LPYS backing for Lib-Lab coalition

Scan page 5

SITOK PRICSCE 'Our criticisms do not mean that we want to bring down the Labour Governmment, we want to strengthen it and keep it in power'.

This was the conclusion drawn by Tony Saunois LPYS National Committee member after a harrowing account of the vicious attacks by the Coalition Government on workers' living standards, and a rousing description of the mass mobilisation of workers growing daily, against these policies.

This Militant double-think was apparent again and again during the LPYS "Young Workers' Conference at Islington on Saturday November 25.

It came not least from the main speakers, Tony Benn, Minister of Energy, and Bob Wright, Assistant General Secretary of the AUEW.

He agreed that it was only through mass struggles that workers' gains could be achieved. But he conspicuously slid around the challenge that he should therefore fully support the firemen and other current disputes. He rejected any vores have ditched their scruples and set out to pick up some of the easy pickings Daily Mirror readers suffering from withdrawal symptoms.

But as in all the best suspense stories a hero rushes to the rescue in the nick of time.

And when the threatened victim is one of capitalism's own presses, who better to snatch it to safety from the jaws of disaster, than a fulltime official of a print union?

Bill Keys, General Secrecary of SOGAT, whose services to the newspaper bosses most recently include attempted sabotage of the Darlington strike, instructed his members not to handle more copies of any other paper than normal.

The "solidarity' of this action is tempered by the fact that print union leaders are now trying to co-operate with the Mirror to find a way to scab on the dispute through linking up production to Manchester. overthrow Benn for the 'lefts' to Callaghan and Unity claimed that a split in the Labour Party would destroy the unity which made the British Labour movement the strongest in the world!

Benn was given a friendly reception by YS and Militant members present, applauded as he left the room to return to his ministerial 'duties' of organising productivity deals for the miners and other plans to strangle the working class.

Victor Matthews, the man who bought the Express in the summer, burst on to the front page for the second time in a few months to protest against 'unwarranted interference' by Keys.

With tears rolling down his face, businessman turned ace reporter Matthews wrote'His instructions do not take account of the welfare of Beaverbrook staff, whose own security has been in jeopardy for. years through financial difficulties, or the right of small shop-keeperswho are already fast disappearing-to sell the newspapers that give them a living 'Mr Keys should know that we shall continue to uphold the right of management to manage and right of workers to work.

Not a word about his profits. But then Matthews, like his fellow sharks in the business, does not want to show all his teeth at once.

That really would frighten the fish.

Maudling reflects

dilemma and the unhappi it is causing inside the 1 Party. He points out that present programme of Government contains