Wind Down Iron Curtain

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the Persian Gulf region will be and privileges through the regarded as an assault on the preservation of a balance of vital interests of the United forces-"peaceful coexistence"_ States. It will be repelled by with imperialism. the use of any means necessary, It was precisely because This is a naked threat of forces in Afghanistan threatened US military intervention against to disrupt the balance of forces any revolutionary movement by on the borders of the USSR that the masses or oppressed nation- the invasion was launched, in a This is a naked threat of invasion as a high-handed ITS militarv intervention against bureaucratic measure that Alarmed by the blows struck at US and world imperialism by the revolutionary struggles that in 1979 toppled the Shah in Iran and Somoza in Nicaragua, Carter and Thatcher are exploiting the Afghan invasion as a cover for a major anti-Soviet build up.

Arms deals already surreptitiously underway long before the Soviet invasion have been brought to the surface and pressed home amid demagogic attacks on Russian "aggression".

$33 billion In particular Carter proceeding full speed ahead with the mammoth $33 billion MX missile system, which will desecrate thousands of square miles of US desert and farmland.:

And the long-projected Pershing 2 missiles into NATO bases in Europe wil also go ahead as planned.

• In Britain, the Thatcher government has revealed advanced plans for refurbishing existing British nuclear weapons and a £5,000 million scheme for a new fleet of submarines and Meanwhile the SALT 2 treaty, stalled by warmongers in the US Congress last autumn. has been shelved indefinitely.

Carter's 'State of the Union' message last week also included steps to register American youth preparatory for a possible reintroduction of conscription, and moves to bolster the flagging prestige of the CIA.

"Outside forces"

And he made it clear that the US military build-up is not simply in opposition to the supposed Soviet "threat" to Iran:

"Let our position be absolutely clear: an attempt by any outside force to gain control of including military force".

alities in the Middle East.

Intervention

any revolutionary movement by the masses or oppressed nationalities in the Middle East.

Such an intervention would of course have nothing to do with preserving "world peace" but everything to do with preserving US imperialist exploitation of the masses throughout the colonial and semi-colonial countries.

The talk of a possible Soviet invasion of Iran is, of course a deliberate deception by the They know all too well that the Kremlin bureaucracy has consistently acted not for any motives of world domination; but to safeguard its own power Carter imperialist-backed right wing misguided defensive move.

The Workers Socialist League has condemned this Amid a renewed burst of reactionary propaganda in last week's Sun, the Third Reading of Corrie's anti-abortion bill is due before Parliament on February 8.

• Opposed by every remotely threatens to drive the Muslim masses of the Middle East further into the arms of reaction and which provides the imperialists with a new pretext for anti-Soviet agitation.

Expropriation

But, recognising that in the present situation the withdrawal of Soviet troops would create conditions for a pro-imperialist takeover in Afghanistan, we call now not for the withdrawal of troops, but for policies through which the Afghan masses can, alongside rank and file Red Army men, press through the struggle for the expropriation of land and private property and the establishment of an independent Soviet Afghanistan.

From the same standpoint we condemn the new Cold War offensive against the Soviet Union, and all those reactionaries within the labour bureaucracy that have sided with the A precondition of the working class making new gains is to defend those already won.

For this reason socialists mus must unconditionally defend the nationalised property relations of the USSR against all forms of imperialist attack, while fighting for the politica overthrow of the reactionary Stalinist bureaucracies in the deiormed ana • degenerated workers' states. ment has been called by the National Abortion Campaign on Tuesday February 5, and backed by the SE Region TUC:

NAC is correctly calling for every possible section of workers to take strike action on that day to register opposition to the Corrie Bill.

But at the same time trade unions-particularly those in the health service and MPU/ASTMS -must commit themselves now strators left Sparkhill Park, Birmingham, on the second of Provisional Sinn Fein's series of demonstrations in British cities. At the Bull Ring local residents and others had swelled numbers to 2,000.

In preparation for future bans, Birmingham police announced that they had considered banning the march and large numbers of police, were turned out.

by-product was thei prevention of physical conflict with 100-200 backward youth and fascists in the town centre (who later went off to ransack a CP bookshop and broke up a Women's Liberation meeting in the CP's Star Club).

To advance the struggle the crucial question remains: will the issue of Ireland be turned remorselessly back to the labour movement, to base the struggle against the British army on the strength of the working class?

Yet apart from republican, UTOM and left organisations there were pitifully few labou movement banners in Birmingham on Sunday (Selly Oak Constituency Labour Party being one of the exceptions).

Notably there was not single delegation from the CP-led BL Longbridge trade union bodies.

Only a principled struggle for a policy of troops out of roland within the labour movement can place the issue in the forefront, as it deserves.

defu to take strike action to defend aný member or doctor prosécuțed for defying the Corrie legislation and continuing to provide abortions.

And those Labour MPs who insist on defying Party policy of "free abortion on request" must be removed by their constituencies and sponsoring trade unions.

The Kremlin bureaucracy has exiled Andrei Sakharov, the most prominent of the Soviet dissidents, and his wife Yelena, to the city of Gorki, 250 miles east of Moscow.

Sakharov, a Nobel Prize winning physicist is not a left' oppositionist. But we have no doubts about condemning this action by the Stalinist bureaucracy, and demanding the restoration of his right to live in Moscow. i It is clear that the Soviet leadership moved against Sakharov only reluctantly and under considerable pressure. So wary were the bureaucracy that they held back from their more usual repressive methods-exile to Siberia, confinement to a mental asylum, or a swift show trial and prison sentence.

In view of the fact that he is accused of "being used as a channel by the special services of imperialist powers to spy out important state secrets of the Soviet Union", , the action taken against him is relatively minorthough he may be put on trial at a later date.

Internal problems

But the action of the bureaucracy is far from "incomprehensible" , as said by the French Communist Party. Rather Sakharov is the victim of the internal problems faced by the bureaucracy in a situation of internal economic crisis, crisis in the capitalist system, and now a Cold War offensive by US and other imperialist powers.

As national consciousness develops among oppressed minorities in Iran, Kurdistan and elsewhere, the Soviet leadership also fears a challenge to its chauvinist and bureaucratic treatment of the many national minorities within the borders of the USSR itself.

Sakharov is known as a defender of the national rights of the Crimean Tartars-and the bureaucracy: clearly feel he could become a focus for opposition on a far broader scale than the present dissident movement.

His most recent moves however have played into the hands of imperialism and of the bureaucracy. In signing a statement opposing the invasion of Afghanistan and pointing out that the Soviet people are denied the right to express their opinion on the war, Sakharov also put his name to supporting the Carter call for a boycott of the Olymics.

By not starting from a Trotskyist perspective of building a revolutionary party for the political overthrow of the bureaucracy and defence of the nationalised property relations in the USSR, Sakharov has thus been pushed by the bureaucracy into lending support to a pro-imperialist campaign.

But he is no spy. In defending his rights against repression we fight to create conditions in which the Soviet working class can organise and mobilise to remove the parasitic Kremlin

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CORRIE BIL demeaned "troops out Some 1500 demon !

is no spy. py