Part of the large ING contingent on last Saturday's Irish demonstration. For this week's Irish coverage, turn to page 2 Parliament last week.
If only it were true! But Bann's Bill will do nothing to solve the problems facing 742,000 unemployed workers and a further 170,000 who are on short-time working. It will not stop inflation ravaging the living standards of the working class. Far from having anything to do with socialism, and despite its pretensions to extend public ownership into profitable areas of manufacturing industry, it's just another way of giving state hand-outs to the capitalist class.
RYDER
Bean's billion (£1,000 million) will go on tired vestment Lo industry through a National Enterprise Board. The board is aimost certain to be headed by Sir Don Ryder, former [46,000-ayear boss of paper and publishing giant Reed International-bardly a friend of the working class.
So why all the fuss? The more astute spokesmen of the ruling class have noticed that 'in switching Labour policy from outright nationalisation to something approaching a corporate industrial state, Mir. Benn will be assailed AMIDST HOWLS OF PROTEST FROM THE TORY OPPOSItion, Anthony Wedgwood Benn, introduced his Industry Bill in more by critics from the trade union Tele wins taun py soc codaery s beleaguered businessmen." (Observer 2 February 1975)
What really scares the big firms is that they might have to disclose company information to the trade unions and enter into planning arrangenients. These things in themselves do not frighten the bosses. What does worry them however, Is that these ideas might be seized on by sections of the trade union move. ment demanding the opening of the bucks so they can see how the whole capitalist system works, and not simply the parts whieh are bankrupt, and calling for a plan for the whole economy to be implemented by the organisations of the working class, That, of course, would demand a break from capitaLism.
le is precisely these ideas that militants in the trade unions must he fighting to spread in the coming months. Benn's Bill can only proLong the agony of capitalism, not produce a solution to the crisis in the interests of the working class. Roger Teal the garden path.
Support Wigan union leaders. marchers, but only a national movement.
can free the 2. PAT HICKEY, a member of the International Marxist Group and UCATI consenor at Wimpey's Yorkwood site, Birmingham, gave the following interview to Red Weekly on the Shrewsbury 2 Campaign "A lot of the best militants are disillusioned over Shrewsbury, They are fed-up with one day stoppages that get nowhere. Of course they want to get these lads out of jail.
"At the moment it is a struggle to get the lads out over Shrewsbury. The only thing that will get them to take action is the conviction that a final push is being made.
Failing that then a key section like the miners must take the lead.
The Wigan March must be supported. But that means building local Action Committees in every town and locality which are committed to working for national strike action.
(These Action Committees can form a spearhead to campaign for strike action. Also they can intervene in the Liverpool Conference to offer a lead and break that Conference away from simply relying on the trade 'There is a big local feeling. The Birmingham Trades Council took ove 700 people to the lobby of 14 January. But no real action was proposed from that lobby. Those forces must now be grouped around the new campaign that can be sparked off by the Wigan March.
What we need is united action, and that is what we will be fighting for in Birmingham, both on the sites and in every section of the labour SIn Nowcastle 14 scaffolders have been victimised by McAlpines - the same firm who played such an important role in getting the Shrewsbury workers prosecuted. A big movement is growing in their support.
*We have to explain that defending the Shrewsbury brothers involves defending all pickets and fighting all the attacks that the ruling class is making on the right to picket by using its state and its laws."
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"The grasping hand of state socialism," screamed Tory industry spokesman Michael Heseltine. Nothing is more likely to destroy the confidence of British industry*, wailed Aims of Industry.