Tories Shrink from Kremlin's 'human Rights' Challenge

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Published by Folrose Ltd for the Workers Socialist League, BM Box articles do not necessarily represeat the views of the Workers Socialist Lea • Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office as a nespaper. Signed 2022. British soldier in Irelana The human rights crusade under which the British government pursues its hysterical anti-Soviet Union campaign almost blew up in its face last week. Predictably the fuse was Ireland.

A cynical deal was reached between the British government and the Soviet bureaucracy in the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

The British agreed to drop a resolution calling for a Soviet statement on the treatment of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov-in return for the dropping of another by the Soviet Union which condemned Britain for violating human rights in Ireland.

The deal-played down in Britain -is a measure of the deep hypocrisy under which the anti-Soviet crusade is being run.

For home consumption the British government-both this Tory government and . the Labour government which pre* ceded it-have dismissed the H Block prisoners as "terrorists" and masochists who deliberately deprive themselves of the most up to date prison facilities in Europe.

Abroad, the government comes under constant pressurenot because other imperialist oppressors support the struggle nationalists-but because the torture, repression and treatment of Irish republicans by the British tarnishes the image of the 'free world' advocates of dissident rights in deformed and degenerated workers states.

The Stalinist regimes themselves have never raised the imperialist oppression of the Irish people or the treatment handed out to the H Block prisoners as anything other than a bargaining counter, a means to detend the repressive regimes over which they preside.

The cornerstone of British foreign policy is not anti-Sovietism. The real target of its .._id... attack are the socialised property relations in the Soviet Union and the deformed workers' states which have barred the free exploitation of those massive markets by imperialist finance.

The crusade on human rights is trotted out only against those countries which do not provide America, Britain, West Germany and Japan with unrestricted markets.

Where markets exist-in Chile, the Shah's Iran and a host.of other repressive nations, Britain and America condemn 'outside interference'.

Where such markets might be created (in China, where the imperialists hope to see an eventual overturn of nationalised property relations) the tirade is switched off like a tap.

Ireland remains Britain's Achilles heel in its international manoeuvres.

The British had a majority in the Human Rights Commission for their attack on the Soviet Union and therefore have some political prison It is necessary for a workers ate to defend itself against mov to re-establish capitalism.

But the Soviet Union fee the rise of Stalinism hasong since dropped any pretenchat this is its aim. The police se is used against workers, Trakyists and dissidents like Saarov who are not agents of intrialism.

The Soviet Union isherefore unable to demonste to the working class of thworld the difference betwe the repression of the expled in imperialist countries 1 the necessary repression i the exploiters.

It is for that reasonat the Soviet Union cannot mpaign on the treatment of Block prisoners and Irish rablicans by the British.

But that fight mube taken up by British socialis:

*PoW status forpublican prisoners!

*Smash the H BKS!

*Troops out of and