The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 440

IT will come as no surprise Newsletter to learn that the with employment on the docks interests of their members on the sation Committee.

This is the body set up as a result of the Devlin Commission Report, and it includes representatives of the employers, the Transport and General Workers' Union and the National Amalgamated Stevedores and Dockers' Union. After several meetings the Modernisation Committee is proposing that Mr. Ray Gunter, the Minister of Labour, makes a draft order involving serious changes in the dock labour scheme.

According to the 'Financial Times', April 14, 1966:

"This order gives the changes needed in the existing dock labour scheme to allow -for ending the present casual system of employment. Objec tions can be lodged by anybody up to May 6 and if the Minister considers them to be valid he must arrange an enquiry.' Objections?

The 'Financial Times goes comment:

However, because all the main dockers' unions are represented on the National Modernisation Committee, which worked out the system for decasualisation, they are not expected to raise major objections to the order' Of course, and this is where the boot really pinches, before making the decision the unions concerned avoided like the plague any kind of consultation with rank-and-file portworkers. In other words, they knew they were selling out.

Decasualisation under the proposed order would mean the reak-up of the present dock abour scheme by throwing the dockers to the mercy of port employers either on matters involving discipline or the future of their jobs.

This proposal can only be defeated by a national struggle involving all dockers throughout the country. The union leaders have sold out, the dockers were not consulted, now it has to be a fight to a finish, that is, until the proposed order is withdrawn.

Not sufficient At this point, some dockers, notably Mr. Jack Dash, call for the nationalization of the dock industry. With this we entirely agree but it would not be sufficient. Portworkers should consider the bitter experiences of the miners in a nationalized industry, where the labour force has not only been considerably reduced but speed-up is rampant and now their wage claims are blocked.

Portworkers require much more than mere nationalization along these lines. They need a system of workers' control where they have access to all the vital information concerning the administration and profitability of their industry. Under these conditions they will be in a position to decide the best policies for their members. THE EDITOR to readers of The unions concerned have sold out the National ModerniDash: We agree with his call, but it is not sufficient The Newsletter policy for portworkers is: • Prepare an all-out fight for the withdrawal of the proposed order on decasualisation. Recognise that this will be from the start a political struggle against the Labour government and the oflicial trade union leadership.

Demand the immediate nationalization of the port industry under workers' control.

Build a rank - and - file leadership pledged to these policies which will ultimately replace the present trade union leadership.

Rhodesia U.S. infantry routed, air base bombed THILE the Saigon puppets and their puppeteers in Washington are frantically trying to get a patchedup agreement with the rebels in Hue and Da Nang, the Vietcong are having a field day with the U.S. forces.

In one battle, 30 miles from Saigon, a large force of Vietcong completely routed and annihilated a company of First Division infantrymen.

One of the few U.S. survivors described the battle as 'horrible'. In fact it was poetic justice: one Vietcong bullet exploded a gas grenade on a U.S. soldier's belt and released the gas among the U.S. troops, adding to the general confusion.

The day after, Wednesday, the Vietcong followed up with a surprise attack on Ton Son Nhut air base, which is only three miles from Saigon.

MORTAR FIRE

For 20 minutes the Vietcong poured mortar fire on the base and succeeded in blasting 400,000-gallon jet-fuel tank, six planes, and 12 helicopters. At least eight U.S. and Vietnam servicemen were killed.

Some of the mortar fire narrowly missed the house of Marshal Ky.

Unable to win militarily or politically on the ground President Johnson and his restless chiefs of staff have decided to escalate (if that word has any meaning now the air war against North Vietnam by authorising bombing raids by the giant B-52 bombers.

Some U.S. senators, such as Stuart Symington, are determined to bomb Haiphong and Hanoi and are exerting pressure on the government. What stops Johnson from immediately embarking on such a policy Third International Congress = the most impressive of our SOME OF THE LEADING DELEGATES AT THE CONGRESS: (left to right) standing: M. Banda, eator, Newsletter; Clift Slaughter, secretary, International Committee. Seated: Pierre Lambert (France);

G. Healy (Britain); M. Rastos (Greece); Stephan Just (France)

HE Third International Congress called by the International Committee of the Fourth International took place in London from April 4 to April 8 inclusive. It was beyond doubt the most impressive conference of our movement since the founding conference in the summer of 1938. A significant feature was the attendance of special youth delegations as observers from the French youth organisation 'Révoltes', and the British Young Socialists.

The conference began just the day after the highly successful 6th Annual conference of the Young Socialists at • Morecambe, where over 1,000 delegates and visitors participated.

At the International Conference there were four main delegations, French, Hungarian, Greek and English.

In addition there were observers from the USA, Japan, Ceylon, Iraqi students, Germany, Denmark and the 'Voix Ouvriere' group from France. Observers from the Congo and Nigeria were unable to attend on time, because of unThe main discussion centred on a report from Comrade Cliff Slaughter, the secretary of the International Committee, who proposed the main political resolution on Rebuilding the Fourth International (main extracts reported on The discussion on this report lasted two days and comrades representing not only the main delegations, but observers also participated.

The main political difference which emerged during this discussion centred on the proposition as to whether or not the Fourth International has ceased to exist as a result of the treachery of Pabloism. Some observers, especially from the Voix Ouvriere' group in France maintained that the Fourth International was completely finished and needed to be rebuilt Conference decisively rejected this proposition along the lines that in practice it was an the damage done the Fourth Interthe day it was movement SS • founded, fought revisionism and held the banner of Trotskyism and Marxism aloft.

It was stressed that in 1953, on the eve of the split with Pablo's so-called International Secretariat, the French and English delegations had met and formed the International Committee of the Fourth International. In this action, they were supported by the Socialist Workers' Party of the USA, who could not be The International Committee, founded in September 1953, took over the task of fighting to preserve and develop through the experience La changing international situation the Marxist theoretical work which Comrade Trotsky utilised in order to found the Fourth International.

The conference demonstratively recognised that Trotsky's struggle was continued in a most serious way by the International Committee, and it unanimously rejected all proposals to the contrary.

This decision paved the way for the next stage which was the appointment of commissions to work over and report on the American situation, the next stage in the development of the Fourth International, and a manifesto of the Fourth International which will be published shortly. The reports back from these commissions were accepted unanimously.

The conference demonstrated clearly that the history and theory of Comrade Trotsky and the Fourth International was related in every way to the building of the International and its national sections today.

A full report of the conference will be published in the next issue of 'Fourth International'. represented because of the Voorhis Act.

• Vietcong of course, is his fear of war with China.

Many White House officials now feel certain that time is not on the side of Johnson in Vietnam.

Any further procrastination, they insist, will see the collapse of Ky's regime and the complete isolation of the U.S. in South Vietnam.

Already attempts by the Saigon generals to persuade the people that they are in favour of civilian rule have been denounced by the Buddhists as 'fraudulent, and even bigger demonstrations against Ky are in the offing.

The uncontrollable political situation is undermining the entire military effort of the U.S. One example which reveals vividly the hopeless position of the U.S. bandits is the shortage of bombs in Da Nang created by the refusal of civilian porters and even soldiers (sic) to unload them at the docks.

S the 'Daily Telegraph' A commented on Wednesday, the president of the Boilermakers' Society, Danny McGarvey's assessment of the Geddes Report on Shipbuilding is a mixture of "hard" and "soft" sell to the union's membership'.

In an article in the union's journal, McGarvey firmly rejects the suggestion in the Geddes report that a demarcation panel be set up to prevent inter-union struggles in shipyards.

At the same time he says the report could set the industry on 'a course of much calmer seas and a brighter future'.

The attitude of the U.S. State Department is more clearly indicated by the prompt action of the Panamanian government in cancelling the registration of the tanker loanna V. This could not have taken place without U.S. agreement and encouragement.

Whatever their original opinions may have been, the imperialists are now impatient with the Smith regime. The big problem for them is how to replace the white settler government without disrupting the precarious stability of the whole of Southern Africa.

The African nationalist leaders, whose political living is earned in maintaining that stability, are equally concerned.

This explains the farcical proceedings at the United Nations Security Council last week-end. The Mali delegate delayed recalling the council, despite British demands for an emergency meeting, because he thought the British proposals too mild.

To cut off oil to Rhodesia involves action against the South African government as well.

The next step on the Rhodesian escalator could then only be military intervention.

Anyone who calls for military action in Rhodesia by the British, the African states or the United Nations, is preparing the way for a repetition of the Congo experience.

The Socialist Labour League's demand to arm the African workers points the way to the only solution for the Central African struggle against imperialism.

MR. MONTY METH, a former national official of the Young Communist League, and, until recently, an industrial reporter for the 'Daily Worker, has joined the industrial staff of the Tory 'Daily Mail.

Mr. Meth gained all his journalistic experience inside the Communist Party and it is understood that he still remains a member of the Party.

Little confidence

What is surprising is that Mr. Meth should have left the 'Daily Worker' staff on the eve if it changing its name to the 'Morning Star'. Perhaps he had little confidence in what this would achieve so far as the future of the paper is concerned.

H ous MPs of Labour's EADED by the righteso-called left, 5,000 marchers started out on Good Friday last week on what has now become Easter's institutional protest for pacifists.

For the old faithfuls of the Quakers and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, 1966 was the eighth march. Letting off steam about nuclear weapons at Easter for these representatives of the middle class has become as much a tradition as tea in the afternoon. , And there were, of course, the anarchists—many of them original members of the CND-again representatives of the middle class who crawl out every Easter time.

Young Socialists on the march were the only people to call for a military victory of the Vietcong in South Vietnam.

CONFUSION

Confused marchers from the Young Communist League contented themselves with merely calling for the setting up of negotiations. On the whole of the march there was significantly only, as far as I could see, three trade union banners.

From the colossal contingents of 1961, which made up a march of 80,000 and a rally of 100,000 in Trafalgar Square the CND can now muster only 5,000.

The national press alleged that there was a crowd of 20,000 at Continued 4, column 1 avoidable difficulties. all over again.

anti-theory approach.

Delegates felt that despite by the Pabloite revisionists, national had always, since

Pri

The class struggle is international. World capitalism has long since played out its historical role of laying down the objective bases for socialism; the struggles of the workers of all countries have meaning only in terms of the world socialist revolution which began in October 1917 in Russia, as part of the world proletarian revolution. The Third (Communist) International was set up to answer the needs of the working class in this epoch of wars and revolutions. Following the betrayals of Social Democracy after 1918, the degeneration of the CPSU and the Comintern led eventually to the defeats in Britain and China in 1926/27 and the victory of fascism in Italy, Germany and Spain. Between 1933 and 1938 Trotsky and the Bolshevik opposition prepared to establish a Fourth International in response to the needs of the working class in a period of defeats, when Stalinism passed definitively to the side of counter-revolution.

The history of the class struggle since 1938 has proved correct the basic starting-point of Trotsky and the founders of the Fourth International: the working class remains oppressed by capitalism because of the betrayals of the working-class leadership, particularly by the Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR; our epoch is the epoch of crisis of working-class leadership. All the economic and political developments since then have shown the correctness of insisting that the development of imperialism constantly deepens the contradiction between the productive forces and capitalist social relations. But at every critical stage in the development of this contradiction, the traitorous social-democratic and Stalinist leaderships and the Soviet bureaucracy have misled the workers; these petty-bourgeois formations have divided the workers along national and sectional lines and held back the development of a revolutionary consciousness. The post-war economic and political crisis in the advanced countries, the breakdown of capitalist rule in Eastern Europe, the victorious revolution in China, the mass struggles in the colonial countries—all of these international capitalism has survived because of the treachery of these misleaders who disarmed the working class.

Imperialism was able to overcome its postSecond World War crisis through the collaboration of international Stalinism and of other petty-bourgeois tendencies. Such collaboration, fully developed in the bureaucracy's strategy of peaceful co-existence and peaceful competition between the two world systems since the death of Stalin and particularly since 1956, now takes on an added significance for the rebuilding of the Fourth International. This new and more advanced phase of the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism is the response of the bureaucracy not only to the increased pressure of imperialism but also to the upsurge of the political revolution in Eastern Europe after 1953. At the same time, movements like the General Strike of August 1953 in France showed that the policies of the Stalinist and Social Democratic bureaucracies in the advanced capitalist countries were coming into contradiction with the mass movement. The containment of the working class in those capitalist countries where the Stalinists had mass influence became more difficult and fraught with danger. Every partial mobilisation of the strength of the class threatened to rapidly develop into a general class confrontation, putting in question the whole capitalist system. The Stalinist bureaucratic leaderships of the working-class movement found themselves faced with the necessity of making themselves open agents of the maintenance of bourgeois order like the Social Democrats before them. In a different form, the historic defeat of French imperialism at Dien-Bien-Phu forced the international Stalinist apparatus into direct collaboration with imperialism for the purpose of preventing the extension of the revolution in the colonial countries.

The Hungarian Revolution represents the principal manifestation up to the present of the insoluble contradiction between Stalinism and the extension of the socialist revolution. At the same time as it was the first political revolution against the Stalinist bureaucracy, and was for a time victorious, it was also an expression of the international class struggle taking its specific form in the countries of Eastern Europe. It posed the problem of workers' power through workers' councils not only in Hungary but throughout the USSR and Eastern Europe. Its actual development raised the question of the social revolution in the countries of Western Europe. Thus the increasingly international character of the proletarian revolution threatens the existence of both the Kremlin bureaucracy and imperialism. The Sino-Soviet conflict is another major external manifestation of the insoluble contradiction between Stalinism and the international revolutionary struggle. This struggle must be led by a Marxist leadership if capitalist counter-revolution is to be prevented in China, the USSR and Eastern Europe, and if imperialism is to be defeated throughout the rest of the world.

The linked crisis of imperialism and of the Soviet bureaucracy does not arise solely from the contradiction between capitalist economy as a whole and the planned economies. It consists also of contradictions between the imperialist powers themselves, which constantly nourish the class struggle and give it sharper forms in the advanced countries, and of the inability of imperialism to of the International Committer of the Fourth International held in London arrest the development of the revolution in the backward countries; the crisis is also fed by the fact that the Kremlin and satellite bureaucracies cannot resolve the problems posed by the development of the planned economy, whose harmonious development demands not only the extension of social ownership and planning to the means of production in the advanced countries, but also the participation of the working class in the management and control of industry; this is only possible if they exercise political power, which is impossible without the overthrow of the bureaucracy. This linked crisis creates the conditions for intensification of the world class struggle, and it is in that struggle that the crisis will find its solution. For this reason, the struggles engaged in by the workers of the advanced countries during the years between 1953 and 1956, and the changed relationship which these struggles expressed between the workers and the bureaucratic apparatus of the labour movement, were decisive factors. This fact was partially obscured by the defeat of the Hungarian Revolution, which was basically … a victory for imperialism, encouraging pro-capitalist tendencies in the USSR and Eastern Europe and reformist trends in the Communist Parties. Nonetheless, this defeat was temporary and not fundamental, since in not a single advanced country has the working class been subjected to a defeat like those of the 1920s.

It is the perspective of combined revolutionary struggles threatening at the same time the existence of imperialism and of the Kremlin bureaucracy, bringing the proletariat into conflict with the bureaucratic apparatuses which control the workers' movement, which demands and makes possible the rebuilding of the Fourth International.

No starting point for revolutionary practice in the present international political situation can be found simply from contemplation of the 'objective forces' at work. The lessons of the struggles within the revolutionary Marxist movement are decisive to the grasping of these opportunities in the objective situation. The Fourth International has successfully resisted and defeated the attempts of petty-bourgeois opportunism, in the shape of a hardened revisionist tendency, which penetrated all sections of the Trotskyist movement to destroy it politically and organisationally. The struggle against this tendency was and remains the necessary preparation for the rebuilding of the Fourth International as a centraliised proletarian leadership. This revisionist tendency developed into a centre for liquidation of the revolutionary party and the International, now gathered in the self-styled "Unified Secretariat', which is the product of fusion between the International Secretariat of Pablo and the revisionist groups previously associated with the International Committee and the SWP of the USA. Revisionism became liquidationism when the French section was expelled from the International because of its defence of Trotskyism, of the Transitional Programme, and of its own very existence. The onslaught of the revisionists reached its peak in the split of 1952-1953. The liquidationist centre has become a major obstacle to the rebuilding of the Fourth International.

The revisionism and liquidationism which has attacked the Fourth International is an international class phenomenon responding to the needs of imperialism in its latest phase of extreme contradictions and dependence upon the Stalinist bureaucracy, Social Democracy, and the nationalist leaders. The abandonment of Marxist theory within the Fourth International, not only the abandonment of the programme but even of the fundamentals of dialetical materialism, was the mechanism by which the cadres were prepared for this capitulation. The objective situation-physical liquidation of many sections in the late 1930s and the Second World War, the apparent strength of Stalinism in the workers' movement from 1942 to 1953, the divisions and pressure of the cold war period, the McCarthy repressions in the USA— all provided the circumstances for the decline, particularly by physically separating the class struggle in Eastern Europe and Russia from that of the capitalist world. But the emphasis placed on revolutionary consciousness by the Transitional Programme must be our guide. The death of Trotsky weakened the Fourth International immeasurably. There had not yet been time to train a cadre which had absorbed the living theoretical heritage of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, particularly the lesson learned by Trotsky in the October Revolution of the need for a centralised Bolshevik party, founded solidly on Marxist theory, responding to every need of leadership by the working class in accordance with an internationalist perspective. This theoretical and political weakness, reflected in a dogmatic attitude towards theory and programme, not developing Marxist theory against hostile ideologies but attempting to 'preserve' it, was the reason for the the resolution carried by the on April 4-8 inability of the Fourth International to develop the programme and build parties in the post-war period.

Instead the cadres of the International adapted easily to the petty-bourgeois trends dominant at that stage of political development particularly to the Stalinists. A false and artificial 'international centre' was set up, relying on a propagandist contemplation and commentary upon 'objective' developments in the class struggle. Such a centre did not discuss the living experiences of the sections in the course of developing Marxist theory and programme but instead either left the sections without guidance or intervened bureacratically (upon the basis of the most 'Bolshevik' of organisational statutes) to impose an abstract international line against the sections. Such an international centre, isolated from real struggle, adapting programmatic formulae to the surface atmosphere of politics and certain circles of the 'left' intelligentsia, dominated as it was by the petty-bourgeois elements who inhabit the Labour bureaucracies, was inevitably exposed to the pressures of the cold war, of international Stalinism and imperialism. Its theory and programme developed not in active connection with living struggle but in the rarefied atmosphere of 'international secretariats'.

The theoretical backwardness of the SWP leaders, who paid no heed to Trotsky's warnings of the need to do battle against pragmatism, the dominant American philosophy, made it easy for them to adapt to the Pabloite revisions and to end in the position of pragmatists themselves. Such adaptation amounted in fact to a narrów nationalism in party matters, an abdication of internationalism and of responsibility to the International. This explains why the rejection of Pablo's revisionism by the SWP stopped short of a real theoretical analysis. Cannon and the SWP leaders reacted empirically to Pablo's gross capitulation Stalinism and to his organisational abuses in organising factions within the national sections, especially in the USA, but they did not probe to the theoretical roots of the revisions and therefore themselves fell victim to revisionism; their abandonment of the programme of political revolution and the building of revolutionary parties in Eastern Europe, their increasing support for petty-bourgeois leaders in Algeria and Cuba, as well as in the Negro struggles in the USA itself, have all prepared a situation where the SWP is now immediate danger of liquidation.

It follows that the most serious theoretical preparation in struggle against revisionism is necessary for the rebuilding of the Fourth International. The deepening crisis of capitalist society and the connected crisis of the Stalinist bureaucracy are dissolving the old political relationships and creating favourable conditions for the construction of revolutionary parties. The changes in the internal relations of the international workers' movement at present taking place, and the need to exploit the linked crises of imperialism and the Stalinist bureaucracy, demand that our national tasks must be placed correctly in their international context as part of the construction of the Fourth International; only in this way will the international class struggle be resolved in favour of the working class. But these parties will nowhere develop spontaneously; they depend in every case on the intervention of Marxists who base their programme on the international perspective of Trotskyism. In particular, these national sections must grasp in theory and in practice the revolutionary role of working-class youth in the USA, Europe, Russia and Eastern Europe, and in all the colonial and semi-colonial countries. It is these proletarian youth who are now drawn into struggle against the capitalists and the bureaucracy. In the building of parties of the Fourth International, youth play a special role as one of the most exploited sections of the proletariat. But the construction of sections of the International requires the mobilisation behind the programme and organisation of the Fourth International of all the principal fighting forces of the proletariat. It is in this perspective, and not in isolation from it, or as a substitute for it, that work among the youth takes on its real importance. The Negro struggle in the USA, intensified especially by the impact of automation under capitalism, the heroic struggle of workers and students in Spain, the political opposition to the bureaucracy in the workers' states, the fight against the Social Democrats and Stalinists in Britain, France and all Western Europe, as the youth strive to join battle with capitalism, the workers' battles in Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Latin America and Africa, all of these bring a new generation of workers to the fore. As all the old working-class political tendencies swing sharply to the right, a heavy responsibility falls upon the International Committee and the sections grouped around it. They have the responsibility, beginning from scientific analysis, of providing the motive force for the rebuilding of the Fourth International on the founOUT NOW Vol. 3, No. 2 186A Clapham EDITORS- TOM KEMP, Editorial Algeria Kenya-Coloniali Independence The Struggle for United States (iv) American Trotsky Tim Wohlforth Cuban Revolution in Danger Statement of the International Committee of the Fourth Iternnational dations of this revolutionary potential. It is not a question of a 'youth movement' as such, but of a generation of the working class radicalised by new international revolutionary opportunities, resulting from the crisis of imperialism. The cadres of the Fourth International are on trial: in these struggles we must develop Marxism, defeat revisionism and demonstrate in practice in each national section the capacity for leadership of the Trotskyist parties as the only answer to the capitalist class and its bureaucratic servants.

Revisionism, which separates into distinct sectors the revolution in the advanced countries, the 'colonial revolution', and the political revolution in the workers' states, is a most important cover for capitalist domination of the workers' movement and for obstructing the construction of revolutionary parties. This revisionism is expressed particularly in the theory and practice of the self-styled Unified Secretariat of the Fourth International, which was formed without discussion of theoretical and political questions. The next phase in the building of the Fourth International must on the contrary be accompanied by a most serious theoretical discussion in all sections of the policies and theory of the movement past and present.

Many workers all over the world, particularly the youth, are in battle against the bureaucratic leaderships who want to confine them to narrow and sectional struggles. The Fourth International and its sections must be able to lead these struggles, explaining the class role of the bureaucratic leaderships and bringing forward the essence of these struggles-—the perspective of world socialist revolution.

The intervention in the class struggle is not separate from the theoretical discussion upon which we have insisted. There is no development of Marxist theory except insofar as revolutionary parties fight in practice to penetrate living reality with that theory, enriching it in the course of the struggle, to negate the revisionism which has destroyed the International originally founded by Trotsky. It is not enough to make formal theoretical corrections on the one hand and to carry out intensive activity in the class struggle on the other. Such a procedure might give the appearance of limited success, but only when Marxists see themselves and their consciousness as part of the living class struggle, developing with it and transforming its qualitative ebbs and flows into an enriched theory from which to develop the programme of the International, is the unity of theory and practice actually realised. Only in this way will the cadres of the sections of the International be trained. Their internationalism will be worthy of the struggles of the international working class, because it develops as a living part, the conscious and most vital component of these struggles. The International Committee has been built in the course of the struggle against Pabloite revisionism, and as such has successfully fought for the continuity of the Fourth International. During the last 28 years, the founding programme of the Fourth International has expressed correctly the strategy of the international socialist revolution. It has no less importance for the struggle for the proletarian revolution than had the Communist Manifesto for the Marxist method and the fundamental aims of communists. In its appeal for the building of the Fourth International, the IC must show clearly the indissoluble link between this building and the building of revolutionary parties in every country, as the path to the victory of the socialist revolution. Fourth International April A Journal of International Marxism Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International High Street, CLIFF SLAUGHTER CONTENTS 'rotskyism и

The reconstruction Fourth Internationa and the tasks of th 1. The London Conference re-affirms that the programme and method for the building of the revolutionary parties and the Fourth International are to be found in the Transitional Programme. This programme remains the only one that is capable of AFTER seven months on strike, the California • grape pickers have broken the ranks of the April 16, Newsletter Correspondent NEW Page Th

of the International Committee A commission report %. The Conference affirms that the Fourth International has not degenerated. The hisInternational founded in 1938 loism attempted to destroy in 1950-53, has been maintained since 1953 by the struggle International Committee.

claims that the continuity of the Fourth International has by the International Committee's actions. 4. The Conference recogsucceed in the tasks required by the building of revolutionary parties and the International.

During the course of this hard battle for Trotskyism, some cadres have been exterminated, victims of imperialist and Stalinist repressions, others worn out, and the leadership of the Fourth International became bankrupt. This leadership collapsed because of its distortion and abandonment of Marxism, i.e., of the method of dialectical materialism. This is why this leadership was unable to root the movement in the struggle of the working class, and particularly the youth. As a result, they were incapable of assimilating the methods and principles of communist organisation. In no case can this failure be considered the failure of the Fourth International.

. The essential unity of the international class struggle, flowing from the international character of the joint crisis of imperialism and the bureaucracy, implies the direct consequence of the necessity of building Trotskyist parties in every country. As against the liquidationist conclusions flowing from the revisionist 'division of the world into sectors'; this perspective emphasises the urgency of building independent revolutionary proletarian parties in the countries of Eastern Europe, USSR, and China, and in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. D. This central task of building independent revolutionary parties stresses yet again the essential struggle for the political independence of the working class, against the politics of the Stalinist bureaucracy and the reformist leaderships. This fight for the Party implies a determined struggle against syndicalism and all ideas that a revolutionary party can be spontaneously produced from the working class.

T The International Conference stresses that the Trotskyist movement, in the course of the struggle to build the International, works towards the creation of a centralised leadership of the world revolutionary party, in a struggle organically linked to the fight in each country to rebuild revolutionary centralised parties leading the struggles of the masses. This building of parties and of the International must be carried out on the basis of the lessons of the struggle against revisionism and of the continuation of this struggle.

The proceedings of this fighting for the programme of will include a struggle by the International Committee to Fourth International the milithe United Secretariat.

In order to achieve the must organise an international (a) The building of revolutionary parties on the basis of text of the concrete struggle for the rebuilding of the International. Trotskyists, LecOg- organised as sections of the letarian parties based on the Transitional Programme of the Fourth International.

They carry the fight for this programme and for the construction of the Party as the main basis of their work in the mass organisations of the working class, and in particular towards the working class youth, as the direct source of new forces for the Fourth International. All such work is subordinated to the main task of constructing the Party. The building of the Party necessitates the production of a newspaper able to constantly fight for the overall programme of the Party, to raise the consciousness of the working class in all spheres of the class struggle. This fight for the independent party is the only basis for the defence of the positions won in the past by the working class, and all tactical considerations are subordinated to it. In conditions where the tactic of entry into existing working class parties is necessary, this tactic is conducted in a manner which subordinates it to the main task of the construction of the independent party.

The Unity of the international class struggle.

Defence by revolutionary methods of the conquests of the international working class, in the capitalist countries, in the USSR, China and all the countries under the control of the Stalinist bureaucracy. This discussion will be carried out on the agreed framework of the unconditional defence of these states.

1U. In the framework of the objectives agreed at this Conference, the International Committee must, so far as its resources permit, give assistance in: (a) the building of Trotskyist organisations; (b) the activity of Trotskyist organisations; so that they can advance from the stage of propaganda groups to being Communist organisations fighting in the class struggle for the leadership of the proletariat in the struggle for power.

1l. The International Committee will publish an official internal bulletin in English to be translated into the various languages by each section. employers. Two days before their demonstration in Sacramento, the state capital, these Mexican and Filipino workers heard that Schenley Industries had agreed to negotiate only with the National Farm Workers' Association.

Since Schenley's are the growers involved, this makes strike very likely.

The pickets are among the poorest communities in the United States. Using them as cheap labour, the bosses have succeeded in breaking every previous attempt at union organisation.

Led by Mexican-American, Cesar Chavez, a small group began to organise the National Farm Workers' Association over three years ago. Last summer, just before the harvest, 2,500 pickets came out on strike.

They demanded recognition of the NFWA and 1.40 dollars per hour rise.

The bosses, aided by sheriffs' and police departments, imported strikebreakers from all over the South and then from Mexico. Every effort was made to intimidate the pickets. Growers sprayed them with sulphur, set dogs on to them, and drove trucks at them.

Wide picket

The job of picketing was enormous. The strike area covers over 400 square miles of San Joaquin Valley, individual fields sometimes being a mile in length. Pickets had to be out in the fields before 5 Most of the scabs had no previous union experience and many depended on the boss to pay their return fare home.

The strikers received assistance from the American trade union movement and especially from organisations involved in the Negro struggle. . Many students came to help on the picket lines. LETTER DON'T agree at all with the beginning of Robert Black's article 'Trade Unions and Politics' (The Newsletter, March 26)

and especially on the interpretation that he gives to the French syndicalist movement.

... Gustave Hervé cannot be considered as a 'revolutionary syndicalist' leader, as he was one of the best known members of the Socialist Party, and revolutionary syndicalists before the war did not hide their misgivings with regard to 'Hervéism'real opportunism behind adventurist phrases. The assimilation is abusive and rests on incorrect information.

lo The influence of Georges Sorel on the syndicalist movement is traditionally emphasised, wrongly, I think.

It is not a question of denying it, but of placing it in its correct perspective. It was minimal. The source of revolutionary syndicalism is a healthy class reaction against the opportunism of socialist politicians robed in the colours of Marxism!

• The way in which Robert Black 'executes' the destiny of revolutionary syndicalism with regard to the betrayal of the leaders in 1914, then the evolution of certain of them towards national syndicalism and the corporate second largest of the 33 complete victory for the Digiorgio, leader of the Californian growers, is reported to have offered to recognise whichever of the three unions his workers choose in a secret ballot: the NFWA, the AFL-CIO Agricultural Workers' Organising Committe, or the International Farm Workers' Union. Offer rejected The third of these is an organisation of managers and labour contractors. The AWOC has been supporting the strike and also mediating between the strikers and Schenley's.

Digiorgio's 'offer' has already been rejected by the NFWA, who point out that the workers who would be ballotted would be the strike-breakers.

Now the AFL-CIO is attempting to combine Chavez's union with AWOC, pulling it into the bureaucratic machine which failed to organise the area previously.

Although only a small number of workers are affected, the victory of this strike will have a big impact on the US labour movement and the Negro struggle.

It will bring home to many workers that the fight against poverty of the most exploited sections of the US working class lies through organisation on class lines.

REVOLUTIONARY

ADNV NI WSITVDIANAS state, is completely ficial.

ermit me to remind him that Trotsky, on July 13, 1921, wrote to his friend Pierre Monatte, the revolutionary syndicalist around whom the internationalist revolutionary grouping was organised in 1914:

agree, all your previous work was only a preparation for the foundation of the communist party, for the proletarian revolution.

Revolutionary syndicalism before the war was the embryo of the communist party? cannot be clearer. Robert Black will find this affirmation in Trotsky's book, "The Communist Movement in France' recently published in France.

to If one wants to approach in a positive way the problem of revolutionary syndicalism in France-so important today in the problems of constructing a revolutionary organisation in that country -I think that it is first necessary to understand all the aspects of it. ifred Rosmer-still a revolutionary syndicalist become Bolshevik to whom the Newsletter paid homage when he died-wrote about the work of the French revolutionary syndicalists beCCORDING to George Matthews, editor of the 'Daily Worker' (now to be renamed 'Morning Star') the new paper is to be 'an independent paper on the side of progress' Speaking on a late-night TV programme, Matthews showed that there are two ways in which Communist Party leaders can appear on TV.

One is to lose £8,500 in election deposits.

The other is to take a huge step to the right.

The big question about this new 'independent' newspaper is —independent of what? In a society divided into classes no one can be independent.

But Matthews' interview, following on John Gollan's election broadcast (see The Newsletter, April 2) makes it clear that the independence sought by the Communist Party leaders is an independence from the working class.

DIFFERENT CONDITIONS When asked by the interviewer whether the change of name might displease its working-class readers, Matthews replied that the old name had been chosen 36 years ago when conditions were very different and it now gave a 'restricted view' of the appeal of the paper. The paper, Matthews declared. was 'not restricted to working-class people, but to all sections of the community opposed to the monopolies.

Serious Communist Party members should examine this explanation very carefully.

The Daily Worker was fore 1914 (those that Robert Black defines as 'Hervé' and 'Sorel'):

'Fight for the immediate demands of the working class to draw the greatest possible number of workers around the organisation, and, at the same time, call for the longterm perspective of the social revolution which, in enlarging the horizon of daily struggles, prepares the formation of the group capable of fighting completely and consequently serves as a guide to the working class in its struggle today and in the future; a solid basis of all revolutionary movements of which Lenin and the Bolsheviks-starting from another standpoint, the idea of the party-did not cease to remind their militants' is actually on this point that today Marxists should criticise revolutionary syndicalism.

is also from this angle that we should study the weaknesses of the communist movement in France and the Trotskyist movement, as Stalinism formed a screen between revolutionary syndicalists and the construction of a revolutionary party.

it, on the other hand, we must recognise that the revolaunched on January 1, 1930. This was on the eve of the Ramsay MacDonald betrayal of 1931.

As The Newsletter has constantly pointed out, Harold Wilson is following in the path of Ramsay MacDonald. Of course the circumstances are not identical, but Wilson's policies, like MacDonald's, are determined by the requirements of international finance. Like MacDonald, Wilson will attempt to solve the crisis of British capitalism at the expense of the working class. In the first place, this means attacks on the unions and workers' organisations by anti-trade union legislation.

NEED FOR PAPER

Does this mean that an open unequivocal working - class paper is any less necessary in 1966 than it was in 1930?

The election showed that most workers still support the Labour Party. But the Labour government will not only attack the workers in the form of higher prices, rents, etc., but will also turn against working-class organisations-the very organisations which created and built up the Labour Party. Because of this, the crisis of the Labour Party today is even more acute than it was in 1931.

Today the exposure of these leaders and the building of an alternative working - class leadership is the main task facing socialists. This task was carried forward at the Young Socialists' Conference on April 2 and 3—but it is precisely now that the Communist Party takes a step in the opposite direction.

NO MORE 'PROGRESS' When the basic organisations of the working class are being lutionary syndicalists -Monatte chiefly, but equally Rosmer - accommodated themselves to it, and continued to think that one could approach questions of the class struggle from another point of view than the standpont of the party.

is in this, and only in this, that one could say that the role of revolutionary syndicalism has been, and remains, reactionary. From this standpoint, the 'revolutionary syndicalist' ideas played a negative role as much in the Communist Party before the degeneration of the Bolshevik Party as in groups in the opposition or in the revolutionary groups claiming to be Trotskyist.

re construction of a revolutionary organisation in France passes through the struggle against these false conceptions, but it can only be waged on the basis of a correct analysis, not on analogies of a superficial impressionism.

know perfectly well that Black's article was not destined for French readers, but there are enough French comrades who search The Newsletter for answers to their problems as militants for me to take up this article and its mistakes on the position of the syndicalist movement before 1914. says Editor attacked by the leaders of the working class themselves, where does an independent' paper fit in?

And what does Matthews mean when he says the paper will be 'on the side of progress'?

Capitalism is not in Position to allow any more 'progress.' UNPREPARED On the contrary, it demands the smashing back of the progress that the working class has made economically since the end of the war, and organisationally over the last 60 years.

Matthews leaves his readers completely unprepared for the real struggles that are about to take place.

Similarly, Matthews" statement that the 'Morning Star' will be aimed at 'all sections of the community opposed to the monopolies' also smudges over the real class alignments in capitalist society and recalls the pre-war popular front' policies which contributed greatly to working class defeats in the 1930s.

Monopoly capitalism will only be defeated by a powerful party of the working class.

CAN BE WON

Of course, members of the middie class and eyen individuals with a background in the capitalist class can come over to this party. But such people can only be won by a firm determined working-class party —not by retreating from a working class position in order not to alarm them.

It seems possible now that sections of the leadership of the Communist Party are moving towards the view that the party should be liquidated altogether. Certainly, Matthews came close to saying that the 'Morning Star' would not really be a paper of the Communist Party at all.

The new paper, he said, would continue to put the view of the Communist Party editorially. The 'Daily Worker' however, had always been a 'platform of the left' and had carried non - Communist articles. There would, he promised, be even more non-Communist articles in the future!

What left' will appear on this 'platform'?

The left which so distinguished itself in the last parliament?

The ex-nuclear disarmers who took seats in a Cabinet committed up to the hilt to support imperialism in Vietnam?

EXPOSED LEFTS?

The 'lefts' who were exposed to thousands of youth and trade unionists on the January 26 Lobby of Parliament?

These are the people Matthews has in mind when he says that the 'Morning Star' will 'give expression to left points of view in general'.

Militant Communists should contrast this road with that taken by the Young Socialists at their conference when a real lead was given on how to fight capitalism and its agents in the labour movement. They should also contrast the 'Morning Star' with The Newsletter.

This turn away from a working class paper by the leaders of the Communist Party underlines the importance of the decisions taken by the Socialist Labour League to build The Newsletter into a daily communist newspaper.

CAWU conference supports incomes policy ... BUT Page Fou

to have been made in a letter from the managing director delivery firm to Ray Gunter, Minister of Labour.

In this letter complaints are said to have been made that Mr. Alan Law, Midland regional commercial trade group secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, is using his 'position of power' to exercise a 'disruptive influence' and bring 'the transport services of the Midlands to a standstill, industry by industry'.

Mr. Law is accused of 'causing trouble and strikes that are rarely officially recognised', and of regarding 'the activities of the Ministry with contempt'. The letter is reported as adding: 'It appears that his union superiors cannot control him or remove him from office because of his misplaced popularity with the members.' Ominously it continues: ' ... while his activities remain within the letter of the law no other action can be taken against him.' The writer of this letter is said to be Mr. Maurice James, chairman and managing director of a firm which controls Avon Car Transporters. In the New Year this firm was involved in an unofficial strike of transporter drivers at the Rover car factory, Solihull.

This reported attack on Mr. Law comes after a fortnight which has seen drivers at the main Esso depot in the Midlands, and a strike of draught beer Bass, Mitchells and Butlers brewery, Smethwick, which resulted in many houses running dry over the Easter holiday.

- The Esso tanker drivers, SYLVIA whose strike has entered its third week, are protesting against the signing-on of a new driver from a source other than their union, the T&GWU.

They say the management contravened a local agreement with a former manager at the depot, that new labour must be recruited through the union.

Not accidental On the Thursday before Easter the management tried to arrange a meeting with the 150 strikers, but before it started an official of the union spoke to the men and persuaded them not to go into the depot. The following day the local management addressed a personal Easter letter' to each of the strikers in which was set forth 'the company's point of view.

There is nothing accidental in the pattern which is emerging of managements trying at this time systematically to undermine trade union organisation. Nor is it an accident that the attacks are growing in intensity against. the Transport and General Workers' Union, which has taken a prominent part in resisting the moves of the employing class and the Wilson government to drive down the living standards of workers by anti-trade union measures.

After preliminary action against the wage claims of railwaymen, busmen and bakers, the true target of anti-union agitation is beginning to be seen in the stepping-up of attacks against workers in the Midlands.

Concessions

One thing is plain arising out of such attacks as the reported letter to Ray Gunterthere must be no more concessions to the employing class by trade union leaders and officials. After attempts to intimidate unofficial strikers and shop stewards, the heat will be turned on any union leader who shows resistance to the demands of the British capitalist class.

Concessions will be seen as weakness and will be exploited to the full. The employers and their agents in the labour movement will be content with nothing short of the complete subjection of the unions to their drive for higher profits in the export markets.

All trade unionists must unite to defend their organisations against such attacks on working-class living standards and security of employment. They must be satisfied with nothing less than complete and unconditional independence for the trade unions.

reported of a car a strike of tanker delivery drivers at Birmingham public

• CND's Trafalgar Square on Easter Monday. That was being generous.

In five years the bible-thumping priests and vicars and the bootlicking centrists have let a movement of over 70,000 people ship right through their tingers.

Not one of the MPs who spoke at Trafalgar Square mentioned this fact.

'I urge you to continue your demonstrations,' were the words of Stan Orme MP, followed by a plea to keep up the 'pressure'.

What humbug! No policy was given on how to fight against the Labour government's support for the American aggression in Vietnam. Many youth and trade unionists have participated in demonstrations against nuclear weapons in the past. They have been given the same kind of useless exhortation as Mr. Orme gave on Monday.

NO STRUGGLE Precisely because no struggle was developed out of this movement from the beginning, because the only advice they were given was to 'keep up the pressure', the large majority of them left the movement.

That is why 70,000 people are missing on the Easter marches now.

For those who merely wanted to protest they could find a haven in CND. For those who wanted to mobilise the • whole of the labour movement there were—as in the case of the first Easter march — physical attempts by peace-loving marshals to keep political banners off the march.

Thousands of youth opposed to the threat of nuclear war flocked to the CND. They were quickly disillusioned by the CND leadership and either left or, in the case some, became extremely cynical, joined the anarchists and became the backside of the peace movement.

The Young Socialists and the Socialist Labour League, through a struggle to show that the question of nuclear weapons was a political issue, won over many youth.

Today the Communist Party brings its young people onto the demonstration, not to make the march more political, but to try and forde them into the image of CND.

Many of these members of the Young Communist League however showed great interest in the ideas of the Young Socialists and discussed its policies.

These YCL members must join with those who really want to fight against the threat of war, and expose the Labour government's imperialist war policy, its support of the Johnson government's war in South Vietnam and above all the fakery of the 'left' and the centrists : who merely cover up for Wilson.

[By Newsletter Reporter A tors' questions on NSWERING invesprospects under the Labour government, the City Editor of the News of the World' summed up the attitude of the rightwing leaders.

We quote a section of the report without further comment:

'Don't you think there's a risk that now Labour has got its large majority it may prove rather more antiinvestor than in the past?' I see no serious danger of this. In my view Mr. Wilson is unlikely to do anything to offend the City. Indeed, he is unlikely to do anything which would seriously upset any large or powerful group of interests.

WIDEST APPEAL

It became fairly clear in the last Parliament that the new middle - of - the - way socialism concentrates primarily on staying in power by directing the widest possible appeal to the largest number of electors.

doubt if any old-fashioned piece of left-wing dogma will be allowed to get in the way of this objective?

Johnson and his cronies are learning the same bitter lesson of the French generals, namely, that a little bit of intervention can be just as inexorable as a little bit of pregnancy-and, sometimes, just as abortive.

BY OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT one should be fooled by the seeming support for George

On Thursday the puppet generals promised elections in South Vietnam by mid-September for a change to civilian power. Air Marshal Ky promised to immediately step down from power if the country wished.

Lieutenant General Nguyen van Thieu, the chief of state, signed a decree for the elections at a political congress. The elections would be for a constituent assembly which would frame the constitution for civilian rule.

This still does not satisfy the Buddhists who marched 2,000 strong through Saigon on Thursday.

But along with the Devlin Reports on the docks and the Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers' Associations, the Geddes Report is another attempt by the Labour government (Mr. McGarvey is a member of the Labour Party National Executive Committee) to seek a capitalist solution to the economic crisis.

The reports on docks and shipbuilding contain financial incentives to the employers to monopolise, modernise and rationalise-at the expense of workers' hard-won rights.

The only realistic demands which workers can put forward is a rejection of the two reports and the nationalization of ports and shipyards under workers' control.

However, McGarvey, speaking on behalf of 119,000 workers, accepts sections of the report. His acceptance is embroidered with militant phrases aimed against the employers. If his union is expected to co-operate, he says, there must be joint discussions.

'Own procedure'

He rejects the demarcation panel because since the recent amalgamation between Boilermakers and Shipwrights 'we have our own procedure which, in the main, works quite well'.

At the same time he says that on the question of 'interchangability' within the union, "if they [the employers] are not prepared to negotiate as other employers have done, then this sectionalisation in their yard will remain'.

The union, he adds, "co-operate at a price'.

He also asks for proof employers' change of attitudes and their belief in the security of employment in relation to the Geddes Report's recommendation for a monopolisation of leading shipbuilders.

His union, he says, views with extreme concern the report's suggestion for time and motion study in the yards, then adds:

'But, of course, if the employers can assure us higher wages with a guarantee that we won't fall behind or below our present earnings, then 1 am sure our members would look at their suggestions, as the report says "Cutting costs does not mean cutting wages"!

But what about wages increases, cutting of labour, and the defensive actions used by the workers?

Take the example of other monopolies, such as in the car Report is to accept these attacks and the misery and hardship they bring if not opposed in a struggle against the capitalist class.

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COUSINS TO QUIT UNION?

T is now more than likely that Frank Cousins will relinquish his position as general secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union. His position is to be reviewed at the next meeting of the union executive in June. Cousins has been on unpaid leave since he joined Wilson's government in 1964 as Minister This ex-CND marcher, now ir ' This ex-CND marcher, now in charge or nuciear developmen and research, attended the previous meeting of the T&GWU's executive when a decision on his position was deferred until after the recent Election.

He had attended to gain permission to fight the seat at Nuneaton again. He is now reelected and serving in a fullterm Labour government will put him beyond the retiring age of 65 laid down by the union.

But it is not this mere formality that is being considered.

What differences have developed between Cousins and the union in the October 1964March 1966 period?

In spite of his supposed left' position Cousins, like the rest of the 'left' parliamentarians, remained tight-lipped about Wilson's anti - working - class policies and was unwittingly used by the right wing to silence the left within the rank and file of the Labour Party.

Like Greenwood, Benn, Castle and others, he accepted a post in the crisis government and, therefore, accepted the policies aimed at solving this crisis.

When these policies took on an even more direct attack on living and working standards and conditions, Cousins still remained silent.

His union, on the other hand, came out strongly against the vicious anti-union Prices and Incomes Bill.

of Technology. charge of nuclear development Cousins: Now supports incomes policy Then, when Labour's majority was certain on election night, Cousins said in a television interview that he agreed with an incomes policy.

So, as the Labour government moves further to the right and on the offensive against workers, threatening a split in the labour movement, Cousins makes his position quite clear.

June's executive meeting is almost a foregone conclusion.

On what conditions Cousins parts from Harry Nicholas, his probable successor, and other leaders of the union, are doubtful.

But the rank - and - file T&GWU members will be clearer about the parting line when it comes to the vote on the Prices and Incomes Bill. Brown's Prices and Incomes Bill given at the conference of the Clerical and Administrative Workers' Union, held last weekend in Hastings.

The voting of 251 to 101 in favour of the executive council's emergency motion supporting the Bill can in no way be taken to represent the true feelings of the union rank and file since the conference also went on to support overwhelmingly an immediate pay claim for low-paid workers.

COMPOSITE

A large number of motions from branches all over the country were made a composite amendment to the emergency motion, giving the right wing 15 minutes to open the debate and the right of reply.

Despite calls for a card vote, the President passed it on a show of hands.

Most of the large branches from the chief industrial areas were against the motion and on a card vote the result would probably have been rather different.

In the arguments for the Prices and Incomes Bill, rightwing speakers declared that it was designed to help the lower-paid worker, and that unless it was supported, more vicious legislation would be necessary.

'RIGHTS'

Opposing speakers restricted their arguments to pleas for democracy and 'rights' without relating the laws to the crisis of British capitalism and the promises made by Wilson's government to the international banks in return for loans.

Ivan Limmer, from the London Western General Branch, who was Labour candidate for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Lancashire) in the General Election, said he was opposed to laws against the unions passed by any government.

He told how awkward he felt in the Election campaign when he had to answer questions on the Bill put by railwaymen. industry.

There the strength of the bosses' organisation has been used to wage the most vicious attacks on workers' rights and conditions.

In a period when the employers cannot afford to give workers any more-and are aided by a Labour government intent on legalising the wage freeze-to accept the Geddes