CHINA'S "CIVIL PHOTO: Chris Davies. Report WAR"

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ONLY STRIKE ACHION CAN STOP THE CUTS!

Pipe-dreams, wage cuts and dole queues - these were the only prospects offered in New Year's messages from the Healey-Callaghan government, immersed as it is in efforts to restore the profits of crisis-ridden British capitalism.

In this they are still backed to the hilt by the TUC leaders, pledged at all costs to preserve the Social Contract.

For this reason the central issue facing workers in 1977 is to organise the swelling resistance to these leaders, around policies in defence of jobs and wages.

SIX MONTHS

There can scarcely be a worker anywhere who takes Healey seriously when he claims that "we have got a difficult six months" before things look up again. How many times have we heard this from Labour and trade union bureaucrats determined to force through further cuts in living standards?

Meanwhile, of course, British inflation continues to soar despite the slashed value of the wage packet,. and capitalism internationally shows no sign of upturn - trade is already stagnating and investment falling.

All this means that if we accepted Healey's line workers would confront not six months, but an endless prospect of cuts in public services, huge rises in food and other prices, mounting redundancies and wages held down by the TUC not only until July (under the 42% deal but after July under strict limits to be written into a Phase Three of the O.K. JACK...RAM HOME PHASE 3 Social Contract. complete determination 1976 gave an idea of the deter- at all costs. mination of the TUC leaders to hold down wages - as manoeuvre after manoeuvre was used to secure a stage-managed 17-1 majority for the 42% limit at the June Special Congress, despite the opposition of the rank and file.

Since then the frontal attacks on the Seamen (with the threat to expel the NUS from the TUC and smash it by organised scabbing if defence of the basic wage. the leadership called strike action against the 42% and on the erupt on wages in 1977 Rubery Owen workers (engineers threatened with discipline by the AUEW; and electricians browbeaten by an unprecedented intervention by union officials including TUC chief Murray and two against the 4½% limit! union Presidents, all seeking to end sectional strikes which threaten pay laws) show both the hostility within the working class to wage control and their leaders the cuts in social services.

TUC leaders have been careful to limit this "fight" on all these questions to protest - marches, token strikes and lobbies divorced from all-out strike action to force a change of government policy.

They know only too well that the cuts and unemployment are a vital part of the Social Contract on which the Labour government has chosen to stake its existence.

ELECTION If the Social Contract is smashed by workers on any of these issues, it will mean the defeat of the Labour government and the prospect of a General Election bringing the Tories to power.

We stand of course in opposition to the return of a Tory government. But if the right wing Labour leaders consciously jeopardise the movement by implementing a programme of Tory policies then the responsibility for the loss of Labour support and-the return of a Tory government must lie with them, and with the spineless "lefts" who refuse to remove them, not with the workers who resist these policies.

In any event, even the Social Contract cannot for long save this completely reactionary Labour administration. The crisis of British capitalism rushes ahead far faster than their desperate attempts to patch it together.

At almost any time another sharp collapse could take place, forcing the government to seek further loans from the IMF -on terms which could force a General Election.

Whatever proves to be the case trade unionists need to enter 1977 armed with a programme adequate to the task of confronting not just the employer, but Such tensions within the trade also TUC and government. unions must increase as the INDEPENDENT pressure for wages grows with the rising tide of inflation. Certain The first task is to mobilise the bureaucrats like the miners' independent strength of the leaders have already sensed this unions. While the bureaucrats and set out to head off their move in to enforce dictatorial rule members into 'fringe benefit' by full-time officials over the rank claims making cynical use of the and file, dragging stewards and legitimate demand for early retire- convenors into management roles ment to take the place of a through 'participation' schemes, the fight must be taken up for the Despite this, struggles must regular election of all full time officials, for democratic struggles which, though they may procedures in the unions and the at first seem isolated, reflect the complete independence of the feelings of the mass of workers, inions trom employer and state. and open up the possibility of the 4t the same time the following outbreak widescale action demands to defend the working class must be fought for in every This movement on wages inter- union Conference in 1977: connects also with resistance to all *End wage controls now! For attacks now launched by the substantial catching up increases employers on the working class - Cont'd on Back Page Col. 5 in particular unemployment and The carefully selected and censored reports of political and armed struggle in several parts of China now being issued by government-run sources give only a very partial picture.

Like the grotesque series of accusations which continue to mount against the Shanghai-based 'gang of four • arrested last designed the brand a ay cd aly designed opposition to the regime of Hua Kuo-feng and the army chiefs as the work of provocateurs, terrorists and counter-revolutionaries.

At the same time the selective release of information now by the official media reveals two imporant things.

Firstly, Hua's leadership has found it impossible to deal with opposition province by province, and is now trying to head off the spread of news and agitation through unofficial channels.

And secondly, the struggles are taking place on a vast scale.

Szechwan, the vast western agricultural province bordering on Tibet, with a population of 100 millions, was the scene of civil war' and fighting in the major city of Paoting, 100 miles south of Peking was quelled only by army intervention.

It is said also that industrial production throughout Kiangsi province (south central China) was paralysed by 'disruption' • All such news points to political resistance on a vast scale, confirming that the grip of Hua's regime remains precarious.

And the substance of Continued on Page 2 Hotel workers fight for unions....... ...Page 4 Syndicalism and the British working class...... Page 7 The Artist Under Stalinism:

Shostakovitch... Page 6 Defend Print Jobs Page 9 Plus supplement The Fight for Revolutionary Leadership - Part One.

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fage 2 SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday Sth January, 1977 ONAL NELES last June 500 blacks have been killed compared with the official police figure of about 250.

Of the 500 dead, 376 were residents of Soweto. A sample of "normal" life under apartheid was given by the police report that over have simply "disappeared"

In the last two weeks about 100 people detained under the intamously repressive Internal Security Act (the successor to the Suppression of Communism Act) have been "freed"

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