years ago is in no way unjustified.
The issue which sparked off the violence was that of the compulsory teachine or Airkans - The leneus% of the white Nationalist ruling group urban aress. This mcant that African schoolchildren would henceforth have any language. to master three languages: their native tribal tongue. English, and now AfriSL8EI3 It will coine as no surprise to learn that African school hours are short, as both buildings and teachers are in short supply. Indeed, the amount of money spent per head on African education is only C18 (1974) as compared with 300 for whites. To require children to be tri lingual is in any case a tall order, but in this context the result can only be the emasculation of African HEAR TARIO ALI SPEAK on the fight against racism Mon 21 June MANCHESTER (Bernes Waitis Building, UMIST, Bpml Wech 23 June SHADFOND SIRE Star, Westgerte, 7,30pm)
Thurs 24 vune LEEDS (University Students Union, Tpm)
SHEFFIELD (Memoria Hall, behind City Hall, 7pm)
Sum 27 June BIRMINGHAM (Dig beth Civic Hall, 7.30pm)
Tues 29 June OXFORD (Blackfriars; St Giles, 8pml Weds 30 June COVENTRY (General Wolfe, Foleshill Road, 8pm)
Thurs 1 July BRISTOL (phone 01B37 6964 for details)
Fri 2 July N. LONDON (Hamsey Library, Haringey Park Rd, NB, 8pm) Sar 3 July DEHCCHARIAEE natianal Community Centre, 61b Mans field Road, 3pm)
Response to the meetings has been enthusiastie. In Manchister, for вхатрій, мгу Asian shop approached has willingly Three thousand handbills have been dis tributed in the Asian comunity.
A local West Indian Cantre leader has agreed to speak on the platform in a personal capecity, and a local black self-defence group has been approached to assist with the stewarding of the meeting Pull out all the stops to campaign around the meetings and mobilise for the demonstration on 4 July! DETENTION of the Vorster regime. Anyone still unconvinced of the barbaric nature of racism after the past few weeks in Britain can have no excuse now witl the events in Souti Africa. The lid of the pressure cooker that is Soweto, so long held down by the South African authorities, finally blew off with the inevitable violence and bloodshed. With over 100 people dead, hundreds injured, and further handreds imprisoned, the comparison with the Sharpeville killings of sixteen As a consequence of this there is an appalling drop out rate: of the six million black South African children who started school between to African schoolchildren in "white' 1955 and 1968, three million had given up before they could read in Soweto itself is a township of anything up to 1,500,000 Africans, ten miles outside Johannesburg. Its facilities are to say the least minimal.
Less than a third of this large city has ciectricity, for example - yet the bigeest power station in South Africa Is right next door.
Hundreds of thousands do not live in their own bomes, Transport to and expensive. Life becomes a brutal strugde for survival - last year alone over a thousand cases of tape, and over 8.000 cases of assault. This Is just a brief glimpse at the life Africans suffer under apartheid, In consequence the education issue must be seen as a focus for a discontent that goes much, much deeper. Peaceful The protest march of 10,000 students started peacefully with the students marching on the Phefeni school, the focai point of the struggle against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction. In order to disperse the students the police threw tear gas shells at them, to which they reptled with stones, Then with out warning, and without first firing over their beads, the police shot into A senior police official is reported increasingly threatening the day-to-day life of white Rhodesians All this has led to a fantastic growth in the self-confidence of the Africans, as witnessed in the new scope of their protests. They have begun to raise militant black power slogans, sensing the increas ing weakness of the whites. On the march African students for the first time shouted "Viva Azania" - the name given to South Africa by the black nationalists, Soweto, unlike Sharpeville, isjust the beginning.
-dental that the violence erupted on imposed by the United Nations in 1963 was highlichted only last weck with the ly exported more than E1 million worth and from Johannesburg is overcrowded Africa. Technical Support and Services was fined a trifling £1,000 for this offence. Even more revealing, though, There were over seven hundred murders, wore tho details of how the parts wan obtained from the Ministry of Defence.
пг шот лн тк зін тоги managing director of the firm's parent "As far as 1 am aware -. any work we nave cone in relation to sout Alc has been done with the blessing of the MinuRry or Datem by Jersay's Deputy Bailiff, who pointed out that the Ministry 'could hardly have thought the parts were being sent here to supply Jersey's army and navy: the ore of the visit by South African Premier Vorster to meet Dr Kissinger in West Germany. The frustration of Africuns in the foe of the South African regimo means that they can only look outwards for help. Certainly Vorster's hopes of presenting everything as rosy under his now policy of detente bave been shot to pieces with a vengeance. South Alrican military in the latter. In Zimbahwe the black guerrillas are line.
It is perhaps not entirely coinci The farce of the arms embargo supposedly prosecution of a Jersey firm which illegal.
of parts for military equipment to South La," He was backed up AFTER THE BALL There they were, guarded by a long line of policemen and crash barriers from several hundred demonstrators on Che other side of the road. Fascists, racists? Perhaps even a Government Minister responsible for the cuts?
No, none of these, but the gentlemen of the TUC, 'our leadem", turning up for the special TUC on 16 June. Feeling somewhal more secure inside Central Hall, Westminster, these bureaucrals voted by an overwheiming majority for the Healey pay deal.
What 'deal" one might ask, because even a deal usually supposes that there are two sides to the bargain. But the Government bas got everything and the unions nothing — except pie in the sky. The Department of the Environment is now unilaterally threatening to cut the rate support grant to local authorities that 'overspend" — Le, retain essential services - this year. The child benefits scheme has been withdrawn not because it would mean taking money out of men's pay packets but because the amount of money Ministers were prepared lo offer for the first child was so stall it was laughable, Becter nothing at all!
The TUC has fallen hook, line and sinker for the Government's strategy - but it is working people who are being dragged along on the end of the And with the deal sealed up, the TUC leaders are now falling over them selves in calling for higher profits. Even the token references to maincaining the ineffectual Price Code have been dropped. 'If the Government is convinced that the employers have not been involved in a deliberate "investment strike" and that some financial casement is necessary, then a controlled revision of prices should be agreed provided that the increased profit is wholly re directed into furtber investment.?
Increased Profits This statement came not from the Confederation of British Industry, nor from the Retailers Consortium, It came from the general secretary of the second largest union in the country, Jobn Boyd of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, writing in the editorial column of the June Issue of the union's journal. Of course, John Boyd does not argue his case openly for increased profits. What he claims is that this will increase investment and safeguard jobs.
This is simply not true, Short of nationalisation under workem control there is absolutely no guarantee that increased profits will be Invested in new plant. And even if they are, It's more likely to be in strong-arm states like South Africa and Brasil where huge profits can be made on the blood and bones of a subdued labour movement.
The new moves virtually to suspend the Price Code equally reveal the total Ineffectiveness of the mindless chanting Ly the left' leaders in the unions and Labour Party for "investment'. Investment for what? Under whose control? The very same argument is now being turned against the working class to justify wage controls and higher prices. The so-called 'Investment strike" was not caused by nasty unpatriotic British businessmer as the rhetoric of the lefts would have us believe. It was caused by virtue of the fact that the rate of profit is higher in other countries or in sectors of the economy like property speculation.
Yes, the working class does need irivestment — but on our terms. It needs a massive injection of funds into the social services to meet social need and provide jobs. It needs workers control over production so that plans for socially useful production like those drawn up by the Lucas Aerospace combine committee can not only be written but implemented. And that means tearing away the organisations of the working class from class collaboration - breaking them from the policies of the Labour Common Struggle The 4%4 per cent rip-off has been massively confirmed. But 90,000 miners were against the pay deal, including a majority of those who actually dig coal. Big minorities opposed to the deal exist in all the major unions, In London a new focus of opposition to the cuts is energing in the decision of Haringuy's Labour Couneil to defy the Department of the