Basnett muzzles fight against 'secrets' show trial „JACEE+HOSENBAL MUST STAY PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Nationalise these catering giants. PRESS GANG

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The catering firms are also viciously anți union: our picture shows a THF service area blacked by union action last year employers' spokesman nine months to screw up the nerve to go on television and into print to assert that the whole system is not a monumental rip-off.

Cider boss

Of course right wing Transport Secretary William Rodgers had chosen a reliable figurehead for the expensive "committee of inquiry" _Peter Prior, chairman of the Bulmers cider firm.

As expected, Prior refused point black to criticise his bosom pals in the Trust Houses Forte, Ross and Granada catering monopolies who run the motorway service areas.

Their "inflation adjusted" profits fell between 1973 and 1977 from 10.3% to 2.5%, he claimed.

But the luckless motorist's "inflation adjusted" meal has gone from expensive to astronomic in price, while petrol remains a stubborn 8p per gallon extra.

Prior proposes the government make additional hand-outs to these latterday highway robbers, to boost their profits further.

We propose that the reactionary, anti-union catering agents, the breweries, and Mr. Prior's own cider giant be nationalised without compensation • under workers' management.

t.ima Der inay eropit on ties 1319.

GADDAF! amhersarr al thee pamphiet ! A WSL The press does like to be wrong.

Political correspondents had been recalled from their holidays, executives had been preparing lists to follow party leaders about the country and leader writers had been rehearsing their arguments on the need for 'firm' government.

All in all the press was as geared up for an election as were MPs, Labour bureaucrats and political parties.

In thrashing around for an explanation for no election the press has come up with an almost infinite variety of conclusions.

Some papers portrayed Callaghan as a scheming master of suspense, deliberately building up to a crescendo of nothingness.

Others screamed with frustrated anger (The Sun announced the news under the one-word headline"Chicken!').

But in all the headlines and thousands of words written on the subject there has not been one single reference to the SU Carburettors strike!

Had the election gone ahead under conditions of a national shutdown of and Healey could have faced as big a challenge from the working class in action as did Heath in 1974.

This fact did not rate one line of coverage-either in the immediate reaction stories or in the 'serious' think pieces in the Sundays.

Instead the press presented the decision as being i based on "private polls, predictions about the future or plain cowardice.

The Sunday Telegraph underscored the fact that the capitalists required an election-whichever way it wenfif the Government had won an election, its mandate for a five per cent limit would have been vastly strengthened.

On the other hand if the Conservatives had won, the new Government under Mrs. Thatcher would have begun implementing policiesnotably cuts in taxes and public expenditure-which would have transformed the prospects for industrial expansion.

As it is the country is saddled with a lame duck PHOTO: Andrew ward, Report Callaghan Both the Sunday Times and Observer dr voted long articles each of several thousand words to the minutiae of the decision, without mentioning its central plank.

Callaghan is too bland and avuncular a figure to be raw material for the cult of the personality.

But the press chose to endow him with the gift of personal caprice to obscure the most gigantic and obvious obstacle a to general election.

The working class action.

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WRP leaders: junk the old Trotskyism

PO AXED British Leyland, Callaghan