LETTER- youth One of the big problems of the bourgeoisie today is the young workers, and early teenagers. They spend a lot of time and money in making sure these people are occupied to the full. They in fact promote controlled hooliganism, like in football, they give full coverage on telly and papers which in effect encourages the young to go to a foot- ball stadium and unleash all their anxieties and class struggle inside a closed ring. It is the same every where, they split the young up so that they can control them eg. skinheads, rockers, teddyboys, weirdos, mods, protestants, catholics, in every way you can think of. They do this because they don't want the young to unite and participate in the elimination of imperialism social-imperialism and cap- italism, they do this to save themselves. Look how they split people up every- where, blacks over there, Indians here, all-white dis- tricts. They do not want people to integrate with each other bacause they can use this to their advantage when the time comes; for instance, say, within the year unemployment went up so much that the people would not take no-more, what do the ruling class do? They simply put out some sort of programme on telly saying that the blacks and Indians etc are taking all the jobs, this will turn the people on to the blacks whereas the blacks are usually worse off than us. SORRY! Some readers have commented on certain technical faults in the first NEW AGE, parti- cularly on our omission of parts of several sentences. We will try to avoid such faults in future; our paper aims to serve the working people of Britain, and it is therefore our duty to make sure that it is of as high a standard as possible. OUR TIMES (Cont'd from p.7) as 15 years went out". "Why did they call it the 'Great War' Gran?" "Don't know son. Great Britain, Alfred the Great, the Great War, sounds as if someone actually saw something good about it. Perhaps the authorities did think it was great". Granny showed that she didn't want any more talk about it, by resuming her work". (To be continued.) These are just a few things the bourgeoisie do to cut down the talk of pol- itics by the young, Music.. Football, booze, telly, new trends etc. Why the hell do you fight each other? Think! Whose the main enemy, who takes all the hours of work, in the end who takes all the money? Who are you working for - surely not for your- selves - you're working for a handful of bloodsuckers who will exploit and suck the blood from you until you are dry. Rise up and smash the shackles that hold you, crush this corrupt and decadent society. Decide your own destiny, run your own lives. Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. ECONOMIC NOTES The British share of the EEC 'mountains' on Jan. 19, 1978 were as follows: (The corresponding figures for 1977 are in brackets) Beef: 14,211 (4,942); Butter:6131 (2,142); Skimmed milk powder; 75,578 (4,250); Barley: 9,434 (0). The 7.6 million workers cov- ered by nationally negotiated wage settlements had average increases of 4.4% in basic wages in 1977, compared with 14% in 1976 Barclay's Bank's profits for 1977 were £267.6 mill- ion(1976: £197.9m). Lloyd's Bank's for 1977 were £166.2 million (1976:£147.7m). * The total number of reg- istered unemployed nursing administrators, state regi- stered nurses, state enrolled nurses and state certified midwives in September 1977, was 5,588. ***** In the last quart- er of 1977, in- dustrial output rose by 0.2% to stand at 110.2% of the 1970 level, compared with 110.1% in the same quarter of 1976. Consumer spending rose by 12% to £8,925m. (at 1970 prices.) *** The number of new homes started in 1977 was the 2nd- lowest for any year since 1951. Over 200,000 build ing workers are unemployed. On the buses... Public transport systems are in near chaos in our cities and towns, as the transport officials fail to get to grips with the problem of transporting large numbers of people about their business. However, the bulk of the burden does not fall on the shoulders of the bureaucratic administrat- ors of these services but on the long-suffering bus driver, conductors and passengers. Neither has the danger of bus staff and passen- gers uniting to oppose their bureaucratic polic- ies gone unnoticed by London Transport at least. How London Transport divides and dictates to staff and passengers is I WAS A WELL- PAID ENGINEER UNTIL I DISCOVERED THE SOCIAL CONTRACT... The Lome Convention was signed on February 28, 1975, between the EEC and 53 African, Carribean and Pacif- ic countries. It includes th so-called 'Stabex' mechanism, whereby the EEC guarantees cash compensation to raw material producers when ex- port earnings fall below specified levels. In 1975 & '76, ACP exports to the EEC increased in value by 14%. In the first 8 months of '77, they increased by 26%. In both 1975 and 1976, the ACP countries were in overall surplus with the EEC. 64-65 68-69 72-73 75-76 76-77 18- 16- 14- 12- DOMESTIC 10- COMMERCIAL AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 8- INDUSTRIAL 6- 4- 2- % Graph shows the average price per therm charged by the British Gas Corp- oration to 3 categories of customers. 3 revealed in the following true incident passed on to us by a reader: O.A.P.'s have been issued with bus passes which allow them to travel without payment at off-peak periods. Though most people regard this as a right for our retired senior workers, Uproar nearly broke out on a 73 bus recently, when a bus conductor ejected two O.A.P.s two minutes before the restricted peak period was due to expire. Another O.A.P. who could not face the thought of standing at a bus-stop at below freezing temp- eratures for perhaps another 20 minutes, after some argument, paid the fare just as Euston clock began to strike 7pm. Not surprisingly, other passengers on the almost empty bus were annoyed at the incident. Then the conductor explained why he was forced to act in that way. Each time he gets caught with a non-fare paying OAP on the bus in a peak period - even if the person will not disembark until well after the period is over - he is liable to be booked by an inspector. Three such O.AP.s would have resulted in three 'bookings' and three bookings a year meant he would lose his £50 annual bonus! As most travellers on the route know, Euston is usually full of snooping inspectors. Passengers initial annoyance rapidly became one of sympathy. L.T. are constantly pat- ting themselves on the back for this 'privilege' which is really paid for by other younger workers using the buses. MAY DAY The Revolutionary Communist League of Britain and the Communist Workers' Movement are organising a joint May Day meeting on the subject of: BUILDING THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE WORKING CLASS The meeting is at 2 o'clock on Saturday 29th April at The Old Town Hall, Haverstock Hill, London N.W.3. (opposite Belsize Park Tube)
