U.S. crisis: Carter cuts crackdown

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Striking firemen-victims of armv scahhing While Labour and TUC leaders put their signatures to a new document proposing scabs demonstrated the real meaning of this policy as they moved in to break the blacking action by industrial civil servants 'in pursuit of their pay claim.

This action, echoing the massive army strikebreaking during the Firemen's pay strike, is a clear warning to the workers' movement.

Permanent wage control -with a 5% limit for Phase 4-has been spelled out by the right wing leaders as the central plank of Labour's election manifesto.

Break strikes

If Callaghan is re-elected, he will attempt to use this as a mandate for all-out action by the state to break any strikes against the new pay limit, which comes into force on Tuesday.

But the TUC leaders and Labour Party "lefts' are using the pretext of the coming election to head off any struggle against the 5% limit and lend their support to the plan for permanent wage controls.

Even though. postal workers leader Tom Jackson was the only TUC General Council member to defend the 5% limit, and the Huge dangers now confront the heroic guerrilla forces now fighting a 200,000-strong Ethiopian army offensive in Eritrea, in the North east horn' of Africa.

Major military setbacks last week allowed the Stalinistbacked Ethiopian forces to capture the formerly liberated towns of Adi Quala and Tessenei, and put at risk a number of towns and areas previously held by the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF).

This weakens not only the ELF but also the rear positions of the larger Eritrean Popular Liberation Front (EPLF), which has so far succeeded in beating back Ethiopian attacks.

There seems little doubt that the crisis-wracked Ethiopian regime headed by military TUC is now nominally opposed to the policy, these same leaders on Wednesday signed a joint statement agreeing that "each year" there must be:

"a thorough discussion with the trade union movement so that there is a broad understanding in this as in the other areas of our national economic life"

But it was precisely such innocent sounding "discussions" and "broad understandings" that led to the TUC collaboration in the enforcement of every previous round of wage despot Mengistu Haile Mariam has staked everything on a speedy and brutal move to crush the 17-year struggle by the Eritrean people for their right to self-determination.

Such has been the tenacity of this protracted struggle that the bloodthirsty and unstable rulers in Addis Abbaba must realise that even if they were to conquer the territory they can only hope to "pacify" the Eritrean people through the most barbaric slaughter.

Stalinist allies

It is this factor which explains the reluctance of Mengistu's Stalinist allies-the USSR and Cuba-to be seen to be directly involved in the final military push into Eritrea, and reportedly seeking means of replacing Mengistu with a more pliable dictatorial leader who controls, which have successively cut back the living standards of every section of workers in order to boost the profits of private industry.

The support for this vague form of words by six TUC bureaucrats threatens to tie millions of trade unionists in a permanent straightjacket in which the basic right of workers to bargain freely for wage increases is denied.

The TUC leaders are joined by ""left" Labour MPs in winding up even the pretence of a fight against might be amenable to a negotiated settlement with the Eritreans.

But the scandalous fact remains that Soviet and Cuban military aid is the major factor propping up Mengistu within Ethiopia, and facilitating his murderous attempt to repress the Eritrean people.

3,500 Cuban combat troops and piles of sophisticated Soviet weaponry, including tanks and heavy artillery have been flown in to back up Mengistu, while the Eritrean forces depend on arms captured in the course of their struggle.

A growing economic crisis and increasing chances of a major famine inside Ethiopia have combined with unrest in the ranks of the 200,000-strong peasant militia, who are angry at their starvatic n rates of pay.

And the cities workers in PHOTO: Chris Davies, Report Callaghan this plan as the election looms nearer.

The handful of Tribunite MPs who still profess to stand to the left of and civil servants are pressing wage claims spurred on by spiralling inflation.

But sooner than allow any mobilisation of this mass hostility to Mengistu, who has already butchered thousands of left wing opponents, the Stalinist bureaucracies of Havana and Moscow prefer to provide material aid for his war against the Eritrean masses.

These points were forcibly made at a public meeting held in Oxford by the Workers Socialist League on the Eritrean revolution last week.

A 90-strong audience heard a report on the current struggles and passed the following resolution:

*This meeting declares its support for the right of the Eritrean people to self-determination, and its opposition to every attempt by the imperialist powers or the Ethiopian state Cowley 9 Campaign. No Rational Way Out Callaghan split on the question of whether to support the 5% pay policy-one section voting for the government "to prevent a Tory win" and another eight simply abstaining.

And not a single TUC leader has declared a willingness to lead action to break the 5% pay limit.

Rather than expose the betrayals of four years of Callaghan-Healey leadership and lead a campaign for their removal and for an alternative socialist programme, both "left" and right wing bureaucrats in TUC and Labour Party (with in particular the scandalous assistance of Soviet and Cuban troops) to deny this right.

We call on all workers, in this country and internationally (especially in Ethiopja and those states which support the present policies of the Ethiopian government), to campaign for the fullest active support for the struggles of the Eritrean people towards self-determination and to organise acts of concrete solidarity with these struggles"

A total of £55 was raised at the meeting and forwarded to the EPLF for arms and necessary supplies.

(See background, page PHOTO: Mark Rusher, IFL unite to argue that a Tory government under Thatcher would be "worse"

Workers must decisively reject the attempt to blackmail them with the threat of a return of the Tories.

Heath was brought down by the workers' movement: Thatcher, too, if elected, could be defeated by an all-out mobilisation of the working class.

The only reason Thatcher stands a chance of being elected is because of mounting bitterness at the years of Labour betrayal.

The central issue for the workers' movement is to break from those Labour and TUC bureaucrats-"left' and right wing alike-who have carried out these betrayals, and to mobilise its independent strength in the struggle to regain and defend lost living standards around the demand for catching up pay increases linked to cost of living clauses to compensate for inflation.

Within the trade unions and the Labour Party the fight must be taken up for the removal of Callaghan and his cabinet of wagecutters.

Reveal position

Those lefts' who claim to represent "socialist" policies must be forced in this way to reveal their real position-for or against the existing leadership.

In the course of such a fight, workers will begin to grasp the impossibility of resolving their problems through Parliamentary elections and spineless reformist leaders, and recognise the necessity to construct a revolutionary leadership in the trade unions to further their struggles against the attacks of the next government, whether it be headed by Thatcher o: Callaghan,

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wage controls "Into the Eighties", Royal Navy