Careerists gloat at election reprieve

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Reformist politicians up and down the country could be heard slapping each other on the back last week, congratulating themselves on "only"

having handed over three London boroughs and one metropolitan council to the Tory axe-men.

While they gloat at the faet that even four years of absolute treachery under successive Labour and Lib-Lab governments has not completely liquidated the Labour vote, the lesson for workers is a very different Now that the strike at Claridge's is over and the threat to the employer has been removed the press has been able to treat Richard Elvidge's sacking as a nice, safe, human interest story.

Immediately after the strike ended the Daily Mail set up an extravagant three course meal for the sacked cook to prepare and issued its own judgement-that he could get a job in virtually any restaurant in London.

But the press has really gone to town on the industrial tribunal which started last week and has now been adjourned.

The Daily Telegraph looked through its files and pulled out a picture oi Mahatma Gandhi-with his goat-both of whom stayed at Claridges.

This was quoted by managing director Sir Hugh Wontner, as evidence of the unique nature of the hotel.

Kruschev stayed there. Half the monarchy in Europe stayed there. If you sat down to lunch in the restaurant, ten to one the Queen or Tito would be sitting down to a •He gave his married milk makes one.

The continuing class vote for Labour against the prospects of a Tory win demonstrates the necessity for a struggle to expose the reactionary politics of the Labour leaders 'left' and right, and the necessity for a revolutionary programme and a conscious leadership if workers are to resolve problems of falling living standards, mass unemployment and savaged social services.

Opportunist

Despite winning substannice family lunch table.

And in this world of princes, kings and Stalinist leaders, the ambiance itself is enough to make trade unionism a contradiction in terms. How can you settle down to enjoy yourself if you suspect that the staff might not actually be servile?

Or as Sir Hugh put it: "We have Claridge's to run. We must have people who don't try and trip us up all the time"

Celibate

But it was obviously Ghandi who got the goat of the Telegraph. Their correspondent Amit Roy, interrupted his account of the tribunal to bring us this useful piece of knowledge.

"A spokesman for an Indian religious group in London commented last night: The fact that the goat went to Claridge's does not signify it has a discerning palate. Gandhi got hooked on goat's milk after he became celibate.

up sex early in life. An d cow's yol fe • more tial votes in some areas, the opportunist "Socialist Unity"

platform devised by the International Marxist Group is quite devoid of any serious demands whatever.

It offers its supporters nothing more than the words "socialism" and "unity"which, under conditions where the official Labour leaders offer neither, have a certain appeal to sections of workers and petty bourgeois.

In Newham, however, where a socialist programme including the call for workers' defence squads against racist violence, opposition to all public sector cuts and a sensual. In any case Gandhi considered the cow to be holy'"

So the 'ratatouille was all fun and games?

Not quite. Beneath the froth, the recipes and the upstairs, downstairs account of hotel hierarchy a picture emerged familiar to any militant.

Richard Elvidge was not sacked for his herring tails, his buckets full of curdled mayonnaise or his ratatouille.

Managers at the hotel followed staff to a recruiting meeting of the GMWU, had to be thrown out of the meeting and then hung about outside the tube station noting down who had gone in.

It came out in the arrogant defence of life for the super rich given by Sir Hugh Wontner.

The other familiar trait that all those who have attempted to unionise their workplaces will recognise is that the tribunal itself is a symbol of the GMWU's failure to fight for Elvidge's reinstatement.

A big splash in the papers will not make up for that recipe for disaster.

demand for the breaking of the Lib-Lab coalition, was put forward by Labour candidates John Plant and Ray Massey, the Labour vote in the ward rose by 11%, and this election takes struggle against the right wing in Newham NE Constituency Labour Party to a new level.

In the meantime electoral support for the National Front has plummeted in every area.

NE slumped

With the Tories vying for the straight racialist vote and with an increasing volume of propaganda exposing the fascist nature of the Front now appearing in the press, throughout the labour movement and in the publications of the Anti Nazi League, NF votes outside London slumped from last year's In the middle of what was supposed to be a knock-about attack on Tory leader Margaret Thatcher, Labour's General Secretary Ron Hayward managed to convey a defence of permanent wage controls.

"We have to work for a return to orderiy collective bargaining" ", he told an audience at Ruskin College, Oxford, which runs courses in class collaboration for would-be union officials and personnel managers.

For the benefit of those who find it hard to penetrate the jargon of Labour and union leaders, "orderly collective bargaining" is the term-possibly coined by Jack Jones-now used as a

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parliamentary traditions PART TWO by Mark Hyde ligion and Revolution The historian Christopher I highlights the feelings of , rising seventeenth century idle class by quoting one lits members on the eve of civil war: "The merchants in no part of the world so ewed and wrung as in gland"

Despite the exaggeration his statement, it provides excellent insight into the is básis of the English revoon of the seventeenth cenThis class content has, vever, often been obscured the fact that it took on a gious form.

A study of the English olution by Marxists theree demands some attention the problem of the relation ween the development of • capitalist class and the ritan religion.

Driving force Less sophisticated bourbis explanations of the ents of the 1640s have ten presented the whole ¡air as some kind of relilus war, with thousands of isans and peasants risking eir lives for points of theoBut on the other hand, irxists, while pointing out that religious disputes had a material origin in the conflict between classes, do not relegate religion into background insignificance.

The religious ideas which have been commonly called 'Puritanism' did become a driving force in the English "No Bishop, No King"

Hatred of 'Popery'-an epithet attached to Archbishop Laud and the extravagant ceremony, symbols, pomp and cost of the established state church-united: the bourgeois and : petty-bourgeois classes in a common crusade.

The same feeling was reflected directly even in attitudes to foreign policy, where loathing of Catholic Spain was the hallmark of the House of Commons, and Charles I's marriage to French Catholic princess Henrietta Maria caused extreme distrust from the outset.

The desire of revolutionary forces in the early seventeenth century for a Presbyterian clerical system was hated by James I and the ruling class.

The cause was not mere interpretations of the Bible. The official Anglican church was a vital part of the state Oliver Cromwell apparatus.

In 1604 James I gave voice to his fears of the political consequences of the possible overthrow of the church system.

"Then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet, and at their pleasures censure me and my council and all our proceedings."

He summarised his opinions on these matters with his famous statement, "No Bishop, no King."

For the forces of reaction in seventeenth century England then, defence of the established church was essential to defence of the state.

For the forces of progress, hatred of the backward, feudal, Catholic regimes of France and Spain was obligaIdeological challenge The religious hierarchy of Archbishop Laud - whose doctrine of 'Arminianism' involved Catholic practices and ceremonies, as well as the Catholic notion that the congregation, the 'flock', ', had only to learn to obey the priesthood-was seen as not much better than the sinister agency of a foreign power.

Puritanism, then, was much more than a religion-it represented an ideological challenge to the old order.

Unlike the official creed it set out to make men think. This in itself had revolutionary implications in a society based on blind acceptance of feudal authority.

Like the first Protestant, Martin Luther, the Puritan thinkers of early seventeenth century England sought after "the priesthood of all believers.

Healthy alternative

Religion was seen as not simply the privilege of a few Latin-speaking worthies, able to understand and then hand down messages to the passive masses.

All men, equal as they were before God, could raise themselves to. the task of interpreting the Gospel.

Great emphasis was laid in this revolutionary creed upon organisation and discipline as qualities of the highest order.

Under the Stuart regime the Laudian church was shot through with corruption, especially at its highest levels.

Puritanism stood in marked contrast as a living, healthy alternative. Poorer members of the clergy were often drawn to Presbyterian Puritan religious thinking.

They had a special interest in reorganising the church along Presbyterian lines as in Scotland, which would do away with the authority and privileges of the bloated caste of bishops.

'Lecturers'

The Presbyterians allowed congregations to choose their own ministers and appointed "lecturers' to preach the sermons that they could not hear in the official church.

The revolutionary threat posed by these practices to a church so closely bound up with the whole state machine was huge.

The Church of England today, whilst still a state church, is a pitiful shadow of its former self.

In the seventeenth century it is no great exaggeration to say that political life in society revolved around the church.

In the absence of mass media, widespread literacy, a developed police force and other modern trappings, the church had countless tunetions to fulfil.

Under conditions where other religions were not tolerated by the state, the Anglican church held a moropoly.

Politically reliable

A priesthood, selected by the ruling class from politically reliable candidates, had the unrestricted right to preach loyalty to the King, obedience to the state, and every manner of feudal notion to audiences of yeomen and townsmen for whom church attendance was obligatory.

The bible, which could only be read by the educated minority, was the natural source of wisdom, through which all sought to find justification for their ideas on society and politics.

In the late 1620s, for example, the bible was used by priests in a national campaign of attacks on Parliament for its refusal to grant customs rights to King Charles 1.

Religious It was quite natural that political opposition should take on religious form.

Further. while accepting that no mechanical relationship exists between political and religious ideas, and economics, 'Puritanism" fitted in admirably with the needs of the capitalist class-so well that some historians have seen it as capitalism's cause.

The outlook of the Separatists, Brownists and other groupings which have long been lumped together under the general heading of Puritans, did much more than merely challenge the old church regime.

Equality before God The emphasis on the equality of men before god, and the ability and need for ordinary men to read and understand the scriptures, reflected the need of the rising middle class to assert itself against its old social 'superiors', Even at the level of the religious service. Itselt, the political implications of Puritanism were clear.

The bare hall replaced the church of images, candles and stained glass.

Topical sermons in simple language, and discussion, replaced recital of the ten commandments and unintelligible Latin litanies. - One Evins a turich man puss lately conitod to Mone laying hee mas christ Neers one bla/phomon by Teacher was carst did Tay suste furtold.

To rife ith later daye Soule Sleepee John Pym The aim was to stimulate ideas and raise confidencenot to mystify, confuse and overwhelm with grandeur.

No revolutionary class can tolerate being kept in blind subjection in the way the Arminian system was designed to ensure.

On the level of basic economics, Fast Anglia, London and other centres of trade and industry were the Puritan strongholds.

A religion which extolled the virtues of diligence, organisation and hard work was inevitably popular with the middle classes, the merchants and their kind.

Handy formula

Puritanism seemed strongest in those counties where the bourgeois class was most strongly entrenched.

The other side of Puritan 'Sabbatarianism' (strict observance of Sunday as the lord's day) was opposition to the countless saints' days-holidays which cut across all efforts to establish the modern regular working week Prosccution still taced those who disregarded the

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"A Catalogue of the Several Sects"-a contemporary list To him purdel Bite him. peper call to down tools on over a hundrea occasions a year to ¡enerate some obscure saint. Even on this level the Popish justoms of the Anglican church were an obstacle to the smooth functioning of papitalism.

The Puritan merchants had their religious beliefs a randy formula for the reorgmisation of society along efficient capitalist lines.

Attempts by the monarhy to limit preachers to recting the creed and the ten rommandments were an Ittempt to suppress these evolutionary ideas.

Conflicts over statues and Itar rails in churches repreiented a struggle against obicurantism and superstition.

Strict Sunday observancethe Puritans were appalled by government advocacy of sports and other revelry on the Sabbath-would provide the basis for the regular enforcement of discipline, and most importantly ideological training upon a population they thought lazy and corrupted by the slow, indifferent rhythms of a stagnating feudal society.

While the bourgeoisie in bther countries in later years could find many other ideologies in which to dress up its lims as a class, it is indeed surprising how well, for an early attempt, the Puritan religion fitted the bill.

English merchants made considerable efforts to see that the word was spread.

Lectureships-through

which corporations hired lecjurers to preach a fixed number of sermons each yearwere an effective counterweight to the official priest10od.

Laud's ruthless suppresson of lecturers needed no eligious motive-it was a political necessity in its own right.

More penetrating observers It the time saw the relationhip between the role of the ecturers and the ultimate lownfall of the old regime.

Preparation

The lecturers were the material organ of ideological preparation for revolution.

Archbishop Sheldon, again quoted by Fill, noted, Nothing had spoiled the late King's affairs so much as the credit that the factious lecturers had in all corporations.

fo On this level, Puritanism can be compared to the task of Marxist theory in the preparation of the proletarian revolution that will destroy capitalism.

But here comparison ends. The proletarian revolution is the first in history in which the vanguard . of the revolutionary class is conscious of the historic role which it is playing.

The working class has the task of reconstructing the economy and I society on a planned scientific basis.

Such work cannot be accomplished with the religious, semi-religious and idealist delusions that gave justification and moral courage to the bourgeois revolutionaries of the past.

The proletarian revolution and the building of communism requires the scientific Marxist method of dialectical materialism-there can be no substitute.

This is because the proletariat is a propertyless, exploited class which possesses nothing but its labour power.

All spheres of life in capitalist society are completely dominated by the bourgeoisie. The working class, driven by its social position into conflict with capital, comes forward, unlike the revolutionary bourgeoisie in the seventeenth century, with no means of production, no system of social organisation, no ideology, no culture of its own. Capitalism controls all.

The new social order-the proletarian dictatorship, the planned economy-cannot spring spontaneously out of the everyday conditions of proletarian life in bourgeois society.

The working class moves in this direction only in so far as this step has been prepared in advance in the theory, scientific programme, perspective and orientation of the revolutionary party.

The young bourgeoisie on the other hand, built up the capitalist mode of production and exchange within the framework of feudal society.

Far from being a propertyless class, the bourgeoisie was already the most wealthy and powertul group in society.

It only remained for it to Adamite the various brands current brush aside the parasitic political and legal vestiges of feudalism that strangled free economic activity.

The bourgeoisie was thus able to develop its own norms of social behaviour, its culture and basic social organisation in an organic' waytruly scientific theory was not a necessary tool.

Indeed the very fact that the bourgeoisie grows up in this way within feudalism, incapable of establishing the scientific basis of its own existence.

Like its feudal overlords, the English bourgeoisie sought a rationale for their actions in the bible-the first means of defence to hand.

Empiricism

Whether it cloaks itself in the language of the old testament, or hides behind the infinitely more progressive formulae of the eighteenth century French philosophers, the natural outlook of the rising bourgeoisie is one of empiricism and pragmatismcrossing bridges as it comes to them, testing out methods of action, junking them and passing on to new uncharted experiences quite unsure of where the path leads.

The bourgeoisie, then, including its leading elements, came up to the point of revolution not really understanding what was happening.

Civil War and Independently of the control of anyone, the revolutionary crisis had reached a critical point by 1640.

Charles I's attempts to rule without the Parliament of the bourgeoisie had broken down.

Every avenue had been explored to avoid making concessions. Bullion had been seized for government finance to name but one example: yet the regime was hopelessly bankrupt, and of course no aid was forthcoming from the great centres of financial wealth-all of which were controlled by the merchant class.

The resistance to the government was taking on an increasingly rebellious character.

The opposition was encouraged by Scottish defiance of Libertin in the 17th the King's efforts to impose the Anglican church system upon their country.

Parliament was not slow in finding an ally-and the Scots showed readiness to go to war on the issue.

Charles' return to calling Parliaments was to no avail. The gulf had widened so much that it only resulted in the arrest of leading members of the Commons.

Not viable But repression in turn was not viable as a policy. The opposition was militant, confident wealthy and undefeated.

The fact that the army sent to hold back the invading England became almost mutinous was eloquent testimony to the chronic weakness of the old regime.

Despite the failure of his first attempt (appropriately called the Short Parliament) Charles was forced to summon the Commons once more.

Arrested

This time there could be no thought of an ultimatum from the monarchy. The first sittings of the 'Long Parliament', as it would come to be known, must have seemed sweet to those who had even been deprived of the right to serious protest during the eleven years' tyranny.

Government ministers

the country as John Pym gave the first genuinely revolutionary lead to the bourgeoisie.

The Commons used their ancient rights to impeach the mighty and powerful. In November 1640, the Earl of Strafford, Charles' most hated minister, was arrested by order of the House.

Before Christmas, Archbishop Laud had joined him in the Tower of London.

Their master dare do no more than stand by and watch. By Spring of 1641, matters had gone. even further. With the crowds of London demanding execution Charles found himself signing the death warrant of Strafford -his most able adviser, an act Charles was to recall with some bitterness when he himself mounted the steps to the scaffold eight years afterwards.

Parliament now moved to assert its supremacy. The Triennial Act ensured the regular calling of Parliament.

The King's right to collect tunnage and poundage without consent was definitively declared illegal.

Prerogative courts such as the Star Chamber, which had been used to enforce royal authority, were abolished.

The question of control of the state power iself was posed starkly by the rebellion which broke out in Ireland in 1641.

The Commons-this time by a narrow margin of votesrefused to give backing to any attempt to reconquer Ireland that it did not directly control.

Instead of giving support to the King it passed the Grand Remonstrance-a manifesto of condemnation against Royal policy in general.

John Pym, who introduced the document, probably hoped that the King would take issue with it: He did not do so.

Matters had now reached the point of no return-the policy of the monarchy and the demands of the Commons were diametrically/ counter4.30 posed.

The time for debate and argument was drawing to a close. Charles was grouping his boldest young officersnicknamed "cavalieros' (Cavaliers) after the Catholic Spanish soldiers.

The basis of an army was being laid. As tension mounted, daily street battles plagued London.

The militant London populace, spear-headed by the crophaired (Roundhead) apprentices, grew more audacious day by day.

Hanging by thread

By the end of 1641 the most popular slogan was for the removal of Charles' 'Papist Queen' herself.

Coupled with Parliament's attempt to remove the army from the King's control, it could be seen that the royal authority was hanging by a thread.

Two state powers were now confronting eachothera situation which could only be resolved one way or the other.

Westminister

It was fitting that the old regime should make the first desperate move. On January 4, 1642, Charles marched into Westminister Hall at the head of a troop of 'cavaliers'.

He had come to arrest Pym and four other MPs, including Hampden of 'ship money' fame.

But the plan had been leaked. Charles could only observe that the 'birds had flown' , and left in "a more discontented and angry passion than he came in".

From now on, the king had lost the initiative.

The attempt to trample on the rights of the Commons even alienated some of Charles' own allies.

The anger of London's masses, who now hoped for Parliament to find a way of putting their grievances to rights, was without parallel.

Cannon

For the first time matters went beyond the point of mere rioting.

The Trained Bands-a kind of city militia for preserving order-declared support for Parliament. Seamen hauled cannon from their ships in the Thames and positioned them around Parliament for purposes of defence.

The illegal drilling of men in the streets became a common sight. On January 10, Charles and his wife recognised the gravity of the situation by fleeing London.

It was not till August 22, that the King, in drizzling rain, raised the royal standard at Nottingham.

Battle lines .

But there was no serious effort at negotiation in the eight months in between. Time was needed to organise depicts Roundhead and Cavalier forces on. both was civil war.

The French conservative historian, Guisot, in a passage quoted by Trotsky, summarised the situation as follows.

"Negotiations were still continued, but neither party expected any result from them, or even had any intention to treat.

It was no longer to one another that they addressed their declarations and messages; both appealed to the whole nation, to public opinion; to this new power both seemed to look for strength and success"

The battle lines were being drawn.

Continued

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Trotsky-middle class critics never tire of old distortions Leon Trotsky has always been the subject of slander and distortion by ruling class ideologists and the Trotskyist movement is well-tried in exposing the lies and the deceit.

But the attack on Trotsky and the movement he founded takes many forms. The most insidious is often the "critiques of sophisticated lefts' who set out to sympathise with Trotsky's 'moral idealism' while emasculating the revolutionary core of his work.

An example of this method is to be found in the newly-published "Trotsky' by Mr. Irving Howe.

To take up every error and misconception in this book would be to give it more attention than it deserves.

"Authority"

Howe informs his reader that he once had a "youthful experience" with the Trotskyist movement.

Today editor of the American radical magazine Dissent, he produces the fact that he has 'done Trotskyism' as proof of authority to write on the subject.

He has already edited an anthology of Trotsky's basic writings.

When such an informed' author omits central periods of Trotsky's work from his account, the reader must beware of accepting the small size of the book as an 'explanation' Johnny Nichols Inhnnv Nichnls In fact Howe's separation of the important from the unimportant flows entirely from his subjectivist and sceptical approach to the great political questions of our epoch.

Struck Howe, for example, gives some attention to Trotsky's personality and finds d conflict between authoritarianism (which he does not like) and romantic idealism (of which he approves).

He crudely distorts the theory of the party found in Lenin's What is to be Donedescribing it as a "monastic secular order" of intellectuals -and expresses sympathy for the young Trotsky's polemics against the 'authoritarian' Lenin (which of course Trotsky later rejected as completely wrong).

Yet at the same time Howe says nothing of Trotsky's battle to rebuild the international revolutionary movement in the 1930s.

It was for this that Trotsky was hated by all his political opponents and finally struck down by a Stalinist assassin in 1940.

As Howe expounds his own 'theories' the cause of this unbalanced selection is not too hard to discern.

Madness

In the 1920s and 1930s the Trotskyist movement distinguished itself by its insistence that the working class was the only revolutionary class, and that this class could take power and buid socialism only under the leadership of parties based on the scientific perspective of Marxism.

But for a middle class critic like Howe this is nothing short of madness; (Howe has better manners than to say this and so litters his book with mealy-mouthed phrases about Trotsky's political ideas-"increasingly questionable". "at least doubtful", etc., etc).

In the working class, Howe can only see backwardness, weakness and 'problems' For Howe, the masses simply accept "both the advantages and rules' of the welfare state"

He proceeds to churn out Stalin long been the stock-in-trade of reformists and bourgeois 'social scientists':

"Workers with homes, cars, television sets are not likely to yield to insurrectionary visions"

Fantastic To see the working class as an exploited class driven into conflict with their exploiters in a system of crisis -this is merely a fantastic notion in the heads of the revolutionary fighters whom Howe contemptuously calls the "Trotskyist faithful"

What makes Howe's book tedious is the utter lack of originality in his sniping attacks on Marxism.

Typical is his regurgitation of the stupidity that the decisive role played by an individual-Lenin-in the Russian Revolution, invalidates the Marxist view of class struggle:

"What then happens to historical materialism, to say nothing of the elaborate analysis offered by Trotsky in his various works intended to show the outcome of the Bolshevik revolution as a necessary outcome of Russian development?"

Concentrated

Howe knows that Trotsky long ago answered this question in a passage he is at pains to omit from his account.

"For this new age Russian All that was best in the old revolutionary intellectuals of earlier times: their spirit of denial, their audacity, their hatred of oppression-all this was concentrated in the figure of this man . . Supported by Russia's young revolutionary proletariat, utilising the rich experience of the international workers' movement ... he has risen to this full stature on the political horizon.

... the fate of the working class does not depend on individual personalities: but this does not mean that individual personality is of no importance in the development of the working class"

Howe is at his most vulgar (and that is very vulgar indeed) in dealing with the 1917 revolution itself.

Like all democratic reformists he clearly wishes that the great events of the epoch-war and revolutioncould be settled in accordance with the principle 'one man, one vote'.

Dragged in Howe is not choosy about his allies when he attacks those who dared to take the power.

Kautsky, Kollontai, Kronstadters--even Bertrand Russell-are dragged in. And Howe has a good word for them all.

During the brutal civil war to defend the first proletarian revolution against imperialist intervention, Trotsky, commanding the Red Army wrote Terrorism and Communism.

In this work he castigated those social-patriots and centrists-Kautsky in particular-who had tolerated the slaughter of the working class in the First World War and now attacked the Bolsheviks for their "undemocratic" "terrorist" and "Jacobin" treatment of their class enemies.

Of this work we astonishingly that it "supports those who believe Leninism and Stalinism to be closely linked or to form a line of continuous descent".

For Howe-the radical intellectual, the 'freethinker" -there is no difference in quality between the violence of revolution and that of He feels more at home in his treatment of Trotsky's at against Stalinism.

Basic question

Here he can easily afford to be 'sympathetic'. '. The bosses' publishing houses are open to all those who wish to trials as a means for discrediting the October Revolution.

But as Howe admits, things were very different when Trotsky stood firm against Stalinism.

Then all varieties of liberals, reformists, pacifists and centrists were willing to close their eyes and ears to preserve their standing as 'friends of the Soviet Union'.

Howe tells of Trotsky's appeals to "a world which did not want to believe" and of his attacks on those Fabians like the Webbs "who had begun to praise the Soviet Union only after it had sunk into totalitarianism"

But Howe cannot ask the basic question. Why was only the Trotskyist movement able to fight Stalinism? Why were his own political forebears the capitulators?

The whole method sees only surface impressions in which Trotsky is just a brilliant individual, somtimes good, sometimes bad, depending upon Howe's subjective requirements.

Skipped That is why the international defeats of the working class in the 1920s-Germany, 1923, Britain 1926, China 1927-which were partly caused by, and partly contributed to the rise of Stalinism are omitted.

That is why Trotsky's struggle for a Fourth International is skipped over.

The fight against Stalinism confronted not only its open agencies but also those, like the revisionist Burnham-Shachtman group in the USA who under the cover of 'anti-Stalinism' abdicated the class duty to defend the Soviet Union against imperialist attack.

Such people ultimately deserted the workers' movement and finished their parpare a rahidi ennhacman for imperialism.

Like Burnham and Shachtman, Howe seeks refuge from the world in a 'third camp' in which he can hold forth as a 'critic' of capitalism without damaging his acceptability in democratic circles by defending the conquests of the working class.

Repelled

His opposition to Trotsky flows precisely from the latter's refusal to bow to •publio opinion' and to identify Stalinism with the October revolution, the counter-revolutionary bureaucracy with the socialised property relations.

Howe writes "In his writings of the late 1930s he did begin to use the term "totalitarian' as a crucial descriptive, but this seems to have referred more to the outer character of Nazi or Stalinist politics than to a new historical problem of major significance.

He can hardly be blamed for not having worked out a theory about something which few other analysts had even begun to grapple with, and which stil has not found its Marx or Weber"

This passage sums up Howe's view. Repelled by the outer features of Stalinism and Nazism, he throws them into the same pot and thereby excuses himself of responisbility.

Despite his claims to be a socialist thinker he clearly feels no obligation to the working class movement.

If a new social system exists, neither capitalist nor socialist but "totalitarian' does not the working class have the right to ask about its material basis, its line of development, its implications for humanity?

Learn

But we have only the reply that this theory has not found a suitable theoretician!

The reader will learn little about Trotsky from Howe's book.

But if one picks up any of Trotsky's polemics against idealists, vacillators, liberals and centrists in the 1930s one can still learn a lot about Mr. Howe.

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INTERNATIONAL WORKERS house TION NO 1 OFFICIA

TGWU

OFFICIALSTRKE SKRNERS Y FOR STEAK TRADE UNKN RECOGNITKA TG W BRANCH DR

TGWU

OFFICiALSTRKE SARNEKS STEAK from the strike committee.

In the week following the conference, Abrahams (increasingly losing his usefulness to the higher echelons of the bureaucracy) began to scramble desperately to retrieve his position of authority in the strike.

• He issued 'a series of communications; an abortive stewards' conference was called for 23 April and a latter asking for support from the miners was circulated.

However, by the meeting on April 19 of the Food, Drink and Tobacco Trades Group Sub-committee it must have been clear to the bureaucracy that some steps had to be taken to regain control.

It was significant for the bureaucracy that they had been leafleted by strikers calling for secondary blacking, mass picketing and the levy. bureaucracy, having taken a battering, and been constanty leafleted and picketed by the strike committee took the unprecedented step of allowing speakers from the strike committee to address the meeting.

With pressure from the strikers forcing a division between the Trades Group and the rest of the committee, they adopted as Regional policy the secondary blacking of Garners and gave assurances that they would mobilise for the mass pickets.

Clearly the issue over which the Regional Committee will not concede without a major fight is that of the levy.

Setting the precedent of sustaining a strike indefinitely has massive political implicațions for a union with members in strategic industries.

They have to undermine the strike committee's ability to conduct such a fight.

Hence Nicholson's intervention over the past week.

Pressed

In a mass meeting of the strikers on May 7 when Nicholson was pressed on the result of the F&GP meeting with the TGWU EC he skillfully evaded giving an answer, saying he could only speak in a personal capacity and that the Region's policy would be decided at the Regional. F&GP meeting on May 18.

The bureaucracy's tactic is now to destroy any independence that the developing opposition has won over the past three months.

On the basis of this reasserted

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

le fuit inte is cnptunan

Arminian anabaptist

Srian Familift

feeding from it for an entire epoch, means "that it'

use Stalinism, its labour camps, murders and mock-