Fruits Popular

Scan page 3

Supporters of Archbishop Makarios, Cyprus' devious, right-wing nationalist President, have been elected to all 35 seats in the Cyprus parliament in the recent elections.

Thirty-four of them were members of a Popular Front alliance led by Makarios' own Democratic Front Party.

The two junior partners in this unprincipled alliance are the Cypriot Communist Party, known as EDEC, and the "left-wing' socialist party, EDEK.

Since the 1940s the Communist Party has been the strongest political party in Cyprus, with the support of 40% of the voters in elections, and in control of the main trade union federation, the PEO.

STRENGTH

Yet its leaders have consistently used this unrivalled political strength not to fight for the needs of the working class but to serve the interests of some section of the ruling class.

During the independence struggle against British colonialism, they cowered in the background while General Grivas' fascist EOKA movement and demagogic church leaders like Makarios led a movement in which the interests of the working class were submerged.

Grivas used his position to murder Communist Party members, just as he had done in the Greek Civil War in the 1940s.

Since the early 1960s the Communist Party has given more or less Makarios uncritical support to Makarios as an "anti-imperialist" in spite of his constant deals with British and US imperialists (in which he was supported by the Soviet bureaucracy).

In 1975, with inflation running at 15%, the CP-controlled unions agreed to a wage freeze in the "national interest"

This was just part of the CP leaders' consistent policy of making the struggle against capit ilism a "secondary question"

NOT OPPOSED In spite of its strength the CP did nothing in 1974 to oppose Nicos Sampson's ultra-right coup on behalf of the Greek military dictatorship.

Even the smaller hardly less class-collaborationist, EDEK Socialist Party organised armed resistance and many of its supporters were massacred.

When the Soviet bureaucracy supported the Turkish invasion of the island the Cypriot CP leaders first of all said it had been wrongly informed'.

ACCEPTED

But later the party, which had once led a united trade union federation of Greek and Turkish workers, came meekly to accept the Soviet line of division of Cyprus on ethnic lines.

For a short time this new line brought the CP leaders into conflict with Makarios. They transferred their allegiance - not to the working class, but to yet another section of the ruling class led by extreme right-winger Glavcos Clerides.

But now the island is effectively partitioned, the CP leaders are back in their old role as altar-boys to the reactionary Archbishop.

SWEPT BOARD

In the Popular Front alliance which swept the board against Clerides, the CP accepted nine seats and allowed Makarios' party to take the lion's share.

Their abject support doesn't even get them a place in Makarios' cabinet.

The net result of these years of betrayal of every opportunity to build an independent workers' movement is a partitioned Cyprus.

In the Greek section the trade unions under CP leadership do the bidding of the capitalists and tens of thousands of refugees from the north live in intolerable squalour and poverty.

The objective of Labour Foreign Secretary Anthony Crosland in calling the conference on Zimbabwe, scheduled to begin in Geneva on October 28th, is to put an end to the independent armed struggle of the Zimbabwe people against racist rule.

For Crosiand, for his ally Kissinger whose diplomatic arm-twisting brought the conference about, for South African premier Vorster who assisted him, and for the capitalist class which they all represent, such a struggle by black Africans spells mortal danger.

Smith For such a confrontation with imperialism will bring with it clear lessons to the mass of workers and peasants of Zimbabwe that the enemy of real independence is capitalism. Within such a struggle the need for permanent revolution - the flowing over of struggle into the battle for socialism - will become plain..

And such a struggle is bound to link up with the growing fight of black workers against repression in South Africa, capitalism's most treasured possession in the African continent.

For the Zimbabwean nationalist leaders to make a treacherous deal with Smith, as Crosland and which has power to draw up "majority rule" constitution, and which the white racists would s have veto power - or nothing.

But he might well settle something less satisfactory to 1 white regime if he could be sure would • severely damage the arm liberation struggle.

None of the black leaders ha fully accepted the Kissinger pli though ZAPU leader Josh Nkomo has implied his readiness compromise with it.

Robert Mugabe of ZANU, t main. political leader of the Zi guerilla army, and hitherto t most outspoken critic of the de has now met with Nkomo a issued a joint statement.

They have demanded the relea of all political prisoners before t conference and spoken of the ne for Smith to be counted, not as t leader of an independent delegatin to the conference, but as part the British delegation. ' SURRENDER At the same time they call the unconditional surrender Smith and the racist regime.

But they do not make all thi condition of attending. They ha both agreed (as has Bish Muzorewa of the African Natior Council) to lead delegations to t conference and neither Nkomo n Mugabe has unambiguously rul out either negotiation with Smi of even participating in a coaliti government with him.

Such a dangerously comprom ing position is to be expected i the basis of past experience fro Nkomo and Muzorewa.

STEP BACK

For Mugabe, however, it seei to represent a serious step ba from the principled statements opposition with which he initia reacted to the Kissinger proposals In the next issue of Social Press we will print an intervi with leading members of ZAN