Workers' Struggles Shake Apartheid Celebrations

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Both our Monthly Fund and our Special Fund seem to be running into trouble. With some money for the May Monthly Fund still in the post, we have so far received only £546.00-over £300 short of our target! We really must make an early start to the June fund and ir, to ensure that we don't fall short by such a large amount during the coming month.

The £2,500 Special Fund seems also to have ground to a halt once again. The total stands at £1230.00. So we also need to give a boost to this fund urgently if we are to get back on target for raising the full £2,500 by the beginning of the Money for either fund should be sent to:

sector jobs have vanished in school meals, health. teaching and social services without a finger lifted by union officials.

Sole exception to this tide of retreat was the unofficial miners' strike which forced back the Tory/ NC. B closure plans.

Basking in the glory of this action which they did nothing to promote were NUM General Secretary Lawrence Daly and Yorkshire leader Arthur Scargill. Murray blames workers It was Scargill's speech that made most impact on many at the rally-with his correct call to defend jobs and occupy factories threatened with closure and his statement that:

"If the TUC gave a lead and threatened the government with direct action we would get somewhere.

We are not prepared to see our children deprived of the right to work. If that means direct action on the part of the trade union movement then that's the consideration that our movement will have to give."

Well Scargill is on the TUC General Council: So loo is Ken Gill of TASS, who insisted that "the TUC must make sure that the momentum is not lost":

Both therefore now have the opportunity to fight for the TUC to embark on an immediate campaign for all-out action to bring down the inflexible and savage Tory government and drive out the discredited right wing leadership of the Labour Party (whose main representative, Dennis Healey, was roundly booed by Sunday's rally).

Only such a fight can cut through the sticky icing ot hypocrisy which coated every speech in Trafalgar Square, masking the bitter flavour of betrayal in the day-to-day policies of the oureducrats on the platorm.

We've had a bucketful of. speeches: now let's see some fight to defend jobs, organise i the unemployed and bring! down this nated Tory.

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cott the celebration and organise protest meetings.

These boycott committees have focussed attention on the official celebrations -while black workers and youth are daily facing in struggle the real meaning of the Republic, and fighting the real battle against the bosses' apartheid state.

The growing strength of that struggle has meant that the government and capitalists do not have much to celebrate about.

Behind the extravagant displays and the massive show of military strength. lies the confusion and division of the ruling class in the face of a black working class that is moving forward on every front.

Despite vicious repression and terrible poverty, the black working class continues to march on in struggle, developing its class confidence, building its organised strength, and extending its demands on every issue.

Across the country groups of workers and youth are in struggle. In the motor industry, thousands of black workers are on strike.

About 2,000 Leyland workers have been sacked for striking for higher wages.

Over 3,000 workers at Ford, General Motors and Firestone Tyres have gone on strike to demand rein. statement of victimised workers.

Deported

In the crucial mining industry too, workers are fighting against the starvation wages and slave labour conditions.

Last week 1600 workers on a gold mine were deported to the rural areas after striking.

In workplaces throughout the country, workers are mobilising to defend the organisation they have built in struggle.

Again and again, united action is developing in workplaces and in the communities. Mass resistance has been mobilised in many working class townships against increased rents. Striking carworkers Thousands of workers and youth are daily resisting the bosses' pass law system with its expulsions from the towns and farming areas into the bantustan starvation camps.

Militant battles

In the schools and on the streets, working class youth are waging militant battles against government attempts to control and discipline them.

The upturn in the economy which has been based almost entirely on gold is beginning to stagger under the pressure of the world crisis of capitalism.

The massive profits of the last two years are threatening to develop into a crisis of profits.

Facing a developing economic crisis, the capitalists and their government are increasingly forced to attack even the terrible economic position of black workers.

This capitalist drive 1o protect profits is also forcing them to weaken the relatively privileged economic posi tion of white workers on whom they have traditionally relied as crucial allies in the control of the block working class lizabeth The recent white elections were organised by the governing National Party as part of its attempts to strengthen its base of support in preparation for a mounting attack on the black working class.

There was a massive swing of support to ultrarightwing reaction. The ultra-right has been able to exploit the growing contusion and dissatisfaction amongst white workers making the black workers the scapegoat for the threats facing white workers.

The capitalist class is less and less able to rule through the old forms, but it is also impossible for them to tind new forms of rule stable and strong enough to control the forward movement of the black working class.

Challenge

Black workers are more strongly mobilised, organised. uniled and determined than ever before.

Their mounting day-loday struggles are posing the greatest over challenge to the capitalist state.

It is by developing these struggies that a movement will be built to defeat the bosses" republic. But there is no developed leadership to meet the urgent needs of the situation.

Some union leaders are acting to hold back struggle when the clear need is to drive forward.

Time and again, these leaders leave groups of workers to struggle in isolation when there is a ready basis for organised united action.

Other union leaders hey der support the militancy of workers and the action workers are already taking but fail to give a lead for developing and strengthening action and demands.

And the traditional black nationalist ANG leadership is telling the working class which is stronger than ever to rely not on its own strength, but on the guerrillas and their action.

At a time of growing mass struggle, ANC leaders have launched a campaign of propaganda sabotage actions Their call for a general strike was backed up not by mass agitation but by sabotage to halt trains taking workers 1o work These ANC leaders have attracted thousands of cour ageous militants from the ranks of the working class but are leading them away the nlare and antion mom be place duu alliva where the real challenge to the bosses is being builtthe daily struggle in the workplaces and working class communities.

Summer School in July.

Socialist Press Fund BM Box 5277, London WCIN 3XX.

could never meet the basic needs of the workers.

Even in the imperialist democracies like Britain, capitalism is forced to attack the democratic rights and living standards won by workers' struggle.

Class strength

The task must be to develop the independent class strength of workers and youth, to strengthen the defences against a more and more desperate ruling class, to take forward struggle behind the strongest actions demands and organisation.

The existing leadership is an obstacle to this vital task -a new leadership must be built in the struggle.

Messages of support to the British Leyland strikers should be sent to NUMARW, (WPMAWU), 2 Goodhope Street, Bellville South, Cape Town, and messages of support the Firestone workers to Government Zini, Ford Cortina, Struandale Plant, Port Elizabeth.