[Ison of Ner Latene Camera mas adored the…]

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Ison of Ner Latene Camera mas adored the 44 the TUC Se aR (44% SIR? OF COURSE sued that the best way to approach and attempting to pose the weaknesses and reverse the sterile propaidequacy of these leaders gandism and ultimatism of is to encourage workers to the WRP leadership we were ace demands on them, laying the important politicmands that they fight the al foundations for the ¡ht wing, and mobilise launching of Socialist Press: tion in defence of jobs we were also making life n February 1975.

But we knew what kind if political approach we vanted to take in relation to he struggles of the working lass and the fight for the lemands of the Trotskyist Prancitinnal Prooramme None of us had ever seen typesetting machine before. None of us knew how to rule out columns or paste up artwork. Luckily a friend who had worked on Red Weekly helped out and showed us which end of a T-square to hold.

We may have got lots of lines crooked, with pictures few and far between on those first agonising allnight productions, but we knew what kind of material wantar: to on in the n9 ri. nalltel Sa tir ATT1 Most of us had spent the preceding few months engaged in a sharp political struggle inside the Workers Revolutionary Party.

We had argued there for a turn towards popularising and campaigning for workers to act upon the demands of the Transitional Programme -such as cost of living clauses to protect wages against inflation, work shating on full pay, opening the books of the employers, and occupations to force the nationalisation of particular firms and industries.

We had argued for this approach in opposition to the repetitive abstract propagandist calls for "nationalisation without compensation under workers' control" which formed the major conilfit 13315 it of the WRP's demands the trade unions.

We argued for a flexible I sensitive approach to the ht to expose the waverings i betrayals of the 'left' bour MPs and left-talking reaucrats, who command ISS support within the irkers' movement.

While the WRP leadership C01 ntented itself with merely del nouncing them as "corporati sts" and traitors, we arg ex] ina wa pla del rig acl an d living standards.

Bma! to mad mea REFORMISIS Rare d ite Masa IMPERIAL BRETS BIVEN BB LEAR 1- nuroo •NOR/J KIA (N X4UIO)

NAHINA We j The first issue February 0. 1975 Insofar as they do so. we argued, they advance the class struggle and must be given critical support and urged to go further: insofar as they refuse to respond to such demands, they expose their own weakness in the eyes of their supporters.

Foundations

In embracing this impossibly difficult for the In our opinion, the starting-point of our activities, the first step towards creating the desired organisation, or, let us say, the main thread which, if followed, would enable us steadily to develop, deepen, and extend that organisation, should be the founding of an All-Russian political newsA newspaper is what we most of all need; without it we cannot conduct that systematic, all-round propaganda and agitation, consistent in principle, which is the chief and permanent task of Social-Democracy in general and, in particular, the pressing task of the moment, When interest in politics and in questions of socialism has been aroused among the broadest strata of the population.

Never has the need been felt so acutely as today for reinforcing dispersed agitation in the form of individtelen dial reside mate Deser " the corals. them, „ rețirer no zhe taal s in ros wering si. iher,a ra l Ar. • MBE .aroe sa.rm orwr. * r untla a. ope rhe pon s mer. DEFE B HT m4rii raduate to professional printers WRP leaders.

They had set their faces against this, the method of the early Comintern and the Transitional Programme: sooner than change from their sectarian and propagandist stance they expelled us all from the WRP on the eve of the Party conference which was supposedly to discuss our positions.

In launching Socialist Press within six weeks of the formation of the Workers Socialist League, therefore, we were taking up the challenge before us: we were beginning the fight to make the Trotskyist programme a living force in the daily struggles of the working ate a ual action, local leaflets, pamphlets, etc., by means of generalised and systematic agitation that can only be conducted with the aid of the periodical press.

It may be said without exaggeration that the frequency and regularity with which a newspaper is printed (and distributed) can serve as a precise criterion of how well this cardinal and most essential sector of our militant activities is built up.

Utopian

Furthermore, out news paper must be All-Russian. If we fail, and as long as we fall, to combine our efforts. to influence the people and the government by means of the printed word, it will be utopian to think of combining other means, more complex, more difficult, but also more decisive, for exerting influence.

Our movement suffers in the first place, ideologically, as well as in practical and organisational respects, from its state of fragmentation, from the almost complete 2252 2227 222232 WI ATT CONFEREN+ =E2D lass.

We recognised, too, that rhile we could immediately egin this fight in the British ibour movement-in particlar the trade unions-our ight was part of an internaional struggle for revoluionary: leadership in the truggle against imperialism, apitalist exploitation: and he repression of the Stalinst bureaucracies in the leformed workers' states.

From . our first issue herefore international news und analysis have played a najor role in the developnent of Socialist Press.

Festering hulk

Our initial cadres emerjed from the festering hulk immersion of the overwhelming majority of Social-Democrats in local work, which narrows their outlook, the scope of their activities, and their skill in the maintenance of secrecy and their preparedness.

It is precisely in this state of fragmentation that one must look for the deepest roots of the instability and the waverings noted above. The first step towards eliminating this shortcoming, towards transforming divers local movements into a single, All-Russian movement, must be the founding of an All-Russian newspaper, Lastly, what we need is delinitely • a political news paper. Without a political organ, a political movement deserving that name is inconceivable in the Europe of today.

First step Without such a news paper we cannot possibly fulfil our task-that of concentrating all the elements of political discontent and pro-2255 TIM of the WRP as a partial reflection of the growing strength of the internațional working class in the struggles in Vietnam, Portugal, Ethiopia, Angola and South Africa: and we have acknowledged our responsiblity not simply to observe and applaud these struggles but to analyse and draw lessons from them for the workers' movement on a world scale.

Independence

Above all we stressed in each arena of struggle the necessity for the political independence and the central revolutionary rok of the working class in the test, ot vitalising thereby the revolutionary movement of the proletariat.

We have taken the first step, we have aroused in the working class a passion for "economic" factory exposures; we must now take the next step, that of arousing in every section of the population that is at all politically conscious a passion for political exposure.

We must not be discouraged by the fact that the voice of political exposure is today so feeble, timid and infrequent.

This is not because of a wholesale submission to police despotism, but because those who are able and ready to make exposures have no tribune from which to speak, no eager. and encouraging audience, they do not see anywhere among the people that force to which it would be worth while directing their comRussian government.

But today all this rapidly changing. There struggle against oppression ana exportation.

While recognising the need in many cases for the working class to spearhead the struggles of poor peasants, the urban middle class and other oppressed groups in society we have opposed every form of class collaboration which restricts workers' independent demands or shackles their struggles.

Socialist Press has therefore developed a distinctive political line and method of approach to struggles. And we have recognised the need not simply to echo and reflect struggles taking place but to offer analysis, such a force-it is the revolttionary proletariat, which has demonstrated its readiness, not only to listen to and support the summons to political struggle, but boldly to engage in battle.

Duty We are now in a position to provide a tribune for the nationwide exposure of the tsarist government, and it is our duty to do this.

That tribune must be a Social-Democratic news paper. The Russian working class, as distinct from the other classes and strata of Rusian society, displays a constant interest in political knowledge and manifests a constant and extensive demand (not only in periods of intensive unrest) for illegal literature.

When such mass demand is evident, when the training of experienced revolutionary leaders has already begun, and when the conc.:!tration of the working riss makes it virtual master in thie working class districts of the big cities and in the factory

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JOHN LISTER has edited Socialist Press since its first publication. Here he points to what has distinguished ours from other papers-the qualities that we want to see carried forward in the new Socialist Organiser.

SOCIALIST WRP steados our political approach, and step forward. verspective, programme and radership to those struggles, Iven if we were not directly p a position to implement uch policies in practice.

Our paper has never lood by the sidelines simply osing questions to the caders. We have set out contently in each issue to ike positions on the probims confronting the workig class.

As a fortnightly or even i a weekly paper our funcon has not been so much to resent "news" to our aders: in many cases our ews is necessarily less up-toste, less detailed, less nmedíate than that availble in the bourgeois press ettlements and communijes, it is quite feasible for he proletariat to found a olitical newspaper.

Iban petty, bourgeoisie, the ural handicraftsmen, and he peasants, thereby becom is a real people's political ewspaper.

The role of a newspaper owever, is not limited sole ¡ to the dissemination of leas, to poutica, education, pu to the enlistment of plitical allies.

A newspaper is not only ¡collective agitator, it is also collective organiser. In this ist respect it may be likened the scaffolding round a zilding under construction, bich marks the contours I the structure and facilicommunication etween the builders, enablthem to distribute the ork and to view the ommon results achieved by heir organised labour.

With the aid of the news aper, and through it, a ermanent organisation will aturally take shape that will Now tore aiga Fresh attack on unions or larger scale publications.

Our strength has rested in our ability accurately to draw out the political content of issues and struggles, to present clear slogans and conclusions, and to expose the various manoevies and betrayals of the reformist and Stalinist misleaders.

It is as a Marxist paper rather than a newspaper that our readers have turned to Socialist Press.

And with this in mind we have presented as run a preture as we can of the Marxist vorld view-not simply on industrial, economic and overtly political questions but also on cultural and engage, not only in al activities, but in regular general work, and will train its members to follow political events carefully, appraise their significance and their effect on the various strata of the population, and develop effective means for the revolutionary party to influence those events.

The mere technical task of regularly supplying the tion will necessitate a network of local agents of the united party, who will maintain constant contact with one another, know the general state of affairs, get accustomed to performing regularly their detailed func tions in the All-Russian work and test their strength in the organisation of various revolutionary actions.

Skeleton

This network of agents will form the skeleton of precisely the kind of organisation we need-one that is sufficiently large to embrace 1861;

We have brought into the pages of the paper over our 6½ years a range of theoretical contributions-ranging from a 25-part series on the Russian Revolution, to a tenpart series on the struggle for Irish liberation; series of articles on women's oppression, on Popular Front governments of the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War, and We have explained basic policies and demands of the Trotskyist programme, explained the origins and politics of Stalinism, and we have explained our disagreements with other political tendencies on the left in We reprint written in 19( 5 of his Coll stresses the i Democratic 1 movement of Party paper.

the whole country; sufficiently broad and many-sided to effect a strict and detailed division of labour; sufficiently well tempered to be able to conduct steadily its own work under any circumstances, at all "sudder turns" , and in face of all contingencies; sufficiently flexible to be able, on the one hand, to avoid an open battle against an overwhelming enemy, when the enemy has concentrated all his forces at one spot, and yet, on the other, to take advantage of his unwieldiness and to attack him when and where he least expects it.

Easy task Today we are faced with the relatively easy task of supporting student demonstrations in the streets of big cities; tomorrow we may, perhaps, have the more difficult task of supporting, for example, the unemployed movement in some particular area, and the day after to be at our posts in order to play Britain and internationally while spelling out our call for the reconstruction of the Fourth International.

Of course we have learned and developed in the last 6½ years-particularly in areas of struggle in which the WRP had no practical involvement.

Socalist Press has markedly strengthened its coverage and analysis of the Irish struggle and the fight for solidarity in the British struggle for revolutionary leadership in the labour movement has taken on a more concrete and practical form with the emergence of powerful leftward currents in the Labour rank and file.

here an article by enin, D1 and taken from Volume lected Works in which he importance for the Social movement (the Marxist his day) of an All-Russian revolutionary part in a peasant uprising.

Today we must take advantage of the tense political situation arising out of the government's campaign against the Zemstvo; tomorrow we may have to support popular indignation against some tsarist bashibazouk on the rampage and help, by means of boycott, indictment demonstrations, etc., to make things so not for him as to force him into open retreat.

Such a degree of combat readiness can be developed only through the constant activity of regular troops.

If we join forces to produce a common newspaper, this work will train and bring into the toreground, not only the most skilful propagandists, but the most capable organisers, the most talented politica. party leaders capable, at the right moment, of releasing the slogan for the decisive struggle and of taking the lead in that struggle.

We have of course made labour movement.

We have developed our grasp of the problems of women's oppression and the necessity to mobilise working class women and men in the struggle for sexual equality.

And in the last two years we have strengthened our analysis and ability to play a role in the political upheavals now taking place in the Labour Party.

Socialist Press supporters have come to the fore in numerous struggles within the Labour Party. And our initial formal understandino of the necessity fight» to "make the lefts the One year • some mistakes in the course of 254 issues. But in general we would argue that the • mistakes have been more technical than political: that the record of Socialist Press is one of consistent struggle for a Marxist analysis and for Trotskyist intervention into tha strumilao of tha atartino class.

Uur turn now to support the expansion of Socialist Organiser and to argue in that paper for our politics stems from our conviction that we can carry forward this record into a new, enlarged readership. The last few months have confirmed that the comrades arnund •.AY Socialist Organiser share that cooperation can be of mutual benefit.

The new paper 18 a further step forward in the struggle to root the Trotskyist programme in the living movement of the working class.

In sponsoring _the new weekry, we miend to see that it picks up on the strengths and record of both Socialist Press and Socialist Organiser.

We continue to set ourselves squarely in opposition to barren sectarian sloganising, while at the same time offering workers a principled alternative to their existing labour movement leadershin.

Our history takes a new

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:SOCIALIȘT PRESS, Thursday 9 July 1981 Editor, SOCIALIST ORGANISER selves.

The paper must have correspondents, researchers, reporters everywhere. Three

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SYRIAN TANKS DEFEND ISRAEL

MILANT BALLIT ao vital the doal

WILL FOOT FOUNDER CNOKOMPROMISE Court THE WITH HEALEY? Our response to Tory government - May 1979 Issue 250 - June 11 1981

6 months. . Send to Socialist Organiser, 214 Sickert Court, Essex Rd., London NI lip bRESS * SHITH MORIESE,

newspaper with copy and of promoting regular distribu-

PRESE HUNGER STRIKES! Demonstrate Saturday 13 June