[Embankment (Cleopatra's Needle), WSL PUBLIC MEETING-Conway Hall, Red…]

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Embankment (Cleopatra's Needle), WSL PUBLIC MEETING-Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, 4 pm, after the march.

The Workers Socialist League is a Trotskyist organisation fighting to construct a principled revolutionary leadership in the working class in Britain and internationally and for the reconstruction of the Trotskyist Fourth International on the basis of the Transitional Programme.

The WSL fights at every step against the existing leaders of the trade unions and the Labour Party-now firmly harnessed to the bourgeois politicians of the Liberal Party in an Against their policies of class collaboration we put forward instead a programme which points to the independent class interests of the working class, its need to organise independently to overthrow capitalism, destroy its repressive state machinery and establish a Only in this way can workers resolve today's problems of tumbling living standards, mass unemployment, slashed social services, racial, of the History of the Fourth International plus 12p p&p from WSL, 31, Dartmouth SOCIALIST I mould like to receive.. insues. I enclose the sum of I.

Send to: Socialist Press. 31. Dartmouth Park Hill larch with us MARCH-from Charing Monday 1 May WORKERS unspoken coalition arrangement.

socialist planned economy.

national and sexual oppression.

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Address Union/Or Send to WSL, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NWS 1HR ISSUE No.

PRESS * § issues 10 issues 25 insues 50 issues I would 1 Name.

Address I onlon NWS I HR Cross 1pm, SOCIALIST Includes British Trotskyism in World War II Marxism v. Socialist Feminism Stalinism in Bulgaria Park Hill, London NW5 1HR .£1.10 .£2.20 . £5.50 {10.00 Communist Party members are coming to the very forefront of moves by the major car industry employers to attack conditions and trade union strength on the shop floor.

In Fords last week's announcement of record sales, exports and profits was matched by an 80% pay rise for chairman Terry Beckett, who declared plans for £1,000 million investment over the next four years.

A good £100 million of this seems certain to come from government aid. And the plans for modernisation and re-equipment are certainly linked to an intensified drive to impose speed-up on the shop floor.

Boycott

Union officials and convenors boycotted Beckett's announcement of the plan. TGWU Executive member Bernard Passingham complained that, despite the large figures being quoted, the plan really amounts to a cut in investment, and a strategy of turning British Ford factories into suppliers of components for assembly abroad.

But no such reservations coloured the response of Stalinist Sid Harraway, chairman of the Ford national convenors' committee.

He insisted that the investment plan was due to "union pressure" and would help towards "job security and a sound future" for Ford workers.

This is tantamount to giving Ford management a blank cheque to force in new machinery and working methods, all in the name of further increasing Ford's pretax profits of £246 million.

Fellow Stalinist Meanwhile Harraway's fellow Stalinist, Eddy McClusky, TGWU convenor at Chrysler's engine plant in Coventry was demonstrating what this collaboration means in practice.

Chrysler management sacked two forklift drivers' stewards, Paul and George O'Brien, both long-standing workers in the plant.

An immediate strike took place in their defence by workers on their section.

But dedicated to the interests of Chrysler management, McClusky did nothing to organise support for the strike.

On the contrary, he got together with AUEW conthe forklift back work.

They attacked the strike as unconstitutional. And they forced through a decision to scab on the strikers. Next day the company threatened to sack any worker that did not return to work.

As feeling rose in the plant the Joint Shop Stewards Committee was convened, and the appeal from the two stewards for a policy of reinstatement pending an ACAS inquiry was carried.

But the company flatly rejected even this tame demand, and the stewards backed down and left two of their number victimised outside the gates, thanks to the efforts of Stalinist McClusky.

McClusky and Harraway's Stalinist stable-mate in British Leyland is Longbridge convenor Derek Robinson.

As last week's Socialist Press pointed out, Robinson, a leading Stalinist, played a key role in ensuring that the workforce at the threatened Leyland factory at Speke on Merseyside did not take any decision to occupy the plant against closure at their mass meeting.

Divert

He used a barrage of 'left' rhetoric to help divert away from this crucial policy decision which marks the dividing line between an allNEWES waving also helped him conceal the fact that Robinson himself is the major defender of worker participation and the Edwardes plan for rationalisation of Leyland which have resulted in the company's closure decision.

Yet both Socialist Worker and Socialist Challenge accepted Robinson's hypocritical speech at face value.

Socialist Worker described him as "moved to tears during the emotional meeting" (though the front page article fell into an embarassed silence at the point where it should have reported the steps Robinson proposed to save the plant).

Their "last word" comes from Leyland worker Dave Manning:

"The only way they are going to get me out of the gate is with a policeman on either side.".

Protest

Yet the danger is that, with a Communist Party member at their head, Leyland workers could be led into a hopeless and demoralising series of protest gestures instead of an all-out fight for occupation and the defeat of the Edwardes plan.

As the struggle sharpens in the car industry only a clear political awareness of the treachery and collaboration of the Stalinists can equip workers for the fight in defence of jobs and conditions.

Those that cover up for the Stalinists i fall for their innonahle nf Work-sharing with a substantial cut in wages seems the prospect for bakery workers in the wake of a major sell-out of jobs from the doomed Spillers bakeries.

A mere 2,000 jobs are to be salvaged out of the 7,986 workers made redundant.

And these jobs are to be preserved by discontinuing the rest-day working that has been essential for chronically low paid bakery workers to take home a living wage.

The bosses have offered £4 a week as some compensation for this loss of earnings. And on this basis Bakers Union leaders have called off their threat of an overtime ban against the proposed sackings.

General Secretary Sam Maddox pointed out that the extra £4 on basic rates was in recognition of 'higher productivity'.

Work harder

In other words, as 6,000 bakers join the growing dole queues, the Bakers Union is actually organising its members to work harder to make up for the loss of their sacked colleagues!

Maddox went on to appeal against any bakery sit-ins to combat the closures, and insisted that the sacked workers should act 'in a reasonable manner"

In making this appeal for his members to depart quietly and close the door behind them, Maddox professed himself "highly satisfied" with the settlement.

Maddox has thus done whatever he can to bury the unanimous decision of the Bakers Union executive to defend all the threatened jobs.

And in doing , so he has struck a substantial blow at the fight against redundancy and mass unemployment.

The whole affair is a damning indictment of those who believe that protest and pressure divorced from factory occupation sufficient to save jobs.

FOLLOWING objections from TGWU branches and members and other sections of the Coventry labour morement, including the Trades Council, the TGWU District Committee discussed its decision to hold a May Day social at the Allesley Hotel.

The hotel owner.

Kilpatrick is well known for his anti-trade union and racist record.

Despite the protests and a picket of its meeting the District Committee voted by 33-7 with a large number of abstentions to go ahead with I the social on April 27.

Trade unionists in iN he sereniemo e

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John Power sti

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jobs sold out

Picket to greet