African struggle denied leadershir

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WRP Junks the old Trotskyism. •p.6-7 French workers march... .Back page Irish prisoner campaign. • p.5 So much for the economic recovery that Callaghan, Healey and every defender of this government's anti-working class policies had been boasting about since the budget. house-buyers.

These moves by Healey give the lie to those union bureaucrats and government ministers who have insisted that wage controls, social service cuts unemployment and speedup on the shop floor would "solve" the Dole queue in Kirby, Merseyside mobilise the working class for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a planned, socialist economy in which production takes place for need and not profit.

The Callaghan-Healey leadership of the Labour Party and the TUC bureaucracy stand as the foremost obstacle to such a struggle.

Tory danger

Their betrayals over the last four years have created the danger of the return of a Tory government.

The Healey measures must be fought politically throughout the labour movement. The Tory Party has this week tabled a Parliamentary motion to cut the pay of Chancellor Workers must demand that those Labour "lefts' who claim to oppose the reactionary line of the government should not simply be voting against the Lib-Lab government on this issue, but putting down motions within the Parliamentary - Labour Party, Labour GMCs and union branches demanding the removal of Healey and Callaghan from office.

Opening

Those lefts' that refuse to act against these traitors in this pre-election period do no more than offer an opening for the Tories. The fight must be to build a principled, revolutionary leadership within the working class, on a programme that starts from today's conditions and today's consciousness of wide layers of the working class and inescapably leads on to the conquest of power and a planned, socialist economy The military dictatorship of Ethiopia is still massing huge forces in Asmara and on the borders of the liberated zones as it prepares to crush tre struggles of the Eritrean revolution.

But while Mengistu and the leaders of the Derg build up their resources for a full offensive, their Stalinist backers are still seeking ways to resolve this acute dilemma.

The Soviet and Cuban bureaucracies appear to be powerless to stop the Derg from waging a war of genocide against the Eritreans.

Yet although Castro and Pravda now characterise the liberation struggles in Eritrea as 'secessionist , they themselves formerly gave verbal support to the Eritreans' right to self-determination and independence.

Recognition

It is recognition of this right that the Eritrean Popular Liberation Front and Eritrean Liberation Front are demanding as a precondition of talks with the Ethiopian dictatorship, along with a recognition of their organisations as the sole representatives of the Eritrean people.

Mengistu has rejected these "arrogant' terms angrily, and the Stalinists have so far been unable to overcome this confrontation.

Now it is clear that they are holding back their military support from the Derg's preparations as their efforts to reach a compromise become more desperate.

The ELF reports that Cuban troops have ceased any active in fighting against the Eritreans.

At the same time they claim that the South Yemeni forces have been withdrawn not only from the war areas, but from the whole of Ethiopia.

Sinister

But these developments do not indicate in any simple way that the Stalinist bureaucracies and their allies will not move against the Eritreans. Other more sinister developments have emerged over the last week.

Partly in response to pressure from the Soviet bureaucracy, and partly in line with its present rightward turn, the petty bourgeois nationalist regime in Iraq has expelled members of the EPLF and the Syrian regime is expected to follow suit.

In opposition to these manoeuvres of the Stalinist bureaucracies, the demand must be taken up through the labour movement internationally that the Cuban and Soviet forces actively support the right of the Eritreans to self-determination, in opposition to the repression of the Ethiopian military dictatorship.

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mass for Eritrean