Leamington: Trades Council Gives Lead Cil Gives Lead

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A special meeting of Warwick and Leamington Trades Council has backed an ASTMS resolution calling for a demonstration in Leamington against Robert Relf and the present racialist campaign to be held on Saturday June 19th.

Relf, a self-confessed Nazi who has a ten year long record of racist violence, and his supporters, including the British Movement (who consider the National Front to be Jew-ridden') and the fascist National Party (who stood a candidate in recent local elections in Warwick), have been using his case to try to split black and white workers in the town.

In Automotive Products, the biggest factory in the area, the right-wing leadership of the Shop Stewards Committee have done nothing to stop the fascists circulating their petition for Relf's release and making racist propaganda.

And an Indian Workers. Association leader claimed last week that an unwritten deal between management and some stewards in the plant • now barred the hiring of coloured workers.

These events make the Trades Council's initiative extremely important. A strong trade-union lead (which has been completely lacking on a national level) can open the way to clearing racists out of the labour movement.

7,000 leatlets are to be distributed through trade union branches and plant committees, calling on all workers to demonstrate, and pointing out the divisive effects of fascism and the responsibility of the Labour government for the bad housing, low wages and unemployment that the racists seek to blame on black workers and which have opened the door to racism.

Tom Litterick, MP for Selly Oak in Birmingham, who poses as a 'left' MP, has been invited to address the rally that will end the demonstration.

This will be a test of whether he will come out with more than the conventional anti-fascist phrases, and take up the fight to remove the Labour right wing and end their policies.

The refusal of the lefts' up to this point to carry out such a fight is a clear indication of the need for new leadership.

The local MP Dudley Smith (a right-wing Tory) has also been asked to speak. Although he sits on the Community Relations Council he is notorious for his antiimmigration stance, which he has reiterated recently in the local press. He is correctly hated by Indian workers locally and would disgrace a trade union platform. There are no grounds to justify the presence of Tories other employers' representatives in the fight against racism.

It is a class question which can only be resolved through the independent mobilisation of working class strength against the employers. It is those who hold workers back from this fight that provide the breeding ground of racialism.

Indian workers are keen to demonstrate if support from white workers is forthcoming.

Mobilisation for the march in every factory and estate is imperative, so that the fight for a new programme and new leadership can move forward, destroying any foothold the fascist parties may haye gained amongst backward workers.

Demonstration assembles 10.30am Saturday 19th June, Eagle Recrea:

tion Ground (opp. Flavel's)

Clarence Street, Leamington.