Genera strike falters in Sri Lanka

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Continned from front page VULI Each of these moves, howinvolved a substantial split in the bureaucracy itself.

Today the existing leadership is so distrusted that any attempt to take over the unofficial movement would require a further split.

But the only other alternative is the use of brute force to repress the strikes.

This would involve the intervention of the Kremlin bureaucracy.

Gierek talks about the need "not to provoke our allies"-but is in reality threatening Polish workers with a Soviet invasion. After all, Gierek himselt supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.

The odds are at present against a Soviet intervention. Not only is Polard itself a hostile cauldron of class struggle, but the Kremlin leaders themselves face the problem of danger from the right wing. The Catholic church in particular is hoping to cash in on the movement, suddenly discovering that -in Poland, if not in any capitalist country- "Poland's bread belongs to all Poles:"

The real danger of a right wing intervention lies in a reactionary mobilisation of the peasantry by the church should the bureaucracy succeed in defeating the working class.

The present mobilisation of the workers in independent struggles provides the worst conditions for a pro-imperialist intervention.

But the fight for a Trotskyist party could be vastly strengthened in today's struggles.

While the Polish workers have the potential strength to make history, they need above all a conscious leadership and an internationalist programme, incorporating an appeal to the Russian working class and peasantry.

After more than a month has seen its leadership sound the retreat.

Over the past five weeks, despite massive state repression to break the strike, more and more workers have come out alongside their class sisters and brothers in open confrontation with the reactionary United National Party (UNP) government led by J.R. Jayawardene.

Notwithstanding the uprisings of August and September last year-when 128 people died in struggles focussed around the secessionist demands of the oppressed Tamil minority -this general strike has been the first major clash between the government and the working class since the UNP came to power in the 1977 elections and the greatest struggle on the island for decades.

Its coming was inevitable. Coupied with the impact of the world crisis of capitalism on the island's economy, , Jayawardene's government has, under the direct auspices of an IMF investment' launched a concerted savage attack on the standard of living of Sri Lankan workers.

Prior to the 1977 elections Sri Lanka had one of the most extensive welfare systems in Asia-a product of decades of working class struggle which at one stage (1964) brought the "Trotskyist» - Lanka Sama Samaja Party (the then Sri Lankan section of the USFI) into the infamous and treacherous Popular Front government with the bourgeois Freedom Party of Mrs. Bandaranaike.

Imperialism, through the agency of the IMF, has hoped to transform Sri Lanka into another Singapore-a competitive trade and manufacturing In the three years since the UNP came to power, the welfare metes have stat sashed, wale so-called Free Trade Zones have been opened up in the proletarian centres to provide a discipined cheap-labour force for imperialist exploitation.

In the past year, while wages have been drastically cut and thousands of workers made redundant, consumer prices have risen by 35% and expenditure on welfare has been cut from 9% to 5% of the GNP.

Even with 65% of public investment coming from imperialist aid, the no-growth and Talling. . exports economy is in the grips of a severe balance of payments crisis, with the current account deficit having doubled to £500 million in the past year.

In a country of 14 million people, where over 1½ million are unemployed and the inflation rate is 40%, more than half the population subsist on less than 300 rupees (f8) per month.

The only 'development' that capitalist investment has brought to Sri Lanka is the developing misery and pauperisation of the Sri Lankan masses.

When the government recently eliminated large subsidies on basic foods, causing still sharper price rises, the Joint Trade Union Action Committee -which unites unions linked to Sri Lanka's two main workers' parties with those affiliated to the bourgeois opposition Freedom Party-called for the 300Kms -1 300 Miles INDIA POLOMBO J.R.Jayawardene Bay of Bengal JAFFNA TRINCOMALEE intervene in this struggle on the basis of a programme of transitional demands which make the workers conscious of the revolutionary implications of the objective process unfolding in Sri Lanka today.

The general strike-which not only paralysed production but also, for the moment the UNP government-brings the revolutionary struggle for workers power to the top of the agenda.

The Sri Lankan revolution now rests above all on the leadership of the massive struggle in progress-a leadership which at the moment rests most firmly in the hands of the NSSP, a mass working class party which considers itself Trotskyist.

A few days before President Jayawardene ordered the arrest last week of Vasudeva Nauayakkara (President of the United Federation of Labour and leader of the NSSP) he challenged him publicly to state whether his forces are willing to rule the country and whether they had a programme for mass unemployment.

Trotskyists •should have answered with the programme of socialist revolution, not in the ear of Jayawardene but in the struggles of the working class.

The NSSP responded with a programme demanding: "from a general strike to a mass 'Hartal' (involving workers in the towns and countryside); convene a workers' delegate council; out with the UNP government and form a left revolutionary government!" (quoted in Militant 516, to whom the NSSP are sympathetic).

The WSL, critically supporting all of these demands calls on Sri Lankan Trotskyists to struggle alongside the NSSP in the working class on the basis of a programme which seeks to deepen the general strike by fighting to:

Build and develop the independent unity and • solidarity of the working class by the linking together of workers committees in the towns and countryside through construction workers councils of action as a basis for the creation of soviets.

For the councils of action to organise the establishment of workers militia to defend the working class and its organisations and pave the way for the armed offensive on state power.

Disband the standing army.

On this basis to struggle for the creation of a workers' government rooted in the independent organisations of the working class as part of the struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Bring down the bosses' UNP government!

Full support for the struggle of the oppressed Tamil people for national self-determination and the right to secede.

Full support for transitional demands to defend wages and jobs.

For solidarity action in the British labour movement.

Fight in the trade unions and the Labour Party for blacking of all trade with Sri Lanka for the duration of the strike.

Open the books of multinationals reaping massive profits in Sri Lanka. Prove the case for nationalisation of domestic and foreign capitalist holdings without compensation under workers control.

For workers' trade.

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ever, took place in a much more peaceful period-and both

of general strike action, the courageous and militant working class in Sri Lanka