Tories Renew Their Racist Campaign

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The squalid record of the Labour government in supporting British imperial: ist repression in Ireland came under heavy attack at the, first meeting of the Workers Socialist League's London area election meetings last Thursday.

Addressing an audience of over 40, Socialist Press editor John Lister showed the links between Labour's commitment defending imperialist interests in ireland and its class collaborationist policies in Britain.

Reformist

As a reformist party, tied to the notion of achieving concessions, for workers within the capitalist system, the Labour Party sees no alternative but to assist the British ruling class in driving up the rate of profit at workers' expense, pointed out comrade Lister.

And this means also fighting to repress , those struggleswhether they be the Iranian revolution, the Zimbabwe liberation fight or the Irish war of independence-that threaten capitalist stability.

But despite Labour's repression, the anti-imperialist movement in Ireland-North and South alike-continues to grow in scope and tenacity, reflected in the courage and sacrifice of The WSL in fighting for a Labour vote in this election Is conducting the fight to expose the nature of the pro-imperialist Callaghan-Healey-Mason leadership, and to build an alternative revolutionary party.

In contrast to individual floor speakers who had called for an abstention in the election, Comrade Lister in conclusion urged the trade unionists and Labour Party members in the audience to combine a Labour vote with stepping up the active fight within the labour movement for solidarity with the irish liberation struggle and in particular the key demands:

*Support for the Long Kesh prisoners' demand for PoW status.

*Immediate withdrawal of British troops. * *The removal of torture chief Roy Mason and all other pro-imperialist Labour leaders.

LEAGUE

Public meeting "Fight for Alternative Revolutionary Leadership Friday 27 April at 7.30 Nearest tube: Chalk Farm Margaret Thatcher's conscious decision last week population is an important element in Tory strategy after the election.

One of the few categorically clear sections of the Tory manifesto spells out eight ways in which a Tory government would seek to attack the few remaining rights of immigrants' families and fiances to enter Britain.

In the hue and cry around the implementation of these proposals, the Tory press would intensify its propaganda promoting racial divisions within the working class-hopefully providing Thatcher with improved conditions for, her planned onslaught on the trade union movement and workers' living standards.

Thatcher She knows full well that the kind of reactionary racist forces attracted to her vicious anti-. immigrant platform are precisely the type of elements she needs as a base of support from which to attack the working class.

Cynical

To this end she has dragged out the old cynical falsification of Britain being "swamped" by inflows of immigrants-despite the fact that, under Callaghan's right wing Labour government, Tory Immigration laws have already been tightened to virtually halt the inflow of black immigrants.

Her efforts to create splits and divisions along racial lines are also assisted by the chronic unemployment, homelessness, social service cuts and plunging living standards created by years of Labour treachery.

For all their half-hearted attacks on Thatcher's full-blooded chauvinist campaign, therefore, the Labour leaders offer no way of fighting •racialism or answering the material problems that help it to fester.

Nor indeed do the timid Labour lefts' that cling to Callaghan's coattails. Indeed the recommendations of the Commons Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration which form the basis of the Tories' manifesto were co-signed by Labour's racist 'left' Sydney Bidwell and four other Labour MPs.

Bidwell went out of his way last year to defend Thatcher against charges that she was a racialist-and now finds his own reactionary policies being used as part of a recruiting platform for the Tories' anti-union shock troops!

Bidwell :

More enlightened sections of the Labour 'left' have opposed Bidwell, but pulled up short of any fight to oust Labour's right wing leaders.

Yet the massive mobilisation of anti-fascist forces in Leicester last weekend and the growing isolation of the National Front indicate that the potential exists within the working class to crush the overt racist movements and struggle in defence of the immigrant community.

Vote Labour This fight demands a vote for Labour against the Tories in the election, combined with a struggle by socialists to drive out the racist Callaghan-Healey leadership and fight for the repeal of the Immigration laws.

Instead • socialist programme to improve living standards and social services and provide new jobs must be fought for, based on the nationalisation and planned expansion of basic industry, without compensation under workers' management.

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in the Labour Movement" Lyndhurst Hall Walden Rd, Kentish Town

to reopen her racialist cam- paign agianst the immigrant