Bishop above law

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Ever mindful of the legal window dressing which covers the real face of oppression the Tory government rushed through an Order in Council which gave Muzorewa the immunity he knew he could count on before he came to Britain.

Joan Lestor and the Anti-Apartheid Movement were delighted in that the government move proved to them that the Bishop was indeed what they had argued all along-'an enemy of the Crown' The most important point about the Bishop's visit is not whether or not he is an enemy Chris Davies, Report Lestor of the Crown in strictly legal terms-he is in every sense a friend of the British Crown, a stooge of imperialism and no more than lan Smith a traitor.

The real traitors are those within the labour movement like Callaghan and Owen who have fought hard to defend imperialist interests in Southern Africa.

The Tories are simply continuing the talks in public here that they have taken over from the Labour government which carried them out in public in 'Rhodesia-Zimbabwe' And more important still is the fact that these 'public' talks are in no sense public. Behind the scenes deals are being cooked up in the constant round of secret diplomacy which continually goes on between imperialism, the SmithMuzorewa regime, the Front Line states and the Patriotic The strategy of the imper¡alists continues to be around splitting the Patriotic Front or at best winning both wings to a negotiated settlement.

They are attempting to prepare for this by bringing pressure to bear on the Salisbury regime to remove the constitutional guarantees for the whites which effectively exclude blacks from leading positions in the judiciary, security and public services.

The visit of Muzorewa is designed to bring pressure particularly on Nkomo to bring him into an all party conterence.

Nkomo's response, "the moment Thatcher decides to formally recognise Muzorewa's regime we shali make it impossible for her to do so the same way we have done it in the past by intensifying even further the armed struggle" shows that he sees the armed struggle as something to be turned off and on for diplomatic manoeuvres.

The antics of Joan Lestor and the anti-apartheid movement over the last few days have in no way helped the working class to take independent class action in support of the Zimbabwe masses. In associating acts of solidarity with appeals to jail 'enemies of the Crown' they confuse and disorient the solidarity movement.

Joan Lestor would be much better employed campaigning for the bringing to account of Callaghan and Owen for their role in imperialism's plans for Southern Africa and the mobilisation of workers to black supplies to the racists.

The proposals in this Bill are -according to Corrie-not meant to be anti-abortion.

But on television on 3 July he made it clear that his intention is not for safer abortion but , less opportunity for legal It calls for the time limit during which abortions can be performed to be cut from 28 to 20 weeks.

Late abortions, currentiy less than 5% of all performed, occur for several reasons-some

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In this short series it has been impossible to make a complete critique of the politics of the Socialist Workers Party-this has been an initial contribution.

We have shown, however, that in relation to Stalinism, permanent revolution, economic theory, Leninism, and its modern continuity Trotskyism, the SWP has little or nothing in common with revolutionary positions.

The International Marxist Group, however, clearly prefer an orientation to the SWP to one towards the Trotskyists of the Workers Socialist League.

That this is the case can be seen from the IMG's stated positions and from its initial reluctance to take seriously the discussion of our document the Poisoned Well-which was prepared specifically for the pre-11 th World Congress discussion which is taking place at present.

Syndicalist

In August of last year the IMG Central Committee discussed its orientation to the SWP.

The resolution which was framed says that the SWP:

"represents a syndicalist break trom revolutionary Marxism, i.e. Trotskyism.

"Nonetheless, since the middle sixties the SWP has defended a basic class struggle orientation and has been able to express the revolutionary instincts of the most advanced layers of the vanguard."

The SWP, says the resolution:

"combines an attempt to bypass the struggle in the official organisations-in favour of militant vanguard action and the creation of party fronts in the trade unions-with a minimalist combination of demands upon the official leadership.

"This difference in view is not a small matter: it concerns the central political problems facing socialists in Britain today.

"The SWP's line does not today lead it to cross class lines-it leads it only to abstain from real struggle against the "But when the bankruptcy of this leftism is exposed before the SWP comrades in the heat of major turns in ine class struggle, the absence of a correct grasp of the united front and the transitional method can produce a dangerous lurch to conciliation with the bureaucracy in practice through a tailing of the average consciousness of the class.

"A second issue of divergence is the question of socialist democracy, inner party demo. cracy and the question of the Fourth International.

"It is differences around these key programmatic issues which present obstacles to a genuine and lasting fusion of our cadres with those of the SWP."

Real Strong stuff! But the real face of the IMG's attitude to the SWP can be seen a few lines further on, when the resolution blandly states:

"But since these programmatic differences have not become yet the burning issues around which the basic social forces in the class struggle are PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report polarising, there is a real chance of these divisions being resolved between ourselves and the SWP as a whole in the coming period.

"But such an outcome will require that we strengthen to the maximum our practical political collaboration with the SWP and at the same time discuss these political obstacles to fusion in a fraternal way with the object of overcoming them."

Out of the door, then, go all the basic weaknesses of the SWP! These apparently don't really matter to the IMG, because they are not yet 'burning issues around which the basic social forces in the class struggle are polarising.' What, we might ask, about the years of principled preparation which must go into preparing for the time when the basic social forces in the class struggle 'polarise' around the question of power?

Actual betrayal

What about the actual betrayal by the SWP of the Irish people in 1969 when the British troops went into Was the IS/SWP's failure to call for their withdrawal not a direct result of the SWP's refusai to conflict with the consciousness of British trade unionists and the Catholic population in Ireland - combined with its lack of any perspective for the Irish struggle?

What about the SWP'S dreadful role only last year in covering up for the jobs sell-out at Speke?

The situation becomes even worse as the resolution goes on.

The principal illustration of the SWP's supposed "healthy" turn is given by the IMG as the Anti Nazi League, a cross-class pacifist propaganda group vigorously opposed to workers defence squads against fascism.

FORD According to the resolution, the ANL shows an attempt by the SWP to turn to left unity!

The resolution suggests that the SWP is now more vulnerable to IMG pressure to enter or create further swamps such as the ANL-this time in the unions, specifically NUT, CPSA and NUPE.

Swamp

The NUT is a good example of the IMG's attempts to create a political swamp.

Here there is not even the pretence of a fight for transitional demands. The Socialist Teachers Alliance went as far as arguing for token strike action around the NUT pay claim while the much smaller forces of the WSL were able as result of their fight to bring to the NUT conference a mandate from at least one NUT association for all out strike action.

The same association had adopted the sliding scale of wages as its policy.

The IMG's real politics dovetail in practice with the tailendism of the SWP on many occasions in the trade unions.

The IMG can show no evidence of any serious political fight against the sort of line which their resolution correctly denounces in the extreme (for the IMG) language quoted above.

It would of course be wrong to give the impression in this article that the IMG. is uniformly enthusiastic about fusion with the SWP.

Orthodox There exists a sizeable section which rejects that path and prefers an orientation to the 'orthodox' Trotskyist groups such as ourselves.

The main spokesman of these comrades. is John AIN!

AntI/Vazı Strawson who put torward an alternative resolution at the CC debate.

While this resolution did not characterise the SWP as centrist, it did argue that the SWP had broken from revolutionary Marxism and was a block to building the revolutionary However, the method which Strawson used to attack the majority view was one which, as we shall see, left him open to attack from forces who are even more enthusiastic about the SWP than are the IMG leadership.

The substantial criticisms Strawson puts forward are concentrated not on the whole theoretical basis of the SWP's centrism, but on isolated examples of its consequences.

Examples cited include Korea, Ireland 1969, and the SWP's support for the Portuguese PRP which signed with the Stalinists in Portugal in August 1975.

Incapable The strongest section of his critique is where he shows the SWP incapable of giving a lead against the bureaucracy-citing amongst others the example of Speke (see Socialist Press 158).

Similarly his objection to their self-proclaimed Leninism concentrates purely on the SWP's total lack of internal democracy.

Strawson is incapable of really coming to grips with how to oppose the drift to the SWP because he, too, wishes to give them some credit for "class struggle positions" and, of course, the launching of the ANL-of which he strongly approves.

Worse still, he makes the ludicrous diversionary point that the SWP as a whole 'under favourable circumstances' League on the streets of Ilford (whatever those are) might well be won tO revolutionary Marxism!

But while Strawson's opposition is fundamentally flawed, for the average IMG member land this is not intended to be an insult) the pages of contradictory 'theorising' which characterise the contributions from the IMG majority leadership on the SWP must be confusing in the extreme.

Gyrations

Lesser mortals than the top intellectual gurus have clearly grown tired of the ceaseless theoretical gyrations contained in such documents as the resolution quoted above.

They prefer to go straight the heart of the matter.

Impatiently they demand to know what differences exist in practice between the IMG and the SWP.

In the CC debate, a group of IMG members from Birmingham put forward a resolution which at least has the unusual merit of being straightforward and honest in its total capitulation to the politics of the SWP.

It is no good the IMG bleating about the fact that the document received only one vote-the authors include important IMG members with a record in the trade unions.

We would argue that they articulate a feeling widespread in the IMG-and one which flows logically from the leadership's own positions.

In their 20-odd page document these comrades argue for an immediate fusion with the SWP.

The only barrier they see to this is the need for agreement on internal democracy.

They are able to point tó weaknesses in the IMG's characterisation of the SWP which they see, without the slightest qualification, as revo lutionary.

Embarrassingly for the IMG leaders, they are also able ta marshall a whole series of examples-such as the fact that the IMG's sister party, the LCI, signed the same document as the PRP in Portugal; the lack of of the Fi; and the SWPIUSA)S wrong line on the war in Angola -to show that 'errors' such as those listed by Strawson in relation to the British SWP are not decisive in defining that organisation as outside revolutionary Marxism.

They are also able to show that the SWP's particular brand of centrism is different from that of the PSU in France, the POUM in. Spain and Avan!

guardia Operaia in' Italy.

Massive

Their overwhelming rational isation for demanding an orien tation to the SWP is that it ha not crossed class lines; that i is massive compared with the IMG; and will continue to grow.

They even hold out the hope that the SWP will spontaneously confront the Communist Party rather than continue to attemp to join up with it or go round it "Just as we cannot beat' the SWP by building around o outside of it, so the SWP must establish a route to the base o the CP in their case, to destroy it."

We have cited one example (Socialist Press 158) of tha SWP's actual approach to the CP-total capitulation to it over the Speke closure.

We can add to that the SWP's appeal to the CP for joint candidate in the Hamilton byelection, and the recent call by the Rank and File organising committee for a join conference with the Stalinist dominated LCDTU.

The IMG supports the last of these policies anyway, clearly having no understanding them selves of the thoroughly counter-revolutionary role o It is also interesting to note that while during the Spek closure crisis Socialist Challeng printed one generally correc article on the question, th author is a leading supporter o the Strawson tendency. W don't think the authorship is a accident.

Incidentally it was recenth said of this article (by a mor than usually disgruntled IMO member) that it was one a four Trotskyist' articles appear in Socialist Challeng since it commenced publication But back to the Birminghan resolution.

Majority

What do the Birminghan IMG oppositionists propose a the political basis for this join organisation with the SWP?

In the words of th comrades:

"Are we simply wanting build a big organisation in whic the ING's politics can quickli win a majority, and in which th SWP's politics can be rapidl disposed of?"

Their answer is firmly 'No!' The reason for this apparently their belief that th experience of the IS/SWI tradition should be 'synthesised with the tradition of the FI!

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SMASH,

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wali NOA IN ILA

an orientation to autonomous women's groups in the history