Social St70 Socialist O Press

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Cuts struggles Weekly paper of the Workers Socialist League. * No. 238 * 11 March 1981 * 20p port and ammunition are now rickety armed forces of the reac- assistance from the Soviet speech confirmed that world $50 million worth of US additional guns, helicopters, military trans- and technicians to back up the Warmongers wave: Reagan and Thatcher, hIIT sbi The lurch towards militarism and international aggression by Ronald Reagan's American administration-with eager support from Britain's Margaret Thatcher-has chilled the blood of workers throughout the world.His plan to raise the USA's war budget by a thumping $32 billion next year-buying up additional bombers, fighters, battleships, and the transport facilities to ship a Rapid Deployment Force to wage war anywhere in the world-might appear to flow from a position of strength.

Shameless And his shameless political, military and economic support for the bloody military dictatorship in El Salvador is on a scale which he hopes is sufficiently huge to intimidațe the left wing huna to intimidato tha laft urina liberation forces in Salvador and throughout Latin America into being terried to El Salvador, submission.

tooether with additionol TIC military "advisors" , ground staff rickety armed forces of the reactionary junta and its right wing paramilitary murder squads.

And Reagan has called for an extra $225 million to be given to the junta in economic aidmuch of which could in turn be diverted to military use.

Yet all this enormous flow of cash and arms is being focussed on a tiny country no bigger than Wales, with a population of no more than 5 million people!

High point

Reagan's war moves stem not from strength and confidence, but from an acute awareness that, in the wake of the defeats inflicted on imperialism in Vietnam, Angola, Iran and Nicaragua, the left wing guerrilla war in El Salvador is simply the high point of a growing worldwide tide of rebellion.

And El Salvador has also been picked as a battleground by Reagan because he has assessed that the guerrilla forces will obtain little or no military assistance Irom bureau cracy.

Mamu Despite the propaganda peddled by US envoys, Reagan knows full well that little or no military equipment is being supplied to the FMLN by the Kremlin or by the Castro bureaucracy in Cuba.

The fact that Brezhnev signally tailed even to mention the war in Central America in his lengthy report to last week's CPSU Congress in Moscow was not lost on the imperialist leaders.

Nor was the fact that while fringe meetings were held in Moscow for all manner of insignificant figures, the delegation from Nicaragua's Sandinista regime was offered no chance to speak.

"Coexistence"

The Kremlin leaders have made it quite clear that they are not prepared to assist the revolutionary struggle in El Salvador or back the Nicaraguan government. Instead Brezhnev's SImE DEP speech contirm Stalinist leader more anxious th ists to arrange a to redraw the li coexistence" w:

Battli • tet the working masses in the neo-colonial countries have shown that they accept no such limitations on their struggle.

Faced with attacks on their already poverty-line living standards, and bridling under the brutal repression of military dictatorships and right wing regimes, they continue to seek means of battling for their rights.

In 1979 the Nicaraguan FSLN logged up the first major victory in Central America when they ousted the bloody regime of General Somoza.

Since then the struggle in El Salvador has gathered strengththough dogged by acute problems of political leadership.

Attempts in late 1979 to incorporate social democrat and ed that world Are possibly lan the imperialfuI ther meeting nes of "peaceful ith imperialism. SUPPLEMENT Stalinist leaders into Salvador's new ruling junta were smashed by strike action and armed resistance.

But as the civil war has grown in scope, the left wing political groupings have fallen into the trap of seeking a cross-class alliance with sections of capitalists and politicians-who are committed to preserving capitalist rule in El Salvador.

They have cat un tha Nama mey Have set up me yellucratic Revolutionary Front (FDR). And, with support from the capitalist governments in Mexico and West Germany, and from the social democratic "Second International" have appealed to the US imper ialists to negotiate a political settlement which would install "democratic" capitalist government to continue exploitation in a more respectable' form in El Salvador.

Full brunt

As FDR statesmen tour European capitals the guerrilla forces, unified in the FMLN, face the full brunt of the bloody American-backed onslaught.

And they face attempts (through US economic and military blackmail aimed particularly at Nicaragua and Cuba) to cut off the already inadequate supplies of arms and ammunition.

The guerrilla forces remain militarily strong-some 10,000 organised in full or part-time units. But they remain politically weak-particularly in the towns. And they need international support. In solidarity with their struggle we must find every way possible to:

*Mobilise to halt the Thatcher/Reagan war drive!

*Black all arms and aid to the Salvador junta!

*Demand Soviet and Cuban arms and aid to the FMLN!

*Break from the FDR-for socialist revolution in Salvador!

*Build Trotskyist parties in El Salvador and Central America.

Demo: see Woman Worker

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SOCIALIST PRESS, March,

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REAGANS WAR-CRY

WOMAN WORKER