Blow up the World? You Let Th 24th - 25th Opinion

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They can war-monger, they like about the Tories. He explains 'Opinion'.

THE future facing the lives of young people looks desperately bleak - mass unemployment, government-backed slave labour schemes, the chronic housing shortage and the steady erosion of civil liberties.

One solution which is being more and more frequently mentioned by the bosses and their friends in Fleet Street is that young people should either join, or be conscripted into the armed forces.

Prince Andrew is held up by the media as a shining example for valiant young males to follow. serving as a helifume and splutter all Falkland Islands, but won't fight for the why in this month's copter pilot with the Falkland Islands Task Force. Apparently this ex-public school boy is fully trained to drop nuclear depth charges.

1 can imagine the Daily Express utopia where women stay at home having babies like Lady Di and the men go out and fight like Prince Andrew.

But this reactionary ideology is hardly new and was used in both the First and Second World Wars.

Due to the economic recession the tensions leading towards full-scale war are increasing rapidly and so is the arming of nations internationally When I was at school, usually the last thing the Careers Department recommended was a career in the Armed Services, what with low pay, the war in Ireland and mainly the fact that you could get a better job elsewhere.

Now the situation has drastically changed and the crisis over the Falkland Islands has given added ammunition to the politicians arguing for big increases in spending on the armed services.

The dispute with Argentina has shown how pathetically useless the government's enormously expensive nuclear missiles system is to "act as a deterrent" to use the government (Wn jargon.

Despite the fact that the head of the Falkland Islands Office in London has called for a graduated military response up to and including the HBombing of Argentina (!) Britain's nuclear arsenal doesn't seem to have worried the Argentinian government.

The Tories have, however, used the present crisis as an excuse to justify increased military spending. But although Thatcher has at her fingertips the means of destroying the world in a nuclear holocaust, she still has to rely on mainly young people to operate the battleships, submarines, aircraft and missiles and all the other instruments of war.

So this brings us to the question Would you fight for Britain?' 1 would not fight for Britain. I do not agree with the Tory argument that you should fight to save 'your' country.

It isn't 'my' country. Nearly all the wealth in this country is produced by the working class but owned by a small ruling class.

All that members of the armed forces do is act as puppets of the ruing class to maintain the status quo mass unemployment, poverty and injustice on a world scale.

In the army or navy ordinary soldiers and sailors do not have a say in the way it is run «Theirs is not to reason why"In the army or navy ordinary soldiers and sailors do not have a say in the way it is run. "Theirs is not to reason why" -as the saying goes and quite obviously this is drummed into them during training to such an extent that they're prepared to kill other people on the orders of their officers without question.

I do question the kin‹ of life I lead and the kin‹ of society I would bi defending and I reckor that it deserves no sup port whatsoever and should fight to over throw it.

If I was in the armer forces I would leave a quickly as possible an join the labour move ment and fight for social ism.

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and final part of his article on Walton shows why we must be of the Irish Republicans and In the period following REDS is a film about an American revolutionary called John Reed. He went to Russia in 1917 and witnessed the Russian Revolution.

He is most famous for the account of the experience he wrote in a book called Ten Days That Shook the World. (available in a Penguin paperback).

Love story

If you expect the film (which is directed by Warren Beattie, who also plays John Reed), to be a sloppy affair Reed's wife Louise Bryant is very much portrayed as the faithful wife who follows her husband through his fame and glory. Judging by all realistic accounts this is not true. Anything to soften up a Hollywood drama and put women in their place!

I know that the cinema is very expensive and all that. One day I believe we'll have free cinemas and leisure facilities. But still I'm going to recommend you go and see the film, maybe have a YS outing, because I think it is very inspiring and a very good way to get interested in what actually happened in Russia in 1917.

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based on a love story, you're Class Fighter, April 1982 Page 7