The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 409

TRADE UNIONS- 'Blue' and White' HE attack on the trade unions is now moving into top gear. On Sunday, August 29, the press gave enormous publicity to the articles by the Labour MP Desmond Donnelly and Sir Miles Thomas, An editorial in the 'Sunday Times', mouthpiece of the Thompson Empire, on the same day gave its fullest support to the demand for legal action against the unions. Clearly the attack is being carried out in a very organised way by people whose views coincide with those of the most reactionary and powerful employers.

A noticeable feature of the campaign is its tolerant attitude towards the union leaders. Sir Miles Thomas goes out of his way to compliment them.

'It is not the fault of the union leaders', he says, 'I know many of them personally. They are mostly serious-minded, deeply-thinking and dedicated men. They would not be where they are otherwise. Many of them have statesman-like qualities in their philosophies'.

The employers are well aware that it is not necessary to muzzle these gentlemen, and that, in fact, they need their assistance in order to succeed in taking away the hard earned freedom of millions of ordinary trade unionists.

The class hatred of the employers for the rank-and-file trade unionist is not disguised. In the Tory Evening News' of September i, the weekly ultra-right-wing columnist Lord Arran attacks striking workers as follows:

6... a 30-year-old welder is able to put 18,000 of his mates out of work, to their detriment — not to mention the country.

This is called workers' solidarity. I obstinacy.

For sheer stupidity give me the British his "rights". You put this bloody government in, chum, and quite soon you'll put it out.9 The last sentence is the important one. What the Tory scribe is really saying is that Harold Wilson has opened the door for the Conservative Party to return to Westminster with a greatly increased majority.

Discredited

This, then, is the role of the right-wing — the trade union leaders hate the working class in struggle and behind the scenes collaborate with the Tory employers to tie them more and more to the capitalist state, whilst Wilson plays ball with the Tories in Parliament in such a way that Labour is discredited and the Tories come back.

Then the Tories will start from where Labour leaves off in its attack on the unions and complete the job.

Such a conclusion cannot be avoided if one studies the events of last week-end. Wilson returned from his holidays knowing full well that the capitalist press were howling about so - called unofficial strikes in the motor-car trade.

Cashing-in He cashed in on this by announcing that the Labour government proposed holding an enquiry into 'unofficial strikes. Yet, the same Wilson knew that, just a few days earlier Ford put many thousands of workers on short-time without consulting the trade unions "concerned. This was only done several days after the short-time proposal was announced.

Wilson avoids mentioning the motor employers, who sack workers indiscriminately, and who are protected by the press.

He concentrates instead on attacking the workers who are the victims of the capitalist offensive and who are being maligned by the capitalist press. Is there any further evidence needed that our so-called Labour Prime Minister is a tool of the Tory capitalists?

Now take the way in which Wilson and company treat their colleague, Desmond Donnelly, MP.

Remember, that one of the so-called reasons why they expelled the Young Socialists was that they talked about their differences with the right-wing in public.

"Curb unions' No such treatment for Donnelly. He comes along with an article in the Tory 'Sunday Telegraph' (how more public can you get?) in which he makes the following legislative proposals to curb the unions:

"First, Mr. Aubrey Jones's Council on Incomes and Prices should be invested with statutory powers. It should have the authority to examine such wage settlements and price arrangements as it wishes, in order that they should conform broadly to national policies.

It would also try to ensure that employer-union agreements are soundly based in the interests of both.

Second, recognised contracts between management and the unions must be legally enforceable; and either side must have the right to sue the other if it defaults. A statutory period of notice before any strike action can be taken should be enforceable, thus eliminating wild-cat strikes.

Third, certain statutory model rules must apply to all unions, including the introduction of the secret by march Islington tenants' meeting "THE Devlin proposals 6ГTНЕ Devlin proposals will hand the docker and the industry back to the big port bosses. To increase the power of these bosses, the "Blue Union" will be driven from Merseyside. Then all trace of any democracy in the Transport and General Workers' Union will disappear'.

This warning is in a leaflet which was distributed up and down Merseyside docks this week. It is a statement from the Merseyside Area Committee of the National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers (the 'Blue Union').

Last week, Transport and General Workers' Union officials held dock-gate meetings on Merseyside, supporting the Devlin report. At the same time they announced a drive against non-unionism and a 'card show' on September 6.

T& G authority

'Blue Union' dockers see these moves in line with the recent attack on the 'Blue Union' by Mr. Lew Lloyd, the docks district secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union. see the Transport and General officials seeking to establish the type of authority which Devlin would welcome.

The dockers remember the period before 1955 when the Transport and General officials were more arrogant because men did not receive their docker's registration book except on production of a T & G card. It is the bitter experience of this bureacratic authority which has been one of the main ingredients of the stubborn persistence of the 'Blue Union' in the north, despite continuous difficulties and victimisation.

Now, the Transport and General leadership seeks to establish its authority on the docks to assist the carrying through of 'modernisation' plans.

Crushing plans

room for the Blue Union' with In these plans there can be no its democratic and militant traditions, neither in the north nor in London-despite the granting of a seat on the modernisation comblacked in Midlands Recognition strike

in tenth week Newsletter Reporter THE ten-week-old strike of over 100 Amalgamated En in Mid ballot before strike action can be taken. This will ensure a more true reflection of collective union opinion and safeguard the rights of the membership, to say nothing of their wives.)

No-one in the right-wing, or for that matter, in the so-called left-wing, demands Donnelly's expulsion from the Labour Party for airing his views —

WHILE the military situation in South Vietnam has bogged down into sporadic fighting and localised guerrilla operations, the political situation continues to deteriorate rapidly.

In Hue, on August 29, a mass rally of 3,000 students demonstrated against the mobilisation decree of the South Vietnam government, which makes all higher school certificate holders eligible for military service.

This latest decree shows how desperately short of manpower the puppet government is, and although the decree has been somewhat modified, the students - and the Buddhist clergy as well as the urban population - have defied the threats of the regime to demonstrate not only against the decree, but against the whole reactionary, medieval set-up that passes for government in Saigon.

Civilian government call Main target for attack by the students was General Van Thieu, Chief of State, and the most hated man next to Air Vice-Marshal Cao Ky. The students demand the election of a civilian government to replace the military junta.

The chairman of the Islington, London, Tenants' Association is seen above holding a notice from the n clerk ordering tenants to pay rent increases of up to 38s. in two phases. Tenants met last Friday outside the local town hall to protest against the increases and to lobby a special council meeting which was discussing the rents question. But, it seems, the matter had already been decided-the notices were pushed through the tenants' letter-boxes while they were at the meeting. Anger rose as the notice was read out, and, when the council meeting ended, tenants stopped councillors to discuss the position with them (see picture above). There is increasing support in the area for the policies of the Young Socialists, who have participated in the struggle, and a large turn-out is expected at a YS demonstration against the Labour government and the rent increases its economic measures have created. NLF MEMBERS REFUSED ENTRY THE Labour government has refused entry visas to members of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, invited to this country by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.

Sir Frank Soskice, in a letter to Lord Russell, has stated that he had decided it was 'not in the national interest' to let them in.

Lord Russell, in his comment on this piece of humbug, stated:

"Not final' 'We cannot accept this decision as final . . . We shall seek the reversal of this decision and begin a national campaign to demonstrate the extent of public feeling until the government's decision is reversed'.

A letter in the 'Statesman', signed by, amongst others, Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, supports the right of Liberation Front representatives to visit this country.

delivery of Ford cars from Halewood, Liverpool, recommended, on Thursday, to return to work.

Union representatives, who met with the employers and a Ministry of Labour industrial relations officer for seven hours on Wednesday, will ask the men to return while an industrial court determines whether there has been a breach of procedure in the sacking of shop steward, Frank Murray.

The men struck two weeks ago after Murray was dismissed. He had just returned to the factory after being found guilty of dangerous driving.

UNPRECEDENTED

Strike committee members claim that the men went on strike because the management's action was unprecedented. The procedure agreement was broken, the committee alleges, because Murray was sacked without any discussion.

Murray had submitted an appeal against the court's decision, but the management, it disclaimed, refused to allow the status quo until the appeal was heard.

If the men accept the industrial court, Murray will be technically re-instated, but will be immediately suspended.

MOTOR TALKS

AT NO. 10 Trade union leaders and management representatives from the motor industry were meeting Minister of Labour, Gunter, and Prime Minister, Wilson, at 10 Downing Street on Friday, to discuss the recent disputes in the industry. mittee. It was always clear that if the T & G officialdom crushed the 'Blue Union' in the north then they would clean it up in London.

'The democratic control of the "Blue Union" by its members has always been seen by the employers as an obstacle to their plans', says the statement of the Merseyside Area Committee.

"The Ammon and Leggett reports attacked the NASD because its officials were under the control of lay committees.

The Devlin report attacks democratic procedures in the union. It proposes that this should be changed and also that the power of the Transport and General leadership should be strengthened.

The attack on democracy i he trade unions goes nana-in hand with an attack on the freedom of a docker to belong to the union of his choice "white" or "blue"?

Recruitment ban

The statement declares that the proposals from T & G officials for a 'card show' are 'part of an attempt to impose an agreement on northern 'Blue Union' members to ban all recruitment to the 'Blue. 'Blue Union' members,

WORLD NEWS Septemb September 4, 196

DONT STRIKE unionism it is declared, can transfer to the 'White' — but not vice versa. What sort of freedom of choice is that?

The Area Committee declares it will not accept the plan that T & G officials will eventually 'service' 'Blue Union' members. The result of these proposals would be to reduce the NASD to 'a tiny "sweet" club'.

The statement goes on: The Merseyside Area Committee of the NASD stands for 100 per cent trade unionism on the docks. Time and again we have proposed to the Transport and General Workers' Union that there should be a joint campaign to bring this about. But we will expose any attempt to attack the "Blue Union" and split the dockers under cover of a supposed plan for strengthening trade unionism.

"The present moves for a card check, etc., have been decided, arbitrarily, by T & G officials, without consultation with the NASD members concerned'.

The statement then issues a call to the rank-and-file members of the TGWU, 'who have supported us in all struggles for the dockers' interests'.

It asks them 'to demand that their Distriot Committee meet the Merseyside Area Committee of the NASD and work out a joint campaign'.

Joint campaign

Confidently, the statement says:

'A joint campaign of "White"

and "Blue", up and down the docks, with freedom of choice, would bring 100 per cent trade unionism within a week and would do away with splits and discrimination.

'We call for unity of "Blue"

and "White", for trade unionism on the docks and the building of a strong organisation to defeat the plans to hand back the docker and the industry to the port bosses.

*If seriously concerned, then the T & G will meet the Merseyside Area Committee of the "Blue" to work out a campaign — otherwise we can only conclude that the present moves are meant to split the dockers at a critical time.

"The NASD has every right and duty to continue to enrol non-unionists. Already, since the Devlin report, many dockers have joined the NASD.

Membership • of the "Blue Union" will still be open to dockers on Merseyside.

•We stand in support of freedom of choice and 100 per cent trade unionism'.

The NASD announces a mass meeting for "all dockers' next Saturday, on 'Devlin and Democracy'. It also announces as a speaker — Bert Aylward, former secretary of the dockers section of the NASD, who retired recently. He is well-known and well respected on Merseyside.

"THE British Political Fringe',* published this week, devotes its longest chapter by far to what its author calls "The Outside Left; the major part of " this chapter consists of a collection of misinformation and hair-raisingly ignorant comment about the Trotskyist movement in Britain.

Those who read this book may find themselves asking how it ever came to get a publisher.

One clue to the answer may be found in a pamphlet which appeared only a week or two before this book. The pamphlet, produced by the antiCommunist organisation of businessmen, ex-army officers and retired trade union officials like Mr. Jim Matthews, called Common Cause, is entitled, "Trotskyism and its supporters in Britain'.* GLORIFIED BLACKLIST It may fairly be described as the most thorough, glorite 1 blacklist ever circulated to employers and their servants in this country.

Thayer's book, "The British Political Fringe', only saw the light of day because the present political situation, and the growing strength of the Socialist Labour League's alternative to the traditional treacherous working - class leadership, creates a market for academic snoopers.

Who is Mr. George Thayer? The publishers introduce him only as 'a 31-year-old American who has spent the last two years studying the British political system'.

Mr. Thayer has swept together in one corner most of the muck which has been spread by renegades and enemies of our movement in the last few years.

NO SUPPORT Without feeling obliged to provide a scrap of evidence, he presents a picture of sectarian and bureaucratic plotters living on dreams of some 'revolution round the corner'. In the absence of any political material to support this view, Mr. Thayer makes up his own quotations.

For the rest, his chapter on Trotskyism is a list of names and addresses, liberally interspersed with adjectives like 'ardent, cynical and dedicated', in order to confirm the usual reactionary stereotype of a revolutionary socialist.

Mr. Thayer also considers a number of other political groupings, lumping them together with the 'outside left' on the grounds that they are small and that their aim is to change political institutions.

NO ANALYSIS His complete failure to analyse the actual political programmes of any of these groups will only surprise those readers who think that Thayer's purpose was any different from that of the writers of the 'Common Cause' pamphlet.

However, some of Mr. Thayer's own impressions are introduced and they give us a fair idea of his inclinations.

* The British Political Fringe' by George Thayer. Published by Anthony Blond, 30s. * 'Trotskyism and its supporters in Britain'. Common Cause, 1s. 6d.

Writing about Oswald Mosley, he says:

'There is virtually no one who is a part of the British political fringe today, or even within recent memory, who has as many of the advantages and talents of this man: wealth, charm, wit, social position, a superior intellect, hypnotic powers, and Messianic zeal Thayer's description of movements like CND, the Yellow Star, and the Fascist groups, is of no interest except to highlight his method, which is remarkably like that of the slow-witted investigators whose reports appear in court proceedings; a meticulous dredging process.

PAMPHLET SERIES Common Cause's pamphlet does a more thorough job than our apprentice investigator from the U.S. Their pamphlet is part of a regular series to counter 'Communism' in British industry and politics.

The cover says:

The main object of Common Cause is to expose the activities of the Communist Party as a conspiracy to subvert individual freedom, the national economy, and the Rule of Law in the United Kingdom.

Since the Communist Party regards Trotskyism as its bitterest enemy, why then does Common Cause direct such heavy fire at the Trotskyists?

The reason is that the Socialist Labour League, and especially our plans to launch a daily paper, are recognised as the only real political threat to British capitalism and its supporters in the official Labour and trade union leadership.

POLITICAL NONSENSE "Trotskyism and its supporters in Britain' is a mixture of political nonsense, very detailed information about the past personnel and resources of the Trotskyist movement, and some glaring gaps and errors.

For example, on page 6 Joseph Stalin is described as 'a keen follower of Lenin', and Trotsky is said to have died 'at the hands of an assassin', without any mention of the fact that the assassin was one of Stalin's agents.

But, of course, this is not the main business of the pamLabour leadership was built upon the strength of British imperialism in its heyday. It based its policies on the ability of the employing class to grant concessions to a section of the workers.

The Labour Party has always contained various trends which gave . verbal opposition to this right-wing, talking loudly about socialism - and leaving capitalism to take its course.

The present crisis of British capitalism makes it impossible for further concessions to be granted. This means crisis for the right-wing leaders and also for their 'left' appendages. It is, therefore, not surprising to find that the onset of unemployment and short-time changes the situation in the Labour Party.

Open conflicts All the conflicts and contradictions which have been hidden under the big top of the Wilson circus begin to come into the open. People who not long ago were enthusiastic cheer-leaders for 'Wilson the wonder boy' edge neras

phlet. The political and 'historical' introduction followed by a long list of names (in bold type for easy reference) of all those known to have been connected with Trotskyism. Addresses and even dates of marriage are provided.

A collection of information has been made from persons who have been close to the movement and have since specialised in spreading gossip about it.

SLEUTHING This information is supplemented by a certain amount of orthodox sleuthing, so far as one can tell, and the whole thing has been put together with an inane commentary by one of Common Cause's tired scribes. This explains its very uneven character.

The pamphlet concentrates particularly on the material resources of the Trotskyist movement for its plans to launch a daily paper.

For all their efforts to portray Trotskyism as a sordid little conspiracy, addicted to interminable splits, these two publications are unable to conceal their main concern, and the main reason for their appearance. That reason is the growth and strength of the Socialist Labour League.

HE rght - wing vously towards the exit.

*rom the extreme rignt o he Labour Party come criticisms of the handling of economic problems and a renewal of tendencies to break the Party from the unions. Those who were once on the left feel obliged to mumble a few phrases about Wilson's abandonment even of his election promises.

As sharp class battles are prepared, the various tendencies within and around the Labour Party are shaken and bewildered.

For two years they have been silent about the real problems confronting the working class. From the former Gaitskell-ites to the so-called Communist Party they conspired to pretend that Wilson had some magical recipe which would ensure success for the Labour government.

Sham exposed Now this sham is exposed in front of growing sections of the working class. The employers, having used Wilson in a period of capitalist crisis, as they used MacDonald in 1931, get ready to ditch him.

The story used to go like this; economic growth had been held back by Tory bungling. By means of some secret conjuring tricks, Wilson was going to 'get Britain moving'.

As a result workers would get a higher standard of living, without disturbing capitalism. What some people rudely described as a wage freeze, Mr. Stalinist's autobiography published Pritt's views on Moscow Trials R. D. N. PRITT, • QC, is no longer prominent in British politics. The retired barrister writes occasional articles for Stalinist publications and attends the usual "peace' congresses.

But Trotskyists will not forget his name. For, when Trotsky and those who supported him were being attacked by Stalin's murder and slander machines, Pritt, then a Labour MP, lent his legal standing to the defence of the Moscow trials.

While Vyshinsky elicited, from men who had been Lenin's closest associates, fantastic 'confessions' of anti-Soviet plots between Trotsky and Hitler, Pritt was always ready to convince the rank and file that everything was in Cousins told us, would turn to be 'planned growth of comes' The Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists, who denied all this stuff, were denounced as splitters. To talk as we did about a fundamental crisis of British imperialism which demanded an attack on private ownership of industry, was to 'rock the boat'.

Soon after the election, the boat sank. The sterling crisis was 'tackled' in orthodox capitalist fashion by cutting social services and deflating the economy. Any measure which might weaken confidence in Wilson's reliability to run capitalism was dropped overboard.

The speech of Jeremy Bray last week-end expresses the fear of an electoral disaster resulting from Wilson's policies.

Speaking on behalf of the so-called 'technocrats', Bray bemoans the failure of the government to carry through the promised modernisation of British industry. Donnelly's call This must be seen alongside Desmond Donnelly's call in the 'Sunday Telegraph' for legislation to tie down trade union action.

This extremely reactionary article comes from a man who opposed the move to nationalize the steel industry and who openly advocates cutting remain unchanged order.

This man has recently produced Part I of an autobiograhy, 'From Right to Left' with a chapter devoted to his 1936 visit to Moscow. He is careful to explain how his wife persuaded him to attend the trial of Zinoviev and Kamenev, which just happened to be starting, and how difficult it was to get a ticket.

'Confessions'

This was the first of the three big 'show trials, in which Stalin wiped out and humiliated a large section of the Bolshevik leadership. The defendants in 1936 readily 'confessed' to organising the murder of Kirov in 1934.

Khrushchev revealed, 25 years later, that Stalin himself was really the organiser of the assassination. Could there now be any doubt that the trials the Labour Party away from the unions and allying it with the Liberals.

The miserable band around "Tribune' now show signs of slipping off Wilson's wagon. Last week an editorial and an article by John Mendelson each made the amazing discovery that Wilson was using Tory economic measures and that stagnation would result.

Some genius even noticed that Wilson's actions did not quite correspond to some of his previous statements!

"Tribune' recommends that the government replaces its deflationary policies with the usual list of gimmicks; cut overseas military expenditure, control imports and capital expenditure.

Question settled "Tribune', 'Labour's Independent Weekly, pretends to be hopeful that Wilson will take this advice. In fact these people know quite well that the question was settled long ago, when he capitulated to the bankers.

The 'New Statesman' is notable for its inability to be wrong. Having been even closer to Wilson than Tribune' (if such a posture is possible) this highminded journal now tries to give the appearance of having been right all along.

Its editorial 'Socialism on the Dole?' concludes:

'In short, the events of the past week confirm this journal in its view that the were frame-ups?

In the course of 1936-7, Pritt was busy explaining how the Soviet legal code had been followed scrupulously. When glaring contradictions and ludicrous impossibilities in the 'confessions' were pointed out, he did his best to explain them away.

A colleague of Pritt's, Dudley Collard, was persuaded to write a book about the second trial, that of Radek and Piatakov. Pritt contributed a forword, and it was published by Victor Gollancz.

Before he died in 1961, Collard made a statement withdrawing his opinions that the trial was authentic, and regretting his gullibility.

But Pritt, repeatedly challenged since 1956 to give his views on these questions, has resolutely kept his mouth shut. ship takes water time has come for Mr.

Wilson to manipulate the levers of socialism.' How disgusting is the spectacle of this scurrying from Wilson's ship. For them the chief considerations are their political careers.

They feel, without understanding it, the instability of the social system of which they form a part. They fear the development of powerful class actions as the right-wing leadership loses its grip on the rank and file.

But their political manoeuvres are on a different plane from the reality of millions of working-class homes, hit by short-time working, loss of overtime, rent rises, and the rising cost of living.

They 'criticise' Wilson because he has failed to hold in check the answer which the workers will give to the attacks of the employers.

Prepared

British capitalism is in deep crisis. No economic tricks can avoid head-on clashes between the monopolies and the workers.

The Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists have consistently prepared for this situation and fought to organise a new leadership for the class. We have shown how the maintenance of living standards requires a struggle to take the power out of the hands of the Now, on page 112 of his autobiography, he has the effrontery to say: "The Soviet authorities were apparently so satisfied of the genuineness of the case, and of the guilt of the accused, that they published the full shorthand transcript of the hearing, translated into English. What their views of the case now are, after the revelations made at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (to which I will come in Part II) of the tragic abuses of the Stalin period, I do not know. I have thought it best to leave unchanged my account of the trial, and of the views of it that I formed at the time, which I in fact wrote before the revelations were made' Slander In the period following the trial, which Pritt whitewashes, bankers and monopolists.

Wilson's • pretence to rejuvenate British capital covered the efforts of the employers to answer the crisis by attacking the still-powerful workers' organisations.

All those who helped him to sell this line-and this includes that crumbling ruin, the Communist Party-now desperately attempt to head off the growth of a Marxist leadership.

This is the meaning of the opposition to Wilson which they will affect as the Labour government is pushed towards a collapse by its Tory policies.

The call of the Young Socialists for the demonstration in Blackpool to 'throw out the MacDonald-Wilson traitors' shows the way these fakers will be answered. LANDLORDS PROFIT AS WORKERS STARVE which is nothing more than the executive committee of Indian monopoly capitalists, landlords and communal fanatics, once again revealed its true, reactionary class character when it arrested 500 Left Communists for the crime of demonstrating against the continued imprisonment— without even a pretence of a trial - of their colleagues arrested in early 1965 on trumped-up charges of plotting to overthrow the state of Kerala with Chinese support.

At the same time that Minister of Interior Nanda was savagely attacking the left, the right-wing extremists, led by the Jan Sangh, and with the active support of the RSS (a militant Hindu totalitarian and para - military organisation) organised a 70,000 - strong demonstration outside the Delhi parliament, which cunningly combined anger at Congress food policies with crude anti-Muslim, anti-Pakistan and anti-Communist sentiments.

NO ARRESTS Significantly, not a single right-wing demonstrator was charged or arrested.

Another challenge from the extreme right is the separatist demand of Messrs. Tara Singh and Sant Fateh Singh for a 'self-determined political status for the Sikhs', a demand which in the present political context could very well lead to a major crisis in the Punjab.

By far the greatest threat still confronting the Indian Congress government, however, remains the growing food crisis; the desperate shortage of foodgrains, despite two bumper harvests and substantial imports from the USA.

In early August the chief ministers' sub-committee on food took the unprecedented step of introducing statutory BY NEWSLETTER CORRESPONDENT thousands of Communists were slaughtered by Stalin's G.P.U. thugs. Many more perished in the labour camps. An unprecedented slander campaign was mounted against Trotsky and his supporters. The international labour movement was disoriented on the eve of the war.

Murderer

Stalin, the murderer of working - class revolutionists, Stalin the slanderer and falsifier of history, is dead, and twice buried.

But Pritt is still alive, and at this moment enjoying the hospitality of Stalin's successors.

If he lives to write Part II of his life story, what contortions will he perform to evade responsibility for the consequences of his work on Stalin's behalf? rationing in all urban areas with a population over 300,000 and informal rationing in towns with a population over 5,000.

Fair-price shops and system of informal rationing are to be introduced in rural areas suffering from scarcity.

The capitalist government of India has, by virtue of these measures, shown its complete incapacity to raise living standards and to solve the agrarian problem-the main problem of India.

Instead of increasing production, the government sets out to limit consumption and thereby place the burden of the crisis on the emaciated backs of the Indian workers and peasants.

NO AGREEMENT It is typical of the capitalist class that the sub-committee, while it found no difficulty in agreeing on rationing, found no agreement on how it was to procure the seven million tons of food-grains required for the rationed areas.

It rejected the idea of mono-. poly procurement and statetrading in grains for fear of alienating the well-off farmers and the wholesale grain dealers —many of whom are making handsome profits as blackmarketeers and hoarders.

Previous procurement policies have proved to be total failures. In some states farmers were obliged to deliver half their produce to the miller and the government advanced money to the miller for purchase of grains. The system seldom, or never, worked.

The farmers kept their marketable surplus until prices rose and the miller used the government capital on other projects and never delivered the grain.

Reliance on massive foreign imports of wheat (from the U.S. under the infamous PL 480 agreement) has not only increased foreign indebtedness and allowed U.S. imperialism, under the terms of the Act, to get a financial foothold in India, but it has also seriously hampered the development of agriculture and the creation of buffer stocks of food-grains.

RESERVES SOLD

At present, out of an estimated buffer stock of five million tons, only two million tons have been procured. The U.S. imports of cereals were originally intended to be used to build up government reserves against shortages, and as a means to stabilise prices. In fact, the U.S. produce was sold at subsidised prices for consumption purposes.

The Food Minister, Subramaniam, in a press interview, declared that the country would have to live with shortages till the end of the Fourth Plan period! I am keeping my fingers crossed' (sic) he said.

The paradoxical fact, however, is that while the population in India between 19511963 rose by 26 per cent, rice production rose by 40 per cent anad wheat production by 74 per cent!

Where did the increase go? And is there any justification for rationing? Obviously a good part of the present food crisis is factitious and can be easily solved by immediate government measures, coupled wih a long-term plan of industrial and agricultural development.

A state monopoly of all Call for

Its successful battle against the right wing of the Labour Party in the Young Socialists, its confident progress towards the daily Trotskyist newspaper, and its growing acceptance as the alternative leadership of the most advanced workers, have left behind for ever the days when Trotskyism could be dismissed as an insignificant minority tendency.

These two publications are part of the offensive now being mounted against the working class as a whole.

Having successfully tamed the Staliqists as well as the Labourites, the ruling class now finds it desperately urgent to deal with the alternative leadership.

They will not succeed: the the working class will turn back their offensive, and in the course of the struggle, the Trotskyists will win their place as the new working-class leadership.

al a newspapes Printed in food-grains and a system of compulsory requisition of all marketable surpluses with provisions for adequate compensation for the tenantcultivators and poor farmers is an unpostponeable and indispensable policy for ensuring • adequate supply of food to the people.

But in order to provide a real abundance of grain, not only for consumption, but particularly for export, a vast programme of land reform, land reclamation, cheap credit, fertilisers and better marketing facilities for the cultivators must be introduced.

To expect any of these things from the Congress regime would be like extracting milk from a he-goat. Only a workers' and peasants' government will end hunger, misery and capitalism in India.

Why? Because they ought not to have reduced hours or workers without loss of pay? Not at all.

The 'Sun' reported that: 'Some Ministers would be prepared to see short-term unemployment while workers find other jobs, rather than have much-needed manpower wasted on a four-day week.' Sections of the Labour right wing argued that the Ford workers should have been released on to the labour market.

The Labour Ministers want to assist capitalism through reducing the shortage of some skilled labour by general unemployment in an area like Merseyside where unemployment is already growing.

The Ford workers have far more to fear from Gunter, Brown, Wilson and Callaghan than ever Ford have.

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The question the Communist Party of Pro (PSIUP, a breal Nenni Socialist left-wing of the which at prese! Coalition Got now been raisi of urgency. To this is so, the by the Italian past 20 years lined.

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Parliamentari not as a means sary end. In pra the abandonme Leninism and t working-class s ward by Lenin Revolution'. I leadership wall 'parliamentary ‹ worst type. No the dictatorshi letariat.

(2) Full en the Constitutic public.

This means institutions of democratic stai has done ever (3) Support autonomy.

This is an e ture the suppr and petty bo more backward it has brough and has only hands of the b (4) Alliance called progressi This policy, : anti-clericalism forthright with the 'proletaria XXIII, who Italian CP dangerous as it churchmen. E successors war tees, however clasp the out: It is only a q then, before th crats come for concessions to (5) Keeping class in chec policy of parti:

Septem September 196 Three

Mr.

the ying For leratical under' of the • they ar the 1 class It-wing on the manoi plane ons of eit by )SS of id the on belold in ch the attacks is in ›nomic ead-on monobour oung ently ition se a the I0wn e of res a ower the s autoeffronuthoriatisfied le case, ccused, ne full of the 1 into ews of the reTwenComSoviet I come abuses do not best to iccount : views e time, before le.

ing the washes, Wilson's pretence to rejuvenate British capital covered the efforts of the employers to answer the crisis by attacking the still-powerful workers' organisations.

All those who helped him to sell this line-and this includes that crumbling ruin, the Communist Party-now desperately attempt to head off the growth of a Marxist leadership.

This is the meaning of the opposition to Wilson which they will affect as the Labour government is pushed towards a collapse by its Tory policies.

The call of the Young Socialists for the demonstration in Blackpool to 'throw out the MacDonald-Wilson traitors' shows the way these fakers will be answered. INDIAN FOOD CRISIS LANDLORDS PROFIT AS WORKERS STARVE which is nothing more than the executive committee of Indian monopoly capitalists, landlords and communal fanatics, once again revealed its true, reactionary class character when it arrested 500 Left Communists for the crime of demonstrating against the continued imprisonment— without even a pretence of a trial - of their colleagues arrested in early 1965 on trumped-up charges of plotting to overthrow the state of Kerala with Chinese support.

At the same time that Minister of Interior Nanda was savagely attacking the left, the right-wing extremists, led by the Jan Sangh, and with the active support of the RSS (a militant Hindu totalitarian and para - military organisation) organised a 70,000 - strong demonstration outside the Delhi parliament, which cunningly combined anger at Congress food policies with crude anti-Muslim, anti-Pakistan and anti-Communist sentiments.

NO ARRESTS Significantly, not a single right-wing demonstrator was charged or arrested.

Another challenge from the extreme right is the separatist demand of Messrs. Tara Singh and Sant Fateh Singh for a 'self-determined political status for the Sikhs', a demand which in the present political context could very well lead to a major crisis in the Punjab.

By far the greatest threat still confronting the Indian Congress government, however, remains the growing food crisis; the desperate shortage of foodgrains, despite two bumper harvests and substantial imports from the USA.

In early August the chief ministers' sub-committee on food took the unprecedented step of introducing statutory • Trials BY NEWSLETTER CORRESPONDENT thousands of Communists were slaughtered by Stalin's G.P.U. thugs. Many more perished in the labour camps. An unprecedented slander campaign was mounted against Trotsky and his supporters. The international labour movement was disoriented on the eve of the war.

Murderer

Stalin, the murderer of working - class revolutionists, Stalin the slanderer and falsifier of history, is dead, and twice buried.

But Pritt is still alive, and at this moment enjoying the hospitality of Stalin's successors.

If he lives to write Part II of his life story, what contortions will he perform to evade responsibility for the consequences of his work on Stalin's behalf? rationing in all urban areas with a population over 300,000 and informal rationing in towns with a population over 5,000.

Fair-price shops and system of informal rationing are to be introduced in rural areas suffering from scarcity.

The capitalist government of India has, by virtue of these measures, shown its complete incapacity to raise living standards and to solve the agrarian problem-the main problem of India.

Instead of increasing production, the government sets out to limit consumption and thereby place the burden of the crisis on the emaciated backs of the Indian workers and peasants.

NO AGREEMENT It is typical of the capitalist class that the sub-committee, while it found no difficulty in agreeing on rationing, found no agreement on how it was to procure the seven million tons of food-grains required for the rationed areas.

It rejected the idea of monopoly procurement and statetrading in grains for fear of alienating the well-off farmers and the wholesale grain dealers -many of whom are making handsome profits as blackmarketeers and hoarders.

Previous procurement policies have proved to be total failures. In some states farmers were obliged to deliver half their produce to the miller and the government advanced money to the miller for purchase of grains. The system seldom, or never, worked.

The farmers kept their marketable surplus until prices rose and the miller used the government capital on other projects and never delivered the grain.

Reliance on massive foreign imports of wheat (from the U.S. under the infamous PL 480 agreement) has not only increased foreign indebtedness and allowed U.S. imperialism, under the terms of the Act, to get a financial foothold India, but it has also seriously hampered the development of agriculture and the creation of buffer stocks of food-grains.

RESERVES SOLD

At present, out of an estimated buffer stock of five million tons, only two million tons have been procured. The U.S. imports of cereals were originally intended to be used to build up government reserves against shortages, and as a means to stabilise prices. In fact, the U.S. produce was sold at subsidised prices for consumption purposes.

The Food Minister, Subramaniam, in a press interview, declared that the country would have to live with shortages till the end of the Fourth Plan period! 'I am keeping my fingers crossed' (sic) he said.

The paradoxical fact, however, is that while the population in India between 19511963 rose by 26 per cent, rice production rose by 40 per cent anad wheat production by 74 per cent!

Where did the increase go? And is there any justification for rationing? Obviously a good part of the present food crisis is factitious and can be easily solved by immediate government measures, coupled wah a long-term plan of industrial and agricultural development.

A state monopoly of all Call for 'single party and unity with left movements By Our Own Correspondent Athens, Sat., August 28 HE Greek crisis continues.

The sirimokos govern ment has fallen and the young King Constantine has had to call a Crown Council of past Prime Ministers to decide the the crowd by forming a narrow cordon, but this did not stand up to the pressure of the crowd for long.

Then the police attacked with tear-gas, throwing bombs by the hundred-the atmosphere, says our reporter, was

being a movement of struggle against the economic and social roots of oppression, which persists, and even gets worse with the deepening crisis of capitalism, despite the new laws.

Those who wanted civil rights only to allow the Negro to 'take his place in American society' are being thrust aside, because that American capitalist society cannot provide any place for its new citizens'. Along with large sections of the working class they are now impelled to a struggle against the ruling class and its system of profit and war.

• Private eyes

Betrayal of working class more obvious WITH two milion members and eight million voters, the Italian Communist Party, the largest in an advanced capitalist country, continues to dominate the working class. Today it arrives at a point where its betrayal must become more open, its desertion of the class struggle more obvious.

It is no accident that it now raises the cry for a single working-class party. This continues the programme of Togliatti and exploits the political ignorance in which it keeps its members. It is in line with the Italian road to socialism' which he proclaimed.

The question of a union of the Communist Party with the Party of Proletarian Unity (PSIUP, a break-away from the Nenni Socialist Party) and the left-wing of the Socialist Party, which at present supports the Coalition Government, has now been raised as a matter of urgency. To understand why this is so, the policy pursued by the Italian CP over the past 20 years must be outlined.

Six points

The policy of this party may be summarised under the following heads:

(1) The peaceful road to power.

Parliamentarism is regarded not as a means but as a necessary end. In practice this means the abandonment of MarxistLeninism and the principles of working-class strategy put forward by Lenin in 'State and Revolution'. Instead, the leadership wallows happily in 'parliamentary cretinism' of the worst type. No room is left for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

(2) Full endorsement for the Constitution of the Republic.

This means upholding the institutions of the bourgeois democratic state as the Party has done ever since 1944.

(3) Support for regional autonomy.

This is an attempt to capture the support of peasants and petty bourgeois in the more backward regions. So far it has brought little success and has only played into the hands of the bourgeois parties.

(4) Alliance with the so-called progressive Catholics.

This policy, following one of anti-clericalism, became more forthright with the arrival of the 'proletarian' Pope John XXIII, who saw that the Italian CP was not as dangerous as it looked to many churchmen. Both he and his successors want more guarantees, however, before they clasp the outstretched hand. It is only a question of time, then, before the Party bureaucrats come forward with more concessions to the clericals.

(5) Keeping the working class in check through the policy of partial strikes. ALAVENTU Knowing the willingness of the Italian workers to fight, the bureaucrats seek to hold back these energies by fragmenting the struggle in industry to the maximum possible degree. There are never national industrial strikes. Instead there are many small strikes for particular groups or categories of workers which last 24 hours, 10 hours, 4 hours, or, in some cases, a quarter of an hour. Thus, the Communist - controlled unions capitulate before the employers, who are now preparing a new offensive against the working class, shown, for example, in the recent closure of the Fiorentini and other plants.

(6) Acceptance of the policy of 'peaceful co-existence'. • This is shown in the failure to mobilise the working class on foreign policy issues like the Vietnam war in a country in which there are big U.S. bases. The CP confines itself to verbal protests on' the floor of Parliament.

Natural conclusion

These points show the general position which the Communist Party takes up in relation to the main issues in Italian politicial life. Its policy of immobilising the working class finds its natural conclusion in the formation of a single party of an openly reformist type.

It means leading the Italian working class into big defeats unless a serious effort is made to build an alternative leadership. This is bound to be an extremely complex and difficult task.

It is not being undertaken at all by the Pabloites around 'Livio Maitan', by the ultra-lefts of the Posadas tendency, or by the other little groups which exist.

The communist opposition movements have so far failed to break away from a sterile form of protest. Their language is abstract and incomprehensible to the mass of workers. In practice, they stand aside from the class struggle.

Spontaneous action

It is now clear, however, from the developments in Italian economic and political life, that serious problems are confronting the bureaucracy of the Italian Communist Party.

Its principal problem is how to hold back the pent-up anger and energies of the working class. On several occasions, in strikes and in clashes with the police, the workers have acted spontaneously and independently of the Party and its trade unions.

It is on these workers, such as those in the building trade, who have shown their will to fight, that, the reconstruction of a revolutionary party in Italy must be based. In this way the real Italian road to socialism will be found, not through the parliamentary intrigues of privileged bureaucrats, but through the mobilisation of the strength of the working class.

bankers and monopolists. country's future.

From Greece our correspondent writes that the masses were again demonstrating all last week against the new "social monarchist puppet government, against the King, the right wing and American imperialism.

Trotskyists, with other groups, have continued shouting anti-royalist slogans including "Take your mother and get out', 'Out with the Gestapo Woman'. (These are references to Queen Frederika, Queen to King Paul who was father of demonstrators sounded a Constantine. The Queen was church bell and a battle followconnected with the Hitler ed; and at Metaxugian, fighting Youth movement.)

These slogans were taken up 3 a.m.; there were barricades, by the people in the demon- cars overturned and hand-tostrations, as was the call for hand fighting with the police. a plebiscite. Two hundred and sixty-six 'On the other hand, our people were arrested and huncorrespondent reports, 'Papan- dreds were wounded. Arrowed in this picture of Greek potice attacking demonstrators is the young student Sotiris Petroulas who died from wounds received in the attack. He had been in the forefront of the struggle with dreou [the deposed prime minister] and the Stalinists still saturated with gas and still retains the smell. The crowd dispersed in all directions shouting 'down with the murderers'. •Several battles followed in all the districts in the centre of the town.

In Patissian Street, barricades were erected. Fires were lit in the street and outside the police headquarters.

Demonstrators threw a bomb into a police car. The police got out and fought against them.

In St. Constantine Street was fierce and lasted until Trotskyists. Thos Angeles stre the al recent struggles in blow to the myth that liberal, religious, and non-violent leaders can represent and lead to victory the Negro people of the USA. Martin Luther King's visit to the scene of last month's battles brought home the point with crushing force. • The Rev. King had already issued public statements justifying the use of armed force to restore 'law and order' in Los Angeles. Like all advocates of pacifism and non-violence, he found it very easy to acquiesce in the use of violence by the established authorities. Why not?

They are against the use of force to disturb the established order; once such force is used, then the order must be defended ... in order that parsons, lawyers, and peddlers of non - violent submission to authority can go about their business in blessed peace.

A Negro teenager commented on Luther King's arrival in the Los Angeles Negro quarter of Watts: 'WE WANT JOBS' 'Aw, they're just sending another nigger down here to tell us what we need!

Another, listening to King's efforts to build up what he called a community of love', said:

•"I had a dream, I had a dream"—hell, we don't need no damn dreams. We want jobs.' This summed up the relation between the leadership of the Civil Rights movement and the class needs of the Negro workers in the ghettoes of the cities. Without a doubt, the struggle for civil rights provoked a certain expectancy and confidence in the Negro working class, but for that class to win, it must dispense with the very leadership which was initially in control of the movement.

The American magazine 'Newsweek' had this to say:

'And King might as well have stayed home. He held one audience with local Negro leaders, who had three minutes apiece 1 to tell him what was wrot 1g in Watts. The com posite answer: everything.' The public meeting conducted by Luther King was a complete failure.

Before he began, one audience spoke out:

"The people don't feel bad about what happened. They had nothing to lose. They don't have jobs, decent homes.

What else could they do?' And from another part of the hall came the answer, in the words of the current hit tune that sounded everywhere over Los Angeles during the fighting: 'Burn, baby, burn!' Laughter and applause followed.

KING INTERRUPTED 'Newsweek' reports the following exchange, once the Rev. King finally got going: • "We must join hands ..

"And burn!" someone shrilled, and the crowd laughed again. King pressed on:

"You are all God's children.

There will be a better tomorrow ..." "When, dammit, when?" a spectator roared. King finally got the crowd under, attentive control, but he wound up cancelling other stops in the riot zone for "security reasons"' Robert Kennedy has made the suggestion that middle-class Negroes must provide "more leadership'. In point of fact, the capitalist rulers of the USA will now depend a great deal on middle-class Negro leaders to mislead the movement. The need is for a working-class leadership of the Negro workers which will fight for unity with the rest of the American working class. This is the lesson of the Los Angeles uprising.

LEGALLY COVERED From the angle of passing laws, nothing remains to be done. All the legal provisions have been made for any man, whatever the colour of his skin, to enjoy all rights of citizenship in the United States.

Now there is coming igrants

What is the response of the trade unions to this? Complete silence, which means complicity with the employers. No struggle to unite French and immigrant workers. No fight against the conditions which the immigrants have to put up with.

The only voice really being raised is that of the group of Italian workers who publish the monthly bulletin Noi Emigranti'. They have begun to organise immigrant workers without distinction of nationality. Their programme can be resumed in the following points:

(1) Establishment of an organisation of immigrant workers to fight side-by-side with French workers, exploited by the same employers.

(2) Bring as many immigrants as possible into the French trade unions to defend the interests of the immigrants through a National Convention of Immigrant Workers on a programme of (a) equal pay for equal work, (b) payment of the same family allowances as the French workers, (c)

decent housing conditions, (d) recognition of skills and professional qualifications, (e) full political rights.

(3) Formation of solidarity committees to aid those in need.

This kind of work becomes increasingly necessary as the capitalist economy ceases to expand.

It is the only way to mobilise this enormous mass of workers, who not only experience all the problems of the French worker, but others besides.

These workers must be brought into the struggles of the French working class. The passivity of the French unions on the question of the immigrants must be broken down. It is to these tasks that 'Noi Emigranti' devotes itself.

• Los Angeles

march in the path of constitutional monarchy?

In spite of the attempts by the Stalinist leaders to hold back the workers, the people continue to march towards Parliament and towards the palace.

The Stalinists did succeed in holding back three demonstrations after the fall of the Novas government, in spite of struggles between them and the Trotskyists.

The previous week the Stalinists had carried out a campaign labelling the Trotskyists as 'provocateurs'.

One night last week, a huge Athens crowd ignored Stalinist attempts to take them to the Academy, where on preceding demonstrations the crowds had dispersed, and marched en masse to the Clafthmonos Square, which the police occupied.

Stalinists attempted to stop Petroulas arrowed in large picture above. APITALISt expansion i Western Europe in recen years has depended upon a vast influx of immigrant workers.

These workers have formed an especially cheap, mobile and adaptable supply of labour-power for employers in France, Germany and Belgium. They have come mostly from the more backward areas of southern Europe — Italy, Greece, Spain and Portugal. Others have come from north and west Africa and Turkey. The more backward capitalist countries, with a large overspill of population in the agricultural areas, have been happy to see this movement take place. It has served as a safety valve, diminishing the risk of revolt at home. LABOUR TRAFFICKING At the same time, the remittances sent home by the emigrant workers have helped to meet the bill for payments which have had to be made abroad.

Important agreements have been made at government level to deal with this international traffic in labour power. Governments with surplus labour power have thus been able to strike bargains with those whose economic expansion would be halted without a continued inflow. All this at the expense of the workers themselves.

Communist and social-democratic trade unions have played a part by permitting this traffic to go on without once raising the slogans of international class solidarity. The bosses, meanwhile, have been able to play the immigrant workers off against each other and against the French and German workers.

NO ORGANISATION The immigrants come from the poorest layers of the working class and peasantry of southern Europe and Africa. Often they are illiterate and have few, if any, traditions of organisation and struggle. When they arrive they do not understand the language of the country and are dispersed, a few in one factory or building site, a few in another.

In France there are now well over two million of these recent immigrants scattered over many branches of industry, in constructional work and even in agriculture.

Many of these men live in the most abject conditions, six or eight to a room. Some work an 11-hour day and travel 30 miles to their jobs. Where houses are not available they live in huts or shacks with only the most primitive facilities.

These workers have little sense of political organisation and live in fear of being sent back to the worse poverty which they know awaits them at home.

The bosses take advantage of their plight to pay low wages. An Italian gets less than a French or German worker, the Spaniards less than an Italian and the Portugese and Moroccans less again.

Racialist feeling is stirred up and used as a factor of division in the interests of the employers.

BOSSES' BLACKMAIL French workers are led to believe that the foreigner has taken their jobs and the bosses are thus able to pursue a policy of blackmail in relation to the French working class.

In effect they say: don't ask for higher wages because we can always find cheap foreign labour. Turn to page 4 →

Industrial age components Septem ber 4, 1965 Wilson

Immigrants to BR 'deal' Newsletter Correspondent A LARGE number of resolutions passed by rank-and-file members and local leaders of the National Union of Railwaymen are building up against the 'package deal' offer by British Rail's new boss, Stanley Raymond.

The deal, which is in line with George Brown's wage freeze policy, will tie workers down to a three per cent increase in October, another three per cent next year 'unless there were major changes in the meantime', and a reduction in working hours to 40 a week.

On holidays, chairman of the Railways Board, Raymond, said he would like to make a modest start, and proposed one extra day for staff with ten or more years' service. The position would be reviewed in 1966.

Raymond called the deal a 'planned programme for progress.

Progress could hardly be the word when rail workers are ll per cent behind other industries on the wages front.

Many district councils of the union are now preparing to wage a fight against the package deal.

AEU ORDERS

OVER PAY Newsletter Correspondent committees of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, the executive committee of the union says members have no right to strike or revert to dayworking when they are in dispute with an employer over payments-by-results or time worked.

The executive states that: In future no support will be given, nor benefit paid, in respect of stoppages of work which have not received the prior approval of the district committee and the executive committee in accordance with the rules of the union'.

"Mutual agreement'

The circular complains that an increasing number of cases concerning payments-by-results are remitted for discussion to the Central Conference, but that these disputes are really a matter of mutual agreement between the workman and the employer.

No more cases are to be discussed at the Central Conference.

So, as workers strive to keep up with the rising cost of living by improving existing agreements, their leaders attempt to tie their hands behind their backs with bureaucratic red tape.

India

From BILL HUNTER, ' HIS week, Ford at Halewood, Liverpool, have shut down their production lines completely. The management declared on Thursday of last week that the factory would reopen on September 7providing the delivery men's strike was over.

This is the latest attack on Ford workers. The company unloads its sales difficulties upon the backs of its workers. Do they hope trade union officials will end the strike of 300 car delivery men?

At the same time as Ford blow, the Joint Shop Stewards' Committee at Halewood issued a duplicated statement on short-time working.

The first thing the statement points out is how big business rewards a willingness to sacrifice workers' conditions in the interests of a profit drive.

'The trade unions,' says the statement, 'agree to commit their members to a policy of a high amount of overtime during the peak spring and summer periods when schedules are running high as opposed to the hiring of extra labour who would be fired when schedules drop.

"They also agree to "mobility of labour", whereby men are constantly re-deployed to maintain efficiency of plant operations, often with great inconvenience to the men concerned.

'Reward'

'Both these measures are patiently endured, and much co-operation is given. The reward for this is labelled "continuity of employment", virtually a guaranteed five-day week.

'And yet the Ford Motor Company, the only company to have secured such agreements, is the first of the motor car manufacturers to cast its employees on to short-time working and imperil their livelihood with redundancy tactics.' Only a few weeks ago the Ford Company was disciplining men for refusing to comply with a 15 hours per week oversaturdayan, addition The statement, however, repeats the illusion that the Labour government will come to the aid of Ford workers. It ends with an appeal to George Brown: 'We urge most strongly that you be ever-watchiul of the Ford Motor Company, and that you thoroughly acquaint yourself with the current situation Unemployment This statement was being distributed on the very same day that the press reported that Labour Ministers were critical of Ford, Hoover and Vauxhall.

Calling for the Labour government to set up an inquiry into the motor industry is a trap. The Labour government may very well set up the equivalent of a Devlin inquiry. But its purpose is to regiment the labour force through an alliance of employers and trade union leaders backed by the full power of the state.

It is concerned with the 'inability of the unions to control their members' not the inability of Ford and other motor companies to give security to their workers.

Ford stewards must think again. The Labour government is not going to fight Ford for them. In fact it is not going to fight Ford at all, it is going to fight the motor workers.

The struggle for a reduced working week without loss of pay; the fight for nationalization of the motor industry, will mean a campaign against Wilson, Brown and Gunter.

Wing Union members at Dunford and Elliotts (Sheffie received powerful support from the Midlands.

workers al the Drilisa olo corporanons fractor and liails Birmingham decided to renew their 'blacking spies not no so goi ot all sites suppie amount to about 80 pe cent of steel used.

This announcement, which came after a BMC convenor had visited Sheffield, contradicted an earlier statement by an AEU executive member who had been conducting negotiations in the strike.

Workers struck after the management allegedly refused to recognise the union.

This strike is closely connected with the 'package deal' signed between the AEU and the employers. The strikers want a similar shift system operated by the AEU in Sheffield — fourshitt week with "mini-shift' on Fridays — even though Midland workers are opposing the 'minishift.

CRACK SYSTEM

But this system would crack the 'Sheffield shift system' under which shift workers must remain at their jobs if their replacements do not arrive for work.

Workers at Ambrose Shardlows (Sheffield) added their support to the Dunford and Elliott workers when they passed a motion calling for the suspension of National Union of General and Municipal Workers' local official. His union has failed to call out their members in sympathy with the AEU men, on the grounds that their unions is not a direct party to the dispute. TOILET DISPUTE and what views - in the 'Sunday Telegraph'. He says and does what he likes, whilst the Young Socialists are victimised by Wilson and his hirelings.

No different Could any other example be produced to prove in practice that Wilson is no different from Ramsay MacDonald and that he is doing the same dirty work now as the former did in 1931?

The lesson should be clear. Labour needs a Marxist revolutionary leadership — one which goes all out to expropriate the capitalists and expose their agents inside the Labour Party and the trade unions. There can be no more compromise with Wilson and his Tory allies.

meet tenants held a rent rise meeting outside the town hall last Friday (August 27), notices were being pushed through their letter boxes ordering them to pay increases up to 38s., in two phases.

Inside the town hall a special council meeting was supposed to be deciding whether or not to implement the increases.

A roar went up as the Tenants' man read out the 'two-phase' terms the town clerk, which was rushed to the 300-strong tenants' meeting. Tenants will have to pay the first amount next Monday and the rest next April. A Tenants' Association leaflet has since recommended tenants to pay the first phase!

Councillors blamed

For nearly three hours the tenants stood outside the council meeting last Friday listening to speakers, several from the Communist Party, who blamed the rent increases on the incompetance' of Islington Labour councillors to run the finances of the borough.

'You can make your position clear at the next election by not voting for the councillors several speakers suggested -omitting to mention any alternative.

Speakers stopped

The previous evening, at a similar meeting, Young Socialist speakers were prevented from speaking after one of their supporters explained the increasing number of rent rises all over the country, in terms of the financial crisis of the Labour government and the economic restrictions imposed on councils, who have passed the buck to their own tenants.

Having whipped up the anger of the tenants, speakers, after Association chairThe very young see rent rises as an increase in of the notice from hearing of the town clerk's letter, pleaded with them to save their strength for a march on Parliament to see their MP and Ministry of Housing representatives.

Young Socialists in IF TH: RENTS CO UP THE DEON, RATE MILA. up. BECAUSe ME. HQHT BE ABLE To AFFORD 10 BUY FooD the cost of living. have been campaigning among the tenants in the last few weeks and have found a great deal of support for their policies. They hope to hold a large demonstration of tenants through Islington on Saturday, September 4.

to protest housing racket grants having council houses. These petitions have been circulating around local factories and council estates. They are circulated only as an attempt to split the workers in an area which has a large number of unoccupied office blocks.

Local trade unionists and tenants must demand that these huge office blocks are requisitioned by the local council, and support the demonstration against the landlords and housing profiteers called by the Middlesex Region of Young Socialists for Saturday, September Il.

IN Southall, Middlesex, recently, two of the independent Ealing Labour councillors spoke on the same platform as the leader of the Council's Tory group at a meeting called by the 'whites only Southall Residents' Association. The meeting passed a resolution against immigrants having council houses. As reported in last week's 'Newsletter, six Labour councillors have split from the Labour group to form their own group, after voting with the Tories to make immigrants wait 15 years for a council house.

Members of the Residents' Association, which gets houses £100 cheaper — but only for white people -have been collecting names on a petition against immi-

FOLLOWING an announcement that a team of men would investigate actions which led to a strike of 40 workers at the Coventry Felt Company, it was agreed to return to work.

The investigation team is part of a proposal put by a local official of the Transport and General Workers' Union during a week-long strike over the dismissal of a 19-year-old machinist, whom the management alleged spent too long at the toilet.

Carol Lloyd, the dismissed machinist, said that she had only been away for 10 minutes.

Vote to return

The company, which supplies felt to the major car firms, claims that Carol was away for 20 minutes and that production was disrupted.

At first the majority voted in favour of continuing the strike. But after a local TGWU official and a union representative from Massey Ferguson who* said he could not guarantee support from workers at his firm-both said that the decision was wrong, and another vote was taken.