Uruguay protest

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Right wing guerillas sponsored by South Africa have recently cut a water pipeline 25 miles from the capital of Mozambique. And Angolan troops (above) still face a simmering war with South African or South African sponsored forces in the south of their country. EIGHT trade unionists in the South American dictatorship of Uruguay will go on trial on November 15, charged with being members of the banned Socialist Workers' Party (PST).

The fact that they are coming to trial is a victory for the campaign waged in their defence since their arrest in April. Previously the police had denied having them in jail - and they could simply have 'disappeared', like so many others in Uruguay since 1973, Argentina since 1976, or Chile since 1973.

The eight were in fact active in secretly reorganising the trade unions in Uruguay: After arrest, they were severely tortured.

A campaign has been organised in many countries. In the US, mary union officials and shop stewards have endorsed it, as well as the National Lawyers' Guild. 30 congressmen in Peru signed a telegramme demanding the release of the eight, and one trade union leader personally went to Uruguay to pursue the campaign.

Trade union organisations in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil have also called for the eight to be freed.

The campaign asks for signatures for the following text, and donations to cover the cost of sending telegrammes to the Uruguayall authorities: "We demand the immediate release of Roberto Rodriguez Suarez, Ulises Marshall Nigro Ortiz, Jorge Frutos Oliva, Alicia Locatelli Miserocchi, Maria Cecilia Duffau Echevarren, Jose Bruzzone, Miguel Matos Fangio, who were arrested by the Uruguayan police because of their union and human rights activities.

"We hold the Uruguayan government responsible for any physical harm that may have come to the above-named during their detention"

Contact: Susana Fernandez, PO Box 27421, Los Angeles, CA.90027, USA.

his nineteenth year.

•His name is David Kitson and his family are living in Islington.

His wife, Norma, his son, Steve and his , daughter Amandela have been organising a round-the-clock vigil outside South Africa House at Trafalgar Square in protest against the imprisonment of David Kitson and all the other political prisoners in South Africa who are held under apartheid's draconian laws' • They are calling for his immediate release, and short of that an improvement in the conditions under which he is gaoled and medical care for his bad heart.

Viva It is a spirited picket which welcomes newcomers with cries of "viva Bob" (or whoever).

It has been subject to considerable police harassment. While I was there, two policemen aggressively informed us that anyone not standing on the tarpaulin covering a small area of the pavement would be arrested. Already seven pickets had been arrested.

Steve Kitson said that he had personally been charged on two counts of obstruction but both charges had been dismissed in the magistrate's court. Taxpayers' money had been wasted on the fact that the pickets had hung their dripping seeping bags on Hyde Park railings to dry after a wet night.

Steve Kitson said that this police harassment was the tremendous importance of British trade unionists uniting with our South African countèrparts in our mutual struggle against apartheid.

The rapid growth of independent, non-racial trade unions in South Africa has made this much more feasibie and pressing now than ever before.

David Kitson has been busy in prison taking degrees Economics, Political Science, Zulu, Mechanical Engineering and some other subjects. He has been offered a fellowship by Ruskin College, Oxford, where he had once been a student. He is due to be released on December 17, 1984.

Let : support the Kitsons in their endeavour to have him released earlier and to protest against the barbaric policies practiced under the veil of apartheid's law and order.

Anyone wishing to offer support can join the picket at any time any day outside South Africa House. You will be warmly welcomed.

BOB FINE inue to get longer.

Unemployment increased 120,000 in the first half of 1982. Significantly, the total number of jobs decreased by a much greater number - 250,000. The difference reflects partly an excess of people retiring over school-leavers in the given period, but also unemployed people just giving up all hope of a job.

The rate of profit, which last year was rock-bottom, seems to have been increasing slightly in the second half of 1981 and first half of 1982: Wage rises behind the rate of inflation, and a massive increase in output per worker, explain this.

But there is no indication that the increased profits mean a return to prosperity. Real interest rates have risen, too, and the Bank of England reckons that the "cost of capital' may now be higher than the industrial rate of profit. In • other words, capitalists will do better to lend their money at interest than to invesi it productively.

Besides, if productive investment does pick up, it can just as well mean more machines to replace workers as more jobs.

The immediate cause of the new upsurge in unemployment seems to be the renewed downturn in the US. Between about mid1980 and autumn 1981, the US had something of a limited recovery from the slump which started in 1979. Since then, however, it has plunged downwards again. So have the advanc ed capitalist economies as a whole.

Industrial production went down between August 1981 and August 1982 in all the major advanced capitalist economies except Belgium and Japan. And unemployment increased Slump An overview of Britain's slump is given by a few figures. Employment i in production* industries has gone down from over 9 million in 1978 to 7.2 million in July this year; employment in manufacturing industries has gone down from 7.1 million to 5.6 mill. ion. Public sector net capital formation ran at about {4 billion a year (1975 prices) up to 1976, and last year was down to £400 million - a 90% decline.

But the Thatcher doctrprofitable basis.

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by John Riley

ine is that this purge must continue until the working class is sufficiently beaten down to allow a new capit- alist upturn on a • more