miners reject Birmingham wages

These letters said: If you do not reply, the Board will assume that you have rejected the offer to: continue employment, and they may not in that case be obliged to treat you as entitled to a payment under the Redundancy Payment Act, 1965'.

Replies were demanded by the NCB by Monday, even though some letters were only received on Saturday morning.

The decision of the Cambrian miners is the biggest development so far in the struggle against pit closures in South Wales and marks a break from the National Union of Mineworkers' policy of co-operating with pit closures, while asking or talks with the government With big increases in redun dancy in the area over the last three weeks, miners know that they are fighting for their livelihood.

No Hopes "...

In the Cambrian lodge's clubhouse--30 yards from Sewing Industries factory closed three weeks ago-miners told The Newsletter how the sackings at the nearby Treforest Trading Estate had destroyed their hopes of alternative employment.

One miner said that he had been in the coal industry all his life and, at 50, could not hope to get a job outside.

The Stalinist-dominated leadership of the South Wales' NUM has undermined the struggle against pit closures in the past. Now that a bitter fight is inevitable, these so-called leaders' try to prevent united action. Last week leaders declared that any action was up to the Cambrian lodge alone.

T PAM Early History Communist the time had come for a review of union policy.

The union should not cooperate in the closure of pits where there are still reserves of coal.

More Closures He said the closures were being accelerated, now coming two or three at a time, and miners were being offered Jobs contrary to their abilities.

In the setting of the Labour government's wage freeze policy increasing unemployment, the Communist Party's peaceful pipedreams of 'directing industry to Wales' and putting pressure on Wilson is transparent nonsense.

A leading Rhondda CP member said on Saturday: 'We can no longer hold back severe criticism of the Labour government, and we from the Rhondda must say to them: "Lads, you are on the wrong track, you are putting the people of South Wales on the dole"' This is not only ludicrous, but smacks of nationalism as well. Harold Wilson's lads' must be quaking at this 'severe criticism' which came after a poster parade by a mere 30 people ... out of the Rhondda CP's several hundred paper members.

Rank-and-file miners have to take a more serious attitude than the Stalinists and fake 'lefts' They can only fight for their futures by fighting for a socialist alternative to the Wilson government and defending the nationalized industries through a programme of workers' control, suspension of compensation and interest payments, and extending nationalization.

BY BRIA PEAR 2s.

TIONS, ondon, promised pay-rise to meet the extra expense.

"They're quick enough to stop us getting more in our paypackets. When the Council want to put up the rent, that's not but the low-paid worst of all. We don't know where this extra rent is coming from.' Nearly all these : workers are members of the National Union of Public Employees, which recently declared its opposition to the wage freeze. NUPE delegates will vote and speak against the government's measures at the TUC and Labour Party conferences.

Fifteen thousand Birmingham workers are involved in this freeze dilemma. It is to be put before the union as a "special case', and may well become an important issue in the fight to beat the government's anti-working-class wage-freeze policy.

The struggle in Birmingham is gaining support from another section of workers. The central committee of the tenants and residents' association, representing 16 tenants' associations in various parts of the city, has approached NUPE with proposals of mutual support.

RENT FREEZE

This association, which says that 1,400 tenants have refused to pay the higher rents, expressed the view that if there are threats of eviction the tenants concerned should have government support.

One thing most of these council tenants appear to have resolved is that they will not stand for having to pay higher rents out of frozen wages, while interest rates soar and benefit the, moneylenders.

Birmingham Young Socialists stand side-by-side with the tenants in this struggle, attending meetings and organising support in factories and among the youth. For the future they urge all tenants to take up the fight against wage-cuts and unemployment by joining the mass demonstration of workers at the Labour Party Conference on October 2.

SACH THE facts of how the living standards of workers are threatened by Wilson's policies are already apparent in key sections of Scottish industry. Instructions have been given that all municipal building projects other than housing and schools are to be severely cut. All civic buildings and amenity projects will be suspended. The programme for road development will similarly be cut back. DATA backs YS march ON SATURDAY (August 20) the No. 1 Divisional Council ¡Scotland of the Draughtsmen's and Allied Technicians' Association voted by a large majority to support the call by Glasgow Federation of Young Socialists to demonstrate through Glasgow on August 27 against the wage freeze and the government's anti-union legislation. The decision authorised the carrying of the union's divisional banner on the demonstration.

Employment

uncertain atter Blyth lay-otts SINCE the announcement of the closure of the Blyth shipyard a fortnight ago—when 500 men out of a 1,200 total were sacked without warning during their holiday period-two factories on the local trade estate have announced they are to close. unable to meet competition Europe and the USA.

The ICI sackings also make nonsense of Labour's so-called 'economic policy' for the modernisation and re-organisation of Britain. In the first place all the talk of 'directing labour and industry' to those areas where it was most needed is now revealed for the fraud that it was.

ICI dismiss men in South Wales, always an area of high unemployment, in Doncaster, where the contraction of the mining industry now leaves very few acceptable jobs open, and finally grave doubt is now cast over the much publicised Scottish plant for nylon polymer (the raw material for nylon yarn). : Already it is clear that the economic crisis will hit those areas already suffering from high unemployment: Scotland, Wales, the North East and Northern Ireland—just as they did (although to a much less extent) in Selwyn Lloyd's Tory squeeze in 1961.

CAN'T COMPETE

Nothing has changed under Labour despite the battery of planners and highly paid administrators who were to direct industry to these areas.

Secondly it is clear from the ICI case that the present crisis and the measures which the bankers have demanded Labour take to solve it will make British industry less able to compete on the world market than before the squeeze.

ICI is now forced to work with plant below full capacity, thus raising its costs as well as to scrap or defer its plans for much investment in modern plant which the crisis now makes impossible to carry through.

The main consequence, of course, will be the sacking of thousands of workers.

Wilson's reported threat to the Trades Union Congress General Council that failure to accept the wage freeze would mean two million unemployed is a lie: the heavy unemployment which was already resulting from Callaghan's measures is in fact being used to force through the wage freeze.

These results of 22 months of Wilson's government follow directly from the decision to operate capitalism. The workers' movement must throw out Wilson and his treacherous policies, which can only mean a return to the mass unemoloyment conditions of the thirties.

BOB SHAW It was decided to ask the Executive Committee of DATA to send a delegation to the Young Socialists lobby of the Labour Party conference at Brighton on October 2.

The EC was also called upon by No. 1 Divisional Council to organise a delegation or send observers to Liege on October 15 in solidarity with European Young Socialists' demonstration against NATO and the war in Vietnam.

Newsletter Correspondent Of the 500 men who were sacked, a small number have left the area altogether, but most of them seem to have found work in the shipyards on the Tyne, ten miles away.

Seven hundred men are still working at the yard on the remaining ships——a 7,500-ton collier is to be finished completely, two ships are fitting out, but on four ships for the Westminster Dredging company work has ceased completely.

It may be that for men in the finishing trades, there may be work for another five months. As for the rest, redundancy could come at any time.

'You don't know when you walk through the gates in the morning what is going to happen, said one welder. 'Anyone could get their notice at any time. Some of the office staff got their cards last week, The closure has taken the local councillors and union men completely by surprise. Although talks between yard stewards and the Lloyd's bank receiver are being held regularly and representations to the Board of Trade are to be held, no one has any idea what the outcome will be.

The union demand for the government to give financial help to save the yard seems to have met with no response.

One Boilermakers' Society official considers that the town should shame the government into doing something by raising a 6d rate and 'refloating' the shipyard at a cost of £500,000l "Don't Move' In addition local councillors, union official and representatives of the north-east development corporation are urging skilled men still out of work not to move from Blyth as this will make it more difficult to attract alternative industry to the area.

But as has been pointed out previously, to appeal for help from a government whose very policies are responsible for what happened at Blyth is completely inadequate.

As the recent Geddes-plan mergers on the Tyne and the proposed mergers on the Clyde signify, only large consortiums, concentrating capital, rationalising production and cutting labour costs will be able to survive in the future.

The failure of the union leaders to draw the lessons of the Fairfield yard-where the union rule book was thrown out-and to effectively oppose the Prices and Incomes Act and the Geddes plan means that workers will be herded into a trap of speed up, yard closures and redundancies.

Negotiations over Geddes must be broken off now and a real fight be staged for nationalization of the yards under workers' control.

Building workers know that these cuts mean unemployment; they had it from the Tory government three years ago.

Colvilles have announced that at their three factories in Lanarkshire one of the night shifts is to suspended. This move affects 2,000 workers and it is not clear how they will be employed if at all.

But steel workers in Motherwell and I Wishaw are worried; they have observed Colvilles current purge of all spare labour. The cut in the night shift they say is a serious threat.

Thousands of car workers at Rootes, Linwood, are on a three or four-day week. Wilson's law prohibits them from taking strike action to demand that they be given the same pay for four, days as for five.

The Communist Party on the Clyde demonstrates a paralysis which has resulted in complete inactivity on the anti-trade union law since its campaign of June 22.

Jobless pattern

THE TREND of unemployment in 1966 is following fairly closely that of the Summer of 1963. The Santersh workers. is all too familiar to On August 8, 58,887 were jobless in Scotland, the press emphasising that this was 4,080 fewer than August last year.

However, the trend of unemployment has been reversed from a general decline in the figures to a steady increase. The number of unemployed workers has increased by 4,000 this month, Building workers, steel and car workers should join the Young Socialists and the Socialist Labour League in a fight to defeat the attack by the Wilson government.

Make the banks and the employers pay for their crisis, nationalize the building industry; steel and car industries.

Join with the Young Socialists in a demonstration from Queen's Cross, Glasgow on Saturday, August 27,.

at 3 p.m., and at Brightón on October 2.