Carter rings round for

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US Senators will be plagued by a spate of heavy breathing phone calls in the next week or SO.

A desporate President Carter, unable to win support for his energy conservation measures will be frantically lobbying uncommitted Senators, trying to persuade them that his controversial Bill to increase the price of natural gas is crucial to his efforts to stabilise the US dollar.

Some support Whereas a few weeks ago many sections of US capital were content to allow the dollar to fall in order to improve their chances in export markets, there is a chance that the mounting evidence of economic crisis within the US itself may rally some support for the increasingly discredited peanut millionaire.

In particular the dollar's downward plunge against the yen has created renewed chaos in the US steel industry, with clamours from the steel bosses for anti-dumpThe Oxford City Nursery Campaign started off the new school term by firmly reminding the County Council of its existence by demonstrating through the streets of Oxford on Saturday September 2.

The march was joined by over 100 parents and other nursery campaigners from the Labour and Trade Union movement, carrying banners from trade unions, political groups, womens groups and the nursery campaign itself.

Victorious

They shouted slogans calling for the restoration of the axed South Oxford Nursery class.

The march was led by children from the victorious campaign to save the South Oxford Middle School.

This school, to which the axed nursery class is attached, was reprieved from closure in July by Carter ing measures against increased imports of European steel.

Steel shipments from the EEC countries increased 72% in July over the June total, and US steelmakers claim that European manufacturers have exploited the currency fluctuations to avoid the protectionist "trigger price" system designed to minimise foreign competition.

But dislocation of trade in steel is only one aspect of the weak state of US capitalism.

The July trade deficit has shocked the Carter administration by rocketing to a massive $2.9 billion-which if continued would bring a staggering $34.8 billion annual deficit.

And the fleeting spring boom in the US economy now seems to have completely run out of steam even before Carter takes further steps to curb growth in a bid to hold the value of the dollar.

Meanwhile, despite assurances from government officials, inflation shows little sign of dropping below double figures.

All this means a bleak prospect for the powerful US working class, with continuing mass unemployment and the necessity to confront Carter's wage-cutting "anti-inflation" policy if they are to defend their living standards.

But workers are discovering, that, as in Britain, the main allies of wage controls are the bureaucratic leaders of the trade unions, who are Bleak prospect and foot to the Democratic P rty.

Latest casualties of this unholy alliance are the 460,000 US postal workers. Both postal unions-the American Postal Workers Union and the Letter Carriers Union-had voted to defy the law and take strike action to force an improvement on the employers' 19.5% three-year pay contract.

But on the eve of strike action union leaders gratefully seized the pretext of "mediation" by Carter's chosen "impartial outsider" Wayne Horvitz, in order to call off the action.

New talks are likely to see virtually insignificant increases in wages, in exchange for likely concessions by union bureaucrats on job security.

Carter however is in far too dire a crisis to reward such craven collaboration with even the distant promise of a crumb from the table.

Postal the march The much vaunted medical programme which he cynically dangled as a carrot in front of the noses of top union bureaucrats in order to secure their support in the course of the election campaign is now obviously a dead duck.

The struggle to break the US trade union movement from the Democratic Party and for the construction of a Labour Party to assert the political independence of the working class must be taken up now with renewed vigour.