7. Press Gang Ess Gain

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further dignity to • her person-an Honorary Degree at the Polytechnic of Central London-the Embassy passed on the message that the Communist First Lady wished to walk on nothing but red carpet everywhere she went in the Polytechnic-a total of over half a mile. (No red flags were requested!)

Pomp The worthy Poly administrators are no strangers to extravagant pomp. But this seemed a bit steep especially while they were trying to convince students and staff of the need for economies.

So Buckingham Palace-no less-was asked graciously to intervene in the cause of moderation.

PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Thinks President Ceáusescu of Romania demanded red carpets, an open carriage and his own room in Buckingham Palace.

He was clearly determined not to miss out on any of he traditional customs o the British common little man he is". working class as he arrived with his expressions of international solidarity and his calls for revolution.

Admittedly his solidarity was reserved for the Queen and her state; the revolution was in trade relations between British businessmen and Romanian factories.

It confused the British press not a little. Ceausescu': 's visit to Britain was spelled out in an interview in the Guardian as part of the play by various factions of the workers states' bureaucracies in searching for capitalist allies.

Ceausescu in his own right would have been material for political assassination in the bourgeois press. Bút as an opponent of the Soviet bureaucracy he has become an acceptable figure.

Fiven the Daily Mail which (Bernard Levin apart) is the most determined smearer of the workers states, confined itself to calling C'eausescu This battling Balkan bear-baiter' The first Warsaw Pact leader to make a state visit to Britain is praised for his international diplomacy, his 'proud nationalism' the 'romantic ring' to his name and his vigour.

Attacks on the police state are contined to a few vague paragraphs near the end of a long article. The Daily Mail is aware of its political obligations, concluding:

'Romania is in a vulnerable part of the world-and it is this which makes Ceausescu's visit so intriguing' The Guardian-having secured its "exclusive interviews-was less deferential, mocking the Romanian leader's progress through the fuming motorists of London.

"The arrangements clearly pleased the President who waved like a windmill at Victoria and was still going vigorously at the gates of Buckingham Palace. The Queen sat beside him in her landau, looking a bit frozen, as the presidential hand whipped past.

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tradition.

By arguing only for black self defence and black strike action, the SWP condemn the black community to isolation from the labour movement and encourage illusions amongst blacks that they can solve their problems by themselves.

At the same time these demands permit the SWP and those blacks who support them to ignore the urgent task of mobilising the whole of the labour movement to build workers defence squads-class organisations that can strike blows at the fascists who are a class enemy determined to use their racist policies to build a party to attack and destroy the organisations of the labour movement. • Because the fight for such mobilisation is Part of last Tuesday's meeting Arrogant and reactionary to the marrow, this poor man's Margaret Thatcher was met with bitter hostility by the overflo. PHOTO: Andrew Wiard. Report