November 29 March Agains Thatcher Liverpool

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¡WHOS NEXT walley CHI One year ago: the last Labour cuts demonstration, November 27 1979. Since then no action ke and occupy to defend jobs! Sold-out: seamen Seldom in the British class struggle have so many workers been so militantonly to be betrayed by so few.

Nobody needs another list of the Tory attacks in the last 18 months. Everyone is sick to the teeth of cuts, closures, redundancies. and price increases.

Never in recent years have workers been so universally hostile to a government.

The willingness of tens of thousands of workers to fight for the removal of the Tories is unmistakeable.

But each time this strength emerges it is met by a stubborn refusal of trade union and labour leaders to fight to kick out Thatcher.

The record is plain for all to *100,000 steelworkers struck last winter for 14 weeks: the TUC left them to fight alone -knifing the moves by the Welsh TUC for a General Strike. The cost? Tens of thousands of jobs lost.

*Over 1 million workers downed tools on the TUC's May 14 Day of Action: but union leaders insisted it was a 'failure' and in any case they only wanted Thatcher to 'change course.

The cost? More cuts, more sackings, and new anti-union nurseries have been occupied to TN"T prevent closures and sackings: but in each case the struggle has been kept isolated with no official call for supporting strike action.

The cost? The forcible closure of St. Benedicts Hospital, the brutal AHA raid on cancer patients at St. Columbas (page 4) and a non-stop tide of health and other cuts-with not a finger lifted by public sector unions.

*Dockers voted for national strike action to defend jobs, and Gardners' workers have occupied their factory against redundancies. But officials have diverted such struggles into negotiations on 'voluntary' redundancies.

The cost? More jobs lost.

*Labour conference delegates voted overwhelmingly for mass industrial' action to halt cuts in local government spending. This stand was endorsed at a 700-strong conference called by Lambeth Labour Council. Yet not one public sector union has adopted a policy of strike action against the cuts and Labour spokesmen have opposed "illegal" action against the Tories.

The cost? Tens of thousands of jobs and services axed by Labour councils.

"Friends"

The total cost of such bitter Each betrayal carried WUKK UN.

CLOSU i eft isolated: steelworkers 19.28 through by the leaders of the labour movement appears to be a victory for Thatcher. But with "friends" like the do-nothing TUC, and the Labour leadership waiting for an election in 1984, who needs enemies?

The clearest example of treachery so far is the sell-out of the pay fight at British Leyland. A battle on wages there would have provided the focus for a mass wave of struggle against the Tories.

Disregarded

BL carworkers voted by 2-1 at mass meetings for strike action. to press their £17 pay claim and reject Edwardes' insulting 6.8% offer. Five days' strike notice was given.

But union officials disregarded their votes completely. They set out to undermine the action. General Secretaries met Edwardes and came out recommending BL workers to accept yet another wage cut.

This line was rammed through by full time officials on the BL Joint Negotiating Committee. Then it was pressed through a completely unrepresentative meeting of BL convenors.

When the proposal was referred back to mass meetings there was again a large vote for rejection. But as right wing convenors forced some plants into acceptance, everything hinged on the vote at the Longbridge mass meeting.

Longbridge convenor Jack Who's next for a lame excuse? Adams, a Communist Party member, was opposed to a strike. He was voted down on this by his stewards' committee -who wanted action to defend living standards.

But Adams still got up at the mass meeting and argued against a strike. A close vote on a show of hands was hastily declared "carried" for acceptance of Edwardes' 6.8% deal. The Communist Party had played a key role in preventing a fight against Thatcher.

And the BL workforce had been sold down the river yet again by their leaders-along with the whole working class, Sold down the river: BL workers FOR A:waiting for a chance to act against the Tories.

Such union leaders will be two-a-penny on the November 29 demonstration in Liverpool. There will be hordes of Labour leaders, and there will be Communist Party Stalinists.

They will wave their arms and rant against the Tories for one day-and then return to their daily routine of sabotaging struggles to bring down Thatcher.

The tens of thousands of workers from all over the country who will march on 29 November deserve better than this. They are ready to fight. The Tories can be beaten.

All that is lacking is a leadership prepared to lead—a revolutionary leadership ready to pit the strength of the working class against this bosses' government. That's what Socialist Press is all about. We are fighting to build such a leadership in the workers' movement. We have a programme for action to defend workers' interests.

We urge you to join us in that fight. When you see the soaring cost of trusting our present leaders, can you afford not to?

Longbridge background, p.4 O 'Fishall, page 11.

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officials. But without the political campus. the bosses, their government West Bank and the other defeat.

The Catholic Church continues to utilise the Polish mass movement for its own purposes.

In negotiations between the Stalinist bureaucracy and the Church hierarchy they have achieved the appointment of a Catholic Deputy Prime Minister, Jerry Ozdowski.

The relationship is clear. The church tries to limit the movement of the masses so that they don't overthrow the bureaucracy -and in return the bureaucracy strengthens the position of the church.

In this, the bureaucrats are creating a rod for their 'own backs at a later point in time.

In the meantime the undefeated strength of the working class is clearly shown.

The strikes and occupations of health workers have been successful, reportedly forcing 25% wage rises.

The threatened strike by Solidarity trade unionists in the southern province of Czestochowa has forced the dismissal of the governor and his two other top officials. The position of the mayor of Czestochowa and other officials is being reviewed.

This is a major gain as it has shown the working class is continuing to act politically. It also shows that gains are made because of strikes or the threat of strikes and not-as the Solidarity leadership has recently declared-by talks alone.

What is Communism?

It is a classless system of society that rests not on private ownership of wealth but on common ownership; not on the haphazard workings of the capitalist "free market" but on planning; not on the exploitation of the vast majority by a wealthy minority but on the development of the forces of production to provide an abundance for all.

The Workers Socialist League is fighting to achieve a communist society.

•To do so it is necessary to win the support of the working class for the struggle to overthrow the present, capitalist system, which offers workers only the prospect of years of mass unemployment, growing poverty and the threat of war.

In Reutlingen, Baden Wurtenberg, student teacher Barbara Bregler has been stopped from completing her course because she stood for city, council elections on a list supported by the Communist When she took her case to court the Judge had to borrow the programme she stood on from her solicitor-saying that if he bought one himself it might cost him his job.

Leaders of all opposition parties have protested about "assaults on democracy" by Mrs Indira Gandhi because, during the parliamentary recess she promulgated the detention without trial ordinance.

Amongst those who protested were several parties of the Janata coalition, who themselves, when they were in power, initiated dictatorial measures.

Last week workers witnessed newsreel film of Israeli Zionist troops opening fire on students in the occupied West Bank.

Military repression is nothing new to Palestinian people who since 1967 have lived under the strain of Israeli occupation involving land exproproations, house destruction, torture and detention without trial, and non-recognition of Palestinian Trade Unions.

The present wave of heigntened military violence is linked to the enforced closure of Birzeit University-the biggest So why do we oppose the Communist Party-ana the so-called Communist' regimes of the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Asia and Cuba?

To answer this question it is necessary first to point out that communism cannot be achieved in a single country in isolation from the rest of the world.

The development of technology, and the need for a wide range of raw materials for modern production mean that no country can hope to remain self-sufficient.

To provide the material basis for communism-a massive increase in the production of commodities needed by the working classes to eradicate poverty and inequality-an international division of labour is necessary.

Leaders of four unions, ASTMS, COHSE, SCPS and the agricultural: workers' union joined 150 others to demonstrate outside the South African embassy last Thursday, against the continued detention in solitary confinement of Oscar Mpetha.

Mpetha is national organiser of the African Food and Canning Workers Union and an organiser for SACTU. Eight other leaders of his union have recently been arrested. Mpetha is a diabetic, and it is considered that his life is in danger.The Faribundo Martin liberation forces last Wednesday killed anti-guerrilla commander Col. Carlos Choto and burnt his house down, in a daring raid in which they painted the entire street with slogans.

Palestinian university region.

The closure resulted from the university Palestinian Week' which attempts to keep alive the national consciousness of the Palestinians.

Nine Palestinian students, two of them teenage girls, were shot as troops put into practice an old policy of shooting at the legs of Arab demonstrators.

At the same time the Military Government has introduced press censorship preventing foreign journalists from interviewing reporting incidents at first hand.

All trade unionists should fight to raise the barbarity of When they carried through the first-ever socialist revolution in Russia in 1917, Lenin and Trotsky were the first to realise this. Russia was an economically backward country. It needed technology and industry from the West to develop the basis for a socialist economy.

They fought therefore to extend the revolution into Germany and throughout the world. In 1919 they set up the Communist International, in order to develop in every country the kind of revolutionary leadership needed to lead the overthrow of capitalism.

But setbacks took place. Revolutions in Germany, in Hungary and in Bulgaria were The massive social tensions underlying Mugabe's unstable capitalist regime in Zimbabwe have begun more sharply to erupt to the surface.

On November 5 Socialist Press pointed out that 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.

Just four days later this prognosis was brutally confirmed.

Over 60 people-the vast majority being workers-were massacred when rival groups of militants and frustrated guerrillas turned their guns on Zionist repression labour movement.

Teachers and lecturers in the NUT and NATFHE should condemn the mounting harrassment by the military authorities of the Birzeit university which was also previously closed on Israel Independence Day (May 2 1979) and ransacked by Israeli On that occasion international pressure forced the Israeli government to re-open the Journalists within the NUJ must raise the issue of press censorship and demand a union inquiry into repression on the defeated. Mass struggles elsewhere were headed off by partial reforms to the working class. The Russian revolution became isolated.

Within the Soviet Union, conservative, nationalist forces emerged that thrived on this isolation. Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, they began to argue in defiance of Lenin and Trotsky that the task was not to extend the revolution but simply to create "socialism in one country"

Stalin was able to exploit the material difficulties within the Soviet Union to build a power base among the careerists, technocrats and administrators who emerged in the war-damaged economy as a new state bureaucracy.

And, atter the death of Lenin in 1924, he moved to isolate and expel Trotsky.

Under Stalin's leadership, the Soviet Communist Party turned for support not to the independent strength of the international working class, but to alliances with "left" sections of the labour bureaucracy in various countries-such as the British TUC leaders of the Anglo-Russian Committee-and with nationalist leaders like China's Chiang Kai Shek.

The Communist International (Comintern) and its parties became increasingly the tool used by Stalin to carry through such diplomatic manoeuvres.

The consequence was a string of disastrous errorsone another in Entumbane, the black working class ghetto outside Bulawayo.

The sole responsibility for this outrage rests with the treacherous nationalist leadership of ZANU and ZAPU who have consistently subordinated the interests of the mass base upon which they rest to their own petty-bourgeois class interests in reforming the capitalist system.

In the absence of a revolutionary leadership, the pent-up anger of the guerrilias is fertile ground for the reactionary, tribalist and opportunist elements in both ZANU and ZAPU to exploit, in order to pursue their own sectional interests at the expense of the Zimbabwean masses.

Since the Bulawayo occupied territories.

The importance of these actions by British trade unionists can be seen in recent reports in the Israeli daily paper "Maariv' where government officials are quoted arguing for an industrial relations officer to be sent to the Israeli embassy in Britain.

These demands come from a recognition that anti-zionist feeling is growing in the British working class.

This growth must continue in support of the Palestinians' just demand for national self-determination. including the slaughter of the Chinese Communists by Chiang Kai Shek's forces in 1926-7, and the betrayal of the British General Strike by Stalin's chosen TUC allies in 1926.

But any voices that were raised against Stalin's policies within the Soviet CP or the Comintern were immediately silenced by bureaucratic expulsions-and later by executions.

Stalin By 1933 the Comintern had been so purged of revolutionaries and transformed into Stalin's puppet that not a single voice was raised to criticise the absurd ultra-left line of the German communist farty, which, by branding the mass Socialist Party as "social fascists" , had prevented a united front against Hitler.

Trotsky who had consistently fought Stalin's policies declared after the rise of Hitler that the Comintern and its parties had been proven to be similar acts of armed terror have occurred in Salisbury as well, where five workers were killed in just one clash.

Although Mugabe has mobilized the full might of his repressive apparatus in an effort to contain the guerrilla clashes, he has been unable formally to go beyond the political disarming of the guerrillas to actually disarm them physically.

Ever since Mugabe came to power, workers have demonstrated by their actions that they are willing and prepared to struggle against the oppressive and exploitative conditions of their existence.

Last week over 6,000 workers in nickel and coal mines owned by the Anglo-American Corporation of South Africa, came out on an indefinite strike in pursuit of demands ranging from pension deductions and higher wages to the dismissal of certain racist white managers.

In the rurai areas, the stage has been set for growing struggles around the question of land redistribution.

Already 'squatters' who have returned to the countryside and spontaneously taken over land abandoned by white farmers, have met with armed eviction by the state forces.

The depth of the social, political and economic crisis wracking Zimbabwe today is driving every sector of the oppressed masses into struggle. -perspectives and programme which can turn their spontaneous struggles against and their agents in ZANU and ZAPU, the Zimbabwean workers and their oppressed allies stand threatened with "dead for the purposes of ution"

It was necessary to build new revolutionary parties, and a new, Fourth International.

Events since that time have amply confirmed Trotsky's analysis.

The Communist Parties have remained subservient. to the overall objectives of the Stalinist bureaucracy which not only remains in control in the Soviet weakening of imperialism after but which with the World War 2 has now extended its control into. Eastern Europe, Asia and Cuba. Time and again they have blocked revolutionary struggles.

The Kremlin bureaucracy seeks to preserve its own power by preserving "peaceful coexistence" with imperialism. This means in practice preserving capitalism throughout two-thirds of the world.

Communist Parties in the various countries have adopted this strategy -by seeking various illusory "parliamentary roads" and even forming open Popular Front' alliances with so-called "progressive" sections of capitalists.

in Britain, too, the Communist Party has proved itsell dedicated to blocking all-out action to defeat the Tory government. Despite its fraudulent name it is an obstacle to Communism.

That is why we fight to build a genuinely revolutionary party -the Workers Socialist League.

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The second article by DAVID LAI military coups in Turkey prior to 1 Wednesday ¡ey (KIN 980.

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Stri ONAL DADINA SEAMEN

246. FRHT ACK

*Action not words to defeat *Strike to stop the cuts!