The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 438

LABOUR is in with a considerable majority. This time there can be no position to make great strides towards socialism.

The success of the Labour Party is due to two contradictory factors. Firstly, large sections of the middle class swung to Labour on the basis of the right-wing, anti-trade union policies, while, at the same time, the working class remained solidly Labour on the basis of anti-Tory class policies. What happened in the Hull North by-election on January 28 has now been repeated nationally.

While the right-wing Labour leaders are busy congratulating themselves on this unstable state of affairs, the La bour Party now almost certainly heads towards a split. With the economic situation still desperate, Wilson, Callaghan and Brown will continue their attacks against the i working class. So far as right-wing Labour is concerned, the election victory means the go-ahead to introduce anti-trade union legislation.

In other words, this splendid victory, which could be a real beginning for the application of socialist policies, will now be transformed by Wilson and Co. into a trap for the rank and file of the Labour Party and the trade union movement.

The Newsletter insists that the right-wing leaders betray-just as they have done over the past 17 months.

will continue with Tory policies which will more They split the labour movement to the advantage of its and more opponents.

The question of policy is now decisive.

With an overwhelming majority the Labour Party could nationalize the major industries without compensation. They could proceed along the road towards real socialist planning on the basis of such nationalization. They can and should break from American imperialism Vietnam. But of course they will do nothing of the over In fact, the fight for policy during the next period will sort. take place against them.

Initiate campaign In other words, the large majority in Parliament is, in fact, meaningless unless the rank and file immediately initiate a campaign for socialist policies.

This is the great importance of the Young Socialists' Conference at Morecambe on April 2 and 3. The Young Socialists have pioneered the struggle for socialist policies.

The General Election results for Labour have shown what is possible. The Morecambe Conference of the Young Socialists will be a Conference to show how it can realised. by THE EDITOR excuse. So far as the A for BMC service workers LOCAL conference failed The employers may take the scheme to a York conference.

It is this wage scale which was behind the so-called 'workers' court' and was ignored in the hysteria whipped up by the press over the 'noose trial'.

BMC are moving their Service department to a new automated plant at nearby Horspath, and mooted the new scale a few weeks ago.

Cowley workers told our reporter that the wage scheme would mean a drop in pay of between f5 and f10 for many.

The management justified this drop by saying that 60 per cent of the labour force would be moving onto semi-automated work and 40 per cent onto fully automated work.

The management decided to amalgamate the service and repair sections. The amalgamation went ahead four weeks ago and 3th Annual Conference of REPORTER

to agree on a new wage scale at Cowley, Oxford, on Tuesday. the repair men were brought in on the basis of the new wage scale.

They maintain that when amalgamation was discussed 18 months ago it was agreed the repair men would remain on their present wage rate.

It was this disagreement which brought about the two one-day stoppages—in the second, eight service department workers failed to come out and the so-called 'noose trial' followed.

Both the service and repair workers had over a period won some major concessions from the management through strong action and leadership.

They do not want to see this shattered by the new wage scale and therefore disagreed with the management on Tuesday. They must receive every support from all trade unionists in their stand.

HE Soviet attitude to the alutude role of stalin in their history is still unclear after two major speeches at the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which opened in Moscow on Tuesday.

Opening the Congress Leonid first secretary of the Party Brezhnev made absolutely no reference to Stalin in a five-hour speech.

The nearest he came to mentioning the Stalin era was when he suggested that the 24-man Praesidium take the name Politburo which was used after the revolution and up until the last year of Stalin's rule in 1953.

Moscow Party secretary, Nikolai Yegorichev, in his speech on Wednesday raised the question of Stalin directly.

It had become fashionable, he said, to search for elements of Stalinism in Soviet political life in order to scare people.

Indirectly, he deplored the action of several Soviet intellectuals who had written to the Kremlin expressing their fears of No reference by Brezhnev an intended partial rehabilitation of Stalin.

"There will never be a return to a violation of "democratic methods or legality, he said, adding that everything which hindered our advance has been swept aside for ever.

It was necessary to reject attempts to "smear' the CPSU and take pride in its achievements over the past 50 years.

Much could have been done better, 'but what has been done is admirable and fills us with pride,' he said.

But for half those 50 years of history, Stalin did everything in his power to carry out his policy of socialism in one country'. The bureaucracy and Stalin developed enormous powers. This led to the purges and repressions necessary to this hierarchy to maintain its position ... against the interests of the Soviet people.

Yegorichev says quite cynically: 'The Party casts aside all attempts to minimise the heroic role • of our people which, for half a century,. have traversed a difficult but glorious path • under the leadership of the Communist Party.' Certainly the Soviet workers have a brave and courageous record in defending the gains of the 1917 revolution, but this was not made any easier by the actions of Stalin's secret policè.

a ge gates gather this NEW

To scale LEGISLATION against the trade unions on wages—the most vicious attack made by Labour government in its 17 months office betwe 1964 and 1966—is a major item on the agenda the Young Socialists' Sixth Annual Conference Morecambe this weekend.

With delegates from Young Socialist branches all over the country and an important number of adult delegations from trade union branches and factories, the conference is devoting a whole session to a discussion on campaigning to fight against the anti-trade union legislation, which the new Labour government will hey enforce in the form Already Young Socialists have BALL played an important part in the fight against the right-wing Labour government's policies. Before the Jamuary 26 lobby of parliament, organised by the Lambeth Trades Council, it was the Young Socialists who campaigned day after day throughout the winter months to make the lobby a success.

AT THEIR MEETING on Monday, the Stratford No. 3 3 (East London) branch of the Amalgamated Engineering Union voted unanimously to send fraternal greetings to the 6th annual conference of the Young Socialists in Morecambe this weekend.

The member of the branch who moved the resolution told the Young Socialist speaker :

Although you will remember I was your main critic when you spoke some weeks ago, I have been watching things very carefully since then and I think that we now have to give the Young Socialists credit for being a watch-dog for the older generation of trade unionists. I hope the branch will agree to send a greeting to your conference.

You're doing a job we will be grateful for in the future' Further support for the conference has come from :

The Bradford United Pattern Makers' Association (two delegates); the National Union of General and Municipal Workers, Glasshoughton branch (two delegates); and the Association of Supervisory Staffs, Executives and Technicians (Leeds Engineering branch), which has passed a resolution of full support for the conference.

This weekend it iş the Young Socialists again who provide a platform for the thousands of workers who want to fight to defend their organisations and prevent them from being tied to the state.

Thirteen YS branches sent in resolutions demanding that the YS fights against anti-trade union legislation. A full measure of determination with which the Young Socialists face a fight with the future government against such laws is expressed by the Woolwich YS branch:

... We believe that the proposed legislation against the unions is not only a betrayal of the workers, but an open attack on them by the so-called Labour government and the bosses.

'We will support any serious struggle by any of the political parties of the left or by a group of trade union militants against his legislation.' server Newsletter Correspondent THE annual conference of the National Association of Labour Student Organisations, agreed on Wednesday to send observers to the sixth annual conference of the Young Socialists in Morecambe this week-end.

Among a number of leftwing resolutions also carried was the following, moved by the Oxford University Labour Club:

This conference, recalling the hopes expressed in the 21 resolutions on industrial and economic policy in the past year's policy statement, concludes that the passing of such resolutions is not an effective means of political action; therefore:

(a) Declares its full support for the campaign called by the Lambeth Trades Council against the anti-trade union legislation;

(b) Demands the reinstatement of the Lambeth Trades Council by the TUC;

(c) Undertakes to assist where appropriate organisations which will defend the British working class from attacks by this and future capitalist governments. In particular, it undertakes to fight any legislation to make official and unofficial strikes illegal or to enforce the 'early warning' of wage agreements.

Amendments were carried which committed NALSO to send delegates on the lobby called by the Lambeth Trades Council, provisionally fixed for April 27. Another amendment was accepted supporting moves by the recent meeting of London Shop Stewards against the proposed legislation.

During the discussion on the debate, students grouped around the paper 'The Militant' bitterly attacked the Lambeth Trades Council, but their amendment was defeated.

When they abstained on the resolution, they were virtually isolated and it was carried by an overwhelming majority.

week for the 23rd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, it will be nearly 10 years after the historic 20th Congress of 1956, where Khrushchev made his 'secret' speech, denouncing Stalin and the 'period of the personality cult'.

This speech, together with the Hungarian and Polish uprisings later in the same year, produced the most important crisis ever to affect worid Stalinism.

Ever since then, there have been two significant lines of approach among socialists to the problems of the Stalinist bureaucracy and the workers ruled or led by them in the capitalist countries and in those where the Stalinist bureaucracy controls government.

In many different forms, there is the belief that Khrushchev's speech was a sign that the Stalinist bureaucracy would now gradually reform the USSR and the world communist movement by a process of 'de-Stalinisation'. Inside the Communist Parties, those who insisted on a Marxist analysis of the Stalin period were told to accept Khrushchev's guarantees that 'Socialist legality' and Leninist norms of Party life' were now secure.

•Pressures' Revisionists inside the Trotskyist movement moved towards a rejection of the need for the Soviet working class to overthrow the bureaucracy in a political revolution. Instead, they suggested, the pressure of the masses, which had already forced Khrushchev's exposures, would force the bureaucracy to the left.

In fact the bureaucracy retains its Stalinist and countersavolutingary sharagtes as was the Hungarian revolution.

There was no possible advance of the world movement from Stalinism without a struggle against this bureaucracy. That could and can be undertaken only under the banner of the Fourth International, starting from the Marxist understanding of the nature of Stalinism made by Trotsky in the 1920s and 1930s.

Bedevilled

The contradictions of Soviet society have continued to demand a solution; the struggle of the workers there has continued to raise these basic political questions. The 23rd Congress finds itself bedevilled by these problems, even though the bureaucrats gathered there would have liked Khrushchev's guarantees of the future to come true.

186A Clapham "CO EDITORS - TOM KEMP, Editorial Algeria Kenya-Coloniali Independence The Struggle for United States (iv) American Trotsky Tim Wolforth Fourth International Cuban Revolution in: Danger Statement of the International Committee of the Fourth International FEBR Stalin lies in state with

Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin in 1956 (they are seen together above) produced the most important crisis fol world Stalinism, whose disintegration is further exposed by the refusal of the Chinese (Mao Tse Tung seen with Stalin below) to attend this year's Congress of the Soviet Communist Party.

It is in this atmosphere that the question of resurrecting Stalin its head.

How can the contradictions of a workers' state in a backward, isolated country, its economy distorted by bureaucratic control as well as.by A Journal of International Marxism Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International High Street, CONTENTS and *rotskyism capitalist TintiWond market and military in the Communist Parties strength, plan its economic the capitalist countries, they future? insist on the 'good sides' of Wartime get-together, Churchill, Roosevelt How can the relations between a bureaucratised Party, a managerial élite, and a growing and powerful working class in Russia and Eastern Europe, be regulated?

How can the policy of collaboration with US imperialism, upon which the Soviet bureaucracy has embarked, be carried through in a situation where the Chinese Communist Party is split from the 'official' communist movement? Behind agenda It is these questions which lie behind the agenda of the 23rd Congress: the five-year plan and the revisions of Khrushchev's 'adventurist' targets; relations in the international communist movement; possible revision of the Party constitution; and, most publicised, the possible reconsideration of the role of Stalin.

This last question has been insistently raised in high circles in the USSR in the last few months.

Khrushchev, of course, gave no Marxist explanation of how it was possible for 'socialist' society to sustain the abuses of the Stalin period. He attributed these to Stalin's megalomania.

Under the guise of seeking a more Marxist explanation, some historians and writers, and now leading generals, all of them without doubt sponsored by definite forces in the higher ranks of the Party, have called for at least a measure of rehabilitation of Stalin.

Stali carve up the world Marxist works which answer the burning problems of the Communist movement Writings of Leon Trotsky Permanent Revolution (with Results and Prospects) The New Course The First Five Years of the S.W.4 Communist International Where is Britain Going?

Platform of the Left Opposition (1927)

Death Agony of Capitalism (Transitional Programme) Draft Programme of the Communist International: A Criticism of Fundamentals, 1928 Germany: The Key to The International Situation The Only Road for Germany Radio, Science, Technique ane Society Hue and Cry over Kronstadt Three Articles on Workers' Control The Workers' State and the Question of Thermidor and Bonapartism 9d. The Revolution Betrayed Culture and Socialism & Art and Revolution The Intelligentsia and Socialism Through What Stage Are Passing?

Stalinism & Bolshevism Stalinism and Trotskyism in the USA Available from:

New Park Publications I 186a Clapham High St., Stalin's work; they draw attention to the tendency, particularly among the youth, to reject out of hand the heritage of Stalinism.

Last week this persistent campaign on behalf of Stalin (intended as the ideological backing for a drive against opposition to the bureaucracy) received a reply from a number of leading Soviet intellectuals and public figures, including Peter Kapitsa, atomic phycisist, Ivan Maisky, ballerina Maya Plisetskaya, and a number of writers and academidicians.

They warn that the rehabilitation of Stalin would precipitate a split between the Soviet and Western Communist Parties.

The important thing is that this group of intellectuals no doubt feel they have some sort of 'protectors' in the Communist Party hierarchy.

No 1956 These intellectuals insist that 'the people will never understand or accept even a deviation in part from the resolutions taken against Stalin's personality cult- in 1956'. In other words, the Soviet workers will not stand for any going back from 1956; it would be dangerous to the bureaucracy itself if discipline were to be enforced with the help of Stalin's ghost.

Whether the Congress will publicly discuss any of these questions is of course doubtiul, but it is t fear of the working class is the USSR and all dominate this conference of bureaucrats.

On the eve of Growing support for W feeling hopelessly ORLD imperialism, cornered in a world-wide crisis, is getting more ruthless in Its attempt to strangle the workers' militancy and their conscious or instinctive revolutionary tendencies.

In the under-developed countries, American imperialism, along with its European counterparts, in their struggles to hang on to, or spread their spheres of 'influence and exploitation', have to resort to bloody coups, military dictatorships or semi-dictatorships.

Vietnam, Indonesia, Ghana, Rhodesia, Santo Domingo, and Greece are the latest examples of the swift replacements of so-called 'popular governments' by open or hidden dietatorships, unleashing a policy of terror against the workers and peasants in order to force their living standards down and to crush the workers and their left-wing tendencies.

ERE rule ends

Greece, up to 1963, was governed by the ERE Party, representing sections of Greek capitalists, who are connected with American capital.

This party in fact contains some of the most reactionary elements in Greece. It is solidly monarchist, and advocates 'strong' government against the masses.

Making use of the general opposition of the people against such a policy, the Centre Union, led by Papandreou, promised 'democratic freedom' and a rise in living standards. Aided by the Stalinist EDA, Papandreou came to power.

He was unable to fulfil all his 'promises', ', and soon the workers began to fight back. The government replied with fresh repressions.

Faced with increased it was suddenly announced in Moscow that four plays running there are to be immediately taken off the stage. All of these plays deal with the Stalin period, and one of them is by Tvardovski, who made a very critical speech at the 22nd Congress on these questions. All this is in preparation for moves at the 23rd Congress.

In recent months the bureaucracy has mounted a wave of repression in Russia and Eastern Europe, not only against writers but also against Trotskyists and other militant workers. Any moves at this Congress are against that backcloth.

Declined

The Chinese Communist Party, feeling more and more the campaign of the Soviet bureaucracy to isolate the Chinese revolution as part of its accommodation to US imperialism, has rejected the invitation to send fraternal delegates, not even considering it worthwhile to take advantage of the platform offered there to attack the 'modern revisionists'.

This indicates how far the disintegration of international Stalinism has proceeded. This disintegration is a necessary part of the development of the conditions which now favour so markedly the reconstruction of the Fourth International.

The task of the Trotskyists is to base themselves upon that international working class so tearea by the pureaucracy, and to appreciate the events at the Soviet Party Congress from that standpoint. Greek Trotskyists tancy by the workers, the capitalists, particularly the pro-American sections, began thinking of ways to strengthen their hold on the working class and finally resorted to the July 1965 coup, carried out on their behalf by the King, with a few of Papandreou's ministers, who simply sacked the elected government.

'Peaceful' struggle

A new government was formed and swiftly began passing anti-working-class legislation, exiling left wingers, etc.

Papandreou and the Stalinists called on the people to wage 'peaceful struggle against the coup' (!) and for 'a return to normality of the Papandreou type—in other words, for a solution within capitalism.

The EDA, having deep petty middle-class roots, meekly followed the capitalist slogans of Papandreou for a 'return to constitutional monarchy, and capitalist 'normality' under the already discredited Papandreou government.

Only the Trotskyists, a mere handful in numbers, put forward correct slogans for the overthrow of the monarchy, and for a plebiscite for a constituent assembly, coupled with calls for strikes and the creation of workers' committees to fight back and defeat the capitalist attacks.

The correctness of the slogans was proved by the fact that they were readily taken up by the demonstrators and gave fresh impetus to the struggle.

By August, the demonstrations became violent. Cars were set alight, barricades were )RRESPONDENT set up and bloody clashes the police were common.

The Trotskyists fought in the front lines and Comrade Petroulas became the first victim of the fight.

They fought hard to broaden the social aspect of the struggle and to lead it towards socialist solution to the crisis. In this uphill struggle, they found the Stalinists and the organs of the very government which the EDA called 'fascist' unified in the common effort to smash the Trotskyists and end their rising influence among the workers.

Stalinists splitting

The Stalinists have managed to temporarily arrest the force of the workers' movement, but their party is already splitting up and is torn apart by various opposed tendencies within it.

On the other hand, members of the Workers' Vanguard (Trotskyists) are carrying on their struggle and more and more workers today are realising that the real solution of the problem can only be that (left to right) Molotov, Voroshilov, Beria, Malenkov, Bulganin, Khrushchev, Kaganovich Mikoyan.

Stalin was a pall the funeral of the assassinated Kirov.

Stalinists have never explained the exact circumstances of his death and the biood-bath precipitated by it.

Neither have his alliances with the most reactionary and imperialist states been satisfactorily explained. He is seen here with Pierre Laval, extreme right wing representative of the French government, at the signing of the Franco-Soviet pact in 1934 and with Ribbentrop, Hitler': emissary, after the sign of the Stalin-Hitler non-aggression pact of August 23, 1939, with Matsuoka, Japanese envoy, after the signing of the Russo-Japanese nonagyrossion pact of April 13, 1941. of a social change. They remember the past br trayals of the Stalinists in 19 15 and are beginning to turn to the Workers' Vanguard.

Thus, the new party of the working class in Greece is now being built as a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, the world party of the international proletariat.

Stand witnessed

The Stalinists in Greece may go on denouncing the Trotskyists as 'fascist provocateurs' 'police agents', etc. But the working class has witnessed the stand the internationalists took last summer-squarely on the side of the masses.

As none of the problems which led to the crisis have been or can ever be solved within the capitalist system, the struggles ahead will provide fresh evidence of the Stalinist collaboration with capitalism on the one hand, and of the loyalty and revolutionary sincerity of the Trotskyist movement, on the other.

Stalinism will find it an impossible task to take on the working class again.

Student Sotiris Petroulas the first victim in last summer's clashes. He was found dead after a police rush on a crowd of demonstrators.

ril 19 WSLETTER Page :Three business

Michael Banda comments on the Cubela trial FACTS emanating from the capitalist press seem to throw a new and extremely sinister construction on the trial of Rolando Cubela Secades and his alleged co-conspirators, Ramon Guin Diaz, Jose Gallaretta, Blanco Romariz and Juan Navarro.

On March 10 the first two were sentenced to 25 years' and the rest to 20 years' jail. They were charged with plotting to assassinate Cuban prime minister Castro. Two others, Alvarez and Herero, surprisingly, were set free.

The trial was held before for the defendents in the The audience consisted many of them Stalinists.

The trial was noteworthy for three things:

Firstly, there was no material evidence produced during the two days the trial lasted to substantiate the charge that Cubela had conspired to assassinate Castro and that he had indulged in 'counter-revolutionary activities in complicity with the American CIA'.

Secondly, Cubela who was arrested only the day before the trial (March 6, 1966)— although the alleged conspiracy with Manuel Artime in Madrid took place more than a year ago, in February 1965— made an unrestrained self-denunciation, reminiscent of the Moscow Trials, and demanded the death penalty for his 'crime' Improbable tale According to 'Le Monde' Cubela pounded his chest and cried:

I am an unstable character, filled with contradictions and weaknesses; I became dissolute, beginning with the day I abandoned the revolution. Because of my own corruption, I became an ally of the corrupted enemies of our people and our revolution.' Continuing his fascinating, if somewhat improbable tale, Cubela revealed that he had an interview with Castro in January (sic) over his alleged divergences and that he never felt the least hatred for Castro (!). He could not understand what had brought him to such a state of demoralisation. (Nor, for that matter, could any of the foreign observers at the trial.)

Thirdly (and this makes the whole thing look like an Orwellian fantasy, Castro anticipated the verdict of the court, which was the death penalty, by putting in a plea for clemency which was immediately accepted..

As 'Le Monde' commented:

'After Mr. Fidel Castro's letter was read by the court, everybody stood up, the spectators, the judges, the prosecutor, the accused (!)

and applauded with all their might.' Mystery Even if by some painful stretch of the imagination we were to accept Cubela's 'confession', there still remains the mystery of why, as he stated in court, he 'abandoned the revolution'. • Cubela is not a nonentity. He was a prominent leader in the anti-Batista movement-a leader of the revolutionary directorate and a leader of the post - revolutionary student movement in Cuba. In fact it was Cubela who killed Batista's police chief in the daring, but unsuccessful, attack on Batista's palace in March 1957.

What class forces impelled Cubela, who on his own admission harboured no hatred for Castro, to try and kill him?

Was Cubela framed in order to create an atmosphere in which new repressive measures could be taken against Castro's enemies or opponents?

The date of Cubela-Diaz conspiracy—February 1965— is also interesting. It was during this February-April period that the conflict with Ernesto Ché Guevara broke in the Cuban leadership.

Was Cubela a supporter of Guevara and if so would it not have been expedient for Castro a five-man military tribunal. Legal representation trial was, to : most accounts, denied them. of 500 carefully-picked supporters of Castro, Mass movement can defeat fascists Newsletter Correspondent HE Commissioner of police for New York stated recentiy that he had no objection to policemen joining the John Birch Society. The John Birchers, who used to call Kennedy a Communist, have claimed to have 500 members in the New York police force.

A professor at Trenton University, who made broadcasts attacking fascist activities, was beaten up badly recently by a gang who identified themselves as John members.

As the US bosses wage a Nazi-like war against the Vietnamese people, they give encouragement to fascist elements in the USA. Children in American schools have been given pictures of General Ky, the Vietnamese puppet, who proclaims himself an admirer of Hitler.

VIOLENT ATTACKS

During the coast-to-coast demonstrations against the Vietnamese war, gangs of fascists organised by such groups as the American Nazi Party and the Klu Klux Klan made violent attacks on the demonstrators in New York, Boston, Oakland and other places.

The New York Sunday News', largest paper in HE Labour - coalitlon government in Israel shows signs of coming apart at the seams under the strain of anti-union legislation.

Yigal Allon, Minister of Labour, has announced legislation to impose:

A compulsory 'cooling-off' period, requiring advance notice of strike action.

Special tribunals to which workers would submit grievances for arbitration.

• Legal authority for the Histadrut (Israel TUC)

presumably so that it can compel workers to put up with 'package deal' agreements.

Centrist opposition

The Mapam (centrists) who are in the coalition with rightwing Labour, have stated that they will oppose any measures that restrict the right of workers to strike.

As has been reported previously in The Newsletter, the economic crisis of the leading capitalist countries has had a severe effect on the highly dependent Israeli economy.

There have been suggestions of devaluation of the Israeli lira, and much talk from bankers and newspaper editors about the need for more hard work, etc.

In February the government cut expenditure on housing; education, and roads, as well as food subsidies.

The aim of the Birch Society Leadir of the Amarican Nazi Party, Lincoln Rockwell, between two of his aides at a Black Muslim rally. America, featured a photograph of a group of fascists entitled 'Voice of the People'.

Not only the press, but also the police gave encouragement to the fascists.

In New York City the cops directed the demonstrators after the large Fifth Avenue march down side streets. They were noticeably absent when the fascists attacked.

Another sign of polarisation has been the Young Republican organisation.

At Long Beach, California, two members of Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party were elected to run the Young Republicans, although subsequent publicity led to the local «OTT Republican Party asking them to resign.

• The New Jersey Young Republicans are also being led by a group of American Nazi Party members.

At the Young Republicans' convention songbook brought out by the New Jersey section proved very popular with delegates. Typical song title was 'Shooting the Kikes' —obviously referring to the Jews.

FASCIST "RESERVES' The US ruling class, in a period when it must attack the American working class, will turn increasingly to its fascist 'reserves'.

ISRAEL Unlike the official leaders of the peace and Civil Rights movement, and for that matter the Socialist Workers' Party, the US supporters of the Fourth International have warned consistently against placing any trust in the cops and the state.

The US Trotskyists in the 'Spartacist' and 'American Committee for the Fourth International' groups call for independent self defence, like the Deacons for Freedom movement in the South.

In building a mass socialist youth movement, they will be able to make short work of the fascist outfits.

He said he saw nothing wrong in a public figure taking care of his party's finances.

However, a spokesman for the Finance Ministry has since stated that, in fact, months before Allon got the money, the Treasury had fully indemnified the border villages.

So where did the £12,000 go?

The National Religious Party (also part of the coalition) are keen on raising the question in a spirit of revenge because one of their leading members was jailed for two years for soliciting bribes from a building contractor while director-general of the Health Ministry, and Raphael, another National Religious Party member, had to resign from the front bench (he had been Minister of Health).

Not fit So all in all, the Israeli government is in no fit state to put over its reactionary measures, and if Mapam, having shown by its stand on the anti-union legislation that it is reflecting the pressure of rank-and-file militant workers, should take the essential step of leaving the coalition, it could win many workers who previously backed other parties.

It could lead a socialist opposition to the government or, out of continued loyalty to Zionism, stay with the corrupt reactionaries.

If it takes the latter course, the workers certainly will not.

But in this country too, the basic and essential need is for a revolutionary Marxist Party.

WORLD Imperialism is using the squeeze political and economic concesMrs. Ghandi's talks in Washington have been trying to settle the terms on which the Us government will send the financial aid India now desperately needs to avoid widespread starvation.

In February, the Indian Prime Minister was declaring that the effects of the drought and food shortage were being exaggerated, even in Now, reports of the plight of millions of Indian workers and peasants cannot be denied. In some areas, people are subsisting on a diet of grass and roots.

Naturally, for the Indian capitalists, the When US aid was stopped in September, it led to the rapid depletion of foreign exchange reserves. Since then, Indian imports have been drastically cut back to protect the rupee.

The development of a depression, with mass unemployment throughout industry is threatened.

The implications for the stability of the Indian state are clear. Already, the food riots have coincided with a worsening of the national problems to crisis point.

Lawyer

and unionists for trial are preparing the trial of three trade unionists and a lawyer who were arrested last September and were later released.

Reasons for the arrests were not given at the time, but it is understood that the men were questioned about a petition from transport workers in Madrid, demanding a wage increase. The petition had over 4,000 signatures.

The four men, members of the Workers Trade Union Alliance (ASO), are: Jesus Gonzalez Quesada (45), a municipal transport worker; Mariano Nuero, a 36-year-old steel worker employed at the Boettischer and Navarre factory; Antonio Nogues (38), a worker at the Telefunken 32-year-old lawyer. Manuel Fernandez Montesinos Garcia.

In extensive police reports on the men smuggled out of Spain it is alleged that the men were in an ASO delegation to last year's congress of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in Amsterdam, where they reported on the state of the unions in Spain and the struggle against the Franco regime for free trade unions. It is also alleged in these reports that they sought aid from foreign trade unions in their struggle.

The authorities will be asking for a five-year sentence on Mentesinos and three years for the other three.

Montesinos, a lawyer at the bar in Madrid, has appeared in court many times before-often to defend workers in dispute with their employers.

He is also the nephew of the Spanish poet Garcia Lorca and the son of the Cont d page 4, column 1 → exploits starving millions hunger of the Indian masses to sions out of the indian ruling class. the figures of her own Food Ministry.

situation does not seem so serious.

At the beginning of March, a warning of the dangers ahead was issued by V. A.

Grantham, chairman of the Chartered Bank.

Speaking as the head of one of the most influential City of London financial groups with interests in India, he demanded the lifting of restrictions on foreign investment.

He also called for a 'relaxation of the permitted size of land holdings, so that the full benefit from advanced agricultural techniques can be obtained'.

As well as pressing for lower taxes, this highly respected banker puts forward a possible answer to India's problems. Estimating that about £2t million is lying An Indian boy begs for food around in hoarded gold, he thinks that the food shortage can force this on the market. Both British and American imperialism thus uses the agony of India's starving masses to squeeze more profits out of the country.

In every detail, they confirm Trotsky's views of the revolution in countries like India: neither national nor agrarian problems can be solved in the epoch of imperialist decay without the coming to power of the working class.

In the revolutionary upheavals which face India a Marxist Party must be built which can lead the workers and peasants to tear India out of the clutches of the world's financiers.

socialist mayor of Granar who was shot by Fran police at the beginning the Civil War.

Gonzalez Quesada is a member of the committee of the Madrid Transport Company, elected by the workers.

Nogues is a member of the committee of the Telefunken factory, also elected by the workers.

Nuero is a committee member at the Boettischer and Navarre factory.:

Also named in police investigations are José Buiria, José Pallach and Hermes Piquer, but they have not been traced in Spain. The last the police knew of all three was when they were living abroad.

Trade unionists throughout the world must give every possible support to the courageous struggle of the Spanish militants demanding the basic rights of free trade unions against the regime of dictator Franco. ment and his steward, Evans agreed to apologise. But later he was sacked.

The background to the dispute seems to stem from the setting up of a separate branch for Port's-the 5/677 branch.

EXPLANATION

Since the new branch began to function in October, officials of the 5/540 have made several requests for an explanation from regional secretary Urwin, and for an inquiry into their own conduct as officials of the branch.

They have heard nothing on either question.

Full-time union officials have attacked alleged acts of intimidation against Port's workers who are members of the 5/677 branch and have not joined the strike.

Members of the 5/540 branch are angered by the speed and method used by union officials to defend the employers. They claim that better agreements have been reached by them with the management than by the 5/677 branch.

A meeting of over 300 strikers on Sunday declared that there was no evidence of intimidation and unanimously gave a vote of confidence in officials of the 5/540 branch. it was not high wages, but overseas military expenses and private investment abroad which were crippling 'our country. If

Bv OUR FOREIGN is obviously to prevent workers fighting back against these attacks on their living standards.

Allon complained that in 1965, while there were 66 official strikes, involving 8,033 workers, and costing 23,139 working days, there were also 209 'unofficial' strikes, involving 85,333 workers and costing 180,313 working days.

It has been estimated by one economist that if official Histadrut wage policy had been followed, wages would have risen by 15 per cent in the last two years, but that in fact, due to action at factory or company level, they rose by an average to 30 per cent.

Camouflage

When Mapam joined the coalition some bourgeois newspapers hopefully remarked that this might mean fewer strikes -in other words, that the centrists would provide a 'left' camouflage for right-wing policies.

This was probably also the reason why Allon was given the 'hot seat' of Minister of Labour, sirice his Ahdut CORRESPONDENT Avodah party had some influence among trade union militants.

However, the workers are not so easily fooled, particularly as the government has failed to hold prices down.

To make matters worse, amid all the talk about "sacrifices for the national good', Allon is now involved in a bribery scandal.

It has been revealed that before the 1959 election, the Dan bus co-operative paid the Ahdut Avodah party a sum equivalent to £12,000, A newspaper quoted the cooperative directors as saying this was 'in order to have good relations' with the Transport Ministry. •A member of Allon's party, Moshe Carmel was Transport Minister at the time and gave Dan some route concessions.

Allon wrote to the paper stating that the money was a loan, which he had negotiated himself and which has been to cover the repair of damage done to some of his party's affiliated kibbutz settlements by Syrian gunfire.

CHAIRMAN of the Labour Party's dock study group, lan Mikardo, MP for Poplar, revealed last week that the Party is pledged to nationalize for Poplar, revealed last week that the 'This is complete nationalization without any loopholes whatever. I want nobody be under any illusions about this,' said Mikardo, who predicts nationalization for Page HAIRMAN the industry.

1968. NEWSLETTER REPORTER Labour Party's dock Ti Another evasion on anti-union legislation ERNARD FLOUD, who has been re-elected as Labour MP for Acton, spoke at a factory-gate meeting outside CAV (Lucas) on Monday

OCKER-CRANE drivers at Tilbury are continuing their boycott of about 30 cranes following the death of one of their mates in the accident seen right.

The men are using derricks and other cranes, which are less manoeuvrable.

Proposals are still in hand for the establishment of a crane drivers' branch of the Transport and General Workers' Union, which the men feel would be more able to deal with their specific problems on the docks. At the moment, they are members of a branch which includes dockers and stevedores.

Tension is growing among the whole 2,000 labour force over a number of questions.

A member of the local liaison committee told our reporter that since the Devlin Report was published, firms on the docks had been merged leaving four large companies.

The men claim that the effect of this is that the 'blue eyes' have become more prominent and are obtaining more of the work, while militants are on fall-back pay for at least two days every week.

The fall-back rate for the whole week is still only £9 8s and not the figure recently quoted by Poplar MP, Ian Mikardo.

Three days' pay • Injured dockers are even worse off. Known as 'C book dockers they are employed on light work. They can work a full week, but if there is no work, they can only sign on at the Dock Labour Board offices to ensure their fall-back rate for three days, instead of the normal full week. Their fall-back rate, therefore, is only f6 Is a week.

Another grievance among the dockers is the smaller number of workers being used on ships.

In Tilbury, said the committee member, there are about 100 dockers employed by the Port of London Authority full time. A small number of these work on packaged timber. An agreement was reached recently that they work in gangs of three with stacker trucks and earn f27 a week.

Often they work with only 24 men on ship and quay where previously there were 100.

The Tilbury liaison committee is watching this situation and would accept the whole labour force becoming permanent provided there were guarantees of:

No sackings whatsoever; No victimisations; Fall back rate of f27.

The Newsletter says that Tilbury dockers should also mand the nationalization of docks under their control.

Unionists

and lawyer for trial Industrial Gollan's TV speech £8,500 for 4 minutes, 40 seconds of CP-styled A lost deposits, the Com- T a cost of 28,500 in munist Party last week bought four minutes 40 seconds on television.

While general secretary John Gollan's performance may have persuaded a few middle-class viewers that the British Communist Party has nothing in common with Marx, Engels and Lenin, it will certainly have caused serious disquiet among militant Communist workers.

Gollan began by saying that this were reduced, it would 'give us the resources to modernise our industry.

Then, said this 'Communist': •We would be able to pay our way in the world.' NATIONALIZE It would help, mind you, 'to nationalize at least some of the key sectors of the economy'.:

Such rubbish as this can only disarm the working class and play into the hands of its enemies. British capitalism requires to modernise itself extensively, cutting away working-class conditions and hard-won practices in the process.

It is forced to attack wages and the workers' organisations.

Nowhere did Gollan give any lead on how to defend the trade unions against the legislation planned against them.

Instead he peddled this dangerous idea that all that is required is some readjustment of capitalist expenditure, - together with the reformist programme of nationalizing at least some of the key sectors of 'our' economy.

Gollan took care, of course, not to mention which industries Regional authorities would completely run the docks for the state. They would have powers of the present Port of London Authority. They would also employ their own labour, dockers would have 'direct control' in the industry through special committees.

Until 1968, Mikardo says, a Labour government would licence a small number of who could guarantee full employment for 80 per cent of the time.

He attacked the Port of London Authority as an industry run by had spent all the money needed to build and maintain the docks and come along and made fat profits. Strike illegal says firm reformism he thought ought to be nationaliized. To do this might have alarmed some of the middle-class viewers at whom the broadcast was aimed.

Much better to skirt round the vexed question of actually taking property from the ruling class!

Similarly, speaking on the unions, Gollan did not say that these were organisations built up by the working class in struggle against the employers. On the contrary, he . declared that: 'The trade unions have done much to improve the conditions of the whole of our people'.

OMITS CLASS

This so-called 'Communist' leader manages to omit the entire class character of the trade union movement.

And this happens precisely when these class organisations are under attack from the enemy. This attack is being carried out through the agency of the leaders of the Labour Party, assisted by the right-wing trade union leaders. What is required is an alternative leadership which will expose and defeat these leaders.

Yet Gollan went out of his way to stress that the Communist Party wasi in no way different in kind from the Labour leaders.

'Our policy,' he declared, is in the best traditions of the labour movement and will take our country a step on the road to socialism. : Thus, at this decisive time, the Communist Party deliberately identifies itself as closely as possible with the existing Labour and trade union bureaucracy. In fact, it tries to outdo them in patriotism. - Only the Communist Party puts forward an independent 'Nobody would think of running a factory without forecasting a load of work and taking on the right amount of staff to do it. But in the docks, the Port Authority has no idea what is to be loaded on and off ships when they berth, so they cannot plan out the labour force, he said.

Illusions

To sell this scheme, Labour promises greater security for the docker through de-casualisation, better conditions of employment and pay comparable with other State concerns, like the railways.

Mikardo talks of nobody being under any illusions about the scheme. Certainly many dockers will not be fooled.

Many of the recommendations, and all the implications, of the recent Devlin Report are inherent in this scheme.

Mikardo talks of first of all licensing a small number of employers to take on 1, men on a permanent basis.

Devlin also says that the number, of employers must be pruned and calls for an ending to the casual system of employment. For years this has been the only real safeguard for the docker from direct hire and fire relations with a boss eager to break down the strength of men united in their unions.

By the time a Labour government nationalized the industry, all the militancy and strength would have been knocked out of the labour force by a gang of monopolists.

British foreign policy,' pronounced Gollan virtuously.

What is this 'independent British foreign policy'? How is such a thing possible? British foreign policy represents the class structure of Britain. It is a capitalist foreign policy. The struggle against the war in Vietnam, the H-bomb, etc., is inseparable from the struggle for socialism, the struggle to overthrow capitalist property relations.

You would then have a socialist foreign policy. You can never have an independent' foreign policy, because you can never have a society independent of its class relations.

Gollan's final slogan—'Vote Communist for a People's Britain'—is equally dishonest.

There can be no such thing. The people are divided into classes. At the moment, the capitalist class rules. The only force capable of changing that is the working class under a retolutionary leadership.

WIN MIDDLE CLASS

The middle class must be won to support this working-class revolutionary leadership. This will not be done by abandoning Communism in order to placate the middle class, but by showing them that their interests are the same as the working class and that the working class is capable of victory.

Gollan's non-socialist broadcast, like the abandonment of the 'Daily Worker' , is a false attempt to woo the middle class and to cuddle up to the reformist Labour leaders. It reflects the social position of the Russian bureaucracy, which long ago abandoned international revelutionary politics.

Like the Stalinist bureaucracy throughout the world, the its customers. The State then private firms had To talk in terms of dockers' participation in the running of the industry only means representation on something like the present docks modernisation committee—a by-product of the Devlin Commission-which has seats for employers and rightwing trade union officials.

Under nationalization, the government would be the employers. A combination of rightwing Labour MPs and union officials would be even better equipped to hold back any demands by the dockers than they were in the recent rail pay sellout.

Redundancy

This same committee would also enforce such schemes as packaged timber and palletised goods which would eventually mean slashing the labour force.

But such a scheme as outlined by Mikardo falls in line with the pro-capitalist policies carried out by the Wilson government over the past 17 months.

This great 'socialist' ogrenationalization—is in fact yet another move to hit out at the living standards of the working class in the desperate moves to modernise and rationalise industry and save the capitalist economy.

Dockers must see clear through this proposed scheme and fight it with even greater strength than they have fought the proposals of the Devlin Commission.

Their slogan should now be:

*Nationalize the docks, yes, under workers' control.' British Communist Party has turned its back on the working class. The only Communist thing about it is its name. How long will it be before it abandons that?

Militant Communist workers must examine the political roots of this degeneration of their Party leadership. They will be assisted in understanding this by participating in the struggle against anti-trade union legislation, which is being led by the Socialist Labour League and Young Socialists.

In this struggle a real communist leadership, firmly based on the working class, will be built.

Cubela trial to frame him in this way? It seems a legitimate conjecture.

If so, were the Stalinists also behind the frame-up?

Not so long ago, Castro made a similar intervention in the trial of a Stalinist studentprovocateur who caused the deaths of many student leaders by denouncing them to Batista's police.

In the course of the trial, very compromising evidence about the role of the Stalinist leaders in this dastardly business came to light. Castro got the trial hushed up and no more was heard of it.

Now it is the turn of the genuine student leaders to face trial and possibly the firing squad!

Even if Cubela did represent an avowed counter-revolutionary tendency, there was no reason why his ideas should not have been fully discussed at the trial so that the Cuban as part of his campaign.

When he was asked to give his reasons for supporting legislation the last parliament, which would result in fines and imprisonment for trade unionists, he claimed that the questioner had got his facts wrong. It was the Tories who were planning this, not Labour! Then he was asked how else the government could hold down wages to 35 per cent without laws, he evaded the question and started talking about a different subject.

YS policy greeted at Islington tenants' election meeting A tend a pre-election meet- LTHOUGH invited to ating held by the Islington, London, Tenants' Association, Labour MP Albert Evans did not appear or send a representative from the local Labour council.

This is in an area where the council rents have recently been increased by 30s to f2.

The poor attendance at the meeting only 38-shows the disillusionment of the tenants with the leadership of the Association — a combination of Stalinists,: state capitalists) and British Legion members.

The cosy atmosphere created by the Communist Party candidate John Moss was shattered by Young Socialists who pointed out that none of the speakers had even mentioned the role of the banks in the housing problem.

Young Socialists said that the tenants must demand that the council go into deficit and that they call on : the trade unions to unite with them in the struggle against the Labour councillors who had voted for the rent rise.

The only lasting solution was the nationalization of the banks, said one speaker.

Tenants greeted this with enthusiasm and the rest of the discussion was dominated by the youth, despite the efforts of the chairman to ignore them.

After the meeting, many of the tenants, including an elderly Communist Party member who had been hostile to the Young Socialists at the beginning of the rent struggle, said that the leadership shown by the youth was what was necessary for the tenants in Islington and the working class generally.

Many bought copies of The Newsletter and the Young Socialists' newspaper 'Keep Left' and expressed support for the Morecambe conference.

workers would know why and how the counter-revolutionary forces were operating inside Cuba.

But the capitalist dictatorship of Castro dare not allow any discussion on any side because that would threaten the tenuous basis on which he rests. That is why Castro does not permit any form of democratic expression in Cuba, whether it be Soviets or even a constituent assembly.

The weaker the bourgeoisie, the stronger the repressive measures.

That is why too, the Cubelas trial will remain a judicial farce and a mockery of justice, carried out by a prostituted and servile judiciary.

Justice will be restored to Cuba only under a workers' regime.

Registered at the G.P.O. 28 д петбрарет Published by The Newoletten. 9.W.4 19 Cohan His Street, In 29 180 Clapham High Street. London

THE 350 Coventry car delivery drivers who mate was dismissed, returned to work on Tuesday. strike ended after a 2ę hour meeting between regional secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, Harry Urwin, and members of the 5/540 branch, which called the strike.

On Monday the employers, Port's Car Deliveries, Coventry, warned of possible legal action against the strikers.

In a statement, Mr. L. E. Port, personnel relations director of Progressive Deliveries Ltd., a group that includes Port's said:

•Following consultations with our legal advisers, it would appear that present action taken by car delivery drivers in Coventry is not a trade dispute in the accepted sense, and therefore the employees involved have no immunity against claims for damages within the law.' BOSSES STRENGTHENED The employers' view must have been strengthened by a local union official who was reported to have said the strike was unconstitutional and a further attempt by a group of individuals to run their own organisation without regard to the rules and policies of the union'.

The same official called for an inquiry into the conduct of the officers of the 5/540 T&GWU branch.

A representative of the branch told our reporter about the facts behind the dispute.

It is claimed that the sacked man, David Ewan, a member of the 5/540 branch, was sent by an allocator to collect a car from three different places on three successive days.

The car was not found at any of the three places resulting in a loss of time and money for Evans—there is no payment for non-collection.

Due to this grievance and the attitude of an allocator, it is alleged a scuffle took place off the firm's premises and out of working hours.

After talks with the manageNewsletter Reporter struck last Thursday after a Thursday after esday. The strike ended after