[The connections of Princess Alexandra's family with business…]

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The connections of Princess Alexandra's family with business scandals and the resignation of her husband, Angus Ogilvy, from his many lucrative directorships, are not the only things to emerge from the Lonrho affair.

Widespread 'sanction busting in Rhodesia, and the shipment of arms and military equipment to south Africa with the connivance of the British government are just some of the other items that emerge from the Department of Trade investigation into the Lonrho financial empire published last week.

The revelations are by no means the first rèport of major and systematic violations of international sanctions against the racialist regimes in Rhodesia and South Africa.

What is new is the revelation of the ease with which violations were carried through. As the Guardian put it:

66 ..sanction busting is easy provided you have a telex machine, an understanding with your clients and a willingness to travel."

"Tiny" Rowland, the Chairman of Lonrho kept in virtual day to day contact with his extensive business concerns in Rhodesian mining and manufacturing from UDI to the present day and held boat meetings over the telex machine.

It was through a Lonrho subsidiary company that Rhodesian timber "found its way" to the National Coal Board in 1974.

In addition, it is now being alleged, Rowlands through his substantial political connections in Black Africa has played a vital role as a go-between and financier in African politics.

It is specifically rumoured that Be has acted as a go-between in the. "detente manoeuvies between Presidert Kaunda of Zambia and Sout: Lines that he played a turn the Lebanon into a graveyard for tens of thousands of Palestinians.

states supposedly medisting the Not just Syria, but all the wat, as well as Washington and Moscow, look to the 'containment' of the Palestinian resistance as the pre-condition for an overall settlement in the Middle East.

The battle round the Palestinian refugee camp of Tel El Zataar has spread throughout the Lebanon as thousands of Syrian armoured troops co-ordinate their attacks with the Lebanese right-wing forces efforts to suppress the Palestinians and their supporters.

The Palestinian guerrilla movement warned that if Tel El Zataar fell, "the Vietnamisation of the Lebanese war and of the rest of the area will begin.

The year and a half long war in the Lebanon began as a civil war when the Christian right-wing refused to give up the positions of political power it gained after a census thirty years ago showed the Christians to be in a majority in the Lebanon.

The predominantly Moslem lett wing, who now represent a majority were not prepared to accept the undemocratic imposition of rightwing rule indefinitely.

The key to the present crisis in the Lebanon, however, was provided three weeks ago, thousands of miles away in New York.

There, a United Nations resolution affirming the "inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, including their right to national independence and sovereignty" was vetoed by the United States.

These are the rights which the Zionist state of Israel has tried to abolish.

The majority of the three million Palestinians scattered throughout the states of the Middle East live on the East Bank and Israeli-occupied West Bank of the Jordan. which supports the Palestinian people gaining power through the Lebanese civil war which has terrified the bourgeois leaders of Syria, Egypt and other Arab states.

While they are happy to make endless statements of support for the falestinians, their real position in the fight against Zionism is closer to the US veto at the UN against the rights of the Palestinians.

Egypt's President Sadat formally abandoned his stance as leader of the anti-Zionist struggle in September 1975.

In violation of earlier agreements amongst Arab states, that there should be no unilateral negotiations with Israel, he entered into the Egypt-Israel disengagement agretment - abandoning altogether the confrontation with the Zionists.

In exchange for the return by Israel of 720 square miles of occuSinai and the occupied Abu Rudeis oil fields, Egypt agreed to allow Israeli shipping through the Suez Canal.

This unilateral sell-out agreement with Israel and its US backers was vehemently criticised in the Arab world, particularly by Syria's President Assad - who aimed to pick up the mantle of anti-Zionist leadership discarded by Sadat.

"NO RECONCILIATION"

Syrian leaders frequently repeated, in public, statements that no reconciliation with Egypt would be possible unti the sinai agreement was scrapped.

The reality of a possible Palestinian-left wing victory in the Lebanon, however, has forced Syria's rulers to reveal their real interests.

The broken off diplomatic exchanges between Egypt and Syria were hastily resumed as Syria sent a thousand troops into the Lebanon in an attempt to ensure that the right-wing forces would not be Egypt, anxious to ensure that Assad's Syrian regime is not overthrown and replaced by one supporting the Palestinians, has agreed unilateral deals with Israel.

Three days after the patching up of differences with Egypt, Syria sent another 3,500 troops with tanks against the Moslem town of Hermal, 65 miles north east of Beirut and another 500 to attack the left-wing held town of Arsa, to the south east of Hermal.

Elsewhere, Syrian troops are holding down groups of Palestinian guerrillas who could be used in the fight against the Phalangist forces.

The PLO claim that in some areas, Syrian troops are fighting side by side with the right-wing against Palestinian and left-wing held positions.

Egypt and Syria do not lack military backing from the capitalist powers. The Egyptian Minister of War and War Production spent the first week of July in Britain negotiating the purchase of patrol boats, helicopters, submarines, supersonic fighter-bombers tanks.

The US State Department has recently approved the sale to Syria of an undisclosed number of Lockheed L-100 turboprop transport planes.

Israel has no need to intervene in the Lebanon as the Palestinians are attacked once again. The Tel Aviv government must be shaking with laughter as Egypt "warns" Israel against intervention.

For the Palestinians, this is yet another indication of the futility of looking for support amongst the bourgeois Arab Regimes of the Middle East who are constantly striving for an accomodation with the world's imperialist powers.

Even those like Libya and Tunisia - whose leaders have demagogically protested against the massacre of the Palestinians have not lifted a practical finger to help them.

As the Syrian-Maronite offensive mounted at the weekend the Libyan 'support' for the PLO revealed itself in its true colours -an 'appeal' by Gaddafi to the Soviet Leadership. to bring increased

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The new Italian parliament opened with an agreement between the Christian Democrats (DC) and the Communist Party (PCI) over the division of the most important parliamentary offices.

The right wing DC president, Fanfani, becomes president of the Senate and Pietro Ingrao, a member of the secretariat of the PCI, becomes president of the Chamber Deputies (a slightly more political version of the Speaker of the House of Commons).

Only one vote was cast against Ingrao - a write-in vote for General de Gaulle!

LONG WAY

This deal is still a long way from the PCI's "historic compromise" coalition with the DC. But it is a sure sign that the belligerent statements coming from both party headquarters since the election are strictly for public consumption only and do not reflect the discreet conversations going on in secret.

The bargaining is now taking place over the chairmanships of parliamentary committees.

The PCI have demanded those of justice and the interior as well as of the parliamentary inquiries into the Mafia and the Lockheed affair.

HIDE

On the latter the DC leaders, some of whom have a lot to hide, may well be less compromising.

The PCI demand for a direct share in a coalition government continues but is being made less

Berlinguer

insistently. The DC leaders have asked the PCI to "make its contribution" from outside the government, which would therefore be a centre-left coalition, which the Socialist Party continues to reject, or a minority DC government.

It is clear that, whatever government emerges, the PCI is secretly negotiating with the capitalist parties a package of policies designed to meet Italy's huge capitalist crisis.

"RESTRUCTURING"

All commentators in the capitalist press agree that this must include a "restructuring" of the state sector (meaning rationalisation, speed-up and unemployment) and some form of incomes policy which as a minimum must include the abolition of the present limited sliding scale of wages.

The employers' organisation, Confindustria, under the guidance IC of Giovanni Agnelli, head of Fiat, submitted an economic programme to the trade union federations and political parties.

It is a plan for massive loans from the EEC and the United States to help the "restructuring" of the state sector. Contact has already been made with the US Treasury and, at the economic summit meeting in Jamaica at the beginning of July, sympathetic noises were made about such a • It was also made clear that any loans would have attached to them the most stringent conditions about cutting state spending and controlling wages.

SILENT

The Stalinists are silent about these manoeuvres. Not only are they making no effort to prepare the working class to resist what is bound to be a massive economic onslaught; they show every sign of helping to prepare it.

The trade union leaderships are also silent. This no doubt partly reflects their subordination to the political parties but also. their awareness that there is very little possibility at present of their being able to impose these policies on the mass of their membership who are already under attack from accelerating inflation and growing unemployment.

For months, all negotiations on new labour contracts, which were due to be settied last autumn, have been at a halt as the PCI and Socialist party argued that disputes would threaten their votes in the impending election.

Whether or not the majority of the workers accepted that argument they certainly expect some progress with these contracts and not a huge The last man whom Franco named as Prime Minister, Arias Navarro, has been abruptly replaced by the last man that he named to lead the National Movement (the Falange), Adolfo Suarez.

The switch of Premiers is part of a desperate effort by Franco's successors to present a convincing posture of "liberalisation" while simultaneously making sure that not one atom of power falls into the increasingly impatient hands of the working class.

The argument inside the ruling class, then, is purely about the tactics of how to maintain the dictatorship over the working class. Nonetheless this internal conflict has now turned into a public and bitter struggle for power between warring 'clans' of Francoists.

The regime's plans to give limited legal rights to some bourgeois and reformist political parties had ground to a halt in the Cortes, Spain's fake parliament.

Arias Navarro showed no signs of being able either to persuade 'the bunker' (the Francoists who do not even profess a 'reformist' position) to pass them into law, or persuade anyone else that he was at all committed to the measure.

Arias was widely expected to be replaced by either Interior Minister Fraga or Foreign Minister Areiiza, the two smoothest-talking "reformist' Francoists in the government.

Both of these were vetoed, it is now known, by the chiefs of the army and by pressure from other die-hard fascists.

And that veto reflects the most pressing of the tactical differences inside the regime - whether to Carillo:

those which suit tile bourgeoisie.

Fraga has himselt hinted that, after the first round of constitutional reforms, the PCE could be legalised.

Fraga's own political 'party" within the National Movement, the grotesquely named 'Democratic Reform' ', organised by a close associate of Lopez Rega, the instigator of the ultra-right death squad in Argentina) has also come out in favour of legalising the PCE.

Fraga, Aleilza and five other 'reformists' of the Afias cabinet have now all refused to serve under Suarez, who has instead increased the weight in the cabinet of Opus Dei, the ultra-right lay catholic order prominent in the Franco governments of the late 1960s and of other ultra-right catholics.

The result is a cabinet with a less reformist' image 'than even its predecessor. This is almost certain. ly not what was intended by King Juan Carlos, whose first experiment with using his power has shown just how small it is. The split in the Francoist ranks now poses a grave danger to the working class movement - that the PCE and Socialist Party leadership through their joint class collabor ationist front the Democratic Co ordination, will make some more o less open deal with Fraga, Areilz: and the other 'reformists' who have refused to serve under Suarez.

They might then return tr power with PCE and Socialist Part! support when the Suarez cabine collapses.

It is known that in the last fev weeks the PCE leaders have ha‹ secret talks with Fraga and othe ministers. At the same time th about a "national pact», Particula with th opposition have become uncannil: similar to the statements of th