Bradford solidarity with Palestinians

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the fact that the houses were "temporary houses"-designed for no more than 15 years use.

Val Hill said the result was that many tenants were now convinced that the council had no intention of making the major structural changes in materials used in order to make the houses safe, and were intent only on hushing things up and making a few cosmetic alterations to keep people quiet.

She said the main point was that the houses needed knocking down and replacing.

The council has responded by producing a plan for a £1.2 million repair scheme [£500,000 in the present year] to remove the worst excesses (such as pressed cardboard ceilings), but leave the houses generally as they are.

Inadequate

The inadequacy of this is clearly indicated by the fact that in Hull it was calculated that over £6,000 per house would be needed for such work, whilst Leicester have come out with a figure of £2,500.

Perhaps more disturbing, however, is the reluctance of the council to spell out in any detail what it intends to do or say what the detailed reports on the fires prepared by the fire officer concluded.

If the Trades Council Enquiry is to succeed it will The Bradford Labour Movement Campaign for Palestinian Solidarity held its first public meeting the Monday before last.

The meeting, entitled 'Why workers should support the Palestinians" , attracted around 50 trade unionists, Labour Party members, students and Palestinian exiles.

Opening the meeting on behalf of the Campaign, Barry Turner stressed the dangers represented by crisis-ridden imperialist governments who now find themselves faced by a militant working class and peasantry throughout the world.

US war chiefs had lost the ability to openly intervene in events as they wishedgas witnessed by Nicaragua and Iran.

As a result they were using the excuse of Afghanistan to reestablish military outposts and rearm their allies.

The swing from detente' towards renewed cold war reflected a recognition that Stalinism could not be relied upon, despite its obvious Willingness to prevent the overthrow of dictatorships friendly to the US.

In these conditions the continued repression of the Palestinians was guaranteed and it was stressed that ever since the formation of the Campaign workers had witnessed the fruits of imperialist tactics in the Turkey coup.

British responsible

Roger Hardy, an NUJ member and journalist specialising on the Middle East, gave a detailed account of the dispossession of the Palestinians in 1948 and showed how the British government had been responsible for aiding the Zionists.

He explained how the British government protected the Zionists as they created a state within a state' prior to 1948.

A major factor in aiding the final military defeat of the Palestinians had been the breaking of the massive resistance strikes in the 1930s by British The continuing western support for Zionism was explained by the need for imperialism to maintain a reliable police agency in the heart of the Middle East.

The campaign's characterisation of Israel as a racialist, colonialist settler state was challenged by a group of Zionist students who attended a part of the meeting.

In referring to the rights' of different religious followers to conduct their religion in certain towns the meeting was encouraged by these apologists to accept the idea that Zionist Israel was indeed a form of socialist state!

Brother Hardy correctly pointed to the denial of trade union rights to Palestinian workers, the bulldozing of homes, the torture and arrest of activists and the nonsense of the idea of socialism based upon the dispossession of a whole people

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"Hey, I can't stand seeing the poor ar ig littlel' - - gir wie winier-have the boys !

In his first statements after the election results were declared, Presidentelect Ronald. Reagan has said his initial moves will be to cut taxes and government spending, and impose a freeze on the recruitment of public service workers.

He has campaigned on a pledge to implement three consecutive annual cuts of 10% in Federal income tax, and to give huge tax concessions to industry -while pledging at the same time to further increase military spending over and above Carter's colossal $175 billion war budget.

Such policies under the conditions of the US cconomy are problematic: in any case they can only be earried through by draconian cuts in social service spending.

But the attacks on public services will also be accompanied by the wholesale lifting of environmental, health, safety and other regulations on big business-again at the expense of the working class.

Reagan also plans to lower the minimum wage in order to increase the scope for employers to exploit the vast army of unemployed youth-particularly blacks-cast aside by crisis-ridden capitalism. Such a "solution" to unemployment is one which intensifies the misery of the most oppressed sections of US workers.

Thatcher's It is no coincidence it all this sounds exactly like Thatcher's cconomic strategy. Reagan and Thatcher share an admiration for the monetarist theories of Milton Friedman, and a similar dedication to the restoration of capitalist profitability through slashing state spending ind allowing the weakest sections to go to the wall:

"What's wrong with bankruptcy?" was Reagan's first reaction to the Carter administration's laboriously constructed plan to save the USA's third largest motor firm from collapse earlier this year.

The closure of Chrysler would have brought some 500,000 redundancies-but would of course have given a profits boost to ford and General Motors.

Small wonder that the Thatcher government has been one of the few enthusiastically to welcome the arrival of Reagan as President-elect.

Stronger hand The sweeping Republican victory has given Reagan control of the Senate-and thus a far stronger hand for implementing his policies than Jimmy Carter ever had ior his more conventional attempts to manage US capitalism.

Thatcher and Reagan's other co-thinkers hope that he will as a result quickly be able to implement his reactionary policies on an international as well as a national level.

In the last five years Reagan's aggressive Cold War politics have led him on no less than ten occasions to propose the use of military force to. secure US imperialist interests.

In 19/5 Reagan was among the few "hawks" sufficiently recovered from the trauma of the Vietnam defeat to call for a US military intervention into the Angolan war of liberation.

But the Republican President of the day, Gerald ruu, lel undure to mitivere. Crud falt enhlo to intarano The USA could do not more than supply money and CIA mercenaries to work alongside South African soldiers and the pro-imperialist. FLNA/UNITA guerrillas in their unsuccessful war against the Cuban-backed nationalist MPLA.

More recently, Reagan advocated only last winter that the USA should reply to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan by Diockdumg cuva.

Alongside such warmongering statements has gone a continued defence of the US intervention in Vietnam, with Reagan declaring during his election campaign that:

"It is time we recognised that ours was, in truth, a noble cause."

Io back up such a warmongering world yiew, Reagan's defence advisors are looking towards a colossal increase in the military budget. -perhaps $40 billion or more in his first year.

Reagan refers lovingly to the balance of forces that prevailed at the time of the Cuban missiles crisis, when President Kennedy brought the world to the brink of a nuclear war.

"We outnumbered them 8 to 1 in missiles. It isn't very hard to see why, when Kennedy and Kruschev eyeballed each other, Kruschev blinked. He knew he didn't have the muscle to stare us down. And now we haven't got the muscle to stare them down.

Arms Il Is towarus a chewar vr the arms race to restore such a balance of military forces that Reagan is looking when he declares himself opposed to ratifying the SALT 2 arms limitation agreement negotiated by Carter with the Soviet Reagan is in favour of the $100 million MX missile system initiated by Carter, and also in favour of building the neutron bomb-as well as other undisclosed plans for increased weaponry ana military technology.

In the final few weeks of the election Reagan carefully sott peddled his Cold War image.

But it is plain that he, and the military hardliners who have supported him, would initiate a new nerind of ornwing inter111ELI national tensions, dropping even the pretence of concern for "human rights" and throw the weight of US imperialism openly behind reactionary regimes, in Central and Latin America-such as the dictatorships in El Salvador and Bolivia.

There are even more frightening • possibilities. Reagan's seven foreign policy advisors are reportedly divided inta "hawks and "cinnarLILU dull superhawks"

For the hawks, the planned increase in the US military budget is a move designed to force the Soviet Union to agree to a more acceptable deal on arms limitation.

But for the superhawksheaded by Reagan's foreign policy coordinator Richard V. Allen-there is no question of a deal with the Kremlin leaders.

They believe that a major SOCIALIST PRESS. heinesia: i:: conventional or-more likelynuciur war Is levilaDIe WIlIn unlone ror io inaritahla within the next few years-and are urging Reagan to raise military spending by an immediate 20% to prepare for such a war.

These men are in the majority among Reagan's defence advisors!

Under their influence he has 1144 WI made it clear that he favours:

*Stationing US troops in the Sinai desert to help prop up both the Zionist state of Israel and the puppet Sadat regime in Egypt.

*Pressing the Japanese imperialists to increase military spending.

*Possible moves towards recognising the reactionary nationalist regime in Taiwanit this could be done without alienating the Chinese Stalinist alienating the Chinese leadership in Peking.

*A "get tough" policy against revolutionary movements in the Caribbean.

Such aggressive moves will win instant applause trom Thatcher's Tory government, which will continue as ever to follow in the wake of US imperialism.

Meanwhile within the USA itself Reagan plans an offensive ameria to strengthen the grip the racist, sexist of US ideology US. imperialism.

His election programme was eagerly endorsed by the neofascists of the Ku Klux Klan, who pointed out that:

"it reads as if it were written by a Klansman."

Similar enthusiasm was to be found among religious fundamentalists. They launched a "Christians for Reagan" campaign-based Republican's stance of opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment (which would concede equal rights to women), opposition to abortion, and opposition to gay rights.

Let-down

The reactionary Christian vote has not always gone to the Republicans. In 1976 many of them looked to "born again" Jimmy Carter to intensify the oppression of women and gays.

Colonel Donner, leader of Christian Voice, pointed out that Carter's term of office had disappointed the extreme right wing:

"It was a tremendous letSOTE -REss Reanesier i Norember 1980

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