A heavy blow against Smith

Scan page 3

Armagh march in solidarity with 'H' Block prisoners We have just received news that Noel Murray and twenty-four others (the entire prison) have been 'on the blanket' at the Curragh Military Detention Camp since November 27, protesting about conditions.

Details of their protest are sketchy at this stage. Mrs. Murray arrived for her usual monthly meeting with her son to be told that no NOW!

visits were being allowed.

Only later did she discover why-when asked to attend a press conference of the Prisoners' Rights Organisation.

One prisoner recently released has given a horrifying account of conditions since the appointment of a new Governor. He reports brutality from the Military Police and banging of doors and other noise during the night.

At Press Conference In a spectacular attack on a fuel storage depot in Salisbury liberation forces have shown their capacity to reach right to the heart of the country .and deal important blows to the Smith regime.

So important and successful was the operation that both wings of the Patriotic Front, Joshua Nkomo's ZAPU and Robert Mugabe's ZANU are claiming responsibility.

The fire at the depot Armagh march in solidarity the "Punishment Cell" was described . as "The Black Hole" where the prisoner's hands are manacled and he has to eat off his plate like a dog. There is no mattress and no light.

Suspended

Privileges at the prison have been suspended until January 27. 'Socialist Press' will publish further details as and when they become available. continued to rage for several days and badly depleted stocks of oil.

Smith will depend on supplies from South Africa which itself has been investigating alternative sources since the struggles of the Iranian masses began to threaten shortages.

The South African government at present depends on Iran for more than 90% of its fuel imports.

Within the country the South African has been stockpiling with 'H' Block prisoners Meanwhile the courageous men in H Block continue their campaign for political prisoner status. We salute their intransigence in the face of the brutality of British imperialism and urge the British labour movement to begin a serious campaign in support of their demands. supplies and has reserve of between 40m and 60m tonnes.

Mr Chris Huennis, Minister for Economic Affairs has made it clear that these reserves will not be used.

Although restrictions on PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Owen usage have not been introduced there have been regular appeals to the general public to conserve fuel.

Rhodesian oil consumption is fractional compared with South Africa's 320,000 barrels a day and it is likely that South Africa will be able to increase supplies without much difficulty.

Also, in recent months the oil companies have built up heavier commercial reserves before the expected price rise. This' could well ease the immediate crisis.

The importance of the attack is that it shows the continued vulnerability of the reactionary Smith regime which could easily be swept away with a concerted effort by the Patroitic Front.

Instead Nkomo : and Mugabe hold out for a deal with imperialism-manoeuvring between each other for positions in a future Zimbabwe government.

The key book for understanding post-war Stalinism. 166pp, £1.75 plus 20p post and London NWS 1HR

Scan page 4

1978 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the emergence of the Trotskyist movement in the United States. The Socialist Workers Party which today claims to represent that tradition offers no more than a hollow mockery of the fighting spirit of that early movement. This article is Part 4 of a series in Socialist Press which will examine the early history of the SWP, the party so central in the 1930s to the launching of the Fourth International. • Lenin and Zinovier greet delegates to 2nd Congress of the Communist International The Communist League of Struggle was led by Albert Weisbord who had organised important working class struggles such as at Passaic in 1926.

That particular fight had been sabotaged by the CP leadership of which Cannon was a part.

In The First Ten Years of ackericedges the Cars betrayal acknowieedes TiNE but is careful not to go into detail about his own role.

This experience left Weisbord very critical of Cannon.

Sceptical When he too broke. with Stalinism and established the Communist League of Struggle, he was, to say the least, sceptical of Cannon's ability to build the Left Opposition in the USA.

Weisbord in correspondence with Trotsky claimed that the CLS should be preferred to the CLA as representatives of the Left Opposition in the USA.

Trotsky replied as follows: "You deride the publishing work of the League and you oppose to it 'mass action' "Have you any mass action behind you? Before we turn to the masses we must build a principled basis. We begin with a propagandist group and develop in the direction of mass action.

"Also your international connections, sympathies and half. sympathies speak against you... Tell me with whom you go and I will tell you what you are" (1010-31).

In their reply, the CLS refuted Trotsky's charge that they derided the publishing activities of the CLA and agreed with the need to start as a propaganda group.

They went on to charge that the Cannon group wished to remain with "the quiet of the office desk"

They went on: "Attempting to win good fighters from the Communist Party they get mere college and high school students from the petty bourgeoisie...

"Even when' they were in the Party, the Cannon leadership has absolutely no record of mass work after they became Communists... Does a group deserve to be called anything better than a sterile sect when in the first two years of its existence it issued not even one agitational leaflet mobilising the workers in an independent manner?"

The CLS considered Trotsky's question about their record of main work to be wrongly posed.

Weisbord pointed • to his own record in the CP and argued that at least they were now attempting mass work:

The reply to Trotsky lists attempts to build shop committees, involvement in various defence campaigns for class war prisoners, direction of comrades into larger factories and involvement in demonstrations.

Negro struggle

The Cannon group is charged with ignoring programmatic questions on American issues-in particular the negro struggle.

In reply to the charges of having doubtful allies in Europe, the CLS claimed that while they had united with no one, they were talking to some groups in Europe.

They further claimed that they were forced into this position by the refusal of the Left Opposition secretariat to answer their letters.

They went on to call for an international conference open to all who claimed adherence to the views of the international Left Opposition.

Rejecting Trotsky's claim that they had but recently split with Lovestone, they ended by arguing that it was Cannon not they who was preventing a fusion of the two groups. .. Weisbord alleged that Cannon suppressed discussion within the CLA and called on Trotsky to bring together the two organisations for discussion: (Letter to Trotsky 3-11-31 quoted Class Struggle 1-12-31).

discussions with Trotsky and a further exchange of letters took place.

In his letter dated May 22nd 1932, Trotsky had taken Weisbord to task for his view that the CP, Lovestone and Cannon were much the same.

He also argues against the CLS positions on the Labor Party which he thinks places them in a camp with Lovestone, and rejects their call for a conference of all MA those claiming adherence the Left Opposition.

"The Left Opposition is not a mechanical sum of vacillating groups but an international faction erected on the granite basis of the principles of Marxism. Marxism...

" was glad to hear from you that your group have nothing in common with Landau and his methods.

"Precisaly for this reason, it is necessary to renounce once and for all the thoughts of transforming the International Left Opposition into a Noah's Ark.

"It is necessary to choose another road less precipitate but more serious and certain."

He has this to say, in the same letter about 'mass work' and a possible rapprochement between the CLS and the CLA:

"You stress with special energy the necessity of active participation on the part of the Left Opposition in general in the movement and struggle of the working masses.

"Although at the present stage the Left Opposition is, in the majority of countries, a propagandist organisation, it puts forth propaganda not in a sectarian but in a Marxist manner, that is to say upon the basis of participation in all the life of the proletariat.

"I am not able to admit that anyone of the leaders or of the members of the American League denies this principle.

"The question reduces itself to a great extent to the real possibility, to which pertains also natural capacity, experience and initia. Poverty in 1930's USA SM tive.

"Let us admit, for a minute, that the American League lacks this or that possibility in mass work.

"I am ready to admit that your group would be able in that respect to complete the work of the American League.

"But mass work must be on the basis of definite principles and methods.

"Until the time that, in a' number of fundamental ques tions, a necessary unanimity will be attained, disputes on 'mass work' will inevitably remain lifeless."

•:. I have called the position' of your group ecclectic. By this I do not wish at all to express any condemnation as a whole which bars the possibility of a future rapprochement...

"You must openly, clearly and attentively revise your baggage so as to take care to uncover by that not only your manifest political faults but also the historical and principled roots of these faults.

"| have reacted with such warm praise to the thesis of the Second Conterence of the American League on the Labor Party because in this thesis there was taken not only a correct position in the essence of the question, but also there was given an open and courageous criticism of its own past.

"Only in this way can a revolutionary tendency assure itself seriously against a relapse."

Trotsky considered the Labor Party question as "the most important" • So much so, that he wrote a separate letter to the CLS on it.

nesday ZU Lecember 1978 JOIN Gastonia textile workers strik This is printed in Trotsky's Writings 1932 and is in sharp contrast to the position later developed by Trotsky himself (and resisted by Cannon).

• In 1932 Trotsky was of the opinion that the trade union bureaucrats would only turn towards the formation of, a Labor Party under the intense pressure of the class struggle:

"The bureaucracy must roceive a blow on the skull before taking such a 'radical initiative. To prepare for that situation by calling for a Labor Party would be to ease the path of the bureaucrats.

. "It was impossible to say in advance whether the development of such a party would be a step forward without being able to study the concrete circumstances and balance of forces under which such a development would take place.

reformist Labor Party would form a barrier to the development of a revolutionary party and Communists had no business preparing such a noose for themselves."

In attacking Weisbord's conception of the Labor Party as an integrated series of united fronts Trotsky says:

"(this) signifies a misunderstanding of the notions both of the united front and the party. The united front is determined by concrete circumstances for concrete aims. ‹ "The party is permanent. In a united front we leave our hands free to break with our temporary allies.

"In a common party with these allies we are bound by discipline and even by the fact of the party itself"

He does, however, grant that Labor Party created as a barrier to communism could be an arena for successful struggle:

... but only under the condition that we consider the Labor Party not as "our"

Sharp In reply, the CLS stuck to their view that sharp battles were approaching in which the working class would come into conflict with their bureaucratic misleaders.

They maintained that this would be reflected in a political development towards a Labor Party, initially taking an amorphous form, developing around concrete class issues.

They acknowledged Trotsky's warning about the straitjacket nature of a party which included bureaucrats and admitted that in thinking the amorphous stage of the preparation for the Labor Party to be one of an extended time scale they had indeed made an error.

----- pull-quotes -----

packing from WSL, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill,

Exchange Following this, Weisbord had