Ral Strike!

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health workers' campaign for a decent wage.

Already, the membership in Rowntree Mackintosh are faced with redundancies. It is against this background that Jim Tolton has been sacked.

It is vitally important that the other craft shop stewards' committees in Rowntree Mackintosh take Have a... ive action.

Ron Giles from Sheffield told the meeting that local NHS JSSC has been a major force in organising for the 22nd, pushing the bureaucracy aside. It has made the link with the steel jobs threat. BSC River Don and Firth Brown will be out for the day.

The local TUC has a sub-committee organising with convenors. Confed have called for one day, and nearly all factories will support this. Buses have balloted to stay in, but there will be a NHS workers' picket anyway.

In the hospitals feelings are higher than ever. Four trains running to London and there'll be a local demonstration.

Jeremy Corbyn, a NUPE full-timer from London, stressed that we need to organise to prevent the TUC doing an ASLE-type sell-out. There is an important connection between this dispute and the whole public sector.

Jeremy Corbyn reported that he had spoken to the London District Committee of UCW. 200 delegates were there, and gave strong support. Pacing Messages of support to privatisation and Tebbit they saw themselves a having a common struggl with the NHS workers.

The difference with "7 is that the TUC neve moved then. We shoul build links with other trad union sections. In the faa of Fowler's plans, the TU one hour stoppage is path etic.

The GLC has turned al facilities at County Hal over to NHS unions for thi day. Councillors will be or picket lines throughou London.

The meeting decided t take back to local NHS Join Shop Stewards' Commi ttees the idea of a nationa conference of shop stew ards' committees - we felt HWFC was not strong enough to organise this conference. The Sheffield comrades felt that the Sheffield committee might be willing to make the ini. tial call.

HWFC in any case will continue co-ordinating and campaigning for all-out indefinite action with emergency cover under workers' control.

rotest OVER 500 Asian and white militants attended a meeting in Leicester on Friday 17th in support of the Leicester 3.

These are three youth! who were harassed and arrested on trumped-up charges by the local police.

At the meeting it was pointed out by a supporter of the Bradford 12 campaign that in fact Asian youth have consistently faced a situation where they have no rights in relation to the police.

The campaign is to be developed along the lines of the Bradford 12 campaign, including mass court pickets and efforts for maximum possible support from the local Asian community.

Already the Asian youth movement has established its own network of links to defend other youths who might be threatened by similar police attacks.

Contact: Leicester

campaign, Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre, Leicester.

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schmiar, like kohl (right), is a good ally of Reagan. But many LAST Friday (17th), as the world woke up to newspaper headlines predicting the imminent collapse of the ruling SDP/FDP coalition government in West Germany, the four FDP cabinet ministers were resigning and bringing that prediction to reality.

Events have been moving quickly in the past fortnight, but the split has been on the cards for the past year.

At last the world recession has caught up with the Federal Republic.

It is expected that company bankruptcies this year will total 16,300 (a 40% increase on 1981). The number of jobless has risen to 1,800,000. It seems certain to rise to 2 million over the winter.

(Unemployment has been kept artificially low in Germany by two reasons: as in Britain, many women don't register, but also the Republic has been able to send 'home' a large number of its immigrant population, brought in when workers were in short supply.)

Over the course of THE Chinese Communist Party has just held its 12th congress, six years after real wages fell by 1.2% overall.

Many firms are now beginning to 'trim' the workforce as an 'economy package'. The most serious 'economy package' to be announced recently comes from the company AEG, which plans to sack 30,000 to 40,000 workers nationally.

This is the economic background to which the political parties have been responding, and which has caused the SDP (Social Democratic Party - the right-wing dominated Labour Party) and the FDP (Free Democratic Party -The key posts held by Hua went to Deng's proteges Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang in 1980, with akin to the British Liberals) to go their separate ways.

The parliamentary SDP has been growing away from the body of the party for some time: most notably on the issue of NATO nuclear bases in West Germany and the level of the upper rates of income tax and tax on business profits. It has also been drastically losing electoral support: even in traditionally strong Labour areas.

Although some local parties offered a 'left' policy, this hasn't been able to soften the attitude of German workers to the veterans; point to policy changes to modernise China, and repudiate once SDP rank-and-filers dissent SDP's record it government. Some union leaders are conscious of the problem. Eugen Loderer, leader of the IGM (Metal Workers' Union), which has been the traditional licensed left in the SDP, told his union's conference recently: 'We don't want a change in party, but we do want a change in policy' The DGB (German "TUC') has called regional and a national demonstration to remind the SDP whose side it's supposed to be on. This response would be unusual at any time, but is especially so against a ruling SDP-dominated As for policy pronouncements, the congress in fact did little more than confirgovernment.

The initiative is largely thanks to the agitation of a group called 'Initiative Soziale Sicherheit', formed from various left groups and members of union factory committees. They are putting forward a workers' response to the crisis: calling for a 35 hour week with no loss in pay, an end to the forcing-down of the real value of wages, and an end to racism and sacking foreign workers first.

They are currently busy building local groups to organise local days. of action.

Revolution gave a younger generation of careerists the chance to oust older cadres, This trade union activity, coupled with a very real fear as to the SDP's chances in the two forthcoming by-elections (in Hessen, the local FDP switched allegiances some time ago, and decided to run as partners with the Conservatives), forced Chancellor Schmidt to draw the line.

He challenged Otto Lambsdorf, FDP Chancellor of the Exchequer, to come clean, and outline his budget proposals, stating that the maintenance of the welfare state was crucial to the SDP's policy.

Lambsdorf responded by publishing a document containing drastic anti-working class measures.

Included were proposals to:

• cut the first three months unemployment benefit from 68% to 50% of the claimant's previous wages, and cease paying benefit after a year's unemploy.

ment. • To scrap the (already meagre) system of student grants, and replace it with loans. This is particularly important, as the current means-tested grant is paid from 16+, and many working class young people rely on this to get not only academic qualifications, but also to attend technical colleges, without which there is virtually no hope at all of getting a job. • To increase the level of 'National Insurance Contributions' paid by workers and the level of contributions paid to the private health insurance companies to such a degree as to form a severe attack yet again on the level of real wages.

These proposals were acclaimed by the employers' organisations: and branded 'antisocial' and a declaration of war' by the The incompatibility of these proposals with Schmidt's declared line brought about the split that everyone had been waiting for.

What will happen in the immediate future remains uncertain. Schmidt's first response to the resignations was to ask the other parties if they would tolerate his staying on as leader of a minority government, if he asked the President to call elections in November.

This move is unconstitutional, and anyway not to the liking of Helmut Kohl, the leader of the CDU/CSU (the Conservative parties) in Parliament. Kohl will now spend the next few days in discussions with the FDP, bargaining with Cabinet positions. and allocations of policy areas, to try to form a new coalition government between the CDU/CSU and FDP.

Some form of agreement is bound to be reached, and the likelihood is that Kohl will then attempt to spread some time in office and establish a clear economic policy, before going to the voters.

Whatever the balance between the FDP and CDU/CSU in the new government, the economic measures they adopt will be attempting to bolster up the capitalists at the expense of the workers. The FDP has only recently shown its teeth: those of the CDU/CSU have been very visible since the last general election.

The Conservative alliance was then led by the infamous Franz-Joseph Strauss, and lost the election mainly thanks to scare-mongering tactics of Schmidt and the left, which the avowedly rightwing Strauss could not deny. Strauss was ditched after this failure, in favour of Kohl, but plans to make a comeback. He expects to hold the number two position in Kohl's government.

The German Left and trade union movement must be ready to face the

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The Chinese CP congress produced a reshuffle, but more. Chin Yang reports.