D s Edwardes know?

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chairman Michael Edwardes already know the outcome of the AUEW "inquiry" into This intriguing possibility is revealed in a letter from Edwardes to the Times last week in which he refers to the unofficial pay strike in Longbridge reluctantly led by Robinson in January, and publicly trade union bureaucracy, with whom he has worked for years to force corporate-level bargaining and "workers' participation" into BL.

Right behind him were his "Comrades" from the Communist Party on the Combine Committee and in plants throughout BL,, who also believed official support was a formality and who therefore Boyd in the AUEW Journal.

Edwardes writes: "Because this caused a disciplinary warning, his actions at that time will be fully exposed in the forthcoming inquiry by his union." (em phasis added).

How does Edwardes know what the AUEW "inquiry" will expose?

Has he perhaps already cooked up with them a deal, whereby the AUEW leaders use held back so as not to antagonise the bureaucracy.

And on the other side was Michael Edwardes-for whom Robinson himself had led the shameful standing ovation (of convenors shoulder-to-shoulder with managers) when Edwardes announced the first 10,000 redundancies in February 1978.

The wretched, compromising politics of the Communist Party "guilty and to saD mu OL mE trade union positions, enabling BL generously to reinstate himas a shop floor worker?

There is a recent precedent for such a squalid AUEW sellout in the case of BL Service convenor and Combine Executive member John Power from Cowley, who was victimised, only to be eventually "reinstated", stripped of union positions.

have now helped strike a blow at the fabric of trade unionism in British Leyland.

But though Robinson is still sacked, and Edwardes is riding high, all is not calm on the BL shop floor.

The sacking of Robinson was at least in part a move to bludgeon workers into accepCont'd back

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EM-гаедасть Rreshney: keen to take prodit. hut lomes suhardinates to carry the can for failure 1979 W il see the slowest grov ith of industry in the USSR sicne the end of the Second World War.

That was one of the many gloomy economic facts revealed at last week's meeting of the Supreme In fact this year's growth rate (3.6% in place of a planned 5.7%) was so embarrassing that they did not even announce it directly but concealed it within a figure covering a number of years, a much used technique of Stalinist statistics.

Industrial failure

There was also an even more dramatic shortfall in agriculture. Grain production last year was 179 million tonnes, compared with the target of 227 million.

The industrial failure will cause more shortages of already scarce consumer goods and will -hold back the overall growth of the Soviet economy by restricting the production of heavy industrial goods.

But the grain harvest failure will have to be made good, as so-often in the past, by a massive increase in imports-paid for either by cutting back needed imports of industrial goods or by going deeper into debt to the capitalists, Heart attack In his speech to the supreme Soviet the economic planning chief, Nicolai Baibakov, said that the overall targets of the present Five Year Plan could not be anything like achieved.

His direct boss, Premier/ Economics Minister Kosygin preferred to suffer a heart attack rather than turn up Demirel The return of right wing Justice Party leader Suleyman Demirel as Prime Minister in Turkey is the signal for still further repression of the Turkish workers' movement.

Martial law restrictions imposed by 'liberal' capitalist Prime Minister Ecevit are to be supplemented by a system of special courts, and new restrictions on the trade unions.

While such measures are to announce all these dire facts.

These failures of production are announced only a few weeks after huge price increases for a wide range of consumer goods. These reflected both the internal failures of the Soviet economy and the inflationary pressures being increasingly transmitted from the capitalist world.

The Soviet bureaucracy is being forced in this way to admit that, despite its grandiose claims to run a "socialist planned economy" and despite 50 years of experience of Five Year Plans, that the Soviet conomy cannul vt controlled by them.

In fact in recent years capitalist governments, even given the present anarchy of world markets and finances, have been more accurate in their predictions of capitalist economies than the Soviet bureaucracy have been in even predicting, let alone planning, the Soviet purportedly aimed at repressing "terrorists' there is no doubt that, like previous such moves, their full brunt will be felt by working class and socialist militants.

Encouraged by the electoral successes of Demirel and the extreme right, lascist terrot gangs have intensitied their murderous attacks on the Turkish workers' movement.

As the economic crisis of Turkish capitalism worsens, it becomes increasingly urgent that a solidarity campaign is taken up in the international labour movement to warn Turkish workers of the necessity for independent class action to prevent the possibility of the capitalist class resorting to a fascist-backed military coup in a desperate bid to resolve their problems.

For this reason the Workers Socialist League has invited other movements on the left in Britain to participate in a solidarity campaign which intends to raise these issues before the British working class. VUT IRVI WALS It is just one further piece of proof of the way in which the Stalinist bureaucracy act as an obstacle to rational economic planning and as a permanent. threat to the property forms established after the 1917 revolution.

What solution does the bureaucracy have? The only one it knows-lecturing the workers to work harder and mutual mud-slinging within the bureaucracy itself.

Brezhnev's speech to the Supreme Soviet was typical sample of this.

"Punished"

He sharply criticised "shortage, carelessness, irresponsibility and bungling" , the "unforgiveable" absence of basic items like soap, toothpaste and needles and thread from the shops, a fertiliser plant which was built before it was realised there were no available supplies of fuel and materials, too many unfinished projects starved We urge Socialist Press readers to move the following model resolution through their union branches, trades councils, students unions and Labour Parties, to be sent to Turkish workers and students' organisations in Britain and in Turkey itself along with the British Communist Party.

"This trace union branch (or other lalour movement body) recognises the increasing threat to democratic rights in In particular we note the continued imposition of military rule in many states and escalating repression of the Kurdish people, attacks on workers organisations and assassinations of militants and trade unionists by the mass fascist party.

These developments are a direct result of Turkey's acute and deepening economic crisis.

As with Chile in the days prior to the military coup in 1973, Parliamentary democracy has come under increasing strain and the danger is growing of (AUl tren were was t of resources, vast losses in agriculture due to bad techniques and so on.

What was a bit new was Brezhner's naming of guilty ministers and demands that the culprits be "punished"

Inevitable

So, as usual, the vast problems caused by Stalinist rule will be dealt with by more pressure on the workers and purges in the higher echelons of the But all these problems, perennial in the Soviet economy, are inevitable in a Stalinist-ruled police state dominated by a parasitic and unresponsive bureauThe potential of the Soviet economy will only be realised when the creative force of the working class is liberated by the revolutionary overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracy. fascist and military reaction.

In demanding an end to all such repression we declare support for a campaign of international solidarity with Turkish workers, peasants and youth.

And we call on the Turkish Communist Party the Turkish Labour Party, other working class political parties and the trade union confederations to break their political links with the capitalist party of former Prime Minister Ecevit, and to form instead a united front of workers' organisations, including workers defence militias, to defeat both the fascist terror campaigns and the repression of the right wing Demirel government.

TURKISH SOLIDARITY

CAMPAIGN Organising meeting Sunday December 16 at 2pn Artists Room, Conway Hall Red Lion Square, London Open to all organisations in support of the campaign. tion between US imperialism and Iran was set up by the Ayatollah Khomeini as a ploy to shore up the crumbling power of his reactionary regime.

Unable to impose his dictatorship on the masses through the medium of the weakened armed forces, or with the authority and terror of the Pasderan ('Revolutionary Guards'), Khomeini has been forced to resort to mass mobilisation as a focus of anti-imperialist demands.

Clearly such a method is fraught with dangers-not the least of which of course is the threat of military intervention from the US.' Within Iran, the divisions between the ministers Khomeini's government reflect the total loss of direction shared by the religious leaders-a confusion highlighted by the sacking of Bani-Sadr, formerly one of Khomeini's closest advisers and until last week responsible for foreign affairs.

The anti-US and pro-Khomeini mobilisations have coincided, by a happy chance, with the referendum on the new constitution.

But again, the fragile nature of Khomeini's power was revealed by the response of the oppressed nations within the borders of Iran.

Violent conflicts broke out among the Baluchis and Turkmenis, while the polling reached only 10% in some areas.

The militant anti-imperialist posturing of the regime has been employed as a device to revive feelings of Iranian 'national unity'. , and this has been extended even to. Kurdistan.

The regime's loss of authority was shown nowhere more clearly than in Kurdistan.

A fortnight ago, Abdelrahman Ghassemlov, general secretary of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, made his triumphant entry into Mahabad, capital of Kurdistan.

The Kurdish nationalists now control all the towns in the province, except Sardacht.

The Pasdaran have been forced to give way to the Peshmerga (militia of the KDPI) and a truce has been in force for 3 weeks.

In these conditions greater is probably that the countries concerned have been cautious in order to avoid producing a sudden collapse in the dollar's value or more blocking moves by the US government.

Iran's responses to the US blocking move were equally dramatic and threatening to financial stability.

In the first place it has demanded that from now on no payments from the Coil companies to the Iran government should be made in US dollars; all must be in some other currency. • This itself will substantially cut demand for the dollar and the resulting fall in value could weli persuade other countries to do the same.

The extent of Iran's other move has still not become clear but it could turn out to be the most important of all this dramatic series of events.

Sensational

Finance Minister Abd Hassan Bani-Sadr reportedly announced that Iran was going to default on all its debts-alleged to be $15 billion-to the advanced capitalist countries.

This would be a sensational development since the financial leaders of imperialism have spent the last 25 years falling over backwards desperately trying to prevent a successful default.

Any agreed delay or rescheduling of payments is preferable government's delegation has been forced to talk seriously of "self-government' (but not, apparently 'autonomy'!) for the Kurds.

But the regime's retreat has been covered by the betrayals of the KDPI, who have responded to the threats of US imperialism by giving their support to Khomeini's appeals for national unity against the 'satanic superpower'.

The negotiations continue without the Fedayeen or the Maoist Komala, who were willing to participate but were rejected as objective' agents of US imperialism by Khomeini's delegation.

At the same time, the Fedayeen in Tehran have shifted their stance.

These 'Marxist-Leninists' have now joined the left Islamic Mujaheddin and the Stalinist Tudeh Party in giving 'critical support' to the guide of the revolution' in the name of the anti-imperialist struggle.

But the struggle against imperialism is not a struggle to be led by reactionary religious leaders such as K homeini.

On the contrary, the struggles against imperialism necessarily involve the struggle to overthrow Khomeini and replace his Islamic republic' with a workers and peasants government; committed to the revolutionary strategy of proletarian internationalism and fighting to expropriate capital and build socialism in Iran.

Scapegoat: the butcher Shah and frequently arranged.

A default, they fear, would set an example to the whole underdeveloped world now in debt to the imperialists (banks, governments and the IMF) to the tune of at least $250 billion.

The tremors of the default announcement were so severe that the Iranian Central Bank President countered Bani-Sadr's announcement and said that most debts would be repaid.

All the same a group of US banks declared $500 million overdue last week.

The result of that was another astonishing development. Chase Manhattan Bank seized through the courts in West Germany the 25% Iranian share of Krupps steel and engineering in West Germany.

This immediately raised the fury of the West German government which is made to seem incapable of guaranteeing the safety of foreign-owned assets in its own borders.

The conflict, therefore, is sharpening the existing tensions between the main imperialist countries.

No series of events has more severely rocked the imperialist financial system - since World War II.

It is almost certain that they are but the opening tremors before what could be a massive financial earthquake which would immeasurably sharpen the economic crisis.

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Wednesday December 1979