Scab Troops in Glasgow

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The Labour-controlled City Council in Glasgow voted on Saturday to ask the government to send troops to break the nineweek old strike of 350 dust cart drivers, out in defence of a living wage. The counc! used the tale that they had "no alternative" because the growing piles of rubbish dancerous to health"

It is ciear however that a politi cal attack has been launched against the drivers in order to protect the Labour government's treacherous social contract. The deliberate use of troops as an organised scabbing force is designed to beat the drivers into sub mission, as well as establish a pre. cedent for strike-breaking on a much wider scale.

ACTION As we go to press the drivers were about to meet to consider action against the military intervention on Wednesday. One thing that stands out clearly is that they have been left wide open to this attack by the class-collaboration of the T&GWU leadership two have refused to make the strike ficial and have made no responsi o the Council's clear determination to smash the strike, other than he inadequate response of Alex itson, T&GWU National Officer, who said the implications of the move were "very grave".

GENERAL STRIKE

The back-pedalling of the bureaucracy is matched by the leisurely attitude of the local Trades Concil, which has called an emergency meeting for Wednesday evening -a whole day after the use of troops is scheduled to begin.

Every class conscious worker will reject with contempt the pitiful pretexts used by Glasgow Labour councillors for this action, and the Labour ministers responsible for sending in the troops. The sharpest fight must be taken up in the Labour movement to hound out these scabs and replace them with peopl prepared to defend the working class. The call must go up throughout the T&GWU and all unions to support the drivers, to make the strike official, and to ensure their fight is not broken by this attack on trade unionism.

General strike action is called for to defend the unions against this latest attack by the state.

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Lon Nol's troops collect dead after attack by liberation furces. Page The determined resistance of carworkers in the giant Renaul: plants in the Paris area made itself felt throughout French politics during March. Renault workers faced a concerted management campaign for lay offs and short-time working, and an equally determined attempt to victimise and sack militants.

At the Le Mans plant managemen unilaterally posted notices cutting the time of 4,200 production workers by four hours a shift. The workers affected replied by working the full shift. Since (like most French workers) they are monthly paid, the full crisis in the plant is suspended till towards the end of the month, when an angry and solid reaction is expected if manage ment attempts to carry out the nay-cuts threatened.

MILITANTS

At the Billancourt plant (centre struggle during the general strike against De Gaulle in May and June, 1968), management served sacking notices on seventeen militants -three of whom are shop stewards -several of them Africans and Algerians. The main unions, including the Stalinist-led General Confedera tion of Labour (CGT) took a position against the sackings, but without proposals for action.

Unofficial stoppages have taken place both at the Le Mans plant (where a mass demonstration was held a week ago and at Cleon. Management has added to its attacks by flatly refusing to negotiate on a 250 franc (about E23) per month flat rate pay increase (in any case insufficient to keep up with the MACHINE US Defence Secretary James Schlesinger last week unambiguously repeated his war threa against the Arab countries. I think we should recognise that circumstances can change very rapidly, and in circumstances in which the American people feel their interests are being dramatically affected they would be no more averse to the use of power - of military power - than they were in the period after Pearl Harbour', he said in an interview last week.

Schlesinger's interview came as Congressional haggling over his 104 billion dollar defence budget for 1976 reaches its height. He speaks of course, not for the American 'people, but for the US and international imperialists. With Ford and Kissinger, he hopes to steer through Congress a package that will limit spending on nuclear weapons - now being negotiated with the Kremlin in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks' (SALT) - and set much greater resources free for the US to directly attack revolutionary and liberation movements world-wide. The issue at stake in US backing for the Lon Nol regime in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Pehn was 'the questioning of the fidelity of American commitments, and that, I think, is the most impor tant aspect.

US imperialism, with Schlesinger's military planning and Kissinger's flying diplomacy working hand-incost of living), and with a series of one-day lock-outs at the Sandouville, Flins and Saint-Jean-de-la-Ruelle factories. The question of a fight for workers control of production has been posed in this complex of struggles, with management claiming - against union evidence to the contrary - that 'shortage of parts justifies their actions.

Background to the struggles in Renault is accelerating inflation and mounting unemployment in the French economy. Both Commi nist Party leader Georges Marchais, and Socialist Party leader Mitterand have been forced to put Renault at the centre of their main political speeches. But they have limited hemselves to demanding that Gaulist Prime Minister Chirac more realistically'. step in to make Renault negotiate Chirac, for his part has made it clear that management are acting in line with government policy, as explained by him recently to the company's president.

The Stalinist and social-democra tic officials in the unions have no policy to defend Renault workers Edmond Maire, leader of another main national union (the CFDT) put it, Renault's refusal to negotiate is carrying the unions into the Sea of Storms'. All he could propose was that "We believe in human will, and its determining influence on the development of the crisis. As if the crisis was just something in the heads of worker and management, which would go away if they thought about some¡hing else!

It is the strength of the working class, especially in the great plants, and its refusal to hear the burden of the economic crisis and inflation, which lies behind the long-running sniping-match between Communist Party and Socialist Party chiefs on the interpretation of their electoral *common programme" (the present hand, is desperate to restore backing and confidence for their reactionary and puppet regimes world. wide. The crises in Indochina and the Middle East now come together in Schiesinger's plan for a massive bulld-up of US forces in the Indian Ocean, centred on the British island of Diego Garcia. It is the need to invade suddenly with large numbers of ground troops that is the key factor, not the reported increase in Societ forces in the Indian Ocean. While the US has about 200,000 troops in the Far East, and effective control of the 800,000 NATO men in Western Europe and the Mediterrancan, have only a few hundred in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.

PERSIAN GULF

Schlesinger stressed that Most of the industrialised world is dependent on the tlow of petroleum out of the Persian Gulf. The dominatio of the oil resources of the Persian Gulf area would dramatically alter the configuration of world politics. He added that the cut off, by Congress, of military aid to Turkey in January had been 'an extraordinary event. US military schemes include not only an increased presence in the Indian Ocean and the surrounding states, but plans to increase the forces manpower by almost a quarter - from the present 2,100,000 men - by 1977, and to greatly expand military airlifting capacity so that, for example an entire Army division could be transported from the United States to Western Burope every few days. Similar plans are afoot for the troops in Japan, South Korean Pacific islands.

"AID"

Litary force it of the pi tary and co form of the coalition which gave Mitterand 49 per cent of the poll in the presidential election following Pompidou's death).

The 'common programme" is in fact a recipe for Popular Front betrayals, tying the workers parties "liberal" parties of the bourgeo thus nreventing the adoption of a socialist programme. Its vague and reactionary character is producing splits even among the top Stalinist ARMY On March 6th Marchais was torcec to step in and repudiate a letter to President Giscard d'Estaing from Henri Fizbin, leader of the Paris Communist Party federation. The Paris bureaucrats stepped into line soon cough, and the CP leadership set about 'mobilising the rank-and-file behind a series of meetings culminating in the March 19th protest against the increase in petrol prices. which now together with value adde tax, cuts deep into workers" pay packets and into local government social spending.

On other fronts, too, the 'common programme' is showing itself increasingly tattered. Following widespread demonstrations by army conscripts in support of their political freedoms to which the government replied with a cabinet reshuffle placing General Bigeard, notorious for his role against the FLN in Algeria, in the Ministry of Defence- CP and Socialist Party leaders vied with each other in proclaiming their patriotic loyalty to the 'national" forces. But on March 13th Marchais - reflecting the pressure from Moscow - was forced to attack right-wing Socialist Party leaders for "deviating' from the 'common programme on the independence of the French nuclear strike force.

These reactionary positions on the forces of the state are the most open expression of the class-collaborationist character of the Stalinists and Socialists' "left unity'.

tinues to grow as the US struggles to prop up 'sympathetic' ments. one of the things brought into the open by the scandals and investigations concerning the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been the enormous role of the highly-secret National Security Agency (NSA). Spending over a thousand million dollars a year, the NSA is officially restricted to intercepting and decoding telecommunications. NSA personnel were recently evacuated from a station in northern Ethiopia as the Eritrean Liberation Forces in the area gained ground against the Addi: Ababa regime. The NSA post was set up in 1960, the US Senate was told, following an agreement to supply 147 million dollars of military aid to the (later deposed) Ethiopian *emperor' Haile Sclassic, (for background see feature in Socialist Press of February 20th). One of the top priorities of US foreign policy is now to restore "security" to the southern exit to the Red Schlesinger THE END DOMINO The tremendous advances of the Khmer Rouge liberation forces in Cambodia during February and March have shaken all the US-backed puppet regimes in the area.

As the Khmer Rouge - fighting almost unaided, with only a trickle of help from China and North Vietnam - tightened their grip on the Cambodian capital of Phnom Pehn, administration officials in Washineton began to revive the "domino' theory: that even the most corrupt and shaky of puppet regimes must be propped up at all costs, less their collapse fracture American foreign policy as a whole.

The "domino" thoery does represent the most realistic outlook of Us capitalist politicians. The successes of the Cambodian liberation fighters have immediately strengthened the struggle against US imperi lism throughout South-East Asia.

Capitals to to ta on onal in a week, despite massive airlifts of men and ammunition by the Thieu government. In Thailand, Cambodia's western neighbour, th Gerry-built coalition of Seni Pramc giving access to the Israeliports in the Sinai peninsula.

WAR US military planning, in the teeth of an economic crisis in which domestic 'welfare proammes are being savagely cut, ows with crystal clarity how capitalist crisis accelerates the drive towards war. The CIA 0w provides President Ford with a aily computerised calculation o 1e chances of war in the Middle Fast. Immediately before Kissinger's latest tour it was running at 60 per cent - ie. more than evens! The worl-wide role of US imperialism now demands of workers everywhere a principl struggle for unity on revolutiona policies.

OPPOSE

The Britisit Labour and trade union movement must oppos the maintenance of a standing capitalist army tied into NAT and must demand that the Lal government withdraw all US T tary facilities, including those the Indian Ocean.

ollapsed only a week after it was ormed, just eighteen months after the military regime was ousted by student demonstrations. This was despite Pramoj's promise to remov the 23,000 US air force men stationed in the country. And the next attempt to form a coalition, led by Pramoj's brother, immediately got embroiled in accusations that the narliamentary hallot was 11880...

The compromise Laos governmen a coalition of the Communist Party and capitalist politicians - is cleari threatened by the developments in the rest of Indochina. And liberation forces continue to press forward in Burina and the Phillipines.

KOREA

Even the South Korea regime -solidest bastion of US imperialism in Asia since the 1950s - feels itself at risk. As the ambassador in Washington expressed it: • ... we look at the American dilemma this way: where will the US draw the line in resisting communist pressure? The question eventually boils down to the suggestion that maybe all of Asia is kind of inscrutable to the US, and that the line should he drawn in the Middle Eas and Europe.

It is this "pressure, expressed in the victories and popular support of the Khmer Rouge, that is forcing the divisions among American ruling class politicians to crisis point, and opening the door to further international blows against imperialism.

Polish: Prime Minister Piotr JarosLewice has admitted tha the country's economy faces •severe crisis, comparable to the situation which forced a Shange of leadership following strikes against food prices by Danzig shipworkers.

Speaking on International Wome: Day' (March 6th), he said in Warsaw that the government had taken "necessary and efficient steps" in the previous few days to control the supply and prices of meat, milk and other dairy products. His statement followed demonstrations against shortages, especially in butchers' shops, by housewives. Armed militia men were reportedly needed to disperse some of the demonstrations Jaroszewicz told his audience that *We are counting on your understanding and your patience at a time when we must pass through a period full of difficulties. Blaming the weather for some shortages or supply, ne went on to indicate that the state was revising its purchasing policy for dairy products to even out "fluctuations" in supply But, as every Polish housewife kno the other side of the 'shortages is an almost universal black market in foods, on which those who can afford it can buy as much as they want.

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"hurs LEAGUE?

John