The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 423

THE initiative of the Kambeth calling a lobby of Parliament on January 26 against the proposed laws on wage control and trade unions is being acclaimed by trade unionists all over the country.

On Tuesday, November 30, the Sheffield District Committee of the Amalgamated Engineering Union voted unanimously to support the lobby and there are many militant engineers in that city who will work for a large delegation to back up this support.

During the 'fifties' ', when the Tories were in power and the economy was booming, factory workers were called out on one parliamentary lobby after another, usually under the leadership of Communist Party or 'left-wing Labour' (of the "Tribune' type) members and sympathisers.

UNEMPLOYMENT

In 1963, the first dose of unemployment for a generation, even though it remained at only one-quarter of the figure of the '30s, brought a new and immediate response.

On March 26, 1963, many thousands of workers responded to the call of the Trades Councils of the north-east region to lobby parliament.

It had been intended by those who called it that this lobby should be just another of the old type-a long queue outside the House of Commons and a few arguments, violent or otherwise, with MPs.

But changes had taken place in the working class.

Over 20 years of full employment, with no major defeat for the working class, meant that the workers had high expectations and were prepared to defend them.

Not only that: in the Young Socialists and the Socialist Labour League, with their papers 'Keep Left' and The Newsletter, there was being built a political leadership which was determined to fight in a revolutionary way, basing themselves on the ability of the working class to struggle.

In our epoch, the question of political power of the working class is raised by every clash with the employers.

It was this drive CLIFF SLAUGHTER The In I The The The ing-class power, the rejection of class-collaboration, which differentiated these non-political tendencies from both the Labour Party and the Communist Party, with its 10-year-long marriage to 'the parliamentary road to socialism'.

Into the middle of the protest lobby on unemployment, there(Cont. page 3, col. I)

Support lobby OTHER organisations which have added their support to the January 26 lobby, and have passed resolutions opposing legislation against the unions include:

the government.

The Clydebank No. 4 branch of the NUGMW which covers the majority of engineers in the Singer works; the North Glasgow branch EI; the Clydesdale Television Engineers' Works Committee, Edinburgh;

the Croydon, Surrey, Trades Council; the South-west London CAWU branch; the Loudon School of Economics Socialist Society; the Birkenhead No. 7 branch of the United Pattern Makers' Association.

Most union branches are sending further resolutions to their union executive committees and to local trades councils calling for support for the lobby.

SHOULD READ efence of Marxism Permanent Revolution Stalin School of Falsification Third International After Lenin (Postage 1s. extra per book)

Obtainable from NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS LTD., 86a Clapham High Street, London, S.W.

JANUARY 26 Namara's latest visit to Vietnam.

S the Wilson government preparing its biggest betrayal of all? Tied by billion-dollar threads to U.S. imperialism, have the Labour leaders given the go-ahead for nuclear weapons in Vietnam?

This is the question raised by the world tour of U.S.

Strange McNamara. He visited Saigon on November 28, the bomber base at Guam.

But his Vietnam visit followed discussions with the Britain. What did Harold Wilson, one-time 'left', discuss w The Atomic Aircraft Carrier 5 The Enterprise the largest atomic-powered aircraft carrier in the world operating with the Seventh Fleet off the coast of Vietnam. VIETNAM:

VOTE "[EFT' MPs attacked their leaders' Vietnam policy at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party on Wednesday. were softened by 'polite and moderate terms', according to lan Aitken in Thursday's 'Guardian'. John Mendelson, MP for Penistone, urged Prime Minister Wilson to tell President Johnson that Britain insists on the unconditional cessation of U.S. bombing attacks on North Vietnam and an assurance that the Vietcong will be invited to any peace negotiations. But such demands mean nothing as 'polite demands. These critical 'lefts' have to take a stand on Vietnam by voting against Wilson's support of U.S. aggression, even if it means bringing down is now AGAINST WILSON 'Defence' Secretary, Robert returning to Washington via NATO powers-starting with ith the man in charge of the brutal imperialist war against the Vietnamese workers and peasants?

NOT IGNORED The question of a European H-bomb was certainly on the agenda, both in London and Paris.

But Vietnam could not have been ignored.

Recent reports from Washington stress the growing desperation there at the defeats suffered by U.S. forces at the hands of the Vietcong. * The war was once planned to end in December 1965. i Toat war tre ycais dgo wien U.S. advisers' in South Vietnam numbered some 15,000. Now, when 170,000 U.S. men are in action with 600,000 South Vietnamese troops, McNamara tells the world that 'it will be a long war'.

And so; as the casualty lists lengthen, the American ruling class debates whether to try to find a compromise or step up the slaughter.

Already, another 100,000 Americans are expected to be shipped out to Vietnam in the new year.

But more than troops are involved here. The U.S. Seventh Fleet, operating off the coast, comprises 125 warships, including three aircraft carriers.

One of these is the nuclearpowered U.S.S. Enterprise.

Four hundred strike planes operate from these carriers.

The further 'escalation' of the war undoubtedly raises the question of adding to all the other horrors practiced on the Vietnamese people by using atomic weapons.

Since they see no way of bringing Vietnam under their SEVEN HUNDRED IMMIGRANTS SEVEN hundred workers at R. Woolf and Company, Hayes, Middlesex, went on strike last Wednesday after the alleged suspension for three days of one of their fellow workers for being ten minutes late.

On Tuesday morning this week all the men are reported to have received their cards.

According to a report in the 'Weekly Post', Southall, a document issued by N. S. Hundal, the convenor, claims that over the past two years the management at Woolf's have continually attempted to break up their trade union organisation.

The document puts forward the following reasons for the strike:

1. The management has contuously over tha given preferential treatment to non members and over the PUBLIC MEETINGS SACKED Newsletter Correspondent same period there has been constant victimisation of shop stewards. We are therefore demanding 100 per cent trade unionism.

2. Many of our members are regularly taking home only the bare minimun, despite the fact that they are always being asked to work harder and in fact have been doing so.

Whilst this has been going on, wage claims for the lower paid workers have been pending for very lonz periods: one such claim nas en pending tOL over a year. We are demanding these outstanding claims are settled at once.

A further point states that all agreements between the employers and the workers must be honoured.

The majority of the workers at Woolf's are from India and Pakistan and they organised themselves into the Transport and General Workers' Union.

TOLD TO GO

On Tuesday the strikers were told to go early to their Transport and General Workers' Union branch 1/686 biennial general meeting, where they were to be informed of the latest developments in the strike.

After a discussion on the strike, the several hundred Woolf's men, who had turned up to the meeting were told to go home by a union official and did SO.

When this action was questioned by two members of the branch they were told that the hall was not large enough.

One of the members moved that the business of the meeting— the election of officers-should be postponed for two weeks and that a larger hall should be found.

But the chairman is reported to have refused to accept the motion.

The two members continued to object, on the grounds that the militant members of the branch were being denied their rights, whereas at least one member of the British National Party was in the meeting.

A union official then allegedly called the police into the meeting and the two trade union members were removed.

Full support must be given . to the Woolf strikers by the labour movement. T&GWU members must also ensure that they enjoy full union rights.

Not sanctions - Arms!

THE seriousness with which the Wilson government intends carrying out the farcical sanctions against the Smith regime in Rhodesia was brought home when his 'left' lap-dogs revolted on Tuesday evening over the movement of crude oil by the British Petroleum tanker, 'British Security', to Rhodesia.

Wilson claimed that stopping 'British Security' might harm Zambia, and twice, in Parliament, he said that stopping the tanker would be only a moral, ineffective gesture.

This contempt of the right wing for the rights and safety of the African workers and peasants must be answered in Britain not merely by effective sanctions carried out by British workers, but the raising of the demand of arming the Africans.

AMBETH Irades Councu has taken a tirm stana again: • the local borough council's recent document on housing called: Immigration from the Commonwealth'.

The council has suggested that its housing problem—it has 13,500 families on its fast-growing housing list—is aggravated by the influx of coloured immigrants and that 'a lasting solution to these major concentrations can only be achieved by dispersal Age of Permanent Revolution: A Trotsky ithology (a collection of vital writings) 9s. 6d. 9s. 6d. 15s. Od. 15s. Od. 22s. 6d. 22s. 6d. throughout Greater London and the provinces' To carry out its responsibilities to these workers (i.e., give them decent housing) 'might well be regarded by the public within the Borough as giving quite unfair consideration and priority to the claims and difficulties of these people'.

Divides workers

In a press statement given on Monday this week the Lambeth Trades Council says that the borough council document "divides off sharply one section of workers, who are victims, not causes of the problem, and invites the remainder not only to blame them for the capitalist crime of the housing situation, but even to hound them out of the borough.

(Continued on control, the imperialists are prepared to wipe it off the map.

Wilson has gone along with all the actions of U.S. imperialism in South-East Asia so far.

What are his views on this possibility?

RIGHT TO ASK We have a right to ask.

After all, did not Clement Attlee, when deputy to Churchill, agree to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atom bombs?

Was it not the Attlee government which, without even pretending to consult the labour movement, started development work on the British H-bomb?

Imperialism has already shown what it is prepared to do to hold on to its power and the rightwing Labour leaders have always acquiesced.

Those Labour MPs who, while bleating about 'peace' have continued to support Wilson's administration with their votes, must come off the fence.

Wilson and Stewart belong not with Labour, but with Johnson and McNamara and their H-bomb threats.

The 'lefts' should stop faking and cast their votes in Parliament against this reactionary government.

The whole working-class movement must be aroused to throw Wilson and company out of its Tanks.

Stalinism be

to close THe last in the highly successful series of Socialist Labour League public meetings, held throughout the country over the past two months, will be held in Manchester this week-end.

Youth, students and adult trade unionists have crowded into these meetings to hear SLL and Young Socialist speakers outline a socialist policy to answer the deepening crisis of imperialism.

The immediate questions dealt with by the speakers have included the proposed legislation against the trade unions, the betrayal of the working class by the Labour government, which now moves into open attack, and the burning international questions of Vietnam and Rhodesia.

Speakers have maintarnea that, because of the Wilson government's subservience international finance capital in the name of the natronal interest and 'saving the pound' big attacks have been made on the working and living conditions of the British working class. It has also led to the British government's support of U.S. aggression in Vietnam.

This betrayal, speakers said, is more blatant than the MacDonald government of 1931.

Speakers declared that answer these betrayals, the working class must clear out the Wilson government through a fight for socialist policies, and, in this struggle, build an alternative leadership of the working class.

By taking up this struggle against legislation against the unions, against the Devlin Report and Immigration Act and demanding nationalization of all the basic industries, the British working class would also immeasurably strengthen the struggles of the colonial workers.

At the same time, the SLI and YS still put forward the slogans of 'Victory to the Vietcong' and 'Arm the Africans' and declared full support to the struggle being waged by colonial workers and peasants against imperialism.

All these policies are contained in the manifesto of the Socialist Labour League Socialist Policy for the Crisis, available from 186a Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4, price 3a.

THE claim that Stalin of Lenin requires further examination, particularly as Ramelson, who was always a loyal servant of Stalin, would claim that he is also fighting for the ideas of Lenin against the Trotskyists of today.

Was the theory of 'socialism in one country' one of Lenin's ideas? On the contrary, this 'theory' had been unheard of in the Bolshevik Party until 1924, when it was produced by Bukharin and used by Stalin against Trotsky and the Left Opposition. The entire - Bolshevik Party had thought , of the Russian Revolution as the ben ginning of the world proletarian revolution.

This is best established by reading Appendix 2 of Volume 3 of Trotsky's 'History of the Russian Revolution'.

Since, however, members of the Communist Party are not encouraged to read such books, it might be better to prove the point here by referring to books published by Moscow's Foreign Languages Publishing House and sold by the British Communist Party for many years.

On his departure for Russia in 1917, Lenin wrote a Farewell Letter to the Swiss workers.

This pamphlet is available separately and is also contained in Volume 6 of the 'Selected Works' of Lenin, published by Lawrence & Wishart.

In this letter Lenin declared that he was leaving • Switzerland for Russia in order to continue internationalist revolutionary Bolshern event try, hold Bolsheviks, he went on, internationalist views' He then declared:

"To the Russian proletariat has fallen the great honour of initiating the series of revolutions which are arising from the imperialist war... the specific historic circumstances have made the proletariat of Russia for a certain, perhaps very brief, period the skirmishers of the world revolutionary proletariat?

(Lenin's emphasis.)

issia, Lenin said:

•... is one of the most backward of European countries.

Socialism cannot triumph directly there at once. But the peasant character of the country may ... make our revolution a prelude to and a step towards the world socialist revolution.' (Lenin's emphasis.)

It is clear never considered the Russian Revolution as a purely Russian affair, but as a product of the crisis of international capitalism.

He regarded the Russian working class as the vanguard of the international revolution, in the first years repeatedly urging the necessity for the Russians to hold out until the international revolution came to their aid.

When it became clear that this was going to be delayed, Lenin realised that it was necessary to make economic adjustments in the Soviet Union-namely, the New Economic Policy-but he never ceased to be first and foremost an international revolutionary.

Any serious Communist can verify this by reading the writings of Lenin, particularly from 1917 until his death. There is space here to make only one further reference.

At the Seventh Congress of the e second article answering a lecture ve Trotskyism giver to the South Leeds Communist Party (Yorkshire Area retary of the CP)

ilshevik Party 1918, nin said:

It is absolutely true that without a German revolution we shall perish. Here is the greatest historic question ... the necessity of evoking an international revolution.' This belief, shared by the entire Bolshévik Party, was in no way a pessimistic lack of confidence in the strength of the Russian revolution. The Bolshevik view that the Revolution could not survive in the face of world imperialism was the reverse side of their conviction that world imperialism could not survive in the face of the revolution.

Moreover, they saw the threat to the revolution not only in terms of direct military intervention but also in terms of an economic threat to the Soviet Union.

Seeing socialism as the organisation of a planned and harmonious social production for the satisfaction of human wants, they regarded collective ownership of the means of production as not yet being socialism but only Credung the basis on Which socialism could be built.

The Bolsheviks considered that an international economic basis was necessary for the construction of socialism, and realised the tremendous economic dangers of a restoration of capitalism if the revolution remained isolated in backward Russia.

So, when Ramelson quotes perusing the printed version of his evidence to Trotsky Trotsky as saying in 1922 that 'We have not come to the socialist order nor even approached it' this does not prove that Trotsky was opposing Lenin, but that he was saying exactly the same things as Lenin.

The lag of the international revolution, particularly the failure of the German revolution as a result of the murderous treachery of German social-democracy and the absence of a German party of the Bolshevik type, left the Russian Revolution isolated.

It was this which compelled the Bolsheviks to introduce the New Economic Policy.

The main feature of this was the return of a measure of economic freedom to the middle peasants, who were permitted and even encouraged to produce a surplus and make a profit by selling it to the cities.

This inevitably to Who fought Bolshevism? strengthening of the richer peasants and the emergence of a number of speculators and middle-men (known as NEP-men). This, together with the unavoidable use of pre-revolutionary capitalists and managers in positions of leadership in industry, presented a clear economic and political threat to the revolution.

This leads on to a longstanding myth about Trotsky and Stalin. Members of the Communist Party are still told that Stalin was the man who insisted on industrialising the Soviet Union, while Trotsky was opposed to this and favoured instead wild dreams of 'exporting' the Revolution.

This is a complete beginning to end.

The truth is that from 1924 to 1928 Trotsky and his supporters fought for industrialisation on the basis of a planned economy and were denounced by Stalin and his supporters as 'super-industrialists'.

Trotsky pointed out that industrialisation was necessary to preserve the revolution.

If industry failed to provide goods for the peasant, then peasant produce would remain hoarded in the countryside, strengthening speculative developfor of the Party, 1926.)

All of Trotsky's warnings proved correct in 1928.

The state granaries were half empty, workers in the towns were short of food and the rich peasants refused to deliver bread or to sell it at the government fixed prices. Officials sent to collect grain were beaten and driven from the villages.

Peasants who could not obtain clothing, tools or industrial goods refused to part with their grain.

Faced with this, Stalin broke with Bukharin and swung over to forced collectivisation, 'extermination of the Kulaks as a class', and rapid industrialisation.

This created such opposition from the countryside that the Soviet Union has suffered from its economic consequences ever since, in the form of a permanent agricultural crisis.

Eight million peasants were exiled to Siberia. Others, forced to enter the collectives against their will, slaughtered their animals, smashed their implements and burned their crops.

It has been estimated that 18 million horses, 30 million large cattle and 100 million sheep and goats were killed. Famine stalked the towns.

Far from being the saviour of the Soviet Union, Stalin almost brought about its collapse.

Trotsky fought Stalin not only for international revolutionary policies, for industrialisation and planne 1 collectivisation, but also fi ur revolutionary democracy within the Bolshevik Party.

The struggle between Trotsky and Stalin cannot be explained as a vulgar struggle for Lenin's vacant place any more than the atrocities of the Stalinist regime can be explained by vague references to 'the negative side of Stalin's character'. Ramelson now tells his members, to quote the words he used to the South Leeds Communist Party branch: I hold no brief for the things Stalin did and we didn't know about, but we couldn't object to things we didn't know about. We were over-naive. It won't happen again?

With these few complacent words Ramelson shrugs off the destruction of the Bolshevik Party.

What does he mean, 'We didn't know about it?' They published books like "The Great Conspiracy Against Russia' in which they set out to prove that out of 29 known members of the 1917 Bolshevik Central Committee, 11 were agents of Hitler.

They 'proved' that the Soviet economy was being sabotaged by, Neumann amongst others: The Commissar for Heavy Industry, the Commissar for Finance, the Commissar for Agriculture, for Internal Trade, Communications, Military Industry, Justice, State Farms, Education, and Sea and River Transport.

The Gollans and Ramelsons accepted without any protest that people like Bela Kun, leader of the Hungarian Revolution of 1919, should 'disappear'; that Remmele and Neumann, the leading Communists in the German Reichstag before Hitler, should 'disappear'; that almost the entire Central Committee of the Polish and Czechoslovak Communist Parties should 'disappear.

Coming nearer home, neither Gollan nor Ramelson asked any questions when a woman called Rose Cohen, a relative of Gollan's and a close friend of Ramelson's wife, also 'disappeared' while on a trip to the Soviet Union.

Nor did they say anything when Edith Bone went on a trip to Hungary in 1949 and was not seen again—until the prisons were open during the revolution of 1956 and it was discovered that she had been in solitary confinement for seven years. What did you think had happened to her, Messrs. Gollan and Ramelson?

During the purges and trials of 1936-38, thousands of good Communists and even loyal Stalinists were arrested, imprisoned and shot—including a majority of the Central Committee of the Party elected at the 17th Party Congress.

The head of the Red Army, Marshal Tukhachevsky, was shot. So were Commanders Yakir, Uborevich, Kork, Putna, Eideman, Feldman and Primakov. Leading foreign Communists, including many fought in Spain, suffered a similar fate.

And Ramelson says he didn't know about it! Yet their hack, D. N. Pritt, was saying that the Moscow trials were a model of socialist justice!

In books like "The Great Conspiracy against Russia' the most fantastic details were • retailed about how the cunning Trotskyists were not only sabotaging the Soviet Union but were actually covering this up by cleverly arresting each other and having each other shot.

A typical extract from this Stalinist masterpiece runs as follows:

'When Zinovier and Kamenev were arrested, four agents of the Soviet Secret Police had brought them to NKVD headquarters. The agents were Molchanov, chief of the Secret Political Department of the NKVD; Pauker, Chief of the Operations Department; Volovich, Assistant Chief of the Operations Department; and Bulanov, Assistant to the Chairman of the NKVD Molchanoy and Bulanov were themselves secret members of the Trotskyite-Right conspiratorial apparatus. Pauker and Volovich were German agents.

These men had been specially picked to make the arrests by Henry G. Yagoda, the chairman of the NKVD!

And what do you think Henry Yagoda was? You guessed it!

'Henry Yagoda was a secret member of the Bloc of Rights and Trotskyites' ('The Great Conspiracy Against Russia,' Sayers and Kahn, pp. 263-5.)

Not only did the leaders of every Communist Party throughout the world accept this stuff without question, but they hounded out of their ranks any member who dared to doubt it.

Is it true that this was just naivety?

Apart from the obvious fact that people so 'naive' would not be fit to have charge of a Cub pack, let alone a Communist Party, will this excuse hold water? Was there no way in which they could have discovered the truth?

In the famous speech at the 20th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, Khrushchev made it clear that the murder of Kirov in 1934 (the event that sparked off the purges and trials) was a put-up job engineered by Stalin himself.

But Trotsky had written a pamphlet "The Kirov AssassinaRemmele tion' in 1934, in which lished exactly this.

During the Moscow Trials, Trotsky appeared before an independent Commission and presented his defence to the charges made against him by Stalin.

This Commission was headed , the American educationist John Dewey.

It found Trotsky 'not guilty' on all. counts. Trotsky's summary of the Trials has been available as a pamnhlet for some 30 years (I Stake My Life').

In this pamphlet he proves beyond doubt that the Moscow Trials were based on lies.

For instance, it was said at the trials that a man called Holtzman met Trotsky's 'son at the Hotel Bristol in 1932.

Yet this hotel had been burned down and did not exist.

It was said that Piatakov travelled from Berlin by plane to visit Trotsky in Oslo in the middle of December 1935. Yet the records of that aerodrome proved that not a single foreign aeroplane landed there in that month.

These works have been available all the time you were enjoying your 'naivety', Mr. Ramelson. Are we to understand that you preferred to accept that Trotsky was guilty without reading his defence? Or that you knew of this, but hoped your members would never find out?

(To be continued)

Commission.

ments and encouraging the growth of the private capitalist, with a corresponding weakening of the position of the proletariat.

Trotsky continually warned that without a planned development of industry, together with a careful extension of collectivisation of agriculture, carried out in such a way that the peasant would join voluntarily, the revolution would be in danger.

This warning was ridiculed Stalia, as was the whole idea industrialisation before 1928.

When Trotsky, as Chairman of the Board of Electrotechnical Development, urged the development of a hydro-electric scheme at Dnieprostroy — a scheme which was to become one of the greatest Soviet achievementsthis was shrugged off by Stalin as being as much use to Russia as a gramophone to a peasant who had no cow! (Central Committee THE Communist Party's appeal for unity to the 'Labour left, which was the main feature of its Congress, has just not got off the ground. 'Tribune' has advised the Party to disband.

'If it were simply a matter of agreeing on a programme, says "Tribune', 'then there would be no reason that Mr. Gollan's dream should not come true very soon.

For the programme for the immediate future which he outlined contains almost nothing to which a Labour left-winger, inside Parliament or without, could take exception.

'But then what basis does the C.P. now have for maintaining a separate existence?

If the British Communist Party wishes to advance the cause of socialism it should announce its immediate disbandment?

So there we have it. Wind the Party up Gollan and join the left' fakers inside the Labour Party, because, in fact, , 'you have no difference with us.

Nothing further need be said about the present state of the Communist Party.

Gollan has led it to the brink of disaster.

Because of the 'peaceful road to socialism' theory, the Communist Party might, according to Tribune, just as well be inside the Labour Party playing second fiddle to "Tribune' and the Fabian Society.

Can there be any greater indictment of Stalinism in Britain?

Gollan and the leadership of the Communist Party will explain the tactic to their members behind the scenes, along the lines that the purpose of it all is to give the impression that it 'agrees with the left' in order at a later stage to cut "Tribune's throat, politically speaking.

In this respect the Party tries to maintain two faces.

The reality, however, is different.

Gollan seriously wants to come to terms with the Labour 'left', but Newsletter Correspondent the price is at the moment too high. These gentlemen are too busy fixing up their parliamentary careers under Wilson to risk embarrassment by an open Communist Party.

If it were to disband, there is little doubt that they could all get together, but in this respect Gollan has to reckon with the dangers involved from the sectarian were required to form the Committee. Those ten days, however, did not go for nothing: the conquest of the garrison was in full swing, the conference of Regimental Committees had demonstrated its viability, the arming of the workers was going forward. And thus the Military Revolutionary Committee, although it went to work only on the 20th, five days before the insurrection, found ready to its hands a sufficiently well-organised dominion.

Being boycotted by the Compromisers, the staff of the Committee contained only Bolsheviks and Left Social-Revolutionaries: that eased and simplified the task. Of the Social Revolutionaries, only Lazimir did any work, and he was even placed at the head of the bureau in order to emphasise the fact that the committee was a Soviet and not a party institution.

In essence, however, the Committee, whose president was Trotsky, and its chief workers Podvoisky, Antonov Ovseyenko, Lasavich, Sadovsky and Mekonoshin, relied exclusively upon Bolsheviks. The Committee hardly met left in the Communist Party.

They want to continue as they are going now, so he is caught in a cleft stick. The fake Labour 'left' will not touch the CP with a barge pole just as long as there is a possibility of seats in Parliament under Wilson.

The unity campaign remains just as it was, not an inch further forward. The Communist Party might just as well have not had a Congress at all.

once in plenary session with delegates present from all the institutions listed in its regulations. The work was carried through the bureau under the guidance of the president, with Sverdlow brought in upon all important matters. And that was the general staff of the insurrection. 9 ('History of the Russian Revolution', Vol. III, pages 110-111, Gollanz)

Trotsky here establishes, suecinctly and indisputably, the origin and function of the Committee and his role in it.

Lazimir NEVER was chairman. He was head of the Commission set up by the Petrograd Soviet-on the insistence of the Compromisers —to formulate regulations for a "Committee of Revolutionary Defence. This was the original title of the Military Revolutionary Committee.

Lazimir was appointed a commissar to the district headquarters of army regiments around Petrograd. What became of him subsequently, I do not know.

Yours fraternally, Buchan.

PLEASE allow me to point out an error in your editorial note printed in The Newsletter on November 20. It concerned the controversy as to who was the chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee at the time of the October insurrection in Petrograd.

You dispute the contention that Trotsky was chairman and state that it was Lazimir, a Left SocialRevolutionary, who was chairman of this important organ of the insurrection.

In fact Trotsky was chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee and played a decisive role in the affairs of this organisation.

As witness, 1 can only quote Trotsky: 6 The decision to create a Military Revolutionary Committee, first introduced on the 9th was passed at a plenary session of the Soviet only a week later. The Soviet is not a Party; its machinery is heavy. Four days more

BY A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT FROM SOUTH AFRICA em be 11, 1965 Thr

Zambesi Kurba SMISBURY Mashonaland Matilete 9c vonere *aLasato aconio RHODESIA • Bechrnige RINSPAAI HE history of how British imperialism conquered Rhodesia is important for many related reasons. Among these are that it shows the historical nearness (only two generations old) of the origin of the great popular demand for the re-distribution of the land—the agrarian revolution. giving the peasants a single good reason (and there is only one: land).

COLONIAL FASCISM A second sound reason for a reminder of what happened 70 years ago in Rhodesia is that this fairly recent conquest was so bloody and brutal. The subsequent subjection of the African people by the British was carried out with such violence and by brute whitesupremacist dictatorship, that to imagine that the Smith regime is any worse or any different or any more dictatorial than the colonial reign of terrot, is merely to be a victim of British chauvinism in yet another form.

Smith is a continuation Rhodes.

The Governor is a continuation of Baden Powell.

Under British rule there never was any democracy or equality for the Africans.

Imperialism has always used fascist methods in the colonies. To suggest that the use of dictatorships — one-party or othergovernment, where his white mercenaries are not unknown.

Semi-colonialism is now 150 years old, almost, since the days of the Monroe Doctrine when 'Latin' America was engaged in her 'long, bloody and protracted Times certainly have treatment meted out

fore, a major political break was introduced. The 2,000 unemployed youth and Young Socialists who marched did not carry slogans appealing for the direction of 'new industries' to areas of high unemployment as did those under the influence of the 'official' Labour and Communist Parties.

They called instead for unity of the employed and unemployed, for class action to bring down the Tory government, and socialist policies of nationalization to take away the control of the economy from the capitalists.

LEARNED A LOT

These thousands of workers fought all day against the continuous efforts of hundreds of mounted and foot police to remove them from Parliament Square.

On that day many workers, young and old learned a great deal about socialist roads to parliament, if not parliamentary roads to socialism!

The lobby had a very large impact on public opinion, and strengthened militant workers everywhere.

The Trades Union Congress responded with new regulations confining the organising rights of Trades Councils to their own localities. Somebody was scared.

The Young Socialists went on, even after the pre-election Tory boom brought unemployment down, to fight for socialist policies. While the other "left' groups were lining up behind Wilson and telling the workers not to 'rock the boat', the Young Socialists and the Socialist Labour League warned that Wilson would

verdict of rank-and-file la st Page F cember 11, 1965

This demand first arose when Britain plundered the Matabele and Mashona tribes of their communally held land and converted them into landless labourers and peasants without any rights in their own birthplace.

It is especially important to recall this land robbery by force when entire pseudo-analytical articles on Rhodesia, written from a neo-Marxist viewpoint, make not a single mention of the agrarian revolution in Zimbabwe's struggle for independence. They call for the peasants to ally themselves with the workers without JANUARY 26 LOBBY OF PARLIAMENT A vital stage in the fight against capitalism wise—or fascist governments in the colonies is something new, is to forget that fascism itself in Europe was the importation into the imperialist countries (Spain, Italy and Germany) of the system of rule long used in the colonies.

A third timely reason is that Rhodes used both white and African agents to achieve conquest and to set up the slavecolony which Smith now manages for Britain as an 'independent' state.

Against this history, to talk of 'neo-colonialism' as against the Leninist term 'semi-colony' is both confused and confusing.

A recent instance of such confusion, among many others, was the African nationalist illusion that Verwoerd and Co. of South Africa would be upset by neocolonies' on their border and for this reason Britain chose to keep Rhodesia 'white'.

Verwoerd, in fact, is not worried by this at all and, indeed has got four 'African states' on his border, practically: Bechuanaland, Basutoland, Swaziland and Malawi.

He gets on excellently with their rulers, has some of them in his pocket, and has had equally amiable relations with the Congo sell out to big business, and called for the labour movement to insist on socialist policies.

The working class retained its fighting strength, but narrowly returned a Labour government in the hope that it would provide better conditions for their struggle than the rule of the Tories.

The call of the Lambeth Trades Council and the response to it are a vital stage in the turning of the tide.

All those who said 'don't rock the boat, and even helped the right wing to witch-hunt the Young Socialists, are caught in the trap of 'loyalty' to a government which acts in the interest of the employers on all questions from Vietnam to Rhodesia to the incomes policy.

While Gunter and Brown prepare laws against the independence of trade unions, just as the Tories are doing, the traditional 'left' not only hesitates, but actively obstructs the fighting back of the working class.

On the Liverpool Trades and Labour Council, for example, a resolution of support for the lobby on January 26 was narrowly defeated.

Many "left-wingers' of the "Tribune' and 'Voice of the Unions' type spoke against legislation-but against action!

Nothing must be done to embarrass the government!

Action now could be 'premature' and an 'adventure'!

They used the same excuses to stand by and watch the witchhunt of Young Socialists.

Gentlemen of this sort, in the Labour Party Constituencies in several parts of the country, are piously passing general resolutions expressing 'concern' about struggle' for political independence. The people of India and many other countries were to repeat this struggle in this century.

It began in the very struggle against conquest and dispossession, including that of Matabele and Mashonaland—i.e., Zimbabwe.

UNEQUAL FIGHT The conquest of Rhodesia was prepared by the conquest of South Africa. The crushing of the Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana, Zulu, Khoi-Khoin (mis-named 'Hottentot') and Batwa (mis-named 'Bushmen') tribes had taken Holland and Britain, and their spawn, the Boers, two full centuries.

The record of the heroic and prolonged resistance of the Batwa, Khoi-Khoin and Bantu tribes against their dispossession and enslavement in South Africa and Rhodesia is documented in '300 Years' by 'Mnguni", a threevolume history of South Africa first published in 1952, 300 years after the seizure of the Cape by the Dutch under Jan van Riebeeck.

By the time British imperialism struck at Rhodesia she already had not only conquered South Africa-with only the Boer War ahead to make the conquest formal-but had by this time become master of the world's largest diamond and gold mines and had established a flourishing industrialist economy, with rapidly growing tories and mines, cities and factories and mines.

She had also by then practically completed her conquests in Asia.

Hence the Africans in what is now Rhodesia were facing impossible odds when the British crossed the Limpopo river. proposed • anti-trade union legislation, while studiously avoiding any action of workers against the Labour government, which prepares this legislation.

When one of their own men, Ken Coates, of the Nottingham Labour Party, was recently expelled even for going as far as he did, his 'friends' in several places could only mutter about his 'wildness' in provoking the right wing.

Meanwhile the Communist Party Congress lurches to the right, and issues an 'appeal for left-wing unity, which cannot even mention the working class!

But these left-overs from the hey-day of boom and British reformism, when protest noises could make a reputation, will be swept aside contemptuously by the working class as it now begins to move and test out a new, revolutionary leadership.

RESISTANCE

While our 'left-wingers' were talking about an 'incomes policy' with socialist trimmings i.e., socialist words to conceal a capitalist policy), the workers were resisting and fighting as before.

Since the 'Declaration of Intent' of the bosses and trade union leaders, they have pushed up wage rates, through struggle, by 8 percent this year.

The capitalists cannot tolerate this.

To compete internationally in manufactured products, they need to modernise industry.

Having lagged behind for years, content to draw their profits and rest on protected empire markets, they cannot now keep up with their competitors unless they accumulate profits more quickly.

To do this they must drive down wages; and for this to be done, the government must be called in to weaken the workers' organisations, the unions. This is the job Wilson, Brown, Callaghan and Gunter are doing.

By this time, too, the machine gun had been used in colonial conquests and the African people had, at most, some rifles and dynamite, apart from their outmoded assegais and shields.

During the days of Tshaka, the Zulu tribal monarch, Mzilikazi had broken away from the then forming Zulu kingdom.

In the 1820s Mzilikazi created a proto-feudal order, with the Bapedi, Bangwato, Bakwena, Bakgotla, Baralong and Batlokwa tribes rendering tribute in return for retention of their lands.

In the 1830s the first Trekboer invasions burst into this developing early feudal system.

Mzilikazi defeated Liebenberg and Trichart and the British Governor at the Cape D'Urban, was forced to protect the Boers from further humiliations by drawing up a "Treaty of Friendship' with Mzilikazi in 1836.

This did not deter the Boers and in October 1836 Potgieter attacked Mzilikazi's camps and was duly routed, losing about 5,000 cattle and 50,000 sheep (previously stolen from the Bantu) at Vechtkop.

But then, with the assistance of the missionaries, the Boers won battle alltes if a section of the Baralong of Moroka, of the Korannas, the Batlokwa and the Griquas and won a now muchcelebrated Boer victory at Mosega in January 1837.

In this battle the Boers killed 400 old men, children and women in cold blood.

In November of 1837, on the Marico river, Potgieter and Uys, assisted by Baralong spies, brought down 500 of Mzilikazi's crack troops.

SIDET OYEDI ER^ 2,000 Young Socialists marched on March 26, 1963. Not bound by Labour or Communist Party policies, they called for the unity of employed and unemployed around socialist policies to bring down the Tories.

So strong is the fighting capacity of the working class, despite the hesitations of the left, that the sharpness of their struggle is forcing even established trade union spokesmen like the bakers' leaders to recognise, in their own way, the role of the Labour government.

The executive committee of the Bakers' Union, meeting on November 28 carried a resolution which included the following words:

'We are dismayed to see our government - because we are lifelong socialists — ranged on the side of big business against our tiny union!' ("The Times', Writing to "The Times', Mr. George H. Elvin, general secretary of the Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians, had this to say on commenting on the bakers' statement:

government It was the same old story in Africa-now being repeated at a different level again: We were never defeated by the imperialists alone, but always by ourselves as well—by our own divisions, by treachery in our midst.

Mzilikazi, already weakened in addition by an attack by Dingaan, then withdrew across the Limpopo into what is now Rhodesia. His well-ordered late tribal, early feudal independence was recognised by the Boer Potchefstroom Republic in 1846.

Thus the Matabele of Mzilikazi was the first recognised government of Rhodesia.

Eastwards and north lay many other tribes and also the ruins of the very old African-built civilisation of Zimbabwe, ruled under the Monopmotapa kings and ravaged, African historians believe, not by the Matabele, but by the Portuguese gold-seekers and conquistadores. In September 1868 Mzilikazi died and was succeeded by Lobengula.

MOFFAT

In 1880 the Boers broke 1846 treaty of independence raiding Lobengula's territory. -It is worth repeating that the so-called 'white man' did not find empty territory anywhere in Southern Africa. He stole it from African tribes who owned the land collectively, per tribe, and who occupied the country in large numbers long before the first 'white men' arrived.

In July 1887, the Boer, Grobler, got the right to farm in Lobengula's area. Under Bantu law, there was no private property and Grobler had no title deeds to Sar UNG the support of the majority of trade unionists cannot hope to retain that support if it continues to take the side of the employers against the unions.' Mr. Elvin wrote las a Labour Party member for 40 years and a trade union official for over 30'.

The old relation between the reformist Labour Party and the trade unions is going, never to return.

CONTRADICTION

This is 'the meaning of the present situation, despite the fact that these trade unionists still speak of the Labour government as 'our government'.

There is a contradiction between the real situation (Labour government acting on behalf of big business) on the one hand, and the outdated ideas of loyalty to the Labour Party on the other.

This contradiction will be resolved by making ideas in the his lana But the missionary, Moffat, from Kuruman, fraudulently tricked Lobengula into 'signing' a treaty which, in English, purported to give the British High Commissioner in the Cape control over Lobengula's right to 'cede' land—a trick aiming at a virtual declaration of ownership by Britain over Matabeleland.

The concession hunters, Rudd and Beit (partner of Rhodes) followed up by getting similar bogus 'concessions' out of Lobengula, including a monopoly of all minerals in Matabeleland.

For the Matabele, these treaties did not exist as private property treaties and could not exist as such, under tribal law, and Lobengula protested vigorously when the British interpreted his 'consent' as agreement to a deed of sale (which did not even exist under Matabele law, with regard to land).

In 1889 the powerful British Chartered Company was formed by Rhodes and dispatched Jameson with troops to force Lobengula to allow the company to enter Matabeleland. Lobengula refused, after his experience with previous treaty-makers and the missionaries. But Rhodes was determined.

RHODES

Cecil John Rhodes, Whitesupremacist, colonialist and British to every marrow of every bone, architect of the major apartheid laws of South Africa and Rhodesia, now declared that he would carry out Livingstone's imperialist policy.

Livingstone had said: 'I deterMENUE working-class movement conform to the reality, so that workers and their organisations can act in the real interest of the working class.

Those who cling fast to the other side of the contradiction, the side of loyalty, in whatever 'left' disguise, are playing a reactionary role.

The fight against these false 'left-wingers' by the Marxists is, thus, a vitally necessary part of the struggle of the working class itself to break through the barriers of reformism.

By building the revolutionary leadership in the Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists, and fighting for a Trotskyist daily newspaper, we are involved in the most important task of all.

The lobby of Parliament on January 26 will mark a great step forward in the struggle and experience of the working class in defeating its false reformist leadership on the road to struggle for power against capitalism. mined to open the country. In June 1890, Rhodes' forces, led by the infamous hunter, Selous, broke through into Matabeleland. In September he built forts on Lobengula's flank in Salisbury, Victoria and Charter.

In April 1891 the British •government annexed Matabeleland as a 'Protectorate'.

Up to now the Matabele resistance had been sporadic, but in October 1893 grew into major armed form.

Rhodes' armies won bloody battles at Shangani, Imbebezi and stormed Bulawayo, capital of Matabeleland.

Lobengula dynamited his camp rather than let it fall intact into Rhodes' hands. He died in January 1894 amidst the décimation of his armies and commoners.

At once Rhodes began to plunder the land. He began to carve out reserves for the Africans, gave out free land to his troops and 'settlers', and the rest was declared Crown Land. Jameson was made 'Chief' of the Matabele.

At the same time that Lobengula was dying, Rhodes gave a victory thanksgiving at the Cape Town city hall in which he gave special thanks to che missionaries for 'the unanimous support of the religious denominations in Mashonaland—religious denominations representing the Church of England, the Roman Catholics, Wesleyians, and, if I might say it, the Salvation Army'.

He praised Moffat who had blessed Rhodes' land-robbing army with these words: Your men go as liberators to do the work of the Aborigine Protection Society' The church, which paved the way for British imperialism into Rhodesia is now not less active in trying to preserve British hegemony in Rhodesia by subverting the vital struggle to drive Britain out of Zambia and Rhodesia into 'constitutional channels'.

1896 REBELLION The British drove the Africans off mineral lands, rich in loam soil, impoverished their farms, slaughtered their cattle under the pretext of rinderpest, shot down in cold blood women demonstrators who refused to have their cattle destroyed, and rounded up the people as if they were cattle for compulsory labour service.

The murder of the women sparked off the rebellion in March 1896. It had been well planned and timed to take place during Jameson's absence on the absurd 'Jameson raid'.

British troops received

order: 'Shoot down natives discriminately.' In May the Boy Scout founder, Baden-Powell, took the field together with Rhodes against the Matabele. After • tremendous losses, the chiefs were disarmed and, after two negotiations, 'peace' (70 years of Crown colony war) was signed in August 1896.

The neighbouring Mashona tribal resistance continued for yet a further year, before being 'subdued by machine-guns and the use of treacherous African troops. Officially, 8,000 Mashonas were killed by the British in crushing this heroic rebellion.

SLAVE COLONY

By 1888 it was all over. The British resumed their land plunder, forced labour, cattle-culling, land Acts, introduced hut, poll and wife-taxes to 'smoke' the people out of the reserves to slave for the farmers and mining companies, made the 'white man boss' , introduced colour bars at most levels, starved the Africans of education and Rhodesia became what Plomer once called:

"This land where an acre of gold is worth a thousand souls, and a reef of shining dust is worth half a people, and the vultures are heavy with man's flesh.'

and file that their leaders vere pushed into the early stages of the struggle.

support for immense bakers ubse the Television interviewers found it virtually impossible to get any man or woman in the Street to condemn the strikes.

Tory newspapers had dropped attempt to work up.

maignation on behalf housewife'.

SATISFIED? hinted leaders that the reported that Gunter at the interim Brown has praised the publi mirit shown br the eaders calling off the threatened- strike and reterring the claim to nis Board.

ine union executive has made much of the fact that they shrink mom usawns taeu goverwell. ranges itselt DUl lI Label.

to hold bac Avail wage have been felt by Midland baker country.

Mr. D. J. Daniels, union secreWimbusi Birmingham. said workers wer "swarming rOUD( like ants Ditterly protesting when heard the first news of the strike being called off. greater in view ot the fast tha Their inaignanon previous ligal al DIl Council there DECI including offers of finansal sue, port.

doesn't do serves 10 behind caned..

also say that though th price of bread has been frozen fo three months on the recommen dation of the Board, in fact, employers have been the prices of many bakery products, Resolution on Vietnam THE following resolution was passed by the Southampton University Socialist Society at a meeting recently.

"The Southampton University Socialist Society condemns the war in Vietnam as being an imperialist war, carried on by world capitalism against a section of the world working and peasant class.

We condemn American-led world capitalist intervention in Vietnam as being a blow struck by world capitalism against the oncoming world proletarian socialist revolution. As socialists we fully support the great fight that the vanguard of the Vietnamese workers and peasants are carrying out against world capitalism.

'We fully support the fight of the Vietcong. This Socialist Society says Victory to the Vietcong—as soon as possible? bakers Newsletter Correspondent A RESOLUTION pledging maximum support for the bakery workers 'in their present struggle to achieve a reasonable rate throughout the industry' was unanimously passed at the Birmingham Trades Council meeting on December The resolution further rejected all suggestions that this should mean an increase in price of bread in view of the 'large profits made by the miller-bakery combines.

Brother Childs, area union official of the Bakery Workers Union, in moving the resolution said:

We have no faith whatsoever in the Prices and Incomes Board. Nor are we prepared to concede our right to strike to anyone?

He and other delegates severely attacked the role of Economies Minister, Brown, and Minister of Labour, Gunter, in their intervention against the bakery workers' demands.

Childs commented: 'If this is to be the pattern of the future, the Labour government is going , the best way to political suicide?

£51m. PROFITS Profits of the three main flour combines — Garfield and Weston, Rank-McDougal and Spillers— were given totalling £51,000,000 last year.

"Where are the so-called fruits of automation?' one delegate asked.

Five years ago nine men produced 1,300 loaves per hour. Today, seven men produce over 4,000 loaves per hour. Yet we have a paltry £11 10s. per week rate' Another delegate said the actions threatened against the bakers and the attempts to force them to put their claim before the Incomes Board showed how correct the Trades Council was in opposing the Prices and Incomes Board right from the beginning.

"This Board is nothing but an employers' Board, he said.

Whilst this debate was proceeding the top union leaders of the bakers were, in fact, 'reluctantly' agreeing that the bakers' claim go to the Board. HE Yorkshire Area Conference of the socials Labour League, held in Shetfield last week, discussed the serious problem of the development of a revolutionary leadership.

It dealt with the political responsibility of all members of the Socialist Labour League to study and fight for the perspectives of the party.

The political report stressed that the perspectives of a revolutionary party flow from a study of the development of the class struggle. This does not mean that a party working correctly can avoid crises and conflicts.

On the contrary it can only develop through conflicts — provided they are consciously understood. Activity alone is insufficient. It is necessary to understand and learn from this activity.

Experience has to be linked with a study of developments in

George Brown's request that the bakers' claim be referred to the Prices and Incomes Board.

They would be a national strike by midnight December unless ployers entered negotiations for an interim pay settlement of £1.

called da an da tee chei st ike red to the • Boardi The demand the fl interim dropped.

The strike was called off atter meeting between the bakers leaders and Ray Gunter, Ministe OI Labour bakers leaders announced inat centea because as want government'.

was ine milancy of tue Ack. his was the Friday's allin off of their livin e. eir le ers such as confectionery.

Rank-and-file bakers must call their leaders to account for this latest act.

The union's annual conference is to be put forward to a date early in January, in place of the normal June meeting.

Members must make it plain that such 'blow hot, blow cold' tactics will no longer be tolerated. Either the leadership must be prepared to reflect the militancy of members and fight for their interests, or they must make way for another leadership which will do so. Birmingham Trades Council supports rent increases in Islington TWO months after it was claimed Housing Minister Richard Crossman told Islington tenants they need not worry about rent increases, 9,000 families living in council dwellings have been told their rents will go up in April. As little as a week ago Crossman announced that there were plans for government subsidies to local councils. Islington Council, however, has said that if rents do not go up, the housing account will be £900,000 in the red by 1967.

A council representative stated this week that the rents would not be affected by the new subsidies and that they would still have to go up. Crossman: accused of misleading tenants The Minister, he said, has made it clear that the subsidies should not be used to keep rents low.

Islington Borough Council Tenants' Rents Protest Association has accused the Housing Minister of 'misleading' them and giving 'false hopes' at a meeting in September.

Crossman, they allege, told them not worry about rent increases because they might be pegged. !. by his plan for subsidies.

Now, Crossman has told the Islington Council that this claim is 'not entirely accurate'.

Faced council

Islington tenants have already faced their local council with the issue of rent increases —in August this year. At that time they were being ordered by the council to pay increases of up to 38s.—the first amount to be paid then and the second stage to be paid in April next year.

Leaders of the tenants' movement at that time laid the blame for the increases on the alleged 'incompetence of the Islington councillors to run the finances of the Borough'. Revolutionary leadership the important question at Yorkshire area conference the class struggle and in this way Marxism must be developed.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was the beginning of the international working-class revolution.

Since that date workers and peasants throughout the world have been engaged in repeated revolutionary struggles against imperialism.

Capitalism has been able to survive only because of the social-democratic leaders, who, since the destruction of the Communist International by Stalin, have misled the working class by the policies of socialism in one country, peaceful co-existence and parliamentary roads to socialism.

The conference recognised that the bankruptcy of the old social-democratic leadership did not mean that the working class would accept new leaders easily.

All who claim to be leaders would be carefully tested out by Newsletter Reporter 9,000 face That, however, is hiding the real issues. •Islington tenants must follow the demands made by the Lambeth Trades Council (see story front page).

Support others

They must support the fight of tenants in other areas and not see rent rises as being the shortcomings of this or that council. To do that is to divide the struggle into local areas.

The question of housing is a national one. The fact that rents go up is directly linked to the drive for more profit by the leading building industries—-it is these monopolies which the tenants' councils must be forced to wage a struggle against. Merseyside builders to march through Liverpool MERSEYSIDE building workers are to stop work on - Friday, December 17, and march through Liverpool. The demonstration has been called by the Mersey District Committee of the Amalgamated Union of Building Trades Workers.

This is in protest against the increasing use of 'labour-only"* sub-contractors, and the demonstration will take place at the same time as a building firm - Emerald Construction Co.—is seeking an injunction in the High Court against three officials of the union - the General Secretary, G. Lowthian, the Mersey District Secretary, J. Cousins and the District Organiser, Jack Rogers.

The injunction is meant to restrain members of the AUBTW from officially picketing a building site near Warrington.

There, at the Fiddlers Ferry power station, the AUBTW have been in dispute with Higgs and Hill since last June over the * A system whereby an outside firm merely supplies the men to do the job.

By Newsletter Reporter the working class.

In particular, the British working class would hesitate before accepting revolutionary leadership because it carried a weight of non-revolutionary political tradition on its back.

It is this which enables the revisionists, who adapt to the existing bureaucratic apparatus, to exert a conservative influence on the working class.

HESITATION

Any hesitation by the Marxists in building up the youth movement, any refusal to develop Marxist theory, any failure to fight politically for the programme of the Socialist Labour League, reinforces this hesitation in the working class.

The conference stressed that the building of a powerful From Bill SHOWDOWN between the dockers and the , docks modernisation committeeset up as a result of the Devlin Report-cannot be long delayed.

That is what is behind the crisis on the national modernisation committee reported in the press last week-end. The committee is reported to have withdrawn the second issue of its broadsheet after 70,000 copies were already printed and ready to be circulated to dockers this week.

According to last Monday's 'Financial Times' , the broadsheet was withdrawn after union leaders objected to a statement in it. by Lord Brown-Labour peer and businessman, appointed by the government as chairman of the committee.

He had implied that the modernisation committee had already ruled out a minimum wage of £18 a week for dockers.

Breaking point

The union leaders' response to this statement certainly does not mean that they support the £18 demand. The 'Sunday Mirror' reported that their demand was for £15 10s. and revealed that the negotiations over this were near breaking point.

Union leaders panicked

because they are afraid of the reaction of dockers to Lord Brown's statement.

They are afraid it will heighten the demand for the £18 and make the opposition to Devlin sharper among the dockers.

Now that present wate negotiations are breaking dow the union leadership are in crisis.

Newsletter Correspondent employment of 'labour-only" subcontractors.

A circular issued by the district committee of the AUBTW declares that there is only one reason for the firms intention to employ "labour-only' and 'that is to break down the traditional organisation that has existed on Merseyside'.

The attempt to obtain an injunction is seen by building workers as another attack on the legal rights of unions.

It is expected there will be a 100 per cent stoppage of AUBTW members on Friday and that they will be joined by a large number of workers from other building trades.

Building workers who want to continue the fight against the attempts to shackle the unions legally should also join the demonstration and lobby of Labour MPs on January 26, called by the Lambeth Trades Council.

Marxist youth movement remains in the forefront of the work of the Socialist Labour League. The struggle of the youth against the right wing and the fake lefts nad been the most advanced stage of the struggle against social democracy.

The conference decided to support the campaign for the January 26 lobby against anti-trade union legislation. The support that has been won should not stop at resolutions but should be translated into action.

It is also necessary to increase the circulation of The Newsletter and build up support for its policies amongst the working class.

The paper must be used to penetrate the contradictions revealed by developments such as the Rhodesian crisis, which created a split inside the Communist Party, and the situation Have they got to go to the docker and tell him they have nothing?

That would mean breaking from the modernisation committee and organising a fight.

There must be some other way. So, it is reported, they are calling on Gunter, the Minister of Labour.

Union officials must have known that wage talks were near a breakdown; didn't they know, in any case, that even if they got concessions from the employers those concessions would be nowhere near rank-and-file demands?

Not logical Thus, is it not logical to assume that the aim was to prevent any independent struggle for wages and to keep the wages movement safely in official hands?

The union leaders are angry with Brown because he broke the rule: 'Keep it dark until we get it sewn up.' If they find it difficult to sew it up' now it is because they are now coming right to the tough heart of their problem.

They are coming closer to the point where they have to directly attack the dockers— attack 'restrictive practices, manning scales, the 'welt' operate the plans for mechanisation.

So they face exposing what the Devlin plan is all about, without being able to sugar the pill with a few concessions.

An accounting!

These leaders must be brought to book. 'Blue' and 'White' dockers must immediately demand an accounting from them.

Lift the iron curtain which surrounds the modernisation committee and the wage negotiations!

There can be no illusions now as to the nature of these modernisation committees and the role of trade unionists who in the coalfields where there is growing support for the paper.

In this way we make the political preparation for the launching of a daily communist newspaper.

There was a long, serious discussion about the election of the Yorkshire Area Committee of the Socialist Labour League.

A place on the League's leading committees is not a reward for hard work and devotion. The test of leadership is the ability to develop others politically.

This was far from being a complacent conference. During the last year the Socialist Labour League has mobilised workers and youth on demonstrations and campaigns — both nationally and locally-in a way that no other political organisation in Britain can approach.

Nevertheless, the emphasis at the Yorkshire conference was on a rigorous examination of the difficulties and problems of the organisation.

The conference was a serious step forward in the creation of a revolutionary leadership in Yorkshire. HOUSING POLICY...

It nowhere mentions the high interest rates, the fantastic price of land, the extortionate private rents which are driving all workers-not only immigrauts— to seek ever-cheaper anad more crowded accommodation?

The Trades Council statement added that the borough council document does not mention the profits which add to the cost of building and building materials.

Yet the council was aware of these things and two months ago had imposed substantial rent increases on council tenants, to reduce the Housing Revenue Account deficit.

The Trades Council statement added: 'While the government is preparing to support the profits of the banks and monopolies in their crisis by a wage freeze enforced by laws against the trade unions, the Borough Council conceals the burdens imposed by these same banks and monopolies.

Immigrants blamed

'While the government strengthens the Immigration Act and blames immigrant workers for the effects of its actions and the actions of big business, the Lambeth borough council blames Commonwealth immigration for its housing problem.' The borough council document could very well lead to race riots between white and coloured tenants who are desperate for houses, the statement adds.

Its talk of the "redistribution of the population"... is reminiscent of the South African Apartheid regime,' it says. The Trades Council demands that the local council:

Does not disperse immigrant workers.

Opens its financial records for tenants to see the profits paid to the banks, landowners and building industry. Refuse to pay high interest rates. Use the money for housing.

Take over empty and underoccupied property to ease housing shortage.

Campaign for municipalisation ot all property, necent owner-occupied, nationalization of the land, banks, basic industries.

Do all building by labour.

Publish the Minutes of a meeting on March 31, 1965, with the Joint Parliamentary Secretary of State, Department of Economic Affairs and Mr. Robert Mellish MP, also the meetings of June 22 and July 20.

sit on them.

Dockers can have only one demand in regard to them: pull the union leaders off the national committee and refuse to participate in the regional committees!

Break the unions from the modernisation committee!

Unity for a real fight for wages and nationalization with workers' control! THE fear of the right-wing dominated executive committee of allowing an Amalgamated Engineering Union resolution giving support to the Lambeth Trades Council lobby against trade union legislation and the linking of this with such struggles as the Bakery Workers' Union was fully revealed at the Birmingham Trades Council on December 2.

The EC had not put this AEU resolution on the agenda on the grounds that it was 'controversial'.

A fight was made on a reference back but was lost.

A letter was read by the Trades Council secretary from the Trades Union Congress to Lambeth Trades Council asking them not to proceed further with their lobby until the TUC Trades Council Joint Consultative Committee had investigated the matter at a meeting to be held on December 13.

Obviously all these moves are feeble attempts to stop working class action against anti-trade union legislation.

If union members fall into the trap of allowing these 'procedures' to stop them seeing the real issues, heavy blows will descend in the near future.

Registered at the G.P.O. as a newspaper Published by The Newsletter, 180 Chaphan Pia Sire, Londo. 14