Ban Plastic Bullets!

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From the Class Fighter leaflet at London THE British Army is the iers' the squaddies conssteel edge of the instruments cripted by unemploymentof oppression in Britain. Its • are tramed and brutalised inofficer elite are the trained to scabbing on their class, bodyguards of the upper they have been used in strike Watch out! The "workers" are coming! (?)

PLASTIC bullets have caused the death of 14 people in Northern Ireland, including 7 children, and also caused serious injury to many more people.

The European Parliament has condemned their use, but the British Army still use them, like peas from a pea shooter.

The main reason for the use of plastic bullets is for propaganda. The people who shoot them know they kill; the people who are shot know they kill, but the general public think they are harmless. -The police on the mainland also use them.

At the last Labour Party Conference a motion was passed to ban plastic bullets - since then a number of Labour County Councils have stopped buying them for their police force.

The motion to Labour Party Conference was a big step forward in the campaign to ban plastic bullets, but like so many motions the right wing of the Parliamentary Labour Party came out against it.

To make sure the Labour Party keeps its promise there must be an organised cam-• paign to get them banned.

The Labour Movement Conference to ban Plastic Bullets in Manchester on February 26 is the first step in the campaign. It has widespread support from the Trade Unions and Labour Party and everyone who can should urge their organisations to send a delegate, to make sure the conference is successful, and the campaign to ban plastic bullets is effective. class in this country.

The working class soldPete Cashman, Wallasey YS, Labour Committee on Ireland Youth Officer Contact the Plastic Bullets _onterence, Box 15, 164/€ Tanging Ditch, Manchester M3 4BN Region YS after strike as envernmentpaid blacklegs.

In Ireland these 'workers in uniform' simply act as thugs, with orders to 'shoot on suspicion'. '. In November and December of last year the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary between them shot dead seven unarmed civilians. 19year-old Patrick Elliot was snot dead, for example, for stealing £20 from a chip shop.

Pressure Wherever the 'ordinary the simple fact is that they are trained to simply follow their orders - orders which come directly from the most open agents of ruling class repression. And in the last fourteen years of the war in Ireland has there been even one sign of opposition to Army terror from within its ranks!

The place of those who are used as the armed forces of the ruling class is not inside our movement, their "job' puts them clearly and

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Greenham Common, year of Cruise, 7,000 YCND members, Unilateralist motion passed in the Labour their way Party, Tories willing to spend a million to combat CND's influence — and where's the YS? On the sidelines, telling people to join it instead.

Class Fighter has received two contributions fron YSs calling for a pro-YCND campaign in the YS... WHV Anacn't tha Vì Arannina minn^+t WAI CUEDIA ME 1D VIgALSE SUPPUI IVI ILNU: There's policy in favour but time and time again YS members dismiss YCNDers and YCND as middie class, and lecture about the need for socialist soluWe think that YCND should be built and the YS should be the best builders of it. Winning the respect of YCNDers, by showing them socialists want to build a massive anti-war movement, have good ideas utIl IUl Ul "UvV vve uryaIr- men as oppressors - iner Tor activity, and can ofter the poltica answers too 1s ised:" a reflection of the central. to the struggle ag male dominated society? inst patriarchy and capital the way to influence YCND and recruit to the YS. Giving out leaflets from the sidelines won't win us a hearing or build YCND, or stop Trident and Cruise.

Our YS moved the motion at London YS Regional YCND festival in Brockwell Park. The motion was defeated, but we have decided to go ahead and orNO TO MISSILES There will be a meeting on March 14 in the Labour Party Rooms, Lansbury House, 41, Camberwell Grove, London SES, for any YS member who wants to get involved. We hope to have a contingent on the demo, produce unofficial YS YCND leaflets, arrange discos to raise money and build up currents within YCND of YS members and in the YS of YCND memIf your YS wants a speaker, or you want to know what we'll be doing but can't get to the meeting, Peckham YS can be contacted at the above address.

Geoff Slee, Chairperson, Peckham YS OUK delegates at the CLPD AGM met up with Peckham YS. We heard about their plans to organise: support in the London YSs for the YCND festival and decided that we should go one step further. We think there is a need for a national campaign in the YS to force it to carry out its paper support for Will Class Fighter join us in launching the "YSs for YCND"? We think the campaign will improve the YS's dreadful reputation in YCND, türn YS branches to the thousands of youth interested in staying alive, help win YCND to socialist policies and YCNDers to Wallasey YS sees YS for YCND as a broad campaign involving members and branches who are interested to take up this type of approach to YCND nationally. We want Class Fighter readers to come to our meeting at YS national conference and discuss with us what demands the campaign should be organJudith Bonner of YCND National and what YCND is doing.

WOMEN - over 30,000 -surrounded Greenham. airbase on December 12 last year. This overwhelming event marked the third anniversary of NATO's decision to deploy Cruise in Europe. It was an act of solidarity between women, building attion against the bomb.

There were things we didn't like: the 'Go Home Yanks* slogan (which we took down), and the overt approval of the fanily unit. But we wouldn't have missed this biggest political protest by women in this country this century for anything.

December 12 and 13, 1982, should be heralded as a successful show of direct action against the missile. On the day, bourgeois TV and radio, try as they may, could not but show that the 'so-called Greenham Womens Peace Camp' had gained mass support. In the street, at work, at school, everyone thought of the courage and applauded the women demonstrators. Many participants demonstrating for the first time, asked 'ls this enough?'- and joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Elsewhere, ' arguments raged, as indignant men denounced the action as sexist and divisive. The Daily Mail wrote about those there as being lesbians, single mothers, the unemployed, and other such social outcasts. Letters flooded into the press taking issue with the day's devisiveness, not its successful oppostion to Cruise. Even the left pointed first to its 'class blind' deficiencies, before uttering any support.

We want socialism, not pacifism' retorted one male SWPer, when asked why he Covent was here - obviously blind to the subtleties of gender.

res, inere were a lot ot women there 'wanting' socialism, - and an end to partiarchy. At the same time, we were a teeny bit worried that the bomb would get us before we dug our heels in to organising soviets and councils of action.

Men got very concerned: Golly gosh = thirty thousand women demonstrating on a political issue - without men - whatever next? (fears of castration loom).

So why should it have been women only?. One South East YS writes good reason is that's what the women at the camp wanTea. INoW, It you ve Deen living under a plastic sheet for 16 months as a protest against Cruise, then the least you expect is that people respect the way you define solidarity protest action. All CND groups who encourage men, and all the men who turned up, ensured of course that we couldn't make that Anfinitinn of haar uio nenanWhat's so bad about organising separately anyway? aiso a carnival manner where Look at other demonstra tions, led, stewarded anc addressed - praominatıy Dy men.

Do we aw women ceast to be a potential revolu tionary force, if we organ ise apart from men? Auton omy should be seen not as : concession but as a necess ity For women to be equa to men - indeed, overthrov ek - -Wome ism is women's autonomy.

Our own experience shows that organising with mon is not done on an enual level. The machoness and agressive speaking manners don't help women attempting to overcume lack of confidence and intimidation. We need our own space to move where we want.

Other people criticise the emphasis on peace, yet this to a degree proves very successful. On the Monday the police were forced to walk the long nine mile base perimeter, taking over 3 hours on each gate to remove pickvans!

Whilst we should be fully aware of the repressive powers of the state ' and its armed forces, it is they, and not us, who determine the level of violence.

If men and their egos were so upset that there was no stopping them taking the initiative to organise solidarFor example, they couru rave uryarstu lucar norid haun arminiend lanni demonstrations in support, and even taken along those kids they should have been looking after.

Greenham Common proved yet again the organising capability of women. It reflected our strength and solidarity as women. This is the year of Cruise. We need to VUTU mass ayatrist huild macc antion anginet r missiles. * l think 30,000 •- women makes a very good start * don't you? in surround Greenham airbase 1. TIM tions.

• of ganise YS support anyway.

bers.

YCND.

the YS.

----- pull-quotes -----

KİLLED KILLED KİLLED KILLED

soldier' may come from, and whatever the pressures that drove them into the army,

unmistakeably in the camp ating the Bombs nham women do it

Conference calling for a mass mobilisation for the WE SAY CRUISE

ets, because the women had peacefully surrounded their