[and supporters played an impor- the amendments moved…]

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and supporters played an impor- the amendments moved jointly tant role in supporting the by supporters of the Campaign occupation of Wheatley Street for Democracy in the Labour nursery in Coventry, where a Movement and Socialist Labour-controlled council was, Organiser at the anti-cuts busily carrying through Tory conference convened by cuts. Lambeth Labour council on ded for over three years by A few weeks later manage- needed facilities. workers. work-in-backed up by repeated ment brutaliy snatched terminal threats of widespread strike cancer: patients from St. action to prevent the various Columbas Hospital, Hampstead, close it. Against this background of bureaucracy and pror while at the same time develop- argue for such socialist policies Callaghan clique. open right wing and the fake for left.

the Fourth the Fourth tion of the betrayals of the have the right of Labour Party memquestions than "alternative". policies advocated - down the meo. tion of to. questions than on the actual the right of. Oxford CLP member Ted Heslin those for socialis.

Socialist Trotskyist International Liaison Com- Commission. within mittee was formed, compromising, in Discussions have, however, tal addition 'to the Workers Socialist with the Fourth Internationalist ] funnies Thaler Mananal whose sections include Politica "the two million mark, con- side. bers pressed for the Campaign This From the time when a WSL member working at University College Hospital, London first proposed to a shocked meeting that workers at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital should occupy to prevent its closure, the WL has consistently stood at the forefront of the fight for this policy.

The EGA was in fact defended for over three years by a work-in-backed up by repeated threats of widespread strike action to prevent the various moves made by the AHA to to end a work-in there. moves made by the AHA to close it.

Sabotage It was the sabotage of such the odds for action. supporting action by union officials which left other Hounslow and Ettwall in Derbyshire • exposed to savage AHA The Labour Party in sion socialist policies. Import controls in 8 ing these far raids, and which eventually allowed the closure of the EGA. 1980 brought further examples of such treachery.

The ten month occupation of St. Benedicts' Hospital in Tooting, which had become a national focus for resistance to the Tory offensive on the NHS, was smashed by scab ambulances driven through angry picket lines-while NUPE and COHSE bureaucrats refused to lift a finger to fight for supporting strike action. betrayal our members and supporters have fought against calls by 'left' wingers for import govern- Trotskyist actual bers to year.

workers were to lead the way in workers were to lead the way in worsening of struggle, • this in view, WSL memmilitancy the Workers ' 16% Socialist League National Comsive.

The attempts to mount a fight against the closure of the large Cowley Road geriatric hospital in Oxford were defeated by the determination of the hospital's NUPE convenor; NEC member Betty Ward to avoid an occupation at all costs.

But the long campaign to save the smaller and more isolated geriatric hospital at Longworth has led to the establishment of an occupation there, in which WSL members and supporters have worked alongside statt to detend much- side staff to defend muchanadar fonilitiar Elsewhere, WSL members Kinnock has has consistent open CLP is still refusing to comply But at the same time the Hostility wingers like Neil Kinnock to argue consistently policies that the fight for the for socialist policies. for socialist policies.

title foT lessons from these struggles have November 1.

As the scale of the Tory been drawn out in more general terms by the WSL.

They were incorporated into self in favour of expelling not On December 31, 1979 the On December 31, 1979 the addition to the Workers Socialist La sympathising section in the USA (barred from affiliation by reactionary US legislation).

The TILC takes its stand on the Trotskyist Transitional Programme of 1938 and on the development beyond it which is embodied in the document "The Transitional Programme in Today's Class Struggle" The level of political agreement this indicated marked a major step forward in the fight for the reconstruction of the Fourth International: but the TIL has been clear from the outset that it sees itself as only a transitional step towards such a reconstruction.

We have stressed repeatedly that we do not seek to proclaim ourselves as "the" Fourth International.

The TIL's 'Declaration of Intent' stresses that our task is to confront the problem of the profound divisions within the world Trotskyist movement-divisions which result from 30 years of political crisis. The TILC thus faces a dual task. On the one hand in the practical work of its: sections and in the discussions within its own ranks it is attempting-necessarily in a limited way-to offer leadership and develop programmatic agreement that will advance the class struggle internationally.

On this basis we intend to work towards the agreement of national perspectives for each of the sections and the establishment of the TILC as a democratic centralist international tendency.

On the other hand the TILC has pressed for discussions both on a national and international level with other Trotskyist forces on the fundamental political problems to be tackled if the Fourth International is to be reconstructed.

attack became clear, these policies, which have often been fiercely contested in smaller local campaigns, won the backing of a clear majority of the 700 delegates, who attended from a wide range of trade union and labour movement bodies.

The steering committee set up from that conference includes WSL members and supporters: it has now convened a recall conference for January 31 and called for national backing to a two-week strike called by sections, of Lambeth council workers."

The fight for such policies The fight for sur of all-out resistance tr of all-out resistance to the Tory offensive can expose offensive can expose the destructive role of t tructive role of the union bureaucracy and provide a vital focus for the fight fr focus for the fight for generalised action to ised action to defeat the Thatcher government. Thatcher government.

We have sought-but failed to We have sought-but failed to achievediscussions with the newly-form discussions with the newly-formed Parity Commission.

Discussions have, however, taken place with the Fourth Internationalist Tendency, whose sections include Politica Obrera in Argentina and the POR in Bolivia as well as the Workers League in Palestine. FIT representatives attended the successful TILC summer school in July.

Within the TILC on an international level a wide range of agreement has been entelt throughout the y odl en lur ter on Poland any on the loaning •on Turkey, on rolana ana on mt lan,uao war, along with a political assessment of the Parity Commission, will be among the topics debated at the next Liaison Committee meeting.

Meanwhile on a national level, discussions have been conducted by TIL sections with individual Trotskyist groupings, with a view to ascertaining whether a principled basis exists for possible fusions.

Thus in Italy the GBL is engaged in discussions with a circle of militants who have come from a number of organisations; in France discussions are taking place with sympathetic forces in Paris; and in the USA the Socialist League (DC) is engaged in discussions and joint work with the RWG.

In Britain the WSL has, during the year. developed discussions at leadership and ai membership level with Workers Power-in which Workers Power has moved to harden and extend the differences of method that have emerged. • And discussions are taking place between the WSL and the International Communist League, accompanied by joint work around British Leyland, the FBU, the Labour Party and the fight against the cuts. Such discussions are yet at a tentative stage, with no firm balance sheet having yet been drawn up on areas where disagreement clearly exists.

Whatever the outcome in any of these instances there is no doubt that 1981 will be a crucial year for the further development of the TILC as a force fighting to reconstruct the Trotskyist Fourth International.

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«Our fundamental aesthetic goal must be to socialise artistic expression and wipe out bourgeois individualism.

"We repudiate so called easel painting and every kind of art favoured by ultra-intellectual circles because it is aristocratic, and we praise monumental "We proclaim that at this time of social change from a decrepit order to a new one, the creators of beauty must use their best efforts to produce ideological works of art for the people; art must no longer be the expression of individual satisfaction which it is today, but should aim to become a fighting educative art for all."

David Alfaro Siqueiros Art and Revolution The relationship between art and revolution is a thorny and also arguably unimportant problem.

At different times the revolutionary banner has been claimed by both figurative and abstract painters and at these times it was not so much the consciousness raising properties of the paintings themselves which determined which was to be the revolutionary artistic vanguard but rather the political sympathies of the artists themselves.

At the time of the Russian Revolution for instance, the academic painters were broadly patronised by and supported the Tzarist establishment, whereas the avante garde was aligned with the left.

Lenin disliked their work but had to accept their presence in the cultural work of the Bolshevik administration and allowed Lunacharsky, the new Minister for the Arts a free hand.

Artists were encouraged not only to make propaganda films and posters but also given materials with which to paint.

It would be interesting to investigate the reasons why figurative and non-figurative painters fall into both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary camps at different times in terms of social class, state patronage, etc.

But no conclusion could be reached without examing the psychological and sociological variants which, rather than talent, characterise artists in any given society.

It is worth examining the extent to which, for example; the invention of the camera represented an opportunity for the exploration of those areas not fully accessible to pictorial imagery or, on the other hand the extent to which it provided a legitimate haven for social misfits-unable to fulfill themselves any other way-to retreat to.:

It is a haven increasingly used by women who, rejecting the traditional female role of helpmate and breeder, rush into a hitherto male profession which enticingly promises them a quick transformation from model to Maker, only to find that they are further marginalised and imprisoned as parasites on male culture.

In other words the political and social composition of sector of creative workers is not a simple question, since a social realist will fulfill a revolutionary function at a particular conjunction of Mexican history, and be a puppet of Stalinist and be a puppet of Stalinist reaction at another place and time.

Therefore whether the painter should be seen as a stable factor distorted by political realities is doubtful.

The USA art establishment rejected non-figurative painting as 'subversive' and communist until the 1930s-when Stalin decided that social realism was the only truly proletarian art.

Unsurprisingly, the New York critics under the expert tutelage of Clement Greenberg then flung themselves into a paean of unrestrained worship at the altar of bourgeois individualism now represented by ...abstract art!

This throws into question the heady objectives quoted at the beginning of this article.

They are objectives which are contradicted in any case by the practice, and adulterated by the other theories of Siqueiros and others like Rodchenko in the USSR.

These artists returned again and again to their easels, com -promised . themselves with Ieactionary patronage and went beyond their audience and Eisenstein's dictum:

"The great revolutionary painter is a synthesis of the ideas of the masses and their representation by an individual."

Capitalism perverts and stultifies popular culture. There are queues for The Confessions of a Taxi Driver and reruns of The Sound of Music, not The Battleship Potemkin.

Oohs and aahs are reserved for Woolworth pap paintings of coy girls and white horses on the beach, not Leger's Constructeurs'. . Committed art is always appropriated eventually by the bourgeoisie.

The Orosco exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art is worth visiting as an impressive collection of a lifetime's work, although the 60p entrance fee is an unwelcome innovation which rather underlines my point about the elitism which 'socialist' art cannot escape under capitalism.

Like the previous shows held there in this genre, (El Lissitsky ana Kodchenko), it is interesting but sad since they represent the ultimate failure of these artists concern to avoid the gallery circuit and subsequent overpricing. Orozco: 'The Leaders' (1936)

Even sadder is the state of mural painting in this country, where with a few honourable exceptions it is restricted to pictures of zoos and trains in adventure playgrounds and the anomalous chirpy little scenes which have sprung up on the ends of houses in places like Swindon.

Vigorous paintings of dole queues and picket lines, images of working class experience and organisation, of the choices RED YOUTH * PAPIA OF THE SOCIALIST Penny Woolcock the Mexican mur at the Oxford Mi (entrance 60p).

open for youth today and the struggle to be waged would be a welcome addition to a stroll through any city as ossified as Oxford for example.

Would the critics and respectable patrons of the galleries be as pleased to see them outside the safe confines of their walls?

Mural painting in Mexico has been particularly significant, partly because of the heritage of highly visual nonliterate Indian culture which continued in a restricted way into the Christian era with religious wall panels and votive paintings.

Heritage

Nationalist artists, in the period immediately before and after the revolution attempted to bring out this heritage more strongly and repudiate the dominance of imperiaust culture, a natonalsm which revealed its reactionary features most clearly in the fascist positions taken at the end of their lives by both Dr Atl, precursor and inspirer of the muralists, and Vasconcelo, the Minister of Education who did most to give them state patronage.

The three great muralists thrown up in this period each had different visions of the artist's role. Orosco, the only non Communist Party member, saw himself as a critic rather than participator or party hack.

His pintings vividly illustrate the betrayals and butchery of the revolution, the tragic character of the soldierpeasant alliance, and so on.

However, his lack of commitment meant that, however correct, his critique simply led him towards cynicism and a nihilistic doctrine of the fallibility of human nature. As a *Partisan with absolute freedom of action' he offered no way forward beyond his image of the revolution as a gravedigger digging his own grave and slumping into it asleep. he painted only when he couldn't engage in other political activities.

Even if this were not qualified as many of his statements are, by others emphasising the professional and specific role of artists in, society, any politically active painter knows that political activity can consume twenty-four hours of any day in the most quiescent times, and painting time has to be fought fot.

However, the very contradictions which abound in Siqueiros' life illustrate even more potently the complex choices facing militant artists over where to place their political energies.

Monumentalising art, in effect meant that he was patronised by progressive' forces such as Fords and the bourgeois state even while they imprisoned him for other activities.

Neither of them would spend a penny on publishing Marxist books or teaching anyone to biow up army bases.

Monthly paper of the Socialist Youth League New issue available rice 10p plus 12p postag WOMAN WORKER A paper of the Workers Socialist League New issue now out Price 12p plus 12p postage Both available from WSL, BM Box 5277, London WCIN 3XX reviews list Orc seum o the wori r of LCO on si 10W dern Riviera, on the other hand, was a lifelong party member and firmly believed that the revolution had taken place, contributing towards the stability of the cultural hegemony of the new political establishment with his glorious images. The New Order had arrived and it was now a question of the 'national interest' Siqueiros, the most politically active of the three, notorious for leading an early unsuccessful attack on Trotsky's life, for his trade union activities, his soldiering in both the Mexican revolution and the Spanish civil war, claimed that His The March of Humanity", a 4,600 feet mural, is inside an expensive auditorium in Mexico City, patronised by middle class tourists and not used às a didactic aid for an illiterate populace.

I would not however want to underplay the fact that because artists were linked to mass movements in both Mexico and the Soviet Union, public art galleries and museums are to this day seen as the preserve of the intelligentsia.

The paintings of these three artists, Urosco, Kiviera and Siqueiros are all powerful and reflect, if nothing else, currents of left/Stalinist thought on culture at the time-not least in their portrayal of women who appear invariably portrayed as either shameless prostitutes representing European decadence or as exalted suffering Madonnas with their babies, images which have more in common with fascism than communism.

Artists are a minor part of a state propaganda machine. Certainly their skills can be used to contribute directly towards it by helping to design posters, newspapers, working for television and advertising companies-and marginally by painting murais.

It is the constant bombardment ef the media, the use of language, the education system which exercise ideological control.

Fine art painting is a specific activity which sometimes impinges on, but is not identical to the functions of any part of the propaganda machine.

To predict and legislate on the shape of culture after the revolution' is to fall into impoverished and rigid categories which do nothing other than support Tory stereotypes of socialism as a grim vision of automatons and common denominators.

We don't know what forms creative potential will take when released from the fetters of capitalism-when it is no longer the preserve of disaffected members of the bourgeoisie and a minority of workers co-opted by bourgeois culture.

Those of us who are artists and revolutionaries must engage in the struggle alongside other workers with no special brief, no Stalinist trappings.

There is no socialist labour under capitalism, there are only socialists.

and blame us!

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SAN TIMINONI THEFIGHT BUNDFOLDA WSL, BM Box 5277, London WCIN With the threat of the BSC Chairman lan McGregor's forthcoming plan for the steel industry in the offing, over 80 trade unionists met in Motherwell on Saturday last to consider the creation of a united front to fight redundancies.

Representatives of Scottish miners, railwaymen and steelworkers discussed the creation of a triple alliance to combat any closures. . Local Labour MPs, John Smith and Jeremy Bray, reported back on their discussions with George Younger, the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Scottish CBI and McGregor, highlighting the danger to Garteosh, the steel finishing complex near Coatbridge with 900 employees.

This threat, it was emphasised, placed 1 Ravenscraig the main supplier of steel in Scotland, in a more vulnerable position than had been previously supposed.

Despite this prospect, David Lambie, MP for North Ayrshire praised McGregor as likely to prove himself a good Chairman.

Smith's assessment of the situation was that the government, fearful of the political consequences JO wholesale decimation of the industry in one area of the country, would earmark for closure one cold rolling mill in South Wales and another in Scotland, namely Gartcosh.

Some speakers from the floor called for an end to "low key approaches" and demanded a wider campaign against the forthcoming BSC plans.

Barr, NUR spokesman in Scotland, pledged the support of his union for the steelmen in their struggle.

In solidarity with this stance, Mick McGahey, President of the Scottish miners, emphasised that any closures in the Scottish steel industry mean the rundown of pits and affirmed that his union would stand by the steelworkers.

He further called for creating the industrial and political conditions for a General Election at the earliest opportunity and the return of a Labour Government committed to its Conference The significance of this meeting lies in that it marks an important stage in the creation of a triple alliance of steelworkers, miners and railwaymen.

McGahey warned that this must not be a "cripple alliance" thereby alluding to the disastrous collapse of the Triple Alliance of 1914-22 which comprised the miners, railwaymen and transport workers.

Formed on the eve of the First World War to create maximum solidarity on the wages front, when confronted with the intransigence of government and employers in the years 1919-22, it failed to meet its early promise and collapsed ignominiously, isolating first the railway workers in 1919 and then the miners in 1921.

None of these defeats can be blamed upon the workerswho remained militant throughout-but full responsibility must lie with the trade union leaders, above all J.H. Thomas, the NUR leader, whose final capitulation came on "Black Friday" , 15 April 1921.

Lacking a common, industrial and political programme, the Alliance was never more than a flimsy paper agreement between the leading figures of the respective unions.

The collapse of the Alliance left the way open for government and employers to pick off individual unions as in the defeat of the engineers in 1922, and, more fundamentally, it grievously weakened the trade union movement.

Membership collapsed by 3 million in the course of the following three years, placing the employers in a more advantageous position to prepare for the General Strike of 1926.

Frustrated

Trotsky's apposite comment in 1921 on the whole experience was as follows:

"The recent crisis of the Triple Alliance furnished the possibility of a revolutionary collision with the bourgeoisie, but this was frustrated by the conservatism, cowardice and treachery of the trade union leaders."

How is this kind of to be avoided today?

*Immediately the trade union leadership must ensure that their membership in all three industries is fully informed through mass meetings and conferences of these decisions. Only in this way can trade unionists ensure that the pledges made by their leaders are adhered to.

*Trades councils, along with constituency Labour Parties, must organise campaigns to unite the employed and unemployed in Lanarkshire and elsewhere on an agreed platform of *A common programme has to be hammered out adequate to meet this crisis, having as its central perspective the bringing down of the Tory government.

A series of feeble resolutions-on grants and loans; on youth unemployment; on peace and disarmament; on finance and autonomy; and on Ireland-passed at last week's National Union of Students' conference summed up the bankruptcy of the Left Alliance leadership.

The NUS is now committed to negotiate with arch reactionary Rhodes Boyson in defence of the grants system-but with no coherent policy to fight Tory moves to impose student loans instead of grants.

The main motion on Ireland adopted the TUC's reactionary pro-imperialist "Better Life for All" campaign which recognises long-term British rule over the six counties of Ireland.

And despite an impassioned speech from Mrs Nugent, mother of Armagh hunger striker Mairead Nugent, the conference rejected even the humanitarian appeal of Charter 80 by a majority of 80,000 on a card vote.

In spite of the rightward swing at the conference the NUS Executive did not escape Trial sub (L Six issues:

Six months One year Europe:

Six months Rest of the World:

Six months Please send me tria of Socialist Press. I Name. .

Address Send to: 3XX unscathed.

For the first time number of years a VO censure was passed again whole Executive.

Censure

By a majority of nine votes conference condemned the EC's handling of the fight against the Tory plans to tie student union funds to the discretion of local authorities and college governors.

A number of other motions of censure were passed against various EC members-including no less than three condemning NUS President Dave Aaronovitch.

He was stripped of responsibility for the fight against government economic policy.

But he was still able to carry through the most blatant manoeuvre of the conferenceunconstitutionally taking the chair to rule that no more money would be made available to the National Union of School Students.

The matter could not be discussed further, except in a court of law, he declared.

Students plainiy face an uphill political battle against Aaronovitch and his ilk in the fight to mobilise their union against the Tory offensive.

For a clear lead in the strugglę against wage control, cuts and redundancies RING of the The STUC organised Scottish Convention fulfilled the expectations of those who, like Socialist Press, forecast it would be a fiasco.

The 850 delegates who gathered in Bute Hall at Glasgow University on Monday 8 December were overwhelmingly Labour and trade union bureaucrats, representatives of the Scottish CBI, Tories, churchmen, nationalists and assorted reactionaries.

The authentic voice of the working class was stifled, barely able to express itself in this august assembly.

Sam Gilmore, convenor of shop stewards at Govan Shipbuilders, made a fighting speech of attack upon the Tory government and the need to get rid of them, but the air was thick with platitudes about the plight of Scottish industry and the extent of unemployment.

Nothing was decided save the establishment of a body of 1o unmateu commissiuncis lu unnamad commissionaro ta approach the government. The comment of John Davidson, director of the CBI (Scotland) that it had been a "civilised conference" is surely a fitting epitaph on the whole sorry affair. £8.00 In marked contrast was the lobby of the Conference held in :14.00 the morning and the lunchtime meeting organised by supporters of the Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Movement and £9.00 Socialist Organiser which emphasised the need for pressure on the STUC to break off all talks with the Tories and £10.00 industrialists and to launch a campaign to bring down the government.

Participants at the lunchtime meeting, including Kon Brown, Labour MP for Leith, expressed their disgust with the class collaborationist methods being pursued by the STUC leadership and the need for an alternative strategy in the Scottish labour The campaign launched by the Scottish Graphical Division (West Branch) of SOGAT for a Strathclyde Shop Stewards Committee must be an integral element in . that strategy and must be taken up immediately in union branches, shop stewards committees and constituency Labour Parties.

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ments. thorough on the actual reinstatement ments. reinstatement "alternative". policies advocated

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Trotskyist International Liaison Com- mittee was formed, compromising, in

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art in all its forms, because it is public property."

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