14 July. The charges arise our of a nass meeting in February on the question of the London Allowance and the Freeze, when the Executive lost control after refusing to allow discussion of a motion properly submitted by the Wandsworth Association, The Wandsworth Association has long been a thorn in the side of a truditionally overcautious Executive, It has now obviously been singled out for a lesson, as an example to other would-be militants" in a period when the Union leadership is trying to create the right atmosphere for a deal over Phase 3 of the Government's pay policy.
It is on this basis that the Wandsworth Three Defence Committee is fighting the case, A national picket, even lunger than the one on 23 June, is being organised outside the NUT headquarters on 14 July, with a meeting to are expected to express their solidarity, It in clear that the NUT Executive will not have an casy passage if they are determined to pursue this collision course. All messages of solidaity. donations etc. should be sent to: Wandswoth Three Defence Committee, Flat 4, 697 Garratt Lane, London S.W,17 (947 3999). Confrontation on the S.E.F picker line picket retreats The equal pay strike at the Eccles and Heywood plants of Salford Electrical Instruments, a GEC subsidiary, has now entered its sixth week Both men and women members of APEX, the clerical workers' union, are out in support of a claim which would both raise the level at which equal pay would eventually be achieved, and narrow the differential now by the maximum permitted under the Pay Laws (one-third on top of the I! + 456), However the production workers, a number of whom are in the AUEW, have so far refused to recognise the picket tines and have carried on working.
In an effort to change this situation, a mass picket at the Eccles plant was called for last Monday. Trade unjorists from ocher factories in the area responded, as did members of Women's Liberation, and their determination was clearly demonstrated when a scab lorry which attempted to drive through the picket lines was completely immobilised. Nobody was able to cuter the factory for over an hour, and the police with only twenty constables present were clearly unable to force the issue So instead of trying to force the issue, the ponce opted for persunsion And incredsbyy it worked, with the represcotatives of APEX and the ALEW, both members of the Communast Party, agrecing to call the whole thing off. "The point had been made", they argued, and indeed it had. Instead of building on the favourable relationship of forces al the time, they were prepared to retreat at the very first sign. of a possible controntation, so allowing the blacklegs in and giving the police every encouragement to act more rapidiy and forcibly in fusure. That is not the way to develop workers combativity and self-confidence. It is certainly no way to win a strike On the contrary, such an approach is nothing but a recipe for demoralisation and defeat, and must be changed at once if the S.B.L. workers are to have any prospect of victory. Since mid-1971, when the dollar was first de valued and its convertability into gold abandoned, the world currency markets have been in a state of semi-permanent chaos, punctuated by several full scale crises during which the currency markets have been forced to close. In the short run, much exchange of currencies is for purely speculative reasons — taking advantage of high interest rates or gambling on expected devaluations and revaluations. Such speculative movements have at times risen to as much as £1,000 million a day. But the basie purpose of currency exchange is for international exchange of commodities and international invesiment. So the threat of breakdown of the world mone tary system contains the threat of collapse of world trade and investment.
Even though exchange rate changes are now a daily occurrence, the importance of last week's surprise 5% percent revaluation of the West German mark should not be underestimated The D-mark has been revalued by more than 40 percent in relation to the dollar in the last 18 months. Yet even with such a massive change, the German balance of payments surplus has continued to grow. German reserves are now nearly twice as high as chose of Japan, more than twice as high as those of the US and aboul 6 times those of Britain. Last week's crisis was precipitated by a month of intense pressure on the dollar (springing from Watergate, the renew. ed US trade delicit in May, and the kap in the rate of US inflationi and also on sterling (with the gigantic brade deficit now less compensated for by the foreign borrowing of the nationaived industries). Sterling and the dollar (both floating currencies) have been devalued by over 3 percent in the last 4 weeks. The haemoershage of funds has portly gone into gold and other commodities, reflecting a general decline of confidence in paper money, and partly into Dmarks, showing a decline of confidence in the pound and dollar in particular.
The move into D-marks led to the first breach of the joint float of EEC currencies (excluding Britain and Italy, but including Sweden and Norway) arranged in March. This is the so-called 'sake in the tunnel': in relation to each other the European currencies may fluctante around their central values, withen a range of 244% (the "tunnel'); within this range each currency becomes a 'snake' able to wind up and down in relation to the others.
The day before its revaluation the D-mark had broken out of the tunnel, pushing the range of its fluctuation up to 3 peroent. The tunnel is now reestablished at new rates, but the iden that the joint float cin represent any real move towards European monetary integation is shattered. It undertines the inevitability of the world economic crisis resulting in rationa! Yather than international attempts at solution, even within the EBC. Capital is becoming the stail in the shell, rather than the snake in the tunneL The Brandt government partly sees revaltation as a move against inflation. Like the US, Germany has suddenly become a high inflition The constant inflow of dollars feede CLUELESS this inflation, Memories of the collapse of the German monetary system in 1923 make inflacion there an even darker shadow than it is in other European countries Earlier this year the government imposed a surtax of 10 percent on peofita and high incomes, as well as an 11 per. cent tax on investment. On wages it has set a voluntary 8½ percent norm which is increus ingly being broken. The pressure on profits produced by all these measures, Ineluding the revaluation, will now drive the Brandt government increasingly towards the statutory wage controls which it has tried to avoid. Michael Price