The struggles of the undead

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TONY RICHARDSON reviews "Nosferatu, the Vampyre", directed by Werner Herzog.

It gives the impression will be as ridiculous as most both with the words as well of those produced in the as the way they are said that last 20 years or so. previous discussions we call for the destruction of the Zionist state and the establishment of a single democratic Palestine.

We do not place conditions on this struggle that it needs to be socialist, though we put forward transitional and socialist demands within it.

In particular we call for the setting up of a constituent assembly in which all the Jewish masses and all the Palestinians, including the refugees, are able to vote to set up a new state for Palestinian and Jewish people.

What are the main activities of your movement in these struggles? ' In the tenants' struggles we put forward the slogan of a crash programme of public works to build houses to rent at low prices.

We also fight against all rent increases and against the system of temporary tenancies, when at times the landlords can within months evict their tenants or sharply increase their rents.

- In the villages we take part in all nationalist mobilisations, on democratic questions against the new settlements.

We calt for the withdrawal of the Zionist troops from the military installations they have built in the areas captured in the 1967 war and for an end to all the occupations by their withdrawal from all the areas inhabited by the Arab population.

We put this forward as an immediate democratic demand in combination, of course, with our general aim of the disbandment of the Zionist army and its state.

We are also proposing at the moment to set up in alliance with sympathisers, with nationalist militants and others a magazine in Arabic to discuss the main questions at this stage of the struggle.

Independent

In the factories we call for the setting up of organsations independent of the Histadrut, the state run and state-sponsored colonialist organisation sometimes regarded as a sort of trade union.

We call for factory committees and common committees of Arab and Jewish workers.

We support wage demands and call for a sliding scale of wages.

Arafat We also intervene in the democratic struggles in the universities for the rights of Arab students to set up their separate organisations on the campus, against the Israeli bombings of refugee camps, for the freeing of political prisoners and other democratic issues.

We take part in the women's movement in Israel, which consists of small groups of petty bourgeois Jewish women to take up the issue of free abortion on demand which is very restricted in Israel, the • separation of and state and in particular to turn this movement towards the Palestinian women who face compounded forms of exploitation.

When we last discussed with a comrade from your organisation. about your international orientation you said that the continuity of the Fourth International flowed through OCRFI (the international grouping led by the OCI).

Since then there has been a series of expulsions and walkouts from that organisation in which you were involved. How do you now see the problem of rebuilding the Fourth International?

We always fought against our exclusion from the OCRFI because we considered that we had to be part of an international organisation and it seemed to us that only Lambert's organisation was trying to maintain the continuity of the fight against Pabloism.

However we were always critical of their refusal to take the necessary steps building of a democratic centralist international.

We regarded the exclusion of the Argentinian comrades from the OCRFI as hastening the degeneration of that body and showing its inability to be an organising centre for the rebuilding of the Fourth International.

We consider that it is essential now to take further steps in building a democratic centralist international in alliance with these sections, especially from Argentina and Bolivia who are now outside the OCRFI, as well as healthy tendencies within the USFI.

We are certainly prepared to continue a dialogue with the WSL and its international co-thinkers towards this end.

In his previous films, German director Werner Herzog has managed to create striking images with his characters.

In "Aguirre, Wrath of God" the most memorable image was of the leader of an expedition in the midst of the most incredibly difficult jungle conditions in South America.

Enigma

In The Enigma of Kaspar Hause" the story centred on • a man who appeared in a German village, from out of nowhere.

He couldn't speak and appeared to have grown up in the wild.

Herzog. presented the simple materialistic philosophy of Kaspar as a devastating contrast to professional philosophers.

The actor in this case was Bruno R, someone who had never acted before.

His simplicity of character, directing "back to nature" , was so striking that Herzog used him in his next film on America. • Now in his latest film, "Nosferatu", Herzog has turned to the vampire legend.

Pointed ears

And yet again he has selected an in credibly striking actor to take the lead. ' Klaus Kinski has a long drawn face, eyes that seem to be hanging out of his head, pointed ears and a bald head.

These physical features are combined with the pallor of his face and two small pointed teeth right in the front of his mouth. This alone produces a striking effect.

Image

Our first glimpse of Dracula seems just. like a painting, a picture that conjures up so much.

Like a picture by William Blake, it presents tortured images that don't need describing, draw on fears.

because they our innermost Developed This is exactly what the Vampire story is supposed to be; the dread fear of a living death.

But Herzog has developed on this. When Kinski speaks in the dubbed version it is with a soft, agonised voice.

This is the finest piece of dubbing I have seen.

TA - - - 11. - • being a vampire is the most miserable existence imaginable.

Apparently Herzog bases his film on an early German film "Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horrors" . By developing on this original he has created a minor work of art.

• At the present time there are a number of new vampire films.

Ridiculous No doubt many of them :11 Such films as "Dracula's Bride? and "Son" show that both he and Frankenstein had a touching respect for bourgeois social relationships-and for the needs of the box office.

Spoofs Most of these films have either been sheer "horror" films or "spoofs", , the best of which was Polanski's "Dance of the Vampires" But because they were so ridiculous they could not be clearly seen for what they are.

In Herzog's film the attacks on science and the implicit defence of the religious notions of "hell" are explicit.

All the way through the film the scientist keeps saying that "science explains" , and that we have to deal with the problem with "scientific thoroughness". We are living in an "enlightened age" " he declares.

Clerk

The wife of the unfor tunate clerk who ends up taking Dracula's place, keeps insisting that Dracula is a vampire.

"I believe what I see with my own eyes" she declares as if Dracula is some kind of miracle.

The scientist proves to be completely wrong and the woman proves to be right.

At first the clerk is quite keen on going to Transylvania. He is fed up with "canals that go nowhere" and bored with his existence.

But we are soon cautioned to be happy with our "canals" by what happens to him. Dracula gets him.

Sacrifice

Although his wife kills Dracula by sacrificing herself (Jesus?) and keeping him out until after the first rays of daylight, it is the clerk who takes his place.

So he ends up with that existence that Dracula has described as "much worse than death, the inability to die" , the existence of "Nosferatu the Undead"

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JULIALIDI PKESS, Wednesday August 15, 1979 MDUSBIAL Leaders of the 6,000 independent television technicians whose strike has blacked out ITV screens all over the country have been forced into action.

National negotiators for the EETPU and NATKE had recommended acceptance of the employers' 'final" 15% offer-but found it thrown • out by their members.

And ACTT organiser Jack O'Connor stressed the "reluctance" with which he had called out his members in response to lock-out moves by the employers, who are hell-bent on clinging on to the windfall profits they have built up during three years of pay restraint.

Combativity

But the militancy of these television technicians plainly reflects the growing combativity of the whole working class on the wages issue, and there seems little doubt that if the employers do not concede they face a mounting loss of advertising revenue in a prolonged and solid strike.

Workers at the Talbot (formerly plants in Coventry, on strike for six weeks now, are getting increasingly bitter at management's refusal to improve on the miserable 5.5% pay offer.

Last Friday, following a mass picket at the Ryton plant, strikers marched three miles to the Whitley site (centre of management and research) demanding a statement: from the company.

Some 300 strikers had responded to the call for a mass picket. This had been made two days previously when, despite promises to the contrary, the staff unions APEX, ASTMS and TASS had crossed the picket line for the first time.

Until that time only PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report senior management had gone into work.

The mass picket went ahead despite the fact that the foremen, clerical workers and technicians did not go in on Thursday.

On Friday morning pickets waited for the usual convoy of cars bringing in senior management.

Other gate But they waited in vainthe management convoy had gone in by another gate.

The convenors, who had trusted the management to come through the main gate were outraged at what they saw as a "provocation"

Clearly a good deal of this reaction was due to the fact that they were made to look so foolish.

It is rumoured that the convenors had an arrangement with the police who had promised the other gates would not be opened.

If this is true it shows the complete bankruptcy of the strike leadership.

The ABC of picketing is that you organise it yourself. Every single strike in which the police have been involved has proved consistently the class role that they play.

Sat down

The reaction of the strikers was to march on the Whitley plant where they forced their way through the gates and sat down while the convenors went in see management.

With no response this action and as we press there was a: march planned for Mo The militancy dis by the Ryton worker sharp contrast to the l ship being given them.

There has been effort to bring the me ship forward and a cor avoidance of carryin the tasks required I te the strike.

No strike pay has paid out-under the e no doubt that it 1 affect social security ments.

This is little comfo those who don't qualil social security and who spend large amour money travelling. to picket lines each day.

Even worse, atter v national officials On of "pressure"

the stil no backing of Chi cars coming country from France. : from : go to nother inday. played is is in leaderlittle embermplete g out • win been :xcuse would payort to fy for those nts of the weeks the re is rysler the Steelworkers are likely to draw little comfort from the fact that the TUC last week pledged its support for the fight against the closure of the Shotton plant in North Wales.

The TUC's notion of "support" is likely to be as far away from tangible action as the policy adopted by Iron and Steel Trades Confederation leader Bill Sirs, who has consistently ducked a call by a Corby mass meeting for national strike action against the steel cutbacks.

Sirs and his TUC cronies will no doubt be delighted at the line being adopted by Shotton convenor Monty Hughes who last week called not for a workers' inquiry into BSC's figures, but for the Tory government to question the case for closure!

Without a clear perspective of plant occupation coupled to coordinated national action by the steel unions, the obvious militancy and willingness of

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ITV union leaders forced to act

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PHOTO: John Sturrock, Report PHOTO: