Step forward for youth

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The Socialist Youth League, which sup sports the programme and pi erspective of the Workers Socialist League, took a big step forward on 24 February when 100 youth attended the Réd Youth Rally in London.

The Rally was the first national event organised by the SYL since its formation last May and attracted youth from London, Oxfordshire, the Midlands, Yorkshire and The first speaker, Ann Evans, a student SYL member from Oxford outlined the role of revolutionary youth in Iran in the struggles which led to the downfall of the Shah's dictatorship.

She went on to explain that religious leaders like Khomeini could not solve any of the problems confronting the Iranian masses.

Party needed

What was needed, she said, was a revolutionary party that could give leadership to the continuing struggles of the workers and fight to transform the workers' committees into the basis of workers' power in tran.

Graham Russel described the role of British imperialism in Northern Ireland and explained the need to support the Andrew MacDonald struggles of the Irish Catholic working class for self-determination.

While defending the right of the IRA to engage in struggle against British imperialism and supporting them insofar as they engage in that struggle, Comrade Russel pointed out that their campaigns of bombing could not win that struggle.

"We need to build a revolutionary party in Ireland that will uhite the Protestants and Catholics around a programme of transitional demands" , he said.

He ended by calling for the withdrawal of British troops, for the granting of political status to republican and socialist prisoners and for a campaign in the treacherous record of the Callaghan-Healey government in attacking the living standards and democratic rights of the working class and the socialist policies that would be needed to defend working' class youth from these attacks.

Other speakers outlined the SYL's record and policies in the fight against racism and fascism and the struggle to build the National Union of School Students in opposition to the bankrupt YCL-dominated eadership.

Red Youth editor Andrew MacDonald told the rally that the SYL had a paper they could be proud of. Unlike other so-called . revolutionary youth papers which adapt to the level of consciousness of youth coming spontaneously into struggle, Red Youth was not afraid of politics.

The threat posed by the policies of this government to the living standards and democratic rights of working class youth meant that it was essential to develop the only paper which could offer youth policies with which to fight back.

SYL National Secretary Phil Moore closed the rally with an appeal to those youth who were not members of the SYL to join and help build a revolutionary leadership amongst youth.

The Rally was followed by a showing of the film • 'State of Seige" and a disco in the evening.

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