Steel: two-way

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. Union leaders who have already signed away tens of thousands of jobs in the steel industry seem all set to allow a further 20,000 cut in the workforce, coupled to a six month wage freeze, and topped off with a miserable 7% pay offer.

As BSC management mail out ballot forms to the 130,000 steelworkers, seeking a vote for Ian MacGregor's so-called "survival plan", , union bureaucrats are in disarray.

Pickets during last year's steel strike The new sackings are supported by leaders of the National Union of Blastfurnacemenwhose membership is already down to a mere 7,000.

Pay freeze

And the NUB, along with most other steel unions, has already accepted the pay freeze -which means a major cut in the living standards of steelworkers.

Only the ISTC-the principal manual workers' union in the industry-is recommending rejection of the MacGregor plan. Yet the union, whose members emerged from 50 years of dormancy to wage a bitter 15 week pay strike last winter, is offering no recommendation on whether or not workers should accept the pay freeze.

Instead of offering a firm lead in the fight for action to oppose the redundancies, the ISTC has opted to call its own ballot.

There is little doubt that under the weight of Tory press and media propaganda, pressure from management, and in the isolation of their individual homes, steelworkers are likely to vote for acceptance of the MacGregor plan.

But there is equally little doubt that a similar ballot of ISTC members last winter on the pay offer would have given no idea of the rock solid support that emerged for the pay strike once a national lead had been given.

Objective

The postal ballot is a tactic designed to exploit the individual weaknesses, doubts, fears and illusions of the working class. That is why BSC is using this technique to undermine steelworkers.

The fact that right wing union leaders use the same method is related to the fact that they seek essentially the same objective-to avoid any chance of a strike which would be in confrontation not only with BSC management but also the Tory government.

• If the ISTC seriously wanted to fight the redundancies mass meetings would be called in the main plants throughout the country with a recommendation for all-out action to defend jobs and defend living standards.

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ГО WORKERS' STR During 1979, the Shah of his Peacock throne by the mass revolt of Iran's workers, peasants and oppressed minorities.

• Yet during the period since those events a reactionary clerical regime headed by Khomeini has worked incessantly to undermine the gains made by the Iranian masses, to repress the organisations of the left, and establish a new "Islamic" dictatorship.

During 1979, the bloody Somoza dictatorship was toppled by the masses of Nicaragua in an assault led by the Sandinista National Liberation Yet even now, 15 months later the FSLN leaders are still seeking ways of working jointly with Nicaraguan capitalists . in the Government of National Reconstruction' Nicaragua remains a capitalist country.

These two situations exemplify the political problems faced by the world's working class in the anti-imperialist struggle in 1980.

The year produced no spectacular defeats for imperialism on a par with the events of Iran and Nicaragua.

There have of course been blows struck against imperialist control.

In the Saharan desert, the militant action of the guerrillas of the Polisario Front continues to inflict defeats on the imperialist-backed Moroccan armies.

In Zimbabwe, the imperialists were forced to recognise the real balance of forces emerging from the protracted guerrilla war, and drop their plans to impose the stooge Muzorewa The sweeping election victory of the witch-hunted guertla leader Mugabe has doubly vindicated the approach of Carrington and other imperialist leaders who carried through' the Lancaster House talks.

No chance On the one hand Mugabe's election demonstrated beyond doubt that the isolated Muzorewa regime would have stood no chance of establishing its control over the Zimbabwean masses.

On the other hand it has proved that Mugabe is in fact the toothless tiger that Marxists have always claimed he was. From his first moments in office, his efforts have been directed towards repressing the working class and maintaining and strengthening capitalism and. the capitalist state in Mugabe's "Marxist" rhetoric, which coloured his speeches during the war of liberation, has been scrapped. Instead we now hear only the rhetoric of class collaboration as Mugabe attempts the impossible task of resolving the economic crisis of Zimbabwe through petty reforms and an endless search for aid from the crisis-wracked imperialist economies.

While there is no doubt that some imperialist leaders would have felt safer were their chosen allies-such as Nkomo and Muzorewa-to have been elected to office in Zimbabwe, the political weaknesses of the Mugabe leadership have offered Carrington and company an alternative strategy for the preservation of capitalist rule and exploitation.

It is interesting to contrast this settlement by the Tory government with the intransigent line of opposition to Mugabe and the PF leadership taken by the Labour leaders when they were in office.

While the Labourites, dedicated to the defence of their "own" ruling class, see the preservation of imperialist rule simply in terms of repression of all forms of opposition, the ruling class itself feels confident enough to take an overview of a particular confrontation and make a bold change of tactic to secure their objectives.

This is the parallel between the concessions forced from the imperialists in Zimbabwe and those extracted from the Tory leaders by the Irish republican hunger strikers.

While the exact form and scope of the concessions made to the 'H' Block prisoners of war have yet to be claritied, it Is Clear that the Thatcher government has acknowledged the political status and the command structure of the republican prisoners.

Such concessions came immediately following the visit by a top-level British government delegation to Irish Prime Minister Haughey. It must be assumed that the Tory leaders have deliberately taken steps that they knew would incur the wrath of Paisley and other Loyalist leaders, working towards a broader settlement of the war in Ireland along lines discussed with Haughey.

Again there is a sharp contrast between the routine, bureaucratic measures of boot and bullet meted out by the last Labour government against the Irish minority in the six counties and the comparative readiness of the Tories-the direct repiesentatives of British capital to seek a less costiy solution.

It was of course the Heath government and Tory Home Secretary William Whitelaw who in 1972 went so far as to conduct direct talks with IRA leaders and in this context to concede "special category status" to republican prisoners.

More flexible It was Labourites on the other hand who chose to step up the drive to crush the republican movement militarily with the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the dispatch of SAS murder squads to Ireland, and the withdrawal of special category status. Wedi We do not wish to suggest that the Tory government is more sympathetic to the demands • of the Irish masses than the Labourites: we point simply to the fact that they are ready to pursue a more flexible tactical line in seeking to repress the Irish people.

Such limited concessions, which have been forced on the imperialists, have however taken place under conditions where the masses have in general been held back from revolutionary struggles by their leaderships.

In particular 1980 has seen : continuation of the bloody situ ation of stalemate between the masses and the US-backed ruling junta in El Salvador, in which Toothless tigers: Nkomo and Mugabe

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UNITED WE STAND EVIDED WE FALL

Iran, the CIA-backed "King of Kings", was booted off