THE RIGHT TO PICKET The fascists of tne National Front had a bad year in 1974. By the end of the year, a determined core of trade union opposition to the Front had bean built up.
But the state has forced the left to pay a price for this. Kevin Gately was killed, Goes running into thou sands of pounds have had to be paid, and, as 1975 opens, two antitascist militants are in are.
lan Coleman is serving an 18 month term for oppasing neo Naxis in Loods. WERE TOM! TOUGH FOES WOTKET. was arrested at Hyde Park Carner in September when thousands of people go to press, he comes up for sentencing affer spending 3 weeks in a remand centre.
Make no mistake about it, the NatSomal Front will be with us for a lone time, Its racist, anti-Irish and chauvinist policies will still attract many workers militants!
—in their thousands to the ballot box, in their hundreds to street doronstrations, and nor a few to the fist and the LABUT.
The fight aganst the fascists on the streets will continue in 1975, Notbing short of a permanent stop to their publie activity can satisfy us But the working class is not yet master of the streets, The price we have to pay maer be Kept down This a why a campaign toe mount to stoo tan tale man, and Tony Young if he is sent down.
Mobilisation must he stepped up now for the Leeds Anti-Fascist Comm intoe demonstration in Leods on 18 January to demand a pardon and demonstration and picket of the Home Delice in London on the santo day must be prepared for Tony Young Dorations to pay lopal costs ane help the campaign to free lan Colenan should he sent to: Leeds Anti Fascist Committe, cro 153 Wood house Lane, Leeds 2, STRIKE A BLOW FOR
The Shrewsbury pickets, victims of a legal system that the ruling class has created to perpetuate and maintain its rule are still in jail. The ineffectual protests of the Labour MPs, the TUC leaders, and the demands of the Labour Party Conference were brushed disdainfully aside by Labour's Home Secretary who reveres capitalist law and abhors working class militancy.
Bob Pennington By the end of 1974 inflation had reached an astronomical 18 per cent. Rising prices had eroded he living standards of all workers. For the low paid the effects of inflation had been savage and cruel. But for the top people' the Labour Government had a message of good cheer - their salaries went up by as much as £4,000 with a promise of the same again next year.
Mr Benn -more of a mouse with a leer, than a tiger with a snarl may have worried some of the more timid gentlefolk in the City, However, Mr Healey soon put their minds at rest when he disbed out E3 billion to British industry and told the working class to go easy on pay claims or he would give them a massive dose of unemployment.
To make sure that Healey's message had gone home Mr Wilson appointed his favourite tycoon, Don Ryder, to be the Government's Despite Mrs Whon's touching claim that "If God had meant us to be joined to the continent be would have joined us on her hus band fully intends to upset both the plans of the almighty and the votes of the Labour Party Conferleast of all the pro-marketeers, that the Labour leaders, under the pressure of industrial capital, fully intend to stay in Europe.
At Labour's annual jamboree the rumblings and disquiet of the rank ind file were contained by the "lefts". Like obedient puppets the Mikardos, the Jegers, the Lestors and the Harts danced at the end of the strings pulled by the rightwing Cabinet Ministers.
Mikardo argued against MPs haring to submit themselves for periodle re-clection and made sure that a resolution calling for defence cuts of at Icast £1,000 million was remitted to the NEC.
Lena Jeger got Conference to agree that the Clay Cross fines should be discussed with the Environment Minister, extreme right-winger 1974 began with the Tories? Phase 3. It ended with Labour's In the imperialist "province" of the Six Counties of northern Ireland, internment was half way through its third year when the year began. By the end of 1974, the Labour Government had brought in the Prevention of Terrorism Act so that-it could jail and intimidate opponents in Britain of its bloody war in Anthony Crosland. This made sure that a resolution demanding the immediate lifting of the fines was defeated by 4,378,000 to 1,173,000.
It was Joan Lestor and Judith Hart who came to the Government's rescue on South Africa and Chile.
After a year of record-breaking inflation, increasing bankruptcies and growing state repression, the Labour Party Conference did not take one single decision that broke in any way with the overall interests of the ruling class.
As the harsh winds of capitalist recession have swirled through the economy, big business has more and more demanded financial help from the state. Meanwhile the NHS, the education system, the housing programme and state pensions were squeezed in order to prop up a sick and diseased British capitalism.
Pensions will go up a derisory E1.60 for a single person and E2,5U for a couple in April 1975. By then these rises will have been wiped out by inflation and another of Labour's social "conquests" will have heen swamped by the capitalist crisis. UNDEFEATED Although the ruling class can feel a little more reassured with the porformance of the Labour Government and the "responsible" leaders of the TUC, they know that the main job has not been completed. The working chess and its organss ations remain intact and undefcated.
What is even more disturbing for the ruling class is that militancy has not simply been restricted to the big battalions like the miners, but 1974 saw the nurses wage a fight of unprecedented militancy.
Teachers, particularly in Scotland, fire service workers and other groups in the public sector have case uside their traditional roles as "public spirited servants' and gone onto the offensive. Women workers at Salford Electrical Ins truments, Wingrove and Rogers, and in many other tirms, have downed tools and fought long bitter struggles over equal pay and conditions.
As less traditionally militant workers have gone into struggle they have used the techniques of occupations, mass pickets and clocted strike committees, often refusing to let their struggles be strangled by the union bureaucrats. Such methods of organisation can, and will, act as an inspiration not just to the less-well organised sections of the working class. but can show the way forward to many of the more powerful-sections.
The last year has revealed not only a crisis of massive dimensions as the Court Lines went bankrupt, Ferranti's went broke and British Leyland headed for the poor-house, it also revealed a political crisis within the organisations of the working class.
There is no 'national' way out. The exortations from the Labour and trade union leaders for everyone to pull together are meaning Jess nothings, treated with contempt even by the ruling class itself.
The miners showed in February that they could break not only the pay laws but the Government itself.
sey showed how the working class could impose its will. The attempts of the tight wine to prevent the working class using its strength to fight the capilalist crisis will, if heeded, lead to disasto try to divide the squatting movement by councd property; whilst at the some time evicting all single people. But thote is to be Once squatters are divided, the idea is to -1974 solution to the crisis.
ATTACHMENT
for "mercy'. ter. On every single issue the official leaderships of the working class were incapable of providing any Because of their attachment to imperialism they prostrated them selves before the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The attacks of the capitalist state on the Clay Cross councillors and the Shrewsbury pickets rendered them impotent. All they could do was appeal to the state's most loyal custodians The example of the miners and in 1972 the action of the workers" movement to free the Pentonville Five —did not inspire them of show them the way. In fact the successful battles of the working class horrified them Above all, 1974 has shown time and time again that the werker" movement must be prepured to break from adherence to capitalist law and challenge the right of the employers to control the productive forces and run soc iety in their image. The alternative is to stick to the rules of the game and allow the ruling class to dump all the burdens of their crisis on to the backs of the work ing class The last year has shown that the workers do have the strength and fighting ability to take on the employers and their state. The task in 1975 is to use that power to the full
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NO HOLIDAY RULING CLASS NO PICNIC FOR THE WORKERS