Defend Youth from Police

Scan page 5

direction of industry. Everything must be controlled by the workers who wil be the masters of society tomorrow.

But to call for conquest of power [ie. nationalisation of basic industry without compensation (JL)] • .:. that seems to the American workers illegal, fantastic. But if you say:

The capitalists refuse to pay for the unemployed and hide their real profits from the state and from the workers by dishonest book-keeping, the workers will understand that formula." (March 21, 1938)

APPROACH And by that road of approach the demand for nationalisation can emerge integrated within workers' struggles as the logical answer to material problems, and not simply as an ultimatum to the mass movement tacked on to the end of a series of demands.

Of course an important question arises, if we accept along with Trotsky that workers' control is control by workers over a capitalist. That is, what form of management would take its place after nationalisation.

38222000 Lenin addressing a Again the Transitional Programme states clearly that a further role of workers' control is to prepare the working class to replace altogether the old managers and specialists who could otherwise sabotage a socialist plan:

"Committees representing individual business enterprises [this is still before detailed discussion of nationalisation (JL)] should meet at conference to choose corresponding committees of trusts, whole branches of industry, economic regions, and finally of national industry as a whole.

Thus, workers' control becomes a school for planned economy. On the basis of the experience of control, the proletariat will prepare itself for direct management of nationalised industry when the hour, for that eventuality strikes." (Transitional Programme p. 23, last emphasis added)

Once nationalisation has taken place, then the need' to "control an employer is replaced by the need to establish workers' management, which must of course in the final analysis rest on the backing of working class state power. But simply to call for "nationalisation ... under workers' control (or, still more confusingly "under workers' control and management" [!] as advocated by the Militant grOuD) leaves out this This does not mean to say that workers control cannot play a role in preparing workers to assume management of their industries even after the taking of state power. Indeed in Russia precisely this development did take place. The first nationalisations other than the banks and the land under Soviet rule dated from June 1918, and we find Lenin states clearly five months after the revolution, in April 1918:

"We have to expropriate them [the trusts]. That is not where the hitch lies... I told every workers delegation with which I had to deal when they came to me and complained that their factory was at a standstill: You would like your factory to be confiscated? Very well, we have blank forms for a decree ready.

They can be signed in a minute.

But tell us, have you learned tow to take over production and have you calculated what you will produce? Do you know the connection between what you are producing and the international market? Whereupon it turns out that they have not learnt this yet...

The period of control of prodcrowd in Red Square May Day 1919 uction is thus seen as a training, a preparatory stage before management. It may be longer or shorter or eliminated in some cases according to material conditions - but the struggle for workers control and, centrally, the opening of the books, is a fight to be begun in today's conditions to prepare the basis of socialist planned production. And in such a fight the complete political independence of the working class is crucial.

METHOD

How then should we approach the demand for nationalisation? Clearly, if we follow Trotsky's method in the programme, by putting forward at each point in the struggle transitional demands which lead to that conclusion, going beyond the bounds of capital• ism - sliding scale of wages, work sharing on full pay, the opening of the books of employers who refuse to guarantee jobs and living standards.

The slogan for the opening of the books is always posed by the WSL in such a way as to lead towards nationalisation. It aims to provide the documented case to back up our demands for occupation in defence of jobs and establish a nation wide struggle within the labour movement to the employers monopoly of information opening the avenues of struggle. In such struggles key political lessons will be learned by the workers involved.

Only in this way can nationalisation be anything other than a weak-kneed reformist, parliamentary demand. This is what Trotsky means when he stresses that in calling for nationalisation "we call upon the masses to rely only upon their own revolutionary strength?

ULTIMATUM

We approach the nationalisation demand in this way because any other approach either 'forgets' nationalisation altogether (as do the reformists and Stalinists, and in their daily practice the International Socialists), or presents. it in undigested form as an ultimatum to workers - many of whom are yet to be convinced of the desirability of nationalisation As Trotsky clearly states:

"Only a general revolutionary upsurge of the proletariat can place the complete expropriation of the bourgeoisie on the order of the day. The task of transitional demands is to prepare the proletariat to solve this problem". . (TP, p24)

The defence of this approach by the Workers Socialist League is not an academic question. The Marxist party must play the leading role in the struggles of the class, and can do so only on the most thoroughgoing struggle for the method which led the Bolsheviks to the successful revolution in Russia in October 1917.

Trotsky is at pains to emphasise that the Transitional Programme is not in this sense a new departure but rather a summation of the history of struggle of communists up to 1938:

"The programme is not the invention of one man. It is derived from the long experience of the Bolsheviks. I want to emphasise that it is not one man's invention, that it comes from long collective experience of revolutionaries. It is the application of old principles to this situation. It should not be considered as fixed like iron but flexible to the situation...

They are not sterile slogans;

they are th e means of pressure on the bourgeoisie and will give the greatest possible material results immediately". (Discussion on the TP, May 19, 38} emphasis added)

Or again, in an earlier discussion:

"What is the sense of the trans¡tional programme? We can call it a programme for action but for us, for our strategic conception, it is a transitional programme - it is a help to the masses in overcoming the inherited ideas, methods, and forms and of adapting themselves to the exigencies of the objective situation ... That is why I cannot overestimate the importance of the transitional (Discussion on March emphasis added)

AVOID It is in seeking to avoid these implications that the propagandists, centrists and left-talkers throw mud at the slogan and concept of "workers' control" They are backed up also by the hopelessly reformist so-called "Institute of Workers' Control" given credibility by the International Marxist Group who applaud it as a rank and file' organisation, ignoring its role as a talking shop of left' union bureaucrats and platform of Wedgewood Benn, architect and political figurehead of the Ryder speed-up plan.

Only the most rigorous defence of the independence of the workers' movement, of the principles of Trotskyism, can enable the demands of the transitional programme to be fought for in the working class, and the real basis of workers control established in opposition to the class collaborating "participation" backed by the union bureaucrats, which is nor central to the attacks of the employers.

This fight falls on the shoulders of the Workers Socialist League and its supporters.

A series of arrests and trials particularly involving black youths throughout the country suggests that police harassment of young people is on the increase.

Such harassment is, of course, nothing new. In most working class areas of Britain, and particularly on the larger council estates, every youth has a story to tell about the harassment of young people, driven to hang around on the streets because of a lack of youth facilities.

These youth are constantly "moved on by the police, sometimes they are arrested and even beaten up.

In the latest series of incidents it has been black youth who have been the victims of police activity. First of all there was the raid on the Carib Club in Cricklewood. Dozens of police poured into the club in search of a 'suspect' (who was never found or produced at the subsequent trial) and turned the place over.

This massive provocation led to a fight between the youth and the police as a result of which twelve youth were arrested on a variety of serious charges. At the end of a trial lasting 81 days and costing over £1 million, not a single youth was found guilty.

Since then, there has been a police raid on a multi-racial disco in Stockwell, South London, in which 50 police took part and which resulted in seven arrests. The trial of the Stock well Seven is still in progress while in Leeds, four black youth arrested in Chapeltown on Bonfire Night are now awaiting trial.

Leeds claim that a large gang of black youths was roaming the streets 'obviously looking for trouble' and that they attacked and overturned a police 'panda' car which 'had entered the area engaged on an inquiry of an entirely different nature'.

A second police car was stoned, the windscreen shattered, and the two occupants injured when the driver lost control of the vehicle which crashed into a tree.

The local community newspaper, Chapeltown News, suggests that what sparked off the trouble was the presence of a convoy of police vehicles, two of which contained police dogs, in an area where about a hundred youth were spending the evening around one of the many street bonfires to be seen in Leeds on November 5th Although the police claim to have been under instructions to keep a low profile on any incidents which might occur because of trouble in previous years, it is quite obvious that the presence of large numbers of police is seen by the youth in the area as a deliberate provocation.

The United Carribean Assoction points out that the incidents of November 5th must be put into the wider context of continual police harrassment of the black community, What lies behind this increased police activity against youth, and in particular, black youth? Certainly it is no accident that these raids and trials take place at a time when unemployment stands at its highest level since the 1930s. The policies of the Labour government have led to a massive increase in unemployment as the Labour leaders try to solve the economic crisis at the expense of the working class.

Youth unemployment has increased alongside this and each year school-leavers sign on to the dole in increasing numbers. Amongst black youth, unemployment is increasing at an even faster rate than amongst white youth.

The trade union leaders refuse to fight for the defence of jobs. Not only have they kept silent as the number of jobless passed the million mark and headed towards one and a quarter million, but they have officially attacked the lobby of Parliament called by the North West TUC which took place on 26th. November.

This is because they are actively supporting the Labour government's so-called fight against inflation, which involves wage-cutting, redundancies, speedup for those left with a job and drastic cuts in public spending.

The refusal of the trade union leaders to oppose the anti-working class policies of the Labour government strengthens the hand of the employers because the working class is • deprived of an organised fight in defence of jobs and wages.

The police who are the direct means of expression of the capitalist state, are therefore able to harrass young unemployed workers who are both unorganised and denied any lead by union leaders to enable them properly to defend themselves.

These poliçe attacks can only increase. As the economic crisis worsens, more and more young people will realise that they have no future under capitalism. The ruling class are frightened of what these youths will do and are prepared to strengthen the police force incorder to deal with any social unrest resulting from their attacks on the working class.

UNIONISE

In order to defend themselves, young people must become part of the organised working class. Trade unions must open their doors to all youth, employed and unemployed alike in order to bring them into the labour movement. Young people must be brought on to Trades Councils and trade council sub-committees on unemployment where these exist.

Local trade union bodies should organise the defence of young people from police harassment and from the racialist and anti-working class attacks of the fascist National Front.

At the same time, the National Front, who are fighting on a racialist programme have also physically attacked trade unionists. Yet the NF is readily afforded police protection from the justified hostility of the labour movement.

POLICE RAID

The police raid on the WRP education centre and the arrest of trade unionists in Southampton shows that the problem of police harrassment faces the whole of the working class, both black and white.

Young workers cannot defend themselves from such attacks as individuals. Where assaults become a real problem, workers' defence squads must organise to protect working class youth.

The main question which arises out of the Carib Club trial is whether police evidence was fixed. This would certainly be the conclusion of the jury who refus ed to convict a single defendant in the case. Local trade union bodies must set up committees of enquiry into cases of suspected police harrassment, to establish the facts of the case.

These basic questions on the defence of the working class from physical attack must go hand in hand with the fight around a programme to unite the broadest layers of the working class in the defence of jobs and wages.

by lan Swindale