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We reprint below an article from Forward, the journal of the Independent Labour Party, first published on July 14tl 1934, J & P Coats Ltd., were, of course, the forerunners of the present day Coats- Paton combine.
The firm of J & P Coats Ltd., has increased its profits from £2,259,110 to £2,574,894. Quite a substantial sum during times of trade depression. A Paisley correspondent who noticed this sends us the following: "Apropos the recent large profits declared by J & P Coats Ltd., I had a visit the other evening of a friends who works in one of the thread mills in Paisley and she was telling me of a recent order that has come into force and what I can only describe as the last word in meanness for a firm earning the profits J & P Coats do.
It appears there is a rest room in the mill with a qualified nurse in attendance, and any of the girls who may meet with slight accidents which, while they may be able to continue at work require the wound to be dressed daily at the rest rooms.
Up to recently the girls went to the rest room during working hours daily, or as required and their pay went on just the same, but the order has now gone forth that the girls foreman must take a note of the time she leaves her flat and when she returns, and this time is entered in the book. And when pay day comes round the girls find the time taken to go to the rest room deducted from their pay"
One would have thought that a firm making such handsome profits could have managed to get along with petty economies of this kind.
Jim Sillars' attempts to build a tartan tribune group came unstuck last October when he expelled the SLP's left wing. Paid membership, at best never more than a thousand, is now less than the Scottish wing of the far-left SWP. Desperate for publicity Sillars has issued an "industrial newsletter" purporting to give an "alternative to phase three". This consists of stale Tribunite seige economics prefaced with a call for a "climate of goodwill". British capitalism is advised to sell of £12,000 million in foreign assets and bank them to ward off speculation against the pound. Unfortunately, British capitalism lends long term overseas and borrows against these assets in the short term. Liquidating foreign holdings would reduce the credit rating of British capitalism, thus sparking off a fresh round of speculation which would gobble up the £12,000 million in the bank.
There are over one hundred political prisoners in Scottish jails, according to Labour MP Robin Cook. Speaking to a packed meeting called in May by the Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace, Cook dropped this bombshell to "prove" the growing threat of "terrorists" hijacking atomic materials. Ignoring the real danger to mankind of a nuclear war unleashed by the racist regimes in Israel or South Africa, Cook claimed the pretext of "terrorists" to defend his support for the setting up of the para-military Atomic Energy Authority Police who, armed with machine guns, have the right of "hot pursuit"
SCRAM can be contacted via Rob Edwards, Friends of the Earth, 2 Ainslie Place, Edinburgh.
The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, a body said to be loosely connected with the Christian religion met in Edinburgh last month. A motion from pacifist and socialist George MacLeod, urging unilateral disarmament was rejected. Visiting chairman of the British section of Amnesty International Paul Ostreicher, called on the Assembly to condemn the continued maintenance of a British Army torture unit. "The torturer in us and around us is at work", Ostricher said, "He has many respectable friends"
By way of proving the point, the Moderator ruled against any questions and the matter was deferred for checking. An attempt to get the Assembly to oppose the SFA football match with Chile in the infamous National Stadium at Santiago was
thrown out.