obviously like to integrate the British ruling class into a strategy for combating the workers' movements as soon as possible. Hence the recent statement by the Dutch Foreign Minister on the "urgency' of an EEC meeting to discuss Britains's entry.
In the last week of September, workers were on strike in:
Lubeck: 1,200 shipyard workers Kiel: 7,000 workers Copenhagen: 600 workers Milan: 2½m. workers Rome: Doctors threatened to join strike in solidarity with millions of workers Palermo: Transport paralysed France: Rail strike Many of the strikes are for higher wages, but these wage demands will undoubtedly spread to more specific anti-capitalist actions. Periodic fights which are limited either to readjusting or The gates are back in LSE made of wood instead of increasing wages are necessary but by themselves are not sufficient for making any serious headway. The challenge can be mounted effectively by demanding and forcing the capitalists to open the books, to abolish secrecy in banking and to yank out and expose all the hush-hush mechanisms of protit and big business. The Merseyside action should be seen as a beginning. Paid agents of the City like the Editor of Punch can complacently write in the Guardian (15 Sept. 1969): "Occupation of factories is unlawful, and workers who take part will lay themselves open to all sorts of trouble. Mr. Weinstock is hardly the sort who takes things meekly on the chin... (the workers) are a good deal less interested in idealism than in the financial backing of their weekly pay packets." Of course hacks like Davis object even to the latter. They talk about partnership' and 'realistic concepts.
However, what they fail to see is that we are living at a time when capitalism is on the brink of the third industrial revolution. Change is paramount -various branches of industry, various jobs will disappear within the next few years. Manual labour will gradually disappear, and the number of technicians involved in production will increase. This coupled with the fact that the level of training and the education of workers is Because argument that the bosses know best and only the bosses can run plants will be turned on its head as it will no longer be true and workers will know much more about running industry than either the bosses or the hordes of financial journalists who are their public relations men. The narrowing of the technical knowledge gap is not as far off as it seems.
The wave of strikes in Western Europe is reminiscent of the post-war periods in Europe in 1918-24 and 1945-47. In the latter instance the workers were betrayed by the traditional social-democratic and Stalinist leaderships. May 1968 in France was both a dress rehearsal for a socialist revolution but also a grim reminder that only a revolutionary party opposed to the twin policies of the social-democrats/Stalinists and able to attract large numbers of young workers will be able to seize state power.
strike - this was another example of a fundamentally