BUSMEN WANT THAW ON PAY RISE

How do we pay a 20 per cent rise on FROZEN WAGES? to THE CAMBRIAN COLLIERY: Closure will increase jobless total.

Disaster pit on Jobless figures will rise in Rhondda DELEGATES from every colliery in South discuss the National Coal Board's latest list at a special conference on September 16.

The latest closures include pits with ample reserves of coal which are situated in areas threatened with heavy unemployment: Duffryn Rhondda near Port Talbot and two pits in the Rhondda Valley-Glynrhondda at Treherbert and the Cambrian colliery at Tonypandy.

On August 8, 230 workers at Sewing Industries Ltd., in the Rhondda, returned from holiday to be met by closure notices.

The government's economic measures are creating unemploy. ment in the very light industries which the Labour Party said would bring new jobs to South Wales.

Militant struggle

In this situation, a militant struggle now lies ahead of the miners.

The Cambrian colliery has a long record of militancy since it led the fight for the national minimum wage before the First World War, and took on troops sent by Churchill in 1911. The same colliery was the scene of the disastrous mine explosion which killed 31 men in May 1965.

On Sunday night, 750 men from the Cambrian met Mr. I. R. Thomas, MP for Rhondda West. It is reported that he had to face a barrage of questions.

The men at the meeting gave support to the lodge committee's policy of non-co-operation in the closure, and demanded that the coalfield conference be brought forward.

No co-operation After the meeting, Mr. Garfield Rogers, the lodge secretary, said in a press statement:

"As the lodge is opposing this closure, we will not be cooperating in the mass transfer of men to Cwm Colliery.

'We appreciate that if we GLASGOW busmen are to determine their attitude government's Prices and Incomes Act at important meetings this week of the Transport and General Workers' Union. They now have the backing of the Corporation's Transport Committee in their demand for a 9s. 5d. pay rise.

The wages of busmen are kept at a 'reasonable' level only because of excessive overtime and rest-day working. At one garage in Glasgow busmen said that the 9s. 5d. increase which was agreed in July and stopped by the government's wage freeze would be worth fl with overtime enhancements. closure list CARDIFF CORRESPONDENT Wales will of closures CLYDESIDE SHIPYARDS BEGIN MERGERS shipbuilding , yards on the Clyde are now being implemented on the lines of the Geddes Report recommendations.

The Connells, Barclay. Curle, Yarrow and Stephens' yards have announced that mergers may take place within a matter of weeks. Before this John Brown's of Clydebank announced that it had approached Fairfields for merger of the two yards. The latter firm is 50 per cent financed by the government subsidy following its announcement of bankruptcy last autumn.

The lesson of Fairfields is being drawn by all the large shipbuilding firms on the Clyde and elsewhere. It is that either they jointly amass capital to cut labour and other costs and rationalise production or they go out of business. No firm is now too large to avoid this procedure.

So the Clyde will see within a year the eliminaton of all but two large consortiums of shipbuilders.

The lessons for shipyard workers are equally clear. It is that to preserve illusions of negotiating plans such as that at Fairfields where the resources of the unions are put at the disposal of the employers (the Electrical Trades Union oblingingly trained Fairfield shop stewards in time and motion study) is disastrous and will be paid for at a heavy price.

Urgent need

One thing is certain: the recently negotiated 'no strike' pledge for the boilermakers will be blown apart.

But it is urgent that leadership is built which will draw all the lessons from the betrayal of the right wing.

Rising unemployment will mean a massive increase in pressure on wages in the yards with the employers seeking to take advantage of the government's Prices and Incomes Act to make actual cuts.

Nor will plans for increased earnings coupled with better productivity get by the wage freeze.

There will be 'Fairfield'-type plans to increase productivity and cut wages and they will be pressed with the knowledge that there will be thousands of unemployed outside the yard gates.

Shipyard workers must now support the campaigns of the Young Socialists against the wage freeze and march in Glasgow on August 27. BOB SHAW the They claimed that a working week of 80 hours was common but that because of the low over shifts there was a continua] stream of new recruits into the whom By had ter this winter more workers will be forced to accept work on • the buses so that overtime will be slashed and earnings dip down tiz. to the basic minimum of GRIM PROSPECT With prices bounding up and rent, rates and tax increases, this will mean a drastic reduction in living standards and a grim prospect tor thousands of workers' families.

The union delegate at the same garage expressed great complacency. He had no idea of the union's intentions on the wage freeze but thought that things were generally satisfactory.

That the situation is explosive is understood better by the leaders of the Transport and General Workers' Union and the Glasgow (Labour) Corporation.

They remember the impressive strike of Glasgow busmen two years ago when there was a 100 Indian Scottish workers, despite several racialist provocations attempted by the press.

The Corporation and T&GWU officials have, therefore, been exchanging shots, mainly to impress the rank and file. Corporation officials have complained that a strike is being prepared and is being imposed from London. Local T&GWU officials have hinted at action to secure the payment of the 9s. 5d. increase.

TYPICAL ACTION But typical of the T&GWU attitude is the actions of one official who is also a member of the Glasgow Trades Council. During the period of January to June, he has effectively blocked all attempts to mobilise the Glasgow trade union movement in a fight to throw out the Prices and Incomes Bill. Only the most vague and general resolutions on this question were put forward.

To take up a struggle against the government's wage freeze is essential if great hardship is to be avoided. Not only that, but to allow Wilson's measures to go unchallenged by the working class on the Clyde means a reappearance of heavy unemployment such as was experienced three years ago when in sorne areas there were 10 per cent unemployed.

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Vietnam Solidarity Campaign

kept in mind, in case the Soviet bureaucracy should attempt in the future to foist another similar reactionary agreement on the Vietnamese people. We have kept to that agreement.

During our talk we made it clear that we were not affiliated to your Campaign but that we would support your public meeting on August 6 and the torchlight procession to the American Embassy at Grosvenor Square, W.l. afterwards, on these grounds, and these grounds alone.

Subsequently, attempts were made by members of your Campaign such as E. Taite that Mike Banda, the assistant general secretary of the SLL, should not speak at the public meeting, because he was too forthright in his condemnation of the war in Vietnam, and that he might embarrass any Labour MPs who would be on the platform. Naturally, we did not agree to this, since it is out of the question Tor anyone, apart trom members of the SLu, to determine who should speak for our organisation at any meeting.

Then it was agreed that he should speak, so we called upon our members and supporters to attend the meeting and join the demonstration which, of course, they did.

At that meeting we were faced with an extraordinary situation in which you as chairman tried to determine by your control of the meeting what our people should or should not say in relation to the role of the British Communist Party and the Soviet bureaucracy. You wrongly accused the Socialist Labour League of breaking the united front of the Solidarity Committee.

We did nothing of the sort, since we were not in the first place members of the Committee and we would never under any circumstances agree not to criticise the British Communist Party and its evolutioverlords who are in our opinion Betraying the Vietnamese A united front agreement is one that relates the specific issues of agreement whilst enabling those who participate to criticise, necessary, the political shortcomings of others who subscribed to the agreement. Since neither we, the British Communist Party or the Soviet bureaucracy are members of your Campaign how could the SLI spokesman from the floor have broken any agreement?

The most charitable conclusion we can draw is that a serious mistake was made by you due to a misunderstanding of your powers as chairman.

You must appreciate that the members of the Socialist Labour League are indignant over what they believe to be an unwarranted interference with the rights of their organisation.

They participated in the demonstration when others who are affiliated to your Campaign sought refuge in a public house by Baker Street tube station, rather than march. to Botore we decide as to appetite you to cents. Yours by CP By a Newsletter correspondent A RECENT meeting of the . BOAC joint shop stewards' committee at London Airport showed exactly where Communist Party stewards and their sympathisers stood in relation to the rank-and-file workman.

Referring to the parity claim (which is the attempt to raise the wage level of BOAC workmen to that of BEA workers), a leading member of the committee and CP member stated that although negotiations had been going on for over 18 months, the. officers of the committee had been correct in refusing to make the call for industrial action in order that the foreign. bankers would have more confidence in the Labour government.

Agltation

However, in order to remain a militant figure in the eyes of the other shop stewards, he went on to attack the Prices and Incomes Act and the wage freeze.

The freeze would last longer than 12 months, but prices would continue rising. He made a call for agitation amongst the workers at the BOAC base. What was needed was a large demonstration against the wage freeze, he said.

Later in the discussion, an apprentices' representative - a Young Socialist—called upon the committee to support the Young Socialists' demonstration outside the Labour Party Conference in Brighton on October 2 aganst the wage freeze, and to organise a coachload of workers to attend.

The same call was made again later and this time the chairman urged the mover to leave it until the next item—a shop resolution condemning the wage freezehad been discussed.

After discussion on this resolution, the apprentices' representative again called for support for the Young Socialists' demonstration, warning that if the shop stewards' committee did not act, it would be left behind thousands of workers who would be out on the streets demonstrating against the wage freeze in the next few months. A decision on this was deferred again.

The S.L.L. and the