Free Jailed Argentine Socialists!

Scan page 4

Argentina is a 'free territory' for the forces of repression. Not only has the military dictatorship which came to power on March 24th this year, arrested and murdered thousands of workers and members of all opposition parties and groups, but it also allows the murderous fascist bands, the 'death squads' such as the Argentian Anti-Communist Alliance (AAA), to operate unmolested, kidnapping torturing and murdering workers and bombing their homes.

In addition it has welcomed to Argentina the security forces of other Latin American dictatorships, especially those of Uruguay and Chile, allowing them to search out, capture and kill political refugees from those countries.

Under the previous anti-working class regime of Isabel Peron it is estimated that there were 5000 political prisoners in the country; now the number is said to be 20,000 and growing rapidly.

THOUSANDS The number of kidnappings and murders is unknown "but now reaches many thousands. While the clashes between the government and the guerrilla organisations (the Peronist Montoneros and the Castroite Peoples Revolutionary Army), along with the recent murder of groups of Catholic priests have received most publicity it is important to realise that the bulk of the repression has been against the workers' movement.

At the national level, many trade unions have been taken over by the state. Given the abject collaborationist policies which their leaders have pursued and in many cases continue to pursue, it is not this which has most decisively weakened the workers' movement.

Much more damaging has been the systematic repression of local trade union leaders in factories and local committees. It is at this level that the regime is attempting to behead the workers' movement.

PARAMOUNT This kind of repression is paramount in the dictatorship's plans to make Argentina 'safe' for capitalism.

The • economics •minister, Martinez de Hoz, educated at Eton and in the United States, and the owner of Argentina's leading steel company, is attempting to implement a policy of economic 'stabilisation What this means in practice is an enormous cut in real wages, achieved to begin with through astronomical inflation, which for now at least has abated, and a refusal to allow any wage increases. Such a policy can only be imposed through the destruction of the fighting strength of the workers.

His policy requires not only savage repression but also borrowing millions of dollars from the advanced capitalist countries.

LABOUR GOVERNMENT He recently visited Britain for this purpose and received a friendly welcome from members of the Labour government, friend of so many butchers throughout the world, which helped him to borrow significant sums from British banks.

On this page we print an appeal by the Socialist Workers Party of Argentina, the Argentinian sympathising section of the United Secretariat' of the Fourth International, on behalf of two members of that organisation who now stand in extreme danger of their lives in the jails of the barbarous dictatorship.

We give our complete support to this appeal. In addition we emphasise the necessity to fight for the freedom not only of these comrades but also of the other fifty or more comrades of the PST now in jail and all the other 20,000 political prisoners now in jail in Argentina.

The release of all these prisoners cannot be obtained, as many supporters of solidarity with the struggle in Argentina appear to imagine, by appealing to the murderous dictatorship of General Videla.

It requires the largest possible mobilisation of the working class movement on this question throughout the world. In this country the trade union movement must force the Labour government to use all the strength at its disposal against the Argentinian dictatorship.

BANNING

This includes the banning of all trade and financial relations with the Arrentinian rovernment. In particular at the present time British banks must be prohibited from lending money to the regime, importers must be •forbidden to import goods from Argentina and all export of British a rms banned.

British diplomats should either be withdrawn from Argentina or should be ordered to cease all work except giving assistance to political prisoners and those pursued by the police, army and death squads.

All members of opposition parties forced to leave the country temporarily should be allowed to enter Britain and be given full freedom to organise politically.

That is what solidarity means in practical terms. It is what the 'left' Labour MPs and those who claim to represent the working class must fight for.

So far there has not been so much as a word from the Labour government or the union leaders who could so easily impose blacking action.

The Workers Socialist League has made criticisms of the political positions and practice of the PST in Argentina. We stand | ›y these criticisms.

But at the same time we are in agreement with the words of Ernesto Gonzalez a member of the National Executive of the PST, his comrades murdered by the previous Peron government in 1975:

"As always in this hour of grief and indignation, we rement, strut the workers' movement, strug gling against the trade union leaders which hold it back and tie it to the plans of the bosses, and against the elitist guerrillas who contribute to and promote its demobilisation.

"We are not looking for our own vengeance, not for the way of conciliation, nor that of the guerrilla. We continue to have confidence in the mobilisation of the workers even though today they have not succeeded in responding as a whole to the reactionary offensive."

That response to reaction cannot be left only to the Argentinian workers; they need the concrete and practical solidarity of the world working class movement.

Jose Francisco Paez enTe Argentinian workers' demonstration