Bethnal Green

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As if deliberately flaunting the fact that the "nationalised" industries in Britain are run by capitalist managers for capitalist enterprise at the expense of the shop floor workforce, the Callaghan government has decided to implement astronomic pay increases for top nationalised industry executives.

And a whole string of key servants of the employers-judges, senior civil servants and Armed Forces officers-are also to benefit from a salary hike which Callaghan described as essential to prevent a "crisis of morale" in nationalised industry management.

"Calibre"

It would, he declared, enable executives "of suitable calibre" to be recruited.

Such bosses of course need to be qualified at enlisting the aid of union bureaucrats in imposing swingeing cuts in manning levels and plant. The "strain" they encounter is the strain of continuously maintaining attacks on the working class.

A workers' government would take steps to establish elected trade union committees at workplace, regional and national level, with full access to the books and plans of the nationalised industries, to develop the basis of a planned use of resources.

Such committee: would at first have to exercise control over the existing management, but would eventually replace them altogether.

They would be composed of workers paid the average shop floor wage, recallable at any time. And they would take as their criterion not profit but need.

As workers in steel, shipbuilding, railways and other nationalised industries run up against management attack, they must include such demands alongside strikes and occupations in their fight back.

FBU Executive member grate.

In line with Government policy of providing cash rewards for the most parasitic and anti-working class sectors of society, the special Edmund-Davies report on police pay recomthis week.

This proposed increase comes on top of the 10% Phase 3 increase, which the police received last September. It would give some police constables an increase from £3,600 to £5,700 a year, and Chief Constables an extra £5,500.

'pears to be no if special bonus rates for protecting the gton conference National Front or piecework payments for the picket-busting thugs of the Special Patrol Group and the police assigned to harass Irish and black workers and youth.

"Special problems"

But the report does recommend extra rises for police in London and in Northern Ireland because of the "special problems" they face in defending capitalist property relations and combatting the workers movement.

However the Police Federation seems likely to regard the thumping 40% increases as insufficient to stem the flow of resignations from the police force.

Their claim is for rises of between 78-104%!

Strike breaking

The Edmund Davies report is believed to recommend immediate payment of the increases-which causes problems for Healey's Phase 4 pay limits!

The Callaghan government, however, has rested as much as any preceding government on police and army strike-breaking; and TUC leaders-who have often been grateful for police escorts to protect them against the hostility of this own members-will alyst certainly arrive at an agreement to regard police pay as a 'special case' LING 20. invalisse Right to Work marche officials, or even in convenors and combine committees."

But if anyone peddled such illusions it was the SWP, with its talk of the "brilliant" mass meeting at which Robinson derailed any real fight!

Deason's talk of Right to Work bulletins trying to "win people's minds" to the idea of nationalisation is a deliberate distortion.

The Right to Work bulletins at no point called for occupation, and Deason himself advised stewards not to call for too much 'all at once' but to go "first" for a general statement of opposon The fight continues at Bethnal Green Hospital in East London, where workers are occupying against the plans to close the casualty department.

On Wednesday July 5 any false hopes that protests to the government would bring victory were dashed when a delegation from the hospital's action committee reported that committments or guarantees had been given to preserve the facilities at Bethnal Green.

Following the one day strike and demonstration reported in last weeks' Socialist Press, the most important development in terms of real action has been among ambulance Despite instructions that the Bethnal Green casualty department is to be treated as closed, admissions have increased to well above the average.

The threat to Bethnal Green must be answered by stepping up the fight in the unions for the calling of all-out strike action, the opening of the books of the Area Health Authorities.

Alongside the fight to nationalise, without compensation, private suppliers and contracters who bleed profits from the hospital services, this remains the only road to a socialist plan for health service under the control of the working class. rs-militancy but no politics ition to closure. That was far as they got.

The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but Speke shows that the road to the dole queue is paved on each side with opportunism and political confusion.

Deason's squalid cover -up of this sorry episode is simply further proof that -for all its size and pretensions - neither the SWP nor its 'Right to Work' campaign. offers any lead to workers fighting in defence of jobs and conditions against the combined weight of employers and union

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PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report PHOTO: John