Dominican Republic: Reaction's new mask

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unittent cracy's pro-imperialist The crises brought about by the national positions of the Hua-Teng clique become more and more frequent and acute.

The present conflict with the Vietnamese CP leadership stems entirely from an anti-internationalist standpoint.

Two million people of Chinese origin live in , particularly in the Many of them fled after the 1949 revolution ann set up businesses in the town of Cholon.

Vital measure

The flight of 70,000 overseas Chinese from Vietnam, some to China, and others to capitalist countries, began after the 27 March nationalisation measures in the south.

Clearly this step was a vital measure in the organisation of a planned economy in Vietnam.

But tar from supporting neighbouring workers' state in this action and taking a united class position, the Chinese leadership has attacked the Hanoi regime as being the same as Ngo Dinh Diem's.

They further accused the Vietnamese government of persecuting "Chinese people" and forcing them to There is still no official result of the presidential election in the Dominican Republic.

This is because supporters of ex-dictator Balaguer who appears, against all expectations, to have lost, have lodged numerous protests about electoral fraud by the apparently victorious Antonio Guzman of the so-called Dominican Revolutionary Party.

Conceded defeat

But, after receiving the firmest instructions from Jimmy Carter and the CIA to call off the military coup initiated during the counting of the votes, Balaguer has conceded defeat to Guzman.

It is now becoming clear, however, that far from losing power, Balaguer and the • most reactionary sections of the military have gained in political strength.

Because they will now exercise power through the new "revolutionary" President.

The CIA has organised a filthy deal in which Guzman US imperialist flee, and they haver even sent boats to "TE scue" them!

• Purges Chinese television time has abounded with the sight of fleeing petit-bourgeois after they have been stripped of the booty they tried to bring with them.

At the same time as these international positions "develop". internal conditions show the attempts to consolidate a pragmatic, rigidly controlled society.

The Le Monde correspondent A. Delain claims:

• the new leading team manifests a liking for the concrete, order and discipline. They show more realism in their projects.

The credibility of the regime has been enhanced by this, and by increases in wages and the cancelling of some taxes, eg. those on bieycles."

Alongside this has gone the purges, the reintroduction of the death penalty and the continuing attacks on the "Gang of Four"

Protected its own

These purges, however, have been notably more numerous in the lower levels of the party.

The bureaucracy has in is allowed become president only certain conditions.

These include no changes in the senior military staff, no changes in the anti-working class economic policies of Balaguer and military approval of major cabinet appointments.

Guzman has gone along with this with relish.

It means, he hopes, that he will have the support of the army, the CIA and éven Balaguer, and he can treat with contempt any pressure from the masses who elected him to carry out the reforms he promised.

He has already made several speeches squirming before the "self-sacrificing armed forces"

"Counsellor"

Dictator Balaguer, says Guzman, will be "a counsellor of my government" and the cabinet will be composed of "the best men from all parties, including the Reformist Party".

So the "victory for revolution" is the same extreme reaction wearing a new mask.

Brzezinski poses with Chinese general protected its own. On the Political Committee, besides the "Four" only Wu Kuei-hsien has been "eliminated"

In the provinces and the military regions only six of the forty First Secretaries have disappeared from political life.

On the level of vicepresidents of revolutionary committees in the provinces however, only one-quarter of the 380 have maintained their posts since 1976.

Obviously as Trotskyists we do not differentiate as regards supporting one section of Stalinism against another.

This latest squabble between bureaucracies hogbound by national interests merely highlights the crisis in this counter-revolutionary force and the crisis in working class leadership.

The Sino-Soviet split does not pose a major threat to the struggle of the world working class and makes more urgent the task of the Trotskyist movement to build a revolutionary leadership in China and the other degenerate workers states for the political overthrow of the reactionary Stalinist bureaucracy and the defence of progressive nationalised property relations.

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Police "protecting" black youth on Grunwick picket line Trade union branches, Lewisham meeting. councils, tenants associat- ation for black workers, tions and the political Flame, they called for black A wave of racist shootings and knifings in the Lewisham area in S.E. London has resulted in proposals by the local black community to set up self-defence squads.

The move came at a meeting last Thursday, chaired by David Foster, chairman of the Lewisham 21 Defence Committee.

David Foster's son Chris, is one of the Lewisham 21a group of youth arrested in a dawn police raid early last year and still awaiting trial at the Old Bailey on charges of conspiracy to steal. David Foster' 's other son, Carl, who has in the past been active in the Lewisham 21 Defence Committee was one of three blacks who have been shot in the last two months.

He needed an operation to removed a pellet, fired from a high velocity rifle, from his intéstines.

The response of the police to the proposed defence squad was to immediately condemn it as "gross irresponsibility"

Lewisham's police commander Maurice Taylor said:

"These matters should be left to the police. We are the people charged with the responsibility of preserving law and order in the But in the words of Foster:

"You can say we are taking the law into own hands but the situa ion is so desperate that requires action from • US now"

matter And as if to underline the need for the working class to take action, Commander Taylor, commenting on the shooting Carl Foster said:

, 'Whether it was a racist matter or a personal feud we don't know and will not know until the person who did it is found"

In other words the police have no intention of finding the racists responsible for this and the other shootings and are prepared to invent a "personal feud" as an "alternative explanation" of the shooting to divert from the real search.

Time and again, at Grunwicks, Lewisham, So when Madame CeauLadywood and Hyde in Manchester, the police have shown that their real job is to act on behalf of the capitalist state and against the working class.

This may mean smashing picket lines or defending fascists from the justified wrath of the working class.

And as the toll of racist attacks mounts in every major city the urgent need is for the establishment of workers defence squads based on the mass organisations of the working class. Labour Party wards, trades parties of the labour movement must all take up the question of forming workers defence squads to protect the black population, to defend picket lines like that at Garners which has been attacked by racists, and to defend public meetings from fascist attack.

This, not surprisingly, was not the position taken by the Socialist Workers Party at last Thursday's PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Through their organisself-defence (their slogan is Black Self Defence-No Offence).

The latest issue of their black workers' paper Flame also repeats their call for industrial action by black workers against racist attacks.

The SWP continually panders to the existing consciousness of the working class and these two demands continue in that