The Newsletter, vol. 9 no. 455

ViCToRy to the VIETGONG sells out B/OSL ILE The message of the Young Socialists on last Saturday's torchlight demonstration is quite plain. It echoed the speech of Newsletter Editor, Michael Banda (below), reported here.

STATEMENT

AT A MEETING called by the Vietnam Solidarity Committee on Saturday, August 6, the impression was created that the Socialist Labour League is a party to a united front agreement which formulates policy of this committee.

The Socialist Labour League is not in any way connected with this united front agreement. It supports the Solidarity Committee insofar as an effective campaign is waged for the victory of the National Liberation Front and the complete withdrawal of all U.S. armed forces from Vietnam.

Spokesmen for the Socialist Labour League will, when they think it is necessary, criticise any tendency within the labour movement, which, by its actions, weakens the struggle for these aims.

This especially applies to the role of the Labour 'lefts' in Parliament, the Communist Party, and the bureaucratic leaders of the Soviet and Chinese Communist Parties.

London Area Committee, Socialist Labour League. attended by nearly 400 people, including Young Socialists and Socialist Labour League members who later marched over 300-strong on a torchlight procession to the U.S. Embassy.

The following day there was talk from the Pentagon of the need to step up the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam to 750,000 and threatening talk: 'We've already outbid the Vietcong. We can and will outbid the North Vietnamesel' At Sunday's meeting, Banda said the Socialist Labour League and Newsletter had been warning about an all-out war for over a year. Never betray But, he added. american imperialism can be defeated, must be deféated and will be defeated, as was French imperialism at Dien Bien Phu.

'Even if the war goes on for another 10 years, our organisation will never betray the Vietnamese people, but will do everything possible to see that they win?

The SLL and Newsletter had been waging a campaign ever since troops were first sent to Vietnam. He spoke as a participant, not as a commentator. • 'Our movement was the only movement in 1950 to speak up in the Labour Party and say: "Down with American imperialism and United Nations in Korea, the It is the same spirit which animates us today against the same enemy,' he said.

The colonial peoples possessed one right-to rise up against their oppressors and it was the duty of British socialists to give them every conceivable support. Every blow we strike against capitalism in Britain is also support,' said Banda.

A defeat for the Vietnamese people would be an enormous defeat for the international working class.

We know what happened in Spain in 1936 and how that contributed to the development of fascism throughout the whole of Europe. Johnson's policy is yery little different from that of Hitler's. Hitler's policy was for Germany to conquer, to rule and exploit.' Domination Fascism and . war was the only solution for imperialism's problems. But Johnson, unlike Hitler, did not intend to share the world with anybody. He wanted to dominate the entire globe, Banda said.

He was not surprised that MPs had declined to attend the meeting is it possible that they are too busy abstaining in parliament to come?

'However, let us not worry, because the matter will not be settled inside parliament, but outside it. If anyone thinks that by appealing to the moral susceptibilities of Harold Wilson they will get him to change his mind, they are living in a cloud-cuckoo land, he stressed.

The SLL and Newsletter were for peace in Vietnam'but not the peace Which sanctions misery, slavery and aggression, and which forces whole sub-continents like India to live in semi-starvation.

Continued page Another section of the torchlight demonstration to Grosvenor Square PILOT TRIALS SORT OUT THE march YOUNG Socialists from Britain will be going to Liege in Belgium on October 15 to meet Young Socialists from all over Europe, who will be protesting against the war in Vietnam and against NATO.

The visit marks an important step in the building of a ocialist youth movement. Both the Young Socialists and th elgian youth share a common policy of complete oppositio to the war in Vietnam and to NATO, the imperialist war organisation which has its neadquarters mn Dererum Already over 100 have enrolled to go and there will be hundreds Young Socialists are campaigning to take a big conSocialists National Committee extends an invitation • all youth who are opposed t he American aggression in Viet nam and imperialist war-young workers, apprentices, students and school-leavers-and especially to adult trade unionists who wish to join in this VISIt.

Go to Liege

We urge all our readers to consider going to Liege with the Young Socialists, who have taken the lead with the Socialist Labour League in this country in campaigning against U.S. imperialist aggression in Vietnam and for the Victory of the National Liberation Front.

The full cost of the round trip to Dover-Ostend and Liege is £8 10s. which includes a free meal at Liege and dancing on board the ship there and back.

For further information readers should write to Dany Sylviere, Liege Organiser, at 186a Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4.

POWERS to imprison trade unionists proposed by Wilson's 'Labour government ing economic crisis.

When Wilson visited President Johnson in Washington he went out of his way to insist that the powers taken by the government in the Prices and Incomes Bill, now going through its last stages in Westminster, were without precedent "democratic societies. even in wartime. UVAI =.-- Wilson's method for taking these powers is also 'unprecedented' Young Socialists and Socialist Labour League members were told on various lobbies of parliament that 'left' MPs intended to amend the projected Bill so thoroughly that it would be toothless and harmless. What happened was something quite different.

The powers taken by the government have been introduced after the debates in parstage, du sing the coay nitee ordinary 'democratic' procedure is dispensed with.

It was not a matter of everything being done by the traditional rules of democracy, as the reformists always told us things could be put right, but of the economic requirements of international finance capital insisting on a change in the law.

No Pretence Wilson and his Cabinet now serve these banking interests directly, and have dropped all pretences of gradually wearing down capitalism by reforms. They are tied hand and foot to the banks.

The old democratic forms become an obstacle to the continued exploitation of labour.

The seamen's strike increased the determination of the ruling class to discipline the working class.

What is urgent now is that the working class prepares for the answer to the growthe critical struggles ahead as thoroughly as the enemy.

In the first place the depth of the crisis must be understood. There will be no quick or easy solution. The six-month wage freeze is only the beginning.

The new Bill actually gives power to cut wages.

In June, according to government figures published this week, retail trading and hire-purchase was already on the decline in a serious way, i.e., before the new measures announced by Callaghan.

There was a fall from 138 to 126 points in the level of new hire-purchase credit, and HP sales fell from 87 to 80 points.

Shops selling durable goods had a decline of f8 millions to t301 millions.

New credit extended in the second quarter of 1966 was 11 per cent lower than the same quarter of 1965.

All these are signs that the economy was in decline well before Callaghan took his steps in July. It is therefore only to be expected that the 2 per cent unemployment which Wilson says will be 'not unacceptable' is a laughable underestimation.

The process of large-scale attack on the working class has already begun with the wage freeze. All the big capitalist newspapers admit that it is entirely a question of wage control and not price control. Mr. Sidney

HE war of imperialist aggression waged by America against the Vietnamese people is one of the bloodiest and cruellest ever. No one can calculate the immense amount of suffering, grief and misery which the U.S. forces-particularly the air force—has caused in this country.

The imperialist planners have exploited every possible technique of mass murder. The more fiendish the device the better it serves them.

The pilots who fly the B-52s, the Thunderchiels and the Phantoms are not ordinary Americans impressed into a thankless job by the government.

VOLUNTEERS

On the contrary many-the vast majority-of them are volunteers who take immense prıde in watching villages being consumed by napalm and get a big kick out of strafing hapless peasants working their paddies.

It is a special type of war and it requires a special type of animal to conduct it.

So when the North Vietnamese began to talk about putting : U.S. pilots on trial they had every justification to đo so. The judicious hanging of a few U.S. pilots would no doubt have had a sobering MICHAEL BANDA influence on the Pentagon.

Of course, it would have provoked a wild outburst of 'anti-communism' and war hysteria in the U.S. But that is something we have come to expect.

If the American capitalists and their middle-class hangers-on did not have a pretext for going to war they usually invent one anyway.

They have really no cause to complain. S.S. men in the German army when captured by the Russians were summarily executed and they did less damage to civilian life and property than the U.S. pilots.

CHARLATANS

In fact the question of putting the pilots on trial has done more to sort out the real friends of the Vietnamese people from their false allies than any other issue.

Amongst those whose charlatany has been exposed . comWSLETTER

BY BRIA PEAR 2s. pletely are the MPs Frank Allaun, Michael Foot, Fenner Brockway, Joyce Butler and Stan Orme.

These pacifist humbugs and imperialist apologists trying to masquerade as humanitarians have sent a letter (published in the July 22 "Tribune') to President Ho Chi Minh appealing to him not to put the pilots on trial.

These people must really believe that the North Vietnamese are waging war against the USA and that there is no difference between the heroic resistance of the exploited and the brutal aggression of the exploiters.

How else can we explain the filthy insinuation contained their joint letter:

T is reported in the 'Daily Telegraph', Thursday, August 11, that Mr. Sidney Bidwell, Member of Parliament for Southall, voted with the government on the Prices and Incomes Bill. r. Bidwell is well known to the British Trotskyist movement when before, during and after the Second World War, he was one of its leading members active in the National Union of Railwaymen.

Haston associate

uring these years Mr. Bidwell was a close associate of Jock Haston, who was until the time of its dissolution in 1949 General Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist Party. cently during the seamen's strike, Mr. Bidwell spoke at a rally of seamen at Trafalgar Square. He supported the seamen whose main struggle as everyone knows was against the terms of the Prices and Incomes Bill. what the 'Daily Telegraph' Political Correspondent reports about Mr. Bidwell voting for the Bill in Parliament is true, there is no further need for us to comment about the role of this MP who is described as a Labour 'left'. It speaks for itself.

WORLD IMPERIALISM is drifting rapidly towards its most severe economic crisis since the end of the second world war. Foremost, amongst those countries on the downward plunge is Great Britain. As the unemployment figures commence to climb, hundreds of previously well established businesses are threatened with bankruptcy during the coming months. The Prices and Incomes Bill, which seeks to tie the trade unions firmly to the capitalist state machine, will introduce an era of political strikes which will continously before the working class the problem of power.

The lessons from the seamen's strike confirm this perspective. When the ctriko honan it was looked upon by rank-and-file seamen as an industrial dispute. Yet when the Labour government and the state showed their hands in support of the shipowners, it immediately became clear to these same seamen within a matter of days that their's was a political struggle against the Wilson government. A rapid political development had taken place in a union which had not engaged in a strike for 50 years.

This experience is an indication that a similar politicalisation of the British working class is on the way. A powerful new force is entering the arena of class struggle and that force is the working class, which is now embarking on the road of class struggle in one of the most powerful countries in the world.

For over 25 years it has held back, so long as it could improve its wages and working conditions in a period of capitalist inflationary boom. But this is now a thing of the past.

What the Labour government, the monopolists and the state machine propose to do today is to attempt in the course of the coming year by means of unemployment and legislation against the trade unions to take away these gains and reduce the standard of living to what it was before the second world war.

A period of unparalleled revolutionary conflict lies ahead.

The Socialist Labour League now shoulders an enormous responsibility-that of structing the mass revolutionary party which will lead the working class to power. By doing so it will inspire revolutionists countries build similar parties to do the same.

We follow in the traditions of the Bolshevik Party which so far remains the only party in the world, guided by Marxists, consciously lead successful socialist revolution.

Because of these aims, our organisation and members have to face a constant barrage of lies and hostility from the right-wing traitors the Labour Party, the fake 'lefts' around "Tribune', who cover up for them, and the Stalinists, as well as a variety of revisionist groups, such the Pabloites Paris 'United Secretariat' who masquerade under the name of Trotskyism, and who have long ago liquidated themselves into the camps of Stalinism and social democracy, depending upon the countries they are operating in.

This is as it should be. The Socialist Labour League is engaged in a fight to a finish against these betrayals of the working class and we won't yield an inch: We didn't in the pre-war days when the might of Stalinism, through its propaganda machine of lies and falsifications, was turned tul blast against the international Trotskyist movement, denouncing us as fascists and agents imperialism in order to coinst the against the working class. cover Stalin's foul deeds Trotskyism, which is the fight for the development of revolutionary Marxism in the post-Lenin era, can be best described by paraphrasing Trotsky's own description of Leninism—it is warlike from head to foot. In the struggle against its enemies, the Socialist Labour League follows in the foosteps of this tradition.

Revisionist

Islanders Our revisionist opponents such as Hansen of the American Socialist Workers' Partythe Party which sent the telegram of condolences to the arch imperialist Mrs. Kennedy when her husband, the President, was assassinated in 1963, are fond slandering the Socialist Labour League on the grounds that it is insular to world problems, because it is working in Britain, which as every content of trope.

Undoubtedly, the Socialist Labour League reflects the strength and weaknesses of the the working class movement, but merely to say that is not enough. We are obliged to examine the history of the working class and the Socialist Labour League in a more serious way.

Behind Hansen's slander there is also a snigger of contempt for the British working class, who: having been the first to arrive on the historical scene, reflect in their thinking the trial and error, improvised empirical methods of thinking which characterise the methods of the industrial capitalists who were forced to develop their industrial machines by 'trial and error'.

Amongst other things, this industrial machine built a huge empire, which in turn supplied vast sources of income, part of which was used by the British capitalist class to orrupt th leaders of the English abou and trade union movement. as well as enabling the working class to enjoy standards of living even in the darkest days of slump and trade recession, in excess their colonial brothers in the Empire.

Thus the working class suffers from two serious handicaps.

The petty-bourgeois leaders and university-trained radicals of the labour movement constantly inject idealist and empirically-formed ideology into their ranks through all manner propaganda techniques, thus taking advantage of its peculiar national historical origin. In this way, the struggle against Marxism is maintained by the Fabian Society.

The working class have up to now been prevented from relating the theories of Marxsm, which supply a consciou: understanding it the history of the class struggle, to the historical tasks which face them in Britain. This is the task which must be undertaken by the Socialist Labour League.

Secondly, the crumbs from the table of the Empire which provided them with reforms in the past also tended to make them insular and divide them off from the struggles of the dania rese in the Today this growth and dangers of racialism and forms a stubborn barrier which is exploited to the full by the Tory and Labour leaders as well as miscellaneous groups of fascists in preventing the working class from attaining class consciousness.

But these obstacles, although extremely powerful, must not be taken out of historical context.

We are obliged to take note of a further characteristic of the working class, which it has inherited from the ruling class and which today conceals highly revolutionary content. We are speaking about the tendency towards compromise.

Again the resources of the empire enabled such tendency to develop as a dominant method of capitalist rule, under conditions where our rulers rule almost exclusively through the Labour and trade union bureaucracy.

But this was also a characteristic of the period before the seventeenth century Cromwellian Revolution. Trotsky in quoting the French historian Guizot in Where is Britain Going?' warmly applauds his comment on this period 'when the time came for drawing the sword', wrote Guizot, 'all were astonished and deeply moved'.

For impressionist demagogues such as Hansen, this 'compromise' is deceptive. To him it appears to bolster up his cliché about insularity' but in reality it simply acts as the thinnest of covers for a molecular revolutionary process going on today beneath the surface of class politics.

All appears well in the field of compromise on the top, until suddenly this period is over and there rushes now to the surface a revolutionary era of proportions.

That is the meaning of the present stage in British politics, a stage in which the working class is about to join the great colonial revolutions of Asia and Africa in struggle against the common imperialist enemy, world imperialism.

The seamen's strike supplied us with a small glimpse of what is on the way. It is this new wave of class struggle that will destroy for ever the historical obstacles which hold the British working class back and enable the revolutionary party Hansen in his ignorance of the history of the British working class tries to create an amalgam between its historical difficulties and the Socialist Labour League. This is something which will call forth titters of laughter amongst the anti-theoretical ignoramuses around "Tribune', The Week", and similar centrist publications, but it is nonsense so far as a Marxist interpretation goes.

To take a fixed impression like 'insular' and then relate it in a mechanical way to the revolutionary experiences of the working class now on the order of the day in Britain, is 77,000 municipal busmen are going to have to fight to get the increase awarded two hours before the freeze came into force. Over 500 other wage claims are in the pipeline.

In the car factories and throughout the engineering industry, thousands of piecework revisions will be pushed aside by the employers with the help of the government's policy, and meanwhile they will proceed with their plans for speed up and redundancy.

Hundreds of strikes are inevitable under these circumstances. Everyone of these struggles will find the government on the side of the employers.

At the same time the government's own measures force up the cost of living.

The duties on petrol, HP restrictions etc., announced by the Chancellor, not to mention all the consequences of the increased Bank Rate, have already begun to take money out of the pockets of working-class families.

Official Receiver When workers on holiday from Blyth dry dock, on the North-East coast, received a letter from the employers, they discovered that their firm was in the hands of the official recoing in to work they should report 'to the nearest employment exchange' Now they do not know if they will receive the week's wage owed to them by the company. They must queue up with the other creditors.

In Rochdale and other areas, local councils are fighting hard to put up rents, despite the 'freeze' in order to balance the corporation books.

The number of The first of a series of articles by Secretary to confuse form with content. To take this fixed impression further and attach it to the SLL and its struggles to build the party is to reveal oneself as a complete bankrupt in the field of Marxism, as a brief analysis of the history of our movement goes to show A consistent defence of th Fourth International against national insularity Of course the history of the Trotskyist movement in Britain is cradled within the working class and must directly or indirectly reflect its problems. In fact it has grown up in a struggle against these problems -that is a constant defence of the international teachings of Marxism and the Fourth International.

Shortly before the founding conference of the Fourth International in 1938 the Workers' International League opposed the unification of British Trotskyists on the tactical grounds that it was necessary to discuss our attitude towards entry into the Labour Party before unification could be achieved. This was a serious CRISIS DEEPENS councils doing this is an indication of how much can be expected in the way of leadership from the constituency Labour Parties in these areas.

Where Lansbury went to jail rather than put up rents, they defy the Minister for the right to put them up!

The Monopolies Commission, meanwhile, supposedly there to protect the public from 'unfair trading practices', has achieved the astounding victory of cutting the price. of Kodak colour films. This will be a great relief to the family budgets of millions of workers during the coming difficult months!

While he takes powers to 'get tough' • with the trade unions, like his fellow capitalist rulers in the Us and Germany Wilson has merely requested the building societies not to increase their mortgage rates.

These increases, like wage freezing and rent increases, like the cuts in HP, and like the 10 per cent cuts in the Health Service, are class questions: they affect the working class and not the ruling class. The only answer of the working class must be a counter-attack against the capitalists.

The British working class is regarded by the capitalists of the whole world as a grave threat. This is why Johnson lectured the American trade unions on the situation in Britain.

He warned that the unions had taken too much in wage increases, and that if the American trade unions did not behave more soberly, then US "prosperity" could not last.

Within a few days the reamistake which certainly had at its roots a rejection of international responsibilities in favour of a nationalist approach.

But it was corrected in 1943 when some of the present leaders of the Socialist Labour League re-analysed their mistakes and explained its origin within the movement.

The correction was made at the second National Congress of the Workers' International League in September 1943 and it was bitterly opposed by the overwhelming majority of those present, led by Jock Haston, now educational director for the right-wing Electrical Trades Union.

Despite this it brought the movement back to a political understanding of internationalism so much so that by March 1944 reunification had been achieved and the Revolutionary Communist Party was founded.

Haston and his majority continued to oppose the policies of the Fourth International, especially towards work inside the Labour Party. During this period, from 1943 onwards, we collaborated closely with the international movement and its various bodies. We fought the opportunist and sectarian effects of Haston's anti-internationalism right up until February 1950 when he deserted the Trotskyist movement and applied to join the Labour Party.

Haston undoubtedly reflected the insular nationalism of the working class. He openly advocated and defended empirical thinking as a means for building the revolutionary party.

In the end he went to the right wing and broke for all time from Marxism.

It was a fitting end, but it may well not have happened in this way had it not been for the struggle which the present leadership of the SLL carried out against him in defence of the programme and policies ot the Fourth International.

Having corrected the mistake made in 1938 we have always insisted and defended the principle that it is impossible to build a revolutionary party in Britain except through the clearest understanding of the role of the Fourth Internasons for his concern became apparent, with news of increased balance of payments difficulties tor the Us economy, anq widespread falls on Wall Street.

Press agencies attributed these falls to the Vietnam war and the economic prospects in Britain, i.e., whether the trade unions in Britain would accept the wage freeze.

Similarly, General de Gaulle was one of those who helped the recent rescue operation for the pound sterling, because he was disturbed by the example for his own working class of the seamen's strike.

Contradictions

But his own capitalist interests still bring out the enormous contradictions in international problems that there is no quick solution for the British employers.

For example, the French balance of payments and currency reserve figures, announced this week, show that 86 per cent of French reserves, now at an all-time high, are held in gold, since the adoption of the policy of converting dollar credits into gold.

There are serious implications here for the British capitalists. As junior partner to the dollar, since 1944 the basis of the international monetary system, the pound sterling has retained an anachronistic strength. Since 1949, the dollar itself has been losing the basis of its strength, as is shown by the loss since then of one half of US gold holdings, now standing at 13 billion dollars.

Many ministers in the French government are driving at a tional. We subordinate always building of this party to our international obligations. Any other course would be a return to the barren nationalist course of Haston and company.

The Pablo experience Then, in 1951, came Pablo, at that time Secretary of the international, with his theory that because of the imminence of the third world war, the Stalinist parties could, under the impact of this war, transform themselves into revolutionary parties.

His entry policy into the Communist and social-democratic parties now became the vehicle of liquidationist policies. Only the majority of the French section of the Fourth International opposed him at first.

The Socialist Workers' Party supported Pablo against the French section and we made at this point our second most serious mistake in the international movement, because we also supported the decision to expel the French comrades.

We didn't have long to wait to see the bitter fruits of that one. Barely over a year later Pablo had started his groups hell-bent on a liquidationist course inside our organisation in Britain and the SWP in the USA.

In Britain he gave full powers to the Lawrence minority to ignore the decisions of our majority. This encouraged them to publicly violate the discipline of … our organisation. Naturally we expelled them immediately. Later Lawrence and his friends joined the Communist Party.

The SWP meanwhile publicly broke from Pablo's international leadership and issued the 'Open Letter to all Trotskyist Organisativno lu forember 1953. This letter spoke about the struggle of the French comrades against Pabloism as follows:

6 By fiat of the International Secretariat, the elected majority of the French section was forbidden to exercise its rights to lead the political and propaganda work of the party. Instead the political bureau and the press were put under the control of a "parity commission"!

At the time we deeply disapproved this action by which a minority was used to arbitrarily overturn a majority. As soon as we heard about it, we comdevaluation of the pound, taking advantage of the incurable historic crisis of British capitalism because they know this would be inevitably followed by devaluation of the dollar and the consequent strengthening of French capitalism.

The British working class is therefore in the cockpit of a great international crisis.

The intensity of the struggle will reflect the enormity of this crisis. The situation has now developed where the steps taken by the capitalists of any particular capitalist country endangers the interests of the system as a whole.

For example, in Japan there was a 50 million dollar loss in exchange reserves during July because of the increases in US and British money rates. The Japanese had held down their own rates to encourage industrial expansion.

Such a situation has great dangers for the working class. World war and repression against the workers are the only paths open to the capitalists.

Favourable

But the situation is at the same time favourable. This international intensification of the crisis means that the ruling class in each country lacks the security of stable international capitalist conditions and support against its own working class.

The workers in the advanced countries are highly organised and undefeated for for many years. They are the key to the international situation. The joint crisis of the British, US and West German economies gives municated protest Pablo.

However, we must admit that we made an error in not taking more vigorous action.

This error was due to insufficient appreciation on our part of the real issues involved. We thought the differences between Pablo and the French section were tactical and this led us to side with Pablo, despite our misgivings about his organisational procedure, when, after months of disruptive factional struggle, the majority was expelled.

But at the bottom the differences were programmatical in character. The fact is that the French comrades of the majority saw What was happening more clearly than we did. The Eighth Congress of their party declared that:

"A grave danger menaces the future and even the existence of the Fourth International. .. • Revisionist conceptions, born of cowardice and petty-bourgeois impressionism have appeared within its leadership.

still great weakness of the International, cut off from the life of the sections, has momentarily facilitated the installation of a system of personal rule, basing itself and anti-democratic methods on revisionism of the Trotskyist programme and abandonment of the Marxist method." 9 How easy it is today for Hansen, Cannon and Dobbs to forget What they wrote in 1953. the time we heartily endorsed the contents of this 'Open Letter' and we have never changed our minds.

All these important historical experiences establish one thing very clearly. In sharp contrast to the nationalist insular tendency of the British working class, the education of the pre» sent leadership of the SLL and through them the rank-and-file members is internationalist to the core. All our political successes in Britain are due in the main to this basic factor.

For further information concerning the split with Pablo in 1953, see Fourth International, Vol. 2, No. 1, July 1965, price 3s., available from New Park Publications, 186a Clapham High Street, London, S.W.4.

great opportunities for the building of new revolutionary leaderships through the struggle of the working class.

Strong sections of the capitalist class would like to take the path of war against China and eventually against the USSR and Eastern Europe. They are behind the imminent decision to invade North Vietnam.

But the US government held back by two forces.

Five Years A US Defence Department study released this week estimates that it would take 750,000 US troops five years to win the Vietnam war; such is the fighting power of the Vietnamese people, even assuming the US could win.

But the report is more concerned about another obstacle to 'winning the war'-this is within the US itself.

Even the Korean war brought political issues into the Presidential campaign in 1951. But now the issue is brought into the middle of the Negro struggle and the growing militancy of the American labour movement.

This is a remarkable confirmation of the strategy of working class internationalism.

Every blow struck by the working class and socialist movement in the advanced countries helps in the struggle against US imperialism in Vietnam.

Every battle won by the National Liberation Front is a blow against the ruling class in the US and Britain.

The weight of these blows can bring the downfall of capitalism if we accept the challenge of building a Marxist leadership equal to the task of leading the struggle for working class power.

CHUNNON SAHN CNNA SIX months before the fourth Indian general election, the political and economic crisis of Mrs.

Gandhi's government threatens to flare up into As the desperate food shortage leads to riots into which the army has to be called, the possibilities of a military coup August 13, violent class struggles.

is openly talked about. THE EWSLETTER Crawfor

NIGERIA continues in turmoil the working class fighting for But like General Aguiyi Ironsi, who came to power on the backs of a rebellion by young officers, Lieutenant Colonel Yakuba Gowon will be incapable of overcoming the deep political, economical and tribal strife in this country. Neither will any bourgeois civilian rulers, to whom Gowan intends to hand the power, be any more capable.

The working class is not an unknown quantity. It has gone through two general strikes in the last two years, and recently there have been large number of smaller strikes in which workers have demanded better pay and conditions.

CORRECT ANALYSIS In May The Newsletter's Nigerian correspondent told of the growing crisis Iollowing Ironsi's 100 days and analysed quite correctly:

"The masses are angered by the status quo, and this leaves Ironsi-contacted and badgered by British and US interests—in a precarious middle position.

'He knows that with • a slightest turn to the right anything could happen, and he must recognise that his rule cannot last too long.' *Explosive Situation in Nigeria Again.' (May 7.)

At that time Ironsi was promising civilian rule, and now Gowon promises the same, PRIVILEGES But, as our correspondent pointed out, in all the regions, most of the politicians and civil servants of the old regime of Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, are still enjoying their privileges.

The main differences would be that Gowon although not a member of the Hausa or Fulani tribes-traditionally from the northern region—would favour the feudal emirs and landlords of this arid region.

They felt that the January coup, which brought Ironsi to power, was an act by Ibo Become a subscriber to IN the fight for socialism, The Newsletter is playing a vital role. Do you get it regularly? Don't leave it to the chance encounter, fill in this form and send it to: Subscription Department, The Newsletter, 186a Clapham / High Street, London, S.W.4. 9s. Od. for 12 issues Name Address with yet another military man taking over the reins and food, jobs and decent housing.

tribesmen in the army (Ibo's are traditionally from the eastern region) to the detriment of the north which had had a majority in the Federal government. The anger of the once-powerful northerners was increased by Ironsi's moves to make Nigeria a single state, which would have left them with even less influence.

DIFFERENCES

There are tribal differences in Nigeria and they have been used to the utmost by imperialist and feudal interests.

Idris Cox, writing in Tuesday's 'Morning Star", says Gowon's takeover is not the outcome of sharp tribal differences, but is a political conflict.

He points out correctly that the regional system imposed by the British 1947 sharpened tribal divsions, but he then tries to divide the tribal and political aspects of the Nigerian crisis.

In fact, they are very closely linked. In the present explosive political atmosphere, the apparently mild Ironsi tougher Gowon could use tribalism at any time on behalf of big businessmen and the feudal emirs to protect imperialist and landlord interests by dividing the rising masses on tribal lines.

The fact that Gowon is from a small tribe with a Methodist background would make such a role so much easier-his neutrality could be used to play off any of the major tribes.

TOUGH LINE

Because the Nigerian crisis deepens day by day, Gowon along with the emirs and imperialists needs to take a tougher line. The divisions caused by tribalism will now be played up to the full-with the aid of the capitalist press, of course-to split the workers and peasants in order to hold back their standard of even further.

Cox sees a solution in a broad united national tront wnich can give leadership in this new situation' trom among the younger and more militant political parties.

Among them, be says, are the Socialist Workers' and Farmers' Party, the Nigerian Youth Congress, the Northern Elements Progressive Union, the United Middle Belt Congress and of the progressive elements LuC National Council of Nigerian Citizens (which pioneered the struggle for Nigerian independence) and the Action Group (the opposition in the old Federal Assembly).

JOINT ACTION

He cites the example of the December 1963 and june 1964 general strikes when rival trade unions came together in a Joint Action Committee and forced substantial concessions from Abubakar's Federal Government.

'It is from the united action of these progressive forces that Nigeria can look to a progressive future,' he says.

Let us return to The Newster's May 7 report from our -the-spot correspondent:

around • the organisations the which hungry and angry workers could unite socialist action are bureaucratic machines, tied internationally socialist democracy, Stalinism and the church.

"Three of the five major organisations—the Nigerian Trades Union Congress (which has its main base in the Stalinist-led Socialist Workers' and Farmers Party: the Nigerian Workers' Council (a Catho lic Action group); and the Labour Unity Front (formed by "neutral" unions, attracts many militants)formed a loose confederation in March. Since then they have not made any demands' (Our emphasis.)

much for Stalinist "leadership' Mr. Cox!

ONLY ACTION Such a leadership cannot break down tribal differences or overcome the economic crisis of Nigeria.

The Nigerian workers and peasants have proved their metal. Only when they unite their strength and militancy behind those Nigerian Marxists working day and night for the overthrow of any bourgeois military or civilian regime and its imperialist backers, tribalism, unemployment, bad housing, starvation and inflation be abolished.

Indians are now starving in their millions Parliamentary fisticuffs of the ever-rising violence several areas.

NIGERIA only represent a pale reflection based on hunger, now seen in In Assam, for example, police shot several workers last week during an attempt to break into a rice store, as well as in a strike at the Durgapur steel plant. In Bihar opposition party leaders have been arrested, as a general strike against soaring prices was called.

It is still two months before the rice harvest and no one knows how supplies can be maintained during September, even on present famine levels.

A question mark hangs over Mrs. Gandhi's regime. Can she hold Congress together?

As the economic crisis deepens, can this precarious alliance of conflicting layers and national groups of capitalists maintain its hold over the masses?

The party president, Kamaraj, is well-known to be entirely opposed to the government's economic policy.

Problems

June's devaluation of the rupee highlights all the problems of this policy, and its interaction with the world problems of imperialism.

A devaluation is supposed to solve balance of payments difficulties, by reducing imports and making exports more competitive.

But Indian imports had already been cut to the bone by physical controls imposed in previous crises. Moreover, exporters are now going to face a completely different world market from the period of post-war expansion.

Ihe gap used to be filled by foreign aid. But, despite appeasement of Johnson, for example, in relation to Vietnam, US aid is severely restricted by the problems of the dollar itself. Spaniards belonging to union and the presence of many foreign observers, the Spanish authorities last week passed lenient sentences on four trade unionists alleged to have been illegally associated • with the Workers' Trade Union Alliance (ASO) and to have attended the Congress of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in 1965.

Similar charges against three others, now living outside of Spain, were dropped on August 3 by the Tribunal of Public Order in Madrid. The public prosecutor had been asking for 13 years' jail for the three, José Buiria, Hermes Piquer and José Pallach.

The prosecutor had asked for five years for 34-year-old lawyer Manuel Fernández Montesinos, who donned his legal gown before stepping from the dock to defend himself. When arrested Montesinos-nephew of the Spanish poet Garcia Lorca, shot by Franco in Granada during the Spanish Civil War-went on hunger strike.

He jailed How long can Mrs. Gandhi last?

What follows now is mass starvation, enforced by international finance capital.

The 1947 partition, from which the Congress regime emerged, was a compromise between Indian capitalism and British imperialism. The object of the deal on both sides was to halt or divert the Asian revolutionary tide.

Not resolved In the post-war boom conditions of the world market, and with the aid of imperialist subsidies, expansion of the Indian economy could stagger forward. But nothing was resolved, nor could it be under the rule of capital, tied to world imperialism.

Neither national nor agrarian problems could be tackled by the various Congress administrations.

The consequent stagnation of agriculture inevitably held back and distorted industrial development, despite all the 'plans'.

Only drastic land re-distribution and nationalization and workers' control of industry can lay the basis for economic advance and the elimination of hunger.

Hitherto, Stalinism has held back and misled the powerful Indian working class trom the political action necessary for such a solution.

The building of a section • Fourti revolution with the metropolitan struggles against world capitalism, is now the most vital task in the Indian sub-continent.

months.

The other three, metalworkers Mariano Nuero and Antonio Nogués, and bus mechanic Jesus López Quesada, were each jailed for four months-the prosecution had asked for three years each. Meetings of fellow workers were held soon after the men were arrested last September demanding their release. The men were released on bail and had to report to the police twice a week.

Conformed

On August 3, the court heard evidence from Herr Hans Matthofer, leader of the German Metalworkers' Union, and a social democratic member of the Bündestag.

He told the court that the Workers' Trade Union Alliance (ASO) conformed with the West German conception of a legitimate free trade union.

Also present at the trial were Labour MP Francis Noel-Baker and Belgian lawyer M. Marc de Kock.

In a preliminary report on his impressions of the court Kock says that the rights of defendents were respected at all the trials he attended. But the Tribunal of Public THROUGHOUT United States, the long hot summer has produced its riots, centred in Chicago on the question of housing.

The deep hatred shown to the Negroes in the South for over a hundred years has now found its expression in the North with white people gathering near Negro and white Civil Rights demonstrators to throw rocks, beer cans and any other missiles at hand.

Of course, Martin Luther King has latched on to the deep feelings of the Negroes against housing discrimination, and has been hit on the head with a rock for his troubles a knife also narrowly missed him.

He has led several militant demonstrations through predominantly white areas ... only to kneel and pray!

Another who has come to the fore is Stokely Carmichael, 25-year-old chairman of the Student Non Violent Co-ordinating Committee. Equally dangerous to the Negro people as King, Carmichael now says that SNCC is considering a coalition with the Black Muslims.

NO SURPRISE To the 'New York Times' this was no surprise-they had got hold of confidential SNCC document which states:

If we are to proceed toward liberation, we must cut ourselves off from white people. We must form our own institutions, credit unions, co-ops, political parties, write our own histories.' While Martin Luther King leads militant Negroes up the garden path to prayer, Carmichael talks of 'Black Power, which can only lead to disunity and defeat.

In Chicago last week crowds shouted 'White Power' as Civil Rights marchers moved through an all-white district. Demonstrators' cars were Order continued to be bound by laws which denied workers all freedom to organise in defence of their rights and the improvement of their position.

Sentences were also announced last weekend of others tried in Madrid last week.

Three Basques accused of distributing leaflets calling on workers to take part in the May Day demonstration in Bilbao were jailed for between four and six months. The prosecutor had asked for two years for each man.

A six-month jail sentence was also passed on a young Catalan for painting slogans on a wall in Barcelona for which the prosecutor had asked three years.

As well as soft-peddling in the courts, the Spanish authorities have also been forced by the strength of the student movement to grant pupils and professors more say in university affairs.

The order for this has been made during the summer vacation in an attempt to prevent, when the universities resume, the militant riots and action by students demanding their own union-earlier this year students in Barcelona staged a sit-down in protest against the university authorities.

Reporter burned and turned pushed into a lake.

When the marchers returned later in the week, police had to protect them from some 7,000 white people who began throwing everything at hand at the demonstrators.

On Sunday in Cragin, another white district, 1,100 police formed a cordon around 1,500 demonstrators as hecklers shouted 'kill them' and 'monkey go home'.

JOBS FOUND

In Minneapolis, the local authorities were forced to find jobs for some 60 Negro youths following rioting and looting of white-owned stores in a multi-racial district.

In Philadelphia promises were given that charges police violence would be investigated following three nights of battles between police and Negroes on a housing estate.

In Omaha, where National Guardsmen had been used against demonstrators in July, Negroes fire-bombed and looted several shops and buildings.

Police viciously waded into a crowd of Negroes in Providence, using large shields, after Negro youths pelted nine policemen who were watching shoppers in a Negro neighbourhood. Previously Civil Rights demonstrations had been held there.

Puerto Ricans have also clashed with the police. In Perth, New Jersey, 7,000 Puerto Ricans rioted for four nights after police had arrested someone. The police claimed they had been attacked with rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails.

'POLICE RIOTED'

A Puerto Rican spokesman said it was the police who had rioted by grabbing innocent people on the street.

In Atlanta, where SNCC has its headquarters, Carmichael led a 200-strong crowd of Negroes in chanting "Black Power' after a white motorcycle policeman had stopped a Negro motorist for making an illegal turn.

The House of Representatives is now discussing a section of the Civil Rights Bill on fair housing and on the death sentence for violence and threats in demonstrations.

But neither government laws, nor the 'leadership' of the Bible thumpers or Black Power' merchants can solve the problems of the coloured people of America.

The immediate task is to forge a unity between Negro and white workers behind Marxist policies to answer these problems and in the process to forge a revolutionary narty to take the power from the crisis-ridden US capitalists.

SPEECH TW THE & TROGRAB SOVIET B / CELEBRATING LENIN'S RECOVERY FROM WOUNDI RECHIVED IN THE ATTEMPT MADE ON H$ LIFE ON AUGUST 30TPH This remarkable biographical speech is now available in pamphlet form. Well illustrated and pocket size, it costs 3s.

Socialist Labour League, 186A Clapham High Street, London,

TEST case is now being fought out in the Midlands which could mean a wholesale attack on the wages of thousands of car workers.

The management of the British Motor Corporation's Tractor and Transmissions factory has proposed that the No clearer indication that the wages freeze Wilson government is nothing more than an charter aimed at reducing wages could be given. TWO investigatione Devibeine carried out into ways of implementing the Devlin Report on the docks are exPage i Fo • ALL OUT WAR From page 'We want the kind of peace which will enable people to live and develop their economies and to improve their standards of living in fraternal collaboration with the rest of the world. We cannot achieve this while finance capital exists: there can be no peaceful co-existence with capitalism today,' he said.

Emphasising : his point Banda said: "The violence of imperialism will be, and must be met with violence of the colonial peoples and their browhers in the metropolitan countries. The Old Testament was right on this question. There is no other way?

Returning to the role of Wilson, Banda said that the Prime Minister was a rascal in dissociating from the bombing in Hanoi and Haiphong. entire wage structure be scrapped.

In place of piece work prices on jobs-where strong shop organisation in a continuous battle with rate fixers has provided a reasonable standard of living for the workers—the management now proposes: • Measured day work;

Work study methods;

Job evaluation; and CORRESPONDENT Bill of the employers' LATE NEWS On Wednesday the Tractors and Transmission stewards unanimously rejected the management's proposals. They decided to issue a special leaflet on this to all the factory workers. Later a meeting of all BMC stewards will be called to hammer out a common NEWSLETTE News tenants LAL28 Newsletter Reporter nected to be completed by September. For... →w=r - -I The government still intends to carry through the decasualisation scheme, but a recent estimate stated that this could not be realised until early next 13, 1966 35 employers so that they would become more efficient and big enough to operate with a force of permanent dockers.

The employers recognised

only real interest was the f.

'He hoped to make a deal on the entry into the Common Market with M. Pompidou, who is opposed to the bombing of the North, but when the deal fell through, he went to Washington and got his orders and agreed to the bombing of the demilitarised zones.

Truly tied

'He has tied himself well and truly to the chariot wheels of American imperialism.' The South Vietnamese regime was merely the embodiment of human refuse dredged up by history to hold back the dyke walls against the flow of the revolution.

But Wilson was as responsible as Johnson... for all the atrocities and abominations in Vietnam - U.S. imperialism had tried everything there and even recruited bed-bugs.

*If they could, they would take the rats out of Harlem and send them against the Vietnamese people, Banda added.

Banda said that both the Soviet Union and China should have given •more adequate support and protection to the Vietnamese people. If they had done, the spirit of insatiable bellicosity of imperialism might have been dampened, but unfortunately: this had not happened and the imperialists were preparing for a generalised war.

'We have to draw some conclusions.' he said. 'We are revolutionists, not neutralists. We have to make a complete break with the policies of Wilson and Stewart. Down with all this treachery!

"The only difference between Wilson's government in Britain and that of Marshal Ky, is that Ky shoots trade unionists while Wilson prepares to put them in jail.

Reciprocal

I do not know why they have - to send Philip NoelBaker to Spain to cover the trials of Spanish trade unionists. He will certainly needed to cover the trials here -and we must not be surprised if Franco, in a spirit of reciprocity, sends his people over here to see that Justice is done,' he said adding:

"The British working class must break completely with them, even if it means the Labour government being defeated in Parliament. would rather have the triumph of principle than the triumph of expediency and defeat for the working class.' He called on trade unionists. Young Socialists, Cooperative members, and members of the Labour Party to demand that the Wilson government recognise the National Liberation Front, withdraw all British troops from south-east Asia and send arms and other war material to the Vietnamese people.

PAMF Early History Comm nist Party of of.

Great Britain (Reprinted from 'Labour Review of July-August 1957 January-February 1958)

Available from:

NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS, 186A Clapham High Street, London, !

Advisory committees on productivity.

In simple terms this means that workers will be given a day wage while having to work at piece-rate pace.

For good measure the management has thrown in the suggestion of an incentive bonus, to be added to the weekly wage if the timestudy norms are exceeded.

BACK WILSON

It is reported that in discussions with the 100 stewards, the management quoted and supported Wilson's July 20 speech which opened the attack on workers' wages whilst prices mortgages and rents go on rising, and quite bluntly indicated that the proposals were to get higher productivity and a lower wage bill.

The stewards are most likely to reject this first frontal attack, but should realise that the whole employing class is out to drive down wages with the active assistance of the Labour government. The fight is, therefore, political right from the start.

Section meetings have already gone on record against the management's proposals and the government's wages-freeze Bill.

DREAM WORLD Factory convenor, A. Harper, said in a statement:

"The management is trying to create a dream world of piece-work needs for daywork rates.. This could be a BMC test case, and what we have built up over 50 years is not going to be given up • without a struggle. ...

This is all the more reason why Tractor and Transmissions stewards must go immediately on the counter-attack by rallying the maximum support throughout the British Motor Corporation and allied engineering factories to make sure that Tractor and Transmission workers are not left to fight this out alone.

The stewards should call an immediate conference of all BMC stewards, delegates from sections and from other factories in the area to discuss this attack in line with the fight against the government's wage freeze Bill.

Thousands of motor car workers must take the opportunity to continue this policy.

fight on the October: 2 demonstration organised by the Young Socialists outside the Labour Party Conference in Brighton in order to throw out the Bill and the Labour traitors with it.

The fight against the BMC wage attacks must also be strengthened by the struggle to take this industry out of the hands of the profiteers and to nationalize it under workers' control. Will refuse to pay rent rise BY NEWSLETTER TN their fight against the exorbitant rent increase and rent rebate scheme-which the tenants call a means test - Normanton Yorkshire tenants decided on Wednesday night to carry out their threat to withold the increases when the collectors call. They also called for solidarity amongst all tenants.

The only letter of support, which also offered help, came from a branch of the Young Socialists. The tenants and YS have now formed a committee to organise a jumble sale.

The big danger in Normanton at the moment is that the local press and other organisations will try to use this fight to split the labour movement.

Normanton tenants in the Labour Party, which runs the local council, should go into the Party meetings to weed out the traitors to the working class.

Miners in the council houses should take up the fight in the local National Union of Mineworkers' branches for support.

Normanton tenants should also consider sending a delegation to the October 2 demonstration of the Young Socialists outside the Labour Party conference in Brighton. workers year.

At the same time the Lonon port employers are now onfident that they will reach the target set by the Devlin Report before the end of this year by reducing their number to ten.

The Devlin Commission recommended this figure to the that they would not get any co-operation from any dockers without an increase in the basic rate of pay, and the six-month pay freeze has put an end to that for the time being.

One of the investigations into wages.

Increase doubtful

But any increase is now doubtful, even after the freeze, and it is a foregone conclusion that any offer would not come anywhere near the £15 basic wage demanded by dockers in a big wage struggle in 1964.

Most dockers do not want to be bought off anyway. They recognise that the Devlin Report wants to sell them lock, stock and barrel to the employers, and that their casual system of labour has been one of their only means of defence in the struggle with the port employers to maintain their present wages and conditions.

Unofficial action

"Unofficial' action was begun earlier this year in all ports against the Devlin proposals.

There has been a quiet period since then, but dockers must remain on their guard against this scheme and be prepared to do battle against its implementation.

By the time the employers and government are ready to impose it again, the dockers' fight will be more closely linked with that of all workers for even the barest of livelihoods.

Their best preparation will be to join the Young Socialists October 2 demonstration outside the Labour Party Conference.

WHEN workers at ENV Engineering, north-west London, return from their holidays next week, they will find the employers still trying to break down union organisation in the factory.

At the end of last month, an attempt was made to force workers into accepting proposals which would have virtually destroyed the rights of shop stewards.

Declaring that the U.S.-owned was losing money, the management twice attempted to hold a ballot on these alternatives:

Accept the proposals, or Close the factory.

In discussion at a factory meeting, the workers unanimously decided to have nothing to do with this.

A second ballot, sent out by post, received one or two replies from the 1,500 workers.

Now the managing director has returned from yet another trip to the firm's Cleveland, Ohio, headquarters, with fresh proposals.

These are to be discussed at a meeting between the management and union officials on Monday.

Meanwhile, as several factories in the Willesden and Acton areas declare redundancies, it is rumoured that personnel officers in other firms have been instructed not to take on anyone who leaves ENV.

The bosses will take advantage of the recession set by Wilson's policies and his anti-union laws.

This attack must be resisted not only by those at ENV, but by trade unionists throughout the district.

The danger that union bosses will be used to break this resistance must not be ignored.

Workers must say to ENV's owners: 'Let us inspect the books of your firm. If you are unable to run this once highly-profitable factory, it should be nationalized.' VIETNAM

THE 1,200 workers at the Blyth shipyard and the small town's other inhabitants were stunned at the shock news of the yard's intended closure.

As far as was generally known there was plenty of work in the yard and plenty of orders besides.

Overtime was regularly worked before the holidays.

Five hundred of the yard's employees received their dismissal notices during the fortnight's holidays. Many did not know they were among the first to go until they returned • ° we fear such trials would inflame public opinion in the West and make it harder to secure peace.' (sic)

They might as well go a step further and request the North Vietnamese to stop infiltrating into the South or, for that matter, to stop killing Americans because there is nothing calculated to 'inflame public opinion' more than killing Americans.

It is difficult to think of anything more philistine, more stupid and more reactionary than this appeal to President Ho.

INCREASED WARFARE A few weeks after this letter was written the Americans bombed the demilitarised zone, increased the number of sorties over Hanoi, strafed a 'friendly' village promised to increase the U.S. presence by home on the week-end before they were due to start work.

Extracts from the letter read as follows:

'You will probably have observed from the press, that ... due to continuing losses at the yard... Debenture Holders have appointed a receiver. In the circumstances now prevailing, I regret that I do not have further use for your services • • you are advised to attend your local Employment Exchange...:

Anyone who thinks he has a duty to tighten his belt to save the capitalist economy should study this letter closely.

All the working class will another 400,000 troops. All this without a single pilot being put on trial!

In the face of these facts the pledge of the MPs 'to do all in our power to help end the war' remains a fraudulent gesture.

As a postscript it may be be said that Trotsky anticipated the Brockways and Foots 45 years ago when he wrote in his polemic with Kautsky on the use of terror:

'As long as human labour power, and consequently, life itself, remain articles of sale and purchase, of exploitation and robbery, the principle of the "sacredness of human life" remains a shameful lie, uttered with the object of keeping the oppressed Slaves in their chains.' A very fitting deed. get for making sacrifices in the interests of the nation is a kick in the eye and a hollow laugh of derision from the employing class.

One young worker, newlymarried, had just spent a hard-earned £100 on his summer holiday only to return to find he was on the dole.

The 700 men still at work will finish off the remaining ships, which will take four to five months, and then the yard will close completely.

(The closure spells out hard times for the small town, whose only other industry is the two pits close by.)

Confusion reigns as to what to do.

At a mass meeting, attended by all the yard's 1,200 men on Monday, Tyneside union officials proposed a resolution calling upon the government to intervene with a view to retaining the premises as a shipyard: the argument being put forward that it was better Ior the government to plough money into the yard than into the dole.

Inadequate

But this reaction is entirely inadequate. As the Young Socialists pointed out in their leaflet to the meeting, the closure could be understood in the light of the Geddes Report.

And the Geddes Report called for the shipbuilding firms on Tyneside and Blyth, which is further up the coast, to merge and form one unit, employing between 8,000 and 10,000 men.

This would mean halving the number of shipyard workers on Tyneside by 1970.

Swan Hunters and Smiths docks have already merged.

The Blyth closure can only be seen as part of the plan to rationalise the shipyards.

But this is government policy. What is the point of appealing to the government to make an exception of Blyth?

The question is to fight this policy in the form of the Geddes Report. The only policy now is for the whole of the Tyneside Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions to demand the closure order be cancelled, that the sacked men be reinstated, and that a committee of elected workers from the yard examine the books to assess for themselves the financial position.

Nationalize

If the yard is making a loss the demand should be for the it to be nationalized, without compensation, under the control of the workers.

But instead of opposing the Geddes Report, union leaders are co-operating in its implementation.

Recently, Danny McGarvey, of the Boilermakers' Society, negotiated an agreement to end demarcation strikes.

All the shipyard workers will get in return is similar treatment to the Blyth workers: yard closures, or speed-up and sackings.

Negotiations to implement Geddes should be broken off and the policies of nationalization fought for. Registered at the G The News newspaper Printed 1 London 3.

Myton site in the Barbican re-development area of London picketed the site gates on Monday against the introduction of subcontract labour.

They succeeded in persuading the sub-contractor's men to stay away.

At a lunchtime site meeting of all trades, a senior steward made it clear that the introduction of sub-contract labour affects every man on the site.

A decision was taken unanimously to down tools if sub-contract labour is introduced.

The lessons of this move are quite clear, and may well be followed on sites throughout the country.

The crisis of British capitalism has been shown in the already heavy deflation which will bring widespread unemployment this winter. On the building sites employers are now attempting to reduce costs to offset the effects of the selective employment tax.

Sub - contract labour means that the sub-contractor will have to pay the tax.

On top of this, every building worker knows that sub-contract labour worked harder under worse conditions, often for less pay. In some cases, subcontractors have promised continuous working in all weather conditions.

This is only the beginning of these struggles. In the next few months as unemployment rises, employers will take advantage of the situation to force down wages and speed up the jobs. Naturally, in times of lay off, the militants will go first.

Workers must be prepared now to unite employed and unemployed workers against the wage freeze and anti-union laws, through the building of an alternative leadership to the reactionary Labour government.