The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 426

PEACE, the late dictator of Italy once said, 'is an interval between wars'-and Hitler before launching his SS legions on a new aggression would always declare with mock solemnity: I have no further territorial claims make'.

Today, we are quite used to this cynical language. So nobody should be fooled lulled into complacency by the high-powered 'peace' drive led ported by Mr. Wilson, and sanctified by the Pope.

Brandishing the atom bomb in one hand, and dangling withered olive branch in the intimidate the Vietcong into sur render.

A month ago The Newsletter warned British workers about the danger of Johnson deciding to use atomic weapons in south-east Asia and the threat to British labour constituted by Wilson's acquiescence to US dictates.

That danger and threat still remains despite, rather because, of the suspensions of the bombing raids.

For Johnson and his fellow gangsters, the pause is very necessary.

So far, despite massive counterinsurgency measures and logistical superiority, barely succeeded in the American comcontaining the Vietcong offensive or in holding the, major towns.

KEPT INITIATIVE

At the same time, the Vietcong have doubled their strength South Vietnam and have kept the initiative on the ground, despite the cessation of the south-west monsoon. have inflicted heavy punishment on the South namese forces while pummelling the Americans in central Highlands.

To compound Johnson's problems, Montagnards, until recently the aboriginal mercenaries, considered the smartest, toughest and most loyal jungle fighting force, have rebelled against Saigon and contracted out of the war in the most vital military area in Vietnam.

At home. Johnson is faced with a groundswell of opposition which shows no signs of being appeased.

It is a situation on which even the bourgeois journalists are being forced to comment critically.

Henry Brandon, writing in the 'Sunday Times', revealed Johnson's dilemma:

"The president gradually warmed to the idea Ta pause in bombing and "peace' crusadel when confronted with the grim implications of the Vietnamese war, because the effects of the budget (which may be swelled by as much as 10.000 million dollars) upon economy and all the pans Failing to find the required say:

ings in domestic projects, he The brutal war enters 1966 with a vicious kick in the head for a Vietcong prisoner, administered by a Vietnamese soldier. US First Cavalrymen look on.

Their decision even contravenes their own resolution carried at their September Congress. They voted then for a 'voluntary early warning system'.

'LIMIT CLAIMS'

Since September, a TUC wagevetting committee has been hard at work. telling unions a limit their claims.

But, when George Brown met the TUC Economic Committee last month, he made it clear that this scheme was inadequate.

Union chiefs who asked for a postponement of legislation were told that this would not be acceptable to 'foreign opinion'.

Coming a few days after Wilson's US trip, the meaning of this remark is obvious.

It is the American and other bankers who dictate the policy of the "Labour' government, as LAMBETH they have done since October 1964. Fighting slogan •

THE British Railways Board is against any changes in the law in relation to strikes. This, they say, would be unworkable 'if large numbers of workers were involved'.

The Board is of the opinion that responsibility for disciplining workers who take part in unofficial action should rest mainly with the trade unions'.

It suggests that the recent agreement in the municipal transport industry which allows for a suspension of bonus payments to workers who take unofficial action should be taken as a model for the kind of action required.

'Withhold benefits'

Mr. Stanley Raymond, chairman of the Railways Board, believes that in the event of strike, employers should withhold fringe benefits such as sick pay and holiday payments. He also maintains that the trade unions should withhold their benefits from their members who engage on unofficial strike.

This division of opinion between the employers hinges on their attitude towards the trade unions.

The British Railways believe that it should be up to them to discipline their members, whereas the majority of employers come down in favour of state legisiation.

No protest over massacre in Indonesia WHIle the leaders of the British Communist Party search for a new name for the 'Daily Worker'-last weekend an executive committee meeting could not come to any decision thousands of Communists are being massacred in Indonesia (see full report, page 3).

The so-called British workers' paper has, like the capitalist press, faithfully reported mass murder, but not once have those leaders, so concerned about a 'new image' newspaper, made any protest over the actions of the reactionary clique of generals behind the puppet Sukarno.

Isn't the murder of 100,000 Communists of any concern to the British Communist Party?

It will be recalled that CalTRADES laghan visited the USA, (including a tour of Wall Street) during the week of the TUC in SeptemCOUNCIL After George Brown had spoken to Congress about wage restraint, the massive dollar loan was FIGHTS FOR announced. This has sustained sterling ever since.

Now, with the dollar facing problems of its own, the AmeriRECOGNITION Scans have begun - AND LOBBY Araka wage te sis 13 AT its meeting on Monday, rown's Bill will be presenter the Lambeth Trades Coun- luring January and will be lat cil decided to fight for restora- before the April budget strikes. tion of TUC recognition, but This will be an 'Enabling Bill'.

Even if it does not operate at reaffirmed its decision to con- Implement sEd ar any time" to tinue with the campaign for the January 26 lobby of parliament.

prepared for it ace been Afterwards delegates and supporters of the campaign discussed the importance of the lobby and in by a by the coalition sen went on to make further plans r by a for its success. cessor.

And this is only the start.

Many promised to campaign in The Royal Commission on factories and on building sites. the Trade Unions is considerThe Trades Council is making Wing more sweeping measures to a drive to secure the maximum illegalise 'unoffical' strikes representation of union branches and jobs by delegates with their altogether. banners.

SET CLOCK BACK The demonstration on January 26 will assemble near the Oval Unded by the the as to pare station, Kennington, at Il a.m.

sent their in trade union law. the crests back 60 years London busmen And the trade union leaders back New York strikers THE Harrow Weald and Hendon bus workers have sent a message of support to the New York transport workers who have been on strike since New Year's Eve.

As the city faced more and worse traffic jams as cars poured into the business sections of Manhattan, 60-year-old strike leader Mike Quill was hauled off to jail. Later he collapsed from a heart attack.

working emendous As in the last power workers' strike in Britain, the press is beginning to whip up a campaign against the strike, which is losing New York businesses an estimated reich will 100 million dollars a day. Motor accident and hospital deaths are being blamed on the strike. (See page 3 for further story.) stage in this task.

-Who helped-Hitler? 'seen here (left) with Roosevelt and Stalin) should be includec The Communist Party said that 'progressive Tores like Churchil During the 1930's, according to Ramel'foresaw the coming war' and sought to divide the capitalist forces to prevent them ganging up against the Soviet Union. This brilliant strategy, says Ramelson, 'worked out exactly.

What was the position in the 1930s? Trotsky gave repeated warnings about the dangers of fascism. He urged a United Front of all working-class organisations in Germany to defeat Hitler.

This did not mean sinking all political differences, but it did mean uniting in action against the fascists, combined demonstrations united defence squads to defend each other's print shops and premises, etc.

Trotsky considered that such a united struggle could defeat fascism and German big business.

Without it, the working class would be smashed with results that would reverberate throughout the world.* Meanwhile, what was the brilliant strategy' of the Communist International led by Stalin and applauded by all the Gollans and Ramelsons?

Following the theory of the "Third Period', they declared that fascism was not a real danger, and that the true enemy was social democracy.

In The Communist Parties and the Crisis of Capitalism', Manuilsky, the secretary of the Communist International, wrote in 1931:

'The social Democrats, in order to deceive the masses, deliberately proclaim that the chief enemy of the working class is fascism.' Thaelman, leader of the Geran Communist Party, declared November, 1932:

'Nothing would be more fatal than an opportunist overestimation of Hitler fascism. It would be false to believe that the most important process that is taking place in Germany today is the growth of fascism.' The Communist International ported in January, 1933:

"The Twelfth Plenum has shown that there is not-and cannot be-such a thing as classical fascism.

Stalin's main attacks were lirected against German social democracy. On November 6, 1931 Pravda' declared:

'The main task of the German Communist Party is to expose the manoeuvres of social democracy. The Communist Parties are conducting and will continue to conduct an unceasing day-to-day struggle against the whole social democracy.' Of course, the social-democratic leaders were completely incapable of putting up any resistance to Hitler. In order to defeat Hitler it was necessary to free the German workers from the leadership of social democracy.

But in order to do this, it was necessary-in the course of a struggle against fascism-to expose the social-democratic leaders to those workers who followed them.

The only way to do this was to offer and fight for a united front against fascism and through this both to unite the German working class and also to show the social-democratic workers that their leaders would not fight Hitler.

Instead of this, the Stalinists played down the Hitler danger and concentrated their main fire on the social democrats.

Actions such as the 'Red Referendum' alienated millions of social-democratic workers and left the German working class hopelessly divided.

The 'Red Referendum' took place in 1931 in Prussia, which was the strongest state in Ger*(See Leon Trotsky: 'The Turn in the Communist International and the German Situation', 1930; 'Germany, the Key to the International Situation', 1931; 'Germany, What Next?', 1932; 'Germany, the Only Road', 1932.)

Thaelman: 'Fatal to overestimate of Hitler fascism? many and was controlled by the social democrats. The fascists, gaining in strength, demanded a referendum to turn out the social-democratic government.

The German Communist Party at first sided with the social democrats against a referendum, but after a meeting between the Central Committee of the German Party and the Comintern, this line was reversed and the Communist Party called on its members to support the fascists in their referendum.

The mighty German working class was paralysed by this disunity, which was the direct result of Stalinism.

It was this which enabled Hitler to defeat the strongest working class in Europe with no real resistance. This experience convinced Trotsky that the Third International was dead and it was necessary to construct a Fourth International.

Ramelson's picture of a brilliant Stalin playing off the capitalist powers against each other is very far from the truth.

On the contrary, the abandonment of international revolutionary politics led the Russian bureaucracy to attempt to preserve the Soviet Union by crawling before the imperialist powers -including Germany.

Under Hitler, thousands of devoted and heroic Communist Party members suffered torture and murder.

But this did not disturb the bureaucratic hierarchy in the Kremlin. Thus, the 'Communist International' of May, 1933, commented:

The establishment of an open fascist dictatorship, by destroying all democratic illusions among the masses and liberating them from the influence of social democracy, veronioni, towards accelerates the German And Stalin, on January 26, 34, could blandly announce:

Fascism in Italy, for example, has not prevented the USSR from establishing the best relations with that country.' Then there was the famous Russo-German Pact signed by Molotov and Ribbentrop on August 24, in Moscow.

This not only included a non-aggression pact, but also agreed to the division of Eastern Europe and the partition of Poland.

No wonder Stalin telegraphed Ribbentrop on December 21, 1939:

"The friendship of the people of Germany and the soviet Union, cemented in blood, has every reason to be lasting and every firm.' Somehow, Ramelson 'forgot' to mention this to the members of the South Leeds Communist Party Branch.

No doubt he could find a 'brilliant' explanation for this, as well as for Molotov's message to the German ambassador in Moscow on May 18, 1940, which expressed 'the warmest congratulations of the Soviet government on the splendid success of the German armed forces'.

Ramelson avoided mentioning to his members that Stalin's brilliant strategy in fact took the form of a pact with Hitler.

Without actually mentioning any details, he implied that Stalin succeeded in holding off imperialism in order that the Soviet Union would have time to prepare. in à coalition government in 1945.

The fact is that Stalin did not prepare the Soviet Union to meet a fascist attack.

As has been mentioned in previous articles, the leadership of the Red Army was decimated by the Stalin purges. Moreover, Stalin insisted that Hitler could be trusted.

On June 21, 1941, the 'World News and Views' carried this paragraph:

"The British and, in general, the foreign press began an intense dissemination of rumours on the proximity of war between the USSR and Germany.

Despite the obviously nonsensical character of these rumours, responsible Moscow quarters have still found it necessary, in view of these rumours, to authorise the Soviet . news agency Tass, to state that these rumours constitute clumsily concealed propaganda by forces hostile to the USSR and Germany and interested in the further extension and unleashing of the war.' ONE DAY AFTER-ON JUNE 22, 1941—HITLER INVADED RUSSIA!

In his speech at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956, Khrushchev confirmed that Stalin left the Soviet Union completely unprepared.

Reports from the Russian military attaché in Berlin on May 6 and May 22, 1941, warned of a fascist attack in June. Both were ignored.

Churchill-for his own ends— warned Stalin in May that Hitler had concentrated 147 divisions along the Soviet border.

Shortly before the invasion, Kirponos, the chief of the Kiev special military district, reported that the German armies were prepared for an attack and proposed that a strong defence be organised.

Stalin instructed that no defence work should be undertaken as this would be a provocation.

Even when the invasion was under way Stalin instructed that enemy fire was not to be returned as he believed that they were undisciplined German units who would be called to order by Hitler.

Khrushchev reveals that Russian industry had both the time and capabilities to prepare the country adequately for defence but that Stalin refused to make such preparations.

According to the Twentieth Congress Report:

"The result was that already in the first hours and days the enemy had destroyed in our border regions a large part of our Air Force, artillery and other military equipment; he annihilated large numbers of our military cadres and disorganised our military leadership; consequently we could not prevent the enemy from marching deep into the country.

Such things can only be explained politically. Stalin had abandoned the revolutionary struggle against imperialism. He believed implicitly in deals and bargains with imperialism. In 1933, for instance, he had reached an agreement with the United States in which Russia agreed •.. not to permit the formation or residence in its territory of any organisation or group-and prevent the activity in its territory of any organisation or group-which has as an aim the overthrow or the preparation of the overthrow of or bringing about a change in the political or social order of the whole or any part of the United States, its territories or possessions' (reported in the New York Daily Worker", November 18, 1933).

Stalir. 'Fries In the same year the Russian reign Minister, Litvinov, wrote 'Le Temps' (July 7, 1933):

'Neither our political nor our economic interests clash with those of France in any part of the world. That is why we consider that nothing should stand in the way of the continuation of a political as well as an economic rapprochment."

Stalin's "brilliance' during the 1930's was directed towards reassuring the imperialist powers, and preventing any revolutionary struggles of the working class.

On March 3, 1936, Stalin gave an interview to Mr. Howard, President of the US press syndicate 'Scripps-Howards' newspapers. This interview ran as follows:

Howard: 'Are you not of the opinion that there may be wellgrounded fears in the capitalist countries that the Soviet Union might decide upon a forcible conversion of other nations to its political theories?' Stalin: 'There is no reason for such fears. You are greatly mistaken if you think that the men of the Soviet Union would ever want to change the state of any other country by any means, let alone by force!

Howard: 'Does this declaration of yours imply that the Soviet Union has in any way renounced its plans and intentions to bring about a world revolution?' Stalin: 'We never had any such plans and intentions.' Howard: It would seem to me, Mr. Stalin, that quite a different impression has been current in the world for a long time! Stalin: 'That is the result of a misunderstanding' Howard: 'A tragic misunderstanding?' Stalin: 'No, a comic one. Or, perhaps, a tragi-comic one!

Stalin loyally kept his side of these bargains. It was because he had more faith in the imperialists keeping their: bargains than he had in the revolutionary strength of the working class, that the Soviet Union was unprepared in June, 1941.

Khrushchev: Revealed Soviet Union unprepared for German attack.

Thus far, from Stalin's 'brilliant stategy' saving the Soviet Union, it almost brought about its collapse. The Soviet Union survives despite the bureaucracy, not because of it.

Ramelson, of course, has to struggle to preserve something of the Stalin myth in order to cover up his own role as the loyal servant of Stalin in Britain.

om page will be faced with the increase taxes.

'Vietnam has become the problem that eclipses all others .. in the public mind. It is also the reason why the President's Gallup rating has dropped to its lowest so far..• • Johnson is belatedly learning the ABC of capitalist economics: that you cannot reconcile an escalating war budget with even a slight increase of state welfare without, at the same time, evoking the spectre of runaway inflation.

One section of the capitalist class, represented by Mcchesney Martin of the Federal Reserve Board, has effectively prevented Johnson from resonting to the inflationary solution by increasing the Federal discount rate.

Johnson must now resort to tough, unpopular measures pay for the Vietnam war.

The brunt of this burden, as usual, will have to be borne by the working class. Already the New York transport workers are beginning to see what this means.

That is why the White House is ww considering the declaration nd Ribl ship cer Ramelson, skyists are 'splitters', while the greatest need of the working class today is unity. The best example of the Trotskyists' splitting tactics is on the docks where, Ramelson says, they caused thousands of dockers to break from the Transport and General Workers' Union. hold no brief for Frank Cousins, Ramelson said, 'but it is a fact that the T&GWU as progressive as this country.

Frederick Engels wrote an interesting letter to Bebel on June 20, 1873 (contained in the Marx-Engels Correspondence), in which he dealt with the 'unity-shouters':

'One must not allow oneself to be misled by the cry of unity. Those who have this word most often on their lips are those who sow the most dissension. Those unity fanatics are either people of limited intelligence, who want to stir everything up together in one nondescript brew which, the moment it is left to settle, throws up the differences again in much more acute opposition because they are now altogether in one pot, or else they are people who consciously or unconsciously want to adulterate the moveatest sectarian seasona greatest sectarians biggest brawlers and rogues are at certain times the loudest shouters for unity. Nobody in our lifetime has given us more trouble and been more treacherous than the unity shouters.' Unity is not achieved by sinking all political principle in order to get together. What is needed is unity of the working class in action.

The Socialist Labour League has always fought for this sort of unity. In demonstrations such as the lobby of Parliament on January 26, we seek to unite all sections of the working class in action against the proposed anti-trade union legislation.

We invite members of the Communist Party to join in and campaign for this lobby.

In Leeds members of the Communist Party voted ample, at a meeting of the National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers.

Questioned at a University meeting, Bill Moore, a full-time Communist Party worker, said he 'supposed the London Comrades would support the lobby'.

Yet at the meeting of the Leeds Central Branch of the Clerical and Administrative Workers' Union, a prominent Party member voted with the right wing against the lobby and said that the campaign should only go through 'official union channels'.

At a time when the Labour government is preparing to attack of a state of national emergency and the promulgation of new regulations on compulsory military service, a measure which is bound to antagonise American youth more than anything the President has done so far.

That is also why Johnson and his chiefs-of-staff have decided to bomb Hanoi and Haiphong the moment the 'pause' has ended and have already got the CIA to stage an 'uprising' against the Cambodian government.

WAR PREPARATIONS In Saigon decisions have been taken for the 'hot pursuit' of Vietcong guernillas into Cambodian territory, while in Siam, feverish war preparations are being made in the many and large US bases in the country for war against Laos.

In order to make the 'quantum jump', and involve North Vietnam and China in a major war, the US has had to take, ostensibly, a step backwards.

As the 'Guardian' editorial lamented:

•.. what is now being done fits almost too pertectly into the pattern talked about in Washington.' the working class on behalf of capitalism, it is ner :essary to unite the working class against Wilson and those trade union leaders who go along with him in measures against the working class.

Yet, in the name of unity, Ramelson and the Communist Party leaders support the bureaucrats against those workers who are in the forefront of the class struggle.

This is the sort of 'unityshouting' that Engels was denouncing: unity with the bureaucrats in order to divide the working class.

This is made clear by an examination of developments in the docks.

It is not true that the Trotskyists led the dockers to break from the Transport and General Workers' Union.

What the Trotskyists did was to support the right of these workers to join the union of their choice and to build up and recruit to the National Amalgamated Stevedores' and Dockers' 'Blue Union' in the northern ports.

It was the Communist Party which helped to split the dockers by supporting the bureaucrats of the T&GWU.

Molotov signs the Russo-German pact.

When the northern dockers struck for six weeks in an attempt to force the recognition of their union, they faced another sort of unity-the unity of the employers, the press, the TUC, the T&GWU, and the Communist Party.

And it is the Communist Party, through the docks liaison committee, which is now trying to prevent the unity of London and northern dockers against the Devlin Report.

Ramelson should take his praises of the 'progressive' Transport and General Workers' Union to the dock gates of the northern ports-but he should be sure to have his swimming trunks with him. If he gets time, he might explain why the progressive T&GWU bans all Communist Party members from holding office.

Ramelson might also explain his concern for unity to the Young Socialists who, over the last four years, have built up a Young Socialist movement in constant struggle against the right wing of the Labour Party.

In the course of this, these young people have fought for working class unity in important In this sinister manoeuvre, Johnson has once again enlisted the support, not only of Wilson, which, while making attacks against US imperialism, is doing its damndest to pressurize the Vietcong to bring them to the conference table in Geneva.

This is the real aim of Shelepin's mission.

Unfortunately for Shelepin, the White House did not bother to co-ordinate its actions with its Kremlin allies and Shelepin has been left without even a fig leaf to conceal his hod-carrying activities for US imperialism.

The Chinese regime, by its opportunistic policies in the rest of south-east Asia, particularly in Indonesia and Cambodia, gravely endangered the struggle of the Vietnamese and, to the same extent, strengthened imperialism and the Soviet bureaucracy.

Hanoi and the Vietcong have refused to have anything to do with Johnson's horse-trading (much to the annoyance of his centrist friends in Britain) and have stated their determination to carry on the war until the last American has left Vietnam.

Page Jack Gale's final article answering a lecture by Yorkshire Area Secretary of the Communist Party, Bert Ramelson, on Trotskyism campaigns such as the one in support of the old age pensioners. They have repeatedly visited trade union branches and factories during these campaigns.

While often gaining warm support from rank-and-file Communist Party militants, they have met repeated hostility from Ramelson and other leading members of the Communist Party.

Throughout this struggle they were led and supported by the Socialist Labour League.

That is why young people today are joining the Trotskyist Party in large numbers, while the Communist Party has an ageing membership and a dying Young Communist League.

Bert Ramelson is a desperate man. All the lies about Trotsky are being exposed. Every revelation of the true history of the Soviet Union increases his embarrassment and confusion. He not know where to turn.

Don't you presume to talk about Leon Trotsky's history, Mr. Ramelson!

Where is the history of your own Party?

Start preparing some more lectures. Explain to your members your Party's call for a coalition Government in 1945-to include 'progressive Tories' like Churchill and Eden.

Justify your support for the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (See the 'Daily Worker' of August 7, 1945, 'L'Humanite' of August 8 and 'L'Unita' of August 10, where protests at the bombing were called 'a curious psychological perversion and a doctrinaire obedience to a form of abstract humanitarianism'.)

What about your Party's strikebreaking during and after the war-for instance when your members in the Yorkshire coalfield were instructed to break the Grimethorpe strike of 1947?

And, while you're about let's have the truth about ETU. ' And account for the activities of Will Paynter as a 'Communist' trade union leader at the head of the National Union of Mineworkers.

Don't be reticent, Mr. Ramelson, let's have some more.

During 1965, thousands of youth, old age pensioners and trade unionists marched behind the banners of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. In 1966 more and more will do so, more and more will seek to learn the truth about Trotsky and the policies of Trotskyism, including all those members of Mr. Ramelson's party who want to be real Communists.

Until then, there will be no negotiations, only misery and bloodshed.

The responsibility for this terrible situation rests squarely on the shoulders : of that modern friends in Whitehall,' • and his Attila-Johnson TRANSITION The logic of Wilson's capitulation to US imperialism leads inexplorably to the final escalation of conventional war and its transition to nuclear war in Vietnam.

This could very well be the prospect for 1966 in south-east Asia. In any case, it is a very real and _ever-present danger which grows in direct proportion to the defeats of US imperialism in the battlefield.

Instead of being paralysed by such a probability British and US labour must, on the contrary, take heart from the magnificent resistance of the Vietnamese workers and peasants, and redouble their efforts to overthrow imperialism at home-before imperialism buries us all.

Let our actions be more resolute. Let our opposition be more implacable. Let our determination be more tempered.

Let 1966 see a massive escalation of the class war against Anglo-US imperialism.

Victory to the Vietcong!

Death to imperialism!

THE crush the Communists" January 8 996

to tion to restrict wage claims, they were carrying out the most significant betrayal of trade unionism since 1926. Their 23 to 12 vote on December 22 opens the door for an onslaught by the employers on the gains made by the workers since the war.

the January 26 lobby of parliament, they try to tie of the workers and stop them from hitting back.

These 'official' leaders are nailed for their 'responsible' attitude by every capitalist spokesman.

But they are responsible, not to their millions of members, but to their masters, the bankers and monopolists. 7 HEN the comfortable bureaucrats of the And, by attacking the Lambeth Trades Council for the Forward to a socialist Britain and co. er cent rise an Order in Council may of the dept Aileen Jennings said the circulation of the paper had steadily increased over the year and, as would be seen in the financial report, income had also increased.

This had enabled great improvements in the paper and it was Party leaders who now possible to give serious thought to the question of adding four more pages. This would be put before the Morecambe conference at Easter. industrial INCREASE SALES 'We shall ask the conference to go down on record for a further increase in sales to enable us to enlarge the paper,' she said.

These plans, she added, were important for the development of the Ycung Socialists as a youth organisation in 1966. lashing of capitalism 26 must mark a nev Never in the history working class did the calling hands Fighting slogan of Keep Left' AGM Aileen Jennings, re-elected Editor of 'Keep Left'.

• whelmingly accepted a proposition to make 1966 the greatest year for their movement and their newspaper 'Keep Left' with the slogan Forward to a socialist Britain'.

Youth had travelled from all over Britain to London to hear the policies and organisational aspects of 'Keep Left' outlined by its editor, Aileen Jennings, at the paper's annual general meeting.

A successful speakers' contest was held, during which a tremendously high standard of speaking was displayed by representatives from all regions in the British Isles. Tom Jarvis, representing the north-east, was the winner. In the evening a packed hall danced to recording groups, "Them' and 'Sons of Fred'.

An executive committee member of the Lambeth Trades Council outlined the campaign of the council tor the January, 26 lobby of Parliament, and thanked the Young Socialists for their support in this work.

Publisher of 'Keep Left', Dave Longley, welcomed the delegations, many of whom had travelled overnight to attend the meeting. He introduced 'Keep Left's' publication of "Keep Left" , we have to record that 1965 was one of the most active years of campaigning that this paper and the Young Socialists have ever known,' she said.

SUPPORTED TEN DEMONSTRATIONS : "Keep Left" gave its support to ten major demonstrations, including the Morecambe conference of the Young Socialists in February.

'In fact we went straight into the lobby of Parliament on February 4 in support of the old age pensioners' fight for increased pensions after the annual meeting in 1965.

This was closely followed by the huge conference at Morecambe-the fifth Young Socialists conference where we made a decisive break with social democracy and "Keep Left" was voted as the Young Socialists' paper.

'From then onwards we never looked back. The Young Socialists and "Keep Left" called out thousands ot youth in demonstrations on May Day, against the war in Vietnam and for the victory of the Vietcong, against fascism, and at the annual conference of the Labour Party in Blackpool on September 26.

'At the summer camp held in July and August Young Socialist members attended lectures on Marxist theory.

'Most important of all was the Trotsky commemoration meeting held in London at the end of August.' 'Lastly, "Keep Left" gave complete support to the Young Socialist programme to be presented to the next Young Youth, Socialist conference entitled "Socialism and ', extracts of which were published in "Keep Left" recently movement need the Young Socialists more than now, when the Labour leaders had carried out a complete betrayal.

*And they have received the support of the "left" around "Tribune", , who, whilst mouthing phrases of opposition, hide behind the skirts of the very people they are supposed to be opposing.' An easy way to understand the treachery of the Labour leadership was to understand their complete hostility to the socialist youth movement.

The reason was because Keep Left' had spoken out on the political issues facing the working class and the Young Socialists and its paper had put forward clear demands.

On Vietnam they had come out for the withdrawal of American arming of the Vietnamese people.

'We don't just want an end editor who was re-elected for a second year. we are now entering the 15th year of the to the war, we want the vietory of the Vietnamese people over imperialism, and we will continue campaigning until this victory is achieved, she said.

"This means we will continue to expose Wilson's boot-licking attitude towards President Johnson and the US government.' ARM AFRICANS On the question of Rhodesia, she added, too much time had been wasted by the Labour government. The working class had to demand the arming of the African people and the withdrawal of British troops.

Let the African people decide what to do with Smith,' she said.

*In the same way we are opposed to the hated Verwoerd regime in South Africa.

Continued

blame and asked Whilst the Wilson government moves to launch a vicious attack against the workmore clerical power.

Ing class and the Trades Union Congress gives Its go ahead for the introduction of Social workers retorted that there was not enough entertain'The fact that the Labour th had bee their determination to resist such attacks and prepare for a showdown with the Wilson ment available on the Sabbath, before and that religic sus laws should be to this government, has to be government. altered. condemned as one of the most The Albion factory has notorIous engineering factories on the Clyde to book Opposition parties said the shameful acts always been considered by the package deal under the buses and organise for collec- answer was to , extend free educa'establishment' of the Amalga- threat of fines and impri- tions to finance the biggest pos- tion up to 17. about the build up of nuclear Pessimists observed that the weapons, which could only lead Engineering Union sonment. the world closer to a third world being "safe'. The Albion shop stewards are trouble was after school hours.

in the Labour and Tory parties. war, in which the main aggressor was US imperialism and its allies We believe that the real largest factory on the Clyde to It is, however, the January 26 lobby. second union met by mobilising The legislation ci threat n only be the anti-trade trade right to demand that the Glas- gow District Committee of the AEU act on its resolution to youth could become 'good lads' if they went out to be pioneers on Some people thought these

6/09k FiLE SION MOTO STEWARDS SUPPORT LOBBY Report from Glasgow A MASS meeting of 1,500 Merseyside construction workers decided last Tuesday to support the Lambeth Trades Council and to stop work for the day on January 26 to protest against the government's proposed anti-trade union laws.

The workers are employed on erecting an extension to the ICI works at Runcorn.

With only four votes against, they carried the resolution put forward by the shop stewards committee.

It was proposed to levy each man 5s to send a contingent on the January 26 lobby.

The site meeting, called for the middle of the morning, was held for the sole purpose of discussing a circular sent out by the Lambeth Trades Council.

In discussion the only opposition was in the form of a question:

MORE UNIONS BOTH the Fulham No. 1 and Brixton No. 2 ASW branches voted overwhelmingly this week to support the Lambeth Trades Council lobby. They also condemned the suspension of the Trades Council by the TUC.

Others who have joined the swelling ranks of support include the Bermondsey ASW;

Shepherd's Bush No. 1 ASW;

Brixton G/S AUBIW; and ETU branches in Romford (Essex), Stratford (London), New Addington (Surrey), Hast 'Are we for or against the Labour Party?'.

In quick retort, another worker said: I would like to answer with another question: Is the Labour government carrying out Labour policies when it introduces this legislation?'.

Other workers raised the proposition of unions withdrawing the political levy if the government carried through legislation.

One worker received much support when he pointed out what legislation would mean on a site like theirs, Where, through milifancy, conditions had been built up above the national site agreement, which is completely inadequate.

If we get on a site like this when it starts and then begin to organise to get above the national agreement, then we will be liable to be fined £50 to €500 for inciting to strike action', he said.

Another worker reported that his Plumbing Trades Union branch has asked its district committee to organise a stoppage of all plumbers in the Liverpool area for January 26.

IEND SUPPORT Ham, Islington and London Studio and Entertainment branch; Islington AEU; and Deptford No. 1 ASW.

In Glasgow, the Albion Works Committee and the Ibrox corporation bus garage have added their support.

Manchester No. 1 NUR voted in favour of the lobby, and the quarterly meeting of the shop stewards committee agreed to send two delegates on January 26 (see page four).

'Keep Left' AGM

AFTER striking, tex- tile workers in B'nei Brok, Israel, rejected pleas for a return to work from the government and the trade union bureaucrats. The Manufacturers' Association met at the end of December and threatened to stage a national lock-out of 20,000 textile workers.

Behind this stand was undoubtedly the news that, starting this month, the British Board of Trade is imposing strict quotas on textile imports from Israel.

Already, several British companies have cancelled • contracts, on government instructions.

The crisis of capitalism is sending a chain reaction round the world, as the ruling class in each country attempts to solve its own 'national' problem.

A few years ago, the Labour government in Israel adopted a policy of restricting imports and freezing wages.

Visiting British Labour leaders were very enthusiastic about this model of socialism, including the participation of trade union bureaucrats in management (hence Fairfields).

Israeli workers have not Stones versus bullets in Indian recognition strike POLICE shot and killed eight strikers last week at India's first atomic power station being built near Bombay.

Eighteen people were injured in clashes with the police, which occurred when workers refused to pay for food in the canteen.

About 4,000 men, employed by Bechtel India Limited, an Indian subsidiary of a US construction firm, have been on strike since December 9 demanding recognition of their union.

When workers began breaking up property on December 30, police, armed with tear gas and staves, charged them. Later they fired into the strikers, killing eight and wounding 18. Fifty-two policemen were injured by stones.

Correspondent keen.

Their first reaction to raised import tariffs was demonstrated by a crowd of seamen arriving home at Haifa, who just charged through the customs with quantities of transistor radios, watches etc.

Unofficial strikes came in waves, by-passing sometimes even the works' committees, and always the Histadrut (Israel's equivalent of the TUC), which is referred to popularly as 'an organisation to prevent strikes' The workers' attitude was reflected at trade union conferences and rallies when a veteran trade unionist declared: "This is no lottery; only one thing has been made cheaper by the government's policy', and the speaker held out his empty hands.

'What we want to know,' declared another, 'is when will the Labour government do something for labour?' Within the Labour leadership, a right-wing grouping led by former premier Ben Gurion, General Dayan, and former defence minister Peres, emerged, closely connected with the French and West German governments, with the perspectives of entry into the European Common Market— and wanting to break with trade union ties. (Very similar to the Donnelly-Wyatt group in Britain.)

This clique broke from the Israel Labour Party last year, contested the elections, and, in a number of local councils, its followers are now in coalitions with conservative fascist groups.

NO AID The sharpening world economic crisis has put the major capitalist countries in no position to help Israel's bosses.

The USA has cut foreign aid, Britain is restricting textile imports, and the Common Market countries refuse to lower tariffs on Israeli citrus fruits.

The balance of payments crisis is worse. And now the West German government, to help its own budget, as well as cutting social services in Germany, has cut its indemnification payments to refugees, many of whom, of course, live in Israel.

The Women's Zionist Organisation, which raises funds in the USA and Britain to supplement the Israeli government's welfare expenditure, announced in December a large budget deficit, and said it would have to cancel projects.

So the Israeli government attacks workers' wages and organisation, and cuts expenditure on social services.

The workers will not accept this.

The most significant development in recent months was on the streets of Tel Aviv, where, on several successive weekends in the working-class Hatikvah district, crowds of youth clashed violently with the police.

People in this district are mainly immigrants from the Yemen, North Africa and Iraq. They are mostly employed in unskilled and underpaid jobs and are known to the middle class as Shachorim ('The Blacks').

They are forced to live in crowded slum quarters in each Israeli city.

Unable to afford school fees, most have to withdraw their children from school at 14.

It has recently been estimated that between 40,000 and 50,000 teenagers are neither at school nor in jobs.

In Hatikvah, crowds of youth gather in the streets on weekend evenings.

STREET RACING

Some have taken up motor racing in the main thoroughfare.

As well as their own scooters, they sometimes borrow sports cars from the bourgeois neighbourhoods of north Tel Aviv, along the appropriately named Rothschild Boulevard.

The families often sit out on the balconies watching the youth sport.

When the police started to enter the distriot last October, to push the youth around and order them home, the crowds refused to budge.

They blocked the streets and chanted 'We demand youth clubs'.

On the following weekends, the crowds grew bigger each timesome local youth told reporters that they had been reinforced by young workers from other quarters.

The police were stoned. Hatikvah became a little Watts in Israel.

After mass arrests, local teenagers said they would soon 'liven things up again.

Asked if the girls had taken part (police claimed they hadn't), a 16-year-old girl told reporters: 'Oh yes, our job was throwing stones at the police.' The Israeli establishment was shaken by these youth.

(Continued on back page)

campaign being systematically carried out in Indonesia has taken on even more horrific proportions with the news from Jakarta that 100,000 people have been slain in the three months since the unsuccessful coup.

This 'conservative estimate' of Western diplomats puts the number of dead at more than all those killed in the Vietnam war in the last five years, and must come close to the figure of communists killed in the Second World War.

Active membership of the Communist Party of Indonesiawhich now represents a signed and sealed death warrant-has been reduced from three million to around 150,000.

Outside of the Soviet Union and China, Indonesia once boasted one of the largest Communist Parties in the world.

But the collaborationist policies of the Stalinist leadership of this party have led to massacres such as that reported from the isle of Bali-in 10 days between 3,000 and 4,000 people were killed.

All over Indonesia the killing continues and the 'Sunday Times' (January 2, 1966) reported:

'European engineers, businessmen and other foreign _travellers returning from upcountry speak of rivers filled with ..floating, decapitated corpses. One traveller said he had seen children in a village playing football with the severed heads of Communist supporters The murders have mostly been the work of Muslims who suffered greviously at the hands of the Communists before the abortive coup d'etat last October.' FIGUREHEAD As The Newsletter reported on October 9: 'Sukarnoism is played out.

Unable to maintain his balance between imperialism and the militancy of the peasant and working class, Sukarno remains a mere figurehead with the country run by the Army.

The Sunday Times' ported:

Sukarno: A mere figurehead •.. there is little question that the real master of the country is General Nasution, the Defence Minister, who escaped assassination on the night of September 30 by climbing over his garden wall.

"His implacable hostility to the Communists was turned into an obsessed hatred by the murder of his five-year-old daughter on that night.' Later it says:

"The Army leaders will probably allow President Sukarno to go on ruling the country as its figurehead until ill-health finally puts him out of the running' The Stalinists of the Indonesian Communist Party collaborated with the ageing president and, to a certain extent, aided him in maintaining his precarious 'nonaligned' position.

It was the failure of leaders, like 41-year-old Communist Party secretary D. N. Aidit, to offer an independent, revolutionary leaderNewsletter Correspondent ship to the peasant and working classes that laid the Party open to the present massacre by an extremely reactionary clique of generals.

Aidit himself, as we reported in the last issue of The Newsletter (January 1, 1966), is said to have been summarily executed in a Central Javan village.

Indonesia's currency (the rupiah) has been re-valued—primarily to attract foreign investment into what was, in any case, an ailing economy.

The 'Sunday Times' commented:

'No serious attempt has yet been made, either by the army or the Cabinet, to tackle Indonesia's economic chaos in a fundamental way. Eventually some kind of concerted international rescue operation may have to be mounted.' FURTHER ATTACKS Such an 'operation' would only be mounted by the imperialists, allowing further attacks on the lives and living standards of the masses of militant people.

This is one of the most harsh and brutal lessons to be learned by all those who believe in the Stalinist road.

Once again we appeal to all those revolutionary sections in the Communist Parties of the world to join the fight of the Fourth International in a real communist struggle against imperialism and their uniformed servants in countries like Indonesia.

EPTON

FACES 12 - YEAR UNDER a 1901 lai, not

invoked successfully in New York for 45 years, William Epton, 33-yearold leader of the Progressive Labour Movement, was jailed on December 20—over the Christmas period-until January 27 to await sentence.

He had been found guilty of conspiring to riot and to overthrow the New York state during the Harlem riots of July 1964.

He faces a maximum penalty of 12 year's jail and fines totalling 6,000 dollars.

The Peking-orientated Progressive Labour Movement, formed by Epton and others who broke from the Communist Party, has played a big part in the segregation and rent struggles of the Puerto Rican and Negro sections in New York.

Active

With their newspaper 'Challenge', and their activist outlook, they have worked in and among the working class of Harlem for a short, but effective period.

Recognising the potentialities of the Movement in providing a certain amount of leadership to the most oppressed sections of the United States population, the state authorities hauled in Epton after brutally quelling the riots.

A tape recording of a speech he made on July 18, last year, was taken by the police.

He had told his audience: •We will not be fully free until we smash this state completely and totally.

The phrase which seemed most to offend or, more probably, scare the authorities, was: 'In that process, we're going to have to kill

FORETASTE of what could happen in Britain on a wider scale is the jailing of Mr. Michael Quill, the 60year - old Irish - born leader of the Transport Workers' Union, which has called out all bus and subway workers in New York since New Year's Eve.

Late on Monday night the State Supreme Court decided that Quill had committed a civil contempt by ignoring an anti-strike injunction taken out by the Transport Authority nine hours before the strike began.

In fact, it is a state law that a strike of public employees is illegal.

INJUNCTION TORN UP Blustery Quill tore up the court injunction while he was appearing on television.

The original demands, which Quill later reduced by 80 per cent, are for a four-day, 32-hour week, six weeks' holiday after one year's work and half pay after retirement.

The city claimed that this would cost them 680 million dollars in the next two yearsthe period of the contract the transport workers want drawn up.

Things have eventually caught up with Quill.

Each year, around New Year, he has threatened and bludgeoned the Transport Authority for a bigger and better contract for his men.

Each year a little more has been granted, with Quill always compromising, often selling out on vital issues. Not once has he had to lead a stnike of his union.

But New York, a city dying on its feet, is deeply affected by the deepening economic crisis in the United States. Any question of overstraining the budget is out of order.

Quill, once more using his militant-sounding phrases, makes the demands. He is pushed by the even more militant sections of his union to maintain the demands.

This union is an amalgamation of several transport unions, the By a Newsletter correspondent most notable being the Motormen's Benevolent Association, which was absorbed recently.

It is the past members of the Association and the large sections of Negro transport workers who are pressing Quill to the point where through maintaining his militant front he is jailed.

He knows full well that, because of his past compromises with the state, he will be treated well. And, in his bluster, he adds that he might even organise the prison guards (some are members of a section of his union).

POWDER KEG

But this powder keg he has unwittingly primed could blow if a fight is put up over the jailing of unionists and against anti-trade union laws.

The Negroes, and many white sections, voted for the 'liberal' Republican Lindsay—he took over Mayoral office the day after the strike was called—in a swing against the Democrats.

Who was It is this man, and the state machine, which now turns round and uses the reactionary laws against 'militants' like Quill, and more directly against the wages and working conditions of the 33,000 bus and subway workers.

A fight could be put through the equivalent of the local trades council calling for more widespread strikes.

MANY QUILLS But there are many Quills at the head of the unions, which, in the US, have been forcibly amalgamated to make them more manageable by the state and central government.

It is up to the rank and file to make the past demand of the Transport Workers' Union for an independent party of labour a reality.

With such a party, and a Marxist leadership, a real struggle could be waged against the mock militants of the trade union movement, and against anti-union laws, as part of a fight for a revolutionary leadership of the whole of the American working class.

La lot of these cops, a lot of these judges, and we'll have to go up against their army.

A week after this speech, Epton was arrested for defying a city ban on a demonstration he had called.

A charge of rioting' against Epton was dropped because of insufficient evidence.

Agent

The chief prosecution witness at Epton's trial was Adolph W. Hart, a Negro police detective ordered into the Movement several months previously.

The grand jury gave immunity to 13 prosecution witnesses—1l of them from the Movement-on charges of rioting, but all 13 refused to give evidence and were arrested for contempt of court.

Five have been sent to the workhouse for four months. The other eight are awaiting sentence.

Despite appeals from the defence, the judge insisted that Epton be jailed over the Christmas period. He refused bail because 'the defendent is a dangerous man' (!).

In fact, Epton had been on bail for over 12 months waiting for the trial.

Both the US and British labour movements. must make every possible protest against the detention and forthcoming sentence on Epton and prevent him becoming a political scapegoat for the state, whose responsibility for the Harlem riots must continually be exposed. ¡He sentences of death passed on two Iranian students by a military court in Teheran have been changed to sentences of life imprisonment.

The two men, Ahmad Kamrani and Ahmad Mansouri, both aged 26, originally had their death sentences confirmed by an appeals count on December 15. Sentences were changed a few days later.

Kamrani and Mansouri were among nine young people who were alleged to have taken part in an attempt on the Shah's life on April 10 last year.

• The appeals court announced stiffer sentences on three of the nine, increasing terms of one year in jail to three and five years. Eight year sentences on another three of the accused were confirmed.

'Communist Parviz Nikkhah was absolved from complicity in the plot but was found guilty of organising communist activity. His life sentence was reduced to one of 10 year's solitary confinement.

On April 28 a government statement said that six of the aocused had been trained as engineers in Britain, and it was whilst they were there that they had become involved in communist activities.

The British labour and trade union movement must continue to press for the release of these students and of all political prisoners of the semi-feudal oil state.

Industrial • Peter Arnold ling a resolution giving unqualified support for the January 26 lobby of

1. The controversy about the president of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet ended in a very unsatisfactory way with the letter of I. Buchan in The Newsletter Readers will recall that the correspondence was sparked off by a reply to Palme Dutt's review in the 'Daily Worker', in which it was denied- that Trotsky was chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee, as he claims in his 'History of the Russian Revolution'.

Dutt raised the formal question of chairmanship in order to obscure the incontrovertible fact that, as President of the Soviet, Trotsky in fact directed all the practical work of the insurrection, as even Stalin admitted in 1918.

In point of fact, Trotsky's witness in 1917 is perfectly contradictory: if, as Trotsky writes, •. was even placed at he head of the bureau in order to emphasise the fact that the committee was a Soviet and not a party institution ...', then clearly he was the president of which was set up to look into the formation of a Military Revolutionary Committee.

Podvoisky presents the question this way in his two long articles on the military organisation of the Bolshevik Party, published in numbers 6 and 8 of Krasnia Letopis in 1923 (number 8, pp. 15-17): Podvoisky says that Lazimir was elected president in the first place, then replaced by Podvoisky himself, both of them assisted as secretary by AntonovOvseyenko.

I have not been able to find any denial of this assertion.

John Reed reproduced in his book a decree of October 24 signed 'for the President, Podvoisky' (ch. 3), then several days later, the 28th, a decree signed the president: Podvoisky' (ch. 8).

The titles changed quickly, but it does not seem possible to determine the exact date. In another passage, Reed writes: 'the Military Revolutionary Committee sat in continuous session, under the chairmanship of a towheaded, eighteen-year-old boy named Lazimir'.

And, on the next page: "There passed Podvoisky, the thin, bearded civilian whose brain conceived the strategy of insurrection...

Clearly one must not and cannot approach Trotsky, or the Lenin-recommended Reed, as infallible gospels.)

In fact the title had little importance.

In that period the Bolshevik Party actually created institutions which never functioned, and the roles of individuals often failed to correspond to their defined functions.

For example, the Military Revolutionary Centre composed of Sverdlov, Stalin, Bubnov, Uritsky and Dzerzinsky, created by the Central Committee on October 16, which never in fact functioned, or better still the Political Bureau of the CC created on October 10, 1917, which also remained in limbo.

Decisions taken one day were forgotten the next in the turmoil of the struggle (cf. the numerous decisions on the press in the minutes of the CC in 1917, or the presence of Kamener at the CC of October 24, even though the CC had accepted his resignation on October 20, by five votes to three).

The fact is that Trotsky, president of the Petrograd Soviet, effectively directed the whole of the work of preparing the insurrection, and if Podvoisky, titular president of the Military Revolutionary Committee (which would follow logically since he was in charge of the Party's military organisation), supervised military questions, it was under the direction of Trotsky.

This was evident even to Podvoisky at the time when he later wrote a number of dull 'studies' designed to show that up to Lenin's arrival on the evening of the 24th, the Military Revolutionary Committee was in a state of utter chaos: presumably these remarks were not directed at himself.

At any rate, all this permitted him to stay alive until 1948.

2. 1. Buchan says he does not know the subsequent fate of Lazimir.

He was named member of the Military Revolutionary Committee for the southern front in October 1918 along with Mekhonochin (another old member of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet) and Shlyapnikov, and he died in the following year in one of the Civil War battles.

In the meantime he had become a member of the Bolshevik Party. • 18, 1965, Jack Gale wrote: In his article of December 'Bubnov was imprisoned in 1937 and released in 1957, at the age of 77; the fate of Berzin, Kiselev Lornov (Lomov?), Muranor and V. Yakovleva is unknown' There have been rumours about the release of Bubnov and Kossarev (former secretary of the Komsomol) from prison camps; in fact both of them died in 1940: Kossarev was shot and Bubnov almost certainly met the same fate.

All Soviet biographies give 1940 as the date of Bubnou's death. There seems no reason to doubt this.

Conversely, the old left Menshevik Sukhanov, deported in 1931, is manifestly still alive since all Soviet sources obstinately give only his date of birth.

Berzin was shot in 1937 and rehabilitated in an article in 'Komsomolskaya Pravda' for November 1964.

Kiselev was shot in 1938, and has been rehabilitated.

Muranov died peacefully in 1959 (the same year in which died Manuilsky and Krzhizhanovsky, other rare survivors of the fury of Stalin).

Lomov was shot in 1938, and has just been rehabilitated. • I do not know the fate of Yakovleva.

Parliament called for by the Lambeth Trades Council to oppose the anti-trade the w religious leaders said that union legislation.

the kibbutzim; the difficult thing struggle against the dangers of nuclear war is the struggle for socialism in Britain. An on- slaught by the labour movement, jumped into the lead also demanding that shop stewards have the by behind the of January union rank and file whole lobby oppose legislation against the trade unions. Other factories on the Clyde THE Daily Sketch' of January attacked course. was getting them there, of Zionist led by a revolutionary Marxist District Committee of the Workers should see acti- should follow their lead by in Wooll to these young workers party would greatly weaken the capitalist class internationally.' AEU implement its res ou- Albion is imi nediately factory and begun at working for a January 26. turnout Labour leaders of be simple reason that they around Tel Aviv just who leadership to Wilson was the The building of the alternative tion meeting opposing passed at its last sible for the latest from the pioneering.

burning question for 1966. form of legislation YOUTH HELP prices increases. well that it cannot offer The establishment kno ws very a future Young Socialists. Building such It was the real challenge to the the trade unions. 'Harold Wilson's bubble to the young workers of the a leadership meant not just being The Albion stewards burst,' it says. "The tide of Hatikvah quarter.

called on the District Commit- ing prices is swelling- On the contrary, the comand rade see bran tee to circulate all TENANTS FORM there is more come.' five weeks, ing year it will have introduce commitices calling on and social services, and me on their sit 'Sketch' factory in Sc 5 at suthall, Mir the Woolf to cut employment. the lobby. sex, claim they not have still Youth like those of the HatikEvery Young Socialist branch the Albion Shop Stewards' The resolution passed by ASSOCIATION go fares. 'From Sunday Season tickets Transport and General received strike pay from the vah quarter, the militant indusnow in existence and every new one that was formed became a Committee has great poli- side Lon lon 'will s 7d cost 1 Workers' Union. The majority the government and trade union bosses, and the young Arab milestone along the road for alter- tical significance for the in the f more. And in of the strikers are Indians and workers who have been leaving native leadership. Clyde. It is not just a To fight Liverpool rent rise don bus, rail and tube Pakistanis. Most of them their villages to seek work on as the win learn T militant demand but indi- cates the growing aware- are UP go by ls in the UP. Freight Even members of the union. members of the Forty per cent of the strikers if united in building sites a movement, lead and factories, can, legislation against wage increases ness amongst workers that AT a meeting called by the Newsletter and the Young were fully paid up at the time the Israeli working class Rail coffee is a step which must ultimately in defending their interests the strike was called over the the present rulers: but affect every person in the labour they are in direct conflict Socialists, Liverpool council tenants at Speke decided UP—to suspension of a workmate for through in leadership is essential.

movement. with the Labour to set up a Provisional Tenants' Committee. Eggs, already costing more late. three days being ten minutes ment which uses They called another tenants' than ever before, are likely union official is reported to of the state to The 'Mapam' (a centrist organithe profiteers. They are allowed to continue to make their millions of pounds profits. not attack those who voted solidly Tory. It turns on the working "There is no legislation against "The Labour government does case of Fairfields shipyard interests of This was the very clear in the be reported which the councillors for the Speke asked to give their threatened meeting for last Wednesday at estate were three rent attitude on (To the tant rates interest mus tenant in private property in corporation property must be stressed. The Government known in every household. bond of unity between The and the be of bread further. the standard loaf An committee to work out how much have said that only those 240 fully paid up will receive union much up a largely from the militant trade sation), which now gets its votes the kibbutzim, and petty-bour- geois careerists, and attached unionist, is still led by men from class who actually voted this which is across the Clyde from must be forced to restore the hope of getting rid of the Tories,' government into power in the the Albion works. councillors the choice is clear: For the Liverpool Labour subsidies and to lend money to local councils interest free.9 by an average f2 10s per ton. George Brown's Prices Board she said. tooth and nail against Wilson. Because legislation against the "This is why "Keep Left" fights aideds, acted to the Brown, union Either tenants dry to the big moneylenders, or refuse squeeze council the councillors who expressed simi- may delay the cerned at the amount of goods going in and out of the factory. Shop stewards are still con- On Monday, it is alleged, one ment. company they cultivate, regard middle-class intellectuals whose The Mapam' leaders, and the fascist dictatorship. state is a step towards the des- trade unions is a step towards 'To tie the trade unions to the of closure a new management which has succeeded in wiping a matter of days all the standards. raise rents and organise working people of Liverpool in to defend their lar sentiments in the past. More and more tenants, like household rates. This year's demand UP. be at least 2s of the two pickets (the police are not allowing any more than two on the picket line) was beaten up by scabs. "social problem'. the Hatikvah quarter youth as a duty to them as benevolent social At best they would regard their nent the trade unions could no gains won by the trade unions in the £ UP last year's, Police cars and con- work; with the hope of making in tens of years. ALDERMAN WRITES which was over 2s in th 2s in the tinually patrolling the them good Zionists and shoving members what was the purpose of The lessons of this have not UP on the year before? vicinity of the factory. trade unionism? been lost on the Al bion Only five years ago The workers must form squads right wing of the Trades Union The despicable betrayal of the ing the next months they workers. They know workers. They know that the next months dur- will the leaders of the Labour Coun- Alderman who is now one CROYDON to protect the pickets. To pro- tect their union organisation for tion ing system' at the Trades Union Congress and now they had turned They put forward the 'early warn- Congress had to be condemned. be faced with increase prices and taxation which eat into their wages and faced with increases that will in cil put Writing Workers the choice very well. in the 'Harbour Voice, February who own the property, alway kerie black. The Taling, which they have fought for so should join the lobby of the Southall area, these workers determinedly in Woolfs and the control of Nazareth Council. Arab workers, students It has the support of y against the policy of their own their only form of defence is 1960, he described the action of MAY RISE who raise resort to price increases when South all Trades Council, villagers.

labour movement in the London area. organisation. the Lambeth Trades Council, one of the most active bodies of the ing to go on record for the That was why they had attacked am asking this annual meet- struggle. through factory and trade union to force workers to accept such miserly inc The proposed reases as Labour ing as brokers' big moneylenders who mand even higher interest rates. &By raising rents follows: Councils will de- are act- for the so the achieve increases in wages. the working class fight for and sition, But Wilson and co. support Tories, who are in oppo- take full advantage policy in parliament, organised by the Young Socialists for January 12, to protest at the calling of police union branch. This will the pre- - 26 lobby of parliament agains: part of nowhere further than nationalism, a middle-class orientation, and worship of Arab rulers in neigh- bouring countries. work to break completely from It believes in leading them Serious socialists in Israel must the Lambeth Trades Council. vithdrawal of the proscription of contained in the housing as a social service by They are reducing the ideal of in- this to discredit Labour. anti-union laws. imperialism and its Zionist stooges, to unite the working class Young Socialists and "Keep fixing rents above a worker's on a socialist programme with Left" must do everything in their SHORT to be British Rail appeals perspectives for a united struggle legislation for this to be power in the campaign against in the Middle Eastern countries, achieved. ing, will certainly mean in- wrest them from imperialism.

NO TIME TO LOSE he reets for their a par creases of between 15s and to union on liner trains national has A section the Fourth Inter- be constructed. perty.. 25s. for 'When we talk about legislation AT WELSH 'The only fight the way As yet, the Labour group we must understand that because Brown has already indicated that problem is on the political feld. has not even met to discuss a bill is going on the statute books there is no time to lose. STEEL not take upon themselves the Labour local authorities must tional, particularly the Socialist "The essence of leadership is to job of squaring their housing Croydon Tenants' Associ- WITH an announcement that ncw facts would be introduced warn and prepare the working accounts at ation is discussing this and and bad the hemational ace. class against the employing RI Instead hotume of protest this week its final appeal to the National Union of Railwaymen That has concerned about reports for the introduction of a streamlined rail freight system. started an all out campaign for the lobby of Parliament on Janu- The new facts concern the ary 26 in the latesit issue. of disagreement between the has been forced to reject 'open E120m profit 'We must reach out to every nationalized steel com moment charged to rate- Board and the NUR-the use of terminals' at its previous meetactive trade unionist and militant te es posed must cape place can payers, will be transferred railway terminals private ings. -but 1500 in the country and mobilise them to come to the lobby! Baldwins has introduced short- solely to council tenants. hauliers. True policy betrayal no other organisation which was It was the Young Socialists and time working large be levied on The exorbr- and file, the executive of Due to pressure from the NUR the rank roon tominal liner ta the Labour for the in- nt gave the the backbone of the organising with 200 time plan te for the lobby.

'Of course the nice polite Young at the DEW LATTER This whole scheme, allowed the Labour Party have said and done nothing about legislation.' Socialists who have hung around Newport, and Spencer works Vale works. at lanwern, near the Ebbw to be put into practice, would be just another way of de- WORKERS at factories in the RKERS at factories 'We are not unmindful of the nationalizing the railway in- Phillips-Mullard group fact that just as legislation is pro- posed, the cost of living is going announced this week that the flat dustry. were told just before Christmas

up, making it more and more rolled products division of YOUR the strike to decent level. It is alleged will it be before they do? In announcing plea to that, because the group had difficult for the working class to and Baldwin electricians employed by Camden the union has indire ctly aided the Even if they do; their problems the NUR, a spokesman for the failed to expand in the last two avoid a showdown on wages. are going up in addition to elec- Already the transport charges would begin a four-day the cold mills at both works. Borough Council over the dis- missal of ten fellow-workers Council by refusing the ten dimissed for will by no means be over. The The government's policy of policy • of jections to having anything to do Board said that the union's ob- with the 'enemy'-road transport years, 5 per cent of the labour force—1,500 people--would be tricity and gas. Callaghan has The situation arose from (Newsletter, January I, 1966) appeal hearing.) holding holding back loans for local for local —were no longer relevant to sacked. said that the budget will pose lack of orders for reduced sheet omitted a number ot detaris, Even with the 6d the development means that redun- modern conditions. The firm reported a trading higher taxation.' and coil and is expected to persist which I think are in electricians on the department in dancy is the order of the day for "We have got to have co-ordina- of £564,000. Yet £1,632,000 ing class, the old age pensioners would be the hardest hit. 'Keep Left' supported the decision of the Of all the sections of the work- last year it was reported that the for some weeks. (In November firm's main steel market was this strike. wage creases the shen tere men the strike (those the lifts) will still Is per hour under who maintain be more than the rate of employees. all sections The constant rise of local authority in war, he satat on the basis section of the giant European paid out in dividends. Phillips and Mullards are a like the right wing labour leaders.' last Young Socialist conference to campaign for the aged. Left" will never desert them, un- "The Young Socialists and "Keep petition from steel finms in the abroad.) and Baldwins are finding it im- possible to face up to the com- In other words Richard Thomas workers. In fact, one senior mem- negotiating further which would have been an ex- ample to all local authority ber of the council staff is reported cult to obtain labour to us, even if they want to. Also they will not take the council will find it diffi- wage freeze policy. Labour councils of living will also sharply the role of right-wing and Brown's bring home man, however, it is ve a war. The Beeching already taken the jobs the rank-and-file lips Gloeilampenfabreiken N.V. of Holland. combine of Phillips Electrics and Associated Industries, and Phil- In 1964, the combine made be"We have it within our power to foreign market. to have said that the electricians chance of employing any more 1oB-pastrusoles are ahead for the of these workers. tween them a trading profit of make 1966 the greatest year yet were setting a 'bad example' to electricians under the direct The introduction of liner £102,239,7911 for Keep Left' and the Young the rest of the council employees. labour scheme who will set a 'bad ployees. is expected to bring further re- When a shop steward at the Socialists. Let this AGM decide zation a long time ago, cannot be Not only could the council not By understanding the dundancies. Mitcham, Surrey, Mullard factory case to and and socialis expected to come to the defence allow such a position; right wing because of prose sharee hat of the strike in Camden, This is what faces the rank was told of the sackings it is of the steel workers— no doubt officials of our union, the Electri- prepare for the future file of the NUR when they claimed that it was made clear the right-wing Labourites see the cal Trades Union, would also side contractors will have to do struggles ahead. mand that there should be no there was no question of cutting short time working as part of the have been seriously embarrassed the work. The council has not introduction of liner trains with- back production, but that a government's 'streamlining of by an attempt to lift the low yet signed any contracts with out- out some very definite assurances higher output would be aimed labour' plan. of the council employees side electrical firms. How long from the Railway Board. for (with fewer workers).