[The question of whether the atest ceasefire will…]

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The question of whether the atest ceasefire will hold cannot be letermined at the time of going to press, but it can be said that this ime the left wing forces will be iegotiating from a position of trength.

Dangers of course remain, as is dear from the announced reconcilItion this week of PLO chief Arafat with George Habash, who las led the rejection front' group if guerrila organisations.

REVERSION

It is to be hoped that this will oi lead to any reversion of the Palestinian leadership to the UNliplomacy Geneva peace conferance methods they are pursuing.

A new awakening of the Palestmian masses themselves was cleat irom the recent developments in Galilee, just over the Israeli side of the border with Lebanon.

LAND-GRABBING

The Zionist authorities have been engaged in their traditional policies of land-grabbing and confiscation in this area, and on May (30th a 'land day', a general strike (as proclaimed against one of the latest instances.

The Zionist authorities reacted against this with the utmost brutality. Arab youths stone Israeli occupation forces They beat up those who closed their shops or would not go to school. When their victims retaliated by throwing stones and Molotov cocktails, they shot them down.

At least six were many wounded.

These developments show the real hatred of Zionist occupation on the part of those Palestinians living in Israel itself traditionally less militant than their compatriots across the borders. And in the forefront of the struggles were militant groups of youth..

The desperation of the Zionist authorities is shown by such statements as the one from the Israeli embassy in London saying the strike. was only a "communist plot"

They know that the advance of the left wing forces in Lebanon presents a threat to them as well as to the reactionary regimes of Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere.

These new signs of upsurge in the Arab masses will not stop short at any national boundaries. They raise the need to struggle for a socialist programme and perspective throughout the area.

The right to strike has been abolished and trade unions and the Peronist "62 organisations" have been banned from all activity. All political parties have been suspended and five parties of the revoluționary left have been declared illegal.

The five are the Workers Socialist Party (PS), the Workers Political Party (PPO), the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCK); the Trotskyist Workers Party (PO1) ánd the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (PCML).

All civil servants are under direct military control and all factories and workplaces are subject to martial law. Political offences are punishable by death.

CAPITALIST

One of Argentina's largest industrial capitalists, Eton-educated Jose Martinez de Hoz, has been appointed economy minister.

His policy is to enhance the profitability of capital in Argentina through imposing huge cuts in real wages. The wage increase of 20% granted by Mondelli last month is confirmed.

But between February and March prices (even according to the underestimated official index) went up by a record 54%, (the equivalent of an annual rate of inflation of 17,400 per cent!).

At the same time he plans to cut government spending, of which 90% at present is financed simply by printing money.

Martinez, a close associate of the Rockefeller family, has also introduced generous new concessions for foreign capital investment in Argentina.

For this economic strategy to work will require the total repres sion of all working class organisation. Even what has happened up to now, theretore, is only a prelude to what the military rulers are planning.

The reactions to the coup have shown up not only the gross treachery of Peronist and Stalinist working class leaders but also the failure of revolutionaries to offer an alternative leadership.

ABROAD The coup found many of Argenttina's main trade union leaders conveniently out of the country:

Textile workers' 'leader' Casildo Herreras, who is Secretary General of the CGT made a statement to the press in Uruguay:

*I am completely disconnected, erased from the picture. It would be better if you forgot you had seen me and did not say I had been in Montevideo".

Peronist union leaders have spent a lot of time abroad since the withdrawal a few weeks ago of 4000 police exclusively charged malamorant CONTINUED FROM FRONT PAGE Peronists, the Montoneros, have continued their guerrilla activities and were probably responsible for killing the chief of operations of the Federal Police on the day of Videla's inauguration.

But politically they have been presenting a series of demands for bourgeois democracy combined with economic nationalism.

NO PROGRAMME More serious is the fact that the largest party claiming allegiance to Trotskyism and the Transitional Programme, the PST (recognised Argentinian section of the USFI), has put forward a programme which does not differ fundamentally from that of the Montoneros.

The PST has correctly pointed out that the best way to combat the danger of a military coup was not to support Peron's government but to organise maximum mobilisation of the working class against it and its policies.

which venture scarcely a step beyond the limits of bourgeois democracy. They simply call for the resignation of Peron, her replacement by a President from the trade union leadership, the election of a constituent assembly which 'would allow a broad discussion of the crisis and its solution.in which socialists would propose socialist solutions' General Videla's military coup puts an end to such dreams of socialism through discussion in parliamentary assemblies.

The failure of "revolutionaries" to break from parliamentary illusions has conceded valuable time to the military regime and the capitalist and imperialist interests they are in power to serve.

The PST, which has had numbers of its members gunned down by fascist thugs, right to the very point of the coup, made no call for the organisation of workers' defence squads to protect the labour movement.

The complete unpreparedness of this, reputedly the largest "Trotskyparty in the world, is a sorry reflection on the political state of the 'United Secretariat' and in particular: the public faction grouped round the US Socialist Workers Party of which the PST was a part until recent months.

Of course our political differences with the PST and other banned Argentinian workers' parties in no way prevent us from demanding unequivocally. their freedom to organise and agitate for their programme.

*No base all Workers partiess parties! *Armed self defence squads to defend the labour movement adainst fascist and state violence!

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with protecting them (against their own members, not against the

But it has then gone on to present a set of political demands