Workers Press no. 961

workers press

DEMAND TUC END STATE PAY PLAN TALKS WITH TORIES

LEADERS CRAWL

AS WORKERS FIGHT

INCORPORATING THE NEWSLETTER • WEDNESDAY JANUARY 3, 1973 • No 961 • 4p DAILY ORGAN OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE SOCIALIST LABOUR LEAGUE

BY OUR INDUSTRIAL CORRESPONDENT

AS MILLIONS of workers move into intensified struggle against the Tory govern- ment on wages and in defence of their unions, the TUC leaders continue their abject crawling before Heath and his ministers. Tomorrow TUC general secretary Victor Feather and his associates will go to 10 Downing Street to hear the Cabi- net's plans for an extension of the state wage control legislation.

What such capitulation—if left unchecked-will mean for the working class was shown this week when Employment Secretary Maurice Macmillan halted the second stage of a pay agreement for London's West End actors (see pp. 1 and 3).

This involved a £5-a-week hundreds of hospital ancillary

THE 230,000

rise. in adamnon, nine chorus and small-part perfor- balloting workers are alternative forms Industral mers will lose their first stage including total batring in action, of €7 which date from

TISCS

over the al nosoilals November. So actors on the negotiations on their f4 claim.

present minimum Equity

AND 339,000

agricultural work- of £30 will revert to £18 for had their €3.30 award ers also performances and El2 for re- stopped. hearsals! 58,000

SOME

gasworkers are Other workers are moving into demanding a substantial rise on the front line: their present basic rates £19.10 and £22.87. 1,000 of them OVER 20,000 British-Leyland car are to rue and over- time ban two Kev reply expect action will be Plane monO

TOL

Monday's delegate demanded at creases of between £5.80 and E7.

conference.

THE PAY

agreement covering

PAY

talks affecting 275,000 50,000 Ford add stewards are ta lit carworkers ends miners are due to commence on February January 10. ing of a E10 increase.

OTHER

directly in- workers 30,000 volved in the government's state Dium pers nave £12 pay bher hit by these promised fur control wages over Include promised teachers (365,000) clothing work- (over 113,000), bank workers the end of 1972. (100,000)

DISCUIT

WOTKETS

cut for

AND

70,000 electrical workers (70,000) furniture workers have had the second stage of a.

(90,000) and workers water wage settlement reached in June (23,000). actors! NO OFFER will be made to Lon- involves sums of between don's 12,000 dockers out of the and £3.80. and review FortHCORE Pay had Liverpool dockers LEADERS of Equity the five-hour cut the working decided yes- actors' union week blocked, along with a pro- What we wait-and-see terday on a mised pay rise policy before taking any said in 1972 A BIG pay claim Covers

IOSI

action against the £12 wage- of the country's 300,000 railway been submitted cut imposed on its West End workers has In tomorrow's Workers Press Railway Union of members by the Tory govern- one Nanonal t or digni pull- we include an men and the Transport ano editorials ment. out supplement Salaried Staffs Association. and political statements we expires They want to see the terms present published in 1972. This is a May and year's order- Mon- at HaSt UnIOn of the -signed on of articles selective series conferences Secre- day Maure Employment which con- ine malor Issues demand for 25-per-cent rises- Macmillan- tary fronted the workers movement a week. Vietnam, Britain and internationally: which will shown to the be Ray the Middle East, Mr nance and tere. general Thursday. union on Ireland, Nixons re-electon. Engineers t is the first to order a wage

UCS

Locomotive The common Market cut Stalinism, inflation, the said vesterdav his executive no a reversal to od salar men. strike, prices. Work- had decided not to put an across- levels. dockers claim in ot afraid to let the-board wages Equity leaders and the Society ers Press despite decision its record speak headers

CAIS

stake. it west uni 1 neatre Managers year to submit and sympathizers should keep have already been told that a E7 three unions last as a refer new claim jointly. last Novem- this special issue Ic case policy state-

SEVERAL

thousand the er will have to stor ence of maor ments. Be T&GWU's 300,000 members in sure of your copy. This historic decision by the Phone 01-622 7029.

TURN TO BACK PAGE

TURN TO BACK PAGE

8,000 Swindon engineers stop over NIRC fines Union of Engineering Workers district committee Amalgamater president Ron Perret speaks to a meeting in the shopping precinci Wilts, yesterday during the stoppage of 8,000 engineers.

at Swindon, fines Imposed on union by the against inev were Perret is district secretary Court. With Nationain usta Helations Ray Howells. • See story p.12.

SALE• SA

YOUNG

KEEP LEFT

SOCIALISTS

OFFICIAL

WEEKLY

PAPER

ANNUAL GENERAL

MEETING

and National Speaking Contest

BUILD THE WEEKLY KEEP LEFT

BUILD THE YOUNG SOCIALISTS

STOP RISING PRICES

FORCE THE TORIES TO RESIGN

Next Saturday-January 6, 2.30 p.m.

East India Hall, East India Dock Road, London E14

SPEAKERS:

GURMEET

(Editor Keep Left)

GARY

(SLL national secretary)

GERRY HEALY

BRIAN

PRANGLE (YS

Student Society) Dance 8-11 p.m.

workers press

DEMAND TUC END STATE PAY PLAN TALKS WITH TORIES

LEADERS CRAWL

AS WORKERS FIGHT

INCORPORATING THE NEWSLETTER • WEDNESDAY JANUARY 3, 1973 • No 961 • 4p

DAILY ORGAN OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE

BY OUR INDUSTRIAL CORRESPONDENT

AS MILLIONS of workers move into intensified struggle against the Tory govern- ment on wages and in defence of their unions, the TUC leaders continue their abject crawling before Heath and his ministers. Tomorrow TUC general secretary Victor Feather and his associates will go to 10 Downing Street to hear the Cabi- net's plans for an extension of the state wage control legislation.

What such capitulation—if left unchecked- -will mean for the working class was shown this week when Employment Secretary Maurice Macmillan halted the second stage of a pay agreement for London's West End actors (see pp. 1 and 3).

This involved a £5-a-week hundreds of

THE

hospital ancillary 231.000 rise. In addition, and small-part perfor- battoting chorus workers are alternative forms industrial mers will lose their first stage including total hatring it action, of £7 which date from al nosoilals, over unc November. So the dulls negotiations on their £4 claim.

present minimum rauity Lales 339,000 agricultural work- of £30 will revert to £18 for

AND

had their £3.30 award £12 for re- ers also performances and stopped. hearsals! 58,000

SOME

gasworkers are Other workers are moving into demanding a substantial rise on the front line: their present basic rates £19.10 and £22.87. 1,000 of them OVER 20,000 British-Leyland car are or a Wolk Lo rule all Uvel" line prant the ct l raply bly time ban two Kev _LOnCON expect reply will be Plaill plants. month The l Calla 101 Monday's delegate demanded at creases of between £5.80 and £7.

conference.

THE

PAY

agreement covering

PAY

affecting 275,000 talks 50,000 Ford carworkers ends in miners are due to commence on Februarv and stewards are talk- January 10. ing of a f10 increase.

OTHER

directly in- workers

SOME

volved in the government's state 40.00 blises nave £12 pay been hit by the halting of a fur- control over wages mcuce promised teachers (365,000) clothing work- increase (over 113,000), bank workers the end of 1972. (100,000) cut for

AND

70,000 electrical workers (70,000) workers have had the second stage of a (90,000) workers and wage settlement reached in June (23,000). actors! ThIs NO OFFER will be made to Lon- involves sums of between thou don's 12,000 dockers out of the and £3.80. review and had Liverpool dockers Equity-the LEADERS of five-hour cut the working • decided yes- actors' union week blocked, along with a pro- What we a wait-and-see terday on mised pay rise. policy before taking any A BIG pay claim said in 1972 covers

MOSL

action against the £12 wage- thers as be 3 submitted by been submitted cut imposed on its West End workers Workers Press in tomorrow's the National Union oi Railwar members by the Tory govern- eight-page pull- we include an men and the Transport and of editorials out suoblement Salaried Staffs Association. and political statements We They want to see the terms

CALICO

published in 1972. This is a and last -signed on Mon- at years of the order- of articles series conferences deletes e rised Employment day Secre- which con- demand for 25-per-cent rises Macmillan— tary frontea the workers movement a week. Vietnam, Britain and internationally: will be shown to the which Ray Middle East, Mr nance an are. general the union on Thursday. Associated Ireland, Nixon sececuon. It in the feversal to end salary

UCS

Locomotive Engineers The common Marker. salary and Stalinism, inflation, the men. levels. Work- had decided not to put an across- strike, prices. dockers the-board claim in afraid to let wages Equity leaders and the Societs ress despite decision its record speak.

COIS

Stake. ot West no neare anacer year to submit and sympathizers should keep have already been told that a f7 inree unions

GEST

refer- new claim jointly. Novem- this special issue paid since thousand of the er will have to stor T&GWU's 300,000 members ments. Be sure of your copy. in This historic decision by the Phone 01-622 7029.

TURN TO BACK PAGE

TURN TO BACK PAGE

SOCIALIST LABOUR

LEAGUE

8,000 Swindon engineers stop over NIRC fines Union Engineering Workers district committee Amalgamated president Ron Perret speaks to a meeting in the shopping precinct Wilts, yesterday during the stoppage of 8,000 engineers.

at Swindon, fines on the union by the protesting against Imposed were is district secretary Court. With National Industrial He on relrol Ray Howells. • See story p. 12.

ALE 5A

WON

YOUNG

KEEP LEFT

SOCIALISTS

OFFICIAL

WEEKLY

PAPER

ANNUAL GENERAL

MEETING

and National Speaking Contest

BUILD THE WEEKLY KEEP LEFT

BUILD THE YOUNG SOCIALISTS

STOP RISING PRICES

FORCE THE TORIES TO RESIGN

Next Saturday—January 6, 2.30 p.m.

East India Hall, East India Dock Road, London E14

SPEAKERS:

GARY GURMEET

(Editor Keep Left) (SLL national

GERRY HEALY

secretary) PRANGLE (YS Student Society)

BRIAN

Dance 8-11 p.m.

Fiat chief leads attack on Bangladesh shootings by police to be probed PAGE 2 Workers Press, Wednosday Janua SHIPOWNERS, port employers and their friends in the Fleet Street Press allowed them- selves a restrained gloat yes- terday at dockers' postpone- of industrial action ment against the threat to London's meat trade. With the Financial Times', they.

saw Monday's decision by the men at Thames Stevedoring Ltd as la major rebuff' for 'militant shop stewards'. They scented a possible deal with the union leaders to force big productivity concessions from their members. Workers Press refuses to share the pessimism to which this gloating has given rise among sections of the trade some union movement on the docks.

Monday's decision at Thames is certainly a setback. But it is first and foremost an indict- ment of the failures of the dockers' leadership since the end of the national strike last August. If the lessons of these failures can be learned, the dockers can take a major step forward. The 'policy' recommended to the Thames mass meeting by Ber- nie Steer, the Communist Party steward jailed by the in- dustrial court earlier this year, was no policy at all. It was merely to traffic black which shipping lines in the South American conference in- tend to transfer to Southamp- ton in any case. The aim of the blacking was to force 'meaningful negotiations' with the lines. And no attempt FORECASTS of a Popular Front victory in the forthcoming elec- tion for the French National Assembly have contributed to a weakening of the franc on the foreign exchange markets.

The French currency ing' only three months ago, but it is now the weakest Common- Market currency apart from sterling. The drop is attributed chiefly to fears among investors that the March election will be won by the Common Front of Com- munist and Socialist Parties and the so-called Radicals of the Left.

There has apparently been a certain flight of capital from France, though it has by no means reached panic proportions.

Indeed a the Common Front leaders taken great pains to assure the bourgeoisie it will maintain the presidential system of the Fifth Republic, which gives Assembly only National limited powers under the Gaul- list president. Socialist Labour League North West F

FORCE THE TORY

GOVERNMENT TO RESI

BUILD THE

REVOLUTIONARY

PARTY!

SUNDAY JANUARY 14, 7 p.m.

The Everyman, Hope Street,

LIVERPOOL

'RIGHT TO WORK' FI

G. HEALY (SLL National Secretary).

CHRISTINE SMITH (Young Socialists) In a personal capacity: CONNIE FAHEY (Manchester Tenants ALAN STANLEY (Vauxhall Shop Stew

BRIAN GEENEY (U.P.W.)

WALLY FOUCHS (CAV Occupation C Union chiefs Dockers, drivers-unite to offered top Nixon posts almost exclusively on the pick.

™0 „é éxerc oố țoẻ nànà save port shop stewards' commit- campaign at east -that the don container depots and cold

1CU1 L

Was unacceptable prin-

NIXON

LOTOY

stores, on tne tneory tnal tne has

SPENANI

ciple. store owners could be forced leading union offered trade to grant dockers jobs there.

It was a blue intermintackine bureaucrats responsible posts in all iratiom ents od ais nene jobs undermining Throughout this period the need administration draw for a policy to unite dockers, DoCk Labour scheme, we sala It must be rejected. drivers and transport

HO CON HIC SHLC.

But many leading stewards, Steer According to White House Lame workerd COmO struggle against the employer: aides, the President to other alll

SUDDOLLCLS

and the Tory government was among them, maintained that show that bis is not going to nly 'safeguards' wer required an anti-labour contenotu- 80 mnSR was to be made to stage joint ously dismissed. tion'. rom the Jones-Aldington con action wita transport orivers mittee. Tories proceeded Yet this Meanwhile the year sees the start themselves deeply affected by the threatened transfer. They gave evidence to the com- of nhase three of Nixon's state WAlLa e ods or enay Jeo mittee. And they refused the Common Market-certain control wages, which No perspective for stopping the lead to attack likely to be even tougher than new on campaign for the only demand from conwuus oo

IOSN

jobs and which can stop unemployment working Conallons

LWU

industry was held out to the eating even further into the in every sector of transport- A number of important wage Thames dockers. and the employers got on with dockers' strength: nationaliza- contracts come up Since TO end Tne „ Tne national their plotting against the Dock tion of the entire nort trans.

negotiation this as well, dock strike, the docks labour port industry without compen- George Meany, the ua Dour screne. and force has been slashed by • sation under workers' control.

Unity behind real policy for richt-wing AIL-CIO leader. has almost per cent nasonoll declared that there will be this way they assisted the the docks and road transport • and the onslaught on jobs is continuing. stiff fight for wages by big union chiefs' plans was never more urgent than sections of workers. ing the strike and leadin the now. No than 4,500 men have lockers into the Jones-Alding Nixon's corporatist plan in- already left the industry, an- To wipe the smiles off the faces 2,000 have applied to g other lon uas. Mentes government s of the employers. uLCa alton of the strength of the working Within weeks of the strike end- and, special against any loss of jobs is re- Tne Time and makes class even more everance-pas offer ends on the port employers were quired. ing, the for demanding SErU CIC In• AlI pci"cll dockers, transport drivers the Labour Party based pected to apply. crease m

TOCOI R LO

and' devot workers must be re the aries od creakin, bom This is the real face of the Jones zad, ment produes n did tained on full pay until the Demoeatt and Repupiican. capital, Dallic. Aldington industry can be nationalized ICOOrL wanck une union leaders collaborated producels under workers' The Contol. with the employers in draw- pull their trade out of the port His offer came at a meeting from must TorCe• and transfer to Sheerness.

Co mission the National Productivity office and Labour 1115 U/ White Workers Press insisted through- Meanwhile dockers' attention ment committed to nationali- both by House • attendec oul tne strıkeln oppositior vas iocused by the steward zalon electea. Meany and teamsters' enie Frank Italian police use new laws to swoop on left workers' stitute a serious, Concrelt public security'. Lorealt police have already 1he 240 December rights were made and anrest summonses issued 1,837 Over 2,000 offices anu lactones anel 400 houses were searched from top te aimed at uocidli

FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT

TOODNY

Suoversives and hoards of arms, was co-ordinated from the THE VERDICT of Giovanni Agnelli, pre- Ministry the

LILCI

sident of the Fiat monopoly, on the crisis and provincial Kome government. facing the Italian capitalist class is: No profits!

All sections of the police In a recent interview, he explained how the wert the raids. used in democratic rights of the Italian working class sinister attack democratic rights were the main obstacle to the might of the three days monopolies. ailcl Illas. co c 'My impression is that in Italy today the trade unionists and stud- area unproductive, parasitic income has against the police laws erown at a pathological rate. "This is because and io Wart Lucase wages cannot be restrained in a democratic rapid rise in the meer tre of living society

LUDL

The demonstrations took 'The employers have two place either a Cale. AKe perspectives Ully • despite being banned ane lod head-on colls on ( Wta ne olic and working class or a series of the Italian courageous sietiatives Communist Party eliminate waste. Stalinists Italian 1he This European monopolist full responsibility for have in no way veiled his con- the Cablule tempt for parliament and work- milant the ot bourgeols ing class the to utcooo way defend their rights. *The of changing They Ildyt

TOUCN

minister, of the president convince workers that the Common Market be o mie counci or ministers can or the limits imposed 'democratized' do por iadit the decisiins majority nev ave broker cowi all wages movements with the huge monopolies. the tactic one-day "They make their ITALIAN POLICE ... given new, wider powers strikes. plans for investment on the basis Sune : altacks launcned bi It is, in any case, a govern- police the power • to arrest their group strategy, Agnelli and which and hold taking into account the ment

ICSL

LaC ald sas. against democratic rights vote of the MSI, the fascist pects for four days. situation the ilclll Can JoURN heirs of Mussolini. The police can arrest resolute struggle for ane olemaona arker The Andreotti On the pretext of 'giving 'whose conduct socialist policies. govern- anyone This ment has the police new, effi- like leading with an not hesitated to the must start 101C

JO0KS

dic- way for cient instruments pre- orebare toe committng ol one or more vuconnoromsid tatorship and the naked vent crime', the Andreotti acts punishable with collaboration with the rule of monopoly capital. administration prisonment or which con-

EEC

has given institutions. .. .... SHEIKH Mujibur Rahman, tral students union denied injured, one critically, in injuring policemen, in- police which Molotov cocktail the premier of Bangladesh, superin- T•OCe came as the demonstrators tendent. was thrown during the de has ordered an inquiry in- approached the United monstration. The said the note also to the shooting of two stu- Information Service They demanded the states had hurled hand library marcaers dents by police during a mediate closure of all USIS 1 tie and grenades, explosives demonstration in Dacca Press note issued by centres in be- bangladesh brickbats usts olic the Bangladesh government cause they against the Vietnam war. guarding the the establishment following the shooting against Six other students were Dacca University's cen- direnene cenoase

THE BATTLE at Clay Cross over the Labour council's re- fusal to implement the Tories' 'fair rents' Act resumes tomor- row with the return visit of the district auditor. When he first came in early December investigate the council's housing accounts, angry tenants and trade unionists be- sieged the town hall and filled the meeting place to overflowing.

Auditor Charles Lacey, in-

MEMBERS

THE

Equity members on a 1972 lobby of pay THE VAST majority of act- ors and actresses are con- stantly facing the dole queue and pauperism, said their union Equity yesterday. And Equity members are earning less and working for shorter periods than they were seven years ago. A survey of 5,000 actors and actresses shows that for every ten Equity members, six earn less than £1,000 a year, four go on to the dole each year and seven are out of work at any one time.

Many actors in fact say that the figure for unemployment is an under-estimation of the true position and that over 90 per cent are out of work at any time. The poorest-paid were extras and walk-ons who somehow were expected to survive on just £212 a year. Then came chorus dancers on £611, actors £785, stage man- agement £930, and chorus singers on £980. the highest-paid But even groups earned far less than the average wage in Britain. For ex- ample ballet dancers earned, on average, just £1,143 a year and 1933-1934 £1.43 1934-1935 £1.43 1935-1936 {1.25 1937-1938 £1.25 1938-1939 .......... £1.25 1939-1940 ....... {1.05 These extremely vita years 1929 and 1940- Union-are now availa structed by the Tories to con- duct a special examination at Clay Cross, agreed to a second meeting tomorrow. His job will be to find out if any of the Il Labour councillors are personally responsible for the £7,000 he has calculated to be missing in revenue as a result of failure to implement the the Housing Finance Act. It is expected that several hun- dred Clay Cross tenants and workers will turn out to greet

ON FULL CL

by of pay talks on the West End claim.

BY PHILIP WADE

£1,040. variety artists Opera singers managed to earn an average of just £1,406. It is estimated that only about 700 of Equity's 20,000 members earn £5,000 or more a year, while at the peak of their careers, be- and 50, most actors tween 41 were still having to make do with a pitiful £1,140 a year. Equity's assistant general sec- retary Peter Plouviez said the position would deteriorate with into the British entry Common Market. The only thing the Equity leadership seemed to be worried about, however, and. that from a chauvinistic viewpoint, was the flooding of British stages with Continental actors and actresses, whom could speak of most English. Other actors yesterday pointed out that much more was at stake and the solution did not reside in keeping foreign actors out of Britain. + Value-Added Tax on theatre

I TROTSHI

13535

WAIINGS OF

LEON

TROTSHY

S29-30 y vital writings by Leon Tro 1940—his third and final exil available in Britain from the P the auditor when he arrives in the morning. Councillors are also getting ready for the confrontation. Said CIlr David Skinner yesterday: I'm not just going to sit there and be dictated to by the auditor.'

• Tenants' associations through- out South Wales are planning a demonstration and meeting at Merthyr Tydfil on January 13 in protest against the installation of a Housing Commissioner in the town by the Tory government.

LCLAIM.

seats will have a drastic effect on audience numbers and any slump that followed would be bound to lead to more unemployment.

Attacks on the film industry from EEC would also come entry. The arrangement by which a number of films made in this country had to be British was to be phased out. And the same would apply to the agreement whereby a per- the takings from centage of British films was returned to a central fund for future develop- ment. Taken together with the carve- up of the Shepperton studios, prospects for employment in the film industry look bleak.

Actors are also claiming that the. BBC has been allowed to productivity introduce a and speed-up deal which enables the corporation to tailor programmes to the requirements of European television companies. The effect has already been to reduce work and cut wages. Finally, a further threat to actors comes from the plans for property redevelopment in the and Covent Garden Piccadilly areas which could close up to seven West End theatres. (1939-40) Writings of Leon Trotsky (1938-9)

TROTE

21, on Trotsky between the al exile from the Soviet 1 the Paperbacks Centre Workers Press, Wednesday January 3, 1973 PAGE 3

BY IAN YEATS

THE OFFICIAL Sinn Fein will contest local and General Elections in Ulster and the Republic, Presi- dent Thomas Macgiolla announced at the weekend.

The timing of the decision undoubtedly coincides with the collapse of the military wing of Provisional Sinn Fein, which, since 1970, has been a perpetual threat and embarrassment to Gardner Street.

It was the Officials' move- ment toward participation in elections, with their implied recognition of the parliaments in on election partition Eire and Ulster, which led to the split in the Repub- policy now lican movement at Dublin's chief Provos Intercontinental Hotel in December 1969. At their Ard Fheis (con- ference) at the Mansion House, Dublin, in 1971 the elections to Six County any assembly, but allowing Officials passed a resolution par- ticipation in local government for the first time formally contests and elections to the committing themselves to Dail (the Dublin parliament). elections. This strategy underpins their conference the 1972 At ballot-box revolu- policy of a policy dis- electoral was not imperialism tion to oust both cussed, although there were a and native gombeenism. of resolutions from number To it Counties the Oficials hope to branches in the win ex-Provisionals, Protestants calling for an election boycott.

and all other 'progressive' Influenced by the Communist forces, including the Com- Party, Gardner Street has munist Party. sought for two years to achieve the status of a legal political On Monday they held freely north national 'Day of Mourning' to party operating and mark Ireland's entry into the south of the border to Common Market. promote its policies amone electors. Meanwhile the Lynch-Heath While there seemed a chance so-called anti-terror campaign, that the Provisional IRA could which has created the condi- carry the day by armed force, this tions for development, a wholehearted commitment to continues to forge ahead.

parliamentary politics was The chiefs of both wings impossible. of the Provisionals have been Now that it is clear that the Sunday Derry arrested and on IRA's shooting and bombing Martin Mc- commander has failed, members of Guinness was captured on his both wings of the Republican way to Donegal in a car carry- varying degrees movement to 2001b of explosives and ing favour the 'parliamentary road 5,000 rounds of ammunition.

to revolution'. McGuinness' Sean deputy, The political wing of the Keenan, captured a few was Provisionals led Rory by days before Christmas. O'Brady and David O'Connell In a New Year message, the are firmly in control and on First Battalion of the Derry December Dimendown after low inest or their following Brigade vowed to fight on, but they will do so without public Chief of Staff Sean McStiofain, support and shorn of their they sponsored the setting up ablest leaders. of a new civil rights movement Eleven other IRA men were in the 26 counties. the British arrested by army As final proof of the party's at the weekend in the River- movement back to democratic dale district Andersonstown, O'Brady told the of Belfast where the Provision- politics Special Criminal Court in als' leadership already Dublin on Saturday that he seriously depleted. was doing nothing illegal and New Year message In his was engaged merely in prepara- Eire Lynch he premier said 'for local council tions elec- hoped to make peace in Ire- tions with the possibility of a land a 'dynamic reality' this General Election' year. Whether 'We believe the two wings of He said: that the Republican movement will peace established on the foun- eventually collaborate again is dation of justice is attainable.

'History But events however, an open question. shows, appear to point in that direc- that peace is not the product tion. of chance and that it is neces- The weekend statement by work and positively sary the Officials was couched in constructively for its realiza- tion.' careful political language pre- serving the objective of a 32- The arrests of MacStiofain, Ireland by ruling out O'Brady and McGuinness county are the possibility of taking part in plainly part of this work.

I would like information about FIll in the form below and send to NATIONAL

SECRETARY,

SOCIALIST

LABOUR

LEAGUE,

186a CLAPHAM HIGH ST, LONDON SW4 7UG.

Name.. Address

EZRA POUND:

THE PRICE OF CAPITULATION

PAGE & Workers Prosa, Wadrasday dar

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Dear Editor, I'd like to amplify and dis- pute some of the remarks in the obituary of Ezra Pound (December 11). There is no question of the profound artistic and political degeneration that Pound un- derwent in his shift to the extreme right in the 1920s, nor any doubt that elements of a mystical romanticism and bar- barism are there in the early poems. But in his early work Pound opened the way technically for developments by other have enriched writers which our cognition of reality.

Quoting from 'The German Ideology' ('The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas') the corres- pondent makes the point that: 'Here Marx is not merely talking about philosophical ideas, but also of all the ways in which these philosophical aaday January d, 1873 propagated and ideas are spread [including] the fostering "cultural heritage" of of a artistic production embodying, as Marx put it, "the dominant material relationships grasped • as ideas ..." 'When the capitalists talk about "culture" or "art" there- fore, they refer to something with a definite class content?

The capitalist class would like to have an art that merely propagates and" spreads its philosophical (and political ideas. But art arises from the development of the conflict between man and nature and from the inter-relation between classes in bourgeois society.

It is inadequate to categorize and condemn the art on external basis of its class characteristics or political 'circumstantial evidence', as Trotsky put it. Trotsky waged war on a one-sided view of art and on the mechanical views of liter- culture that led the ary Stalinist conception of 'socialist realism' insists in his '. He speech 'Class and Art': 'Art has to be approached as art, literature as literature, that is, a quite specific field of human endeavour. Of course we must have a class criterion in art too, but this class criterion must be re- fracted artistically, that is, in conformity with the quite peculiarities of that field of applying our criterion' (My emphasis.) in "Culture Later, and Socialism' • Trotsky • writes: 'The ruling ideas of an epoch are essentially the ideas of the ruling class of that epoch. This also applies to culture as a whole. And yet we say to the working class: master all the culture of the past, otherwise you will not build socialism...

Over this contradiction many people have stumbled ... Pound's obituary obliterated the struggle of many 19th and 20th century writers-includ- ing romantics like Shelley and ironic smybolists like Corbiere and Laforgue-to create an artistic image of reality. You can isolate the spiritual egotism of the early 19th century romantics and trace a line to later Ezra Pound, but this is almost as reactionary as to dismiss Hegel for his frequent idealism and mysticism. In the 20th century impor- tant contributions have been made by writers who were extremely conservative--Proust and Joyce-or who later be- came supporters of the extreme right—T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats and Pound himself. To write off the whole 'modern movement' and to writers merely ransack these for 'a clear insight into the bankruptcy of contemporary society' is a gross error. It is the propaganda method applied to art. There is no point in exag- Pound's artistic gerating achievement. But he indisput- ably blasted the way for the emergence of Yeats from his early gloomy Celtic twilight, demolished the effete roman- ticism of the Victorians, pro- vided the technical basis the early poems of Eliot ('The Love Song of J. Alfred Pru- frock', 'Portrait of a Lady', 'Gerontion) and pioneered stylistic attitudes and interests that still provide technical material for young poets today.

True, even in his early days he was a limited writer and the political dangers were already there. His work of the period 1908-1916 is dominated by pastiche, by a raiding of medieval literature Provence and Italy, by trans- lations of Chinese poetry, and a conflicting attitude to fin-de- siècle aestheticism. His poem "The Garden' is characteristic. The flatness of its last section is due to Pound's inability to decide where he stands in relation to his content, but it opens the way for Eliot's own superb portrait of the sexually timid mentally volative petty circulating among bourgeois the anaemic cultured few in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' Early Pound is stylish, skil- ful with metre, meaning and allusion, but the whole does not cohere. These are symp- toms of his inability to resolve artistically the conflict be- tween the subject (the poet) and the object (the world) through the technique of the poem (rhythm, metre, language, etc.). Pound pays the artistic price for his capitulation to philo- sophical idealism. His rhythms stutter and sometimes almost in a very literary vanish, as, manner, he pastes his words onto the page. All his poems are in a state of virtual complete internal collapse, anarchy. From his early days he was a rabid empiricist, and he ends up the most abstract and obscure of modern poets.

Pound, like to a lesser ex- tent T. S. Eliot, saw the poem translation of an ideal as a artefact already existing within the poet's head. All that was required was to polish the surface of this mind-created object in order to perfect the poem. In 'Hugh Selwyn Mauberley' he attempts, however futilely, to break from his early dilet- tantism, aestheticism and religiosity. But he imagined he could make the break by mental activity alone. After 'Mauber: ley' he abandoned all attempts to make a conscious break and is on the road to the ultra- right and to using his poetry foulest purpose.— for the demagogic anti-Semitism, exal- tation of the strong man, etc.

It was the Irish poet W. B.

Yeats, who later in the 1930s was to become a supporter of O'Duffy's Blueshirts and whose become in- poetry was to creasingly, intellectually hys- terical and artistically arid, who in his poems of the period 1916-1926 attempted to syn- thesize some of the best elements from Pound and Eliot. The reviewer dismisses Yeats as 'a bridge between the epoch of capitalist rivalry and . the of imperialist war'. epoch '. It would be truer to characterize Yeats of that period as a writer who, despite his reactionary conception of Irish nationalism, was nevertheless reluctantly forced to endorse the leaders of the Easter rising. Similarly, it would be wrong

GET CLOSER TO FRANCO

to reject the early poetry of T. S. Eliot. Hostility to, for example, the extreme conser- vative standpoint of "The Wasteland'-its obsessive fear of vulgarity, its sexual neurosis, its contempt for workers should not blind us to Eliot's technical advances. Neither should we condemn the early Pound for his intense literary interest. In order poeti- to negate cally Continental developments in 19th century poetry — and many pre-19th century developments which remained outside the main- stream of English poetry-into English verse, the poet has to work developments in over world literature. Literary illusion and fiction inextricably themselves are bound with the reality which the artist seeks to dis- cover from under these layers of illusion which have, in turn, partially created that reality. overcoming of the The fictional domination of reality is a painful process which only a few 20th century artists have grappled with (e.g. Blok's "The Twelve' Proust's 'Remem- brance of Things Past', Marcel Carne's 'Les Enfants du Paradis', Brecht's epic theatre).

Ezra Pound collapsed under the weight of what became for him an international junkyard of objets d'art. And he be- politically an extreme came rightist. In contrast the leading poets of the 1930 generation—W. H.

Auden, C. Day Lewis, Stephen Spender-looked to the Com- munist Party as a revolutionary party. But by the 1940s they were so repelled by Stalinism that they were on their way to a religious verse, a conception of poetry as a game of words.

Today, the writer who is serious about his art needs to assist in the construction of the revolutionary party and to struggle to express these ex- periences artistically for him- self and the working class and those who fight with it. This a prescription but is not a serious historical necessity.

As Trotsky put it: 'Mastery of the art of the past is a necessary precondition not only for the creation of new art but also for the building of the new society for Com- the art of the past enrich us with an artistic knowledge of the world? It can, precisely because it is able to give nourishment to our feelings and to educate them. If we were groundlessly to repudiate the art of the past, we should become poorer at once spiritually? Below: Ezra Pound in Rome dur- ing the war when he was broadcaster for the Mussolini regime. The Spanish Cortes rati- fied on December 19, 1972, the protocol for trade between Spain and the Soviet Union. The debate was marked by the enthusiasm of the fascists in Franco's pup- pet parliament for closer ties with the Soviet Stalinists. Lieutenant - General Iniesta Cano, head of the Civil Guard and police security, stressed that the 'massive fortress of our regime could not be threatened by a commercial treaty. Moreover, he went on: "The treaty in no way represents a compromise. On the contrary, I think that the signing of an agreement with Franco's Spain by Russia is a great victory for Franco himself.' Cano was in brief conflict with Blas Piñar who had added his name to an amendment to protocol deleting the those sections Russian com- merical representatives in Spain. Piñar, who inspires the right-wing terrorists, the War- riors of Christ the King, and various Falangist youth move- ments, lectured the Cortes on the 'perversity of communism', claiming that the 'Soviet state is totally devoted to the ser- vice of communism and its expansion throughout Europe'.

However, Piñar himself later declared that he was not opposed to a purely commercial treaty with the Soviet Union.

The fascist debate continued: Jesus Fueyo Alvarez, on behalf of the Cortes Committee on the protocol: ' Spain • entered the United Nations with the vote and not the veto of the Soviet Union ...

"The protocol is not a trans- cendental absolute because it does not change the ideological moral opposition of principles between the two countries a commercial It opens up mechanism which may be very in the profitable to Spain future.' Miguel Angel Santamaria, rep- resenting the Ministry of Affairs: 'We cannot Foreign ignore a market of 250 million inhabitants, and the protocol Left: José Antonio, founder of the Falai Franco-the 'massive fortress of our reg gets rid of all intermediaries and allows the of export agricultural produce, industrial and the possibility of plant participating in the develop- ment plans of Russia.' Orti Bordas, provincial pro- curator: 'I am a convinced and militant anti-communist, and if I had the slightest doubt that the protocol could en- danger peace in Spain or damage the integrity of the regime, I would be opposed. But this is not the case.

'I was born in a part of the country that is depending on the ratification of the treaty. There has been a lot of invest- ment in the Tajo-Segura dam which means a great increase in production and we need markets for this production.

of national in- In the name terest, I am in favour of the ratifying of the treaty.'

Fernandez Sordo, procurator: 'The Spanish people now have 28 Charlotte St London W1

BOOKS • PERIO

Left: José Antonio, founder of the Falange. Right: Blas Pinar-not opposed to commerclal treaty. Above : Franco-the 'massive fortress of our regime' could not be threatened by a commercial treaty.

and proper maturity sensi- tivity, and the regime of July 18 [the date of Franco's in- surrection in 1936 against the Republic], should be proud of this. The axis of the question strengthening ideology.' Garcia Valdecasas wound up the debate on behalf of the Valde- Protocol committee. of casas was one the co- founders of the Falange with José Antonio and, after Franco's victory, an architect of the fascist state. He is now dean of the Faculty of Law in Madrid University which he runs in close co-operation with the secret police. Garcia Valdecasas: 'The pro- tocol is a positive step forward ¡ood dra la no way allalk.

her sovereignty We have been careful in our study the protocol and have rushed nothing. Moreover, we cannot ignore the existence of Russia.

PAPERBACKS CENTRE

BOOKS • PERIODICALS • NEWSPAPERS

38, Wednesday January 3, 1973 PAGE 5 opposed to commercial treaty. Above: d by a commercial treaty.

The Spanish cannot be hostile to any nation.. • The friendly disposition of the fascist Cortes towards the Kremlin bureaucracy is a sinister indication of the Stalinist line-up with the most reactionary forces against the European working class. It absolute also the exposes treachery of the Stalinist policy of 'democratizing' the Com- mon Market. While Georges Marchais and Antonio Berlinguer of the French and Italian Communist Parties talk of 'democratiza- tion' ', Spanish Stalinist Santiago Carrillo claims that Spain would be democratized through entry into the Market. As the servants of Moscow cover up the preparations for dictatorship in Europe, the Kremlin masters establish the with most cordial relations the regime of Franco, the old ally of Mussolini and Hitler.

NOW OPEN

Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs 9 а т.-6 р.т. Frl 9 a.m.-7.30 p.m. Sat 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

PAGE 6 Workers Press, Wednesday Jan

BY ALEX MITCHELL

An agency reporter who last week braved his way into earthquake-shattered Managua, capital of Nica- ragua, found a man in tattered clothing wander- ing through the rubble. He fixed the reporter with a piercing stare and said: 'We turn into animals when we get so hungry. We'll do almost anything to get something to What the starved and home- less worker did not know was that at the nearby airstrip tons of food and medical supplies were being hoarded in make- shift sheds. But between the worker and this relief stood— inevitably-armed soldiers.

It was no accident that within hours of the earthquake estimated which killed an 6,000 people and badly in- jured 20,000 others-the mili- tary dictator, General Anas- tasio Somoza, mobilized the entire National Guard and declared martial law. To help with the evacuation of civilians? To assist the pathetically small medical ser- vice to bring aid to the maimed and injured? No, their function was to restore order' '. In practice this meant that poor workers who had no food, water or shelter, were shot or beaten up by roving bands of militiamen.

Two eye-witnesses saw sol- diers kill a four-year-old street urchin as he scrambled through the debris looking for food. The bullets struck him in the stomach and he died painfully.

Somoza Meanwhile was entertaining his ministers in the luxurious gardens of his fortified mansion. The resi- dence was closely guarded by soldiers, tanks and machine- guns. The guests laughed and they • drank their as tumblers of whisky. Somoza himself had been talking to the Press about 'looters'. He described them 'abominable beings'. The as he said, National Guard, 'would save the country's honour and that of the armed forces'. There was a ripple of alarm through the garden party.

Reports had just come through of a riot at a rebelled and demanded food. They threat- ened to blow up the petrol tanks unless they received food.

Another group of between 300 and 400 stopped foreign correspondents on the road to Las Mercedes Airport. They carried placards saying 'We are hungry'. Food was being sent to the couty, theyinted.

they thanked national solidarity'. But they added: "The army stockpiles the donations. It doesn't dis- tribute them.' Somoza, in his yellow uni- form, restored confidence among his guests. "There is no puse for complaint, he said.

'All those protesters should already have been evacuated from the city! Fresh rounds of whisky were poured. Later that day Somoza went esday January 3, 1973 on national radio—who would have had a radio to listen?— to make this vicious announce- ment: 'Beginning today I have given orders to the National Guard to patrol the city and They have halt pillaging. orders to shoot if necessary.

I order that the pillaging immediately. Let US stops establish peace, which is Nica- ragua's only salvation.' The greatest "pillager' of is, Nicaragua course, Somoza himself and his cen- tury-old dynasty (see story this page). On behalf of his political, financial and military backers in the US his regime has been doing ; nothing else but pillage. And the 'peace' which his junta urgently needs to enforce is the "peacé' of a clique who fear for the future of their illegal, repressive and corrupt regime. How did the earthquake, a natural and unpredictable pose any danger to disaster, the stability of this US puppet regime? the first place it des- In privatelv- troyed property, owned property, which is the foundation of capitalist ex- ploitation. And secondly it meant no electricity, food, water. or shelter for the working class, which has always lived pre- cariously on the borderline of illiteracy, starvation and severe exploitation. With property in ruins, the general and his National Guard had to defend the ruins! Under capitalism private property is sacrosanct. Even if the masses are starving and bleeding from effects of floods, fires, the typhoons or earthquakes, capi- talist property relations must be maintained—with the gun if necessary. It is at this point that the screaming liberals and the clerics make their appearance.

the tele- From the pulpits, vision and the Press we are treated to exhibitions of monu- mental hypocrisy. Please give to the refugees, the old and the suffering of Nicaragua, we are told by a variety of per- sonages, including the Pope, Fund, Children Save the Christian Aid, the Red Cross and the UN relief agencies.

In fascist Spain the Roman Catholic church has been wringing even greater sums of money out of the backs of the in massive pro- population vince-wide collections. Not one of these 'humani- raises tarian' agencies the slightest whimper about the mass devastation of Vietnam by Nixon's B52s. There is no great rush by the Catholics or the Anglicans or the crowd from Oxfam to bring relief to the peasants and workers of Vietnam who have been sub- bombing raids jected to paralleled only by the atomic bluntly: they like Somoza and his regime more than they do the liberation forces of Viet- nam. Behind their mask of humanitarianism, they're all vicious anti-communists. The relief industry serves to satisfy the aimless guilt of the middle class. It also collects the sympathies of those sec- tions of the working class which aren't class conscious.

They are both channelled away from the real questions in- volved in rehabilitating those communities hit by natural or unnatural disasters. Objectively, the relief in- a more sinister dustry plays role. It has become a common ritual for the relief to colonial countries to fall into the hands of the ruling clique. It is then used as a cynical bargaining counter to drive the shocked and devastated workers into submission. the means of dis- Because private remain in tribution hands, relief is eventually dis- tributed through those channels which operate on the basis of capitalist supply and demand.

In some cases this leads to rampant black marketeering; in every case to profiteering.

The whole exercise is con- imperialist through ducted agencies like the UN, the US State Department (read CIA) and the British Foreign Ofice.

Thus, behind the prayers, the One of those who did not re- main to assist the Nicara- guans in the relief work was Howard Hughes, the US bil- lionaire believed to be worth some £1,000m. Hughes rushed from the city in his limousine surrounded by his personal bodyguard and flew to Lon- don where he is now resting in a Park Lane penthouse suite. collection boxes, the tear-jerk- ing advertising campaigns, re- main the objective require- ments of imperialism to main- tain its puppets and to keep workers enslaved. This was the lesson of Ban- gladesh following the typhoon and floods of 1971. On that occasion the imperialists deli- berately withheld supplies in the hope that the masses struggling against the military dictatorship of Yahya Khan would be driven back. Eventually giant aircraft were brought in to disperse sections of the population in the poorer areas of India in a further attempt to decimate their resistance. This relief programme' failed. It only in- tensified the masses' determi- nation to seize independence from West Pakistan. Capitalism's interest is not to feed, clothe and tend to the masses damaged by disasters.

It is to restore its parasitic, exploitative system as quickly as possible.

Workers Press, Wednes

BY JUAN GARCIA

Washington has good reason to protect Anastasio Somoza, the fifth dynasty to rule the central American Republic of Nicaragua. They can be sure he will continue the family tradition of suppress- ing all opposition and of allowing US imperialism to exploit the country's wealth.

In the 19th century the US proclaimed president one as William Walker, a pirate who enjoyed the support of southern slave-owners. In 1912 the US took control of the finances, trade and armed forces of Nicaragua. During their occupation, American forces combined with outright election-rigging Adolfo Diaz slaughter. was elected with • a total of 4,000 votes to the Presidency—out of a population of 800,000. In Leon, the second largest city, only 80 people were allowed to vote, In February 1926, when Diaz a serious challenge from faced the Liberals who attacked the Pacific coast city of Chinandenga, they were driven off by a US aerial bombardment which killed hundreds and burnt down half the city. The troops were not withdrawn until Anastasio Tacho Somoza, chief of the National Guard, could announce the assassination of the liberation fighter Augusto Sandino on February 21, 1934.

In 1936, Samoza exchanged the National the uniform of for the robes of the Guard President of the Republic.

The fortunes quickly Somozas' flourished.

PRIVATE

AEROPLANE

Tacho made his elder son the director of the military academy and chief of staff of the armed forces. His second son became President of the Chamber of Deputies. Daughter Lilian was her profile forgotten: not bank- appeared on Nicaraguan| notes. The family holdings were con- solidated. Somoza soon owned a third of the estates in the 50 ranches, coffee country, plantations, gold mines and cement works. Tacho held onto the reins of power until shot at a reception in 1956. Summary justice of the Somoza type was meted out to the marksman who was lynched on the spot by a 'Somoza body- guard. President Eisenhower sent his private plane and surgeon immediately to save Tacho, but in vain. The Somoza dynasty is still in power today. The latest s, Wednesday January 3, 1973 PAGE 7 manoeuvre was the announce- ment last year by Anastasio II would that the country 'democratized' through elections.

The Nicaraguan • Conservative and Liberal parties signed a pact on March 30, 1971, to guarantee man's "democratic strong opening. According to this pact, Con- servative leader Fernando Aguero guaranteed re-election to Somoza, the leader of the Liberal Party and graduate of West Point, in exchange for 60 of the 100 seats in the legislature. and So the Conservatives Liberals elected in the February 6 elections have : to reform the constitution for the 13th time to insert an article facilitating the President's re-election.

STUBBORN

OPPOSITION

Meanwhile, a triumvirate made up of two Liberals and one govern from Conservative will April 15 to September 1974 when Anastasio Somoza will once again be sworn in as President.

In the 'democratic election the Liberals in places many whisked off ballot-boxes in order the count in army to hold garrisons. The main obstacle to these ploys to maintain Somoza and US power is opposition from the exploited masses. The Somozas have amassed a fortune of some do not pay any £150m. They taxes on their many holdings.

US companies pay • less than 1 per cent tax a year on • the millions of pounds they extract each year from the exploitation of gold and timber resources.

In the midst of this plunder, the average Nicaraguan peasant and worker has a life expectancy of less than 50 years and 50 per cent of their children die before reaching the age of five. Only 5 per cent of boys and 0.5 per cent of girls receive secondary education. To fight resistance to this' oppression, the US provided $ilm worth of military aid between 1950 and 1960, as well as training in counter-insurgency for 4,000 Nicaraguans. The US now maintains an estimated 40 military advisers in Managua. These forces have been occupied in fighting the liberation front led by Carlos Fonseca, many of whose followers have been brutally tortured in Nicaragua's jails. However, the opposition to Somoza is stubborn; the front has been fighting since 1958.

And with all his American aid, Somoza has not been able to destroy this opposition.

D'ARCY-ARDEN INTERVIEW

PAGE 6 Workers Press, Wednesday Jar

BY CLIFF SLAUGHTER

Playwrights John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy, interviewed in Workers' Press on December 12, explained the important issues behind their pick- eting of the Aldwych Theatre. It was in protest against the misinterpreta- of the Mighty, and advo- cated the rights of drama- tists to a say in the production of their work.

However, the opinions they express on a whole number of questions require an answer from the standpoint of Marx- ism. Not having seen the play which is the subject of the cur- rent controversy (Island of the Mighty') I am at a disadvant- age, and my remarks here refer only to the interview. Arden and D'Arcy are ob- viously very sympathetic poli- tically to the revolutionary movement, but they are just as obviously in basic disagree- ment with the Marxist posi- tion on the questions they raise. The most important problem here is that of the working its revolutionary, role, class, and its consciousness of that role. All previous revolutions, i.e. revolutions in which one was replaced exploiting class by another exploiting class, had to dress themselves up and imagine themselves in the glory of past heroic ages.

This was not just for pur- poses of deception, to conceal the real exploitation under- neath, but it actually concen- trated and made effective the consciousness of the revolu- lutionaries, e.g. the Jacobins of the French Revolution who acted out their parts as Romans The proletarian revolution is entirely different. It 'cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself, before it has stripped off all super- stition in regard to the past.

•Earlier revolutions required world-historical recollections in order to drug themselves concerning their own content.

In order to arrive at its con- tent, the revolution of the 19th century (i.e. the socialist re- volution) must let the dead bury their dead. There the phrase went beyond the con- here the content goes tent; beyond the phrase.' (Marx: 18th Brumaire of Louis Bona- parte.) Now a play might dramati- cally recall universal aspects of popular struggle and of the character and problems of men fighting and oppres- • women sion, but that is a different thing from the utter confusion expressed as historical judge- ments by John Arden. How can it possibly be main- tained, as he does, that the Arthurian legend holds the same sort of place in our na- tional conciousness as the war of Troy had for the Greeks or the adventures of Siegfried for Greek legend Germans? the and the Greek 'nation' were a completely different thing his- torically from Britain or any capitalist nation today. Today we face an historical crisis in which the final form of state power-dictatorship esday January 3, 1973 • A scene from John Arden and Margaret!

misrepresentation of their script in the rights of dramatists to a say in the produ of the proletariat—is neces- sary, as the precondition for socialist society and the 'with.

ering away of the state In Greece of the first mil- lenium BC we have the origins of the state, of private pro- perty and of classes, overcom- ing the internal contradictions between tribal communism and the new productive forces (i.e.

agriculture, metal-working, particularly the use of iron).

Secondly, to portray the struggles taking place social around the origins of the state as above all conflicts between struggling authority and a people, and then find modern parallels, is historical non- sense. It throws the away whole essence of the materia- list coception of history: the necessity of certain historical developments in the mode of production, and their political and ideological reflection.

There is no need to say any Engels said 100 more than years ago. 'Without slavery, no Greek state, no Greek art and science; without slavery, no But without Roman Empire. Margaretta D'Arcy's play 'Island of the Mighty' Ipt in the Royal Shakespeare Company's Aldw the production. Hellenism and the Roman Em- pire as a basis, also no modern Europe. 'We should never forget that our whole economic, political and intellectual development has as its presupposition a state of things in which slavery was as necessary as it was uni- versally recognized. In that sense we are entitled to say: without the slavery of anti- quity, no modern socialism.'

(Anti-Duhring.) 'We should never forget'!

But John Arden wants to con- trast 'roads' with 'culture'. The Romans ('like Mussolini') built roads 'but the general effect of the Roman Empire was 400 years of rigid repression and control which actually stulti- fied the culture of all the com- munities in it' (Are roads not 'culture'?) 'cultures What these were we are not told. Arden simply asserts that the Druids were 'reputed' to be 'well educated, scientific (!), artistic, poetic le Mighty' which is based on the Arthurian leg any's Aldwych production that the authors picke and philosophical' but all this disappeared without trace! It 'replaced by roads'. was Finally we get the Common Market compared with the Roman Empire-masses of mi- gratory workers. Well, you might say that the late Roman Empire, like the EEC, held back the further de- velopment of the productive forces by perpetuating an out- dated social system. But the content of the two processes is essentially opposite. The Roman Empire had to give way to a break-up into smaller economic and political units, to permit the develop- ment of agriculture. Feudalism, resulting from necessary period of barbarian invasions, wars, and the actual decline of and (both material culture spiritual), in the Dark Ages, necessary develop- was ment. The capitalist system on the other hand must give way to an international socialist eco- nomy and the disappearance of the nation-state. The role of the popular masses in the two hurian legend. It was in protest against hors picketed the theatre demanding the cases is completely different because of their relation to the development of the productive forces. To ignore these historical necessities and make an en- tirely superficial comparison between the 'large and dis- contented masses of migratory workers going from country to country' is dangerous. Modern wage-workers looking for work are not in any way the same as marauding bands of war- or migratory peoples riors colonizing new land as declin- ing barbarism meets the disin- tegrating Roman slave empire.

But I wonder if this 'left' interpretation of history in terms purely of oppression and struggles does not imply in tact a rejection of the 'economic, political and intellectual de- velopment referred to by Engels. Is there not here a tendency to throw out past art and literature as 'bourgeois' and to search instead for elements which can be made over into "proletarian culture"? What on earth does it mean to say that

Marx: 'In order to arrive at its conter century (l.e. the soclalist revolution) deact.' (The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bo Engels: 'We should never forgel that and intellectual development has as Its i In which slavery was as necessary as (Anti-Duhring.) the Arthurian legend is 'sunk into the public mind'? There is no such animal as the public mind. In the same vein, for exam- ple, is the misuse of historical materialism to explain to us Portrayed the way Tennyson the Arthurian legend. Because 'getting the bourgeois were rich on capitalist development' and he wrote for them, 'the story is therefore (!) escapist.

Picturesque knights were a diversion from working hours.

This is to reduce historical materialism to an infallible and therefore utterly useless theory. If you can't explain the economic content of a cultural you explain that it product, was an 'escape' from the eco- nomy. Clearly we shall be able to explain everything! D'Arcy's Margaretta con- clusion that: "The age of the individual playwright working on his own is gone' is, I think, the product of the same ultra- left simplification, where all 18th Its content, the revolution of the volution) must let the dead bury their Louis Bonaparte.) get that our whole economic, political as as lts presupposition a state of things issary as It was universally recognized.'

theory is reduced to the level of a simplistic, pragmatic 'tool' for the obvious common- necessities of the sense struggle. Taken together with Arden's home-made banner Play- wrights are workers before they are artists'! Margaretta D'Arcy's proposition amounts to an assertion that the time has come for some 'proletarian drama'. , part of a proletarian culture. This has a long history in revolutionary movement, the and the Ardens should look hard at it. Lenin and Trotsky in particular waged war on the idea. The mistake is to try and deduce the characteristics of a proletarian art-collective, re- volutionary, anti-individual- istic, disciplined, atheistic, etc -from the characteristics of the revolutionary proletariat.

(see Trotsky's 'Literature and Revolution' for the most de- tailed reply to this outlook).

A future socialist culture will be based on the acquisi- tion and transformation of all the culture of past civilization (which of course consists of class societies, with cultures which excluded the working masses). Playwrights and other artists will continue to work indivi- revolutionary dually in this socialism. period and under The individuality of artists and of all other men will develop the collectivist basis of - on socialism. It will be related to and in- spired by great collective struggles against nature, for the transformation of educa- tion, for the real assimilation of the past, and so on. D'Arcy is right when she says: 'All we left-wing people have got to put ourselves into a strong revolutionary party and out of that we are going to drive along collectively to- gether.' That is a political task. The political task will be facilitated by the work of artists, drama- But artists tists, actors, etc. and dramatists will continue to work through the art-forms developed in the past, to bring these into conflict and unity with the needs of men today.

No doubt in the course of these struggles, new relation- ships between artists and the working class will be forged.

But the way to this is through creations of real writers the 'individuals work- and artists, ing on their own', and not by decreeing that those days are over. turned the Capitalism has product of the writer or artist into a commodity, judged by , same criterion as every commodity, i.e., other • how much profit can be made out of it? The writer is like every other worker in this respect, that his product passes entirely in- to the possession of the ex- ploiter. But there is also a difference. The worker sells his labour-power, and the produc- tion of the •commodity takes place entirely under the con- trol of the capitalist. The playwright first creates, then sells, the product to a publisher or a theatre company or a collector, then loses all control over it. How can this exploitation be fought? The working-class movement has for over 100 years been a battleground be- tween reformism, which sets out to alleviate the workers' situation, and Marxism, direc- ted to the building of a party which can lead the working class to the conquest of state and the abolition of power capitalist property. These were Marx's conclu- sions from the analysis of ex- ploitation in Capital. In the course of experiencing the con- tradiction between their artis- tic work on the one hand, and capitalist exploitation on the other, many artists and writers are impelled towards scientific Marxist understanding. These are not petty ques- tions. The profound historical crisis of humanity through which we are living throws ele- ments of the middle classes and even upper classes into crisis as well as the working class. Their first reaction is often to see the struggle basically in • revolt. Scien- moral terms of tific socialism is a difficult school, and these people must go to this school and learn the materialist conception of his- tory. There is no vaccum: either Marxism or the impressionis- tically unified scraps of a de- caying capitalist culture which distorts the past in order to rationalize the present feelings of outrage and rebelliousness.

The latter combines easily with ultra-left pronouncements about a new proletarian art.

Whether the Ardens want to or not, I think their interview with Workers Press shows that they have this kind of outlook.

It is not compatible in any way with Marxism. Workers Press, Wedne It is now quite clear that British capitalism cannot sur- vive the intensifying competi- tion from the more thrusting bourgeoisies of the Common Market... and the East. If more proof was wanted that the British ruling class has lost its vitality • and that the UK economy is the sick man of the imperialist world, it was supplied in Hyde Park on Christmas Day. Around the Serpentine were various worthy representatives of Britain's upper crust, taking a stroll or taking the children to feed the ducks before going back to Belgravia for a lazy Christmas Day dinner and too much turkey. When suddenly onto the scene came 20 scarlet track- suited athletes, pounding their way round the lakeside under stern guidance of their the trainer. On the back of each was the legend "The Matsushita, Elec- trical Corporation'. . It was the London sales staff of one of Japan's biggest monopolies keeping in trim for the rigours of the vicious trade war to be fought in 1973. As they sweep down Park Lane, the Japanese look to be slightly in the lead .. The National Union of Public Employees has written to Cheshire County Council pro- testing at the use of volunteer schoolchildren in hospitals in the Stockport area during the recent one-day strike. Letters have been the Cheshire director of educa- as to Social Services Minister Sir Keith Joseph and Education Minister Mrs Margaret Thatcher. Mr Colin Barnett, chester divisional officer of the union, said the matter had been raised at a district com- mittee meeting. If this kind of activity con- tinued, said Mr Barnett, can lead only to a hardening of our attitude in the dispute' What to do with those empty beer and soft drink cans left over from Christmas and New Year parties? An American architect has come up with an use them to build houses. Professor Alvin Miller of Arizona is trying to patent a process for a cement-fibreglass block filled with empty cans.

He claims it is inexpensive and waterproof and hopes to 88, Wednesday January 3, 1973 PAGE 9 hat use it for low-cost housing.

Think how much more pleasure a can of beer will give you when you know it is helping to build your house at the same time! Revelry went on into the early hours at Eaton Hall, Chester, when 1,000 guests helped Earl Gerald Grosvenor celebrate his £16m inheritance on his 21st birthday just before Christmas.

Chimes on the 178 ft high tower at Eaton, a replica of Big Ben, rang out at midnight.

Usually they are turned off because they keep the family awake. But Earl Grosvenor wanted the hour to ring out. He was cheered as he cut the first slice from a huge birthday cake and a toast was proposed by his father, the Fifth Duke of Westminster, who happens to own most of London's West End. Now you know how the other 3 per cent live! Michael Clapham of the CBI Last week came a heartrending statement from Michael Clap- ham, president of the Con- federation of British Industry, in about times the tough industry. Heath's legislation against increased prices of manufactured goods was caus- ing excruciating pain, he said.

He told, for example, the story of the pitifully poor wool manufacturer being driven to the wall by the rising cost of materials. Couldn't a widow's mite be spared for these needy manufacturers? Cynics might say that Clap- ham is shedding crocodile Why should he worry tears. about them. He's deputy chair- man of ICI, the biggest sup- plier in the country of synthetic fibres. Moscow Trlals Anthology Paperback, 62}P

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PAGE 10 Workers Press, Wednesday January 3, 1973 9.50 Captain Pugwash. 10.00 Desert crusader. 10.20 Unsolved mysteries. 10.50 Huckleberry 11.00 Film: "The hound. Prince the Errol Flynn. and Pauper' 12.55 News. 1.00 Pebble Mill at 1.30 On the farm. 1.45 Made one. Britain. 2.00 Out of school. 3.05 The church and apartheid. 3.30 Lord of the Samirs. 4.00 Film: 9.35 10.00 skippy. 4.10 Play Deputy dawg. school. 'Rhubarb'. Milland, Jan hay 4.50 Thursday's 4.35 Jackanory. 11.35 Sterling. Galloping gour- 5.20 5.40 child. Screen test. 12.00 Cartoon. 12.05 Inigo met. Tipps. Crystal 5.45 News. Pipkin. 12.25 Rupert bear. 12.40 Weather. 1.00 Sing out with First. report.

NATIONWIDE.

6.00 The Settlers. 1.30 Crown court.

TOM

ANI

6.50 2.00 Harriet's back in town. 2.30 Cat. ing Good afternoon. 3.00 Looks 7.00

TOMORR

4.25 Lift familiar. 3.25 The saint.

7.25

MISSION

4.50 Arthur of off with Ayshea. Encore. Survival. 5.20 5.50 the Britons. 8.10

SOFTLY,

News.

FORCE.

6.00

TODAY.

NINE

O'CLOCK

NEWS.

9.00 6.35 Weather. 7.00

9.25 FANFARE.

of T. 7.30 the UK's into the entry Sweets 8.00 Common Royal Op

EYE.

9.00

PUBLIC

Garden. 10.00 10.35

INTERNA

OUN-

10.30 Highlight Three V

TRY.

The Six from E. 11.00 Stadium. OF 11.30

FILM:

EYES

11.25

LATE NIGHT NEWS.

SAND'

11.30 Weather.

OF THE

12.50

THE

Wakely

FUTURE.

Richard ennis Gabor. 11.00-11.25 Play school.

MAN

6.05 WORK. Inter-

RIPPLES IN THE ETHER.

6.30 Royal Institutions Lectures.

Pictures With and Without CHANNEL: 1.15 News. 1.30 Lon- Wires. South. 3.00 don. 2.30 Man of the 7.30

NEWS

SUMMARY.

London. 6.00 News. 6.10 Hogan's Weather. 6.35 London. 7.00 heroes. ALL IN A DAY. The Can- 7.35 Treasure hunt. 7.30 London. 8.00 didate. New series concen- Hawaii five-o. 9.00 London. 11.30 trating on a few hours of News, weather. intense activity. WESTWARD. As Channel except: 8.20

MUSIC ON 2.

Three fan- 9.25 Let them live. 9.55 Prince tasies for piano by Mozart, Rainbow and the 10.50 pauper. Schumann and Chopin. five. country. 11.15 Jackson 11.40

MAN

ALIVE.

9.25 Plimpton: 12.05 Lon- Katie Stewart cooks. Adventure in Africa. 12.25 Hammy don. hampster.

THIRTY

MINUTE

THE-

10.15 12.37 Gus Honeybun. 12.40 Lon-

THE

JAPANESE

ATRE:

12.57 News. 1.00 London. don.

STUDENT'.

Gwen Cherrell, 6.00 Diary 11.31 Faith for life.

Stephen Murray, Tessa SOUTHERN: 10.00 Torchy. 10.15 Wyatt, Eric Young. 10.40 Bush boy. Southern 10.45

EDITION.

Kenneth Allsop scene. 11.50 11.05 Gilbert and Sullivan.

looks at the world of in- Cartoon. 12.00 News. 12.05 Lon- formation, comment and 3.00 don. 2.30 Houseparty. Lon persuasion. don. 3.30 Danger man. 4.25 Lon- 11.15 NEWS EXTRA. Weather. Do you get WORKERS PRESS regularly? If not, why not take out a subscription now? {20.28 for 12 months (312 issues) {10.14 for 6 months (156 Issues) £5.07 for 3 months (78 Issues) areou want to take Workers Press twice a week the rates £1.56 for 3 months (24 issues) £6.24 for 12 months (96 issues) Fill in the form below NOW and send to : Circulation Dept., Workers Press, 186a Clapham High St., London SW4 7UG. I would like to take out a subscription to Workers Press.

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Or Full subscription (six days) for ..months. Name Address Amount enclosed f Tessa Wyatt as Joanna a university student, with Eric Young as Yoshi, her Japanese boyfriend, in Japanese Student' BBC 2's Thirty-Minute Theatre production don. 6.00 Day by 11.30 What 6.30 London 10.30 Odd couple. 11.00 roads. 4.25 London. 6.00 News Survival. 7.00 London. 11.30 O'Hara US 7.00 Loncon yvnal s on the papers say News. treasury. Weather. oncon on me ouses. Guideline 11.55 12.00 Farm pro-

ULSTER:

12.05 9.00 London. 1.29 Weather. cress News

HARLECH:

12.05 London. 2.30 2.40 Romper room. TYNE TEES: 9.30 Lidswill Out where the London Houseparty. 3.00 5.20 4.23 News. 4.25 6.00 Re London. new begins. Chuckleheads. 5.25 Crossroads. London. 8.00 Bearcats. We need each 10.50 Dick 11.20 Gilbert and Sulli- London. Van Dyke Report Wales. 6.30 Arthur of YORKSHIRE: 9.30 Let them live.

3.25 Cham van Britons. 7.00 10.30 10.00 We need each other.

10.50 pions. 4.25 London. Today. London. Dr Simon 11.20 Gilbert 6.35 London. 8.00 Persuaders. Was Cinema. 12.00 9.00 London. 10.30 weather 12.05 3.30 About Britain and Sullivan

HTV

Cymru/Wales as above ex- 11.00 London. 11.30 News king. •4. 12.40 4.25 mawr. Bewitched 5.50 London. 6.00 Edgar Wallace. Lectern. 4.35-4.50 6.01-6.15 Y Calendar. Weather. 6.35 London. dydd cantamil.

SCOTTISH:

11.20 Katie Stewart above except: 6.15- 8.00 9.00 Persuaders cooks. 11.45 Sky he. ks. 1200- 12.05 6.30 Report West. 70.3U Loncon. 2.30 Dateline. 11.30 Spyforce. 12.25 Weather. 5.25 scene Topaina 120 Tay. 5.20 con. Ganoon. 11.30 Southern

GRANADA:

11.03 Felix the cat. 6.30 survival 5.50 London. 6.00 • Today. 11.15 Bush boy. 11.40 Galloping 6.30 7.00 London. 10.30 footpaths. 6.00 12.05 3.25 11.00 London. coummer London Laye London. 8.00 Hawaii five-o. 9.00 Yoga. 3.50 Cartoon. 4.00 Cross- All Trades Unions Alliance ROCHESTER: Tuesday The Greyhound, Roches Fight Rising Prices meetings Force the Tories to Resign avenue Support the Engineers

HULL:

Wednesday January 10, Alfred • p.m. wnite an notel, Gelder Street • (near Drypool Bridge).

CROYDON:

Wednesday January 3, Sunday 7,

BRADFORD:

January p.m. 7.30 p.m. Talbot Hotel, Kirkgate.

Road, south Croydon. p.m.

SWINDON:

Sunday January 7, Trippett Lane, Sheffield 1.

TOTTENHAM:

Wednesday Briedayers Arms. 7.30 p.m. 'Locomotive Hotel' uary 3, 8 p.m.

HACKNEY:

Thursday January 11, rottennam High Road.

BRADFORD:

7.30 Talbot Kirkgate, p.m. The Parlour, Hackney Hotel, .ill Hall (opp. Central Town Hall).

SOUTH EAST LONDON:

Thurs- Bradford 4, 8 р.m. Deptford validaly VA. attor Trade Union Hali Monday Club, New

WATFORD:

January The Foresters Quarr Engineers Cross

TONBRIDGE

'Build Councils of Action! Defend engineers!' (upstairs), Woodford Road, oppo- Hill Road site Watford Junction station.

KINGSTON: Thursday January 11, LETCHWORTH: Thursday January

ACTON:

Tuesday p.m. So. Wis The Rocket, Churchield Cambridge Road and corner of changed date.) London noad. SLOUGH: Thursday January 11, 8 p.m. 7.30 class Room, Farnham Road Centre, Road. communi 80UT. So the Librater

MANCHESTER:

8.00 ark Road. (Please note date Southall Library,

LEEDS:

5p.m. Peel Hotel, Boar Lan Prices Force the Tories to Resign.'

HOLLOWAY:

HARROW

AND

WEALDSTONE:

January Sisters a Coat Finsury Part Speakers: Connie Fahey, Winnie Fall Railway Approach, Station Seven Price (Manchester tenants' Hall, Railway Station Road, Harrow. tube). leaders). An appeal on behalf of the Fine Tubes strikers of Plymouth ers Press Tubes wishes to The Plymouth Fine This Christmas has been the special appeal trade hardest of 53 all. to wives and Imposed take collections children just spent their • Now great unancial burden. Christmas strike with the 37 strikers face the rest of branches Yheir actories and Tubes with depleted for the Fine men ° These Woney. that their heroic waged a strike fund. January always order bitter truggle for to raise money •termme acuon can be car- basic • right ker can to further their fight. ried forward. All money should the his is a struggled Yet determined to be sent to: -the to belong the tight on 0 & oo on Fine Tubes Treasurer Strike workinhat is why members Cass cannot core c/o 65 Bretonside have travelled 100,000 lose. the Socialist their fight. Labour League and the Work.

Plymouth, Devon. sustain

Unemployment bogey used Tories defend tortures in Turkey THE 'This-will-be-our-last-strik Steel Corporation's three Scul unemployment to frighten and The Redbourne, Normanby Park and Appleby Frodingham works employing 18,500 people are being reorganized around a £230m new steel complex known as the Anchor project involving the loss of 3,000 jobs. Scunthorpe is virtually a one- industry town and the threat of unemployment is not taken lightly. Some white-collar workers be- lieve that the present wrangle over bargaining rights at the new complex between the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation (ISTC) and the Steel Management Association (SIMA) is putting the future of the whole project in jeopardy. SIMA has local bargaining rights for middle management at three obsolete plants, but the ISTC has told the Corporation it will represent these workers at the new works and they have in- structed their members not to work at the Anchor site until their demand is granted. The ISTC called out its 6,000 members at the three plants just week ago after 40 were over a home for refusing to take sent part in tests at the Anchor site.

BSC has not divulged which but it is under- side it backs, stood to privately favour SIMA, which is more of a staff asso- ciation than a trade union.

The position between BSC and the ISTC is deadlocked and after TORY Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas Home has at- tacked "The Sunday Times' Insight team which recently published details of tortures inflicted on political prisoners in Turkey. In an interview with the Istanbul newspaper 'Miliyet, he said the details could only encourage disruptive forces and consequently hamper pro- gress. His remarkable statements were released by the British em- bassy in Istanbul, a move which • indicates they have full clearly approval of the Tory government.

His solidarity with the Turkish military regime is the more stri- king in that he makes no attempt to refute the well-attested evi- denc of torture brought forward by the Insight team and Amnesty International. I think the Turkish authori- ties deserve support and under- standing in their obvious deter- mination retain their to in the democratic institutions face of ruthless terrorist move- ments,' Sir Alec told 'Miliyet'.

He referred to the clandestine Turkish People's Liberation Army which kidnapped and killed two Britons and a Canadian employed on a secret NATO military con- tract in March last year.

'Turkey is not only a friend but an ally of the United King- dom in NATO and in CENTO.

I am sorry that in recent weeks a number of allegations have been made against her. 'Such action can only encour- age disruptive forces and conse- quently hamper rather than pro- mote progress. This is not the first time the by

IAN YEATS

ast-strike' warning by clerks at th ee Scunthorpe plants reflects the | ten and intimidate workers into subi the Corporation's recent display of ruthlessness in • axing 50,000 jobs over the next seven years,.

some clerical workers are getting worried that chairman Lord Mel- may put his red chett . pencil through the Anchor project as well unless the dispute ends.

Two hundred of them lobbied the strike committee. head- quarters last week in an un- successful bid to get the stoppage called off. And a handful are thinking about asking the National Indus- trial Relations Court to uphold their right not to belong to a union rather than, as they see it, allow their jobs to be held to ransom over bargaining rights.

Their fears have been fanned by the laying off of 1,100 pro.

duction workers and the an- nounced prospect of the remain- ing 10,000 being sent home before the end of the week.

The ISTC was meeting yester- day to consider their next moves in the dispute. The Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru has demanded the Lord Mayor of Cardiff call a national conference to discuss the threat to the Principality's steel industry. The Party claims 40,000 jobs will be lost under BSC's new modernization plans conference and they say. the should include representatives of Welsh trade the CBI, unionshe Welsh local authorities, Council, MPs, university econo- mists and corporation officials.

Tory government has defended the Turkish torturers. When asked about well-documented cases of torture in Turkey, Julian Amery,. Sir Alec's junior Mini- ster, said: I would prefer to pay tribute to the enormous efforts made by the Turkish political parties to ensure that parliamentary gov- ernment is preserved.' Sir Alec and Amery, of course, speak for the same Tory govern- troops organized ment whose torture of Irish workers at Long Kesh and other centres. These troops are part of a veritable international • of tor- turers. According to the 'New Scientist', (December 28, 1972): «Torture has become a science, with schools and research cen- tres and international exchanges of information.' Last year, the magazine says, Yahya Khan's Pakistan govern- ment was able to order a com- plete torture kit from the US.

And in November six Belgian commandos were found guilty of using excessive violence while torturing soldiers during NATO exercises in November 1971.

'All of those involved in the NATO test were volunteers in an exercise to practice both in- terrogation and anti-interrogation techniques, using procedures learned from Chinese interroga- the Korean war, tors in the 'New Scientist' reports. The Turkish torturers are only carrying out official NATO policy 'in defence of parliamentary gov- ernment'. This excuse-advanced the by the Tory government to jus- The Anchor s struction for thi s at the British tion at Scunth ts the power of the nearby nto submission. works.

BY JOHN SPENCER

tify the bestial practices of the Turkish regime-is laughable.

The army seized power in Tur- key in March 1971 and converted existing parliament into a servile tool of military policy.

The 11 most important provinces of the country have been under martial law ever since. Premier Suleiman Demirel was SIR ALEC . . . Support Turkish government. forced out of office by the army and his successors have had to exercise a shadowy vestige of power under the constant threat of being swept away by the army. Meanwhile the jails are cram- capacity with med to trade unionists, students and intellec- Workers Press, Wednen nchor steelworks under con- on for the British Steel Corpora- : Scunthorpe, using steel from nearby Appleby Frodingham tuals accused of subversion and systematically before tortured trial. In a typical recent trial, 52 school teachers were jailed for up to eight years and ten months.

Their crime? They belonged to the Turkish Teachers' Union which has been banned by the military regime and took part in an illegal' strike in 1970. They living were demanding better conditions. These are clearly 'disruptive forces' who must be repressed by every means—in the interests of of course! Just how democracy the Tories' friends in Ankara go about this task is revealed in grisly detail by the Insight team in "The Sunday Times' (Decem- ber 10, 1972): Sadik Akincilar is a res- pected Istanbul lawyer. At noon last April 3 plainclothes police searched his house, con- fiscated documents and took Akincilar to a nearby police station . . . Akincilar says he was savagely beaten with karate blows: his captors took care not to mark his face. He was then thrown to his feet were tied the ground, together and raised in the air and he was subjected to repeated bouts of falaka-continuous beat- ing on the soles of the feet with a stick or in Akincilar's case, a thin rubber police truncheon.

His feet became terribly swol- bruised, though, again, len and care was taken not to tear the skin. At intervals he was forced to walk barefoot on the rough stone floor. • When beating and falaka failed, he was given electric shock treatment.

8, Wednesday January 3, 1973 PAGE 11 means ABOUT 1,500 monthly-paid staff on strike at the British Steel Corporation's Scunthorpe works will have to wait an- other four weeks for the money they earned last month, a BSC spokesman announced yester- day. He claimed they had been unable to feed the amount of time the staff had worked into the computer. "The figures should go into the computer by the end of this week, but as we cannot do this we cannot prepare their pay. They will have to wait for at least another month, he said. On Monday 450 workers were laid off and another 1,000 sent home yesterday. Emer- gency arrangements were being • the made, however, to pay laid-off men. HMSO shop still closed HER Majesty's Stationery Office, High Holborn, London, and the mail order department remained closed yesterday on the second day of a pay and conditions dis- pute. This strike is against the end- ing of a 48-year-old pay with agreement between outside SOGAT and the Federation of London Wholesale Newspaper Distributors. Yesterday's unsuccessful talks were held after a walk-out by 170 workers Monday. Na- on tional SOGAT officers have been in session to discuss future action. At present the strike is still unofficial. The Federation wants a house agreement with the bookshop along the lines assistants those already negotiated with the Stationery Office warehouses and presses. "They connected my body to electrodes ... I was bound to an iron chair with chains and When they began ropes. con- necting electricity to my head through the ears, I felt I was about to go mad..? Falaka and electric shock treat- ment continued for almost three weeks, says Akincilar: between sessions he was chained to his bed in a cell permanently lit by a blinding light. Akincilar had offended the sus- ceptibilities of the democratic Turkish military by acting as de- fending counsel in the trials of a number of Turkish People's Liberation Army members. His case is only one of a large number of similar well-attested instances of torture, which the Foreign Office has made no effort to refute. It is worth noting that apart res- from 'The Sunday Times', ; which earned Home's ofticial has now displeasure, no capitalist news- paper has given prominence to the Turkish torture regime.

No doubt these papers have taken the heavy hints dropped by the Foreign Office through both Sir Alec and Amery. In many cases the same papers de- voted acres of space to the case the of drug-smuggler young Timothy Davey. It is clear that Sir Alec's pose as a defender of democracy is a fraud. The man is simply cover- ing up for the systematic erosion of even the most elementary democratic rights. After all, the Tories have already done this themselves in Northern Ireland and are un- doubtedly planning to do the same in Britain too, if 'disrup- tive forces' should get out of hand.

Prices dam about to burst PAGE 12 Workers Press, Wednesday Jan NORTH VIETNAM has affirm fight a protracted war against cribed 1972 as 'a year of the This assessment was made public hours before the secret negotiations with the United reopened in Paris States the suspension of following US bombing attacks north of the 20th parallel. The talks-at technical-adviser level—are designed to prepare the way for a meeting between Hanoi representative Le Duc Tho Washington's Dr Henry and Kissinger. US planes are still bombing North Vietnam below the 20th their attacks on parallel, but the main cities of Hanoi and off Haiphong called were on December 29 after 12 days of bombardment which reduced much of Hanoi to rubble. The North Vietnamese army 'Quan Doi Nhan newspaper published a New Year Dan' commentary headed 'A Strategi- Victory, Significant cally ex- plaining why Nixon had called THE TORY decision to allow a 7 per cent in- crease in the price of dried fruit may open an- other breach in the so- called price freeze. The Ministry of Agricul- ture admitted yesterday that similar exemptions might apply to frozen fish, or other foods where the cost of treat- ment' only makes up a small proportion of total price.

The spokesman • pointed out that prices would be allowed to rise anyway if the cost of im.

ported foods or fresh foods rose.

Press

JANUARY

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THE FIGHT is just starting to the Tory build up against government. Gasmen, steelmen, car workers following up with behind, are joining the struggle for higher wages. Everywhere the movement is growing to de fend the basic right to a decent standard of living. Workers Press will reach out more than ever, in this period ahead, to give a political lead to hundreds of thousands of work- ers now taking up this decisive fight. Therefore everything you can for Fund will raise our needed. Make It a very speclal effort this month. Let us start 1973 by raising a record amount.

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esday January 3, 1973 is affirmed its determination to against imperialism and des- of the greatest victory in the istance against US aggression'.

By Foreign Editor JOHI the giant bomber raids off against the north. 'Our northern armed forces and people have just undergone a very fierce test of strength in Nixon fight against the their clique's air war. Through 12 days nights of extremely brave and and clever fighting we have won very gloriously and have in a short period of time scored an unprecedented victory. 'We have smashed the US im- perialists' greatest strategic air .. The Americans deployed raid. in this raid the total number of B52 aircraft which are combat Asia and ready in south-east hundreds of tactical aircraft. They dropped more than 70,000 of bombs and used the tons method of carpet-bombing densely populated cities, aimed ato creatiom the site effect as without atom atom bombs. 'Nixon expected that with the

CONSUMER ROUND-UP BY

He said that manufacturers had little choice but to accept higher prices from suppliers. The only other alternative was not to buy at all. The controversy within the industry was sparked off by the ministry's decision not to ques- tion a price increase by Britain's leading dried-fruit packers Whit- worth Brothers. A growing lobby in the food industry is viewing the move as the green light for other price increases on other ranges.

A spokesman for Unilever, which owns the big vegetable producers Bird's Eye and Bat- chelor's, said that any proposal to increase prices would be reported to the government first.

'Certainly we are in touch with the Ministry anyway, he said. 'Vegetables are seasonal and are subject to price rises. If, for example, we had a hard winter from now until March, vegetable prices would increase on the market and we would make an application.' Both Bird's Eye and Batchelor's grow all their crop under con- tract. They negotiate the price with the farmers and supply As such seed. them with the they play a dominant role in the market. Preliminary price negoti- ations have started for this year's and planting begins in crop February. The dried-fruit case is an indication of the massive pressure building up in industry for price increases. There are over 700 applications for price increases outside the Textiles, leather, food sector. timber and shoe manufacturers are all asking for exemption and "prices' Geoffrey Howe's Sir their Ministry is examining claims. In the food sector there have been 758 requests for increases.

in canned meats, Price rises processed meats, sausages, animal foods, biscuits, dried fruit and breakfast foods have been allowed.

The rest have been rejected and a third are still under con- sideration. This enormous prices dam is likely to burst on the market after the 'freeze'. An added inflationary pressure Common Market res"lts from entry. From February 1 there will be free trade in food throughout western Errope. This means subsidies to importers of Con- tinental foods to make up the difference between the low British and high European prices.

ditor JOHN SPENCER might of the absolute superiority of the US air force this strategic air raid could rapidly overpower anti-aircraft adversary's forces and causes terrible losses subdue the adversary and to force him to accept the pirate's conditions. But all this has been upset. 'The Americans have suffered the most painful defeat in this In only 12 days-from war. December 18 to 29 our people's ground-to-air nets clever 34 B52s, five FIlls destroyed and 42 other aircraft, totalling 81. The number of downed B52s is more than 2 per cent of all combat-ready B52s, not to men- tion ten damaged Americans, ad. B52s as mitted by the This is an implicit rebuttal of the advocates of peaceful co- existence who believe in coming to terms with the imperialists and abandon revolutionary strug- gle against them. The paper adds.

ND-UP BY STEPHEN JOHNS

The system will work this way: An exporter of dear French wheat will receive money from Common Agricultural Fund for the loss he suffers by selling in the cheap British market.

British wheat going into west Europe will have a levy put on it to make price up European levels. The money from the levy will be paid into the fund. Britain's £125m annual con- to the fund will be tribution collected in taxes, largely from the working class. Gradually this support system and prices will be run down allowed to rise to European are often double levels, which British prices. Prices will go up in six stages starting in the spring. By 1977 the entire burden of higher food commodity prices will fall and directly on the consumer.

establishing The question of Councils of Action, which unite all sections of the working class and the labour movement to fight this, is now urgent. The alternative Tory in- to flation ais the nationalization of the big food combines, the break- up of the commodity exchanges

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road haulage are also involved in pay claims. 2,000 lorry drivers in Hull are holding a series of one- day strikes in support of a de- mand for a £10-a-week rise.

The ferment is affecting sec- tions of the middle class as well as industrial and manual workers.

and THE 200,000-strong Civil Public Services Association is to hold selective strikes among civil servants in key government de- partments. This step has caused consider- able alarm in ruling-class circles.

'The Times' editorial yesterday declared: 'Civil servants have a special obligation of loyalty to the state ... if they do not back up the state, who will?' This goes to the heart of the matter. Those workers and sec- tions of the middle class who fight now on wages are challeng- ing the state. Premier Heath and leading Cabinet members met yesterda] o draw up final plans for phas two of their legislation giving the state total control over wages.

ABOUT 8,000 Swindon workers s when the town's engineers staged against the £55,000 fine imposed or of Engineering Workers in the Goa At the 6,000-strong Pressed Steel Fisher factory, members of the Transport and General Workers' joined the Union strike called by the Swindon committee of the district

AUEW.

Engineers also stayed away at Lister's, the Square D factory, Vicker's and British Rail's work- shops. On Monday, up to 2,000 work- ers at three Plessey factories in Swindon staged a similar 24-hour strike against the fine and the Tory pay laws. AUEW district secretary Ray Howell told a meeting in the town centre's shopping precinct: and the nationalization of the retail chains—all without com- pensation under workers' control.

Within this structure of public ownership, committees of house- wives and trade unionists could and the dis- superion of essential commodities supervise to those in greatest need, like pensioners.

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Tories—who have also frozen the second part of the wages agreement—means that minimum wages for West End actors revert back to pre-November levels of f18 a week for shows and f12 for rehearsals. Yesterday an emergency Equity council session decided to call a mass meeting of actors and actresses in the West End to discuss the government's moves. But a move for all-out strike action to be called by Equity defeated. heavily leaders was Inctead it was decided to hold another meeting of the council —probably next Tuesday-after the full terms of the Tory order are known. Recommendations from that meeting will then be put to the mass meeting, a date for whicn has yet to be fixed. To fight on wages, therefore, is not only to fight the employers but to come into conflict with the law of the land backed by the state apparatus. A victory for the working class in this conflict is only possible through a struggle which brings down the Tory government.

this The TUC leaders know perfectly well. That is why, in- stead of preparing their members for such a fight, they rush back into the arms of Heath. As the TUC of 1926 begged and pleaded with Tory premier Baldwin to get them off the hook, so in 1973 Feather and company will beg , Heath for some tiny concessions in the hope of heading off the mount- ing explosion of anger from mil- lions of workers. They will not be successful.

As prices soar following Com- mon Market entry, the employers and their government can only seek to rescue their system at the expense of the working class.

means pushing down That wages, increasing unemployment and smashing the unions. 1973 will not be a year of con- vorkers stayed at home yesterday staged a one-day strike in protest posed on the Amalgamated Union the Goad case. 'No one is under the illusion that a few one-day stoppages can remove the Industrial Relations Act or its authors. "There will undoubtedly be a need for further action. The meetings and demonstrations we have seen in the last few weeks are only the Earlier he told me: 'It needs total action called by the TUC.

There should be an indefinite strike until we get rid of this government.' A General Strike to force the Tories to resign has been the policy of the district committee of and Swindon Confederation and Engineering Shipbuilding Unions for the past 12 months.

The committee's president Ron Perret said: "The dispute today is not just a matter of one man.

It is a put-up job to immobilize the unions. If you don't defend Speakers warned that entry into the Common Market would mean soaring prices and a bitter struggle for trade. They said the Tories would weapon in their use every armoury to keep wages down.

A SAILOR was found shot in the head 'during firearms drill' aboard the US 'Polaris' depot ship 'Canopus' at Holy Loch early yesterday. Seaman Robert O'Leary was given emergency treatment on board the ship and transferred to Glasgow's South- ern General Hospital, where he be 'fairly was later stated to satisfactory'. RESERVES fell by $249m during December to stand at $5,646m at the end of the month. This was after the normal end-year debt service payments to the US and Canada of $260m. BARCLAYS and Midland, two of Britain's largest banks, yesterday raised their basic lending rates by 1 per cent to 8.5 per cent. The moves follow the raising of the Bank of England lending rate to 9 per cent-the highest since World War I. cessions, but a year of conflict.

The Labour traitors who plead with Heath while their members fight for wages and fight to de- fend the trade union movement the Goads and Langstons from must be told 'No more talks'.

They must be compelled to mobilize their members in a force the General Strike to Tories to resign and return a Labour government pledged to socialist policies. In 1972 miners, dockers, ten- ants and other workers showed that the working class has the strength to do this. 1973 must be the year when the leadership is constructed to carty it through.

The immediate task is to con- Action in struct Councils of every area to link up and lead the battles on wages, prices, trade union rights, rents and housing. • End the talks with the Tories!

• Demand the recall of the

TUC!

• Make the trade union leaders mobilize a General Strike to force the Tories to resign!

• Build Councils of Action!