This second annual report of Barclays Shadow Board - established by the London-based committee, End Loans to South Africa - focuses on the bank's role in South Africa.

"Barclay's presence in South Africa serves to bolster the apartheid regime," states Michael Dummett, Oxford professor of logic and shadow board chairperson, in the introduction to the report. As the Shadow Board did last year, "We once again call upon Barclays to withdraw completely from South Africa," Dummett said.

The U.K.-based Barclays is South Africa's largest banking concern, holding over one third of the nation's total bank deposits. It is also a major provider of capital to the country.

This year's report highlights Barclays' "particularly strong ties with the military" forces of South Africa. Symbolic of such ties, the report notes, is the presence of a member of South Africa's government defense advisory board on Barclays' own board of directors. As evidence of Barclays' material support for the South African armed forces, the Shadow Report cites Barclays' 1976 purchase of $3.4 million in South African defense bonds.

In addition to obvious military links, says the report, Barclays assists the apartheid government's military capacities by holding $292 million in government and government-guaranteed securities, and by helping to manage a 1980 $250 million loan to the South African government.

These services, the report claims, constitute "direct support to apartheid" by "free[ing] considerable resources which could then be diverted to help fund the military's massive budget."

Barclays also contributes to South Africa's military capabilities by providing financial assistance to ESCOM, the state electricity corporation, the Shadow Board argues. Loans by Barclays in 1980 to ESCOM, amounting to $169 million, have enabled South African authorities to proceed with the construction of a nuclear power station at Koeberg, the report claims, adding that this plant "has increased South Africa's capability in the nuclear field."

Barclays' involvement with SASOL, the South African state oil corporation, also helps entrench the apartheid system, says the Shadow Report. South Africa depends on oil imports for most of its fuel needs. But with Barclays underwriting much of the cost of coal-to-oil conversion plants, the report claims, the South African government intends to become more oil independent and thus better able to resist international anti-apartheid sanctions. Barclays owns 10 million shares (equivalent to approximately $15.8 million) in SASOL, "one of the largest single blocks of shares in SASOL," according to the report.

Copies of the 1981 and 1982 Shadow Reports are available for $1.50 plus postage from ELTSA or from Third World Publications, 151 Stratfored Road, Birmingham, England.

This fact-crammed report analyzes Great Britain's defense budget, and the companies which are its prime beneficiaries. From nuclear warheads to firearms to airplanes, we learn what the British defense ministry is buying, and who they are buying it from.

Britain's main defense contractors include:

British Aerospace (BAe), a 48% state-owned consortium formed in 1977, which produces military aircraft and guided missiles. It also supplies personnel and training to overseas purchasers, who now account for more than half of BAe sales. According to War Lords, "It is the close bond BAe has with the British government that underwrites the company's profitability. In most of the deals BAe does with Third World countries, the government is acting as the broker."

GEC-Marconi, which produces electronic equipment, torpedoes, missiles, radar and communications systems. "Ever since its formation in its present form during the white heat of Harold Wilson's technological revolution in the late 1960s, GEC's greatest strengths have been its sheer size, its monopoly power and its public funding," says the report.

Racal Electronics, parent corporation of the U.S.-based Data Communications, a computer equipment firm. Other Racal subsidiaries make radar, communications and navigation equipment. Rolls Royce and Associates, owned by Vickers, Rolls Royce, Foster Wheeler and Babcock & Wilcox - which produces reactors for British nuclear submarines.

Plessy, an electronics firm which derives more than three-quarters of its U.K. business from British defense contracts. Ferranti, another electronics firm.

Leyland and Birmingham Rubber Companies, Bondina Ltd., Thorn Automation, Primary Medical Aid, and the Charcoal Cloth Company, all suppliers of respirators and protective equipment for chemical and biological warfare.

This report provides essential information for research on the international arms industry, nuclear weapons, and multinationals in the U.K. Photographs and an attractive, readable format make it an excellent introduction to the subject of Britain's arms industry.

For a copy, write:

Counter Information Services
9 Poland Street
London Wl
ENGLAND

Plant Shutdowns Monitor, a project of The Data Center. "A monthly compilation of press clippings on themes related to the causes and effects of the permanent or temporary elimination of jobs due to plant closings, cutbacks in services, and runaway shops."

One glance at the "directory" of the March, 1982 Plant Shutdowns Monitor is enough to make you catch your breath. In March alone, no less than 118 plants in the U.S. laid off workers, cut wages and benefits, or folded entirely.

Organized by company, location, industry, and number of workers affected, the Plant Shutdowns Monitor directory briefly describes each incident and reprints news articles about them, organized under such headings as "Economic Conditions," "Union Activity," "Worker Ownership," and "Runaway Shops."

The Plant Shutdowns Monitor is a vital resource for researchers, journalists, union organizers, and local activists who are concerned with labor and economic transformation in the United States. It brings together an impressive array of documentation about the havoc which plant closings and layoffs are wreaking on workers' lives today - and of the responses and resistance those workers are organizing.

Articles from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Economist, Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Congressional Record, and Washington Post are included, as well as clips from such periodicals as the People's Tribune, the People's World, Solidarity, Union W.A.G.E., and the Maryknoll Magazine.

Although the annual subscription price of $50 will put the Plant Shutdowns Monitor out of the reach of many groups, its existence alone will mean that more information about plant closings will be available in a more readily usable form than ever before.

To subscribe, write:

The Data Center
464 19 Street
Oakland, CA 94612

Annual subscription price of $50 includes postage.