[Socialist Press, which has appeared without interruption for…]

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Socialist Press, which has appeared without interruption for the last 6½ years, is to ceare production with issue 254, dated July 9.1981 This is not the result ol any setback, but the pre lude to a new step forward in the fight for a principled programme and perspective for action in the workers' movement.

We have decided to sponsor and add our forces those already grouped around the paper Socialist Organiser.

This will become a 16-page weekly paper on July 30. And we will fight to ensure that it embodies the strength of both papers in a new expanded form.

We are sure that with our support and participation the new weekly will confront the major political problems facing the working class in the current situation.

We will seek to support and champion every struggle, every protest by the working class in its battles against capitalist exploitation and repression in. Britain and internationallv.

The weekly will obviously continue as both Socialist Press and the fortnightly Socialist Organiser: have done. to promote the struggles of women tor genuine sexual equality; of gays against their oppression, of black workers and national minorities against discrimination and repres sion; and of youth agairst the capitalist system that dooms them to a lifetime of misery and exploitation.

The paper will campaign to publicise the demands of those in struggle, and fight for the broadest possible concrete solidarity action.

It will analyse developments in major struggles week by week, offer political guidance and leadership, and fight to expose manoeuvres and betrayals by trade union and Labour bureaucrats. But it will not stop there.

Socialist Organiser will also attempt to educate readers to grasp the broader significance ot their local and immediate problems and struggles in the contest ot the national and international class struggle.

It will seck to show the necessity to go herond the limits of trade union militancy. it workers are to develop a revolutionary leadership which is capable of tackling the political attacks now being waged by the Tory government. and the political betrayals carried out by the Labour bureaucracy.

It will explain the political limitations which make the confused politics of the Labour 'left' inadequate to the needs of the working class.

The paper will attempt to popularise the political and theoretical heritage of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Leudership labour Trotsty. and to carry forward the programme of Marxism in a positive and concrete way into the daylonday struggles of the labour movement.

This means of course that the new paper like both Socialist Press and Socialist Organiser betore it will also conduct continuous propaganda arguing the case for socialism and socialist revolution against the various currents of reformism and Stalinism.

In nur capacity as sponsors of the new weekly. we will seek in spell out not simply immediate demands but also our general perspertive for the development of struggles. the generalisation of struggles, the fight for new leadership. the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the possibilities opened up by a workers government and a planned socialist cconomy moment ummuna don •" 1 We will argue the case for the complete reconstruction of the crisis-ridden Trotskyist Fourth International a: the world party of socialist revolution.

We will explain as clearly as possible the gult that separates our revolutionary Marism from the Stalinist politics of the mass Communist Parties and the so-called "C'ommunist" states in which political power is in the hands of a minority, parasitic Stalinist bureauWe will spell out our perspective of working class political revolution in Poland and other deformed workers" states.

We believe that only by presenting such material can we provide the basic information needed to develop the large numbers of leftward moving militants now taking up the struggle in the labour movement into Marxists who will recognise the need to join us in building a new. revolutionary And of course as weekly paper speaking both to organised militants and 10 a wider readership in the labour movement. Socialist Organiser can fas is name suggests) play a crucial role in organising the forces most committed to the struggle for socialism.

We will offer them a regular analysis of the class struggle. and slogans and policies on which they can act together in common with comrades and co-thinkers in other towns and other unions.

We do not ser this in any sense as a one-way process. To achieve its purpose our new paper must draw a response from its readers and supporters: they must be encouraged to enter into a dialogue with those who sell and produce Socialis/ Organiser. and themselves take copies to sell and participate in our fight to huild a new. revolutionars leadership.

The 16-paze weekly offers new scope which we are keen should be used to open it up further to debate and dialogue with readers. We want to see at least a page in Socialist Organiser every week allocated to readers' letters and debate on basic political topics currently under discussion in the workers' movement.

Readers in every locality should be urged to submit letters, articles. cartoons, news cuttings and photographs.

A News Desk telephone would make the paper still more accessible.

Nor do we simply want to merge the aristing readerships ot the two papers.

In every area we will be pressing arising supporters of Socials Press and Social. is Organiser take increased numbers of the new paper to sell.

We want to see it sold in or outside every union hranch. avers tabou r Party ward, women's section and GMC; every labour movement conference, rally and We want to see sellers taking our new paper to every factory gate, dole office, picket line and mass meeting. We want teams assembled in each town where we have supporters to canvass the working class estates door to door, selling copies of the paper, seeking out new regular readers for weekly deliveries and new forces willing to come forward in the fight for socialism.

As the colleges and universities reopen, we want Socialist. Organiser taken into student unions and halls of residence, to establish supporters' • groups and mobilise students in the fight against the Tories.

Teams of supporters should be organised to campaign on High Streets and shopping centres in the big towns, stopping passers-by and explaining to them exactly why they should be involved in the fight to kick out the Tories and carry through a fight for socialism.

It is plain from every union conference that there is now a strong leftward tide of political development within the labour movement: local elections and even opinion polls in the Tory press confirm that this reaches through the whole working class.

In sponsoring together with the Socialist Organiser comrades a new, expanded paper we are confident that we can reach new, expanded, readership, building a firm base of support on which to build a new, fighting leadership in the labour movement that will increasingly represent a major challenge to the present reformist and Stalinist bureaucrats.

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SOCIALIST PRESS: revolutionary leaders PRESS * 801 00 30000 MATINEN BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD CRISIS IN TORY GET OPENING THE BOUKS ?! LEFTS MUST FIGHT NOW NO 12 - 300 14L7 19780 100 41%: TUC SPEAK ONLY O DEFEND JOBS! 'O DEFEND JOBS! /FOR THEMSELVES!

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