ERITREA: where do CP and IMG stand?

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DALSO TE CK December demonstration in support of Eritrean struggle The Eritrean people in their struggle for liberation need the support of all socialists throughout the world, now more than ever before.

The toll from the latest offensive launched by the Ethiopian military dictatorship and the allies of the Derg has been colossal.

Newsletter

In its December issue, 'Mekalih Sewrana' (monthly newsletter of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front) gave the following balance sheet of losses suffered since the offensive began on 18 November:

*154 villages heavily damaged or destroyed.

• *4,700 people killed or seriously injured.

*8,000 more people being treated for wounds inflicted in the raids.

*100,000 people homeless, suffering from and disease.

All these figures are in addition to the massive casualties of earlier phases in the war-for -example, the ¼ million refugees in the Sudan.

No support The EPLF receives no effective support from any state or external force which can help to deal with these problems. • Medical supplies are urgently needed, and they can be provided only by assistance from those forces internationally which support the Eritrean people in their struggle for self-determination and independence.

Providing that material aid is the responsibility of the labour movement in this country. And it is the clear duty of all those who call themselves revolutionaries and proletarian internationalists to ensure that the British labour movement meets that responsibility.

A recent meeting in London revealed just how much work remains to be done to achieve even such limited objectives.

Discussion

Called. by the Eritrea Support Committee and the Workers Film Association, the meeting on 25 February at Road, fel into to tents-a showing of the film 'Sawrana' was watched by some 100 people, who then moved into a session of discussion.

Speakers from the EPLF reported briefly on the unity agreement reached between the ELF and EPLF on 21 January, which provides for a complete fusion of military forces and preparation towards political fusion.

In giving an account of recent developments within Eritrea, they also reported that the meeting in Sierra Leone between Mengistu WSL supporters march (head of the Derg) and Numeiri (president of the Sudan) had broken up when Numeiri refused to - meet Mengistu's demands for a ban on all refugees entering the Sudan from Eritrea, and the cutting of all supplylines to the • liberation . The Ethiopian Embassy had been invited to send a representative; but none materialised.

Absentee

Yet the emissary of the Derg was only one among the notable absentees.

Aside from the EPLF, Eritrean Relief Association and Eritrean Support Committee, the only political tendencies which identified themselves were the Organisation of Women in Africa, the CPGB and. the Workers Socialist League.

Where were all the other 'revolutionary' organisations of the left in Britain?

Silent IMG?

Socialist Challenge had carried a notice of the meeting in its edition of 8 February, 'For those who are horntied at what 1s going on in Eritrea-and for anyone else':

But it any members of the International Marxist Group were present, then they they remained stunningly silent.

Perhaps the comrades of the IMG have been too exhausted through being in iran.

But this is not the first time that the IMG has chosen to keep well away from events called by the Eritrean organisations in LEAGUE Britain.

In December, this British section of the 'United' Secretariat of the Fourth International was conspicuously absent from a demonstration called by the Associations of Eritrean Workers and Students in the UK, protesting at the role played by the Soviet Union in the war.

Once again, it was the WSL which provided the only contingent from the British labour movement.

Since that time, false and fleeting hopes have been raised by Socialist Challenge..

Guilty Under the heading 'Eritrea: the guilty and the silent' , a full-page. article appeared in the edition of 25 January.

The opening paragraph fighters SOCI LENOU TROO exposed quickly, enough the light-minded attitude of Socialist Challenge and its IMG producers to the struggles in Eritrea:

" 'Russia's Vietnam' is an inexact and incorrect description. But on the emotional level it does sum up what is going on in Perhaps some sophisticated IMG Pabloite can explain to us the political content of this crude journalistic ploy?

The bulk of the article contained information which should have appeared long 'ago in Socialist Challenge-but better late than never.

Yet two statements cannot go unchallenged. Driven uncomfortably • bi the USFI's increasing worship of the Cuban revolution and the supposed "revolutionary internationalism" of Castro's left Stalinist leadership, the author has to provide some cover for the Cuban bureaucracy's complicity in the Derg's colonial war of genocide:

"As in Angola the Cubans are doubtless moved by some healthy considerations. But the root of the betrayal in Eritrea lies in their failure to understand that support for the Ethiopian revolution is not the same thing as support for the Derg-indeed the two are incompatible."

Doublethink

It would be difficult to find a more astounding example of doublethink. Castro and the Cuban leaders have intervened in Ethiopia precisely because they understand that situation only too well.

Their rhetoric may be more radical, but the Stalinists in Havana are only following the instructions of their Kremlin tutors in the vicious arts of counterSuch grotesque distortions of Marxism are not unexpected from the IMGBritish heirs of Pabloism. But perhaps, in its small way, the other statement is even more breath-taking:

"even on the rare occasions it mentions Eritrea, the left has almost totally ignored the possibility that Cuban and Soviet troops have been used."

Socialist Press for one has given consistent coverage to the struggles in Eritrea, and paid considerable attention to the role played by the Stalinists.

But of course the left' for the. IMG means essentially Socialist Challenge, Tribune and the Morning Star.

And even within this blessed trinity, the Socialist Challenge article was actually tail ending Tribune!

Unanswered

The question Socialist Press asked the IMG back in December still remains unanswered: why do you not give practical support to the Eritrean liberation struggle?

But if the IMG, SWP and assorted "Trotskyists' of the British left feared to tread in Scala last month, Vishnu Sharma, leading CP member and Indian Workers Association leader rushed right in.

After a WSL speaker had argued that it was necessary to build an international campaign in the labour movement to demand an end to the Soviet and Cuban involvement in Eritrea, this 'Marxist' condemned this as "a call for an international war against communism"

Sharma also had the audacity to cite the support given by the Soviet Union and its allies at the UN in 1950 to the right of the Eritreans' to self-determination, and also the fact that in the past the Cuban bureaucracy had assisted in training EPLF fighters.

• Unfortunately he neglected to mention how the Soviet bureaucracy maintained its 'principled' stand until recent timesfor example, by giving Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie as a birthday present two jets and a helicopter for his personal use!

Demand

But this Stalinist did point out correctly that not all CPs have supported Soviet policy in the Horn of Africa. We therefore take up the demand raised by a WSL speaker in the meeting: where does the CPGB stand on Eritrea?

Does the CP give its clear support to the right of the Eritrean people to selldetermination?

Does the CP clearly condemn the policy being pursued by the Soviet Union and Cuba in Eritrea? • And where do other left wing groups in Britain stand on these questions?

Any refusal to agree to these two basic points means an alliance with counter-revolution in Eritrea. On the basis of agreement with these two points, an effective solidarity movement can be built in Britain to assist in defending and advancing the struggles of the Eritrean people:

By John

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LSTRAL NEWS PHOTO: Mark Rusher, IFL

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WURKERS FIRED PHOTO: Laurence Sparham, IFL

VDON AREA MULTING 4 TH

'excited' by the revolution in war in trit horrified by

WORKERS LEAGUE WORKE