Boosts Bi Tack
Socialist Press1980 1980-02-27Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 12 →
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managers everywhere.
But the press is wrong to present the strength of the employers as resting on the membership as opposed to the apparatus of the unions.
It is no accident that union officials (and particularly Robinson and the Morning Star) see things similarly, when they say the members will "regret what they have done"
The reality is very different. The mass meeting was only the final, humiliating act in the drama directed by both the employers and the leadership of The answer to the question is not recorded: but it is plain that the Rhodesian capitalists, along with the imperialist leaders and the South African racist regime are determined to go to any lengths-including a NEEDED! the AUEW with the help of Robinson's. own "comrades" in: the Communist Party.
Everybody could see the employers moves. Horrocks, Edwardes' deputy, was on TV the night. before, threatening closure.
Management had been given three months for a propaganda campaign inside the plant while the gutter press did the job outside.
But we must also look at the general situation in BL. There are two major complexes, Longresumption of the civil w order i to prevent M agabe winning the frauc ulent "elections" next week.
Mugabe has time and revealed that he stands pletely opposed to struggles by the working and poor peasants of Limbabwe to expropriate major industry, banks, and major landholdings.
In an interview in Newsweek nagazine, ne responded to the again comclass bridge and Cowley.
•When Robinson was first sacked, strikes took place immediately only Longbridge, Castle Bromwich and Canley.
Not involved Cowley was not involver because Robinson and fellov Stalinist Jack Adams (TGWI convenor at Longbridge) tok convenors not to try to get : strike where they might lose.
The Assembly Plant senio to protect the South African apartheid/capitalist state, the imperialists are unwilling to take any chances whatever.
This is why, from the very moment Magabe and Nkomo endorsed the reactionary Lancaster House agreement, the "election" and the "ceasefire" have been a transparent fraud.
While Mugabe and Nkomo struggled to persuade their sceptical guerrilla supporters to rally at British-supervised assembly points-thus making - Muzorewa stewards judg wouldn't get vote. Why was 1 1L .
jed that they a mass meeting . this?
Because there nas been an hara ongoing witch-hunt in the plant -supported by the Communist Party ever since 1974.
This witchhunt helped the right winger Reg Parsons to take oyer as convenor for a number of years-during which he and other right wingers, along with the CP members he used as his deputies decimated the union organisation.
The left is now back in the major positions in the plant, and the union branches but it is still having to reconstruct the union organisation.
Prior to 1974 Cowley would have been the first plant out in support of Robinson. But ever since Robinson has been victimised, CP members along with the right wing have continued them sitting targets for Rhodesian jets and land forcesSmith and Muzorewa's "security forces" have been deployed in even greater strength: reservists have been called up; and Muzorewa's vicious "auxiliaries" paid by the state, have ranged the country at will, beating up and intimidating political opponents.
As a vicious international propaganda campaign has got underway accusing Mugabe supporters of using violence and intimidation, Mugabe himself and his candidates have suffered series of assassination attempts.
Meanwhile senior officers of the Rhodesian Selous Scouts have been caught red handed planting bombs designed to discredit Mugabe.
At every turn the desperate moves of Governor Soames to prevent a Mugabe victory have been exposed.
.in one of the supposed "red" areas where Mugabe sup:: CP paved way for betrayal the witch-hunting of Bob Fryer and Alan Thornett.
Such betrayals helped ensure that restorer Nuffer andarad tha inat wnen buny vruertu ene workforce at Longbridge back to work in order to carry out the "inquiry" he was successful because the strike was isolated.
The job on Robinson was done at that moment. But in the following months the Communist Party helped to finish the job.
Jamboree
The first moves were made at the special conference in January to discuss the Robinson case. The rally was dominated by the CP. :
• It became a jamboree that sowed confusion about the role:
Cont'd page 11 Mugabe addresses mass rally porters were allegedly preventing other parties holding meetings, a Guardian reporter discovered that four parties had held without trouble a total of 36 meetings!
Elsewhere the evidence points to savage intimidation of Mugabe supporters. by white farmers and capitalists. They have thrown their weight in the main behind Muzorewa, whose election funds are plainly also baosted by South African finance.
'Nkomo has attracted the backing of the Soviet bureaucracy-seeking to bring about a capitalist coalition government that will hold back revolutionary struggles in Southern Africa -and, for similar motives, the British monopoly Lonrho.
Yet the British and South African governments are not satisfied with • such moves to shape the outcome of next
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week's poll. The election itself col. Cont'd p.2, col. 4