Booth backs print traitors to axe jobs

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-by their leadership") the IMG have gone overboard in a bid to adapt to the SWP.

Toothless

IMG backing for the large but toothless Anti-Nazi League (whose heterogenous class content excludes essential demands for socialist policies and workers defence) is simply the latest shape of this adaptation.

It was more fully elaborated late last year in an IMG document "Our Common Ground" which was published in Socialist Challenge.

The IMG in this platform for 'unity' threw overboard not only the spacific demands of the Transitional Programme, but also any call for unconditional defence of the Soviet Union against imperialism, and any call for unity to take place with the context of an international movement.

The irony is that all of these sacrifices used as bait by the IMG have netted not fusion with the big fish-the SWPbut a bloc with a modest shoal of worthless small fry (Big Flame, the Workers League) and a handful of plankton (the Marxist Workers Group of rnment and opposition leaders tip-toeing on eggs.

Virtual unanimity of views expressed by Tory opposition spokesmen, James Prior, and Labour Employment Minister, Albert Booth, had been guaranteed by the tough statements from managements at both the Observer and the Times.

Both men recognised the crucial role being played by the print union leaders. As they waited for Joe Wade, the NGA General Secretary, to work out thek correct formula for attacking Observer print members, they were both extremely anxious to say nothing to embarass him.

Prior set the tone with some mild criticism of newspaper managements who lacked some of the 'qualities' of the old fashioned Press barons, which enabled them to avoid some of the disputes.

He praised the union leaders for their 'responsible attitude' and urged them to use their strength and 'if necessary they must act together to do so':

A joint union management effort to get accepted the once rejected blueprint fór new technology (Programme for Action) should be made.

His speech could have been cleared with Booth. Almost the only thing that the Labour Minister could find to object to was that Prior had been too explicit about his desire to declare print union closed shops illegal.

Booth attacked managements for being too soft. If they gave in to unofficlal action they reduced the authority of the print union leaders on whose cooperation they depended.

Disintegration

In a reference to the disintegration of the Newspaper Publishers Association he called for the strengthening of the employers organisation.

Booth backed the threats by Observer and Times managements to cease publication. There was no "immutable law' which said that there should be national papers centred on London. junior party of the coalition, the Liberals.

With the Labour left reduced to their habitual impotence the only discord was introduced by right-wing Tory Jonathan Aitken, who said newspaper workers were 'just about the greediest, most ill discipl ined, most selfish and irresponsible group of trade unionists in this country.' This was the authentic voice of newspaper ownersquickly buried.

The task ahead for Tory and Labour leaders is not down that road. They intend to boost and back their agents-the print union leaders-to solve their profit crisis in Fleet Street, through the discipline of the union. in their praise of this imperialist and enemy of the working class than the Labour Party leaders.

They also had nothing but praise for the other belated casualty of the week Robert Menzies, former Tory Prime Minister of Australia.

Aside from his numerous acts of hostility towards the Australian working class, Menzies should be remembered as the man who alongside Johnson and • Nixon sent troops to Vietnam in an unsuccessful attempt to crush the Vietnamese revolution.

Though forced in the end to retreat humiliated, this was not before the Australian army had notched up its share of brutal murders.

Selwyn Lloyd • and Menzies-both these imperialist butchers lived many years after their crimes, to be honoured and revered by the British and Australian state and by those who claim to lead the working class.

We shedding no tears.

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ALLS ON PRESS, Wednesday 24 May 1978