No cuts in Queen's Loo!

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men ferreted through spectators MP Greville Janner used the in search of disruptive elements. opportunity to skip out of And just to make the whole voting against the Corrie Bill, thing clear, numbers of armed while the Tory County Council police were openly stationed busied themselves spending the amongst the waiting crowds and money saved from sacking Unfortunately for the royal nurses on a new royal blue party the rain-drenched crowds carpet specially imported from The visit of the Queen to Leicester gave the local forces of the state yet another chance to play martial law games.

At London Road station police dragooned the carefully selected throng of schoolkids and ageing royalists while elsewhere in the town plain clothes on available rooftops. were less than overwhelming in their enthusiasm as she passed en route in a bullet-proof Rolls Royce 'greenhouse'.

Amongst the cheers there were shouts of 'scroungers'.

Clearly not everyone was there for the spectacle: Labour lollipop ladies and nursery Norway: to grace chosen Royal 100.. -Even the toilet-roll holder was specially moved so that her "Highness" wouldn't have to stoop so low as to , stretch a muscle.

Unfortunately for the Tory County Council the decision to spend over £20,000 on the royal visit has not gone unnoticed by those who turned out on February 27 to oppose the council cuts.

Nor has the fact that while school students who struck then in support of teachers have since been hounded and victimised by headmasters and welfare officers for their absence, no such action will be taken against those students conned into filling out the ranks of the royalist parade.

A meeting of 60 parents anú teachers at All Saints Secondary School, Springburn, Glasgow, last Thursday heard regional councillor Pat Trainer tell them that "there will be no closures of schools or redundancies among teachers; but, if there have to be redundancies they will be negotiated with the unions.

He also. admitted there The implem the bill main hope for those fighting the Thatcher government's cuts-according to left' talking NUPE leader Alan Fisher at a public meeting in Camden last week.

He held out the prospect of a U-turn by the Thatcher government under pressure from the Tory Party, culminating in a wage freeze before the end of the year.

in line with this perspective, Fisher emphasized the role of propaganda activity-to bring home the terrible reality of the cuts to rank and file Tories!

• The TUC and trade union leaderships' primary role according to Fisher is to coordinate campaigns of marches and meetings to bring home the truth about the cuts, first to ordinary workers, and then to their new-found saviours-Tory voters.

Although Fisher acknowledged that the "true strength of the working class is industrial" in the first sentence of his would be a policy of nonreplacement of teachers.

Warnings of such: attacks were made by other speakers at the meeting-John Cairney, EIS representative at All Saints and lan McCalman, EIS representative at Albert Secondary School-both speaking in a personal capacity.

latter called upon the councillors to refuse to nt the cuts, and to send lack to the Tory governspeech, he emphasised the difficulties of getting workers to use that strength in the next.

That this was the last that was to be heard of industrial action can be gauged from the fact that throughout his oration -lasting over forty minutesFisher did not mention the steel strike once!

ment.

John Cairney argued for an all-out strike in the area on May 14. In this he received the full backing of Michael Martin, Labour MP for Springburn, who called upon teachers to support this action if they were really serious about fighting the cuts.

After a good discussion parents came forward volunteering to form a committee to carry forward the campaign.

Fisher But the glaring gap between what Fisher advocates and what is needed did not escape his audience.

A Camden dustmen's shop steward pointed to the lack of any lead from the NUPE bureaucracy, contrasting their low profile today with their treacherous role in the low pay strikes of last winter, when they consciously promoted the divisive policy of selective action.

His criticisms of the NUPE leadership, characterised as "the easy way out" by Fisher, were echoed by a worker from University College Hospital, who emphasised that at her workplace action against the cuts needed the organisation and coordination that can only. come from a determined leadership.

Last week's performance confirmed once again that the only way such leadership will be forthcoming is through the building of a new principled revolutionary leadership in NUPE.

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Belgradi 5 E A arame Istanbull Monument to Red Army liberation of Prague in Jon Bloomfield is not a Marxist, but Passive Revolution is a superb book, containing tremendous amount of valuable research and a wealth of factual material on the post-war overturn of capitalism in Czechoslovakia.

Though the book is the best to emerge from the "Eurocommunist" stable, the developments in Czechoslovakia are in no way. compatible with the Euro CPs' insistence on a peaceful parliamentary evolution towards socialism in alliance with '"democratic? capitalist parties.

Bloomfield shows this contradiction at the end of the book, where he admits that:

"For example, the balance between retaining maximum unity and encouraging the most advanced forces to press ahead always needs fine. judgement. 1945 the KSC's (Czechoslovak Communist Party's) caution undoubtedly led it to emphasise the former."

He explains this away by arguing that the Czechoslovak CP was not working towards socialism!

! Indeed Passive Revolution is not a Marxist work precisely because Bloomfield approaches history simply to discover facts that fit his own "Eurocommunist" perspective. He has no intention of probing historical development to show the primary forces at workin which the most decisive is that of the leadership of the working class.

In this way he approaches Czechoslovakia' as an isolated phenomenon - isolated not in its period, but in history.

Why was the Czech CP not working towards socialism? Why did "Communists" oppose the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism in 1945?

The i starting point in grasping these questions is an •understanding of the bureaucratic degeneration that took place within the Soviet Union under ronditions of isolation and crushing economic difficulties in the 1920s. A privileged bureaucratic caste, headed and epitomised by Joseph Stalin, began increasingly to recognise its need it it were to preserve its position-to balance between the strength of the nationalised property relations achieved in the October 1917 revolution and the strength of imperialism internationally.

This position, summed up in Stalin's "theory" of buiding serialism in one coali only lead to

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appetion qained by the USSK. 1045 Territory by Germany tesen?

AUS RIA

Treste Ricka zadny the most reactionary conclusion: the effort to preserve the balance of class forces by holding back working class struggles internationally.

Through the bureaucratisation of Lenin's Communist International, this counter-revolutionary perspective of the Kremlin leaders became the watchword of the Communist Parties of every country.

Thus the apparatus of the "Communist" movement became transformed into a major obstacle to the revolutionary struggle for communism.

Czechoslovakia in the year from 1945 was only one example of Stalinist resistance to revolutionary mobilisation. But it was also an example of the other side of the contradictory role of Stalinism; for as a bureaucracy resting parasitically on FINLAND Helanki Riga LATYIA Memel LITHUANIA •Karenas graci ¿'Vilnius!

Warsaws.

Bres Bacturer GARY Buchwares Sota nationalised' property relations within the Soviet Union, the Kremlin leadership is capable, and at times has felt obliged, to defend* itself against imperialist offensive by a variety of means-up to and even including the overturn of capitalism itself in the postwar "buffer" states of Eastern Europe.

Trotsky and the Left Opposition, and subsequently the Fourth International, fought the bureaucratic degeneration inside the Soviet Union. It is from the basis of their work, analysis and practical struggles that the real nature of Stalinism can be grasped today, and the contradictory transformations in Eastern Europe can be understood.

Yet the Trotskyist movement in the post-war period found its very principles challenged by the emerLeningr odessa gence of a political current within its leading ranks that set out to revise basic tenets of the Transitional Where Trotsky had fought for a conception of the need to mobilise the working class independently and in conflict with the Stalinist and reformist labour bureaucracies, this current, headed by FI Secretary Michel Pablo, saw in the social overturn of capitalism in Eastern Europeand particularly Yugoslavia -"proof" that Stalinism was not a completely counter-revolutionary force.

Under certain "special" conditions, concluded Pablo, Stalinist bureaucrats can be pressured into centrist and even revolutionary positions by the movement of the masses.

Such an course called the very need ing of Moscow e analysis of into question for the buildTrotskyist parties to combat Stalinism and lead the working class to power.

This confusion as to the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism, and the way in which it operates, continuously arises amongst forces calling themselves Trotsky1ST.

It can be seen today in forces as diverse as the opportunist Socialist Workers Party-with its fulsome support for the Cuban Stalinist bureaucracy-and the sectarian Spartacist cult with their position of "Hail the Red Army" in Afghanistan.

Such people cannot comprehend the way in which or a world scale Stalinism acts as a material and political force for counter-revolution through the demobilisation and repression of the independent struggles of the working class. it, tor its own bureau cratic reasons, the Kremlin bureaucracy should trans form property relations in Afghanistan, this minor and limited progressive step must still be seen in the context of its reactionary strategy on a world scale. And it will be carried through by the same Red Army that crushed workers' uprisings in East Germany and Hungary in the 1950s.

Trotsky, in some of the last writings of his career, examined the change that took place in the international role of the Soviet Union after the takeover by the Stalinist bureaucracy.

He renlied sharpiv to critics like Max Schachtman 1 1a 1диG WARMAT who argued that, since he supported the Red Army invading Georgia in 1920. he should hold a simila: position on the actions e: the Red Army in 1939:

"You (Max Schachtman: quote the march of the Red Army into Poland and inte

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- 5045.355 **n= VET In this, and a further article next week, RICHARDSON reviews the book Passive Rei examines some of the issues it raises in to the overturns of capitalism Eastern 'Buffer' countries.

Al over Europe there was the basis of proletarian revolution. The workers were armed in the resistance forces mainly supporting Rather. each counterrevolutionary move took a form forced upon the bureaucracy by its own contradictory role as a priv-