Socialist Press no. 180

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Page 2 remarks "Many critical have recently been diverted at the management of the economy and especially at the government. We do not reject these criticisms".

wores. uttere• almost exactly mother arrives y uprising workers ГОСТ Cottomuke are overniel those of a Stalinist bureaucrat response of were une Polish Prime Minister PotI Jaroszewicz a new wave of hostility stag- to the worsenio living standards resulting from the bureaucracy's management or tue cconomy. i ne criticisms are bound to sharpen next week when called Poland's 'parliament' Hoon NeXt economic plan, which envisages country's growth in any year since World Failures This will come after a year ot striking economic laure. i which rate arowth production has been well below planned. LoZ0 Workers' living standards are once again being squeezed very nare le Od y charges on Poland's gigantic $17 billion debt to capitalist banks.

not the only But Poland whose economy is in crisis.

tatest 5-year plan nas officiain Soviet unachievable, declared and avnocritica areck on econ- And announcements week •ovee economic crisis was a general- phenomenón the •annist ee countries Hungary was announced last week that this press it appears as if Patriotic Front As we leaders Mugabe and Nkomo have made their final osten- tatious display of intransi- and seem likely to gence, accept a Tory compromise military arrangement on bases in Zimbabwe as the basis for a cease-fire. been the continual has by those petty bour- leaders rather than ally part ot the weakness guerrilla fighters in the field or strength intrinsic ally imperial- STate DE SILISA ism which have brought about the pro-imperialist settlement.

Neither Nkomo nor Mugabe had serious mobilising the Zimbabwean in the struggle for a villailal socialist state. Capitalist Their from objective "democratic outset was Zimbabwe black capitalists and petty bour- geois could establish themselves alongside instead of the whites. There is no scope for such a reformist development Zimbabwe. danger militants, that Patriotic Front leaders and by their Stalinist 'front line state" allies, will and

COSL.

East Europe in economic crisis year's growth in the economy the war. 9% Inflation had instead of the planned 4% Workers' recistance wages rose by 8% instead of the planned 1% But that still meant a tall in wages fall is intended by the Du Couldy are planned to rise by 4.5% during 1980. But the vast number of price goods already rises of consumer announced and due force on January 1 will wipe out whole

THE

proposed wage increase betore it The of the Stalinist goods is the East German regime of Erich Honecker: . Last week IT announced price increases on all but a tew basic tood items day It chose aimosi the anniversary of the '1970 uprising in Poland. workers and intellec. rorist tuals hostile to the bureaucracy mark the anniversary intend to tor toe taro veat runnin your peaceful demonstrations outside Troops out of Zimbabwe! Herded into convenient places'' British troops, supervision they will become a sitting target TOr The slate should they attempt to pursue against imperialist oppression. Meanwhile the hefty imper- ialist figure of Lord Soames will by the Patriotic Front leaders through the press consolidation of a stable, capit- Nkomo Brezhner shipyards where the Gdansk workers were killed in the brutal repression which followed the 1970 protests. be only will not Warsaw bureaucrats look alarm at Inest protests. In East Berlin, in Budapest and even in moscow Dureducials will also be wondering when the uprising will occur Thev know that it cannot be long, since even they themselves have abandoned their bombastic boasting that their bureaucratic "socialist' economy-even with the immense advantage nationalised property relations- can meet the neeas of tre work.

ing class, produce rapid growth, would believe them. "planned" With the of economies increasingly the control of the planners, the bureaucracies increasingly stand exposed as obstacles to meeting working class of the accus wage cutters and debt-collectors for imperialism. alist state machinery British workers-whose nour leaders nave scarcabus endorsed the "peace" moves must demand the withdrawal of troops, tne winost sole lask ensure the smooth transition bourgeois rule orthodox repression exploitation the Zimbabwean workers and Dudsallls SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday December 19, 1979 Ayatollahs with no way forward united defensive action against tactical differences with whose political turmoil combined with a The such attacks, absolutely Im berkin ant is passing dwarfed by his total opposition within Iran forces of reaction which independent political the through stages of deepening Iranian working to chain revolutionary confusion as the forces and strengEl revolution in the bonds oi islan proletariat. inside and factions, both and capitalism The movement was aurected "left' nationalists of the outside the country, bring against dictatorial powers Iraqi are playing an their pressure to bear on the assumed by Khomeini under the increasie Dold Will new constitution of the Islamic development of the revolu- border raids-supposedly direc Republic ted against the bases of the Kur tionary crisis. 'Apparently on this basis, the actually regime staggers Fedayeen Khomeini's Hullaus. 'Marxist-Leninist' to the next, designed to make day seem to have supported on iro

LIC

tion among the dissident Arab increasingly dependent on mass first, before rapidly rising the oil-producing mobilisations which denounce to a stance oi oppos changuig US imperialism as they hail the province of Khuzestan. itionor all that it revealed of the the 'truths' of Islam. south-eastern Baluchi tribes hostility from workers to funda In uncil is sustained funda- the kevolution- ary Council Khomeini's mental aspects . OI mentally only by the absence of central government in the hope e rising itsel pro- there was nothing of restoring the Shah to power a clear principled revolutionary gressive about the Kurdistan alternative las at the placed ot Shariat- leadership nears its expiry, not el Ild. working class Madam coes nor one wok been forced treat : with against religious reac fan a duture of peaces struggles forces for the right of tion and bourgeois democracy' fighting freedom the oppressed Kurdish people to basis for socialism • oppression Walll building through the shown little willingness to enter Khomeini workers and peasallis govern real negotiations. ment in Iran That future can be won only capital of Khomeini is beseiged on al

ANO

bv the revolutionary struggles ol Carter and the agents of Azerbaijan, , Khomeini has faced sides. the proletariat for socialism- latest test to his insecure the US imperialism rooted the rich nave occl struggles thwarted for moment experience of the international powel. dis- economic The rising in Tabriz their bid to imposs bona newittory party that is played the same tragic political unded lutionary a by that is sanctions on Iran through the which prevails United Nations Consol basis rounder of direct throughout Iran the Trotsky's

DUL

At its head were the still military Programme and fight for the intervention Ayatollah followers of the of the Fourth and poses revolution reconstruction socialists within Iran with snarlal-Madan-a 'enlightened' Islamic bigot preparing Tast necessil Support grows for pre-conference would be restricted December also visited the Parity mission Discussions took place entirely to the three convening " at the oftices o the weekend to make at the OCI in Paris. organsations for the membership, final preparations Associate which would carry only a con international pre-conference The Parity Commission was sultative vote, was possible bu convened by the WSL, being between set jointly would require unannou held in Britain on December of the three convening Trotskyist Faction and 28-31. organisations. following prior Talks were held with leading would reguire in the United secretarial

SOHI

members from the GBL of Italy, agreement the ThaT of the Fourth International.

were all members The Commission has been other alu Elle Fourth Internationalist

A TOLSKVISES

Stool deva The rules of the Parity Com- Tendency. ly organising the cuben come mission, which were agreed on of these organisations ence to be called by the three rach 29 made will be sending representative: but

UCTODO

10 T grouping: public, discourage polemical dis to the pre-conference and will But it begins to look as if the cussion between member organ.

join the eleven may not Ul visalsa conterence tions already doing so appeared and Isalons open The discussion the WItH certainly that it will not take • Effort to agree

GBL

they share place for some time showed till many The purpose of the WSL visit common Dostons will the

WSL.

They have to the Commission was to app!!

political They urge that presented documents for the for membership of the Commis- statements made by the member organisations attices, should not be opposed The meeting with the LOB open conference with thorough signed marked the first real discussions with a recent discussion in line bein efforts flaut without organisations, policy made to reach pror agrcemen although between the Parity Commission : Ther nave close relationship with the GBL

WSL

representatives This is also to bi But the agreed that were auckiv told by the com done at a national level mission's permanent represen- It was also made clear that exchange or aocuments berweet WSL and the

FIT

would Ernesto Gonzalez and the three organisations would b the tatives, discus- and further comance. Lal us Was 11T S Cortelenc sions take place. not so simple. (There was no themselves. This seems among representative

LTT

in atten- us to relegate the importanc To of the Open Conterence. whic the They were informed that full in our view should go ahead a Leading members of Workers Socialist League on 15 membership of the Parity Com- soon as possible.

SOLIDARITY WITH

TURKISH WORKERS

It will contain a founding adonted the text of a resolutior The first meeting of the statement and news of campaign prepared for labour movement Solidarity Turkish organisations, and it was empha Heyes held Campaign was last would Sunday in London. A series of meetings, to be seek concrete support and affili held Birmingham, ations from a wide range of such Representatives from the sponsorship Leeds. bodies Socialist League, Workers Manchester borough Brighton, the Univer- , in thi Group and

ITOM

promment Igure. sity of Éast Angli and Thames labour movement. Bolshevik Faction mapped out a It was also Polytechnic, were planned.

programme of work for the next Combat fascists Embassy callee on Decem De Messages support were Association of Kurdish by the Workers Power and the sent by These meetings will stress Students. The meting begins at who were both unable to

IMG,

the need 2 pm. at Conway Hall. com ta TiNE attend due to pressure of other activities of Turkish fascists in Press eil carry a foote repost The issue of Socialist commitments. Britain, as well as explaining the It was agreed to establish a general

WOIK

on me urai soman came campaign bulletin, the first issue Solidarity Campaign. and a feature on the which will be published on The organising meeting political situation in Turkey.

January 20.

Councillors dodge fight against the Tories SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday December 19, 1979.

"A slump is inevit- this govern- able from ment's policies. The solution if your markets are falling away is to spend more money-like Roosevelt did in the 1930s." Thus spoke Alan Fisher at a rally and demonstration • Coventry

SUSAN CI

Labour Party and Coventry traite Counci last Saturday. The demonstration was called to coincide with the national of conterence Labour Councils convened Coventry Council by to organise a united opposition to the Tory cuts. World War 2 Fisher's open espousal of the capitalist New Deal is not only histerically inaccurate-the real driving force behind the temporary of the US omy was of course the prep- Second World War-it is also for extremely may be taken in. his militant credentials.

Perhaps the inadequacy tion" to current economic problems he went on to asked answer the much question ‹Where will the money ponie spending? from What would happen expand Fisher didn't tell us. then, But he hinted at the possib- Defence of revolt • lity a national He gave three answers: against the government. One, "More AHA's should cancel the £1,000 million paid annually to the have followed Lambeth and Southwark", he argued; 'if BEC; two, don't implement plans to compensate the lot had refused to imple.

Rhodesian landowners; ment the cuts then it would have made all the difference three, cut defence expendi- —it would have been worth ture. fighting for." As if clear commitment to tinkering with the capit- Strikes alist were not pathetic enough, he went on to call strongly for rate In the whole of his increases: speech there was not "Labour councils must word about direct action be honest and sav this.

SUCH

occidens the government prevents it strikes to stop the cuts. Labour Councillors ought to But, of course, this is not Fisher region en masse and go back to the electorate". bitterly opposed to action

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Six months (25 issues). One year (50 issues) ..: Send your cheque/P.O. Socialist Press, 31 Dartmouth Park- Hill, London NW5 1HR Two-faced maybe, but single-mindedly opposed to strikes and occupations - NUPE's Fisher of this kind. His preoccupation-like that of Callaghan -is to wait for a general election. can't 'What a pity we election have tomorrow", he moaned. He did, offer however, one ray of hope for those reeling under the Thatcher/ Joseph axe-by elections. "The by-elections will show what mandate the Tories have, and whẹn we a general election we get need to elect a government which will support the alter- native strategy proposed by the TUC". Luckily for those who do of not have the advantage living in Tory seats which might fall vacant at some five years time in the next £1.80 £3.60 £7.00 £13.00 £8.00 £15.00 £9.00 £17.00 to Fisher did have for general programme action for everyone. "The important most message of this rally is that this is a battle we've got to fight-demonstrations, lobbies, send a letter to your MP. have massive *We movement which must not lose its steam" his speech Fisher steered clear of any reference to direct action.

Lambeth He specifically referred to AHAs which oppose the cuts but did not see fit to Lambeth mention Lothian councils, which are at present at the forefront of the anti-cuts fight. Other speakers did bring out the importance committing Labour councils to a refusal to implement Cornerease rates. Dave Nellist, chairing the rally and speaking on behalf Coventry

SE CLP,

oi the struck the right note when "As far as the SE CLP is concerned the way to fight Tories is not through with discussion but defiance". But Nellist, too, steered any specific refer- clear of ence to action. strike of the mass speking only response from the working class which defeated the plans of the Heath govern- Abstract This attitude is, of course, not surprising when you know that Nellist is a of the Militant supporter tendency, generally correct abstract Page 3 of the problem cuts 1s budget shuffle which aims protect education and services-at the the social expense of other items of expenditure. Announcing the plans, council leader Arthur Waugh Senior said: "Coventry will become a dirty city. The streets wil not be swept so often and be encouraging infestation will Parks become untidy, a tree plant- programme will be red. uced and the freezing of posts at the Council House will lead to reduced services to the public." As we got to press, these revised budgets are due to full council put lo meeting on Tuesday. The Labour council's position is quite clear. They are trying to hide the cuts behind a smokescreen rhetoric about trying to save services the most emotional outcry.

the demonstration and lobby a Workers Social- ist League leaflet hit the nail on the head in its opening sentence: "Today's conference of Labore: councile has been called in prepare the way for accepting the Tory cuts.' Sooner than admit this outright, however Coun- cillor Waugh again sheltered behind vague rhetoric, positions on the need for claiming that: socialism socialagainst the Tories with and genuine " The plans are only pro- We have visional not ver absolutely no attempt what- decided implement the cuts, and will strongly resist the soever to expose the government through confusing and obstructive role played by the likes of the city's Labour MPs". Fisher. Such cynicism is John Hughes, Chairman of typical these of the Coventry Council and They have shown people. the Coventry NE CLP put time and again that they forward a militant stance: will not resist the Tories. All "You intinence their talk of doing so is a Cool the Tories by civilised tc detente" he said, "they can head off militant opposition be resisted physically" only an esse from Labour Party activists.

thẻ The only way open is to We need vanguard. united prepare direct action by the action around their fight- working class against the them don't let become cuts another Clay Cross, whose Labour councillors must betrayal is a stigma on the be told that those who ref- Labour Party" use to vote against cuts will Speaking of the confer- be driven out of their seats ence he said: by Labour wards. "If get the right The campaign against the decision today the battle is Tories has gained much on". success in Coventry Labour Hughes But Councillor Party. himself sees no alternative An excellent opportunity to an increase in the rates!

. the forthcoming 'Moderation' Trades Council conference against cuts and unempicy ment to establish a week after the In the based committee conference and demonstra- gates drawn from the trade aroued for this unions, Labour Parties, shop 101 ne the Council Labour Group stewards' and -and lost. which tenants associations, The conference itself was can be charged with the task a complete victory for what of organising a united fight euphemistically goes under for strike _action and occu- the 'moderation' pation to stop the cuts name or Not only did the 300- There must be support- odd delegates back ing strike action to Tories "within those workers who go into oppose the but action to protect jobs and agreed that it would be best services. to leave each council to do * Defy the Tories! this in its own way. * Coventry council must The logic of this position join Lethand Loto rat was clear for all to see, and cuts quickly found its expression increases Confront the in the policy subsequently baukers and moneylenders.

* Strike and occupy to adopted by the Coventry Labour Group. stop the cuts ! * Drive the Tories out ! . Their solution to lne

THE WORLD

In the old days, Lord Palmerston would have sent a gunboat. But today imperialism does not have enough gun- boats to contain the rebellions and uprisings it confronts at home and abroad: nor does it have sufficient reliable crews or enough safe ports from which to operate. On every side it is under seige from a workers' movement and colonial liberation struggles that are now rocking its puppet regimes and dictatorships, its outposts and pools of cheap materials and labour. Even the Shah,* bloodthirsty and apparently unshakeable, armed to the teeth and fabulously wealthy, now clings on to power only by his fingernails, resting on the complete absence of revolutionary leadership in Iranian working class on the one hand, and the support of 'human rights' Carter, the British Labour leaders, and the Kremlin and Peking Stalinists on the other.

In Latin America, the crisis of the Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua has brought the prospect of a new overturn of capitalism on the very doorstep of US imperialism: develop- ments have again been only held back by the complete a developed Marxist leadership, and absence of of the nearby Castro bureaucracy, conscious abstention which has restricted its "support" to the level of vague verbal proclamations. Somoza's plight is not unique; it is only one of the sharpest indications of the growing threat military juntas throughout the sub- to pro-imperialist continent. And in Southern Africa it has taken the combined efforts of bourgeois nationalism, Stalinism and reformism at the head of the African masses to give the racist Smith repeated regime the leeway to mount Zimbabwean liberation forces' guerrilla camps. Such leader- ship offers the heroic liberation fighters nothing more than an endless prospect of diplomatic manoeuvres aimed at getting Patriotic Front "leaders" Nkomo and Mugabe seats in a black bourgeois cabinet.

In each instance the weakness of imperialism is obvious to all; the militancy and strength of the oppressed masses is beyond doubt; but the key to victory-a Marxist leadership that has learned the lessons of the degeneration of the and Third Internationals, and Second the Transitional Programme - tenaciously for the represents the sole continuity of traditions of the Bolshevik revolution-is lacking.

The objective conditions for the world socialist revolu- tion-the stagnation of the productive forces in the epoch emergence of the working of imperialist decay, and the class as the central, pivotal force that must lead the revolu tionary overthrow of capitalism-are already rotten-ripe.

But the development of the subjective factor, the pre- paration of Trotskyist parties adequate to the huge task of the revolutionary struggle for power, /leading retarded by the disorientation and crisis that has developed within the post-war Trotskyist movement.

Our task is to resolve that crisis through the struggle to the Fourth International reconstruct conditions of today's class struggle must reaffirm not only in theory but in practice the programme and principles on which the Fourth International was founded in 1938. Now, perhaps more so than when the words were written, we can understand, and must act upon the opening declaration of the Transitional Programme that: "The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterised by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat."

POPULAR FRONTISM

The common factors of recession and the drive for rationalisation to boost profitability have driven both the imperialist leaders and the bonapartist regimes of the semi- colonial countries to resort simultaneously programmes-cuts in social services, in public spending and _ in taxes on big business; closures, rationalisation of produc- tion and imposition of new technology; cuts in manning levels and attacks on real wages.

Thus in both the colonial and the developed economies the working masses are driven forward simultaneously into struggle against a common assault. And with them come the * The text of this document was drafted before the fall of the Shah in Februarv, and it was decided not to add updating amendments the The events ory me down, wou since the massive 1968 upheavals in France and Czechoslovakia, th acute leadership crisis that grips the world's working class and Nicaragua in particular, the the imperialist control have been toppled by abwe the racist settler regime has been forced to concede ground in the face of a rising guerrilla war Yet in none of these emerged that is capable of leading the masses to the overthrow o and the Meanwhile in South East Asia the deformed workers the Vietnam/China war, nationalist nature of the ruling Stalinist bureaucracies.

sharply ational to spearhead the struggle for the overthrow of capitalis attacks on other socially oppressed layers that suffer the burdens of the capitalist crisis--the rural peasantry and the urban petty distributors, and faced with financial ruin. The imperialists do not have the option of picking off one section at a time threats to imperialist rule attacks and fights that which rather than the open political parties of the bourgeoisie.

revolutionary growing strength of the proletariat.

has been proletariat in its crisis of leadership.

which, in the of Stalinism has taken on a new dimension.

to austerity continually threatening terrounlutionary control of Stalinism

THE

Somoza's National Guard under fire in Managua IN 1979 more clearly chosen defenders of mass struggles: and in Zim.

instances has a revolutionary leadershi!

the nece establishment of a workers state WSL more the ontbrent of wars betwee March tates of Vietnam and Kampuchez, followe again the reactionary, by events in 1979. Yet though these developments in the class struggle point more han ever to the necessity for a conscious Trotskyist Inte upsurge of the proletariat.

bourgeoisie, squeezed by the banks, the monopolies and the the tion, as they tried to do in previous periods. Now resistance to embrace every continent and penetrate every section of the working class.

And this resistance is only temporarily deflected when the attacks are carried out by ever-pliable reformist politicians The forward movement of the working class inter- nationally has disrupted the balance of forces between imperialism and Stalihism on a world scale. Imperialism has been decisively weakened by, its economic and political crisis. These defeats and setbacks have compounded the The revolutionary potential of this enormous objective strengthening will be realised only by a reconstructed Fourth International that can overcome the massive subjective weakness of the world (carried out But the weakening of imperialism has not worked in any simple way to the advantage of the Stalinist bureau- cracies ruling in the USSR, China and the other deformed workers* states. Their economies, increasingly linked with crisis-ridden capitalism through the Stalinist strategy of 'peaceful coexistence" and deals to preserve socialism in have suffered a certain dislocation.

These increased the pressure driving individual national bureaucracies into disagreements and conflicts.

Such forces have significantly weakened the authority and ¡power of the Soviet bureaucracy in particular. But the crisis The ruling bureaucracies justly fear above all the revol- utionary movement of the masses. Such a movement, with its potential to overthrow imperialism and end the isolation of the workers' states, opening up the prospeet of an inter- nationally-planned socialist economy, throws into question the continued bureaucratic power and privileges of the Stalinist bureaucracy itself. (which feeds precisely off the cratisation" workers" and imperialist encirclement of the This forward movement of the working class has developed in every continent and every corner of the earth, decisively beyond the catastrophe-marks to pass and raise itself SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday December 19, 1979.

WANTED FOR

MURDER

- MUST,

IAN SMITH STED IN

MASSES

POWE

POWER MUST

BE VESTED IN

• MASSES

ZIMBABWE

- MIJGABE.

Pro-Patriotic Front demonstrators and for political revolution, they have helped further to expose th opportunist politics of many currents posing as Trotsky confusion and deep / divisions and the prolound theoretica which these currents had for years struggled to cover up. The resul has been a succession of splits and inadequate attempts at regroup It is with a view to countering such confusion and pointing to sity of the Marxist method of analysis that the Worker Socialist League is taking advantage of the holiday period to publis the bulk of in International Perspectives document drafted by than a your ago, and adopted by our conference la merits have been richty comf la our view its general dese For reasons of space an extended section on the international economic crisis has had to be omitted.

into a politically independent and genuinely revolutionary As in 1968, when the rise of workers" struggles throughout Europe found its reflection in the Czecho- slovakian events which posed the threat of political revolu- Kremlin leaders recognise that the world-wide offensive of the working class today is a direct threat to!

And their chosen servants in their bureaucratic interests.

the national Communist Parties also recoil in horror at the prospect of independent revolutionary action by the work.

ing class. They recognise in such action a threat to the Kremlin strategy of 'peaceful coexistence' on which their whole political perspective is based; they see it as a threat to their own bureaucratic apparatus and to their leading role within the working class of their own countries; and the very independence of the working class runs counter to their decades of training in the counter-revolutionary school of Stalinism. For some of these leaders, the many years of tireless adaptation to their own bourgeoisie of 'peaceful the name preserving in coexistence' through peaceful, 'Parliamentary Roads' to socialism) have now been rationalised in the so-called 'theory' of Eurocommunism.

"Eurocommunist" not, the Communist Parties, or along with the servile reformist bureaucracies, have come to play an important role in safeguarding imperialism from the angry resistance of the working class. Whether drawn into open Popular Front alliances with capitalist parties, or used to provide a 'left' cover for fake "democratisation'" moves by beleagured military juntas, or simply offering workers no more than empty left rhetoric and demoralising token gestures of opposition to "austerity" the Stalinists have come to the front line of the defence of imperialism at home and abroad.

In Latin America and elsewhere, crumbling bonapartist regimes have been forced to take tentative steps towards legalising Stalinist and reformist parties in order to exploit Carrillo's their class collaborationist positions.. In Spain, Communist Party has been almost the foremost defender of the Francoist regime of Suarez and Juan Carlos. Spain indeed is now cited widely by bourgeois leaders and bona.

partist juntas as a model of the technique of fake "demo The treachery of the Popular Front-which, by prosti- tuting workers' independence to bourgeois political group- ings can lead only to the consolidation of the power of the bourgeoisie, or in the worst instance, to a new Chile-style of almost the universal signature Stalinist, and reformist politics in this period of chronic

SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday December 19, 1979.

Iranian oil workers after the fall of the Shah capitalist crisis and advancing class struggle internationally.

In India, Iran, Iceland or Italy; in Spain, Portugal or Southern Africa, the unmistakeable lesson for the workers' movement is that there must be a decisive break from all such political blocs with the bourgeoisie. A turn must be made to the construction of revolutionary Trotskyist parties which are capable of analysing and fighting every manoeuvre of the Stalinist bureaucracy.

The struggle for the building of such a party is at the same time the struggle for programme.

Recent events in many countries have demonstrated beyond question that it is neither indomitable strength on behalf of the exploiting capitalist class, nor any timidity or passivity among the masses that holds back the overthrow of capitalism. It is rather the absence of a revolutionary leadership equipped with a programme which can embrace and mobilise the evident strength and combativity of the masses and turn the bluntness of spontaneous struggle into the sharp cutting edge of successful revolutjonary strategy and tactics. The essence of this task in all countries is the correct application of the method of the Transitional Programme.

oats ly the combination of political aüd economic demands, and democratic demands along with transitional demands which lead workers to challenge the very nature of capitalist power. It is essential to develop the ability to use the programme flexibly in response to the constant ebb and flow of the mass struggle itself, while maintaining the fündamental the direction of the complete thrust n political independence of the working class from all forms of bureaucratic and petty bourgeois misleadership. The relative emphasis accorded to different demands will vary as the objective situation and the consciousness of the masses change in the course of the struggle. But at all stages we continue to link the appropriate demands of today with the strategic objective of the seizure of power by the working class, the destruction of the machinery of the capitalist state, and the establishment of the dictator- ship of the proletariat. In this context it is necessary to emphasise in many of the struggles now developing the necessity for the construc- tion of organs and institutions which represent the unity and the independence of the working class and its need to ally with and give a lead to other oppressed classes in the fight to overthrow capitalist exploitation.

Whether in the wages struggle in Britain, the mass upsurges of black workers in South Africa, or the revolu- tion against the Shah in Iran, the programme of the revolu- tionary party must at key stages of development bring right to the forefront the need to build factory and strike committees and councils (Soviets) of representatives of workers and_other oppressed social classes as a necessary basis both for defending the gains which have been made and for advancing the struggle towards new goals.

As Bolsheviks, we see these organs as representing the of the working class, and its unity and independence historic role in leading behind it the other oppressed classes.

But this does not mean that workers councils are sufficient in and of themselves to advance the spontaneous struggles of the working class. The crucial role in the development of such councils must be played by the intervention of the revolutionary party itself. We argue that all representative organisations of the oppressed masses must be allowed to participate in these soviet-type bodies, and to fight within them for the adoption of their programme. Representatives of the bourgeoisie must be excluded.

Given such political leadership from a developing Trotskyist party we see such bodies as the future organs of workers' power, At some stage in the struggle it will be the task of revolutionaries to call for all power to devolve to these bodies. At the present stage, however, it is crucial not to outpace the developing mass movement. Workers have first to be shown in practice that the soviet-type bodies can play a role in furthering their struggles. They must at the outset therefore be firmly›linked to all the demands-economic and political-which can at the present stage of development of the mass struggle arouse sections of the working class to take action.

Thus the future instruments of workers' power unite and organise strikes for begin bodies to lite as specific demands or to fight for the implementation of the release of political democratic demands such as prisoners or free elections to a Constituent Assembly.

The renewed crisis of capitalism, added to its long-term economic failures, especially in the semi-colonial countries, have meant that its survival depends more and more on the erosion of hard-won democratic freedoms in the imperialist countries and their virtually complete suppression in most parts of the semi-colonial world.

These facts mean that revolutionaries are obliged to give democratic demands (freedom of expression and representative elections, release of political organisation, prisoners, etc.) substantial prominence in their programme.

Such demands rèspond to the objective needs of the mass and are therefore often capable of strongly movement mobilising the masses. prevent these demands becoming 'a democratic To noose fastened round the neck of the working class by the agents of the bourgeoisie', revolutionaries must fight for these demands by linking them at all times with a pro- gramme of democratic and transitional demands. At the same time of course revolutionaries fight for democratic demands by revolutionary methods-through mobilisations of the working class, the construction of independent committed to fight for these demands. organisations Neither the programme nor the method of fighting for it must in any way be subordinated in the interest of forming alliances with sections of the bourgeoisie and its agents.

THE POLITICAL CRISIS OF IMPERIALISM

In the wake of the profound defeats inflicted on US by. the successful liberation struggles imperialism Vietnam and Cambodia and the struggle against imperialist- backed forces in Angola, the main feature of the recent period remains the weakness of imperialist control over Puppet regimes-military underdeveloped nations. the dictatorships or uneasy bonapartist regimes awkwardly straddled across the labour bureaucracy and the repressive increasingly military apparatus-have found themselves isolated from a hostile mass movement, at the head of false impressions and schemas which, contrary to the peddied by the Pabloite movement throughout the 1960s, has been the organised working class.

"CATIN AMERICA

The re-emergence of strikes and trade union organi- sation in Chile expresses almost more clearly than anything else the independent forward movement of the working class in Latin America in defiance of the most savage dictatorial measures and abysmal, treacherous leadership.

Chile was the only Latin America dictatorship established on the basis of an outright military defeat of the working class. It held out for Pinochet's US imperialist sponsors and the capitalist class internationally a ray of hope that barbaric repression could-if necessary-restore stability and east their economic difficulties. But a newly-reemerging workers' movement-driven into struggle by the same material forces that have mobilised workers in their millions in country after country-has given the lie to this illusion.

There can be no long term stability for capitalism, which must always rest upon the open or disguised repression and exploitation of the propertyless proletariat.

Alongside the rise of struggle in Chile, the recent Angolan workers celebrate the defeat of imperialist-backed forces Page 5 period has seen military juntas all over Latin America quail in the face of working class militancy: Nicaragua, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico and Peru (where the economic crisis has reached the point that 55% of the country's export earnings are pledged to debt repayments to the IMF and imperialist banks) all show this. The huge votes achieved in Peru by the electoral bloc headed by USFI and OCI Trotskyists' in the General Election, combined with the combativity of the Peruvian workers' movement and the IMF's demands for further austerity of the combined measures all indicate the acuteness political and economic crisis facing the imperialists.

Throughout Latin America the necessity to fight all forms of Popular Frontism, and to combine democratic transitional demands pointing the way demands with beyond reforms to the necessity for revolution is the over- taken up in the building of Trotskyist riding task to be parties.

AFRICA

In Africa too the combined struggles for national liberation and militant actions by the. working class have emerged in both the more advanced and the more economically backward though the generally countries, lower level of industrialisation has meant that in more instances the peasantry is playing a central role. But the working class remains the most powerful force challenging the rule of imperialist-backed regimes, and breaking asunder the fragile political compromises on which their rule is based. Tunisia a massive general strike movement sparked off by wage demands has resulted in the arrest of hundreds of supposedly "reliable" trade union leaders, a number of whom have now received punitive jail sentences.

, In Ghana, too, the military regime has been shaken by major strikes following on the political removal of former junta chief Acheampong. But the most profound upheavals of all have emerged in South Africa, the most advanced industrialised capitalist country on the continent: The working class there has grown numerically while denied the most basic of bourgeois ' democratic rights. This poses problems both of organisation and of political leadership. During the Soweto events i working class mobilisations went far beyond the political limits of the traditional nationalist, Stalinist and petty bourgeois-led found themselves organisations-but up • against a complete absence of political leadership and pers- pective to advance the struggle against South African capitalism. The essential question in South Africa is the construc tion of a leadership which can demonstrate to the prole tariat in practice that mass democratic demands are only achievable in connection with the struggle for transitional demands. designed to unleash the independent strength of the working class in the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism. The black petty bourgeoisie can only play a progressive role in struggle under the leadership of the working class. If allowed to take the leadership of the movement, the petty bourgeoisie will seek merely to exploit the power and militancy of the working class as a battering ram to force from the capitalist dictatorship a number of token demands-such as extension of home ownership, entre- preneurial and trading rights, votes in the 'homelands', eto- which benefit the petty bourgeois but fall miles short of answering the material exploitation faced by the millions- /continued...

Page 6

ALL POWER TO THE

PATRIOTIC

RON

Zimbabwe struggle exploited by Stalinists for diplomatic purposes strong black African proletariat.

All notions that a "national liberation struggle" rather than a social revolution is on the agenda in South Africa today must weaken the struggle for revolutionary leader- ship and. lead inevitably to a Stalinist-type "two-stage" concept of the struggle that could leave it decapitated at a crucial point. The implicit or explicit popular frontism of the existing nationalist and petty bourgeois groupings must be fought. One way of doing this is to challenge its reflection in the various solidarity movements in the imperialist countries, where the independent action of the working class. to enforce blacking and other solidarity action is subordinated to "pressure" campaigns on capitalist multi- banks, and nationals, "anti- governments to aid the apartheid" struggle, in isolation from the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism itself in South Africa.

But if South Africa is a clear case where a proletarian mobilisation is essential to carry forward the struggle, else- where in Africa the struggle against imperialism has taker the form of the struggle against national oppression and puppet regimes. Such are the protracted wars now taking place in the Sahara-where the Saharoui people are fighting an unholy alliance of French imperialists and Moroccan and Mauritanian armies-and Chad, where guerrillas continue to fight the French puppet regime. The refusal of the Stalinist bureaucracies to offer any material support to these struggles is further testimony-if any were needed-to the counter-revolutionary strategy of Stalinism in Africa.

So, too, is the role played by Soviet arms and Cuban troops in supporting the reactionary Derg military dictator- ship in Ethiopia, with their bloody attempts to defeat the Eritrean liberation struggle. While they wish to consolidate a diplomatic and military foothold Ethiopia, Stalinists want no part or any independent revolution are struggle-and/recognise in the Eritrean war of liberation a force which could spur on militant resistance not only to the Derg within Ethiopia itself, but also against national oppression throughout the Middle* East and the African continent as a whole. The crucial force in the development of the revolution in Eritrea has been and remains the EPLF.

Owing no allegiance to the Kremlin or the Peking Stalinists (or indeed to any external force) the EPLF nonetheless seems to hold some positions-particularly on the two-stage theory of revolution-that echo those of Stalinism. Yet it cannot be stated categorically at this stage whether these signs are the traces of political immaturity and confușion.

or the hall- mark of a bureaucratic leadership that will become exposed as the major obstacle to socialist revolution in Eritrea. The EPLF has displayed a resilience and strength which go well beyond the examples of any previous liberation movement, and clearly it is still passing through a process of political development. Its formal positions on the 'National Demo- cratic Revolution' have been increasingly contradicted in practice in the liberated areas. Under attack from the Stalinist it has struggled nevertheless to bureaucracies. preserve a principled position towards the Soviet Union.

While not accepting the theory of permanent revolution and the Trotskyist analysis of Stalinism, the EPLF has so far resisted the blandishments of Maoism. The EPLF thus represents a political formation whose progress we should follow with the greatest attention and seek to develop at every step, and win to Trotskyism.

Yet even while claiming to support the Eritrean struggle the "Trotskyists' of the USFI have continued to peddle the idea that Castro's troops in Africa are fulfilling an "internationalist" role independently of Kremlin policy, and' stressed the 'socialist' of nationalisation measures undertaken by the butcher Mengistu regime. The task of PHOTO: Carlos Augusto (IPL)

ZECC -

ZIMBABWE EMERGENCY

MITTSE

COMPAICN O

building revolutionary parties in both Ethiopia and Eritrea cannot be carried out with such a perspective, which condones counter-revolutionary role of Cuban tne Stalinism. But though the Stalinists' role in Eritrea is so nakedly exposed that the empiricists of the USFI have trouble ignoring it, it is no less pernicious in the behind-the-scenes moves to hold back the Zimbabwe liberation struggle- where a military overthrow of the Smith regime would spell danger to the whole fragile balance of forces on which bourgeois nationalist leaders throughout the continuent are precariously balanced. At stake for imperialism is its control the huge mineral wealth and industrial development it holds in Southern Africa. If it were lost, the economic crisis itself would immeasurably worsen, and the stimulus to world revolutionary strüggles would shake the stability of the imperiatist nations themselves.

It is in this area therefore that the most devious, back.

door wheeling and dealing is in progress. The full weight of the reformist and Stalinist apparatus has been set to work in the hopes of achieving what the open spokesmen of the capitalist class internationally could not hope to achieve -the construction of a black bourgeeis government in Zimbabwe without the military defeat of the Smith regime.

Behind the scenes talks have been combined with con- sabotage and under equipment of the . Stalinist scious guerrilla forces in a desperate bid to stem the revolutionary tide that gained such momentum with the defeat of the South African/CIA puppet forces in Angola. Inside Angola itself Cuban forces remain at hand to control the restive working class movement should it oppose the policies of President Neto. Neto's line of developing a friendly working relationship with multinational firms, imperialist govern- ments and the puppet Mobutu regime is clearly one worked out with the consent of the Stalinist bureaucracies-who have simultaneously taken steps to draw Angola into the Comecon set-up. They would hate above all to see their military/diplomatic bridgehead turned into a centre from which confrontation with imperialism was organised- prompting full-scale struggles throughout Southern Africa.

"Peaceful Coexistence" remains the basic watchword for the Kremlin and Havana Stalinists and their chosen allies.

This is why in Mozambique also, Stalinist "advisors" have helped ensure total impotence of the armed forces in the face of repeated armed assaults by Smith's racist troops.

The task of the Trotskyist movement in the Zimbabwe struggle is to expose the collaboration and sabotage being carried out by all the so-called leaders of the liberation struggle, and point to the need for a Marxist Party based on a programme of democratic and transitional demands to combine the guerrilla warfare in the countryside with the mobilisation of the black Zimabawean working class in the towns in the struggle for socialism.

ASIA

In Asia, as in the remainder of the underdeveloped economies, capitalist regimes have found themselves under renewed pressure from a workers' movement held back only by a total absence of revolutionary leadership, and the counter-revolutionary, Popular Frontist policies of the Stalinists. The crisis of proletarian leadership has taken perhaps - its sharpest form in India. While the reformist and openly capitalist politicians of the Janata from stagger crippling catastrophe to the next, ex-dictator Gandhi has "champion" of the been able to step forward as the oppressed masses. Meanwhile in West Bengal the workers are occupying factories and the peasants seizing land even as the non-aligned Communist Party (Marxist) struggles to hold together its local Popular Front and urges capitalists to invest profitably in this particular Indian state. In Sri SOCIALIȘȚ PRESS, Wednesday December 19, 1979.

Counter-revolutionary alliance in the Horn of Africa: Castro The Portuguese events shook the entire European bourgeoisie Lanka, the bourgeois regime rests even more openly than the Janata • on repression and on emergency legislation which gives the lie to the facade of 'democracy' In Pakistan that facade fell with ex-President Bhutto and was replaced by a stop-gap device of military rule based on nothing more than the imprisonment of Bhutto (the only politician in Pakistan with any, mass base of support) and willingness to use armed force against the masses. But - the weakness of the regime is openly demonstrated by its failure to implement the death sentence on Bhutto for fear of unleashing the full fury of his supporters and thé govern- ment's many other enemies.

Pravda's opposition to the anti-Shah demonstrators and strikes in Iran, and Brezhnev's notorious birthday greetings to the butcher Shah himself spell out beyond doubt the commitment of the Stalinists to stemming the revolu- tionary process in this key, strategic, oil state. Again the prospect of such a profound revolutionary upheaval on the very borders of the USSR itself is too terrifying for the Kremlin. On top of this the Stalinists recognise the blow that it would strike against world imperialism thus

SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday December 19, 1979.

h Ethiopian Mengistu

REMOS

isrupting the entire balance of forces internationally.

hile joining the efforts by international capital and social emocracy to shore up the Shah, therefore, the Stalinists ave not hesitated to üse their particular secret weapon- he Stalinist Tudeh Party inside Iran itself. This Party has ow played the Popular Frontist card-calling for the stablishment of a cross-class government of national unity, esigned to defuse the independent struggle of the workers' ovement. In this situation the necessity for a Trotskyist pro: amme for the arming and self-organisation of the working through militias, factory committees and soviets, cass mbined with democratic and transitional demands, is the sential element needed to combat the political ligious forces seeking to divert from the struggle for the cialist revolution.

HE MIDDLE EAST

Like Iran, the Middle East offers little comfort to ther Stalinist leaders or imperialists. ontinues of course to cultivate Sadat as its main stooge in Egypt's military budget dispossessed Palestinian people.

avoid such an outright collision with imperialism, and conferences. against Zionism would struggles against their own military and dictatorial regimes.

Kremlin has increasingly the liberation struggle. situation must be the construction in every Arab country programme of demands to mobilise the exploited masses in the struggle for the overthrow of the Zionist state, and for socialist revolutions throughout the Arab countries.

Like the Palestinian liberation struggle has profound implications in the struggle

TOO:

against imperialism in recent developments in Iran have shown, the emergence of centrifugal struggles by Kurds in Iran, Turkey and Iraq are unavoidable whenever the class struggle advances in those countries. The formation of an independent Kurdish state in the area represents a major threat to the bourgeoisie in.

these countries. the right of the Kurdish people to self determination and the formation of an independent Kurdish state, with the struggle for the independence of the Kurdish masses from bourgeois leaders like Barzani and Talabani. The future of the Kurdish masses lies in the fight not for a supposedly "democratic" bourgeois state of Kurdistan, but for the establishment of a united socialist states of the Middle East.

struggle is a crucial factor. The re-emergence of major anti-imperialist demonstrations and armed struggle in the occupied six counties. of Ireland, and the growing senti- ment within the British working class against the complicity of the Labour leaders in the military repression of the Irish people, national class struggle."

has remained a constant factor in the struggle against Franco's heirs and their Stalinist and reformist parties. The Basque struggle, by its sheer persistence, has highlighted the unreformed nature of the Francoist repressive apparatus, the CP and PSOE to conceal the reality behind the fraudu- lent new suggesting that Spain has been "democratised" and the confusion on this by many 'left" groups, the continued struggle of the working class against speed-ups, and wage cuts has already brought one abortive attempt at a military organised tascist forces.

THE AFTERMATH OF PORTUGAL

While the defeats of Vietnam, Cambodia and Angola have shaken the entire colonial world and shaped the recent period, the collapse of dictatorships in Portugal, Greece and Spain have inflicted major setbacks on European capitalism.

Since these events the bourgeoisie has had to carefully assess its political methods in imposing austerity plans, rationalisation and speed-up.

The sheer scale and scope of the Portuguese events and following back to the capitalists agonising memories of the French 1968 General Strike. Portuguese workers, once apparently firmly under the fascist jackboot, were suddenly breaking down all kinds of cherished barriers-occupying factories, forming their own workplace committees, marching in their hundreds of thousands, publishing capitalist bank accounts; The US forming joint committées with students and even with rank and file soldiers, and jointly patrolling the streets in armed the Arab world. And Sadat-driven by the lure of cutting and thus easing the massive economic problems which threaten to arouse the exploited masses against his regime-continues to be drawn closer into this arrangement. But these moves have brought renewed pressure on the bourgeois heads of the other Arab states to act in support of the historic liberation struggle of the Since there is no way that the Palestinian national question can be resolved without the destruction of the of Armed Forces racist settler state of Israel, and since the bourgeois and petty bourgeois Arab nationalist regimes are determined to this pressure must be headed off in other ways--the establish- ment of endless "rejectionist" committees, fronts, funds The Arab leaders also recognise that with the long-standing interconnection between the Pales- tinian struggle and the Arab masses, an all-out mobilisation also encourage revolutionary The Stalinists recognise this too. So while paying lip and

AFM

service to the Palestinian struggle and verbally opposing the Zionist state which Soviet abstention helped to create, the lent its rhetoric, assistance to the no "rejectionist"' leaders' efforts to contain the struggle-and alternative in particular to the latest realignment between the Syrian and Iraqi dictatorships. As in Africa, the so-called 'Front- line" states are to be found in reality in the rearguard of Under these conditions the PLO strategy of appealing solely to the United Nations and the Arab heads of state offers nothing to the Palestinian masses. The key to the and within Israel of Trotskyist parties, equipped with a for all experience. struggle, the Kurdish national the Middle East. As the Trotskyists must combine uncompromising defence of In Eurape, too, the explosive role of the national Prime Minister Suarez. diehard CP the are partial reflections of the sharpening inter- In Spain, too, the national struggle by Basque workers treacherous assistants in the totally despite the efforts of "constitution". In fact, despite the propaganda • split, with Communist sackings coup and a mass mobilisation of the still.

prepare in the wings. the April 1974 overthrow of fascism brought defend. The Europe the Page 7 squads to protect against fascists. The bourgeoisie was terrified.- They needed a political answer to this mass movement of the working class.

And the key in Portugal and elsewhere rested with the bureaucratic leaders of the workers' movement-the newly- constructed Socialist Party and the (Moscow-line) CP of Alvaro: Cunhal, which proved itself no less frightened of revolution than its "Eurocommunist" stable-mates.

The Popular Front roadblock to the Portuguese revolution was first pieced together in the form of a variety Movement governments in which Stalinists and centrists played prominent roles. It has continued to this day with the period of Socialist Party coalition government and the tacit CP support to the restoration of open bourgeois rule.

As a result, the mass movement that once horrified the capitalists of Europe appears to have been restrained- though not eliminated-and a "democratic" edifice created to decorate the continued power of the army which has formed the bedrock of capitalist rule under both fascism "revolutionary" government-a telling confirmation of the Leninist theory of the state Portugal also demonstrates that, no matter how left'its Communist Party offers workers! any independent road. And, far from being pressured towards revolutionary positions by a mounting mass movement (as the Pabloites still fondly believe) the Stalinists and left reformists move-as we have always 'insisted-time and again into more and more desperate attempts to hold back the working class. It is in the wake of the Portuguese events that Santiago Carrillo and Enrico Berlinguer have hastily put the finishing touches to their ramshackle "theory" of Eurocommunism-hoping once and to prevent any repetition of the Portuguese Both looking for cover: PLO leader Arafat with Spanish These policies have found practical expression in the for support Italy's reactionary Christian Democratic government, and Carrillo's willing backing for wage-cutting Moncloa Pact. In France, the classic Stalinist policy of the Popular Front took the form of the Union of the Left, while the CP is now responding to the militant demands of its membership not by fighting the Giscard austerity measures but by blocking strikes and actions designed to protect jobs and wages.

Such treacherous policies have provoked a real, if confused response from among the mass membership of the Stalinist parties. Splits and crises have taken place in the French, Spanish and Italian CPs, and in Britain, too, the much smaller and more docile CP has formation of the pro-Moscow New the Party. Such splits and feuds have been distinguished in each case by the bankruptcy and confusion of both sides 'in the argument, and the necessity for a sharp intervention by Trotskyists on the Transitional Programme if any development towards revolutionary politics is to emerge. Meanwhile whole sections of workers and youth are turning away from the Stalinist Parties in the search for a way forward. In Italy, whole groups of hospital workers, organised in a union confederation largely autonomous of Stalinist control, recently brought the hospital system to a grinding halt in pursuit of their pay demands-and forced a further governmental crisis for the Christian Democrats.

Meanwhile, as reformists and Stalinists conspire to hold back the working class, in France, in Italy and in Spain, and -above all-in Turkey, fascist groupings are beginning to The experience of Germany and Spain showed clearly that the only defence against fascism is the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system that fascism arises to whole effort of the mass parties of the working class is to prevent such a mobilisation. But they have not fully succeeded in this task: The power of the masses arises. again and again. This is why throughout bourgeoisie has sought to stave off governmental crises through Popular Front arrangements.

Even Holland, Belgium, Denmark and Iceland have witnessed attempts made to construct governments which /continued...

Page 8 Kremlin leaders - using opportunities in Africa to preserve 'peaceful coexistence' with imperialism combine the brutality of the bourgeois parties themselves the bureaucratic with the more insidious treachery of leaders of the workers' movement.

And West Germany, the supposed pinnacle of class compromise, has found itself beset by a series of major strikes, culminating in the November 1978 steel strike-the first in 50 years. These struggles flow from the plans for German and speed-up forced on the rationalisation capitalists by the impact of the international crisis.

Nor has Britain escaped the Europe-wide move towards Popular Front forms of rute-as our British Perspectives document points out. The CPGB was not of course a direct partner in the Popular Frontist formation of the Lib-Lab coalition-which rested tacitly on the counter-revolutionary perspectives and policies of the Stalinists acting through their bureaucratic positions in the trade union movement- but the arrangement proved crucial in the preservation and extension of wage controls in the face of a militant working class. The attempt-fostered by the Stalinists-to extend the method of the Popular Frort into industry itself, with the "workers' joint management/union creation OT.. participation" schemes as in British Leyland has failed to convince the working class-and the Leyland scheme itself , is under notice of union withdrawal.

The vast scale and increasingly political development of the proletarian movement throughout Europe cannot be ignored. Huge sections of workers have not only taken militant strike action despite the massive collaboration and blatant manoeuvres of the labour bureaucrats; they have also entered into the process of directly challenging their existing reformist and Stalinist leaders, although often in a The formation of the confused and misguided way. "autonomous unions' in Italy is once clear example of this.

In Spain, large groups of workers have again and again struck for higher wages despite the collaboration of union bureaucrats in the Moncloa Pact, while in West Germany the pressure of the economic crisis has been great enough to cause major strikes, despite all the suppressive apparatus of At the same time, expulsions and other labour laws. enough methods have not been anti-democratic safeguard the reformist leaders against the opposition of These growing signs of independence by the militants. working class pose sharply again and again the question of the fight for transitional demands to develop forms of and production, transport workers' control over distribution and every aspect of capitalist society.

The renewed onslaught on pay and jobs by the Carter administration points yet again to the essential unity of the twin capitalist parties that contend for workers! votes in The construction of a Labour Party based on US elections. the US trade union movement is a demand that in the crisis remains of paramount educational and developing It offers workers an avenue for agitational importance. struggle against both capitalist parties and against the union bureaucracy who bolster the existing political set-up. The 100 million abstentions in the last elections despite hugely what a large expensive advertising campaigns shows USA has seen proportion of the working class in the through the capitalist shroud of propaganda and recognised that neither of the two main parties has anything to offer.

Indeed the growing scale of the world imperialist crisis and the sharpening antagonisms that it fosters are the motive forces stripping away the facade of credibility from the treacherous labour bureaucracies in every country of the world. As imperialism grasps desperately for support in preserving the existing balance of forces, so also its faithtul servants who have posed as "progressive" nationalists in the underdeveloped, and colonial countries are increasingly exposed for what they are in the eyes of their former supporters. But for such exposure to lead to the recessary conclusion-the need to construct revolutionary parties in a reconstructed Fourth country as part of every International-the political contradictions of the period must be consciously drawn out by the intervention of Trotskyist forces. For such an intervention it is necessary to uphold and develop the understanding of the counter- revolutionary role of Stalinism and social democracy in the post-war period.

STALINIST EXPANSIONISM IN AFRICA?

The puppet regimes of imperialism crumbling, as the oppressed masses move forward. In this situation, the Kremlin Stalinists have been forced to move dramatically beyond their everyday methods of counter- revolution: the liberation movements, so as to exercise political control over their development. On this basis, the Stalinists can bring maximum, pressure to bear to nationalist movements to make compromise deals with But this well-worn method of preserving the imperialism. balance of world forces in relation to imperialism has come US After the defeat of the against new problems. imperialists in Vietnam, the weakness of imperialism- Kremlin leaders in an all-has placed the evident to embarrassing dilemma, since imperialist forces were clearly in no position to withstand the advancing struggles in Angola, Mozambique and elsewhere for any prolonged period. But this period for Stalinism coincided with a new turn in its own internal crisis. As the split between the Soviet and Chinese bureaucracies grew deeper and more bitter, the Kremlin leaders were also faced with the increasingly open willingness of the leaders of the mass European CPs to collaborate with NATO and their own bourgeoisies even in the event of war with the USSR, and with a growing confrontation within the Warsaw Pact with Rumania and other sections of the Stalinist national bureaucracies.

These divisions dangerously weakened the ability of bureaucracy to defend itself against any Kremlin the offensive by imperialism against the nationalised property relations of the Soviet Union. To restore the balance, the Brezhnev clique was forced to look for new allies and bases of support. It is a combination of all these factors that accounts for the entirely new level of Soviet involvement in. Africa.

The tool for these operations has been the armed forces of puppet Stalinist Fidel Castro (now completely absorbed into the Stalinist economic and military orbit). Cuban troops, combined with Soviet and East German advisors and judicious supplies of arms and material aid, have been secure Stalinist bridgeheads in the wake imperialist defeats in Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia.

This intervention has had a contradictory character. In preserve their own bureaucratic interests; the Kremlin Stalinists have actually assisted in the victory of SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday December 19, 1979.

In this way, the Soviet bureaucrats sought both to forestall any deeper radicalisation of the masses that might result from a more prolonged struggle, and alsó to exercise leadership of the newly- the immediate control over independent states or new regimes.

the Stalinist opposition In *each instance . tO independent struggles of the masses has been demonstrated vividly-most blatantly of all in the Eritrean war.

involvement must Our position on such military underline these dangers, while seeking to strengthen the fight of those forces now in struggle against imperialism. We demand for the sending of do not ourselves raise the do demand that a Soviet or Cuban troops-though we maximum of arms, finance and material aid is provided to every anti-imperialist sturggle by the workers' states. On the other hand where the leadership of liberation struggles themselves issue an appeal for Cuban or Soviet troops to assist them, we should support such a demand, while at the for every possible same time spelling out the necessity link-up between the liberation forces and the troops concerned to ensure the expropriation of landlords and capitalists in the liberated areas and the creation of soviets and committees of workers and peasants, which must strive for the involvement of rank and file soldiers.

Only such an approach offers any independent road for the masses in the struggle against their own petty bourgeois leadership and against the reactionary hold of the Stalinist bureaucracy. But for the imperialists the harsh fact still remains that, while their own power in Africa is on the wane and they face severe problems in Latin America and Asia, the Soviet bureaucracy is ensconcing itself in key strategic ports and outposts, and consolidating as best it can economic and military links with the ruling petty bourgeois nationalist regimes. Posed with this problem in Africa, the question of a renewed "cold war" not. to unleash whether or confrontation with the Stalinist states, or even a military Cüban detachments in Angola and confrontation with elsewhere, has raised its head.

Indeed at the time of the Zaire events during 1978 and the Stalinist show-trials of pro-Western "dissidents", the sabre-rattling by Carter and other leading US spokesmen demonstrated the real content of the fraudulent "human rights" crusade designed to lay the basis for an offensive against the degenerated and deformed workers' states.

But the Cold War tactic in itself-seeking to isolate the workers states and on this basis also repress the revolutionary and left wing organisations within the main capitalist countries-is of dubious value to the imperialists in a period where the forward movement of the working class makes witch-hunting of communists an uncertain proposition. Moreover when the Stalinists are playing such a crucial role in holding back struggles in so many parts of the world, accommodation between Angola and Zaire and (as the shows) are plainly hostile to any upsurge of revolutionary struggle that might jeopardise the global balance of class forces, an all-out confrontation with them could only threaten further problems for imperialism.

The military intervention in Zaire also spotlighted the massive problems faced by the imperialists in any challenge to Statinism-particularly in the wake of the Vietnam defeat. The US imperialists themselves had to sit on their hands, unable to send troops, and were forced-to do no more than supply cash and transport planes. The job thus fell to the second string imperialist powers, France and Belgium. These states themselves could not move until the Stalinist leaders of Cuba and the Soviet Union made it clear they would under no circumstances support or defend the rebel forces. But even here, with the mobilisation of only a few hundred troops to intervene in Africa, thousands of French and Belgian workers took to the streets in protest.

And while the operation was on the class struggle in France erupted into strikes on wages at naval dockyards and munitions plants, and riot police called in to break up illegal mass meetings. postca Carter - 'human rights' a cover for war moves?

SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday December 19, 1979.

If all this happened with only a few soldiers committed to a brutal, but short and small-scale military intervention, what chance have the imperialist nations got of carrying task of directly controlling events throughout the vast African continent by military force?

In any event Carter's vague threats soon drew forth apologetic gestures by the Stalinist bureaucracies. Castro disavowed any intention of interfering in Zaire, offering to help police the border. And top Cuban bureaucrat Carlos "Cuba does not aid subversion, but on the contrary admitted, in an affort of stabilisation or struggle against Despite their deep mistrust of the Stalinists, imperialist leaders are impelled increasingly by their own the Stalinists to police the world against social revolution. In recent months the Stalinists have shown off their counter revoluționary credentials in Iran, in Nicaragua and in the Middle East.

Angola the imperialists have scented the "spheres of influence" arrangement. They have therefore from the kind of economic and political measures that forced Castro's Cuba completely into the willing embrace of the Kremlin bureaucracy. They have instead agreed with Neto on terms under which they will continue the multi-million dollar oil operation in Cabinda and the Benguela railway. And Neto-himself reluctant to see any extension of the Angolan struggles into Southern PHOTO: Andrew Wiard (Report) Africa-has willingly collaborated in the moves to block guerrilla struggles in Zaire Zimbabwe and Namibia.

Under these conditions the dark threats bandied about earlier in the year by the Carter administration and in particular by top aide Brzezinski, have been largely set aside in a renewed effort at tactics of cláss collaboration to retain These tactics are summed up in the reactionary manoeuvres by the British Labour traitors.

Callaghan was one of the first to criticise Carter for heavy- handed "Christopher Columbus" tactics on Africa. Now * imperialist errand-boy Owen and other Labour leaders are mainstay of hopes transition to black bourgeois rule in Zimbabwe, while the Stalinists use their material and political influence with the guerrilla forces to give the imperialist powers the leeway for While the contradictions of the economic and political capitalist class to contemplate the necessity for a war to recapture the lost markets and once exploited masses of the degenerated workers' states, this same crisis also produces the obstacles to such a strategy-a forward moving working class challenging capitalist rule in every continent on the 'globe, acute economic constraints on the major capitalist powers, and a profound political crisis penetrating the very heart of the imperialist nations themselves.

Before the imperialist ruling classes can contemplate a military confrontation with the degenerated and deformed workers' states they need to remove that obstacle, In their fight for survival they can count on the aid of international Stalinism. The political reality in the world today is the unity, albeit uneasy, of imperialism and Stalinism against If the imperialists succeed in crushing a significant section of the working. class in the advanced capitalist countries it will be in no small measure the responsibility of the Stalinists who will have then laid the basis for a military assault by imperialism on the gains of 1917.

Our principled call for the defence of the nationalised property relations of the workers' states against attack by the revolutionary overthrow.of capitalism and political revolution in the Stalinist states therefore gives a radicalisation of the world's proletarian and peasant masses And in doing so it raises to the forefront the task of constructing Trotskyist parties not only in the capitalist degenerated workers' states themselves.

FOR POLITICAL REVOLUTION!

The forward movement of the working class that has characterised the period in the capitalist states is also a deformed workers' states of material factor within the Eastern Europe, Asia and Cuba. The growing demands of the working class are the ever-present factor underlying the splits and divisions between the different national Stálinist bureaucracies. Rumanian leader Ceaucescu, fearing a repetition or extension of the recent mass strike by Rumanian miners, has allocated an increased portion of the state budget to increase working class living standards-hoping in this way to buy off the working class with concessions while of the political power in the hands retaining the bureaucracy. But this course has driven him into conflict with the Kremlin's demands for an immediate increase in defence spending from all the Warsaw Pact countries.

Fears of repetition of the Hungarian and Czechosiovak events has therefore also persuaded Ceaucescu to refuse to place Rumanian troops at the complete disposal of the Warsaw Pact whose chiefs of staff are • 0t bureaucratically deformed Rumanian economy to find the resources for the expansion required to placate the working class, Ceaucescu has set out to further his opportunist links with the capitalist nations: 'Socialism in one country' and the failure of Comecon to attempt any overall planning of the economies of the workers' states save in the interests of bureaucracy on to the path of increasing reliance on capitalist loans and technology. In so doing it renders the Rumanian economy increasingly liable to disruption as a result of the capitalist economic crisis. Similar pressures can be seen at work in the Yugoslav economy. Tito's flirtation with 'Eurocommunism' is little more than a reflection of the Yugoslav bureaucracy's increasing dependence upon investment from the capitalist states, and its search for a Given the interdependence of the Stalinist bureaucracy and imperialism in the face of the world working class the penetration of imperialist investment into the non-capitalist economies is the major form which imperialist aggression against the gains of 1917 Ceaucescu - fears anger of masses The emergence of differences between Rumania and spending will intensify the pressures on other national based Stalinist bureaucracies to place as a priority the placating of their own working class, and to resist efforts by the Kremlin leaders to buttress the of territorial rivalries between the workers' states-both in Europe and between demonstrates the utterly reactionary, nationalist basis on which each Stalinist leadership attempts to. resolve its problems. Such splits and conflicts offer imperialism its represented by the nationalised property relations in those bureaucracy and the working class which lies at the root of these upheavals offer the prospect of developing in the direction of political revolution for the overthrow of the parasitic Stalinist ruling caste and the establishment of a government based on workers' councils.

The Soviet bureaucracy itself, as shown by the recent spate of show trials and punitive sentences handed out to intellectual "dissidents", isolated supporters of imperialism, other opponents, feels the kind of unease which suggests that they are concerned not so much to punish the individuals concerned as to intimidate forces likely to move into opposition to the bureaucracy- the working class. Such nervousness must also underly the bureaucratic crackdown in East Germany against intellectual "dissident" Bahro and the Czech Charter: 77" grouping, which has had the audacity to demand the implementation of rights written into the Czech constitution.

The Stalinist leaders will be acutely aware that isolated, often confused protests by intellectuals were the first symptoms of the emergence of the mass struggles now But more than this is involved in the struggle for workers' states. The bureaucracy knows that one crack in the armour that is its repressive apparatus will be enough to alongside the 'dissidents' for democratic rights, aiming always to develop that struggle away from any notion of a Page 9 The 'human rights' crusade by Carter does not extend to serious support for dissidents within the Stalinist states.

Carter knows well, the effects of a genuine struggle for democratic rights against the Stalinists. He is not yet ready to organise open parties of restoration.

A sense of this internal weakness is also a factor in the moves by the bureaucracy to seek new diplomatic and military bases of support in the Middle East and Africa In particular the economic and military alliances formed in Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia seem to be attempts to repeat the experiences of the Cuban revolution, in which the use of such measures to bolster up Castro's nationalist government led to complete assimilation of the Castroites the orbit of Stalinism, providing a "low extension of the defence of the USSR through establishment of a military outpost on the very doorstep of Such a strategy-in total opposition to and in mortal fear of the revolutionary mobilisation of the independent strength of the world proletariat-is possible only as a result of the weakness of world imperialism at a time of acute crisis for the Stalinist leaders themselves.

The bureaucracy which clearly feels most menaced by the mass movement of the working class, and most driven to measures designed to bring rapid improvements in living Acting from a far more isolated and weak economic Soviet bureaucracy, position than the resources they need from any of the degenerated workers' states, the Chinese Stalinists have set out to build their own 'socialism in one country' with the aid of huge loans and deals with imperialism, and to buttress themselves against the Kremlin bureaucracy through the most brazen bureau- cratic and military manoeuvres. In its bid to win Western respectability and justify its appeals for credit, the Peking regime has offered its services as an ally against the Soviet Union. And, trying to establish itself as a rival force to the Kremlin on a world scale, Peking has set out to establish its own network of opportunist links with selected regimes- dictators. Such a strategy is simply an alternative version of the opportunism of the Kremlin leaders themselves.

The scale of the borrowing and of purchases, and the opening of doors to direct capitalist investment of up to 49% in new Chinese industrial projects, are reflections of the unresolved economic backwardness inherited after the 1949 revolution and preserved through the policy of "socialism in one country". Now this massive commitment to world capitalism carries real dangers to the nationalised property relations of the Chinese workers' state itself.

The bureaucracy has clearly remained split on the need for such extreme measures. And this division, combined with the growing militancy and awareness of the working led to the emergence in late 1978 of the wall poster campaigns which now the bureaucracy is attempting The range and vigour of the wall posters now appearing capital-and surrounded by crowds of readers- suggests that the bureaucracy is so split that its rigid control is slipping fast. Ten years after the 'Prague Spring', the crisis.

of Chinese Stalinism is producing a "thaw" in this much vaster nation. The Central Committee has already made desperate attempts to close ranks. But there can be no Soviet tanks coming to the rescue of Chinese Stalinism.

For this reason all factions of the bureaucracy will tend to be drawn towards the protection of the army chiefs. If the masses are to find a way forward, the struggle for the workers' councils as the focus of organised power independent of the bureaucracy is crucial.

In each of thé workers' states, therefore, the reflection of the capitalist crisis and the movement of the masses raises the necessity for the construction of Trotskyist parties to lead the political overthrow of the Stalinist bureaucracy. The vitriolic attacks on "Trotskyism" carried recently in the Cuban press, and the anxious efforts of the Stalinist regimes to repress intellectual opponents who might turn in the direction of Trotksy's analysis and programme for the political revolution, all indicate that this point is not lost on the bureaucracy itself.

RECONSTRUCT THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL!

becoming a material factor in prolonging the life of The Workers Socialist League restates its determination to fight for a return to the basic principles, the programme and the method of the Trotskyist Programme of 1938 as the basis for discussions and practical work designed to Only in this way can Trotskyists come to play their historic role in the vanguard of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, the armed overthrow of the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracies, and the establishment of a worid federation of socialist states as the only answer to the threat of fascism and barbarism raised by capitalism in its death agohy.

CLOSE AND DISTANT

ENCOUNTERS WITH

Page 10 Sumerian Civilisation is a small but interesting exhib- ition showing until January Cultural 11 the Iraqi Centre in London. Although there are only exhibits, this exhibition few result of its infor- (partly as mative card oque. convers a fol about civilisation which marked one of the most gigantic sees TorWard ever 'DY mankind, Sumerian civilisation qualitative leap in man's struggle against nature ano so towards that development of the produc- tive torces which must torm the material basis advance towards a classless society.

civilisation which •uniel lal asted trom adout Due to AUt BC was one of the civilisations of the so-called Bronze Age there arose a series ot societies in ine fertile area (now between the Rivers Tigris and also in the Nile cuentates valley and in the north of India.

Steps forward These: societies time in human history, on wide- spread settled agriculture, the ot a sur. plus or tood and the growin ol large scale urban society developed Sumerian society and made use of new techniques of metallurgy well .The irrigation, the sailing ship and writing. were massive stes forward for humanity, though framework of an authoritarine they took within priest-ridden society which became an obstacle eventually productive forces. Within Sumerian society the exchance

COTTHOOFLIS

developed to a very advanced degree. motic lary probably even the rudiments of capitalist production began.

But the reactionary teatures the society. "slavery and religious oppression-prevented free" labour force not tied to the means of production. Material conditions Sumerian civilisation, there- fore. did not provide all of the material conditions which would have permitted capitalism

LIFC

dominant Worles mode production. 3000 Another years of for govances ane retreats humanity were to be required before that occurred. unprecedented But material • advances Sumerian civilisation was clearly seen in cavdoie -can we stark, staring faces of the _the religious statues but plans.. pictorial reconstructions and photographs of archings •highly complex But exhibits of the Ittne Sumerian appear_to be staring at us a little myster- acos te cancer millennia there is another much vaster exhibition now which many of the London in exhibits could scarcely be more familiar and immediate. Art and design "The Thirties" at the Hay- ward Gallery is an exhibition of the art and design of the decade and the country in which I was the 1930s. The exhibits include many of household everyady objects, books, comics, maga zines and advertisements of my own childhood. Familiar ¡ hat is one reature or tne exhibition which makes . it visually arresting. particularly CuT vou con unave ornae born in the Thirties to been striking feeling of find familiarity many desian few stand out as designs when are so mue a snore part of our surroundings that forgotten look at we have Ench as conscious cicaliols.

4m examne or inece is ene London Underground '30 which was designed in the

OUT

way seems today. That how- -particular one, ever, is a somewhat exception- a stance or sonant. ward-tooking piece of design serviceable for decades. meone was that fette bios 1930s few aesigns nao been and how many of the objects seemed relatively dated. AnO many of them were, even much dess i varicular the glassware and ceramies and some of the architectural extrav- Lutyens' Edwin for Liverpool Cathedral desion be the second largest church in Christendom It is the industrial designs of the exhibition which personally found its most inter- esting feature. is partly because decade in the 1930s was the

THE PAST

HENRY PHILLIPS reviews exhibitions on Sumerian civilisation and 'THE THIRTIES' is showing at the Hayward Gallery, South Bank, London SE1 until January 13, admission £1.20 (60p on Mondays) Pointer to politics in the 1930s - Chamberlain returns from Munich 1938 will be affected by individual which industria desion as aseo.

arate speciality was born.

taste. This is even more true of and the large collection of paintings The exhibition's fen people be Come says la I nere in 1930 there was not a single who tal to tino some interest professional industrial designer india caser page sion the sculp in Britain while by covers painting, WOrKING end of the decade there were ture. architecture, onotogdouly 300. industrial design, print,

DOOK

This fact is reflected in the and design backward and and advertising tensions between Come Clal forward looking designs. leisure. Some of the early designs socialist will be puzzled by the But same time TV for such new products as sets Cane los make exotion them look like something The '30s , after all was the different encasing decade of deep capitalist crisis totally by in housing which talk. ana siump, or mass unempioy back to a previous age. fascism and the This tendency. to disguise approach of war. is in sharp contrast technology tanes co one on exhibits to such the exhibition but in the form jet of and •distant shadowy very Campbell's Valcolm which he broke devoted to photography. "Bluentro'. In the world speed record. would be to ask exhibition this Durable Dontical history But there are no more than a In both cases design is sub- few hints, some of which appear ordinated to the technical needs dooul . yvay and the result is a design whic which the art and design of the more honest and more period and durable. political factors. But another problem with the most original and forward to reflect a number seem looking designs however, many term trends which con- deal

TIALIPO

even German during the '30s-the develop- designers от ine 1920s, is the over enthusiastic of the new some the new increasing role of the capitalis state as materials wich became avalt- •a patron able át that time. design and the emergence especially products, •inese incuse monaco des chromium plate, bent ply- tics, electrica ano electronics cood.

wood and various new building But it is less successful at the way in which reflecting materials. economically and politically the '30s was a decade of crisis, materials regression and barbarism.

seemed futuristic at the time look merely vulgar (for instance the Nash bathroom and mucn or the turniturer. But many of these questions SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday December 19, 1979.

The Silver Bullet -functional design

YOU SHOULD

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dictions of the anarchic capital.

workers by With the force the wholesale ist system thousand the taking to and destruction of the Crosure Tory streets to oppose productive slammed acey TorCe. only a socialist acon policies there is plainly no world scale offers a of militancy in the way forward organised working class. To Yet the existing trade union tive leadership oeder bureaucrats and Labour leaders beyond -whether right or "left'-have to advance workers offer militancy, protest trade union thost politics and illusions that capit prepared fight workers defence jobs, living stan- aliem can be aholished throud dards, social services and demo parliament. The Workers Socialist These can only be defended Trotskyist move- League policies which start ment fighting day in and day through build such a principled from the independent interest out to of the working class, ' the working clas! which international class, Britain WE invite and everything TO call to lose from attempts to restore

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SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday December 19, 1979

INDUSTRIAL NEWS

92% vote for Derby work-in! neitner union has taken the at Etwall Workers national Hospital in Derby to implement it last week began a work-in to Fisher Alan the closure of prevent counterposed the 97-bed hospital. work-ins to 130 action-though A ballot of strike Tne union and non-union staff experience of the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital had earlier produced staggering 92% vote to stage work-in in London proved work-in as a last ditch that the threat of support- ing strikes is decisive to the "means to fight the closure.

defence of threatened hos are Such occupations officially the policy of both pitals. Etwall

NUPE

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COHSE.

PHOTO: Laurie Sparham, IFL

O'FISHALL

COMPETITION

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Send to: Socialist Press, 31 Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR work-in is significant there- in taking up the fight intiative fore for this tactic outside the

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London area, leader where hospital occu- has actually

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pation has taken place. of policy the call Support the facing Health cuts and closures must rally Etwall support in the OI that and demand struggle their unions: the call *Officially give for occupation of all threat- ened hospitals and facilities.

Hospital nationwide supporting strike action the struggles back cuts. *Take the initiative forming local labour move- ment councils of action to such defend extend and create the struggles basis for bringing down the Tories. *Fight for the removal of reactionary leadership that initiated the health cuts. of a aming se fle of helicy *Campaign expenditure to protect services against inflation, as elected com mittees of workers' manage- ment. Don't miss your copy! O'Fishall's Year

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REMEMBER THE EMBARASSMENT LAST TIME?

GENTLEMEN: A TOAST TO

MODERATION AND COOPERATION!

Robinson: need for action plan Leyland Dufty The British Executive needs Longbridge joint shop stew- This ards have called a national union's labour movement delegate of majority. in defence conference Derek Robinson on Sunday

AUEW

from January 13. committees and The West Midlands No. 20 movement Confed has already supported •COUtTY this call must conference trying to it must : not be supported but another allowed CP jamboree of standing rally Birmingham AUEW Executive! Town Hall, held on the Monday Robinson for support, ailti conference must forward. official action demand all-out throughout Leyland in defence resolutions doing this. of Robinson. Credentials mass from Steve must organise lobby of the AUEW Executive Lane, Halesowen, West Midland

B63 3RN.

It must also campaign ballot of

AUEW

members to LCDTU Conference called Such is the scale of the Tole ment, when, mass movement against the "Kill the Bill", government that Tory Com- Stalinist-run Liaison the treachery leaders, mittee for the Defence of felt Unions has Trade Act onto obliged to call a conterence Like the TUC, in London on January 26. If the Communist Party have Heath government: conference their own will certain tr exclusively abstract protest against the Tory cemand down Thatcher amount This. would cynical ie-run of the LCDTU's leadership within makes it likely

LCDTU

urges Press to from Their shop stewards workers vocalls Facade of the L Dit ence can be independent of the Stalinists Credentials ence are Wanstead Park Essex.

WILL THERE BE MANY OF THE LADS THERE? AND

WHAT ABOUT WOMEN- OR SHOULD I BRING THE WIFE?

NEVER MI

IS A CHANC

MEET SOME

Page 11 Shop floor destroys ballots the and shop 10% of the unusual An branches to call for it floor revolt by the 140- 250) and a two-thirds member- strong TGWU Support has been coming in Biddles, ship at branches, district Nuneaton, last week other lalou in defeating bodies all over the succeeded management attempts But the Communist Party is to force in a wage offer limit the struggle

NUS

conference by a secret ballot. members actually opposea After an initial 15% offe condemning had been thrown out by a mass meeting management January 13 must not just be 50p-but offered a further it must point In Branches must insisted that this had to be put forward put to a ballot. convenor The and stewards can ne majority of shop , 25 Hawne caved in to this demand and agreed to recommend acceptalice. floor But angry shop in succeeded workers meeting forcing a mass the despite convenors arguments, voted unanimously against partici- the ballot-the pating in were des- forms for which troyed there and then-and 20, to reject by 80 votes to the new pay offer. under the Heath govern- WiTN Storal

NUJ

it provided a 'left' diversion aladed the industrial Relations •stood rejects books the LulL vigorously opposed any demand for action to bring down the and oppose any concrete offer bring its record of betrayal, the present vacuum of Provincial journalists working have voted three to one to • that. Tine a 14.5% offer conference will . attract throw out layers or militant workers seek Newspaper from the ing a way forward against the Society. The vote came in the same week that the Law Lords Fight for action of Lord decision Denning and declared secondary With this in view Socialist used blacking year's readers get the conference Workers should be under no union Dancha illusions that this represents the committees 'fairness' of the legal system.

By fight alongside members of the widt une now the Lords are inviting Prior to time dies streets include clear changes in his down Tories. anti-union legislation. militant way For the Provincial journalists can be however, the decision highlights exposed for the sham it is, an which the state way the best elements at the confe directiv intervened in last years offered policy strike. . The only way to take on Society and the Newspaper for the confer- force a victory on the 30% wage available from claim this year is through all-out Road, Ilford, strike action with blacking as a prime means of support. WELL WiVE MANAD

NEW NATO WAR

SOCIALIST

PRESS

THREAT

In a week when 20,000 Soviet 1,000 troops and tanks were withdrawn from East Germany by Kremlin leaders, imperialist chiefs decided last Wednesday to press ahead with an aggres- sive £2,000 million missiles plan that dramatically increases the danger nuclear war. Cutting through the wafer thin voicel seasona. Dour- "peace on geols claptrap about earth" the anti-Soviet

NATO

alliance 600 US- controlled Cruise and Pershing missiles on sites in Western Europe. Prime targets S The missiles, with a range of 1,500 diC Europe to have thé capacity strike the Soviet Union. But their immediate

111UDL

effect will •i colise ve to maes form the "host" countries into targets for Soviet retalia- tion preventative

SLIIKES

the event of war. workers states And the missiles are since At the forefront of the fight controlled not by the European secure European acceptance zovernment our alrectv ov tne of this potentially suicidal plan US Carter has been the fanatically anti- reality much offering not Soviet Thatcher "detence • DuT Taller new device for forcing European ana in particular Derence secre- tary Pym. into front But another eager sponsor of the scene nas been west war against deformed Tine "socialist" Premier Lerman Helmut Schmidt Belgium's "socialist" Foreign Minister also ment simone. played a leading role in winning conditional Belgian backing for the missiles Only in Holland was coalition government-that Agt-forced intO the which plan, involved the stationing of 48 missues on butch soul. Encouraged by this NATO determined striking power of in crease the US imperialism, Carter went on last Wednesday $9 billion, increase in arms spending. The extra money is neces- Рут sary, . Carter argued. in order to "more flexible

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All donațions should be sent to: Socialist Press Monthly Fund 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR rubished Dy folrose Lta for the workers socialst League, 31 Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR Printed by Anvil Printers (TU), London. Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office.

6 USAF

strategic and tactical military posture" Central to his new plans is a rapid deployment strike force, requiring a new fleet of "mari- time ships". carrying three each brigades of marines. "We understand" must "that not asserted Carter every instance of the firm application or power is a potental vietnam.

"The consensus for natienal international strength and involvement, although survived that divisive and tragic war".

Once again, therefore, the imperialists contemplating massive military adventures, in which hundreds The US war budget now totals a massive sI57 billion. growing importance &0O- attached to tech spending at a crisis ot acute economic noneares Tane desperate lengths which capitalism is prepared to go to defend its rule such actions are not only a threat to the deformed workers' states: they run directly counter to ne meres or me workang class in every country of the world. Yet the imperialist threa can only be defeated through the revolutionary mobilisation of the class struggit lor tne overtnrow ol

WORKERS SOCIALIST

LEAGUE

Public meeting "Support the Steel pay strike! Fight the redundancies" Room 2 YMCA Brandon St., Motherwell Monday 14 January 7.00 p.m. Carter ordering new warships capitalism. political answer such a anathema the Kremlin Stalinists, whose privileged bureaucratic power (like that of fellows in the deformed Then states) rests on unicas y coexistence" with beaten capitalism on a world scale.

Threat to privileges The Stalinist leaders recog- the nise revolutionary struggles of the a threat to their own parasitic positions. Instead. they seek merelv to use tame protest movements diplomatic means in a bid and Dressurise imperialst leaders imperialist into abandoning policies. This is why the today against the war threat and for the defence of the workers' • stale. requires construction The capable o country Trotskyist parties leading the overtnow or cabarsm ane la necessary revolution pontica Stalinist bureau- Nov. 1979

INTERNATIONAL

DISCUSSION

BULLETIN

60р postage ine leine 31 Dartmouth Park tom: Wsu, Hill, London NW5 1HR. Ireland: a new year of struggle Within one week of Parli The talks will be doomed to failure (and are being boycottec ament nodding through by the Official Unionists) bit six monthly renewal of the . assist alumnes about turn Will Prevention of Terrorism Act Thathe int demand Amatica 18 people had been picked demand Britain collections and help for repub in a major licans in the north are cut off.

police sweep. Splits among the Unionists Although police are claiming increase that the have netted one man Kilfedder, from North their the oticia who was expelled from SuSoCCI Tuite-the round up is clearly an Unionists three annual propaganda drive. years ago, is to form a progre time last year This Metro- sive unionist party which will politan Police mounted Onera seek to ignore national the tion Santa-flooding London's question as best it can and make West End with uniformed and proposals for social reform.

BIAL

attempt to heighten the political If the year ends with the surrounding Christ- British Army on the defensive there is little for the working Among arrested class in the six counties to look Patrick Prendiville, aged . 33, forward to in 1980 industrial with the Hibernian Weekly Revien doned duces but demons arrest renowne nose : remain ever locked brought rational Probes of Coumalish, in guerrillaism. A spokesman for the Provos Council told the : Sunday will two others lor a press: writ of habeas corpus to secure have their release terms of a •code to think But the Home Secretary had long-term struggle already signed an order agreeing speculate on long it will how to their being held for five extra LaKe charge, Workers Socialist lays ana the court-which is nominally the sure visional A against es osed to that noone Provisional IkA against the held without evidence-grante British Army. adjournment to lne bonce

H-BLOLK

prepare evidence! Nine of those held have now been released

LONG

KESH

The round up came ten days after two NUS delegates had been arrested under the PTA as Northern Ireland to the student annual conference The Act unashamedly of harassing used those known to have republican views; yet this year's 'debate' in the House of Commons brought EBritains fewer protests than ever from Labour MPs. Concentruțior Dul such propaganda pudil A Camp. displays do little to demonstrate that British government winning its war with Irish repub.

have lost 180 1he Provos Icans. killed in last people years and 1,000 of their number Reduced confidence Have been ance Those inside and outside the The blowing up of four ranks of the Provisionals who soldiers in County Tyrone and killed, Have the killing of a fifth in South jailed are victims of British Armagh brought the number of imperialism in Ireland British killed troops But the Provisionals are no drovisional cAlas vear to sx substitute for a party of the -three times the total figure for working class which makes no 1978. Curess on The security forces in the Loyalism and seeks to unite the North are at sixes and sevens. A working around a revolu- stunning blows this tionary programme. year have reduce condence Such a party-which only amongst the Loyalist population in the North. Trotskyists are capable of build- They are beginning to doubt ing-would link a struggle in the North to an unremitting struggle whether war against a Provisional move.

danst une cannone state in the ment which is now operating South where Haughey's guerrilla nationalist ..warfare t reputation is a thin at maximun cover for his orv politics SDLP attempts to present a *British troops out of left face to Northern Catholics Ireland now! came to anomous eno this DIANE Ne A week with the new leader John *Release political prisoners!

Hume agreeing to talks with the *For Irish

WUINCIS

British government. repuonc.