Fight for solidarity with Bolivian masses

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The resistance of the workers and peasants of Bolivia against the Junta is referred to in a separate report in this issue of Socialist Press.

Revolutionaries in Britain must now build a campaign to fight for solidarity action in defence of democratic rights in Bolivia.

The development of this campaign will be covered in Socialist Press.

As a first step the following resolutions are proposed for raising in trade union branches, particularly the NUM, TGWU and other unions with present and potential links with Bolivian workers.

NUM leaders recently visited Bolivia and had a return delegation from the Bolivian miners' union, the FSTMB.

NUM leaders must translate words into material support.

Transport workers and dockers in the TGWU must take up the call for blacking of all trade with Bolivia in defence of the working class against imperialism.

The export of arms to the Junta and the import of Bolivian tin in particular must be stopped. RESOLUTIONS FOR UNION BRANCHES.

1) This (trade union branch' deplores the recent military coup in Bolivia and expresses its solidarity with the struggle of the miners, peasants and other workers of Bolivia against the new Junta.

It calls on the union to give maximum material sumport to this struggle in:

i) blacking of all trade with the Junta and calling on the TUC to organise a full-scale blacking campaign.

ії) participating in building a national campaign of solidarity;

üi) using all necessary means to ensure that recognition and aid are with-held from the Junta by the British government. RESOLUTION FOR LABOUR PARTIES This (Labour Party) deplores the recent military coup in Bolivia and calls on the NEC to support all trade union action in Britain in solidarity with the miners, peasants and other workers of Bolivia in their struggle to overthrow the new Junta. It calls on the NEC to ensure that all necessary means are used to prevent British government recognition of or aid to the Bolivian Junta, and further calls on the NEC to give active support to a national campaign of solidarity in Britain with the Bolivian working class. the already substantial repressive apparatus in operation at the plants to bludgeon the workers into disciplined & SASOOD plants. one alone of which required capital investments of over £1,000 million, are top secret and security concerns.

Besides the normal apparatus of electronic security fencing continuously patrolled by armed guards with dogs and strict surveillance over everyone South African miners like compounds. They are subject to a dusk-to-dawn curfew, repeated on-the-spot strip searches by security guards and perpetual harassment from the armed guards and troops which patrol the compounds at night.

Though the repressive might of the apartheid state is enormous, the revolutionary strength of the working class is mightier by far.

When a worker, Patrick Mtetwa, was shot dead by a security patrol on the night of July 13, workers at SASOL 3 went on a two-day rampage, burning buildings and buses and killing two whites before all 18,000 construction workers came out on strike.

Last week, following a night by angry workers while police reinforcements used teargas in an attempt to disperse them, 750 construction workers at the SASOL 2 plant demanded higher wages.

The workers, who are not unionised, added their independent strength to their negotiations with management by taking strike action. Within a day they had won a pay rise, which the bosses will not reveal.

While the majority of the workers resumed work, 80 who found the increase unacceptable were sacked.

Commenting on the counterrevolutionary process set in motion by Mugabe in Zimbabwe Tambo said:

"Before they (Zanu-PF) took power, the leaders had certain theories of what they would do when in power. But when they did take power, they had to face up to certain realities. This is the way it would be in South Africa"

Intervene

It is only Trotskyists who, basing themselves irreconcilably on the independent interests of the working class and drawing their strength from the courage and initiative of the spontaneous struggles of the class, can provide the political leadership capable of breaking the stranglehold of petit-bourgeois nationalism on the independent strivings of the workers.

And it is only by intervening in the day to day struggles of the workers on the basis of a revolutionary programme which turns their spontaneous struggles against the bosses into the struggle of the whole class against the capitalist system that Trotskyists will demonstrate the necessity for the building of an independent revolutionary party in South Africa (as a section of the reconstructed Fourth International) to lead the struggle for communism.

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