NOTABLE VICTORY FOR ALEXANDER DEFENSE COMMITTEE
The American civil-liberties movement won a Signal victory July 15 when Assistant Attorney General J. Walter Yeagley of the U.S. Department of Justice announced that the government had decided to drop the case it was seeking to develop against the Alexander
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Defense Committee. The victory was one of the swiftest, if not the swiftest in this field in the United States. The original order to the committee to register as the "agent" of a "foreign principal" was dated May 20.
The committee was formed to help get funds for the legal defense of Dr. Neville Alexander, who, together with ten comrades, was placed on trial in South Africa for political opposition to the racist policies of the fascist Verwoerd regime. Dr. Alexander, a noted scholar, was given a ten-year sentence. After the conviction of the eleven, the committee helped in appealing the sentences; and, when the appeal was lost, collected funds to help maintain the families of the victims. It has also offered help to other victims of the Verwoerd government.
The order from the Justice Department to register, would have compelled the committee to file reports’ on the source of all contributions and would in other ways have acted as a repressive measure aimed at crippling the committee's activities. Failure to register entailed possible sentences of five years in prison and heavy fines.
Robert H. Langston, executive secretary of the committee, announced that the organization had decided not to register and would fight the order.
Appeals were made to all organizations concerned about civil liberties to help defend the organization against the attempt to repress it. It was the resounding response to this appeal that. actually caused the government to decide to retreat.
Statements of support rapidly came from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Workers Defense League, the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, the American Committee on Africa, the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Students for a Democratic Society. The National Council of the latter organization authorized its president, Carl Oglesby, to become an officer of the Alexander group. He became co-chairman.
Upon returning from his trip to Africa Senator Robert F. Kennedy learned of the order issued by the Justice Department , which he formerly headed. He wrote to Yeagley June 29 inquiring about the order.
The Justice Department utilized this opening to back down. Yeagley replied to Senator Kennedy in a letter dated July 15 stating that in view of certain changes in the law that went into effect July 4 and also in the absence of "evidence indicating that the committee is acting under the direction or control of a foreign principal," it.had reviewed the order and was withdrawing it.
The victory set an important precedent for other organizations engaged in activities of a similar nature in the United States.
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Sop: oy WILSON FACES: THE BANKERS -~ AND THE WORKERS |
-s "less than four months after.he. steered the Labour party:; to; Oe. smashing electoral victory March 31, increasing its majority. in Commons from 4 to 97, Prime Minister Harold Wilson's government has "been plunged- into a severe: financial crisis.
To. prop. ‘up the. “weakening pound, “the | prime: “minister - was) forced july 20 to saddie the. British economy with a-burden of..deflationary. restrictions. These included :the raising of: a variety. of taxes,. some by ten percent or more; restraints on installment buying and on personal foreign. travel: expenditures by: British. CAGLZENS 5 “and ...the curtailment of construction. : wrt ; . poh ere ptt
The Long-impending crisis. has ‘been. made still. sharper by - ‘Ewo. collateral: factors. Throughout his: twenty-one: months in Downing. creet, Wilson. has: been blithely assuring his.coyntry and. the. Teen. of the "world. that. the pound was in’ a healthy-condition under. his. ministrations. Only two weeks before these emergency moves he had, . lashed out at the "moaning minnies" and "wet editorials," both to the right: and to the left of him, that had criticiged his inertie and‘ called: for a program. of more drastic action..He:>now.appears to: have been taken by surprise: and to be, not a shrewd. and strong... ... leader, but a short-sighted, vacillating victim of economic events.
“ Phis: judgment is being openly expressed by some of his supporters: “Among them is the New. Statesman which has been campaigning for. more-.stringent controls to.cope with the situation. On July 15 its editors accused Wilson of compronising and maneuvering, of fail-~ ing tofvifill his promise made. a year ago of being a "government with guts," and of "being slowly obliged to adopt the Tory measures it originally rejected (no doubt concluding, in time with devaluation) because it lacks the will to apply the real. alternatives.
The following week, after the. announcement of Wilson's emergency package, they charged the Labour government with a lack of "competence and judgment". which has: seriously. ‘damaged its _ image as a confident, trustworthy. government team. :
No less ominous for Wilson has been ‘the reaction -- or. rather, the absence of enthusiastic response -- from international financial circles... The British .and foreign money interests have been looking to.the Wilson government to perform the same nasty chore ia 1966 as Ramsay MacDonald had carried out during the crisis of 1931 . under quite different circumstances and in a different manner. That is :to take ‘the immense costs of restoring stability and profitability to British capitalism ‘out of the hides of the working masses by reducing their wages and living standards. This method of sal-.. vaging a capitalist economy faced with bankruptcy has been:a traditional role assigned to Social Democratic regimes in Western Europe.
Wilson's new measures are oriented in this direction. But
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the refusal of the bankers -.at- home:and abroad.to rally to the battered pound Signifies that they are far from satisfied with these concessions. They want a full pound of flesh. Their wait-and-see attitude leaves the future. of sterling in doubt and even places it in Jeopardy. . ae ae
As the July 24 New fork Mmes: “points: out, "the pound iB “plainly not out of trouble, and the next week or two will be critical. Even if the immediate pressure is relieved, the deflationary package raises its own: questions about the long-run hopes for growth and. greater productivity in the British economy."
The international financial sharks are now concerned to see how much further Wilson is prepared to proceed on their behalf and against the welfare of the workers in order to uphold the pound and the profit system. On the other side, the seamen's strike showed the determination of the workers to resist the imposing of the wage celings which the government has been trying to enforce by a series of measures- ranging from exhortation to a mandatory cooling-off period.
The pressure from below has been dramatized by the resigna-tion from the ‘Cabinet of Frank Cousins, leader of the huge transport workers union, and the declaration that his union will not accept any official straitjacket on wage claims or struggles.
‘Wilson is therefore caught in the cleft of the two major class forces: the skeptical bankers and avaricious speculators, dissatisfied with his half-measures and pressing for more deflation at the expense of the workers, and the organized workers who put him into office with a big majority and who are increasingly opposed to the antilabor edge of his economic policies.
Britain's present sterling crisis is the fourth to hit the country in the last twenty-one months of the Labour government and by far the most serious since the pound was devalued in 1949.
It is highly doubtful whether the deflationary steps already taken, including the tightening of credit and raising the bank rate to seven percent, will suffice to stave off another devaluation.
It is even more unlikely that Wilson will reverse his course and apply a socialist economic policy that would give priority to the needs of his working-class constituency over the demands of the plutocrats.
These two factors presage that the current financial crisis may well be the prelude to a political crisis of these labor caretakers of the capitalist regime who were so jubilant over their prospective five-year tenure in office only a few months ago.