Bloody Murder

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Ebbed to death by police powers and numbers, when taken together with the massive numbers of arrests, the huge fines, (£250 for threatening words) and the use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act in Leicester, and the mass arrests, brutal beatings and murder of demonstrator Blair Peach at Southall, presages a major onslaught not only against anti-racists but against strikers, pickets and the rights of the workers' movement.

Under such an attack on basic rights by the capitalist state, the fight against fascism can only be waged by taking the demands for No Platform and the formation of Workers' Defence Squads right to the centre of the labour movement and welding them firmly to the general struggle of the working class against the employers.

The decision of the Leicester anti-racists to take up precisely this fight in local union branches, with a motion supporting No Platform being passed in the ASTMS General Branch only two days after the April 21 mobilisation, is an important first step.

The fight for No Platform and for Workers Self Defence must become a national campaign which counterposes the real needs of the situation to the propaganda back-peddling of the reformists and the ANL's abject political prostration.

Only a united struggle of the labour movement, drawing in the militant immigrant workers and youth with trade unionists, tenants and workers' political organisations can create the conditions for driving the fascist gangs off the streets and out of the meeting halls and for tackling crushing material problems like housing and unemployment by independent class action.

The police stand condemned of the murder of NUT member Blair Peach, clubbed to death last Monday, by an SPG truncheon.

This was the culmination of a day of violence, intimidation, harassment, beatings, kickings and punching.

All of these were meted out by the police to the largely immigrant community of Southall.

It is clear that the decision to permit the NF to meet in Southall was made in the top ranks of the police with the connivance of Labour's reactionary Home Secretary Merlyn Rees.

Legitimate Every one of the 50 thugs at the NF's so-called "public" election meeting was drafted in from outside while 5,000 police, 50 mounted police and a helicopter were there to protect them from the legitimate hostility of the entire local population.

The anti-fascists, who were disgusted at this deliberate provocation, were completely caught unawares by the actions of the police.

The Indian Workers Association, headed by Stalinist Vishnu Sharma, had called for the closing down of the shops and factories at 1 p.m. and for a mass sit-down.

On its front page the IMG's paper Socialist Challenge had called for a peaceful protest.

But it was not up to the anti-fascists to decide. The police had already decided that violence was the order of the day.

They had deliberately picked this area of well-organised workers, active in their unions, as the arena for a confrontation in which they would seek to beat opponents into submission.

They knew • wel how Southall has become a symbol, particularly to the Asian community, of how to stand up for your rights and to walk the streets without fear and where it is the racists who have learned to keep out of the way.

The police were well aware that they could not seal off a town like this without the local community determinedly opposing it.

Provocation

They wanted to create a provocation, relying on the Tory stooges in the media to portray it as some sort of race riot.

They have not, however, been able to have it all their own way.

Trade unionists all over the country have been quick to condemn the police actions, as in the Leeds Trades Council where a public enquiry' was also called for.

The Enfield and Edmonton Trade Union Council called for the removal of Merlyn Rees and wrote to the local Ealing Trades Council pledging whatever support they could give to a labour movement enquiry.

Those who, like the WRP's daily Newsline (Thursday 26 April) imply that anti-fascists shouldn't have gone to Southall, branding the events "sheer buffoonery" and talking about the ANL setting members up as "Aunt Sallies for the police" (25 April) show only their own remoteness from the actual struggle in the workers' movement against the NF Lack of leadership There was, certainly, a criminal lack of leadership in Southall; but this is not remedied by watching from a safe distance.

Workers defence squads have to be set up through a fight in the local immigrant organisations, trade unions and Labour Parties.

The police tactics last Monday resembled a military occupation and are an indication of the way the Tories intend to operate if they are elected, in forcing in their racist measures.

All roads to the town were blocked off. All bus routes were, curtailed miles from Southall.

Searches were made at every cross roads. The police were like a pack of hounds let off a lead and thirsting for blood.

Marksmen were stationed on roofs. Horses and riot shields were used by police all day to break people into groups, harass them, force them i into corners where they could best be beaten with long white truncheons and then-generally bruised and bleeding-arrested.

All the police force's pent up racism and hatred of youth was allowed to pour out against the black youth of Southall.

SPG vans were driven at top speed into groups who were forced to leap out of the way and then found themselves flung onto van floors and herded away.

340 were arrested in this way. In fact it is surprising that the toll of death and injuries was so low.

Anyone who thought they would be safe from the police thugs inside a building were mistaken.

In the People's Rights Centre in Park View Road a medical room had been set up by a doctor and ambulanceman to treat victims of police brutality.

The building was also full of community workers, lawyers and local workers and youth.

Beat everyone

•The police smashed into the building, rushed upstairs and proceeded to beat everyone around the head and to drag them off to jail.

community rights worker, Clarence Barker, is Central Middlesex Hospital as a result of the beating and kicking he received.

He was held until 1 a.m. before the police would even get him a doctor.

Police thugs also forced their way into the medical room and made the occupants get out.

The ambulanceman had to be taken out on a stretcher as a result of the thrashing he received.

gauntiet All the occupants were made to run a gauntlet of cops wielding truncheons and viciously kicking.

As one young girl who witnessed the event said:

'They even dragged out Anyone game for these thugs in blue. The police have set up their own farcical inquiry into "allegations" against them.

This is designed as a whitewash job in the same way that the death of antifascist Kevin Gately in Red Lion Square was "inquired" into.

The anti-fascists will be blamed and the police exonerated and more powers called for.

We call for an independent workers' enquiry into the police. brutality at Southall, and its relationship to the national build-up of police violence against immigrant communities and the labour movement.

This demand must be connected to the fight to remove the SPG's supervisor Merlyn Rees, and his right wing and fake "left' cronies from the Labour leadership.

Defence As socialists we recognise that the police, as the armed defenders private property under capitalism, are, together with the army, the backbone of the state machine.

Black and white workers must unite in the struggle for a revolutionary leadership that will spell out the necessity to disband the police force and the standing army, and substitute a workers' militia answerable to the labour movement.

In the meantime the urgent question is to defend the workers' movement and the immigrant communities from all forms of violent provocation, through the mobilisation of workers' defence squads, uniting black and white workers in struggle against the common enemy.

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Our Science Correspondent reviews The Politics of Nuclear Power by Dave Elliot with Pat Coyne, Mike George and Roy Lewis, published by Pluto Arrested anti-nuclear protestors discuss plans to further th struggle against US expansion of nuclear programme Press, price £1.95.

In Britain those on the left commonly hold one of two main positions on nuclear power.

The first of these involves the total rejection of nuclear power as a monumental evil perpetrated on society by technologycrazed scientists. .

The immediate closure of all nuclear power plants and an end to research into the nuclear fuel cycle are demanded.

A move to low-technology, smaller-scale power generation, such as wind or solar energy, is often also called for.

This position is exemplified by the various evironmentalist groups who have often strongly influenced the opportunist policies of more orthodox left-wing organisations.

Essenti:

The second position typified by the attitude It, entails a firm belief that the development of nuclear power is essential to safeguard the supply of energy to meet the, future needs of capitalist industry.

Ensuring the health of British capitalism is held to be the best way of generating direct and indirect employment prospects.

Where health and safety risks to workers are acknowledged, they are claimed to be small compared to other industries (themselves often not noted for their safety record), and their so-called "minor' drawbacks are held to be far outweighed by the advantages of satisfying capitalism's thirst for energy.

It is as if, as Roland Barthes points out, "a little confessed evil saves one from acknowledging a lot of hidden evil"

Turgid arguments

Neither of these positions is in any way able to give a lead to workers in the nuclear industry, or any other.

Instead, debates on nuclear power degenerate into turgid arguments about whether a given procedure involves more health risks to workers than the alternatives, whether projections of future energy needs are valid or not, or whether the levels of risk to the general public of nuclear power plant accidents are "acceptable" or not (to whom?).

Political The highly selective and often secretive way in which health and safety matters are approached by the nuclear industry and by government means that we must treat with the utmost scepticism all figures published by these sources.

Health and safety matters and projected energy réquirements involve political decisions.

The struggle as to who controls these decisions is the central issue.

Calling for the abandoning of nuclear power generation and of other work on the nuclear fuel cycle (such as waste disposal) in isolation gives no perspective to those employed directly or indirectly through the nuclear industry.

Furthermore, it: closes the door on any benefits that nuclear power generation may be able to contribute under socialism.

Indiscriminate and blind opposition to nuclear waste disposal ignores the fact that even if all nuclear research ceased at once, we are already saddled with substantial quantities of high-level radioactive wastes from nuclear reactors that somehow have to be put out of harm's way.

In Britain alone there are at least 600 cubic metres of liquid wastes; and there are even more in the USA.

These are likely to remian hazardous to life for thousands of years.

Political control

It is essential to realise that until procedures are developed whereby the wastes can somehow be rendered less harmful, the placing of nuclear wastes in underground repositories (temporary resting places) if not in depositories (relatively permanent resting places) is inevitably going to take place.

What is important is who has political control over the implementation of this procedure.

Decisions concerning site selection factors and the design of the underground chambers cannot be left to capitalist governments and the nuclear industry corporations.

In The Politics of Nuclear Power, Elliott and colleagues have attempted to address some of these problems.

They divide their book into three parts: the political economy of nuclear power; nuclear power and employment, and political strategies.

Useful

The book is a very useful reference source, where the authors provide summary accounts of the nature of the nuclear industry in Britain and its links with similar industries in other countries.

They chart the historical development of the industry, relate the attitude of trade union movement to nuclear power and summarise some of the potential benefits and drawbacks of nuclear power.

Although objections must be raised in some areas, such as how unique is the nature of the government's involvement in the nuclear industry, these sections could usefully be read by all trade unionists and other interested parties. The low cost of the book is also an added bonus.

The book is especially strong where it describes the interconnections of nuclear industries in Britain and the rest of the world, to show that they form a web of enmeshed capitalist interests.

Not single Where the books is weakest, is when it comes to discuss political strategies, where it had the opportunity to eclipse its numerous limp competitors.

The authors correctly point out that the political challenge of nuclear power is not a single issue, to be faced in isolation.

But they propose instead "consciousness-raising 'on a broad front' (author's quotation marks).

Such an approach quite inadequate in the present circumstances.

Whilst not denying the importance . of making available to workers' representatives information on nuclear power, lobbying Trade Union meetings, etc. what is of key importance is the posing of demands which can enable workers to make the necessary political development to see the need to take control of the nuclear industry themselves.

The lesson of the 3-mile island nuclear plant disaster macinl at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is that the posing of these demands is an urgent priority.

• Government and nuclear industry officials cannot be left with the authority to pronounce on the safety of nuclear plants and the risks to the public.

Their work must be subject to control by workers' representatives.

It is essential that the workers' movement takes up the fight for demands that lead towards such control, and point to the inability of the anarchic, secretive, profit hungry capitalist system to find safe means of utilising nuclear power.

*No further work on reprocessing, fast Breeder Reactors or other reactors until safety precautions are acceptable to workers' committees drawing members from all industries and the labour movement in the locality concerned. Such committees must force access to all relevant information on the safety hazards of nuclear power generation.

*No further extension of nuclear power programmes until safe and efficient methods of disposal of. existing and potential wastes is established.

*No redundancies in the nuclear industries. Work sharing on full pay and retaining for all those workers who cannot be transferred to research work pending these developments.

*For an increase in state spending • on all aspects of research into the exploitation of nuclear power and into alternative energy sources, under the control of elected workers' committees.

*Open the books of the giant monopolies that stand to profit from nuclear power, to prove the necessity for them to be nationalised, without compensation, under workers' management.

*Publish the full details of known existing hazards! Immediate compensation for all victims of past unplanned nuclear "experiments"

NOW OUT! The WSL discussion document adopted for submis. son to the USFI XIth World Congress. Price 20p plus 10p p&ep from WSL. 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR.

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