70,000 WORKERS DEMONSTRATE The most important recent event was the massive demonstration in Glasgow on Wednesday August 18th, involving at least 70,000 workers. Once again. as with the June 23rd demo, the organisation lay essentially with the shop stewards, and it was the network of contacts established by the UCS stewards with rank and file leaders in other sections of industry which enabled them to build a demonStration nearly twice the size of the previous one.
A very noticeable feature of the second demonstration was the large increase in the number of banners from areas outside the West of Scotlind: Edinburgh, the Fife and Lothian coalfields, Dundee and from numerous areas of England stretching down as far as Newhaven. For some time it has been clear that wide layers of the working class in this area have regarded the CS struggle as a crucial test of the Tory government's ability lo impose their anti-working cluss policies, and therefore also of the ability of the class itself to fight back. Every worker in the Clyde Valley has fell the potential draught of redundancy as he has observed events in the yards. The wide support for Wednesday's demonstration and the donations to the fighting fund flooding in from all over the country, show that this lesson is now percolating to the consciousness of the most advanced workers all over Britain.
Further evidence for this is provided by what has been one of the most important repercussions of events in UCS. Namely, that sections of the working class in other parts of the country are beginning to take up the methods of struggle used in UCS. The idea of factory occupation as a tactic in opposition to redundancies has been pur forward in such widely spread places as the River Don Steelworks, Rotherham, GEC-EE, Witham, Essex and Plessey, Alexandria. In the future it is clear that the example of US will serve as an inspiration for more atlempts of chis kind. In this way a Long forgotten tactic of the working class has been rehabilitated through the example of'action.
A dangerous feature of Wednesday's demonstration was the presence of a large number of leaders of the Lubour and Trade Thrion movement, opportunistically jumping on the bandwagon. Having seen the dimensions of this struggle and the extent to which it has caught the imagination of the working class, they coalise that to fail to identify with it, in however token a fashion, would be to considerably dim their own careet prospects. The dangers inherent in such peuple being allowed to take over leadership of the movement are most clearly shown by the TOC plan, produced by Feather on the eve of the demonstration, to set up a Clydeside Development Authority. Such plans for founding yet another commission of trade union bureaucrats and industrialists have a familiar ring for the Scottish working class who lave seen numerous such "high powered" outfits over the years totally fail to halt the rise in unemployment to its present overall level of 6.3% or the steady emigration rate of more than 30,000 annually, The real implications of the exercise are to be seen in Feather's statement that pay-offs in UCS should he held up while consideration is given to the TUC plan. In other words the TUC leaders are propared to see the rundown of the yards proceed after a decent interval during witich it would be hoped to dampon down the dynumic of the struggle.
REID/AIRLIE AND THE ROLE OF MR. KELLY Yet another diversion has been created by a Mr. Kelly, selfmade millionaire and owner of a reputedly highly successful small shipyard in Dublin. For a fow days now the papers have been full of storics, including one of a dramatic flight by stewards leaders, Reid and Airlie, to the Islo of Islay whore Keily is on holiday. The precise outcome of these negotiations is likely to be known by the time this appears, but this much can be said at present: 1. Kelly has indicated that he is opposed to the "work in" and he would demand full controt of the labour force. Although this has not heen spelt out it is absolutely clear that this inchides the right to sack workers. 2. While he has indicaled his interest in taking over the Govan yard and the Linthouse fabrication division and is prepared to discuss plans for Clydebank. Kelly has made no mention of the Scotstoun division (scheduled to close by the end of the ycar under the Liquidator's plans). 3. Kelly has mentioned the sum of E1 million as being the kind of money he could pump into the yards. This would only pay the wages for four weeks! As pointed out in preVious articles in The Red Mole, the cost of bringing the Clydebank yard alone up to the standards of its most advanced compelitors could cusily be 40 or 50 times that figure. 4. Kelly is insistent that he cunnot procoed without government financial backing. Yet urgent calks held in Glasgow immedistely after the demonstration by Sir John Eden Minister for Industry, broke down on precisely the point of the government's unwillingness to sunnlv any more money. all 8,500 UCS workers should he dismissed. It is necessary to be absolutely clear that any such compromise would represent a complete sell out of the shipyard workers and the effective end to their present stand. Unfortunately, the pressures for the stowards to make such an accommodation will inevitably increase the longer the struggle continues.
The Red Mole has already analysed the implications of the present tactics in some detail in its Clydeside broadsheets. As this article is being written the tirst of the workers made redundant by order of the Liquidutor will be reporting for work as usual at the Clydebank Division. Cut of the 160 sacked only a few have volunteered to accept the position: the vast majority will continue to work and be paid out of the fighting fund. What these workers and the tundreds more due to receive their books in the next lew weeks will in fact be doing, is donuting their labour to the bosses free of charge while themselves being supported by other sectións of the working class. This admicable arrangement from the point of view of the yard owners and their creditors is made even more attractive by the professed aim of the stewards to ensure the most rapid possible production of the remaining ships on the stocks and combal any signs of "slacking" amongst the workers, Thus what has evolved out of the present taclics being followed is that the work force of UCS is being partially supported by other workers. in a frantic effort to work themselves out of a job. This is the grim result of the tactics oi the C.P. throughout the struggle.
The contrudictions in this situation are already being exploited hy the bourgeois press. An article has appeared on the subject of a husband and wife working at Clydebank who will receive a total of £50 weekly out of the fighting Fund if their current wages are puid when they are declared redundant. Quite clearly this was not printed out of some abstract concern for injustice. Is purpose is to divide the working class and particularly to ruise questions in the minds of those like the t12 a week labourers in the Glasgow Corporation Direct Labour Department who have. in common with all their work mates, agreed to pay 50p per week to the UCS fund.
C.P.'S OBSESSION WITH "RESPECTABILITY" PAVES THE WAY TO DEFEAT The strategy of Reid, Airlie and the other stewards leaders is based upon the theory that the UCS worker will win a "respectoble" image through their continued hard, disciplined work, und that this will convince the government of the justice of their case. Such a policy is fundamentally mistaken and can only lead in the long term to defeat. For the strategy which is clearly evolving on the part of the governwent and their collaborators is becoring clear. They will continue to attempt ro buy off the stewards with compromis plans of one kind or another, but for the time being they will not be over-worried if these are successful or not; for they realise very clearly that the longer the struggle goes on, the weaker will be the position of the UCS workers, both in term: of their own morale and, quite possibly, of outside support. For these reasons it is the duty of every militant to try to counteract this strategy by campaiguing for:
1. Maintenance und extension of support for the CS workers 2. An extension of this suppurt beyond finance and demonstra tions into militant action which hits against their own employers also - token of preferably more prolonged strikes culminating if possible in a general strike occupations in solidarity with the UCS workers ete.
Since the government are quite prepured to sce the work-in continue for the foresecable future, on condition it remains on its present basis, it is clear that the UCS workers themselves are confronted with the task of bringing the struggle to a head. What is demanded in the yards themselves is a reversal of the present passive policies of co-operation with the management the transformation of the "work-in" into a "sit-in" involving th continued occupation of the yards along with a refusal to proc with work in hand until they are fully nationalised under work control with the guarantee of employment for the entire labou lorce.
-Tony Southall, writing from Glasgow, 23.8.71
"T'm no longer a Socialist"
-LORD ROBENS The former chairman of the National Coal Board-now chairman of Vickers-made this truly startling revelation in a TV interview to be broadcast on September 13th.
He also gave us his definition of a Socialist:
*A Socialist is a person who believes that the State should own the whole of the means of production, distribution and exchange." Robens is of course referring to the capitalist state.
And the working class..?
This wretched errand-boy for the bourgeoisie has no capacity to sec heyond the confines of the capitalist mode of production. Hence his utopian dream of burcaucratic ownership of the means of production.
What he calls "socialism" is nothing more rhan state management of cupitalism or "Great Britain Ltd."
For him the class struggle was some kind of gigantie misunderstanding which "socialism"
would somehow smooth over.
For us socialism in advanced capitalist countries is the kind of society which will emerge only after copitalism has heen overihrowm hy the working class seizing state power and taking over the ownership of all the means of producten and distribution in order to run them themsselves in their own interests.
This necessitates a thorough struggle against the capitalist class to destroy the last vestige of their political power, and will involve the destruction of the entire bourgeols state machine and its replacement by workers' councils and other forms of reat workers" democracy.
The result of this struggle for power by the working class -a struggle which inevitably has international proportions-will be a new society in which there will be no "owners", no bosses. and no state apparatus fording it over the working town of Haguio. They were greeted by a toppeople. The means of production will be collectively owned, managed and worked by the people themselves, and all the fruits of produc tion collectively reaped.
With such ideas, Lord Robens and his ilk have never had unything in common.
REFORM OR REVOLUTION IN THE SOVIET UNION?
The recent "revelations" in the bourgeois press about the existence of a "Political Diary" produced by a tiny group of top Party bureaucrats in the Soviet Union, should come as no surprise to anyone who recognises the process of disinte. gration of Stalinist monolithism that is taking place.
The journal has apparently appeared since Krushchev's dowmfall in 1964, in some 82 monthly issues; it circulates secretly and only within the uppermost ruling circles of the bureaucracy that it should "liberalise" its policies with regard to a whole range of problems: economic management, national and religious minorities, foreign policy, etc.
Ia fact, the "Political Diary" represents yet a further breach in the ranks of the bureaucracy. and may be compared to the Dubcek-Novotny splic in the Czechoslovak Conimunist Party in 1967-68, though at a much more restrained level. On all the crucial questions that remain to be solved in the USSR, which centre around the necessity of political revolution to restore socialist democracy in the workers' state, the "Political Diary" and its like remain silent. This is simply because the political tondency they represent is very much within the bureaucracy, and is in no real sense an opposition to it. | CANTERBURY TALES FROM THE UNFREE PRESS On 3rd August 1971, the Kent Henadt, a rag of no fixed repute printed an attack on the Canterbury Spartacus League by a hack who referred to remain unknown and signed bimself Diogenes. To give an impression of the brilliant reporting skills of trainee back journalists we pant a lew sentences from the article:
* Parents of schoolchildren living in Canter bury would be well advised to look out for the activities of an organisation called the Spartacus Society. Apart from the fact that the SL Is not a "Society" It is neither "an anarchist body"
as our ill-informed hack seems to imply. To quote him aguin: " I would seriously warn parents not to allow their children of this age to mix with such self-confessed anarchists and sell-style Fourth Revolutionarles."
Needless to say no SL member has ever confessed to being an anarchist (I hope so-Ed.)
but what the hack does not explain is what precisely a Fourth Revolutionary is meant to be. What this small incident reveals, ofcourse, is the abysmal level of lumpen-bourgeois Journalism in the provinces. The fact that journalists have to earn their keep by writing bullshit of this sort is in itself' a terrible Indictment of the systen that employs them.
As repression mounts in Britain, one of the areas which the bourgeoisie will be keen to protect from "alien" ideologies is the schools and any revolutionary activity connected with schools will be dealt with severely. This implies that we should, at least, be prepared for what the bourgeoisie and its agencies mete ou!
SAN FRANCISCO (LNS)-A four-day "summit" policy meeting of U.S. ambassadors to East Asian und Pacific countries took place without fanfare 17ch-21xt May 1971, at the Philippine resort level delegation from Washington headed by John N. Irwin, veteran spokesman and lawyer for Rockefeller oil interests, trustee of the CIAFunded Asla Foundation and Nixon's Under. Secretary of State A communique issued at the end of the meeting said merely that they had discussed implementation of the Nixon Doctrine in East Asia, and the status of U,S, relations with the countries of the area. " But in view of the boom in offshore oil exploration under way in the region, it is likely that oil was high on the agenda at the ambassadors" conference.
Irwin has a reputation as Nixon's oil envoy". He was Nixon's special representative in talks with the Peruvian government following nationalisation of the Rockefeller controlled International Petroleum Co., a Standard Oil of New Jersey subsidiary. And he was Nixon's personal envoy to the recent Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) conference in Iran.
Irwin has been, at different times, partner in Patterson, Belknap & Webb, Rockefeller oil Jaw vers; associate counsel to the Rockefeller Foundation (a major stockholder in Standard Oil of New Jersey); former board chairman of JUST OUT A pamphlet containing a short biographical sketch of Leon Trotsky-in Bengali.
Order from: IMG Publications, WHOSE ARSE...?
When the Twelfch Conpress of che Russian Comminist Party opened, the rumour campaig about Trotsky's "Bonapartism" was in fill swing. The numerous public actribuces to Trotsky that marked the beginning of the Congress added fuel to the fire. Early in the meetings, an altercation between Radek and Klimenty Voroshilor ia Scalin supporter, who as a military man may have felt particularly impecilled by Bonaparrism, revealed how strained relations had become.
Voroshilor was in the chairman's seat, presid.
ing over a session, when Trucky walked into the chamber, followed by Radek. Voroshilav certainly ought to have known better chan to trade verbal barbs with Radek, an acknowledged master of the are. Attempting a pan on Trotsky's first name, Lev, the Russian word for bon, Voroshilar called out: "Well, here contes the lion fallowed by his tail!" Radek reraliared with a torrent of abuse, and ended: In che final analysis, I wouki much prefer to be the lion's tail than Stalin's arse!"
-Estracted from Karl Radek: The Last Inter.
nationalist-Harren Lerner, pab. Stanford University Press.
Rockefeller-endowed Union Theolopical Seminary; and director of Rockefeller-dominated United States Trust Co. As such he was the logical choice to attend the top level discussion of U.S. oil interests in South-East Asia.
Two of Asia's three most promising offshore oil basins in the South China Sea off Vietnam. und in the East China Sea off China-are areas of dispute between U.S. oil companies on the one hand, and the National Liberation Front (NLF) and the People's Republic of China, on the other.
The Provisional Revolutionary Government (PRG) of South Vietnam announced in February that it would not recognise any offshore oil leases granted by the Saigon regime, and that it would consider such arrangements illegal. Yet U.S. I in the bidding. The political motive of shoring up the Saigon regime and providing it with a stronger economic base is explicit in statements of Ambassador Elsworth Bunker and other U.S. officials urging more U.S. investment in oil and other industries in South Vietnam.
In similar manner, the People's Republic of China announced that it would consider "null und void" and illegal any offshore oil leases in the Tiao-yu Tai (Senkaku) Iland chain or elsewhere on the Chinese continental shelf, whether by Japan, South Korea, or the Chiang Kai-shek 10p.
182 Pentonville Road, London N.1.
MOLE SELLERS HARASSED The last issue of The Red Mole declaring its support for the IRA against Britinh imperialism has annoyed sundry fuzz and Orangemen up and down the country. In Edinburgh comrades selling the paper were physically attacked by the Orange thugs and in Leeds, Sheffield, Oxford and London the police have been been warning Mole sellers that unless they stop selling the paper they will be charged with "obstruction". One fuzz told a comrade: "Lots of people have been ringing up the Yard and complaining about that provocation on the cover. You better watch it as the Public Prosecutor might be on to you after the OZ lot."
Needless to add we are not going to be intimidated by these threats. Nor are we going to stop street selling. Every prosecution will be contested and fought. As far as the Orangemen are concerned, all comrades are advised to take precautions. regime out Taiwan. Yet at last word, American oil companies were still conducting exploration work in concessions granted by these three U.S allies. This was despite official warnings from Washington that it would not protect U.S.. owned exploration sessels should they be seized by the Chinese.
The different positions of the PRG and the People's Republic of China and the U.S. oil companies regarding oil interests raise several 4UCSHO0S -Are the oil companies likely to pass up control of the tast pools of low sulphur, lower: pollution oil so close to the big Japanese market? (David Rockefeller, chairman of New York's Chase Manhattan Bank the main Rockefeller oil bank-last year predicted the oil offshore.)
In view of the PR's and China's position on oil exploration by foreign companies on the continental shelf off Vietnam and China respec tively, how far is Wasbington prepared to go to protect the interests of these compunies?
-Are the escalation of the nir war in IndoChina and the increase in D.S. shipments of military equipment to Taiwan and particularly to South Korea, related in any way to the prospects of large-scale oil development in the Tegion-How nes Japan fit into any U.S. military plans in the region?
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Saigon still intends to auction off oil concessions companies would spend $35 billion by 1980 in with at least 32 foreign companies (most of them East Asia and the western Pacific, most of it