The Real Infiltraturs

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nuclear policies of NATO, partly as a result of the thousands of pounds poured by the CDS into leaflets, journals, the salaries of a full-time executive and the expenses of a large team of field workers.

REFUSED TO PUBLISH Yet in his article Who were they travelling with?' (commissioned by the sunday Times, which then refused to publish it, Fletcher points out that the CDS never had a single subscription-paying member.

Rodgers told the committee that the money came from a number of small donations 'together with a large sum from a source which wished to remain anonymous.

The reason why the source wished to remain anonymous seems clear. There is little doubt that the Summ the ATA wat an ad probably via one of its front organisations, through which it has financed right-wing subversion in the labour movements of the world ever since the 1940s.

Fletcher's article (now published by Spokesman Books as part of The CIA and the Labour Movement) reveals nothing which was not already known, but it does pull together a lot of evidence to show how the right-wing Labour Party leaders have been consistent collaborators with the CIA.

This collaboration took place especially through three magazines - Sol Levitas's New Leader in the United States, Rita Hinden's Socialist Commentary, and Melvin Lasky's Encounter, all of them financed in one way or another by the CIA.

Tha Anu, london alana with

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Rodgers' campaign restored Labour backing for NATO dismally low as for socialists' illustrates the naivety "The Significance of the Transitional Programme" "The Fight for Revolutionary Leadership" WSL Wednesdi pubic spending increases" and "strict price controls" , so the TUC in 1965 argued:

"The justification for trade union participation in an incomes policy lies in the contribution that it will make to the attainment of economic and social policies which will lead to more substantial and lasting benefits for their members.

•The General Council have made it clear to the government and to the representatives of the employers' organisations that trade unions would co-operate in a prices and incomes policy only if it appeared to them likely to secure broad trade union objectives more effectively than present policies"

WOLVES

Casting independence to the wolves they try to argue that the wolves would gratefully give them presents in return!

Understanding_this, the SLL in the Newsletter of November 1964 made this comment.

'Wilson, Callaghan and Brown hope to chain the unions to a wage freeze. A meagre rise in pensions, to be given next year is used to bait the trap."

Here is the forerunner of Healey's fraudulent talk of "tax cuts"

But, the Newsletter pointed out: 'Woodcock's extreme caution in talking about wage freezing reflects the doubt in the minds of some union chiefs about the dangers of trying too soon to push the rank and file into the incomes policy trap."

These doubts reflected in the TUC decision. The union leaders "voluntary», Prepared to accept a wages policy [again a familiar note today!] And the TGWU went so far as to vote against acceptance of the wage norm of 3-3½% in 1965.

As. Wilson commented Oft Cousins of the TGWU:

"His life's work had been based on the doctrine that a trade union leaders job was to get more wages for his men; even a voluntary incomes policy seemed incompatible with that life long objective"

Cousins was later to resign from the government in June 1965 over his opposition to wage restraint, an opposition which he was not prepared to turn into a full scale fight against the policy. He was prepared to let other bureaucrats destroy this "life's work" even if he would not do the job himself.

AXE Today's TUC leaders of course are fully prepared to swing the axe themselves against free collective bargaining and the jobs and conditions of their members. This is another indication of the increased depth of today's capitalist crisis and its impact on the reformist leaders. The Wilson government continued its Tory policies. A central tole was played by the National Board for Prices and Incomes under the Chairmanship of the , Tory Aubrey Jones - with, as vice chairman, the Managing Director of Esso Petrol. renegade Trotskyist James Burnham, was in the vanguard of the formulation of the US government's cold war policies after World War II.

CIA director Allen Dulles wrote for it: so did Hugh Gaitskell; and Dennis Healey was its London correspondent for some years after 1952.

Socialist Commentar! has for years been the house journal of the Labour richt-wing. Fletcher revels that it recent! had a inancial resene o: 53.000 - emerkanle for a mara--= Price and wage increases were referred to this body with the usual result of the former being agreed and the latter being turned down, including the claim of the exceedingly low paid agricultural workers.

In January 1966 the Board recommended no improvement on British Rail's offer of 32% on basic rates.

The NUR in reply went to the point of calling national strike action - which was of course sold out at the lith hour by Wilson's intervention which secured agreement on a productivity deal.

Productivity dealing was a hall mark of this government's upon the working class.

Wilson hoped to raise the rate of exploitation and ease the crisis of profitability by increasing profuctivity.

The agreement which spearheaded this attack on the working class was at the Fawley oil refinery which involved higher pay and shorter hours in return for abandoning trade union practices and safeguards.

This was seized upon by the government in its drive to 'modernise Britain? (ie raise the rate of exploitation).

Cannon of the ETU, a vicious right winger and professional anticommunist, led a campaign for productivity deals, wages policy and against so called *restrictive practices"

Supported by sections of the trade union bureaucracy, the Labour government continued to hold down and attack wages.

They had other help, too. The Communist Party in the AEU voted for incomes policy in the spring of 1900 cocks cinee norsing Gieorge • "The trade unions share the has always been as its quality.

Fletcher also describes the conferences financed by the Congress for Cultural Freedom and other CIA fronts at which Labour right-wingers such as Gaitskell and Healey rubbed shoulders with "the chairmen of the world's largest capitalist organisations, monarchists, ex-Nazis, commanders of the American and German forces the Crown Princes of Europe and CIA agenrs."

government's responsibility and they cannot remain at arm's length from the government"

Yet Wilson faced a strong and buoyant working class, a working class ready to fight.

Despite the mandate given in the 1966 General Election which gave the Labour Party a massive majority of 110 in the house, the Labour government continued to attack the working class.

In May of that year the seamen's strike attempted to break through the wages standstill.

As Wilson saw it the strike was: "a test of the government's determination to preserve the criteria we had laid down for an incomes policy"

"In other words it was a test of the government's resolve to defend capitalist profitability at the expense of the working class.

The strike was long and bitterly fought. Like many of the events of this period it reveals threads we can follow through to this day. ET MP:

UST FIGHT The Communist Party, as ever, held back from fighting to the finish.

At the time the CP had considerable power on the docks, (except for Liverpool and Hull, where the SLL, working within the 'blue union' , the National Association of Stevedores and Dockers) had a large following.

Stalinists like Jack Dash in London who purportedly represented rank and file dockers in effect abstained both from launching any real fight against the Devlin plans to decasualise the docks and from the fight to bring out the dockers in support of the seamen.

The dockers' leaders allowed ships to be moved in port so that of his political analysis.

Such people are the natural allies of a right-wing Labour leadership who act as the agents of the capitalist ruling class in the labour movement.

They must be driven out of all labour movement organisations.

The usefulness of Fletcher's facts is that they show how reformist leaders like Rodeers act not merely as agents or alien class fortes. but as chet consors and BaN gents the seamen's strike vas weakened.

Despite the CIs eactionary role in these events, the seamen's strike was the occasion of a massive witch hunt against the Communist Party and all on the left.

Wilson spoke of a "tightly knit group of politically motivated men" and revealed that police surveillance was kept on leading militants and Communist Party members.

The device of the witch-hunt, then as now, was an important tactic for the government and the ruling class in building up hostility to "unofficial" "unconstitutional" strike activity.

This witch-hunt was a necessary prelude to the second phase of the Labour government's attempt to break the strength of the working class - its industrial relations bill. (he story of this struggle will be appearing in our second article).

But the seamen were beaten. Wilson unashamedly admits having intervened to organise a right-wing caucus in the NUS Executive.

He did this because his police surveillance revealed that the left were planning to argue for a ballot of the entire membership and a recall delegate conference.

Such an excessively democratic plan was obviously a threat to the right.

In 1966, as now, the question of democracy in the unions and the fight against wage control are closely linked.

Yet the trade union leaders would not give unanimous backing to the attack on wages.

In July 1966 there was a wages standstill; this was follow ed from January to June 1967 wit h severe restraint; and from July 1967 to March 1968 there was a "zero TRANSITIONAl PROGRAMME The founding programme of the Fourth International, republished with an introduction by Alan Thornett.

plus "Fourth International - Problems perspectives in three parts...• Britain, in 3 parts ...

P&P6÷P 61 ін пра.14 34 TENTAL SEET TO SOCIALIST PRESS and Tasks" WSL Wage norm" with exceptions.

Wilson reports:

"In July 66 the TUC began to express deep reservations about incomes policy. Cousins stated that the TGWU would not observe the freeze. Now other leaders were joining him. Even right wing members of the Council expressed doubt."

Finally, of course, all these toothless mouthings and gestures ended and the TUC acquiesced to the wage freeze.

In Parliament, though 47 'left' MPs condemned the government's wages policy, they did not fight for Wilson's removal.

Instead they simply argued in the time-honoured bankrupt style we see today for the nationalist demand of import controls - and for cuts in defence spending.

In September 1966 at the Labour Party Conference in Brighton, Wilson was heckled first by protestors against his backing for the Vietnam war and then by a lobby of car workers facing short time and lay off in the Midlands.

The pressure of the rank and file was constantly growing. Unofficial bodies of stewards in the car industry and on the docks made the government aware that they could not sufficiently hold down wages so long as there was an independent trade union movement free from the controls of the bureaucracy.

commenced the second major thrust of their assault on the working class. Wilson's government brought forward "In Place of Strife" , a battery of laws to shackle Ene unions and directly curb their power.

Parkin TLE FOR THE BACTEE FOR Documents of the opposition expelled from the Workers Rev. olutionary Party in 1974, prepared by the Executive Committee of the Workers Socialist League.

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