Taraki toppled in Australian workers figh Afghan crisis

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Brezhnev embraces ill-fated President Taraki Amin, like Taraki, belongs to opened his regime by promising the other, Khalq (People) wing. that "September 16 opens a He has gained the reputation better socialist order."

Bokassa ... from front Bokassa been as swift as that of Macbeth.

And the comparison may not stop there since the former Head of State Taraki and the Chief of Police were apparently killed during last week's coup.

And if Amin, as a hardened Stalinist henchman, is unlikely to suffer the Scottish king's inner qualms, the external pressures on Kabul must seem quite as bad as those in Dunsinane.

Since the start of 1979 the pro-Soviet Taraki regime (in which Amin rose to become Prime Minister) has been under growing attack from the "holy war" unleashed by Islamic rebels.

These have received morar and material encouragement from anti-communist bigots including the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran and General Zia ul Haq in Pakistan, and probably less direct backing from the imperialists.

Early in August there were confusing reports from Kabul of an unsuccessful army coup against Taraki in alliance with the Islamic rebels.

Certainly some high army generals have recently been purged, So have most of the old leadors of the 'Flag' party-one of the two wings of Afghan Stalinists which came together to form the ruling Democratic and People's Party and overthrow the pro-imperialist Daoud regime in April 1978. of a "strong man" and of being even more pro Moscow than his predecessor.

Moscow was certainly swift to recognise him, though there is continuing uncertainty as to what role, if any, the Soviet leaders played in the coup.

Hypocrisy

Some observers claim that Moscow supported Taraki (warmly received by USSR President Brezhnew only a few days before his overthrow) against Amin's over-harsh repression.

Amin is trying to make it appear the opposite, since he He said he would release political prisoners "uselessly arrested" (Amnesty International claims there are 20,000 of them) and that "atrocities committed by members of the government" would be brought to an end.

In addition to this hypocrisy (Amin himself would have been responsible for any recent atrocities of the government!) he made what may turn out to be a significant turn on the economic front.

"Industrialists and businessmen* • he announced, would receive help for the reconstruction of the country.

An all-out confrontation between organised labour and the Liberal Party government in Australia seems likely to develop in the next few months.

The state government in Queensland has brought forward a bill to ban strikes by workers in transport, power and health services.

It can also be extended at government discretion to other workers considered "essential"

Going beyond any proposals yet suggested in Britain, it not only makes unions responsible for any financial losses caused by strikes, but provides for the fining or imprisonment of anyone inciting workers to disobey government instructions to return to work.

The West Australian government has already in operation a Police Act by which union meetings are banned if they are thought likely to encourage defiance of government anti-strike instructions.

Twenty-one trade unionists will appear in court on October 1 for taking part in banned union meetings.

Although union opposition has so far been restricted to marches and token gestures, the pressure for a general strike will be irresistable if the 21 are jailed.

• Wages offensive The legislation is a response the prolonged wages offenLiberal PM Fraser sive of the last six months which has brought whole areas of Australia to a standstill.

This offensive is in itself caused in large measure by government manipulation of the wage indexation introduced in 1974.

The government commission ACAC (similar to ACAS . in Britain) looks at the increase in the retail price index and decides that a percentage of this should be awarded as a wage increase.

Since recent awards have been only 80% of the increase in the RPI, their decisions amount to blatant wage cutting.

This has provoked a massive response from all sections of Australian workers.

But the trade union leadership has been trying to hold back the movement to prevent "undermining the electoral support of the Australian Labour These arguments will have a familiar ring to British workers: and, as in Britain, they are arguments that cry out for a revolutionary answer.

The presence of French troops and the installation of a new neo-colonial leadership in the CAR is designed to prevent the forward movement of the local struggle into one that embraces the class interests of working people in the entire region-a development that would be a deadly blow to imperialism's hold in Africa.

Unity of the mass-oppressed in struggle in west and equatorial Africa can only be achieved under the leadership of the working class acting in their own independent class interests.

The need to take forward these struggles and build the independent organisations of the proletariat underlines the necessity for the reconstruction of the Fourth International and the development of Trotskyist parties throughout the African continent.

"There is no Spain is sick"

The words come from the mouth of one of the would-be doctors-General Jose Gabeiras Montero, chief of the General Staff of the Spanish army.

• He was addressing a conference of officers in the Canary Islands on September 20, the day following the killing of two more high ranking army officers (the 12th and 1.3th since 1977)

in Bilbao by ETA (militar), the militant Basque nationalist organisation.

The general told his listeners to stay calm and not to overreact until "the moment-which I don't believe will come-when the country will have to turn to us again to preserve its essence".

There have been several open threats of a military coup since the death of Franco four years ago.

Minority factions

But up to now. they have come from evident minority factions in the officer corps even though they expressed a general feeling in Franco's unreformed army.

This new statement, despite its attempts at anaesthetic phraseology, is the first clear threat from the top of the army hierarchy of a military takeover of the government.

Montero's statement reflects the growing fear of an officer corps all of whom know they are in constant danger from the most efficient terrorist organisation in Europe.

It is unlikely that the army high command will actually launch a coup without the more open support of the political spokesmen of the bourgeoisie.

And they still hope that capitalist stability in Spain can be maintained peacefully with he aid of the bourgeois nationalist leaders in Euskadi (the Basque country) and to a lesser extent in Catalonia, alongside the reformist and Stalinist leaders in Spain as a whole.

Got the message

If this policy has just about worked up to now, the more conscious sections of the Spanish bourgeoisie are now well aware that with the Socialist Party leadership in a full-scale crisis, the CP leaders losing credibility and the economic crisis daily making the material situation of the workers more difficult, the outlook for their brand of "democracy" is not bright.

They will have listened carefully to Montero and got the message.

• The working class must get it too-and prepare to build armed, independent organisations to combat the growing danger of a full-blown restoration of the Francoist dictatorship.

This must be part of an uncompromising political offensive against the bourgeoisie which is the only way of putting an end to Francoists and pursuing the struggle for socialism in Spain.

Correction

We apologise for an error in the centre page article on theoretical questions arising from the wars in SE Asia in Socialist Press 166 (September 12). Paragraph nine of that articlé should have read as follows;

"So why cannot this contra-. diction lead to expansionist tendencies on the part of the bureaucracy which flow from a need to augment the surplus available to one bureaucracy through expansion of the territorial base from which it is appropriated."

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