New Broadsheet Old Cp Betray
Socialist Press1976 1976-10-20Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 5 →
Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: expect misread words, and now and then a caption or a line from a neighbouring story. For anything you quote, read the scan.
Scan page 5
available from WSL, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NIV5 1HR The Communist Party is at present selling a 'Broadsheet' on the motor industry which brings out very clearly the reactionary policies of this organisation.
Printed in July, the Broadsheet gives some idea of how part of the Communist Party is moving to the right, hand in hand with the reformist trade union leadership. These moves to the right are in line with the requirements of capitalism.
The Broadsheet refers to:
...the attempt to use new investment as a stick to beat the workers. One of the first acts by the Leyland bosses was to threaten the witholding of further investment unless the workers complied with demands for more production and that they should forego their right to use whatever action they saw fit to remedy industrial disputes.
This blackmail had the objective of intensifying exploitation through speed-up on the one hand and on the other the elimination of industrial action. In short, management used the fact that the government had put up the capital to try to force the workers into the position of tamely surrendering all their hard-won rights and trade union organisation which would leave them powerless to resist any further attacks.
The other side of the pressures put on Leyland workers was the threat that, unless they did what the bosses wanted, Leyland would be denied the new government aid and it would fold up. This is pure bluff. The government and Leyland's bosses know full well that the labour movement and people would not tolerate such a step. Because of the political, economic and social consequences, that would arise, no government would dare take such a step."
STAR
If this was the position of the Communist Party in July, look what Derek Robinson, Convenor of the Leyland Longordge works, leading member of the CP and writer in the Morning Star has done within four months of this statement.
BATTLE NE TROTSAYISN PRESS UPLE LEAD BLAT Documents of the Opposition expelled from the Workers Revolutionary Painty in 11974, wilmah account of the expulsions. Price pius 20p p&p was Robinson who moved on the Longbridge Joint Shop Stewards Committee a resolution that not only aimed at stopping any strike action but actually said that no section of workers would "impede production" until full procedure had been exhausted.
ULTIMATUM It was also Robinson, through the 'participation' committees who was recently instrumental in persuading the shop stewards and then balloting the workforce to accept managing director Whittaker's three-day ultimatum on proposais for a 40% improvement in productivity on the new Mini.
I these proposais - originating in the Leyland 'participation' machinery - do not amount to speed-nP They don't know what we don't know does.. must increase unemployment.
The rest of the Broadsheet contains the reactionary nationalist demands of the CP for the motor industry. These centre on import controls on the one hand, combined on the other with a vague call to: "extend links between motor workers in Britain and overseas so that all can unite in their common struggle against the multinationals."
NOT EXPLAINED How these two demands supposed to go together is not explained.
Import controls of course mean getting together with your "own" nation's employers. In this way they are fit company for the "participation" demands in the Broadsheet: "Using existing participation schemes in British Leyland to press for more investment." "Fight to extend participation schemes to all levels of the company so that trade unionists start to take decisions on the company's future."
This is the position that leads Robinson to line up with the employers in everyone of their attacks on the workers he is supposed to represent.
THE TRANSITIONAL The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International:..
BEHIND THE SMOKESCREEN (p&p: 10p)
TROTSKYISM TODAY BACK ISSUES "Fourth International - Problems and Tasks" • 15p "In Defence of a Great Revolutionary: James P. Cannon" by Tim Wolforth 10p "The Post-war Reconstruction of Capitalism" plus a reply to Wohlforth's article on Cannon.... .:.5p "The General Strike" 5p "The Significance of the Transitional Almost two weeks ago, on 9th October, Noel Jenkinson was found dead in his prison cell at Leicester.
It was there that he had been serving life-imprisonment for his alleged part in the Aldershot bombings of February 1972.
The official verdict is that he died of "natural" causes, but in reality his death was merely the climax of a recent wave of violence against prisoners.
Thus, on 2nd September, prisoners at Hull jail demonstrated against prison warder brutality; on 18th September, prison officers attacked Republicans held at Albany Jail, and at the coroner's inquest, Mr. Ian Glick, representing Mrs. Jenkinson, stated that Noel had recently been the victim of three vicious assaults by prison staff.
Yet the coroner refused to accept the statement and brought in a verdict of "death from natural TIM Leyland bodie causes"
This verdict can only please th British government. Noel's deat now means that his petition to th Court of Human Rights at Stra bourg will be dropped. And tha is especially convenient, given tha just six weeks ago, the same cour found Britain guilty of usin torture in Northern Ireland.
Noel Jenkinson had a fine recor as a trade unionist and as al opponent of British domination o ireland. Until 1962 he was member of the British Communis Party. Thereafter, he was a leadin militant in Holloway Bus Garage
----- pull-quotes -----
FOLKOSE THE
workers press SOCIALIST
An analysis of the sectarian politics of the WRP 40p