Within a day, the General Tire and Rubber Company, another American firm operating in Port Elizabeth, fired 625 Black workers who were fighting for trade-union recognitions.

The response of these two American companies to the demands of Black workers is little different from that of any other foreign or domestic firm operation in South Africa.

The Ford Motor Company, however, has tried to maintain that its economic involvement in South Africa plays a “progressive role” by supposedly helping to undermine apartheid.

When company Chairman Henry Ford II visited South Africa in January 1978, he rejected demands by numerous Black liberation groups that Ford withdraw from South Africa, claiming that “we do more for the people of South Africa by staying here and providing equal opportunities.”

Under pressure from Black workers in South Africa, who make up more than three-quarters of the industrial workforce, and from antiapartheid organizations in the United States, Ford did institute some minor reforms, such as integrating the factory cafeteria.  
 
December 6, 1954
During the preliminary laudatory meetings leading up to the main celebration of Sir Winston Churchill’s eightieth birthday, the octogenarian boasted about his 1946 Fulton, Mo., speech that launched the “cold war,” and revealed for the first time a secret order he issued as head of the war-time British government showing how early he began to plan for World War III. The statement, made Nov. 23 is as follows:

“Even before the war had ended and while the Germans were surrendering by hundreds of thousands, I telegraphed to Lord Montgomery, directing him to be careful in collecting the German arms, to stack them so that they could easily be issued to the German soldiers whom we should have to work with if the Soviet advance continued.”

This order, as Churchill himself stresses, was issued in April 1945, that is, before the surrender of either Germany or Japan!

Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery, who was in command of the Northern Army Group of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Germany at the time, confirmed Churchill’s revelation. According to reporters, Montgomery appeared surprised that such a damaging admission had been made by the war-time Prime Minister, but he repeated over and over, “It’s true.”  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home