The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 415

1"t Labour government unde CLEAR OUT THE WILSONMACDONALD TRAITORS!

FIGHT FOR SOCIALIST POLICIES!

LONDON movement.

p.m., Sunday, October 17 heartedly. Indeed, the only valid reason for the functioning New Ambassadors Hotel of the government, is that it will prepare the legal groundUpper Woburn Place, W.C.1 work against the trade unions, so that later on a Tory (nearest tube station: Euston)

government would have more Speakers:

G. Healy, National Secretary, SLI power to enforce its own M. Banda, Editor, Newsletter reacuonary decisions Peter Kerrigan, Liverpool docker Halona Dalking Maleruity las providea a oracine loan enable the government LEICESTER stagger over balance payments difficulties during the p.m., Sunday, October next few months-long enough The Corn Exchange Speakers: raae unions on its way to cne Slaughter, Editor, 'Fourth statute books.

International' Ashby, National Secretary, Young Socialists Gale, Central Committee Member, SLL ¿nere will be a big nont acainst all attempts to speed up and It is, SHEFFIELD important for them to Up.m., Sunday, October «Dose un place or wevin The Vestry Hall, Cemetery Road (Moor Ent):

Speakers:

Cliff Slaughter, Editor, Fourth chester and Glasgow.

International' Dave Ashby, National Secretary Young Socialists generallv speaking. supports the Gale, Central Committee Member, SLL all docks and harbour installations should be nationalized.

GLASGOW 7.30 p.m., Sunday, November 7 the docks, why Partick Burgh Hall, Lesser Hal vital sector of industr Speaker's :

Or Wilson's leadership is to propose legislation on the basis of the Devlin Report on the docks. Portworkers will, therefore, be the first victims of the attack which is now being launched against the trade union Needless to say, the Tories will support Wilson wholeportworkers fighting for better conditions, as Devlin alleges.

Towards this end, the inter- The right - wing Labour government has moved a long way from the nationalization demands of the early pioneers who built the labour movement. Today, it supports monopoly capitalism on the docks. No compensation Portworkers rank tradition- The Socialist Labour ally amongst Britain's most League is not in favour of the solidaritykind of nationalization on minded seculon of workers. the docks which has virtually crippled the railways and mining industries. .. There worsen conditions on the should be no compensation, except in very needy cases, where the former employers about what solution they pro- would have to establish that they would be destitute Brital is an an wise unless they received some economic lifelines flow through assistance.

The majority of the profits must be ploughed back into the industry enabling wages and The rank-and-file portworker working conditions to be improved, whilst costs of imports policy of the Socialist Labour and exports would be reduced, League, which says clearly that thus reducing the cost of living and assuring a greater volume of exports.

Neither are we in favour of Vital industry La bureaucratic hierarchy of If the nation depends on ex-owners, or their agents, running the docks after Çont. page 2, col. 3 → mal lu che nanas or private owners WhO make massIve profits through exploitation turn, continuous increase in the cost of goods which are imported and this, and he is supported by the Labour government. He says National Secretary of the Socialist League

MEETINGS NO LEGISLATION AGAINST THE TRADE UNIONS!

Cliff Slaughter, Editor, 'Fourth International' of the portworker, John Robertson, Young Socialist and engineering convenor exported.

BELFAST Devlin says the opposite 7.30 p.m., Sunday, Nov.

International Hotel, Donegall Square South Speaker:

Healy, National Secretary, ployers.

ownership essentially LIVERPOOL strictive in the p.m., Sunday, November 21 Lecture Room, Walker Art Gallery, William Brown Street Speakers: will, without 7. Healy, National Secretary, SLI Cliff Slaughter, Editor, 'Fourth a whole.

International' Kerrigan, Liverpool most anti-social anad BIRMINGHAM 7.30 p.m., Sunday November 21 Digbeth Civic Hall, Digbeth Speakers:

Aileen Jennings, Editor, 'Keep Left' Mike Banda, Editor, Newsletter Jack Gale, Central Committee Member, SLL plans tor the trade unions NEWCASTLE procedures deaiing .30 .m., Sunday, November 2 Bridge Hotel, Castle Square against unions.

Speakers:

Cliff Slaughter, Editor, 'Fourth ments with the emplovers International' Jack Gale, Central Committee Member, SLL Chairman: J. Willamson, Youn Socialists National Committee unions. Hands off the Indonesian Communist tnat wnat we need is a growth THE counter-revolutionary ownership and control on • docks and forces led by the Generals the the small and incited by Islamic fanatics and medium-sized port em- are rampaging through Java and Sumatra.

Under capitalism monopoly An unprecedented campaign of violence and terror against profit-making. By concentratCommunists and trade unioning greater and greater power Lists is in full swing. Houses into lewer ana lewer nanas, tne of Communist MPs, including way 1s open tor tols powertu handful to raise their costs at the residence of D. N. Aidit, leader of the party, have been ransacked.

supporung the Devlin District and provincial offices of the Indonesian ComKeport. the Labour government munist Party (KPI) have been comes down on the side of the burnt down. Wholesale arrests group of monopoly capitalists. and executions of Communist Party members and sympaare the people who are thisers have been reported from Lue ical wreckers ana not the many areas.

NOW TORIES DEMAND: Colonel Untung, leader of the palace corp, has been captured, FINE REBEL UNIONS and many of his supporters disarmed. Sporadic fighting is reON Wednesday this week the ported in East Java and parts of Conservatives outlined, at Southern Sumatra. their dar party comerence Brighton. unelr reactionary FEEBLE UNITY CALLS The ailing Sukarno-now a resir keith Shadow luctant hostage of the GeneralsMinister of Labour, said that issues feeble calls for 'national procedures por deals to with unity' which the generals use to repress the Stalinists even more dispires enforceable fiercely.

The KPI adds to the confusion Trade unions would be fined and helps to strengthen the position of the reactionary Generals if their members Droke agree by shamelessly supporting the appeals made (supposedly) by The Labour government pre- Sukarno for an end to the fighting pares pares by it declared sutention and for 'national unity against imperialism'.

The KPl a statement reprinted in Daily Worker' (7/10/65) calls on the working class and toiling peasantry of Indonesia to:

*... increase their vigilance, to strengthen the front of national unity in order to achieve the realisation of the five principles of the Revolution to foil the joint British - American project of Malaysia and also step up the struggle against neo-colonialism in general' This at a time when illegality, imprisonment and summary execution is the lot of thousands of Communist Party members!

‹DAILY WORKER' SILENT The 'Daily Worker' remains inscrutably silent on these events, even Kosygin is forced to protest against the murder of KPI members.

This is where class-collaboration has led Aidit and his advisers in the international Stalinist movement. For over 10 years they laboured to support capitalism in Indonesia under the spurious political banner of 'national democracy'-the brainchild of the Soviet leaders.

At the same time they gave full support to so-called policies of 'non-aligned peaceful co-existence' of Sukarno, who tried to walk the diplomatic tight-rope between the workers' states and imperialism.

This policy, needless to say, disarmed the working class theoretically and disorientated the KPI politically. Sukarno by involving KPI leaders in his National Council compromised the KPI still further.

While everyone knew that the enerals were plotting to take the ›wer for some time, the KPI aders looked imploringly to OUTSIDE the gates of Turriff's building site in the City of London's Barbican re-development area, many of the 380 men sacked by the firm attended a meeting last Monday-the day of settlement (reported on page 4 of this week's Newsletter).

The men, from the West Indies, Asia and Ireland, had stood firm on the picket line for three weeks.

They have won their way back on to the site and must now take up a struggle for 100 per cent trade unionism.

Early in the strike, mounted police moved the pickets on after there had been scuffles with men employed after the sackings. Six of the strikers were fined f5 following this action.

The men were on strike for two weeks before the three unions involved, the Transport and General Workers' Union, Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers, and the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers, recognised the action. indifferent and the party remains hopelessly divided.

Now the uprising has been crushed and the white terror has begun.

World labour cannot stand aside while the butchers in Djakarta slaughter workers and peasants with impunity. We demand that all executions cease forthwith, all political prisoners be released, and attacks against the KPI and leftwing groups be stopped.

immigrațion policy in Britain has itself encouraged racialism. The new Tory line will be correspondingly strengthened as a result.

The denunciation of Smith as a 'traitor' (by the 'Daily Worker' among others), and calling for his arrest as an 'enemy of the Queen' is so much rubbish.

The examples of Carson in Ulster in 1913 shows that the state will never act against opposition from the right.

Socialists must expose Wilson's compromise plans. " We must support every move towards the building of the workers' movement in Africa, which is needed if imperialism is to be defeated.

Sukarno to do something.

Exasperated by the opportunism and collaborationism of the official leaders, the young communists, together with junior officers from the army, tried at the last moment to turn the course of events by a premature and ill-prepared uprising.

No mobilisation of the working class was undertaken nor was the peasantry drawn into the struggle. The trade unions have remained

president of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, has described the vote by his union delegation against legislation on the trade unions as 'disloyal'. Sir William was prohibited from attending the Labour Party Conference because of a recent operation.

At the opening ceremony for new offices of the union in Leeds, he declared:

In case there should be any doubt, let me make it quite clear that the AEU is in full agreement with all that the TUC General Council has done and that we will fully co-operate in the implementation of policies worked out in consultation between the TUC and the government?

Power is slipping

He further stressed that since his union was fully committed to supporting the government this meant that those who represented it at the Labour Party Conference should have voted for legislation.

By Newsletter Sir William is one of that small band of powerful right-wing leaders who can see power slipping from their hands in the days that lie ahead.

So far as they are concerned, government legislation, curbing the rights of their members, is absolutely necessary if they are to cling on to this power for a little while longer.

Anti-Communist scare During the period of inflationary boom, when their members enjoyed relatively full employment, they whooped up the anti-Communist scare to hold their offices.

Now, more and more trade unionists are beginning to see through this sham, so the right wing feel that it needs fresh assistance in order to carry on.

It will be recalled that at the National Committee of Carron's union, which met last April, the Communist Party delegates voted for the resolution of 100 per cent support for the Labour government, which he now claims gives him full right to cast the votes of the union for legislation.

Refused delegation

At the same National Committee the Communist Party delegates also joined hands with Carron and the right wing in refusing to meet representatives from the apprentices' movment who had travelled to the Committee to exercise their right to put pressure on their elected representatives.

This cowardly capitulation paved the way for Carron. It was the same as the retreat over Ford's victimisation of shop stewards. The more the Communist Party retreat, the stronger become the right wing.

The militant rank and file must draw their own conclusions-the time has come to learn the bitter lessons from the betrayals inside this union.

Carron will never be defeated by those who retreat before him. Now is the time to start the ball rolling by taking steps to launch a real campaign inside the factories and the AEU against legislation against the unions.

Statement by the Central Committee of the Socialist Labour League ge HE United States of America is not only the main centre of the power of October International Committee's draft resolution for the 1966 international conference. What is now necessary is the working out of a revolutionary perspective for the struggle of the American

Vol. 9, No. 415 B/0S' FILE Price 6d. THIS WEEK Trotskyism in the United States - a statement (see page 2)

By JOHN CRAWFORD BEHIND all the talk of • 'sanctions' against the Rhodesian white minority in the event of a breakaway, Wilson is preparing a compromise.

Whatever formula may be found to make it look as if the three and a half million Africans have agreed, the tiny white minority will be left in control.

There is no need for lan Smith to declare independence immediately. He can take his time to build up support among the imperialist powers.

Despite the vote at the United Nations on Tuesday, there could easily be a deal made between the Rhodesian settlers and the U.S. government.

STRENGTHENED

Meanwhile, the reemergence of Lord Salisbury and the shift to the right in the Tory policy last week, shows how Smith's position can be strengthened as time goes on.

It also marks the change taking place in the relationship between imperialism and the colonial nationalist movements.

Salisbury, in his 'Daily Express' article on Tuesday, repeated his opposition to the MacMillan policy of reliance on agreements with African nationalism. This was expressed in the famous 'wind of change speech in February 1960.

The crisis of world imperialism in 1965 has exposed the weakness of bourgeois national ism throughout Asia, Africa and South America. *Nyerere's statement that it is infigitels preferable to have a pte al olution than to have the peoples of Rhodesia suffer the horrors of war, shows how far such politicians are from leading a struggle against imperialism.

CRITICISM

He severely criticised the speech of the Rhodesian nationalist leader, Chikerama, who threatened an all-out fight against white domination.

How can Wilson fight the Rhodesian racialists? His

The Kennedy assassination should have sharpened the class perspectives of all Marxist revolutionaries.

The SWP response was to send condolences to the President's widow. Angeles, the riots in Chicago, the self-arming of Negro workers throughout the United States, is the incompatibility of American capitalist social relations with the new productive forces. The impact of the Vietnam war, which U.S. business finds so necessary to maintain a high level of government spending, as well as to assert leading international role on behalf of capitalism, is thrusting hundreds of thousands of young American workers and students into struggle against the system, a struggle which they will very soon learn in experience is the same as that of the Negroes.

All the struggles of the colonial peoples, in which the blood of millions has been shed since the Second World War, and the struggles of the workers in Russia and Eastern Europe against the bureaucracy, which came to a head in 1956, and are now surging forward once more, has as a precondition of success the coming forward of a revolutionary leadership for the workers thrown into struggle in the advanced capitalist countries. This has always been the standpoint of Trotskyism: it is possible, as in Russia, for the workers and peasants of a backward country to overthrow the native capitalist state, but for the victory of socialism in these countries the struggle must go forward to success in the main centres of advanced capitalism.

For this reason, Trotsky paid particular attention to the class struggle in the United States, and not at all only because his years of exile ended near the borders of that country. Trotsky was in essence the real founder of the Socialist Workers' Party of the USA.

But there will be no successful building of a

October

expanding scale.

TOHNSON VIETNAM ATI AM world capitalism. It is also the most vital sector of the world proletarian revolution for the overthrow of the capitalist system. For this reason, no international revolutionary movement is worthy of the name if it does not accept the responsibility of seeking every possible path to assist in the building of a revolutionary party in the very citadel of world imperialism.

The reconstruction of the Fourth International cannot be successful without an advance on these lines inside the United States. It is in the context of the preparation of the international conference of the International Committee of the Fourth International that this step forward can be consciously prepared.

Those who go on impressions and moods, the professional opportunists and centrists, can always be relied upon to leave out of their political calculations one overwhelming factor in the world situation: the American working class.

Blinded by the mighty wealth of American capital, its military power and its ability to corrupt politicians on an international scale, these reformists see the American workers as an inert and passive mass, victims of all the illusions of the American way of life, including anti-Communism and racialism. They mistake the appearance, where everything is dominated by bourgeois ideology, relayed to the working class by its treacherous leaders as well as by the capitalist institutions themselves, for the fundamental process of production and class struggle.

The American worker is inevitably driven to the sharpest class struggle. At the point of production, he experiences the consequences of unprecedented changes in the forces of production. Capitalism has been able to introduce automation on only a very small scale, but already, in conditions of high boom, this limited application has brought back the phenomenon of the capitalist 'reserve army of unemployed' on a new and This introduction of automation into an unplanned economy is producing the most violent social struggles, especially as it coincides with the historical legacy of one of the main preconditions of American capitalist wealth, the super-exploited Negro population, America's 'internal colony'.

The actual content of the insurrection in Los revolutionary party in the USA unless it is based upon a full appreciation of the consequences of the revisionism and capitulation to the class enemy of the party founded by Trotsky. The SWP has, in recent years though the roots of the process are much farther back!) abandoned the internationalist positions of Trotskyism. Internationalist politics in our epoch are the politics of the working class. All other classes have particular stakes in the 'national interest' and are unable to carry out a consistent internationalist line. Insofar as the working class has become affected by this national opportunism, it has been the result of the creation of a specially privileged minority of the class on the basis of colonial super-profits. The revisionists, those who abandon the construction of the revolutionary party of the working class, are representatives of these alien class influences.

The SWP has arrived at a position where its political line is determined, not by the class struggle and the need of the working class for a strategy, but by estimations of the mor rements of as the workers are considered at all, it middle-class national political trends is as some Insofar The impact of the Vietnam war is thrusting hundreds of thousand of young American people into struggle against the system, a struggle which they will very soon learn in experience is the same as that of the Negroes.

Pictured is one of the many demonstrations.

sort of 'pressure group' to give weight to one or other of these surface tendencies in the 'radical milieu' inhabited by middle-class reformers.

When Kennedy was assassinated, there is not the slightest doubt that here was an event absolutely indicative of the Watts rebellion in Los Angeles. It should have sharpened the class perspectives of all Marxist revolutionaries. What was the response of the SWP? Its General Secretary, Farrell Dobbs, sent a telegram to the widow of this millionaire President, expressing the condolences of the Party!

At that time there was drawing to a close another phase of SWP activity which in its own way proved just as fatally the degeneration of the SWP. The members of the Party had their attention turned almost exclusively not to the explosive changes in American society, which were given peculiar expression in the Kennedy assassination, but to the revolution in Cuba.

Solidarity with the revolutionary people of Cuba was certainly an outstanding task of revolutionaries in the United States, but the SWP leadership made sympathy for the Cuban revolution the be-all and end-all of party activity. The 'Fair Play for Cuba Committees' in: which they enthusiastically participated fell around their ears once the heat was turned on by the: U.S. government. As always, peace movements: not based on the preparation for working-class power capitulated to the enemy once the first shot was fired.

Earlier the SWP had failed objectively in its attempt to 'regroup' the left after the crisis of Stalinism in 1956. Here again there was an attempt at compromise, an attempt to trim principles in order to attract those moving away from Stalinism. Thus it was in this period that: Hansen and others first publicly made concessions. to the idea that the Stalinist bureaucracy might reform out of existence the negative features of. Soviet society.

Eventually, in 1963, the SWP leaders acknowledged the source of the degeneration of their 1. See the International, Fourth 1965. politics by supporting the so-called reunification with the Pabloite United Secretariat of the Fourth International', from which they had broken in 1953, on the grounds of its capitulation to Stalinism. This 'reunification' was made the excuse for suppression of principled discussion of the previous split. Those who demanded discussion on this, and later on the consequences of it in the Ceylon betrayal of N.M. Perera, were summarily expelled from the Party.

The recent Convention of the SWP confirmed all these developments, virtually liquidating the political line of the Party in the 'broad' anti-war movement. The Party's newspaper reports the Convention's call on this question without a trace of analysis of the specific line and struggle of the revolutionary party, to build the movement which will take power from the capitalists as the only answer to war. Outside of this, 'internationalism' is only a series of pious references to the identity of the struggle all over the world, which is exactly what Joseph Hansen provided.

It was fitting that alongside these political conclusions went the refusal of any right of appeal to the revolutionary minorities expelled from the SWP since its last Convention. By a small majority, these rights, never revoked in the history of the Trotskyist movement, were refused to those ex-members at present working in two groups, the American Committee for the Fourth International and the 'Spartacist' group.

The above account should make it perfectly clear that the sources of the present position of the SWP are political and international. Not only have the steps in degeneration been intimately linked with the struggles against revisionism inside the international Trotskyist movement; the political ideas at the base of the degeneration are part of an international tendency in the movement, the tendency of Pabloite revisionism and liquidationism.

If this is clearly understood, then the preconditions for a struggle to build a genuine Trotskyist party can quickly be grasped. From this point of view, the personal evolution of this or that individual in the SWP leadership, the special combinations and cliques in the leadership, etc., are seen to be purely incidental to the main point.

The recent Convention of the SWP must be analysed from this internationalist viewpoint, otherwise there will be nothing but disorientation and confusion, and no possibility of potentially revolutionary elements in the SWP being attracted to the politics of the International Committee.

This raises the question of the responsibility of revolutionary Marxists in the United States. Not only the American Committee for the Fourth International, but also the 'Spartacist' group, has expressed agreement with the main lines of the • DEVLIN nationalization. This is the most costly way to run a nationalized industry and results in nothing more than behind-the-scenes' conspiracies to utilise the industry concerned in the interests of private capital instead of in the interests of the majority of the people. It simply amounts to rule by the capitalists under the 'old pals act. The Socialist Labour League demands workers' control on the docks. from Every day of their lives portworkers work together in page the holds of great cargo vessels. By their skill and understanding they save each other's one lives. They know the docks and they know ships. Who are better qualified to run their industry?

Vital workers

They are a vital part of the working class aand they know and realise the needs of other workers. They know what short-time working is like and they have seen their families suffer on the dole. They know the employers and their agents, and they know how to run the ports. These are the main reasons why we favour workers' control on the docks.

Our answer to Devlin is nationalization, without compensation, except in needy cases, under workers' control.

Devlin's reply to the policy of the Socialist Labour League consists of a series of red herrings. He sets out in his report to prove that there was some kind of conspiracy behind the growth of the National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers ('Blue Union') in the northern ports during 1954 and 1955.

There was nothing of sort.

Long years of rule by Arthur Deakin of the Transport and General Workers' Union had convinced portworkers that this union could not be changed without a great struggle involving all of the workers employed in the industry.

The working class.

With such a perspective, American Trotskyists will be able to carry forward the work of Trotsky in developing Marxism in an everyday connection with the living movement. Only in this way can a successful battle be waged against the pragmatism which permeates every aspect of American philosophy and politics. On this basis, as the International Committee has rightly insisted, unification of all those who accept our international perspectives is essential.

The bedrock of this unity must be, we insist once more, the recognition of the international roots of the SWP's political degeneration. It is in no way a question of counting heads, but of insisting on Trotskyist principles as our starting-point. Only in this way will American Marxists uphold the traditions of the revolutionary movement.

With this as starting base, a correct attitude to the current crisis in the Socialist Workers' Party is necessary and can be worked out. It is dangerous in the extreme to ignore the potential of the youth recruited in the recent period to the SWP. They are not simply errand boys and voting fodder for the Dobbs-Kerry leadership.

What is happening is something more profound, and if this is not grasped, or is obscured by one-sided commentaries which concentrate on the line-up of internal party groups, then American Trotskyists will be hopelessly left behind by events.

In the ironical sense which history so often gives to such processes, it is inevitable that the most profound degeneration of the SWP coincides with the most agitated ferment among American youth. This ferment will develop at a very rapid rate, and will bring to a head very quickly the contradiction between the degeneration of the SWP and the objective needs of the American working class. The latter contradiction is only the manifestation of the sharpened international crisis of centrism and revisionism, a face of the working-class offensive.

The first responsibility of those in the United States who adhere to the positions of the International Committee will be to ensure the political The SWP expelled all who demander discussion on the 1963 'reunification', and later, the consequences of the Ceylon betrayal of N. M. Perera (left).

clarification of these young workers and students who have joined the SWP. Without tackling this necessary political task, it will not be possible to fully prepare for the tasks in the trade unions and the Negro movement.

Here again, this clarification will require a correct international starting point. It will not be possible for them to understand and change the situation in the SWP without this internationalist perspective.

These remarks on the SWP illustrate a general truth which must be burned into the consciousness of every American Marxist: nothing will be solved in the USA without a recognition of the international source of the internal political problems of the USA and of the Trotskyist movement in that country. We are confident that Marxists in America will be able to unite their forces in the common struggle with us to rebuild the international revolutionary movement.

Central Committee of the Socialist Labour League 9/10/65. established trade union on the docks. By exercising their right to join the union of their choice the dockers did no more than stand by the democratic traditions of their industry.

They did not form a 'new union'. " They joined a union that had been established on the docks long before the T&GWU.

Solidarity By joining the NAS&D they were in fact waging a struggle for the democratisation of the T&GWU because they were revealing to everybody the impossibility of trade union democracy within this union. During all this time the utmost solidarity existed between members of the T&GWU and the NAS&D.

The Communist Party at the time (1954) led by Vic Marney, the late Ted Dickens and Jack Dash, opposed, along with Arthur Deakin and Tiffin, who replaced him as general secretary, recruitment into the

IN The Newsletter of October 2, three of my reports from the Labour Party Conference were printed on the back page.

It has been brought to my attention that some people in the Labour Party, who regard themselves as left-wingers, consider my reports to be distorted.

They imply further that the distortion was deliberate, in order to support The Newsletter's criticisms of the weakness of the 'left' in the Labour Party.

It is said that Mr. Peter Price, a delegate from Nottingham to the conference, was the victim of my misreporting, and that the members of his constituency were also brought in without justification.

First of all, what did my Newsletter report actually say? Reporting Tuesday's proceedings, I wrote:

"In the debate on the government's record Peter Price (Nottingham) thought fit to congratulate Wyatt for his "courage", thus rightly raising in everyone's mind just how much "courage" and resolution lay behind Price's constituency's motion against the war in Vietnam.' Reporting the debate on Vietnam on Wednesday, I wrote:

'Wilson . • • ignored the question from a Nottingham delegate: "If you and Stewart were in Vietnam, would you be on the side of the Vietnamese people, or of a South Vietnamese prime minister who is a great admirer of Adolf Hitler?" › Our critics complain that the first report is distorted, and that reference to the 'Daily Telegraph' will show that Price was actually only contrasting Wyatt's courage with the need for courage on the left of the Party.

It is also suggested that we deliberately omitted Price's name from the second report in order that it should not weaken our previous criticism of him.

If our first report implies that the Constituency Party was anything but sincere in sending in its resolution, then we repudiate any such suggestion. The point being made was that the left' was too irresolute and lacking in leadership to inspire any determined following from the union and constituency delegates at the conference.

Thus the sentence before our first report is: 'in point of fact, Gunter, Wyatt, Wilson, and the right wing intimidated the "left"?

Price's unsolicited compliment to Wyatt illustrated this.

Had it been our intention to obscure the fact that Price was Wilson's questioner, why should we have referred in both passages to the fact that the Nottingham Constituency was opposing Wilson on Vietnam?

However, it will perhaps be best to quote the "Telegraph' report so beloved of our crities.

'Mr. Peter Price, of Nottingham South, said he had been an opponent of Mr.

Wyatt, but he had to pay tribute to his courage in putting forward his views.

"Courage is courage, whether it is shown on the right or the left. I would like it to be shown much more on the left and particularly on the left of this platform.' If this makes the defenders of Price any happier, I wish them the best of luck.

But, before they go on their way, I hope they will read the following report of the same speech, which appeared on the same day in "The Guardian":

Mr. Peter Price (Nottingham South) said recently his constituency party had sent a message to the Coalville miners supporting their attempt to get Mr. Wyatt out. But in view of the courage with which he had stated his rightwing views, and in view of thi way in which the people above him (on the platform)

had departed from Socialist principles, he was now glad that they did not get him out.

Courage was needed on both the left and the right of the Party?

I consider that The Newsletter took from this bewildering speech its main characteristic: its confusion and its expression of a 'left wing' tailing along behind a stridently confident ('courageous?) right.

Mr. Price must thank his friends if his unfortunate remarks have had to be put in print again. Cliff Slaughter

OF all the reviews which the re-issue of Trotsky's 'History of the Russian Revolution' has elicited, one calls for special attention. | It appeared in the 'Daily Worker' (September 24) and it was by R. Palme Dutt.

The fact that the 'Daily Worker' is forced to refer to the book at all is a sign of the times. Even more significant is that so great has been the volume of correspondence criticising Dutt's article the 'Daily Worker' has had to publish some of it.

To read this ageing apostle of Stalinism is indeed repulsive. No longer able to put out the poisonous slander of former times in its open form, Dutt is forced to find new and more subtle methods to attack Marxism.

His so-called review has one main purpose: to prevent readers of the 'Daily Worker' from studying Trotsky's book. our policy NAS&D. They maintained that it is not necessary to combine the class struggle with the lemocratisation of the T&GWU. They built up an artificial barrier between the members of the T&GWU and the 'Blue Union', NAS&D.

The Communist Party did everything it possibly could to weaken the struggle of the NAS&D for recognition in the ports. When 10,000 members in the northern ports joined the NAS&D in 1954-55 and forthwith opened up a struggle for recognition, the Stalinists opposed and sabotaged this struggle.

After the seven-week dock strike in favour of recognition by 30,000 T&GWU and NAS&D members combined, Ted Dickens, the Stalinist forerunner of Jack Dash, and supported by Dash, voted for the expulsion of these 10,000 members from the NAS&D under TUC instructions.

They were expelled with Stalinist support and this is what started non-unionism on the docks. The TUC, Jack To this end, he hints that it is not 'trustworthy'.

Of course, he is unable to specify a single inaccuracy. Instead, he treats us to a series of lies and distortions about Trotsky's political record.

Trotsky is alleged to have conducted a 'venomous vendetta against the Soviet government, the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party and the Communist International'.

And this from a man who justified and covered up for every one of Stalin's crimes against Communism.

Lunatic theory

While Trotsky was writing the 'History of the Russian Revolution', Dutt, installed by Stalin's machine, was forcing the British Communist Party to accept the lunatic theory of 'social-fascism'. He carried out his work so successfully, that by the time of MacDonald's betrayal in 1931, the Party almost vanished. Meanwhile, his German co-thinkers had so misled the working class as to open the way for the victory of Hitler.

At the time of the Moscow Trials in 1936-38, when thousands of communists were Dash and the Stalinists are the people responsible for nonunionism on the docks today, because they refused to allow dockers to join the union of their choice.

The legal action by Spring of Liverpool early in 1956 reinstated these 10,000 members, but it did not clear up the nonunionism, which was now created on the docks.

Ted Dickens joined forces with the right wing against the northern dockers. The result was that non-unionism continued and the northern men were forced to retreat, even though they had won their case in court.

Responsibility

If there is non-unionism in the northern ports today, Jack Dash must take his share of the responsibility.

The NAS&D stevedores under Barrett's leadership must also share this responsibility because they have constantly obstructed the recruitment of non-union dockers into the NAS&D.

slaughtered by Stalin's thugs, Dutt and his friends were most active participants in the international slander machine. Trotsky and his followers were smeared as 'fascist agents' and 'counter-revolutionaries'.

Everyone knows now that the Trials were frame-ups and the 'confessions' rigged.

So Dutt has to slide round this episode in the history of Stalinism, leaving as slimy a trail of slander as he dare. 'The Soviet government dealt with this Trotskyist conspiracy, he says.

'In the subsequent Trials, because of the security organs, the innocent suffered as well as the guilty. It is for Soviet historians to give an objective account of the whole period?

No account Dutt knows better than anyone that Soviet historians are as unlikely 'to give an objective account' of the Trials as the Communist Party in Britain is to write its own history.

Dutt also reverts to earlier forms of 'anti-Trotskyism'. • He makes. the most of Trotsky's disagreements with Lenin in the pre-1917 period, although, naturally he confines himself This is our reply to Devlin: T&GWU dockers joined the 'Blue Union' in 1954-55 because it was the union of their choice. There was no conspiracy by the Socialist Labour League.

The dockers were accepted into the NAS&D by a majority vote of its membership. We had no say in this matter. The decision was made by the dockers themselves democratically. We supported them because we felt they were right to take such a step.

Today, we fully support the right of the NAS&D to recruit in the northern ports. Dick Barrett is wrong to accept Devlin on greater monopoly on the docao si "Harrett should fight for his ..umibers instead of gallivanting with the T&GWU leaders.

Our policies are open and above board. We repeat them again for all to see. • Nationalization of the docks under workers' control. the The The right of portworkers to join the union of their choice.

after

IS FREED

MARIANO PASCUAL, one of three Spanish trade unionists jailed in 1964 for "illegal association' with organisations attempting to obtain free trade unions, has been released.

Along with Jose Cases and Francisco Calle, he was arrested in February 1964. Later they were jailed for six, five and three years respectively and ordered to pay heavy fines. THE trial of four Spanish workers arrested in Barcelona following the Workers' Trade Union Alliance May Day demonstrations has been postponed. It was originally set for October 6 and 7 in the Tribunal of Public Order in Madrid.

There have been furthe arrests in Barcelona in connection with the same case.

They are: Cipriano Damiano, who is accused of being a member of the Workers' Trade Union Alliance (ASO) and secretary of the National Committee of the National Confederation of Labour in Spain (CNT), and Salvador Domenech and Juan Valdenebro; both accused of being ASO and CNT organisers.

The authorities were asking for 18 years jail for Damiano and four each for Domenech and Valdenebro, who will stand trial with Jose Pujol, Ignacio Elhombre, Antonio Martinez and Ignacio Carrajal for allegedly organising the militant May Day demonstrations.

Damiano has since escaped from the police and is still free.

Many letters in the 'Daily Worker' followed his review of Trotsky's 'History of the Russian Revolution'.

to quoting the most abrasive exchanges, and avoids analysing the subjects in dispute.

He tells his readers that Trotsky's fight against the theory of 'socialism in a single country' was 'defeatist'.

And he pretends that Trotsky and his supporters were 'defeated overwhelmingly in the Party, after a discussion and a vote in every branch'. (This particular lie is repeated by Olive Arnot in a letter in the 'Daily Worker of October 11.)

In fact, no real discussion was allowed. Gangs of hooligans were sent round by Stalin to howl down the Opposition speakers.

Hounded

When Trotsky spoke to the meeting which expelled him from the Party, not one word of his speech was heard. His supporters were hounded from their jobs and finally imprisoned or exiled.

And yet, in 1965, it is Trotsky's book which is reprinted. His ideas and his revolutionary stand inspire a new generation of workers, while Stalin's name is reviled.

Dutt grumbles that Trotsky treats the Bolshevik leaders (with the exception of Lenin) 'with contemptuous disdain and hostility'. Dutt is so used to worshipping the bureaucratic idealisation of history, that Trotsky's presentation of a living process, with all its contradictions and imperfections seems like blasphemy.

But, as Trotsky says in the Introduction to Volume II and III:

'Certain of the friends of the Soviet Union-a phrase which often means friends of the present Soviet powers and that only so long as they remain powers—have " reproached the author for his critical attitude to the Bolshevik party or its individual leaders. Nobody, however, has made the attempt to refute or correct the

100 per cent site Pag Four Turriff's returned October 16,19

"HE most interesting I thing about the Washington meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank was that nothing new happened, despite the widespread interest which had been aroused.

The 2,800 finance ministers, bankers, economic experts and journalists were soon engulied in boredom alter speeches from the representatives of the big countries. It then became evident that the United States government had decided to seek a pause in its controversy with de Gaulle's government and to avoid a discussion of the underlying problems of the world monetary system.

That system rests on the agreements made at Bretton Woods in 1943 which conformed with the interest of the United States at that time, while recognising the special position of the pound sterling in international finance.

The main problem was to give some stability to the world monetary system by finding a picture given of the condition of the party during the events. For the information of these "friends" who consider themselves called to defend against us the role of the Bolsheviks in the October revolution, we give warning that our book teaches not how to love a victorious revolution after the event in the person of the bureaucracy it has brought forward, but only how a revolution is prepared, how it develops, and how it conquers.

party is not for us a machine whose sinlessness is to be defended by state measures of repression, but a complicated organism which like all living things develops in contradictions. The uncovering of these contradictions-among them the waverings and mistakes of the general staff —does not in our view weaken in the slightest degree the significance of that gigantic historic task which the Bolshevik party was the first in history to take upon its shoulders.' Bureaucracies' crisis Dutt and his friends continue their battle to stop the rebuilding of an international movement to take up that task. But the crisis faced by bureaucracies throughout the worlda reflection of the crisis of capitalism-makes it harder for the Stalinists every day.

The real meaning of the October revolution and the struggle against its betrayers becomes clear to numbers of young people who turn towards the Socialist Labour League today.

As Dutt and the other Communist Party leaders turn what was once a communist party into an opportunist sect, they find it impossible to prevent Trotsky's analysis of the victory of the working class under Bolshevik leadership from aiding the Fourth International in preparing for the world October.

Tom Kemp reports on the recent meeting substitute for the old gold standard which had broken down in the course of 30 years of war and crisis.

In particular, if capitalism was to survive, the competitive depreciation of currencies which had brought monetary chaos in the 1930s had to be checked.

During those years governments caught in the slump had sought to open up a market for their exporters by reducing the exchange value of their currencies, or even by running several different exchange values according to the transaction involved.

The International Monetary Fund was intended to prevent resort to such devices by fixing the values of the different national currencies and by setting limits to the extent to which governments could change them.

At the same time, it was recognised that the world economy was in a state of chronic disequilibrium. The power of the USA contrasted with the penury which reigned elsewhere.

Weak currencies

Most currencies, apart from the dollar, were weak because most countries needed goods which could be obtained only from dollar sources and had little to offer in return.

A major part of the world's monetary stock of gold had found its way to Fort Knox. The whole world trading system threatened to seize up through lack of lubricants. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, together with American loans and the Marshall Plan, dealt with some of these problems in the post-war world and helped make possible a particularly rapid restoration of world trade levels.

The currency system set up under the International Monetary Fund is known as the gold exchange standard. Under it all currencies are linked together through the dollar and gold.

The U.S. Treasury stands to exchange gold for dollars at the fixed rate of $35 per ounce. The dollar thus stands in much the same relation to this standard as the pound did to the classic pre-1914 gold standard which turned on the City of London.

Important position

Despite the great weakening of British capitalism since that period the pound had conserved an important position in international trade and finance.

After 1945 it could not have been dispensed with without bringing monetary chaos, since many central banks held sterling as their reserves, and sterling balances had been accumulated by countries which had supplied Britain during the war.

This, together with the unrivalled experience and connections of the City, left the U.S. government with but little choice. Greatly weakened in relation to the dollar the pound, nevertheless, was accepted as one of the 'key currencies'. , which remain to this day.

At the same time' the continued decline of British capitalism, expressed in repeated balance of payments crises, holds a big question over the role of the pound and thus over international bility.

Until the mid-1950s it seemed that the dollar at least was impregnable. Since then, however, the picture has changed. Repeated balance of payments deficits have drawn down the gold holdings of the U.S. and have thus led to doubts about the gold value of the dollar itself.

More dollars have been pouring into the circuit of exchange, enabling U.S. business to establish a dominant position throughout the capitalist world, while the dollar, as a currency unit, has weakened, especially in relation to the currencies of Western Europe.

Gold value

It is clear that the gold exchange standard can be no stronger than the currencies that compose it and that a weakening of one throws an increased burden upon the other, leaving gold as the only sure store of value for central banks which can afford to procure it.

Meanwhile, the volume of world trade has continued to increase, partly through the expansion of economies like the German, French and Japanese, partly through the continued outflow of dollars and pounds.

Many countries have had to draw on their reserves and borrow from the richer countries or from international institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to prevent economic collapse and revolution.

Means for continuing this process are, however, limited by the rules of these institutions, as well as by the attempts to limit the outflow of dollars from the U.S., and to bring the British balance of payments into equilibrium.

This supply of gold is limited, it is unequally distributed and tends to pile up in the richer countries with export surpluses.

So, as it has been put, in the course of the marble game some players run out of marbles. If there is not a fresh share-out they will have to withdraw from the game. This is what is facing many of the countries represented at the Washington meeting.

They hoped to hear about propositions for a new share-out or some means of getting more marbles to play with. They went home empty-handed. What has happened is that the whole question of the future shape of the world monetary system has been handed over for the consideration of the big powers grouped in what is known as the Group of Ten.

U.S. favoured pause The U.S. appears to have favoured this pause hoping in the meantime to bring its own balance of payments problem under control and winning allies to deal with French criticisms of the dollar. The latter have attraction for countries which have to watch their industry passing under U.S. control, or fear inflation, and thus are suspicious of plans to create new forms of 'liquidity' But the French line makes little appeal to those countries which, without new credit facilities, face economic collapse.

Perhaps the U.S. administration hopes to be able to hatch a new plan in the Group of Ten which, while safeguarding the dollar, will rally support from these quarters, i.e., the national bourgeoisie of the less developed countries in particular. It may also be hoping that growing internal problems will force a shift in the French line by next spring; it is known that substantial sections of French business are opposed to de Gaulle's back-to-gold tendencies.

In the meantime hard bargaining can be expected inside the Group of Ten.

SHIFTS

BUs creva at the Iboo lad Langside depots of Glasgow Corporation Transport Department have banned working after 8 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

The immediate cause of the ban is the number of assaults and disturbances on corporation buses. Last year there were 67 injuries to bus crews from assaults.

But behind the seemingly unhappy relations between bus workers and some sections of the transport users lie other factors.

On many routes services are difficult to run due to lack of staff. A few weeks ago one bus depot threatened strike action in protest against the lack of relief crews to man the buses.

OFF THE ROAD

The general manager of Glasgow City Transport Department has stated that on some Saturdays as many as 400 buses out of 1,200 are off the road due to lack of staff.

In addition, bus crews report long hours of overtime due to the fact that there is no one to relieve them at the end of the shift.

In a situation, where queues get longer and longer as people wait for a bus which is full when it arrives, and bus crews are tired from long and irregular hours of duty-frustration mounts and tempers become frayed-arguments and violence result.

The majority of bus workers are completely opposed to exSchedules strike 100 per cent solid THE second one-day protest 'strike at Hanwell London Transport Garage staged last Saturday • against the new schedules, was again 100 per cent strong.

A meeting was to be held on Thursday this week to discuss future action.

Leatherhead garage also staged a one-day strike on Saturday against the schedules.

cessive overtime, but many are forced to work some overtime to make ends meet.

Glasgow bus workers should receive the full support of all other sections of workers in a fight to improve the onerous conditions under which they work.

While the ban on Friday and Saturday night services may cause some inconvenience and appear to be over an issue likely to increase the conflict between bus workers and passengers, it has far deeper implications for both bus workers and workers who travel by bus.

What the bus crews want above all is 40-hour week with rates of pay sufficient to maintain their families in decent conditions and rostered free week-ends so that they can enjoy their leisure time. to work on Thursday. Three weeks ear had been sacked for striking against the ment of non - union labour.

At a time when the Labour government is proposing to legislate against the trade unions this is a significant step forward for the rank and file, but it must be carried concretely to its logical conclusion of 100 per cent unionism on this and other sites.

The settlement to the strike was announced on Monday after talks between the employers and the National Federation of Building Trades Operatives.

The men had been on strike for at least two weeks before their unions, the Transport and General Workers' Union, Amalgamated Society of Woodworkers, and the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers recognised their struggle.

The settlement allows all the men employed on September 21 to return, and for all those new workers who are taken on (to replace those who found other jobs after the sacking) to become union members.

A document drawn up by Turriff's, which was signed by many taken on after the 380 were sacked, was withdrawn at the talks. This document ensured that men would not take part in any unofficial action, go-siow or work-to-rule.

Stood firm

West Indian, Asian and Irish workers have stood firm on the picket lines during this strike, despite "scuffles with the police and non-union labour taken on by Turriff's, and attacks from the press.

Many of them have been insisting throughout the dispute: 'We want a 100 per cent site.' One worker told our reporter on Monday that the site was about 95 per cent unionised. 'But we need the other 5 per cent if we are going to go back stronger,' he added.

At the same time leaders' of the strike, supporters of the Communist Party, were waving this question aside.

At a meeting on Monday evening, the day the dispute was settled, these 'leaders' refused to answer the question about 100 per cent unionism at least five times.

luestioner was told: Leave that till we get back,' and the meeting was abruptly brought to a close.

The best way to continue this fight is by ensuring that every builder becomes a member of his union to fight against all building employers for better wages and conditions, by demanding the nationalization of the industry under workers' control, and against all those who attempt to weaken this struggle.

Flier they employBRISTOL

REGULAR

Transport users want regular and frequent services and an end to the ever-growing increases in fares.

This means fighting against the Tory and right-wing Labour measures to restrict spending on essential public services.

It means local authorities must be relieved of the burden of heavy interest payments on loans secured to buy public transport vehicles.

The provisions of cheap oil for transport and the abolition of profits made by the motor vehicle industry in supplying buses to local authorities must be made.

This can only be achieved by fighting for policies of nationalization of the oil and motor industries, of the finance corporations and all public transport. It means the planned organisation and running of transport by elected committees of transport workers. THE Paisley District Committee of the Amalgamated Engineering Union is to investigate the action of the management of Rootes, Linwood, in moving the secretary of the works committee to another part of the factory.

He is now no longer able to function as a shop steward.

At the Linwood factory many shop stewards are demanding that the management's action be contested.

They point out that removal of the works committee secre-. tary means that the management could be free to victimise any militant who opposes the kind of trade union and management collaboration which Rootes are advocating.

Hugh Hunter, the ex-secretary, is member of the AEU and was a shop steward for three years Linwood. «Appointed four months ago as works committee secretary by unanimous vote, he immediately became involved in negotiations for the introduction by. Rootes of an Emerson-type bonus scheme, which already operates in the Pressed Steel factory across the road.

COMMITTEES

Included in the management's proposals, is the setting up of productivity committees and the payment of bonus on the basis of saving in labour costs.

In an attempt to organise a protest within the factory some shop stewards and militants from Rootes and Pressed Steel factories attended a meeting called by the supporters of the 'Labour Worker' 10 days ago.

The speaker was Tony Cliff who proceeded to try to head off any attempt to fight against the rightwing rade union leaders.

In Ford at Dagenham last year, Cliff said, it was not a question of the car workers being sold out, it was the car workers themselves, they were just not nrganised.

It was, he said, no good attacking the leaders since it was not they but workers who came out with the racialist slogans at Smethwick (a car workers' town).

Cliff, of course, only created confusion by not in fact explaining that it was a Labour government which opened the door to the racialists.

From this committee there has been no official statement about Hugh Hunter's position and attempts to get the convenor to call a meeting to discuss the case have failed.

Tony Cliff is worth mentioning only because he succeeded in temporarily confusing militant car workers and heading off a fight with the right-wing trade union officials. His message was that it is useless to build a leadership to fight the Harold Wilsons and John Boyds (of the AEU) so that the employers can be defeated.

Car workers should learn the lesson of the operations of people of this type, whose supporters were in the Young Socialists for four years and played the role of agents for the right wing.

LEARN A LOT

When the Young Socialists demanded a year ago that the Wilson leadership take over the government and operate a socialist policy and announced their determination to fight for such policies themselves, the supporters of the Labour Worker' in Glasgow aided the right-wing Labour Party officials to expel and hound the Young Socialist members.

The car workers at Linwood can learn a lot from the struggles of the Young Socialists against the employers, the right wing and their 'left' aides.

GLASGOW BUSMEN BAN By A NEWSLETTER REPORTER Removal of works committee secretary - leary gets the cold shoulder Newsletter Correspondent ANY ilusions national docks officer of the Transport and General Workers' Union, Tim O'Leary, may have had about getting the Bristol dockers to go back to work without a proper settlement were abruptly shattered at a meeting on Monday this week.

Both during the meeting and afterwards Bristol dockers angrily shouted at O'Leary that they wanted to stay out.

PERSUASION

Held in the Colston Hall, Bristol, the meeting lasted one hour and during that time O'Leary tried to persuade the dockers to go back to work the following morning, whilst the union promised to resume talks 24 hours afterwards on the timber rates.

O'Leary, however, was unable to promise to the meeting that the "Gloucester City' , the ship involved in the dispute, would be included in the talks because, he said, another agreement had already been reached concerning that particular ship.

It was after this statement that the men decided to remain out on strike.

•When asked if he had any objection to the Minister of Labour intervening in the dispute O'Leary said 'I have none' The line-up of forces is quite clear. The officials of the Transport and General Workers' Union are most eager to get the men back to work.

ANSWER

O'Leary himself said that he thought the vote in Colston Hall went in favour of a return to work. • Bristol dockers, however, have given a definite answer to O'Leary and the other officials of the Transport and General Workers' Union.

They must now call on support from other sections of dock workers such as those in the northern ports, who have already condemned the Devlin Report on modernisation of the docks as an attack on the docker, and called for the nationalization of the industry. rate offer Militant stand for negotiations Newsletter Reporter ON Eiday, October S, with the deir 12th day, union officials made their urging the strikers to return to work. The proposal to return to work on Monday, October was rejected by the strikers. Only a very small number did vote for the union officials' proposal.

One official told the dockers that negotiations over unloading of packaged timber (the cause of the present dispute) would begin as soon as a return to work took place.

But, he said, the strikers had to return on the basis of the interim piecework rate agreed by the Local Joint Council for cargo on the 'Gloucester City'.

The men have flatly rejected this interim rate for the ship. They claim that it is inadequate.

NEGOTIATIONS

Dockers are also insisting on immediate negotiations on the whole question of pay and manning scales for unloading timber.

Continuously, since the strike started, the press has directed a stream of insults and threats at the 1,500 strikers.

Adverts in the local paper have appeared denouncing the strikers. And statements have claimed that some dockers can earn as much as f4 a day.

What the papers do not report, however, is how often a docker is ever given a chance in a week to earn that much money a day.

Opposition has not come only from the employers and the press. The Transport and General Workers' Union representative is reported to have said the strike was 'putting the whip in the hands of our opponents to bring legislation against us. In fact our government might have to do it.' LEGISLATION The day before this statement was made, a report in the local papers said that proposed legislation to implement the suggestions of the Devlin Report is to be laid before Parliament next month.

This information was given Labour, not at a meeting of dockers, but to the annual conference of the Institute Personnel Management Harrogate.

It was also announced that Tim O'Leary," national docks officer of the Transport and General Workers' Union, was to address a meeting of dockers on Monday.

INDICATION

This is an indication of how seriously the employers are taking this dispute.

They obviously see it as a preliminary trial of strength to test the dockers at Bristol and Avonmouth for the coming struggles over the implementation of the Devlin Report.

The concessions which the employers are being asked to make are marginal, but what is at stake is not just the question of pay but the whole future of the dockers in the ports.

The port employers are anxious not to lose out to the Bristol dockers, who have shown a tremendous amount of strength in this struggle.

LONDON AIRPORT ANGRY car workers boycotted last friday might's mini-shift at the British Motor Corporation factories in Birmingham. At Longbridge and Tractor and Transmissions, plants were virtually deserted. This was their defiant rejection of the move by shop stewards at Longbridge to sacrifice the viotory, won in the mini-shift dispute, in return for the management's ending of shorttime working introduced in BMC factories last Monday week.

Workers are asking what lay behind this sudden announcement of short-time working for an unspecified number of weeks.

After one week of short-time working, the management announced that it was possible to end it if stewards would 'co-operate' by recommending that the mini-shift be worked.

Was it, in fact, a tactic used to reverse the Friday shift victory and induce the cooperation of shop stewards' committees?

BACKING

They already had the backing of union officials, who throughout the struggle had insisted that their members abide by the terms of the 'package deal' covering night-shift working.

There was no move from this official attitude until the revolt against Friday-nighty working was so widespread that the unions were forced to admit that they could no longer contain the situation.

National discussions on the question of Friday night shifts were due to take place this week. Are the engineering employers seeking to influence the outcome of these talks by suggesting that short-time working might be the consequence of cancelling the mini-shift?

'DONE A DEAL'

Intense resentment was felt by Longbridge workers, who believed that their shop stewards had 'done a deal' with the management and thrown away the fruits of their long struggle against Friday night working.

They may well ask what kind of leadership this is at a time when the employing class is stepping up its attempts to discipline the workers and force them to accept a lower living standards and tougher working conditions.

The working class are now feeling the results of. the cowardly capitulation of trade union and Labour Party leaderships before the capitalist class.

After such glaring evidence that official leaders of the labour movement intend to show no fight in defence of workers' interests, every employer in the country feels his position strengthened.

These attacks can be defeated by the militancy and solidarity of the working class. But first they must throw out the weak and treacherous leaderships who collaborate with the enemy class and sell out their own. STEELMEN STRIKE OVER

CHALLENGING the Trades Union Congress' early warning system, 21 Ministry of Aviation shop stewards at London Airport decided to ask for official union support for any strike action they may take over pay.

In opposing the government plan, whereby all wage claims are to be reported under the 'early warning system' before talks begin between management and the workers, the stewards have put in a claim for parity for Ministry of Aviation workers.

.W, Our Newsletter Correspondent This claim is made after a pay agreement covering BOAC and BEA workers was ratified on September 14.

The men claim that the parity agreement, which was drawn up in 1959, will be broken if the claim goes before the 'early warning system'.

1959 Agreement Now it has been decided by the Ministry of Aviation that the 1959 agreement will have to be referred to the Prices and Incomes Board.

Referring the agreement to the Prices and Incomes Board however is not likely to produce any more results than referring it to the 'early warning system'.

Aviation workers know this. They also know that, like many other sections of workers now facing wage struggles, that they will have to fight for every penny they can get from the government.

Earlier this year it was the BEA porters who got their first taste of struggle. Ministry of Aviation workers must learn the essential points of their fight and demand parity of wages-but not on the basis of any package deal.

OVERTIME BAN AT ROLLS ROYCE EIGHT thousand engineering workers and 1,200 clerical workers at the six Rolls Royce factories in Scotland have imposed a ban on overtime working.

The clerical workers claim that overtime rates in England are higher than those paid at the Scottish factories and are demanding parity.

The engineers are demanding an improvement in a recent 5s. and 13s. 4d. wage offer.

IN protest against what they - call the 'archaic disciplinary methods' implemented by the Steel Company of Wales, 1,300 maintenance workers withdrew their labour on Tuesday this week.

The decision was taken at a mass meeting of 1,000 members of the Amalgamated Engineering Union at Port Talbot.

The men, who are employed at the Abbey Works of the Steel Company of Wales, are taking the action of refusing to work until Saturday in sympathy with a suspended fitter.

Suspended

The fitter was suspended for seven days after it was alleged that he had been 'negligent'.

Last Thursday 51 fitters started an unofficial strike in sympathy.

All the men say they will not return to the Abbey Works until Saturday which is the same day that the suspended fitter resumes work.

Behind this strike is a challenge to the employers by the steel workers of Wales on the question of attacks on workers by the management. In staging a protest walk-out the AEU men have shown they will not be divided.

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