Feeling grows on pay

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The Boilermakers union has lodged a 37% pay claim for shipyard workers-pointing to the probability of a steep rise in inflation later this year.

The claim is due for settlement on January 1. But Boilermakers' leader, extreme right winger John Chalmers made it clear that this apparent militancy on pay is not connected to any willingness to defend jobs and conditions against the Tory onslaught.

He told the Financial Times that the union recognised that in return for government subsidies to shipbuilding:

"our members will be expected to lift their levels of productivity and, in addition, perhaps be much more flexible in the patterns of their present working practices."

With 8,000 jobs immediately threatened in the shipbuilding industry the 37% pay claim once again underlines the gulf between the objective needs of shipyard workers and the political treachery of their existing leaders-a gulf that can only be bridged in the struggle for a revolutionary leadership. TO BALL HIM OUT AGAIN TUST LIKE SAT ...HELL BE EXPECTING TRADE UNIONISTS 1 YEAR'S CONFERENT WHINING ABOUT DEMOCRACY GETS SHORT THRII NONG AN NI Chalmers The strike action which has held up telephone bills for over three months looks certain to continue following an overwhelming vote by computer operators to reject an 18% pay offer.

A meeting of nearly CPSA members also voted 625 to 67 to censure their union leaders for recommending the offer which would leave them still behind the pay of Post Office engineers and the 24% increases obtained by government computer staff.

A further 45,000 members PHOTO: Chris Davies, Report of the CPSA are being balloted on the offer. The SCPS data processing branch is campaigning for rejection.

Bureaucrats had an easier task in piloting through acceptance of a 9.6% pay deal at a Special Conference of NALGO local government delegates.

But despite assurances from chief negotiator Mike Blick that "we see no alternative to acceptance" , and a warning that the only action that would achieve any improvement was ail-out action, the offer was grudgingly accepted only. by 260,000 to 179,000-a margin of 3-2.

An amendment had unsuccessfully called for action to secure the union's original 15% pay claim.

WHY CAN'T BASNETT AND THE BOYS GET THEIR FINGERS OUT AND STITCH UP THE RULES OF THI FLAMING PARTY-CHUCK THE SOCIALISTS OUT.

...ON THEIR EARS!!!

...THOSE POWER WORKERS HAVE VOTED TO

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more CUTS Sandinista guerrillas on the rooftops of Matagalpa workers' rights, agrarian reform, exproThese issues are most clearly of property held by all northern Nicaragua where the US imperialism and the estab'Marxist' factions of the FSLN lishment of a constituent assemTen years ago British troops were sent into Bogside and Derry to put their heel on the growing anger and resistance in the Catholic ghettoes to attacks by Orange gangs and B Specials.

The British government, Socialist Worker and 'the civil liberty marchers all claimed that their role was to prevent The vicious face of imperialist troops was not long in making itself clear to the most abject impressionists.

Today those same revolu. tionaries' of the SWP sign a platform statement of the Young Liberals which complains of the cost to the British taxpayer, and seeks to bring the Unionists to the negotiating table' They have been joined in their support for the pro-imperialist position by the IMG, Big Flame and several left MPs as well as by Brendan Gallagher, whose treatment at the hands of the British state might well have given him pause for thought.

The WSL will be campaigning for the biggest possible mobilisation for the march to intervene with a clear anti-imperialist position.

We will be demanding the immediate withdrawal of troops, political status for republican prisoners and self-determination for the Irish people as a whole.

We call for the campaign against British troops and imperialist oppression to be taken up in the labour movement in Ireland North and South and in Britain.

In particular the British labour movement has, as one of its most impurtant tasks, the removal of British troops by a mass campaign including blacking of supplies to the army, and mass mobilisations against the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

The crushing defeat suffered by the Somoza dictatorship which brutally dominated Nicara gua for 45 years is a major • setback for US imperialism.

The victory of the Sandinist National Liberation Front (FSLN) in the civil war will inevitably spur on the mass struggles against dictatorships in the rest of Central America and alter the balance of power in this critically important region.

The war has been long and bloody. We salute the heroism of the masses and honour the thousands of dead.

At the same time, Socialist Press has consistently argued and will continue to argue that the dominant Tercerista wing of the FSLN and the provisional junta it has established are bourgeois forces, which are palpably incapable of and now explicitly opposed to the overthrow of imperialist capital in Composition If there has been any doubt over this during the course of the war it must now be dispelled. The facts are supremely clear. •The first obvious factor is the composition of the Junta itself. This body contains only one member of the FSLN itself la tercerista'), the other members being an ex-member of the national chamber of commerce, a large landowner, a former employee of the World Bank and a millionaire sugar plantation owner.

Secondly, the Junta openly reflects the increasing 'entente' between the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie and US imperialism, not only through the inclusion of the opposition capitalist groups in the new government but also through its'policy of witholding from the total destruction of Somoza's repressive apparatus.

This is most apparent in the concession of 'guarantees' for Somocista butchers and the integration of sectors of the National Guard within the 'new' army.

Minister

This process has already advanced to the extent that a former leading commander of the Guard, Colonel Bernardino Larios, has been appointed Minister of Defence.

Most important of all, of for socialist policies; we expect of it populist gestures, constant manoeuvre ana a 'stream oT •mal ideological motifs designed to confuse and disorientate the masses.

Yet Nicaragua is still in turmoil and, as in all uprisings and revolutions, the balance of class forces is in a considerable state of flux.

The working class and the peasantry, despite having suffered enormous losses, have been awakened and mobilised in a movement which, albeit directed specifically against Somoza and the 'Yankees' openiv poses the questions of collectivization, militias and soviet power. all out offensive the capitalist market.

Moreover, this measure has not been the result of action by independent organs of the workers and peasants.

. We reiterate our call for the 'intransigent' sections of the FSLN to break with the popular frontism of the Terceristas and with the bourgeois parties.

These: parties promise . not only the suppression of the mass movement but also the reconstruction of the full imperialist mandate in Nicaragua.

Hence, besides launching a campaign tor Tul democratic ammanian In. Ja priation without compensation As the Tory government last week set its sights on slashing a further staggering £4,000 million from public spending, British capitalism was already lurching out of control down the road to recession, roaring inflation and 2 million unemployed.

Latest forecasts of trends over the next year vary, but all predict a sharp upward leap in unemployment, while OECD reports an actual fall in Gross National Product.

On every front the Tories' frantic efforts to raise the profitability of private industry -now at an ali-time low-means rising prices, coupled with a war on jobs and hard-won working conditions.

Month to In the steel industry. the government, is to take the unprecedented step of providing finance oniy on a month-tomonth basis in order to ram through a savage programme of cuts, closures and speed-up designed to reverse BSC's current £350 million losses within nine months.

But in the public services, a wholesale massacre of both jobs and basic rights is inevitable at a time when VAT increases and massive inflation are combined with Labour and now. Tory spending cuts.

Already the London Health Service faces decimation in frantic moves to cut. "overspending" (see page 10); other Area Health Authorities are also seeking immediate cutbacks in staff and services.

And education too is falling under the Tory sledgehammer, with plans for wholesale redundancies and "natural wastage" for domestic and teaching staff.

Overseas students, too, face crippling penalties as a result of the £200 million cut in education subsidies, which will raise annual fees for foreign students to over £3,000.

But it is not only jobs and services that are hit by Tory policies.

The profitable public services-the Post Office, Gas and Electricity-in which the exploitation of a low paid workforce has created a massive surplus-are to impose huge new price increases, Managers The cash accruing from these inflationary price hikes will be used by the Tories to finance their tax handouts to employers, managers and foremen.

----- pull-quotes -----

THROWOT WHAT?! SOCIALIST £ 4000 m

SSE SOMOZA OUSTED: NOW FORSOC ALST

belaund: troops OuTt now