[government and their effects there has been a…]

Scan page 5

government and their effects there has been a huge response.

When the • national demonstration was called in November against the cuts, 80,000 workers poured into London from all over the country. And only four days later 20,000 demonstrated against one of the side-effects of Labour's reactionary policies when they responded to the Labour PartyTUC call to demonstrate against racialism, which feeds off the frustration and falling living standards created by the HealeyCallaghan government.

The wages policy itself has received some heavy blows. The seamen's vote for strike action against the social contract, together with the tenacity of the Trico women's 19-week strike for equal pay - toppling the verdict of the "Equal Pay" Tribunal, have snown the feeling on wages within the working class.

Police arrest pickets But what is clear now is that any serious struggle for' wages is a threat not only to the Social Contract but to the Labour government itself - even if such struggles begin with relatively few workers.

It is not necessarily the case that small scale struggles can easily be defeated. Precisely because such battles reflect the mood of the working class as a whole, the danger for the Labour leaders is that they could spread.

This was why the Rubery Owen and Salisbury Transmissions strikes were consciously blacked out for weeks on the mass media and why information оп рау demands in Fleet Street is so hard to come by.

MASS ACTION If this fact is lost on some within the labour movement it is not lost on the employers, who know that in today's conditions a clear lead from even a small section could explode into mass action against wage control.

No major working class party was calling for the downfall of De Gaulle before May-June 1968. but a General Strike erupted which shook the whole foundation 0i French early on In from anno make ¡CASUALTIES capitalism. The tensions in the British working class today make it possible to foresee such a development here in the coming period.

PRINCIPLED LEAD

Preparation for such a development means to prepare a principled leadership and a clear programme for the action of a mass movement. This means being ready to take on both the union leaders and the government in head-on confrontation whenever such struggles break out.

For this reason wherever mass action of this sort erupts we must call for the establishment of councils of action to be set up as delegate bodies through the local trade union and labour movement to lead the fight against the betrayals of the bureaucracy.

This call would go alongside the demand that the trade union leaders abandon the Social Contract and support and spread the action. At the same time, within the Labour Party, the fight would Contract and the removal the Callaghan-Healey leadership.

SELL OUT

Such a perspective will clearly be opposed by the Communist Party - whose line "no wage control after July" has been eagerly taken up by the right wing to obtain acceptance of the 5% deal now, and whose leading position in Leyland's Longbridge plant is used to force through a "no strike" agreement and advance acceptance of Company-dictated manning levels on the new Mini.

Meanwhile, on the question of redundancies, the Communist Party in UCS, far from giving a lead by fighting for occupation of the yard, argue for indefinite suspensions for 1,000 shipyard workers rather than mount any struggle for jobs.

ONLY INITIATIVE the same way, while speeches Healey and Callaghan and incements in the mini-budget it plain the Labour goversment intends to press forward with Phase Three after July, the Communist Party is attempting to divert workers away from the issue of wage controls - into debates on "differentials" or protests against the cuts.

Our Recall Conference on Wage Control and Union Demoinitiative on the wages front. It will discuss the perspectives put forward in this document and a programme of action on these key questions, to be taken up within the labour movement.

*REJECT WAGE CONTROLS NOW! For substantial catching up increases linked to the rising cost of living through a sliding scale of wages on a price index worked out by elected trade union committees.

*NO PUBLIC SPENDING CUTS! Wherever the cuts ale imposed there must be sustained strike action with demands that the local labour movement rally round with full support. The demand must be for the full service to be tees, and the nationalisation of public sector suppliers.

*NO REDUNDANCIES! Where the employers threaten redundancies the demand must be for work sharing on full pay - the total hours of work available divided between the whole workforce with no loss of earnings.

TJUBS MUK YUVIM! FOr Ine *TAnA rAy MATITITI P-. 11 recruitment of all unemployed, including the youth, into the trade unions in order that they can be organised in the fight for jobs alongside employed workers. For further education and training facilities to be available to all youth. For public works schemes under the control of the trade unions to be established. For full adult wages and conditions fot youth.

*OPEN THE BOOKS! When the employer argues he cannot afford a wage increase or to sustain the full workforce. the demand must be to force the firm to open its accounts and plans to an elected committee si cate utionists. This will eite 20:** = 3* is a bluff, and spur on the fight for jobs and wages, or show that the employer genuinely is bankrupt -in which case the firm must be Murray nationalised, under the management of the elected committee, with no compensation to the old owners.

*FOR WOMEN'S RIGHTS! The problem of equal pay is above all a problem of low pay and not to be solved by legislation but in the context of the fight against wage This fight is inseparable from the fight against bureaucracy. The fight must be taken up on the questions of the unionisation of women; the right to jobs for women and on the working conditions for women. From this flows the struggle for nurseries and abortion rights. We call for the. setting up of sub-committees from trade union bodies to fight on this perspective.

*STOP RACIALISM! Defend the black communities by the establishment of workers defence squads. Destroy the basis of racialism by attacking unemployment and inadequate social services - for a programme of public works under trade union management to provide jobs for the unemployed and much-needed houses and other amenities.

*NO TO BUREAUCRATIC DICTATORSHIP! For restoration of democratic procedures in every union. All full-time officials to be subject to recall, and regularly elected by the membership. No union official to be paid more than the average wage of the members he represents.

CAMPAIGN FOR DEMOCRACY IN THE LABOUR MOVEMENT Recall Conference WAGE CONTROL AND UNION DEMOCRACY Sunday March 27th, at 10am Digbeth Civic Hall Birmingham credentials (50p) and copie of this statement from: Kevin Lee, 44, Devonshire Road, Handsworth Wood, Birmingham 20.

On Sunday January 9th, about 1,000 demonstrators marched past the Home Office and the US Embassy to Hyde Park in protest over the threatened deportations of American journalists Philip Agee and Mark Hosenball.

The somewhat disappointing turnout, mainly consisting of journalists and left groups (including a six-member contingent [!] from the Workers Revolutionary Party) reflects the narrow base of trade union support so far won to this vital campaign as a result of half hearted action by NUJ officials.

"BRITISH SECURITY"

Home Secretary Merlyn Rees claims that Agee has acted against the interests of "British security" but he has consistently refused to give any particulars of the charges.

Agee spent last week before a hand-picked "independent" tribunal, reading a lengthy statement in which he tried to account for the whole range of his activities since beginning work on the CIA book.

Even under these circumstances the tribuna., resisted all his attempts to discover the charges. Only by observing at what points the panel took notes could Agee and his lawyers infer that they were "getting warm"

The hearings have now been suspended for three weeks in order to allow Agee to bring witnesses from the United States.

Meanwhile, the case of Mark Hosenball, a reporter for the Evening Standard, who has also written articles on the CIA, will be heard on January 19th under similar circumstances.

Neither the Home Office nor the CIA seem too interested in Hosenball (both must have known at the time he was charged that his father is General Counsel for NASA).

He seems to be a "sprat to catch a mackerel" , and is very likely to be let off to show how "judicious" and "impartial" Rees and company a Hosenball has listened to bad counsel and refused to have anything to do with the campaign for his and Agee's defence, preferring work through the corridors of power.

The issues involved in the deportation are far wider than the cases themselves. There is, first of all, the matter of democratic rights:

Agee is expelled , the status of every politically active foreigner in Britain will be in question.

FULL SUPPORT

And secondly the right of journalists not under the thumb of the capitalist press to report on the disruptive and reactionary actirities of the CIA and other covert orgat isations of imperialism must be defended.

The CIA devote large amounts of time and money to intertening in the labour movement. suppor:ing right wing trade union officials and MPs and are behind the Union bashing National Association for Freedom whose latest escapade mas to obtain an injunction against the UPW's week of blacking of communications with South Africa.

Every trade unionist should gitz full support to the morement to save Agee and Hosenball, to List out the CIA and to repeal the Immigration Act, only part of which is being used in this case, but which provides a battery of arracks on non-British workers.

Information and literature de available from the Agee Hosental Defence Committee. : o NCCL 186. Kings Cross Rozi. "Cl, to which donations and resolutions of support should also be seat.

Scan page 6

Stalinist stewards with Wedgewood Benn protest against Tory closure of UCS

----- pull-quotes -----

PHOTO: Chris Davles, Report PHOTO:

CUTS CAUSE CASUALTIES

STOP THE CUTS