Eleven dead and scores injured: that was the toll after South African police opened fire on striking black mineworkers on Wednesday. This was the worst massacre by the South African government since Sharpeville in 1960, when 67 Africans were killed and 186 wounded in demonstrations against the introduction of the Pass Laws for black workers.
The workers at the Western Deep Levels Mine, owned by the Anglo-American Corporation, had struck last week in support of a pay demand. Demonstrations began when management refused to grant their demands, and these intensified when the hated On 3 October, 6 of the North Wales building workers charged with cribreak them up. Company property was attacked, and then the police opened fire.
After Sharpeville, thousands of 'ring leaders were arrested and imprisoned in an attempt to stamp out the flames of revolt. This time, too, police and mine officials are now concentrating on rounding up the "ringleaders' who 'must have been behind it."
The white ruling class in South Africa were shaken last winter by the strikes involving 30,000 black workers in the Durban area. They are terrified that now there will be a new upsurge by black workers, hence this latest police were, sent in to barbarity of the Vorster regime.
sive against the trade union movemerence to discuss the next moves in Carletonville mine union bodies as possible, including Another Trades Council, this time in Stirling, has decided to take action against British Army recruitment, Its first action was to distribute a leaflet at a "beating of the retreat through the town by the Argylls. It is planned to distribute a further leaflet, modelled on that produced by South Shields Trades Union Council, to school leavers at Christmas.
Women post office workers in Birmingham have decided to take the Union of Post Office Workers (UPW) to the NIRC after eight years of fighting inside the union classification as permanent labour Such classification would enable the women, some of whom have worked in the GPO for as long as 20 years, to get equa promotion rights etc. with male workers But the UPW bureaucracy, claiming that the union is 'a male establishment, have fought tooth and nail against this blocking letters sent through union chan nels, overruling a decision by the AGM of the Birmingham UPW to classify the wo men as permanent labour, and whipping up male chauvinism among the male wor kers to strengthen their hand against the women:
Taking the case to the NIRC, however, will not soive the problem. It is not some neutral referee, but a vicious agent of the ruling class which has not hesitated even ti Tall working class militants during the short period of its existence. Such a move