Part 2 - DW062 001 028 002

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2 EDITORIAL Continued from Page 1. about the Russians getting hold of this name, sinee if a small magazine like"The Leveller" could easily dis- cover it, it is unlikely that Soviet intelligence would be ignorant of it. What concerns the Government is that thousands of working and progressive people might find out too much about the ruling class' state machine, and the way it is being pre- pared for use against them. This it cannot tolerate; the whole system of state rep- ression has to be kept as secret as possible if any illusions about democracy under the capitalist system are to be maintained, Other- wise, more and more people might turn away from the search for reforms within the system to the fight to overthrow the whole system. Though we disagree with much that" The Leveller" says (for example, the way some of its writers deny the need for a revolutionary party), it does have many positive features; also, "The Leveller" prosecution is part of a wider attack on hard-won dem- ocratic rights in Britain; thirdly, the Official Secrets Act is used to keep ruling class secrets away from the working class and is one lim- itation among many on freedom of speech. For these reasons, "The Leveller" and its staff should be supported, in their trial as well as in their call for the scrapping of the Official Secrets Act. Interview with a Leyland Wor- ker at Longbridge, Birmingham, Q: Leyland workers are blamed by the press, politicians, and management for British Leyland cars not being competititive on the world market and so for the company losing money. What do you think? Leyland Worker: Well, for a start the machinery at Leyland is either old or inefficient. This is because British Ley- land has preferred to invest its capital abroad, such as in British Leyland South Africa, where they can make huge prof- its out of 'slave labour'. lake my job. The grinding ma- chine I work on is 50 or 60 years old. It's forever bre- aking down. So I have to wait around for the maintenance man. British Leyland is trying to save mo- ney on this: it doesn't employ enough maintenance reineers and even says it'll have to cut the workforce to be more efficient! The old grinding machines are in such a state that each.com- ponent they produce is a dif- ferent size! So we have to check each plece. WHY PAUL FOOT SHOULD BE A SOCIALIST-THE CASE AGAINST THE SOCIALIST WORKERS' PARTY When the Socialist Workers' Party was launched, it published a book by Paul Foot- "Why You Should Be A Socialist" This book showed many of the faults of the SWP very well. Now CWM has published a book which not only refutes most of what Paul Foot says, but indicates the way forward from the errors of SWP. "New Age" will publish a review in its next issue, but we can recommend it to our readers, particularly those who have had some contact with SWP. WHY PAUL FOOT SHOULD BE A SOCIALIST can be obtained from: OCTOBER BOOKS, 4B, TEMPLE COURT, LIVERPOOL 2. (Price: £1.20, plus 20p for postage and packing) Also available from: NEW ERA BOOKS, 203, SEVEN SISTERS RD, LONDON. N4. (Contact NEW ERA for wholesale terms) There is some new machinery, but there are no servicemen to keep a check on them so they keep breaking down too. How can Leyland management hop to have better production and better quality cars if it runs production like this? Q: What do you think of the bonus schemes? LW: Management says they're going to make us workers happy by offering us a bonus. Really, though, they want more work out of fewer workers - so they'll cut the workforce if the scheme succeeds. Eut with machines forever bre- aking down and us having to check every piece produced, it means, at least on my job, it's impossible to earn any bonus at all. STRIKE AT CLARIDGES! The kitchen staff at Lon- don's "top" hotel, Claridges, walked out on strike on April 10th. Placards were raised in Mayfair reading, "No more up- stairs, Downstairs" and "We are not slaves!" 50 chefs are on strike as well as 100 others from various parts of the hotel. The immediate cause of the strike was the sacking of trainee chef Richard Elvidge for attempting to organize a trade union branch (of the General and Municipal Workers Union-GMWU). These workers- who are practically at the bottom of the central Lon- don wage scale-are also dem- anding a pay rise and a five- day week. Catering workers (manyof whom are national minorityor migrant workers) are among the most oppressed and ex- ploited workers in Britain taday-with appaling rates of pay, bad conditions and long hours. They are usually un- organized and management is able to play on the language problems of migrant workers to keep them divided, and ignorant of their rights and in constant fear of deport- ation. Thus, the recent str- uggles of workers in the catering industry that have been occuring one after the other (Metropole Hotel, Garners' Steak Houses, etc) acquire a special importance for all British workers, and they must be militantly supported. These struggles have THE BUDGET The Budget was, as we predicted, a give-away budget. It is obviously part of the build up to a General Elec- tion, though not a great deal tion. Not many people will be taken in by Labour's "gen- erosity; "so much has been taken off the working class and the working people over the last few years that what has been given back is just chicken feed in comparison. SPILLERS Spillers, who have stop- ped bread production recent- ly, employed 29,097 workers for an average of £55 a week. In 1977, Spillers'chairman, William Michael Vernon got £35,350, plus income from shares, which must have brought his income to round about the £1000 a week level. also exposed the ugly fea- tures of the opportunist trade union misleaders who will willingly betray the catering workers at the drop of a hat! All this shows the importance of working towards a national Fight Back organization of rank-and-file catering wor- kers of all nationalities in Britain, and more impor- tantly, a revolutionary par- ty of the working class based on Marxism-Leninism- Mao Tse Tung Thought. This party will be able draw together the thousands of struggles of various sec- tions of the working class into one mighty struggle of the entire British working class for the overthrow of the capitalist system and for the building of socialism. VICTORY TO THE CATERING WORKERS! BUILD THE MARXIST-LENINIST PARTY OF THE WORKING CLASS! NUS At its Easter conference, the National Union of Students reintroduced its "No Platform For Fascists" policy, desig- ned to stop people like the National Front organizing and recruiting in colleges. This is a very good policy. To allow these people to spread their fascist and racist views is to encour- age more racist attacks on black people, more bombings of leftist and black comm- unity bookshops, more parcel bombs. The policy change was won against the opposition of the Tory students and members of the revisionist "Communist" Party of Great Britain. It seems that, for the sake of Tory votes in the NUS elections and CPGB "respectability" nationally (part of "The British Road To Socialism" no doubt!), the revisionists are quite prepared to reject everything they used to stand for wher they did deserve the title of "Communists"! Socialist Worker Headquarters gutted by Nazi National Front attack.

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