[If there were a competition between on the…]

Scan page 4

If there were a competition between on the • one hand the bureaucracies of the degenerated and deformed workers' states and on the other the Catholic Church to find which has carried out most crimes against the working class then the Catholic Church would have to win the ribbon if for no other reason than it had several centuries startan advantage which even the deepest dyed Stalinist would have trouble wiping out.

If Popery has not died in Poland, that is not a tribute to the staying power of religion but a condemnation of the Polish bureaucracy which has vacillated between accomodation to the Church and petty harassment, without ever challenging the social lie on which religion is based.

The visit of the Pope to Poland, though producing no events worthy of the name or 'news' was seen by the capitalist press in Britain as the most important 'SYMBOLIC event of the week.

«Workers and youth are fighting back. In Ireland and Zimbabwe they do this with guns: in Britain they are fighting through strikes and demonstrations.

"The problem is thie leaders of the working class, who betray these struggles. We have to fight to get rid of these leaders and replace them with revolutionaries who will ensure that these struggles are successful and will In describing the feudal pageantry the press found proof' of the superiority of capitalism.

These two strands were the ground, inspected the Polish guard and then held a mass in Warsaw's Victory Square.

The Sunday Telegraph whipped itself into religious ecstacy (the real religion in this case being of course capitalism).

"Two million people lined the road taking him from the airport into Warsaw, threw roses, carnations and irises into his path and cheered clapped and shouted "Long Live Our Pope"

"Many wept openly as the Pope climbed the raised dais to the altar and stood with open arms before the 30ft cross which was draped in red stoles."

You could be forgiven for thinking that this was a revolution that was being described, not the visit of the head of the most reactionary extortionist gang on earth.

The Sunday Telegraph reporter, John Miller, took in every nuance of the crowd at a glance.

"It was not a Communist rent-a-crowd but a genuine lead to socialism."

So spoke Phillip Moore, National Secretary of the Socialist Youth League at its annual conference on May 19, introducing the four-page main draft resolution.

The resolution stressed that in the mounting crisis of world capitalism the employers were determined to keep up their rate of profit-and this meant intensifying the exploitation of workers, in particular the youth.

The 50-strong audience that had assembled • at the Whittington Youth Centre, Islington, included delegations from Scotland, Yorkshire, the Midlands, Aylesbury and and massive display of love and pride and joy-the sort of welcome never accorded by the man in the street in Eastern Europe to visiting Communist leaders.

The Observer, which marked the visit by turning over its colour supplement to studies of Stalin and 'Pope John Paul's Poland' also carried the visit as lead.

Not content with this, it carried a further article stressing that the state found religion an impossible nut to crack.

«Visits to any other places that might have shown the working class roots of Polish Catholicism local partre boses isted for were years have been beating their heads against the obduracy of Polish faith.

"Doesn't his return to Poland !. as Pope mark the return of both the Polish Church and Poland to world history, a return predestined since the first Polish king was baptised a thousand years ago?

So in tones of religious mysticism, does the press of the capitalists delight as the heads of the Polish deformed workers' state bow and scrape before the symbol of ignorance, reaction and exploitation.

ment, racialism and low pay faced by youth can be answered only by revolutionary policies.

A number of supplementary amendments strengthening the draft resolution were moved by SYL members: the topics covered included the struggle against Stalinism in the National Union of School Students; and the fight for equal rights, unionisation and free abortion and contraception on demand for girls and women.

New film strengthened SYL National Committee was elected and the conference saw an

----- pull-quotes -----

cunningly intertwined in the reports, as the Pope kissed