HEECHING'S PLAN: This arises from the general situation which faces British capitaliam, Lumberedwith out of date industries and facilities it seeks to streamline itself by carrying out widespread rationalisation. However, each measure of rationalisation in one particular field creates problems in anothor, Beeching's plan will intensify the contradictions in industrial development between one region and another, and betwoen the town and countryside. It will transfer from the rails to the roads a vast amount of traffic which in turn willmake the already sericus congestion almost unbearable in the big towns. Only vast captial expenditure could all oyigto that situation. All in all the whole affair gives socialists the opportunity to show how outmoded and moribund the capitalist system is, and to pose the socialist alternative, It is also aterrific attack on a section of the working class and will mean thousands joiningthe dole queue at a time when the prospects of getting alternative work is very remote. Moreover the areas where there will be the heaviest closures and pedundancies are precisely those where a high level of unemployment already exists.
Socialistsmist oppose this latest attempt by Beeching, in the interest of British capitalism, to load the burden of rationalising the railways onto the backs of the workers, The plan must be fought by a strategy which will bring wide sections of workers into action, It would be a grave error to see the main burden of opposing the plan imposed upon the railwaymen themselves,
The Labour Party must become the focal point for a political struggle against the closures which will be linked with an industrial struggle against sackings, “ide sections of workers who use the railways and who now face the prospect of paying mech higher fares or aven a complete lack of transport can be mobilised, locally and nationally, against a particular closure and against the plan in general. Local government elections area in the offing and this opposition can be made into a key issue, Labour controlled councils should be made to pledge themselves to fight tooth and nail against the plan, Iiverything which is planned should have as its aim the bringing into action of the mass of the people. Would it be impossible to organise a lobby of Parliament in protest against the murder of the railways? - we think not and local councils would be the bodies to do this.
‘Such a campaign would dovetail with and inspire a union campaign against the sackings. A policy of complete nationalisation and the planning of all transport, of no sacking and an end +ocompensation must be posed together with the idea of the railways as a social service. This policy combined with the general slogan of the return of a Labour Government pledged to carry out clausa four would evoke a tremendous response.