Tory Press Launches New Party

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Agence of the social democratic step up the fight to secure Al Le samle wune ue clicl" MUA4 MAVJ SMUV party as an unelected grouping control of their party. weakens Labour's opposition, a new, principled leadership in and offers the possibility, under the struggles now taking place certain conditions of propping on jobs, wages, rents and social up a flagging Tory government spending cuts, equipped with a through a coalition arrange- programme of socialist policies. ment. The fight must be for mass This would remove from the action to bring down the capitalists' minds the haunting Thatcher government, expose fear of a Heath-style defeat at and remove the Labour traitors, the hands of the working class- and establish a genuine workers' and reinforce the offensive government committed to buildagainst jobs, services and living ing a planned, socialist standards. economy. danger that the government could fall in the face of working class action.

In previous periods the capitalist response has been simply to turn to the right wing leadership of the Labour Party to manage the economy for a period, while the Tory Party regroups its Successive Labour governments have shown themselves willing and able to wage outright attacks on the working class in the name of preserving capitalist industr hilt in the THOUSUry collaborate to the maintenace of imperialist rule on a world scale-particularly through the NATO alliance.

But recent developments within the Labour Party have caused capitalists in Britain and internationally to question whether this remains the case.

An increasingly angry rank and file within the Labour Party has begun to step up the fight for alternative policies-rejecting the wage controls, cuts and mass unemployment brought about under Wilson and Callaghan.

The working class has set out to prevent the repetition of another right wing Labour government-and forced through policies to make the party leadership for the first time accountable to the members, and to bring right wing MPs to heel. The ferment continues: the old order is being challenged-and in the process Owen, Williams and Rodgers have been roundly defeated.

In particular we should note that the last Labour Party conference while rejecting a call to withdraw from NATO, carried a motion for unilateral nuclear disarmament.

Such a policy is seen as a direct challenge by the imperialist chiefs both in Britain and in the USA. The recent Panorama programmes indicated that the US imperialists would regard a left wing Labour government as so untrustworthy that the supply of secret information would cease, and NATO membership would be thrown into question.

And it has been revealed that former Tory Ireland spokesman Airey Neave plotted with the secret service contingency plans for the assassination of Tony Benn were he to become Prime WAA haka hanama Drima Minister.

The capitalist class in Britain and the USA is thus determined to do anything and everything to prevent the election of a left wing Labour government.

The new party will serve their purpose in this task. On the one hand it will be able to utilise the mass media to create maximum confusion not only amongst workers but also, more significantly, among the sections of middle class electors whose votes are crucial to a Labour election victory. When this is combined with the new electoral boundaries due to be introduced-which offer the Tories dozens of additional safe seats-then the capitalists hope that they can split off enough supporters to make a Labour government impossible.

Coalition

within Parlament immediately

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suciALisi iRiss, wednesaay 2s March 1981 Lula addressing Sao Paulo mass meeting PRESS Don Flint The sentencing to three and a half years' jail of Luis Ignacio da Silva (Lula), leader of the Brazilian metalworkers' union and the Partido dos Trabalhadores, and eleven other trade unionists for 'inciting collective disobedience of the law' promises to accelerate class conflict in Latin America's largest state.

According to the Judge in the case, Nelson Guimaraes:

"I took part in the trial with my mind already made up. So it The notion that workers in Europe might prefer the (unlikely) prospect of a Soviet invasion to the (more likely) prospect of annihilation in a Reagan-launched nuclear war is "contemptible"

So says Mr Richard Allen, National Security Advisor to the Reagan government, in a public attack on the anti-war movement gathering pace in Britain and the rest of Europe.

"Right now the second largest party in Britain has adopted as part of its official platform the renunciation of nuclear weapons. We are even hearing in other countries the contemptible "better red than dead" slogan of a generation ago."

Allen's heavy-handed did not matter what was said by the press-I mean the defence and the prosecution."

The whole organisation of the trial' was so transparently directed towards obtaining a 'guilty' verdict that even sections of Brazil's puppet Congress and, allegedly, sectors of the military, were opposed to The defendants lawyers advised them not to attendwhich they did not-for fear of their safety; eleven military cordons (comprising 2,000 men) were set up around the courthouse; the press was excluded; whole surrounding blocks were cleared of people and traffic and international policy as brutal as Reagan's domestic policy, designed:

"to do to the Soviets what they have been doing to us in Ethiopia,, Angola, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

At a very low cost, without a big investment on our part, we can make it very hard for them in these places."

The USA "would not yield" to pressure from the West German government for new talks on the limitation of the nuclear arms build-up, he said.

The Reagan administration at first attempted to suppress Pipes' name, and then hurriedly disavowed the statement itself as alarm grew among NATO allies.

But it clear that-as Reuters news agency pointed out:

"the tough line appears cononly two days' notice of proceedings were given.

The result was a foregone conclusion. An appeal has been lodged which will give General Figuereido's dictatorship chance to assess the political balance of forces before instructing its judges.

The workers' crime lies in their leading role in organising the metalworkers' strike of April 1980 in Sao Paulo which lasted for six weeks and gained the support of over 200,000 workers.

The strike was illegal under Brazil's 1937 Labour Law, which contains whole sections Beret" commando units are being prepared for action in El Salvador.

But while Reagan's team prepares the most savage onslaught on workers and oppressed masses on a world scale in the name of opposing "international terrorism" they are also extending the hand of economic and military aid to the terror campaigns waged by the most barbaric regimes and right wing guerrillas.

Dictatorships in El Salvador; Chile, Argentina, the savage apartheid capitalist state of South Africa; and anti-communist guerrillas in Angola and Afghanistan have all been the subject of political overtures and economic and military assistance in the last week.

Reagan is seeking to change the law to enable him to supply arms to the reactionary UNITA lifted from Mussolini's legislation.

The struggle marked a major step forward in the organisation of unions independent of the government-appointed "pelegos' yellow leaders who guaranteed verticalist control.

Similar strikes had been held in 1978 and 1979 in the Sao Paulo industrial suburb of Sao Bernardo, laying the basis for the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Labour Party), a social democratic organisation led by Lula.

The regime is clearly determined to repress the PT and any form of independent workers' organisation while at the same time introducing a spurious "democratic opening" after 17 years of military rule.

Yet it will be unable to complete its manoeuvre (forced on the government in the first place by the rising mobilisation of millions of Brazil's working class, peasantry and impoverished masses) without running the risk of wholesale class confrontation.

This is one reason why the 'ultra right' of the military pushed for the prosecution of the workers' leaders and a reversal of the 'abertura'.

The dictatorship is faced EVA with a critical dilemma. For if it gives way, the workers' movement will move ahead apace: whereas if it proceeds with jailing Lula and the others there will be, in Lula's words:

"Ten Lula's tomorrow. If they: arrest them, hundreds more will take their place, so many that they cannot all be arrested."

Figuereido and his generals are sitting on a voicano-it is only a matter of time before it begins to rumble again.