Jimmy Reid welcomes Tory 'Enterprise Zone'

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Last week was an outstanding one for two of the most opportunist figures in the Scottish labour movement.

Remember James Reid, "hero" of the UCS work-in of 1972, darling then of the Communist Party and the Labour Party left, ex-rector of Glasgow University and fervent expounder of the Sermon on the Mount?

Readers may well ask where is he now? We can reliably report that he is alive, well and busily welcoming the establishment of an "enterprise zone" in Clydebank.

In an article in the Glasgow Herald last week, Reid praised the government's decision to convert the site of the now redundant Singer factory into a miniature Hong Kong of superexploitation.

Having betrayed the struggle of the Clydeside shipyard workers in 1972 with the farcical "work-in" policy (also advocated by his fellow CP members James Airlie and Sammy Barr), Reid them jumped into the fold of the After standing unsuccessfully for Parliament at the last General Election (failing to unseat Gordon Wilson in Dundee) he then gave up his job as a shipyard worker to occupy • his time writing a column for the arch-Tory Glasgow Herald in which he now expounds his reactionary Views.

The point being reached where he can now advocate Tory industrial policies which have been rejected by even the most timid reformists, the question must be, where does James Reid go next?

No doubt in the same direction as Keir Bloomer, leading figure in the EIS, Scotland's biggest teachers' union.

Bloomer went on record last week as being in favour of the closure of two of Scotland's teacher training colleges, Callender Park in Falkirk and Hamilton in Lanarkshire.

Herein he finds, himself in total agreement with George Younger, the Tory Secretary of State for Scotland, who announced the closures in a written statement last week.

Interestingly, Craigie College, which was also under threat, has been reprieved; this may have something to do with it being within Younger's own constituency.

It might be imagined that Bloomer who is, after all, the union's chief negotiator on salaries and conditions, including those of many college lecturers, would be interested in opposing the closure of these colleges.

Perish the thought! Mr Bloomer wears many hats. In one capacity he may be a union negotiatot, but in another he is a leading figure on the General Teaching Council which adjudicates on the suitability of Scottish teachers, and in that capacity, he has frequently advocated college closures.

Fewer colleges

Falling school rolls, he reasons, can only mean less teachers and therefore fewer colleges. In this he is certainly consistent for he also fiercely opposes any attempt to make reduction of class sizes a priority in union negotiations.

It was a bad week for the Scottish working class with mounting unemployment, rising prices and further cuts in their social services.

But it was a good week for the opportunists.

Carter it is precisely such generals and imperialist chiefs who stand eagerly behind the shoulder of geriatric reactionary Ronald Reagan, the most likely next US President.

An insight into the way such right wingers want to use the nuclear weapons at their disposal is offered by the revelation of secret papers of Harry S. Truman, US President during the height of the Korean War.

Stung by the military defeats inflicted on the imperialist UN ground forces-in particular the repulse by Chinese troops of Devastation in Hiroshima, 1945 Reid Reagan General MacArthur's attempted crossing of the Yalu river in 1950-Truman looked to the growing US nuclear arsenal to compensate.

In a note in his private journal in January 1952 he wrote:

"It seems to me that the proper approach now would be an ultimatum with 10-day expiration limit. Informins Moscow that intend blockade the China coast from border 11100 China, and that we intend to destroy every military base in Manchuria, including submarine bases, by means control-and if there is further interference we any ports or cites necessary accomplish our peaceful purposes.

"This means all-out war. It neans that Moscow, St. Peters Mukden, Vladivostock reking, Shanghai, Port Arthur Dairen, Odessa, Stalingrad and every manufacturing plant in the Soviet Union will be eliminated.

"This is the final chance for the Soviet Government to decide whether it desires to survive or not."

Truman of course had been the man who ordered the ropping of nuclear weapons o firoshima and Nagasaki in 194 -not so much to crush an already defeated Japanese imperialism, as to threaten the Soviet bureaucracy with the new destructive force now i he hands of American capital The frenzied US military build up with Truman's Cold War period was clearly seen by the imperialists as a means of waging a renewed drive for the "liberation" of the Eastern European buffer states from Kremlin control and an attack on the nationalised property relations of the USSR itself.

There is no doubt whatever that in the Cold War of 1980, both US and British imperialists are again seeking to secure a military superiority over the colour Soviet Union and the deformed workers' states of Europe, Asia and Cuba.

Meanwhile the immense cost of such programmes-$60 billion for the American MX missile system; £10 billion for the British "Trident" submarine missiles-is being inflicted on the working class in the form of cuts in social services, health and education as military budgets soar upwards.

In countering such aggressive moves, the Soviet bureaucracy is not engaging in an arbitrary "arms race" (as the pacifists would have us believe). It is taking vital steps to defend workers' states against the material threat posed by imperialism.

This is why the Labour Party's call for "multilateral mutual disarmament" is both a vain hope and a reactionary diversion from the task of defeating the imperialist offensive, which requires the struggle 101 the unilateral disarmament of the imperialist powers, and the unconditional defence of the Soviet Union from attack.

Opposed struggles

Yet such defence cannot rest simply on modern weaponry and vast armies. The imperialist threat to the USSR has been increased many times over by the reactionary politics of the Kremlin bureaucrats, who, in seeking to strike a world-wide deal with imperialism, have consistently opposed struggles by workers in the post war period to overthrow imperialist governments.

Neither the politics of Stalinist "peaceful coexistence" peddled by the Communist Parties, nor the utopian schemas of the reformists and pacifists can offer a way forward for the working dass in the struggle *gainst imperialist war.

A revolutionary leadership is needed, committed to the independent struggle of the working dass to overthrow its imperialist rulers and the Stalinist bureaucracies in the deformed workers' states.