WSL Conference: a new step forward

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Public sector workers: part of the massive movement against Labour's pa!' TROTSKYISM- •••E Trotskyism Today No. 4 now available, price 45p plus 20p p&p from WSL, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR. ran revolution points to need for Marxist leadership The enormous changes in the political situation brought about by the Iranian revolution and by the upsurge of massive struggles against Labour's pay policy in Britain were the major focal points of the discussion at the Third Annual Conference of the Workers Socialist League on March 10-11. / An important development in this year's conference was the presentation for the first time of a full-scale International Perspectives document, flowing from a year's work by the WSL's International . subCommittee:

The document draws. a balance sheet of the massive economic and political crisis confronting world imperialism.

It points to the impact. of this crisis on the Stalinist bureacuracies' within the deformed and degenerated workers' states.

Reactionary role

And, in tracing. the reactionary role played by reformist and Stalinist leaders in every capitalist country, it stresses the necessity to resolve the historic crisis of leadership that now confronts the working class internationally.

Though drawr, up prior to the massive revolutionary upheaval that followed on the removal of the Shah of tran with the toppling of the puppet Bakhtiar regime, the document correctly stresses the acute political weakness of imperialism and its agencies in the wake of the defeats inflicted on US imperialism in Vietnam, Cambodia and Angola, and the downfall of Portuguese fascism in April 1974.

It shows the interrelationship between this political crisis and the mounting economic crisis which continues to defy every attempt by imperialist leaders to find a "rational"

planned solution.

Far from lending itself to such remedies, the document stresses, the crisis is leading firmly in the direction of intensified national antagonisms and trade war between the imperialist nations, and intensified class struggle internationaily.

Head off

The document goes on to trace the ways in which, far from being strengthened by the forward movement of the working class, the Stalinist bureaucrats in the deformed and degenerated workers' states have sought at each point to head off revolutionary developments in order to preserve the delicate balance of forces with imperialism on which their power and priviliges depend.

A substantial section examines in some detail the role of Soviet and Cuban advisors and troops in Africa, and the way in which their growing involvement must be understood as a part of the Kremlin's overall counter-revolutionary And • another key section looks at the ways in which the capitalist class internationally, wary of direct confrontation with the oppressed masses, has turned to varying forms of Popular Front government, drawing bureaucratic leaders of mass workers' parties into direct collaboration with their plans for wage, cutting and other "austerity" measures.

Pointing to the necessity for the political overthrow of the workers. bureaucracies in the workers states alongside the concludes by emphasising the necessity for the reconstruction of the Trotskyist Fourth International to provide the necessary revolutionary leadership for these tasks.

Conference discussion focussed on the historic significance of the Iranian revolution in intensifying every aspect of the crisis of imperialism, and on the role of Stalinist forces in Africa.

Important contributions came from a comrade from Denmark, examining the problems of taking up the struggle for a Trotskyist party in that country with very small forces;

and from a Turkish comrade who reported on the struggle for a revolutionary perspective against the repression of Ecevit's crisis-ridden bourgeois government, and on the problems faced in the Kurdish struggle for self-determination.

Greetings to the conference were received from the Spanish Liga Comunista and the American Socialist League (Democratic Centralist).

It was agreed that a special resolution on the Iranian revolution be discussed by the incoming National Committee and adopted for publication side-by-side with the full text of the International Perspectives in the next issue of the WSL's theorețical magazine Trotskyism Today.

During the second day, discussion on the National Committee's British Perspectives document was able to draw together many of the important developments in the work of the Workers Socialist League during the previous year, with an analysis of the forces leading towards further, intensified class confrontations in 1979, in which the WSL must play a key role.

Our leadership of struggles against nursery and health service cuts, against wage controls and for trade union recognition was analysed, as were the experiences flowing from our fight to give a lead to socialists struggling against the Callaghan-Healey clique within the Labour Party.

Particular attention was focussed on the almost entirely successful struggle in defence of the "Cowley 9"'. These militants from BL's Assembly Plant in Cowley had only a year ago stood under threat of expulsion from the union or loss of elected union office at the hands of TGWU witch-hunters.

Yet a broad based "Cowley 9 Defence Campaign" had succeeded not only in inflicting a major setback to the TGWU bureaucracy, but also in estabNUPE-TEL lishing the basis for a continuing struggle for alternative, revolutionary leadership within Britains biggest manual union.

Discussion also included the lessons of WSL involvement in the public sector pay struggles, particularly in the London area, where we had emerged as the only force prepared to fight tenaciously for all-out strike action-a policy which had won almost the full claim in Camden.

Speakers stressed the way in which subsequent massive developments in both the public sector and haulage drivers' strikes-producing a. level of struggle higher than the 1926 General Strike-had confirmed the orientation of the document towards the fight for independent class organs of the working class-in particular councils of action-and the necessity even within these spontaneous struggles to struggle for the building of a conscious revolutionary leadership.

Youth movement

A number of youth members as well as trade unionists came to the microphone to remind conference of the importance of the successful launching during 1978 of the Socialist Youth League as an autonomous youth movement in political agreement with the WSL.

The importance of all branches encouraging the development of work among all sections of youth was emphasised.

This point was further underlined by the adoption at the conference of the WSL's first Student Perspectives document, and the presence at the conference of a number of students won to the WSL over the past year.

Plans were also laid to further the political work carried out by the WSL among working class women.

Women's paper

Noting the increased radicalisation of women workers, (reflected in recent recruitment to the WSL), and our movement's strong record in struggles on nursery facilities, against the cuts, and for abortion rights, conference declared it a priority for the incoming NC. to establish the publication of a women's And, following a lively debate in the pre-conference period, a discussion will continue within the movement on the oppression of women in the bourgeois family unit.

A report on party organisation and finances presented by WSL full-time organisers pointed to the considerable achievements of the movement over the past year.

Twelve months' work had seen the maintenance and strengthening of the weekly Socialist Press despite considerable difficulties: the launching of Red Youth and the Socialist Youth League; the publication of a major book (Communists Against Revolution); a number of pamphlets, and further issues of our theoretical magazine.

But the period ahead requires and makes possible a rapid numerical growth in the WSL if political opportunities are not to be missed and if remaining organisational problems are to be solved.

Branches were urged fo examine every aspect of their work from the standpoint of the need to recruit new forces to the WSL.

Appeals for a collection and for pledges to launch a renewed publication programme received tremendous response, with polic!' over £400 realised on each count.

Such enthusiasm was a fitting reflection of the strength and determination of the WSL's Third Annual Conference.

We invite readers of Socialist Press to consider joining with us in taking forward the fight over the next period for the building of a principled revolutionary leadership in the British working class and the reconstruction of the Trotskyist Fourth No. 9 March 1979 Monthly paper of the Socialist Youth League ow available price 5p pl 'p postage from SYL, 31 Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR andel's dance with Stalinism nce of the Transitional The U.S. SWP 40 years on.

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NDUSTRAL NEWS 1979

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socialist revolution in the capi- talist countries, the document

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