Socialist Press no. 37

POLISH WORKERS RISE

AGAINST BUREAUCRACY

STALINISTS PROTECT NUM BUREAUCRACY

SOCIALIST

PRESS

The Polish working class has struck a major blow against the ruling Stalinist bureaucracy. The wave of stoppages and demon- strations which erupted across the country last Friday forced the government to back down on the savage price increases announ- ced only 24 hours earlier.

Prime Minister Gierek, held back The strikes, which began at the Stalinist res- giant "Ursus" tractor factory In from routine THe rapidly spread, as huge of police and military Warsaw ponse queues formed outside food shops repression. on Friday in anticipation of the

NO ATTEMPT

Radom, increases. price large miles from the Unlike the strikes in East Ger- demonstration formed outside the Czechoslovakia many and Party Headquarters - which had to 1956 movements in the be protected by police. the 1968 Poland and Hungary, Railway lines were blocked and Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, reported in many strikes were or the shooting of strikers in the shipyards other factories, Baltic ports of Poland itself only smaller plants. six years ago in 1970, there was

TURNING POINT

no attempt to confront the anger of the masses by guns and police.

These struggles mark a turning Instead they withdrew point in the European revolution.

increases (some of Damned strengthened by Polish up to 100%) "for further consul- the international gains and offen- tation" oppressed masses (as No doubt Gierek remembered shown in Indo-China and South- that he himself only too clearly ern Africa) have not only weaken- had only come to power in 1970 ed European and world Stalinism, after his predecessor, but demonstrated to the world's Stalinist Gomulka, had been that labour working class brought down by mass

BOLS,

bureaucracy which shackles their demonstrations and occupations struggles can be defeated and the shooting of sparked off by the road opened up for the light tor dozens of workers demonstrating

SOCHESTE

also against rising prices.

This is true in every country, where workers

FROZEN

including Britain, confront TUC and Labour leaders food prices Since that time collaborating with the employers massive cut in real have been frozen to inflict a (though numerous unofficial loop- wages. holes have been found), and it has It is for this reason the capital- taken the Gierek regime over five has played down last ist press years to pluck up the courage to Friday's huge upheavals. attempt to reimpose the increases.

Yet confronted by what was The last minute announcement chal- tantamount to an uprising for lenging their very right to rule, the made last increases is the direct huge price increases, Polish bureaucracy, headed by Only one day after the 17- 17-1 vote for the 4½% wage- cutting policy at the Special of the TUC, Congress press gave workers an insight of the into the hypocrisy right-wing bureaucracy in the Miners' union. It was revealed that at the May meeting of the

NUM

Executive not simply a decision was taken the salary of Joe increase Lawrence Daly by Gormley and £6 per week - but also to pay the rates on their houses. This would have boosted their already massive cheques pay. another £7 per week in the case of Gormley and £5 for Daly - over and above the f6 pay limit which they were so instrumental in forc- ing onto the trade union

SHOVC"

ment. Cormley result of attempting to put the policies of cost of the Stalinist building 'socialism in one country and of 'peaceful coexistence with capitalism on the backs of the Polish working class. policies, which have led These thole series of reactionary deals Polish bureaucracy into with imperialism, contain opposition to socialist revolutior in other countries. This in turn has resulted in Only since this was exposed Gormley and Daly now have stay within the £6 offered to limit. These revelations are of great importance in understanding the basis of privilege from which right workers wing bureaucrats lecture "grinning and bearing it bed the need to belts", accept redundancies and cuts in social services.

CRUCIAL

accep- crucial role tance of the 4½% deal. The NUM Executive meeting in May only carried by one mendation for acceptance of the deal in the union ballot.

direction which proved decisive in winning the

FORTNIGHTLY PAPER OF THE

WORKERS SOCIALIST LEAGUE

No 37 * June 30th 1976 * 10p Polish scab exports of coal being used against Spanish and other miners' strikes. The Stalinists' preference for seeking arrangements with capital- conceding any ism rather form of workers' control over the planned Polish bureaucratically and East European economies or the working giving support the advanced capitalist class in countries in the struggle

TOT

led to a massive socialism, narrow majority of votes in favour of the wage-cut plans - there is no doubt that given a lead the vote would have swung heavily for rejection. The acceptance of the 44% by the miners then strengthened the hand of other right-wing bureau- cracies and sabotaged any possible fight against the deal at the TUC.

Every worker has thus been affected by the treachery of Daly and Gormley. But much more is involved.

Firstly, the Press, which must have known about the Executive hand-outs to Daly and Gormley well beforehand, (the Daily Mail rank and file miners since the decision) clearly suppressed the facts until after the 42% deal was safely in the bag.

Communist Secondly, the

TIM

of the Poli indebtedness American economy to European capital. The economic dislocation th has brought about - worsened t the slump in exports to the We - h caused by the recession forced the hand of the Gier regime, And, as if they were running Continued back page col4 members and "lefts' on t Party

NUM

Executive also suppress this vital information througho the ballot campaign.

REVEAL

They knew only too well ti to reveal these details could h the vote to one of re tion. Yet MoGahey, Whelan, De tion. and Scargill all kept silent - their silence aided only the rig wing. Indeed when the story fin broke into the open at miners' conferen MeGahey said nothing

OLL

question. Instead he producer complete diversion spe - a predicting collapse for the l policy and belatedly offering Cont'd back page, col.

ARMED STRUGGLE- ONLY WAY

Page 2 INTERNATIONAL nEWS

LESSONS OF SOWETO KILLINGS

The barbaric response of African working class. The police terror and battery of the Vorster regime - leaving legal growing. 1,000 200 dead and

TORCHOIS

over bill new State Security, currently wounded - to the uprising of before parliament will legalise what African workers in Soweto already happens as a matter of com- lays bare again the mon occurrence - detention with- once out trial of anyone whose actions impossibility of any peaceful oppose or criticise the regime for reformist road to elementary virtually indefinite periods.

democratic rights for the 20 Vorster is not In spite of this, million black South Africans.

succeeding. wave of strikes in 1973-4 The protests about the of use has been followed by the rapid the Afrikaans language in African of black trade unions. education is only the tip of an ice- Black trade unions are denied legal bargaining rights by the state.

As the Observer noted: 'Eighty-six percent of houses (in 93%

CITIZENSHIP

Soweto) have no electricity, are without a shower or bath and 97% hot water..... fifty In October, Vorster will begin four percent of all Sowetans are the attempt to play what will un- memployed.... the average monthiy last card in doubtedly be his the worker is £10, this com- struggle to hold back the movement

WALC DOI

pares with £69 for the average asthe wooking of back outh white worker in Johannesburg".

majority black It is on this that the rate of Africans of their citizenship.

profit of international capital inves- creating This will «done by ted in South Africa depends.

'independence' for the black Ban- tustans (Homelands) - backwaters

CONNECTION

of barren land onto which blacks were forcibly evicted at the turn of This connection was dramatical- the century. Times brought home by the Sunday will become citizens of Blacks survey month of the their respective homelands but will utter failure of the Labour govern- of course have to continue to work ment's 'code of practice' in South Africa stripped of even the rates to African workers of British few civil - they have, • rights as companies operating in South "foreigners' in their own country.

Africa. Throughout South Africa blacks According the to code the have demonstrated their complete minimum wage paid should be at opposition to these proposals.

least 50% above the poverty line.

concluded the

CLEFT

Times (May 16)' paying below the minimum wage rate laid down by the British government" Vorster is now sinking more and Of course they are! Their profits more tightly into his The regime of apartheid and police depend on it. And tito maintain those profits and those terror is integral to the survival of South African capital that Vorster's capitalist industrial economy of police state exists. South Africa. But so is the acquiescence of the black African regimes to the north.

TOWNS

These are now coming Since from the African workers have to under increasing oressure masses to take • a left face and work in towns - where the factories and finance the are and since towns breed class criticise apartheid guerrilla war in Zimbabwe (Rhod- consciousness and trade unionism, Vorster has to take every measure esia). Vorster has been putting pres- possible to resist the growth of a sure on Smith in Rhodesia to come conscious political leadership in the

LEBANON TRAP

FOR P.L.O.

The Arab League's "peace- polit- "heit armed Dresence 1s keeping" formulae for the ically decorated by token purely Lebanon are in reality a trap forces from Libya with a few more due from Saudi Arabia withdrawal" for the destruction of the Syrian Liberation Palestinian forces: promised for last weekend, against This stark fact, which looms which the PLO leadership agreed to a truce in the interests of"Arab over all the comings and unity" is á cynical farce.

goings between Beirut, Damas- cases the same forces in most Cairo and Saudi Arabia cus, position digging them- remain home at the was hammered selves in and pretending to change weekend. their role with a dab of paint.

The Palestinian forces are thus The Lebanese-Christian right- trapped - facing alternate military wing entrenched in East Beirut and blows from the Syrians and from Israeli statements of egged on by mammoth the right-wing Lebanese militias.

support launched The reliance of

PLO

leader rocket and artillery bombardment Yassir of the main Palestinian Arafat on the "support" of three of "sympathetic" Arab states such refugee east of the camos to the Libya and Egypt opens enormous dangers to the Palestinian their him tire corrugated 50,000 movement. huts around While Israel openly demands the refugees, most of them civilians.

strangling of the Palestinians in the And as the fighting continued the Arab League's "peace keep- Lebanon, Egypt and Syria are now rapidly sinking their differences at ing forces folded their arms and the Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) confer- stood by. It is not hard to understand and Arab commentators now openly speculating that Arafat The large majority of them why. to some sort of settlement with the Nationalists to avoid a prolonged would of liberation which war mobilise the masses southern Africa even further. The events in Soweto show that it is now too late.

MILITANCY

The increased militancy and self confidence of the workers and oppressed classes in South Africa is directly. linked to the successful anti-colonial struggles in Angola and Mozambique. itself, Rhodesia the Smith In regime flounders on a similar set of contradictions Any attempt at a negotiated settlement with even the.

right-wing of the nationalist move- ment immediately poses the ques- tion of land. But any concessions on this crucial threatens the whole economic basis of the settler regime. Thus despite pressure trom Smith has Vorster and Kissinger, been able to offer no concessions or new initiatives since the talks with Nkomo broke off. Last week the Rhodesian Special Commission on Racial Discrimina- published its report. And the tion Rhodesia Front ruling party was thrown into crisis as immediately regards its implementation.

Its report recommends minor changes in the land law to allow a few middle class Africans to buy farming or industrial land in the white areas. recommendations which These even if implemented would in no way change the balance of power in Rhodesia, were sufficient to send a wave of horror through the major- ity of the white settlers.

Meanwhile the guerrilla war is More and Smith. of the have mOre areas country vulnerable to attack by proved freedom fighters. Not only that but the official "kill ratio' has fallen from 12:1 in favour of the Rhodesian army in January to 6:1 today, as the equip- all traine or lic alonsta increases in quality. means bilal an mercasug part ollac WInte population is being called up into military service. This, coupled with a level of white emigration which the highest for twelve years, is putting severe strain on the economy.

is against this backdrop, and of Soweto, specifically that , that Kissinger met Vorster in Bavaria

BOLIVIA:

The Bolivian working class is winning its confrontation dictator with General Hugo Banzer. For two weeks, the indefinite miners has strike 35,000 tin by of firm in the lace Banzer's military occupation of the of mining districts, political union leaders of whom 57 (including mineworkers' leader Victor Lopez) were forcibly deported to Chile, and his attempts to get a return to work through an last ares student cia has murdered schdol friend.

cruçial stabiliser the situation instest ern strategy Africa outlined by Kissinger in his Lusaka speech in April. Kissinger is relying on Vorster to pressure Smith to make a settle- prevent a long liberation ment to war in Rhodesia. hoped that by Kissinger stop- ping the war in Zimbabwe he could prevent it spreading into South Africa itself. Now just this is hap- pening! Small wonder that after two Vorster talks with all days oi Kissinger could find to say was that "all the major problems affecting Southern Africa have been dis-

BANZER FORCED BACK

Their other demands include the release of all political prisoners, the withdrawai oi the army from the mining regions, the return of the occupied radio stations to the miners and a committment to take no reprisals. The granting of such demands would be crushing blow isolated Banzer's increasingly dictatorship. week factory workers Last staged a one-day general strike in support of the miners' demands and virtually all the country's university SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday 30th June, 1976 cussed" While the bourgeoisie discuss their strategy to repress the struggle of the black Southern masses Africa, the events in Soweto must be the starting point for a renewed campaign of support in the labour movement for the armed liberation In Britain this means not only forcing the Labour government to break its many links with the racist Vorster regime, but demand- ing that active assistance and material aid including arms, provided to those liberation forces now fighting for self determination.

the defence of the rights and the just aspirations of workers".

Banzer's foIces are under Three of them continuous attack. were killed when a military patrol was ambushed. The army in its turn, however, killing been responsible for nas several workers and students since the present conflict began.

that 3000 Latest reports are miners in two districts have return- ed to work after Banzer agreed to negotiations and open wage accept all their other demands Hanet that chid

ITALY: R

"The most difficult parlia- election; and partly to the sharp ment in the history of the rep- cutback in the vote of the smaller ublic"; "Italy capitalist including the is ungovern- pallico, Fascist MSI. able" That was how the principai capitalist newspapers assessed the outcome of the June 20th elections. The corrupt and discredited Christian Democratic party (DC) is have no still clinging onto power, but their fingerholds are crumbling.

The election have only deepened the political crisis which produced the election i the tirst place. The DC held on to the same 38.7% the 1972 poled in munist Party is the old centre-left elections (a recovery of 3% since the regional elections last summer).

THREATS

WOn Nevertheless, the parliamentary base on ated Italian governments for years has dramatically shrunk.

This is partly due to the contin- ued advance in the PCI vote which reached 34.4% 2.4% on the 1972 year and over 7% up on The Workers Socialist League The Workers Socialist League was formed in December 1974 to struggle for the continuity of the principles of Trotskyism in Britain and towards the rebuilding of the Fourth International. in the daily struggle to take the demands and principles of Trotsky's Transitional Programme into the trade unions, the WSL has been at the forefront of the fight for the sliding on full pay - demands worch at line 1995 wedne were ine wages, and work sharing only alternative to Jones' £6 pay plan and the wholesale acceptance of redundancies by the bureaucracy.

In today's fight against the TUC's 42% pay cutting proposals this demand for a sliding scale of wages (rising according to the rising cost of living as assessed by trade union committees) is the essential basis of consistent opposition.

In the Health Service WSL comrades have led the struggle for a sliding scale of NHS spending, for the start of workers' control of the service (beginning with opening the books of the Health Authorities), along with the fight to end all private practice. Perhaps more important we have led the growing call for strike action to defend the NHS against the cuts and to implement these policies, fighting those like the ASTMS leadership who substitute the words for the action.

In local disputes also, WSL comrades have tested and developed the demands of the Transitional Programme, putting forward in every case the only real opposition to the Stalinists and the right-wing. Our struggle for the "open the books" demand in the motor industry has won a mass tesponse. the same time we have put forward a policy to fight unemployment, calling for unity of employed and unemployed through the fight to mobilise the trade union movement.

WSL

The the only movement that fights consistently for transitional demands, going beyond mere trade union militancy to pose the political issues to workers.

In doing this our comrades have been forced also to lead struggles for trade union democracy agains: the bureaucratic manipulation of the Stalinists and right-wing While interventions have developed the Leagues's grasp of Trotsky's Transitional Prof amme there has been a consistent drive to deepen and enrich the movement's understanding of the history and the present crisis of the Fourth International, as an essential part of any serious initiative towards its reconstruction and the demands we put lorrard to find out more about the WSL and join our fight in the labour movemen:.

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

CP SUPPORTS JOB

AND WAGE CUTS

incurable disease of Italian capital- uneasily and only through the caretaker government's LIONELay bankruptcy only through mounting government subsidies. of control and is nott even higher than the British deficit.

ment will have no further access to loans until it implements new econ- cUTS increases and government spending Italian capitalist class and they have been spelled out most starkly in recent statements by Central Bank Party leader Ugo la Malfa.

be implemented without new legal including in particular on the right These are also the policies of the Italian Communist Party! Like the budget deficiteng to supporis wage cuts, though, Barca they shouk be implemented says, not througn a statutory freeze and anti-strike laws, but through "self- discipe by carade es, the PCI Like capitalists, wants, as part of da very intense Vietnam was carried out last week, when the first session of the National Assembly met on June 24th in Hanoi. It set up a cimmission to draft the south - remains gripped by an intense social and economic crisis.

The official decree tbat Saigon is to be called 'Ho Chi Minh City' gthening the bureaucracy As Tran Trung Tan, head of the Party's education the reactionaries said 'All the cadres are perfect." Now, having seen that the whole world is like that, and that all the cadres are corrupt" south. He spent five years in the tiger cage' torture chambers of the Thieu regime's Con-Son concentra- where the material conditions that ne 1a south. and have been little reduced to made to" This limited "sliding scale" was gained in the struggles of the "hot

SOUTE

of wages against inflation.

has gone along with the demands of the capitalist class that it be severe in need of these economic policies; which increasingly sees Italy as the Either in or out of government the Stalinist leaders of the PCI will not only support such policies but propose them independently.

Italy's immediate political crisis will make what they parties - that has already been done - but over just what form that com- however, will be equally disturbed by a growing realisation that the pared to make any such This was strikingly supported by a public opinion poll published in the magazine Tempo which showed that the great majority of intending PCI voters wanted major changes in No more than a quarter of them between the PCT and the Christian The Stalinists so-called "parlia- mentary road to socialism" has thus in practice proved to be the partia- mentary road to capitalist polices, in complete defiance of the wishes British Stalinists advocating the parliamentary road must now find new ways of explaining the Italian betrayals to their own members.

VIETNAM: SOUGHT

Black markets goods and petrol, the reappearance of prostitution, the illegal appropri ation of houses and cars for Party officials, expensive restaurants while a severe food shortage con- tinues - all these have forced the Provisional Revolutionary Govern- ment in the south to issue public warnings against abuses by the Party cadre itself. But, far from attacking the problem politically, by placing real power in the hands of democratic- elected committees of the workers, soldiers and peasants, the Stalinist leadership in Vietnam is looking for administrative solutions with the help of massive imperialist "aid'. United Nations Secretary Gener- al Waldheim has launched an appeal to member states for 430 million dollars to finance a resettlement programme. iss diplomat, Victor umbricht.

report from Swiss diplomat, to the UN after he toured South Vietnam in March, the UN is to 40% of the population of these th.

policy aimed shifting large majority these are peasants who fled from the coun- tryside during the final stages of the have been south and War us ne stranded, almost all unemployed, in the cities since then. The main economic aims of the UN-backed will be to programme bring abandoned back land into cultivation, and to the heavily-damaged transport system

EUROPEAN

STALINISTS

CONFER

year's hagg leadlock and delay, Moscow, long-awaited 'Conference' of European Communist Party meet yesterday and today in to an international Stalinist gather- Rumanians and the French, Italian refused to attend unless every letter and dot of the 'final communique' were agreed in advance - a drafting phrases in East Berlin over recent page formula (in secret, so as not to Communist Party during the recent safely 'confer' and annoint it.

than the little it appears to say The Soviet Communist Party - which made such an issue of the internationalism' and the 'dictator- recent Congress - have decided to Instead the Italians' expression itself with undertakings to defend the socialist countries, starting with While Brezhner takes his stand on the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' embroils itself in behind-the-scenes hirelins of Located with the Christian Democratic Party, CP has gone even further - opening figures of the Fascist government,

UN AID

Like most UN 'aid' it is aimed at arid propping up reforming inderdeveloped, agricultural the economy. But one of main of unemployment in the south is also the bottlenecks facing industry. Many factories are small plants set to assemble parts and up materials imported from the major capitalist states - especially the US and Japan. With the defeat of imperialism in 1975, many of these supplies were cut off, and a number of technical and administrative staff - tied to the US and the Thieu regime - fled the country. Provisional Revolutionary Government has been able to do little to cut down the power and privileges of those who remain.

And some of them have clearly found political niches for themsel- ves in the new regime. At the same time industrial plant remains seriously under-used, and many of the old wage differentials persist.

The crisis in Vietnam underlines the wores anof polisicals domle workers and demo- peasants стасу against the bureaucracy in all the Stalinist dominated workers states. The workers and peasants Vietnam, who carried for decades the harsh burden of the war against will not hold state to peralsi power in their own hands except through democratically elected councils, in which all tendencies of the labour movement are free to be

INDIA: 1 YEAR OF GANDHI

June 26th marks an anniver- sary that will not be celebrat- ed by the Indian working class and peasantry except in tears and anger. It is one year since Prime Minist- er Gandhi declared a national State of Emergency that has developed 'into a persistent and brutal perse- cution of the

NOTCHCH

with over and oppressed masses, 200,000 political prisoners now in jail. On June 12th 1975, Gandhi was convicted of using corrupt electoral practices and was barred from pub- lic office for six years; on the same day election results in the State of Gujerat showed the six defeats for the Congress Party, that time to Gandhian Jaya Prakesh Narayan's Peoples' Front.

The clamour for her ensuing of resignation included tally 50,000 in the capital, urged by JP to start a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience. A mass meeting of Indian railway workers By 5am the next morning, police had dragged some 700 opposition- ists their beds jail and trom Gandhi announced the State of Emergency. The whole of the Indian press Himself as jailed, one the 4th July under- 26 opposition parties were banned, and a-series of presidential ordin- suspended civil liberties ances right to strike, right including the of speech and associ- freedom ation, and the right of appeal to the courts against arbitrary arrest.

Gandhi's The Emergency was economic and pol- LOPING Loo itical crisis which had been accum- still for some and unresolved despite the remains repression of the working furious masses in the last year.

LANDOWNERS

The backbone of Gandhi's bour- Congress geois nationalist Party; which has held power continuously since independence in 1947, is the rural large landowning class.

Its support is guaranteed by gov- ernment assistance to big farmers at the expense of increasing landless- ness and poverty of small peasants, the eyeballs debt moneylenders. These Indian 'kulars' kept prices high even though the Green Revol- and production,

HELENAU

DICTATORSHIP

industrial After the arrests, the Emergency profitable promoted a for private capital and bought was surprisingly ratified by base Parliament, which also ensured that middle class support by state could challenge employment. not

COMIN

resulted This inefficient Prime Minister legal immunity.

public spending and vicious private sectors and a parasitic agriculture On 21st July Gandhi announced 20 reform dominated point programme by especially of Congress officials, and which offered everything to every- Radical body. land reform, intlicting an inflationary system of minimum shortages on the masses. property and

INFLATION

reduced prices stayed on paper.

Only the ban on strikes, reduc- tions in control of private industry The cost of the Bangladesh war, the oil crisis and tax exemptions were carried failures and combined iwede finanted without touch- stoke inflation

OUL

A promised these crack-down on the black market and smugglers achiev ing the rich. Severe shortages of ed only temporary success. It was essentials Me cooking of. soap and cloth meant that these were only

STOKE IN

hold of the surplus-producing far- available at black market prices.

mers, Mrs. Gandhi's rural base.

• At the same time as over 50% of Just as in 1973 these had sabo- the population was thrust below taged the attempted nationalisation tae once suosstence eye, !c• wholesale food grain • trade by ployment soared to. an estimated withdrawing supplies. Black market 60 million. profiteers are noW exempt from This included many of the urban legal action if they just declare their profits! political repression which was a constant feature of Congress 40,000 rule, with some the indefinite detention before estimated 200,00 0 political prison- sky-rocketed. estimated ers languish in jail without trial.

JAILED

More parliamentary tatives are imprisoned in India than including even any other country Chile and Brazil, Reports murder, torture and police atrocity are commonplace. The attacks and arrests are car- ried out increasingly by рага- forces responsible to the millary Prime Minister and the Secret Service. 250,000 Border Security Force is now quartered in all major cities and form a palace New Delhi. the capital, They collaborate with the feared and Analysis Wing (RAW), a police formed by secret Mrs. Gandhi in 1967 at the time of spreading the Naxalite peasant revolt in Bengal. agents infiltrate

RAW

every party, association, college union, of riff-raff called 'anti-socials' are middle now with no of toe- class, the police in protected by using former base pects, the violence, intimidation and who now began to Congress Party, against kidnapping political and be wooed by an amalgam of oppos of the trade union opponents ition parties including that of JP.

mouthed the same social ist the Congress pretensions

STALINISTS

Party, aimed for power at the same sections of the ruling class and were only party untourtned by arrests is mostly led by disgruntled ex- Virtually Moscow Communist Party of pio.

pro- Congressmen They appealed less to the down continued criminal weighed which has casten, religion and exploitation casteism, and treacherous support oI Congress (as does the (though with the fresh example of to this day Vietnam before them), and to the Morning Star, paper of the Stalinists), lending credibility small working class, but they attrac- to ted some following for want of any Gandhi's "left' and populist rhetoric. other leadership. They voiced demands for decen- In this they follow the policy of Stalin in China in the 1920s to use tralisation of government (Peoples' the support the Power), a fight against corruption, peasantry to "fairer' electoral reform and land bourgeois nationalists. Trotsky wrote then: ownership. At this time the black market "Stalin ked Bukhaein pree ef that yoke was unprecedented in extent, the the bourgeoisie could classes richer than ever imperialism upper fore and the legislatures under their carry out the national revolution in China. The attempt was made. With This meant a travesty of govern- what results? The proletariat wa brought under the headman's axe ment, keeping order only with an average of 25,000 armed police in Then it was said: the democratic dictatorship will the each of the 22 states.

CONC

Gandhi's popularity was waning petty-bourgeois dictatorship proved to be only a masked dictatorship of fast. At several meetings in Gujerat capital." pelted with shoes and of capital in stones. With a general election due The dictatorship India has dropped its mask. Though with the in months, of the jailed oppositionists, revolt in her own camp by sweeping most By Rick Robson the struggle against her contained those who spoke foI the three of farmers working uneconomic holdings and sliding further into debt, the hundreds of millions of the most severely oppressed landless labourers, and the low-wage urban workers starved by inflation. Gandhi's Despite propaganda against reactionary plotters, it was these that were further disciplined under Emergency powers.

NO APPEAL

The Maintenance of Internal Security Act gives the police the right to arrest and imprison anyone without charge or trial or right of appeal, or even the right to know the reason for arrest. This may be exercised if the individual has not paid his local Congressman. Even, civil rights legal associations and aid declared illegal committees were and their leaders arrested.

The only trade union federation opposed to the regime, led by the independent Communist Party India (Marxist) has endured violence and destruction of its officers from Congress union, the and their

INTUC.

'anti-socials' police under protection occupied 300 of CITU's union offices. Normal trade union activities are virtually impossible. Unions are not allowed to hold meetings except for supporting the government, or to raise army demands. Strikes are banned. Management have taken of this to declare a wage advantage freeze. In Madhya Pradesh, union leaders were mining arrested after writing a letter of protest to the authorities.

Police attack rioters in New Delhi food riots Negotiations take place under threat of arrest if the trade unions line of do not toe the authorities. The CITU is denied any role in negotiations. Student unions are abolished. The Congress slogan first and distribution Production next. The federation of AlL UL the Stalinist CP! calls on workers to produce more, and enthuses over the collaboration machinery which calls workers participation'.

FINED

This line will be familiar to many British workers On the railways staff are fined for failure maintain the timetables. or for excessive use of coal. Speed up is rampant in every industry.

Wantamhar SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday 30th June 1976 offset their miserable wages was halved, and Congress now considering its abolition, saving private industry £75m. The CITU alone protested and 3 days later arrests started mass which claim 2,000 its membership. Wages and 'dearness allowances' to the value of £625m have been impounded. It therefore was no surprise World Bank report when a recent recommended increased aid to India because 'conditions are once for upturn in the again ripe economy' growth rate Government praised 'vigorous and action' to control inflation noted "improved labour discipline" since the ban on strikes.

But though profits are up, the growing. recession industry Inflation has slowed due to a recor food harvest but prices stay high consumption and averagetood grain is the lowest since 1967.

UNEMPLOYMENT

With the masses' purchasing power crippled and unemployment the Government high that refuses to publish figures, any home * market uge our Production has been cut back with factory closures wholesae laying off 475,000 workers and leaving £3,750m worth equipment lying idle. the Investment stagnant, employers and landlords retaining their high profits. The regime's for current attempt an export- orientated growth relying on foreign investments and markets lead will to semi-colonial dependence on fluctuating foreign and demand SOve nor political problems. Any failure in agriculture will renew inflation and threaten. to ignite the mass discontent that smoulders under the policeman's club. There has been resistance.

The Governments of Gujerat and Tamil Nadu protested against the Emergency and refused implement its repressive measures and large protest demonstrations were held there last August. These governments have nOW been and " Presidentia removed rule installed. The main opposition front, the Samitais, Lok Sangharsh

WOL

formed last October from the Congress (Organisation),

BLD,

Indian Socialist Party under George Fernandes, union escaped from 'jail, and recently Jan Sangh, the main party in the and bloc conservative-nationalist.

Between November and Januarv it

SOCIALIST PRESS, Mednesday demonstration of Gandhian passive resistance which resulted in 80,000 arrests. In May it was joined by JP's followers and itself to restrIcIs pressure and protest The CITU also calls for joining hands with other democratic forces and for …aboroach to 'the ranks of all political parties.

We must stress clearly that there is no solution in the forming of popular fronts across class lines with the parties of the employers and landlords, however "progressive' may be their rhetoric. We say the lessons of pre-war Spain and France must be shown to the Indian masses, and call lor a united front of all trade unionists and workers' and peasants' parties to campaign for the of the smashing dictatorship.

TROTSKYIST

We call for the building of a Trotskyist movement which fights for the method of Trotsky's Transitional Programme, recognising that the choice is not dictatorship bourgeois but that the democracy, only struggle for workers' power can problems of the Indian solve the anternative to Gandhi's dictator shal serve Lasses of capital and land.. "The present programonas come semicolonial.

colonial semi-colonial countries, at least to those where proletariat has become capable of carrying on independent politics.

The central task for the colonial and semi-colonial countries is the agrarian i.e. the revolution, liquidation of feudal heritages, and the national independence, i.e. overthrow of the imperialist yoke.

Both tasks are closely linked with each other." (p. 42) The working class in their defence of jobs and wages must take the leadership of the peasant with programme movencill and the collectivisation of agriculture.

The moneylenders must be abolished and cheap credit provided small peasant farmers from nationalised banks under the management of workers' committees.

BROUGHT DOWN

The Congress government must be brought down by all means of struggle available to the workers' and replaced DY Government of workers' and peasalls parties, wille al the same time workers', peasants' and small farmers' committees must be built above socialist to lent or the programme and unite the struggle against Gandhi. In Britain workers should demand an immediate end to all aid to investment Gandhi's in dictatorship, and that the Labour Government the denounce dictatorship and pressure for the release of political prisoners and return of basic workers' rights. In particular they should demand the end of scandalous Labour Ministers Michael Foot and emergency Peter Shore, both of whom have meetings organised by spoken at the Indian High Commission, and "left' Sid Bidwell who said in by India that at least (like Mussolini in Italy) 'Gandhi made the trains run on time'. The enormous forces of Gandhi are a repression used by symptom of her political weakness and isolation. programme uniting them with the peasants. the working cass can end her dictatorship and prevent her by any more authoritarian regime ot by the army. = 1976

DEFENCE

SQUADS!

More racialist attacks 1 C going to take place. The neces- developing sity for defence squads in those areas where attacks are already taking is therefore becoming place more urgent The task of revolutionaries is both to defend those being attack. ed and show that these attacks are a ire a russ Issue. rasCIsm Is abouT breaking up the organisation of the working class as a whole.

Those immigrant organisations or malviduais wno nave started ine formation of vigilante groups have taken an important step forward in breaking from the reformist posit- ion of appealing to the police. he capitalist state, to defend theirsel- ves against fascism - which itself 15 just another form of capitalism But, unlike the International Marxist Group and other groups we do not say it is simply a question of "Build labour movement support for self-defence" black (Krd Weekly front page 10.6.76) or "Only the defence of the black by blacks communities themselves are any guarantee for against racist attacks"

DIULECIOI

(IMG national leaflet). Rotherham last Saturday was the scene for the National Front's latest attempt to parade through a working class and immigrant area and whip up a reactionary racist cam- paign. Significantly was National Front's first attempt to march through the strong working class areas of South Yorkshire.

The march of 5,000 white and immigrant workers demonstration called by a COLDEr.

a counter- showed District Committee the determination of Sheffield and Rotherham to pre- vent the fascists gaining any foot- hold. The fascists able were to go with the display ahead for one reason above all others - the policy of the local AUEW District Com- mittee and its Communist Party leadership. Despite widespread support for a mobilisation to prevent this fascist march, the Communist Party insist- ed that the demonstration be kept well away from the tront's march "battle of pursue a pure ideas with the fascists. To crown this attempt to divert away from the class issue of

ANTI- RACIST FIGHT

FORM WORKERS

We of course support the right of immigrant workers to defend themselves whatever way necessary against racist and fascist we also have a political But responsibility to attempt 1o direct these self-defence groups towards calling the strength of the organised labour movement whole so that the most united class againsi lascist provocation and violence If black workers and youth have been the first target of the fascists.

picket lines and trade union meet.

will be ings next. Fascists have already atracked meetings Ireland #SL members and supporters in affected theretart

HUST

propose it their union branches.

trades councils and Labour Parties o that a light is waged for workers defence organised jourly squads between immigrant and trade union organisations. Where possible, we must fight for this within immigrant-orgarised defence squads by attending as delegates from the trade unions and urging that they unify with trade bodies, particularly councils, in their fight against tascist attack.

HUNNYTLAM

BLACK

•WHITT

ROTHERHAM MARCH

defence of the working class from the fascist thugs, they mobilised in classic 'popular front' together Vicars and representa- with local tives of the Tory Party, including a well-known slum landlord.

AUEW

Secretary, District Stalinist George Caborn's desire for "racial harmony' does not prevent a colour being operated man knee dine me actors te knowledge leadership. to the pious In sharo wishes of the AUEW leadership for "racial harmony' was the attitude of the majority of the demonstrators who. marched under the banner "Smash Fascism! For Workers Self Defence!" Answering the request of local immigrant organisations, 300-400 black and white workers went to defend the immigrant area neat National the Front were holding their rally against al y attempted intimidation by the departing fascists. Other defence groups went to the bus station to ensure no attacks could take place by fascist gangs on isolated black workers boarding their buses home. The defence of the immigrant area had been planned in advance with anyone going in being checked There was a considerable setback to the fascist supporters of Robert Relf in Leamington last weekend, when 350 workers marched through the town in a Trades Council anti-racialist demonstration - while the British Movement could only produce 30 people.

Council demonstration, The Trader supported by Coventry and Oxford Trades Councils and including & 40-strong WSI contingent, carried through despite the manoeuvres of the right-wing and the Tory press to witch-hunt the anti-racists, but encountered no opposition at all on its way through the centre of the town to a rally.

There a number of local speakers, including Tom Litterick, local left' MP, and an ASTMS official made general statements against racial- ism, avoiding the key issue of a programme of action to unite the working class. was left to Alastair Green, speaking on behalf of the Workers Socialist League, to link the fight to defend against racist attacks with the struggle for work sharing on full pay in defence of all jobs and a sliding scale of wages in place of the TUC's reactionary 4½% wage.

cutting deal.

IMG AND WORKERS

SELF DEFENCE

The real meaning of the defend jobs and wages. Nor did he once attack union and International Marxist Group's the trade Labour leaders for their lack of call simply to "support black fight. self-defence" came out at a Instead his main emphasis was public meeting of the on racialism within the working Sheffield Anti-Fascist Front class itself - "on the shop floor" last Thursday. This led him to claim -that Barbara Castle and other Labour Tariq Ali, IMG spokesman, men- ministers had simply "given in" to tioned not a word of programme to "pressure" from the racialist British working class. This of course turns the question of leadership its head. The working class is the historically progressive class whose struggles provide the material basis for the building of a conscious leadership which can fight racialism and seek to develop class consciousness.

BASIS

Yet the Labour and trade union leaders Iest on the continued existence of capitalism. Their inaction against racism has a his- torical and a material basis.

This is why Lenin did not blame the working class for their support for their "own" ruling in class World War I - he blamed their Social Democratic leaders and split from them the outbreak of when war revealed their class betrayal.

But Ali's speech went further, to voice the reactionary demand for "anti-racist" candidates in local This elections. attempt to turn racialism into a single issue divorced from early Every street morning. from jobs and wages plays only into guarded attempted the hands of the racists.

incursions by the fascists.

Ali never suggested that The groups of immigrant and such "anti-racist" candidates should white workers who defended this be socialists! area with the full backing of the For the IMG, in other words local community were a first step the "Support Self- towards the formation of workers slogan •Black Defence is simply another one of defence groups. their ways of ducking out of the fight for principle, programme and

DEFENCE GROUPS

leadership in the organised workers' The immigrant organisations are consider to setting defence week, and the next

FALSE CLAIM

KIELS OVer welcomed support from the

LAYE

Sheffield Anti-Fascist Front.

Against this, Ali falsely claimed The local AUEW leadership have that the WSL policy - fighting to given no backing to these develop.

turn local black self-defence groups Instead Caborn has propos ments. towards the labour movement as a ed an ongoing campaign for Racial whole - meant inaction. Harmony "broad" "OK. basis Form your Go ahead. involving not oniy vicars, Liberals defence squads of white and Tories, but representatives of trade unionists" said Ali. the police! can't wait for that" The demand must be taken up in The

WSL

has never suggested every trade union branch for black workers wait passively until AUEW District Committee and the broad-based defence squads aTe Trades Council to take on respon- sibility the organisation of But we insist that only if the workers defence organisations question of defence is approached together with the immigrant politically succassfully can It be workers organisations. carried through

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

NEW ECONOMIC

otsky and the leaders of the Left Opposition The policies of war com- nunism, which were necessary o meet the emergency of the civil war and imperialist inter- rention, posed in the longer for the dangers run grave evolution. The methods used to secure conditions of aplus 01 all eneral shortage produced political s well as economic distortions.

Lenin inveighed continually this period against the twin evils of Pureaucracy and profiteering which companied war communism.

INFLATION

inflation accelerated The rapid from the use of the away and distribute labour

BODY

But money he stage be replaced

POLICY

by Bob Sutcliffe

PART 13 OF OUR SERIES ON THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION.

Instead it came increasingly to criteria by arbitrary be replaced from which all calculations of value had disappeared. It was a long way careful accounting and the from husbanding of all economic resour- Lenin stressed ces important.

DISTORTIONS

of these distortions, The effect of the exigencies along with the was to cut political emergency, back production even more In 1920 the amount of factory roduction was down to as Ittle a 14% of what it had been in 1913 than Coal production was compared with nearly milion tons The 30 million before waI. 1920 46 was grain about two thirds of million tons, the average of pre-war years.

clearly the intention of soon as the emergency would allow it. was the boldest in that Trotsky In spite of the fact that direction. at the height of the civil war he had gone furthest of all in his advocacy of the militarisation of labour and other war communism measures, ne some months before the proposed civil war ended that a grain tax be imposed and the market restored as a means of distribution. His proposal was rejected then.

But the measures introduced some months later under the title of the New Economic Policy (NEP), had a great deal in common with it.

WORKED OUT

NEP,

unlike wat communism, was a cohesive set of policies which worked out in advance more They were intro- or less as à unity. months of the early SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday 30th June 1976 Lenin in Red Square in 1920 by capitalists or petty or leased But, since these were all producers. smail, 85% of all industrial very workers were still employed in the enterprises. cooperative state And these produced as much 93% of total industrial production.

The inflation had been traumat- Over a period of 6 years prices ic. had risen by something like one and a half million percent! Money, as remarked, had become Kamenev simply "coloured pieces of paper' economist Bazarov added The that. the time is not too far distant of those nominal when the sum roubles will exceed the number of all atoms or electrons of which our planet is composed

PRINTING NOTES

time during 1920 as At one many as 10,000 workers had been simply printing rouble employed notes! So a necessary part of the NEP stabilisation of the was the

CUI-

rency. This was done through the introduction of a new currency the chervonetz and the balancing of the state budget. The state bank was but on authorised to make loans commercial terms, to both private The nationalised enterprises.

nationalised ones were expected to operate on hadrin ples for wat ability and what pay bought both from the private and state sector in money.

A labour market was restored along with local collective bargain- ing, though this was in theory sup conform to a national 17- posed to point wage scale. The state contin- ued to guarantee a minimum wage and reforms such as the eight-hour paid day and two-weeks annual holiday.

CONSEQUENCES

The full consequences of NEP did not appear for some time. Atter cleat that weeks it became a len the 1921 harvest would fail.

There of months famine began painful which thousands of people duang died. Neither NEP nor any distr- could this solve bution system crisis. Some respite was obtained by famine including grain imports, United relief supplies from the States. following year the But in the improved. agricultural situation of imperialist troops. began to was tackled production Industria The food problem recover fast and the market started by imposing a tax in kind (later in Supplies improved money) on the peasants, the size of their land holding.

The throughout the country and some tax amounted in total to much less of the more acute economic prob- the surplus extracted in the lems of the previous years were than Once the tax was genuinely alleviatea, previous year. paid, peasants were free to sell any By 1923, however, NEP was to extra produce on the open market.

show that it was no general solution to the economic problem. It repro- This implied not only increasing differentiation among the peasantry duced earlier problems in a differ.

One of these was the but also the legalisation of internal ent form. crisis" which came to a traders who bought grain from the

"SCISSOIS

peasants, sold it to urban workers head in 1923. also the vehicle for the and were

"SCISSORS"

in manufactured trade goods as well as a certain amount of "scissors" referred to the between the private sector The relative movements of the prices of and nationalised enterprises.

industrial and agricultural goods. In merchants were known as Nepmen.

the peasants The industries remained induce large market a large amount of grain it nationalised under NEP; but many industrial small plants were leased to capital- bring was necessary prices foring teen to or te relation to Very few returned prices down were to

ISLA

private ownership. In 1923, 89% of

SOCIALITE E.

Lenin's What in fact happened was the the Politburo to publish This was one sign opposite: the blades of the scissors memorandum moved further apart as industrial many of an ominous new amons prices rose and agricultural prices approach to economic and al other problems in the Soviet Union.

fell. By October 1923 a sack of grain exchanged for about haif the

DISCIPLINE

of manufactured goods it had exchanged for one year earlier.

Lenin had looked time loa "with the beginning of the This was largely because agricultur- when al output recovered from the civil socialist revolution, discipline must waI much be built on entirely new principles; Taster TRan By 1923 agriculture was output. be a discipline of faith in it must producing at 75% of the pre-war the organising power of the workers evel, industry at only 25%, though and poor peasants, a discipline of heavy industry rather than a discipline of the comradeship, consumer goods was most sluggish.

utmost discipline of respect, This fact however, was yet anther independence and initiative in the problem produced by NEP. struggle". "scissors" The crisis was Over- In post-reyolutionary Russia the come partly through state inter- material basis necessary such vention but was in continuous dan- discipline scarcely existed.

It was ger of reappearing. And the reduc- frequently necessary to use instead tion of industrial prices transferred the pre-socialist disciplines of com the difficulties of food supply

DUINOH

Ku ONCY, DULI LIt problems into anther problem whole in the early years of the unemployment. revolution virtues were not made of these necessities.

UNEMPLOYMENT

remained While under the guidance of Lenin and Trotsky, Bolshevik ( Party consistently held The necessity for even state up the socialist and internationalist industry to operate profitably when objectives the in contrast cost were still very high meant that necessities of survival. lower prices led to unprofitability This attitude is shown up in and the growth of unemployment, what has become probably Lenin's which around million most famous remark on economic throughout the rest of the 1920s.

questions. Writing in Pravda on the This was a concrete fulfilment of of the revol- Lenin's frank admission that NEP lourth

DICILLY

ation he said that: fotra. n a corin tesu re ae tactical respects, "When are victorious on world scale I think we shall use gold "means certain measure for the purpose of building public development of capitalism'. But he lavatories in the streets of some of that 'this capitalism will be added the largest cities in the world.. under the control, under the super- Meanwhile, we must save the gold vision of the state'. in the Soviet Union, sell it at the

NEP,

always remained, in the highest price, buy goods with it at eyes of Lenin and Trotsky, a neces- the lowest price. When you live sary tactical solution to basic econ- among wolves, you must howl like omic and political contradictions a wolf". whose real solution could only be found in the international proletar- "an revolution. In introducing NEP, Lenin had said that 'ony an agreement with the peasantry can save the socialist revolution in Russa untiithe revo- ution has occured other countres But that did not mean that even under NEP Soviet economic policy could progeste advances. Lenin said that NEP had been introduced 'seriously and for a long time' but, Trotsky added, 'not for ever':

PLANNING

Hence in 1922 Trotsky increas- ingly advocate betame an OI national economic planning in the Stalin context of NEP. This would have been a step The introduction of the NEP towards the social accounting and was the last major change in Soviet whíeh скопошіс роцсу т wco ше ub the material defence and advance of tincton made between inter was the revolution. Despite some initial nationalist objectives and immed. doubts, Lemur became continced late neces ties that Trotsky was right - that even at By the time of the next major change in 1929, Stalin had explicit- that stare a marot adyance towards national planning ly abandoned the conception that was possible. problems only In December 1922 he dictated a through the international solved memorandum from his sick bed in revolution. He had begun the systematic support of Trotsky's proposals.

Partly through the influence of sabotage of that revolution. He had Stalin, 1923 devalued who had become 'socialism" mean the general the brutal policies with which he tried Strictay Trotsky's proposal

101 =20DOSÉS

solve problems that policy of 'socialism in one country planning relectec тоге. Trotsk: lorie! The very opening words and the focal point of Trotsky's Transitional Programme - the "the world declaration that political situation as a whole is chiefly characterised by historical crisis in the leadership of the proletariat" has been rewritten by Ernest Mandel, leader of the "United Secretariat so-called of the Fourth International".

In an article in the June 10th edition of Inprecor (fortnightly journal of the USFI), Mandel puts forward what he terms the "Fourth International's analysis of' the changes important that have occurred in the world situation during the past eight years".

IDEALIST

But his method. soon makes Mandel approaches the itself plain. world workers movement not as a Marxist analysing a material process of movement, but as a crass idealist, attempting from outside to judge the level of "class consciousness' Mandel In this Mandel - echoes the approach of the IMG's Tariq Ali who in his book The Coming Revolution made the notorious statement that consciousness determines history". Ali of course (just like Mandel today) omitted to tell baffled readers the material origins of such "consciousness". The reason for this omission is Pabloites For the of the simple. the fight for revolutionary leadership is reduced to generalised propaganda aimed at counterposing ideas "correct" to the "incorrect" ideas of the mass of the working time the class, around fot ae rean- class while the same made group - a "mass vanguard" of people with a high level of "class consciousness" who are supposedly more open to revolutionary ideas.

CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

Mandel's article informs us that "a rising level of class consciousness on the part of the entire class" is necessity building soviet power, soviet democracy and for the construction oi socialism.

But the article's approach is one of contemplation of events not one of_ leadership. When Mandel talks of in consciousness, he talking of a spontaneous rise and produced by the not one intervention of revolutionary leadership. To lend a bogus prestige to this feels obliged position to the authority of the usurp Programme Transitional paraphrasing Trotsky whale inserting his oon personal posit= putting the #kote i=-= and into quotation

ITS I

MANDEL REWRITES

TROTSKY

sound plausible: "The crisis. of humanity is the of revolutionary crisis leadership (and of class consciousness) of the proletariat." [emph. added] The words in brackets have been Mandel. added Trotsky lcrCr referred to class consciousness in. this for very clear reasons. wals Trotsky, like Lenin, the political of hackward ness certain sections of workers as the product of their corrupt and reactionary and reformist union. labour leadership which made deals with the the employers Lenin and Trotsky never ceased to pin the blame for nationalism and chauvinism the workers the bureaucratic movement on "labour leutenants of capitalism' who were then as now the main capitalists means of controlling the imperialism working class. There was never any doubt that given revoluționary leadership built in struggle on a firm base of support in the workers movement putting forward a programme of principled demands in line with the method of the Transitional that the struggles led Programme, by such a leadership would be the material basis of heightening the class consciousness of the working class

BUREAUCRACY

In place of this workers today blatantly dictatorial confront bureaucracy prepared to go to any their lengths cosy pIcscIVe relationship with the employers and hold back the development of class The crisis is crucially consciousness. working •Manders class leadership. misquote turns. this upside down. By simply confusing together low

GODARANA

level of political consciousness sections of workers at present, with the crisis of leadership, he opens up the possible argument that the reactionary leaders simply reflect "backwardness" of the working the class This then opens the door to blaming the working class for its own defeats, and for the conscious out® by the

DOMATAES

bureaucracy.

PRACTICE

And it fails to recognise that if workers mobilised are around transitiona demands they can brought in practice into conflict with their own reformist and Stalinist leaders learning the lessons before política. necessary the road towards soviet taking power badeed Mandel norIeTe = De c: programme oI Demention 205: by NH s sereoping =225 = the consciousness of the working Yet to Trotsky this was crucial.

several discussions on Transitional Programme with leading members of the American Workers Party in 1938 he Socialist stressed the importance the OI demands in heightening the militan mobilising even the com cy and paratively politically backward American working class: "These demands are transitory because they lead from the capit alist the proletarian society revolution, a consequence insofar ai they become the demands of the masses the proletarian We can't stop only

TUIGER

with the Vretitd day to day demands of the prolet We must give to the most ariat. backward workers some concrete that thei corresponds needs and that leads dialectically to power". (The

TENTE

COnO LeS Transitional Programme for Social ist Revolution p 119.), "The programme must expres the objective tasks of the working class rather than the backwardness workers. It must the society as it is and not the back.

wardness of the working class. It is instrument overcom backwardness" vanouish 125. emphasis added).

NOT FIXED

The level of consciousness of the working any particula point is thus never seen by Trotsky as something fixed - but as some thing which continually changes and be changed by the must material intervention of Marxists.

Mandel however simply specul ates on the growth of class con working sciousness in the class asserting that there is a: "..growing [spontaneous understanding by broad vanguard layers of the proletariat of the fun damental bankruptey of "classical" Social Democracy and Stalinism".

He is tactfully vague as to wher "broad vanguard layers these to be found - and what should be done mobilise the masse through such a vanguard. He goes on to tell the reader tha the whole problem of revolutionar strategy revolyes around how generalise and centralise: of self ".. soviet-type bodies organisation of the toiling masses".

Hold on Mandel! First we bave to discuss how we fight to mobilis the working class to the point of building soviets as such!

If there were some clear method of action laid down to get this far then could interested what to do with the new-formed SOvICTS But the central problem fo Marxists in Europe and on a worl scale today is not that there is lack of clarity on what to do in soviets.

but that there are no soviets!

• There are no soviets because the fight for revolutionary leadership is at a fairly elementary stage in the Tuinka loyaall

PRINCIPLED

It can only pass beyond tha elementary stage by the principler Trotskyists in the intervention daily struggles of the working clas Transitiona along the lines of the Programme. Until Mandel prepared direct the forces of thè USFI alon his concluding talk such a path, the demand for a "Socialist Unite States of the World" and a "work есолоту" remain planned point abstractions fit only for daydreams of wooly-beade idealists. by TerrI Ca

GOLD AND IMPERIALISM

HISTORY OF SOUTHERN AFRICA. PART TWO: THE LABOUR MOVEMENT.

The nature of the Boer War was summed up by the liberal historian of imperialism, J.A.

Hobson, who wrote in the middle of the war (1900): "If this be success. war can fully accomplished and •a settle- ment' the satisfactory to mine Owners be reached, the first Can fruits of victory will be represen- ted in cheap submissive supply of black and white labour attended by such other economies of "costs" as will add millions per annum to the profits of the mines.

no extravagance to argue

IT IS

that the blood and the money of the people of Great Britain being spent for this purpose; that at present no other definite tangible result of the conflict can be shown.

The men who, owning the South African Press and political organ- isations enmineered the which have issued in this war are swell with this increase; open eyed and persistent they have pursued their course, plunging South Africa into temporary ruin in order that they victorious, JudY small confederacy of international mine owners and speculators hoid- ing the treasures of South Africa in the hollow of their hands".

Hobson right. After the Boer war poor white Afrikaners, tven from tae land by war acvas- tation and inflation drifted to the towns to swell the ranks of the May 1900 - the South African republican flag is taken down in surrender working. class.

SOCIALISTS

International Socialist League - (to the Communist The small band of revolutionary Cape Town - in the black and white workers. organisations like the Social Demo- that there could be no mass trade

CDUCE

unionism: in South Africa without class movement of white and black The opposite happened. By the mid 1920's an alliance of the labour aristocracy of skilled mineworkers, The Rand stike of 1922 - one of ¿Afrikaner poor whites and Afrikan- the most famous events of South her farmers had formed the basis of African labour history - spread like wildfire and was only defeated after South Africa to this day. How did the declaration of martial law and Miners mantain the World Fight o strengthen the colour bar

ARISTOCRACY

This was the policy that natural- ly occurs to the labour aristocracy IN - strengthening its position through position to the unskilled African restrictions on entry into the trade.

The miners still had however, to defend elementary trade union action on this basis (eg on unem- employers rights against the Ul' slaught. A massive strike in 1907 1930's) the dominant tendency was 1913 for and * general strike in trade union recognition resulted in Prime Minister Smuts sending [British troops against the miners.

The defènce of the colour bar The poor whites, rapidly urban- and the defence of trade unionism ised from the rural society of the had become intermingled. Despite this, many Auntied mineroken enslavement of Africans, resented joined in in 1913, in defence of the 'sinking down' to the same employ- dealt with by Smuts. ment situation as Aincan workers and remained under the domination labour Party, founded in 1910 echoed the sentiments of the Before these had a chancé to be white miners. It won 4 seats in the 1911 elections on a programme of defence of the colour bar.

bourgeoisie under whose political

LAND ACT

Li our also The farmers, still smarting from supported the ous Native Land Act of 1913 the defeat of the Boer War, saw the whic restricted the mass of Afric to 8% of the land of labour aristocracy to the cause of Sout Africa! the Afrikaner 'Volk' and away from slutionary socialists had the Empire, hitherto so dear to the Labour Party on ente: the its foun tion but the party's refusal to seriously the organisation of farmers mobilised the poor whites • T2 Afri workers alienated the left.

into militia to defend the strike and T: Labour Party capitulation even had the 'Red Flag, translated to war along with the British Labo Party was the last straw and The strike threw the infant Party It was ot the Syndicalism was element in the ICU which after a successful African strike in Cape Town in 1920 gained By John Lea. in strength, opening up branches in on industrial workers, as yet only a question and the peasantry.

charac- National Congress, founded in 1912 against the notorious pass laws.

method of direct state control over were a crucial barrier to trade union trade unions to exist. the pass laws employees have the right to bargain Communist Party prevented it from playing a leading role in the struggle thus a strong dockworkers African Communist Party's vacillation in 1922 supporting colour bar The strike. 1926 Kadalie expelled Communist African Party sympa- thisers from

ICU

without the much and then moved sharply to the right affiliating the ICU to the British TUC, following the advice of Walter Citrine to keep the ICU "out of politics".

Kadalie, London in 1927 was treated disgustingly by Citrine who denied him attendance at the

1927 TUC

conference as a guest lest the white unions and the South African Labour Party take offence!

By 1930 the ICU was dead.

MISTAKE

The Communist Party also made the elemental mistake of equating African nationalism - the national- ism of the oppressed workers and peasants against a vicious colonial- ist regime, and Afrikaner national- ism - the reactionary nationalism of the rural white petty bourgeoisie, as the same thing! Thus during the 1920's flying in

ANATOMY OF SECTARIANISM

the face of Lenin's teachings, the CP isolated itself from any united front work with the ANC, and the latter remained under the leader. ship of the African miniscule middle class of. lawyers and reachers. The CP was obsessed with the idea that revolutionary initiative would come from the most reactionary section of the working class - the white labour aristocracy now in glove the 1a10 WINd Afrikaner nationalists. The Labour/Nationalist. cooper- begun in 1922 found its ation, political expression 'pact- - In Ene government" of 1924-29 in which Herzog, the Nationalist Prime Minister, took several Labour members into his cabinet, having foundations of the present system of applied ta our policy", reserving whole cate- better paid jobs in the railways and made it virtually The Nationalist Party proved such good defenders of the privileges of decline having outived its purpose!

Similar processes were underway to the north. in khodena. After a struggle between white workers and capitalists in the 1920's the Reform Party was returned to power in the premiership of Godfrey Huggins, a ousted by, the even more reaction- Rhodesia Front party led by cheapest labour in all circumstan- forgotten for the time being since, concessions to skilled armed to the teeth, dedicated to the exploitation of the real terms, a South African govern-

OUT NOW!

LEON

TROTSKY

TRANSITIONAL

PROGRAMME

NEW EDITION

AVAILABLE NOW

Price 30p plus 10p p&p from: WSL, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NWS 1HR Folrose Books, 40p. By John Lister.

FORCE

LABOUR

COVTte

RESIGN

Sectarianism is one of the ship's method is closely linked to fight against sectarianism most misunderstood terms in lett-wing politics. This booklet towards it within the WSL itself.

seeking to analyse the sectar- Revolutionary Party, sets out understanding of sectarianism within the WRP is its what sectarianism is, where it institutionalised nature - taking the knit leading clique surrounded by tion, fostered by ievisionist groups The WRP's rigorous suppression such as the International Socialists becomes necessary to uphold these is that somehow sectarian- is to ioning the role of then section Against Sectarianism in the major split in world Trotskyism of The WRP had just published its letters on the history of the Inter- national, with an introduction mass organisations of the working content of the documents in order class - in particular the mass trade to fabricate a leading role for Healy To support this they struggle for partial and transitional Healy only a few months before the interests and needs of the working backed the revisionist views of the paring for the revolution means to Secret abi! seives of the superiority of social- ie, to tens of millions of organised letter, and exposing the obvious dis- somehow live outside of the con- ditions of the actual class struggle!

for reassessment both of the history of the WRP leadership itself and of the organisations - as if one could win Trotskyist Fourth International as a the masses without intervening in Would. None of the points made against and the one political profile. The other is always Aside from supposed historical ism. The political prostratio in the platform of authority erected sectarianism serves to complement, leadership was the abuse of the Marxist philosophy of tionary vistas. In practical politics, by them not as a sophisticateti means of giving Healy When the articles in this booklet theorie top the meet e Thornett and the forces later to be expelled and to found the Workers object of "building Socialist League), utionary party", to the real practice concealed by their flurry of words ical terms, but in head-on conflict with Healy's "philosophy" movement because it Ivorunonary first isolates the revolutionary cadre from working class, then rationalises this ises the fight against the WRP leadership.

isolation, building it into the very structure and functioning Their importance is that they do of the party ' itself. not as do sceptics and revisionists The WRP exemplifies all these deny the crucial role of dialectical materialism as the necessary theory positions extremely high of a revolutionary degree, and the fight to penetrate of knowledge to the roots of the Healy leader- party. A Review of "Behind the Smokescreen", an analysis of the sectarian politics of the WRP Rather the articles set out to show how Healy's method turns the formal verbal trappings of Marxism into idealist phrasemongering.

As Trotsky points out: "....though he by swear Marxism sentence, every the sectarian is the direct negation of dialectical materialism which takes experience as' its point of departure and always returns to it."

revisionism is quoted in the second walka questions - Marxism on the Rack.

It quotes a passage by Mike Banda (now the new WRP General Secret- araly sho iloso shytt are now entering matter through us via the self impulse of the universal movement of matter. As this takes place we arrive at the moment of explains that "The unfolding of the the Actuality NB equals the moments (abstract thought already posited in as as a part of a previous dialectical cels itself into the cause. This is the nature". (emphasis added).

to language what this passage meant.

Marxism on the Rack goes on to revisions of Marxist philosophy by in the organised working class.

importance in struggles of the working class and transitional demands to politicaily and thei from the working class is taken up Smokescreen - challenging the slogan -and Lessons of Our History sheet atteme recore ious the record This is valuable in showing the real process of degeneration which has taken place in the movement to sectarian degeneration is taken up vietnam.' WRP on the Road Back to Pablo- Thisshowshow a four part series WRP's Workers Press systematically

BEHIND

SMOKESCREEN

AN IN PERS IS COME PARTS OF TIRE

RESIGI

ists in Hanoi the leadership of the US

WRP

the defender of their line on This article, written nine months The Rot Goes On Thetoric becomes more and more hysterical.

its real politics drift cratic control of the central leader- ship no dissent, challenge or change the process of the WRP's degen- eration, compiles the most ruthless and thoroughgoing critique of sec- It does so from a standpoint im- possible for other groupings calling Workers Socialist League's contin- and in

SMOKESCREEN"

polítics of the WRP Price 40p plus 10p p&p Available from

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Dartmouth Park Hill, 31, London NW5 1HR

INDUSTRIAL NEWS

10

HIDDEN

BY TUC

The TUC leaders knew well efore the Special Congress septance of the 473% pay hal that huge public spending ats are to follow. And one of Callaghan's first jobs Minister was to commis- • Prime a list of proposed cuts to be Demented as SOOn as the pay al was forced through. These facts emerged from week- d speculation in the Tory press as when and how much the cuts i be. There is no question, however, there will be huge cuts or that ty will focus on the already hard social services. This is in line with persistent mands from the international kers over recent weeks.

PRESSURE

This week it was the United and administration the puttine on the pressure as that fur- underlined support for the pound would conditional on reduced govern- ..... At home, more cuts are already as Shore, the Environ- der way Secretary, takes steps Workers at the Elizabeth irrett Anderson (EGA) hos- tal in London have voted to scupy the hospital in res- nse to threats to close it.

meeting called by At a

IPE

and

ASTMS,

the main ions in the hospital, a motion to copy the hospital if the DHSS • not agree to à series of demands duding the upgrading of the hos.

al on its present site, the removal and full access to parate beds, hospital for trade unionists quiting into the structural state of hospital - the reason given for dosure, was adopted nem con.

STEWARDS

The motion also called on the Health Authority Joint Stew- is Committee organise strike tion in surrounding hospitals in port of the occupation. Already University College hos al

COHSE,

ASTMS

at the hyal Free Hospital and the North don Health branch of the UD have pledged support. Although the hospital has been reduled for closure for some - along with another 130 local spital in London - the present has occurred because manage- that the lift in the main say ril i dangerous, ana tnal tae aiding is structurally unsound.

have responded to demanding workers' the fit, and the local branch has approached the

CUTS PLANS

impose a cutback of £400 million this year from the present level of expenditure by local authorities.

the late 1970's to only one third of There have been so many cuts the level of the early years of the and plans for cuts by this Labour government that it is hard to keep accade. NOw Shore's measures track of the guillotine strokes.

mean further cutbacks and the pressure grows daily for cuts in next year's

RESTORED

plans of around £2,000 million!

This is approaching 10% of total public expenditure. Since When Labour were swept into government have no intention of office on the of cutting back working wave expenditure immediatay restored the a cots defence, the police and so on and immediately restored many other areas, like imposed by the Tories in 1973.

would be very difficult to cut, this 1974, By November though, implies a massive axing of the social announcing Healey was cuts in services. planned spending for the next four

"ALTERNATIVE"

years. These were spelled out in detai in January 1975. In April of that Workers must be prepared to year further cuts were announced.

fight both these outs and the Early this year the White Paper "alternative' nationalist of import announced even more drastic cuts.

controls, which the Labour lefts' The plans for 1978-9 were for a are certain to push cutback on current expenditure on A fight to defend the social Health of 3%, Housing 8%, services must be waged around the Bduca- tion 9%, and Transport 21%; this demands for an , immediate cash the from already twice pruned injection to replace all provisions plans. already cut and a sliding ease of Investment in the social services social service expenditure to reducing was to be decimated. School buil prevent ding, for example, was to fall by provisions in the future.

MOVE TO OCCUPY

LONDON HOSPITAL

assessing the alleged damage.

This demand, together with that Two for a workers' enquiry into the lift weeks ago management hospital's closed the maternity can be used to mobilise support for the defence of the EGA from all annexe, ostensibly because a doctor was leaving and replacement sections of the working class.

could be found, although the trade policies such around unions have since discovered that these that the strength of the the doctor who left had offered to EGA campaign lies. Its weakness that the annexe could lies in the domination of the Joint stay on so stay open. Management refused.

Shop Stewards Committee Stalinist and Labour Party self- styled "lefts". These people have already post- oned any action in defence of thr EGA even though a full stewards

ELIZABETH GARRETT

committee had voted in favour of strike action to support the EGA occupation. Instead, proposed a dele- Bation to David Ends, Ste minister responsible for implementing the NHS cuts, together with a one hour picket of the EGA! of the committee, Chairman Councillor Jim Warner also announ- ced that it was in any case impos- sible for the joint stewards to become involved at this time With medical staff at the main because he was going on holiday!

allies hospital reduced to nine, and with members and their holidays and study leave granted to who challenged this abject retreat for the were accused of splitting' next few " the com- that the main mittee and wanting to months, staff fear destroy • 1[ hospital will be closed using the ignoring the fact that it was these comrades who had fought for the

JULES VALUNS

The tactics adoptestion mr te.

establishment of the committee in question the first place. opening of the books of the Area Certainly, if the EGA is saved, it Health will be in spite of the activities of

AUNSILS

manoeuvres of management, to give the dominant bloc on the stewards' warning of committee. who see that a fight to COSurEs, reveal the need of the local and save the EGA could become a rally.

The TUC Special Congress, June 16th. (Above: Fisher (NUPE), Jackson (UPW) and Drain (NALGO)).

A timid move by Labour 'lefts' on the Party's National Executive has exposed still further the TUC leaders' active of support public spending cuts. The lefts' succeeded by 11 votes of to inserting number amendments the social to new already document accepted by the TUC leaders the day before. These amendments included one to delete a sentence on spending cuts which states that "there will be further overall no scope for any increase [in public expenditure] in real terms" - though they offered no clear aiternative perspective.

The sentence had been inserted at the specific request of Callaghan and Healey as their carte blanche for the coming further cuts in social service and other public spending.

But it had been endorsed by the

TUC

General Council by 20 votes to despite the devastating cuts will have on impact further jobs and living standards.

Small the

TUC

surprise embarassed the "lefts' when opposition feeble gesture of government policy highlighted this aspect of the social contract.

While Tom postmen's leader, Jackson, had given explicit support to spending cuts in his speech at the TUC Special Conference Fisher of NUPE and Drain of NALGO have until now been forced to give an impression of muted opposition But as our lead article in the last Socialist Press stressed, the TUC

COVENTRY

BUS STRIKE

Coventry's buses were stat- ionary last week following a walk-out by bus crews. Due to unpaid breaks transport workers in Coventry ate forced to work an average of 9 hours a day.

Fot some time they have been demanding the lunch break fiom 60 to 35 minutes.

The strike occurred after several workers were suspended for close inter- pretation of a work to rule".

the background to this lies bus dispute the threat to services from public spending cuts in the West Midlands. Subsidies are threatened by the cuts and the next period will see speed-ups, demands SOCIALIST PRESS. Wednesday 30th June 1976

'LEFTS' GESTURE

EXPOSES TUC

leaders not just voting to were 44% cutting deal accept the pay their 17-1 lodged when they on June 16th. is not priority highest t the defence of the working class but to "save the pound", as argued at the Conference, Special then tance of spending cuts is an auto- matic by union response bureaucrats In this chimate the puny protest of the Labour 'lefts' does nothing but preserve their shallow consciences - enabling them to say *hey mat is ne" esary for these "efts" "fought" the cuts. is to launch a campaign throughout Toe mass about anc trade LOI movement to expose and defeat the right-wing leaders who are carrying the Tory out policy of cutting public spending. Their continued refusal to do so means the right-wing simply treat with contempt. The their gestures Financial Times made this clear, commenting on last week's vote: [Callaghan] ..neither he nor the trade union leaders who have worked statement of policy are likely to be latest amused by this piece attitudinising". Nor will workers whose jobs are at stake. The need is clearly not for 'left' words and manoeuvres but to take forward the fight for a sliding scale of social service spending, for defence of all jobs in public sector industries, and for the opening of the books in these to sectors elected trade union committees as the first steps towards workers' control. A mass meeting of several hun- dred Friday busmen was held 24th June and, despite lifting of the suspensions, voted to continue the strike until management atranged a meeting to discuss the shortening of hours.

OUT AGAIN

If after a week of discussions there was no improved offer they would be out again. Within hours management had arranged meeting for Monday afternoon and the buses were due to start Monday morning. Coventry busmen must link up with other workers to fight all these developments

UCATT BALLOT FRAUD

SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday 30th June 1976 A combination of outright He announced there would be a fraud and complete contempt ballot of the membership on the for union democracy are the issue. But the proposal the ballot form not only main weapons being used by mentioning the 42% deal, but is the leaders of the building written to give the appearance of

UCATT,

workers union, to accepting a £6 increase! Workers force through acceptance of are being asked to endorse the proposition that: the TUC's 4½% pay cutting "The Building Industry increase deal. of £6 in June 1976 be maintained, And at the same time they have together with the relationshps suggested that whatever the out- which this union has' with ornel come of the ballot they will carry ingade Union Federations or group- on with their present policy.

at the Despite cleat vote Only the most astute worker, conference to reject the union's coming to this for the first time, General deal, Secretary George work out that it is a vote for Smith refused to accept the confer- a 4½% pay limit! ence decision - claiming it was "un- And the right-wing's attempt to representative"

HORKERS SOCIA

LEACHE

EE51293 GRA

ELS

PLAN

NO CUTS!

TEM

Oxford Trades Council banner on an anti-cuts march

TUC TIGHTENS

NOOSE

A sharp • tightening of the bureaucratic noose round the necks of Trades Councils is Labour Party indicated by the TUC move to publicly Bradford attack Trades Council for daring to hold a meeting entitled "Trade Union Labour Party and Democracy' addressed by Newham NE Labour Party Secretary, Tony Kelly - who has recently been unconsti- responsible tutionally • expelled from the recognition of all councils.

ASTMS.

while the

TUC

leaders dis- Kelly is plainly well qualified by cuss nothing but politics, and col- his experience to speak the laborate day in and day out with abuses of democracy by the right- the • wing anti-working right wing and their fake-left hangers on policies of the Callaghan govern- Trades Councils are -forbid- in the labour and trade union move- ment, den ment. to discuss these questions. Their's not to reason why - their's but to accept massive wage cuts in

COMPLAINT

dutiful silence! And the new model Rule 14 This factor was not lost on attempts to actions Bradford's right-wing Labour MP, opposed to TUC Conference policy.

Ben Ford, who lodged a complaint with the TUC, suggesting that the

HEAD ON

Trades Counci was normal function - and that the The Bradford letter shows that if activities of tades Councis should.

Trades Councils are to be any more be monitored. than the boys of the The TUC bureaucracy obligingly bureaucracy, they must fight head MT K. Graham, swung into action. on such bureaucratic dictatorship.

secretary of the TUC's Organisation If fighting these actions means Industrial Depo the Trades des- risking disaffiliation with letter to the patched Oxford Trades Council - then still Council which virtually threatened the fight must go ahead. There is with disaffiliation if they should nothing to gained by capitui- be attempt hold another such To ation to the bureaucrats.

meeting. eatened train st buna ta back threatened Trades Councils and the into the union branches rank and file to build a firm base of political support on which to carry through the struggle for trade union democracy.

INDUSTRIAL NEWS

force through the vote on the basis of confusion is backed up by the with absol union's journal, which; the democratic conference decision, carries a front which story only puts unt right-wing case - and claims that the vote itself was a "mis conference understanding"!

PRETEXT

The flimsy pretext for this argu- ment is that the resolution passed at Conference endorsed the UCATT vote against the £6 limit at the TUC Jast year. This, the right-wing attempt to out, "direction'

HAKE

"cancel the

NJCBI

which line with the Social June 28th™ Quite obviously such Contract, Quite obviously such an argument is ludicrous.

But they on still further, suggesting that the correct call in

UCATT

the for the Executive to "disregard any bodies setting a ceiling on wage increases": ...would mean UCATT embar- king on a head-on collision course culminating dispute situations, without help assistance from friends and associates, inevitabiy leading to failure, financial ruin and disorganisation". This scare oft anv attempt lo opposition to the 44% is a million Workers miles away from reality. Tarmac strikers lobby TUC Special Conference Fighting for official backing from UCATT delegates to the TUC Special Conference was a of workers from the group Tarmac Brixton Road develop- ment who have been out for over ten weeks in a victimis- ation dispute. On Sth April, workers had taken strike action against the sacking of "redundant". seven workers made the the site convenor, and the move was clearly a preparation to attack conditions on the site. After two weeks on strike, the employers moved to sack the whole workforce, turning the strike into a lock-out. Despite official backing from the T&GWU Building Group adoption of the "gag" Rule 14, Which was proposed by the Stalinist President, ( who warned of possible disaffiliation" the rule were rejected, Yet while in this way opposing democratic rights for workers with- in Trades Councils, the supporters of the rule were quite prepared to tolerate the local Tory chairman o the County Council being invited as the Trades specker Council public meeting against the cuts. This gives the employers a direct on labour movement platform - while the National Co- ordinating Committee Against the Cuts, with socialist policies opposed the

TUC

know to their cost how little sup- port is ever forthcoming from the "friends and associates' of Smith his fellow full time and bureaucrats whenever a real struggle breaks out. The support which is readily and is from rank and unstintingly given file members of the labour move- - who would without doubt ment rally of any section support which gave a lead against the pay laws.

DEFEAT

To mobilise UCATT in such a fight however requires more than a rejection of the leadersnip's fraud- ulent ballot The proposition. present leadership must be defeat- ed. The right wing shows this when they conclude their Journal article by baldly that, although stating thev abstained on the 44% at the Special Conference of the TUC, because the ballot was pending, ....we will abide by the policy "The Social Contract 1976-77.

which it is universally agreed will be adopted overwhelming by an majority". Regardless of the ballot, there- fore, Smith and company will their continue reactionary until stopped by the movement of the rank and file and the building of alternative leadership in UCATT.

TARMACSTRIKE

Committee, Tarmac have refused to even discuss the dispute.

This struggle is clearly a part of the current offensive of all employ- jobs and ers against conditions seizing on the weakness of leader- ship from the union bureaucracy, their refusal to spread and follow through local disputes, their daily efforts to suppress resistance to speed-up and sackings.

Full official support must be extended by the UCATT leaders to this battle, main unions must be forced to mobilise in defence of the Tarmac actIon workers.

BRITAIN

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Page 11

NATFHE

witch hunt launched Executive National The Committee of NATFHE, the further education teachers union, wants the rank and file 'NATFHE Action' to paper change its name. No attempt to stop members saying what they think, claim the NEC; just an attempt to end the "confusion" serious and general they whether exists about say Natfhe Action is an official union paper or not! Lots of people ring up head- quarters to ask, they say, and that is a nuisance. Well, if that were all there was to it, you would think a tactful letter the editors of Natfhe Action would be just the right treatment.

But no, the

NEC

has. sent absolutely no communication to Natfhe Action.

RESOLUTION

Instead, it has tabled a resolu- the next National Council tion to demanding that meeting ....any directly member who assists OI indirectly in the production, sale, distribution or circulation of any publication written material (other than official business) which includes forbidden letters

"NATFHE"

in its title or heading be "dealt with" under the disciplin- ary rules. And they couple this with a outlawing the sale resolution distribution of any paper literature anywhere on the premises in which any NATFHE conference or National Council is taking place (except when the by President whose decision is final).

It is just a little hard to believe that all this is just to save hard- officials pressed few annoying phone calls rather than to begin the systematic suppression of demo- cratic rights inside the union.

DICTATORIAL

leadership can only be need of such dictatorial measures at this moment because, as in so many other unions, they want to stifle all government TUC controls and spending cuts.

proposals have already scandalously public Party members on the NEC or the National Council. The Stalinists happily conspire with the right wing to introduce the kind of attack on union democracy from Com- which the munist Party itself suffered in the when it was seen as a threat to the right-wing. SUBSCRIBE to Socialist Press

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MINERS Cont'd from front page lead a fight against it (though he had throughout the ballot offered lead. and stressed that the NUM "should not fight alone").

Also at the Scottish

NUM

conference came a sharp attack on Gormiey and Daly from one dele- gate who pointed out that while they claimed 2100 a week unattainable for face-workers they were paid more than themselves £150 per week! This shows that these questions being discussed within the are working class, and that if the full facts had been revealed. to the miners, the 4½% deal could have been thrown out. Silent - Scargill The Communist Party preser- ves tactful silence on these issues for two reasons. One is obviously that their political coexistence with

TUC

the reformist and Labour leaders drives the Stalin- ists to protect them from attack.

But the other reason is that in the

NUM

as in many unions, Stalinists are a part of this privil- eged bureaucracy. In the NUM all 70 officials, Stalinists including the allowed a new car every two years intee 21 these cass Means of these (cars means course a hidden increase in their

FUND

We have received the follow- ing further amounts towards the £600 Monthly Development Fund for June. Oxford Assembly, £13; Wins- $20: North ford, London, £13; London, £30; South PSF, £13.65; Aylesbury, £1.90; £19; Oxford General, £19.25; Leamington, London, £4.20; Birmingham, £15; Leeds, Hull, £7.50; £6.50; LiverpooL, £8.50; Banbury, £2.03; South £16.34; Yorks, £17; Collections, Oxford bookshop, £25; JW, £30. Total so far:£490.21 This has left us with three days to raise the last £110. The full total for the June fund will be published in the next issue of Socialist Press. salaries. The tax, insurance and repair bills on these cars are also paid by the union, on top of 6p per mile travel expenses! And at the end of his period of office an official can keep the car. Gormley, of course, along with other officials he Daily ther further "perks". When the sought a ter met for special after Special Dalv Conference they both were already at a miners' conference in the south of France! of the

NUM

What true true of bureaucracy is also bureaucracy of the other unions. Minimum rates for union officials often several times the are wage of the workers they represent.

BENEFITS

And free meals and all cars, kinds of other benefits are liberal- ly provided. All this to officials who • than completely out of the control of the tank and file, and who now see their principle job as one of assisting management to enforce redundancies with- speca-up and out confrontation. Action must be taken to bring this state of affairs an end. to Gormley and Daly and those who removed must be suDDort them from their positions in the NUM and the vote retaken on the 4½%

SLIDING SCALE

The fight must be stepped up for the £100 a week demand, linked to a sliding scale of wages defend increase further inflation. Officials must be brought to heel by the membership. In the NUM and all unions there must be policy of regular election of officials. And there be must launched to limit the salaries of officials to the average lever oI earnings of the members they represent. Onlv in this way can the careerists be driven out and a principled leadership be built within the unions.

LETTERS

letters from We welcome Letters for publication readers. should be kept as brief as possible and sent to: Socialist Press, 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 IHR.

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Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR. Daly speaking at TUC - supporting the 4½% plan About 750 mainly immi- attended grant workers rally and demonstration in Sunday against London last the dictatorship in India.

The three main groups in this country which claim to be organ- ising on a progressive basis against Gandhi dictatorsup together for the rally. Of Committee for these, Civil Liberties in India - a body of the Communist Party India (Marxist) which seeking an alliance with some. supposedly progressive elements of the bourg- eosie - had agreed under pressure platform not open from the so-called speakers Friends of India, the Maoists of the CPML of course refused to recognise any such question of principle and threw most of their weight behind the rally held by this right-wing religious revivalist group the day before. Although it was agreed before- hand that there would only be the labour movement speakers,

CPM

brought a speaker from the Alkali Dal, Sikh separatist party onto the platform the speaker When from the Oxford Group protested Action about this, he was told that the Campaign for the Release Indian Political Prisoners (CRIPP) had agreed and that to prove this Tariqu Ali was lining up to be one of he speaker was wearing a ckirr neadband. CRIPP had turned out later that not agreed to Ali speaking Virtually all the speakers spoke "Soviet imperialism" and about "fascist" state in existence in India. These terms can only sow

WORKERS SOCIALIST

LEAGUE

PUBLIC MEETINGS

London Italy: Class Struggle or Coalition? Friday 9th July at 7.30pm Conway Hall, Red Lion Square London WCI Coventry Our Policy to Fight the Labour Government's Cuts Wednesday 7th July at 7.30pm Hertford Tavern, Junction St.

Birmingham Revolutionary Work in the Trade Unions Monday Sth July at 7.30pm The Wellington Bristol St.

CALLAGHAN

DEFENDS

HIRED BUTCHERS

reactionary defenders, not in any The disgraceful move by way to the working class.

Labour Minister Prime course. has Callaghan of call for Callaghan to the record as an ally of Angolan government to show every kind of barbaric and blood- "clemency" to the thugs now stained regime. proved guilty of carrying out

COLLABORATION

paid murders as imperialist be mercenaries must con- In the last year he has been demned by every socialist.

involved in collaboration and pol- Callaghan speaks not for the itical support for the Shah of Iran, but only for tatorship in the Spanish fascist movement, the extreme right wing within the the Geisel dictatorship and Cabinet, Brazil, among many other tacit Wild as to capitalism and its most The attempts by Callaghan and the Tory press to whip up tears of sympathy for the group of fascists and lumpen reactionaries who Anti Gandhi (with considerable cooperation and complicity on the part of the government itself) were recruited the motley of South to army African racists, CIA Killers, and Demonstration nationalists which pro-American attempted to the over- prevent imperialist direct throw domination by MPLA forces.

confusion • in the

NO SYMPATHY

oppostion movement. Only the speaker from the Uxford Action Group Against None of those accused deserves Dictatorship in India gave a class the slightest sympathy or lenien- position of opposition any The four executions and the cy. landlord and that the parties jail to the Gandhi dic- opposition correct - if anything, too generous tatorship has to be on a socialist - and are necessary to stand as a basis. clear warning that such reaction- aries will not go unpunished after

END AID

the victory of the working class.

of NoI must the betrayals On the demonstration after the Callaghan and the Labour traitors Group rally the be forgotten. They must be driven "Indira Out! Sanjay slogans were from Labour Out! Workers and Peasants where they simply sully and spit British and Imperialist Aid Out!

socialism on every principle of Nationalisation of Factories and and internationalism. Land In! and Fight for the Right Workers in union branches and to Organise, Fight for the Right to should Labour Party disowning resolutions pass These were the only effective Callaghan's action, demanding his slogans as the CRIPP resignation as Labour Party leader (which comprised IMG, IS Asian and his reolacement by a leader Socialist Forum and others) didn't prepared to defend the working appear to have any slogans at all.

class. Trawler Sackings Further details are emerg- Worst hit is to be Fleetwood, ing on the loss of jobs resul- where fishing is almost the only industry in the town. ting from the Labour govern- ment's imperialist adventure There Borton Deep Sea Fisher- ies are to reduce their 28 strong in confronting Iceland over trawlei fleet to six. the 200 mile fishing limit.

The latest information reveals against these attacks is crucial. is fight defend a planned loss of jobs tar in exces previous estimates demanding must begin by Half of the national deep sea books of the major employers be fleet is to be cut, throwing trawler opened to elected union commit- 1,500 dea going jobs - and many times more this number will tees - to prove the case for nation- planned develop- and in the processing and distri- go ment of the industry. bution industries. POLAND Continued from front page capitalist economy, they turn first Only the political revolution against Stalinism will achieve this.

working to attack the class and drive down wages. In this the key political role must The events of the last few days played by Trotskyists in pre- be will not end with Gierek's tactic- conscious. revolutionary paring retreat. The crisis Iemains leadership. unresolved - and cannot be resolv- The working clas of Europe - ed by the bureaucracy. East and West - face common alongside similar it goes too political tasks. economic crises in other E. The struggle in the capitalist European states against the employers, the Hungary Stalinists and reformists is insep- And the upheavals, while ques- for arable from the struggle tioning : the rule of the parasitic control workers' democracy and Stalinist bureaucracy in Poland in the Stalinist-ruled states.

also throws right into question the Only with democratically elec- stability of the Kremlin bureau- ted workers' councils, with an end cracy itself. to all forms of bureaucratic privit Polish working The class can end to rule by secret ege, an break down the Stalinist distor- police and arica and the openl tions of the economy - ending political activity to shortages, black markets queues, tendencies and bureaucratic privilege or the workers move ment, will the Polish working class But to do this they will have to itself once more - together caste of sweep aside the rotten with the workers of the rest of functionaries and parasites who Europe - on the road to socialism.

control the state party.