The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 454

WILSON, Brown, Callaghan and the Labour leaders have announced their real programme: the working class, which returned them to Westminster, must be made to pay for the economic crisis.

Unemployment and the means test will return, deliberately encouraged by the Labour government. In this way Wilson hopes to convince international big business that Britain can be kept safe for capitalism, the pound can remain as one of the supports of the rickets world financial system, and the British Empire will stay part of the military and political system of imperialism.

To Wilson and his collaborators in the Cabinet, every one of these things is sacred, and must be preserved at the expense of the working people. To save the pound' millions of people are to condemned to poverty.

Gone is all the talk of anew plan, productivity and prosperity all. This was the cover behind which Wilson and TUC general secretary George Woodcock set out to tie the trade unions to the state in the Prices and Incomes Bill. They knew their plans could not be realised unless they took steps to weaken the organised strength of the working class.

The capitalists and the rightwing Labour leaders knew that their main defence against the workers would be the bureaucracy of the trade unions, which could be relied uDon to hold back, confuse and divide the working class.

Leadership built

But the employing class policies it a socialist pose these socialist leadership developed to give direction and unity to the struggles of working class.

Everywhere, in wages fights, in rent struggles, in the battle working-class youth in the Young Socialists for socialist policies, and in the campaign against the anti-trade union legislation, workers have fought and will fight against the reactionary policies of the government.

The bloody imperialist war in Vietnam is arousing more and more opposition. The slogans of the Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists-'Victory to the National Liberation Front, 'Arm the National Liberation Front'-are becoming the dominant slogans in the fight.

Behind these slogans of international class solidarity, a new revolutionary fighting force is being built, a force which reiects the reformist and class-collaborationist calls for 'peace' and 'conferences' with the imperialists. Stalinists, pacifists and reformists will be defeated and left behind by this movement of the working class.

Lines laid down

Similarly on the domestic issues: here the seamen's strike laid down the lines for the struggles of today and tomorrow.

In the end the right-wing on the executive of the National Union of Seamen betrayed the strike, and men returned without the 40-hour week, saddled with 'efficiency' agreements which worsened conditions.

But above all the seamen's will to night, and their expressed determination to change the leadership in order to fight successfully next time, changed the relationship of forces in the labour movement.

Trade union leaders like Sir William Carron of the AEU and Leslie Cannon of the ETU tried to use the seamen's strike to combine with Wilson in a massive witch-hunt to clear out the militants from their unions.

Seamen fought it out not only with the shipowners but also with the Labour government. Only the right-wing leadership called off the fight.

Continued page 4, column In doing this, there is, in fact, no difference between the government of Harold Wilson and the Opposition of Mr.

Edward Heath. If, in fact, they participated in a National government today, the situation could not be much worse.

crisis of capitalism. This is not an economic crisis solely related to British capitalism. It is a world The dollar, today, is just → the pound.

There is an international shortage of money and bank 'ates have risen in one capialist country after another We are just on the verge of another 1931, but with a big difference.

We are on the unes hold of a catastrophe far the history of capitalism.

The harsh measures introduced by Wilson on Wednesday, July 20, are mere chicken-feed so far as this desperate economic situation is concerned.

They cannot resolve any problem. All they will do is to create:

At least three-quarters of a million unemployed by Christmas A high cost of living The bankruptcy of thousands of small business people, and A legal wage freeze backed up by the anti-trade union legislation of the Prices and Incomes Bill. inued page 4, column 6→ Greek army attacks peasants Abandoned tractors, road - builders, stones, spent shell cases and bricks litter the streets of Salonika (left) following a final tear-gas bombardment of demonstrating peasants in the city. Many arrests were made (right).

Hundreds of peasants, who had been joined by workers and students from the city, were dispersed after a day of clashes with; first the police and then the army -who were ordered 'Shoot to Kill'.

The peasants were protesting at the price of wheat.

Full story page 3

Ho Chi Minh

answers the pacifists By JOHN CRAWFORD 6 The war may last another five, 10, 20 or more years; Hanoi, Haiphong and other cities may be destroyed, but the Vietnamese people will not be intimidated. 9 SO declared Ho Chi Minh, President North Vietnam, last Sunday. On the 12th anniversary of his government in Hanoi, he was answering not only the American imperialists, now sending still bigger forces to batter Vietnam into submission, but all those in the labour movement who call for "peace in Vietnam'.

'Let the US end its war of aggression in Vietnam, withdraw from this country all US and satellite troops, and peace will return here ai once, he said.

"The • Vietnamese people cherish peace, genuine peace, peace in independence and freedom, not sham peace, an "American peace".

people will sto rebuild our country. When comest and endow it with bigger and more beautiful constructions' While US imperialism steps up its offensive against the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam and the bombing of targets in the North, the Wilson government continues to declare its solidarity C with the imperialist murderers.

But merely to protest against Wilson's backing for US policy, to evade the real questions. Vietpresent struggle in South nam arose directly and inevitably from the 1954 Geneva "peace' agreements. Russell a These chopped the country in half just when the French forces Kosygin were being thrown out after their defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The

EIGHT MEMBERS of the (Trotskyist) of Mexico, which belongs to the Posadas grouping, are soon to be tried for 'conspiring to overthrow the government of Mexico'. They were all arrested following a 46-day strike by students, and are now in jail.

The eight are: Adolfo Gilly, a revolutionary journalist, Oscar Fernandez, Teresa Confeta Fernandez, Gilardo Ilas Carranza, Ramon and Marta Elena Vargas Salguero, Francisco Zapata and Sergio Garces Estrada.

The arrests came shortly after an attack on Gilly by the Cuban Stalinist, Blas Roca. He was also attacked by Castro at the end of the Tri-continental Conference From Mexico say that attempts have been made to force statements from the accused through beatings and ill treatment. Gilly himself was beaten for three days and ducked in a tank of water in attempts to make him admit being a Trotskyist party member. This failed.

The authorities then threatened to send him over the border into Guatemala, knowing that he would probably be shot there because of his support for the November 13 revolutionary movement.

All eight people have been charged with holding meetings. using pseudonyms, advocating violence to overthrow the government and taking part in student and labour struggles— none of these are offences in the Mexican penal code, and their are no laws preventing the formation of Communist or Trotskyist organisations or membership of nafional international organisations. Nor can the eight be charged with supporting the workers' and peasants' actions in Guatemala.

But it is the strength of the movement in Guatemala that has led, through pressure from the United States, to repressions in other Latin American countries.

This action is aided and spurred on by the attacks of Castro and the Stalinist Blas Roca-it was the Stalinists who have betrayed Guatemalan guerrillas and helped, by passing information, to have Francisco Amado, the November 13 movement leader, arrested and shot.

The British labour and trade union movement must demand the immediate release of the eight Mexicans. Resolutions and telegrams should be sent to the Mexican Embassy, 48 Grosvenor Square, London, S.W.1, or directly to the head of the Mexican government, Diaz Orduz, Palacia De Gobierno, Mexico DF. or to the judge trying the eight. Juez Primero de Distrito en Materia Penal, Eduardo Ferrer McGregor, Bucareli 24, Mexico DF.

STATEMENT BY THE POLITICAL COMMITTEE OF STATEMENT BY THE POLITICAL COMMITTEE OF THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE~ THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE THE Labour government of Harold Wilson has launched the most vicious attack against wages and working conditions. Nothing like it has taken place since 1931. They have taken over lock, stock and barrel, the method of Tory Selwyn Lloyd in 1961 and applied it with a vengeance.

NOTICE

This week's issue of The before oup is the last annual holidays. There will be no paper for the weeks ending July 30 and August 6. The next issue will be published on August 13. THIS WEEK Page 2: WHITHER HAN Page 3: SPAIN 1936-1966 Page 4: ENV FACTORY STOPS WORK

• ONDON and Midland Young * Socialists lobbied MPs on Wednesday on the Prices and Incomes Bill and the budget measures announced by Wilson the same day.

Later a large and successful meeting was held in the Caxton Hall where over 400 heard Gerry Healy, national secretary of the Socialist Labour League, and Reg Perry, a Merseyside building worker, speak on the present crisis.

In the lobby, the youth, along with trade unionists and students met about five MPs. Many MPs, such as Hugh Jenkins of Putney, and other reputedly 'left' MPs, left other lobbyists standing for over an hour and a half, and then did not come out.

Marcus Lipton (Brixton) was the first MP to come out into the lobby. He said there was need to worry about the Prices and Incomes Bill; the matter should be left to the 'left wing' in parliament.

As far as the budget was concerned he declared that it could not be helped. Britain was in a very serious situation financially, but the budget did propose to take money off the employers as well.

When asked if he thought it was' true that the international bankers dictated the Labour government's policy he said a lot was owing to these bankers and therefore the government's policy had to be planned accordingly.

A Nottingham MP, Perry, told lobbyists that there had been a movement of forces since the declaration of the terms of the budget. Wilson's policies were very damaging, to the labour movement at the present time, but MPs who were in opposition had to work within the rules of the House.

Asked whether he would vote against the Prices and Incomes Bill he said he probably would, but he went on to say that Britain still had to have a planned economy—he did not say who it should be planned by.

Price of Rugby said he was going to support the Prices and Incomes Bill despite the fact that before the election at a meeting in front of Bristol Siddeley's factory he had said that he would vote against it. ~ David Winnick (Croydon) also said he was going to vote for the Prices and Incomes Bill.

Tom Swaine, a Derbyshire National Union of Mineworkers' MP said he would vote against the Prices and Incomes Bill in the committee stage if he could get on to the committee.

SEVERAL, statements have been issued by Bertrand from his Peace Foundation this week as the States stepped up its aggression in Vietnam, including one calling on the Soviet Union to send aircraft to Vietnam.

Ho Chi Minh's statement about the determination of the North Vietnamese people to fight no matter how long the war lasts 'is an appeal to the conscience of mankind, says Russell in a statement issued last Sunday.

He adds that Senator Richard Russell's • threat "to turn North Vietnam into a desert if the pilots captured after dropping napalm on cities and hospitals are tried 'is a brutal threat in the direct tradition of Hitler' Threat "The threat of the U.S., which augurs the destruction Red River dykes, the invasion of the North and even the use of nuclear weapons, must be taken by every human being as a threat to his or her survival. Mass action opposing and obstructing the United States military and political apparatus is the duty of us all,' it concludes.

In a press statement issued on Wednesday, Russell reminds us that precisely 12 years ago the U.S. representatives to the Geneva Conference pledged that U.S. government would not use threats of force to disturb the agreements.

The statement says that even though the U.S. has not dared to declare war on the Vietnamese people, it is carrying out war crimes; its pilots and policymakers are criminals in the sense laid down at Nuremburg and set out in the Geneva convention.

"The Vietnamese,' it adds, 'are fully within their rights to try the pilots who torment them.

A further statement issued on Wednesday announced that Russell had sent a telegram to Soviet Premier Kosygin asking him to use the Soviet air force to 'defend the Vietnamese over Vietnamese territory.

Americans then stepped in and took over the running of South Vietnam.

CP ARGUMENT Russell Do those for whom "peace' is United the only question think that the Vietnamese workers and peasants should have accepted this situation? Do they now advise them to allow imperialism to continue dominating South-East Asia?

The argument of the Communist - Party and its "left' The Vietnam Solidarity Cam- Labour allies leads to this conclupaign has called a meeting for sion. In Trafalgar Square last August 6 at the Mahatma Sunday, James Dickens, MP, Gandhi Hall, Fitzroy Square, said:

London, W.l. Speakers have If Britain dissociated itself yet to be arranged. A torch- from American policy it would light procession may • be held strengthen the position later to the U.S. Embassy. Thant at UN and would assist Harold Wilson in Moscow nina detente with the Soviet On the same day, the anniver- Wilson's "instant diplomacy' sary of the Geneva Agreements, trip to Moscow was, like his prePresident Nguyen Huu Tho of vious "peace missions', part of had appealed to Russell in a the National Liberation Front imperialism's efforts to pressurise the Vietnamese workers to cable and offered the support of surrender. the Vietnamese people in the He hopes to recruit the Russian presentation of exhaustive evid- leaders to help in this task. ence before the War Crimes limited While the Russians give only Tribunal under urgent preparation. namese liberation struggle at this The demand for such a stage, Wilson is in no position tribunal has come from many to bargain with them. personalities throughout the The Stalinists, proudly marchworld. But, the statement adds, ing last Sunday with Liberals military defence cannot be tor- and pacifists, tell us that we must gotten. have a negotiated settlement in Vietnam, to avoid the complete Terrorise obliteration of the country and the eruption of world war.

The terrible reality is that Behind such talk lies their Johnson's elections are a danger completely anti-Marxist view of to mankind, the statement says. imperialism. They pretend that *He will create a national emer- somehow the imnerialists can be gency in order to terrorise persuaded to change their minds. Americans into supporting his Appeals from Liberals. parsons policies of full-scale war by and professors are supposed to stages, while masking his plans promise with the workers in two make them see reason and comwith cynical talk of peace.' In his appeal to Soviet Premier But imperialism has, Kosygin, Russell says that 'world world wars—the second of whicl explosions~ peace can be served not by allowshown that it will destrov maning Johnson a free hand, but by kind rather than give up its hold in their just case—a cause which unstinting help to the Vietnamese on this planet.

There is a danger of nuclear is the same as that of all opweapons being used in Vietnam pressed and exploited people, a and the possibility of a world cause which is inextricably linked conflict developing todav. This for only the defeat of Johnson's to our hopes of a secure peace, arises precisely because imperialpolicies will give the American ism is a social svstem in mortal people the means of replacing crisis. those who now rule them'. Continued

by Castro and Blas Roca against Trotskyism and, in particular, against The Newsletter, reveal the great uncertainty and fear of both world Stalinism and the colonial capitalists about the growth and influence of Trotskyism.

In previous articles we have pointed out the class DaSs of These attacks which are aimed against any extension of the socialist revolution into the semi-colonial world and against any independent bid TO T power by the working class.

That Stalinism -the counterrevolutionary agency of world imperiansmn - should DIact itself at the service of Castro is no surprise to us.

It is not an from slalt ot it:

Sts leadershi?

Tales ne hat tho jade some people pimps_ Batista Is tha Roca form is a decidedly embarassing Apologist 5 Am Socialist Party Hansen most admirers apologists Castro's break rebellion of 19980 ing at the is of a new an an and politi ans effect ine ends se sult was cedarithe the theol of the readership socialbeing ocialist Westery Our Dangerous as Whoser necessary unspecified) hey can alway in une process or In Cuban events were supposea to tions without The replied in the followof Lenin an

MICHAEL

"The revolutionary Marxist movement correctly (!) stresses the importance of building a revolutionary-socialist party. Healy converts the principle into an absolute, excluding any variation which reality may present us with.' Having made an exception of Cuba and having further made this exception into a general principle of social development, Hansen had only to sit back and wait for history's confirmation— and the extinction of the 'Healyite doctrinaires and sectarians' 'Reward' Alas for Hansen! Neither of these things happened. Instead, Hansen received his reward in the form of a slanderous and the wattatul Castro and Roba attack on Trotskyism History, thanks to Castro and Roca, "theory' and the 'sectarian- has given the lie to Hanism' the Socialist Labour League has received powerful support. This is indubitable.

Hansen thought he

standing on a rock of theoretical ormness, he must now admit that in fact, it was nothing more than a dunghill of confusion.

An admission of fallibility from Hansen however would diately pose a series of other questions, such as the Reunification Congress of 1963 the split with the International Committee, the expulsion Wolforth group from the SWP and so on.

In fact, everything will be posed for discussion inside the Unified Secretariat and Hansen knows it.

So rather than acknowledge the correctness of the Socialist Labour League's attitude, Hansen in his reply to Roca is forced by the logic of his argument to concede positions to Roca by attacking the SLL. The retreat is developing into a rout.

Hansen, whether he likes it or not, must pay the full price of his uncritical acceptance of Castroism and rejection of Marxism.

In his reply 'Cuba: Which Road? Stalinism or Trotskyism' (published in the International Socialist Review, Summer 1966), Hansen tries hard to pose as the spokesman of authentic Trotskyism and endeavours to dismiss the criticisms of The Newsretter as being non-Marxist and rion-Trotskyist.

THe does his best to assure Blas that he stands closer to (and Roca) than the driadful Healyites and that Roca's attack is really the result of a misunderstanding.

If his reply is equivocal and undignified it is not because of any personal failing. No. It is the very logic of his political standpoint that makes Hansen do all this.

Hansen is more angered than even Roca is by the arguments of The Newsletter on Cuba. He calls them 'outrageous'. "The position of The Newsletter on the Cuban revolution is in such utter contradiction to the reality that the Healy group stands in absolute isolation. Its position on Cuba doesn't play the dirty game of imperialism as Blas Roca maintains, it only plays into the hands of Blas Roca.

We shall see about that. The Newsletter's attitude is as consistent as it is public. In short, we have always and everywhere refused to repose political conhdence in either Castro or the Cuban Stalinists.

Defend rights We fight under all conditions for the construction of a Trotskyist party in Cuba, and we defend the right of other leftwing groups such as the Posadas group to exist and function treely. Why and how does that play into the hands of Blas Roca, comrade Hansen?

Now let us see where Hansen really stands.

In 1963, Hansen had this to say about Cuba:

'The Cuban revolution was marked by the predominance of action over conscious revolutionary theory; but in its course, as was inevitable (sic), consciousness began asserting its rights and the Cubans themselves turned increasingly to the revolutionary classics in search of the meaning of what they had accomplished.

'This road leads in the final analysis to Trotskyism, which contains the quintessence of revolutionary socialist theory. In moving in this direction, the Cubans have blazed a trail for millions of youth around the globe.' (Our emphasis.)

Can Hansen now explain how his boss-eyed predictions of 1963 turned into the sombre reality of 1966? How does he square this prognosis with the disappearance of Guevara, the trial of Cubela, the persecution of the Posadas group and disarming of the militia, not to mention the slandering of Trotskyism? Did they perhaps read the wrong classics?

Of course not! In fact it is Hansen who has strengthened Roca and the Stalinists by his deliberate campaign of revisionist confusion. Once an apologist, always an apologist!

Let us remember, it was the same Hansen who tried, vainly, to cover up the shameful telegram of condolence from the SWP to Jacqueline Kennedy on the grounds that such actions would convince the American 'public' that Marxism and terrorism were separate and mutually exclusive things.

So now Hansen, after the nauseating Vyshinsky-style attack of Castro, thanks Castro for redeeming socialism:

'The rehabilitation of the word "socialism" and tne programme of socialism will likewise be listed in history to the credit of the Cuban Revolution....

Not only does Hansen still remain an uncritical admirer of Castro, he refuses to see any degeneration or deformation of the Cuban state and party.

Writing about the suppression of the Posadas group in Cuba (a fact he tried to ignore and belittle at the time) Hansen now remarks:

'The overhead cost of suppressing the group was rather high, for it gave substance to the false (our emphasis) charge that the Cuban revolution is going the way of the Russian Revolution, i.e., it is becoming Stalinised.' Committed Readers of the International Socialist Review' must surely be excused if they wonder why, in the face of all this evidence, Hansen wants to protest at all!

As we showed earlier, Hansen has committed himself to the revisionist idea that Cuba is a workers' state' and a very good one too. Roca's attack raises a very legitimate doubt about the premises of that argument. So once more Hansen attacks-not Roca-but The Newsletter.

The Newsletter, he alleges, is too pre-occupied with such formalities as soviets, workers' councils, etc.:

'This is quite a condemnation of their theoretical and political capacities and signifies their doom as a viable movement.' (The fact that Lenin took time out to write two major works on the question of soviets does not strike Hansen as being at all strange!)

Having pronounced judgement for the 25th time, he concludes grandiloquently:

Island Marxists "Their (the SLL's) insistence on converting democratic norms into criteria marks them as sectarians....' That is not all, however: 'The entire colonial world remains largely a closed book to them. They are not really interested in it.' You might ask why? Well, it seems, according to the great historical materialist, Hansen, that it all arises because 'they are quite content to vegetate in their placid little island where not even the cops carry guns.' Presumably, if the British Marxists had lived in a different type of island, like Cuba, or in a whacking big continent like the USA, where cops tote guns, they would be less insular, less provincial and certainly more internationalist. Voila!

So now we know what's wrong with British socialism. Thank you Joseph Hansen! Thank you very much!

Being a bodyguard of Trotsky might not have made Hansen into a Marxist, but it certainly taught him to cover his retreat against back shooters.

'Cuba does not yet have a soviet form of government. And, this, too, is a grave weakness, he comments. We ask why are there no soviets? Hansen answers: The Blockade and armed aggression mounted by imperialism cut across this tendency....

A brilliant apology, very much in the tradition of Squealer in 'Animal Farm' explaining the degeneration of pig rule.

Whichever way we look at Hansen's supposition thoroughly worthless, like many of his arguments.

Highest form Soviet rule in the USSR under Lenin reached its highest form precisely when the imperialdanger was gravest. Every socialist revolution becomes socialist precisely because it threatens the foundations of imperialism and thereby invites imperialist intervention.

As an example of the wilting democracy in Cuba, Hansen cites the new Communist Party. In forming this party, states Hansen, Cuban leaders have 'registered real progress'. Some rogress!

This august body has not held a single conference since it was formed. Its leadership was never elected, its programme was never voted upon, and its constitution is upheld by the secret police, and nobody else.

In fact it has all the vices of the old Communist Party, without any of its virtues. Hansen, in any case, has been around the Trotskyist movement long enough to know that one party does not constitute democracy no more than one swallow tokens Spring.

Defence

It is hardly strange then that Hansen in his extreme discomfort strikes out blindly at the Socialist Labour League. In 1 fact he has to, because his article is not so much a reply to Roca as a cautious defence of Castro.

Hansen tries to convey the impression of Castro as a crazy mixed-up Marxist who is being hoodwinked by the crafty, scheming Roca, the grey eminence of Cuba.

In a revealing passage, Hansen comments:

'But Blas Roca's reference to Posadas here is only part of the smokescreen under which he advances a line in opposition to the line followed by Fidel Castro up to now of revolutionary struggle . . . ' and again:

'Never has the Trotskyist programme had such reality as today. This is precisely what the seeking to block.' Blas Rocas fear and are Hansen knows that the despicable pogrom-like attack against the Guatemalan revolutionaries was begun, not by Roca, but by Castro. Hansen also knows that it was Castro, not Roca, who purged Guevara and interfered in the trial of Cubela.

Yet the main burden of his criticism is not against Castro, but Roca.

The implicit defence of Castro is made very explicit when Hansen comes to the burning question of socialist demands in the revolution. While criticising Roca's two-stage conception of the revolution in the backward countries, Hansen explicitly defends Castro's refusal to raise socialist demands in the early period of the Cuban rebellion.

I do not deny that in 1959 a "proclamation of socialism" in Cuba would have been widely tion of socialism'; a "proclama- misunderstood been misunderstood as a proclamation of Stalinism.

'It was correct of Castro to avoid that misunderstanding' (Our emphasis.)

Conceal aims Has Hansen considered the implications of this statement? If this is true in relation to Cuba it must be true in relation to all underdeveloped countries.

What then were the Trotskyists in these countries to do? According to Hansen, they should have concealed their socialist aims until after the conquest of power.

This is a thoroughly opportun-

On July 10, the Greek peasantry wrote yet another page of bloody struggle against the opposis: af the state and the Agrarian Bank of Greece, which is reducing the countryside to starvation. This bloody Sunday on the Macedonian plain proved once again that Greek capital and its government can no longer count on anything but the brute force of T gical backwardness of HE complete technoloagrarian " production in Greece and the unbearable exploitation of the peasant masses have developed the peasani movement into a volcano ready to erupt at any moment; each dispute between the capitalist state and the farmers is bound to lead to violent clashes.

The demand of the July 10 demonstration was for three drachmas a kilogram (approximately 9d) as a minimum guaranteed price for wheat as opposed to 2.20 drachmas (approximately 6zd) set by the government. This difference is of such great significance to both sides that neither will retreat from their positions.

Behind this lies this fact: The 1964-65 wheat production greatly surpassed the required volume of wheat stocks. The surplus and the inflationary pressures on the economy made the state hold an unyielding position towards the wheat producers.

On the other hand, this year's decreased production gives a meaning of life or death to the price of wheat for the peasants.

SECOND PHASE

The violent July 10 clash was inevitable and further clashes are bound to spread, involving even greater numbers of peasants and workers. So, the second phase of the crisis, which erupted in July los is beginning to develop.

On the morning of Sunday, July 10, huge numbers of tractors, towing great trailers full of peasants armed with black flags and banners in Greek and English, moved on Salonika, the northern capital, from all the surrounding villages.

Five miles from the city, police forced the convoy to halt, having blocked the road with a heavy road-building machine. They then charged with tear gas and truncheons.

Demonstrators, determined to get through, hit back with rocks and sticks, captured the roadbuilder . and beat back the police.

When they found another roadbuilder blocking a bridge further down the road, they still refused to disperse, as ordered by AN EYE-WITNESS REPORT guns for its survival.

the police, and a fierce battle of fists, truncheons and stones broke out.

At that moment a truckload of police armed with automatic rifles arrived. They started firing on the unarmed crowd, forcing the peasants back.

The clashes at the Dendropotamus bridge went on all morning, the peasants finally surroundcity and bringing all traffic to a standstill.

At 1.30 they stopped a Salonika-bound train and were attempting to overturn it when the police attacked again, this time with rifles and bren-guns. They mowed peasant youths to the ground, but failed to disperse the demonstrators.

Around 2 p.m., peasants from Kilkis riding 60 tractors managed to break through the police lines and triumphantly entered the city, immediately heading for the east end.

POLICE SCATTERED There, in the working-class district of Phoenix, a large force of peasants had been isolated by the police.

Attacked from the rear by 60 tractors, from the front by the rest, and from above by a shower of flower pots and bricks from workers' flats, the police scattered.

Moving scenes followed with peasants embracing each other. With triumphant shouts they moved towards the city centre, cheered by workers.

In the meantime another group had broken through from the west of the city and arrived at Phoenix, joining up with the rest to form a large convoy through the main streets of Salonika.

Workers and students lined the pavements chanting 'We stand by you' Unable to stem the mighty tide, the police withdrew and the army was called in.

Five heavy tanks (M.47's) blocked the road and faced the tractor convoy menacingly. Their awe-inspiring sight held the crowd momentarily.

But history once more repeated itself and the instinct of the masses proved correct.

Workers and peasants roared out the slogan of the moment: "The soldiers with the people!' A few peasants ran forward. The troops did not shoot. They hesitated, then smiled!

Workers and peasants rushed embrace the soldiers, many with tears in their eyes, and the tanks moved aside to let the peasants' convoy through.

With the two captured roadPolice and ers, pe sents receded into forces efosed to to in. building machines in the lead, the peasants moved on, perched on tractors and on foot, while workers cheered them from the pavements.

Suddenly, scores of police reappeared, showering tear-gas grenades on to the demonstration.

One young peasant attempted to drive a road-builder into the police barricades. He was hit in the chest by a grenade, brutally hauled off the machine and then dragged along the ground to a police van.

The merciless tear-gas bombardment forced the peasants to scatter, abandoning 150 tractors in the Vardari district. Many others were abandoned in other parts of Salonika.

Throughout Salonika, clashes continued till evening. Weary and exhausted peasants slowly drifted away and workers returned to their districts.

Altogether 150 arrests were made-40 working men, seven women, three students and one tourist. The rest were peasants.

'TYPHOON'

One hundred and twenty were wounded and in hospital-15 had bullet wounds and four were gravely injured by machinegun fire. Many more stayed away from hospitals, fearing arrest.

The streets appeared as if they had been hit by typhoon. Rocks, sticks, police hats, peasants' caps and spent shells littered them. Police roamed the streets in armoured . cars while others guarded key points of the city with fixed bayonets.

City people stayed away from the streets and there was complete calm—'law and order' had been imposed.

.. Permission for the demonstration was given only after the firm pledge of the leaders that all adequate measures to preserve order and avoid obstruction of traffic would be taken... • Around noon the director of the Agricultural Co-operative, Afentakis, visited me and declared that the Association had lost control of the march to the their relations from the countryside.

communists' — Secretary for Northern Greece, Manolopoulos.

I am sorry that the peasants fell victims of the communists who exploited their sacred rights, and those responsible for this are the leaders of the Association, who deserted their peasants.'—Minister of Agriculture, Vamagides.

'LEADERS' RAN

In fact, as soon as the first clashes broke out, the bourgeois-democratic and fake-left leaders ran for their lives. They „reappeared in a series of conferences with ministers and police for the 'restoration of order'. On July 10, the peasant leadership was tested and was wholly reiected by the peasants.

The Minister for Public Order, Apostolakos, tried to explain away the clashes as a result of the intervention of 'anarchist elements', • and declared his intention to present a Bill to outlaw all left-wing youth organisations within a week.

So, the government that carried out last year's July coup moves on in the execution of its anti-working-class plans. The banning of the youth organisations is part of the plan castrating the anti-capitalist struggle and for heaping the economic crisis on to the backs of the toilers.

Step by step the dictatorship advances. "Democrats' and Stalinists have already capitulated unconditionally, and the struggle of the masses, spurred on by a spontaneous dynamism, passes over the heads of the corrupt leadership.

But in order to bring results, such spontaneous action must be disciplined and led by the revolutionary vanguard of the working class. The decisiveness of the struggle will be measured only by the degree of success of the Trotskyist intervention.

Thus the victory of the oppressed in the approaching social collision will, in the last analysis, depend on the victory of Trotskyism over Stalinism. ist argument which will fool nobody, least of all the peasantry.

Moreover, it contains two fallacies, both of which are equally pernicious.

Castro did not advance "socialist' demands in 1959 because he had the tacit support of US imperialism. In fact, he was received in i New York by the State Department. It was only when he antagonised US imperialism that he was forced to rely on the masses by indulging in socialist demagogy.

When it suits his purpose, he will drop the socialist mask and adopt another one like Nehru did, or like Nasser.

Secondly, it is nonsense to suggest -as Hansen does that people cally hostile coustainism intrinsically hostile to and are opposed to socialism. The fact is that millions of people are still attracted to Stalinist parties because they identify, ( mistakenly, Stalinism with the October Revolution.

Therefore, a declaration of socialist aims and programme, far from alienating the working class help to expose peasantry Stalinism and pre- would, in fact, pare the way for the conquest of power.

This does not mean that the party ignores democratic demands, but only that it combines these demands in the programme of the socialist revolution.

Hansen, as usual, tries to wriggle out from beneath all this with the reservation that since the Cuban rebellion there is no need for anybody to conceal his socialist aims.

'"Socialism" Cuban style is attractive appear more and bound to more In response we ask Why should it?' Who wants to emulate Cuba after the Tri-Continental Conference? Does any Trotskyist in Latin America desire a state system which enables the Stalinists to repress the Trotskyists and slander other left-wing anti-Stalinists?

Isn't this what happened in Spain in 1936 and 1937?

Hansen makes great play on the fact that the position of the Socialist Labour League on Cuba was thoroughly debated and decisively rejected by the majority of the Trotskyist movement:

Critical If this is so, how does Hansen explain that the majority of Latin American delegates at the Eighth Congress of the Pabloite movement in 1965 were bitterly critical of Castroism-a viewpoint that was not shared, apparently, by Hansen and Germain?

When Hansen talks of democratic centralism and debate in the Unified Secretariat, he lies. of course. The Eighth Congress of his movement is proof of this.

In the discussion on Ceylon at the Congress, it transpired that the United Secretariat had suppressed a vital document on the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), submitted by the Ceylon section for discussion by the delegates.

To add insult to injury, Hansen and Germain rigged the conference so effectively that only one and a half hours were available to discuss the entire experience of the uss! split, the coalition and the perspectives of the LSSP (Revolutionary)! The protests of the Ceylon delegate who represents the largest section of the United Secretariat, of course were ignored.

Hansen cannot reply to any of this. His reply to Roca reveals him as a devout admirer and worshipper of the accomplished fact. . His method of answering the criticisms of The Newsletter is not that of a Marxist, but of a sterile radical. It is a monument to the bankruptcy of revisionism.

July 2

N black ghetto on EGRO workers in the Chicago's west side last week stormed on to the streets in another massive and violent protest against their oppression. For three days and nights they overturned the whole system of 'law and order' which protects capitalist property in this, one of the greatest industrial centres in the world.

The burning and shooting, the mass opposition to the police and the National Guard, was the answer of hundreds of thousands of these super-exploited workers against the system which enslaves them.

Accumulated anger

Policemen, parsons, social workers and leaders of the civil rights movement were all pushed aside by this elemental protest, symbol of the fighting capacity and historically accumulated anger of the Negro workers, which will assert itself over all these agents of a comPromise with the oppressors.

Like the unprecedented riots in the Watts area of Los Angeles last year and the accompanying events in Chicago at that time, these renewed outbreaks of open working-class revolt produced utter bewilderment among spokesmen of the press and 'democratic' public opinion. The most common explanation seemed to be that last Thursday the temperature in Chicago went up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit! In the nineteenth century there were bourgeois economists who explained the recurrence of economic slumps by the appearance of spots on the sun!

The Negro worker, deprived of rights to jobs, to education and to decent housing, is rebelling against an international imperialist system which is threatening the whole future existence of humanity in order to preserve its vested interests.

In Britain, "saving the pound (and the dollar)' requires a Labour government to create unemployment and poverty.

In Vietnam, preserving 'democracy' of the capitalist pattern requires the burning by napalm of hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants, with support for the bütcher Johnson by this same Labour government.

The west side ghetto was quiet again by the weekend for one reason only, because 4,000 National Guardsmen (territorials) patrolled the streets in jeeps and armoured cars, This was the democracy being defended by 280,000 US troops at the same time in Vietnam.

The blood spilt in the streets of Chicago last week was spilt in the same cause, against the same enemy, as the blood spilt in the streets of Hanoi and Haiphong in the US bombing raids. On the same day the Chicago police ran out of ammunition, US commanders in Vietnam were calling for bigger supplies of bombs and munitions.

America contains the highest conquests of science and productive technique, able under common ownership and planning to secure the prosperity of human race. But this wealth was accumulated on the backs of the working class, and particularly of the oppressed Negroes.

These very developments in automation and modern physics make millions of workers all over the world 'surplus to requirements' as company statements put it. Every major capitalist country, far from tackling this question, is implementing new laws to prevent the organised working class from improving its share in the product of labour. There are no reform solutions to this problem, as British workers are having to learn under Wilson's government.

Road to freedom

The Negroes in the US are learning the same lesson. It is their position as the most underprivileged section of the working class which condemns them to the inhuman degradations imposed on them by 'official American society. The road to freedom can only be through the struggle to overthrow the capitalist system, fighting alongside the organised workers everywhere, whatever their 'colour'.

Chicago last week was not a *race riot'. It was the face of the coming American revolution. Those who turn away from it and concern themgelves only with middle-class protest movements on this or that aspect of ruling class policy will be in danger of finding themselves on the wrong side of the barricades • ... literally!

One Jesuit priest who again Newsletter Correspondent to preach moderation to the Chicago Negroes came back hotfoot to his apartment under a ran of stones and bottles. The non-conformist Gregory did not do any better, and the press could only report that 'he was not actually assaulted'. As for Martin Luther King, while one or two British journalists interviewed him in his Chicago flat, there is little evidence that he actually ventured on to the streets. He no doubt remembers the reception he got in Los Angeles last year, after his pious endorsement of the need for the Federal authorities to re-establish law and order'.

The great wealth accumulated in the advanced centres of capitalist industry are no guarantee of peaceful paths to human progress. On the contrary, it is here that we find concentrated together all the elements of the future socialist society and the filth and oppression dredged up by capitalism from the past of class society.

With the preparation of a revolutionary leadership by the international working class, the undying fighting spirit of the Vietnamese and all other oppressed nationalities will be joined by the organised workers of the USA, Britain and the advanced countries and the workers struggling against the bureaucracy of the USSR and Eastern Europe, in the socialist revolution. The Chicago struggles are a lighting flash of that coming storm. break decisively with the Popular Front. Thus the workers were left leaderless.

This was the time of the Moscow Trials and the great slander campaign that went with them. The Stalinists imported the GPU, Stalin's secret police, to murder anyone who attempted to develop revolutionary leadership. Both the POUM (denounced as a "Trotskyite-fascist conspiracy') and the anarchists were destroyed in this way.

Members of the British ILP were among those who died in Stalin's Spanish torture chambers. And let us remember that members of the British Communist Party helped to organise these actions.

Alliances

In Spain, Stalinism became the vital agent of imperialism's action against revolution. Stalin was trying to achieve alliances with the 'democratic' imperialist powers, especially Britain, France and the USA.

For this he had to demonstrate his 'good faith', by holding back revolutionary actions. In theory, these policies were designed to aid the USSR; in reality, they strengthened reaction and prepared the way for the Second World War.

Perhaps the most important lesson of the Spanish revolution is the role of centrism. The POUM leaders, while they made propaganda for socialism and criticised the right-wing policies of the Communist Party, would not provide the leadership for a revolutionary struggle for state power.

If the workers' committees had been organised for such a struggle, a workers' Spain would have rallied the enormous sympathy which existed in the international working class into active

July 23, 1966 966 Jul

'HREE decades nave passed since, at dawn on July 17, 1936, General Franco issued his manifesto to the Spanish Army and Nation. These thirty years have seen world war, revolutionary upheavals and endless betrayals by the leaderships of the workers' movements.

But, as new crises rack international capitalism, the lessons of Spain are vital for a fresh generation of workers to learn. Only by grasping the real meaning of the defeat of the Spanish working class can victory over capitalism and its bureaucratic agencies be achieved.

Bureaucracy has tried its best to stop this historical experience being utilised, by means of wholesale distortion and suppression. For, what is usually referred to as the Spanish Civil War, between a fascist army and a democratic Republic, was in reality the process whereby a revolution was The wording painted on the side of the train taking workers to fight Franco reads: 'UHP United Proletarian Brothers Swear on these strangled. Even bourgeois writers today refer to the social revolution in 1936-37. But the Stalinists still maintain the myth about the 'defence of democracy'.

Workers act

The Republic, which elected a 'Popular Front' government in February 1936, would have been handed over to Franco without more than a protest by its liberal leaders, unless the workers had acted. ANTESMORIR QUECONSENTIRTIRAN words brothers... rather to die than consent to tyranny' Franco had revolted to head off a wave of strikes in the towns and actions by the peasants. Hoping to be saved from the working class, the liberal politicians and their Stalinist and reformist allies called for calm; the workers ignored them.

Despite all the lies told since then by the Stalinists, a revolution broke out on July 19. Workers seized the guns which the government had refused to give them.

In Madrid, Barcelona, Malaga, Valencia and soon in Aragon, the fascists were defeated. Workers' militias took over the running of towns, controlled the factories, patrolled the streets. They opened up the prisons, where militants had been held by the 'democratic' Republic. Peasants seized the land from the landlords, and set up agricultural collectives.

But the Republican government remained in the hands of the same or similar politicians. Without a revolutionary party, the workers could not smash the bourgeois state machine.

The analogy with Russia in 1917 is instructive. There too, the revolution in February left a situation of 'dual power': on the one hand the Provisional Government, on the other, the Soviets. Spanish peasants, like the workers in the towns, seized the means of But where was Spanish bolshevism? Only a tiny group grasped the real nature of the problems for the working class.

The Communist Party of Spain was not a large organisation. But from the summer of 1936, it began to grow rapidly.

After an initial delay, the Soviet Union began to send limited quantities of arms to the Republic. The Communist Party gathered influenceon a programme of the maintenance of 'democracy.

'Broad unity

The argument, heard so often before and since, was that, by avoiding class issues and question of socialism, broad unity could be achieved in the fight against reaction. In practice, this meant that the revolution had to be knifed. The victory of reaction was then inevitable, for the 'democratic' politicians were as terrified of the workers as they were of Franco.

This process could not develop immediately. It had to overcome the resistance of a class in action.

But with the aid of the slander and murder machinery of world Stalinism, the job was done.

The Spanish workers' movement had a history of militant struggle. But it was handicapped by the uneven development of Spanish industry, which left it with a deep influence of peasant and middle-class ideology.

This explains the importance of anarchism among the Spanish workers and peasants. The anarchist leaders since they could not see the difference between a capitalist and a workers' state, became themselves the hostages of the former.

- Not only did they give support to the Popular Front: they entered the central government in Madrid as well as the Catalonian administration. When in May 1937, the Stalinists sent troops to smash the workers' control of Barcelona, the anarchist chiefs held back any organised resistance. They went on the radio and broadcast appeals to the masses to surrender.

In Catalonia also was found the centre of the organisation called POUM. This was a middle - of - the - road grouping.

While some of the leaders declared from time to time their admiration for Trotsky, they refused to carry out his policy and production from the owners.

revolutionary support. A workers' government would, by liberating Spanish Morocco, have destroyed Franco's Moorish base, from which he drew 100,000 of his troops. By declaring that the peasants should have the land, it would have won over the peasantry, as Lenin and Trotsky did in 1917-21.

But by forming a halfway house between the workers and their Stalinist betrayers, the POUM leaders made it still more difficult for a new leadership to develop. 'Wait until Franco is beaten: then we shall fight for socialism,' they said. But without a workers' revolution, Franco could not be beaten. Well over 200,000 German and Italian troops fought with Franco. But, by destroying the workers' revolution, centrism and Stalinism between them enabled the imperialists to smash the workers.

Today, Spain is witnessing a new wave of workers' militancy. Once again, Stalinism emerges with its talk of 'broad alliances'. It even preaches to the Spanish workers a peaceful road to socialism'.

The Fourth International, which alone continues the embodiment of the lessons of Spain in the working-class movement, must build on these lessons. It must construct a Marxist leadership on the basis of a resolute struggle against Stalinism and against centrism in all its forms.

Books to read the following:

Leon Trotsky:

The Spanish Revolution (1931)

Spain, the Last Warning (1939)

Class, Party and Leadership (1939)

Felix Morrow:

Revolution and lution in Spain George Orwell:

Homage to Catalonia B. Bolleten : • The Grand

THIs week, the Labour government Will announge in parliament a series of measures to tackle the present economic crisis which will undoubtedly constitute the must severe credit squeeze and defiation since 1945.

As a result, unemployment will rise sharply, even before measures such as the Selective Employment Tax (due to operate from September) begin to bite.

It is widely assumed that Wilson's measures will include a slashing of government expenditure on all fronts-roads, houses, hospitals, schools, expenditures in the nationalized industries; a sharp decrease in all credit facilities, including restrictions on bank loans, and investment plans by private industry; price increases on petrol, cigarettes and beer, import restrictions on a wide range of goods with the possibility of a complete wage freeze for the rest of the year.

PROBLEM WORSENED The Labour government has done nothing to solve the fundamental crisis of British capitalism.

This is why these measures are now necessary.

Since October 1964 the balance of payments problem has worsened, especially during this year. There is no possibility of a balance being struck by the end of 1966, as Callaghan originally promised.

There has been a continual drain this year on the gold reserves (now standing at under £1,200 million).

Growth has been reduced almost to nil: the National Plan promised an increase in production of 25 per cent between 19641970; this is now likely (even before these measures were announced) to be under 15 per cent.

Labour did not inherit a British crisis. The economic crisis in Britain is inseparably linked to the deep crisis facing capitalism internationally.

At the centre of this crisis stands the USA, which as a result of massive military and 'aid' expenditures abroad, is itself faced with a worsening balance of payments position which has now required a cutback in imports and a reduction of foreign lending.

LIQUIDITY CRISIS

This has produced a slowing down in the expansion of world trade and the emergence of an unavoidable 'liquidity' crisis.

British capitalism, dependent on the world market, now begins to feel the full blast of this policy, finding it more and'more difficult to sell goods abroad to pay for a rising import bill.

The out-dated nature of much of British industry puts the ruling class in this country at an impossible disadvantage with Newsletter Reporter their better-organised competitors abroad.

The Labour leaders, trying to make adjustments within confines of capitalism, face this international crisis. What alternatives lie before them?

Some 'experts' have suggested the devaluation of the pound. This would cheapen British exports, at the same time increase the price of imports, and thus bridge the balance of payments gap.

Such a policy would bring Wilson into immediate conflict with the capitalists abroad, especially President Johnson and the American capitalists.

Their goods would be placed at an immediate disadvantage and they would retaliate by devaluation of their own currencies, discrimination against British exports, or the suspension of any aid for the pound.

In fact the pound still remains an international currency of great importance, second only to the dollar, and such a policy would bring chaos into international economic relations.

Devaluation of the pound would also bring massive withdrawal of funds from London, with the loss of valuable income that this would involve.

So Labour will choose deflation as the necessary alternative. Wilson will try to solve the crisis by slashing imports, at the same time deflating all credit and capital expenditures at home, in hope that this will direct goods to the export market and deter imports.

NOT SOLVED Again such a policy, designed to appease the bankers, cannot solve the basis of the crisis.

Deflation on the now necessary scale will wipe out growth and make savage inroads into the investment plans of private industry.

Such a policy cuts out any chance of the modernisation and re-equipment of British industry.

It means the pound is "saved' and the basic crisis intensifies.

As important, deflation will bring the Labour government into sharper conflict with the working class and the trades unions who will be asked to carry the crisis on their backs.

Hence Labour is forced by the banks to press ahead with its anti-trade union legislation and plans for a wages freeze.

Wilson is in an inescapable dilemma because of the crisis of the system in this country and overseas.

It cannot be solved by 'plans' or 'remedies' which aim to preserve the basis of capitalist interests.

It can only be solved, from the point of view of the working class, by the expropriation of the capitalist class. In this task a new leadership in the working-class movement is the basic essential.

OVERen tibury dockers strack this week in support of men who refuse to work a shed now operated b permanent Port of London Authority dockers. They walked out on Monday as the new scheme was implemented and returned on Thursday.

The decision to call off the strike was taken at a twohour meeting on Wednesday when the men voted on a resolution of the local liaison committee.

Many were in favour of continuing the strike, others suggested a work to rule and some agreed on the return if the shed was blacked.

The scheme to which the dockers objected replaced 89 of them in No. 34 shed with 16 permanent PLA men.

It was claimed at the time that the opposition to the scheme first began in June, that an agreement had been signed behind the dockers' backs without any consultation or discussion at divisional committees.

Custom

Under this the 16 men would work with packaged cargoes and would receive £27 a week.

It has been custom and practice for casual dockers to handle cargoes on to the ships -the permanent men previously worked only on quays.

Several dockers told our reporter that they saw this scheme as part of the wholesale attack planned by the government and employers on the casual dockers' job and conditions through the Devlin Commission Report. two-party equilibrium. Nationalist PaPy of Wales, tas ›een a small group of intellec. tuals in the political wilderness They could not make a break in the solid Labour-held constituencies of the industrial south, or in the Liberal-rural areas. Their recent success is a symptom of the ex losive pressures at work in British society.

Firstly it indicates the bankruptcy of Liberalism. The recent iberal revival was never mor than an expression of lowe middle-class protest.

deepens it inevitably ideology dropped from second to third place in Carmarthen, in a mere three and a half months.

Secondly it reflects the effects of the economic crisis of capitalism on south and west Wales.

The coalfields are threatened with almost complete closure over he next few years, massive un employment threatens the stee induntry (especially SCOW plant at Port Talbot) and the ports and shipping industry have declined drastically since the last war.

• Ho Chi Minh Newsletter Reporter

Every struggle against imperialism, like that being waged Vietnam, is a move towards the removal of this danger.

Only by the workers disarming the imperialists can world war be avoided.

If the Vietnamese workers were defeated, if imperialism succeeded in maintaining its hold in Asia, would the war danger vanish?

On the contrary, imperialism would then proceed to step up its preparations for war on China and the USSR.

Whatever our political" disagreements with him, Ho's speech expresses the determination of the masses oppressed by imperialism to free themselves.

This must now find its echoes in the struggle in the Western countries.

The working cla's movement in im-erialist countries like Pritain must see its own fight against the ruling class as part of the same struggle for victory over imperialism.

That is the only Plaid Cymru.

In the same way the previous Labour MP for Carmarthen, Lady Megan Lloyd George, used to win Liberal support, as a recresentative of 'the radical tradition'.

Similarly the Communist Party with its 'direction of industry' its semi-nationalist propaganda Red Dragons and all has helped to put apparent local interests above the real interests of the working class.

In the modern epoch nationalism cannot solve any of the problems of humanity. In western Europe especially it represents a reactionary force and as Walloon and Flemish separatism in Belgium has shown, this quickly degenerates into fascism. It can only confuse and isolate the working class.

Therefore the Welsh Labour MPs who crowed with delight at the prospect of sponsoring the new MP, Gwgnfor Evans, must be condemned for their failure to oppose these tendencies.

Only a revolutionary leadership of the united working class can provide any alterntive to the betrayals of the Wilson government.

AFTER a mass meeting attended by 1,000 Normanton (Yorks) tenants last Sunday (July 17), over 250 took part in a demonstration all round the town. Well to the fore throughout were the Normanton Young Socialists, many of VER the past two years freak election results have become almost a regular feature of British politics as the deepening economic crisis undermines the traditional, Latest in the list is last week's Welsh Nationalist by-election them from council house homes.

Opening the meeting, held on a plot of land in the middle of a council estate, Mr. Brown of the newly-formed tenants' association, said that they were determined to carry the ight through and he thanked the YS for their efforts in the support of the campaign.

The support of the youth was of great importance and the Nor manton tenants welcomed it They had asked Dave Ashby. hairman of the YS Nationa Committee, to speak from the At the same time there is little new industrial development of major importance in the area, and this has been in the southeastern districts alone.

These tendencies will be accentuated by the opening of Severn Bridge and the development of the Portbury Docks scheme near Bristol.

Wales is the only industrial area to have lost population— there has been a 1 per cent drop over the last few years. At the same unemployment double the British average, at 2.4 per cent. In some parts of Carmarthenshire the figure is 5.7 per cent and further west it is as high as 10 per cent.

HARDSHIPS

These developments threaten great hardships and upheavals for the workers of south and west Wales. It also means restricted opportunities for the lower middle classes. It is on their frustrations that the Nationalist Party bases itself.

Thirdly the Carmarthen result Newsletter Reporter platform.

Ashby said the meeting showed that intense feeling had been aroused by the means test plan and the tenants had rightly replied by organising.

He quoted many examples of bad conditions in council houses.

Was this the result of tenants and workers voting in a Labour government and a Labour council?

Must tenants pay?

Many houses had been paid for several times over. Why?

If the council had run up bad debts, must the tenants pay for council wastage. His speech was loudly cheered.

Mr. Appleyard of the Tenants' Association attacked the so-called socialists who voted for the Prices and Incomes Bill and then put up the cost of living by rent increases.

The rebate scheme would assess people on wages before fax, National Insurance, etc, 'We will be taxed twice,' he said.

Local councillors had said tenants suspected this was a means test. They were right. Tenants knew it was.

Norman Harding of Cross Gates Tenants' Association (Leeds) said the main concerns of workers were houses, food and clothing. Any attack on these hit workers' living standards.

Big step

The foundation of Normanton Tenants' Association was a big step. What was needed now was a fight to change the rotten system.

"We need real socialists representing the workers. We have been told we were through with the means test and the bad old days of unemployment, etc. Now we must fight against a return to the bad old days,' he said.

A vote on a resolution support for the campaign and sending of a delegation to council was carried.

Two letters were read to the meeting. One was from the Labour Party which disagreed with the tenants views and was unable to be represented due to another meeting. The other was from the Young Socialists who came in support of the tenants.

Over 100 Newsletters and many 'Keep Lefts' were sold. called to the holidays.

'Abolish unions' This firm has been proposing virtually to abolish trade unionism at ENV. This attack is bound up with the present actions by the Labour government.

It is possible that the measures taken by the management had been previously discussed by union leaders.

The attack at ENV is directed against the entire engineering industry. Conditions at this factory have made the pace for the entire industrial belt of north-west London.

A conscious political struggle is vital to rally workers to support of ENV, if trade unionism is to be defended. resolution this week :

crease • redundancies Britain, particularly in the engineering industry, and recognises the need for trade union organisation to fight against this. If the legislation took a grip, We see this as the employers' it would prevent any basic attempt to pass the burden of claims. The seamen's basic the economic crisis onto the claim had been reduced by the working class, and insist that employers. the employers pay for their 'We had to concede five days own crisis. on leave, which is 10 guineas a port to our brothers at ENV monarlier Perry had spoken of the We therefore give our sup- ; he added. Willesden in their struggle way Hitler had taken against the management's proposals regarding redundancies, days after praising the union restriction of shop stewards leaders and promising to look activities, cutting down tea after their interests. breaks and waiting time pay- Opposing this view painter ments and other attacks.

We demand that the execu- stress that we are not in 1933', tive committee give official because, he added, Britain was support to any action our surrounded with socialist coun brothers may take, if necessary tries. calling on all engineering He felt that there were no workers to support them.

We further demand that our movement. union MPs immediately cam- About 100 attended the meetpaign for the nationalization of ing and nearly 200 had been on the engineering industry as we the march. Both actions could feel that this is the only way have ben much more forceful safetiesment then be if the Communist Party stewards sults of the employers' drive- drive to bring tne men wroi thor for profits. 9 sites out on to the streets.

return to 19318 • No

is the pay-back for the opportunism of Labour and Stalinist leaders who have constantly played to the narrowest forms of local patriotism. The Labour Party puts up candidates with nationalist associations in west Wales. The unsuccessful Labour man in the Carmarthen by-election was formerly prominent in at union MAINTENANCE fitters at Fenners' Transmission Engineering works in Hull are angry at the way their union, Amalgamated Engineering Union, has used an agreement, signed over 45 years ago, to get them to withdraw an overtime ban that had lasted three weeks.

The men had put in a claim for an extra shilling an hour after six out of 44 had left, making extra work for those remaining.

They say that before the six had left there was a minimum of overtime working, but afterwards it had become almost compulsory. They have also pointed out that what Fenners save from the wages of the six who left would more than cover their claim.

The union says that the claim will have to go through 'normal procedure, but the men know how long normal procedure can take.

They know that they will have to win support from other sections in readiness for further struggles, which must include the revising of this 45-year-old agreement, which, as one of the men explained, is an agreement for the bosses and not for the working class.

LOCAL counciliors called on police to remove several tenants from a council meeting on Tuesday after a close questioning of the council's rent policy.

Several tenants had been earlier allowed in, leaving 70 waiting outside.

Mr. Brown told the council they should freeze the rents and called on them not to carry forward the rent increases. Councillors said they could not do this.

At a meeting after the police action, tenants leaders called on the tenants not to pay the increase.

AS the Labour MPs filed in behind Wilson in the division lobby at the second reading of the Prices and Incomes Bill, Young Socialists and trade unionists from Yorkshire demonstrated their opposition 1o this Bill.

Shouting slogans against any such form of anti-union laws, a lively demonstration marched through Sheffield, which, in the past, has seen many rank-and-file demonstrations of workers.

'Leaders' absent

The fact is today, as Jack Gale, Socialist Labour League Central Committee member pointed out at the meeting held afterwards, that the leaders of these past movements--most notably. the Communist Party-were absent from the demonstration.

In Sheffield and nationally, the only real campaign to oppose these laws and demand that they be withdrawn by the Labour SOCIALIST This political strike was the mirror of the future struggles of the working class. The workers showed . in this strike that they can and will fight in industrial action against the Labour government and its policies.

The question of political power, state power, is therefore posed. Will this power be used for or against the workers? If Wilson uses it against the workers, then he must be fought, and workers' state power established.

The renewed economic crisis, only a few short weeks after the "rescue operation' by the international bankers, raises exactly the same questions of the use of state power.

If the shipping owners could not meet the demands for a living wage and 40 hours, then we need a state power to take the industry from them and introduce these measures by law.

If the banks and monopolies can stay in business only through Labour government policies which throw men out of work and cut living standards, then a workers' government is needed to take their money and their monopolies from them, and plan the economy in the interests of the people.

Nationalization of the banks, insurance companies, and building societies! This is the first basic need to solve the housing problem and to plan the economy.

Nationalization of steel, building and building materials, motor industry, and chemicals industry, and all industries manufacturing government comes from the Young Socialists and the SLL.

The role of the CP in Sheffield throughout this campaign has been to weaken the fight.

On the day of the demonstration leading CP trade unionists walked by the assembly point for the demonstration, looked at the Young Socialists and their banners, and walked on. What way is this to fight these laws?

YS proud

The Young Socialists are proud of their record in this fight as Richard Scott, West Yorkshire regional secretary explained.

They pledged themselves at this meeting to continue the fight in this area to defeat these laws.

The task of building an alternative leadership to the fake 'lefts' and CP members, who in the past dominated the workers' movement in this area, has become an urgent task for the working class and its revolutionary youth.

POLICY

arms. Only common ownership and workers' control of these industries can form the basis of a planned economy.

The workers are not responsible for the crisis! Make those responsible pay, by nationalizing their banks and factories!

Only a workers' government, taking its strength directly from the struggle of the working class, which began with the seamen's strike, can implement such policy and halt the rise in the cost of living.

Withdraw troops

Such a government would immediately withdraw all British troops from Vietnam and every foreign country, and offer immediate help to the Vietnamese National Liberation Front if the US imperialists continue the war.

This is the way to stop Johnson and encourage American workers and students to break his policies. This is the way to cut out altogether the 'East of Suez' expenditure.

Wilson remains tied to Wall Street and to the international banks. The workers in all trade unions and in every section of the labour movement must demand that these policies be implemented. In this fight for policy a new leadership will be constructed.

Build the Socialist Labour League !

Build the Young Socialists! Registered at the G.P.e Newsletter S.W.4 as a newspaper 186a Clapham High Street, London, Printed by Plough Press Ltd. (TU). T.O. 80 Clapham High Street. London. S.W.4

Needless to say, the defence expenditure will hardly be touched. Mr. Johnson, the United States President, has asked his friend Mr. Wilson not to do this, and Mr. Wilson, who licks Mr. Johnson's boots, will not do it.

The government of Wilson is the most , craven, crawling capitalist, boot-licking government that has ever existed in the history of the labour movement. In comparison to Wilson, Ramsay MacDonald was a giant.

They knew this crisis was coming, but meanwhile they broke the seamen's strike.

They allowed the working class to be led into a trap, from which it is now not possible to extricate themselves without a series of most powertul strikes.

Reforms in Britain can longer work.

Problem of power

The ruling class cannot pay for them. The seamen's strike was a political strike. The problem that was then posed was a problem of power.

The problem that is posed today in relation to these new economic measures of Wilson is a problem of power-the government of the working class over the capitalist class.

Should the working class allow themselves to be driven into pauperisation by the Labour Ministers drawing thousands of pounds a year salary?

We say no. It is necessary to fight back immediately.

We will not tolerate a return to 1931 and widespread unemployment.

We will not tolerate the rich idlers drawing their rich dividends and profits as they did in the depression years of the thirties.

We know that whatever dividend restrictions Parliament may put on these gentlemen,. they have the means to remain in the background and hold back the payment of these dividends until they get the go-ahead.

They did it in the lifetime of the Labour government of 1945-51 and they will do it now. To talk of freezing wages under conditions where the employers continue to make as much profit as they like is something we will not tolerate.

The lesson of the Wilson government is that the working class need a new leadership but this must be a revolutionary leadership — a Marxist leadership, one that is prepared to take the power.

Wilson has plunged the working class into a revolutionary struggle whether it likes it or not.

The answer must now be sharp and clear. We are fighting for the English Revolution, for the struggle to take the power.

We demand that Wilson's measures against the working class be immediately halted. We demand that the international bankers be told to mind their own business so far as the affairs of the Labour government are concerned.

We demand that the capitalist class this country expropriated and all major industries be placed under workers' control with no compensation.

Issues clear

The issues are as clear as a knife edge.

Either capitalism is brought to an end by the struggles of the working class or we go forward in seven-league boots to the most extreme dictatorship rightwing politicians since the days of Hitler.

The Socialist Labour League calls upon the working class not to have the slightest faith in the Labour leaders like Wilson and to the fake 'lefts', such Michael Foot, who cover up for him, with contempt.

The issue is socialism or bankruptcy. The time has come to decide.

General strike arrests in India UTTAR PRADESH was the latest state confronted with a Bundh (the word means 'close'). a general strike and stoppage of all services and of all activities of society, called by the opposition leftist parties as a demonstration of discontent.

The Uttar Pradesh government had reacted to the Bundh with arrests of 2,200 people as the state's left-wing parties' alliance pressed ahead with plans for state-wide general strike on July 12.

The strike was to protest at rising living costs as a result of recent devaluation of rupee (by 36.5 per cent) and a recent increase in tax on land holdings. Dr. Lohia, the socialist leader who has played a prominent part in organising the strike, is among those arrested.

On July 12, all the socialis and ommunist leader were arrested.

In his press conference on July 10, Dr. Lohia said that if the state government succeeded in breaking the strike, opposition parties like his own would have to go underground, for there would be no other way with which to resist the government.

NEWSLETTER REPORTER organised firm.

When a deputy convenor went out to discuss with the men concerned, it is claimed he was forcibly refused reentry into the factory and was told he was dismissed for breaking a factory rule.

A complete stoppage began immediately, even though this was only a few days before London, Wednesday Support AEU brothers The Tottenham AEU No. 7 branch passed the following speak against P &1 Bill builders marched through Liverpool last Sunday and later held a meeting against the government's Prices and Incomes Bill.

All the fake 'lefts' invited to the meeting to speak failed to turn up.

Reg Perry, a member of the builders' committee, said the Bill was a giant conspiracy against the working class. Three years ago a document had been circulated to all the heads of the trade unions outlining such legislation, but they had never warned or told their members about the dangers of the proposals.

He said the seamen's strike had proved that the whole state would be used against the working class by the Labour governwar a use de marasitinare fra ment. it was no use waiting 1o1 nicial estion.

Working-class political action was needed and political leadership had to be built.

Seaman Gordon Norris told the meeting that the Prices and Incomes Bill was much conning'. When it became law, it would mean state legislation of wages, as in New Zealand and Australia, where all increases are directly linked with productivity. Recently in Australia a rise of 16s was granted against a claim of 38s, he said.

BASIC CLAIM

Tony McLennon, said: 'I would great dangers to the trade union had made a real