Fascists exploit Tory unemployment 'New' NF lay wreath in Hull

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and trade unionists in Hull to take the threat of fascism seriously was highlighted on Saturday 22 September.

The Hull branch of the New National Front were allowed to lay a wreath on the steps of the City Hall-supposedly to mark the destruction of the British fishing industry.

Although the fascists' intentions had been known for some time it was only on the previous Thursday that they had announced the time and date of the wreath laying in an advert in the local paper.

In the short time available, the anti-fascists managed to mobilise about 120 demonstrators to gieet the fascists. The bulk of the demonstrators were gathered opposite the City Hall in Victoria Square, while others were situated in front of the City Hall and on the steps of the building.

As usual substantial number of police had been turned out to carry out their What is it that Frank Chapple has that other trade union leaders do not?

It is this star quality that makes this differènce between a super hero and an also-ran.

It cannot be simply the crude consistent right wing line. It cannot be the iron shackles in which his members groan. It cannot be the matey bonhomie that he shares with the hard men of Fleet Street.

'There are others that would share his crown if it were this alone. Who else can be so brazen about his careful solicitude for British capitalism? So brutal in his contempt for workers who want to fight? So obviously at home glaring out from the pages of the Daily Express or the Daily Mail?

Their For unlike some of the other open right wingers of the TUC, Frank Chapple does not crawi for. the respect of the capitalists. He does not have any sense of ambiguity. He is their man, hook, line and sinker.

And they respect him. They want blood. He gives them blood. They want to see workers crawl. He makes his members crawl.

They play word games with democracy. He suppresses the last vestiges of workers' democracy in his own union, and then is hailed as the man who supported workers' democracy in Poland.

His pedigree is unempeachable. Not just the man who exposed the Reds. But the man who actually was a CP member and then exposed them.

That sense of danger; of the man once contaminated himself; who saw the light-whose Fascist youth usual function of protecting the fascists.

Their first action was to clear the front of the City Hall and form a cordon between the demonstrators and the building.

The fascists arrived in a minihatred for Communism does not depend on theories or ideas but on a naked vendetta fuelled by the material privileges that his position brings.

So there he stands. If Fleet Street had an Order of Lenin; Chapple would be the man to win it.

Friends

So when Chapple is snubbed, when the bureaucrats club at the TUC closes its ranks against the man who breaks their understandings on public criticisms; then he has as many friends as there are words in the Fleet Street headline writers' armoury.

The newspapers squabble over who saw him first. They vie for the most outrageous quotes. They tumble over eachother in their condemnation of the TUC.

They even trip without irony into defence of the TUC's whole history, which is that the 'elections' to TUC committees are a charade in which the hacks keep their seats and the rest wait for a death in the family.

Gutter press

The Guardian has been trying to demonstrate that it need learn little from the gutter press when it decides to play rough. (Its leader last week on the attack by the NAS/UWT against the headteachers' scabbing guide was a classic of anti-union polemic).

Gleefully the Guardian launched into defence of Chapple:

"He abhors Communism at home and abroad, with all the zeal of a one-time party member and he finds the TUCs half baked matiness with its East was held up by the police.

As the fascists emerged from the bus they were greeted wth verbal abuse and the chanting of slogans by the demonstrators.

Iwo of the fascists were bearing Union Jacks while John Tyndall carried the wreath.

Skirmishes

As they approached the steps of the building some of the demonstrators attempted to break through the police lines to confront the fascists and in the skirmishes that followed the police made five arrests.

Later another demonstrator was arrested for throwing empty cans at the mini-bus.

Four of the arrested were charged with breach of the peace and appeared before the magistrates court on the following Monday where two were fined £50 each while the other -a fifteen year old youth-was fined £25 after pleading guilty to the charges.

European counterparts hard to swallow.

Though not an incomes policy man, he disliked the Winter of Discontent for its violent picketing, its disregard for the young, the old and the sick-to say nothing of Labour's election prospects"

Not that you should run away with the idea that the Guardian is about to launch a defence of some democratic accountability of TUC leaders.

No! The one admirable thing it finds about the TUC is its bureaucratic stranglehold.

"The sensible and honourable tradition round the general council table has long been-as we argued last week-that jobs senior committees are handed out on a mixture of seniority and muscle"

• The Daily Mail had been the first to see the full potential of the story. Every other paper on Fleet Street had felt obliged to lead its front page, with the Iraq/Iran war.

Not so the Mail which summed up the world political situation in general in the headline "TUC are mean and vindictive"

The Express hit back with an editorial "The giants and the pygmies" which seemed to parody the mindless patriotism of the Beaverbrook ghosts.

«We did not win the last war because people indulged in an endless debate on division of labour. We won it because everybody banded together. Mr Chapple has the unfashionable realism and common sense to see that that is the only way we are also going to win our present economic battle"

A profile of Chapple (My members won't give a damn) which shared the page, seemed It is not clear at this moment in time if the other two arrested are going to be charged or not, The harsh lesson of this event is that regardless of the fact that the wreath was destroyed after the fascists had left, the New National Front had achieved their objective.

They had made their gesture in Hull and had got away with it.

Until the labour movement mobilisies allout action to prevent the public actions of the fascists, they will continue their reactionary agitation, exploiting racial tensions and nationalist sentiment-particularly in areas of mass unemployment.

To confront: the fascists requires the building of workers' defence squads drawn out of the labour and trade union movement.

The anti-fascist sub-committee of the Hull Trades' Union Council, dormant for some time, must now be built up and must seriously consider these questions. to have been composed run. The Industrial Editor wrote:

"He rushed from TUC headquarters after his supposed humiliation at such a pace that we: dodged buses, taxis and bemused tourists for half a mile as we talked"

The Express • named Chapple's article in its own pages on the Day of Action as one reason for his 'supposed humiliațion'. (It would be useful A group of about 20 National Front fascists erupted into violence last week at a Communist Party rally in Acton, West London.

Shouting "The Reds, the Reds, we've got to get rid of the Reds" they hurled chairs and threw punches at all within reach.

The 150-strong meeting fought back and eventually bundled them out, managing to inflict some of their own medicine on them.

The signal to start the fray was given by the regional organiser of the NF during the speech by Joe Bowers from the Irish CP.

The stewards on the door had been alerted as to the man's identity-but still allowed him in.

The main speaker, CP Secretary Gordon McLennan gave a Bennite-type speech calling for import controls, bigger wages Chapple incidentially if the press could make up its mind whether he has been humiliated or not)..

In that. article he had argued viciously against political strikes and in favour of the 'democratically elected' Thatcher The Daily Mail was not to be outdone. It followed the story up with another profile of Chapple, not written on the run, but by Linda Lee-Potter, and only increases (!).

The interesting speech, when it was able to resume was by Joe Bowers.

In a difficult-to-follow convoluted speech he attacked the record of the CP and its present non-interest in promoting discussion of Ireland in the British labour movement.

"We contribute to the atmosphere of silence around He also stated that although he still thinks that he was right to attack the "Troops Out people" , one harmful side effect of this was to dampen the discussion of Ireland in the British workers' movement.

His contribution clearly reflected major differences on Ireland inside the Communist. Party whose members have in some areas, particularly Oxford, stood at the forefront of those witch-hunting socialists and trade unionists who support the struggle for troops out. who can pour out eyewash even faster than Chapple can poke people in the eye.

She gushed away in top gear:

«The brash roistering public image. of Frank the thick skinned, Frank the fearless, he says is totally alien to the man who writes poetry in his five bedroomed house in the country where he's built a library and where sheep graze on twelve acres.

He kèeps 200 pigeons, goes on six mule hikes and drinks cocoa before he goes to bed. He's a marvellous cook better than any woman' He has the powerful shoulders of a pugilist, the dramatic oratory of a demagogue, the sexy charisma of a matinee idol and • a slight tendency to address individuals as though they are on the tenth row of a public meeting".

But it is after wading through another column of these sexist, sentimental banalities that we eventually come across an insight-from Chapple himself. After learning that his childhood was a rerun of Jesus Christ's (he confounded wise men with his wisdom) Chapple goes on:

"I loved animals. We had rabbits, pigeons, cats, dogs, canaries. If anybody had a sick cat or dog they'd seek my advice. In some strange way this developed a leadership quality in me.:

If you breed animals you're always taking decisions on their behalf and politics is only an extension of this"

Well in the EETPU no doubt it is. The membership are called upon to jump through the hoop as Chapple plans out their route to the slaughterhouse. It is no wonder he is as sick as a parrot at his demotion.

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Extracted from the WSL pamphlet "Don't Let Turkey Become Another Chile" published earlier this year prior to the coup. NSL pamphlet "Don't Let Turkey Become Another Chile" published earlier this Soldiers carry off confiscated Marxist literature Forces Chief. of Staff General war' within the Middle East. spelt out to both Prime Minister ly in the same language. With Demirel and to Bulent Ecevit, Carter using the USSR's bourgeois Republican People's 11. Imperialism's cold war' turn, lage o ODESSA OMAN 1A SEBASTOPOL BUL.G.

ISTANBUL

KARAMURSEL Dardanelles ANKARA" X IZMIR FO RMER:AIR BASES MONITORING UNITS Extracted from the The intensification of the world economic crisis, bringing rising unemployment and growing inflation within the advanced capitalist countries, is expressed on an altogether different level within For, if the country's entire post-war history has seen a mounting reliance on Western credit, confirming the inevitable inability of the Turkish capitalist class to free itself from imperialist domination, the last few ycars have brought industrial stagnation, which now paralyses vast sections of the economy and virtual national bankruptcy.

• Nearly 1 in 4 are out of work; repeated devaluations of the Lira bring huge price rises where inflation fluctuates at figures nearing 100% p.a.; oil imports are practically at a standstill, meaning no fuel for power stations and. bringing regular 5-8 hour power cuts; the black market thrives while a. whole range of basic commodities are unobtainable; for millions, meat has long ago passed into the super-luxury category.

Meanwhile imperialism's bankers, the IMF and OECD haggle among. themselves over who should sacrifice most to sustain the ravaged economy.

Discarded

Though having long since discarded any serious thoughts of such debts being repaid and scarcely even bothering to fill out the cheque-stubs, nevertheless every dollar and mark is lent at a price.

The terms and conditions attached are commensurate with the vastness of the sums involved. However achieved, at whatever cost, imperialism demands measures which will go at least some way towards creating conditions for profitable production.

The •massive proposed denationalisation and selling off to private capitalists of sections of the country's huge state-owned resources, particularly mines, oil ana lana (mn form, not unlike the Tories' policy in Britain), are a direct response to these demands.

But imperialism's interest in Turkey is far from limited to economics. The country's strategic position, its proximity to the Gulf area and the Soviet Union an, not least, its massive standing army, combine to make it, in the present period, NIKOLAYEV BLACK SEA SINOP PAZAI ERZURUM BELBASI RKEY INCI RLIK mi YPRI of particular: importance to NATO.

Since the founding of the Turkish republic, the military has seldom been out of earshot of the country's political life. Built from the Attaturk-led armed struggle against imperialism, the army poses more than most as a 'respectable' arbiter between the bourgeoisie and the exploited masses.

In reality, its regular internal deployment over the last 30 years has been to serve as Bonapartist broker between antagonistic sections of the ruling class itself when, as today, bourgeois politics reach an impasse.

Such was the threat in. December 1979 of Armed PIRINCLIK Kenan Evren. In frank terms he opposition leader 'democratically' suppress the Party, that I they ralea to militancy of the working class and crush the rising national liberation struggle of the Kurdish people, then in the name of the 'nation' , brute force would be the alternative.

Blunt warning

Significantly, the military chief's blunt warning went beyond the domestic crisis and referred to the danger of 'hot Demirel too, talks increasinginvasion of Afghanistan to step ine nasty reopenng on suincy s mannin of Tankar's NATO bases as part of the agreement for additional finance is but a part of imperialism's regional strategy.

Still shell-shocked from the effects of the mass movement which swpet away Iran's Pahlavi dynasty, robbing them of their strongest and most dependable state ally from which to oversee their Persian Gulf interests (and with cimilar turannies far from secure), the imperialists' role for Turkey has taken on , much greater significance.

Ultimately, their only real hope of regaining the initiative and creating conditions for a badly needed offensive rests on a decisive defeat for a sizeable section of the masses in that vicinity.

They now openly conspire with the Turkish bourgeoisie in carrying out that plan, well aware of the measures necessary to achieve it, and the mass opposition it will provoke.

As with the Chilean bourgeoisie in 1973, Turkey's ruling class now finds its fragile democracy' breaking, under the strain of the social crisis, which daily assumes more and more the proportions of civil war.

Though martial law has been. extensively imposed, the last period has been characterised by working class resistance through the trade unions to attacks on wages, jobs and basic rights.

Struggles against the bosses have turned increasingly into direct confrontations with the state apparatus. With splits and divisions wracking almost every sphere of social life and mobilisations of students to the fore, still the boldest and most militant response has come from the industrial protetariat.

Essential features

Events in Ismir during the early months of 1980 brought together many of the essential features of the climax which the class, struggle is now reaching.

In the city's TARIS state-owned factories, the government-directed policy of using armed fascist thugs against union militants to smash up shop floor organisation led to the 7,500 workers seizing the plants:

Fearing this reaction would spark off a general movement in open defiance of the government, Demirel launched a massive army and air force operation against it.

Tanks and thousands of troops put the factories under siege and eventually over-ran them, with mass arrests resulting. Following prolonged streetfighting as workers and youth in the area demonstrated their solidarity, Izmire joined Ankara and Istanbul in being placed under martial law.

Such confrontations from now on will typify the kind of explosions detonated by the growing polarisation of capital and labour.

It is these tensions which have led to an unprecedented build-up of repressive state measures. The Parliament which they are designed to make Funeral of left wing irrelevant is, ironically, now i the process of finalising a whole battery of legal measures ranging from granting police almost unlimited powers to search and harrass likely opponents, to no jury, State Security Courts such as dispense justice in Northern Ireland.

Sweeping additional powers strengthening martial law are also being prepared. True as it is that these moves are designed to be used against any opposition movement, their most immediate and heaviest application will be against the Kurdish national minority.

The continued subjugation of oppressed nationalities is ranial imnarialicm'e alnha vucd dợ The plight of such peoples is the starkest reminder of the savagery of a system whose existence is based not only on the exploitation of labour within nation states but on the denial to millions of even the right to exist as a . separate people.

Though only one people among many in that position the 20 million Kurds, strewn over five different countries, are particularly acute victims o such persecution. * Their history has been one of almost unbroken armed struggle for liberation though compromised and diverted a every turn by their leadership' hopeless faith in diplomacy and fondness . for reactionary alliances.

Throughout, their oppressor: have had the arm's-length assis tance of the Kremlin, who pay only lip-service to the principle of self determination.

Actions speak louder thar words, for one of the bigges! blows struck against the Kurd! was the sell-out by Stalin of the first Kurdish republic, a casualty of the carve-up between the Soviet bureaucracy ano imperialism at Yalta ano Potsdam.

Victories

Kurdish military victorie over the reactionary Islamic despot Khomeini across tho Iranian border has giver renewed vigour to the ter million who populate Turkey Kurdistan.

The present martial law tha stretches across that area is fa from new. From its earlies years, the Attaturkist "single nation' well understood the threat posed by the Kurds to it stability.

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vilitant in Turkey JN campaien against rısıne