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The Official Secrets Act, and those Labour leaders that insist on preserving it, must be removed as an obstacle to the democratic rights of the workers' movement.

This is the obvious lesson of six week Aubrey BerryCampbell "secrets" trial which is in its concluding stages as we go to press.

John Berry, the former Signals Intelligence corporal who spoke to journalists Duncan Campbell and Crispin Aubrey, has already been pronounced guilty by Mr Justice Mars-Jones.

And his summing up has laid stress on the importance of the Official Secrets Act for "national security"

In reality the Act defends only the secrecy of the military and state apparatus that maintain capitalist rule.

But the Labour leadership has openly declared its refusal to implement their own Manifesto pledge to repeal it.

And while NUJ leaders have made strident verbal protests about the trial, there has been no serious attempt to mobilise action in defence of the ABC victims of this reactionary law.

The bitter lesson of the deportation of former CIA agent Phillip Agee still has not been learnt.

The labour movement must act to defend John Berry and the other defendants should they be convicted.

And workers must drive out those "leaders" who collaborate with the state machine against the interests of the labour movement.

Any group of workers who may have been intending to settle peacefully for Chancellor 5% Healey's pay limit to will have think again.

The thumping 2% increase in mortgage interest rates has just wiped out the whole of this year's wage increase in one go-and there are plenty more price increases and attacks on living standards to come.

Most affected are young workers with families, whose wage packets only barely stretched to pay the bills before the latest price hike.

But every section of workers will be hit by the package of measures introduced last week by Healey, when he raised the banks Minimum Lending Rate to a record 122% and triggered the mortgage increase.

By tightening up the money supply, Healey has ensured that the average business loan now costs 7% more than the present rate of inflation; in other words he has taken a further step towards a new round of closures, redundancies and growing dole queues.

Healey mass meeting votes These measures do not come as a result of widespread breaches of the 5% pay limit. No substantial section of workers is yet receiving more than a 5% increase.

Rather they emerg e from the international cr sis of capitalism, which has produced the present world recession and the recent chaotic plunge of the dollar in the money markets.

President Carter's panic moves to "save" the dollar entailed borrowings of $30 000 million and a sharp rise in interest rates within the USA itself.

This was designed to attract investment from other capitalist countries.

But while a transfer of foreign investment out of Britain would strengthen the dollar, it would weaken the pound, particularly at a time of increasing class So in order to placate the international bankers, and in particular the Common Market financiers, Healey was forced to rates in Britain.

The whole episode exposes the myth of wage controls ending inflation.

In reality the value of the pound internationally, which determines a vast range of prices in the shops, is completely out of the control of the actions of the working class or of the government-and can fluctuate wildly due to completely unforseen factors.

Workers have no interest in sacrificing wage increases under conditions of the capitalist. crisis; rather it is essential to seek full protection against increases in the cost of living through a sliding scale of wages.

Automatic

Under the sliding scale, wages would rise automatically in line with a workers' cost of living index, worked out in each case by elected trade union/housewives? committees, and taking taxation™ and mortgage charges into account.

The employers will of course complain that they cannot afford to pay a sliding scale of wages. This is no more than an admission that workers living standards can only be protected through the nationalisation of major industry and the establishment of a planned socialist Ditched A whole series of wage claims already submittedincluding the Ford claimactually contain the call for cost of living clauses.

But such demands are being quietly ditched by union leaders anxious merely to head off the militancy of their members.

But Chancellor Healey is already threatening further monetary policies to strip us of increases over 5%: only the sliding scale of wages offers an answer to such treachery!

The answer is clear: public sector and private sector workers alike must follow the example of Ford, Leyland and bakery workers Carter now on strike if their living standards are not to be further savaged by the international bankers.

And in fighting for their full claims, workers must also take up the struggle to remove the IMF's British representatives-the Callaghan-Healey leadership -from the Labour Party, and establish leadership responsive to the interests of the working class.

Spread and coordinate the strikes!

For a sliding scale of wages!

Build councils of action!

Kick out Callaghan and

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Viard. DIOTO • Andrew