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shall YOUR AT 1AN AT THE TOP THE Over 200 workers marched behind the Western Shiprepairers banner through Birkenhead last Saturday, in a yard.

This followed a demonstration the previous week outside Birkenhead town hall where Government Minister Edmund Dell, MP for a local constituency, was holding a "surgery"

Dell had told the workers. to "be gentlemen and go away and find another job"!

But instead of campaigning for Dell's expulsion from the party the leaflet put out by the 'Militant' Group called on the workers to join the Labour Party and "force Dell to fight"!

Lack of action

Labour left' MP Eddie Loyden, in his speecn at the beginning of the march tried to justify his lack of action by claiming that the House of Lords had excluded shiprepairing from the Act to nationalise the shipbuilding There is no possibility of winning this fight to save jobs by the kind of policies advocated by Loyden and on 800m the 'Militant' Group-seeking to persuade right wing MPs like Dell to fight inside the Labour Party to change the government's attitude.

Instead the independent action of the workers themselves must be mobilised by calling for an occupation of the yard to stop the machinery from being moved out and to stop management scabs from carrying out maintenance.

This action must be extended to the other places where the workers are faced with redundancies and the struggle must be to unite all these forces in the fight against unemployment.

The demand for the opening of the books of the Laird Group by an elected committee of workers is central to this strategy as a part of the development of workers' . control and then management of the firm as a nationalised enterprise.

'Left" MPs like Loyden must be called upon to fight on such policies and to fight to expel the Callaghans, Healeys, and Dells from the If they refuse to do SO then they, too, must be removed and replaced.

SaN NEOLGSo

I NOTACA 9 341 HELLO MOSS-THIS IS O'FISHALL HERE... LET'S CAN YOU JOIN OUR TU.C. WORKING PARTY WITH FOR THE LABOUR ELECTION CAMPAIGN?

LAK YOU KNOW JIT MAKES SENSE WE'LL BE EXPECTED TO MOBILISE AGAINST THEM! WE'LL BE ERECTED SO MODILISE MORINDI IREM:

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SOCIALIST Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir David McNee has a free hand to step up harassment and intimidation in the London area, according to Home Secretary Merlyn Rees.

Speaking in Parliament last week, Rees declared that McNee "can, count on my support for whatever he does in this city"

The matter had been raised as a result of a 166-page written submission by McNee last week to the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure, in which he admitted that current police pratices involve numerous breaches of the existing law.

Rees consciously ignored this revelation, and simply said that McNee's document contains "some interesting ideas"

Among these "interesting ideas" were calls for sweeping new police powers that would make the British police the envy of state forces in almost any western democracy:

*the power to hold "suspects" for 72 hours before charging them or bringing them to court.

*the power to oblige "suspects" to answer police questions by allowing courts to draw inferences from a decision to remain silent.

*compulsory fingerprinting of the whole area in which a -Only strike action by workers in London hospitals can reopen the accident and emergency department at Bethnal Green hospital and prevent the Health Authority going through with their plans to turn the hospital into small geriatric unit.

the first ESS crime has been committed.

*further extension of the police right to search "suspects"

*power to set up roadblocks at the discretion of senior police officers, for the discovery or prevention of crime.

*more power to use "necessary force" in legal searches.

McNee's admission that the police frequently ignore existing legal restrictions on such activities comes as no surprise to countless workers and youth who over recent years have suffered harassment at their hands.

Democratic rights

The fact that Labour Home Secretary Rees is ready and willing to consider McNee's latest suggestions is consistent with the Labour leader's proven readiness to attack democratic rights in defence of British capitalism.

Whether it be the legislation of the so-called "Prevention of Terrorism" Act, the perpetuation of racist immigration laws, the use of the specially trained Special Patrol Group anti-picket squad against strikers at Grunwick and elsewhere, the bans on the right to demonstrate imposed by Rees under the pretence of restricting the National Front, or the upholding of the Official Secrets Act, Labour leaders have at each point allied with the capitalist occupation of a fully functioning asualty department.

There was strike action in 10 East London hospitals on July 1 in support of the decision to keep the casualty department open despite the Health Authority's plans to close it.

This hospital is in an area of London where there is already a severe shortage of Accident and Emergency facilities, and the decision io keep the casualty open had widespread support amongst health workers state machinery against the working class.

Even now, while imposing a vicious 5% Phase 4 pay limit, the Callaghan-Healey government is planning to increase police pay by an astonishing 40%!

But McNee's open statement also spotlights the criminal confusion peddled by Anti Nazi League leaders and the Communist Party, who seek or support police action against the National Front, in the belief that this could protect the workers' movement.

No one could doubt that among the first victims of McNee's new extended powers would be the black workers, demonstrators and pickets who at present suffer the brunt of police harassment.

Yet in the wake of the bombing of the Morning Star last week, Stalinist Chris Myant put forward the call for "a special police squad to track down the perpetrators of the attacks"

Repression

The task confronting the labour movement is not to strengthen but to disband the police force which is simply a part of the repressive machinery that props up British capitalist rule.

This involves a struggle for removal of class traitors able in casualty.

One serious weakness of the defence campaign has been its failure to recognise the central importance of the fight for the accident and emergency department at Bethnal Green to the Merlyn Rees such as Merlyn Rees and the Callaghan-Healey cabinet, and the struggle for a revolutionary leadership within the workers' movement that spells out the dustmen-went on strike on 1 August in defence of the hospital, despite the fact that several local hospitals were willing to take action if any lead had been shown.

This setback in the campaign need to destroy and not reform the capitalist state as the essential part of the struggle for socialism.

The peasant armies of the Ethiopian military dictatorship have extended their invasion of Eritrea.

Their attacks have so far been concentrated against the areas held by the Eritrean Liberation Front, which has suffered major reversals.

ELF forces are now reported to have regrouped in the rural areas which they still control so as to continue guerrilla warfare against the occuation army.

These advances have made it possible for the Ethiopian armies to launch frontal attacks against the positions held by the Eritrean Popular Liberation The EPLF now faces the threat of total encirclement, but claims to have resisted the Ethiopian offensive so far.

Withdrawn

But EPLF forces have withdrawn from the strategic town of Dekamhare, and from those sections of the major port of Massawa which they had captured, arguing that these ominous moves were necessary to organise stronger defensive lines and . represent a purely tactical retreat.

After these initial successes, the Ethopian army will undoubtedly encounter fiercer resistance as it attempts to penetrate deeper into the strongholds which have been held for some years.

But this is far from the only problem • confronting the Ethiopian offensive. The turbulence within Ethiopia itself has already placed Mengistu's regime in a precarious position, and now the resurgence of war in the Ogaden has struck a further blow at the dictatorship.

Guerrillas from' the West Somali Liberation Front last week attacked Gode-a base of crucial strategic significance for control of the Ogaden. They claim to have wrecked water and power supplies, and left the town burning.

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campaign to save 650 jobs and nationalise the

ST PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report

TOWER HAMLES OLDPECPLESAY