Workers Press no. 853

workers press

INDUSTRIAL COURT

THREAT TO TUC

BY STEPHEN JOHNS

THE TUC may face pos- sible contempt charges if it decides at the Congress which opens next Mon- day to expel or suspend the 35 unions which have failed to deregister under the Industrial Relations Act. On Monday the TUC will hear a key appeal against suspension by the National Union of Seamen. have Later the Congress will to choose between the TUC General Council line of extend- ing the suspensions until Decem- ber or the engineers' motion for immediate expulsion under rule 13. Either way the TUC may face a contempt action in the Indus- trial Relations Court leading to a heavy fine or possible seques- tration of the movement's entire assets. The NUS lawyers have already informed the TUC that the TUC action in suspending the union could lead to an NUS application to the Court for sequestration of its funds. The lawyers argue that the TUC acted in contempt by sus- pending the NUS for refusing to drop its application to the court for an agency shop at sea and that the TUC will continue to be in contempt until the sus- pension is lifted. This threat came in May, a month after the TUC received a direct warning from the secretary of the court, Colin Seaton.

a heavy hint that This was against unions who more action stuck to their decision to remain on the register would land the TUC in deep trouble. Seaton's letter warned: 'Once an application is before the courts no attempt must be made to dissuade anyone from giving in those proceedings evidence and still less must they be The NIRC said at this stage that it had decided to take no formal notice of the suspension but added, 'If any further action were taken against that union or any action was taken against any other union or person in similar circumstances then a different view might be taken whether or not a complaint was received. Again the TUC lawyers mini- mized this club-waving by the court. But in its report on the sea- • men's suspension even the TUC was forced to admit, 'the NIRC, however, acted in unprecedented ways and the TUC might be found guilty of contempt of court by the NIRC which acted as judge and jury in its own cause.

01-622 7029 01-720 2000

INCORPORATING TH

DAILY ORGAN OF THE CENTRA

The report added that if con- tempt proceedings were brought and the TUC-in line with the policy of non-co-operation - decided to boycott the action the court would inflict a punishment which the High Court of Appeal would find it difficult to over- nd turn. The stage is therefore set for a crisis within the trade union movement which would dwarf even the strikes and mass pro- tests that broke out after the five London dockers were jailed.

The TUC is almost certain to reject the NUS. appeal and con- tinue its suspension when the debate is held next Monday afternoon, the first major session of the Congress at Brighton.

The TUC's own recommended policy constitutes "further action ...against any union' to quote the NIRC warning. The General Council say the 35 unions be suspended and given until December 31 to get off the register. If they don't expulsion will follow at the 1973 Congress.

Meanwhile the unions concerned will immediately lose these im- portant privileges after the vote: • Protection against poaching of members of other unions afforded by the famous Bridling- ton agreement. • Their leaders will not be eligible for election to the general council. They will have to leave the Congress as soon as their sus- pension has been decided.

Their resolutions before this year's Congress will fall.

Danger of contempt action may come from two quarters. Should any of the 35 unions come before the court over the court president Sir next year, John Donaldson could activate his earlier unmistakable warn- ings and put the TUC and Victor Feather in the dock for contempt.

More serious is a possible action for any member of the suspended to make unions an application to the court directly.

The NUS, for example, may find itself in a battle for member- ship with the rival Transport and General Workers' Union. This would encourage them to carry out their implied threat of May and apply for sequestration.

The whole issue proves once more that it is impossible for the TUC or any union to live' with the Act. They are in con- stant danger of massive legal attack and confiscation of funds.

This is why a call to oppose the Act without a demand for a General Strike to force the resignation of the Tory govern- ment and replace it with a Labour administration to dis- mantle entirely the legislation, is totally inadequate. The TUC when it meets in Brighton on September 4 should back the AUEW motion for immediate expulsion under rule 13. They should also adopt the resolution tabled by the Asso- ciation of Cinematograph, Tele- vision and Allied Technicians calling for industrial action to bring the Tories down and re- place them with a Labour govern- ment pledged to socialist policies.

This should become the policy of the TUC next week and in the weeks following they should implement it.

• MONDAY AUGUS

RATING THE NEWSLETTER

CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE SOCI

Glasgow bullding workers on the march. L THE BUILDING workers' fight for the £30, 35-hour week claim enters its tenth week today. Over 270,000 workers are now on strike on 9,000 sites all over Britain.

Yet union leaders still refuse to call an all-out, national strike and in fact are doing their best to sabotage the fight. They are still trying to get over 20,000 men back to work on the basis of separate company agreements. And at the same time there is a strong possibility that the claim will be referred to the new arbitration machinery set up be- the TUC and the Con- tween federation of British Industry.

This phoney set-up which is nothing more than machinery for wage-cutting will start its life this Friday. It was none other that George Smith, general secretary of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, who as chairman of the TUC General Council, played a leading part in fixing up the conciliation deal.

The 12-man conciliation panel includes Peter Trench, chairman of J. Lovell (Holdings), one firms currently fighting the the Trench building workers. was director of the National Federa- tion of Building Trades Em- ployers and member a Labour's Prices and Incomes Board. Smith has now announced that 20,000 workers are to be sent back as a result of 83 agreements signed with separate companies, many of them in Scotland.

MY AUGUST 28, 1972• No. 853 • 4p

E SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE

e march. Last week they rejected a union bid to Not only is this move aimed at splitting up and demoralizing workers, but it also represents a real retreat from the claim.

The so-called Scottish "model' agreement is only for a basic wage of £25 a week and contains no cut in the working week.

After ten weeks on strike, how- ever, most building workers realize the complete inadequacy of their leadership. That is why a meeting of 7,000 building workers in Edinburgh on Friday threw out the policy

AUGUST FUND NEI

WE ARE now very close to the end of the month. With our total £1,102.30 now standing at every last ounce of energy must be used to complete our target in time. Our Fund is needed more than ever today. Everything we can raise must be used to expand and improve our paper.

Our readers are increasing.

Our latest circulation drive in Scotland has proved highly successful and hundreds of new readers have been won.

appeal to everyone of you: go Now we intend to continue Ion bid to send corporation workers back of concluding separate agree- ments. They demanded those workers who have already gone back in Aberdeen and Dundee be brought out again. A noisy meeting also called for a 100 per cent strike and no retreat from the full claim for a £30 basic 35 hours and another week's holiday. In doing that they joined the 4,000 in Glasgow who on the same day completely rejected a call by union officials for local authority workers to go back.

NEEDS £647.70

throughout the rest of the country, extending our sales of Workers Press in all the main districts. In these last four days we flat out and help us raise this final amount. We know you will do it. Rush your donations immediately to : Workers Press August Appeal Fund 186a Clapham High Street London SW4 7UG.

workers press

INDUSTRIAL COURT

THREAT TO TUC

sil the 35 unions which have failed to deregister under the Industrial Relations Act. On Monday the TUC will hear a key appeal against suspension by the National Union of Seamen. Later the Congress will have to choose between the TUC General Council line of extend- ing the suspensions until Decem- ber or the engineers' motion for immediate expulsion under rule Either way the TUC may face a contempt action in the Indus- trial Relations Court leading to a heavy fine or possible seques- tration of the movement's entire assets. The NUS lawyers have already informed the TUC that the TUC action in suspending the union could lead to an NUS application to the Court for sequestration of its funds. The lawyers argue that the TUC acted in contempt by sus- pending the NUS for refusing to drop its application to the court an agency shop at sea and that the TUC will continue to be in contempt until the sus- pension is lifted. came in May, This threat month after the TUC received a direct warning from the secretary of the court, Colin Seaton.

was a heavy hint that This more action against unions who stuck to their decision to remain on the register would land the TUC in deep trouble. Seaton's letter warned: 'Once an application is before the courts no attempt must be made to dissuade anyone from giving in evidence those proceedings must they and still less be penalized for having done so?

The NIRC said at this stage that it had decided to take no formal notice of the suspension but added, 'If any further action were taken against that union or any action was taken against union or person other in any similar circumstances then a might be taken different view whether or not a complaint was received.' Again the TUC lawyers mini- mized this club-waving by the court. But in its report on the sea- • men's suspension even the TUC was forced to admit, 'the NIRC however, acted in unprecedented ways and the TUC might be found guilty of contempt of court by the NIRC which acted as judge and jury in its own cause.

01-622 7029 01-720 2000

INCORPORATING TH

DAILY ORGAN OF THE CENTRA

The report added that if con- tempt proceedings were brought and the TUC-in line with the policy of non-co-operation — decided to boycott the action the court would inflict a punishment which the High Court of Appeal would find it difficult to over- turn. The stage is therefore set for a crisis within the trade union movement which would dwarf even the strikes and mass pro- tests that broke out after the five London dockers were jailed.

The TUC is almost certain to reject the NUS appeal and con- tinue its suspension • when the debate is held next Monday atternoon, the first major session of the Congress at Brighton.

The TUC's own recommended policy constitutes 'further action union' to quote ...against any the NIRC warning. The General Council say the 35 unions be suspended and given until December 31 to get off the register. If they don't expulsion will follow at the 1973 Congress. Meanwhile the unions concerned will immediately lose these im- portant privileges after the vote: • Protection against poaching of members of unions other afforded by the famous Bridling- ton agreement. • Their leaders will be not eligible for election to the general, council. • They will have to leave the Congress as soon as their sus- pension has been decided.

• Their resolutions before this year's Congress will fall.

Danger of contempt action come from two may Should unions come before the court over the court president Sir next year, John Donaldson could activate his earlier unmistakable warn- ings and put the TUC and Victor Feather in the dock for contempt.

More is serious possible for any action member of the suspended to make an unions application to the court directly.

The NUS, for example, may find itself in a battle for member- ship with the rival Transport and General Workers' Union. This would encourage them to carry out their implied threat of May and apply for sequestration.

The whole issue proves once impossible for more that it is the TUC or any union to 'live' with the Act. They are in con- stant danger of massive legal attack and confiscation of funds.

This is why a call to oppose the Act without a demand for a General Strike to force the resignation of the Tory govern- ment and replace it with Labour administration to dis- mantle entirely the legislation, is totally inadequate. The TUC when it meets in Brighton on September 4 should back the AUEW motion for immediate expulsion under rule 13. They should also adopt the resolution tabled by the Asso- ciation of Cinematograph, Tele- Allied Technicians vision and calling for industrial action to bring the Tories down and re- place them with a Labour govern- ment pledged to socialist policies.

This should become the policy of the TUC next week and in the weeks following they should it. implement

ATING THE NEWSLETTER • MONDAY AUGUS

CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE SOCI

Glasgow bullding workers on the march. I workers'

THE BUILDING

fight for the £30, 35-hour its tenth week claim enters week today. Over 270,000 workers are now on strike on 9,000 sites all over Britain.

Yet union leaders still refuse to call an all-out, national strike and in fact are doing their best to sabotage the fight. They are still trying to get over 20,000 men back to work On the basis of separate company agreements. And at the same time there is a strong possibility that the claim will be referred to the new arbitration machinery set up be- the TUC and the Con- tween federation of British Industry.

is This phoney set-up which nothing more than machinery for wage-cutting will start its life this Friday. It was none other that George Smith, general secretary of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, who as chairman of the TUC General Council, played a leading part in fixing up the conciliation deal.

The 12-man conciliation panel includes Peter Trench, chairman of J. Lovell (Holdings), one of the firms currently fighting the building workers. Trench was director of the National Federa- tion of Building Trades Em- and a member of ployers Labour's Prices and Incomes Board. Smith has now announced that 20,000 workers are to be sent back as a result of 83 agreements signed with separate companies, many of them in Scotland.

AY AUGUST 28, 1972 • No. 853 • 4p

IE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE

e march. Last week they rejected a union bid to Not only is this move aimed at demoralizing splitting up and workers, but it also represents a real retreat from the claim.

The so-called Scottish 'model' agreement is only for a basic wage of f25 a week and contains no cut in the working week.

After ten weeks on strike, how- ever, most building workers realize the complete inadequacy of their leadership. That is why a meeting of 7,000 building workers in Edinburgh on Friday threw out the policy

AUGUST FUND NEI

WE ARE now very close to the end of the month. With our total now standing at {1,102.30 every last ounce of energy must be used to complete our target in time. Our Fund Is needed more than ever today. Everything we can raise must be used to expand and improve our paper.

Our readers are Increasing.

Our latest circulation drive in Scotland has proved highly successful and hundreds of new readers have been won.

appeal to everyone of you: go Now we intend lo continue ion bid to send corporation workers back of concluding separate agree- ments. They demanded those workers who have already gone back in Aberdeen and Dundee be brought out again. A noisy meeting also called for a 100 per cent strike and no retreat from the full claim for a £30 basic 35 hours and another week's holiday. In doing that they joined the 4,000 in Glasgow who on the same day completely rejected a call by union officials for local authority workers to go back.

) NEEDS £647.70

throughout the rest of the country, extending our sales of Workers Press in all the main districts. In these last four days we flat out and help us raise this final amount. We know you will do It. Rush your donations immediately to: Workers Press August Appeal Fund 186a Clapham High Street London SW4 7UG.

PAGE 2 Workers Press, Monday August:

BY JOHN SPENCER

JAPANESE big business is under heavy pressure to curb its exports as Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka prepares for his summit meeting with President Nixon in Hono- lulu this week. A procession of American envoys demanding trade con- Tokyo have cessions from prepared the way for the two meeting between the leaders, which is expected to centre on US demands for Japan to accept 'emergency imports' of US goods. Willam Eberle, the US chief trade negotiator, has warned that will be protectionist measures WESTERN Communist Parties which criticized the recent trials in Czecho- purge slovakia were falling for 'the old Goebbels propaganda' by Party chief Gustav Husak at the week- end. Husak denied that any of the 46 opponents of the Soviet occupation imprisoned in the trials were tried for the views they held in 1968 or 1969 or the posts they held at that time. 'We have declared on hundreds of occasions that not a single hair will be disturbed on the heads of those who respect the laws of the state, but we stressed on all available also occasions that will not we tolerate any disruption of the socialist state, he said in Bratislava. Referring to the muted criticisms voiced by the Italian, French and British CPs, Husak said: bourgeois 'Unfortunately anti-communist campaign against socialist Czechoslovakia assisted by certain was also of progressive representatives forces in the West, surprisingly indifferent to objective in- formation about Czecho- slovakia. 'We do not conceal that we are sorry about it... The position I have mentioned cannot be helpful to our common class position,' he said. He said these "progressive forces' had added their voices to 'the against Czecho- slanders slovakia' though 'the recent campaign bourgeois against in abounded our country and fabrication obvious lies which were fully in tune with the old Goebbels propa- ganda...' THE British Steel Corpora- tion, which recently announ- ced 10,000 redundancies at its factories in this country, is planning to establish a vast new plant in South Africa.

Planned in conjunction with the German firms August Thyssen and Kloeckner, the lactory has already been dis- cussed in detail with Iscor, the South African Iron and Steel Corporation. The chosen site is on the coast 75 miles north of Cape Town, at Saldanha. The likely cost of the y August 28, 1972 taken both in America and in Europe unless Japan takes dras- tic steps to abolish its trade surplus. The planned 'emergency im- ports', which Japan does not really would bring the want, surplus below $3,000m. But this is unlikely to satisfy American demands. In addition they will do no- thing to stem the rising tide of the protests from Common Market countries against Japanese 'dumping' of electronic products.

Last week the British manu- facturers joined chorus protest from Germany and the Benelux against the countries rapid growth of Japan's exports competition with their own products. The chauvinist agitation against these imports is beginning to penetrate into the columns of the press, where there are now calling for protection articles against the 'yellow peril'.

All this is reminiscent of the trade war of the 1930s, and with their usual lack of principle the Husak's speech indicates the extreme crisis of the Czecho- slovak Stalinists, who cannot tolerate mildest criticism of their repressions.

It also demonstrates clearly the criminal character of the Com- munist Parties' silence about Husak the past purges and repressions in both Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. The Moscow Trials of the 1930s and the Slansky frame-up of 1952 prepared the way for the current Czecho- purge slovakia. The British Com- munist Party leaders fully sup- ported these Stalinist crimes.

Czechoslovak leaders' The hysterical to their response mild criticism of the present trials shows just how im- portant the British CP's sup- port was to the Stalinists in carrying out their crimes the past. project to the BSC is estimated ạt £500m. Producing up to 15 million tons of semi-finished steel pro- ducts a year, the South African factory would be a substitute for planned new investment in Britain to replace plants now scheduled for closure. In particular it would mean the end of plans for a new fac- tory in Scotland, an area of high unemployment. The South African plant would African operate with cheap labour working under the re- gime's repressive apartheid laws.

These ban trade unions and outlaw strikes. For Thyssen's, of reformist trade union leaders are intervening on the side of their 'own' exploiters. This is evident from the tone of several resolutions on the TUC agenda for this year's con- gress. The National Union of Foot- wear, Leather and Allied Trades, for example, calls openly on the Tories to institute a quota pro- tection system to curb imports of manufactured goods such as footwear, clothing and electrical components. There are similar resolutions on the agenda from the electri- cians and the tailoring and gar- ment workers. These resolutions will doubt- less be grist to the Tory mill at a time when Edward Heath is planning to visit Tokyo to put his own trading demands to the Tanaka government. Trade unionists must resist this which is nationalist propaganda, aimed at turning British workers their brothers in other against countries. Unless this is fought the British capitalists will use such chauvinist sentiment as another for cutting wages and excuse worsening conditions at home.

Mass trial of Turkish teachers THE prosecutor has demanded jail sentences of up to 20 years in a trial of 144 teachers before military court in Ankara, Turkey. The teachers are accused of the Turkish Teachers under- the indictment as an aimed ground organization at overthrowing the constitution.

They are also charged with circulating communist propa- ganda and attempting to promote class struggle. Among the accused is promi- Baykurt, novelist Fair nent president of the union. The prosecution has demanded 20 years for him and the same for Dursun Akcam, the term vice-president, union's also a noted writer, and 28 others.

The union was banned shortly. after in Tulikey in triest after the military year. The prosecutor also demanded 16 years' jail for 104 of the defendants and five to 16 years for the rest. He asked for six of the 144 to be acquitted.

CORRECTION

In Friday's Workers Press we Ginger Pearce, EPTU . quoted president branch and Council Southampton Trades about the financial delegate, situation at the Vosper Thorny- croft shipyard. He was quoted as saying the yard had £ltm vorth of orders. This shoul lave read €130m worth of orders. course, this will be no new ex- perience. Much of the company's wealth was accumulated by the use of slave labour under Hitler.

indicatios of Want ahe Common Market will mean for the British working class. The plans for this enormous investment must have the backing of the Tory govern- ment, which will be expected to put up much of the money.

Not only will this bolster the capital will also mean stripped from Britain for the purposes of exploiting cheap labour overseas while the dole queues lengthen at home. MEMBERS of the Socialist Labour League and the Young Socialists picketed the Cameo cinema, Edinburgh, on Satur- day at the first public screen- ing of Joseph Losey's new film "The Assassination of Trotsky'.

film, which goes The on general, release in October, is being shown in conjunction with the Edinburgh Festival. Saturday's Losey attended premiere and became somewhat agitated by the leaflets, which enthusiastically taken and were read by the cinema-goers.

Before the screening began he told the audience that whoever wrote the leaflet hadn't seen the film. This is untrue. Reviewers from Workers Press were present at a special EMI • in London three press preview weeks ago. It was then decided that a picket should be staged at the festival to expose the Stalinist-inspired distortions and inaccuracies of Losey. BANGLADESH entry to the United Nations has been indefinitely post- poned as result of China's decision to use its veto powers and ex- clude the new state. The Chinese ambassador to the UN, Huang. Hua, had warned he would 'categoric- ally vote against the pro- posal to admit Bangladesh.

Earlier China failed to win a vote on a proposal to postpone Bangladesh discussion of admission. supported, This motion was significantly, by the United States and the butcher Numeiry regime in the Sudan which has close trade and economic ties with China. The Chinese excuse is that Bangladesh has failed to imple- ment UN calls for release of •Pakistani prisoners of war.

Bangladesh has said it will not consider releasing the prisoners until it is recognized by Pakistan.

The Peking Stalinists sup- ported Pakistan's repression in Bangladesh and supplied arms and funds for use against the liberation movement in Bengal.

They themselves have only in membership of the been

SOCIALIST LABCUR

LEAGUE

LOSEY S FILM

DISTORTION

OF HISTORY

"The The leaflet, entitled Second Assassination of Trotsky', demonstrates how Losey has con- sciously or otherwise sought to Trotsky's lifelong demean struggle on behalf of the inter- national proletariat. The film ignores his fight to build the Fourth International and, incredibly, tries to suggest that the assassin is not a GPU agent but simply some sort of adventurist psychopath. Losey told the audience he was prepared to discuss the film with his critics after the show- ing. But when the film ended an announcement was made that he • to return to London on had urgent business. • A review of the film will appear in Workers Press as a special feature later this week.

It has been specially written for Workers Press by film director Roy Battersby. United Nations for ten months and this is tested is sourite council members. Their action is a calculated insult to the Bengali workers and peasants who fought against overwhelming odds to establish their right to separate from Pakistani rule. China's admission to the United Nations is a consequence of its counter-revolutionary ties with US imperialism and its puppets not only in Pakistan but also in the Sudan, Ceylon and other parts of Asia. China was kept out of the United Nations by a similar exercise of the veto for 22 years after the victory of the revolu- tion. In the Korean war, Chinese volunteers fought against 'United Nations' troops drafted in from the US, Britain and Turkey.

Bangladesh Foreign Minister Abdus Samad commented that China's action had exposed the hollowness of its claim to be la champion of the rights of oppressed peoples'. member of Sheikh And a Rahman's suite said it Mujibur was a great shock to him to hear which had been that China, kept out of the UN for more than 20 years, should now use its veto for the first time against a small new nation.

LESSONS OF A LONDON SIT-IN

ERIC BOGLE, WORKS CONVENOR SPEAKS ON THE SIT-IN AT STANMORE ENGINEERING CO.

ERIC BOGLE, WORKS CONVENO

Three months ago engineers' union members at Stanmore Engineering Co, Stonebridge, started the first sit-in in the area in support of London the engineers' national claim.

They were inspired by the occupations in the Manches- ter area and were encouraged to go ahead by union officials.

After six weeks the firm took out a court order to have them from expelled the premises. Although the case withdrawn before the was actual hearing, the manage- ment was able to enter the factory and take away vital dies which were used for pro- duction elsewhere. The struggles went on a further six weeks, with the men now picketing outside.

Last week the company an- nounced the closure of the factory and the transferring of all outstanding work to their other premises in Stanmore.

The men who carried on heroic struggle are that long, now looking for new jobs, worried although they are about the possibility of finding many in the area. They are not sure they will even get redun- dancy payments, although the union has told them to apply and says it will represent them at any appeals hearings if the refuses. company Eric Bogle, works convenor Engineering and at Stanmore one of the sacked men, spoke to Workers Press about some of the lessons of their fight.

He told us: for the We are striking national claim of the Con- federation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions. The union told us to go ahead. They said we were a test case. Now the union has let us down badly. We were the ones who started the fight and now we are out of a job.

The union should not have told us to go for the claim if they did not intend to fight it through. Everybody feels bad about it. The union did nothing to assist us. After the court order was taken out we needed more consultation with the union.

Nobody knew what to do. They gave us no advice. All they said was that we were the first such case in the area and they had no idea what to do themselves. You can't get anything out of selective strikes, either in the engineering or the building industries. When one section is fighting the others standing by. are Scanlon said different firms 28 Charlotte St

BOOKS • PERIC

ONVENOR SPEAKS ON THE SIT-IN AT

Top: workers at Stanmoro En- gineering Co during the six weeks occupation. Above : Eric Bogle the works convenor at the firm. would do it on their own, but we should have all carried out the fight united. the one who Scanlon was submitted our claim. Now he has backed down from it, leaving us in a mess.

keep If you don't expect to the fight, don't start it.

up It's the same all over. The going back to dockers are work without any satisfaction.

The unions are backing down these fights and are from showing the government their weaknesses.

3 • PERIODICALS • NEWSPAPERS

T-IN AT STANMORE ENGINEERING CO

There have been a lot of opportunities to take on the government, but they are allowing the government to proceed. Working-class people earn- ing £18, £20 or £25 a week look at Reginald Maulding who getting £20,000 and was wanted more, and they say it is not good enough for such people to tell us how much we should earn. The government is all made up of company directors and people like that, so what can working people expect from them? We are the unions. We elect the people we think will do the best for us. They should have to answer to all the mem- bers and decisions should not just be taken at the top.

Scanlon talked about the claim and then he accepted something quite different.

for the claim A lot of firms were fighting for the claim and have had to drop it. They would not have accepted the new agreement.

The 35 hours was more im- portant than the increase in money because it means more on the hourly rate. Then when you put in for a claim later are starting from a on you

NOW OPEN

Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs 9 а.т.-6 р.m. Fri 9 a.m.-7.30 p.m. Sat 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Workers Press, M

RING CO.

higher level. But the union dropped the fight on hours which would also have helped the unemployed. None of the leaders are any good. They only go part of the way and then back down. The strength of the working class is OK, but the leadership is no good. When those dockers were jailed, it was the chance to a national have stoppage. People were not only thinking men, but of releasing those also of getting rid of the Indus- trial Relations Act and the government. The union • leaders said they were against the Act, and now they are coming to us and say- ing we must abide by it. The government the put £55,000 fine on the Transport General Workers' Union and and then withdrew it and put the penalties on individuals. Then it put the fine back on the unions because it knew the union leaders are weaker than their members. The five dockers who went to jail, they didn't want to go to jail, but they were showing the strength and determination of the working class, and it that determination that was got them out again. What Vic Feather said the other day about the dockers being violent was disgusting.

He is the leader of the unions and regardless of what Labour A reply to some centrist critics By Cliff Slaughter All are avallable from 186a Clapham H Or The Paperback Contre, 28 Charlotte • Press, Monday August 28, 1972 PAGE 3 his members may have done you won't go against them in public. The dockers are fight- ing for their jobs, but he is telling the government the dockers were wrong and agree- ing with the government they is violent, and that were strengthening the government.

The leaders of the unions are weak, really weak. But the working is strong and class they are determined. We must clear the traitors out, both from the unions and Party the Labour because, don't forget, it was the Labour government that tried to pass an Act against the unions. We need a new leadership that is and won't back determined down. We must get rid of this government and make the Labour government nationalize the industries.

Eric Bogle agreed that every- thing Workers Press said about the union leaders was true. The leaders are backing down, he said. 'Workers Press is a good paper to read because there is a lot of truth in it. That is why Scanlon and others like him don't like it. They are cowards.' A series which appeared in Workers Press in June, 1972 is now available as a pamphlet in Socialist Labour League Pocket Library.

'WHY A LABOUR GOVERNMENT?

A Reply to some centrist critics.'

By Cliff Slaughter Price 5p Other titles in this series include: The Case for a General Election By Alex Mitchell. The Ulster Dossier The Social Security Swindle which includes the All Trades Unions Alliance Draft Manifesto and the Charter of Basic Rights.

lapham High St, London SW4 7UG.

Charlotte St, London W1.

PAGE 4 Workers Press, Monday August

IAN YATES REPORTS FROM LIVI

"There's nothing else to do so we might as well batter the blacks,' a small Liverpool boy in huge boots told me in the centre of a glass-strewn court ringed with decay. ing tenaments. A fortnight ago a 60-strong police task force with visors, shields and 3 ft batons broke up gang fights in the same court. Petty feuding between in- dividuals and groups of youth suddenly turned into full-scale neighbourhood riots which lasted four full days. On the other side of Toxteth at Leighton View Heights, 16-year-old George Osu told me: 'Whenever the white kids see us they beat us and when- ever we see them we beat them. It never used to be like this but its getting worse••• Despite all the talk of blacks and whites battering each other, Liverpool is not a city seething with race hatred.

At the beginning of August Fleet Street warned of race war in Liverpool worse than sectarian violence the Ulster. Enoch Powell seized on Toxteth as a likely source for the apocalyptic rivers of blood which he claims will shortly engulf the nation.

When the television crews arrived the young players in the lurid comic-strip drama seemed to have forgotten their historic roles, however. Black and white youth were en- couraged to forage for sticks and bars and line up facing each other to create the appro- priate genocidal atmosphere.

During the now-notorious battle of Faulkner Place these same allegedly irreconcilable buried the foes temporarily hatchet at the sudden appear- ance of their common enemy arresting dressed in blue and everybody they could lay their hands on. Edward O'Hare, who has lived in the Windsor Gardens district for 50 years, saw the whole thing from his doorstep.

"The police chased even them along the landings,' he said. 'One lad hid in the rooms, but they kicked the door down and dragged him downstairs by his hair. His brother got up from his sick- bed to see what was going on and they took him, too.'

Quite apart from the solid- arity provoked by the inter- Liverpool's riot vention of squad, theories of deepening race hatred look even more sick when a lad says in- nocently: 'We were going to have a peace treaty, but another lot of skins wouldn't have it so we said some other time.' Peace treaties, batterings, ter- ritorial rights, Bill said this, Icky did that, Tommy got stabbed because he pinched Alan's tart-all this is the vocabulary of kids playing war games, not races straining to tear each other apart. In any case the different racial groups are not separate.

There ghettos in are no Liverpool except for the work- ay August 28, 1972

OM LIVERPOOL

ing class on one side and the rich on the other. Adults who hear the gangs throwing bricks and bottles at each other until well into the desperation, call the almost all have either coloured relatives or live next door to immigrant families. Edward When O'Hare stomps exasperatedly to his doorstep, nine times out of ten it is to send packing a group of noisy teenagers and kids hanging about on the stone steps of his Close.

'I don't know what sort of families they come from, he says, 'they're just looking for trouble. They should be in- doors not hanging about here.

I've got six daughters and two sons and there's none of them ever out here like this.'

Lads out of school with no money and not much to do together with boys of 15 and 16 who are on the dole form the nucleus of the Liverpool gangs. Slum tenements and new multi-storey "heights' stand amid the flattened rubble of Liverpool's dockside slums like islands and gangs of bored youth have turned individual blocks into their own indivi- dual territory. Gang warfare on this basis has been waged in Liverpool's working-class districts worst for as long as most people can remember, and every foot of George Osu fences, shopfronts space on and buildings is daubed with their violently large aggressive names and slogans.

In the past two years the composition of the Toxteth gangs has changed. The tenements and tower blocks are multi-racial and so used the gangs to be. But gradually the minority of youth who form the neighbourhood gangs have distilled themselves into black and white groups, which colour depending on in a particular predominates block or district. As working-class families have themselves become poli- ticized by the effects of slump their children pick up more about the real world than kids lot a decade ago. Where rents, unemployment, slums and prices are a mount- ing and dominating topic of conversation, every family child is as sharply aware that 40,000 Asians are about to come into the country as he is that Everton smashed Man- chester on Friday. Over 5,000 boys and girls are unemployed on Merseyside in addition to ten times that number of men and women. Now thousands more redun- Liverpool: side by side is the rubble of Gangs of youth such as this (above left dancies are threatened in dock- land. Merseyside Youth Employ- ment Service said last week that apprenticeships are likely to be down by 50 per cent next year compared to 1970, and many employers are tipped to be cutting recruitment of school-leavers by 25 per cent.

As industry has shut down, dole queues have lengthened to the point where 40 or 50 men chase one job. The inflation unleashed and fanned by recession has en- sured that Liverpool Corpora- tion's fight against the almost overwhelming of problem slums and sub-standard hous- ing is a losing one. Two-thirds of Merseyside's decaying urban jungle consists working-class families of struggling anxiously from day to day and increasingly search- ing for solutions their to worsening problems. It is this which the gangs most sharply express. In a city which has been integrated multi-racial and since the slave trade-and in addition one of the cradles of trade unionism-it is diffcult for racialism to gain currency workers' as a solution to problems. None put it forward.

Street's at- Despite Fleet tempts to suggest that the Tox- riots occurred because teth whites were jealous of black rubble of dockside slums (top) and multi-sto above left) make blocks and streets their own te houses, people getting new local residents of all colours hotly deny it and also that there is even a scrap of real racialist feeling in the com- munity. The phenomenon of the all black and white gangs has yet to appear outside Toxteth in what is the bulk of Liverpool large and where there are multi-racial communities.

But there is no doubt about the recent emergence of Black Power supporters. The Black Power agitators have so far had little if any impact on Liverpool's multi-racial work- ing-class community, however.

George Osu's acid comment on them is as typical as it is widespread. He said: 'I think people who go round shouting about Black Power are stupid. The one thing that is certain and indisputable-that Liver- pool youth are bored, frustra- ted and volatile-applies as much to 15- and 16-year olds.

with work as much as it does to those on the streets all day long with the swarms of younger children from the city's large families. Edward O'Hare keeps his sons and daughters off the streets, but one of them told me: 'If there's a fight it's excit- ing. We get fed up sitting here watching the telly every night.'

There are community clubs, but most if not all of them are run-down buildings only given to the youth when they are no good for anything else. They 1 multi-storey wastelands (above right) heir own territory. are very small and have almost no equipment. In the rubble wastelands be- patch of tween tenements a green is a rare sight. But it is not merely soccer pitches and table-tennis tables that are needed to bring down the shutters on gangland.

Like their parents, Liverpool youth are trying to break out of a whole depressed way of life. That is what the violence is really about. Apart from soccer matches many kids in the most deprived never leave areas their neighbourhoods. There's nowhere to go and even if there was they have no money.

As workers' living standards plunge, violence gets gang worse. Riot police are the only answer from the ruling class.

They, of course, are not dis- turbed by this kind of crude behaviour. Some of them live at Chessington Park, a private, walled estate in the suburbs of Liverpool where no residence costs under £15,000. There sprawling 12- and 15- room mansions stand among tennis-courts and croquet- pitches, with lawns and green- houses, many with two cars in the garage, and some with a caravan and boat. Far from the violent, peeling, substandard world of the tenements.

THE CROAT FASCISTS AND

BY JOHN SPENCER

Last month a group of Yugoslav émigrés, mem- bers of the Croatian 'revolutionary brother- hood', drove across the border from Austria and set up a shortlived guer- rilla base 400 miles inside the country. intruders put The were down in short order by the Yugoslav security police and militia units, though not with- causing deaths some out among them. Croat invaders were The heavily-armed young fascists whose organization is run by men who acted as Hitler's puppets against the partisans during the war. They are now trying to cash in on the nationalist and separatist discontent among the various component peoples of the Yugoslav federation.

The Croat fascists, of course, support have little popular majority of the among Croatians, who remember their wartime crimes. But the dis- content among many sections of the population is nonethe- less real enough. It erupted in December last year when students at Zagreb university struck 2,000-strong against what they considered to be discrimination against the republic by the central authorities. The leaders of the strike are now on trial in Zagreb in one of prosecutions of a series directed against Croat nation- alism. The Croatian section of the Yugoslav League of Com- munists has been extensively purged of what are termed 'nationalist elements' in its leadership, who are said to have encouraged the student strikers. 'Political measures'—usually removal from office - were taken against 1,200 Croat Party members in the three- month period following the Zagreb university strike.

Much of the fire has been against the concentrated influential Croat cultural asso- Hrvatska' 'Matica ciation ('Mother Croatia') to which some of the leading nationalists society belonged. The accused of spreading anti-state propaganda and glorifying the wartime Ustachi puppet regime. There is no question that the Croat nationalist resurgence endangers the gains of the Yugoslav revolution. Some of the agitation of the nationalists has been openly restorationist.

But Tito and his supporters have yet to explain how it is that 27 years after the revolu- tion these ideas can still exer- cise a hold even over layers of youth who have never known capitalism. And the process is not con- fined to Croatia. There have been dark warnings from gov- ernment officials about nation- alist conceptions spreading in other republics, notably Serbia and the Vojvodina, inhabited mainly by Albanians. The nationalist tendency has been able to grow only as a result of the bureaucratic character of the regime and its isolation. The privileged officials of the Yugoslav government and of Communists are League primarily interested in protect- ing their own position, not only against restoration of capitalism but also against the working class. Accordingly Tito acts in a dealing Bonapartist manner, blows not only against the right but also against the left.

While the Zagreb trials were in preparation a court in Bel- grade handed out stifi prison sentences to three students accused of Trotskyism. in the Their chief crime eyes of the bureaucracy was that they had sent a delegate the International Youth to Rally in Essen, West Germany, organized by the Fourth International. At the same time there have been a number of important strikes among factory workers, railwaymen and builders. is Tito's in government reality_a series of balancing acts. He tries to balance be- tween the USSR and imperial- ism, accepting credits and opening the country to foreign while cementing his capital with the Council for ties Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon). Simultaneously, he is seek- ing closer ties with the Com- mon Market and trying to make the weak dinar con- vertible with the currencies of the capitalist world. the Balkans, Within he colonels' trades with the Greece and is on cordial terms butchers of the with these Greek working class. And within Yugoslavia itself, the regime rules by arbitrating six republics between the • enjoy very con- which now siderable autonomy in both financial and regional affairs.

It was financial questions which sparked the Zagreb stu- dents' demonstrations December. The leaders main- tained that Croatia was being 'unfairly' of its deprived "rightful' share of total foreign exchange earnings. Tito settled this question by giving the Croatian separatists even more rope: they achieved virtually all their demands in relation to foreign exchange earnings. Historically, Yugoslavia is a bastard state created on the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In the years after the war, the Tito leadership was able to preserve a measure of unity on the basis of the gains made by the workers and peasants in their revolutionary struggle to drive out the Nazis and establish a workers' state.

Now, however, the economic and political crisis facing the regime and the immense gulf between the bureaucracy and Tito is simultaneously Common Market count to foreign capital. Top: Above: Nixon al States last year the masses brings all centrifugal tendencie: surface. These have strengthened by the d of responsibility to managers-under the 'workers' control' used to give rise to enthusiasm among th Fabians and revisioni: radical The mainly revisions, about over the past ! in order penetration of foreig have also undermi central power. The re-emergence o and fascist tendenci among the émigré yo indication that the bu and is bankrupt arouse popular suppo Hence the intensit secret police activity, the creation of anot police bureau. These are measure through wl peration, and his Party attemp the been greatly of which constitutional brought facilitate the capital, the even unable including Tito Workers Press, Mo fles with the USSR, America and the cepting credit and opening Yugoslavia Ith Brezhnev in the streets of Belgrade.

ite House on Tito's visit to the United problems which are in reality Yugo- insoluble so long as isolated slavia remains an workers' state. The Titoites who broke empirically with Stalin in 1949 never broke from the fundamental conceptions of Stalinism. The price for this failure now has to be met by the Yugoslay working class.

They have their own scores to settle both with the Ustachi and other nationalists and with the privileged bureaucrats whose wealth and corruption devours the products of their labour. What is certain is that the Yugoslav workers will not tolerate the peaceful restora- of capitalism under tion Ustachi or any other kind of rule. They will defend the gains of their revolution, alongside Tito in so far as he fights the fascist threat, but also in struggle against the •bureau- cracy whose policies increas- ingly menace their position.

Press, Monday August 28, 1972 PAGE 5 Last month Ford of Bri- tain announced a £30m trading loss, the first since it moved to Dagen- ham 39 years ago. After tax adjustments the loss was reduced to £17m. Ford's, however, is a multi- empire. The losses in national one corner of the globe can soon be balanced out through the exploitation in of workers another part. In the United States the mighty automobile empire has just returned the massive pro- fits figure of $51.6m for 1971.

For Henry Ford Il the philo- sophy he holds is as arrogant that of and ruthless as his Henry Ford grandfather who made his pro- fits with the use of hired gun- men to break the unions in his plants. At the annual shareholders' meeting he made it clear that he was in business to make profits and nothing else.

I believe that the social res- ponsibility of the corporation today is fundamentally the same as it has always been: to earn profits for shareholders by consumer wants serving with maximum efficiency ..

this is the heart of the matter 'Maximum efficiency' in this case has led to over-lengthen- ing dole queues outside the Ford plants. For their benefit Ford had this to say: 'cannot hire The company people merely because they need work'. He also added 'provide that they could not and services for products which no profitable market exists' profits, The record Ford termed by the 'Wall Street Journal' as an 'embarrassment of riches' shows how well the Nixon government's pay freeze has served the bosses. While the government Pay Board, set up after the August 15 measures, freezes car work- wages, while the Price Commission demands more productivity from these work- ers, profits soar. Meanwhile unemployment in the car town of Detroit is up to 8 per cent and to a stagger- ing 50 per cent among minority youth. The speed-up in the plants for those with jobs knows no limits, while services such as education and health deterio- rate because they are not 'pro- fitable'. On this the Democrats, Republicans and Ford agree.

PAGE 6 Markars Prosa, Monday Augual 28, 1972 of the millions of people and the workers and which is meted out every According to Secretary courage day to the people of Indo- their well-tested vanguard peasants of other lands from of State William Rogers, brigade. China for their temerity in revolutionary struggle North Vietnam will soon Vietnamese their daring to challenge the might overthrow exploiters Today the be forced swallow to of American big business.

and drive out capitalism and offensive spirit revolutionary Nixon's terms for ending again shining with all its its agencies. Their reply is summed up radiance, back the the war. If we are to believe Nixon's recent article from pushing In the Hanoi news- terrible pressure of the huge 'Nhan Dan, He believes that the com- public relations machine he US air force and navy, of the 27th bination of relentless Ameri- has been 'winding down' the paper, the blockade and mining, and war ever since he took office.

anniversary August can bombardment and pres- The reality, 1945 the also of all kinds of none-too- from China and however, is the uprising against sure the French. USSR for a compromise set- agreeable actions in one way exact, grim, opposite. defies another exerted by tlement will force the Viet- In three-and-a-half The article both ten- ycals Nixon and the Stalinist 'big dencies of compromise from namese to their knees. his administration has drop- all sides. ped more explosive on Viet- powers' to break the fighting His statement has been de- spirit of the Vietnamese.

Cambodia "The key to the success of Vietnamese Laos and nounced by the nam, the Vietnamese revolution is The revolutionary offensive fighters as liberation than that of president John- a pie- valiancy and tenacity, dynam- son did in four. spirit that has incessantly election propaganda stunt and developed over the past half- ism and revolutionary often- have reaffirmed their From February 1965 to they sive spirit. Our offensive spirit 1969 3}m and surmounted all determination fight to a January roughly century has become a potential force tons of American bombs fell finish against the US military trials is actually the invincible Indo-China. strength of the Vietnamese of millions of people in their on From then juggernaut. work in Nixon would certainly like until June this year the figure daily revolutionary every aspect of life. to go before the electorate as was over 34m tons. •Opportunism often appears in times of regression and at Both Rogers and his friends the of who The results this bom- man peace OI in Moscow and Peking, the brought the American boys bardment turning points due to the lack against tuwns back from Vietnam. of North Viet- of revolutionary dynamism.

authors of the 'none-too. and villages agreeable actions' referred to 'The disastrous But he has an overriding nam can be seen from the opportun- by the Hanoi commentator, Nguyer photographs ist tendencies of all sides Keeping interest in accompanying are discovering that the road from outside have not been Van Thieu's puppet regime taken by North Vietnamese of counter-revolution against in office in Saigon. able to do any harm to this cameramen. This is the Vietnamese workers and Only in this way can the They the land. thanks to the a raid by United States bombers on the night of April 16, 1972 destroyed workers' living quarters of the Ngo Quyen show constant US imperialists hope to dis- rain of death from the skies offensive spirit peasants is no easy one. factory Haiphong. Above: soldiers of the North Vietnamese army are greeted by villagers revolutionary Above: the surgical section of Haiphong's 'Vietnam-Cze Below: damaged by a US missile. children playing in D Ba Dinh quarter of Hanoi, destroyed in a raid on April of the Ngo Quyen district glassware

From the Dockers' Tanner Strike 1889 to Devlin 1967. An historical'series on the organization of the dockers by Jack Gale

THE RECOGNITION STRIKE

AND THE BETRAYAL

In the Northern ports the break from the T&GWU took place in 1954. By 1955 there were 12 branches of the NAS&D In Liverpool alone. Above : PAGE 8 Workers Press, Monday August 2 From the Dockers' Tan

PART 10

Between September 1954 and May 1955 10,000 men in the northern ports (40 per cent of the labour force) left the Transport and General Workers' Union joined the National Amalgamated Stevedores' and Dockers' Union (the 'Blue' union).

The scale of this walk-out gave the lie to Stalinist claims that it was an artificial adven- ture. It was the product of tension building up inside the docks membership of the T&GWU through at least major strikes since the war. This was intensified by the issue of com- pulsory overtime and the use of Dock Labour Board (DLB) disciplinary powers by officials of the T&GWU. Subject to no control within the union, T&GWU officials had acquired the power- through the DLBs-to deprive men of their livelihoods.

The imposition of the closed shop—a desirable condition in itself — nevertheless further strengthened the power of these union officials. It guaranteed membership for the T&GWU no matter how little the leaders of that union did for its rank and file. Ever since the war the real fighting leadership on the docks had been provided, not by the T&GWU but by unofficial com- mittees. The dockers' section of the NAS&D had itself been formed as a result of a break from the T&GWU. This occurred in 1923 when the then secretary, Ernest Bevin, signed an agree- ment with the port employers accepting a wage reduction.

Thousands of London dock- ers left the T&GWU and joined what was then the Stevedores' Protection Society. The 1954 break was similarly inspired (see previous article).

By March 1955 there were five NAS&D branches in Birken- head, 12 in Liverpool, two in Manchester and seven in Hull.

TUC

promptly sus- The pended the 'Blue' union. The employers were also anxious-for obvious reasons— that the T&GWU should pre- serve its monopoly in northern ports. In April 1955 the employers in Manchester and Merseyside refused to issue new registra- tion books to men who could not produce a paid-up T&GWU membership card. This attempt to exclude the 'Blue' led to an immediate strike which closed the three ports, the employers capitu- lated in two days. following The month a NAS&D delegate meeting in London voted for strike action if the employers continued their refusal to recognize the 'Blue' in the northern ports.

20,000 men stopped work— including thousands of T8 GWU members. this In situation, the T&GWU leadership could sum- mon up some energy. They declared they were prepared to spend £9m to break the strike.

But they found it wasn't One Manchester SO easy.

T&GWU

official boasted that the strikers would end by hav- ing to eat crusts. But when T&GWU officials called a meet- ing in Manchester they had to call for a police escort to get them away-and dockers pelted them with crusts of bread as they went. y August 28, 1972 ers' Tanner Strike 1889 to Devlin 19 In the Northern ports the break from the Liverpool dockers at a mass meeting of t The strike lasted six weeks.

With no strike pay, the men suffered real hardship. But it was not this which brought defeat. The strike was lost because a section of the 'Blue' leader- ship in London, who had wel- comed the northern men into their union, not only let them down, but did so by flouting the whole democratic tradi- tions of the 'Blue' which had attracted the new members in the first place. This betrayal resulted from pressure exerted by the TUC and by the Communist Party.

The Communist Party, which had no desire to see the work- ing class free itself from the domination of the trade union bureaucracy, had opposed the 'Blue' union from the start.

In 1954 Vic Marney—a lead- ing docker member of the Com- munist Party and secretary of the Communist Party domi- nated Liaison Committee wrote in "Tribune' that the Liaison Committee would 'under no circumstances be involved in any struggle for the recognition of the NAS&D in the northern ports.' When the recognition strike began, the Liaison Committee, together with the executive of the lightermen's union, met the London executive committee of NAS&D and demanded that the strike be called off.

evlin 1967. An historical"series on th ‹ from the T&GWU took place In 1954. By 1955 eeting of the 'Blue' in the 1950s.

Meanwhile the Communist Party's 'Daily Worker' was consistently playing down the numbers of men on strike and seeking to give the impression that it was all on the verge of collapse. After the strike had lasted for two weeks, the London NAS&D executive-under pres- sure from the Liaison Com- mittee-pushed through a deci- sion to end the strike at a conference between itself and delegates from the northern ports. Every single northern voted against representative ending the strike. But when this recommenda- tion was put to mass meetings it was rejected not only in the North, but in London as well.

Two weeks later the same procedure was repeated. Again the membership rejected the leaders' recommendation to end the strike. But these obvious efforts to sell out clearly encouraged the employers to hang on. A delegate conference of the 'Blue' then agreed to go before a disputes commission appointed • by the TUC. Its representatives three were national officials from London.

commission This disputes offered to lift the ban exclud- ing the 'Blue' from the TUC- in return for an end to the strike and the expulsion of all from the northern men es on the organization of the docker By 1955 there were 12 branches of the NAS&

NAS&D!

The London executive of the 'Blue', in direct contradiction to all previous procedure in the union, then passed a resolution, moved by a member of the Communist Party, to accept the demand and order a return to work. Representatives of the north- ern men were excluded from the vote. No rank-and-file meeting by the was called official union leadership.

Unofficial meetings were held in the north. The men there had no alternative in the face of this treachery but to return to work-but they refused to leave the 'Blue' union. One week later the secre- taries of the 'Blue' union bran- ches in the north received a letter from the acting general secretary of NAS&D curtly informing them that they were excluded from membership of the union as from July 6, 1955.

But the 'Blue' union men in the north refused to lie down and die. They decided to main- tain their organization and to fight their expulsion in the courts. In March 1956 their case-Spring National Amalgamated' Stere- dores and Dockers-came up in a Liverpool court. To the jubilant applause of dockers who crowded the courtroom, judgement was given that a docker named by dockers by Jack Gale the NAS&D In Liverpool alone. Above : Spring had been wrongfully ex- pelled from NAS&D. This meant that all the northern men were still legally in the 'Blue' union. Needless to say, attempts to drive them out continued. The employers in the North denied recognition. The T&GWU several times called for a show of cards in order that 'Blue' men could be put off the dock. Whenever this happened it was foiled by the united action of 'Blue' and 'White' dockers. The executives of the two unions even produced a ludi- crous scheme whereby the northern men retained their NAS&D membership cards but were serviced by the T&GWU.

This was laughed out of court. • hard core of 'Blue' union members still remains in the northern ports, but member- 55. ship has seriously declined. The responsibility for this rests the leadership of entirely on NAS&D, and their backers in the TUC and the Communist Party. The leaders of NAS&D were reformists. Politically, they were basically no different to the bureaucrats of the

T&GWU.

The struggle over Devlin- like the struggle over Jones- Aldington-was not to be led by them.

STALINIST CRISIS BY JOHN SPE

Writing in the current issue of World Marxist Review', an international journal of Stalinism, Gordon McLennan — a member of the political committee of the Com- munist Party-finds him. self in some difficulty when reviewing the events of the past year. As he rightly says, a particu- larly important and significant struggle was that on the upper Clyde. 'simple and The brilliant' strategy of working the liquidator for was, McLennan points out, origin- ally centred on the demand: 'Not one man will be dis- missed.' McLennan has to modify that a bit. The 'possibility' of the four yards remaining open in full production and with no loss of jobs 'is now very real' he declares (our emphasis). A clear statement that all the yards and jobs would be saved transformed into a has been 'possibility' that they might be.

for But unfortunately McLennan, his article. was written before the details of the Marathon and Govan ship- yards deals became known.

It is now public knowledge that not only will all four yards not continue on full pro- duction, but that thousands of jobs have been lost. . four-year, What is more a no strike pledge has been signed with Marathon, one of the chief signatories being James Reid, an executive com- mittee member of the British Communist Party. And at the time of writing Govan Shipbuilders are push- ing for a deal which will in- clude 139 'work-in' men and which will exclude definite guarantees on boilermakers' pay. thousand redundancies A have occurred at the Clyde- bank yard alone during the last 14 months and a further 1,000 men have little hope of being absorbed in the Govan Shipbuilders' complex. McLennan's 'great Thus victory' sounds good in the of World Marxist pages Review', , but rings hollow on the upper Clyde. But this Stalinist hack runs into even greater difficulties in with the struggle dealing against the Industrial Relations Act and unemployment. the 'mighty He describes demonstrations' when workers responded to the TUC's one-.

day strike call last November and concludes: In the view of many militants this great day of working class action ended rather tamely with Vic Feather's meeting in Central Hall, London. fact the TUC general In secretary made it clear that he was going to lead no action to bring down the Tory gov- ernment and guarantee Jobs.

Similarly the mass demon- strations against the Industrial Relations Bill were also led up a blind alley by the TUC leaders. McLennan, of course, is un- able to explain that the only organization demanding that the TUC call a General Strike to force the Tories to resign the Socialist Labour was League. When the TUC General Council voted against a reso- lution for a one-day General Strike, McLennan relegates this to secondary importance.

The main thing, according to him, was 'agreement was maintained the need to on oppose the Bill. Agreement to

HN SPENCER

James Reid and Wayne Harbin sign the • provided the Bill, oppose nothing was actually done to oppose it! Indeed the Communist Party leaders twisted them- selves into knots finding for- mulas which could sound good to their members, but which avoided demanding that the TUC brought the Tories down by a General Strike. Gollan called for 'all-out action, including, industrial action to sweep away this Act' but did not specify what this industrial action should be.

McLennan declares that the Communist Party. 'will con- tinue their fight to win the trade union movement to exercise its full power to defeat the government, make the Act unworkable, and by doing so help further to create conditions for a General Election'. Yet this wordy froth avoids the immediate, direct demand for a fight within the unions to force the TUC to call General Strike to continue until the Tory government is the Stalinist-con- trolled Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions consistently fights against such indeed, a policy and was, brought into existence pre- cisely for that purpose! At no point do the Stalinists wish to clash with the trade.

union leaders. On the 1971 Post Office workers' strike, McLennan writes: "The longest and in many ways the most difficult strike battle was conducted by the Union of Post Office Workers.

membership With a 200,000 this was the first all- out national strike in the his- tory of the union. But finally the union • leaders settled for in wages and con- advances ditions far below what they members and their were demanding' McLennan blandly ignores the fact that members of the Communist Party on the national executive of the Union of Post Office Workers all voted to call off the strike for that settlement. And he makes no mention, either, of the responsibility of the TUC leaders who allowed the UPW to fight it out alone.

This year's miners' strike, of course, was a victory. The Tories were forced to retreat and pay out much more than I sign the Marathon deal they had originally intended to do. McLennan states that 'after six weeks of working-class militancy and solidarity the government was on its knees'.

But he does not go on to say that this advantage was not driven home. The union leaders permitted the Tories to remain in office when they could have been driven out. Had the union leaders linked the fight for wages with the fight for jobs and the fight against Industrial Relations Act, the Tory government could have been defeated. But the Communist Party nowhere called for that. It con- tinued to cover up for the trade union leaders. And when the Socialist Labour League continued to fight for its policy through the ATUA, the Stalinists opposed it in the LCDTU. The main lesson of the past 12 months is that the Tory government remains in office through the courtesy of the Parliamentary Labour Party, whose right wing voted with them on the Common Market, and through the courtesy of the TUC who refused to mobilize the work- ing class against it. Yet John Gollan, general secretary of the Communist Party, in his report to its 32nd Congress last November, called broad democratic struggle for political power and socialism based on the unity of all the socialist forces, with far-reaching political and social struggle, extra parliamentary well parliamentary, as as isolating the forces of the business, Tories and big a socialist govern- achieving ment of Labour and Com- munist Members of Parlia- ment. This perspective deliberately leaves out any struggle against the reformist leaders of the Labour Party and the unions.

It excludes the struggle for revolutionary politics within based the the unions on demand that the TUC call a General Strike to bring down the Tories and elect a Labour government pledged to social- ist policies. The continuing struggle of the Socialist Labour League on that programme only can intensify the crisis of Stalin- ism, and make it increasingly difficult for such as McLennan to conceal it.

UNHAPPY

One of the less happy appoint- ments by the our man in jordan. His name Paul. the cynically tion Paul'. the leadership. ment

COCOONI.

The leader guerrillas Cabral (below). Hassan OI teenth- This must tions within pollics As movement it monarch with any sympathy Others who the type found One his liberated. Workers Proso, M less happy appoint- Foreign Office Mr locals 'Mr Declara- interesting piece of berals who idealize of some of the al liberation move- Portu- agalist the Guiné among those who atulations to King Morocco after e recent-and four- on his life. raise serious ques PAIGC and the its leadership. nationalist generally plays ssue to its cost. rules Moroccans of regime How Coll send greetings Has he in fact with the way he commiserated roccan leader were -not exactly would expect to be what kind of Guiné Prosa, Monday Auguat 28, 1972 PAGE 9 Top: Scanlon. Above: Taverne The monthly journal of the Amalgamated Union of Engin- eering Workers is an indict- of Hugh Scanlon, the ment union's president. The latest has a full-page article by 'Bro Austen Albu', the Labour MP for Edmonton.

Albu belongs to the Jenkins clique. He has voted time and again for the Tories' Common Market legislation and abstained on numerous occa- sions. By so doing he not only eased Britain into the EEC, haven of the monopoly capitalists, but he also kept the Heath government in power.

There is no room in the labour and trade union move- ment for such people. Like Dick Taverne, the Lincoln MP, they should be deprived of their right to represent the working class. How Scanlon lets him write a column called 'Parliament in focus' after his record, is any- body's guess. His lame answer is, of course, that the journal is Jim Conway's pigeon and he can't interfere. Is this an excuse which any engineer should accept?

LEON TROTSKY :

Germany 1931/1932 Paperback {1.25—Cloth {1.87} Where Is Britain Going ? Paperback 372p Revolution Betrayed Paperback 62yp—cloth £1.05 Problems of the Chinese Revolution Paperback £1.12k-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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AGE 10 Workers Press, Monday August 28, 1972 om Staples (above) loader of the Klikby Fisher-Bendix poke 10 a maas mooling of Otthar engineers after whict as taken to realal the Baddan'a clea

PROBLEKS

BRITIS

REVOLUTION

By Lenn Trotsky A salient work of Trotsky treating with his struggle against the rising 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- cracy. This book makes a bridge between Lenin's deathbed struggles against Stalinism and the later found- ing of the Joint Left Opposition.

108 pp price 65p (postage extra) Avallable from 186a, Clapham High Street, London swe Engineering workers in Oldham may stage the first sit-in ever held in this old Lancashire mill town. The men-800 of them- face redundancy aiter a deci- sion by Scragg's of Maccles- field to close their Oldham subsidiary Bodden's. were visited Recently they by Tom Staples, leader of the Fisher-Bendix occupation in Kirkby. After hearing Staples a mass meeting passed a reso- lution to resist the closure 'by all means at their disposal.

include banning This will goods leaving the factory— especially and machine tools components. If this pressure fails they will workers say consider an occupation. Closure would be a very serious blow for Oldham. In 1971-1972 the town has experience the worst unemploy- ment since the 1930s, when the cotton slump brought a holo- caust of poverty the ugly to of Lancashire and mill towns North Cheshire. this year In February total unemployment stood at 7.1 per It has fallen with the cent. regional trend since then but between June and July the total began to rise again.

If the 800 Oldham workers the total go onto the dole will leap up to over 10 per cent. occupation This prospect does not fter which the vote appear to concern Tory Under- This collection of articles was penned by Irotsky in reply to various critics of his then recently-published 'Where is Britain Going?' They appeared in the Soviet press of the time and con- a necessary corollary and stitute sequel to that work. Trotsky here dissects the arguments of all the brands of opponents of Marxism: re- centrist, pacifist, Fabian, formist, 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 in the revolutionary epoch.

64 PP price 35p (postage extra)

I LEON TROTSKY

ndon sWe TUa and the Paperbacks Contro (800 p. 3) because of the slump Industry Chris- mainly Secretary for topher Chataway. in textiles. He was due to meet Oldham If Oldham workers do make Bodden's they worthies last Monday but can- a stand over will be in for a tough fight.

celled the appointment because of 'insufficient time to prepare They face a traditional oppo- papers'. sition: the hard-line Lancashire Oldham workers drew their boss who still talks about conclusions. They found own 'hands' and when there is it significant that on the Tues- trouble 'Luddites'. day the Tory Minister was due fired already Scragg's have to fly off for his holidays.

a broadside at the Bodden's Already workers in the area men. have pledged full support to In a rather lordly communi- any action at Bodden's. cation G. E. Bucklow, manag- This is hardly surprising. The ing director, made the first dark plot' The accusation of the 'red factory is not unique. closure embodies recent indus- spreading in Oldham. There were, he said, 'indi- trial trends in South-East Lan- cations that an attempt is being cashire as a while. The two basic industries- made to turn this matter into textiles and engineering-are in a political issue. steep decline. Textiles, mainly 'Should this happen, the effects will be disastrous in has been crushed by cotton, relation to the company's pros- the twin factors of sheer obsolescence and competition pects for recovery, and the wel- fare of employees in our other from abroad. factories at Macclesfield, Lang- Engineering also has the ley and Altringham will be problem of obsolescence but it seriously jeopardized. also hit by the decline in IS Scragg's is the tradi- cotton. 'This would be particularly supplier of heavy tional unfortunate in that negotia- machinery to the industry.

with other unions have tions Oldham has been badly hit.

successfully now been con- 20 years ago the view from the cluded with reference to the we have hill which dominates the town redundancies which was littered with hundreds of been obliged to declare in Now mills, large and small. these particular areas. Victorian It that normally these gloomy con- seems of industrial counted tranquil region structions can be in Britain will shortly experience tens. Even the The biggest engineering em- major struggle. Lanca- patience the district, Mather of the placid ployer in shire mill-town inhabitant can closed Platt, has down five plants over 15 years — again be exhausted. Moscow Trials Anthology Paperback, 62%p

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Behind The Moscow Trial Paperback 75p

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ITV

9.30 Cliff's kids. 9.45 Clapper- board. 10.15 Name of the game.

11.30 Cartoon time 11.40 Autumn across America. 12.30 1.00 Castle haven. Skippy. 1.25 Bank Holiday Racing pre sport.

BBC 1

1.30, 3.30 Olympics 72. 1.35 They're off! 1.40, 2.10, 2.45, 3.20 Racing from Epsom. 1.55, 9.15 Mary, Mungo and Midge.

2.30, 3.05 Racing from Nawcastle.

Robinson Crusoe. 9.55 9.30 4.20 Racing results service. 4.30 Magic roundabout. 10.00 Olym- Robinson Crusoe on ice. 5.15 pic grandstand. 10.05, 12.45, 3.35, 'Tarzan's Magic Fountain'. Film: 5.00, 5.30 Olympic games. 10.40, Lex Barker, Brenda Joyce. 5.45 1.30, 2.10, 2.35, 4.00 International Olympics and 6.00 Film news. cricket. England v Australia. 1.50 continued. 2.20, 3.20 Ripon.

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS!

Racing from 6.40 2.55, 4.30, 5.35 Motor racing.

7.30

CORONATION STREET.

8.00 FILM: 'Shane'. Alan Ladd,

NATIONAL NEWS

7.00 and Van Heflin, Jean Arthur, weather. Jack Palance. Film classic 7.10

DISNEY TIME.

about homesteaders fight- 8.00 FILM: 'Gambit'. Shirley ing for their homes and MacLaine, Michael Caine. lives in Wyoming.

NEWS AND OLYMPICS.

A cockney crook plans the 10.15 "Lament of perfect crime. 11.00

PLAYHOUSE:

An Unmarrled Father'. By 9.45 NEWS and weather.

11.00 TODAY AT THE OLYMPIC

Fay Weldon. Clive Francis Jayne, Simon

GAMES.

div- Jennifer Gymnastics, Williams. ing and canoe slalom

CRAFTSMEN

IN

THE

finals. 12.00 12.30 Weather.

CHURCH.

11.00-11.25 Play school. 3.45 ATRE: 'Too Far'. By Joan Penelope Pitstop. 4.05 Play Morahan. With Barrie Ing- 4.30 International cricket ham, Sheila Allen, Ann school. and motor racing. Lynn. 9.45 HIGH CHAPARRAL: 'The

HERBERT'S MIS-

7.30 A. P. LEADING CASES: "A Tiger

WILD

AND

10.35 in Your Bank'. WOMEN: 'Everybody fluffed CONTROVERSY: 'The Case 8.00 up and got in touch'. Against Foreign Aid'. Tak- Selena Jones, Doris Troy, Judith Hart part are ing Esther Marrow. MP and Lord Caradon. NEWS ON 2 and weather. 11.05

THE-

FESTIVAL 26.

9.15 THIRTY

MINUTE

11.10

BY OUR OWN REPORTER

MANCHESTER tenants The tenants plan to publish of all those the names coun- demonstrate plan to cillors breach of who-in through the city on pledges—voted their election September 16 against the to implement the Act. Constance ester te sente Labour council's decision Mrs secre- tary of the Manchester to implement the Tory Group

(MTAG),

told Action Housing Finance Act. Workers Press her organization would alternative put up can- didates in next May's local elec- tion 'to oppose the traitors'.

15, 400 On August over

MTAG

the tenants led by town hall picketed Manchester Labour of where the group Many councillors meeting. was passers-by joined in the picketing.

After long meeting the heard that the Labour pickets councillors had voted 59 to 29 in favour of implementation.

ALMOST 1,000 jobs are to go Said Mrs Fahey: 'The in Coventry and Bristol in a cillors were frightened to leave Tory- reorganization the the meeting, and the police were owned Rolls-Royce company.

escort them. called in to At one stage the 400 pickets obstructed The shock announcement came gates leading from the town statement at 11 the in a company car park hall and refused a.m. on Friday. allow the councillors to leave It said that management hoped had informed the until they that with union agreement the picket of their decision.

could be manpower reduction the decision 'The response to achieved without compulsory re- was boos and jeers from incensed done dundancy. This would be After good deal of tenants. by redeployment and voluntary chanting and jostling the pickets redundancy. elected members there and then Within an hour of the state- the councillors on to speak to Coventry Norman Evans, ment everyone's behalf. "They district organizer of the Trans- reminded in were no Workers' General May Union, appeared ready to oblige.

terms that in uncertain 1973 they would be looking for votes and that only those coun- 'We understand that the 300 who had voted will be accounted for by cillors against here retirements and would get their votes. natural wastage, "The councillors were also told volunteers, he said. 'We are told there will be no by the elected redundancies and to inspect compulsory minutes of the meeting in order that the process should be com- discover the who had plete November this year. to ones broken The precise breakdown of jobs their pre-election to go are 675 at Bristol and 300 had promises and those who kept them. in the Parkside and Ansty plants The September 16 demonstra- in Coventry. The of the tion will form outside major part run- up Television down is expected to be completed Granada studios at 11.00 á.m. and march through the 12 weeks, but the closure within of Manchester of the Whitchurch factory, Bris- main streets to March se fine's pad be heid. John's where a mass tol, extends through to next year. Shella Allen (1), Ann Lynn and Barrie 9.15 p.m.

REGIONAL TV

CHANNEL: 11.40 Autumn across America. 12.30 Seaspray. 1.00 Clapperboard. 1.25 London. 11.55 Ann Visages de France. 12.10 Weather.

SOUTHERN: 10.30 Twizzle. 10.45 Lone Ranger. 11.00 Film: The Young Ones'. 12.50 News. 12.55 My three sons. 1.25 London.

4.30 Sylvester and tweetie pie. 4.45 Saint. 5.45 London. 6.00 Day by day. 6.45 London. 12.00 News: 12.10 Weather. Guideline. exc INFORMAL talks have started on the long and bitter strike of engineering workers at the lower Clyde shipyards. These follow the firm resolve of the 750 workers to keep out on strike despite the settlement of the claim at national level.

The men have been in dispute for over ten weeks at the ship- yards of the Scott-Lithgow con- sortium.

BY SARAH HANNIGAN

TRANSPORT drivers have returned to work at Manbré Sugars Ltd, West London, under management proposals banning their union represen- tatives from ever holding office again. Their representatives, Trans- General Workers' and port 1/1172 branch secretary Jim Butt (seven years convenor at Manbré), vice-chairman Pat Harrison and shop steward Mike Gash refused point-blank to accept the conditions and were not re-employed. But they say they will con- tinue their fight for reinstate- ment. Workers Press, Monday August 28, 1972 PAGE 11 ANGLIA: 1.40 Romper room. 1.25 London. 5.15 Arthur. 5.45 London. 6.00 Joker's wild. 6.15 Cartoon. 6.45 London. ATV MIDLANDS: 12.55 Horoscope.

1.00 Women today. 1.25 London. 5.15 Skippy. 6.00

ATV

today. 6.40 London.

ULSTER:

12.35 Romper room. 1.25 London. 12.55 Let's face it. 5.45 London. 6.00 5.15 Seaspray. News. 6.10 Smith 6.35 family. Cartoon. 6.45 12.00 London. Monday night.

YORKSHIRE:

9.30 Cliff's kids. 9.45 Breath of life. 10.00 Sur- vival. 10.25 Saint. 11.15 Film: 'Batman'. 1.00 Arthur. 1.25 Lon- 5.15 Cat in 5.45 don. the hat. Popeye. 6.15 London. 6.00 Hogan's heroes. 6.45 London. 12.00 All our yesterdays. 12.30 Weather.

GRANADA:

12.20 Cliff's kids. 12.55 12.30 Cat the hat. in European journey. 1.25 London.

TYNE

TEES:

9.30 Cliff's kids. nd Barrie Ingham In

BBC 2,

"Too Far', Breath of 9.45 life. 10.00 Ве- 11.15 Film: witched. 10.25 Saint. 1.00 Felix the cat. 1.25 'Batman'. London. 5.15 Cat in the hat. 5.45 6.00 Popeye. 6.15 Funny London. face. 6.45 London. 12.00 A drop in the ocean. 12.25 Epilogue.

HARLECH:

1.10 Tinkertainment. 'Carter's 1.25 4.30 Film: SCOTTISH: 12.25 Casebook. 12.55 London. Army'. 5.45 6.01 News. Horoscope. 1.00 Women today. London. 6.03 Robinson Crusoe 1.25 London. 5.15 Cat in the hat.

on ice. 6.45 London. 12.00 Weather. 5.45 London. 6.00 News. 6.15 6.45 London.

HTV

Wales as above except: Dick Van Dyke. 12.00 12.05 Festival. 12.30 Sain, cerdd a chan. 1.10 Late call. Cantamil. Yoga. 12.55

GRAMPIAN: 12.30

Women today. 1.25 London. 5.15 HTV West as above except: 6.01- jumblie. 5.45 London. 6.03 News. Rumblie 6.00 Cartoon 6.15 Me time. and

HTV

Cymru/Wales above the chimp. 6.45 London. 12.00 as except: 1.10 Cantamil. Songs of Bill McCue. Clashes with police have crease in the basic rate agreed occurred, but the hardest blow with employers will mean very their of all came over a week ago little to wage packet. from Hugh Scanlon, president of Scott-Lithgow managing direc- Union of En- the Amalgamated tor Ross Belch has indicated that Workers, and his gineering the firm might improve its execuuve. original £2.75 offer. He has signed a national deal which means hardly any increase But Tohn McFadyen, vice- at all for the Lithgow workers.

chairman of the strike committee, says the Lithgow engineers were Like most engineers who have united and determined to win been involved in the battle for the claim at local level the in- 'substantial' wage increase.

Brockelhurst refused to agree On Wednesday the 70 drivers, terms and laid on these down who now employed by are four Co conditions, for the men's Brockelhurst Transport as re-employment. They must: drive by Man bre, of an i staged had token Go away from the firm for a stoppage calling for their repre- four weeks without pay and with- sentatives to be re-employed.

out 'contacting and intimidating'

T&GWU

officials, any of their members. But paid • Never hold trade union office district officer Bob Kay and road- Bill secretary again. group Packer, refused to call an official • Accept management orders as stoppage and eventually proposed final. the case to their execu- to put • Their union branch would be tive committee as one of vic- the custodians of their behaviour.

timization. The drivers would Management also wanted them not agree. to state their acceptance of these However when it was proposed 'conditions' front of in meet- that the three should be taken ing of all the drivers. All three back for months without refused. SiX officials then moved their union credentials, the The in seconded proposed drivers voted overwhelmingly to and and put this to management. return to work.

against redundancies PAGE 12 Workers Press, Monday August

BY PHILIP WADE

THOUSANDS of British Leyland workers are expected to strike today —a normal working day for them - against the hiving off of a Leyland subsidiary with the loss of hundreds of jobs. Over 5,000 workers at the Cowley, Oxford, Morris plant will Motors stop. Workers will also come out at other factories, including those at Bathgate, Long- bridge, Leyland and Lianelli.

The sale of Transport Equip- ment Thornycroft, Basingstoke, Hants, for £5m is designed to finance

BLMC

cash to raise expansion plans inside the Com- mon Market. Lord Stokes' empire is in such trouble-it owes deep financial £80m to the banks-that he is selling off assets to raise cash.

On August 15, 1,200 workers at Thornycroft took over their heavy transmission factory in a bid to save their jobs. Buyers of Thornycroft's are to Eaton Corporation of be the Ohio, USA. The price-f2tm. A company called English and Con- tinental Property has bought the 50-acre site on which the factory stands, also for £2tm. Thornycroft first workers of the deal soon after heard

BLMC

blandly announced on June 7 that 344 workers would be sacked by September 30.

In making this announcement, procedural

BLMC

tore up agreement made last summer ") Gordon Owen-Jones following a successful six-week strike against redundancy. For stated: "Company one clause agree that in the event of situa- tions arising which may involve redundancy, there must be con- at local level before sultation final decisions are made.'

WEATHER

AN ANTI-CYCLONE is almost stationary over southern Scan- dinavia, while a thundery trough is slow moving over nothern France. Eastern England and Scotland will be mostly cloudy with a few sunny intervals. Southern Eng- land will be rather cloudy with some sunny intervals and per- haps a few thundery showers.

The Midlands and central northern England will be dry but rather cloudy with a few sunny intervals. Wales, North-West England, Northern Ireland and a.! of Scot- land except the East will be dry with sunny periods. Temperatures will be near normal in most areas but it will be rather cool on the East coast.

Outlook for Tuesday and Wed- nesday: Mainly dry with sunny periods, particularly in the West but showers in some southern warm in the counties. Rather West, but cool in the East.

Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office. Published by Workers Press. 186a Clapham High Street, London,

SW4 7UG.

(TU). Printed by Plough Press Lta.

Street, London, High 180b Clapham

SWA 7UG.

ay August 28, 1972 NO

SELL

NO

CLIT

REDUNO-

100 Thornycroft workers with a clear messag When Lord Stokes eventually disclosed the name of the new owner of the factory, Thorny- croft workers soon found Eaton had no intention of expanding production. Rather the reverse.

Eaton's only had a three-year lease on the 20-acre factory site, and what they planned was a steady run-down in jobs. At that point, stewards, stafi union representatives and local officials declared a policy of no sackings, no closure, no sell-out.

of the powerful The support combine shop stewards'

BLMC

committee was sought and won.

It is clear that BLMC's hive- off-the sixth since the merger to form the combine-is only the beginning of an immense rationalization programme.

Over 30,000 workers have lost their iobs in the last three years.

And BLMC still needs some- thing like f25m in ready cash.

know is 'What we want to what is the future for factories like AEC Southall, Park Royal and the other bus and truck in the division, Gordon plants Owen-Jones, works convenor at WORKERS at Creffield En- Kent, gineering, Tonbridge, are to ask Ford shop stewards to back their struggle for union recognition by blacking the firm's products. The Creffield men, who have been locked out for seven weeks, will meet the stewards on Wed- nesday. If the black is imposed it will be a severe blow for the firm, part of Spa Holdings, since a of their substantial proportion gearbox and transmission pro- ducts goes to Ford. Creffield engineers 100 The want the right to organize the Amalgamated Union of Engineer- ing Workers in the factory, but have met opposition from the management who have a record of hostility to unions. at Enfield, Their factories North London, and Ashington, Northumberland, are both non- union shops and the Creffield men are planning to picket them.

On Friday a Creffield solid- arity march . was held through Tonbridge. Building workers, Labour Party members and the Tonbridge Young Socialists joined the engineers who shouted slogans demanding union recog- nition and 'Tories out!'.

Building worker George Tapp, who is also chairman of Ton-

HALY

ANCY

ar message for Lord Stokes at the occupied fact Thornycroft, told Workers Press on Saturday. 'Is everything going to be transferred to the National Bus Co in Cumberland? Are they going to have one big truck company, centralized somewhere?

'We haven't had answers from them on any of these questions,' said Owen-Jones. Workers in the car plants will also tell you about rumours about Leyland's plan for one central car place. So there are questions to be asked about future of Standard's and the Rover's. Lord Stokes and the rest are obviously unhappy with the state of the company. Thornycroft is a warning to all Leyland workers. We're the sixth has been com- company which pletely sold or half shares got rid of. always Leyland management 'desperate tell us about their straits' and the fact they haven't got enough money for research and development. But just after they told us of the sackings, they bridge Trades Council, said the building workers on the demon- stration were proud to be asso- ciated with the Creffield Unity in action workers needed to win their demands. Bob Todd, chairman of the strike committee, thanked the marchers for their support.

PICKETS outside the Wm Griffiths concrete plant at Chartham, near Canterbury, have been told that a High Court writ is to be taken out against them. A steward told Workers Press the company would go ahead with legal action 'unless we re- moved ourselves from company property, stopped picketing and went away'. The application will be made tomorrow, the men were told.

Recorded letters have been sent to the homes of the pickets in- forming them of the company's plans. The dispute began eight weeks ago when six fitters-members of the Amalgamated Union of En- Workers-were sacked gineering Prisoners demand un PRISONS throughout Britain will be hit by a three-day strike soon unless Home Ofice recog- nition is granted to an organiza- tion for prisoners' rights.

PROP—the Preservation of the Rights of Prisoners which organ- ized strikes by prisoners in 33

BASINGSTOK

1898

STOP

FREDS

WORKERS,

upied factory on Saturday bought Innocenti in Milan and an assembly plant in Belgium.

in What Leyland's are doing is carrying this rationalization out government policy to the fullest extent. The 1,000 workers in Basing- stoke cannot change this policy on their own. It must be fought by all the factories in the com- bine. If they get away with it here Leyland will carry the policy through to other parts of the group. Although it is a fight to get support from the combine, it would be good if we could also support from the wider get labour movement. Our fight is the same as the dockers and the miners. The inside British CriSIS Leyland is a measure of the crisis of British capitalism itself.

With exports falling and the home market being squeezed by Japanese competition, BLMC is attempting to turn to direct pro- duction in Europe in line with entry into the Common Market.

Because of its weak financial position, it is forced to sell assets to raise the necessary cash.

In that sense Stokes has no choice but to pursue the policy implementing. is now The he crisis of Leyland and British capitalism is to be offloaded on to the backs of the working class.

If BLMC cannot guarantee jobs, the question posed is its nationalization under workers' control and without compensa- tion. The implementation of this policy requires the TUC to call a General of a Labour government pledged to socialist policies. The 160,000 Leyland workers must now lead the fight for this campaign.

for downing tools when the management refused to negotiate on a 10p-an-hour pay claim.

They have been picketing every day, and last week members of the Snowdown branch of the National Union of Mineworkers joined the line in solidarity.

Weaver, the fitters' Cavanagh steward, said: 'We feel that it's court order for trespass- not a ing, but an injunction to stop us exercising our basic trade union rights. 'There's been no violence of any description during the pre- vious eight weeks. We are pre- pared to go all the way in defence of our rights. nd union rights jails on August 4-yesterday said the date for the new stoppage would not be revealed. Strikes would involve total non-co-operation said a spokesman.

SECURITY

PASS TOBE

D CE WN

ALL TRADES UNION•

ALLIANCE MEETINGS

TUC MUST BREAK OFF ALL

TALKS WITH HEATH!

MAKE THE TORY GOVERN-

MENT RESIGNI

NOTTINGHAM: Tuesday August 29, 7.30 p.m. People's Hall, Heathcote Street. "Victory to the building workers'

WANDSWORTH:

Tuesday August 29, 8 p.m. Selkirk Hotel, Selkirk Road, Tooting. 'Lessons of the docks strike.'

LONDON:

Thursday August 31, 8 p.m. Festival Inn, Market Square, Chrisp Street Market, E14. PRESTON: Wednesday August 30, 8 p.m. Railway and Com- St_ (nr mercial Hotel, Butler railway station). "The government and the building workers'. CAMBRIDGE : Thursday August 31, 8 p.m. Red Cow (behind the Guild Hall). 'Lessons of the dockers and Builders' strikes'.

DAGENHAM: Tuesday Septem- ber 5, 8 p.m. Co-op Hal Les Fan- shawe Avenue, Barking. sons of docks : strike, UCS jobs fight.' SLOUGH: Tuesday September p.m. Slough Com- 7.30 munity Centre, Farnham Ra.

'Force the Tories out/ Expose the traitors in the labour and trade union movement!" Speakers: Frank Tomany and Brian Bailey, both in a per- sonal capacity. Lessons of UCS and the Docks Strike. ABERDEEN: Monday August 28, 8.00 p.m. Trades Hall, 24 Adelphl. DUNDEE: Wednesday August 30, 8.00 p.m. YMCA Constitu- tion Room. Soclalist Labour League

FOUR LECTURES

THE THEORY AND

PRACTICE OF MARXISM

given by

G. HEALY

(SLL national secretary) as the theory of 1. Marxism knowledge Tuesday September 5 2. Development of Marxlam through working-class struggle Tuesday September 12 3. Nature of the capitallst crisls Tuesday September 19 4. Historical materlalism today Tuesday September 26

AEU HOUSE

Mount Pleasant Liverpool 1, 7.30 p.m.