Alerkant from Ich

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berlayne want you to do the same thing in France that the Bolsheviks did in their country in October 1917"

He pointed to the enormous numbers who turned out to commemorate the Paris Commune on May 25 as confirmation of the revolutionary content of that The fact that much of the CPs 'support' was revolutionary did not make the Many less dangerous.

In words which apply just as directly to the liberal antics of the Anti Nazi League today, Trotsky pointed out:

"Joint meetings, parade processions, oaths, mixing of the banners of the Com. mune and of Versailles, noise, bedlam, demagogy, all these serve a single aim; to curb and demoralise the mass movement"

Conspiracy

He also considered it extremely dangerous to dupe workers into regarding the Radical Party as the party of the petty bourgeoisie rather than as the democrațic party of French imperialism.

Far from being an alliance of progressive 'allies' of the working class, the Popular Front was a conspiracy between the labour bureaucracy and the worst political exploiters of the middle class to kill the faith of the masses in the revolutionary road. The effect of this duplicity might well be to drive them towards fascism.

Careful assessment

In fact Trotsky wrote very little on France in this period. But what is striking from the articles in Whither France and in The Crisis in the French Section is the careful assessment of the objective situation confronting workers and his preparedness to drastically change tactics if necessary.

On June 10, 1936 in the preface to the full collection entitled Whither France he wrote:

"The February days of 1934 marked the first serious offensive of the united counter-revolution. The May-June days of 1936 herald the first mighty wave of proletarian revolution. These two milestones show the way in advance to two possible roads: the Italian or the Russian. Parliamentary democracy, in whose name the Blum government now functions will be crushed into powder between these the struggle saying 'It is not yet time' "That organisation is unworthy of the name of revolutionary which will fail to find a base for itself in the present strike movement, which will prove unable to fuse itself firmly with the struggling workers ... The place of revolutionists is in the factories"

Throughout the period from 1934 to June 1936 he assessed the period as a prerevolutionary one requiring revolutionary offensive, one to which the party should give every possible impetus.

Defensive tactics

But then within days, with all the parties of the Popular Front gunning for the strikes to end and police forces stationed at the ready the threat of counter-revolution raised its head and Trotsky wrote urgently that the revolutionary party must adopt more defensive tactics.

"If we call the first wave 'the February revolution' then it is the July events which are being prepared now"

He considered a partial defeat of the proletariat between 'its first rather imaginary victory and its final definitive victory' as almost inevitable.

At this point therefore it would be wrong to accelerate a second general strike. The task was to prepare for it and to prepare workers for the struggle against betrayal within their own ranks.

Participate

If a new strike wave broke out then the party must participate in it, but the precondition for the success of a new general strike was factory committees and soviets and these Radicals oppose it, then it is necessary to base oneself on the support of the real people, the four or five million trade unionists.

"The manifesto need not necessarily criticise the government. It should make some positive proposals to the government in the name of none factory going through a great experience"

Opposed

Trotsky was opposed at this stage to calling directly for the bringing down of the Blum Popular Front government.

Rather the call should be Drive the bourgeois Radicals out of the Blum government' ', for this was the way to get the ear of Communist and Socialist workers and expose the way their leaders tied themselves to those like Daladier who were responsible for such policies as the two year dratt, the banning of socialist papers in . the barracks, and such like.

Counter-revolutionary This careful strategy of strengthening and preparing the workers' movement to defend itself against the employers' counter-offensive and prepare for the next stage in the onslaught for power figured nowhere in the strategy of the Stalinists who merely called in a counter-revolutionary way for a return to 'order' One can see how followthrough the experience Trotsky The need . to break workers from their reformist • and Stalinist leadership and build an independent leadership is central to the method of the Transitional Programme, published in 1938 at the founding conference of the Fourth International.

That* document, of course, distilled the experience. of the Trotskyist movement in fighting for revolutionary policies and at many points in Trotsky's writings on the 1930s one can see the foreshadowing of its main points of Demands The Programme of Action for France written by Trotsky in June 1934 already uses many of the demands such as the ending of business secrets, for a workers and peasants government, workers militias and many democratic demands such as equal pay.

The Trotskyist movement in France, although split, did continue to produce newspapers and to continue on a clear position of exposing the betrayals of Weakening towards the centrism of Pivert continued to be their main problem. fascism, the degeneration of Stalinism, the demoralisation created by the People's Fronts all combined to create extremely difficult objective conditions for a small revolutionary group -it was a very small boat in an extremely strong current.

Certainly a great deal more could have been achieved.

In June 1936 he wrote:

"If after the Mulhouse congress, the French section had unleashed the vigorous revolutionary internationalist offensive that all circumGerman troops enter Paris, 1940 stances dictated, it would now have a very much larger membership and an infinitely greater authority and capacity for struggle"

Nevertheless the Trotskyists were a steeled cadre unlike any other.

Many of them were handed over to the Nazis by Stalinists in the war, but they played an extremely courageous role in the resistance and were the only section on the left to spread revolutionary propaganda to the German troops and in the concentration camps.

It was on the strength of this record that they emerged as a relatively strong and solid section of the Fourth International after the war.

Next week:

The Popular Front in Spain

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GUN COURE dread red PART 00202: other leaders of the Rastafarians, jailing them too.

The movement was Manley's Gun Court As it grew it curled into locks and the style became known as "dread locks" or "natty dread"

In 1954 a second police raid forced the Rastas out of the hills and back into the slums of Kingston where they were continually harrassed by the police.

They began to refer to Jamaica and its state institutions as "Babylon" and saw themselves as the real Israelites living in exile.

"Zion" was their homeland; and Zion was Ethiopia -Africa.

With the post-war boom, many Jamaicans were tempted to migrate to Britain in search of work and a higher standard of living.

The slogan of the Rastas in opposition to this was "Ethiopia Yes, England No, Let My People Go"

Haile Selassie had granted 500 acres (!) of land to the blacks of the West as a mark of gratitude to the many thousands who had given Ethiopia financial aid when Mussolini launched his invasion in 1936.

"Living God"

The Rastas argued that the blacks would be given more if this land was properly used.

By 1960 the Rastafarian men-their job is to stay at home, cook, look after the children, and so on.

While the elements of hatred and revenge against whites that appeared in Howell's original formulation are greatly modified this more developed set of beliefs is nonetheless reactionary from beginning to end.

Rastafarianism is often attacked because of its association with the feudal despot, Emperor Haile Selassie.

But this is really to miss the point. Rastafarianism is a religion. It is the fact that Rastas choose to deify anyone at all, rather than the reactionary nature of the individual they deify, that immediately condemns the Rastafarian movement as a diversionary movement in the struggles of the Jamaican masses.

Ethiopia is not seen by the Rastafarians as a paradise on earth. Rather it is seen as a state of mind, as representative of a once powerful black culture that is about to be reborn and on the basis of which the blacks will rule the world.

The reactionary role of Rastafarianism is in essence the same as in all religions. Instead of starting with the material world, the class nature of the society in which they live and the need to develop the class consciousness of the proletariat and oppressed masses through the building of a revolutionary party to overthrow capitalism, the Rastas start from a Black God who is going to give black people the strength to throw off their (inferior) white oppressors and rule the world.

To offer the prospect of a return to Africa, which is quite impossible since no regime would be willing to accept, mass immigration from Jamaica into already stretched economies on the African continent, is to divert the Jamaican masses from the real struggle they face of overthrowing capitalism on their island, expropriating the giant monopolies with their stranglehold over the economy and fighting for the establishment of socialist federation in the Caribbean.

The reactionary position of Rastafarianism on the role of women, similarly bolsters capitalism through the strengthening of bourgeois concepts of the family.

The current role played by Rastafarianism will be discussed in more detail once we have examined how it grew from a persecuted minority into the powerful force that it represents today.

Three major events transformed the influence of Rastafarianism within all levels of Jamaican society.

Firstly in 1961 Ras Sam Brown stood as a candidate for political office on a 21 point programme entitled