Letters

Intolerance

Congratulations on a heroic headline regarding Mary Bell (‘State attacks right to think’ Weekly Worker May 7). There is something very creepy when the prime minister of the country comes on TV to urge you not to buy a book and to add another log on the fire of blind intolerance and hate.

The backlash against this book is the tip of the reactionary iceberg of censorship. In the same week we had frenzied calls to ban the film ‘Lolita’. One guest on a radio phone-in said she would ban the original book as well.

It just shows how far attitudes have changed. I don’t remember this book causing any outrage when it came out - I’ve always thought of it as a love story with comic contradictions. The only outrage I recall in the original film was the actress playing the 12-year old nymphet looked about 25. The current film, to calm sensitivities, sets the girl as 14 - and she looks 35 or so, I am told. But it won’t do apparently. According to outraged phoners, the film justifies abuse, brutality and murder of children.

In fact any debate on any question of this kind always ends up with some sort of attempt to brand people who oppose censorship and hysterical reactions to moral panics as advocates of infanticide. There is a sort of mental terrorism and public vilification which forces all but the very brave - or foolhardy - to just shut up and say nowt.

One expects that something of this climate happened during the witch trials and the un-American trials in the USA. We have all seen what the mob, whipped to a frenzy by baying press headlines, can do. A public lynching is by no means out of the question, and the danger for free speech and rational thought in this climate cannot be overstated.

Dave Douglass
Doncaster

Rail fiasco

Recent events in the north of England have shown yet again the complete stupidity of the rail privatisation project. A project that, despite its weasel words when in opposition, the Labour Party are not prepared to end now they are in government.

North West Trains, recently taken over by the bus operator First Bus, now renamed First Group, have decided to go head to head with Richard Branson and challenge the Virgin Trains monopoly of the west coast route to London.

NWT plans for the Rochdale and Blackpool trains to meet at Warrington Bank Key station and for the units to be coupled together, then proceed to London as one train. Problem: Branson controls Warrington BK station and blocked NWT from using its platforms to couple the trains together. NWT and Railtrack then decide they can couple the trains together in a freight loop line just outside the station. Problem: Aslef drivers point out that this is contrary to safety and the rule book. Solution: Railtrack allows NWT to couple units at Crewe station, owned by Railtrack.

It now appears that Virgin are resorting to the type of dirty tricks that Branson successfully took British Airways to court for. Allegedly the Virgin West Coast driver manager has been visiting the NWT drivers’ mess room and recruiting the NWT drivers who have just finished learning the London route.

Lack of funds has not stopped Regional Railways North East going ahead with a rebranding exercise. The company will be known as Northern Spirit, more appropriate to a brewery than a railway, and the inevitable repainting of trains and issue of new uniforms will take place at some considerable cost.

Railworkers would like to know why deputy Prime Minister Prescott, despite all the promises made, has not used his powers to take RRNE back into the public sector. New Labour, Old Labour - same old Labour.

Danny Geest
Warrington

Too long

A little over a month ago, over 2,000 locked out Detroit Newspaper workers ‘celebrated’ a most solemn occasion. On April 8, the Detroit Newspaper strike/lockout passed its 1,000th day.

The strike/lockout went from mass pickets that stopped production to isolation and strangulation. Why is this? Is it because the Detroit Newspaper workers don’t want to fight? Absolutely not! Is it because strikes are unwinnable? Tell that to UPS workers, or the Australian wharfies. No, this strike/lockout collapsed because of a treacherous and cowardly leadership that would rather be eating steak and lobster with the Gannett bosses than leading a militant strike.

The leaders of these unions must be swept out and replaced by an elected, rank and file strike committee, armed with a class-struggle programme of action. Otherwise more defeats and more surrenders are on the horizon. Time and again, the MCNU bureaucrats stabbed the workers in the back, and then kicked them while they were down. What was necessary for the mass action to be successful was a class-struggle leadership willing to see the struggle through all the way. But for Lou Mlezcko and co that would challenge their control over the union.

So the ‘corporate campaign’ was brought in to shackle the striking workers to the capitalists and their representatives in the government. But this was still not enough. The striking workers were still mobilising, defying injunctions and threatening to shut down the scab papers.

This was the background for the ‘unconditional back-to-work offer’. The MCNU bureaucrats’ message to the membership was clear: stay in line or you’ll never get your job back. This ‘offer’, far from being a “bold new strategy” for the strike, was an admission of defeat - it was an unconditional surrender. But it was not a surrender authored in the name of the membership. On the contrary, only one of the six unions was allowed to actually vote on the ‘offer’, and that union turned it down.

To turn this dying strike into a living victory would mean ousting these treacherous and cowardly bureaucrats, and building an elected, rank and file strike committee on a class-struggle programme.

A convention of the six unions, where all members of the MCNU would be allowed to discuss and vote, would be called. At that meeting, an elected strike committee, composed of the rank and file, would be given the power to make decisions in the name of the membership of the MCNU. The strike committee would serve as the general staff of the strike, directing its every movement. All decisions of the strike committee would be subject to the approval of the membership as a whole, and members of the strike committee would be subject to recall at any time.

As for the programme, the ‘unconditional back-to-work offer’ would be immediately withdrawn (as it was undemocratically adopted by the bureaucrats), and mass picketing would be reinstated. Mass picketing would not simply be a weekend event, but a 24-hour, seven-day action - unrelenting and unyielding. All injunctions and restraining orders would be defied, and militant action to stop the scab papers from going to press or being distributed would be initiated.

The strike committee would initiate a massive campaign among other unions in the area, among unorganised and unemployed workers, and in the black community in Detroit. Throughout this strike, the Detroit Newspaper bosses have used ‘diversity’ as a way to keep black workers from supporting the strike. A class-struggle programme would fight for unity among black and white workers in support of the Detroit Newspaper workers.

Finally, an appeal to trade unionists would be issued. As part of this, a demand would also be placed on the bureaucrats at the head of other local unions. This demand would be clear in tone and forceful in meaning: ‘If you can’t act like real unionists and help us, instead of helping the bosses, then at least have the decency to stand aside and let us fight our battle.’ We did it before, and we can do it again.

Jim Paris
Cleveland, USA