Leaders retreat from Sri Lanka

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*No imperialist troops in against any compromise. Africa. There must be a No secret talks with Smith, campaign for a repudiation of no demands for UN troops. Owen's UN speech and demands Intensify the struggle!

*No secret diplomacy. The towards a socialist Zimbabwe!

leaders.

Populists, ‹socialists' and reformists, and self-styled "Trotskyists"

have all taken their turn.

After many years of such failures and betrayals, these workers are now ill-prepared to counter the ferocious attacks directed by the reactionary government of Junius Jayewardene.

Elected with a landslide majority in July 1977, the United National Party has already incroduced major cuts in the extensive welfare service-particularly cuts in food subsidies.

Central Power A range of new constitutional measures has been aimed at increasing the central power of the government and reducing the authority of the elected parliament.

The United National Party's youth movement has been employed as a vanguard of thugs to break up meetings and beat up militants in factories and universities.

Hard on this offensive, the government is attempting to implement its new repressive labour laws.

In their entirety, these would reduce the unions to government-controlled impotence and reverse many gains won by workers in decades of struggle, such as the legislation ensuring job security.

Jayewardene announced last week that all strikes in the public sector would be banned, along with all politically motivated' strikes in the private sector.

Already these powers had been directed against a token general strike called for 28 September by unions under the control of Mrs. Bandaranaike's Sri Lanka Freedom Party and leading "Trotskyists"

The strike had been called round demands for immediate wage increases, the full restoration of food subsidies and of democratic rights.

But the organisers accepted the government order, with "Trotskyist" Bala Tampoe (general secretary of the Mercantile Union) arguing that after this 'tactical retreat' they must be 'better prepared next time, and 17 unions emptily accusing the government of using 'unlawful and undemocratic means' to prevent the strike.

The working class of Sri Lanka undoubtedly has the power the J ment.

to reject 1e new laws and erthrow yewardene governPotential But this revolutionary potential can be realised only by a genuinely Trotskyist leadership, fighting with the method of the Transitional Programme and steeped in the communist experience of Bolshevism.

• The old leaders have for alleged German "terrorist"

Astrid Proll, who is fighting attempts to extradite her to West Germany, are being prevented from free access to her West German lawyer.

can only meet him in the sight and hearing of a police officer.

evidence of the way in which her case has been pre-judged by the German state machinery fight for an independent work. ing class solidarity campaign.

for his removal from the leadership of the Labour Party.

Labour leaders must. refuse to discuss with Smith. BRITISH solicitors acting They have been told they This latest astonishing Such measures can do little to prolong the life of the popular front coalition, but they reveal with stark clarity the crisis of bourgeois rule in India.

The pledge to scrap preventive detention' was a central plank in the Janata's successful election campaign against the Gandhi dictatorship.

and by the British Labour leaders emphasises the need for the Labour movement to oppose the extradition moves.

Once in West Germany she would face a farce of a show trial and then almost certain murder at the hands of German prison staff-as happened to Red Army Faction leaders Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof.

Smith with black stooge Muzorewa Inside the liberation movement there must be a struggie For the military victory of the Patriotic Front, as a step