Public Sector fight!

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Despite the desperate efforts of public sector union leaders to force through acceptance of the miserable 9% pay offer, there is still a massive determination amongst health and local authority manual workers throughout the country to fight on for the full public sector pay claim of a £60/35 hour week.

After the decisive rejection of the offer by Ambulance drivers and NUPE health workers, a new wave of action is under way in the public sector.

Ambulance drivers in South Wales have begun an indefinite strike after being locked out by management. Manchester drivers held a 24-hour total stoppage last week, and ambulance stewards in London are holding meetings throughout this week to discuss further action.

Strikes have begun in various hospitals throughout the midlands and the north.

And there are sections of local authority workers in London and the south who have remained on strike since the end of January, despite the fact that all except NUPE health workers have been instructed to accept the 9%.

On top of this a mass NUPE stewards' meeting called by the London Divisional Council on Thursday night passed a resolution calling for all-out indefinite strike for the full claim by London health workers beginning this Wednesday (see report on page 11).

The fact that there is still the basis for a national offensive on wages in the public sector is obviously a huge blow to Alan Fisher and the other bureaucrats of NUPE, COHSE, TGWU and GMWU.

But NUPE members must grasp the opportunity now to consolidate and extend their action in every area into all-out strikes.

There should be no exemptions to such strikes in any section: rather, elected strike committees should supervise the administration of what they regard as necessary emergency services.

In fighting along these lines for the full £60/35 hour week claim a principled leadership must be built in the public sector, capable of fighting tooth and nail to end wage control and public spending cuts.

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INTERNATIONAL French struggles sharpen A desperate "peace"

Page Confrontation in Denain on 8 March . Without economic power, it is futile to talk of national independence ... The path which France is being driven along is the downward path of decay!

• This was no Gaullist lamenting the decline of once-great imperial France, but George Marchais-leader of the French Communist Party.

His opening contribution to the emergency debate on unemployment in the French parlia; ment was all of a piece with this choice extract.

National independence' was his theme as he attacked the 'antisocial and anti-national' government of Raymond Barre, and foreign capitalists were the enemies he named.

• But Marchais saved his most squalid arguments for a tirade against Barre's support for the European Monetary System:

"The Europe that you want to build is a German Europe" which would lead to 'military integration' and in the end, to •Germany getting its hands on nuclear arms."

Nationalism

While their leaders in parliament have been spewing out this reactionary nationalism, the Stalinists in the field have been hard pressed to hold back the tide of militancy rising among French workers.

A dramatic rise in unemployment over the last year, and the recent flood of redundancy notices, have drawn workers out onto the streets in the repeated protest demonstrations of the last few weeks.

The latest actions have developed in the northern steelproducing areas, and these have brought some of the sharpest betrayals yet from the union While the Stalinist-led CGT has sought to bring workers into a defence of their 'own' bourgeoisie against its fellow CP leader Marchais capitalist rivals, the Socialistdominated CFDT has advanced more brazenly m bankrupt policies.

Among the 22,000 redundancies planned in the steel industry is the closure of Usinor's plant at Denain.

Hard-core

Jacques Chereque, secretary-general of the CFDT's metal-working section, has taken up the fight to defend only a fraction of the jobs at the plant.

• "We must talk to steelworkers in the language of truth and not try to make them believe that it is still possible to employ 10,000 workers at Usinor-Denain. But we are convinced that a . hard-core employing about 4,500 people can be considered.

After the riots of last week, calm is now back in Denain.

• Last week a demonstration went through Denain peacefully and was addressed by Stalinist union leader Seguy.

The bureaucrats seem • to have been able to head aff the militancy of the French workers by arranging some phoney talks with the bosses from the steel industry and the Barre government.

Although the government and bosses have made their position very clear on the talks: "that there is no alternative to their present policies" the union bureaucrats make it out as a victory.

Not impressed But workers are not impressed. "We have won a battle but not the war" they were saying after the bosses had backed down from their intransigent positions.

Workers are ready to carry on the fight, and they proved this last week by occupying the building where nine EEC heads of state were having • their meeting to discuss the EMS and economic policies.

They left peacefully after two hours.

Meanwhile the CGT and CFTC union • federations are planning their march on Paris from all over France.

It should take place on 23 March and, according to the CGT, it is going to be the biggest demonstration ever seen.

The CGT is calling for a 24 hour General Strike of all its members.

This is backed by the CFTC and the other major unions with the exception of the CFDT which says, that the strike should be restricted to steelworkers.

The CFDT is saying that more actions should be taken in the meantime but is not organising any.

Although the steelworkers A ... malina dha handlinna ggl other sections of the working class are also in struggle, namely those in the Post Office, the banks, insurance, the health service, car industry, textiles, dockyards, broadcasting and teaching.

Even the police force are organising.in unions.

In opposition to the evasions and betrayals of the bureaucracy, a clear programme must be raised to reject all redundancies in the steel industry.

The books of all the employing firms must be opened with the accounts of their subsidiaries and creditors to reveal the true financial condition of Nowhere in the world is the desperate crisis faced, by the leaders of world imperialism shown more clearly than in the frenzied efforts to patch up a treaty between the Zionist robbers of Israel and the shaky regime of President Sadat. .

It is clear that the Zionists have been compelled to make. some concessions to the Egyptians as the strongest military power in the area.

oilfields, and will recognise the possibility of a truncated Palestinian state. Even this has only been done on the basis of enormous American pressure and huge cash subsidies for both Israel and Egypt.

The Americans need to do this because they have to rebuild their shattered 'sphere of influence' in an area where their main bulwark-the! Shah and his regime-has disappeared.

Pressure The dispatch of Carter's adviser Brezezinski at the head of a high-powered delegation to the reactionary Arab regimes in Saudi Arabia and Jordan will no doubt be accompanied by some of the same pressure and blackmail that has driven Begin and Sadat to their present position.

The question facing the Saudis is this. Can they seem to take their distance from Arab nationalism and the Palestinian cause by going along with their American backers;

If thev dn this will the these ailing capitalist ventures.

The demand for full nationalisation of the steel industry under workers management must be opposed to every plea of bankruptcy from private capital.

Worksharing on full: pay must be introduced, alongside a massive programme of useful public works to end the already heavy; unemployment that weighs down on the French working class.

These policies must be fought for through occupations of the steel plants, the formation of strike and factory committees and the building of councils of action in the areas regime soon face the same fate as the Shah?

A similar dilemma has faced King Hussain of Jordan,, though he has seldom in the past hesitated to continue his own secret negotiations with the Israelis.

His anxiety at the situation is directly reflected in the warmth of his opportunist embraces this weekend for his . old opponent PLO leader Yassir Arafat.

If the imperialists and their allies have these problems, the question is who can fight the Zionists now?

Little support

The bourgeois nationalist regimes of Iraq and Syria show no signs of enthusiasm for a renewed offensive.

Indeed Arafat's continuing jet-set diplomacy with Arab bourgeois heads of state is producing little if Wednesday -In a move aimed at discrediting their former functionary as a fraud and petty thief, the South African government has out a warrant for the arrest of Eschel Rhoodie, the former Secretary of Information and a central scapegoat in the scandal over the 'misuse' of government funds.

It 'is clear that this is a propaganda exercise whose purpose is to both isolate and discredit Rhoodie in the eyes of voters at home and of the overseas public What is least wanted,. oT course, is for Rhoodie to be given a platform and pushed to the point of making his threatened disclosures.

• There can be no doubt that these would have international implications, stripping the moral masks from a number of individuals and organisations-they would reveal a highly embarrassing sordid network of international bribery, corruption and secret dealings involving prominent political and trade union figures in the capitalist countries.

However, the piqued Rhoodie was apparently recently given reason for keeping quiet by another scapegoat, the former chief torturer in South Africa, General van den Bergh, head of BOSS.

(The General has since had his passport removed, presumably to limit further collusion any tangible support from rulers terrified that any revolutionary struggle that successfully destroyed the racist state of Israel would flow over into struggles against their own tin-pot tyrannies at home.

While it suits nearly all of them to be pictured smiling with and embracing Arafat, it suits none of them to mobilise the kind of mass action necessary to combat Zionism and carry through the liberation of the oppressed Palestinian people.

This is why the urgent question now in the Middle East is the construction of a revolutionary Marxist leadership that will fight to mobilise the Palestinian and Arab masses on an indepen-. dent basis in struggle against Zionism, world imperialism, and repression from their own bourgeois Arab regimes. amongst the herd of scape- small goats).

All ruling sections are jockeying and manoeuvring in their efforts to persuade the voting public of the deep patriotism underlying their various activities in this regard.

And bourgeois liberals try to foster the illusion amongst the black working class of a capitalist future cleansed of misappropriation, corruption and scandal.

In so doing they seek to. control the development of the real crisis facing the. South African white racist ruling class -that posed by the struggle of black workers.

Last the week Financial Times announced that the only remaining member of the CENTO alliance is Britain.

So the great design of imperialism to stabilise the troubled middle-east has collapsed into an "alliance" between reactionary Labour Foreign Secretary David Owen and ... himself!

The Central Treaty Organisation was formet in the mid 1950s as part of the imperialists' anti-communist drive to encircle the Soviet Union with a ring of heavily armed hostile states.

Originally called the Baghdad Pact, CENTO changed its name with the withdrawal of Iraq four years later.

Thereafter it consisted of Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Britain.

One of the first acts of the new government in Iran was to withdraw from CENTO.

Last week Turkey, also a member of NATO, and Pakistan, knowing a sinking ship when they see one, also withdrew, leaving Britain the sole surviving member.

This is a definite blow to the strategy of the While Owen and his reactionary imperialist friends try to patch up new methods of stabilisation and anti-Communism • a campaign should be waged in the labour movement for the destruction of the other imperialist military pactsin particular NATO.

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Wednesday March, ng

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