Grandad Jim and Auntie Marje Play "happy Families"

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opposition.

"A class characterisation of nationalisation is incomplete and turns into its opposite if it does not sharply define the role of the proletariat in opposing the petty bourgeois nationalists"

(Fourth Spring 1964).

Describing and attacking the Pabloite attitude to petty bourgeois led nationalist revolutions, the article went on to show that, in the Pabloites' view:

"When these revolutions occur, Marxists have no alternative but to participate in them 'wholehearted', i.e., they must not appear as opponents of the petty bourgeois leaderships *"In Algeria they must work for Ben Bella, and join with him in denouncing and imprisoning any opposition Movemen is precisely in the Hovcuens. or Algeria and Cuba that the building of the independent party has been most blatantly abandoned, on the assumption that the petty bourgeois leaders will become revolutionary Marxists Ten years This correct criticism and orientation was maintained by the SLL for more than ten years. In 1972, in a major article on Algeria and the dictatorship of the then President Boumedienne Tom Kemp (now editor of the WRP's "theoretical" journal Labour Review) wrote in Workers Press:

"As Algeria celebrates its tenth year of independence it is clear that President Houari Boumedienne presides over one thing above all-the plunder of the country's natural resources by international capital...

"Development which leaves the masses in misery means jobs and opportunities for the new rich petty bourgeoisie upon which Boumedienne's rule is based". (July 12, 1972).

Kemp, in a passage that now reads as supreme irony, explains that this was because:

"the workers and peasants were never able to find a party which gave expression to their historic needs as part of the international struggle of the working class...

And he stresses that:

"In Algeria today there are no democratic liberties or working class rights. The only party is the FLN, which is more a bureaucratic machine than a political party ...

Yet, six years later, all this is thrown aside by Newsline, which in December published grovelling eulogy to the dead Boumedienne, in which the WRP's Own Price from 31, C Lond Zionist chief Begin correspondent" declared that his 'Council of the Revolution' directed the country:

"along socialist programmes of the distribution of the land to peasant co-operatives and the nationalisation of the oil, banks and minerals"

(emphasis added).

This conscious switch of line on Algeria follows on similar calculated aboutturns on Libya and Iraq, and Healy's scandalous abandonment of suport for the Kurdish liberation struggle.

It goes hand in hand with a curious analysis of Middle East politics that views every tyrant and despot not from a class standpoint, but from the angle of his verbal stance on the Palestinian liberation struggle.

This, the WRP's. substitute for the method and principles of the Trotskyist movement, explains the state visit of WRP leaders Vanessa Redgrave and Gerry Healy to the feudal sheiks of Abu. Dhabi -following the illustrious footsteps of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip We await with interest a Newsline report on the stage of development of a Marxist party in Abu Dhabi in solidarity with Healy's so-called "International Committee" as a result of this lavish visit.

Indeed we await any evidence whatever that the WRP still believes it correct to build Trotskyist parties in Iraq, Libya, Iran, Palestine, and the. other oppressed nations of the Failing this we challenge the WRP leaders, once again to explain publicly why they have abandoned this central task facing revolu+ tionary Marxists, and how they see the existing petty bourgeois nationalist regimes leading the masses to the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a Socialist United States of the Middle East.

STILL AVAILABLE WRP leaders junk the old Trotskyism GADDAFI WSL pamphlet/ plus WSL, artme suth Park Hill, on NV V5 1HR.

Marje Proops and Jim Callaghan make such sickening bedfellows that it was difficult to believe that even the Labour Party would really bring out anything as nauseating as an election document written by the two of them.

But the actual document is worse than nauseating; it drips through and through with every idea that is anti-socialist.

Callaghan uses the family to boost his position: and uses his position to boost the family.

On the one hand this shows the depths that Callaghan has stooped to in his desperate attempts to scrape up electoral support from somewhere.

Pillar of support

On the other it points most sharply to how and why it is that the family as an institution is such a pillar of support for bourgeois rule.

Marje Proops begins in tones of sickly saccharine, urging us to count our blessings; lauding the "unit, closely knit by very special ties of blood and tradition."

Blood and tradition are terms which are the hall mark of every fascist vision;

blood and tradition are totally dangerous concepts entirely opposed to the change, progress and solidarity upon which communism is built.

"Blood and tradition"; we might almost expect a fuhrer to stalk across the But no, we are only presented with the grotesque image of good old Grandpa Callaghan, whose *nine year old grandchildren ask him and Audrey"-What was it like in the old days?

For Proops the "old days" weren't so good. (Were they perhaps less full of the glorious bonds of family life?)

Class distinctions In the bad old days, she tells us, class distinctions existed-some people wore collars and ties and some didn't!

Thankfully, she thinks, all this is gone!

The sheer stupidity of believing that class distinctions are about what you wear round your neck rather than about who owns and controls the wealth and factories is quite incredible.

But Proops' witless remarks on the class struc; ture of society aren't what she's wheeled in for.

Mrs Family Life's blatherings about "purpose, justice and decency" are but a prelude to Callaghan's SPECIAl Gll you stay remember what you've got that's Labour fought against this.

But the handout's own examples belie his case.

It refers, glowingly, to one young couple who it admits are unable to afford a colour TV or a phone.

The other example is even greater indictment "family life"

No model A single parent-hardly a recommended model for Proops' "happy families"describes how as a student at college, there were no nurseries and she had to pay a childminder.

"Now with a degrée behind her, she is looking for a job. Unfortunately she is caught in a situation which many woman workers find themselves trapped in-low wages for hours which suit their family commitments.".

Precisely it is the shackles of the family unit in a period of capitalist crisis which oppress this student mother.

It is the failure to provide any alternative child care provision to the individual family unit which keep her and countless other women from full-time employment to match their qualifications and ambitions. i Reactionary Producing her as evidence for the value of family life is the firal twist in this pernicious, reactionary anti-socialist piece.

Only a Marxist approach, starting from the need to provide socialised child care, catering facilities and laundries, can begin to replace the domestic drudgery that is the central facet of life in the individual bourgeois family unit.

And the fight for. such policies means fighting to expose and remove Callaghan and his fellow reactionaries, and build a revolutionary leadership in the working class.