SPD coalition points need for new

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this.

Safety valve

Similarly in Cuba in ithe early 1970s Castro, under pressure, held a series of dernocratic trade union elections, as a safety valve. All the higher levels remained completely under the control of the bureaucracy and the working class made no step forward.

Whatever happens the working class will never be the same, in that they have seen their own power, their anti-bureaucratic consciousness will have been developed.

But it they return to work now then the cosmetic changes will mean no real gains.

Walesa and his comrades must become "political' in that they must turn to the history of the struggle for a political revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy. This lies in the struggle of the Trotskyist movement, the Fourth International.

The Transitional Programme contains demands for the political revolution to overthrow the bureaucracy as part of the struggle for a world revolution to overthrow capitalism on a world scale.

Allies

The workers of the world are the allies of the Polish workers. Whatever they want "blacked' Whatever supplies they require, the United Strike Committees should appeal to the world's working class. When Edvard Gierek talks about investigating workers' conditions, about. modifying plans, about elections in the official trade unions, the question for the workers is who does he intend to carry this out?

The problems of the Polish economy are brought out clearly from the debts to the West, but that is not where they came from.

They arose precisely because a parasitic bureaucracy is in control, it is even them who make the changes. They have the power in their hands.

Plans for the economy are made in a bureaucratic manner.

The masses are excluded except as a limited pressure group. When they threaten the Polish workers with Soviet intervention, they appeal as one parasitic bureaucracy to another. on Soviet workers and the Red Army to follow the lead of the Polish workers, form soviets and overthrow the Soviet bureaucracy.

*End all bureaucratic privileges! Close the special shops and the dollar shops; stop the tourists taking food and goods denied to Polish workers.

*For workers control over the press and mass media, exercised through workers' councils.

*Release all the arrested KOR members immediately.

*Release all political prisoners except proven agents of imperialism convicted before workers' courts. Disband the secret police!

*For the right of free speech, to strike and to assembly for all workers' parties and newspapers.

*Open the books of the economy! For a workers' plan of production formulated not by bureaucrats but by factory committees, consumers and soviets.

*No secret diplomacy! Publish the talks between Gierek and Brezhnev, plotting against the workers of Poland and the USSR! Full support to revolutionary struggles throughout the world. Break the isolation of the deformed workers' states through the international struggle for socialism!

*For an independent Soviet Poland as a • step towards a United Socialist States of Europe!

*Defend. Polish workers against Stalinist attacks: defend the workers' states against imperialist attack! For a revolutionary Marxist party to lead the struggles of the Polish workers as part of a reconstructed Fourth International!

LEAGUE

Public meeting Poland -For Politi Friday August 29 8.00 p.m.

East Oxford Community Cent Princes St With the West German Bundestag (Parliament) Elections little over a month away, opinion polls predict an overwhelming majority for Schmidt and the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

In Baden-Wurthemburg in March, neither the Christian Democrat-Christian Socialist coalition (CDU/CSU) nor the SPD gamed, and it was the 'Greens' (Ecologists) who created the surprises by winning 5.3% of the vote, but this has not turned out to be a trendsetter.

In the North Rhein/Westphalia election in May, the Greens failed to qualify and the SPD gained a landslide victory. It is this Land which is generally seer as the indicator for the 5 October election, since about a third of the population lives there.

War-mongerer

The election was fought on the basis of Schmidt versus Strauss rather than on the merits of the local candidates. Schmidt's popularity seems to be on the increase, not least because of Strauss's reputation as an extreme right-winger and a war-mongerer.

Nevertheless, Schmidt is not yet counting his chickens in public. One of his remaining worries must be over the stability of the national coalition between the SPD and the 'liberal capitalist Free Democratic Party (FDP). In North Rhein/Westphalia the FDP failed to qualify: if they do no better in the national Bundestag elections, the SPD's ruling position would be in jeopardy:

More recently there has been another blow to the SPD/FDP coalition. The metalworkers union, IG Metall, are in dispute with the Mannesmann steel concern over the question of "Co-determination". . This stems from a 1951 Act which binds Schmidt management to accepting an equal number of workers as management on • companies' supervisory boards. However a 1976 Act exempted the coal and steel industries from this provision. The determination of the IG Metall to stop management sidestepping the 1951 law has developed into a full scale row, which has remained deadlocked for some time.

Far-reaching

The implications for the SPD/FDP coalition and the October election are far-reaching. About 200 SPD deputies, eager to appear on the side of the workers, have pledged themselves to recall Parliament if codetermination is not enforced at Mannesmann. However, the FDI, predictably enough, has come out against co-determination and supports management's freedom to rationalise workforces at Mannesmann as elsewhere.

Chancellor Schmidt has offered to mediate in the dispute in order to avoid a Parliamentary split between the SPD and FDP. Meanwhile, 30,000 workers have been on strike over the issue-although such a strike is by definition illegal in Strauss West Germany.

Despite these tensions, it still looks unlikely that the SPD/ FDP coalition will crack. It gives the FDP political leverage over the ruling party, and it has its uses for Schmidt and the right wing of the SPD, who use the 'necessity' for the SPD/FDP alliance to beat left-wing SPD deputies over the head.

The SPD no more represents the interests of the West German working class than does the Labour Party those of British workers. With the increasing level of militancy in response to the growing economic crisis (80,000 workers on short time, unemployment 3.7% and rising) there will be increasing opposition to right wing social democracy and reformism.

Disillusioned

Workers who last winter accepted low wage settlements on the understanding that there would be no redundancies are reportedly growing disillusioned as jobs are cut and short time working introduced. Under these conditions the need for alternative leadership in the West German labour movement becomes even more urgent.

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"The never Nicaragi meant u hensible United States could allow another a, even if this sing the most repremethods"

This barbarism goes under the name of the 'agrarian reform' , introduced in March and heralded by the appearance of large numbers of American