The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 428

Wilson government proposes to make to employers carrying out investment projects, which were announced last week, are designed 'revitalise' British capitalism by creating more unemployment.

Generous cash allowances—up to 40 per cent of the cost of investment projects in some areas of the country-are to be made to induce employers to 'modernise' at all possible speed.

Thus, if a businessman spends £l million on a new factory in an area of high employment such as Merseyside or the north-east, he will receive back from the state £400,000. . Under the old system, which is now to be scrapped, capitalists were allowed tax rebates on investment projects.

It is hoped that this new scheme -with its more immediate cash offer-will speed up the rate of rochiviogical changeo Employers welcomed the new proposals, as they have done all the measures taken by this government.

ICT (manufacturers of compuextremely attractive and British ters), finds the new Petroleum hopes for a 'genuine gain' under the proposed system.

The extra cash grants which are to be given to firms going to the 'development areas' (that is, areas of high unemployment) is a direct attempt to provide cheap labour for the employers while, at the same time, easing the pressure in the Midlands and the South where labour is still very scarce and wage rates have continued to soar way beyond productivity, despite George Brown's 'incomes policy.

The cost of the new arrangement will certainly be over £250 m The tabor soyerament is in tained. This last point seems million a year.

The Labour government is in fact subsidising private capitalism by this amount, even though it was unable to grant the pensioners their paltry rise when it came into oflice, and has resisted every demand for higher wages from the working class.

Gunter has said that full employment cannot be guaranteed. These measures, though small in themselves, are the response of the Labour Cabinet to demands from prominent bankers and industrialists for a sharp rise in unemployment so that labour can be 'put in its place'.

This cash hand-out to the millionaires again illustrates which side the Labour leaders' have chosen to take in the struggle between the employing and working classes.

HAI: --= JOIN THE SLL _ORDER THE NEWSLETTER • The Socialist Labour League is the only organisation within the labour movement which fully supports the national lobby of parliament, organised by the Lambeth Trades Council.

Our paper, The Newsletter, has, since last October, campaigned each week for the success of the lobby.

The Newsletter was the only paper to protest over the suspension of the Lambeth Trades Council by the TUC.

Both the Socialist Labour League and The Newsletter pledge themselves to continue with the struggle until the right-wing Labour and trade union leaders are forced to abandon their proposals for anti-trade union legislation. • We ask all our readers, old and new, to pledge themselves to support us in 'this fight. If you want to receive The Newsletter regularly, why not become a regular subscriber: 9s for 12 issues (including postage). If you want to know more about the Socialist Labour League, fill in the form below.

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ADDRESS.. : 186a Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4 Send Conspiracy exposed proposai to legislate against the trade unions in collaboration with the international bankers. The massive loans to prop up sterling have been granted only on the understanding that the attack on trade unionism would be pressed home. This is the opinion of the industrial correspondent of the 'Sunday Telegraph'.

Paterson also refers to a Transport House Research Department document of 1963 which prophetically referred to the Declaration of item of December, 1964, and several other of the Labour government's gimmicks.

The past three years' discussion in the Labour and the unions about the so-called 'incomes policy' been a hoax perpetrated on the working class.

All that time, the right wing was plotting with the bosses to get anti-union laws on the Statute Book.

It also makes it quite plain that 'voluntary' action would not be adequate to enforce an 'incomes Legislation to control wages was the intention of the Labour leaders three years ago.

DOUBTFUL POINT Union chiefs are reported by Paterson to have been annoyed about this document, which, he says, they have only recently obdoubtful however.

Is it likely that such a report could come from a Labour Party department without the TUC leaders getting to know about it?

Members of the Party Executive, including the 'lefts', must also have learned of its contents.

The silence of the 'left' critics of Wilson on the question of anti-union laws makes them part of the employers' conspiracy.

The whole preparation for anti-union laws has, therefore, been one gigantic conspiracy against the workers. All the discussions at the 1965 TUC about a 'voluntary early warning system' on wages was a fraud—a trick to soften up the rank and file for the main blow against them.

At next Wednesday's lobby Party have of Parliament on this question, trade unionists must demand straight answers from Labour MPs.

It is time to end this dangerous farce.

The labour movement must be mobilised to stop the traitors who are at its head from carrying out their long-hidden intentions.

They must be thrown out of the movement and a new leadership organised which will fight the bosses, not the workers.

'Defend stewards' meeting backs lobby LOBBYISTS RAILMEN SET STRIKE DATE * response to the Prices and Incomes Board rebuit of, their pay claim, the National Union of Railwaymen's executive committee has called a national strike to begin on February 14.

The NUR is to meet the other rail unions to co-ordinate policy.

Union Secretary, Sidney Greene, says the pay claim was fully justified under the title of 'exceptional' cases.

The strike call illustrates the feeling of the rank and file against the Labour government and its wage-freezing tactics. This feeling must also be mobilised into action against the proposed anti-union legislation.

SUPPORT FOR LOBBY BIRKENHEAD Communist Party voted on Wednesday to support next Wednesday's lobby of parhament and to send a delegate. for news of more support see TO TAN MIKARDO, MP for Poplar (London), and supporter of 'Tribune', called the police on Friday January 14) to remove a deputation of Young Socialists and trade unionists from his 'surgery' at Poplar Town Hall.

The deputation had an appointment to see Mikardo to discuss the anti-union legislation proposed by the Labour government.

He refused to answer the question as to which way he would vote in parliament if legislation either to freeze wages or to impose sentences on strikers were proposed, saying:

'NO COMMENT' 'Until I see the actual legislation which is proposed, I am unable to comment.' After further discussion about his comments on the 'Any Questions' programme (broadcast the previous Friday), in relation to the imprisonment of Quill (New York transport strike leader), he refused to continue the interview, claiming that his words were being distorted.

Finding that he received no reply to his repeated 'goodnights', he informed the deputation that unless they left within two minutes, he would call the police.

'We have done it elsewhere, and we can do it here tonight,' threatened one of his assistants.

One of the Young Socialists quickly explained that they required no more than 30 seconds of his time: surely this was adequate for him answer a straightforward question as to how he would vote?

FOR OR AGAINST?

Would he stand with the working class, or against them?

His answer came in the shape becomes more plain.

hundred years of struggle.

The programme for the demonstration LIGHT REFRESHMENTS will be available from 6 a.m. travelling overnight. Sandwicht at modest prices. ST. AGNES AGNES PLACE, KENNINGTON, COACHES will set down by the side of St. KENNINGTON PARK GARDE to park at KENNINGTON CROSS ASSEMBLE at KENNINGTON at 11 a.m.

MARCH from Kennington Oval, via George's Circus, Blackfriars an Gardens (Belvedere Road).

LOBBY House of Commons, starting at REPORT BACK MEETING Central Hall, Westminster, S.W.I, from discuss the order of the march.

points for coaches going to lobby es going to S.E. LONDON Woolwich Arsenal stn. 9.30 a.m. New Cross bus garage 9.55 a.m. British Home Stores, Rye Lane 10.00 a.m. Borough stn. 10.30 a.m. S.W. LONDON Roehampton 9.00 a.m. Wandsworth Town Hall 9.15 a.m. Tooting Broadway Com. 9.35 a.m. Clapham Common tube 10.00 a.m. CENTRAL MIDDX.

The Crown, Cricklewood Br'dway 9.15 a.m. Jubilee Clock 9.30 a.m. Acton Town Hall 9.45 a.m. Shepherd's Bush tube 10.00 a.m.

(Metropolitan line)

N.E. MIDDX.

Theobalds Grove, Cheshunt 9.00 a.m. Enfield Town stn. 9.15 a.m. Edmonton Green 9.30 a.m. Tottenham Town Hall 9.45 a.m. Dalston Junction stn. 10.00 a.m.

onwards for cor is, hot dogs and CHURCH HALL, S.E.11.

Agnes' Church Hall in VS, and then proceed and Elephant and Casi a Waterloo to the i PETER HENDRIE, Secretary. WEST LONDON Ladbroke Grove stn.

Royal Oak stn.

Chippenham-pub S.W. LONDON Dulwich/Norwood Ro Herne Hill Streatham Hill stn.

Brixton Town Hall S.W. MIDDX.

Feltham stn.

Hounslow bus : stn.

Hayes Grapes Southall Bowl Alle Northolt LT stn.

S. REGION Crawley bus stn.

West Croydon stn.

E. LONDON -Connaught Gate The Co-op, Stratford Broadway Angel stn., Islington le, St. 'estival 9.30 a.m. 9.45 a.m. 10.00 a.m.

9.30 a.m. 9.50 a.m. 10.00 a.m.

9.00 a.m.

9.15 a.m. 9.30 a.m. 9.00 a.m. 9.30 a.m.

9.00 a.m. 10.00 a.m.

9.00 a.m. 9.30 a.m. 10.00 a.m.

about the Socialist Labour League. WHEN the IS President sent his envoys scurrying around the world on an avowed search for a peaceful settlement in Vietnam, The Newsletter warned that this was only the prelude to a renewed offensive by the imperialists.

This contention is confirmed by the joint communiqué issued after the visit of Dean Rusk and Avril Harriman to Saigon last week.

The South Vietnam puppet regime of General Ky, self-styled disciple of Hitler, tried to make show of independence of Washington by laying down conditions for negotiations.

These included the withdrawal of all North Vietnamese forces from the South, and a refusal to negotiate with the National Liberation Front. Obviously the North Vietnam government, not the Vietcong, would accept such terms.

Ky's words would not themselves be taken seriously, but the joint communiqué issued after Rusk had left for Manila gave them more significance.

It said that the US Secretary of State 'had expressed his apprecostion of the South Vietnamese So all the pious talk of Johnson, and his junior partner wilson, not to mention the Pope, about seeking peace, is exposed as lies.

The imperialists intend to continue their brutal attack on the Vietnamese workers and peasants, whatever the cost and whatever the opposition within the USA itself. Socialists who want to discuss something with him.

What must he think of workers who want to take strike action?

This incident makes it absolutely plain that it is no longer possible to have any illusions in the 'official left'.

Support for Wilson and Brown from Michael Foot (see article page 2) go hand in hand with Mikardo's calling of the police against the most politically conscious sections of the working class.

¡EVENTY Young Socialists • who attended their Londo Region Conference on Sunday gave unanimous support to the lobby against trade union legislation, organised by the Lambeth Trades Council for January 26.

In a report to the conference, editor of the Young Socialist paper Keep Left', Aileen Jennings, pointed out that the lobby would be held one day after the bill proposing legislation was presented to Parliament on the 25th.

"This move by the Labour government is bound on one hand to bring great hardship for thousands of workers and on the of unions other hand to increase the profits of the employers.

'Such a bill is being introduced by a government which was elected by trade unionists to defend their interests. But Wilson, Callaghan and Brown have made it plain that the Labour government was to be a government of betrayal.' The Young Socialists, she said, who had fought before the election for socialist policies for the working class were now standing steadfastly by the interests of workers in defending the trade unions against legislation.

"This is why we must go all out in the the next week to make the January 26 lobby a most important demonstration' Following the report, Young Socialist members from all over London spoke to resolutions on Vietnam, Rhodesia, racialism, the old age pensioners, rents, trade unions, the Labour government, and the Young Socialists Conterence.

For many youth it was the first time they had spoken publicly and the conference marked an important step in the London Young Socialists campaign towards the sixth annual conference at Morecambe in April this year. surrounded by armed cops-so reminiscent of the suicide of Stavisky-has led to public disquiet and criticism of the notoriously venal French police and secret service.

The head of France's counterespionage service, General Jacquier, has been sacked and it seems probable that more heads will roll.

Sweeping measures to reorganise and centralise the police and secret services are being prepared.

What more the present inquiry into the Barka case will reveal is anyone's guess. But it has made it grusomely plain to the French working class that the state today is riddled with pro-Fascist and anti-labour elements.

Today it is a Moroccan nationalist-tomorrow it could be the turn of a French trade union leader.

The second part of a r articles in "Trib

of a squad of blue-uniformed men who removed the deputation from the Town Hall.

Nothing could be clearer! Mikardo brings in police against trade unionists and Young NOT since the Stavisky scandal which rocked the Daladier regime has France seen anything like the brazen abduction and murder of Mehdi Ben Barka, leader of the Moroccan opposition.

Ben Barka's disappearance—he was bundled into a car in broad daylight in Paris—occurred on the eve of the Presidential elections. It was disclosed at the time that the French underworld, in collaboration with the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior, had planned the operation.

De Gaulle, intent on winning the Presidential eleations, said nothing to implicate the French police or the Secret Service. If the real facts of Ben Barka's case had been revealed, then the elections would have taken a quite difterent turn.

Figon's tales

Dead men may tell no tales— but-unluckily for the French President-live ones do, and George Figon, a notorious gangster, spoke openly and freely about his role and the collusion of French police and Ministry officials in the gruesome business.

The alleged suicide of Figon, a few weeks later in a house

working class is outstanding in the international labour movement. But these millions of organised workers have always been led by political representatives who work to preserve the rule of the capitalist class.

These right-wing leaders produce a serious weakness in the working class, exposing it to grave dangers of capitalist attack.

Nowhere else in the world do the industrial workers constitute such anoverwhelming percentage of the population.

Only 4 per cent of the occupied population work in agriculture and the great majority of these are farm proletarians, worse off than the town workers.

leadership The capitalist class requires that the working class does not have revolutionary, socialist leadership, otherwise capitalism would be faced, at every critical turn, with the possibility of its overthrow.

Labour leaders have always worked on the assumption that parliamentary majorities could work to steadily improve the condie northe wor workers and the majority of workers been misled by this, still regarding the Labour Party as the only realistic alternative to the Tories.

Until a new • leadership proves itself in struggle, the "lesser evil' theory will prevail, or else be replaced for a period by despair and disillusionment.

Lenin, Trotsky, and their followers therefore advocated, in the pamphlet 'Left Wing Communism', elsewhere, that Marxists should fight to get a Labour government into power, in order that it could be exposed, and the Labour leaders defeated.

1966 is an especially favourable period for-this job to be done. But it can only be done in the course of building a revolutionary party, whose leadership will be proved in struggle, and will replace the reformist Labour leaders.

It is an especially favourable situation because the Labour Party "right' and 'left', and 'Communist' Party, are all lurchcollaboration, just as we workersown struggle and determination gathers momentum.

The Labour government, having completely abandoned socialist policies, is required to serve the capitalists directly: in foreign affairs, as in Vietnam; in the colonial sphere, as in Rhodesia; at home, in the attacks on the trade unions and wages.

The Communist Party, unable to oppose Wilson government uncompromisingly, proposes to change the name of the 'Daily Worker' and calls for broad left unity', turning its back on the working class.

Meanwhile the working class responds militantly to the attack with a counter-attack industrially: wages go 8 per cent in 1965.

But politically, many workers hesitate, until shown an alternative, as in the lobby of Parliament on January 26.

We have a number of so-called "left-wingers', around papers like "Tribune', the 'Militant' and The Week' who courage the hesitation instead of fighting on the main question ... to build an alternative, revolutionary leadership.

When these fake left-wingers' quote Lenin's 'Left-Wing

WSLETTER The sec Pag Page &K TRANSPOI NEWSLETT

second article by CLIFF LAUGHTEr answering those lefts' who quote Lenin's "Left-Wing 'ommunism' justify thei support of Wilson's ¡overnment. strength of the British munism', they are turning it into its opposite, to suit their own betrayals. What did Lenin actually say?

His main purpose was to correct the one-sidedness of those who appeared very 'Left' Communists in Germany, Holland, Britain and elsewhere at the beginning of the Communist International.

He insisted that they must ger over the infantile disorder' of dismissing all compromise and working in capitalist and reformist institutions' (eg. parliament, trade unions, Labour Parties etc.).

On the contrary, he said, they must learn to do a new type of Communist work in the reformist mass organisations, and in bourgeois parliaments. He welcomed the revolutionary temper of their break with opportunism and careerism, but that was only 'the beginning of wisdom', he said.

"The very purpose of the existence of the Communists in the world, adherents of the Third International in all countries, is to change all along the line, In all spheres of lite, the old socialist, trade-unionist, syndicalist parliamentary work into new Communist work' For Lenin, there was no question of behaving like the estabiished parliamentarians and bureaucrats in order to 'creep up on them'. , as some of our leftwingers' once set out to do before they became unrecognisable from the others...• Trotsky was responsible, at the same time, for dratting the Resolutions and Theses of the Second Nationalized industries join INE nationalized undertakings have joined the Confederation of British Industry, the body which represents the vast majority of private firms in Britain, and which is the arch-proponent of private enterprise.

The Boards which have joined are: The National Coal Board, The British Railways Board, the Electricity and Gas Councils, British European Airways, British Overseas Airways Corporation, The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, the North of Scotland HydroElectric Board and the South of Scotland Electricity Board. Others are expected to join soon.

This announcement coincided with a denunciation of the miners by the National Coal Board's chairman, Lord Robens, and the rejection of 'the railwaymen's wage claim by the National Board for Prices and Incomes.

This new 'get-together' is for the purpose of a joint attack on all workers, backed by the government's proposed anti-trade union legislation.

It reflects the Wilson government's abandonment of steel nationalization and its complete capitulation to capitalist requirements all along the line.

There is no doubt who will be the dominant partner in this marriage of convenience. The nationalized boards will have no voting rights but will nevertheless pay the same subscriptions as private finms. Lenin (left) said that Henderson and Snowden (right) [the Browns and Wilsons of 1920] must be helped to power, in order to expose them to the working class.

Congress of the Communist International. On August 20, 1920, the Congress carried Theses on 'Communist Parties and Parliaments,' which included the following:

'One such auxiliary centre is the rostrum of the bourgeois parliament. It is no argument against participation in the parliamentary struggle that parliament is a bourgeois state institution. The Communist Party does not enter this institution to function there as an organic part of parliament, but in order, by action inside parliament, to help the masses to shatter the State machine and parlament itself. ...

Aiding Labour With these general revolutionary considerations, how did Lenin present the question of helping the Labour leaders to win governmental majorities?

The fact is, he never advocated support for a Labour government in office. His purpose in advocating their election was to break the workers from their leadership, as the following quotations clearly show (he refers to Henderson and Snowden, the Browns and Wilsons of 1920):

If we-not a revolutionary group but the Party of a revolutionary classif we want the masses to follow us (and unless they do, we stand the risk of remaining mere talkers) we must, first, help Henderson or Snowden to beat Lloyd George and Churchill (or to be more correct: compel the former to beat the latter, because the former are afraid to win);

secondly, help the majority of the working class to become convinced by their own experience that we are right, i.e., that the Hendersons and Snowdens are utterly worthless, that they are petty-bourgeois and treacherous and that their bankruptcy is inevitable; bosses' organisation Thus, the National Coal Board, which is the largest employer of labour in Britain, will pay nearly £14,000 a year to this employers' organisation.

As 'The Guardian' gleefully pointed out on January 13:

"The subscriptions of nationalized undertakings will therefore be supporting a CBI. staff and services which in part forcibly put the case for private as opposed to public enterprise.' The feeble excuse that the nationalized industries will be able to influence the CBI 'from within' will not bear examination.

The CBI intends to co-opt members from the nationalized undertakings on to its Grand Council for specific debates.

But it will exclude them, for instance, from its discussions on the manufacturing powers of nationalized industries.

Make fortune

The CBI wants to prevent the rallway workshops from manufacturing for private industry.

It is not, of course, opposed to private firms manufacturing for the nationalized industries and making a fortune out of it, as in the case of mining machinery.

On the same day as this was announced, Lord Robens, chairman of the Coal Board, gave a press conference and a television interview in which he clearly suggested: that absenteeism in the mines was related to high social service benefits.

He claimed that every thirdly, bring nearer the moment when, on the basis of disappointment of the majority of workers in the Hendersons, it will be possible with good chances of success to overthrow the government of Henderson at once. ...

(Our emphasis.)

So much for those who tell us not to 'rock the boat' for fear the Tories get back, and quote Lenin in their suppont!

Lenin expresses himself even more clearly in a famous sentence:

... I will also be able to explain that I want to support Henderson with my vote in the same way as a rope supports one who is hanged-that the establishment of a Henderson government will , prove that I am right, will bring the masses over to my side, and will accelerate the political death of the Hendersons and Snowdens... • Just for good measure for those who use Lenin to bolster their a Len to conclusions to read Wing Communism':

•.. in order to accelerate the coming into power of the Hen of poser: (Ond then their Lenin spoke_out very clearly, just as The Newsletter speaks out clearly, for revolutionary principle.

He never adapted himself, and nor do we, to the petty-bourgeois and reformist establishment, but proceeded always from the revolutionary interests of the masses of the workers.

Those who abuse his writings today are, in effect, dangerous enemies of the working class.

Far from their suttering trom any 'infantile disorder' of the movement, they are incurable victims of the senile decay of the Labour bureaucracy, rapidly approaching its death along with source of life, British imperialism.

(To be continued)

Robens: High Social Services cause of absenteeism.

National Insurance benefits were raised, there was a 2 per cent increase in absenteeism amongst miners.

Carefully saying that he himself 'didn't draw any conclusions' from this, he nevertheless suggested that the government should examine whether some corrective treatment was necessary.

Robens admits that 60,000 workers in the mining industry get less than f13 for a week's work. Instead of proposing that these low-paid workers get an increase, the Coal Board bureaucrats obviously think that social service benefits are too high.

The Coal Board's figures show that absenteeism in 1965 was 17.4 per cent compared with 16 per cent in the previous financial But Foot says 'nothing' should be done to prevent a fresh electoral victory for MacNamara.

Foot cares nothing for the fighting capacity of the working class, the only basis for any advance towards socialism. Instead, he considers that without a parliamentary majority, 'socialists' are in the wilderness: the Party is prompted by a the prevailing mood of much more creditable purpose.

It is partly the healthy instinct of a rank and file which recognises that if the Labour Party turns away from power at this critical moment or (what amounts to the same thing in practice) if it tears itself to pieces for the convenience of - the Tory enemy Which is still Present on the British political attlefield in force, we will be condemned for generations to ridicule and ineffectiveness.' For generations?! Foot has such resounding confidence in the year. Ihis increase was due, not to more voluntary absenteeism, but to more sickness.

Coal Board officials are now implying that many medical certificates cover phoney illnesses.

Robens and his new friends in the CBI want the whip over the miners' heads. Robens wants to increase the productivity of new and newly-constructed pits by 40 per cent; he wants to extend three-shift working to increase profitability by 100 per cent; and he intends to extend the introduction of Remotely Operated Longwall Faces, which could also mean productivity increases of 100 per cent.

This would mean a production of 200 million tons a year by 1970 with 300 pits compared with the present 500.

Continued attacks

Since government planners want only 170-180 million tons a year (compared with 186.4 million tons in 1965, and 192.8 million tons in 1964), this clearly means continued attacks on the miners.

This emphasis on the so-called 'half time' miners is very closely bound up with the mechanisation of the industry. Robens claimed that voluntary absenteeism last year created a loss of output equivalent to closing the entire West Midlands coal field for nine months.

Under modern mechanised conditions the absence of a few key men can disrupt a whole pit.

Thus the situation tacing the Coal Board bosses is not unlike • Strategy for the THE 'SPLIT' IN THE TO I we past lew weeks. t Party-for long apparent-has widened. In his latest speech, Enoch Powell, from the right of the Party, last week launched a bitter and thinly disguised attack upon Mr.

Maudling, deputy leader of the Party• Speaking to the Manchester Statistical Society, Powell attacked the attitude of Maudling to an incomes policy. He attacked those 'non-socialists' who advocate control over wages through state planning machinery.

Powell advocates that 'supply and demand' should be allowed to settle the level of wages. That is, he is in favour of a sharp that revealed by an examination of the situation in the Fairfield's shipyard.

Extremely expensive modern techniques demand a return in terms of productivity and conflict with the conditions and practices built up by the working class.

Under conditions of full employment and increased prosperity, it has been possible for a man doing a hard, dangerous job to miss a shift when he doesn't feel too well without suffering any hardship.

Unemployment threat

New techniques of production now require the Coal Board and the government to put an end to this by a combination of reduced social services, the threat of unemployment, and increased discipline in the pits.

This is very closely connected with the government's proposal to introduce anti-trade union legislation.

The rejection of the railwaymen's pay claim by the National Board for Prices and Incomes shows clearly what workers can expect it the proposed legislation goes through. Wilson intends to make it compulsory for all wage claims to be submitted to this Board.

Everyone knows that the railwaymen are amongst the most miserably underpaid workers in the land.

Nevertheless, the Prices and Incomes Board—headed by the ex Tory MP, Aubrey Jones—has concluded that the 224,549 manual workers in the industry deserve no more than the 3} per cent increase they received in October and the 40-hour week they will get in April.

(Continued (A discussion article)

rise in unemployment which would depress wage levels and make exports 'more competitive'. should determine the level The he argued, of demand and not allow the unions to force up wages by taking advantage of full employment.

There are two schools of thought in the Tory Party.

One wants to solve the deepensevere disation (credit squeeze, ing crisis of British capital increased taxes, higher interest rates, etc.).

The other proposes to tackle the same problems by involving the trade union bureaucracy in planning capitalism through incomes policy, while at the same time attempting the rapid modernisation of a largely archaic structure.

The divisions in the Tory ranks have now reached the point public slanging matches. The dispute is really a reflection of different interests inside the capitalist class.

section, with most of its stake in industry, want to see expansion and modernisation with tax incentives for exporters and investing in industry. The other is more interested in the City of London and the position of the pound.

To preserve the pound, preparec to see deflation and slow rate of growth at home The intensification of the crisis British capitalism—reflected in the yawning balance of payments deficit and slow rate growth-widens the divisions in the ruling class, especially time when the working class begins to move into action.

The current issue of the 'Spectator' carried an article by Angus Maude, another right-wing Tory.

La piece 'Winter of Tory Discontent', he openly attacks the inept leadership of Heath, even though Maude is a Front Bench spokesman in the Party.

He fears that the Party has 'completely lost effective political initiative'.

His first proposal to invigorate the Tories that they should 'stop pussyfooting about the trade unions and say what everyone wants us to say', i.e. that they should openly declare war on the unions.

After the election, the Tory strategy was clear: to keep Labour in office while they forced through legislation against the unions and imposed an 'incomes policy' upon them.

Powell and Maude now grow restless because Labour is unable to carry out this job rapidly enough.

They are in favour of throwing them out and dealing with working class directly.

Brown's incomes policy and

The same applies to the 74,566 workshop engineers 16,274 supervisory grades.

This decision has been based, not on the abysmally low basic pay of railwaymen, but on their total earnings which are the result of working rest days and excessive hours of overtime.

(The 52,384 clerks are given a small rise of 1t per cent in an obvious attempt to split them off from the railway workers.)

The government is clearly concerned at the fact that since 1960 earnings in all industries (excluding agriculture) have gone up by 34 per cent.

As The Newsletter has consistently pointed out, all these attacks on different sections of the working class fall into a single pattern.

The rejection of the railwaymen's claim, the attack on 'halftime' miners, the government's policy of pit closures, the Geddes Report on the Shipbuilding Industry, the Devlin Report on the Docks, the appointment of "trouble-shooter' Jack Scamp in the motor industry, and now the coming together of the heads of the nationalized industries with the bosses of big capital—all these are interconnected.

Common factor

The common factor in all of them is the need of modern capitalist production to discipline the working class and break down its traditional practices and conditions.

Behind them all lies the threat of legislation against the unions and unofficial strikers.

•The campaign of the Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists against anti-trade union legislation and the lobby of Parliament called by the Lambeth Trades Council for January 26 is thus the only lead which can unite all sections of the working class and defeat the plans of the employers.

The Wilson government serves the interests of big business against the working class, while the 'left' of the "Tribune' variety and the various revisionist breeds line up behind Wilson and provide him with a left cover.

The trade union bureaucracy demonstrates every day its complete inability to lead a successful struggle against the employers. There will be strong demands from railwaymen for a strike against the decision of the Prices and Incomes Board.

But NUR secretary Mr. Sidney Greene's suggestion that railwaymen stop working their rest days and excessive hours will only limit the struggle from the beginning.

The leaders of the National Union of Mineworkers on the other hand, have indulged in much noise and thunder against the government. They accuse the goverment, quite rightly, of betraying the miners and breaking their election promises. But this remains a sham fight.

These leaders have put up no real opposition to pit closures and no fight for a real improvement in wages.

'Communist Will Paynter, who led the opposition to a real fight on day wages, continues to enjoy his peaceful co-existence with the right wing on the national executive of the NUM.

CP unfit

The opposition of leaders of the Communist Party to the January 26 lobby and their continued support for the trade union bureaucracy proves that they are totally unfitted to provide any leadership for the working class.

In area after area the leaders of the Communist Party are deliberately attempting to sabotage the January 26 lobby in marked contrast to the enthusiastic support which is being accorded to it by militant Communist Party rank and filers.

The Stalinist leaders have now welcomed the disaffiliation of the Lambeth Trades Council by the TUC and are using this against the supporters of the lobby, in some cases attempting to reverse decisions to support the lobby on the grounds of this disaffiliation.

Thus, in the name of 'unity', the Stalinists line up with the witchhunters and the bureacrats against those who are building a genuine unity of the working class in the struggle against the plans of big capital.

This brings them into conflict with the best elements in their own party who are attracted to the Marxist programme and campaign of the Socialist Labour League.

The inevitable struggles of the miners, railwaymen, dockers and all other workers can be successful only through the construction of a revolutionary leadership to replace the old leaders who now reveal their bankruptcy more and more each day.

The January 26 lobby will be a big step in the construction of such a leadership.

S promised, Michael A Foot followed up his attack on Richard Gott ('Radical Alliance' candidate in the North Hull by-election) with an article in this week's 'Tribune' on his 'Strategy for the Left'.

It is the most complete statement yet made of the bankruptcy of the left around "Tribune' and the Bevanite group (which fathered Wilson as well as Foot).

That outspoken Tory magazine, "The Spectator', has come to expect nothing different from Foot and company. Alan Watkins, their reviewer of the press, echoes the argument that if Wyatt and Donnelly can force Wilson's hand, why cannot the left?

Watkins writes:

'Mr. Foot and Mr. Silverman, being members of the old left, would not let such a question pass their modest lips. But some of the new MPs do not view matters in quite this "loyalist light"! Not quite, we might emphasise.

Some of these MPs have threatened to vote against the 'early warning' legislation, but of course, the Tories will not oppose Wilson, and it Will be a token i vote only.

'The Spectator's' recognition of the harmlessness of the 'old left' is a confirmation, from the class enemy, of the correctness of Marxist analyses of these 'middleof-the-road' trends in the Labour Party.

Foot's own words complete the picture: he attempts to paralyse the left' with the "lesser evil' theory:

• there is a widespread determination throughout the rank and file of the party to do everything to win a fresh electoral victory, to do nothing to put it in jeopardy!

WHAT RIGHT?

Who is this rank and file Mr. Foot? What do you know about them? Who gave you the right to speak on their behalf?

A fresh electoral victory? Mr. MacNamara, the Labour candiddate in Hull, last week called Hull dockers 'enemies of the commuwage increase. they Whose side are nity' when struck for you on, Mr. Foot?

Should the dockers accept the present level of wages, perhaps until new laws are introduced to prevent their acting agaiast the mployers )r should not MacNamara be told straight? ability of capitalism to keep going that he advocates holding back criticism of Wilson because this will give capitalism scores of years of extra life.

This is at a time when the employers and Aubrey Jones, working with the Labour government, sort out the railwaymen for the first major attack on wages.

Are railwaymen not the 'rank and file'? Will it be 'unhealthy' it they , strike, or ban overtime, for their demands? Should they 'do nothing to put in jeopardy' a fresh electoral victory?

As for the Tory 'enemy', where is it to be found?

That ultra right-winger in this Peregrine Worthsthorne, wrote week's 'Sunday Telegraph' under the title 'H. Wilson: Tory':

•.. the Conservatives are in disarrary, because the man in No. 10 is showing the essentiai menty of their kind of governEvery Tory paper and magazine is full of the divisions and recriminations in the Tory Party.

DISCIPLINE LEFT

Wilson calls for the Tories to sink their differences and function as an effective opposition. Wilson's motive is not any love for democracy, but his understanding that unity in the Tory ranks would give him an argument to discipline the left in his own Party, while he puts through the anti-trade union legislation.

Under these circumstances, Foot retreats:

•.. the Left will only get a hearing in the Labour Party -and in my opinion will only deserve to-if it shows word and deed that it passionately shares the desire for the Party's success. It will not show that by wrecking candidatures, by branding : all leaders traitors and, most fatuous of all, by denouncing as lost souls or spirits all those on the left who take Cabinet posts, National Executive other offices and thereby under• take the work of directing the Labour governmental machine from the inside.

So much in this passage is disgusting that it is difficult to know Where to start. Are there 'left wingers' in the Cabinet, directing the policies of the government on Vietnam and the trade union legislation?

It is not permissible to call these people traitors, yet at the ply to Foot's ine' eft '

end of his article Foot says that for the leit not to assist in a Labour electoral victory would be a betrayal of millions of people who have given their lives to serving the Lavour movement here and tens of millions in other lands'. And yet root cannot bring to his modest lips' the word traitor' for those in the Cabinet Who perpetrate anti-union legislation and support the imperialist war in Vietnam.

when root says that the Labour government only stayed in power in 1yo› with considerable cunning and delcacy, he ought to add that the cunning and dellcacy were on tne part of the fories, whose concern has been to keep vuson in, while appearing to oppose in the Commons.

RHODESIA

One more question should be menconed, ana in a way it points more clearly than anything else to the class position of root's cype oi politics.

Un Khoaesia, he says:

'And let no one suppose that tull victory can come in a tew months. it wul requre a long perioa or arrect british rule in knoaesia, and, tor thac as ior so much eise, a long period ot Lavour rule in Britain is neeaea. (Uur emphasis.)

in an imperials country like pricain, the toucnsione of "leti' ponacs is the colonial quescion.

1 ne Socialist Lavour League ana the Ivewsieter have called Ior the arming of the Atricans, tor the overthrow of British imperiausm, anu ine smich regime in Rhoaesia.

root accepts all the imperialist ciapirap about the Arricans not veing ready' tor seli-government.

ne is tor tne uveralisacion ot imperialism, not its adouition. He goes turther: he advances as a juscincacion oi Ladour rule the necessary continuation of imperiausm in Khodesia.

root no longer represents 'iett' tendency in British Lavour movement. The needs of the capitalst class have become so urgent, and they have become so depenaent on the Labour leaders, that loyalty to Labour' has become a mechanism for turning the 'old lett' into apologists lor imperialism.

This is why Foot now comes out as defender of the Wilson government, just at the point of its greatest clash with the interezis of the working class, in Britain and internationally.

Ing nearer the n, on the basis of intment of the workers in the it will be possible hances of success • the government 2 at once. ...' is.) r those who tell the boat' for fear support and quote ises himself even a famous sentence: ll also be able to I want to support ith my vote in the i a rope supports hanged-that the : of a Henderson will prove that I 1 bring the masses • side, and will le political death Hendersons and measure for those L to bolster their ie Wilson, we read clusions' to 'Leftism': •ganisation S promised, Michael A Foot followed up his attack on Richard Gott ('Radical Alliance' candi date in the North Hull by-election) with an article in this week's 'Tribune' on his 'Strategy for the Left'.

It is the most complete statement yet made of the bankruptcy of the left' around 'Tribune' and the Bevanite group (which fathered Wilson as well as Foot).

That outspoken Tory magazine, "The Spectator" has come to peot nothing different from Foot and company. Alan Watkins, their reviewer of the press, echoes the argument that if Wyatt and Donnelly can force Wilson's hand, why cannot the left?

Watkins writes:

'Mr. Foot and Mr. Silverman, being members of the old left, would not let such a question pass their modest lips. But some of the new MPs do not VIew matters in quite this "loyalist light": Not quite, we might emphasise.

Some of these MPs have threatened to vote against the 'early warning' legislation, but of course, the Tories will not oppose Wilson, and it will be a token vote only.

'The Spectator's' recognition of the harmlessness of the 'old left' is a confirmation, from the class enemy, of the correctness of Marxist analyses of these 'middle. of-the-road' trends in the Labour Party.

Foot's own words complete the picture: he attempts to paralyse the "left' with the lesser evil' theory:

there is a widespread determination throughout the rank and file of the party to do everything to win a fresh electoral victory, to do nothing to put it in jeopardy?

WHAT RIGHT?

Who is this rank and file Mr. Foot? What do you know about them? Who gave you the right to speak on their behalf?

A fresh electoral victory? Mr. MacNamara, the Labour candiddate in Hull, last week called Hull dockers 'enemies of the community' when they struck for wage increase. Whose side are you on, Mr. Foot?

Should the dockers accept the present level of wages, perhaps until new laws are introduced to prevent their acting agalast the employers?

Or should not MacNamara be told straight? ind part of a reply to Foot's articles in "Tribune' ' Strategy for the Left'

irder to accelerate into power of the rand then their out very clearly, vsletter speaks out evolutionary prinapted himself, and he petty-bourgeois establishment, but ys from the revoists of the masses abuse his writings ettect, dangerous : working class. eir suffering from disorder' of the ey are incurable : senile decay reaucracy, rapidly . death along with of life, British continued) industries join rance benefits were was a 2 per cent bsenteeism amongst aying that he himaw any conclusions' : nevertheless sug= government should her some corrective i necessary. imits that 60,000 he mining industry £13 for a week's 1 of proposing that d workers get an Coal Board bureauly think that social its are too high. ¡oard's figures show ism in 1965 was compared with 16 le previous financial But Foot says 'nothing' should be done to prevent a fresh electoral victory for MacNamara.

Foot cares nothing for the fighting capacity of the working class, the only basis any advance towards socialism. Instead, he considers that without a parliamentary majority, 'socialists' are in the wilderness:

. the prevailing mood of the Party is prompted by much more creditable purpose.

It is partly the healthy instinct of a rank and file which recognises that if the Labour Party turns away from power at this critical moment or (what amounts to the same thing in practice) if it tears itself to pieces for the convenience of - the Tory enemy which is still present on the British politica battlefield in force, we wil be condemned for generations to ridicule and ineffectiveness.

For generations?! Foot has such resounding confidence in the year. This increase was due, not to more voluntary absenteeism, but to more sickness.

Coal Board officials are now implying that many medical certificates cover phoney illnesses.

Robens and his new friends in the CBI want the whip over the miners' heads. Robens wants to increase the productivity of new and newly-constructed pits by 40 per cent; he wants to extend three-shift working to increase profitability by 100 per cent; and he intends to extend the introduction of Remotely Operated Longwall Faces, which could also mean productivity increases of 100 per cent.

This would mean a production of 200 million tons a year by 1970 with 300 pits compared with the present 500.

Continued attacks

Since government planners want only 170-180 million tons a year (compared with 186.4 million tons in 1965, and 192.8 million tons in 1964), this clearly means continued attacks on the miners.

This emphasis on the so-called 'half time' miners is very closely bound up with the mechanisation of the industry. Robens claimed that voluntary absenteeism last year created a loss of output equivalent to closing the entire West Midlands coal field for nine months.

Under modern mechanised conditions the absence of a few key men can disrupt a whole pit.

Thus the situation facing the Coal Board bosses is not unlike ability of capitalism to keep going that he advocates holding back criticism of Wilson because this Will give capitalism scores of years of extra life.

This is at a time when the employers and Aubrey Jones, working with the Labour government, sort out the railwaymen for the first major attack on wages.

Are railwaymen not the 'rank and file'? Will it be 'unhealthy' if they strike, or ban overtime, for their demands? Should they 'do nothing to put in jeopardy' a fresh electoral victory?

As for the Tory 'enemy', where is it to be found? a ek Sunday Telegraph Mater Perethe title 'H. Wilson: Tory':

•.. the Conservatives are in disarrary, because the man in No. 10 is showing the essentiai quality of their kind of government.' Every Tory paper and magazine is full of the divisions and recriminations in the Tory Party.

DISCIPLINE LEFT

Wilson calls for the Tories to sink their differences and function as an effective opposition. Wilson's motive is not any love for democracy, but, his understanding that unity in the Tory ranks would give him an argument to discipline the left in his own Party, while he puts through the anti-trade union legislation.

Under these circumstances, Foot retreats:

•.. the Left will only get a hearing in the Labour Party —and in my opinion will only deserve to-if it shows by word and deed that it passionately shares the desire for the Party's success. It will not show that by wrecking candidatures, branding all leaders as traitors and, most fatuous of all, by denouncing as lost souls or spirits all those on the left who take Cabinet posts, National Executive seats other offices and thereby under• take the work of directing the Labour or governmental machine from the inside.' So much in this passage is disgusting that it is difficult to know where to start. Are there 'left wingers' in the Cabinet, directing the policies of the government on Vietnam and the trade union legislation?

It is not permissible to call these people traitors, yet at the THE 'SPLIT' IN THE TORY PARTY past lew weeks. the split in the Conservative Party-for long apparent—has widened. In his latest speech, Enoch Powell, from the right of the Party, last week launched a bitter and thinly disguised attack upon Mr.

Maudling, deputy leader of the Party.

Speaking to the Manchester Statistical Society, Powell attacked the attitude of Maudling to an incomes policy. He attacked those 'non-socialists' who advocate control over wages through state planning machinery.

Powell advocates that 'supply and demand' should be allowed to settle the level of wages. That is, he is in favour of a sharp that revealed by an examination of the situation in the Fairfield's shipyard.

Extremely expensive modern techniques demand a return in terms of productivity and conflict with the conditions and practices built up by the working class.

Under conditions of full employment and increased prosperity, it has been possible for a man doing a hard, dangerous job to miss a shift when he doesn't feel too well without suffering any hardship.

Unemployment threat

New techniques of production now require the Coal Board and the government to put an end to his by a combination of reduced social services, the threat of unemployment, and increased discipline in the pits.

This is very closely connected with the government's proposal to introduce anti-trade union legislation.

The rejection of the railwaymen's pay claim by the National Board for Prices and Incomes shows clearly what workers can expect if the proposed legislation goes through. Wilson intends to make it compulsory for all wage claims to be submitted to this Board.

Everyone knows that the railwaymen are amongst the most miserably underpaid workers in the land.

Nevertheless, the Prices and Incomes Board—headed by the ex Tory MP, Aubrey Jones-has concluded that the 224,549 manual workers in the industry deserve no more than the 3g per cent increase they received in October and the 40-hour week they will get in April.

(Continued end of his article Foot says that Ior the leit not to assist in a Labour electoral victory would De a betrayal of millions of people who have given their lives to serving the Lavour movement here and tens of millions in other lands'. And yet root cannot bring to his modest lips' the wora 'traitor' for those in the Cabinet who perpetrate anti-union legislation and support the imperialist war in Vietnam.

When root says that the Labour government only stayed in power in 190› With considerable cunning and delcacy, he ought to ada that the cunning ana dellcacy were on tne part of the 1ories, whose concern has been to keep wuson in, while appearing to oppose in che Commons.

RHODESIA

One more quesuon should be menconed, ana in a way it poinis more cleariy than anything else to the class position of root's Lype oi politics.

Un Khoaesia, he says:

'And let no one suppose that full victory can come in a Iew monchs. i wil require a long perioa or arrect brillsh rule in knouesza, and, for thai as tor so much eise, a long period of Lavour rule in Britain is needed. (Uur empnasis.)

in an imperiansi country like bricain, the coucnsione of lett ponces is the colonial quesion.

ine Socialist Lavour League ana lhe Newsletter have called Ior the arming or the Atricans, tor the overthrow of British imperiausm, anu ine smith regime in Rhoaesia.

roor accepts all the imperialist clapurap about the Airicans not veing 'reaay' tor sell-government.

ne is for tne veralisacion ot imperialism, not its abolition. He goes turiher: he advances as a jusaticaton oi Lavour rule the necessary continuacion of imperiaism in Khodesia.

root no longer represents 'lett' tendency in the British Lavour movement. The needs of the capitanst class nave become so urgent, and they have become so aepenaent on the Labour leaders, that loyalty to Labour' has become a mechanism for turning the 'old lett' into apologists Ior imperialism.

This is why Foot now comes out as defender of the Wilson government, just at the point of its greatest clash with the intercuts of the working class, in Britain and internationally.

(A discussion article)

rise in unemployment which would depress wage levels and make exports 'more competitive'. The should yetermine he argued, determine the level of demand and not allow the unions to force up wages by taking advantage of full employment.

There are two schools of thought in the Tory Party.

One wants to solve the deepensevere deflation (credit squeeze?

increased taxes, higher interest rates, etc.).

The other proposes to tackle the same problems by involving the trade union bureaucracy in planning capitalism through incomes policy, while at the same time attempting the rapid modernisation of a largely archaic structure.

The divisions in the Tory ranks have now reached the point of public slanging matches. The dispute is really a reflection of different interests inside the capitalist class.

One section, with most of its stake in industry, want to see expansion and modernisation with tax incentives for exporters and investing in industry. The other is more interested in the City of London and the position of the pound.

To preserve the pound, they prepared to see deflation and slow rate of growth at home.

The intensification of the crisis British capitalism-reflected in the yawning balance of payments deficit and slow rate growth—widens the divisions in the ruling class, especially at a time when the working class begins to move into action.

The current issue of the 'Spectator' carried an article by Angus Maude, another right-wing Tory.

La piece Winter of Tory Discontent', he openly attacks the inept leadership of Heath, though Maude is a Front Bench spokesman in the Party.

fears that the Party has 'completely lost effective political initiative'.

His first proposal to invigorate the Tories is that they should 'stop pussyfooting about the trade unions and say what everyone wants us to say', i.e. that they should openly declare war on the unions.

After the election, the Tory strategy was clear: to keep Labour in office while they forced through legislation against the unions and imposed • an incomes policy' upon them.

Powell and Maude now grow restless because Labour is unable to carry out this job rapidly enough.

They are in favour of throwing them out and dealing with the working class directly.

Brown's incomes policy and 'National Plan' lie in ruins.

Wage rates have raced ahead of productivity: growth at 2 per cent has been half of Brown's target of 4 per cent.

Even the leadership of the National Union of Mineworkers was forced to come out in its strongest attack so far against the government.

This is only a reflection of strong pressure from the ranks as the miners prepare to take up the struggle against closures.

How is the ruling class to deal with a rapidly deteriorating situation?

Increased pressure is being placed upon the 'Labour' cabinet to carry through the following measures A sharp increase in unemployment through a severe April Budget which is now universally predicted in the financial press.

• Legal measures against the unions to curb rank-and-file militancy. This Brown's 'early warning system'. The reaction the centrists?

Harrison and Barratt Brown in 'Tribune' last week urged all 'lefts' propose amendments (!) to the legislation. These people standby and refuse to offer any alternative leadership to the working class.

• To take on and defeat a strong section of the industrial working class. So far the Prices and Incomes Board has only really taken on sections of the middle class, such as the bank clerks. The report on the railway pay claim is a declaration of war on every railway worker.

No increases are to be given to this low paid group and yet demands streamline and reorganise the railways at the expense of the railwaymen.

This growing crisis of leader hip in the ruling class unsolver by the sacking of Home and his replacement source of confidence to all revolutionary socialists.

It is a sign of great weakening in the capitalist system that the ruling class cannot, at this stage, unite behind a single leadership or policy. The way is being pre›ared for a 'stronger man'—posiblv Powell or MacLeod The burning question of the resolution of the crisis of leadership in the working class.

In a period working-class militancy, the old leaderships lie prostrate and are unable to fight.

The Communist Party and the "Tribune' type 'left' move farther to the right as the crisis intenThis is a period of great opportunities for the Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists to build their forces in the working class. This is the real significance of the January 26 lobby uf Parliament.

port strike ended in the early hours of January I3. The New York Transit Authority, backed by City Hall in the person of 'Liberal' Republican Mayor Lindsay, has 'paid f'aul' and come to terms with the Transport Workers' Union.

The terms of agreement, while not coming to the level of the widely advertised I5 per cent, do represent a substantial wage gain for the transport workers over the next two years, if little else.

As we pointed out in our previous articie the Transit Authority and the city are bankrupt. Because of the general economic crisis of American imperialism, coupled with the costs of the war in Vietnam, the city cannot expect to get much it anything in the way of funds from the Federal Government.

Now that 'Paul' has been paid with funds that the Transit Authority and the city do not possess they must somehow or other rob Peter'.

There are many estimates of what the two-year package deal will cost the Transit Auchority and the city.

Estimates

The Mayor says it will cost 52 million dollars. The Transit Authority's O'Grady says it will cost 60 million dollars. Last but not least the Transport Workers' Union International Vice-President, Douglas MacMahon, who headed the TWU bargaining team after the arrest of Quill and the first-line leadership, says it will cost 70 million dollars.

These figures of course reflect the needs of each of these fine gentlemen to present the settlement in the light best suited to their own particular position.

Truth of the matter is that reports are so confused that it's anybody's guess as to where matters really stand.

One thing is very certain and that is that the terms of the settlement are a long way from the loudly proclaimed 15 per cent wage gain.

If we base calculations on the terms of the contract which call for 4 per cent in the first year, JACK ARNOLD Union-Transit Authority Tube and bus w ...and riders... that were dropped by the TWU leaders in order to achieve this 'settlement' were every bit as important as their pay demands.

The demand for a 32-hour week would have gone far toward ending the staff-slashing practices that the Transit Authority carries out with the connivance of the official TWU leadership.

The demands of the TWU coming up against the lack of funds was again underlined in the negotiations just prior to this settlement.

A union negotiator, it is reported in the 'New York Times' of January I1, says:

'For 13} hours we discussed the merits of the cases but then we were told it was not the merits of the cases but the ability to pay that must be considered.' In other words the union was being told that the cost of maintaining the capitalist system-the war in Vietnam-was to be loaded onto the backs of the workers.

'Call out guard'

And the manner in which this will be done has been made very clear by the boss class. In a telegram to Mayor Lindsay, a group of Fifth Avenue merchants said:

'Let's get the buses and subways rolling even if it means calling out the National Guard.' The 'New York Times' International Edition in an editorial dated January 15-16 makes the following statement:

'Mayor Lindsay has moved speedily to revise the city's collective bargaining machinery as a means . . . of guarding against future civil service strikes....

'With many unions of public employees about to enter negotiations with the city, the need is obvious for procedures that will ensure some systematic arrangements for third party judgment when all attempts at direct agreement prove futile.

The underlying objective, as we have repeatedly stated, ought to be to provide the most exhaustive machinery for adjusting all the valid grievances of government workers without recourse to illegal stoppages.' Just in case workers feel that all eir 'valid grievances' hâve not en settled they add the kicker: SECOND vice-chairman of the indone. reported to have been executed in December.

In a letter from Jakarta, it is reported that his car was stopped by military police. He escaped them and drove to the house of Indonesia's Foreign Minister, Dr. Subandrio, who was out.

"The military police dropped all protocol,' says the letter, 'and the Minister of State, Njoto, was hastily and unceremoniously bundled up and reduced to the status of occupant of the Jakarta military prison.

'For two nights they interrogated him without much result; on the third night they took him out again and he was never returned to his cell.' Njoto became yet another of the estimated 100,000 Communist Party members who have been slaughtered in Indonesia since the September 30 uprising.

While the bodies remain unburied and cluttering up streets and streams, the massacre goes unmentioned in the newspapers of Jakarta.

Neither Njoto's, nor Aidit's death have been noted.

The letter from Jakarta now reports that Aidit, secretary of the Indonesian Communist Party, who was executed after a summary trial in a Central Javan village where he had been hiding, had written to President Sukarno asking for his help in stopping the arrest and killing of Communist Party members.

Sukarno, who, we have pointed out, was then (and still is) the puppet of the extreme right-wing generals who led the counter coup and gave the go-ahead to the massacre of Communists, promised Aidit in reply to 'follow your directives'.

'But,' he added, 'I need more time and first of all I must change the state of mind of the Army commanders.' What a ludicrous statement, considering his position now. He wants to play the old game of balancing between the different forces and, while Aidit was still alive, played up to him.

The letter from Jakarta says Quill: Over a period has away workers' rights.

... when the state lators draft a more rei law to prohibit strikes a!

the government-as they :

must at this sessionshould remember that punishment unions really to dread is one that away their dollars.

'It makes no sense to p unions to escape paymen contempt simply by end strike or strike action tha illegal from the onset.' Does this sound familiar P workers? Then read on.

At the same time that Pre! Johnson's 'Great Society' ac stration is going through demagogic motions of appi to attempt congressional of some of the more resti aspects of the union-busting Hartley law, Johnson in his State of the Union s a section in which he sa would ask for congressional lation 'which without imprope vading state and local autt will effectively enable deal with strikes which th irreparable damage to national interest.' Sukarno of power came ou Indones many si given in the Dut‹ An! said tha co-oper: and Co leftist, : capitalis Rat 'Sukarn between against reasonal Sukarnc is now o of the "Th months interpre omen.: munists were ha munist:

No to stop nesian ( Sul old reg and otl imperia to help a mock To country only to assured deal wi been si Torti push th will ne enough sary to dictato a Trot Indone a serio and th Pabloit

4 per cent in the first six months of the second year and 7 per cent in the contract's last six months, then we get a total gain over two years of only 8ż per cent.

It takes no effort at all to guess exactly how the Transit Authority, the City Government, and the banks, who take over 100 million dollars a year in bond (interest) payments out of a system they milked and almost destroyed before selling it to the city, are going to 'rob Peter'. Nor is it any trouble at all to guess who 'Peter' is.

The first act, using the contract with TWU as an excuse and a weapon to try and set the working class against TWU, will be to penalise New York's workers, who are absolutely dependent on the transit system, by raising the fares substantially.

Another method will be to take back with the other hand what they have given with the first, that is, to combine 'Peter' and 'Paul' and extract from the subway workers more labour than up to the present time.

This would continue a trend of several years standing, the result of some of those deals that TWU Secretary Quill has been making with his Democratic Party friends who have run City Hall for many years.

Rights given away

According to 'Challenge' the paper of New York's Progressive Labour Party, Quill in the past 12 years has given away the right to contest job schedules. This means that the Transit Authority does not have to fill a job when a worker retires, resigns, or is fired.

This give away has led, according to 'Challenge', , directly to the loss of 15,000 jobs since 1951, the cutting down of services, closing change booths, eliminating platform men, closing entrances, and taking away one of every two conductors on a train.

On working conditions the union leadership gave away, 1953, the right to reject workloads. This creates a real overload on the workers especially in rush hours.

Clerk staff was cut down and replaced by token machines and the one change booth worker left has to fix that when it breaks down.

Workers on the tubes say that on one line, the IRT, there is not a single signal box with sanitary facilities.

According to 'Challenge' one signalman said:

'We're only human beings.

There are times when you have to take care of the call of nature but you can't leave the tower. Many a man urinates out of a tower window into the subway. We also have a standard way of defecating. 1 get sick every time I do You spread papers and squat like an animal. Then you roll up the papers and get them as far away as you can—down on the tracks, or if there's a barrel outside, you throw it there. It makes you feel like something not human, but there's no other answer?

Hellish conditions

Not only did this giving away of the Union's rights to control conditions and workloads create hellish conditions for the transit workers, it also made it unsafe for them and the workers who must ride the tubes in order to get to their jobs.

A large increase in the number of train derailments can be directly attributed to the installation of such 'labour-saving' devices as a wheel-grinding device that permits repairs on a wheel without removing it from "truck'-the part that holds it to the car.

'It looks good on paper,' said one worker, but when you have a flat wheel it causes such a terrific vibration that often the wheel truck develops a crack. This is not noticeable uless you remove both the wheel and the truck from the car completely. The new device hides this potential damage.' Recently a train coming into a station on the Jamaica elevated line was derailed when a wheel broke apart.

Fortunately only the truck carrying that wheel derailed and the rest of the car didn't. An undamaged truck will hold a broken wheel on the track.

If the train had been going much faster there is every likelihood that it could have jumped the track and fallen to the street below. It was an eight-car train.

Clearly then, in order to pay whatever increases the TWU workers have won with their solid strike, the city must take it back out of the pockets and skins of the workers who run these subways and those who ride them.

In this demands

Tube and bus workers Thr THE EWSLETTER

say, has 'paid Paul' and come to terms with the Transport Workers' Union.

The terms of agreement, while not coming to the level of the widely advertised 15 per cent, do represent a substantial wage gain for the transport workers over the next two years, if little else.

As we pointed out in our previous articie the Transit Authority and the city are bankrupt. Because of the general economic crisis of American imperialism, coupled with the costs of the war in Vietnam, the city cannot expect to get much it anything in the way of funds from the Federal Government.

Now that 'Paul' has been paid with funds that the Transit Authority and the city do not possess they must somehow or other 'rob Peter'.

There are many estimates of what the two-year package deal will cost the Transit Auchority and the city.

Estimates

The Mayor says it will cost 52 million dollars. The Transit Authority's O'Grady says it will cost 60 million dollars. Last but not least the Transport Workers' Union International Vice-President, Douglas MacMahon, who headed the TWU bargaining team after the arrest of Quill and the first-line leadership, says it will cost 70 million dollars.

These figures of course reflect the needs of each of these fine gentlemen to present the settlement in the light best suited to their own particular position.

Truth of the matter is that reports are so confused that it's anybody's guess as to where matters really stand.

One thing is very certain and that is that the terms of the settlement are a long way from the loudly proclaimed 15 per cent wage gain.

If we base calculations on the terms of the contract which call for 4 per cent in the first year, RY PARTY 'National Plan' lie in ruins.

Wage rates have raced ahead of productivity: growth at 2 per cent has been half of Brown's target of 4 per cent.

Even the leadership of the National Union of Mineworkers was forced to come out in its strongest attack so far against the government.

This is only a reflection of strong pressure from the ranks as the miners prepare to take up the struggle against closures.

How is the ruling class to deal with a rapidly deteriorating situation?

Increased pressure is being placed upon the 'Labour' cabinet to carry through the following measures A sharp increase in unemployment through a severe April Budget which universally predicted in financial press.

• Legal measures against the unions rank-and-file militancy. This is Brown's 'early warning system'. The reaction the centrists?

Harrison and Barratt Brown in "Tribune' last week urged all 'lefts' propose amendments (!) to the legislation. These people stand by and refuse offer any alternative leadership to the working class. strong section of the industrial • To take on and defeat working class. So far the Prices and Incomes Board has only really taken on sections of the middle class, such as the bank clerks. The report on the railway pay claim is a declaration of war on every railway worker.

No increases are to be giver to this low paid group and yet demands are being streamline and reorganise the railways at the expense of the railwaymen.

This growing crisis of leader hip in the ruling class-unsolvec by the sacking of Home and his replacement source of confidence to all revolutionary socialists.

It is a sign of great weakening in the capitalist system that the ruling class cannot, at this stage, unite behind a single leadership or policy. The way is being prepared tor a 'stronger man'—possibly Powell or MacLeod.

The burning question of the resolution of the crisis of leadership in the working class.

In a period of working-class militancy, the old leaderships lie prostrate and are unable to fight.

The Communist Party and 'Tribune' type 'left' move farther to the right as the crisis intensifies.

This is a period of great opportunities for the Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists to build their forces in the working class. This is the real significance of the January 26 lobby uf Parliament.

Authority

Agreement 4 per cent in the first six months of the second year and 7 per cent in the contract's last six months, then we get a total gain over two years of only 8ż per cent.

It takes no effort at all to guess exactly how the Transit Authority, the City Government, and the banks, who take over 100 million dollars a year in bond (interest) payments out of a system they milked and almost destroyed before selling it to the city, are going to 'rob Peter'. Nor is it any trouble at all to guess who 'Peter' is.

The first aot, using the contract with TWU as an excuse and a weapon to try and set the working class against TWU, will be to penalise New York'sworkers, who are absolutely dependent on the transit system, by raising the fares substantially.

Another method will be to take back with the other hand what they have given with the irst, that is, to combine 'Peter' and 'Paul' and extract from the subway workers more labour than up to the present time.

This would continue a trend of several years standing, the result of some of those deals that TWU Secretary Quill has been making with his Democratic Party friends who have run City Hall for many years.

Rights given away

According to 'Challenge', the paper of New York's Progressive Labour Party, Quill in the past 12 years has given away the right to contest job schedules. This means that the Transit Authority does not have to fill a job when a worker retires, resigns, or is fired.

This give away has led, according to 'Challenge', , directly to the loss of 15,000 jobs since 1951, cutting down of services, closing change booths, eliminating platform men, closing entrances, and taking away one of every two conductors on a train.

On working conditions the union leadership gave away, in 1953, the right to rejeat workloads. This creates a real overload on the workers especially in rush hours.

Clerk staff was cut down and replaced by token machines and the one change booth worker left has to fix that when it breaks down.

Workers on the tubes say that on one line, the IRT, there is not a single signal box with sanitary facilities.

According to 'Challenge' one signalman said:

'We're only human beings.

There are times when you have to take care of the call of nature but you can't leave the tower. Many a man urinates out of a tower window into the subway. We also have a standard way of defecating. 1 get sick every time I do You spread papers and squat like an animal. Then you roll up the papers and get them as far away as you can-down on the tracks, or if there's a barrel outside, you throw it there. It makes, you feel like something other answer, Out there's no Hellish conditions Not only did this giving away of the Union's rights to control conditions and workloads create hellish conditions for the transit workers, it also made it unsafe for them and the workers who must ride the tubes in order to get to their jobs.

A large increase in the number of train derailments can be directly attributed to the installation of such 'labour-saving' devices as a wheel-grinding device that permits repairs on a wheel without removing it from its 'truck'-the part that holds it to the car.

'It looks good on paper,' said one worker, but when you have a flat wheel it causes such a terrific vibration that often the wheel truck develops crack. This is not noticeable uless you remove both the wheel and the truck from the car completely. The new device hides this potential damage.' Recently a train coming into a station on the Jamaica elevated line was derailed when a wheel broke apart.

Fortunately only the truck carrying that wheel derailed and the rest of the car didn't.

undamaged truck will hold a broken wheel on the track.

If the train had been going much faster there is every likelihood that it could have jumped the track and fallen to the street below. It was an eight-car train.

Clearly then, in order to pay whatever increases the TWU workers have won with their solid strike, the city must take it back out of the pockets and skins of the workers who run these subways and those who ride them.

In this demands that were dropped by the TWU leaders in 'settlement order to achieve this were every bit as important as their pay demands.

The demand for a 32-hour week would have gone far toward ending the staff-slashing practices that the Transit Authority carries out with the connivance of the official TWU leadership.

The demands of the TWU coming up against the lack of funds was again underlined in the negotiations just prior to this settlement.

A union negotiator, it is reported in the 'New York Times' of January 11, says:

'For 13} hours we discussed the merits of the cases but then we were told it was not the merits of the cases but the ability to pay that must be considered.' In other words the union was being told that the cost of maintaining the capitalist system-the war Vietnam-was to be loaded onto the backs of the workers.

'Call out guard'

And the manner in which this will be done has been made very clear by the boss class. In a telegram to Mayor Lindsay, a group of Fifth Avenue merchants said:

'Let's get the buses and subways rolling even if it means calling out the National Guard' The 'New York Times' International Edition in an editorial dated January 15-16 makes the following statement:

'Mayor Lindsay has moved speedily to revise the city's collective bargaining machinery as a means . . . of guarding against future civil service strikes....

'With many unions of public employees about to enter negotiations with the city, the need is obvious for procedures that will ensure some systematic arrangements for third party judgment when all attempts at direct agreement prove futile.

The underlying objective, as we have repeatedly stated, ought to be to provide the • most exhaustive machinery for adjusting all the valid grievances of government workers without recourse to illegal stoppages.

Just in case workers feel that all eir 'valid grievances' have not en settled they add the kicker: SECOND vice-chairman of the indonesian Communist Party, Mir. Njoto, is reported to have been executed in December.

In a letter from Jakarta, it is reported that his car was stopped by military police. He escaped them and drove to the house of Indonesia's Foreign Minister, Dr. Subandrio, who was out.

'The military police dropped all protocol,' says the letter, 'and the Minister of State, Njoto, was hastily and unceremoniously bundled up and reduced to the status of occupant of the Jakarta military prison.

'For two nights they interrogated him without much result; on the third night they took him out again and he was never returned to his cell.

Njoto became yet another of the estimated 100,000 Communist Party members who have been slaughtered in Indonesia since the September 30 uprising.

While the bodies remain unburied and cluttering up streets and streams, the massacre goes unmentioned in the newspapers of Jakarta.

Neither Njoto's, nor Aidit's death have been noted.

The letter from Jakarta now reports that Aidit, secretary of the Indonesian Communist Party, who was executed after a summary trial in a Central Javan village where he had been hiding, had written to President Sukarno asking for his help in stopping the arrest and killing of Communist Party members.

Sukarno, who, we have pointed out, was then (and still is) the puppet of the extreme right-wing generals who led the counter coup and gave the go-ahead to the massacre of Communists, promised Aidit in reply to 'follow your directives'.

'But,' he added, 'I need more time and first of all I must change the state of mind of the Army commanders?

What a ludicrous statement, considering his position now. He wants to play the old game of balancing between the different forces and, while Aidit was still alive, played up to him.

The letter Quill: Over a period has away workers' rights.

... when the state legislators draft a more realistic law to prohibit strikes against the government—as they surely must at this session-they should remember that the punishment unions really seem to dread is one that takes away their dollars.

'It makes no sense to permit unions to escape payments for contempt simply by ending a strike or strike action that was illegal from the onset.' Does this sound familiar British workers? Then read on.

At the same time that President Johnson's 'Great Society' administration is going through the demagogic motions of appearing to attempt congressional repeal of some of the more restrictive aspects of the union-busting TaftHartley law, Johnson includes in his State of the Union speech a section in which he said he would ask for congressional legislation 'which without improperly invading state and local authority, will effectively enable us to deal with strikes which threaten irreparable damage to the national interest.' Sukarno's illusions of power came out more and more in defence of the Indonesian Communist Party, pointing out the many sacrifices that the Communists had given in the struggle for independence against the Dutch colonialism.' said that Indonesia must stand by the idea of co-operation between the nationalist, religious and Communist parties-'our revolution is leftist, anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, anticapitalist, anti-feudalist' 'Sukarno is trying to erode the co-operation between the Army and the Islamic parties against the Communists. Only if he can he reasonably hope to regain his old power. Sukarno is tenacious and cunning, too. He is now on record as the indefatigable detender months after the September 30 movement is interpreted in some political circles as a bad omen. For only a few weeks, the non-Communists had had their field day, when they were harassing and hunting Indonesian Communist Party members.' to stop this 'providing a break for the Indonesian Communist Party to come out again' (!)

old regime-—with Communists like Njoto, and others, in his government—but world imperialism has no time for these gentlemen to help it solve its crisis even while they pose country, the Indonesian generals will look only to imperialism (though they cannot be assured of direct monetary aid). Already a deal with the giant combine of Shell-Mex has been signed. push the working class back decades but they will never destroy it. However, it is not enough to survive and to endure—it is necessary to triumph over the forces of capitalist dictatorship. This will be done only when a Trotskyist leadership has been forged in Indonesia.. Such a task is impossible without a serious study of the crimes of Stalinism and the gross errors and weaknesses of the Jakarta says that 'Sukarno This says the 'New York Times' was, according to administration sources, included because of the New York transport strike.

The lessons to be drawn from this must be quite clear, especially to those in the British labour movement who think the struggle against the attempts of the bosses to roll back and hold down workers' conditions and wages can be fought on the shop floor alone.

It is not an accident that an assault is being launched against the American working class at precisely the same time that the Wilson government proposes legislation against British trade unions. Rather, it is a reflection of the general crisis that confronts the world imperialist system.

No accident Nor is it an accident that at the same time that the Johnson administration is contemplating fresh moves against the unions and working class (who, it says, must bear the burdens of its Vietnam adventures) harsh measures are • being aimed at those who protest against that war in Vietnam.

It must be understood that in the light of the needs of the bosses to safeguard their imperialist investments and even to roll back the revolutions that have cut into those investments and interests, any actions on the part of the working class to resist burdening them with the cost of these operations or to advance their own working class interests in a struggle for better wages and conditions, will be fought by the capitalist class through a general offensive against the trade unions. It will not be just the militants who are attacked, but as the New York transport strike shows, the leadership as well, no matter how compromising it may be.

In this general world crisis it is the need of the capitalist class to wipe out all organisations of the working class.

Again it cannot be too often emphasised that the struggle of the working class in the United States can only go forward through the establishment of an independent labour party basing itself on such demands as 30 hours' work for forty hours' pay, expropriation of the slumlords and a declaration of a permanent moratorium on payments to the And, it adds, Sukarno is reported to have Rather optimistically the letter adds: of the Indonesian Communist Party. "The fact that this happens less than three Now, the letter adds, Sukarno has tried Sukarno has illusions of returning to his a mock anti-imperialist front.

To overcome the financial crisis of the Torture, execution and imprisonment will Pabloite revisionists in Indonesia.

THE New York Transport strike ended in the early hours of January 13. The New York Transit Authority, backed by City Hall in the person ot Liberal' JACK ARNOLD assesses the Union-Transit KE Newsletter Correspondent LEar bring dised yare Americans Dying in Vietnam are being distributed in the gigantic Ford Rouge Plant i Detroit by members of the Detroit Committee to End the Wi in Vietnam.. After quotin important facts reports giving about the war in Vietnam, leaflet people to 'no longer fight against fellow human beings who are struggling only for a chance to organise themselves to obtain a few minimum needs of life'.

The leaflet, which has been well received in the tactory, where it has been distributed further by workers, goes on to say:

"The union movement generally and the Ford workers particularly have in the past always had courage to struggle for the common people. Armed with the truth of what is really happening in Vietnam, the organised workers can be a decisive force for peace in our country!

It continues:

'We can't go on allowing Americans, and it is working eople who make up the majorit of the armed forces, to die de fending a military dictatorship trom which the Vietnamese people are trying to free themselves.' Among different newspapers is one from the 'Free Press, December 9, 1965:

'Senator Stephen Young (Democrat, Ohio) said: "Most of the Vietcong are not infiltrators from North Vietnam. This is therefore a civil war waged in South Vietnam." Senator Young quoted General William, Westmoreland, top U.S. Commander, and General Richard Stillwell, one of Westmoreland's subordinates, to the effect that 80 per cent of the Vietcong were born and brought up in South Vietnam.' CEYLON Nationalized

bankers on subway bonds so that the working people of New York can have a free ride to work in clean safe trains, and the subway workers can have good wages and good conditions in the job of supplying that ride.

Own Correspondent Colombo, January 9 AHE regulations for the us L of the Tamil Language the Northern and Eastern provinces were presented in Parliament yesterday. The Lanka Sama Samaja Party, Communist Party and the Sri Lanka Freedom Party called for a general strike for January 8.

The strike call was issued at a big rally of these three parties held on January 6 at the Town Hall grounds.. The response to this call was very poor. The transport services, government departments and Mercantile firms worked as usual.

Workers responded to this call only in the Government workshops.

These three parties had also called for the people to gather opposite the statue of Vihara Maha Devi in the Victoria Park, opposite the Town Hall, to take a vow to fight against any concessions to the Tamil minorities.

About 2,000 gathered at this spot on January 8.

Bernard Soysa, N. M. Perera, Colvin R. de Silva figured with Mrs. Bandaranaike at this ceremony. Since the strike was a failure they tried to make use of this crowd that had gathered to create disturbances and they started on a march towards the House of Representatives shouting anti-Tamil slogans.

The procession headed by Buddhist priests was stopped by the police about a mile from the House of Representatives and there was a clash between the two sides.

Tear gas bombs were dropped from the air, and the police managed to disperse the processionists after some time.

A Buddhist monk, a student of the Vidyalankara University, died in this clash. This gave the government an excuse to declare an emergency throughout the island and impose a curfew from 9 р.т. to 4 a.m.

Since the declaration of the emergency and the mobilisation of the armed volunteers, there have been no more incidents.

age Four uary 22, 19.66

HE surge of support for the January 26 lobby of parliament has been tremendous in the last week. Union branches, trades councils, Labour Party constituency parties, university socialist and labour societies throughout Britain have given their support, and the support of thousands of others, to what has been labelled an 'unofficial' demonstration.

The fact that the TUC withdrew recognition Lambetk (London) Trades Council, which originally lobby last October, has been ignored by the labour union movement.

This is a smack in the eye for the Wilson government (and its friends in the trade union movement), which intends to carry through anti-union law in the very near future to satisfy the demands of the international bankers.

We urge all those trade unionists in Britain who have not yet discussed the lobby to do so and to agree to support it with delegations and banners next Wednesday. Here is a round up of recent additions the magnificent list of support:

NORTH-WEST ON MONDAY shop stewards covering 30 contractors and 3,000 men in the Vauxhall extension building site at Ellesmore Port decided unanimously to support the lobby and to recommend to a mass meeting on Thursday (January 20) that the site stop for the day on January 26 and send coachloads of delegates to London.

Already shop stewards of the Heating and Domestic Union, covering 700 workers on the site, have decided to support the lobby and are sending a delegation.

Electricians employed by Scotts on the_site unanimously decided to support the lobby, as have the AEU shop stewards.

Shop stewards of 600 construction workers employed on the Petro-Chemicals site at Carrington, near Manchester, are to recommend a stoppage on January 26 to a site meeting on Friday. They are calling for a 10s-a-man levy and are sending a contingent.

150 boilermakers and construction workers employed Tarmac at Eastham have already voted to stop for the day.

Liverpool Central branch of the Plumbing Trades Union has decided to send four delegates along with four from the Liverpool No. 1 branch. from the called the and trade Sixty building workers at the Walton hospital site are levying each man 5s to send delegates. Joiners working for the Unit Construction Co. on another site have been contributing 5s a a week for three weeks to send a delegation.

Shop stewards at the Runcorn ICI site, where 1,500 workers supported the lobby recently (reported in The Newsletter, January 8), have booked four buses for their delegation.

Nine Newsletter readers in Speke contributed 30s to pay for a seat on one of the coaches going to the lobby from Liverpool. boilermakers support in the north-east has come from Merseyside shop stewards; Speke No. 3 ABU (one delegate); Clarence Power Station (one-day token strike and four delegates); Fiddlers Ferry Power Station site (four CEU delegates); McGeough's site, Sazakerley (stopping for the day and sending delegates).

In Wigan the AUBTW voted support and will send a delegate. Members expressed particular support for the call to withdraw affiliation fees from the Labour Party if the government goes ahead with its legislation against the unions.

It was decided to collect money for the campaign around building sites in Wigan, so that as many building workers as possible 'could be involved in the movement against legislation.

The NUM (Plank Lane) branch, Leigh, Lancs, supported the lobby and instructed the secretary to write to three Lancashire MPs protesting against legislation. They are Michael McGuire (INCE), Allen Fitch (Wigan) and E. Ogden (West Derby). YORKSHIRE IN HULL the National Amalgamated Stevedores' and Dockers' ('Blue Union') branches Nos. 2, 3 and 5 passed resolutions of suppont and are sending delegates. The No, 4 branch of the union has given support.

Bradford Foundry Workers' Union; Halifax Metal Mechanics; workers on Leeds University building site and power station workers from BICC section at Ferrybridge have all voted support and are sending delegates.

The annual general meeting of the Daniel Doncaster engineering works voted, on recommendation of the shop stewards' committee, to send a delegate.

NORTH-EAST THE WEARSIDE branch of DATA, in supporting the lobby, also decided to submit a resolution to their union's annual conference opposing the anti-union legislation and calling for the withholding of the political levy from the Labour Party if legislation is passed.

Orme "reserves position' on anti-union law on Monday passed a resolution, proposed from the floor by Young Socialist members, pledging full support for next week's lobby of parliament and called for a delegation from the society. No one opposed the motion.

The leading speaker at this meeting was Mr. Stan Orme, Labour MP for Salford West, and member of the parliamentary 'left'.

In spite of his understanding of some of the issues involved in the anti-trade union legislation (likening it to a step toward the corporate state and the fascist state of Italy in the "30s), and despite the fact that he went so far as to say that, I think government policy on this issue is wrong, Orme could make no plan of action for the defeat of these laws.

His leading contribution was scattered with references to 'our economy'.

As we have learnt, such referTENANTS' ACTION GROUP FORMED A MEETING of Croydon, Surrey, tenants called by Waddon Ward Labour Panty formed an Action Committee to fight rent increases of up to 25s. There is a 75 per cent (15s) increase for those living in old people's homes for cripples!

PoR some years, there has been much loose and dangerous talk in Labour fake-left circles about what is termed 'planning'. Pale pink political gentlemen, whose salaries are well into the four-figure class, vie with each other debating such questions as 'incomes planning' while others hold lofty seminars around subjects like 'workers' control'.

The one thing which all this speculation has in common is that it is generally speaking carried on in an abstract way and excludes the need for class struggle and the role of the working class.

The idea is mooted that we can develop a form of 'creeping socialism' which in no way disturbs monopoly capitalism.

Every socialist knows that because of the system of private NORTHERN IRELAND THE FOLLOWING resolution was carried unanimously by the 11/30 branch of the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union, which covers all engineering workers in the Belfast area, and is over 10,000 strong:

'That this 11/30 branch of AT&GWU will fully support by participation the call by Lambeth Trades Council for a lobby of Westminster on January 26, 1966, to protest against the proposed legislation against the trade union movement mentioned by the Labour government in the Queen's speech. All trade unionists must fee believe late his action will demonstrate that the son more. ment will not forfeit any of their gains, so bitterly fought for in the past.' Others who have gone on record for the lobby are the 1l/101 branch of the AT&GWU, covering workers in Courtaulds factory, Victoria Divisional Labour Party also . went on record in support, as did the Socialist Society at Queen's University, Belfast. LONDON AREA A MEETING of 300 building workers at the Bernard Sunley site in Horseferry Road, S.W.1 gave full support and plans are now in hand to bring a large contingent from the site to the march and lobby.

At the GEC factory in North Wembley a meeting called to discuss the closure (reported last week) decided to back the lobby.

Other branches giving support include: Brixton G/S AUBTW; Hendon No. 2 AEU (also opposed suspension of Lambeth Trades Council); Acton No. 4 AEU (two delegates); Paddington No. 1 ASLEF; Shepherd's Bush Painters' and Decorators' Society; Acton No. 2 AEU; Shepherd's Bush ASW; Barking ETU (two delegates); Executive Committee of the Joint Shop Stewards' Committee at BAC Weybridge; East Ham ETU (four delegates); Harrow Weald bus garage, T&GWU Branch 1/295. Wandsworth Technical College Socialist Society are supporting the lobby.

MIDLANDS OXFORD UNIVERSITY Labour Club unanimously supported the lobby. Support also from Oxford 555 T&GWU and Oxford No. 3 AEU. Shop stewards at Morris Motors, Cowley, Oxford, are collecting to send two coaches.

Newsletter Reporter ences to the 'national interest' etc. are used by Gunter and his pals as cover for their advocacy of mass attacks on the living and working conditions of the working class.

At one point Orme_ referred to the Boilermakers' Union as being one of the most 'stubborn' unions.

TURN BACKS

Surely as a 'socialist' he 'militant'?

But no, just when the working class is coming into action against the onslaught of the employers, the 'lefts' and the official Communist Party turn their backs on the workers and make .. vague appeals for unity.

When asked by two speakers from the floor whether or not he would vote against the legislation in parliament, Orme dodged the issue on each occasion. He was 'concerned' about the legislation, he said, but would reserve his own position.

'You will have to judge my action,' he said, 'by the result at the end of the day,' and pointed out that there was a likelihood of the Tories supporting the legislation, so making any action by individual MPs 'an act of martyrdom only'.

When asked by a student Young Socialist did he support the call by the Lambeth Trades Council, Orme again evaded the issue sayIn I don't know anything about Several students expressed an interest in the lobby and said they were willing to form a delegation.

Putting the ownership, where production is carried on tor prott, it as impossible to have real planning wherein the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population, the working class, can benefit.

et more and more, in the epoch of monopoly capital, attempts are continuously being made by these monopolies to work out an agreed planned offensive against the working class so that the parasitic crisis of their profit-making can be paid for. These attacks take the form of state intervention. Incomes planning, yes, under conditions where anti-trade union legislation forces wages down and profits for reinvestment up. Forms of 'workers' control', sure.

Where the state intervenes at Fairfield's, calls upon the unions to invest their money and in return appoint a representative on the board of directors. Under these conditions, the rightwing union leaders are persuaded to give up their rule book and Join the monopoly capitalists in a campaign to make their members work harder and produce more profit. 1 le only effective planning which is possible under captalism is the type of planning which leads to a united drive by the monopolists, the state and the right-wing trade union and Labour leaders against the working class.

The task of Wilson, Callaghan and Brown is to organise the most effective way this can be be carried out.

It is at this point that the reactionary role of our fake-left "planners' emerges. They talk of 'planning' in a way that tries to create the impression that it is possible to plan along socialist lines under capitalism, when they know very well that this is a lot of nonsense. t a time when the real leaders of the working class should be going all out to build an alter-

A against-to support the January 26 lobby 200-strong meeting of London trade unionis and to demand that the TUC lifts its suspension on The meeting had been called by the shop stewards of the ENV factory to discuss the proposed anti-trade union legislation, the incomes policy, and the defence of shop stewards.

It also went on record to form a London Industrial Shop Stewards' Defence Committee; to support all workers engaged in official or 'unofficial' action; to and threats o legs nominate trade unionists from the meeting to form the committee Geoff spoke lookes v Barnard and Stratfor • Lindley cases and in other cour for Mendelson cluded.

He said that at the moment, there was no eflective oppositior to these actions, but the defence come itse welcomed the intese of the Lambeth Trades Council in calling the lobby.

ADDENDUM

V. Mendelson, from the executive of the Trades Council moving an addendum to the ENV resolution, explained that the Wilson government intended take action against the unions on behalf of the international bankers. Therefore the campaign against this had to be a political campaign on a national basis of demonstrations, lobbies and industrial action.

If this meant bringing down the must go government, then they Labour They had allies in the union movement. The TUC had acted hand in glove in attacks on the working, class. They had suspended the Lambeth Trades Council in an attempt to frighten trade union branches into opposing the lobby.

The time had come when the trade union movement would also have to end its support of the Labour Party by stopping the payment of affiliation fees, she said.

Reg Birch, of the AEU, speaking in a personal capacity, said there was nothing new in the problems facing the trade union movement, but "it is more dangerous and serious now beranged against us: greater forces cause there are He explained how the working class would be made to harder to prevent the sountry from becoming bankrupt, but this drive would 'make us bankrupt in power.

The solution, he said, was a political one, not parliamentary. A conscious political army had to be formed. He welcomed the setting up of the defence committee.

A. Hodgson, an El member agreed that it was a political struggle. "The question of defend- K. Dickinson Registratiened o as a newspaper 180 Clapham High Street. London. 's.W.4 its voted last Sunday-with only six called by the Lambeth Trades Council the council.

Mitchell Hodgson Smith Banda Reg Birch ing stewards is important. Workers will defend stewards, but if it is purely in the confines of industrial disputes, it will be headed off.' Workers had to look for a new alternative leadership for the movement.

Cyril Smith of the CAWU said that the lobby of parliament had to be viewed in this light. It was not just a protest demonstration by well-meaning people going along to see their MP's. It was the first step in the building of an alternative leadership to those Labour leaders who had blackmailed the working class.

It was dangerous, he said, to follow the analogy of a previous speaker who said that any action should be seen as a boat launched to see where it floats in the working class.

'STEER BOAT'

'We have to steer that boat as a direct challenge to the right wing leaders,' said Smith.

John Palmer, of Surrey Trades Council, spoke of better liaison between shop stewards, but insisted that leadership could not be 'imposed' on the workers.

Mike Banda, of the Printing Machine branch of the Paperworkers' union and editor of The Newsletter, referring to the Shop Stewards' Defence Committee, said that the example of the New York transport strike showed that action would be taken not only against shop stewards, but also against union leaders.

He added that the 1926 general strike, which had its 30th anniversary in a few months, had taught him of the necessity of a revolutionary leadership for the working class. This was what was needed now to prevent another defeat and to organise the working class to fight against big business and its servants in the labour movement.

Keith Dickinson, of the CAWU, who opposed the January 26 lobby in his union branch (reported last week), led the six opposing the Lambeth addendum at Sunday's meeting.

THE workers at R. Woolf and Co., Southall, Middlesex, who are gradually going back after the seven-week strike there, are quickly realising the extent of the sell-out.

According , to one of the local papers, only half of them (300) will be accepted back, and these are being selected by the management from a list supplied by the labour exchange.

As one of the returning workers alleged:

"The firm wouldn't have allowed the men to stay out for seven weeks losing both money stage! up their loss at a later and orders if they didn't mean to This can only be made off the backs of these workers.

The Woolf workers and all the workers in Britain must learn the lessons of this strike.

What is happening in Woolf's is planned throughout industry, that is why the Labour government is bringing in anti-trade union laws.

The first lesson will be learned if they join the January 26 lobby of Parliament.

• AID SPARKS CALL ELECTRICIANS on strike from the Tilbury B power station, Fort Road, Tilbury, since December 15 in defence of a sacked shop steward are calling for messages of support and financial aid, which can be sent to P. Redmond, 35 Pamlins, Basildon, Essex.

The steward was sacked after negotiating with the employers, AEI, over a previous dismissal. On December 14 the management refused to reinstate the steward, so the 24 ETU men walked off the site the next day.

DRIVERS' FIGHT FOR UNION FORTY drivers employed by Vaux Brewery's, Sunderland, walked out on Monday in support of 80 fellow workers sacked on New Year's Eve for attempting to establish 100 per cent-trade union. cart before th e horse

Industrial By WEs meeting pledges il full support for the cam paign against anti-trade union legislation and for the lobby of parliament called for January 26 by the Lambeth Trades Council. We undertake to campaign in factories, pits and on building sites, and in trade union and Young Socialist branches to get the maximum support for this lobby. We also agree to continue the campaign against this legislation on our return from the lobby?

This resolution was passed unanimously at a meeting last Sunday in Leeds of over 60 people including miners, engineers, clothing and building workers.

ENTHUSIASTIC

There was an enthusiastic response when members of the Socialist Labour League, explaining the connection between the government's proposals and the coming attacks on large sections of the working class, declared that the leaders of the Labour Party, the trade unions and the Communist Party must be swept aside and replaced by a revolutionary leadership.

Ine meeting agreed to lobby local trade union MPs after the national lobby. Militant workers in this area are also faced with a growing alliance between the leaders of the Communist Party and the extreme right-wing unions, who are combining to sabotage any opposition to the government's anti-trade union plans.

These two reactionary forces are making a determined effort to get the Leeds Trades Council to reverse its decision (taken by 21 votes to 6) to support the lobby.

A collection of over £ll was taken at the meeting towards the cost of sending coaches from Leeds to the lobby.

YS AND IMMIGRANTS LOBBY SOUTHALL TRADES COUNCIL 30 Young Socialists and \N Wednesday (January 12) workers from the Woolf rubber factory lobbied the Southall Trades Council asking for investigations into the running of the Woolf strike and into the union branch covering Woolf's.

They were also asking that one of the two suspended members of that branch, who was previously a delegate to the Trades Council, be accepted as a delegate at that meeting.

He was not accepted as a delegate.

The only person objecting to him remaining as a visitor was a member of the Communist Party. At a meeting after the lobby, plans were made for work for the January 26 lobby of parliament, and a lobby of the Executive Committee of the Transport and General Workers' Union, which is organised for January 20 at the union's Transport House headquarters.

STEEL ERECTORS SACKED SOME of the first workers on the Naylor Bros.' pit-head site at Grimesthorpe have been sacked.

The men, steel erectors, had been laying the basis for a union site and condition money, but struck on January 10 after a seven-week-old promise by the firm to discuss a bonus scheme, was allegedly broken. On January 13 they were given their notices.

native revolutionary leadership which will overthrow capitalism, these takers are doing their best to disarm the working class.

They prattle on about 'incomes planning' whilst the state goes ahead making wage restraint legal.

They talk about 'workers' control' as if it were possible for workers to control under capitalism.

The tendency of our learned fakers' is to always put the cart before the horse when it comes to the need for real leadership and class struggle.

No socialist planning is possible under capitalism.

For this it will be necessary to expropriate the capitalists by revolutionary action, carried out by the working class under the leadership of the revolutionary party.

The main task of the Socialist Labour League is to build this party.