[The economic record which Simon praised so loudly…]

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The economic record which Simon praised so loudly is this: unemployment in Santiago has now risen on official figures to 20% of workers; the rate of inflation remains this year over 30% a year; wages still fail to keep up; last year the average real wage fell another 3% and is now less than half what is estimated as subsistence level.

Production and exports however, according to the latest figures, are still falling, sand Chile remains in a deep economic slump in which the working class has been reduced to extreme material privation.

It is little wonder that the regime is having problems selling firms nationalised by the Allende government back to the capitalists.

They are already paying huge subsidies to firms : at present in private ownership.

Simon's visit brought new hope of large scale US aid.

But meanwhile, 12,000 miles away in Damascus, the Chilean dictatorship began to look for alternative economic help.

There the Ambassadors to Syria Chile and the Soviet Union held Law number 21,297, signed two weeks ago by Argentina's new dictator General Videla, authorises the establishment of government committees to make recommendations about trade unions and the right to strike.

These problems have taken on a sudden urgency with a major outbreak of working class resistance to the regime's economic policies: centred on the Renault factory in Cordoba.

A go-slow of 4,000 workers was met, under government prompting by a management lock-out.

The protest began over the management's refusal to grant a wage increase.

Since the regime seized power on March 24th, inflation has continued at well over 30% a month while wages have been frozen.

The economic cabinet has now authorised a wage rise of a derisory 15% from June Ist, together with a month's advance of part of the normal half yearly bonus. These moves still leave real wages cut by around half since the coup.

The regime realises that the valuable time it gained due to the abject surrender of the Peronist trade union leadership at the time of the coup, will soon be lost unless it can curtail the potential power of the labour movement at local and factory level.

COMMITTEES

This has been growing through the clandestine establishment of Coordinating Committees of unions and factory delegates which in some areas have effectively replaced the moribund CGT organIsation.

The military dictatorship is preparing to fight the battle on several fronts.

It has contemptuously dismissed overtures from the old Peronist CGT leaders, well aware that their support among the rank and file has collapsed.

There are signs, however, that they are prepared to try some kind RELAND Six members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary have been executed by the Provisionals in a period of eight days. Against that should be contrasted the number of British soldiers shot - only five this year in the whole of the six counties.

As the number of troops in the Province is reduced, so the RUC are most reluctantly being pushed forward into the front line to replace them. Their old rifles are being replaced by high velocity SLR's and their vulnerable land rovers are to be replaced by heavily armoured patrol vehicles.

To carry through this process of what is called "ulsterisation" of the national struggle, the Northern Ireland Office forced out the Ulster-born chief constable of the RUC Jamie Flanagan and appointed in his stead a reliable Englishman from Scotland Yard, Kenneth Newman.

Under pressure from within the RUC even Newman has been obliged to retard the process.

Merlyn Rees, the Secretary of State for Ireland continues to deny that a British withdrawal is contemplated. But for the Provisionals and what deludingly calls itself 'informed opinion' a withdrawal is aiready under way and the militarisation of the RUC is only the latest proof of it.

The attirade of the Provisionals towards these indirmous deveiop of deal with former Buenos Aires governor Victorio Calabrio, a leader of the metal workers union UOM.

Calabrio and his allies emerged as a mildly left-talking opposition to the orthodox Peronists before the coup. They. now claim to control 40 out of the 100 unions in the CGT confederation - and there is every sign that they are ready to do a deal.

A growing numbet of Argentina's four million trade unionists are now fully conscious that they face a major battle for organisational, economic and physical survival, in which their traditional leaders will be on the side of the enemy.

The weapon the enemy is increasingly using against the workers is the right wing death squads of the 'Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance' (AAA). These are largely controlled by generals of the regime and have been i making numerous murderous attacks on workers, especially local factory delegates and their families.

The regime's tightening censorship laws forbid the publication of information on these terrorist obs crisis ments was made clear by the IRA leadership in a recent statement:

"We wish to state explicitly that no distinction will be drawn between regular British troops and other branches of the Crown forces. Police, UDR and civilian employees of the British government are all classed as legitimate targets and will be struck down when and wherever possible"

Every such blow is regarded by the Protestants as an undermining of the link. with Britain and produces in reply sectarian attacks on Catholics such as the bombing of Clancy's Bar in Charlemont which left three Catholics dead.

IRA REPLY

In its turn the IRA reply with increasingly sectarian actions such as the murder of the Dobson brothers in Moy, shot in the office of their egg packing station last Monday.

With this simplistic belief in the efficacy of bombs and bullets the Republicans can make no political capital out of Ree's declaration that not a penny will be spent to prevent growing unemployment in the North.

At the Lord Mayor's Show Belfast on May 22nd Rees said:

...one thing I must tell you is that there is absolutely no spare money in the public coffers. Government money does not grow on trees"

Occupation, expropriation and groups and their activities, but their recent murders are known to have run into the hundreds.

In spite of the murder of some of their militants by the death squads, however, the Argentinian Communist Party continues to give Videla's regime critical support.

The Cuban news agency Prensa Latina , however, after weeks of total silence on the situation in Arggentina has finally started publishing the fact that the regime has made thousands of arrests.

The position of the Argetinian Stalinists is a scandal rivalling their support for the Gandhi regime in India.

In the building of new leadership in the underground organisations now emerging in Argentina, the political lessons of these betrayals must be drawn, along with the need to break once and for all all links with the Peronist movement. A political party must be built to represent the independent interests of the working class.

Immediate steps must be taken to provide forms of workers' defence against the AAA and other murder squads. nationalisation represent. the only policies that can defend jobs. and the fight for them . poses question of the border in a far more concrete way than the utopian scheme for a federal and capitalist republic put forward by the Provisionals.

The importance to Protestant workers of the link with Britain explains why a united protestant response against direct rule has been impossible,to secure.

Since the Convention broke down the petty bourgeois politician Ernest Baird has incessantly called for rebellion. More recently another Loyalist• politician Edmond Thompson has said that "to maintain the link with Britain is to actively assist in the downfall of Northern Ireland"

But while the Protestant working class resist being dragged into a civil war and an independent Ulster run by chemists and other shopkeepers the Bairds and the Thompsons are generals without an army.

The UVF intensely suspicious of 'their loyalist politicians have called a ceasefire in which "for three months they would sit on the fence and observe and act only im defence"

Our demand for the immediate withdrawal of troops, to be iziea up in the English in are must be widened to undermine the link with Bit of advancing in Ireland boc: lori and South our programme defend jobs.