The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 452

The News Was victory?

EAMEN who have either re turned are relurning le work will by now have had time to reflect the lessons of their sir-anda-half-week strike. vy as l a victory or a defeat? According to the 'Morning Star' Morgan of the Communist Weekly mouthpiece 'Tribune of the fak It was a victory.

Both of these naners, of cours glad the strike has ender hey are anxious, by mean:

relation with the rank and file. to maintair They er te word 'victory 1 acherous during 'The sunke government issue of Tune 30 it savs Policy Bovernmen principle "The underlying of face ce of been ust deter mined union pressure .. the fact that in the final stage of negotiating with the shipowners ; the seamen's leaders effect accepted the limit on total costs, and that only incomes policy.' These are conclusions which very dine Star ande in the Theatede i the greene, a a strike against prices incomes policy. It was a test case Right from the start they sup.

ported the shipowners against the seamen. mn order to suodor become law in liament.

The final terms e sepowers proposed by had the full ecause it the government. With its prices a it accoreance Why the anal To ed incomes Dolley their decision represented victory TOI the shipowner and a defeat for the seamen. Since ce neither fake ment around Tribune ' want : to wag "lefts serious struggle against th government's prices members of the T&GWU, is causing grave concern to union chiefs as well as to the government.

With the example of what is now taking _place inside the seamen's union fresh in their minds, there is real anxiety amongst the T&GWU top leaders. With two of their most militant sections moving into political conflict with the government this could have far-reaching consequences within the union, especially since the leadership has already agreed to the Devlin Report and is pulling its punches in relation to the northern busmen.

STOP PRESS: THE National Committee of the Young Socialists announces that on the eve of the 1966 Labour Party Conference, they are holding a mass demonstration and rally at Brighton on:

Sunday, October 2, (time and assembly point to be announced later)

Organise your coach parties immediately.

Bring thousands of Young Socialists and trade unionists to Brighton to force the Labour government to retreat.

Say NO to the Prices and Incomes Bill. Say NO to the Deviin Commission on the docks.

For the military defeat of the U.S. in Vietnam. For the Victory of the National Liberation Front.

Sheila Torrance National Secretary Young Socialists, 186A Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4 the For 50 years, until 1960, the National Union of Seamen was a happy hunting ground for rightwing bureaucrats-then came the seamen's Reform Movement strike.

in four or five years the leftwing rebels had • a decisive grip on the union machine, and their hold is growing every day.

The class struggle engaged in by the seamen eventually smashed the right-wing stranglehold, and ine same thing can happen inside the T&GWU once the real role of its present leadership becomes exposed.

The union bureaucrats, therefore, needed Cousins out of the Cabinet so that they could head off the growing revolt. The fact that he chose opposition to the Prices and Incomes Bill provides him with a left face behind which he can manoeuvre to confuse his members who are becoming, like the seamen, more and more hostile to Wilson's government.

Make no mistake about it. Since October 1964, Cousins has gone along with the Labour thinemament through thick and is known, of the Prices and incomes recently.

A little late Now that it is about to become law, it is a little late in the day to effectively oppose it. If Cousins had some reservations about the Bill, why did he not resign last October and lead the fight against it?

Tens of thousands of rank-and-file trade unionists were opposed then, and they are opposed nowbut Cousins was silent during these past nine vital months. Cousins: Why didn't he resign last October?

If, for example, he had resigned last October, it is conceivable that the Amalgamated Engineering Union may have swung against the Bill, like the National Union of Mineworkers did this week.

But no, Cousins is not guided by the need to wage a real struggle inside the trade union movement as a whole, but on the narrow requirements of the T&GWU bureaucracy.

And what is the record of Mr. Cousins in leading opposition to Labour's right wing in the past?

Just take a look at his role in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Having swung the PUBLIC MEETING SAY NO: To anti-trade union legislation and Devlin Report VICTORY: To the Vietnamese National Liberation Front Sunday, July 10, 7 p.m.

Digbeth Institute, Digbeth

BIRMINGHAM Speakers :

G. HEALY, national secretary, SLL A. JENNINGS, Editor, Keep Left and prominent motor car workers APOLOGY The article in last week's Newsletter (July 2) on the National Union of Seamen's executive decision to return to work incorrectly stated that the resolution to return was sèconded by G. Mallon of Liverpool. We wish to apologise to Mr. Mallon for any distress caused to him.

US LANDAY YOUNG SOCIALISYS Young Socialists echo the slogan of their banner 'Victory to the Vietcong as they move in to Grosvenor Square. In the background is the VICTORY A VIETCONG INE US Embassy. IN contrast to the pacifist appeals of the Young Communist League, Young Liberals, Youth CND, and Christian youth, the Young Socialists claimed their solidarity with the Vietnamese people in their chants 'Victory to the Vietcong', and 'Arm the Vietcong', in an hour-long march through London last Sunday.

The demonstration, along with a Trafalgar Square meeting and a march on the US embassy, had been organised by the youth organisations, and the London District Committee of the Communist Party following the bombing of North Vietnam cities.

Over 400 Young Socialists participated in both marches, much to the embarrassment of the CP, and walked with the Vietnam Solidarity Committee, whose president, Bertrand Russell has made a recent call for support to the National Liberation Front.

The Young Socialist contingent was the most colourtul, vociferous and most disciplined in its ranks and slogan-shouting.

Half demonstration Because of this, and because of the size of the section, no moves were made to remove the youth, or the banners of, the Young Socialists and Socialist Labour League.

On the first march, from Hyde Park to • Trafalgar Square, the Young : Socialists formed almost half the demonstration.

From the front section came weak and sporadic calls for 'Hands off Vietnam' and pleas for a Geneva conference, while the YS kept up a continuous chant of their slogans.

This march ended up in Tratalgar Square, halfway through the CP meeting, after YCLers had handed in a petition at No. 10 Downing Street.

Calling Wilson a hypocrite, Gollan welcomed the protests by 'left' MPs and Liberals and added:

"There is only one way to peace in Vietnam. America must be forced to withdraw and the Vietnamese people be left to settle their own affairs.' UNION LEGISLATION from 6 p.m. onwards, then Gollan: 'Pressurise government' All this, it appeared, could be achieved by pressure on the Labour government!

He then led 4,000-strong march, with the YS still present, to the embassy. By that time, several sections of the YCL contingent were chanting 'Victory to the Vietcong' , completely ignoring an appeal made from the plinth to shout 'Wilson, end support for USA'.

Deputation

At Grosvenor Square, hordes of police blocked any entrance to the US embassy and only allowed Gollan, with lighterman Harry Watson, printer John Mitchell, parliamentary candidate Gladys_ Easton, editor of YCL paper 'Challenge' John Hyatt, and John Mahon as a deputation to the Embassy.

There they presented a resolution, passed at the Square meeting, to the second secretary.

After a short report back meeting-and after Gollan and company had left-there were scuffles between the YCL and CND sections and police. Thirty-one people were arrested.

Young Socialists did not take part in this middle class, futile expression of 'pacifist' anger.

in respect of employment at a time when the implementation of that award or settlement is forbidden under the foregoing provisions of this Part of this Act, he shall be liable-(a) on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding one hundred pounds and (b) on conviction on indictment to a fine which, if the offender is not a body corporate, shall not exceed five hundred pounds! for actioen trainst individual strikers but also for the bankruptcy of unions which defy the Bill. There is no reference here to imprisonment as an alternative to fines.

Fines from wages

George Brown has referred to another Bill being prepared, which will make it possible to take fines directly out of wages, so that imprisonment for non-payment of fines does not arise.

However, a later section of the Bill does make imprisonment a possibility, but for a different offence.

This refers to the disclosure of information received by the Prices and Incomes Board. Thus, business secrets must be protected at all costs, under this thoroughly capitalist measure.

Trade unionists must fight to stop this Bill becoming law. They must also study all moves towards state intervention in the unions and understand their political implications.

Victory for Foundry Workers 'he shop steward whose VICimisation led to a two-and-a-halfday strike at West Yorkshire Foundries has been given back his job and in his old department.

policy, they dress up th seatens reen in fact it was a defeatihe average. strike meated "was Ne were out for six-and-a-hal provided we won: # The al experiencerovided by two right-wing leaders of the NUS did no want and is he Communis price Secondly, the Party was using the strike in order to their Norris. on men he such as execuwhen the new tive committee.

elections take place They wanted to avoid struggle is against Wilson relations i around Tribune e d "left' Daeneral Workers -Trangion, and MPs the Ce rice back rom the Be.

These there or wim, blacked from the beginning. British, The Newsletter advocated this policy contain stare a bu onposed In the London docks, Jack : Dash an of and refused to anything unofficial Yet it could be unoffiial action that the docks were brought out on strike.

Roger Woods. Dash's colleague acting under ace name thing in Liverpool.

Whenkthin dockers of alacking at oreig British ships, old them to go back to wor hoy the cP for its osa potencal ends.

The laccons seamen obvious:

No trust in Wilson trust Communist serves the diplomac and not the interests o seamen;

Labour was real friend Movement and remains so today. THE GARDEN PARTY, says the Tory 'Daily Mail' is 'a very English institution'.

The sun was shining and the grass was green down Hampshire way—in Goose Green to be exact-last Saturday, when a handful of Communist Party supporters held their annual garden fete.

But this was no ordinary day for the comrades.

Into their midst strolled Jack Dash, well-known to television audiences, the darling of the press reporters and the idol of cameramen everywhere. He was there to open the fete.

Now, no one, least of all The Newsletter, will begrudge Mr. Dash such an honour. After all, during the summer months it is done regularly by parsons, country squires and old Tories of both sexes.

Orders go out

The remarkable thing about this get-together was that way up in the grim fastnesses of the Fleet Street editorial offices, the orders went out • • • *Pearly Dash, our tame photogenic docker, is at it again. Take him boys'-and they did.

The 'Daily Mail' from the Northcliffe stable, and the 'Sun' from Cecil King's all-powerful IPC group, vied with each other and got their man.

There he was, enjoying the sunshine, playing roulette ('Daily Mail') and leaning by a tent drinking a glass of beer ("Sun').

John Gollan (call me Johnny), secretary of the Communist Party, can breathe again. No strikes, just good wholesome 'peaceful road to socialism' fun-the Party's public image is secure in Jack Dash.

Pearly Dash does it again!

LAST Monday, the day the Prices and Incomes Bill was re-published, the Bank of England announced a big drop in the gold reserves and the pound fell on the foreign exchanges.

The economic crisis is directly connected with Brown's Bill. This threat to the independence of the trade unions is being operated by the Labour leaders on the orders of the monopolies and the international bankers.

The way Wilson acted to break the seamen's strike gives us some idea how far the Labour government will go in attacking its own support-the unions.

This is the second version of the Prices and Incomes Bill— the first came out in March and was nullified by the calling of the election.

Some changes have been made since then in an attempt to beat down opposition to the measure.

But its essential significance is only made clearer.

Standstill

By opening the way for direct state intervention in wages negotiations, the Bill prepares for more far-reaching measures in the future to destroy the unions as independent organisations.

The demand for the government to be told in advance about price increases and wage rises and the fixing of a three-month standstill period is still the central feature. Of course, the effect on Bill for fines. Unions still under heavy attack prices can be ignored. Prices and profits cannot be controlled by a capitalist government.

A new section demands that increases and dividends be notified as well. But in this case no stand-still can be enforced.

Anyway, as the experience of the wage freeze of 1948-1951 showed, dividend limitation is a farce.

A whole series of gimmicks, like bonus-share issues, can easily be worked out to distribute increased profits without changing the percentage dividend.

Besides, profits not distributed to shareholders directly are reflected in a rise in share values, so they can't lose.

The most important changes in the' Bill since March refer to the penalties to be imposed for not notifying wage increases.

These clauses have been strengthened by referring directly to trade unions as corporate bodies.

Paragraph 16 sub-section 4 says:

'(4) If any trade union or other person takes, or threatens to take any action, and in particular action by way of taking part, or persuading others to take part, in a strike, with a view to compel, induce or influence any employer to implement an awara or settlement THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE SAYS:

THROW OUT THE ANTI-TRADE LOBBY Parliament on July 20

vote against Gaitskell and the H-bomb at Scarborough in 1960, he then retreated and retreated until Gaitskell regained the initiative and was firmly back in the H-bomb saddle after ignoring the decisions of the Labour Party Conference.

In our opinion Cousins is going to do the same thing again so far as the Prices and Incomes Bill is concerned. He will make left noises, lead the troops up the hill and then down again.

Naturally, the Communist Party

off Victoria Street, s. W.1, 7.45 p.m. (5 minutes from Houses of Parliament)

Speakers :

Healy, National Secretary, S.L.L.

Reg Perry, Merseyside

Chairman:

M. Banda, Editor, Newsletter Neither the Trafalgar Square meeting, nor the following day's 'Morning Star' mentioned the YS in its list of demonstrators, even though a Liberal was welcomed on to the plinth to speak and John Hyatt welcomed unity with Christian youth!

But no one can ignore the fact that the Young Socialists maintain their principled stand of support for the Vietnamese and world working class, and do not curry favour with capitalist organisations to pose a united, pacifist front.

Page Fou: the

As a war centre, the city is more invaded, more occupied, more immoral, with more white masters, more marionette ministers, more beggars, more women selling themselves, than in any other place at any other time.

Vietnamese, says Guillain, want to work and live near the Americans for it is there that the black market thrives— hundreds of tons of goods bound for the forces PX stores disappear every week on the half-mile journey from the docks to Saigon.

'Everyone knows that this doesn't happen without a vast network which must reach into important offices of the US Army,' Guillain adds.

These goods-including US Army uniforms and other wares only accessible to officers—appear in the sidewalk shops of Saigon.

Officials take their cuts from this trade and one Vietnamese told Guillain:

"The mandarins used to line their nests similarly, but over a lifetime. A minister

WITH the bombing o.

Hanoi and Haiphong the organisation of working-class action against the US imperialist attack on the Vietnamese people becomes still more vital.

This makes it extremely urgent to clarify the political objectives of such action.

The Newsletter of June 25 carried a letter from Bertrand Russell, arguing that it was not a question of demanding 'peace' in Vietnam. He called instead for 'solidarity with those struggling for their economic and political emancipation'.

Whatever disagreements we may have Russell, on this question Marxists must wholeheartedly support him.

To call for 'peace in Vietnam' or a 'negotiated settlement' is to demand a holding the struggle of the Vietnamese workers and peasants against imperialism.

Unlike Russell, however, we do not see this from an abstract 'moral standpoint', but as part of the class fight for a socialist world.

We seek to aid the military defeat of US forces and the victory of the National Liberation Front, because this would be a blow against the employing class all over the world.

UNITE WORKERS Our struggle against the Wilson government's pro-capitalist policies at home and abroad are intended to weaken international capitalism and unite workers every-where against it.

Those Labour MPs who are busy tabling motions demanding that Wilson dissociate himself from the Vietnam war, only want to protest against imperialism.

Unless the labour movement is mobilised quite clearly on the side of the Vietnamese workers and for the defeat of the US forces, 'protesting' is just a safety valve for discontent.

The leaders of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament are professional protesters. They can live quite happily with the worst brutalities of imperialism, so long as they čan make an appropriate gesture of disapproval.

They place the main emphasis on the danger of a world war developing from the Vietnamese conflict. They are content to blame 'both sides', they put it, for the situation.

Ignoring the political reality, they equate the Vietnamese struggle for liberation from imperialism with the murderous acts of the Americans and their puppets.

Of course, there a danger of world war. But it arises from the nature of imperialism as a world system of exploitation and oppression.

Every blow against that system, every step towards the smashing of the power of the bosses, helps to stop the possibility of nuclear destruction.

The Communist Party, true to its Stalinist traditions, takes a basically similar line to the CND While making ritual statements about American aggression, the Stalinists refuse to call for the defeat of the Americans.

Since they also organise 'protests', and call for 'negotiations', they are as guilty of equating imperialism with its victims as their Liberal and parliamentary friends.

The Geneva agreement of 1954, whose implementation they put forward as a solution, was imposed on the Viet Minh leaders, against their wishes. It cut Vietnam in two and robbed the Viet Minh of victory over the French.

RESUME FIGHT Later, when the Americans had taken control of South Vietnam, the bitter struggle for liberation had to be resumed by the Vietcong guerrillas.

Instead of taking the side of the workers and peasants of Vietnam against the imperialists, the Stalinists, like CND, call for negotiations between imperialist robbers those they are robbing.

As the Geneva Agreement shows, this means a strengthening of imperialism and the preparation of new and still more violent wars.

The Stalinists used to be motivated by the desire persuade the imperialists compromise with Soviet bureaucracy. This entailed collaboration those politicapitalist groups whose interests led them in that direction.

Today, however, the process of degeneration has gone so far that collaboration with the established order is an end in itself for the CP leaders. Gollan and Company direct their main efforts to securing some influence among Labour MPs and through them approach the government of Her Majesty's Prime Minister.

That is why the propaganda of the Communist Party takes the form of advice to the government as to its best interests.

If only Wilson would change his policy, his problems would be solved, they imply.

On the contrary, Marxists know that the crisis of the Wilson government is intensified by every victory of the Vietnamese liberation movement.

Although it was no doubt made after prior consultation with the State Department: vylison s alssocianon ırom ine dinn Hanoi and Haiphong bombings was a sign of weakness in the imperialist alliance.

As a result of the heroic determination of the Vietnamese workers and peasants to defeat the imperialist invaders, the entire world system of imperialism is shaken.

The power of the bosses in every country is challenged, especially in the United States, the imperialist power-house itself.

That is why the 'protesters' of the Parlamentary 'left' CND and Communist Party all shrink from a direct call tor a Vietcong victory.

The possible dispatch of British troops to back up US point conveniently left out of butchery in Vietnam would a long report of his article in put the question still more 'The Guardian': sharply.

'Protest' movements by 'Even Prime Minister Wilson 'left' critics of the Labour of Britain, whose economic leaders have long been a policy depends on Mr. Johnfeature of the British political son's continued support of the scene. They belong to an era pound sterling, felt obliged to of class compromise when the make a public statement protesters can rest assured against the bombing of Hanoi that no real harm will come to was in trouble about keeping the social order as a result of their actions and speeches. a British military force East With the opening up of a of Suez in support of the period of political struggles, in United States, he produced an which questions of class power interesting defence. can be more clearly posed, the issue of the Vietnam war thought Britain should stay has much deeper implications. there rather than leaving the Our contribution to the de- Americans alone to use their feat of the US forces and their judgement in a confrontation reactionary puppets in Asia is with China.' to fight overthrow their allies, the British ruling class, of the British public "The together with its agents in the Guardian' did not think it labour movement.

You may shoot me bul...

others will come acainst you The Young Socialist contingent marched behind this impressive President Johnson and his Vietnam policy following tha hamhino of Hanni and UIC NU Haiphong last week.

Writing in the 'New York Times' (July 2-3 International Edition), Reston says that with the latest bombing the Johnson administration 'has now done everything it said or indicated it would not do except bomb China' and confused both hawks' and 'doves' about what is coming next.

Not a single major nation supported Johnson's adventure, says Reston. (This was true at the time of writing, but not since.)

And he goes on to make a and Haiphong, and when he 'He said, in effect, that he The oh-so liberal informer worth including this important banner last Sunday. Last Sunday's demonstration against the bombings. CP Secretary John Gollan speaks to a Trafalgar Square rally attended by 400 Young Socialists. The YS National Committee and other YS banners are seen point-probably not to take the wind out of the right-wing Prime Minister's 'protest'. alternatives.

Reston goes on to list Johnson's deception:

*The Johnson administration tion: said it was not seeking a military solution to the war, and it is now obviously seeking pre- land from cisely that. It said it was there merely to help a legitimate government defend itself, and it has ended up by supporting a military clique that is not a government, is not legitimate, bombing to and is not really defending China?' itself.

'Even when allowances are made for the uncertainties and moral ambiguities of warfare, the guile of this Administration, exercised in the name of high and even noble principle, is hard to match. It was not going beyond the 17th Parallel in Vietnam but went beyond.

It was merely going to respond to enemy attacks on its bases, but it went over to the offensive. It was not going to get involved in a major war on the Asian land mass but it did.

The President was not even faithful to his bad resolves:

He said he would not negotiate, but then offered to do so, and spoiled that by refusing to negotiate with the major elements of the enemy he police faces. He has not merely misled his enemies but his friends.

His old colleagues in the Congress have not forgiven him yet for tricking them into support of a blank cheque defence of all south-east Asia under circumstances they could not possibly oppose.

And even in this last adven- tion centre. ture in Hanoi and Haiphong, we are told officially that the bombing of targets there is not nar, an "escalation" of the Reston says the actual question of confidence in the Administration is important.

He wonders if anyone can now trust Johnson's actions.

Johnson had said pressure would be brought on the enemy at source, and Defence Secretary McNamara had said in the crowd. the bombietnamese fores the North Korea announced that it will send volunteers to fight in Vietnam and would give With those statements every assistance to the mind, Reston poses the ques- National Liberation Front.

After the bombing North 'What if the enemy now Vietnam called for 'increased brings in new support from socialist countries and for them to protest against the 'criminal war of American imperialists in Vietnam'. from North Vietnam? China said in the 'Peoples' we then carry *the source tin Daily' on Friday, July 1, that the US bombing North Vietnam was a serious escalaAnd Reston's conclusion is: tion of the war and would 'Nobody knows, because so lead America one step nearer many things have been said to the grave.

In another statement she everybody is in said that the US raids had 'freed China from any World reaction restrictions in helping North Vietnam. London on Sunday hat see World reaction 'Since the United States imperialists have come from the sky and the sea, why can't London on Sunday. others fight back on the In Tokyo on Monday, stone- ground?' throwing demonstrators clashed with police US Joint statement Secretary of State Dean Rusk arrived for a conference. Soviet criticism came from Japan earlier joined the Mr. Kosygin, who said the Anzus defence pact powers- bombings showed the US was Us-in Australiafully supporting the New Zealand and not interested in the peaceful settlement. bombing. Later 1,200 riot A joint Franco-Soviet dethe Ustere stationed around claration, made while de Gaulle was visiting the Soviet Both the New Zealand and Union, said the only way out Australian Labour parties have of the Vietnam crisis was condemned the raids. through a settlement based on There were demonstrations the 1954 Geneva agreement. throws and India on Friday, Washington dismissed the July and in Calcutta, de- Soviet and Chinese statements monstrators set fire to furni- as a routine response disture in the American informa- playing no threat of retaliation' Rumanian demonstrators In a statement made soon threw stones at the American after the bombings, Bertrand Embassy in Bucharest on Russell said that the HanoiThursday, June 30, after hold- Haiphong bombing had been ing a protest meeting in the planned for a year. centre of the city. *Johnson is leading step by Earlier the Rumanian step to the obliteration of National Assembly had con- Vietnam and the bombing of demned the raids, which Prime China. He is as cynical as Minister Maurer called a fla- Hitler and as dangerous. grant violation of the elemen- 'Let everyone, the world tary forms of international law' over, solemnly determine to for which the United States demonstrate, protest and sabobore a grave responsibility. tage the American blitzkrieg.'

The Fourth International July 9,

WO articles in the American pros gressive weekly 'National Guardian' illustrate the corrupting influence of US imperialist forces on South Vietnam, and the complete preparedness of the North Vietnamese people for the recent escalation of the war.

French journalist Robert Guillain is quoted by the 'National Guardian' from his eyewitness reports printed in 'Le Monde' as saying that the Vietcong really have no need to do any work in Saigon as there is another factor which 'corrodes much more surely from the inside-putrefaction'.

He says that when the not too quarrelsome, not too often drunk, side-dealing American 'boys' let loose their 'Niagara of dollars' on a people weakened by 20 years of war, the country cannot escape corruption.

17th of the Diem administration reckoned to do it in 10 years, but one of the present-day in a single year'-many buy expensive cars, villas and so on.

This general sinking into what a Vietnamese described to Guillain as 'nothing more than a brothel, a sink of vice, has broken up almost the whole of the Vietnamese way of life.

The Vietnamese added: 'Confucian society had four classes of which the mandarin class was most respected. Today the four classes are thus listed in order of power and respect: the whores, the pedicab drivers, the Chinese, the generals. It changes very fast-six months ago the generals came first.' Yet behind all this corruption, the Vietcong work consistently, infiltrating all sections of Saigon life, in order to continue their fight against the Americans and whatever puppet sits at the government's head. Guillain comments: 'Frenchmen in Vietnam feel quite simply that the conquest of South Vietnam by the NLF has already been more than half accomplished—an invisible conquest of the areas held by the Americans themselves.

paralle government forces and stockpiles. For this reason the Saigon river is not blocked-it would only take one sunken ship to do it. It is as much a supply route for the Vietcong as it is for the Americans. Another source of revenue for the NLF forces is obtained from checkpoints and customs stations near Saigon where the Vietcong taxes travellers and gives them a receipt—it is estimated that 20,000 dollars is earned from this activity every day.

Where the NLF do want to destroy installations, they have the aid of workers. Even when the armoured car on a convoy is changed at the last moment, the Vietcong know and are able to mine it.

Guillain says that many people are stupefied to see the way the Americans are being fooled and betrayed, and the Vietcong's only problem is in choosing their informers because there are so many.

The Vietcong was said, in February, to have 4,000, five-men cells in Saigon. In Hué all municipal decisions are said to be taken only with the Vietcong's consent. William G. Burchett, 'National Guardian's' correspondent in North Vietnam, questioned defence minister Vo Nguyen Giap about US bombing of North Vietnam.

He said the Americans had not achieved their goals, and that the Pentagon had admitted that it was dealing with people who showed no signs of weakness. Railroads are still running, there are record harvests and the country's military and economic potential has increased, not decreased. In preparation for the bombing of the cities, the authorities have already been taking machines from the cities and setting them up in the jungle villages.

Burchett says that the mobilisation of A UTHORITATIVE and widely sad American columnist James Reston penned a searing attack on manpower and willpower was effected with an enthusiasm difficult to conceive of if one had not visited the farms and factories, the new construction sites and the spots where the battle against enemy planes and bombs was fiercest.

In fact there has been an emphasis on transport and communications, and the North Vietnamese have a grand system for re-building bombed bridges and roads.

In the last year, the volume of traffic on many important roads like the one between Hanoi and Van Linh, just north of the 17th parallel, has been greater than ever before.

Where bridges have • been bombed and where there were no bridges before, pontoon bridges are quickly erected on unsinkable bamboo rafts.

The notion of repairs has been changed by circumstances. Previously there has been inspection, paper work, estimates, involving several ministries and several months. Bridges are now constructed almost overnight. higher than when operated in the city.

He interviewed Doan Trong Truyen of the state economic planning commission, who told him:

"The dispersal of industry and the industrial development in our mountain regions is important for our national defence, not only because it offers protection against the bombings and in case of invasion attempts, but for the future development of the country.

Together with the technical revolution— the application of new, advanced techniques -and the redistribution of our economic potential we can step up labour productivity and strengthen our economic and defence capacity' He quoted the figures for 1965: Overall agricultural production up by 3.3 per cent over 1964; overall industrial production up by 8.4 per cent over 1964; production of industries under state ministries, 12 per cent increase over 1964; machine building industry, up by 14 per cent; output of local industry, established plants, up by 40 per cent! newly

One Frenchman who ventured into Vietcong territory was arrested and lectured by a uniformed NLF officer. Later he saw the same man in government uniform at an official ceremony in Hué!

This seems to be Vietcong policy-infil trating into all sections of South Vietnam life, knowing that their arms, supplies, money, will all roll in from the US and

as seen by American columnist James Reston Even before the smoke has settled on a bombed railway or road, scores of youth have re-laid rails minutes after their comrades have filled in gaping bomb holes with ballast.

As Burchett says:

'Not only had the bombs not been able to put the main north-south railway and highway out of action, but they had not been able to prevent the construction of a whole network of highways and roads.' Burchett also found production in mills taken from Hanoi to the jungle villages was

This despite the fact that large major plants have been dispersed into many smaller ones: the fact that time was taken doing this, and the fact that many women work in industry where men did previously.

On the land, workers have also shown their productivity possibilities; the biggest increases have come in the most heavily bombed areas.

This was 14 per cent against the 3.3 per cent average.

Truyen put these increases down to 'Higher moral due to bombings, more widespread irrigation with lots of new electric pumps installed, intensified use of fertilizers, better seed selection-the application, in fact, of some elements of the technical revolution'.

Burchett says, with all their plans the South Vietnamese 'are determined to prove to the Pentagon the bankruptcy of the thesis of "winning in the South by smashing the north":

CApITA bulived is long outlived its usefulness; since the beginning of its final stage — imperialism - it has faced humanity with an unprecedented succession of crises and wars, despite the greatest changes in the productive forces ever known.

Automation and atomic energy create a great explosive force which constantly breaks against the limits of the capitalist mode of production.

The working class, particularly the younger generation, constitute the fighting force which will break these ciass barriers to the liberation of mankind.

Until now, the capitalist class has avoided its historic fate only by enlisting in its service generations of treacherous leaders of the working class and the colonial masses.

Resolve crisis The Fourth International was founded, and has been fought for, in order to resolve this crisis of working-class leadership. In the class struggles brought by the joint crisis of imperialism and of the Stalinist bureaucracy, , the working class, requirian Desar, turn a revolutionat internationat leadership, must meet a response from the development Marxism, in theory and practice, in the building of parties of the Fourth International.

The Fourth International itself has been able to survive and develop only because of the implacable struggle, beginning in the French, British and Greek sections, against the international petty-bourgeois revisionist group led by Michel Pablo since 1951.

The International Congress of the • International. Committee recorded a vital step in the defeat of this revisionism, a necessary step to reconstruction of the Fourth International.

James Robertson and the 'Spartacist' delegation to our ternationa Darted" from the InCommittee because they had a class and political outlook opposed to the one we have outlined. An. examination of Robertson's contribution to the political discussion at the Congress reveals clearly that his departure over apparently formal questions was no mere misunderstanding. Gigantic dollar aid for Vietnam Usury gave 675 million dollars worth of aid to South Vietnam during the fiscal year which ended on June 30 — the largest sum donated to support any single country's economy in one year.

The assistance was twice that given the previous year.

The 675 million dollar figure amounts to nearly a quarter of the 2.46 billion dollars put by for the year for the Agency for International Development, which distributes U.S. foreign aid.

In the next three months the United States will provide 120 million dollars worth of commodity goods to be bought by Vietnamese importers with Vietnamese currency.

NO PREDICTIONS Experts are loath to predict how much aid the U.S. will provide in the next year to strengthen South Vietnam's economy, but one was quoted as saying:

'Vietnam is notoriously not the place to make predictions of what requireit" was the On the contrary consequence of his whole political position.

What is Pabloism?

Before and during our Congress we insisted that Pablo's revisionism was a tendency alien to our movement, representing pressure imperialism and the Stalinist bureaucracy, the social-democracy and the bourgeois-nationalist mass movement in colonial countries.

No successful battle against revisionism is possible without starting from these class roots.

In our epoch, as Lenin many times insisted, the weakness of the capitalist class in crisis necessitates for it a force within the workers' movement; that force is, in the first place, revisionism.

'Answer'

Robertson says: 'We disagree that Pabloism is but the expression of organic currents of reformism and Stalinism, having no roots within our movement.

Pabloism is a • revisionist answer to new problems posed by the post-1943 Stalinist expansion...

And he goes on to explain that these 'mistakes' were made under the pressure' of the failure of history to confirm Trotsky's perspective of the revolutionary overturn of the Stalinist bureaucracy after World War II.

Robertson has abandoned the Marxist viewpoint, if he ever accepted it. For him social 'pressure' is the pressure of 'awkward' facts on the ideas of the middle-class observer. For Marxists it is a question of real class pressure upon the working class and its Marxist party.

Pabloism was not a mistaken set of ideas but a definite attack on Marxism from within by a revisionist current which had capitulated to the apparcat strength of imperialism and its agents in the labour movement.

It was the International Committee which has its roots' in Trotskyism and Bolshevism, that was able to drive out and defeat the revisionists.

Our task is linked indissolubly with our fight to win the leadership of the working class: struggle against capitalism and all those who serve it, including the revisionists.

It is because we see the struggle against revisionism as a clash of living: forces,: class forces, that we are taken to task Robertson. on another question.

He upbraids us for giving too much importance to the Trotskyist movement and its internal life.

First of all, he says: 'We take issue with. the notion that the present crisis of capitalism is so sharp and deep that Trotskyist revisionism is needed to tame the workers, in a way comparable to the degeneration of the Second and Third Internationals. Such an erroneous estimation By a Newsletter Correspondent ments will be.' To increase the import drive, South Vietnam's leader, Air Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky intends to put the crowded port of Saigon under the control of army officers—it is presently run by civilian officials.

American experts will aid this change-over and hope to expand the port's capacity to take one million tons of incoming cargo a month, in comparison with the present 600,000 tons.

GOODS SUPPLIED

Goods supplied by the Agency for international development during the last fiscal year included 400 million dollars worth commodities, and 80 million dollar worth of foodstuffs, under the Food for Peace campaign.

A further 195 million dollars provided a wide variety of goods including power equipment, school books, ele.

A form of indirect aid came in the form of dollar spending by U.S. forces for, Last week we outlined the relations between the International Committee (at its recent International Congress) with the American group 'Spartacist', whose niddle-class refusal of Bolshevik discipline led to their being excluded from the Congress. Since then 'Spartacist', the journal of this group, has attacked the International Committee and the Socialist Labour League.

The most recent issue contains a transcript of the remarks made by editor James Robertson at the International Congress. In this article those remarks.

would have as its point of departure an enormous over-estimation of our present significance and would accordingly be disorienting.' Evidently, more is involved than just a side-issue. Robertson in fact does not agree that the present depth of the crisis of captalısm is the objective basis for the bulding of the Fourth International.

As always, the talk about 'not over-estimating' our own strength is an expression of complete lack of confidence in the working class itself.

Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks broke from social-democracy over this very question; the 'actuality' of the revolution, the burning question of revolutionary preparation by a revolutionary party as the essence of history in our epoch.

But for Robertson we are still at a slower, gentle stage of development where we are not yet the important ones. Imperialism need pay no attention to us.

Accepts Pablo In this way Robertson accepts 100 per cent the whole outlook of the Pabloite revisionists, which he claims to reject. Their whole basic perspective is surely that the hour of the Fourth International has not yet struck, that 'others' will carry out the historic tasks of the struggle against imperialism, finding intermediate forms of rule before the proletarian dictatorship.

We have not fought against the attack on independent politics of the working class, in the shape of Pabloite revisionism, in order to abandon the Trotskyist force in the USA to the identical programme of Robertson and 'Spartacist'!

Because he does not share our basic perspective on imperialism, the working class and independent alternative leadership, Robertson • reacts to current world developments much as Pablo did around 1945. Thus Robertson stresses that there are no impossible situations for the bourgeoisie:

'Just now in fact, their task is easier, after the terrible shattering of the Indonesian workers' say experts, 'beer, bars everything else'.

It is said that more than 300,000 soldiers, U.S. and foreign, and some civilians are spending at the rate of 150 dollars each every year in South Vietnam in foreign exchange, and the Saigon government is using this currency to purchase more imported goods.

However, this vast spending has led to increased inflation and forced the South Vietnam government to announce counter measures on June 18.

These included the devaluation of the South Vietnamese currency, the piastre, from an exchange rate of 60 for each dollar to 118 for each dollar.

REACHES VIETCONG As the article on page 2 points out, much of the cash and aid sent into South Vietnam finds its way through various channels into the National Liberation Front.

Therefore, the more cash and goods the Americans send into the ! outh, the more they will be aiding the Vietcong to kick them out of the country. (Part Iwo)

BY CLIFF SLAUGHTER movement; add to this the other reversals which expose the revisionists' dependence on petty-bourgeois and bureaucratic strata, like the softening of the USSR, the isolation of China, India brought to heel, 'Africa neatly stabilised, and Castro a captive of Russia and the US.

The central lesson of these episodes is the necessity to build revolutionary working-class parțies, i.e., our ability to intervene in struggle' It would be difficult to find a better example of the anti-Marxist method so typical of the empiricist and pragmatist approach of groups like the Socialist Workers' Party in the USA.

No wonder Robertson in his speech does not refer to Trotsky's admonition to his American followers to develop dialetical materialism against the dominant American pragmatism as a life-and-death question!

For Robertson the unified process of development of capitalist crisis is a series of 'episodes' with 'lessons'. All very 'educational, but utterly remote from Marxism.

In • the colonial and semi-colonial world, imperialism achieved a very relative stability until some two years ago through the agency of middle-class 'left nationalist' leaders like Sukarno, Nkrumah, Nasser, Ben Bella, Castro and others. Whatever the differences between these tendencies, they have the common role restricting the mass national-liberation movements to national frontiers within the present international domination of imperialism, helped by the Stalinist bureaucracy.

Given way

The fact that in a whole number of countries these 'left' leaders can no longer rule through promises to the masses, that left' Bonapartes have given way to 'right' Bonapartes, reflects the deepening of the imperialist crisis as it tries to unload this crisis on to the colonial masses, requiring more repressive regimes for this purpose.

Robertson observes these political developments, but sees them only as defeats for the workers and peasants.

Certainly the liquidation of hundreds of thousands of militants in Indonesia is a defeat for the Indonesian workers at the hands of the imperialists, but it must be seen also as an inevitable consequence of the crisis of Stalinism, Russian and Chinese, and as an indicator of the new stage reached the international crisis of imperialism.

To observe these manifestations of the basic crisis and at the same time to underplay this basic crisis (i.e., to say it is not so sharp and deep to require Trotskyist revisionism is to abandon the responsibility of building the alternative international leadership.

Instead one is condemned to the role of a middle-class observer, collecting 'facts' and drawing 'lessons'. Such is Robertson's position.

For precisely the same reason, Robertson does not take seriously the struggle of the International Committee against revisionism.

He reflects our method of building the International. Thus 'Spartacist' we analyse he presented to the Congress a picture of "four organised international currents all claiming to be Trotskyists, and spoken of as "Trotskyist" in some conventional sense'.

Such 'description' is revealing, but only of Robertson's own method.

He omits to mention that besides the International Committee, the three self-professed Trotskyist tendencies are all products of the recent decompositzon of the Pabloite forces: i.e., the Posadas-led group, Pablo's own faction, recently expelled, and the Frank-Germain-Hansen tendency.

Once again we have 'the facts' served up, without any investigation of their political content and their history.

After this, what can we make of Robertson's 'this state of affairs must be resolved through splits and fusions'?

James P. Cannon had this view of building of the International and it had to be resolutely combatted by the International Committee.

The ill-fated 'unification' of the Pabloite forces of 1963 was the result of this method. We insisted that political clarification of perspectives, based on the actual construction of sections in the living class struggle, was the only basis for development. leadership.

Finally, in this brief reply to Robertson's criticisms, we find ourselves face-to-face with Robertson's perspectives for the USA itself. Here we find repeated, though now in more monstrous form, all the errors we have already pointed out.

If Robertson under-estimates the international crisis of capitalism, and with it the significance of our own revolutionary movement, it need hardly surprise us that he cannot see the sharpness of the social and political crisis inside the USA.

The corollary to his views about the 'neat stabilisation' of Africa as part of a come-back by imperialism, is a complete under-estimation of the American working class.

Robertson concentrated almost entirely on the Negro question: "The principal aspect of our task, Which may be obscure to toreign comrades, is the unique and critically and immediately important Negro question'.

Robertson and 'Spartacist' declare that 'the Negroes in the USA are an oppressed colourcaste concentrated in the main in the working class as a super-exploited layer'. workers prepare for the greatest revolutionary explosion of all.

Thus we see how Robertson's complete lack of a Marxist dialectical international perspective, makes it impossible for him to understand the contradictions at the heart of American politics, where all the international conflicts receive their sharpest focus —not in the appearances which strike the eye of the middle-class observer, but in the essential economic and social forces which underlie the struggle of the classes.

These then are the politics of the 'Spartacist' group. Expressed in their outlook by the relative dominance of US capital, they cannot rest upon the American working class because America is 'exceptional', its strength and its ability to control and win over its white working class seals it off from the explosive contradictions of world capitalism.

The revolutionary movement, developed against Stalinism and the struggle against revisionism, cannot be taken seriously, because, for Robertson and his followers, this struggle is quite separate from the great surface strength and 'stability.

On this basis, splits would certainly proceed, but on questions of principle and always fought through to the, end.

To defend this indefensible position, Robertson retails a story about a visit to Cuba by members of 'Spartacist'.

"Thus, when several "Spartacist" comrades visited Cuba, we found that the Trotskyist group there, part of the Posadas International, were in the main excellent comrades struggling with valour under difficult conditions.' Most important here is what is left out.

Robertson does not tell us that the jailed followers of Posadas in Cuba were released last year, having given to the authorities a declaration that their opposition to the regime was wrong and would now cease.

Even Posadas himself denounced this declaration, but Robertson cannot mention it.

Behind the failure of the Posadas group in Cuba, and behind the utterly erroneous estimation and falsification by Robertson, is a fundamental political error: their common characterisation of Castro's Cuba as a 'deformed workers' state'.

Trotsky was correct to define the USSR as a degenerated workers' state. The organs of Soviet democracy had established the economic relations necessary for building socialism. But the backwardness of the productive forces inside Russian national frontiers prevented the development of socialism.

The bureaucracy, which flourished in these conditions enlisted the political services of Stalin's revisionist faction, destroyed the Bolshevik Party, and usurped political power in the USSR. Balancing regime There was never anything else in the Cuban state, after Batista's defeat, except the rule of the July 26 movement, a petty-bourgeois political group which later enlisted the support of Blas Roca's discredited Stalinist Party.

Far from a proletarian dictatorship, which was 'deformed', there has existed, until now, a Bonarpartist regime balancing between imperialism and the working class, and kept in position by the politics and economic support of the treacherous Kremlin bureaucracy.

What Robertson calls our 'wrong theoretical formulations' on this question are the resuits of an objective analysis carried out on the basis of our whole perspective; the essential and central character of the task of building alternative working-class class struggle' trade unions, eto., become involved, he lays all the black cadres'.. the winning of emphasis In our Congress, Robertson. insisted that the white working-class youth could be regarded as inaccessible to the Marxists.

Now of course it is true that many of the best cadres of the Trotskyist movement in the USA will come from the Negroes in the working class.

But required from Trotskyists in the USA is a constant and bitter struggle against all those 'socialists' who characterise the US white working class as a reactionary mass, entirely: sold on US capitalism.

These workers, black and white, are the revolutionary force at the very heart of the contradiction between capitalism and the new forces of production. The struggles of the American READ Vol. 3, No. 2 A Journal of International Published by the International of the Fourth International EDITORS - TOM KEMP, CLIFF SLAUGHT CONTENT Editorial Algeria Kenya-Coloniali Independence The Struggle for United States (iv) American Trotsky Tim Wolforth Cuban Revolution in Danger Statement of the International Committee of the Fourth Iternational Available from: 186A Clapham High Street, Li

THE NEW

Further: In the US, the qualitatively heavier burden within the class is borne by the black workers. In quiescent times they tend to be divided from the white workers as in the lower levels of class struggle such as are now prevalent.

"Therefore the black youth in America are the only counterparts today to the sort of militant white working-class youth found , in the British Young Socialists' All this stress on the uniqueness of the exploitation and militancy of the Negro is here turned into something quite disorientating for Marxists.

It is used, in effect, to write off the labour movement and the American working class. While that at a certain point in ware Robertson says he is well Fourth International And so the inevitable consequence asserts itself. Unable to comprehend the dialectic of development-the opposed material class forces underlying capitalism-Robertson announces that for the present his group must confine itself to propaganda tasks only.

He accepts that for other sections in other countries an allsided development of the party through agitation, propaganda and organisation is necessary, but in America it is 'different'.

In the Congress, Robertson argued that for his small forces to engage in agitation would expose them to attack. They must concentrate on a ten-fold increase in membership through propaganda activity.

This mechanical separation into stages and types of activity is the necessary consequence of Robertson's pragmatic method and his utter failure to grasp the essence of the class struggle, a political struggle for power on the objective foundations of capitalism's historic crisis. • This unified conception of the struggle, with Marxist theory as the guide to action in the building of a Party through all the struggles of the working class, is What leads us essential continuity stress the struggle carried out by Trotsky and later in the International Committee.

Robertson's cynicism on these questions, and his determination to extend a hand to the 'Voix Ouvrière' group were all of a piece with his fundamental pessimism on international and American questions, a pessimism rooted in an inability to resist and overcome the pressure of American imperialism upon the working class.

Ap Marxism Committer m and the Lessc Trotskyism wi Price 3s.

are now working on the Greater London Council. Stop watches TIME and motion men ig electricians as they carry a ladder, install fittings, or even take in hand they are timi tools from a tool box.

The employers, both those of the GLC and those in the electrical contracting industry, desperately need to cut costs and increase profits by introducing modernisation methods. Method study lays the basis for this. They feel that with the support of the right-wing leaders of the Electrical Trades Union and the Labour government such measures can be carried through.

Runs courses

The ETU, leadership, of course, is entirely in favour of time and motion, running courses for management and workers at the union college GOLD RESE FOR the fourth successive month, Britain's gold reserves have dropped-June figures show a fall of f49 million.

These figures actually cover up the real position. For during the last month, the Bank of England made use of its borrowing powers from the and Continental bankers, and the real drop is reported to be in the region of £100 million.

Since the end of February the loss in gold has been in the region of £200 million, and total reserves now stand at 1,170 million dollars.

In response to these depressing figures, the pound slumped again and on Tuesday stood at 2.78 dollars, almost its lowest point for 18 months.

Should it fall even marginally, the Bank of England will be forced to use its now puny resources to bolster it up—or face the prospect of devaluation.

At the end of last week, the International Monetary Fund discussed a staff report on the UK economy which was critical of the continuing high level of employment in the country and called for misasares of deflation.

There are now definite signs of a tendency towards rising unemployment in the autumn and winter months.

Less investment

There is a widespread drop reported in the investment plans of most of the major these has been a significant dress in orders to the engineering industry, one ot the major export industries, and there is now a definite slowing down in the expansion of hire purchase credit, as a result of Callaghan's measures earlier this year.

The trend is there even before the effect of the Employment Tax, which comes into force in September.

The latest gold figures confirm the general picture: of a deep, serious crisis for the British ruling class and Labour government which lays the basis for an enormous sharpening of the working-class struggle against the employers and against the Labour government.

NORTH-EAST COAST By Newsletter Reporter | in Esher, Surrey.

It is also in favour of all manner of bonus schemes as opposed to a rise in the basic wage-this follows from its complete support for George Brown's 3} per cent 'norm'— and each month 'Electron', , the union magazine, urges electricians to work for a 'maximum increase in productivity'.

Workers should be quite clear what this increase in productivity, as called for by Wilson, Brown, the employers, the ETU, and many other union leaders, is all about.

Basically there are two forms:

Socialists seek such an increase under full workers' BILLno change control of industry with the means of production in the hann modern workings ass when modern methods machinery could be utilised to produce an abundance of goods and a shorter working week with all drudgery and speed done away with.

Speed up

Capitalists simply • want to chop the labour force and speed up those left on the job. To the employer this has only one meaningmore profit! This is why, in the past, trade unionists and socialists have fought against the stop-watch bonus schemes and 'productivity norms, because they knew they were fighting capitalist exploitation.

The real betrayal comes when the Labour and trade union leaders pretend that the capitalist form of increased productivity is a socialist measure.

Any doubts on this score can be dispelled by examining the situation in the coal industry, nationalized under the control of capitalist society.

There, productivity per miner has increased over the last few years by 30 per cent, while the labour force decreased by 20 per cent and the accident rate rose by 24 per cent.

In the case of the seamen, productivity increased by 50 per cent since 1950!

One leading time and motion man says psychology has to be used to get workers to accept work study.

The Bedaux system (a type of bonus scheme) which the employers attempted to introduce in 1931, and which was resisted by strikes, was a 'good system', according to this expert. Only 'bad psychology' prevented its general acceptance and adoption.

Friendly approach

Work study firms and the employers are determined not to make a similar mistake. That is why workers • are approached on the friendliest basis and told the time and motion man is a 'nice bloke just doing a job like the rest of us.

Using the same "psychology", some of the stop-watch men are recruited from electricians and claimed as 'workers' representatives' by the management.

But many workers consider them scabs who have sold out to the bosses, and see as their main representatives the elected shop steward.

The Wilson government and the employers, on the other hand, do not have much faith that attention to points of language will break down the workers' resistance to time and motion.

For them compulsion by law is needed in the form of the anti-union legislation of the Prices and Incomes Bill.

Workers must organise now against work study and to oppose the Bill on the day of its second reading-July 20. NEWSLETTER REPORTER

AT a special branch meeting of Sunderland seamen on Tuesday, the 42 members attending passed three resolutions.

The first expressed a vote of no confidence in the district secretary of the National Union of Seamen and demanded his immediate resignation.

The second demanded that the 12 top paid officials of the union should also resign.

The third demanded that the executive committee open negotiations immediately to press for the re-introduction of the Sundaysat-sea (lost under the agreement made on June 29) and the 40-hour week at sea (under the agreement this was reduced from 56 hours to 48 immediately, with a promise of a 40-hour week next year).

Strike action -The resolution also demanded immediate strike action to implement these improved conditions.

It was noted by the meeting that the Shipping Federation was inviting re-entries to the trade to sign on whether they had • had previous experience or not. This was a deplorable state of affairs, said the chairman, Joe Dodsworth. Registered at the G.P.O. as a newspaper Published by The Newsletter, S. W.4 186a Clapham High Street, London, Printed by Plough Press 180 Clapham High Street, London, S. WA He also noted that Frank Cousins had resigned from the government to take over control of his union I in order to oppose the prices and incomes policy.

This should have happened the previous week, he said (before the settlement of the seamen's strike), then the seamen would have had full support from the Transport and General Workers' Union.

Similar resolutions to those passed on Tuesday were given backing at a meeting in Sunderland on Thursday, June 30.

On the Friday morning (July 1), 2,000 north-east seamen met La South Shields room to hear assistant general secretary Bill Marshall and district secretary George Stanistreet explain • Serious T&: the executive's decision.

They were barracked, booed and slow-handclapped and had to sit down. It was only through Jim Slater, another executive committee member, that the meeting came to order.

Resolutions similar to those passed in Sunderland were passed and were sent on the last Wednesday's meeting of the executive committee in London.

YOUNG SOCIALISTS and seamen marched through the crowded streets of South Shields last Saturday (July 2) in protest against the government's incomes policy and Wilson's strike-breaking role in the seamen's dispute. iW U crisis praises the resignation of Cousins as a body blow against the Billthey would, because like him they do not intend to lead the real struggle. ( They want to compromise with the Wilson government and the fake 'lefts'.

The Newsletter says, don't trust Cousins. Insofar as he really fights give him support, but watch out for the sell-out.

Serious trade unionists must, together with the Socialist Labour League, select and train their own leadership in order to mobilise mass action to defeat the government's Prices and Incomes Bill.

A N all-out attack on • launched by ENV north-west London.

For some time, the stewards in this highly-organised factory claim, they have been faced by a refusal to negotiate over local issues.

It is understood that a special meeting was suddenly called last Monday, involving national union officials, including Sir William Carron, president of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, and some directors of the firm.

One of the latter is said to have been specially flown from the United States for the occasion.

The management presented a document declaring that the rights of stewards were to be curtailed immediately. Tea breaks were being cut, payment for waiting time reduced, and many privileges won since the long strike of 1949, cancelled. However these were only a prelude to the main changes, timed for the new year.

These would involve the virtual disappearance of the stewards' committee and its replacement with a joint committee of management and union representatives. In the meantime, some redundancy would take place.

It is believed that the real object of these moves is the abolition of piecework and its replacement by time rates.

Our reporter understands that these issues were so sharply posed that even Carron could not openly accept them.

A state of extreme tension remains in the factory, with minor disputes affecting clerical staff, as well as manual workers.

Mass meetings have been held at which unanimous votes to resist the moves have been recorded. A meeting on Tuesday declared for strike action if any measures were taken against the stewards' organisation, either by the management, or by the union leaders.

Although Carron is reported as saying he did not know why Monday's gathering had been called, some prior discussions with unions officials must have occured. It is also rumoured that some Labour MPs had been approached on the matter. trade unionism has been Engineering in Willesden, The attack at ENV an attempt to take engineering workers back to pre-war conditions. It is undoubtedly connected Carron: Said to be at meeting.

with the anti-union legislation being introduced by the Labour government.

It ist noteworthy that ENV stewards have been prominent in acting against the government's incomes policy.

Old methods of organisation are quite inadequate to answer these attacks.

A big political struggle is now opening up in the important engineering belt of this area of north-west London.

Overtime ban

against bus schedules After a breakdown in talks between men and management on Tuesday, 350 bus workers at the garage of the and District Motor Services decided to ban overtime and rest-day working against new Parted Scholday series from GAVE OUT LEAFLETSARRESTED A 40-year-old worker, Arcadio Gonzalez Alonso, was arrested in the Ponferrada, Leon, Northern Spain, recently for allegedly distributing Workers' Trade Union Alliance (ASO) leafiets calling on Asturian miners to demonstrate on May Day. He is in a Madrid jail awaiting trial. The authorities are asking 50,000 pesetas (about £345) bail before releasing him. "Means test' by Yorkshire tenants NORMANTON, Yorkshire, tenants were visiting their local council on Tuesday to protest against rent increases and a 'means test'.

The previous Tuesday they had marched on the town hall to protest at the council's actions, but the councillors had already left and could not see the many banners demanding fair rents.

Rent increases range from 5s Provincial men seek parity Big struggle by busmen soon?

A BiG struggle is expected provincial busmen to brothers, who have just been :

Work rule breaking down in Midlands ALONG WITH OTHER Midland 'Red' busmen, Leicester garages have been working to rule to win the five-day week. However, by Thursday (June 30), only Southgate Street garage was still fighting-one of the seven of 34 in the Midlands still doing so.

Despite a meeting called by a union official from Birmingham in which he called on the garage to remain working to continue when they saw the the men decided not to union had made no attempt to spread or strengthen their action in other garages.

Sensing this, the company has been attempting to pair off unscheduled crews.

Backed down

At first the union supported its members in refusing to pair up, but backed down when the company suspended several men.

Busmen in Leicester feel let down and frustrated now that the whole issue has been hived off into negotiations at national level. They have little confidence in their union's ability to win anything.

They must learn the lessons of the seamen's strike that an all-out fight must be waged not only against the employers, but against their union officials, and the government's Prices and Incomes Bill.

Certainly if their ocal officials are anything to go by. then they cannot expect much of a fight from their union leader against the Bill, despite his resignation from the government.

They must link up this struggle with their demands for a five-day week, no acceptance of the 35 per cent wage increase limit and no unscheduled crew pairing and join the protest against the second reading of the Bill on July 20. to fl and tenants are being asked to fill in a form divulging their earnings.

Last Sunday (July 3) 40 tenants met to discuss the next steps. They were addressed by Councillor Harris of the Ratepayers' Association, and Norman Harding of the Cross Gates (Leeds) Tenants' Association. within the next few weeks by gain parity with their London awarded a 6.5 per cent increase.

The Prices and Incomes Board, which recommended the London increase, said that the 170,000 provincial men-in municipal and company services--should receive between 3 and 3½ per cent more pay. They added the "bogey' proviso 'if productivity is stepped up'.

The busmen's union, the Transport and General Workers' Union, is to meet both sections of employers next Thurad and Friđay Truly 14 chut the company bus employers warned on Tuesday of this week that they might not be able to afford an increase. Municipal service bosses have not stated their position yet.

FURTHER ACTION?

When the union representatives met the private company employers the same day, the first date mentioned for any possible rise was next March.

Union officials may have to call a special meeting of the executive next month, if they get similar response from next week's meeting, to decide on further action.

Then busmen will be able to see if their union secretary's stand against the prices and incomes policy of the government really means anything.

The company employers' attitude was further stressed in Tuesday's annual report of British Electric Traction, which has interests in 10 provincial bus companies, given by the company's chairman, Mr. John Spencer Wilis.

He claimed that a wage increase last year and a sick-pay scheme and 40-hour week introduced in February and May this year amounted to a 14 per cent increase in operating costs.

But, at the same time, there are many busmen who have not received such 'benefits'-Midland Red workers have recently been operating an overtime ban support of a demand for a 40hour, five-day week.

CONDITIONS ATTACKED And busmen throughout the country know that for every gain they make, an attack is made on their conditions and livelihood through the implementation of one-man and standee buses, the speed-up drive and changing schedules.

The time is ripe for all rankmatter what their different hours and-file busmen and conditions, in preparation for a wholesale attack in their industry and on other workers, and for similar actions by their officials to those of the seamen's leaders in the recent strike.

protest One tenant said that Harold Wilson had promised on television that there would be no more 'means tests'. Many speakers spoke of widespread opposition to this and the proposed increase.

It was agreed to protest to the council, then hold an open-air mass meeting on the centre of an estate. There are 2,000 tenants on the estate, and already 1,800 signatures have been collected to present to the council.

POLICE were called in by a Communist Party official last Saturday to prevent a large contingent under the banners of the Socialist Labour League and Young Socialists taking part in a Vietnam demonstration, called publicly by the Communist Party.

Two decorated cars were turned away and two leading • Socialist Labour League members had their names taken by the police.

The demonstration finally moved off after being split into two sections by the police.

This shows what CP secretary John Gollan means when calling for 'left unity'.

Previous to the demonstration, the Leeds CP had censored Leeds Left Youth Forum leaflet National Liberation Front in ite struggle.

The YS banners on Saturday's march which really upset the CP were 'Victory to the Vietcong' and 'Arm the Vietcong'. As one CP supporter said: 'We want a nice peaceful democratic demonstration'.

It seems the CP now considers Bertrand Russell 'dangerous left' in calling for the defeat of the US in Vietnam.

Strongest group

Rather than associate with the demand for the victory of the Vietcong, they were prepared to turn a .70-strong SLI-YS contingent off the march.

This contingent the strongest single group on the march.

Perhaps the reason the 'Morning Star' reported a march of 130 not 170 is that they prefer to divide Trotskyists by two.

Little was seen of the 'huge' Young Communist League claimed by their paper 'Challenge' —it is no secret that their last demonstration, to be addressed by Pete Carter of "Challenge', was called off because only half a dozen people turned up.

Whilst the YS and SLL members chanted slogans vigorously, the Stalinists, pacifists CND'ers and Labour 'lefts' moved along in complete silence.

However, the YS made recruits running into double figures during the march.

The small state capitalist group on the march split into three small groups. Some were conspicuous by their absence, some appropriately marched along behind the Stalinists, pacifists and Labour 'lefts', while a few honourable exceptions took a principled stand with the YS in defence of the Vietnamese revolution.