Reject Zimbabwe

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British and foreign bosses.

DROPPED

This is why the pound dropped almost 10 cents in 48 hours last week. The banks, speculators and IMF officials who direct the Labour government's economic policy are concerned not with the hypocritical rhetoric at the end of Blackpool pier, but with the tact that - in the form of concessions over fringe benefits - the seamen have opened the first breach in the bureaucratic dyke erected by Jones and Murray against the pent-up anger and combativeness of the trade union movement as a whole.

Last week's developments underlined in the most emnhatic vu vor vapane terms the correctness of the decision by the Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Movement to call the October 24th Conference on Wage Control and Union Democracy' Taina Namanna?

NUMBER ONE

The Workers Socialist League fully supports this Conference. The defence of wages is the number one question of British politics today.

Within the working class there The "solution" to the Rhodesia question poses an urgent challenge to the labour movement in Britain and other imperialist countries.

Active solidarity must be built now with all sections of the black movement in Southern Africa prepared to resist the united efforts of Kissinger, Callaghan and Vorster to ensnare them into a web of compromise whose real purpose is to prevent the total collapse of racism and capitalism in Southern Africa.

The clear aim of the Kissinger "solution" is to head off the growing armed revolutionary struggle in Zimbabwe.

Smith's white racists cannot resist the armed rebellion on their own; the South African government would further threaten its own life by over-extending itself militarily north of Limpopo; and the United States has been too weakened by Vietnam to risk a similar adventure.

It is therefore no love of justice and democracy but a desperate effort at self preservation from a position of weakness which made Kissinger and Callaghan plot with Vorster to ditch lan Smith's 12year old racist regime, which was an embarrassment to their neocolonial plans for South Africa.

DURESS

The "settlement which Smith sala ın nis broaacast inar ne was L...1..L La ta forced unuer unress to accept „wAan A,,nana nonant included: majority rule not defined to mean 'one person, one vote) within two years; a new constitution to be drawn up by an appointed council of state with equal numbers of blacks and whites, requiring a two-thirds majority for decisions; an interim appointed council of ministers with a black chief minister and white ministers of defence and internal security; the ending once the interim government was set up, of sanctions and the guerilla war; and monetary compensation for the whites.

After the five black presidents (of Lambia, Tanzania, Botswana, Angola and Mozambique) had guardedly "rejected" the plans in that form, Kissinger (who says it's Callaghan's plan anyway denied that Smith's was the correct version.

Whether or not there is a correct version remains a complete mystery. It hardly matters, since Kissinger's aim was, through a combination of threat and bribery, to get all the parties to agree on a conference at which the horse-trading could be done.

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5231 TO all ıllılılccl All parties, that is, except for the authentic representatives of the black 95% majority population of Zimbabwe, the actual victims of Smith's repressive racist regime.

It is against their growing impatience and militancy that Kissinger and Callaghan, through the conference which Crosland has now summoned, aim to create a bloc of imperialists, white racists and collaborationist black leaders before the black revolution can win the decisive victory which is its destiny.

Whether or not Kissinger and Callaghan can gain even a tempor ary respite against this unstoppable revolution depends now on the actions of the bláck leaders in Zimbabwe and the African states around it.

DIVISIONS

The numerous divisions among these leaders represent partly the personal squabbles of opportunists, and partly a real fight of principle between those leaders who are prepared to sabotage the mass struggle for a share of today's spous and those who have still resisted, though in some cases falteringly, any compromise with the imperialists.

Joshua Nkomo, leader of ZAPU, (Zimbabwe African People's Union) whose opportunist shifts in the past have reduced though not destroyed his support inside Zimbabwe, was the only one of the Zimbabwe leaders seen by Kissinger on his African tour.

In the aftermath of the 350,000-strong general strike, massive state repression continues in Turkey. "While the strike was still in progress about a thousand workers, including major trade union leaders, were arrested, and thousands more sacked, charged with participation in an illegal general strike.

While the union leaders have since been released, in many factories the sackings remain and in some areas strikes continue for the reinstatement of those victimised in the struggle.

WITCH-HUNT

The biggest witch-hunt ever launched in the Turkish workers' movement was mobilised against the stoppages by the government, while they conducted police raids on union headquarters and moved army detachments into the factories.

In two of the biggest oil refineries, Ipras and Aliago, 90% of the work loice has been sacked, and replaced by unskilled fascist labour, ....Cont'd from Front Page Nkomo has expressed "doubts" about "aspects" of the plan but is evidently prepared to participate in Crosland's imminent conference and in the interim government it is supposed to establish.

The same is true of Bishop Abel Muzorewa whose African National Counci, signiticant in the rejection of the deal between Smith and the Tory government in 1971, is now virtually defunct, and also of the Rev. Ndabaninge Sithole, who has been virtually isolated since he was ousted from the leadership of ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union) several months ago.

Up to now the leadership of ZANU under Robert Mugabe have alone declared their outright opposition to the Kissinger/Callaghan But Mugabe has still participated in discussion in Lusaka, the Zambian capital, with Nkomo and is without doubt under huge pressure from the presidents of the five "front-line" states, some of whom are clearly anxious to retreat as soon as possible to a back seat in the fight against Southern Atrican racism in order to preserve the power they have themselves usurped from the masses.

Of the five, only Samora Machel of Mozambique, from where the guerillas Mugabe's ZIPA (Zimbabwe People's Army) mostly operate, has still refused to more or less endorse a modified version of the imperialists' plan. which has at once shown itself incapable of running the refineries.

The strikes hit the steel, textile, and car industries, the mines and the public services in eleven main industrial centres - the biggest ever mobilisation of Turkish workers.

"LEGAL" CHANNELS

Though for the moment a return to work has been secured, this in no workers' workers lins vement is in dog ute to topple the right wing National Front government. Indeed the government still has not yet legislated the special state security courts - the proposal of which gave rise to the strikes.

The Confederation of Revolutionary Workers Unions, dominated by the Stalinists of the Turkish Communist however Continues to direct the strengtever.

the working class into peaceful, "legal' channels.

They call on workers to:

"Bring down the NF government in legal ways forming a government with democratic rights and freedoms and which will bring These leaders, as long as they continue to oppose clearly the imperialist design for Southern Africa, must be given unconditional support by the British labour movement.

But if they too should compromise there is nevertheless no doubt that the liberation struggle wil continue, not only among the guerillas and the masses inside Zimbabwe but in South Africa also.

That struggle must also receive the full and unconditional political and material help of the British working class.

It is implicit in the Kissinger/ Callaghan/Vorster plan that, once a the country into the line of democratic regimes; peace and social progress will be among the targets to be attained."

In seeking this illusory "democratic" solution the Stalinists look more to the national bourgeoisie and its "constitution" than to the strength of the working class..

This has led them to subordinate the independent struggle of the working class behind the left demagogy of th bourgeois Republican Popular Party leader Ecevit - who tells workers to wait for the 1977 general election before doing anything!

ISOLATED

Ecevit has managed to win the support not only of the Stalinists but also of the 19 social democratic únions in the other big confederation - the Confederation of Turkish Workers Unions. • And it was his holding back from any call to action against the National Front government which thus ensured that the more militant workers were eventually isolated as the general strike wore on. collaborationist government exists in Zimbabwe, the imperialists will be prepared to use force to protect it against a principled black liberation struggle.

It must be a priority demand in the British labour movement that the Labour government be forced to abandon its policy of support for racists and collaborationists, and to replace it by one of sending arms and material assistance to the black liberation movement throughout Southern Africa.

No to the imperialist plan Arms to the black workers peasants!

Victory Ecevit of course could be expected to do nothing else. He represents the native Tur rish bourgeoisie, and fears the wor king class far more than he fears the fascists.

ILLUSIONS

A crucial political problem for Trotskyists in Turkey is therefore the breaking of the illusions in Ecevit created by the Stalinists, and turning the workers in both the CRWU and the CTWU towards the building of an independent workers' party such as the Turkish The recent moves of the bourgeoisie to legislate new repressions together with an escalation of outright fascist attacks on workers show clearly that the employers are seriously planning to smash the organisations of the working class.

The moves already made against fascist attacks must be consolidated into workers defence squads, and the broadest united action mobilised.

ARAB WORKERS in Israel and in the occupied West Bank and Gaza regions staged a two hour general strike on 28th September against the recent Koenig report.

This report produced by the Jewish governor of Northern Israel advocates, in the most racist language, a programme of forced population control for Arabs in order to preserve Jewish dominance.

The report has outraged the whole Arab population of Israel.

The limited protest of fast week is undoubtedly a sample of growing militancy among the Arab population who are being subjected to increasing repression in many ways.

THE BRUTAL JAIL sentences passed on Polish workers at Radom in September, for supporting demonstrations against food price rises in June, were inflicted with the aid of massive police intimidation and violence, according to reports published in Paris last week.

On two occasions, groups of young workers attempted to enter the Radom courthouse to hear the proceedings.

They were immediately arrested and taken, handcuffed, to the adjacent police station where one of them, Ludvik Dorn, was abused as Jew" and physically maltreated.

When released, they again tried to enter the court, but were arrested again after the trial, and all of them were beaten up, with Dorn and another, Mareh Tomczyh, being beaten on the soles of their feet.

A committee of liberal and Christian intellectuals was formed in Poland on September 23rd, to give support to the workers facing repression after the June strike wave, which forced the Gierek regime to withdraw all the threatened price rises. • The committee denounces the fact that 'For the first time in several years, physical violence was used during interogations and states that a great number of workers have been attacked either by police and legal action, or by sacking them from their jobs.