commission, reinstatement and no victimisation.

Through their tenacity and unity the young strikers—many from overseas - have almost broken through to an important victory, not only for themselves, but for the many thousands of unorganised shop workers throughout Britain, who must to see that Royalty does have political opinions.

The Newsletter says: Well spoken, sir. We hope that you will bawl out your real opinions more frequently in the future. For our part we think it is a shameful disgrace that hirelings of the establishment should seek to gag you. After all, you have never hidden your sympathies with reaction, why should the idea be developed that you have in some way been progressive in your outlook.

As a member of a most outlived feudal institution, the British monarchy, which should have long ago been swept away, you cannot but think in the way that you do. The next step you should take, of course, is to join the Tory Party and declare that you stand, like all of these representatives of big business, four-square against the interests of the working class.

Better still, might it not be a good idea for you to persuade Elizabeth herself to declare her politics more openly. It would certainly purify the air and every worker would know, as a result, what to do in the coming struggles that lie ahead You, like Lord Home and his tribe, will then be dealt with similarly.

bookshop, month of now become organised in the trades unions and Young Socialists.

It is believed that Foyle's have made a heavy financial loss during the strike-estimated by some to a drop of over one-third —and the Foyle's book clubs have been paralysed by the support for the strike from postmen.

Christina Foyle has hung on grimly but has failed to crush this strike.

The likely victory has come about despite union officials, who have been pushed along by the strength of the strikers to make the wage demands, and flaunt the "paper' decision of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers conference to back George Brown's wage freeze. STOP PRESS:

Late on Thursday, Christina Foyle agreed in negotiations to take back all the strikers, including Marius Webb, the 22year-old strike leader. She offered a further 10s. to the top two age wage rates. She wil not grant any extra commission or pay scheme for office staff. The demonstration planned by the strikers for Thursday evening was called off by union organiser Callinan, because 'it might embarrass negotiations'. • The strikers were to meet on Friday morning to decide whether to accept Foyle's conditions.

TWENTY - FIVE - YEAR - OLD Ray Musgrove, a London Transport bus driver and active member of the Young Socialists, was expelled from the Ealing Labour Party this week.

Musgrove was told that he bad been expelled-by 14 votes to six - for distributing leaflets opposing the Wilson government. In fact, Musgrove has fought consistently for the policies of the Young Socialists, and while being questioned at the General Management Committee inquiry, found several Labour Party members agreeing with his position on Vietnam.

Among the six who voted against his expulsion were trade union delegates.

Musgrove had been a member of the Labour Party for seven years and stood for the council in Ealing in 1961.

Stalinism are being revealed to the mass of workers as incapable of winning reforms, let alone fighting for socialism.

The Socialist Labour League and its international co-thinkers in the Fourth International have insisted that this construction of parties. based on Marxist theory is the primary and central task of Trotskyists. Opposing us have been those grouped around the 'Pabloite' United Secretariat in Paris.

Their spokesmen, and particularly Ernest Germain, have insisted that the most important thing is to work within the left-wing or "centrist' trends which will inevitably emerge in opposition to the right-wing leaders within the old parties.

One of their prize examples has been Belgium. There, a group of socialists around the paper 'La Gauche', edited by Ernest Mandel, worked for many years within the Belgian Socialist Party (PSB), anticipating such a 'centrist' break from the Party.

The break Came rather differently from the way they expected. The right-wing leaders of the party simply told them last December that they must cease publishing an opposition paper or they would be thrown out.

Instead of conducting an all-out fight against the witchhunt, building up their forces LA GAUCHE organe do combat socialiste in struggle against the right wing, they simply walked out of the PSB.

Along with them went a sizeable group of Walloon nationalists (advocates of separate federal rights for the French-speaking section of the population). Out of this action came a new party in Wallonia, the Walloon Workers' Party, alongside the new 'Union of the Socialist Left'.

This break was hailed by the Pabloites as a great step forward. They tried to obscure the fact that a number of the most prominent Walloon leaders in the new party, and particularly Perin, were opposed to the perspective of a revolutionary workers' party.

They ignored the criticisms of The Newsletter to the effect that these leaders were simply using the separatist movement in order to lead the workers to non-socialist politics and even to the extreme right. Instead, they allowed the workers under their influence to take at face value the cynical agreement of Perin to the 'socialist' siogans of the new party.

Now 'La Gauche' (July 3) carries as its front-page lead article a denunciation of Perin, and the Walloon leaders close to him, for going back on these became an MP, standing for the latter in the recent elections.)

'La Gauche' says of this new party:

6 The congress refused to place socialism and the class struggle in the party programme. It refused to add the word "workers" to the name of the party. It rejected the word "anticapitalist" to describe the proposed "structural reforms". All this speaks for itself.

Like the leaders of the right wing of the PSB, Perin, Moreau and their friends believe that the "class struggle" is out of date, they consider that "modern socialism" has nothing more to do with Marxism and the Quaregnon Charter, that ideologies should be buried BETTE

THE Common Market has been shaken to its foundations by what amounts to a French threat to break it up.

Although the question of agricultural prices was the immediate occasion for the blow up in Brussels last week, the differences between France and her five partners obviously lie much deeper.

Not that the agricultural issue is of no importance. French agriculture desperately needs a wider market and it is still a lagging section of the economy. Moreover, peasants comprise a still sizeable section of the electorate.

De Gaulle's sharpness can only be understood in relation to the history of the Common Market.

In the fifties the political custodians of West European capitalism saw that if the system which they represented was to survive, something had to be done to break down the restrictions on the development of the productive forces represented by the old state frontiers.

U.S. investment

Washington was also interested in closer European unity as a barrier against the threat of social change and as part of its strategic policy in Europe. Behind this was the need to establish a stable field for investment and trade.

The Common Market began by the reduction of tariffs between the member countries, moving on to the establishment of a single tariff for the whole area.

But the Rome Treaty of 1957, which brought it into being, envisaged also a general and systematic movement towards economic and political integration. This involved the surrender of control over certain aspects of policy by the participating states to a central authority.

Although European statesmen paid a great deal of lip-service to European cooperation, they continued to see the principal question as that of furthering the national interests of their own bourgeoisie.

While in the age of modern technology the national state has become an anachronism, the attempt by the bourgeoisie to carry out what is an historic task of the working class-the abolition of national frontiers—is bound to be abortive.

Inadequate area

To begin with, the territory of the Six member countries was not in itself an adequate basis for the development of the productive forces. Then the material interests of the national ruling classes still expressed themselves through the historical states.

From the moment of its inception, therefore, the Common Market became an area of struggle between the participating states as well as for opposing or bargaining with states outside it.

At first, for example, the British Conservative government, unconvinced about the success of the Common Market and not sure that its policy could be shaped to British needs, remained outside.

By the time it changed its mind, de Gaulle had consolidated his power in France with a worked-out policy for ensuring French hegemony in Europe, using the Common Market as a means.

Meanwhile, de Gaulle had been wooing the Bonn government with some apparent success.

In January 1963 a military and political treaty was signed between France and Germany and in the same year Britain was brusquely refused admission to the Common Market.

Monopolies' alliance This laid the basis for a close and profitable alliance between the big monopolies of France and Germany - an De Gaulle: wooing German liance which continues is day.

West Germany, in any case, remains by far the most powerful industrial component of the Market, but Bonn's interest remained very much bound-up with the preservation of the so-called Western Alliance.

When France came into en confrontation with the SA, Franco-German relations oled. Bonn preferred to be America's soundest ally on the continent rather than play second fiddle to France.

Germany's alliance with France strengthens her position in Europe but cannot satisfy her appetite for markets and for capital exports. In any case Germany's trade with the Common Market countries is less than 40 per cent. At the same time German big business co-operates with U.S. finance and industry on a large scale which gives German industry access to new productive techniques and scientic innovations.

The revamping of American defence strategy and the conflict with de Gaulle over the Multi-Lateral Force has given the German ruling class a new opportunity to press its claims for European hegemony and, incidentally, nuclear weapons without which it will remain a third-rate capitalist power.

No surrender The question of the surrendering of national sovereignty to Common Market institutions fits into this pattern. De Gaulle is unwilling to surrender any shred of French sovereignty because this would make French policy dependent upon countries susceptible to American pressure. For de Gaulle, the Common Market is useful as a bloc which could stand up to the USA, and further French interests.

If it cannot be this, then it becomes a danger which has to be countered, or perhaps destroyed.

Whether it is possible for de Gaulle to proceed very far along this road is an open question into which enters all the contradictions of imperialism at the present stage.

In many ways French capiism is not well placed for carrying on an independent policy in opposition to the USA. It is industrially weaker than Germany, as well as being much weaker than the USA.

American investments in key sections of French industry are of growing importance. Many French enterprises are now handicapped by a lack of reserves for the expansion and re-equipment demanded under present conditions of intensified competition.

Dollar octopus

American big business is not limited in this way and has been more active in France than in any other continental country in buying its way into the control of industry. This extending grip of the U.S. dollar octopus is disagreeable to de Gaulle and to sections of French business.

Although de Gaulle holds few cards, he clearly hopes to take advantage of the present entanglements of American imperialism and of its weak balance of payments position.

Leading organs of the French press comment astringently on the policy of Johnson.

French foreign policy pursues a determined anti-American course.

De Gaulle threatens to use France's present monetary strength to halt the dollar invasion. Resistance to carrying forward the Rome Treaty seems to flow from the same general policy.

The situation thus remains extremely unstable.

Against a background of' gathering economic problems, the contradictions between the l different capitalist interests become sharper. The Common Market, instead of proving a solvent of conflicts, only becomes an additional field which they find expression. Labour Party, commented:

'Barnes has reasons other than the noble ones which some will ascribe to him. He and Ollie Roe have something in common; they both are in trouble and hope to buy their way out with the "right" answers at the right time?

This outright and blatant frame-up is part of the wholesale attack by the police and courts on behalf of the capitalist class on youth all over the world. The capitalist class still fears and hates youth who will not accept the conditions in which they live and work.

The whole struggle of youth internationally was adequately expressed by one of the six in a parting shot as he was led from the court:

"There is a way to freedom and courts and judges don't know the way.' ONE of Stalins chief literary hacks, Ilya Ehrenburg attempts to cover up his subservience to the bureaucracy in the latest instalment of his memoirs, being printed in the Soviet literary magazine, 'Novy Mir' Speaking of the period the Moscow Trials, he says:

TRIALS PERIOD 'In 1937, I was only aware of certain isolated crimes. Like so many others, I tried to whitewash Stalin in my own eyes. I attributed the mass executions to the struggles which were going on in the middle of the Party...

From years of experience in their struggle against imperialist aggression, the Vietnamese people have refined their methods of guerrilla warfare. Here MICHAEL BANDA explains these developments against their historical background.

A section of the ever-growing South Vietnamese Liberation Army. July 10, 65 HE capture of a number of provincial capitals by the Vietcong, despite increased military activity and aerial bombardment by U.S. imperialism, shows clearly that the struggle in South Vietnam is approaching a climax.

Capitalist commentators and sections of the U.S. ruling class are very nervous that the U.S. has lost the initiative in South-East Asia, and the manifest failure of the Wilson 'peace' mission indicates the military-diplomatic imbroglio, from which there is no escape. have refined distributed to the peasants by the Communist Vietminh.

This brutal repression was cloaked under the euphemism VIETNAM liberate their country and unify it.

In 1959 the long simmering wrath of the peasants and workers exploded into open revolt. Peasant uprisings and The Vietcong met terror with terror. Hundreds of district officials and local commanders were shot or assassinated. Rural administration crumbled, then collapsed.

Even the British government began to get worried. In 1961 British autnorities in ivalaya despaicned over 55,000 rites and small arms and over 700 armoured vemicies to Vietnam. As a furtner gesture of solidarity a police mission headed by General G. K. Thompson was sent to Saigon to advise and instruct the Diem regime on how to repress the Vietcong.

New tactics were worked out, each one as hopeless as

A meeting of the Walloon Popular Movement in Liège last year.

and "all Walloons united"

whatever their social status. 9 Mandel and 'La Gauche' try to make the best of a bad job by criticising Perin at this late stage, and they go in for the most frantic whistling in the dark when they conclude:

6 Don't let anybody smile too soon; he who laughs last laughs longest. The confusion born of the effort by the Perin tendency to prevent a class orientation, a left socialist orientation, to the new groups which came from the split in the PSB, is now dissolved by Perin himself. The way exposed is now clear for a federal congress of the Walloon Workers' Party, which will decide to group together with other left socialist forces, beginning with the Union of the Socialist Left.

The new left socialist formation, awaited with mounting impatience by many militants, will finally be born, without any doubt by September. 9 This is great stuff. First you amalgamate with the demagogue Perin, allowing him to use socialist colouring to ensure his parliamentary seat, giving him a platform to influence all the Walloon workers who are breaking from the opportunists, eventually to lead a substantial part of them into open class collaboration. Then you condemn his statements against socialism, and comfort yourself with the ingenious theory that his very betrayal exposes him and his group.

Those who are really exposed by these events and by all the casuistry of 'Lá Gauche' are the so-called revolutionary socialists around Mandel and the "Trotskyists" rat the Pab'United Secretariat'.

Their addiction to centrism, and their abandonment of the central perspective of building the revolutionary party, actually permitted the bureaucratic leaders of Belgian Social Democracy to consolidate their strength against the rank and file, and then handed over this rank and file to right-wing demagogues whom they now themselver denounce, even comparing them with the neo-fascist Poujade in France.

Leadership has been abdicated by these people and so they play their own very definite part in the betrayal of the working class, just as they did in Ceylon, Algeria and the USA.

Once again it becomes very clear that the fight against revisionism waged in the columns of The Newsletter and in the sections of the Fourth International is no abstract debate.

We drew attention months ago to precisely these dangers, and we are confident that this theoretical struggle has helped to create the forces in Belgium which will defeat this revisionist and centrist course, setting in motion the reconstruction of the Trotskyist movement in Belgium.

N Europe today, new revolutionary parties of the working class are an urgent necessity. The traditional parties of social - democracy (including the British Labour Party) and of declarations and abandoning the Walloon Workers' Party.

Perin and his collaborators convened last week a conference at Namur together with the Walloon Front and two smaller Walloon movements. These united at the conference into a new 'Walloon Party' into which Perin has led the whole Liège section of the Walloon Workers' Party. (He NEWSLETTER REPORTER Six Harlem Negro youths who have been on trial since May 3, having been held in custody for over a year, face the electric chair for a crime they did not commit.

The Harlem Six, Wallace Baker, aged 20, William Craig, Ronald Felder, Danny Hamm, Robert Rice, all aged 18, and Walter Thomas, aged 19, are charged with the first degree murder of Mrs. Margit Sugar, who was knifed to death in her New York clothes shop on April 19 last year.

Two days earlier, a group of elementary school children, accused of overturning a fruit barrow, were brutally attacked with clubs and guns by police who arrived in six patrol cars.

By-standers were also attacked—one Frank Stafford, lost an eye when clubbed with a police stick.

Baker and Hamm, two of the accused in the murder trial, were also beaten up when they asked a police officer why he was hitting the children.

The attack came at the time of the story, whipped up by the press, that a gang of 'Blood Brothers' were being trained by extremist Muslims to kill white people.

HELD FOR YEAR

Immediately after Mrs. Sugar was killed on April 19, Hamm, Baker and their four friends were arrested.

They have been held for a year, without being brought to trial, and there are claims that they have been ill-treated.

For some of the time, they have been kept in solitary confinement and it is claimed that at the beginning of May Hamm was beaten up by a guard while his hands were handcuffed behind his back. The youths have not been allowed to have the attorney trial o1 tneir choice.

The , prosecution's two main witnesses are Ollie Roe, a drug addict who says he was an eye witness to the killing, and Kobert Barnes JI., a petty tniet and suspected addict.

It took several months for Roe to decide that he could recognise any of the accused, and when questioned about the number of youths who had run past the shop where he worked, he gave different numbers on ditterent occasions.

'CONSIDERATION'

Barnes, in a statement, said he nad been promised some consideration by the assistant District Attorney, Lenner, regarding three cases pending against him.

His story was that the youths had planned the attack while he was present, and be gave word tor word conversations of a year ago.

He said that all the youths had gone to the attack together, but that his father had called him in on the way.

In earlier evidence, Barnes' father said he had seen his son with one youth at the time.

Barnes identified a knife in court which he said he had seen washed and put in Rice's bedroom, but police evidence said the knife was found on the floor of the clothes shop.

There was a complete contradiction between his evidence of what he was told happened in the shop and the evidence of Mr. Sugar.

-RIGHT ANSWERS As 'Challenge', weekly newspaper of the Progressive

State.' says:

In speak after Janua Stalin 'It was not immediately that I could decipher the role of the sage of sages (Stalin). ...

"The methods of poisoning, denunciation and the ruthless murders suggested by Machiavelli and perpetrated by Medici and the Borgias are inadmissable in a Communist Having voiced his opposition to such methods, he then I have• never considered silence a virtue. Of course, I was aware of many crimes, but to stop their perpetration was beyond my power. It is nly too obvious: people in nitelv more influential coul not stop them either' SPOKE OUT fact, he claims, he did out — nearly 20 years the Stalin purges in 1953, just before 's death.

He claims he was asked to denounce 'saboteur doctors'. arrested by Stalin, at a prizegiving ceremony, at which he would receive the Stalin prize.

But, at the ceremony, he says, he was 'inspired by current events' to say: 'I want to evoke those artisans of peace who are persecuted, tortured, hounded. I want to evoke the obscurantism of prisons, the inquisitions, the tribunals.' OPPORTUNISM It is not clear what 'current events' so 'inspired' him to make such a statement.

Whatever they were, Ehrenburg has only demonstrated more clearly the opportunism of the writers and intellectuals who attempt to perpetuate Stalinist methods within the Communist Parties of the world, in order to safeguard their own positions.

atic repression of the people made possible by the terms of the Agreement, but these measures were actually facilitated by the presence and activity of the International Commission for Control and Supervision set up from the Geneva conference.

In May 1958, for example, the Commission sanctioned, by a majority vote (the Poles alone opposing), a resolution permitting uncontrolled introduction of U.S. war materials into South Vietnam to replace the material taken by the French troops when they evacuated South Vietnam in April 1956.

And what did the Commission do when the Diem regime fatally poisoned more than 6,000 people at the Phu Loi concentration camp in December 1958? It said nothing and did even less!

In the same year more than half a million people demonstrated in Saigon-Cholon

R Frank Cousins not attending this year's con- EASONS for Labour government Minister A RECORD number of delegates attended the Binningham ference of the Transport and General Workers' Page

DATA com

findings published THE findings of the court of enquiry into the dispute ibetween the Draughtsmen's Allied Technicians' Association and the Federation of Shipbuilding Employers over a wage demand were published last week.

The findings of the court, By NEWSLETTER Policy ¡ NEWSLETTER REPORTER

Everything that is happening in this tortured country vindicates the words of General Giap that 'no reactionary force in the world can prevent 30 million people of our country from carrying out their sacred aspiration.

A survey of recent and past events will show why this is true.

When the infamous Geneva Agreement was signed, the U.S. government refused to be a party to it and Eisenhower, the President at the time, declared:

"The United States has not itself been party to, or bound by, the decisions taken by the conference.' U.S. move in Even before the conference was convened U.S. imperialism began to move in in the wake of the French and replace the French puppets with U.S. ones. Prominent amongst them was Dinh Diem.

After the conference the U.S. government began feverishly preparing to create the military and diplomatic framework for intervention in South-East Asia.

In September 1954 the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) was set up with the explicit purpose of 'defending' South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

At the same time, U.S. aid was sent directly to the Diem regime, rather than being channelled through the French.

In the early part of 1955 French political domination in South Vietnam was replaced by the U.S. in a bloody conflict with the Binh Xuyen group and the Cao Dai religious sect. The training of the South Vietnam Army was taken over by the U.S., and the Diem government was strengthened.

Diem, having consolidated his power with powerful U.S. financial and military backing. proceeded to unleash a wave of white terror against the areas evacuated by the Communist forces.

Police and para-military

units equipped with portable guillotines and other instruments of torture toured the rural areas terrorising the peasants and forcibly handing back the land which had been of 'Agrarian Reform' and with such demagogic slogans as 'give property to the proletarians'.

In early 1956, under the notorious ordinance No. 6, concentration camps were set up throughout the country into which were herded thousands of former resistance fighters and progressives. The press was gagged.

Diem, with the tacit support of the U.S., repudiated the provisions of the Geneva Agreement, which stipulated the holding of nation-wide elections to decide the unification of Vietnam, and organised his own rigged elections for a bogus 'National Assembly, which endorsed a reactionary constitution.

Army increased Russia and Britain, the cochairmen of the Geneva conference, who were supposedly responsible for the implementation of the Geneva treaty, did nothing to step Diem's activities, even when prominent leaders of the puppet army threatened to march to the North'.

That U.S. imperialism was determined to organise such an aggression was revealed by the continued increase of U.S. military personnel (from 200 to 2,000 in the first two years and the massive build-up of the South Vietnam Army to an effective strength of 150,000, as well as the organisation of many other para-military forces.

To facilitate its plans against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (the Northern government), the Diem regime began to build a network of strategic roads, linking the bases in the plains with the high plateaux of central Vietnam - this is one of the main strategic bases of U.S. imperialism in SouthEast Asia.

The road system was meant to embrace Laos and connect up with the strategic highwavs already constructed in northeast Thailand.

This road system was also seen as part of a more general plan to develop the natural resources and exploit the hydro-electric power of the Mekong Valley — the biggest and most fertile rice-growing region in Asia.

To supplement the road system, a complex of military strong - points, misleadingly called "agricultural strongpoints', running from the western plateaux through the Plain of Reeds and Ca Mau in the South, were erected.

The idea behind this was the encirclement of the popular resistance forces. The fact that a similar strategy, followed by the French in Northern Vietnam, proved abortive did not impress Diem's U.S. advisers very much.

Today most of these forts have fallen to the Vietcong, while the rest, such as Kontum and Pleiku, are threatened by massive assaults.

Today we hear much from centrist and pacifist circles of a return to the status quo ante-1954 and Geneva. 'Tribune, for example, prefers 'peace' to victory.

'No alternative' From their cosy sanctuary in the Strand these sanctimonious rascals say:

"There is ... no safe, let alone humane, alternative to a negotiated peace.' The facts speak otherwise. The present war is the direct and logical outcome of the 'negotiated peace' of 1954.

Not only were war preparations and systemagainst unemployment, excessive land rents, and the continued division of the country. The Commission, however, remained quite impervious to all this.

The most brazen act of collusion of this contemptible tool of the U.S.

was its tacit acceptance of the Seventh Fleet in Vietnamese waters.

The Seventh Fleet is the largest naval armada in the world and there is nothing pacific in its function. It consists of five operational groups comprising 125 warships, including the largest nuclear aircraft carriers and 650 planes, all in all, over 64,000 men. In addition, there are attached to it large marine units. French Stalinist reporter, recently returned from behind the Vietcong lines, relates how the peasants in the plains of the Mekong delta successfully resisted these puppet executioners and torturers.

In the June-July 1965 'Vietnam Bulletin', issued by the British Vietnam Committee, she reports:

"The peasants have created their 'air force' by installing around the villages swarms of fighting bees, sort of savage hornets the size of a fist, a few stings of which can kill a man. A simple method is used which with a piece of string and a stick which hits the nest to excite the bees without being seen, the bees leave the swarm in fury and then return. The peasants repeat the process to make them ferocious and even sacrifice a pig to them.

"Trained in this way the hornets at the time of an attack and hearing the stick once again hitting their nest fly at the soldiers or police who they think are attacking them. This unexpected offensive causes panic amongst the puppets and they leave the paths, falling into the traps [spiked mantraps], no longer thinking of lefending themselves, they are easy targets for the guerrillas who, well camouflaged take advantage of the position.

"When you have been made to suffer a lot," a peasant from one of the liberated villages said to me, "when you are determined to fight, you can always find ways.

They can shoot people, but they can't shoot the bees.", Burning hatred Thousands of former partisans began to return from the North. Some had arms, other brought with them a sound knowledge of guerrilla warfare, and all of them were inspired by a burning hatred of the Diem regime and an unquenchable determination to sporadic, but severe, fighting broke out throughout South Vietnam. Many units of Diem's crossed over with their arms to the side of the people. Diem's grave was being dug.

In 1960 the movement to liberate the country spread to every province in South Vietnam.

For the first time the backward national minorities of the Western Plateaux of Central Annam openly rebelled against the government. Elsewhere spontaneous attacks by the peasants destroyed hundreds of so-called 'prosperity zones' (a synonym for military occupied areas.

In many towns huge demonstrations of Buddhists demanding freedom of worship took place. (The Diem regime, which was Catholic, tried to suppress and discriminate against the Buddhist majority.) Blind eye And, , once again, the International Commission turned a blind eye to further intrusions by the U.S. In April 1960 it sanctioned the introduction of more U.S. military personnel at a time when Diem's regime was wracked by crisis and abortive coups.

In December 1960 the civil war reached a new stage with the formation of the South ¡Vietnam National Liberation Front (Vietcong), a coalition of anti-Diem parties and groups.

The main planks of the Liberation Front were: overthrow of the Saigon government, establishment of unified democratic government, preservation of minority rights, independence, unification of the country and 'neutralism'.

Guerrilla warfare was waged on an extensive scale by the Vietcong. In the initial phase, the Diem regime launched a series of offensives against the liberated areas. The orgy of terror commenced by his army drove thousands of peasants to support the Vietcong.

People's Army gunners the previous. The 'strategic hamiets' and the spraying of crops with toxic chemicals were some of them.

In mid-1961 the U.S. government made an agonising reappraisal of the war tollowing the trip of Vice-President Jonnson to Saigon in May. Special attention was paid to 'anti-guerrilla' war, a torm of war which is new to the United States.

'Master plan' Finding themselves hopelessly out-fought and outmanoeuvred by the Vietceng, tne U.s. sent a special mission, led by t. Staley, to saigon.

His main recommendations were to pacity the soutn in 18 months by beenng up the army and estabusn bases in North Vietnam tor savolage and terror.

In the latter part of the year Kennedy sent General Taylor (chairman of the Joint Chiets of Statt) to Saigon on a facttinding tour.

Kesult: enormous increase of U.S. arms and men in South Vietnam, and a deeper crisis of the . Diem regime. From this trip there emerged the master plan—the Staley-Taylor plan-for the subjugation of Vietnam.

In order to strengthen its command over the resistance forces and counter pro-French and petty-bourgeois forces and ideas in the Liberation Front, the Communists, in January 1962, set up the South Vietnam Revoluwonary Peone's which called itself and toiling people of South Vietnam....

In its statement of policy it significantly omitted any mention of 'neutralism', but spoke instead of contributing 'to the defence of world peace'.

After Taylor's visit a veritable war of extermination was launched against the people. In 1962 alone 28,000 moppingup operations, large and small, combined with intensive air raids (whose main ingredient was napalm) were carried out.

U.S. mistaken A new form of warfare, helicopter-borne infantry, and amphibious armoured carriers, was introduced. At the same time the herding of the population into 'strategic hamlets' was stepped up.

This was the Staley-Taylor plan in action, but if the U.S. thought they had won the war they were sadly mistaken.

After a few months, the Vietcong recovered from its initial defeats and developed new techniques of fighting the helicopters-techniques which for U.S. air raids.

This unconventional force is equipped with the latest supersonic strike aircraft armed with nuclear bombs.

It is capable of remaining at sea for three months without returning to its many bases in the Pacific ocean. It is this fleet that has enabled Chiang Kai-chek to hold on to Formosa.

The same fleet helped destroy hundreds of Korean coastal towns and villages during the Korean war. In 1962 it was used to intervene in Thailand during the Laos crisis, and after the overthrow of Diem in 1963 the menacing shadow of its guns was cast over the Saigon coast.

Now, secret negotiations and surveys are going on to enable this fleet to operate in the Indian Ocean as well.

In the face of this massive and calculated provocation, the Control Commission remained mute. Perhaps "Tribune' could tell us why.

By 1959 South Vietnam was in the throes of a severe economic crisis.

Ten thousand out of 15,000 weaving looms were idle. Over 10,000 sugar mills stopped working. Unemployment soared, evictions multiplied and huge movements against increased taxation, conscription and illegal detention developed.

repression Diem's answer to popular resentment was increased repression and added military expenditure.

One hundred and four new airfields were built, even the new Saigon-Bien Hoa motorway is, in fact, a 32 kilometer long airstrip which can be used by heavy bombers!

Nine new naval bases were constructed and the armed forces were augmented considerably.

Against this vast ordnance, the peasants and workers, at first, counterposed the most rudimentary weapons and immense courage.

Madeleine Riffaud, the

George Brown's incomes policy.

There was an air of tenseness in the meeting. Delegates knew that a decision against the wage-restraint policies of the right wing would be an important barometer as to the extent of opposition throughout factories in the Midlands.

The right wing, which dominates the Trades Council, had hoped that the Minister for Economic Affairs would be present to speak and help them out, but Brown pleaded other pressing engagaments.

In moving the resolution opposing wage freeze, Harry Finch, delegate from Birmingham No. 9 branch of the Amalgamated Engineering Jnion, exposed the role of the Wilson government which, he said, was acting against. the working class and in defence of big business.

"The economy remains as it was under the Tories-a capitalist economy, controlled and owned by monopolists and millionaires. By asking the workers to accept a wage restriction of 3$ per cent, you are asking them to accept a cut in wages, he said.

*The working class is not going to accept a decrease in becausent voted Labivurs just living He finished by stating that the working class must oust the capitalist class and not collaborate. This collaboration was the whole basis for the so-called incomes policy.

The right-wing defence of the Trades Union Congress and government policy turned out to be a damp squib.

"Don't rock the boat' Alderman S. Watts, a Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers official, pleaded the old 'don't rock the boat' case.

"This motion would be interpreted as a direct attack on the Labour government. The press is hostile. It will use the opportunity to embarrass the government in any way it can,' he said.

(Although there were no fewer than five national newspaper reporters present, as well as one from the Press Association, the press, far from using the resolution to 'embarrass' the government, carefully suppressed all mention of the motion, except in one or two papers.)

Mr. C. N. Davis, of the have proved deadly efficient.

Together with military attacks, a massive political campaign to instruct and educate the peasantry in the policies of the Front and the techniques of resistance was undertaken. Thousands of meetings, demonstrations, rallies and even requiems for the repose of victims of Diem's tyranny were held.

In the industrial towns, strikes and occupation of factories became a frequent occurrence. The schools, too, became centres of resistance.

If 1962 was a year of stalemate, 1963 saw the gradual change in the relationship of forces on the military field, a change which was determined largely because of the intense political activity of the Front in mobilising the people for struggle.

After a series of resounding tactical reverses, U.S. secretary of state, Dean Rusk, was forced to declare in February 1963 at a press conference that the war against the guerrillas in South Vietnam was a very discouraging affair. ('Tribune' please note!)

In fact, the Staley-Taylor plan was in ruins, and continued to be so, despite the frequent visits of top-ranking Printed (Bis Clanhum Hich Street, London. S.W.4 Resolution carried by Birmingham Trades Council on Thursday, July 1, 1965.

6 That this Trades Council is opposed to the Trades Union Congress' acceptance of the incomes policy of the government, considering the cost of living increased by 2.1 per cent last month. Any talk of limiting workers' wage increases to 3t per cent is tantamount to cutting down the standards of the working class to pay for the capitalist system's crisis.

This Trades Council is of the opinion that the trades unions' job must be to protect workers' standards and work for a society free from the domination of big business. y National Union of General and Municipal Workers, said: "Throw this resolution out. Be loyal to the government. Be patriotic!' Spill the beans But it was left to Chapman of the Post Office Engineering Union to really spill the beans as to what this TUC-government-employers incomes policy really means.

'Let's get away from all this old Victorian nonsense about the unions versus the capitalists. Don't the delegates know that this is finished? The employers have got together with the unions and government and sued for peace. We're now in a new era of peaceful co-operation in industry,' he commented.

Delegate after delegate got up and derided this.

One delegate asked if Sir William Lyon, the Jaguar boss, was 'co-operating' by refusing to meet union officials after workers in his factory had been out on strike for three weeks.

The mover brought the council back to the real issues of the class struggle and the vital need to smash through all forms of wage-freezing and to fight for the nationalization of the basic industries.

The resolution was carried by 58 votes to 44.

page generals, advisers, diplomats and even of McNamara himself.

Diem's and the Americans' problems were greatly increased during this year by the almost total alienation of the Buddhists of South Vietnam, because of repressive policies of Diem's police and army, officered mainly by Catholics SUICIDE Suicide-by-burning became a frequent occurrence in South Vietnam. (Did the International Commission have anything to say? We are still waiting.)

The overthrow of the Diem dynasty in November 1963, far from resolving American problems, only made it more malignant.

Losses of arms and men to the Vietcong increased, the number of 'incidents' reached unprecedented heights. In Washington, Honolulu, Okinawa and Saigon there was gloom and despondency. Forty-odd missions of 'experts' had come and gone but the tumour remained!

The U.S. high command, which initially set out to encircle the enemy with its rural forts and 'prosperity zones, now (irony of ironies) found itself encircled by innumerable guerrilla units.

In three years of intens ghting, the U.S. had lo! which is only an 'advisory body', while affecting the usual spurious tone of objectivity, repeats precisely the employers' arguments.

Firstly, they agree on the relevance of the prices and incomes board to the claim.

Secondly, they agree that a national wage-to-age scale should be set up which would specifically exclude all local claims.

Thirdly, they repeat the arguments of Mr. N. A. Sloan that negotiations could be opened concerning those workers who would not receive any increase in the new national settlement.

If union secretary Doughty and company accept this judgment then they will be accepting the same pressures on the workers' movement which led to the signing of the engineering package deal.

NUR Conference preparing sell-out on liner-trains?

NEWSLETTER INDUSTRIAL CORRESPONDENT FOLLOWING the meeting between the National Union of Railwaymen and the British Railways Board on July 3, on the question of liner-trains, general secretary Sidney Greene spoke, rather ominously, at the union's conference of accepting the scheme.

In Wednesday's 'Guardian' he was quoted as saying: 'I don't want the responsibility for their failure to be placed on the union. I would sooner accept them and let them run and if they did not pay, then it would be a responsibility of management. But if they do pay and bring us more jobs, then it is a step in the right direction. We have to look at this very seriously indeed.' We certainly do.

DISPUTED ISSUE

Who does Greene think he is kidding? The question of linertrains has been the most hotly disputed issue over the past 18 months, precisely because the scheme would mean redundancies and an open attack on nationalized industry, with linermore than 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and hundreds of planes and helicopters.

The words of General Giap, written 10 years before, had acquired a prophetic quality:

'Successes in many small fights added together gradually wear out the enemy manpower while fostering our forces. The main goal of the fighting must be destruction of enemy manpower, and ours should not be exhausted from trying to keep or occupy land, thus creating final conditions to wipe out the whole enemy force and liberate our country!

('People's War People's Army', p. 104)

This is the basic strategy of the Vietcong, and no matter how many troops America and her allies pour in (and no matter how many unctuous editorials "Tribune' publishes), this strategy will not be defeated.

On the contrary, as Da Nang, Dong Xoai and a hundred other battles demonstrate, the American and puppet forces will be worn down, harrassed, ambushed and finally submerged in a sea of armed people.

The question for Briti bour is: why let them do gle-handed? Union became abundantly clear on Tuesday this week.

Out of the 800 delegates at the conference only 20 gave support to the government's Incomes Policy. In this, the country's largest union, with membership covering industries which include the docks and the buses, a firm 'no' was given to wage restraint.

No doubt to avoid the embarrassing situation where his own union votes against the policy of the Labour government, in which he is Minister of Technology, Frank Cousins pleaded "pressure of duties" for his absence.

Anxious to make himself felt, if not seen and heard, George Brown sent a telegram to the conference. Significantly, he was not even invited to address the delegates.

Right wing train depots being opened to private hauliers.

To talk of the scheme's success or failure is a blind for its acceptance. The railmen's conference should demand that Greene tell them about the last meeting with the Railways Board.

What assurances did Greene give the Board?

Only two days after this meeting, and the day before the NUR conference opened in Southport, the 'Sunday Telegraph' carried a front page story that Tartan Arrow, the leading Scottish haulage firm, had signed an agreement with British Rail to run two express freight trains north and south each night between London and Glasgow, carrying the equivalent of 80 heavy lorry loads and cutting down the time by half.

INTERESTING

The most interesting thing about this story is that 'the firm is investing £500,000 in depots and handling equipment to be built on sites in Glasgow and London taken on a 99-year lease from British Rail.

Although the 'Sunday Telegraph' is careful to point out 'The company's project is in advance of and distinct from, the liner train proposal, it certainly resembles the scheme very closely.

The conference called for legislation to give the Minister of Transport, Fraser, power to revoke the closure decisions of Beeching; a halt to further closures and withdrawal of services; repeal of the 1962 Transport Act, and called for a new Act to enforce an integrated transport system based on socialist principles.

HAND OVER

But how can the Wilson government carry out such legislation, when it has shown through its policies that it is attempting to solve the economic crisis of capitalism by attacking the conditions of the working class, and is willing to use the nationalized industries, if not indirectly hand part of them over, to private enterprise?

Railmen must take their demands for an integrated transport system further than a call for legislation. Their fight, which is a highly political struggle, must be linked with that of the Young Socialists and Socialist Labour League to build an alternative to the Wilson government and right -wing leaders like Greene (who will still remains one of Britain's 'best dressed men' at £2,930 a year, despite the rejection by conference of a recommendation to increase his salary to £4,500 a Main spokesman for • the resolution condemning the Incomes Policy was Harry Nicholas, acting general secretary.

However, this action on the part of the union leadership can only be understood if the tremendous pressure exerted by the TGWU rank and file prior to the conference, is taken into consideration.

Strikes

Only a few months ago Midlands busmen staged strikes on the question of wage negotiations.

Issues on . wages and working conditions are always simmering below the surface on the docks. The fact that Nicholas makes a speech arguing for public ownership and control is an indication of the opposition amongst workers in the TGWU to the betrayal of Wilson and his crew on the question of wages.

Nicholas and other union officials may be expressing opposition to the Labour government on some issues, but they cannot possibly provide a leadership for the TGWU workers by a few radical speeches at annual conference.

That the question of leadership is vital was shown in the debate on immigration.

Confused

After a resolution condemning racial discrimination was passed, another, calling for a 'drastic' curtailment of immigration and 'strict medical examination on arrival in this country, was also passed.

Workers cannot allow themselves to be confused on the question of dividing the working class on the issue of colour.

The experiences of the young workers in the Young Socialists must be taken as an important lesson on the fight against attempts by the employers to weaken the strength of the working class, by seeking to divide white and coloured workers.

In a strike last year at the Leyland workers to continue ban on overtime WORKERS nd eland and Choly and Viree maries of Leyland Motors, leading commercial vehicle manufacturers, are determined to continue their ban on Friday night working. This is in spite of the decision of their shop stewards, taken last Monday, to urge an end to the ban so that further talks with the management may be held.

The dispute has arisen from the implementation of the 40-hour week agreement contained in the notorious engineering "Package Deal". The men allege that although the day-shift workers were consulted about the way in which the agreement wouid Tribune Newsletter Correspondent be implemented, the management insist that night-shift workers work four 9-hour shifts and one 4-hour shift.

In doing so, they claim the management is going back on its previous agreement to the men's demands for four 10hour shifts.

BIGGEST

The dispute is the biggest for some time in a firm which prides itself on its good labour relations', but it reveals a longstanding dissatisfaction with the trades union and shop stewards organisations among Leyland workers.

They complain that there is no communication between stewards on different production lines in the five factories; that the shop stewards' committee does not function properly.

They cite cases where the management has been able to refuse to negotiate with those stewards whom it found troublesome.

COMPLAINT

Workers further complain that almost no stewards were present at a recent mass meeting to decide on action in the current dispute. But in spite of the apparent lack of leadership which this situation reveals, there is no lack of militancy amongst the men.

On the first Friday of the dispute half the day shift stopped work for the afternoon in support of the night workers, and with organisation this would have been far more.

The night-shift workers are confident that they will win their demands for a four-shift week because, they claim, there will be no Friday night working.

each new bout of calls for negotiation is accompanied by an intensification of U.S. attacks.

At the Central Hall meeting which followed the lobby of Parliament, organised by Brockway and his Stalinist admirers, their attitude to the government was clearly exposed.

Felix Greene's attack on Wilson's policies had hardly ended when Silverman was on his feet defending the Labour government.

He then proceeded to introduce a Liberal MP, and protected him from hecklers who objected to his blatant anti-Communism.

As the Wilson government lurches further to the right, the hypocrisy of the "Tribune'-ites becomes clearer.

Their refusal to support the struggle of the Vietnamese people against U.S. imperialism is matched by their apologies for Wilson's subservience to the British bosses.

You can fool some of the working class all the time, you might even fool all the workers some of the time, but—as Wilson found out the previous weekthe centrists can never fool all the workers all the time.

And the Socialist Labour League will struggle unremittingly to expose and combat the rotten game of the centrists.

Wolff rubber factory in Middlesex the Young Socialists showed that if white and coloured workers are united around socialist policies, then issues can be won.

Coloured and white busmen have seen in strikes in recent months that they must unite to fight together.

Opened the door

The Labour government by taking this shameful role on the question of immigration control has opened the door to confusion and allowed a position where the racialists can step in.

Curbing immigration is not the issue. The Labour government has carried out a policy of betrayal of the working class in this country and abroad. It must be made to answer for this by the rank and file of the labour movement.

By his policies Wilson attacks all workers and if the TGWU rank and file are to wage a successful struggle they must not allow themselves to be confused and divided.

A call has to be made now for a Labour Party conference so that the working class in the labour movement can decide the socialist policies on which the party must fight the next election. BUSMEN in Coventry have recently demanded, and been awarded, a pay increase of £3 a week. This award must now go before the National Joint Industrial Council for ratification or rejection.

If the award is rejected by the Joint Council, then the Coventry Bus Department will most likely leave the Council and make the award anyway.

The Joint Council will probably refuse the award because of the pressure from bus companies in rural areas, who do not have to compete with a high average wage in other jobs.

Other bus companies, even in large municipal areas, will probably side up with this view. They will say that it is impossible to grant such a pay increase because of the incomes policy and because of the high expense involved in modernising and rationalising bus services.

A likely result is that busmen will begin to press for local agreements, after the manner of Coventry.

This would be an extremely dangerous development. The strength of the last series of wage demands by busmen was sapped because provincial, municipal and London busmen all fought for wage increases separately and at different times.

Last week, the Nottingham 5/92 branch of the Transport and General Workers' Union took a step along the right lines.

They passed a resolution demanding that the union fight for union policy passed at several conferences since 1950. This policy is equal wages for all busmen.

Busmen must not allow their strength to be split by their employers' tactics and by the treachery of their union leaders. When there is a wage demand it must be fought for nationally at the same time by all sections.

If provincial companies say they are unable to give pay increases, then the demand must be: nationalize them!

It municipal companies say they cannot afford it because of the amount involved in modernisation, then the demand must be: nationalize Leylands, AEC and the rest!

These are the only demands busmen today.