[Two weeks: into the national steel strike, BSC…]

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Two weeks: into the national steel strike, BSC management put the boot into the trade unions with the confirmation of 11,300 sackings at the two giant South Wales plants • of Llanwern and Port Talbot..

But instead of pressing forward with its original call for an all-Wales General Strike from January 21, and fighting to force the British TUC to call parallel action, the Welsh TUC has restricted itself to calling a "day of action" on January 28 and "all-out action" from March 10.

Blank refusal

This climbdown followed the blank refusal of Len Murray and British TUC leaders to call out trade unionists in all-out struggle against the Toiy government, whose attacks are now hitting every section of the working class.

But the repcated talk during the last week of a possible general strike arising from the steel struggle indicates that the issue is still very much alive.

ISTC leader Bill Sirs, forced to admit thai the steel unions are engaged in à political fight with the Tory government, warned of a possible "holocaust". A general strike, nimaid, wouki be a "yery fright? ahead with its closure plans.

And right wing railwaymen's leader Sidney Weighell told the Financial Times that:

"he was coming under great pressure from his members to fight the associated threat to railway jobs, particularly in Sid Weighell South Wales, where about 3,000 were at risk"

«But trade union action con-. fined to South Wales would not be enough to stop BSC's plans," he added. It's a 1926 situation"

It is not unusual for even right wing trade union leaders on occasion to call and direct massive strike action in pursuit of a pay demand.

Battle on jobs

What frightens Weighell, Sirs and the TUC bureaucracy is that this pay battle threatens to grow into a national battle on jobs, producing a full-scale showdown with the Tories which union officials will find it hard to wriggle out of or to control.

The central role of BSC's sackings plan in fuelling steelworkers? •militancy has been shown clearly by the militant response of workers at the doomed Corby and Shotton plants to the strike cal.

• They see the national strike a means of waging a battle against closure and striking a major blow at the hated Tory With other sections of workers now pressuring their leaders to take action alongside the steelworkers in defence of jobs, now is the time to fight throughout the labour movement for a General Strike with the clear objective not simply of delaying the BSC closures, but of bringing down this reactionary Tory government.

Weighell admits the NUR members • are clamouring for action: a ballot of South Wales miners also showed overwhelming support for a strike. Other railwaymen and .. miners would undoubtedly follow their lead.

Offer a lead

Were more generalised action to spread, it would offer a lead to "countless thousands of workers in other industries currently under Tory attack:

*100,000 BL: carworkers, whose insulting 5%-with-strings pay offer clearly stems from the same Tory policies as BSC's closure plan;

*2 million public service workers, whose pay rise this year is pegged far below the cost of living by Tory cash limits, and who face cuts, closures and speed-up on every side;

.-. *Civil servants, who face a steady erosion of manning levels and an endless tide of cuts;

*Workers in every industrial sector whose wages are under attack from Tory-fuelled inflation, and whose unions are once more under attack from Tory legislation;

*Women workers, facing the worst impact of the cuts, the worst unemployment, and Tory attacks on their rights at work and on the right to abortion;

* Immigrant workeIs, confronted by new Tory racist legislation;

*The unemployed-condemned by Tory recessionary policies to a lifetime on the scrapheap or at best to ajob at rock-bottom wages.

Not There is not a worker in Britain that does not have good cause to rally behind a determined General Strike to bring down this government.

But when Weighell talks of 1926 he is not wrong. The 1926 General Strike was not defeated; it was sold out by union leaders exactly like Weighell, who, terrified by the power of the action they had called, sent their members back to work after only nine days with nothing gained, and left the miners to be starved back to work six months later.

1980 finds the working class with an equally spineless, reactionary leadership which has no intention of bringing down the Tories-if it can be avoided.

Inadequate

The Welsh TUC leaders, in calling for a General Strike, centred on using the strike to press for three, completely inadequate demands:

*A two year delay closures;

*the replacement BSC management;

*an inquiry into the running of BSC.

Even in the unlikely event these demands being met, it would merely give BSC two years to prepare the ground better to force through the closures-and leave the Tory government in office to press forward its barrage of attacks on the working class.

When we call for a General Strike we are not calling for a repeat of the 1926 betrayal; nor are we calling for a protest contence whatever in the rad leaders to call or to lead such a strike.

We call on workers throughout the trade union movement to move resolutions to the TUC demanding that a General Strike be called in solidarity with the steelworkers' jobs fight, pledging support for such a strike, and insisting that it demand the removal of the Tory Councils of action • At the same time such resolutions should call for the setting up in each area of councils of action, to draw delegates from every local labour movement body-union branches, stewards committees, tenants associa tions, Labour Parties and other political organisations-to lead and extend general strike action independently of the TUC leaders.

Such councils of action would need to oversee. mass picketing, the distribution of necessary supplies, the provision of essential services and the 1 10 defence attaÇKs • Dy: scaps anu stato 1a+r рив otato * This fight to develop the steel strike into a general strike must be combined with renewed struggle in the unions and the Labour Party for the ousting of the. right-wing Callaghan-Healey leadership that paved the way for the Tories and now stands opposed to their removal by working class action:

What is needed is not a repetition of the treacherous Wilson and Callaghan governments; but a workers' government, prepared to implement socialist policies in the interests of the working class.

Such a government is at present unachievable without a concerted political struggle to expose the real role of the Labour leaders 'left' and right in the eyes of the mass of the working class.

This is why in the unions, the Labour Party and the councils of action, should they emerge, we will continue to focus workers' attention on the Labóur lefts' that posture as opponents of Callaghan, but lift not a finger in practical struggle.

The coming struggles will prove to important and new layers: of workers that 'left wing' reformism cannot defend the interests of the working class. Only a revolutionary leadership based on the Trotskyist programme can do that.

*No sell-out on steel jobs!

*Demand the TUC call General Strike!

*Build councils of action!

*Bring down: the Tory *Kick out Callaghan-Healey: demand Labour carry out socialist policies.

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- INTERNATION IS ITALY MOVING CLOSER TO ICELAND?

Indian Stalinists attack Gandhi The question may sound as improbable politically as it is geographically.

But it was to Reykjavik and not to the apparently more likely parallels of Paris or Madrid that Italian politicians were looking last week.

What happened in Iceland was that the equivalent. of Enrico. Berlinguer ¡General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party.) was asked to form a government.

The Icelandic Berlinguer is Svavar Gestsson, leader of the Peoples' Alliance (the title chosen by the Icelandic 'Eurocommunists' so as not to offend the bourgeoisie). This week he was asked by the President to. form a government.

The call came after the failure of the leaders of the right wing Agrarian, and Conservative Parties to find a majority following Iceland's indecisive parliamentary elections at the beginning of December.

Berlinguer Is that his party is • hostile to Iceland's continuing membership of NATO and to the presence of American bases in the country.

His appointment as Premierdesignate therefore fit is by no means certain that he will be able to form a government) shows the desperation of the Icelandic bourgeoisie in its long" search for a stable form of rule.

Though the Peoples' Alliance has been part of a coalition government before, this is the first time the ruling class has been forced to contemplate putting a Stalinist in control of its efforts to resolve the consequences of the capitalist crisis.

In Italy, too, the central political issue remains the extent to which the Stalinists of the Italian Communist Party have to be brought into political power in order to resolve the country's semi-permanent political crisis:

Early election The Stalinists of the • CP themselves demand to play a full role in a coalition government with the Christian Demo-crats (Italy's Tories). The Christian Democrats do not dare to let them in; but at the same time wonder whether they can dare to keep them out.

When the previous formula, in which the CP was part of the parilamentary majority but not part of the government, broke down nearly a year ago, Italy was forced into an early general election whose result was no more conclusive than the later one in Iceland.

"Opposition"

The Italian Communists insisted that they would stay in "opposition** until they were admitted to the government.

The Socialists who held the parliamentary balance did not want the stigma that would attach to keeping a Christian Democrat government in office; at. the same time neither did they nor the CP dare even to mention the possibility of a joint. SP-CP government-a possibility which would in their view unacceptably increase the demands of the Italian working class for a resolution of its rapidly worsening ™ material problems As long as all these positions are held to rigidly by the major political parties there is no form government which can command parliamentary majority in Italy So the only formula which can solve the government's conundrum in Italy is to have no government at all.

Even in Italy this is constitutionally not allowed; and 'so the bourgeoisie came up last summer with the closest possible thing to having. no government at all: they "appointed Francesco Cossiga as Prime Minister.

"Caretaker"?

Cossiga's government has been officially labelled a 'caretaker regime'; and he was selected for the highest office in the land because. he was about the most colourless and inoffensive person in the leadership of the Christian Democratic Party fand he is also Enrico Berlinguer's cousin).

But ' this semi-invisible government could be no long term soiution, given the tremendóus pressures of conflicting class interest which demand political expression.

Last week saw a 24-hour general strike by workers in defence of the limited sliding Italian workers on the march scale of wages which them against the effect prices.

It is in the Socialist Party that these pressures have now again broken: through the surface. Last week the Socialist Party, after a long and bitter debate, took the new position that the • CP ought to: be included in a multi-party government; and that the SP would no longer support a minority Christian Democrat government in parliament, even tacitly.

This line, which was a rebuff for-party leader Bettino Craxi's plan to be Prime Minister in a Christian Democrat-Socialist coalition, pushes Italy to the edge of a new acute political The British Communist Party journal Marxism Today carries in its January issue a warning on the dangers of fascism in But at the same time it displays the politics of class collaboration that can only help to create conditions for a fascist takeover.

The article looks at two alternatives for Turkey.

The one is to follow the present economic course of restrictive fiscal' and monetary policies which are causing unemployment and declining. living standards.

Capitalist roads

But the alternative, according to the CP, is export diversification. This cannot now work because of a lack of international credit, competition trom SE Asia and the "growing protee! tion of the markets of the advanced capitalist countries."

Both of these roads are of course capitalist-roads: the CP examines no socialist solution to the crisis. Indeed the second "alternative" they put forward vividly exposes the impact of the British Communist Party's nationalist policy of "import controls-which exports unemployment from Britain precisely to countries like Turkey!

Within Turkey itself, the article admits, the working class continues, in the face of mounting attacks, to organise strongly into trade unions. 40% of the industrial workforce are now in the left wing trade union confederation DISK.

"Sectarianism"

But alongside this there is "a rising tide of neo-fascism". The major problem, according to the CP, is that the Turkish left has been severely weakened by "sectarianism" • In particular it has been "divided over whether or not to support Ecevit"

crisis and possibly to parliamentary elections.

• This new decision of the Socialist Party is not just a negotiating tactic of the leaders since it was voted by a party It probably, therefore, spells the end of even the temporary expedient of a Cossiga government.

The bourgeoisie must decide again: are they willing for all Italy's political wounds to be opened in a new general election campaign likely to produce a result just as indecisive as the last?

Safe bet

Or are they willing to take a step on the road to Iceland by asking Berlinguer to become not Prime Minister but at least a senior member of the Cabinet?

It is a safe bet that, whatever is decided, growing sections of the bourgeoisie in Italy-and in Iceland . and the points between the two-have started to ask: themselves a little more purposefully: what can replace parliamentary democracy?

• The main problem, on the contrary, is that Ecevit, a bourgeois politician who introduced savage martial law restrictions in most Turkish cities and drove the Turkish left (including the CP) underground, has been consistently supported by the Turkish Communist Party!

What plainly worries the British CP is that more and more left wingers in Turkeyand Turkish CP members in Britain-are recognising_ the necessity to break from Ecevit and to fight instead for a working class united front against rascism, comprising all the workers' parties and trade union bodies.

A crucial role of such a "Democracy is not safe in Mrs Gandhi's hands, as she has taken her party's victory as a vindication of her emergency rule"

Thus spoke Rajeswara Ras, General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI) last weekend.

"With all the ex-maharajas, industrialists, blackmarketeers and landlords elected under her banner it is foolish to expect Ecevit united front must be to establish armed workers defence squads to combat the daily violence and intimidation aimed at the workers movement by lascist gangs, and to struggle fo the defeat of the Demire government and the establishnent of a workers and peasant overnment in Turkey British Communist Party me Dere mISi that their leaders stop coverin up for the Turkish CP's support for Ecevit.

If was a similar alliance with so-called "democratic" bourgeois parties that led to crushing defeats in Spain in the 1930s and in Chile in 1973. Mrs Gandhi to solve unemployment, poverty and inflation -problems for which she was largely responsible during her previous eleven years as premier."

Ras tactfully avoided mentioning the fact that the CPI supported Gandhi during that 11-year period of rule.

When she introduced her "Emergency Powers" on June 27 1975 (which included detention without chaige; the banning of many political parties-though not the CPI; and the banning of strikes) the CPI enthusiastically welcomed the move, declaring that: 1990 "A preemptive, stunning blow has been struck against counter-revolution".

The main edge of the emergency was directed against *nea colomalin, reactionary comtunal and fascist loroo:

u Mis Gandhi hadn't taken the courageous step of enforcing the emergency India would have been turned into another Chile"

This was the position upheld by the CPI during the whole of the "Emergency Powers" period right up to and including the moment Gandhi was thrown out.

This is the main reason why in the latest elections the CPI only won ten seats; its organisation has been decimated by its' years of servility to Gandhi Postured Why did the CPI give this cringing support to the Indian dictator? Because she postured as : an "anti-imperialist" and maintained friendly relations with the Soviet Union.

But of course this stance was simply one of a capitalist politician balancing between the Soviet Union and the imperialist powers in order to achieve the best deal for Indian capitalism.

The very • nature of the emergency powers exposed the anti-working class content of her government.

Even today, - as Gandhi lurches from side to side over the Soviet invasion of Afghanis tan (supporting Russia at the UN, only to then condemn the invasion; welcoming Carrington and opposing "outside interventions, only to declare that the Afghan revolutionary council *invited Russia in") she is merely jockeying for position, in an attempt to secure the best deal for the crisis-ridden Indian And in addition Gandhi is keen to prevent an imperialist campaign to arm the Zia dictatorship in Pakistan.

Switch of policy

But the scale of the election victory has given Gandhi the scope to drop the cosmetic anti-imperialist and left rhetoric of earlier years, and to brush aside the bootlicking CPI leaders.

This is no doubt the explanation for the switch in Stalinist policy. Meanwhile in Kerala, Gandhi's Congress (Indira) party has set up an anti-communist: "Democratic Alliance" to fight the state government elections.

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Wednesday public statement opposing the invasion. And some CP members on the National Executive of the Stalinist-dominated trade union federation the CGT abstained against the party line in a vote on a CP motion of support for the Soviet move.

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