Scarman Cover-up

Scan page 7

The dying Ken Gately being dragged away by police

Irom

Howas a minority of advanced. workers who first grasped the importance of trade union organisation, and the small group around Marx and Engels who first analysed and fought for an independent workers party in Britain -later to be built by the unions in the form of the reformist Labour party. Now in this period it is the revolutionary minority which starts out from a struggle to understand and test out in practice Marxist economics, philosophy and history which is decisive jn the development of new leadership for the class battles that are to come.

To defend jobs or living standards today pose questions which go far beyond spontaneous trade union consciousness. Questions which pose a threat to private ownership, to the freedom of the capitalist to exploit, to the very basis of capitalism itself. Sucl struggles can only be carried forward in a fight for Trotsky's Transitional Programme which starts from the daily material struggles confronting workers and through its revolutionary method and its demands, which take workers beyond today's consciousness, forms a bridge to the revolutionary tasks facing the working class - to end capitalism and establish socialism.

The fight of the revolutionary movement is to put forward such demands. To defend living standards through the fight for a sliding scale of wages, or to demand that the books of the employers be opened to reveal the inner workings of capitalism. To establish workers control of capitalist firms. To defend jobs by demand. ing a sliding scale of hours withou loss of pay. To demand that capitalist enterprises are nationalised ander workers management with no compensation to the major share holders. For state contracts to be negotiated with committees of workers to ensure that the fact ories nationalised are kept open. It is only by making this programme the basis of a principled fight in the trade unions that the ground work can be laid to challenge the existing reformist and stalinist leadership, which refuses precisely to take the struggle of workers to the point where priv ate property is threatened and the taking of power posed.

NEW LEADERSHIP As Trotsky says of the commi nist movement:"Their party is The report of the Scarman Inquiry into the demonstrations in Red Lion Square last June is part of a conscious preparation by the ruling class.

The issue posed in those demon strations was the right of the working class to defend itself against extreme right wing organisations such as the National Front, which at the time was witch hunting immigrant workers.

Scarman, of course, does not recognise this right. He deliberately diverts attention away from the National Front and focuses it or the International Marxist Group. by blaming them for the death of Kevin Gately.

This slander is a continuation of the campaign by the Tories and ti employers to suppress left-wing minorities in the working class.

Only the day before the report was published, Lord Chalfont, (formerly a Labour Peer but now an Independent) introduced: motion in the House of Lords "calling attention to subversive ar extremist elements in our society He named: the Communist Part! the International Socialists, the Workers Revolutionary Party and the IMG.

While he spreads lies about the IMG, Scarman is careful to bulld up the image of the police force. The evidence of police violence is dismissed in this incredible para graph:

"The photographic evidence of specific incidents involving identifiable officers (particularly photographs of forcible arrests) does call for explanation by the officers concerned. I recommend that the Commissioner be invited to seek explanation Although the inquiry was unable to discover the manner of Gately's death, it specifically exonerated the "He was not the victum of a brutar policeman".

In all of this, Scarman clearly has an eye to the future role of the police against the working class:

"I am not prepared to make any recommendations which would have the effect of reducing the ability of the most highly equipped urban police force in the world to deal swiftly and decisively with disorder.

What he did recommend, however. was the introduction of an "independent element" into the procedure for examining complaints against the police (at the moment these are investigated by the police themselves.)

This is a deception. It is not possible to be 'indpendent" in relation to the police. They are part of the armoury of the capitalist state, alons with the armed forces and the intelligence services.

Ever since their tormation they nave been used against the working class: to break up unions, to protect scabs, to smash factory occupatinns and in on. Scarman's purpose in calling for an independent element to overlook the police is to give these actions a veneer of respectability.

The Communist Party, along witl the National Council for Civil Liberties and the National Front, has praised the Scarman report. This is a betrayal of the interests of the working class. The report aims to strengthen the police, to attack left-wing minorities and to promote the growth of extreme right-wing groups. It must be completely reiected by the labour movement.

The refusal, after Watergate to believe any official US announcement has led to the greatest scepticism about the reply to Dr. Peter Beter's allegation (he was the counsel to the US Export-Import Bank) that the gold in Fort Knox is not all it is meant to be.

The reply, published after a delay of 4 months, failed to explain why ¡the gold sold in January's famous auction was taken from the meagre stock of the Exchange Stabilisation Fund, and not from Fort Knox -where the gold is said to be not only much less than it should be, but also of inferior quality Even worse, the report of the committee, which saw only 1/5 of the gold alleged to be in Fort Knox, has been quietly played down -no press conferences or publicity in leading newspapers has been provided. And, the tact which clinches the matter, p. 4 of the report is missing, an omission whi supports the allegation that many members of the committee were 1 even prepared to sign the whole