Philip Noel Baker, M.-P. Emrys Hughes, M.P. Trevor Park, M.P. Frank Allaun, M.P.
On Wednesday, March 17th in the House of Commons at 7.30.
March 4, 1965 — THE WEEK Two Vital Meetings
Workers’ Control Seminar Reconvenes
ib April 1964 Voice of the Unions convened a seminar on industrial democ-
racy in Nottingham. To the great surprise of the organisers, over 140 people turned up, including a most representative cross-section of trade unionists, academics and socialist activists. | Undoubtedly this seminar was the most important conference on industrial democracy since the days when guild socialism was at its hey-day.
This year, a recall meeting will take place in new conditions. It will be dominated by the fact thar we now have a Labour Government, and will accordingly focus its attention on problems which can only be dealt with while such a Government is in power. The need to develop measures of self-management in the public sector, in the nationalised industries, the coops and local authority employment, will take up the main energies of the meeting. Papers will be circulated in advance, and the seminar will divide into a number of study groups in order to close to grips with the essential difficulties which are being faced by workers in these different areas of public enterprise.
The conference willbe held under the auspices of the London Cooperative Society, on Saturday, May 7th, and Sunday, May 8th, this year.
The joint convenors will be Richard Fletcher of the LCS and Tony Topham, who took the responsibility for organising the 1964 meeting. ill those who would like further details are urged to write to them at 1 Plantation Drive, Anlaby Park, Hull.
A third conference is being scheduled for early June, in Manchester. This will probably take up questions of workers’ control in the private sector, the problem of incomes policy. and similar matters. Details will be announced as soon as they are available.
Bertrand Russell te call Freedom Fighters’ Conference
The following press statement was issued by Bertrand Russell on February 21st, 1965: AM calling an international conference, to be held in London at the end
of May, to bring together prominent personalities of the world peace movement and leaders of national independence movements. The conference will be sponsored by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, and I expect about 100 people from five continents to attend. I am sending out invitations this week. i
The present crisis concerning Vietnam threatens world peace. Even if we survive it, similar disasters are inevitable in the Congo, the Middle East, Thailand and much of Latin America. These crises will also involve the denial of self-determination by Great Powers. Africa, Asia and Latin America are being used increasingly as areas for East-West confrontation. Although these peoples urgently require food, economic development and national independence, they have become the victoms of the Cold War. The United Nations has shown itself unable to act decisively in these fields because it is dominated by disputes between the Great Powers.
Our conference will consider these problems with a view to common action to prevent the Great Powers extending their spheres of influence and their battlefields. All those who are struggling for world peace, for national independence, for civil rights, for social justice and for the eradication of starvation and disease have a basic unity of interests. The establishment of a permanent link between them, and the formulation of immediate specifice steps to be taken together, is overdue.
THE WEEK — March 4, 1965