struggle for the soul
of the labor movement —

JOHN GOLLAN, general secretary of the
British Communist Party, comments on
Labor Party Conference which met in

Brighton recently.

THOUSAND car workers

barracking the prime min-

ister for work, and the
leader of Britain’s biggest trade
union accusing the Labor gov-
ernment of the “negation of the
rights of the workers.”

This was the Brighton Labor
Party conference. .Six months
after the great electoral victory
it was a conference more poli-
tically divided than ever before,
because of government policy—
with the positive Left challenge
mounting as the days passed.

By invoking Part 4 of the
Prices and Incomes Act and
making the ordinary functioning
of trade unionism a’ crime, the
government has not only done
what the Tories fora generation
have tried in vain to do.

It has set the course for col-
lision and conflict in the move-
ment on a scale not seen for
years. -

Frank Cousins was correct
when he said: ‘We shall not be
in conflict with the law, because
if the law is unfair, trade union-
ists since time immemorial have
Opposed the law.” :

No trade unionist worth his
salt will accept this anti-trade
union law. They will press ahead
to wage the struggle and fulfil
the objects for which the trade
unions were founded.

While the government got its
expected majority at Brighton
for its freeze and squeeze it was
defeated in its opposition to the
Transport and General Workers’
Union emergency resolution on
work sharing instead of sack-
ings.

This was a tribute to the mag-
nificent factory-floor pressure of
the car workers supporting those
unions prepared to struggle.

What is Mr. Wilson’s confer-
ence majority worth if, when it
comes to the test of unemploy-
ment, the conference rejected
him?

The majority was-won only as
a result of confusion, appeals to
loyalty, and pleas that the mea-
sures were only temporary. It
was a visibly reluctant majority.

If two more major unions
were won over for changes in
policy the government would be
isolated from its own support-
ers.

While the conference was do-

- flopped above all

minated by the government’s
economic measures, there was
the clear understanding from the
word go that these measures
;were bound up with the govern-
ment’s foreign policy and its
suicidal military expenditure.

From the beginning the gov-
ernment spokesmen presented a
false and phoney prospectus to
Brighton.

Mr. Wilson’s speech was the

flop of the conference. We had
heard it all before.

His method was to slam “‘con-
servatism” everywhere in order
to hit the unions. It was to short
change everywhere and_ upset
Big Business nowhere.

It was as up to date as 1928-

vintage Mond-Turner class col-
laboration for Big Business stuff,
tarted up with phrases of the
managerial revolution:

No thrilling the conference
with vistas of the technical re-
volution this time.

The scepticism was thunder-
ous when he described it as the
springboard for a new expan-
sion.

Economic growth has been

‘sacrificed for (Chancellor of the

Exchequer) Callaghan’s balance

of payments, with mounting un-~

employment as the result.

There can be no _ industrial
change without redeployment,
hammered the prime minister.
Who is disputing this? There
has been staggering redeploy-
ment over this century as the
great giants of cotton, coal, rail-
ways and_ shipbuilding have
given way to the great new
growth industries.

But what the workers are re-
sisting—and conference endor-
sed that resistance—is redeploy-
ment by the brutal method of
mass unemployment.

The dole is no sweeter under
Mr. Wilson than it was under the
Tories.

The prime minister’s speech
because he
could offer the movement no real
sense of purpose.

The “reorganization” of the
docks, shipbuilding, aircraft and
transport, the Industrial Recon-
struction Corporation, for ever-
bigger mergers, and steel nation-
alization by the grace of Lord
Melchett.

What’s this go to do with a

IN BRITAIN

labor movement? It is Harold
Wilson stating that he can work
capitalism better than Ted
Heath.

Why should any socialist, any
trade unionist, give any loyalty
to this set-up?

When Mr. Callaghan spoke in
justification of the July meas-
ures, his whole case was based
on two major half-truths.

The first was the old story
that we as a nation were not
paying our way. Not true.

Between 1960 and 1964, Bri-
tain earned a surplus of £1,300
million in its commercial bal-
ance of payments. We were pay-
ing our way.

What turned that surplus into
a deficit of £500 million over
these five years was the govern-
ment overseas expenditure
(mainly military) of £1,800 mil-
Nom.. 3 "

It has been successive govern-
ments, Tory and Labor, that
have been living beyond their
means.

The second Callaghan _half-

* truth came when he said that
the July measures were needed.

because of runaway British
wages not accompanied by com-
parable rises in output.

He used the figure of an an-
nual 10 percent rise in hourly
earnings during the 21 months
of Labor government compared
with a 3.75 percent annual in-
crease in output.

But we don’t live on hourly
but weekly earnings. So what is
the real position? Annual rate of
output up 3.75. percent, prices
up 4.6 percent. and weekly earn-
ings up 8 percent.

In other words British earn-
ings have barely kept pace with
rising prices and output. Fur-
thermore, output would have
been greater if it had not been
for government restriction.

Finally, in every major Euro-
pean country wages have risen
faster than in Britain.

Callaghan’s arguments at
Brighton, therefore, are a fraud.

And where do we go from
here? No one at the conference
could be under any illusions. The
freeze is to extend indefinitely
under state regulations. This is
why compulsion has been intro-
duced.

This is what great sections of
the m: vement, many of them not
traditionally Left, will never
tolerate — and this was made
clear at Brighton.

around the world

TOP PENTAGON OFFICIALS have turned down appeals by
U.S. scientists to stop the use of chemical warfare in Vietnam.
Claiming that it must continue because it was “militarily useful,”
they said their planes would continue to spray chemicals over

forests and fields in Vietnam. .

. Sophia Loren says she will never

wear a mini-skirt because it destroys woman’s strongest weapon
— feminine mystique. ‘‘Today a man can practically see the whole
woman with a single glance,” she says. “It’s like swallowing a

meal in one mouthful.”
s x

*

FAR-REACHIING PLANS to reshape the policy-making bodies
of the Yugoslav League of Communists and to separate the state
and party administration, were adopted by the League’s central
committee which met recently. The major changes, aimed at prov-
iding more democracy in the party, include the abolition of the
post of secretary-general and the setting up of a presidium, whose

* chairman will be the president of the party. The presidium will

consider “social and political’ questions but will have no executive

authority.
*

*

DAWDLING DRIVERS are being criticized in West Germany.
Traffic experts, alarmed by a road toll now claiming 15,000 lives a
year and still rising, are pressing for minimum speed limits of 45

miles per hour on the country’s crowded motorways . .

. Designers

of the Zhodinsky automobile plant in Byelorussia are working on
experimental models of 72-ton trolleys to be powered by an over-
head line or a diesel engine. The Byelorussian plant, which ‘sells
goods to 15 countries, will shortly be producing 121-ton, 176-ton
and 243-ton dump trucks . ;

October 21, 1966—PACIFIC TRIBUNE--Page 8

Mr. Wilson can make what hé
likes of his conference endorse
ment of the executive statement
on foreign policy and defensé..

Despite all Brown’s

rf seeps

word
spinning the government Te

mains committed to the suppott :
of United States aggression 1%

Vietnam. 3
But the real feeling of oppos!
tion was shown when, in del
ance of the executive, the Fire
Brigades Union resolution call-
ing for urgent pressure to e?
the war and to stop U.S. bomb
ing was carred by 1,200,000.

And even more significant was
the 538,000-vote victory for thé
TGWU resolution calling fof
cuts in defense and withdrawals
in West Germany and east ©
Suez. :

Never has the relationship of
defense and foreign policy 4
Britain’s economic plight bee?
so clearly shown from the floor
at any Labor Party conference-

All commentators agreed that

at Brighton the labor movement -
was struggling for its soul, fot

it sense of purpose.

The fact that this is the situa
tion after Labor has been 1?
power for 21 months, followi08
13 years in the wilderness, !
the greatest condemnation 9
Wilson’s policies.

We now have a government
which is coming into increasin&
conflict with ever-extending se
tions of the organized laboF
movement. It is a position which
cannot last. One or the othet
must give. a

The Left is stronger, more for
tified after the Trades Union
Congress and the Brighton L@
bor Party conference.

Now the battle will go on if
the factories, in the localities,
Parliament, to end the wag®
freeze, for the rights of colle
tive bargaining, to defeat th?
anti-trade union legislation.

Brighton showed the positiv® —
Left counter-policy, the cuttin’
of military expenditure, the 25

sault on the monopolies, the &™
tension of nationalization.

Fighting for these demands

enforcing them on the gover —

ment is’ the only way to unil®

the Labor movement and pre —

vent any Tory advance.
The Left, therefore, is fighting

not only for immediate interest?
but for the future of the labor”

movement.

It will succeed all the bettel —
if it consolidates its own unity —
Labor and Communist, and fe
moves, where possible, bans alt —

proscriptions that impede tt”
full cooperation of the Left fot
ces. 4