Steel bosses profit from US

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'We like this one... How far away are the school, train station, church, grocery of America is obviously a big name in the shipbuilding industry.

Lately, he's been getting in the news for two reasons: one, his company has been locked in battle with the ranks of Ironworkers Local 627 in San Diego, which he has been trying to bust through frame-ups and with the cooperation of the union's international that has recently put the militant local under trusteeship.

store and nuclear missile site?' The second reason Larry French is getting famous is that Ite, as a major spokesperson in his industry, is promoting enormous spending increases by the Navy to prepare for war.

The Reagan government has quickly adopted the view that the Navy will become a vital tool of American imperialism.

The Navy has received an increase of $9 billion in its budget from the new administration to buy new ships and aircraft, which is a 40% increase over what the Carter administration had requested.

NASSCO president French has been leading the shipbuilding industry's campaign to inject new funds into the Navy which will in turn sign contracts with the shipbuilders.

"I think," says French, "what the Reagan administration ought to be backing is a phased programme of increasing naval ship construction."

Small wonder that French thinks this, since, as noted in the February 1, 1981 Maritime Reporter, NASSCO has just received $19.8 million in order to refit tankers to comply with Department of Navy codes for ships in use in time of war and national emergency.

Now things are moving rather fast. By February 27 the Reagan regime announced that among the new batch of military "advisors" being sent to assist the military government in El Salvador will be an advisor from the Navy.

US and El Salvador navy vessels will be used to patrol the Gulf of Fonseca (the sea route between Nicaragua and El Salvador), which is the passage way of the alleged arms supply pipeline to the Salvadorean revolutionaries.

The US Navy will also be indispensible to American imperialism when the time comes for Reagan to dispatch thousands of troops backed by vital supply lines to what is quickly becoming the Vietnam of Central America.

The millions of workers and students who will soon be thrown into the national fand international) movement to oppose this war will be looking for ways to concretely stop this brutal intervention against the with the growing campaign to defend the right of NASSCO shipyard workers in San Diego to strike over safety issues, and to halt the attempts of Ironworkers International officials to put the local under trusteeship.

For the workers at NASSCO, the stepped up war production has meant the deaths of two workers at the shipyard, the jailing on trumped-up charges of three NASSCO workers, and government and company attempt to bust the union.

The anti-war campaign should also be brought into the NASSCO shipyard. As part of the campaign to defend Local 627, NASSCO workers should address. the entire anti-war movement and direct it against the shipyard owners, the Navy and the Reagan government.

NASSCO workers should prepare to join the nationally coordinated demonstration against the war and the draft that has been called on May 9 in San Francisco. At this demonstration and at the San Diego shipyard the following slogans should be raised:

*Strike against the War speed up and killings at the NASSCO shipyard.

*No NASSCO ships to El Salvador, or to supply operations in El Salvador.

*Build a Labour Party in California against anti-democratic trusteeship.

*Free , the NASSCO Three! any possible lengths, even if they seem absurd, to send the government back before parliaits responsibilities, must assume But neither Pertini nor anyone else can square the circle of Italian parliamentary politics.

Meanwhile, as the problem continues unresolved, the present government's survival still. depends on the CP-not because the CP votes for it in the way it used to, but because it won't on any important issue vote against it unless it can be certain in advance of losing the vote!

Reconstruct the Fourth Internetional !!

• No. l Nov. 1979 DISCUSSION BULLETIN 60p The Transitional Programme in Today's Class Struggle The founding programmatic document of the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee.

Available, price 80p

including postage, from WSL, BM Box 5277, London WC1N 3XX

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3y J. L. Mahon SS,