Basque 'state of War

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END BUSINESS SECRETS ...Cont'd from Front Page £3000 FUND The response to the announcement in the last issue of our plans to produce "Socialist Press' weekly from October has been very encouraging. A further £206.50 has arrived in the office over the past fortnight. Donations include R.G. and G.G. £100; A.C. and B.C. £50; B.S. £10;

iverpool £10; K.M. £15; Cowley workers £19.50. The fund now stands at £376.50.

With fund raising activities now being planned up and down the country by members and supporters, the fight is now on to raise the £3000 target by the beginning of October. At the same time, it is vital that the Socialist Press Monthly Fund continues to be raised. This fund is essential for the running of the paper and must not be allowed to fall back as the fight gets under way for the Special Fund. The May Fund now stands at £328.32. With just over a week to go to the end of the month no time should be lost in setting about raising the rest of the HOTEL SELL-OUT ... Cont'd from Front Page ITAIN sues • issues issues For two weeks an explosion of resentment against the fascist police has created a political situation in Euskadi (the Basque provinces) which Spanish newspapers have described as "insurrectional" and "a state of war"

The demonstrations began all over Euskadi early in May to demand amnesty for the remaining political prisoners in Spain who include at least 27 Basque nationalists.

The police and paramust spur on the demand to see the whole workings of the system.

"slush" funds and corruption really are normal business relations as employers claim, let the whole lot be revealed to the workers' movement.

The management "participation" committees that have drawn in convenors and sent them onto the shop floor to argue for speed-up and sackings have been exposed completely.

Either these bureaucrats, along with national union leaders like Jones and Scanlon, knew all along of these transactions, and agreed to them: or even they must admit the whole "participation" machinery is a hollow fraud.

GIVEN AWAY

In any case, while workers have been instructed by Jones and Scanlon to "keep working" no matter what, the cars they produce have been given away in corrupt deals at home and abroad.

The burning need now is for the books of Leyland as a whole to be opened to elected committees of workers, as the start to à campaign to open the books throughout industry. There must be a complete end to business secrets.

Not one 'left' Labour MP has called for the facts to be revealed to the workers' movement. First they rushed to the defence of Leyland management; then, when evidence became overwhelming, they called for all kinds of enquiries-Parliamentary Select Committees or an enquiry headed by a High Court Judge. Callaghan went even further, calling for an enquiry to be run by those accused of corruption-the NEB and Ryder!

Leyland is not an *unacceptable face" of capitalism. It is simply a part of capitalism. Capitalism itself as a system is unacceptable. And every proposed enquiry would only have the objective of putting the lid back on the box of secrets before too many workers demand to know the truth.

The 5% shareholders of Leyland WORKERS I would lik Press. I wo NAME...

ADDRESS EU ROPE 6 is isues • issues issues ubscri is sues, I military Civil Guard (under the command of "democratic" Premier Adolfo Suarez) dispersed the demonstrations with indiscriminate violence and in doing so killed six demonstrators in the space of a week, severely injuring dozens more.

Each of these murderous attacks provoked further demonstrations which increasingly took the form of real battles for the control of the Workers and students erected barricades and offered armed self-defence against the police attacks.

Then came a call for a general will have their say at the company's AGM on Wednesday, but the workforce whose jobs are involved will have no say whatever, thus showing how much of a nationalised company it is.

Leon Trotsky, in the Transitional Programme written in 1938, summed up the position well, when in the section of the Programme arguing for an end to business secrets he said:

"In reality, the trusts keep no secrets from one another.. . .

"The immediate tasks of workers control should be to explain the debits and credits of society, beginning with individual business undertakings; to determine the actual share of the national income appropriated by individual capitalists and by the exploiters as a whole; to expose the behind the scenes deals and swindles; finally, to reveal to all members of society that unconscionable squandering of human labour which is the result of capitalist anarchy and the naked pursuit of profits"

"Only factory committees can bring about real control of production: calling in-as consultants but not as technocrats- specialists sincerely devoted to the people: accountants, statisticians, engineers, scientists etc.' CAMPAIGN The Workers Socialist League is for this reason campaigning for opening the books of Leyiand to elected committees of trade unionists in order to prove the necessity for nationalisation of the company withought compensation. We call for a similar policy to be pursued through the whole motor and components industry.

This will prepare the way to a full scale fight for a nationalised motor industry under the management of these elected committees which should be part of a planned socialist economy.

We call on the left' MPs to break with the Lib-Lab coalition government, vote against its cover up plans and fight for opening the books of Leyland and the NEB as part of the fight for the removal of the right wing in the Labour Party and the preparation of an alternative socialist policy.

SOCIALIST LEAGUE strike on Monday May 16. Of all the general strikes in Euskadi in the last two years this was the most complete.

The three principal Basque provinces came to a complete halt for 24 hours and thousands of workers have remained on strike since then.

This vast movement has posed a huge threat to the Francoist government's plan to smear itself with a cosmetic veneer of democracy in the June 15 elections.

As usual the reformist and Stalinist leaders have rallied round the floundering Francoists. The Spanish Communist Party wholeheartedly opposed the general strike as did the CP-dominated Workers Commissions (whose leader Marcelino Camacho was seriously injured last week in a motor accident).

Since Monday 16 May the CP and the Socialist Party (PSOE) have made daily calls for a return to work.

The Communist Party of Euskadi issued the following treacherous statement:

"The Communist Party has never supported and will never support attitudes of systematic provocation towards the Public Authorities, coercive pickets and vandalism in the streets. We condemn this type of action and call on the workers and the people not to support them but to oppose them."

1600 target for this fund.

Donations for the Special Fund This reduced trade to a fraction of its previous level in the 113 bedroom hotel-the public bar was closed down completely by this action.

When the fascist supporters of the Self Help group tried to break the picket on May 5, 300 turned out to stop them.

It was only by deploying the overall financial strength of THFthe biggest hotel chain in the world -that the management were able to hold out.

Similar picketing on the Linton Lodge hotel in Oxford had three weeks earlier won a complete victory after a similar 23 weeks on strike for union recognition.

It is clear that with THF the crucial question was national blacking. This was demonstrated by the strength of the limited blacking imposed in the Midlands area by Alan Law, the Birmingham regional official, mostly involving motorway service areas.

It is significant that the The PSOE has followed the same line:

"The moment has arrived to call on the population not to fall into the provocation of those who want to create a climate of chaos and violence in Euskadi in a premeditated operation which could begin in the Basque country and then extend to destabilisation at the level of the whole country. Consequently we recommend a return to work and the maintenance of a peaceful struggle for amnesty ..• These are the insidious words of opportunist traitors whose only concern at present is to demonstrate their "worthiness" to participate in the Francoist's sham democracy.

In doing this they commit criminal sabotage against the workers of Euskadi who are prepared to risk death and injury in the fight against Francoism.

• The events of the last three weeks have once again sharply raised the question of a boycott of the elections.

For the Monthly Fund can be Socialist Press Fund 6 in :

167C Randolph sellout came at the point where the Linton Lodge victory and the blacking on the motorways made victory possible.

THF had been panicked into spending tens of thousands of pounds on full page adverts in every national newspaper to try to maintain their trade.

It was at this point that the TGWU bureaucrats moved in for the kill.

The strikers were called to a meeting on Tuesday 17 May with Geoff Hulett, the district official in Oxford handling the dispute.

The offer it transpired was not so much from THF-who had merely upped their buy off money, as from the union. As steward Margaret Radbourne said:

"He said he would lay his cards on the table, and tell us as he was told. We'd get no more support and no more hardship pay.

"Hulett said he'd had it from Regional Office. We couldn't use the union's name. If we wanted to Mass demonstration in San Sebastian In Euskadi about half of those eligible to vote boycotted last December's referendum.

At that time the Stalinist and reformist parties• half-heartedly supported the boycott and put forward certain conditions which would have to be met before they would participate in elections.

Somewhere in the unseemly scramble to leap onto the Francoist electoral bandwagon these conditions got dropped and trampled underfoot.

NOT MET None of the conditions (eg amnesty for political prisoners, legalisation of all parties) were met. But unlike the leaders of the main workers' parties, hundreds of thousands of workers in Euskadi took those conditions seriously, regarding them as part of an offensive against the Francoist state.

It is certain that many of those workers will be correctly demonstrating their willingness for a show down with Francoism by boycotting the polls in June. sent to:

1HR.

carry on it would be on our backs. That was it. Take the money or carry on on your own."

So Hulett who had ordered them out on strike now ordered them to accept the offer of money to go away, losing their jobs and leaving the Randolph without a single union member.

The capitalist press is busy trying to cover up for the officials by giving the impression that the strikers accepted the offer and the union had no choice. This settlement is a blow to all hotel workers' struggles and must be exposed for the sellout it is.

The sell out of this strike has also left the other two THF strikes isolated with no blacking taking place.

At Birmingham the main demand of Law is that the victimised shop steward, Pat McGuire, is compensated to the extent of £4000.

If this took place it would be a sellout similar to the Randolph in that the strike, now in its ninth week has been for union recognition as well as reinstatement, not for compensation.

At Sheffield at the Grosvenor House, the issue is the same. Unless national and regional blacking is instituted then the strike will be isolated and THF will force the strikers to accept monetary compensation, with all union members having lost their jobs.

There is a meeting with management next Monday. Resolutions for national blacking should be passed through union branches immediately.

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