I. Behind the ‹SasSod

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This week we are publishing the first of two parts of the document on Britist erspectives that was adopted at the Fourth Annual Conference of the Workers Socialist League on April 4-6 1980. For reasons of space, some sections have been slightly abbreviated. The second part, The Crisis of Working Class Leadership, will Steel pickets at Port Talbot on the first day of the strike Callagha they shi leadersh chose th Alth leadersh and issu ings, thi the rigt events. appear in next week's Socialist Press. an bluntly told them ould either challenge his lip or shut, up. They le latter. ough the trade union lip grew shrill verbally ied dark and dire warney, too, were pushed to by the pressure of The TUC code on picketing gave the ruling class almost every concession it required. Although workers on picket lines virtually ignored the code, it gave strength to the courts and police and undermined solidarity.

The election took place with the working class angry and confused. It saw no clear path forward but was fuelled mainly by anti-Toryism. Although some workers in this confusion did vote Tory, the reason for the Thatcher victory was the mass defection from the Labour Party of its petty bourgeois support which found what it saw as a refreshing 'radicalism' in the Thatcher programme.

Thatcher came to power with a clear mandate from the ruling class and the middle classes to smash up the organisations of the working class.

This truth has become such common rhetoric among labour bureaucrats and every shade of left that its meaning has been diluted. 'It is not a phrase but reality.

It must also be clearly und lerstood that the task of 1 the Thatcher government is noi ta 'return to the 30s' • The Tc vision of the 80s. needs no su ich historical apology.

Its aim is not simply remove rights from the worki class but to destroy them struggle, and by doing so lea the working class, in a wo. position than the 30s. Party who argued that t , Those cynics in the Labc Jur the return of Thatcher was 'no different' from the right wi ing Labour government were wroi ng.

Those who argued that at least the working class wot Jld fight Thatcher, were actua lly arguing that the Labour bure: cracy would fight Thatcher. They were wrong top.

The working class has shown that it is prepared to fight whichever government is in power. The number of days lost to strikes (which admittedly is not an adequate guide to the temperature of the class struggle) shows that the 29 million working days lost last year were, proportionately speaking, evenly divided between the four months of Labour rule and the eight months of Tory rule:

The bureaucracy, on the other hand, has shrunk still further from confrontation. Not only has the TUC continued to talk to the Tories, and continued to parade Concordat (which it periodically buries, only to resurrect), but it has increased its efforts to isolate the struggles of. the working class which do break VUL. nuIt The first three months of 1980 have shown the massive strength of the working class and a level of betrayal by its leadership which constantly outstrips all previous experience.

It is in this sense that there is a qualitative differencè between the struggles of the class against the decaying Labour government, and the struggles against the Tories.

The need for a break with syndicalism has become even more acute. The struggle for political leadership of the working class has become even sharper The opportunities are creater. une senaties tor tanure arostar, the nonaltior for frilun more severe Crisis PHOTO: John Sturrock. Report NUPE to a worsening economic situa tion for world capitalism. Within a whole period of very slow growth of production, a new sharp downturn, expected to be at least as severe as in 1974-75, has begun and is likely to be particularly acute in Britain.

Virtually all the indicators of capitalist profits show continued downward trend. As world inflation once again accelerates, pushed on by further escalations in the oil price, there are continued signs of the precarious instability of the world currency and exchange system-evidenced by intense fluctuations in the price of precious metals (reflecting waves of defensive and pessimistic speculation), and in sharpening inter-capitalist rivalries (the upward auction of interest rates, competitive devaluations and mounting pressure for trade war measures)..

While we avoid a perspective of imminent, inevitable catastrophe, and struggle towards an understanding of capitalism's still considerable armoury of defensive measures, we must recognise that the overall economic situation of the capitalist system-the problem of producing and realising surplus value under stable conditionshas been acute for a decade and connuts i wursen. Ana in mantinuina • a son as dera mo these circumstances we cannot rule out sudden economic downturns much more severe than we have seen up to now, monetary crises, waves of protectionism and so on.

The round of price increases 12 months has become a major component of the economic

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SOCIALIST PRESS, redresdas Apri 30. 1950 HO'S NEXT world-and increasingly penetrating to the economies of the deformed and degenerated workers states.

As the dollar has fallen in value against other major capitalist currencies-in particular the Deutsch Mark and the Yenso the purchasing power of the vast pool of $800 billion dollars held outside the USA has fallen.

To protect themselves against the anti-imperialist mood and mounting demands of the workers and peasants in their own countries, the rulers of the oil-producing states need to prevent their oil revenues failing too far in real terms.

And the Iranian revolution proved to be the trigger to the development in 1979 of a new aggressive pricing policy amonst the oil producers which has restricted supplies to the worid market and raised average prices to $26 per barrel.

Every forecaster is now agreed that this will have a dramatic impact on. the ailing world economy-driving up inflation, unemployment, and balance of payments deficits.

The 24-nation Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) predicts an overall growth in gross national product of its member countries at no more than 0.3% in 1980-as against an original forecast of 1%, and a growth last year of 3%.

Within this average increase, Britain and the US are expected to actually decline by 1.25% and respectively. This decline in growth, put crudely means the destruction existing forces of production, and a further rise in already high levels of unemployment tup from 17 million to 20 million in the OECD countries alone).

Elsewhere, too, the picture is one of stagnation or insigniticant growth-at a time when human needs continue to increase.

Yet far from steering clear of such a slump, capitalist leaders are forced to head relentlessly in that direction in their efforts to cut out the least profitable sectors of industry, "to hold down the price of oil through cutting back demand, and attempt, through monetary policies, to curtail runaway inflation.

The impact of the oil crisis is felt everywhere: from the powerful Japanese • economydriven from huge balance of payments surpluses into deficit by the oil price rise and the rising value of the yen-to the strong West German economyrevising downwards its forecasts for growth in the light of pros:

pects for oil supplies and prices:

from the crisis-ridden US economy-facing the traumas of Carter's "energy programme" in a do-or-die attempt to cut back on its huge oil import bill, to the chronically sick British economy-in which manufacturinn induetry ic etill forced to Dav ....aido 11> worid market prices even for North Sea oil, while the inflated value of sterling drives export prices sky high.

Underdeveloped Economies But if last year's ail price rises have caused havoc in the advançed capitalist countries, the last 12 months have brought a staggering $33 billion dollar increase in the oil bills of the underdeveloped economies.

: This . increase amounts to more than 12% of their total export revenue, and as such signals a renewed round of increasingly savage attacks by puppet governments and military dictatorships upon the already super-exploited workers and peasants of the semi-colonial countries.

Yet the generalised slump in the world capitalist economy and the already desperate state of the economy in many of the underdeveloped countrieswhose combined foreign debts already exceed $400 million and will increase by a further $55 million in 1980-create the very real danger for imperialism that even the most brutal onslaught on the oppressed masses will fail to extract sufficient increased exploitation.

There remains the haunting possibility of one or móre underdeveloped countries defaulting on thier debts to the imperialist ' bankers-a move that could precipitate a catastrophic chain reaction of foreclosures and financial collapses in the advanced capitalist countries themselves.

Such a prospect is particularly worrying at a point of time when the political hold of imperialism over the underdeveloped economies and oil states is increasingly coming into The confrontation between the US and the Khomeini regime over the hostages issue, for instance, led into a series of reciprocal reprisals in which a whole series of fundamental principles of capitalist relations havé been thrown overboard.

The Carter regime "froze" (i.e. stole) billions of dollars of Iranian government assets lodged with US banks; the Iranians responded by refusing to make regular repayments on a S500 million loan-only to be declared in default on the loan at the instigation of leading US banks.

As writs fly over the legality of the US procedures (in particular the freezing of Iranian money in US banks in Europe), there is the possibility that Iran will repudiate its $15 billion international debts, and refuse to accept US dollars in payment for oil supplies, as well as slashing back production to a subsistence level; such moves threaten to prompt simultaneously a new round in the worid market.

But no less damaging to the confidence of the imperialists is the fact that a $500 billion Iranian loan has actually fallen into default- the first time a government has fallen into default since World War 2.

With underdeveloped coun tries all over the world facing monumental debts •and impossible conditions at home, the temptation for them to simply withhold payment and default must be growing. And, as one Midland Bank official told Newsweek: "Quite honestly, if a country cannot repay, what can you do? You can't force it to pay what it hasn't got."

As the workings of finance capital divide the capitalist world more sharply into creditor and debtor nations, the problems for the imperialists in reclaiming bad debts and pre+ srving the system of credit become greater month by month.

At the same time the cuts already imposed in the living standards of the masses of the world, the cuts in government spending programmes, and the deliberate policies of recession imposed in a whole series of countries have helped to throw the world market into stagnation.

Monopoly manufacturers. with investment in plant and technology designed to cater for an expanding world market are thus forced to compete with each other under conditions where their combined productive capacity exceeds the market available.

Such a crisis of overproduc tion which hits profits and is a beads the nam intensificationi is, ¡edos național rivalries as giant firms fight to retain their own markets and to capture those of their competitors, and must eventually bring the rationalisation of industry, as . the least competitive is driven to the wall -as can be seen to be the case in the car industry with the mortal crisis of Chrysler and British Leyland.

Falling Value of Currency The continued rise in the price of oil both reflects and intensifies the slide in the value of paper currencies in relation to commodities in general.

At the same time, capitalist governments continue to engage in (albeit heavily trimmed) spending programmes, or effecMIDS COM.

FOR A tiyely the same thing) in. "tax cuts" designed to stimulate private industry.

la Britain; the Tory. tax cuts' have in fact taken the form. of a redistribution of the tax burden from richer to poorer through increases in an overall packagt of deflationary and recessionary policies including public service cuts.

But even the slashing public services and rationalisation of industry, and the boosting of mass unemployment involve large sums of government spending if a major explosion of working class opposition is to be avoided.

Another sphere of inflationary government spending which is now firmly on the increase is armaments and "defende" spending in the imperialist countries. Hundreds of millions more pounds are to be allocated to new weaponry and military activity in the next period, acting as a further drain on the rate of profiț in productive industry.

The NATO agreement has committed its members to 3% growth per annum on defence spending in real terms. Britain this constitutes a massive burden on the economy.

Meanwhile, supposedly in a bid to stop inflation by limiting the growth of credit, interest rates have been raised-in Britain to a staggering 17%, and in the USA to 15%%. Such rates of interest act a major deterrent to industrial investment and intensify the slump, while. at the same time adding massivery to the overheads of industry and helping to drive up prices of finished commodities.

As the cost of living races out of control and social services are destroyed, workers are driven to struggle in order to maintain their living standards.

Far from being the cause of inflation-which is a product of the anarchic capitalist world economy-wage increases are a belated and generally inadequate response to inflation, a response which, like other reformist attempts to confront the crisis of capitatism, in fäct merely perpetuates and intensifies the problem.

In fighting consistently for the defence of living standards through the policy of a sliding scale of wages, we do so not as a self-sufficient slogan, but as part of a programme which counterposes the interests of the working class to those of the capitalists and their anarchic system.

In reality the only defence of workers' living standards lies in the overthrow of capitalism, expropriation private industry and the establishment of a planned, socialist economy.

Falling Rate of Profit But the superficial movement of prices, of currencies and of interest rates are not the CIT root si the crisis: merely forms taken by it. At the base of these developments is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall..

And the falling rate of profit, in turn is the expression of the fundamental contradiction of capitalism-that the profits of the minority class who own the means of production are derived solely from their exploitation of the toiling masses who are forced to sell thair labour power in order to live.

Production under capitalism only takes place in pursuit of profit. Yet to offer the capitalist class even a temporary respite in the decline of profitability, a frontal onslaught is! necessary on the living standards, working conditions and basic rights established by the working class in decades of struyyIt.- atriania.

In Britain, for instance, where for some firms profits in money terms continue to risé, the rate of profit, in terms of return on investment, continues to remain pathetically low, with every prospect of falling still further. One forecast anticipates a staggering 30% drop in industrial and commercial profits in 1980.

Protectionism Desperate sections of the capitalist class and chauvinist: elements in the movement seize upon such developments as "proof" of the need to impose a national policy of import controls to protect home markets and thus export. the crisis and resultant unemployment to other countries.

Now, with even the British CBI having taken up' this demand, and with US steel producers and other employers forcing such measures, ".op the Carter administration, Phatcher seems prepared to toy with the idea of "selective import But of course the drive to protectionism carries with it (even in imperialist t terms) the danger of developing into full-scale inter-imperialist trade war, in which world 'trade would stump still fu ther, and national rivalries could develop out of hand, from economic confrontation to outright "military clashes.

In opposing protectionism, revolutionaries argue not in favour of the old capitalist ideal of "free trade" but first and foremost against any notion of a common "national interest"

between the working class and its employers.

The main enemy is not a "foreign" employer; however cheap his imports may be: the main enemy is the capitalist at home, who exploits the workforce, and who takes "the decision to protect his own interests-his profits-thraugh speed-up, wage cuts, redundancies or closures.

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-SOCIALIST PRESS, H'ednesday April 30, 1980. Page 7 Challenge to Imperialist Rule It is particularly important lhat. this concept of "'the hational interest and every tendency towards national chautinsm is challenged at a time when Imperialism is increasingly under fire from a rising tide of truggles by the masses of the ¡olonial and semi-colonial world P struggle for national liberaion and an end to exploitation.

1979 has seen such struggles each a new peak under the protesque misleadership of Chomeini in Iran, under the jetty bourgeois FSLN in Nicarajua, and under the treacherous atriotic Front leadership in imbabwe.

But elsewhere, in, Central nd Latin America, in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, here exist struggles, 'or the otential for, struggles, which ould inflict equal setbacks on nperialism, against which the nperialists will be tempted to trike back! to. preserve the tability of their system of xploitation.

Indeed it is in this political ontext that we must under.land the renewed anti-Soviet fold War, moves by the inperialists in the wake of the ifghan invasion.

In his agressive international rance Carter's most enthusiastic apporter has turned out to be • reactionary Thatcher svernment: the Tories have led le struggle to win acceptance F US missiles in Europe; they gerly took up the calf for a sycott of the Olympics and ir political and economic sanc ons against the Soviet Union; nd they have, placed British nperialism firmly at the centre I the drive against revolutiony and national liberation ruggles.

It is in this context that we Just insist that, in Britain and sternationally, only the most solute internationalist struggle in lay the basis to resist war loves and to mobilise the work9 class in opposition to the dain enemy: the bourgeoisie home:

In this context the, role of titish revolutionaries must be tamined " in • particular in lation to their struggle for the feat of their own imperialist ders in Ireland : in many respects, therefore, • political : and economic -pects of the crisis of imperialn overlap and pose related *s and problems for the arking class.

The coming period offers pitalists and workers alike ly the prospect of chronic itability..the reversal of man progress in the destrucin and stagnation of the aductive forces, the shackling * science and technology to tty proft-seeking and military -erests, and the ever-present sibility that the runaway em will be finally tipped over the brink-by some new and unexpected sequence of events-into absolute chaos, collapse or world war.

i As it is, the scope of the decline that can be predicted for the future is moderated chiefly by the extent of the stump that is already upon us.

For the working class the only way forward is through principled struggle against every aspect of the capitalist offensive, and the construction of an international revolutionary ieadership capable of mobilising independent class action.

Britain in Britain all of the elements of this international crisis are present. There are endless-wellfounded-complaints from the employers that their profits are at a rock-bottom level.

The over-confidence and conservatism of a once worlddominant British capitalist class, that has recognised all too slowly the extent to which it has been wiped out of world markets by its more modern competitors, has produced ar antiquated industrial economy which is unable to generate the, resources needed for the wholesale rationalisation and reconstruction that it needs to make itself "viable"

Despite the abrupt fall in Jiving standards inflicted on the British working class in recent years the profitability of whole sections of basic, industry has fallen so low that, for the capitalist class, only the most drastic surgery can provide the answerhençe the brutal closure plans for the shipyards, for BL and for the steel industry.

Yet even this "'solution" comes up against the problem of decreased production which means that plant is forced to operate at low levels of profitability.

Indeed, the Thatcher government is attempting to embark on this course of action at a point where the world economy teeters on the brink of a historic slump, and where pressures towards protectionism internationally threaten a further cutback in trade. It is the hardest possible point at which to seek, through ruthless pruning, to produce an expansion in profits from manufacturing industry.

Despite, these problems Thatcher has firmly set her face against the Callaghan strategy for British capitalism, which rested on government measures to prop up whole sectors of industry-at the expense of the profitability of other sectors that would have survived in any event.

Instead, under the banner of '"free enterprise" and "nonintervention" , the Tory. government has cut back government aid, and lifted protective exchange markets at the expense of British exports, boosted interest rates to an alltime' record, and left firms to sink or swim.

At the same time, however, the hiking up of interest rates, by effectively diverting wealth from industrial to finance capital, has the effect of intensifying the drive towards rationalisation of industry through the wiping out of unprofitable sections and further developing the process of monopolisation and mergers.:

This tendency towards the centralisation rather than the accumulation of capital has sharpened visibly in Britain since the return of the Tory government-to the point where the total 'value' of announced mergers tor the first two months of 1980 is already greater than the annual totals for 1975-78. Such steps clearly prepare the way for trade war in a shrinking world market and for major class battles at home.

This policy runs alongside direct government cutbacks in the social services, civil service and nationalised industries, enforçed by rigid cash limits.

: The results can be seen already in mounting unemployment and ' in the organised appeals from the CBI to Thatcher not to cut back any more on government assistance to private firms, many of which face a prospect of stagnation or collapse in the next period.

The problems for both the weakest sections of capitalists and the working class are worsened by the unleashing of inflation, spurred on by a series of deliberate government decisions-raising VAT, petrol and nationalised industry prices, health charges, etc.

While the major monopolies ride out a wave of inflation by simply raising prices, small firms often lack the leeway to do this, and the working class, of course, if its living standards are not to be destroyed; 'is forced to struggle for wage increases to keep pace with inflation.

But every one of the Tory policies benefits the bankers. Though not, of course, entirely separate from industrial capital, the banks stand to gain from the Tory tax cuts, from the rising interest rates, from the high value of the pound and from the increased borrowing that is forced on crisis-ridden firms; banks draw profits-in interestfrom the most bankrupt companies and nationalised industries, from the NHS and local authorities.

As inflation gathers pace, bank profits are sustained by *the larger volume of money changing hands; as smaller firms go to the wall it is bankers who benefit from the final asset-stripping operations.

And as the Tories sell off • profitable sectors of nationalis.

seize the opportunity more directly to exploit new sections of workers.

While the manufacturing base of British industry is liquidatec Unce araditionat sectors of the indus trial capitalist class are forced into damaging confrontations with the working class in a bid to drive up the rate of profit, the bankers wait with hand outstretched-either to pick up their share of the winnings or to shitt their investments to more profitable industry in the EEC or elsewhere.

The Working Class !

The: Thatcher strategy is therefore one which benefits above all the finance capitalist and which is designed to force through a rationalisation of manufacturing industry. What are the implications for the working class?

Already the December unemployment figures show a 100,000 growth in the numbers out of work. The Tory budget of June 1979 laid plans for 300,000 more unemployed over the next 12 months.

Meanwhile recorded female unemployment has increased by 62% over the last four years -from 254,000 to 412,000. These figures do not, of course, include the vast numbers of married women who have been driven back into the home by cut-backs in staffing and lack of nursery provision, and who now constitute an "invisible" army of unemployed.

The Tory hopes are that such a huge shake-out of workers from weaker sections of capital and from the public sector will not only force through speed-up and increased exploitation: amongst those remaining, but begin to act as a means of holding down wages.

To do this, workers on the dole have to be press-ganged into a desperate hunt for work. The Tories seem intent on doing this by holding down (effectively cutting) benefits at a time of 20% inflation, and by stepping up the pressure on the unemployed to take low-paid, unorganised jobs.

At the same time moves are in -hand to cut the benefits payable. to strikers' families. Thus a pincer movement-preparing an army of potential scabs, and attacking would-be strikers-s being lined up to smash working class action on pay or jobs.

Alongside unemployment, workers face a continued fall in the standard of public services, with the ongoing crisis in the NHS, cutbacks in education, and the whole range of social local authority cuts. services under pressure from Rate and rent increases will come on top of a lengthening of council housing queues as housing programmes grind to a halt.

Under such conditions of stress, racial civisions will be deliberately widened by new Tory immigration laws, which pave the way for a new spate of propaganda designed to exploit the frustration and anger within the working class at the material problems and at the absence of any political direcLabour leaders.

Though some victories have been achieved, few workers will obtain a pay settlement that will maintain their living standards at last year's level.

In short, the capitalist crisis and. the Tory response to it ensure that 1980 means an actual reverse of social progress for the British working class-a reverse which can only be halted by resolute class action to bring down the Thatcher government and oppose the Labour and trade union traitors.

Tory Offensive Recognising that their programme must lead to confrontation with the working class, the Tories have moved in from their first days in office with a package of measures designed to strengthen the forces of the state and the employers, and to divide and weaken the working class.

Within hours of their assuming office, huge pay increases were awarded to the police and the armed forces-increases which had been worked out under the Callaghan government but witheld in order to avoid further antagonising trade unionists.

Thatcher's pledge to devote more resources to "law and order" and to defence has been carried out, and Whitelaw's steadfast refusal to concede an enquiry into the murder of Blair Peach or Jimmy Kelly have reinforced the view of absolute Tory backing for the most brutal police repression.

This is, of course, interlinked with the new anti-union laws put forward in Prior's Employment Bill, which aim at destroying the power of the closed shop, and restricting the right to picket.

It is significant that the third strand of the anti-union lawsthe pressure for: postal ballots within the unions, which further open up trade union decisions for the intervention of the media, and force workers to vote as individuals rather than as part of a class action-has been actually welcomed by right-wing union leaders in the NUM.

AUEW and elsewhere.

Of course, the NUJ's legal victory in the McShane "blacking" case and the sharpened struggles around the steel strike, (with the legal moves of the private steel employers pressing Lord Denning to jump the gun and invent his own anti-union legislation) have forced the Tories ' to prepare extensive amendments to tighten up their own Bill.

At the same time, the rising tide of working class militancy and the fact that workers' attention has now been focussed on the prospect of new laws to limit the right to strike, creates very unfavourable conditions to enforce such legislation.

This is plainly why the Thatcher cabinet has been forced to weather the vicious criticism from the CBI and other right-wing elements, and has refused to be rushed into putting stringent new laws through Parliament to deal with the steel strike.

The most likely development in the coming period will be growing rank and file anger at the danger to their hard-won rights continuing to conflict with a stubborn refusal of the TUC to launch any serious fight to prevent its passage.

Instead advanced action around the Tory anti-union laws is likely to be combined with action on other issues-cuts, jobs, pay, etc-while the main resistance to them will very likely (as with Heath's Industrial Relations Act) emerge only in resistance to the implementation of its provisions in practice.

Yet we do not look to any Po the for of the early 1970s as a solution simple repetitión of the events to the Tory attacks. We must of course stand in the forefront of the fight for action to stop this legislation, while making clear our conviction that, like ..the Industrial: Relations Act, it can be effectively killed only by the defeat of the Tory government itself.

Other Tory attacks on the working class also aim to divide and weaken it. The Yatest Immigration Bill, whose effect on actual immigration will be negligible, has a double impact.

in pandering to the most extreme racialist. elements drawn around the Tory Party from the National Front during the 1979 election campaign on the basis of Thatcher's racist ganda and thus help divide the working class. .. And in establishing beyond doubt a "second class citizen" category for immigrant women it creates conditions for increased deportation of immigrants and, in the future, for the

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SOCALIST FRESS. Wedness ArrE. 1990.

LEGAL ABORTION CORRIE BILL KEEP avoid the temptation to identify 'ini Young women murch agains/ immigrant register and other restrictions and discriminatory measures demanded by the • racialists.

The factor working against this Tory strategy is the growing militancy and combativity of the working class, which breaks down racial barriers in united stnuggle.

Needless to say, as with nearly every other Tory attack, the groundwork for the new Immigration Bill haş been laid by years of Labour betrayals, in which Tory immigration laws have been effectively strengthened by the Wilson and Callaghan governments.

In the field of women's rights the Tories' bid to eliminate even the inadequate abortion rights embodied in the 1967 Act amounts to a major offensive against working women. Combined with Prior's attacks on maternity rights and women's rights at work, it can be seen as part of a determined Tory move to reverse the gains made by women in the last ten years; and to force them back into the confines of the home and the menial tasks of childcare and domestic labour.

It is impossible to ascribe one particular conscious motive for this Tory offensive: in part, they act from the need to eliminate thousands of workers from the payroll of an economy in recession; in part, from the fact that the withdrawai of social services and health care from the elderly, the cutbacks in education and youth facilities, the axing of nurseries and child care, require-in the Tories' view -that women in the home "Sale of the Century " man Heseltine KEEP undertake these burdens that are properly the responsibility of the state. And of course there is also the desire on the Tories-shared by the right wing or ine Lavour rally - lu vraye unt af thalahair Party-to wane an ideological offensive to bolster up the old constrictive values of the bourgeois family unit. The oppression of women in* the home plays a crucial role in isolating them from the class struggle and transforming them into the victims of the individualistic, conservative and even religious propaganda poured out by the media.

The Tory strategy of appealing to the individual worker and family unit to act against the interests of the working. class as a whole can also be seen in the use of postal ballots to defuse class consiousness - and militancy, the propaganda surrounding Howe's package of "tax' cuts"' and the development of government policy on housing and private medicine.

The axing of council house building and Heseltine's "sale of the century" of existing council property at knockdown prices are designed long-term to effectively abolish the role of the state sector in housing. They reprešent therefore a major attack on the working class as a whole.

The attack, however, is being carried through with propaganda aimed at individual tenants, designed to persuade them to secure their own interests by taking advantage of a "bargain" offer. The net financial loss to be carried by the state in selling off these houses is regarded by the Tories in the same way as large sums paid out in voluntary redundancy-they are an investment for the tuture, in which private landiords can look forward . to higher rents and eventually to buying up chunks of prime council estates, and private developers can drive house prices even higher as the inevitable shortages arise.

Private medical schemesgiven a boost in the last year by deals involving power workers and other unions-are another way in which the Tories aim to press sections of workers and the middle class to seek an individual way out of the crisis facing the NHS, and thus to reduce the opposition to further drastic cuts. There has been an actuai increase in private medicine as state facilities are run down. By offering doctors in particular the hopes of a profitable excursion into private practice, the lories can hope to remove their influence and prestige from the struggle against the destruction of the NHS, a struggle already muted by the continual sabotage of public sector union leaders.

These moves towards utilising the individual and the family unit as a bulwark against class consciousness run hand-in-hand with an eager series of Tory press witch-hunts on socialists and communists that oppose LEI such positions and fight to mobilise. resistance within the labour movement.

Such witch-hunts have also extended to attempts to whip up violence against those workers identified with the struggle against British imperialist oppression in Ireland. The Tories have so far largely followed the reactionary Labour strategy on the Irish war.

The Atkins conference on the future of the province was a predictable failure. The Tories seem likely to attempt to impose: some form of devolution on the north, banking on the SDLP confining itself to verbal protests, and at the same time to step up attempts to 'Ulsterise' the security forces by putting a strengthened RUC more into the front line, while making some cosmetic withdrawals of British troops.

Such steps will do nothing to resolve the crisis for the British state whereby the growing polarisation and the increased military strength of the republican movement puts a mititary or diplomatic solution out of the question.

Irish workers, north and south, face growing attacks on their lobs and living standards. Surveys in the north now predict 17% unemployment, the bulk of which is borne by the Catholic population.

Tens of thousands of working class Catholic men (and virtually all Catholic women) are outside the ranks of the trade union movement.

The trade unions are in many cases dominated by Orangeism and fail to provide a forum where northern Catholics can fight their double oppression.

Those not dominated by Orange forces have adopted the Stalinist/Official republican line of the Better Life for All Campaign.

This is a jumble of utopian abstractions which recognises both the sectarian Orange state and the right of the British government to legislate. We condemn this policy without reservation.

While Trotskyists in the north must agitate within the trade unions, we recognise that in these conditions work outside the official labour movement takes on added importance.

In the south workers have shown over and over again their readiness to struggle on economic demands. The Haughey government, which replaced Lynch, has merely stepped up its attacks on the working class and savagely increased taxes. The bureaucracy has attempted to channel the militancy of the Irish workers into a peaceful campaign on the tax system:

There is no automatic link between the economic struggle and the national question.

Protestant workers in the grip of Loyalism in the north have proved capable of major struggles on the economic front.

Such struggles objectively point to the common interest of all workers against imperialist rule in Ireland, but the task of the Trotskyist party-to organise the class as a class-cannot be glibly posed.

At each point where limited unity between Catholic and Protestant workers has been achieved against their common class enemy, the Orange leaders have successfully used the 'Papist Threat to the material privileges of Protestant. workers to re-establish the sectarian divide.

Faced with such a division Trotskyists do. not adopt a haughty 'even-handed attitude. We are not indifferent to the double oppression of the Catholic minority in the north and we do not hesitate to support their struggle, arms in hand, against the British army.

In Britain, when confronted by workers for left groups like the RCG) who see the Provisionals as the only legitimate leadership for the anti-imperialist struggle, we oppose them.

We point out that the Provisional movement is a petty bourgeois nationalist movement, which (as is so clearly illustrated by Mugabe in Zimbabwe) never bases itself on defence and independence of the working class.

We point to the capitulation by the Provisionals to the Pope's visit; its failure to even try. to organise workers as anything more than individuals within a guerrilla movement; and its disdainful attitude towards the British working class.

But for every worker with such illusions in Britain there are 99 others who have been poisoned by the state, the press and the labour leadership, to condemning the Provisionals as 'terrorists' and 'murderers' That is why the majority of our propaganda and agitation in Britain must be directed towards defending unconditionally Republican forces against imperialism.

Failure to do so condemns any movement as objectively aiding imperialism against that When we take up the question of Ireland in the trade unions, and when Socialist Press supporters take up the issue in the Labour Party, we clearly do not pose as a precondition that such bodies adopt a policy of an Irish Workers Republic before they can demand the immediate withdrawal of troops.

We must ensure "however that we consistently put forward this demand in our press and that when speaking on Ireland in the organisation of the working class we must make it clear that we do not support a reunification of Ireland based on a double exploitation of a Protestant minority by a Catholic-dominated Dublin In campaigning on Ireland in the labour movement it is essential that revolutionaries the backwardness of sections of Pa.

British workers with the conscious pro-imperialist stance taken \by their bureaucratic • trade union and Labour leaders.

What is needed is not arrogant lectures against national chauvinism, but patient propaganda and ağitational work designed to counter the censored lies and provocations of the mass media, to expose the reality of the Irish war and to mobilise workers-in conflict with their reformist and Stalinist leaders-to oppose the role of their 'own' capitalist class.

In Britain . the struggle against press censorship, against the so-called Prevention of Terrorism' Act, and in solidarity with the long and bitter struggle of the republican prisoners of Long Kesh and Armagh Jail for the restoration of political prisoner status are all central democratic demands. to be raised by our comrades in every labour movement body.

This is not just a propaganda campaign. Our task is to build a real mass anti-imperialist movement which will break the stranglehold of the trade union and Labour Party bureaucracres.

We also demand self-determination for the Irish people as a whole. This demand which has a transitional revolutionary content against both the British and irish bourgeoisie, cannot.be evaded by 'defending' the rights of the Protéstant workers in the north.

That would be not to defend their real interests, but their reactionary consciousness" and their allegiance to Paisley and other extreme reactionary Not to call for self determination for the Irish people as a whole must mean to call in fact for the right to 'self determination' for the Protestant minority (which was created an artificial majority by imperialism). While stressing the obligation:

of the British workers' movement to assist its Irish brothers and sisters, we must not shrink from exposing the way in which the schooling of the British armed forces in urban guerrilla warfare and mass repression in Ireland also poses a direct threat to the British working class, which now faces one of the most battle-hardened and brutalised armies in all the advanced capitalist countries.

The Tory press and the Labour bureaucracy, with assistance from the right wing and state forces, have shown themselves determined to witch-hunt and even provoke violence against those who press the struggle for solidarity with the Trish people.

The answer to such witch-hunts must be to turn into the labour movement in a deter:

mined fight to broaden the base of support for the demands of "troops out now" and self-determination for the Irish people"

Continued next week

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STEEL WORKERS' POWER

JUINT SHUP STEWARDS TEE TGWU

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somers- right i PHOTO: Laurie Sparham, IFL

KEEP ABORTION TUC says CORONE A KEEPIT

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