FROM THE ANTI-APARTHEID MOVEMENT (12/12/68)
We are writing to ask your support in our campaign [illegible] a sell-out in Rhodesia. The present lull [illegible] does not mean that attempts at a [illegible] been abandoned. Mr. Thompson has [illegible] proposals "on the table" for Mr. Smith to [illegible] on the "Fearless" proposals [illegible] in the creation of another [illegible] southern Africa. These proposals [illegible] release of political prison[ers] [illegible] of the existing discriminatory [illegible] be scrapped by the settlement. For four million Africans the settlement would be a sell-out. [illegible] in public demonstrations [illegible] would appreciate it very much if [illegible] in your journal the all-night [illegible] mounting out [illegible] on Monday 6 Jan [illegible] morning at 4 [illegible] those Commonwealth Prime Ministers who will urge the British Government to stand by NIBMAR and, we hope, give some expression to popular feeling against [illegible]. We hope it will be possible for you to assist us in this way. With many thanks, yours, [illegible] (Executive Secretary)
Editorial note: The address of the AAM is 89, Charlotte St., London W.1. Telephone: 580 5311.
FROM NOTTINGHAM
A Nottingham branch of the National Joint Action Campaign Committee for Equal Rights is being formed at the end of January. This will be at a public meeting sponsored by the Women's Subcommittee of the Nottingham and District Trades Council. Audrey Wise, of USDAW Midlands Divisional Council will be the main speaker. From this meeting we hope to find a hard core of people in this area to carry out the work of the campaign, I hope all readers of INTERNATIONAL in the Midlands will attend and co-operate in the [illegible]. The meeting will be on Thursday, January 30, at 7.30 at the People's Hall, Heathcote St., Nottingham.
Antonia Gorton
FROM A [illegible] READER
An item which appeared in the December BEAVER, the LSE student union paper, seems to be a suitable comment on the [illegible] sentence:
"In good faith our wonderful Government passes laws to protect good citizens. Then suddenly - zapp! - the amazing [illegible] discover the loopholes. How they can use a perfectly ordinary law as yet another weapon of oppression. Perfectly sensible laws against colossal groups completely blocking whole streets become an excuse to pick up anybody for "obstruction."
"The latest knife they are about to twist in our backs is that of suspended sentences. A great idea originally - must keep sentences up because of deterrence, but this bloke is not a baddy. So give him a suspended sentence. If he does anything else wrong meanwhile we will know he was a baddy all along, and can imprison him as sentenced in the first place. So we get a political demonstrator, and we give him a suspended sentence instead of an immediate. That way we put him out of action for several years. He won't dare demonstrate. Or have a drink. Any time he could be picked up for something petty and thrown into prison.
"If there's trouble brewing in a big town, with lots of stories of molotov cocktails, we can pick him up. Any trumped up charge will do. It always does. Suspended sentences have been on the increase recently, especially for leading political militants of the left. If you think this increase is due to the judges' growing humanitarianism, you wouldn't have read this far anyway."