Ower Must Power Niu: Be Vested N of Zimbabwe

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Gone are the days when Mugabe called for power to the babwe working class mood of resistance amongst workers and their oppressed allies, capitalist employers and reactionary layers of the petty bourgeoisie are becoming increasingly strident in their demands for the "restoration" of "law and order"

Reactionaries are not relying simply upon the Patriotic Front bureaucracy; nor upon British imperialist supervision over the army; nor even upon the existing, largely untouched police force, civil service and judiciary.

They are preparing their own methods of • self-defence: the ever present threat of right wing terror squads is bound to emerge more and more openly as conflict escalates.

The most vicious elements of the Rhodesian army have not, as Mugabe claims, been disbanded. By and large, they have been geographically redeployed, ready to defend the capitalist state from across the South African border.

And South Africa's politicalmilitary bosses have repeatedly warned of their determination to take further military action Zimbabwe if there is "a breakdown in law and order."

Manoeuvring more and more frantically between these opposing forces, seeking to protect their own economic and political privilege, the Patriotic Front bureaucracy act to shackle the working class to the reformist illusion that through class collaboration a solution can be found which guarantees capitalist profits and meets the needs of workers and their oppressed allies.

Increasingly, Mugabe's supporters will be objectively confronted by the political legacy of his popular frontist class collaboration.

Within days of being voted by the masses to form a government to serve their interests, Mugabe was throwing their votes back into their faces to consolidate a class collaborationist bosses' government, as an obstacle to those interests.

Irrelevant

Rank and file ZANU militants are coming up against the fact that their majority in Parliament is irrelevant, when power itself lies outside of Parliament.

Workers and peasants are being confronted by the fact that class oppression and exploitation cannot be voted, or legislated out of existence.

And the legacy of popular frontist guerrillaism is being experienced for what it is-not the triumphant construction of socialism by a broad front united in struggle, but frustration and disillusion among the oppressed which can even lead to militaristic acts of terror against workers and peasants.

But anger, determination and the oblective experience of confronting class collaboration are not themselves adequate weapons for the workers' What is required is the policy, perspective programme and organisation which can equip the working class to turn the situation to their own advantage.

The crucial crisis facing the working class is one of leadership.

In the absence of revolutionary leadership, suspicion and anger-the product of Patriotic Front class collaboration-can turn to frustration and confusion-fertile grounds for reactionaries and opportunists, ready to exploit every grievance of the working class to their own advantage.

Wherever the capitalist right to profit is conceded, and the productive forces remain backward or geared towards profit, scarcity must prevail, and under such conditions workers can be turned against workers in pursuit of their immediate interests.

Every attempt to develop progressive socialist relations on the basis of backward productive forces, or those geared exclusively to the production of profit, not the meeting of human needs, is doomed to failure.

It is not inconceivable that Mugabe himself, or left reformists within the Patriotic Front, under • the weight of mass pressure, or to secure greater leverage with imperialism, or as a frantic effort to cling to power, may use the parliamentary majority and the limited power of government to legislate apparently substantial reforms.

But socialism cannot be won and the real interests of workers cannot be met through legislation.

Those struggles can only be won by the strength of the working class mobilised around masses an independent working class programme, fighting throuch independent working class organisations, with the support of all oppressed against the capitalist state.

Reaction Any reformist effort to legislate socialism on the basis of a capitalist state is bound to provoke a capitalist reactionOn

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Dear Comrades, Perhaps the most disturbing feature of the recent trial and sentence of the Scottish Republicans at Glasgow has been the total absence of comment in the press of the far left.

One can hardly believe that this would have been the case had these events occurred in London.

Many Republicans who consider themselves as socialists foliow arguments MacLean and accuse the far left of being 'London dominated organisations' and as long as situations such as this are left unremedied • protests to the contrary will cut little ice.

This is especially so when one considers the record of the left in defence of Mathew Lygate of the Scottish Workers Party, who received one of the heaviest prison sentences in Scotish legal history.

Of course, we have serious differences with the urban guerrilla strategy, but the only way to win these people from their erroneous conceptions is by being the first to defend them against the bourgeois state state.

Yours fraternally, Charles Palmer. We welcome on any topic 400 words. Dear Comrade, I notice a slight error has crept into your report of the Conference of the Group for the Study of Leon Trotsky and the Revolutionary movement described in the article 'Lessons from History of British Trotskyism' in your paper on October 8th.

You talk of Matlow and Palsey' as being part of the Trotskyist entry into the ILP and as being members of the Revolutionary Policy Committee. I presume that by 'Palsey' you mean Joe Pawsey.

1980 Actually, Matlow was not so much an entrist as a recruit, and the same goes for Pawsey as far as 1 am aware.

Reg Groves remembers Matlow as being in Clapham ILP at the time that they had close contacts with the Balham Group, but says that Matlow never actually joined the Communist League.

Naturally, when the group led by Denzil Harber and Jim Woods split off from the Balham group to enter the ILP Matlow joined them when they came in, and due to his pre-eminent organising ability became secretary of the Marxist Group that the Trotskyists set up in the ILP a year later.

In addition to this, I feel you should have pointed-and so should the speaker at that conference-that the interest in and ferment of semi-Trotskyist and Trotskyist ideas in the ILP had already had a long history before the split of 1932.

Apart from articles in the ILP paper supporting the struggle of the Left Opposition against the Stalinist bureaucracy, there were such comrades as the late Hugo Dewar, who as organiser of Frank Ridley's semi Trotskyist Marxian League' continued to work in the ILP and regarded himself as a supporter of Trotskyism in its fullest sense before the Balham group had declared its opposi-