Who benefits from state industry profits?

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UPW leader Jackson: defends wage controls that jack up deals which will further cut full trading records of each back the workforce in these of the industries industries are opened up Benefitting from three years of increasing exploitation of their labour force, the major nationalised industries have been clocking up huge profit margins again this year.

Electricity showed a £133 million surplus. The Post Office managed to extract a record £367 million through its particular combination of skyhigh prices and rock bottom wages.

And the gas industry made a cool £180 millionfour times last year's profit.

Overcharging

But there is no reason for workers to celebrate these figures.

Firstly they indicate the level of overcharging carried out by these corporationswhich are managed directly by the nominees of the capitalist class, and which function in the interests of British capitalism.

Secondly they demonstrate that wage controls, which have held down the pay of the hundreds of thousands of workers in these corporations simply maximise profits with no advantage whatever accruing to the working class:

Thirdly the profit figures which partly rest on the increased productivity of workers sold. out by their union leaders will spur management to introduce further investment plans and new "productivity"

Post Office profits.

ALAL HALL And finally the figures completely conceal important issue: the exploitation of the "nationalised" industries by privately owned monopoly suppliers and the banks.

Each of these giant corporations uses a whole host of supplies from firms in the private sector that in many instances are able to cream off huge profits.

Unly relenny du wires- Ruler annantin an intrac tigation revealed scandalous overpricing and an illegal price-fixing cartel operated by the giant cable manufacturers who supplied the Post Office. Such a case is obviously only the tip of the iceberg in the public sector, where management is out of the hands of the workers and private suppliers are free to call the tune.

The trade union movement must insist that the PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report nationalised for inspection by elected trade union committees, and that this investigation reach out to examine the books of each private firm concerned, and the banks.

The objective of such an investigation is not only to equip the workers in the nationalised industries to form committees of workers rontral and eventualiv DULLIN remove the existing capitalist management, but also to launch a campaign for the nationalisation of the private suppliers and the banks without compensation, under workers' management.

Only when this step towards a planned, socialist economy has been taken, can the nationalised industries begin to function in the interests not of private profit but of social need.

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CIlD domanstentire domand release of FBI files. SOCIALIST "If there is any fault it is mine and mine alone" declared Labour Home Secretary Merlyn Rees in Parliament as he put forward a White Paper which abandoned Labour's manifesto pledge to legislate a Freedom of Information Act.

Rees' statement spells out the arrogant contempt shown by the Callaghan cabinet for the interests and democratic wishes of Labour Party members and the labour movement, and the impossibility of achieving socialist policies under the existing right wing leaders.

New provisions He unveiled a paper which oposed replacing the existing ction Two of the Official Merlyn Rees In a 'democracy', censorship of the press is not supposed to be carried out in public. It is considered a delicate act, denied officially, and only practiced between consenting adults.

It should therefore have been an easy enough task for the police to bring the BBC to heel. There was little more involved than one arm of the state-its police force-arranging with another-its public relations office-to be a little more delicate.

Instead of approaching the BBC discretely, instead of having a word in the ear of the director, " who would have a word in the ear of the current affairs controller, who would have a word in the ear of someone else, who would put a muzzle on the TV camerasinstead of that time honoured method of keeping only those things in the public eye that the state wanted to be therethe police blundered.

A producer, seeking to make a film about missing persons, was told bluntly by the police that he would have to sign a contract giving the police the right to cut out any film of which it did not approve.

The directors and producers who have always been allowed to preserve the outward vestiges of free control, rebelled.

The Guardian took up the Secrets Act-which makes disclosure of any official information illegal unless specific authority has been granted-with new provisions that would limit the areas of secrecy to the "security" "intelligence" "defence" and international relations of the British capitalist state machine.

No reform There is to be no reform of Section One of the Official Secrets Act, the so-called "spying" clause, under which journalists Crispin Aubrey and Duncan Campbell and ex-soldier John Berry are to stand trial in September, each threatened with a possible 14 years imprisonment.

This law lays down that it is an offence to receive or communicate any information that might be "directly or indirectly useful to an enemy"

The very vagueness of its formulation is designed to ensure that the law intimidates journalists or the organised workers movement from examining the workings of the armed forces and the police and intelligence units whose task is to preserve British capitalism.

Wall of silence

The massive expenditure on this repressive apparatus; the activities of the military; the spying by the state on the workers movement; the whole network of powerful civil service and military chiefs who operate unelected and out of the control of any of the fraudulent "democratic' bodies that mask the real face of British capitalism, are all concealed behind a wall of enforced silence through the Official Secrets Act.

_ Soft story with the news that the Police Commissioner-Sir David McNee-was to lunch with the BBC's director general, lan Trethowan. It was a bit late for romantic meetings over a candlelit table. The BBC exeutives were already well into their "freedom of the press"

routines.

Desmond Wilcox, head of BBC TV's general features group declared:

"There is no way anybody at the BBC could sign such a document. We could not abrogate our editorial right. It would make co-operation between the organisations impossible"

Of course the BBC has found no difficulty in the past in "co-operating" with such "organisations" as the British Army in Northern Ireland by censoring news, cancelling programmes and trying to poison the minds of the British working class against their Irish brothers and sisters.

What is more, the Guardian -even in the act of showing good liberal disapproval over the police move-revealed that extensive collaboration between the police and BBC goes on every day.

"What is now likely to happen is that the often extensive talks between the two organisations which almost invariably precede documentary filming will become more specific in agreeing common DWE utmUnSraturs wer Hu r The Labour leaders who have. so clearly shown their dedication to preserving British capitalism are equally deter. mined to preserve this secrecy.

There seems little doubt that this decision by the Callaghan cabinet has been influenced by the huge problems that are now confronted by the FBI in the United States as a result of a $40 million lawsuit against them conducted by the Pabloites of the Socialist Workers Party.

Such is the Freedom of Information legislation in the US that the SWP has been able to obtain a Supreme Court injunction to demand the US Attorney General Griffin Bell hand over FBI files on 18 informers who are among the 1,300 informers known to have been used by the FBI against socialists over the last sixteen years.

Bell, the top law enforcement officer in the US now stands in contempt of court for refusal to surrender these ground for what is sometimes nicely known as the rounded picture' "Although producers will be able to maintain their editorial independence and integrity, it will be within clear and preagreed guidelines indicating what is, and is not 'on' Later the Guardian reported that the lunch had been "affable and cordial' The importance of a written contract was now played down and the BBC howls of indignation were quieted. Instead the police now said they were merely "seeking assurances from Mr. Trethowan on greater understanding and liaison between the two organisations" and McNee only wanted "to mention a need for producers who have often been found 'cavalier' by senior police officers, to stand by gentlemen's agreements on programme content.

Mr. Peter Nievens, police 'Director of Information' la grand and honest title) made it clear that what he was demand ing from the BBC he had already got from Fleet Street.

Or as the Guardian put it: "While newspapers in general had accepted what editorial responsibility was all about, it does not seem to apply in quite the same way at the BBC', said Mr. Nievens. files. He declared that:

"Such action would signal to other informants and poten. tial informants that the United States would not or could not continue to honour the pledge of confidentiality which has been the cornerstone of its relationship with informants".

The British Labour leaders who now proudly preside over a repressive machinery far more shrouded in secrecy have no intention of allowing the workers movement to uncover the details of the measures propared against it.

The decision to abandon the pledge of a Freedom of Inform. ation Act is part of the same plan as the victimisation of Aubrey, Berry and Campbell, whose sole 'crime' was that they held a tape recorded two hour conversation together early in 1977 and had all been active in defence of deported ex-CIA agent Philip Ages.

the details of the have ever been As TUC bureaucrats and Labour MPs, act out their charade of "opposition" to Healey's 5% pay limit, some seem even to be beginning to convince themselves that they are fighting in earnest.

This was what caused a curious division between two 'lefts' on the Labour Party NEC last week.

TGWU delegate Alex Kitson _who of course has no record of taking any action whatever against Phases 1, 2 or 3 of wago control-attempted to move an emergency resolution against the 5% limit.

But the NEC chairman, Tribunite Joan Lestor, ruled discussion of the motion out of order.

She realised at once that if it had been carried the NEC would have found itself committed to a struggle against the policy that will clearly be the main plank of Callaghan's election manifesto.

The fact that the policy itself has been sprung on the labour movement with no discussion, she clearly regarded as irrelevant.

Kitson however, had cast himself in the role of the great defender of free collective He moved a further resolution to remove Lèstor from the chair-which only fell by 13-8.

However, now this show of militancy is over we can expect Kitson to return to his more customary role of obstacie to the pay struggle.

In Parliament, too, the talkers were able to keep published. And "expert" witness "Colonel B" refused even to confirm or deny whether any secret information had in fact been revealed during the discussion-yet all three men could go to jail for 14 years!

The reason is obviously the detormination of the state to reinforce its intimidation of potential opponents and its repressive legislation in a period where the Tory leaders have been debating the prospects for lising troops to smash picket lines in industrial disputes and the Labour leaders themselves have used the army and now the navy in scabbing operations.

The trial of Aubrey, Berry and Campbell is thus an issue that affects the whole workers movement.

The NUJ conference voted to prepare for one day strike action on the first day of the trial, and to campaign through. out the labour movement to force the dropping of the charges and the repeal of the Official Secrets Act-but as yet little preparation has been done.

In every area, Trades Councils, union branches and Labour Parties must take up the defence of these three victims of Labour betrayals.

In Oxford the local NUJ Branch, with joint sponsorship from the Trades Council, is preparing a public meeting on August 31 to spell out the issues to local workers and rally support for the defence of Aubrey, Berry and Campbell.

Kitson heads. Eight Tribunites contented themselves with verbal denunciations of the Phase 4 plans-and then pulled back from voting against the policy in Parliament.

Instead, all merely abstained, while the remainder of the Tribune Group voted in favour of Phase 4, ensuring, with Liberal help, that the plan was passed.

The refusal of the lefts' to lift a finger to oppose wage control or take up the slightest fight to remove the Callaghan-Healey leadership was vividly demonstrated earlier in the week.

According to the Financial Times, Eric Heffer was challenged by Callaghan at a A far-re eaching p lan to protect animals has been backed by Labour's National Executive.

Fish and game birds however, will not he joining the cattle, rabbits and giraffes galloping to vote Labour as a result of these proposals, since they have been consciously excluded from protection in the NEC proposals against other blood sports-none of which will in any case necessarily be included in the Party's They, together with the unprotected working class will continue to look with envy and hostility on the conditions of life and the consideration already afforded by the Labour leaders to the most protected, carefully cultivated, the most selfish, • savage, voracious, destructive, widespread animal of all-the British capitalist!

Labour/TUC Liaison meeting:

"Eric, you'll have to choose whether to support the Labour Party with me or without me.' Rather than snap up this golden opportunity to launch a popular struggle in the ranks of the Labour: Party to fight for Callaghan's removal, Heffer as usual collapsed.

With "apposition" like Heffer, Callaghan need have no fears that he will win out on every reactionary proposal he wants inserted into Labour's manifesto, and every reform he wants deleted.

Diversion

Increasingly the experience of Labour in office shows unmistakeably that the illusion that Labeir lefts' in Parliament can defend workers' interests or in any way take up a principled fight against Callaghan is a dangerous diversion from the fight to build a revolutionary leadership in the workers move.

ment.

Every sarjous demand put on the lette luriber exposes their inability to break from the right wing and their lack of any coherent socialist perspective.

This Is why in this pre-election period. constituency Labour Parties should step up such demands and in particular call on MPi and Labour candidates to tounch a campaign for the remoral of the Callaghan-Healey t Pleadership, an end to wage controle, restoration of social service cuts and socialist policies of nationalisation of major industry without compensation under workers management.

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SURAD SOBREISTASLE TRASHERMA ANTESMORIR QUECONSENTIRTIA Republican troons on their wav to the front

PART TWO

The Spanish Popular Front with its amalgam of bourgeois and workers parties, though it ran totally counter to the interests of the working class and peasantry, nonetheless suited the interests of all its participants.

*the small group of liberal bourgeoisie anxious to prove that they still had a political role to play in defence of private property;

*the leaders of the mass workers? parties desperate to avoid being forced to lead a social revolution;

*the centrists of the POUM, unable to formulate an independent working class strategy and hence adapting to the weight of the workers' bureaucracy.

Events would show how this anti-fascist alliance in practice paved the way for fascism and how, as Trotsky said:

"contrary to its own intentions, the POUM proved to be, in the final analysis, the chief obstacle on the road to the creation of a revolutionary party."

Capitulation

It was clear in advance that the vast majority of the voters for the Popular Front would be supporters of the Socialist Party (PSOE).

But the workers' leaders underlined their abject programmatic capitulation to the bourgeois parties by also giving the bourgeois parties a majority of candidates on the Popular Front lists.

Of the 353 Popular Front candidates 194 (55%) were. from the bourgeois republican parties.

the workers " leaders prepared in advance their alibi for not forming a government independent of the bourgeoisie-they guaranteed that they could not have a parliamentary majority.

Against all expectations the Popular Front as whole won a clear majority in the general election of February 1936.

The Popular Front got 276 seats out of the total of 471.

Of these the republicans (including the Catalonian Esquerra) had 159, the PSOE 90, the Communist Party had 16 and there was one each for the the POUM (Maurin) and the Syndicalist Party (Pestana).

The CEDA was the largest party of the right with 86 seats.

As soon as these results were announced, without waiting for word from the elected government, workers massed in tens of thousands outside the prisons until all political prisoners were released.

In the South tenants spontaneously stopped paying rent. And a strike wave began, which was not to subside until the revolution which followed the military revolt in July.

Powerlessness

For six months an exclusively bourgeois republican government, set up in the name of the Popular Front and supported in the Parliament (Cortes) by the PSOE, the Communist Party and the POUM, desperately tried on behalf of capital, the church and the landowners, to control a growing revolutionary working class upsurge.

But the powerlessness of this regime became so evident that the dominant sections of the bourgeoisie decided that Popular Frontism of this variety could not stem the revolutionary tide and so turned increasingly towards authoritarian solutions.

Self defence

Fascist bands committed daily outrages against workers' lives and property. And, in response, the workers themselves began to organise self defence independently of the criminal inactivity of their own leaders.

A kind of civil war had already begun. Between the February elections and the military revolt in July an average of two people werę killed and six wounded every day in street. battles.

Major sections of the bourgeoisie supported the plot which produced the military rebellion of July 18,1936.

In two-thirds of the country this rising was defeated by the instantaneous, massive and spontaneous revolutionary mobilisation of the working class and poor peasantry.

This mobilisation was as much against the bourgeois republican Popular Front gu: unment as it was against the fascist cunter-revolution Independently of their national leaders, the workers' organisations everywhere disarmed the army, set up workers militias using captured arms, took over transport and supply, took over factories and offices.

All kinds of workers' committees were set up. The traditional courts were ignored and workers established new revolutionary forms of justice.

A situation of dual power existed. And until the prestige of the central government could be re-established only workers power remained as a bulwark against fascism.

The American Trotskyist journalist Felix Morrow saw the situation at first hand in September 1936:

"The ostensible justification of the People's Front was that it secured the aid of the republicans against counter-revolutionary The People's Front, however, served the opposite function: it prevented the proletariat from tearing away from the republican politicians the petty-bourgeoisie who, in all victorious revolutions, throw in their lot with the proletariat when they see determinedly striking out for a new and rich life under a new social order.

The People's Front subordinated both the petty-bourgeoisie and the proletarian masses to the treacherous leadership of the bourgeois politicians.

Only the dual power of the proletariat has so far prevented the victory of reaction"

But the Popular Front was preparing to destroy that dual power and SC participate in the triumph of reaction.

To do so it brought out its last reserve weapon-the "left' socialist Largo Caballero.

On September 4, when the bourgeois republicans had acknowledged their political impotence, the Popular front was reconstructed in another form.

The PSOE now became the centre of the coalition government in republican Spain.

"Spanish Lenin"

And it was led not by the right wing of the Socialists (led by Prieto and Negrin) but its left "revolutionary" wing, headed by Largo Caballero who became Prime Minister.

The task which the man whom Prayda had called the "Spanish Lenin" set himself was not to defend the social revolution which was taking place, but to begin to reverse the gains which the workers had made and to restore "order" and "normality"

He was a faithful servant of the Popular Front and the bourgeois order.

Caballero was probably ¡he only political figure who could have reversed the revolution because of his "left" reputation.

He was assisted not only by the Communist Party which now (on Cabalie o's insistence) entered tr government but soon als by even the anarchists wh in November 1936 supplie four ministers to the goveri ment.

This Popular Front, le now by "revolutionaries set out to undo all th revolutionary gains made b the workers and to reassur "world opinion" (the impe: ialist democracies) that th Spanish republican goverr ment meant no harm t private property.

Workers' control i industry was ended, 'th revolutionary committee were disbanded, militia disarmed and so on.

Impression

The Anarchist Ministe of Justice Garcia Oliver wa later to try limply to justif his participation in th destruçtion of workers committees.

'The international bour geoisie refused to supply u with the arms we needed. We had to give the impres sion that it was not thi Revolutionary Committee that were in control but thi legal government withou which we would havi nothing at all"

Caballero's counter-revol utionary treachery, how ever, though crucial i 'Left' socia

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Defeated Republican troops entering France in 1939 play in the counter-revolu- escaped or were arrested tion, the Soviet dictator and subjected to Stalin-style remained show-trials, being accused mistrustful of the "Spanish grotesquely of being "fascist Lenin". agents"

Caballero might be forced 1936 an article in Pravda to carry out some of the had gloated obscenely that: had verbally advocated from concerned, the clearing up In a famous letter Stalin Anarcho-Syndicalist warned Caballero that he elements has already begun, should do nothing which and it will be carried out would alienate the demo- with the same energy as in rentin haumaninia in Illact the USSR" turning the revolutionary tide, was not sufficient to reverse it completely.

That was a task for the third form which the Popular Front government took-an alliance between the right wing. of the PSOE and the Communist Party.

Isolated

Almost from the moment that Caballero took office the CP and the main leader of the PSOE right wing, Prieto, had plotted his removal and replacement as soon as his crucial role had been played.

It was not long before Caballero, having manifestly disappointed the expectations which large sections of the working class had had of him, became politically isolated.

In material terms his government came to depend more and more on aid from the Soviet Union.

The Soviet government, therefore, along with its agents on the spot-the Spanish CP and the growing number of GPU agents and political representatives of the Third Internationalcame to acquire more and more weight.

Although Stalin had, to begin • with, grudgingly acknowledged necessary the Caballero at front role which Caballero had to nonetheless He genuinely feared that red-blooded measures he 1934 to 1936.

ern Europe.

And in saying this he was thinking of his own plans for a clearer alliance with Britain and France.

Stalin wished to dispose of Caballero as soon as possible also as a result of the (relative) protection he gave to the anarchists (who entered his government) and more particularly the POUM, the "Trotskyists" who had begun to wage a propaganda campaign against the Moscow showtrials.

Trial In December as a result of pressure from the Catalan Stalinists, the PSUC, the POUM was expelled from the semi-autonomous government of Catalonia, the Generalitat.

•This began a chain of events which was to culminate in the "May Days" in Barcelona when a spontaneous rising by workers followed by a series of provocations by the Generalitat government (a Popular Front coalition dominated by the bourgeois republicans and the Stalinist PSUC) forced a final trial of strength between the Generalitat on the one side and the revolutionary Barcelona proletariat on the other.

After several days of street-fighting, and largely as a result of the indecision and vacillation by the POUM and the CNT leaders the workers were decisively beaten and the excuse was taken to outlaw the POUM.

This finally enabled the Stalinists to unleash one of the most shameful of the many crimes which were undertaken in the name of the Popular Front and the fight against fascism-the systematic repression of the POUM and the anarchists.

Its best-known leader Andres Nin was kidnapped by Stalinist agents from the USSR, tortured and murdered.

Other leaders either As early as December 17 "So far as Catalonia is of the Trotskyist and the One of the GPU accomplices involved at this time in bloody • acts against Trotskyists and centrists was today's "Eurocommunist" Santiago Carrillo. Barcelona's May Days provoked the fall of Largo Caballero.

He was unable to control the rise of Stalinist power and was forced by the CP to resign as Premier.

The anarchists left the government with him. Caballero was replaced by the CP's chosen successor, the Socialist Finance Minister, Juan Negrin, who was to remain Prime Minister until the final destruction of the Republic in 1939.

The initial strong-man of Negrin's government was Indalecio Prieto, Caballero's right-wing rival for the leadership of the Socialist Resigned Prieto became Defence Minister in which post he, like Cabillero before him, came into sharper and sharper conflict with his erstwhile allies, the CP, because he wished to prevent complete CP and Soviet control of the Republican Army.

When in April 1938 Prieto opposed a proposal of the CP ministers to increase the number of political commissars (nearly all of whom 1 were CP members) in the Army, leading Stalinist Dolores Ibarruri ('La Passionaria") said that the acceptance of the proposal was condition of the continuation of Soviet military aid.

Prieto resigned and went into political obscurity.

His predecessor Caballero had by this time been removed by the Stalinists from the leadership of the UGT union federation and from every position in the labour movement.

By mid-1938 the Francoist armies were closing in on the shrinking Republic. But the Stalinists had achieved their political objectivesthe political and often physical destruction of the POUM, the anarchists, the left of the Socialist Party and indeed virtually the whole of the mass movement.

The vehicle through which this political carve-up was produced was the Popular Front-the class collaborationist electoral and then governmental alliance which in Spain was not originally the creation of the Stalinists of the Communist Party but which, following the line which the Comintern adopted in 1935, they made their own.

Within the Popular Front the Stalinists bécame the most determined and in the end the unrivalled component.

Their public excuse for the counter-revolutionary policies which they supported or initiated in the Popular Front was that the war against fascism had 'first' to be won before there could be talk of socialism.

In reality it was the opposite. The Popular Front and the Stalinists in particular pursued policies which sacrificed the winning of the war to the needs of the counter-revolution.

Starved of arms

Important fronts were starved of arms and materials by the Stalinistdominated Popular Front government on the basis that the troops were led by Anarchist or other "revolutionary" forces.

In the months before the Civil War the Popular Front government, still consisting entirely of the bourgeois parties, had refused to arm the workers against the fascist threat.

171/11 Now at the direct instigation of the Communist Party, militias of the workers' organisations were disbanded and forcibly disarmed The formula "Military victory first, then social reform" , was, as Trotsky said:

66 ... fatal for the Spanish revolution . . . Audacious social reforms represent the strongest weapon in the civil war and the fundamental condition for the victory over fascism"

But the leaders of the Popular Front showed at every turn that the suppression of the revolutionary proletariat ' and peasantry was more important to them than victory over Once again Trotsky expresses this appalling fact graphically:

"The republican' military commanders were more concerned with crushing the social revolution than with scoring military victories.

The soldiers lost confidence in their commanders, the masses in the government; the peasants stepped aside; the workers became exhausted; defeat followed defeat; demoralisation grew apace.

All this was not difficult to foresee at the beginning the civil war. By setting itself the task of rescuing the capitalist regime, the Popular Front doomed itself to military defeat.

By turning Bolshevism on its head, Stalin succeeded completely in fulfilling the role of gravedigger of the revolution"

The first way in which the Popular Front paved the way for fascism was that through it the workers' parties rejected the building of an independent working class programme in favour of tying the workers to a programme which above all else was designed to uphold bourgeois authority and property.

In doing so they denied the objective choice which lay before the Spanish working class-socialism or The second way that the Popular Front prepared for fascism was a concrete result of the first.

Between February and July 1936, under the protection of the Popular Front government, the senior military officers of the state more or less openly plotted their violent counter-revolution. And the Popular Front leaders did virtually nothing to stop them.

Token gestures were taken against a few generals. Militia nun natunla Madrid atrost i mere purruru muur in serter Franco, for example, was sent off to the Canaries.

In June Largo Caballero, had, it is true, called on Azana to arm the working class organisations.

But when Azana predictably refused, Caballero would not lead any independent movement of defence by the workers.

Only guarantee The third way in which the Popular Front paved the way for fascism was after the beginning of the Civil War.

Led now by Caballero, it set out to destroy the organisations of revolutionary workers' power which were the only guarantee against fascism.

As the war of *democracy" against fascism continued, then all democratic rights and revolutionary gains within the republic were abolished.

Stalinist tyrrany was established. By the end, for workers and peasants, there seemed nothing left worth defending.

With the appropriate details changed the same conclusions can be made about the Popular Front in France from 1936 to 1938, or the Popular Unity in Chile between 1970 and 1973 or any other Popular In Spain, the conclusions are all the more bitter because of the long period of defeat which was ushered in for the Spanish working class.

As early as July 1936, a few days after the start of the Civil War, Trotsky predicted with terrible accuracy:

"By lulling the workers and peasants with parliamentary illusions, by paralysing their will to struggle, the Popular Front creates the favourable conditions for the victory of fascism.

The policy of coalition with the bourgeoisie must be paid for by the poet.

ariat with of new torments and sacrifice, if not by decades of fascist terror"

But while it is always the objective of the Popular Front to lull the working class and paralyse their will to struggle, not all Popular Fronts have led to such results as in Spain.

In writing on Spain and France, Trotsky reminds us that the first Popular Front was the coalition of Cadets, Social Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in Russia between February ' and October 1917.

There was only one reason why that regime did not in . practice pave the way for fascism: it could not crush the successful revolutionary struggle waged by the proletariat under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party.

The policy of the Bolsheviks in 1917 is a model today for the revolutionary • socialist policy towards Popular Fronts as it was the model in Trotsky's mind in the 1930s.

The Bolsheviks refused to join the Popular Front.

They campaigned to break the Popular Front by calling for the dismissal of the capitalist ministers.

During the attempt at military counter-revolution by Kornilov, the Bolsheviks fought on the side of the Popular Front but they gave it no political confidence whatever.

They defended democracy against reaction, but with the weapons not of bourgeois democracy but of proletarian revolution.

And, behind the hack of the Popular Front, they built up the organs of workers power which could replace the bourgeois order which the Popular Front defended.

Through this. non-sectarian but uncompromisingly proletarian policy they constructed the party which by leading the social revolution was capable of averting the disaster to which subsequent Popular Fronts have led.

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Page 8 SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday 2 August, 1978 CARTER'S

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