Workers Press no. 839

workers press

THE TORIES ALERT

TROOPS AND POLICE

INCORPORATING THE NEWSLETTER • F

DAILY ORGAN OF THE CENTRAL COM

BY DAVID MAUDE

RECALL OF THE Transport and General Workers' Union biennial conference to mobilize the full strength of the 1.6 million-strong union behind the dockers is now an urgent necessity. Solidarity action from transport drivers, engineers, carworkers and members of other unions is essential.

While a group of hard-faced em- ployers play the T&GWU leaders along on the Jones-Aldington com- mittee, the government is starting to use its armed forces to break the docks strike. Troops and police have already been EDWARD HEATH yesterday alerted for action by the Cabinet, which called senior ministers to 10 is now virtually ruling by decree with its Downing Street discuss to emergency powers. the emergency situation fac- The military-style of police operations ing the government. against the dockers' pickers torm part or d The heard blackmail The Tories hope meeting reports strategy. to from the Emplovment Secretary frighten those docks delegates who abstained Maurice Macmillan on the docks the Jones-Aldington interim report to strike and from Ulster Secretary vote in favour when it is put to them again.

William Whitelaw, who arrived Screams from the Tory press for more pickets back from Belfast after his meet- to bloody nose' form part of the get ings with army chiefs, the Social blackmailers chorus. Democratic and Party

ABOUT

In this way the Tories think they can and the Rev Tan Paisley. isolate the dockers. get their official backing the Home Also present were and then to ruthlessly removed move in Secretary, Robert Carr, Defence crush a continuing unofficial strike.

Such a situation would be a serious defeat for the whole trade union movement.

Every trade unionist, therefore, must demand that the TUC leaders stop their servile crawling the Heath government-by-decree and mobilize action to force it out of office.

Some docks shop stewards have demanded that what they call promises' in the Jones- Aldington transformed "copper-bottomed' guarantees.

But Jack Jones and Lord Aldington can produce no solution to the jobs crisis in the port transport industry. They never could. The purpose of con- tainerization under is to get rid capitalsm smashing of dockers, the process the have won rights they over years or bitter Employers have invested heavily in struggle. precisely this prospect. For a union secretary like Jones to even Secretary Lord Carrington, Privy suggest this situation can be resolved by Seal Lord Jellicoe, and the Finan- amicable with these dI CCHICHE CHl" the secretary reasury, ployers is bad enough, but the Jones- Terence Higgins. report has already taken Aldington interim yesterday On its front things a stage further. page "The Guardian' carried this head- the committee's init union line: "Triple crisis has accept the employers' claim that up to 6,000 standby. on require- dockers палопацу are surplus lo The paper's political corres- ments. pondent, Ian Aitken, said: 'Senior The implication is: all we have to do is ministers directly involved crisesthe find 6,000 replacement jobs and Bob's your major political three dock strike. Northern Ireland uncle. and Uganda's threatened expul- This is a dangerous illusion.

sion of 40,000 Asians- -were last night virtually placed on emerg- At the most generous estimate the number of container jobs dockers could hope to get ency standby as parliament rose every promise in Jones-Aldington were long

ICCOS

fulfilled is less than 2,000.

Many were advised to And to get these. remain would have displace dockers men who to within cal for the time being.

his officials The main consideration yester- Tones and eagerly recruited into the union. day was when to use troops ou T&GWU docks delegates the docks. So whenever the are recalled, they have one paramount duty: the Emergency Under Powers to reject not only the Jones-Aldington report, which parliament approved Act but its whole philosophy.

Tuesday. the Tories have sweeping powers to wield through

TURN TO PAGE 12

the Privy Council. ITER • FRIDAY AUGUST 11, 1972 • No. 839 • 4p

- COMMITTEE OF THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE

in the bulld-up to the eventual showdown with the dockers, the po free rein to deal with pickets. This is a scene from Keadby on Wedn were arrested.

MILITARY

aircraft are to begin airlifting supplies to Shetland the Orkney and islands to break the docks Office strike, the Scottish arranged for emergency sup- announced in Edinburgh plies to be transported to yesterday. RAF Kinloss. From there The announcement came flown out to they will be a few hours after a meeting the islands in service air- of senior Tory Ministers in Ministry of craft under London and heralds the first Defence arrangements. of the A Scottish Office spokes- use services since the state of emergency was man said: declared. It would not be possible Orkney and Shetland to transport sufficient quan- County Council have tities of urgently-needed rs, the police have been given a / on Wednesday when 22 dockers essential commodities to the northern islands over the weekend without the large load-carrying capacity pro- vided by military aircraft.'

Alick Buchanan - Smith, the Tories' under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Scotish Office, is maintain- ing contact with the county councils. Buchanan-Smith, a former Captain the Gordon Highlanders, is a member of one of the most powerful Tory landowning families in Scotland.

workers press

THE TORIES ALERT

TROOPS AND POLICE

INCORPORATING THE NEWSLETTER • F

DAILY ORGAN OF THE CENTRAL COMM

BY DAVID MAUDE

RECALL OF THE Transport and General Workers' Union biennial conference to mobilize the full strength of the 1.6 million-strong union behind the dockers is now an urgent necessity. Solidarity action from transport drivers, engineers, carworkers and members of other unions is essential.

While a group of hard-faced em- ployers play the T&GWU leaders along on the Jones-Aldington com- mittee, the government is starting to use its armed forces to break the docks strike. Troops and police have already been EDWARD HEATH yesterday alerted for action by the Cabinet, which called senior ministers to 10 is now virtually ruling by decree with its Downing Street to discuss emergency powers. the emergency situation fac- military-style police The operations ing the government. against the pickets form part of a dockers' The heard reports blackmail strategy. The Tories hope meeting from the Employment Secretary frighten those docks delegates who abstained Maurice Macmillan on interim the Jones-Aldington The docTo strike and from Ulster Secretary vote in favour when it is put to them again.

Whitelaw, arrived William who Screams from the Tory press for more pickets back from Belfast after his meet- of the to get form part nose ings with army chiefs, the Social blackmailers' chorus. Democratic Labour Party and In this the Tories think they way can and the Rev Ian Paisley. isolate the dockers, get their official backing Home Also present were the removed and then move ruthlessly Defence 1n Secretary, Robert Carr crush a continuing unofficial strike.

Such a situation would be a serious defeat Every for the whole trade union movement.

trade unionist, therefore, must demand that TUC leaders stop their servile crawling the Heath government-by-decree and mobilize action to force it out of office.

Some docks shop stewards have demanded that what they call 'promises' in the Jones- Aldington transformed report 'copper-bottomed' guarantees.

But Jack Jones and Lord Aldington can produce no solution to the jobs crisis in the port transport industry. of con- They never cond. The purpose tainerization under capitalism is to get rid smashing in the process aockers, ThA rights they have won over years of bitter Employers have invested heavily in struggle. Macmillan precisely this prospect. For a union secretary like Jones to even Secretary Lord Carrington, this situation Privy be resolved suggest can by Seal Lord Jellicoe, and the Finan- amicable agreement with these same em- cial Secretary to the Treasury, bad enough, but the Jones- Terence Higgins. Aldington interim report has already taken On front yesterday its page things a stage further. "The Guardian' carried this head- In the committee's union members line: "Triple crisis has Cabinet accept the employers' claim that up to 6,000 standby. on dockers nationally to require- are surplus The political paper's corres- pondent, Ian Aitken, said: Senior menTO. directly involved The implication is: all we have to do is ministers find 6,000 replacement jobs and Bob's your three major political crises-the Northern Ireland dock strike, uncle. Uganda's threatened and expul- This is a dangerous illusion.

sion of 40,000 Asians-were last At the most generous estimate the number night virtually placed on emerg- of container jobs dockers could hope to get standby as parliament rose AnCy if Jones-Aldington every promise in were for the long summer recess. fulfilled is less than 2,000.

Many And to get these, advised Were Brelail dockers would have to displace who within call for the time being.'

Jones and his commercial-section officials The main consideration yester- eagerly recruited into the day was when to use troons on So whenever the T&GWU docks delegates docks. The Under the Emergency Powers are recalled. thev have one naramount duty.

to reject not only the Jones-Aldington report, which parliament approved but its whole philosophy.

Tuesday. the Tories have sweeping powers to wield through

TURN TO PAGE 12

the Privy Council. TER • FRIDAY AUGUST 11, 1972 • No. 839 • 4p

• COMMITTEE OF THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE

2 106 In the build-up to the eventual showdown with the dockers, the po free rein to deal with pickets. This is a scene from Keadby on Wedn were arrested.

MILITARY

aircraft are to begin airlifting supplies to Shetland the Orkney and islands to break the docks strike, the Scottish Ofice arranged for emergency sup- announced in Edinburgh plies to be transported to yesterday.

RAF

Kinloss. From there The they will be flown out to announcement came islands in a few hours after a meeting the service air- of senior Tory Ministers in Ministry of craft under London and heralds the first Defence arrangements. of the services A Scottish Office spokes- use since the state of emergency was man said: declared. 'It would not be possible Orkney and Shetland to transport sufficient quan- County Council urgently-needed have tities of 18, the police have been given a on Wednesday when 22 dockers essential commodities to the northern islands over the weekend without the large load-carrying capacity pro- vided by military aircraft.'

Alick Buchanan - Smith, the Tories' under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs, Scotish Office, is maintain- ing contact with the county councils. Buchanan-Smith, a former Captain in the Gordon Highlanders, is a member of one of the most powerful Tory landowning families in Scotland.

ONCE AGAIN: WHERE DO BRITISH CP

LEADERS STAND ON MOSCOW TRIALS?

PAQE 2 Workors Prece, Priday August 11 THE BRITISH Communist Party newspaper 'Morning Star' has first time editorially for the criticized the Czechoslovak purge trials. It said yesterday: 'The limited information available indicates sentences have that severe been passed on communists and others engaged in political activity arising from their poli- with the tical differences Czechoslovak government.'

And the paper added: 'Such differences should be dealt political means and with by not by trials and imprisonment This statement is welcome as far as it goes. Trotskyists have always fought for the principle that you cannot solve questions between communists by purges and frame-up trials.

this declaration, In making the leaders of the British Com- munist Party no doubt hope to middle-class liberal conciliate opinion and placate their own members. In reality, however, position of they are in the brushing away a speck of mud while ignoring an avalanche. For the trials in Czechoslo- a new pheno- vakia are not menon, a 'spot on the sun' • as

BY A FOREIGN

CORRESPONDENT

THE

DUTCH coalition government has called a pre- mature general election for November because it is unable to resolve split a within its ranks. One coalition partner, the Democratic Socialist 70 Party, defected over proposed cuts in social services to meet a £400m budget deficit. After prolonged negotiations, they refused to rejoin the govern- and Barent ment left premier no option but Bieshuevel with to call a General Election.

Until the election, Bieshuevel will head a caretaker government. The Dutch cabinet crisis is doubly the third significant major as government crisis • within the Common Market this year. Italy has already held one pre- mature General Election and the new Andreotti government is looking extremely shaky. In Germany, the social-demo- crat-liberal coalition is now in a minority in the Bundestag and election is scheduled for a new November. The tension this has is demonstrated by created yesterday's police raid on the offices of 'Quick' magazine which published Finance Minister Karl Schiller's letter of resignation from the Brandt government.

The political instability of these Common Market regimes is directly produced by the intract- and political able economic problems posed by the inter- national recession and the trade war with the United States.

The monopolies which dictate policy within Common Market are pushing for more right-wing regimes to lead the attack on the working class.

working-class with Yet growing and the militancy strength of the labour movement intact, they are unable to carry out these plans without passing through continual crisis.

Far from being a stable form- ation harmoniously integrating the various member states, the Common Market is a political battlefield in which the employers are waging a constant struggle for mastery. August 11, 1872 of the the old Stalinist Palme Dutt present deputy editor described the would have said. They are the Morning Star', Trials 1942: direct descendants of the Mos- Moscow in 'Trotsky was a Russian who coW Trials Of the 1930s in gathered around him which Stalin's secret police 0114 murdered scrupulous gang of traitors to framed and the Bolshevik sabotage, leaders of Lenin's spying, organice Party wrecking and assassination in They Soviet Union The the same bureaucratic re- wormed their way into impor- gime which imprisons Jaroslav positions, working- Sabata Milan Huebl, tant army former Czechoslovak central class organizations, even gov- They did committee members, gives ernment posts asylum to Mercader, Trotsky's deal of damage in great Russia before they were assassin, who lives in luxury in Prague. caught. But their plot was un- Everybody, earthed. They were brought to including the Com- The guilty were executed leaders of the British trial. munist Party, is well aware that or put in prison. Stalin's frame- The whole world listened in the victims of to the story that ups were completely innocent credulously of all charges against them. Yet was unfolded at the Moscow the British CP leaders-among Trials. It does not seem quite them John Gollan, now the SO strange now. This extract is taken from a Party's general secretary the 'Clear supported pamphlet called out wholeheartedly which advised Lenin's closest Hitler's Agents' murder of workers to treat a Trotskyist comrades. 'as you would an open Nazi.

They endorsed all the slan- Thirty-six after the ders and lies pumped out by years Moscow Trials, the leaders of the Kremlin's secret police still machine against the Bolsheviks British Stalinism have explain their complicity in the Stalin's done to death on crimes and betrayals of Stalin.

This, orders. ( for example, IS They have repudiated William Wainwright, the never how By John Spencer THE PENTAGON is engaged in a frantic propaganda campaign to "justify" bombing of North Vietnam's flood defences and dykes. After months of denials, the US government was finally forced to admit that some dykes near targets' had been bombed 'accidentally.

military In an attempt to back up this implausible story Department the Defence week released last photographs which it claimed showed anti-aircraft guns mounted on a dyke. view, this made the dyke a 'legitimate' In their the North Vietnamese target- -though sharply as pointed out the US has no right to be bombing North at all, since the are not Vietnam two countries formally at war. The official US Hanol says It is Vietnamese The North charges as part of a 'mon- strous lie campaign'. said that in any case there He was no dyke in the picture.

and his fellow action bombs a They said that what was journalists were "conscious Then, in called a 'dyke' was actually tools of Hanoi, the Depart- about-turn, earth embankment said. confirmed an ment around the gun and what Then they produced the Department. the Pentagon termed 'evidence'-the photograph In fact, US 'river' really a small of anti-aircraft guns on top was dropping. nearby lake. of a 'dyke'. delayed-action The Pentagon's crude The State Department magnetic extended tail efforts to crimes last week categorically cover its denied the use of delayed- are not convincing, particu- vent it sinking larly in view of the latest admissions from that de- la R partment. Swedish journalist Sven Oste, foreign editor of Nyheter', visited 'Dagens North Vietnam and accused the US of dropping delayed 'a bombs action as inflicting of terror means the population behind on dykes'. the He said the magnetic bombs prevented workers from using machines fill in craters caused by earlier explosions. Some of the bombs were capable of burying them- deep the selves below He concluded that surface. ( Washington to pass off the dyke bombing as 'accidents' while at the same time making sure Hanoi knows that the dams being deliberately put are at risk to force them to the conference table. State Department The

BOOKS • PERI

week described Oste's last their slanders against Trotsky and the other Bolsheviks who Stalin murdered. The British CP leaders now want, for their own reasons, to dissociate themselves from • the trials in Czechoslovakia. To do this they lay claim to the prin- 'such differences ciple that should be settled by political means, and not by trials ana imprisonment". They have no right to do this without repudiating their past complicity in the crimes of Stalinism. By their support for the frame-ups of the past, they paved the way for the Prague trials of today. Gollan, Wainwright and other leaders of British Stalinism must be required to answer: • Where do they stand on the Moscow Trials? • Where do they stand on the murder of Trotsky? • Do they mean what they say about the Prague trials or is it simply a hypocritical evasion of their responsibility for the frame-ups in Prague, which is designed for the ears of the liberals and fake Labour lefts?

icial US photo of guns on a dyke.

says It is a lake. bombs against dykes. mud or water.

The mine is dropped a remarkable the fact rivers and canals urn by the Defence was effort to stop the flow carrying barges supplies. US planes are The same type of bc the Mark-36 with its fins I-action bomb, a effect a sharper landin with weapon ed tail fins to pre- dropped on road juncti With fins retracted sinking too deep in St

• PERIODICALS • NEWSPAPERS

THE ROYAL Dutch Shell combine, one of the world's largest corporations, has had a dramatic fall in profits. The six-month profits for this year are £100m less than for the same period last year.

Yesterday's announcement of quarterly accounts sent Shell shares plummeting on all stock exchanges. Profits for the second of the year are only quarter £53m, £20m down on the first The corresponding quarter. second quarter total last year was £111.6m. For the first half of this year, the Royal Dutch Shell combine has announced profits of £126.4m, means a fall of almost £100m compared with last year's half- time total of £224.5m. No account has been taken in the first half of the year of adjustments amounting to £34m net arising from translating non- sterling assets and liabilities at sterling's floating rate on June 30.

A statement said: 'Accounting principles for dealing with such have been under adjustments general review? THE AMERICAN govern- ment yesterday asked Japan to make emergency imports of uranium ore and commercial aircraft to reduce its payments surplus with the US. The request was first made at in trade talks Hakone, near Tokyo, last month. Ambassador Robert Ingersoll met Japanese Foreign Minister Ohira yesterday to Masayoshi repeat the request, which was accepted only in part at Hakone.

According to foreign ministry sources in Tokyo Ingersoll ex- pressed his government's dissatis- faction with the outcome of the The US has Hakone Hreatened to force another yas revaluation unless the Japanese fall into line. Monetary officials in Tokyo are now discussing the introduction of an export surcharge to avert this prospect. Japan's trade sur- plus is building up at the rate of £3,300m a year despite a 16 per cent revaluation of the yen December's currency realignment.

sinks deep into the earth.

These weapons are used is dropped on in an the rivers and canals which run between • the flow of the military dykes. requires It the hair-i type of bomb, splitting skill of a Nixon retraoted to to state that the US is not er landing, is deliberately bombing dykes even on the evidence of its oad junctions. own admissions. it retracted,

NOW OPEN

Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs 9 a.m.-6 p.m. Fri 9 a.m.-7.30 p.m. Sat 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

Unregistered ports main target—

BY OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT

THERE IS no doubt among A as to the central issue in the l fighting on the question of the delegate, John McRuvie told m going back until they've either or brought inside the National On the two-hour drive back to Aberdeen from the unre- gistered Moray Firth port of Buckie, where about 600 tons of bacon were being unloaded by non-union labour, several of the dockers explained to me that this question had been fes- tering for some time. It has all been brought to the surface by the strike,' one of the 'and I can't pickets explained, see any way round the problem without a radical change of atti- tude by the employers, which is unlikely. 'I can't see what can come out of the Jones-Aldington talks. It's a pity we didn't get a General Strike when they arrested the lads in London. Then we could have settled all these questions all at once.' John McRuvie said he was watching the leadership very care- fully on the question of the non- scheme ports and that he saw the split developing danger of a among the delegates if Jones- Aldington comes up with any- thing new on jobs in the ports where containerization is the cen- tral question. 'But in the East of Scotland this problem must be settled, he said. 'Hull has the same problem- and I don't think Liverpool will go back until we've got this set- tled.' In contrast with the day-to-day arrangements made during the 1970 strike, Aberdeen's relatively small force of dockers has organ- ized full-time picketing right round the Moray Firth ports to Invergordon during the present dispute. They are also co-operating with dockers from Leith and Grange- mouth to cover the most hated unregistered port in the area at Montrose. The from response most T&GWU drivers has been good.

About 30 returned to the Hum- ber area without a load at the beginning of the week after they had been approached by pickets.

But a stream of lorries driven by non-union men, men in the weakly-organized union from areas and self-employed drivers is still available transport saw taken off the 'Icecap' at Buckie. transport firms involved The included John Smith of Glasgow; Davidson of Banfi; Strachan of Turriff; Muir-of-Ord; Noble of Elrick of New Deer-with a lorry appropriately named 'The Wild Rover'; Munro of Alness; McWil- liam of Dufftown; and, from fur- ther afield, Alan Blakey of Bar- row-on-Humber; W. H. Irving of Longtown and Wilson's Trans- port, Manchester. the dockers are The attention devoting to these ports extends far beyond the issue of strike- breaking. The whole future of Aberdeen as a port is at stake, particularly if the situation at Montrose is not dealt with.

Dockers' chairman Ron . Find- lay told me there was a real dan- ger of Aberdeen being virtually closed down if non-scheme ports continue. 'Five years ago they had about two boats a week in Montrose,' he said. 'Now it's more like five a day. 'I think it's a fight to the finish now. The trouble is there's too much going to and fro for cups at Downing Street by the of tea top leadership. 'There's no doubt that natio nalization is the answer, but it must be nationalization of all ports-not the scheme the last proposed. Labour government Complete nationalization without compensation and under the con- trol of the workers-that's what's required. 'Of course,' he said, 'that means getting rid of the Tories. Work- ers Press is certainly right about that, and I agree with the call for a recall T&GWU conference to work out the fight for natio- nalization in detail.'

ONDENT

mong Aberdeen's 150 dockers in the present strike. 'We are a of the non-scheme ports, lay e either been driven to the wall Jational Dock Labour Scheme?

John McRuvie one of the Aberdeen doc tered ports in the North of Scotland.

BY SARAH HANNIGAN

OVER 250 tenants and trade unionists attended the first public meeting of the Lam- beth Council of Action at Lambeth Town Hall on Wed- nesday. The meeting followed a lobby of Lambeth Labour councillors, 33 of whom later joined a 44 to 18 vote at a council meeting in favour of the Tories' Housing Finance Act. Chairman of the Council of Action meeting, Tim Cowen, said that the Council had been formed to unite all sections of workers and tenants in a fight to remove the present Tory gov- ernment. This policy, he said, had been unanimously agreed at the inaugural meeting in Council's July. Grahame Nicholson, chairman of the Lambeth Housing Estates Committee, and a member of the of London Housing Association Estates Committee, said that his members had been fighting the Tory housing proposals since last November. They had continually told tenants and residents what the terms laid out in the White Paper produced then really meant. Council of Action secretary Vivienne Mendelson said that the Council had set out to get ten- ants and trade unionists together in the lobby and meeting to fight the Tory Act. 'Rising rents and prices are an integral part of the attack on our rights by the Tory govern- ment. We have to turn this meet- ing into something much wider— we have to turn this into a cam- paign to get this government out,' she said. "This is not a protest meeting, but a meeting to prepare our poli- cies for the battle to end Tory rule once and for all.' She went on to discuss the im- plications of the dock strike and the betrayals by the trade union leadership in the dockers' fight to preserve their jobs. Transport and General Work- ers' Union general secretary Jack Jones was more prepared to spend ideen dockers who this week have been picketing at Buckie and

KICK THE

MUST

FIGHT

TORIES OUTA

TORIE

his and time energy talking to Council of Action bar the chief Tory representative of Lambeth Town Hall. the port employers, Lord Alding- ton, than to his own members.

The signing of the agreement Clydeside with Marathon on Shipbuilding chief Wayne Harbin, was an equally treacherous deal, she said. "The unions have capitulated to Harbin in the face of the threat of mass unemployment on the Clyde and they have traded union rights for their trade a handful of jobs.' affected tenants, These issues because all workers, they, like were in the fight to get jobs and wages to pay for the basic neces- sities of life. The 33 Labour councillors in Lambeth who voted for the Tory Act that night must be told thev do not represent the tenants and workers-thev must be told that they will be expelled for their betrayal, she concluded. Tenants, trade unionists, Young Socialists, All Trades Unions Alliance and Labour Party Young Socialists members took part in the discussion which fol- lowed. A resolution pledging full sup- dockers' port for the national strike and for a General Strike to bring down the Tory govern- ment was passed overwhelminglv.

Workers Press, Friday August 11, 1972 PAGE 3

PRESTON

dockers with recent help from Liverpool men have been picketing the unregistered railway port of Heysham during the strike.

'The police are definitely inti- midating drivers to break picket lines', , claimed Bob Kitchens. 'Every time we get the drivers to agree to turn back, the police push them without, of course, actually saying so, he The dockers were angry yester- day morning the at television news which said they were happy with the situation at Heysham.

'We want that closed port down and said one ckie and other unregis- 'We want the picket. in support', said another.

Bob Workers Kitchens told Press that the Jones-Aldington report either had to guarantee their jobs 100 per cent or it was no good. Yesterday, when a polite police officer arrived at the dock gates at 7.45 a.m. to ask the assembling pickets if they were staying there or going to Heysham, a leading docker told the men not to talk to him. The day before an inspector had "jovially' asked where he should send his men as they were stretched numbers. very over When the pickets didn't answer, he said it would help them very much as they had four missing children to find and not enough men. emotional This blackmail worked yesterday. The few lorries-it was about 200 a day at Heysham but now only half a dozen come-are driven by road drivers. The pick- tell how the licenses ets were covered yet the police made no effort to charge the drivers.

ALL TRADES UNIONS

ALLIANCE MEETINGS

Support builders the and dockers. Force the Tories to resign. PRESTON: Wednesday August 16, 8 p.m. Railway and Com- mercial Hotel, Butler Street, 'Support near railway station. the dockers and building workers.' WILLESDEN: Monday August 14, 8 p.m. Trades and Labour Action banners outside Hall, High Road, NW 10.

NORTH

LONDON: Thursday August 17, 8 p.m. Co-op Hall, Seven Sisters Road, N4. Moscow Trials Anthology Paperback, 621p

MAX SHACHTMAN:

Behind The Moscow Trial Paperback 75p

ROBERT BLACK :

Stalinism In Britain Paperback £1.12½-cloth £2

LEON TROTSKY:

Death Agony of Capitalism (The Transitional Programme) Pamphlet 5p Class Nature of the Soviet State Pamphlet 20p In Defence of the October Revolution Pamphlet 15p The Theory and Practice of Revisionism Pamphlet 15p Postage 10p per book, 3p per pamphlet. Order from:

NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS

186a Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UG.

PAGE & Workers Press, Friday August 11 An international discussio Revolutionary Workers Party-POR (Bolivia) From 1952 Lora's POR became the main support of Pabloism in Latin America. Accepting Trotskyism verbally, but deny- ing it in practice, Lora has led the workers' movement in Bolivia to defeat since the revolution of 1952. In fact, Lora supported the MNR' in incapable of 1952 and was struggling for the alternative leadership of the POR around a Marxist programme. Later on, when the MNR began its offensive against the masses, Lora changed his position and centred his hopes on the left wing of the MNR. In the 'Union Theses of the POR', Lora built his strategy on support for the left wing of the MNR against the right wing. That a grotesque remnant of the policy of Stalin towards the Chinese Kuomintang and the negation, consequently, of the construc- tion of independent revolu- tionary parties. The Pabloite crisis meant for Lora a conscious move from any international perspec- tive. Lora fought from 1953 to 1969 against the IC of the FI, when he made a new oppor- tunist turn and decided to 'support it'. During the whole period from 1953 to 1969 Lora carried out a policy of capitu- lation to petty-bourgeois tend- encies; unconditional support for the petty-bourgeois govern- ment of Castro and support for guerrilla movements are the most striking proof of this.

Guerrillas In the pamphlet 'Revaluation of the method of the guerrillas' Lora declares: 'The POR, from its clandestine position, stated August 11, 1972 iscussion article in six parts that it was putting to one side the discussion on the place occupied by the guerrillas in the revolutionary struggle in order to give them its deter- mined support? In the POR manifesto on Che Guevara's guerrilla cam- paign, there is the statement: 'The guerrilla is no more than the method of struggle of the people against anti-popular capitulationist gorilismo . .

And later: 'At this time of definitions, the POR says pub- licly that it solidarizes with and the guerrilla supports which has just movement broken out, according to offi- in the cial bulletins news south-east of the country. It assumes this position without previously considering its weakness or strength, its vir- tues or defects. The guerril. leros, despite all the limita- tions which they might have, are part of the advanced army of the people. Their objectives are national and social libera- and they are acting on tion behalf of progress and the advance of history.' For Lora the construction of the independent revolu- tionary section of the party, FI, is left entirely on one side and guerrilla warfare is put in its place. In that period Lora capitulated completely to guerrilla warfare and made the of the POR whole strategy 'support' depend and on 'entrism' in the guerrillas.

Lora argues in this way in the same pamphlet: 'When we talk of popular support we are not at all subscribing ; to the which the silent sympathy masses may feel towards the guerrillas, but concretely to militant support, to the eco- nomic and political support which must be given to them, Top left: Lora of the POR put aside discussion order to give mem nis support. Above • wue uevard.

to the co-ordination rilla warfare and agitation in the cities and centres of work.

The the existence guerrilla and the Centres will appearance ot new become the result of the sup- port of the masses. At the extreme limit of his opportunism, Lora even goe. far say that 'the as guerrilla movement seems mean a return to Bolshevism of the first period' and calls for into the guerrillas, arguing that 'the Bolivian situ- requires another kind of duol guerrilla, that which results from the united front of work- tendencies'. Only ing-class the them when guerruleros selves reject the entry of the POR does Lora criticize them *Sick and absurd anti- odyllis. Trotskyism characterized The education of the guerrillas and the attempts which were made to justify them technically. The of this was to consequence

POR

keep distance obeying orders from afar and ine doors were closea agalnst any future participation by the

POR.

Party The permanent policy of Lora implies rejection of the struggle for the building of a it aside discussion on the role of guerrilias in t. Above : Che Guevara. revolutionary party. His theses of support for the MR for the guerrillas or at the moment of the RAF the constitution are but manifestations of an anti-Marxist conception which believes that the revolutionary party is the result of the development of spontaneous the mass movement. In his book 'Perspectives of the Bolivian Revolution' Lora declares: "The exploited, on reaching a certain degree of maturity expressed clearly their central objective: the constitu- tion of their own government and their wish to cease to be fodder for political move- ments which are alien to it.

The existence of the POR is justified because it expresses this basic tendency ... The party iS reduced, according to Lora to the 'ex- pression' of the spontaneous ade development of the workers' movement, and at a given moment the 'expression' of the "maturity' of the proletariat, in opposition to the Marxist theses that class-consciousness is introduced into the prole- tariat from outside and that the party is in no way the 'expression' of spontaneous consciousness but quite the opposite that to introduce this class-consciousness, it is neces- errillas in the revolutlonary struggle in sary to combat at all times this spontaneous consciousness.

When Lora decided 'to sup- port' the IC after 16 years of struggling against it, was it not correct to draw up a balance- sheet of the POR as the Eng- lish section maintained in the guarantee existed IC? What that the POR had broken with centrism? However, the French sec- tion decided its own on account and without it having been approved on the IC to consider the POR as a mem- ber of the IC. Such a decision on the part of the French sec- tion was but a manifestation of its capitulation to centrism forward in the and a step attempt to dissolve the Inter- national into centrist organiza- tions with the justification of not appearing 'sectarian'

CONTINUED MONDAY

" MNR. National Revolutionary Movement in Bolivia. A petty- by bourgeois party led Estensoro which took power in 1952. The MNR and Estensoro work in full co-operation now with Colonel Banzer. * RAF. Anti-Imperialist Revolu- tionary Front. Formed after the Banzer coup in Bolivia by the Stalinists, Pabloites, Lora's POR, the Torres wing of the military other petty-bourgeois ten- and dencies.

THE COMMUNIST PARTY AND THE A-BOMB

'It was 0915 when we dropped our bomb and we turned the plane broadside to get the best view. Then we made as much distance from the ball of fire as we could.

'We were at least ten miles away and there was a visual impact even though every man wore coloured glasses for pro- tection. We had braced our- selves the bomb was when gone for the shock and Tib- bets said "close flak" and it just like that-a close was burst of anti-aircraft fire.

'The crew said "My God" and couldn't believe what had happened. A mountain of smoke was going up in a mushroom with the stem coming down. At the top was white smoke but up to 1,000 feet from the ground there was swirling, boiling dust.

'Soon afterwards small fires sprang up on the edge of the town but the town was en- tirely obscured. We stayed around two or three minutes and by that time the smoke had risen to 40,000 feet. As we watched the top of the white cloud broke off and another soon formed.' Thus reported Capt Parsons of the B-29 bomber 'Enola Gay' after bombing Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. To this day how no one knows many people died in the holocaust of the Japanese port. Last Sun- day, on • Hiroshima day, the city officials added 1,918 names to the 78,086, already inscribed on a marble cenotaph. The new names were either people who have died in the past year from the after-effects of the atomic blast or who have only just been identified as victimes of the original ex- plosion. The actual death toll in the bombing, however, is thought to be nearer 200,000.

That same August 6, Presi- dent Harry Truman was on the fourth day of his journey home from talks with Stalin and Churchill at Potsdam. He was handed an urgent message: "To the President from the Secretary of War. Big bomb dropped on Hiroshima August 5 at 7.15 p.m. Washington indicate time. First reports which was complete success even more A few minutes later came a second Following message: info regarding Manhattan re- ceived. Hiroshima bombed visually with only one-tenth cover at 052315A. There was no fighter opposition and no 15 flak. Parsons reports minutes after drop as follows: "Results clear-cut successful in all respects. Visible effects greater than in any test. Con- ditions normal in aircraft fol- lowing delivery"? The President, accompanied by Secretary of State James F Byrnes, went to the 'Augusta's' ward-room, where the ship's officers were at lunch. In a tense with excitement, voice he said: 'Keep your seats, gentlemen, I have an announcement to make to you. We have just dropped a bomb on Japan which has more power than 20,000 tons of TNT. It was an overwhelming success.' United Press reported that 'smiling and Truman was buoyantly happy as he made the announcement'. So happy that three days later he had his forces drop a similar bomb on Nagasaki, killing another 73,000 Japanese. Joseph Stalin knew in ad- vance about the preparations for these. war crimes. He was told at Potsdam that the Atomic bomb was to be used against Japan. Top: B-29 bomber, Enola Gay. Left: 'LI Churchill has described his reaction to the news: I can see it all as if it were yester- day. He seemed to be de- lighted. A new bomb! Of extraordinary power! Probably decisive on the whole Japanese war! What a bit of luck!'

His account is corroborated by Truman, who wrote in "The Decision to drop the Bomb': "All he [Stalin] said was that he was glad to hear it and hoped we would make "good use of it against the Japanese"?

Yet at that very moment the Japanese were suing for peace through Swedish and Soviet intermediaries, as the Americans were well aware.

The negotiations had been in progress fully six weeks be- fore the two Japanese cities were laid waste. At Potsdam it had been agreed that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan on August 8. Why then did Truman drop the two bombs and needlessly butcher so many civilians?

The real reason is contained in a passage from the memoirs of Admiral James Forrestal, who records his conversation with Byrnes two days after the Potsdam conference. The conference had called on an Japan to surrender uncondi- tionally or face prompt and utter destruction. to Forrestal: anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians get in ... Once in there he felt it would not be easy to get them out.' Prompt surrender was necessary so that Japanese capitalism could the us be preserved and hegemony over Asia ensured.

That is why the US ignored the Japanese peace-feelers put • Left: 'Little Boy' the uraniur bomb dropped o out via Moscow: It wanted to dictate its own settlement without any Soviet participa- tion. The dropping of the two Atomic bombs was thus the opening gambit of World War III — directed against the Soviet Union. This is now widely acknow- ledged as the evidence of hitherto memoirs and secret papers released over the post- war period leaves the issue in little doubt. The leading British Stalinist R. Palme Dutt, for example, wrote in the May 1954 issue of his magazine 'Labour Monthly' that: "The guilt of the Atom bomb is an Anglo-American guilt. The quarter million slain and Nagasaki at Hiroshima were not killed to hasten the end of the war against Japan and thereby "save lives" as the subsequent myth has been spread to seek to hide the guilt.' Dutt added: "The dropping of the Atom bombs at Hiro- shima and Nagasaki was not the last act in the war against fascism. It was the first act in the new cold war for Ameri- domination and against can the Soviet Union.' but in be- Perfectly true, rating the US and Britain for their incontestable war guilt, Dutt seeking to hide was butchery at Hiroshima and Stalinism's Nagasaki. We have already seen how Stalin himself received the news of the Atomic bomb and how he recommended Truman to put it to 'good use' against the Japanese. This attitude was echoed faithfully by Stalin's acolytes, despite the clearly charac- counter-revolutionary ter of Truman's action. Indeed, more than a year after the bombs were dropped, British Stalinism still was maintaining the progressive Workers Press, F dropped on Hiroshima, and 'Fat Man' on Nagas nature of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki holocausts. In a pamphlet published by the of Great Communist Party in Britain 1946 entitled 'Atomic Energy and Social Progress', the following state- ment appears on page 3: "All intelligent people know that the Atomic bomb helped to shorten the war and thus lives.' millions of saved Earlier, Harry Pollitt had com- mented on the Atom bombing of Japan in his pamphlet 'Why You Should Be a Communist' The were equally comments uncritical: 'When we got the news that the first Atomic bomb had dropped [sic], I think most of us realized that this was some- thing new among all the tre- of this long mendous events war. Here, helping to close the war with amazing swift- ness, is discovered a source of power far more destructive than anything in the seen blitzes and flying-bomb worst raids.' Pollitt's enthusiasm was as nothing compared with that of the American Stalinists who were no doubt filled with 'their' national pride at country's 'achievement'. The after Hiroshima, the day American CP paper the 'Daily Worker' (later the "Daily World') ended its editorial by urging still stronger action to force Japan's instant capitula- tion: The enemy has several times rejected unconditional surrender. He must now feel the bombshell of the United The enemy Nations action. must be thoroughly smashed and the basis established for a new Asia.' s Press, Friday August 11, 1972 PAGE 5 on Nagasaki. Right: Truman.

There was no room for com- placency as the 'Worker's' next editorial pointed out: 'The war is not over, here at home, even though a vast new weapon has been created. Pro- duction for victory is still necessary in all fields as well as in the field of Atomic bombs. The Nagasaki bombing caused even more joy in the •Daily Worker' editorial offices. The next day (August 10) the paper ran a cartoon showing a bandy - legged Japanese being blown back- ward by two explosions. One explosion was labelled 'Soviet declaration of war' and the other 'Atomic bomb'. The car- toon was captioned The old one-two' The American Trotskyists, in their paper The Militant' expressed their condemnation of the 'deliberate and cold- of blooded extermination 600,000 Japanese' • The same issue of the paper, August 18, warned: 'The end of World War II does not mean peace, but only an interval between wars, marked by smaller con- flicts' present-day Ironically the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party in the United busy cuddling up States are to the Stalinists in various so- called 'peace coalitions' over 'The Militant' to show the CP's stinking record and then lend their support for glamor- izing the same Stalinists.

Stalinism has not changed its spots. Its support for the Atomic bomb was the in- evitable corollary of the theory of 'peaceful coexistence' with imperialism. That theory led the CP to support the murder of hundreds of thousands of Japanese victims of US im- perialism.

PAGE & Y

BY STEPHEN JOHNS

'You're loading a ship without Understandably few dockers seeing the sea'-ex-dock officer wanted to move inland like gipsies and leave the reg- now a superintendent at one of Britain's biggest inland con- isters, especially in 1968 when labour tainer depots. there was no serious shortage due to union-employer The container base has promotion of the severance pay schemes. become an increasingly Depot employers openly familiar feature of admit that they did not want Britain's industrial hori- to extend the workers' rights embodied in the scheme to zon over the last four their premises. years. John Reid, head of the Con- These depots, where the con- Federation, put it tainerbase this way: 'We didn't want to be packed and un- tainers are packed with cargo, are one of recognized as a port or as port employers and pay the levies the fastest growing industries the scheme.' He was in the country. There is hardly under a town or city without its con- referring to the payment port They vary from tainer bases. employers must make towards the small converted haulier's the the cost severance yard to the and to the revenue vast complexes scheme owned by pool necessary to support dock- 'the con- sortia or the National ers on the unattached register Corporation. who have no work. The ICDs, as they Another smaller are operator called. are the centre of the who had been severely hit by a black on his depot put row on the docks. Dockers say more bluntly: the work of stuffing and strip- 'No one would touch you ping is traditionally their own.

if Many add that the depots have employed you registered For deliberately been built labour. example, in- costs would be all land to get round the prob- would soar. It right if everyone of employing registered was in the labour. same boat and had to take the but to do it These claims are only partly dockers on, The loading and unload. impossible would have true. our own been ing of containers is undoubt- edly a variation of traditional stevedoring work and its transfer inland does not alter its character and certainly some employers have deliber- ately moved off the dock SO This refusal to work the they can stop employing dock- scheme was an admission that But ers. there are good rea- sons for inland operations.

inland operations though for Without groupage, contain- i sound other reasons- -did offer the chance of cheap lab- would erization not pay. Transporting a half empty steel our with less rights than the box docker. more expensive pyon But even in the early days than shifting the cargo by con- methods. Groupage could be fought ventional employers successfully this is done inland to get the full on issue. After a prolonged strike benefits from the new method.

at Liverpool docks the Container- Goods must be stuffed into the base Federation was forced to containers as near source as possible and unpacked as close register at its new 17 men 1969 Since to destination as possible.

Aintree depot in So the depots which handle then it has offered employment the trade of big industrial areas to registered dockers (in fact like Leeds or Birmingham are none has been taken on because of a lengthy dispute built in those very regions, by motorways, about wages and conditions).

the hundreds of inland Most depot The Federation miles seems to owners plead did have accepted that where it that they offer jobs to dockers. But in dockers operate melo the Beers operates near cases this is a most phoney defence because a condition of ing terminal (not a part of the Federation but a separate com- employment was that the Dock Labour Scheme the sheet pany) has begun to employ anchor of dockers' rights since registered workers. 1947—would not operate. Elsewhere. however, the Birmingham contalner base: one-man contain Transport and General Work- ers' Union was happy to see bases recruit non-registered labour who often joined the union's commercial section.

It was in this encouraging atmosphere that the 'cowboy firms' to proliferate began round the ports. These opera- often ex-shipping tors were agents or haulage contractors who had been hit by container- ization as much as the docker.

selling of The container space is a very direct affair between the shipper and ship- The complicated owner. arrangement for transporting from one country cargo i to another involved in the con- ventional methods has been wiped out by the container networks and with them go the services of the shipping agent and the small haulage firm.

They fought back by band- ing together and entering the container market themselves.

They hired or bought con- tainers and began stuffing and stripping on their own prem- ises. They did not have the capi- tal or the custom to build land empires like the big consortia.

Rather they relied on 'coupon clipping, , offering a service at the ports, or in their immedi- ate vicınity, employing cheap labour and giving minor price concessions over the big bases.

Usually the smaller shipping • the lines would use their service.

e: one-man container packing. The dockers say that this In the main they concentrated on the short sea routes, where land costs are a greater pro- portion of total costs, therefore advantage of diminishing the moving far inland. Other firms latch onto the big operators. A superintend- ent at the Birmingham depot of the Containerbase Federa- typical tion described one small operator in the area.

'He has a clapped-out fork- lift and Quite one packer. frankly we would not be upset to see him go out of business.

He offers cut-throat rates. For example the firm might give free storage for containers. We charge £1.20 a day, per box.

'Such firms can do this because they don't offer our service Or carry our over- heads. We, for example, will handle all cargo-even a thing like chassis of a big motor or other big pieces of machinery.

We don't make anything on this, but it's part of the ser- The smaller man will vice. just get the carton end of the trade, easy to mandle. The trouble no small loads nice some of the operators that use this base get the best of both worlds. They will send us dif- ficult loads and give the easy stuff to the bloke down the road who charges that little bit less.' But the truth is that the 'cowboys' , as they are called, though obviously the most pro- dockers say that this work of stuffing and stripping vocative operators to the docker, are not the most important employers. They exist very much on the fringes of the industry. The issue of groupage, in fact, has been given too much Figures on how importance. tonnage is shifted by the depots are not readily avail- able. The Federation grouped 218,213 tons in the year end- ing October 1971. Next year, with the containerization of the Far East trade, it hopes to push the figure up to 500,000 tons--but this is a very opti- mistic forecast. It claims to have 18 per cent of the total groupage mar- ket—on this basis 2.5 million tons of freight are grouped nationally at inland depots. This compares 50 with the million tons of general cargo that through British pass ports. The Federation says it will need 450 freighthandlers by December 1973 (again the forecast, on present showing, is optimistic), compared with the 190 it had in June this year. Again on the basis same this would mean 950 jobs in the depots nationally at the pping containers is traditionally theirs.

time and 2,250 present in roughiv a vear's time. Ignoring for a moment the plight of their workers if the dockers were to get their jobs, this figure is half clearly not enough to absorb the 5,000 plus surplus dock employers say already exists at the ports.

groupage demands of The the docker can serve to spread confusion great ranks. On the one hand they are totally inadequate. If every job in every depot went to dockers immediately, there would still be an employment crisis at the ports. Container- ization per se means a smaller labour force and under capitalism vast redun- the other hand 'conces- ions' on groupage jobs migh le used by the unions and th employers work-just as the extra cash and improved conditions on the docks were used to get the labour force to accept Devlin stage two and the big drive for modernization. Again the nationalization of the industry-depots included —is raised as the only solu- tion for the working class. Dockers may not like this, but it is a fact; there is no easy non-political way out of their struggle.

CONTINUED TOMORROW

The executives of the firm profess to a great faith in the port of Hull. They counter the accusation that the work they did was taken off the dockers by claiming that 50 per cent of freight they the handled was new to the port anyway.

Now their business is seri- ously diminished. A visit to Hull the warehouse revealed four five lorries or scattered around the yard. From the the immobile cranes Panalpina hit the headlines entrance of George when it tried to prosecute the the Dock are Transport and General Work- visible. The ers' Union and Walter Cun- warehouse handles a ningham the Hull dockers' variety of cargo. One container in the National Indus- lorry was being stuffed leader, with trial Relations Court. sacks of chemical. Panalpina has a staff of 45. The The company wanted to end ten of blacking the national its drivers and four warehouse- lorries which, it are all in the Transport claimed, had men brought it to the brink and General Workers' Union.

of The rather closure. desolate atmos- Panalpina is an example phere of Panalpina's Hull of shipping forwarding depot with and sharply the ICDs owned by the Con- agent forced to build up its own container transport tainerbase Federation. business. The depots company's SiX The firm is part of a world- offer four basic services; the wide company based in Swit- receipt of loose cargo and the packing of this into containers zerland. It was originally

TIR

Compton called Ltd, and (custom-cleared) with the headquarters in Bradford vehicles; unpacking of and

TIR

vehicles a branch in Hull. Eventually it containers and changed its name to Panalpina and storing separate con- 01 (Northern) Ltd. When signments ready for collection; the bought its own lorry the transfer of containers company fleet, Panalpina (Services) Ltd (empty or full) from vehicles was established. to stacks and vice versa and The managing director, W. the clearance of container customs Oxendale, started the business traffic through and with a bike and a boy. He health authorities. would Hull docks for Containerbase has been scour trade. plagued by overcapacity since Things began to drift when started in 1968. Originally first roll-on, roll-off 24-hour shift was planned the ser- vice began from Hull in 1966.

at some depots. The amount Containerization made things of trade to justify round-the- worse and in a battle for sur- clock operations did not vival Panalpina began to materialize and last year there hire out containers, handing them were substantial redundancies.

over to a local firm for stuffing Losses have steadily declined from £300,000 in 1969. Con- and stripping. Then another local firm, chief Reid John Lallel base Trans-European Pallets set claims the would its own warehouse and Panap company have broken even this year was forced the introduction Far pina deeper into of the the business. It built its own East container trade had not Valleta warehouse at Street, been delayed by the Japanese within sight of the docks, and The strike. seamen's company began groupage work. expects to increase its group- It lost age tonnage from an expected Its cost Lans to 255,000 October advantage over the big inland by this year depots when 493,000 by October 1973. it became the practice to charge the receiver This compares with the 218,213 of goods all transport charges tons in the 12 months ending from the October 1971. depot premises. Panalpina struggled One problem Containerbase on and its bought lorry fleet, faces is the increasing move to offering a door-to-door service full container loads (FCLs- to exporters and importers. that is containers packed full Then the blacking began and at the point of manufacture). the business Massey slumped Ford and Ferguson once have recently again. started packing Fifty per cent of the work their own containers-this has was and at the been a blow the Federa- groupage height tion's Birmingham base. of its operations the company says it dealt with 500 Ironically the consortia tons of container themselves often encourage the cargo a week. move to FCLs. OCL has a team CAPITAL INVESTED AS AT 3rd Containerbase Containero: se (Barking) Ltd (Birmingh ir. Ltd 800,000 Oversets Containers Limited 723.00 241,671 Associated Container Transportation Ltd 250,000 National Freight Corporation 187,973 British Railways Board Clyde Port Authority 134,255 Coast I ines 80,343 General Steam Navigation Company Itd Mersey Docks & Harbour Company 80,543 Atlantic Steam Navigation Company Itd.

1,050,000 1,450,000 & Medium and short-term borrowings 900,000 50,000 £1,950,000 £1,500,000 #Containerbase (Barking) Lim'ted is not a member o Workers Press, Friday August 11, 1972 PAGE 7 of experts who will visit firms transport Ltd. The in Britain and abroad to advise Birmingham depot was on containerization and the one of those hard establishment of groupage oper- About redundancy. half the ations the manufacturers' labour force was sacked last on premises. It is of the because the Australia part year drive to attract the new cus- trade did not live up to pros- tom the consortia badly need. pects (of course with registered The Federation Federation did dock labour the 'sneak' into business behind the would be unable to declare dockers' back. Its board wrote redundancies in this way). Transport and General to the The depot's difficulties Workers Union in 1968. The increased by the hundreds of then general secretary passed 'cowboy' firms that operate in the his Midlands offering on letter to deputy the cut- Jack Jones and the throat rates. national O'Leary. docks secretary Tim In July, 24 freighthandlers On May 27, 1968, a deal was were employed 37-hour signed. This week. Pay was £32.10 plus an gave preference £8 shift bonus. the employment dock to of labour-though the men were The labour agreement required to come off the regis- requires freighthandlers to stuff ter. The docking section of the and strip containers, sweep T&GWU was given the seven days out containers, operate to come forward with men who and move goods around the wanted jobs at the bases. After warehouse. The shop steward this, could Bill Russell, recruitment at the base, says so long as workers ceed freely relations labour good. are joined the T&GWU commercial There have been a one-day and section. a one-week stoppage since the Only at Aintree (see above) base began operations in did the docks December 1968. section object and this led to a dispute which The depot shifts about 800 unresolved to this day. tons a i week, but it can rise The bases inherit problems of 1,000 ceiling tons. to a traditional the docking The Federation hopes to Trade still fluctu- industry. increase this to almost 2,000 Sometimes ates. the depot tons a week when the Far East workers have very little to do trade is fully containerized.

The base guarantees to turn- and other times overtime is of needed to shift a surplus round a lorry in one hour if cargo. Managers hope the Far are 24 hours' notice of there East trade will smooth things arrival. out and fill the empty spaces Superintendent John Kend- in the sheds. rick (40), ex-dock officer Leeds is a typical, busy con- from Liverpool, says this is a tainerbase. It lies half major advantage over the ports mile from the end of the MI where lorries can wait for days motorway and shares few to load or unload. acres of wasteland on the out- The Containerbase Federa- skirts of the city with a British tion appears to be a group with Rail Freightliner terminal. nothing to hide. It co-operated It employs 43 freighthand- rapidly with the Workers Press and did not refuse any infor- lers, six supervisors and four requested fitters. The mation freighthandlers as the work two eight-hour shifts 16 pointed the Oul, a.m.-2 p.m., 2 p.m.-10 p.m.) for union agreed to everything...

£32 basic plus f5 a week shift bonus. Management labour says relations are good and claims complete free-strike record during the three and a half Leeds of operations. supplies the Australian and Far East trade, reflecting the of the interests main users, OCL and

ACT.

The bulk of traffic is shipped through Til- bury and Southampton. The depot lined with stacks of containers - in the groupage export shed about five were being packed during my visit. Main include Benn Line Containers Ltd, ACT, Kil- lick Martin, Leeds, Crowe, Louis Duforest, Thomas Cook Sons Ltd (freight depart- Above: Tim O'Leary. Below: table

LEP

Ltd, Transport ment), of capital Invested in container- Systems Interfreight and All- bases as of July 3, 1972.

STED AS AT 3rd JULY 1962

CONFIDENTIAL.

Containerbase Containerbase Containerbase Container se

TOTIS

(Leeds) Ltd (Liverpoci: i.td (Na chester) Ltd (Scotland) Ltd 418,000 281,000 540,000 416,500 3,210,460 152,000 89,700 162,000 123,500 1,015,65l 190,000 59,800 135,000 142,500 710,278 190,000 107,640 243,000 142,500 683.140 95,000 95,000 134, 255 87,:13 59,800 59,000 80,519 950,000 598,000 1.080,000 950,000 6,078,030 250,000 270,000 300,000 1,770,000 £1.200,000 £598,000 £1,350,000 £1,250,000 £7,848,000 im'ted is not a member of the Containerbase Federatica

PAGE 8 Workers Press, Friday August 11 Editorial Note: This discus- sion on the history of the Left Opposition was held in Coyoa- can in April 1939. The sum- is not a detailed mary (it stenogram) was made by Com- rade Johnson; it was not checked by Comrade Trotsky.

Trotsky: Comrade Johnson has studied this subject with the greatest attention and the numerous annotations I have made are evidence of the care with which I have read his memorandum. It is important for all our comrades to see our past with insistence on revo- lutionary clarity. In parts the manuscript is very perspica- cious, but I have noticed here same fault that I have the noticed in 'World Revolution' - very good book-and that lack of dialectical is a approach, Anglo-Saxon empiri- cism and formalism which is only the reverse of empiricism.

C. L. R. James makes his whole approach to the subject dependent on one : date-the appearance of Stalin's theory of 'socialism in a single coun- try, April 1924. But the theory appeared in October 1924. This makes the whole struc- ture false. In April 1924 it was not clear whether the German revolution was going forward or back. In November 1923 I asked that all the Russian comrades in Germany should be recalled. New strata micht lift the revolution to a higher stage. On the other, the revo- decline. If it lution might declined, the first step of the reaction would be to arrest the Russians as foreign agents of disorder. Stalin opposed me: 'You are always too hasty. In August you said the revolution was August 11, 1972 • Say that it is near; now you over already' I didn't say that it was over, but suggested that this pre- cautionary step should taken. By the summer of 1924 Stalin had convinced himself that the German revolution was defeated. He then asked the red professors to find him something from Lenin to tell the people. They searched and found two or three quotations and Stalin changed the passage in his book. The German revolution had more influence on Stalin than Stalin on the German revolu- tion. In 1923 the whole party was in a fever over the coming revolution. Stalin would not have dared to oppose me on this question at the Central Committee. The Left Opposi- tion was very much to the fore on this question. Johnson: Brandler went to convinced Moscow of the success of the revolution. What changed him? many inter- Trotsky: I had views with Brandler. He told troubling me that what was him was not the seizure of power, but what to do after.

I told him 'Look here, Brand- ler, you say the prospects are good, but the bourgeoisie are in power, in control of the state, the army, police, etc. The question is to break that power.. Brandler took many notes during many discussions with me. But this very boldness of his was only a cover for his secret fears. It is not easy to lead a struggle against bour- geois society. He went to Chemnitz and there met the leaders of the social demo- a collection of little cracy, Brandlers. He communicated to them in his speech his secret fears by the very way he spoke to them. Naturally they drew back and this mood of defeat- ism permeated to the workers.

In the 1905 Russian revolu- tion there was a dispute in the Soviet as to whether we should the Tsarist power challenge with a demonstration on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

To this day I do not know for certain whether it was the correct thing to do at that time or not. The committee could not decide, so we consulted the Soviet. I made the speech, putting the two alternatives in an objective manner, and the Soviet decided by an over- whelming majority not to demonstrate. But I am certain that if I had said it was neces- sary to demonstrate and spoken accordingly we would have had a great majority in favour. It was the same with Brandler. What was wanted in Germany in 1923 was a revo- lutionary party ... You me also of accuse degeneration when you quote Fischer. But why did I give that interview? In revolution it is always wise to throw on the enemy the responsibility.

Thus in 1917 they asked me at the Soviet: 'Are the Bol- sheviks preparing an insurrec- tion?' What could I say? I said, 'No, we are defending the revolution, but if you pro- • voke us ...!' It was the same thing here.

Poland and France were using the Russian Bolsheviks as a pretext for preparing interven- tion and reactionary moves.

With the full consent of the German comrades I gave this interview, while the German comrades explained the situa- tion to the German workers.

Meanwhile I had a cavalry detachment under Dybenko Civil War. Top: Trotsky during the 'What was wanted In Germany In 1923 ready on the Polish border.

Johnson: You would not agree with Victor Serge that the sabotaged the bureaucracy Chinese Revolution, in other words, that its attitude to the was the Chinese Revolution as its attitude toward same the Spanish? Not at all. Why Trotsky: should they sabotage it? I was committee (with on a Voroshilov, Chicherin, and some others) on the Chinese Revolution. They were even opposed to my attitude, which considered pessimistic. was They were anxious for its success. Johnson: For the success of the bourgeois-democratic revo- lution. Wasn't their opposition to the proletarian revolution, the opposition of a bureau- cracy which was quite prepared . bourgeois-demo- to support a cratic revolution, but from the fact of its being a bureaucracy could not support a proletarian revolution? Trotsky: Formalism. We had revolutionary the greatest party in the world in 1917. In 1936 it strangles the revolu- tion in Spain. How did it • 1917 to 1936? develop from Il War. Above: the German revolution.

/ In 1923 was a revolutionary party ..!

That is the question? According to your argument, the degeneration would have started in October 1917. In my view it started in the first years of the New Economic Policy.

But even in 1927 the whole party was eagerly awaiting the issue of the Chinese revolu- tion. What happened was that the bureaucracy acquired certain bureaucratic habits of thinking.

It proposed to restrain the peasants today so as not to frighten the generals. t it would push the thought bourgeoisie to the left. It saw the Kuomintang as a body of office-holders and thought it could put communists into the offices and so change the direc- tion of events ... And how would you account for the which demanded a change Canton Commune? Johnson: Victor Serge says that it was only for the sake of the Sixth World Congress that they wanted the Com- mune 'if only for a quarter of an hour'. Trotsky: It was more for the Party internally than for the International. The Party was excited over the Chinese Revo-

Above: Chinaco Nationallet troops: belleved the Chinese Revolution was a lution. Only during 1923 had it reached a higher pitch of intensity. No, you want to begin with the degeneration complete. Stalin and company genuinely believed that the Chinese Re- volution . was a bourgeois- democratic revolution and sought to establish the dicta- torship of the proletariat and peasantry. Johnson: You that mean Bukharin, Tomsky, Stalin, Rykov, and the rest did not understand the course of the Russian Revolution? Trotsky: They did not. They took part and events over- whelmed them. Their position on China was the same they had in March 1917 until Lenin came. In different writings of theirs you will see passages which show that they never understood. A different form of existence, their bureaucratic habits affected their thinking and they reverted to their previous position. They even enshrined it in the programme of the Comintern, Proletarian Revolution for Germany, dic- tatorship of the proletariat and peasantry for semi-colonial countries, etc. Comrade Trotsky here asks V. to get a copy of the Draft Programme and the extract is read. I condemned it in my 'Critique of the Draft Pro- gramme' Johnson: What about Buk- harin's statement in 1925 that if war came revolutionists should support the bourgeois- soviet bloc? Trotsky: After Lenin's Testa- ment Bukharin wanted to show that he was a real dialectician.

He studied Hegel and on every occasion tried to show that he was a realist. Hence, 'Enrich yourselves'. 'Socialism at a snail's pace.' etc. And not only Bukharin, but I and all of at various times wrote us absurd things. I will grant you that. Johnson: And Germany 1930- 1933? Trotsky: I cannot agree that the policy of the International was only a materialization of the commands of Moscow. It is necessary to see the policy as a whole, from the internal and the international points of view, from all sides. The foreign policy of Mos- cow, and the orientation of social-democracy the to Geneva could play a role. But was also the necessity there of a turn owing to the disas- trous effect of the previous policy on the Party inside Russia. After all the bureau- and company genui n was a bourgeols democratic revolution' cracy is dealing with 160 mil- lion people who have been three revolutions. through What they are saying and thinking is collected and classified. Stalin wanted to show that he was no Menshe- vik. Hence this violent turn to the left. We must see it as a whole, in all its aspects.

Johnson: But the British Stalinist, Campbell, writes that when the British delegation in 1928 was presented with the theory of social-fascism it opposed the idea, but soon was it was convinced that correct ... (It was agreed to continue the discussion. During the interval Comrade Johnson sub- mitted a document. Discussion continues:) Trotsky: I have read your document claiming to clarify the position, but it does not clarify it. You state that you accept my view of 1933, but later in the document I see that you do not really accept it . • • I find it strange that on the Negro question you should be so realistic and on this be so undialectical. (I suspect that just a little oppor- you are tunistic on the Negro question, but I am not quite sure.)

1924, Stalin's slogan In ('socialism in a single country') corresponded to the mood of the young intellectuals, with- training, without tradi- out tion... But despite that, when Stalin wanted to strangle the Spanish revolution openly, he had to wipe out thousands of old Bolsheviks. The first struggle started the Per- on manent Revolution, the bur- eaucracy seeking peace and quiet. Then into this came the German revolution of 1923.

Stalin dared not even oppose me openly then. We never knew until afterwards that he had secretly written the letter to Bukharin saying that the revolution should be held back.

Then, after the German defeat, came the struggle over equality. It was in defence of the privileges of the bureau- cracy that Stalin became its undisputed leader ... Russia backward was a country. These leaders had Marxist conceptions, but after October they soon returned to their old ideas. Voroshilov and others used to ask me. 'But how do you think it possible that the Chinese masses, so backward, could establish the dictatorship of the proletariat?'

In Germany they hoped now for a miracle to break the backbone of the social demo- cracy; their politics had failed utterly to detach the masses it. Hence this new at- from tempt to get rid of it...

Stalin hoped that the Ger- man Communist Party would win a victory and to think that he had a 'plan' to allow fascism to come into power is absurd.

It is a deification of Stalin.

Iohnson: He made them cease their opposition to the Red mele turn,' he made them stop fight- ing the fascists in the streets.

'After Hitler our Trotsky: turn,' was a boast, a confes- sion of bankruptcy. You pay too much attention to it.

f.: They stopped fighting in the streets because their de- tachments were small CP de- tachments. Good comrades were constantly being shot, and in as much as workers as a whole were not taking part, they called it off. It was a part of their zigzags. Trotsky: There you are! They did all sorts of things. They even offered the united front sometimes. Johnson: Duranty said in 1931 that they did want the not revolution in Spain. Trotsky: Do not take what Duranty says at face value.

Litvinov wanted to say that they were not responsible for what was happening in Spain.

He could not say that himself so he said it through Duranty.

they did not Perhaps even bothered about to be want Spain, being in difficulties at home ... But I would say that Stalin sincerely wished the triumph of the German Com- Party in munist Germany 1930-1933... Also you cannot think of the Comintern policy. In France in 1934 the Com- munist Party had declined from 80,000 to 30,000. It was neces- sary to have a new policy. We do not know the archives of the Comintern, what corres- pondence passed, etc. At the was seeking same time Stalin a new foreign policy. From one side and the other we have these tendencies which go to make the new turn. They are the different sides of same process ... The French Com- munist Party is not only an agency of Moscow, but a organization with national members of parliament, etc.

All that, however, is not although it very dangerous, shows a great lack of propor- tion to say that our whole propaganda has been meaning- less. What is much more dan- is the sectarian gerous approach to the Labour Party.

You say that I put forward the slogan of Blum-Cachin reservations. without Then you remember, 'All power to the Soviet!' and you say that the united front was no Soviet.

It is the same sectarian approach. Johnson: There has been difficulty in England with advocating a Labour govern- ment with the necessary re- servations. Trotsky: In France in all our press, in our archives and propaganda, we regularly made all the necessary reservations.

Your failure in England is due to lack of ability; also lack of to the long flexibility, due domination of bourgeois thought in England. I would say to the English workers, 'You refuse to accept my point Well, perhaps I did of view. not explain well enough. Per- haps you are stupid. Anyway I have failed. But now, you believe in your party. Why allow Chamberlain to hold the power? Put your party in power. I will help you to put them in ... But it is very important to bring up these questions periodically. I would suggest that you write an article dis- cussing these points and pub- lish it in our press. COMRADE Johnson agreed that he would. Workers Press,

TINNED PIGS

It must be said at the outset have the highest that we regard for pigs. But only because they pro- vide a range of food rich in protein and every bit as vital to human survival as the rest of the animal kingdom. If, however, we were to come to regard them as more than food but as thinking, be- Ieeling and consciousiy trayed creatures we would all either have to reconcile our- selves to a lifelong role as brutal murderers or become vegetarians. In fact man has neither lived for millions of years weighed " (v down by an ever growing bur- den of remorse at the mass slaughter he inflicts the on animal world, nor turned to leaves, berries and roots as his ., sole means of sustenance.

If he has not been unduly cruel to his domestic animals it is largely because no useful would have been purpose served by it. As soon as the position altered and a certain elemental became cruelty positively desirable as a means of breed- ing animals en masse and cheaply, capitalist farmers were quick to change their methods.

Suddenly intensive farming became the rage and chickens, turkeys, pigs and calves found themselves in a short life and deach cycle in the company of scores, hundreds and thou- sands of their relatives rarely ever seeing the light of day.

then, How ridiculous, to read in last Friday's 'Evening Standard' under a hugh half picture of innocent, page goggle-eyed piglets whose food supplies are due to dry up shortly: 'Observe these pigs. Bless their hearts, they have very possibly two weeks to live. It's enough to break Bernie Steer's heart.' There is, of course, no men- rs Press, Friday August 11, 1972 PAGE 9 tion of the chubby, red-faced Jaguar-driving farmer who for years has lived off the suffer- ing of the poor little piglets.

As everybody knows, pigs can and have been fed for cen- turies just about every. on thing including the household these pigs rubbish, are special, it is just because they are not happy, normal free- range pigs frolicking in the sun- and fresh air, shine but the intensively farmed variety.

These need a special maize and fish meal for their care- fully 'programmed' existence to provide calculated the farmer with maximum profits.

So the issue is not really about 'dear little piglets' hed " (would you believe) or food, but about profits. Earlier last week we were also asked to wring our hands to . and condemn the dockers his . over the fate of two million chicks-destined, be it noted, not for the bright light of day, but for an overcrowded bat- tery drawer in some dark country shed. special Workers Press A animal column would be filled every week with horror stories of animals dying, trampling each other to death in the capitalists' of sheep suffocating in packed trucks or of horses dying upside down and side up in aircrafts. By Saturday the 'Standard' had discovered an Orangutang whose life apparently hung by mere banana. Of course, a jailing animals in tiny zoo cages was not remarked on.

But all these tales of vicious anti-animal attitudes by the dockers were no substitute for suffering people — the tech- nique which had worked so well during the power workers' strike. Using all its formidable resources "The Sunday Times' found one—a Guernsey tomato grower, Mrs Sylvia Seally (61), who works a 15-hour day to £1,000 earn a year.

LEON TROTSKY:

Germany 1931/1932 Paperback £1.25-Cloth £1.87} Where Is Britain Going? Paperback 372p Revolution Betrayed Paperback 62)p—cloth £1.05 Problems of the Chinese Revolution Paperback £1.12}—cloth £1.87} Permanent Revolution : Results and Prospects Paperback 75p In Defence of Marxism Paperback 75p Lessons of October Paperback 60p Postage 10p per book, 3p per pamphlet. Order from :

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From the heart of one of the oldest and quietest corners of industrial, coal and iron Britain, an PAGE 10 Workers Press, Friday August 11, 1972

FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT

DENHIRST

NO ONE need be surprised at the heartfelt outburst of anti-Tory feeling at last Saturday's demonstration against the closing down of pig-iron production at the Stanton Ironworks, Ilkeston, Derbyshire. of the This feeling arose from the collision past history of one of Britain's oldest in- the present world dustrial areas with economic crisis expressed through the policies of the Tory government. Coal mining and ironmaking have been associated But the twin this since the middle ages. in made a real start when Henry VIll's dis- industries the monasteries released much land for solution of on a commercial basis. Ruins mineral exploitation are still to be seen today old Dale Abbey of the the Stanton works. near Although the first blastfurnaces came to Stanton Part of the huge crow in 1788, the present works originated when Benjamin Smith and his son Joseph leased bought Stewarts • & Lloyds Ltd coal and fireclay rights ironstone, the company. their way into 1846. from Earl Stanhope in Production of what is now the three small The Smiths built company's major product, spun capable of blastfurnaces each concrete was iron and pipes, producing 18 to 20 tons of pig- Pioneered at Stanton in the early iron daily. If the industrial revolution was 1858 management In a new shape with took born and took banking

CONCCLOUD

like Ilkeston, then so was the Bri- and the company began over Ilkeston work- tish working class. haphazard course of expansion, opening coal mines in Derbyshire played a leading role in the ers Luddite riots from 1811 onwards, and Nottinghamshire and iron- and subsequently became in- stone extraction in Northampton- the Reform Riots of volved in shire. the whole Butterley Company 1831 that convuised Like the Nottingham and which its heyday area between nearby, owned furnaces, for- Derby. coalmines, National Consoli- and The Grand brickworks ges, Union of Robert canals, the Stanton Ironworks ex- dated Trade Owen fought its biggest battles in empirical way, panded in an nearby Derby, where the entire its in boom increasing capacity industrial workforce turned out times and buying up its competi- six month General Strike tors to survive in times of slump.

for 1833 to 1834. By 1920 a reorganization of in overdue and Ten years later the Derbyshire long the site was miners started their battle against considerable capital sums were abuses of the the criminal coal spent. for the right to the end of the 1920s the and By equipment could no longer organize what Engels described old be cobbled together, as had been gre English Working The Condition SO Class'. of the English the practice in the previous cen- The conservative and reformist and the blastfurnaces were tury, of the trade completely reconstructed.

appearance On the eve of World War II movement in the area since the The dally paper that loads the fight against. the Tories. £20.28 for 12 months (312 Issues) £10.14 for 6 months (156 issues) £5.07 for 3 months (78 issues) If you want to take Workers Press twice a week the rates are: £1.56 for 3 months (24 issues) £6.24 for 12 months (96 issues) Fill in the form below NOW and senid to: 186a Clapham High St., Irculation Dept., Workers Press ondon, SW4 7UG I would like to take out a subscription to Workers Press..

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huge crowd that turned out in Ilkeston last Satı end of the 19th century is only the negative side of this early militancy allied to the coal and iron masters' ability to make concessions. Before nationalization, Stanton Ironworks Ltd boasted of far- reaching fringe benefits, ranging from sickness and pension funds to company housing and company canteens serving company food produced by company farms.

This was the tradition of class compromise that prompted the Tom Swain, Labour MP Stanton Action Committee to in- vite Tory MP Peter Rost to speak from the platform of last Satur- day's protest meeting against the enclosures. But the meeting was actually dominated by a mood of extreme hostility towards the Tories.

Foremost in the minds of the trade unionists drawn present, from all the major industries in the East Midlands, was the fact that the Heath government attacking all workers' basic rights. The 'left' Labour MPs on the platform were quick to pick up and amplify this mood in their speeches. Tom Swain said for example: 'The only thing we can do as a working class is to do everything to get this government out. We have got to get them out at the earliest possible moment. We want to take over now to redress vital mistakes by this government.'

'All Tories are hypocrites,' said Bolsover MP Dennis Skinner. 'If you want to fight you will have to follow the example of the

UNION

n last Saturday and chanted 'Heath Out.

dockers and the miners.' Skinner proposed that the men should occupy the plant in the struggle to defend jobs. General and Municipal Work- ers' Union steward Stan Hatton summed up the reaction of the Stanton men: 'A member of the Action Committee has said we are not hghting a political action, but it's a political decision to close the fraternizing with the enemy, is plant. Calling Peter Rost up 'It's got to be a political fight because politics has created the situation today,' said G&MWU Spun Pipes Branch official Wil- liam Brown. 'Management were not allowed to run the business in a com- petitive way. Melchett was under political pressure to give up a big investment programme. Even if a Labour government were elected, he concluded, 'the fight and the pressure must be kept on the politicians to let the workforce of the country make their full contribution.'

TORY

MEMBERS of Eccles council in Lancashire walked out in protest this week when the Labour group used its majority to pass a resolution by 15 votes to eight refusing to implement the 'fair rents' Act. But the four Tories and three Liberals were joined by former Labour mayor, Alderman Bob Benson, a magistrate, in opposing it. Three Labourites abstained.

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Coventry Council has voted to implement the Tories' hated Housing Finance Act.

At specially-convened council meeting, housing com- chairman Tom Mc- mittee Latchie, maintained, however, that the Labour group was opposed to the Act and called it an intrusion by central into local government democracy. He proposed asking the Secre- tary of State for the Environ- ment for a special dispensation for Coventry as he said there had been an increase of 72 per cent overall under the previous, Tory-controlled, council.

But he also asked for authority to notify tenants that their rents would be £1.08 a week more from October 2 if the govern- that ment does not agree Coventry council rents are high enough already. He also saw a 'gleam of hope' in one of the later amendments to the Act which might allow Coventry to stay within the law but not charge increases.

The Labour councillor for Shortland, Godiva Ward, Mrs pointed to the accumulated sur- plus on the housing account. 'Coventry Council is in a very good position to take a firm stand against the Act altogether, she said. Though many other Labour councillors spoke of their hatred for the rent Act, it was left to Tory Gilbert Richards to point out the inconsistency of profes- sing opposition to the Act and yet asking for authority to notify tenants of their rent increases.

McLatchie, in his reply, said that the council now has to 'get on with the job of trying to work within the framework of the law'. He should pause to reflect on the actions of miners, railway- men and dockers in the last few months. They are not looking for leaders who can find a way of working within the law.

What workers are looking for is a new leadership which will fight to get rid of the Tory government altogether. tend to put myself outside the law. 'In my view, if we support this resolution, we are breaking the law. It is ridiculous to oppose the action taken by the govern- ment.' Another magistrate, Liberal leader Councillor Alan Cooper, said: There is too much law- breaking in the world today.

If sufficient people break the law, we will have nothing but anarchy in this country? information about ow and send to NATIONAL

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6.35 Open University. 7.30 NEWSROOM, Weather. 8.00 CHRONICLE. The Cave Divers. 8.50

GARDENERS' WORLD.

With Percy Thrower. 9.25 SPORT TWO. Brian Clough and Sport and Drama. 10.15

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PHONIES. Symphony No. 6 in F major (Pastoral). 11.00 CRICKET. 5th Test. 11.30 NEWS. Weather.

11.35 LATE NIGHT LINE-UP.

BUILDING workers from the Wimpey site in Portsmouth will hear a call for a total stoppage at a meeting to be held today. Half the men walked off the site on Wednesday after firmly rejecting the employer's latest pay offer and a meeting was held at the nearby Hilsea site yesterday to plan future action.

This will include picketing all big sites in the area to rally sup- port for the strike. told One building worker We've rejected Workers Press: the last offer, so now have no alternative but to launch an even tougher fight. 'Other sites, in Southampton for example, have been out for seven weeks and we must sup- port them before they come and drag us out.' Other workers said they wanted a national stoppage and the running of their criticized union. PRESTON building workers are pickets to call preparing flying out men still working in the area. They have found that with the call for a national strike many non-union men are asking to become members of a union.

One picket said: 'I agree with Stan Jackson and the Taylor- Woodrow men in Heysham for supporting the dockers. They and we registered ports want want the building industry union- ized. As it is, the stoppage has caused Preston council to switch plans for Preston Guildhall which commences at the begin- ning of September. The new Guildhall will not now be finished in time.

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island. 3.45 Women only. 4.15 Tinkertainment. 4.30 Crossroads.

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At worst no work would be done, since most of it fell in overtime periods.

More 400 the than of vehicles have been returned Britain because they to were pierced by bullets tip- ped with tungsten fired by the IRA. Norman Atkinson, the Labour for Tottenham, MP accused the Tories of put- ting pressure on negotia- tors not to settle for any- thing more than £1.50. there 5,000 He said were industrial civil servants earning less than £17.95 a week.

CORRECTION

The second sentence in the first paragraph of yesterday's lead story should have read: 'During the next ten weeks, parliamen- tary democracy could well be replaced by a form of Privy Council dictatorship which immediately answerable to the word nobody, inserting "immediately'. Workers Press, Friday August 11, 1972 PAGE 11 Anna Cropper and Ron Moody have 'Appointment View' in "The Man Outside serles on BBC 1 tonight.

ANGLIA: 1.40

World war I. 2.05 Smith 7.00

YORKSHIRE:

Pauline. 6.30 family. Mad 2.30 movies London. Bellbird. 7.30 2.15 Comedians FBI. 8.30 in 3.45 Survival. Yoga. noon. 10.30 4. NewS. 4.00 4.15 Cartoons. 4.25 Romper room. Calendar. 4.50 London. 6.00 About Anglia. Happy 6.35 7.00 5.20 crossroads. Glamour risones News. 72. 7.35 Comedians 8.00 Combat. Cial 9a00 Comedians 730 F 9.00 London. 10.30 Film: 'Payroll'.

7.00 10.30 Film: ATV MIDLANDS: 3.10 Good after-

TU SU

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WISIT.

Don't Want to Married'. News. 6.00 News. 6.05 Perils of Road report. This collection of articles was penned by Trotsky in reply to various critics of his then recently-published "Where Going?' They appeared in is Britain the Soviet press of the time and con- and stitute a necessary corollary Trotsky here sequel to that work. dissects the arguments of all the brands of opponents of Marxism: re- pacifist, Fabian, formist, centrist, trade-union bureaucrat and by impli- cation, its Russian counterpart, the nascent Soviet bureaucrat. Here also he unravels many of the knotty prob- lems facing the infant Communist Party developing a strategy for power the revolutionary epoch. in 'A pP price 35p (postage extra) A salient work of Trotsky treating his struggle against the rising with Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. Written in the aftermath of the civil war and in the period of the New Economic Policy when, despite all the conservative pressures generated within the Soviet Union, there still seemed every chance of curbing and overcoming this bureau- makes a bridge This book cracy. between Lenin's deathbed struggles against Stalinism and the later found- of the Joint Left Opposition.

ing

IN LEON TROTSKY

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PAGE 12 Workers Press, Friday Augus THE SO-CALLED triumph at Briant Colour Printing Ltd, London, appears to be some- thing less than the 'victory' it was hailed by yesterday's 'Morning Star' One hundred and twenty men and 30 women have been work- ing in at the Old Kent Road factory since June 21, after man- agement announced they were closing down. Although five or six buyers have expressed interest in the plant, none are willing to take it over except as a going concern.

A month of picketing the fac- of Horne Ltd, tory Robert Briant's largest creditor and re- sponsible for plunging the firm voluntary liquidation, has into finally won some concessions.

An agreement reached this between Horne's and the week work-in committee guarantees that it will not farm out work Briant's previously done at throughout the print industry.

to provide It has also agreed paper for any of the small cur- rent orders the workers have in hand, as well as for any poten- tial buyer. concessions put the These work-in in the best position it could hope to be. They guarantee the factory gets any orders which might be available and ensure that the men have the paper stock to execute them. workers are faced Now the with the task of building up the plant's order books to the point where potential buyers can feel confident that the business is viable. slow So far progress has been and the depressed state of the print industry generally, taken together with the £100,000-a-year been Briant's had plus losses making previously, leaves little scope for optimism. Time is not on the side of the remains work-in. The business in the hands of the liquidator, Mr P. Granville White, and cannot be long before the wind- ing-up operation is complete.

Apart from guaranteeing not to farm out Briant's work, Horne's role as paper suppliers to the work-in is strictly com- mercial-limited credit for known orders. There is no question of the firm generously pouring money into a bottomless well. And once the liquidator finishes his work, Horne's will wash their hands of the factory altogether.

All this leaves the work-in committee racing against time to transform a defunct business into a profit-maker capable of luring and netting a new owner. In a similar situation at UCS workers were eventually forced to accept a four-year, no-strike pledge and the disappearance of trade union conditions in order to entice a buyer. Briant Colour workers must examine what happened at UCS in order to avoid the same dangers for their own work-in.

LATE NEWS

day August 11, 1972 Hull Mike Above: Former rugby player, docker picket line at Keadby, Smith, is helped from the Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, on Wednesday with near crushed ankle. He and several other pickets claimed police would not move a Black Maria after it was driven onto his foot.

Right: Scenes reminiscent of the frisking in Ulster took place on the roads into Keadby on Wednesday, when every car, coach, lorry and its occupants were searched by the police.

FROM STEPHEN JOHNS IN HULL

HULL DOCKERS yesterday trans- ferred their attention to unregistered warehouses in the centre of Hull.

A 40-strong picket was launched on Hull Warehousing and Forwarding Limited, a firm that has up in the city recently sprung employing non-registered labour.

Shop steward Harry Kidd told me that the firm was attempting to shift cargo while the strike was on: 'These people employ labour who get far less wages than registered dockers.

We have been We are deter- picketing them for some time. mined not to let them get away with it' Colin Townsend, owner of the thorpe a total of 40 dockers were admitted that his company,

SIX

tried special magistrates staff paid less than regis- court and fined up to a total of tered dockers. €1,000. 'But we are very flexible with Roy Garmston, deputy chair- overtime, he added. man of the shop stewards' com- mittee, told me that the fines He claimed to have lost £1,200 had ranged from £40 to £100.

since the dockers started picket- ing his premises. He said that the picket of the private wharves would be At the other trouble spot on until the tinued dockers had Wharf the Humber Neap . a achieved their objective and shut token picket was out yesterday. them down. There was no repetition of the attacks by police which marked • At North Shields 130 striking the first three days of picketing dockers decided not to discharge this week. 180 tons of fish, worth £70,000, from the factory trawler 'Ranger Forty-one men were arrested Calliopee', due at North Shields in these angry clashes. at the weekend with mechanical On Wednesday night in Scun- trouble.

WEATHER

EASTERN England will be dry

BUILDING

workers' ilying with bright sunny periods. have down all pickets closed Eastern Scotland will be mostly private sites in Sheffield.

dry with sunny spells becoming cloudy later. Sheeheld susten mmie, said member of the Central and north west England Scotland will start and western 'In my opinion all construction generally bright but become workers should be out. The only rain later. cloudy with some ones who should carry on should South-west England, Wales and be the small maintenance group Northern Ireland will be cloudy So the housewife doesn't suffer. with outbreaks of rain. Tempera- •Whatever they agreement tures will be near normal in most nationally, we're not, come districts. stopping here until we get the Outlook for weekend: Sunny in- full claim. tervals in most places but also 'We've got 100 per cent back- Remaining showers. mainiy dry been calling ing. Sites have us Temperatures in the south. and telling us and up come generally a little below normal.

pull them out. All sites we've have with replied been to walk-out.' spontaneous has The Sheffield committee Registered as called a big rally on Saturday at Office. which an appeal will be made to High Clanham Street.

SW4 7UG.

the backing of corporation get Ploush (TU) Press Lid. don workers. Street, • See p. 11

AUGUST FUND

£443.16—A

DON'T SIT BACK

GOOD post A yesterday of {138.50 brought our total up to £443.16 for our August Fund. But we must not sit back for a moment—we are still a long way from raising our target of £1,750.

While the dockers remain i out in front in the fight against this government, they must not be allowed to stand alone. All the support of the labour movement must come behind them in this decisive battle. Workers Press must be used to mobilize this support. We appeal to you, our readers, to take our paper everywhere and rouse the whole trade union movement. Immediately, we need all your help in the campaign for our August Fund. Extra amounts can and must be raised. The fight is on. We are determined to make this month our best so far. Post all your donations Immediately to: Workers Press August Appeal Fund 186a Clapham High Street London SW4 7UG.

SEE TODAY'S

CENTRE PAGES

This vital series should be read by all workers. Be sure of your copy by 'phoning our circulation department 01-622 7029

TALKS ON

the engineers' claim, submitted 12 pay months ago, will reopen at the Engineering Employers' Federation headquarters in London on Monday. agreed at York This was i yesterday by the executive of the Confederation of_ Shipbuild- ing and Engineering Unions.

Informal talks between CSEU negotiator Hugh chief Scanlon and the EEF were held last week.

the unions Last December turned down an offer of £1.50 on basic rates. Jack Higham, CSEU president 'We are said yesterday: com- mitted to negotiating a one-year agreement, not a long-term deal, and the employers have accepted this. 'We are optimistic. The em- have said have they ployers something better to offer uS. They have not spelt it out in money, but money is behind our thinking! They were also looking for some progress towards an extra week's holiday. announced in It was also York yesterday that increases of £2.80 a week for skilled men and a week for semi-skilled £2.60 have been agreed for 9,000 main- tenance engineers employed hospitals health authorities in and similar establishments. The increases backdated to are January 1.

FROM PAGE 1

At the last T&GWU confer- ence in July 1971, Jones spoke of the TUC for a union pressure on 'mighty campaign' against un- employment. The conference passed resolu- tions calling for urgent govern- ment action to cut the jobless figures and demanding that a Labour government future nationalize the docks and trans- port industries. With 900,000 workers out of a job the Tories have shown they have no intention of heeding the first call.. Jones' responsibility, therefore, is to act immediately to get the blackmailers removed Heath from office. constitutionally- decided demands be implemented Every moment the T&GWU secretary spends in further time- wasting on the Jones-Aldington committee is a step nearer the troops on the docks. use of Every time the TUC leaders cross the threshold of 10 Downing Street trade union rights come under further threat. The docks delegates must reject the Jones-Aldington philo- sophy and the T&GWU biennial delegate conference be recalled to adopt the following policy: • No redundancies either on the docks, in the container depots or in the road-transport industry.

A shorter working week. • Maintenance of all workers whose jobs are threatened on full pay until the industries can be nationalized and planned on socialist lines. • Full rates of pay for all dockers. Work-sharing with no loss of earnings where there is insufficient work. • Mobilize the strength of the union, in united action with the rest of the trade union move- ment, to force the Tory gov- ernment to resign. Demand that the TUC call a General Strike.

• Elect a Labour government which will immediately nation- alize the ports and road trans- port without compensation and under workers' control.