Steel strike bites German Jailbird Gandhi rides on

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A short stretch of watching colour television in prison has done little to check Indira Gandhi in her ride back to power.

On the contrary, she can now fight another election to regain a seat in Parliament with all the prestige of martyrdom.

The opponents who jailed her have absolutely nothing to congratulate themselves on.

For a brief moment, Janata appeared to be united in action against the common enemy.

But this facade soon crumbled into the everyday disarray of the ruling coalition.

It was not futile hopes of crushing her growing strength which determined Prime Minister Desai to move against the former dictator. The main force which drove him to take this foolish step was the equally desperate hope that it could distract the Janata from its violent internal wrangling.

But reviving the issue of Gandhi's involvement with the corrupt practice of her sone Sanjay did not succeed in burying the bitter controversy over the alleged corruption of Desai's own son and the son of the Janata's former Home Minister Charan Singh.

Singh himself is now holding back from forming a new party based on the richer sections of the peasantry-not because he lacks the strength to do so authorities come in the face of a large campaign which has won 80,000 signatures in France, a demonstration at the Polish at any moment, but for tactical questions of opportunism.

Singh clearly sees now the prospect of splitting larger sections of the Janata off to join him, or even regaining greater control within the floundering coalition.

While the Janata strangles itself with its own quarrels, Gandhi is now engaged in the last moves towards reuniting the two sections of the Congress peasants' committee, has been sent to a psychiatric hospital.

In Gedansk itself on 18 December there was a demonto lift from the centre of the horizon.

Not collapsed Despite their confident predictions, the strike in the steel industry has not collapsed over the holiday period.

In the face of management intransigence and lock-outs, the determination and solidarity of the pickets has in fact increased and forced Eugen Loderer and the leaders of IG Metall to extend the limited action to new plants and new areas.

As the strike begins to bite into other sections of manufacturing industry, with short-time working expected soon in the car industry, the question of blacking by other groups of workers has come to the fore.

Solidarity

Action must be taken immediately not only by dockers in West Germany but above all by steel workers and dockers in Britain and other countries to prevent increased imports from undermining the effect of the strike.

A campaign within the TGWU and the Confed must be launched now to fight for this concrete solidarity with the struggles of the IG Metall strike.