Sabotage at Kings

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United richt at Even sleepy, God-minded King's College, University of London, has been drawn into the storm over fees increases.

On Thursday 17th February, sympathisers of the WSL called a meeting in support of the LSE occupation.

After the Broad Left members of the student executive had made a last ditch attempt to sabotage it by calling another meeting at the same time, a combined gathering of Poly making occupation the first united iction in the history of the Poly.

The occupation was only Partial one and did not stop lectures and seminars).

This was because the original motion for total occupation was defeated. A Broad Left amendment was passed which used the excuse of the coming examination to argue for a partial action. about one hundred heard speakers from the LSE and Middlesex Poly argue the case for direct action against the government's attacks on education.

The strong response led the President of the Union to call an Extraordinary General Meeting for the following Tuesday.

UNPRECEDENTED

Although the Broad Left provided little publicity, an unprecedented five hundred students arrived to debate a motion which 'noted and deplored' the fees increases, but did little to organise a fight against them.

An amendment calling for a one-day "token occupation" lost by the surprisingly narrow majority of 130 to 207.

Eventually an amendmert 57s carried calling for a delegation to the Principal of the college to demand that the college refuse to implement the fees increases aad that no quota system of forga students be imposed.

It also moved support for i* LSE occupation.

As we go to press a meeting bas been called to hear the deigation's report and. if it is not satisfatory. to discuss the occupation of the college.

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SOCIALIST. PRESS, Wednesday 2nd March 1977.

We begin in this issue a series of four articles on the revolutionary history of France. This article deals with the French bourgeois revolution from 1789 to the Thermidorian reaction of 1794. The second will describe its later development under Napoleon, and its international repercussions. The third and fourth will deal with the revolutions of 1848 and the Paris 6,000 angry women armed with pikes and cannon marched to the "The French revolution is but the forerunner to another revolution far greater, 'far more solemn, and which will be the last.

The people marched over the corpses of the Kings and priests who had unitod eninet them Thev will do the same with the new tyrants Commune of 1871.

Just as the Russian Revolution of 1917 dominates our age, the Great French Revolution of 1789-1794 echoed down the nineteenth century.

In each case the revolution began as an uprising against the remnants of feudal society: the absolute power, arrogance and luxury of the monarchy; the denial of parliaments and of elections; oppression and restrictions on trade and monopoly; near serfdom, starvation and ruinous taxation on the land; the crushing material and spiritual weight of the Church.

In both cases the emerging capitalist class, the bourgeoisie, in order to settle accounts with the old order, had to bring into play the peasantry and the revolutionary workers and poor of the cities.

But at this point the resemblance between the two revolutions ends.

The Russian bourgeoisie of 1917 were unable to satisfy the most elementary demands of the oppressed classes: bread, land and peace.

Their hands shook and the revolution was torn from them by the working class.

The Russian bourgeoisie class without history.

YOUTH

But the French bourgeoisie of 1789 was a class in its youth, far from having exhausted its historical role.

To deal with their common enemy, the King and nobility, they brought onto the streets of Paris the sans-culottes in their masses.

But the sans-culottes (the poor, literally: those without breeches, ie not dressed in the bourgeois fashion) were not a working class in the modern sense, but only the more mixed social soil from which the working class was to grow.

They included some wageworkers, apprentices, small master craftsmen, shopkeepers and traders, and the unemployed.

Not then united in great factories and unions, the sans-culottes were only the embryo of the proletariat, not yet full grown enough to rule.

So the French bourgeoisie were able successfully to turn on their temporary allies and crush them.

Napoleon Bonaparte stepped to power over the corpses of the Paris poor.

Like the English bourgeoisie had done 140 years before them, the French cut off the head of one king, only to accept his descendant back on the throne.

To this day France remains the most bourgeois and hypocritical of palace at Versailles. Part One By Paul Stein "republics' - in which official celebrations of the storming of the Bastille are protected by the riot Thus both the French and Russian revolutions demonstrate -the first negatively and the second positively - the theory of permanent revolution - that distinct and opposite social struggles are in reality united in sharp conflict.

Combining the lessons two, Trotsky wrote:

"To distinguish between the bourgeois and the proletarian revolution is political ABC. But after the ABC come syllables, that is, combinations of letters. History accomplished just such a combination of the most important letters of the bourgeois alphabet with the first letters of the socialist alphabet ... It is nonsense to say that stages cannot in general be shipped. The living historical process always makes leaps over isolated 'stages' which derive from theoretical breakdown into its component parts of the process of development in its entirety, that is, taken in its fullest scope. The same is demanded of revolutionary policy at critical moments. It may be said that the first distinction between a revolutionist and a vulgar evolution. ist lies in the capacity to recognise and exploit such moments" • Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution, (Merit edition, Pp239240).

The task, therefore, is to decypher the confused syllables of the French revolution from beneath the mound of historical writing on it (which serves, in large measure, to smother them).

Correctly joined, they spel our an important message for the British and European working class today.

At the close of 1788 the regime of Louis XVI is in acute crisis.

Faced with bankruptcy following the American war of indepenpart at the expense of the great aristocratic landowners.

IMMUNITIES

The nobles resist, claiming (along with the clergy) traditional immunities from taxation.

Their opposition to the King's ministers fosters other moves of resistance: peasants rise against both aristocratic exactions and the shortage of food; in Paris the poor riot against the increase in the price of bread. The middle classes add their protests against royal privilege and luxury. The sans culottes surge into the royai palace Louis XVI's head held up from the p The government retreats promises to convene the ancient 'Estates-General' of the realm. When the Estates meet at the royal court at Versailles (May 5th, 1789) the Third Estate (reflecting the bourgeoisie and the middle class, the other two representing the nobility and the clergy) solidify behind demands for reform before they will provide money for the King.

Given a political voice for the first time, they swiftly become the centre of events.

Faced with procedural fencing on the part of the King's ministers and the Court, they declare themselves a 'National Assembly" and vow (the tennis-court oath' , June 20th) not to depart until a constitution is drawn up.

TRIGGERED

But it is Louis XVI who triggers the July revolution.

On the 11th he dismisses Necker (his reforming finance minister) and garrisons Versailles with foreign mercenaries.

In Paris the news provokes insurrection: a mass search for arms, the taking of the Invalides barracks and (on July 14th) the Bastille prison, fortress and armoryThe capital is in the hands o : the bourgeois politicians; Louis XVI recognises the National Asser nbly and visits Paris wearing the red. white and blue cockade of the 011 August 4th, in an all-night session, the National Assembly abolishes most hitles. feudal dues and servitudes: on the 271h they adopt the 'declaration of The Rights of Man for which all inen are equal in rights" but especult! n They ational state' latform of the Guillotine The revolution has now reached its first point of equilibrium which is maintained during 1790 and the early part of 1791.

The bourgeoisie have asserted their inalienable rights, while the absolute monarch remains on his throne (though not absolutely of in September, when news Royalist intrigues add to food shortages in Paris, hundreds of poor women lead a march to Versailles which forcibly removes the King and his family back to the capital).

EQUILIBRIUM

The equilibrium is far from stable, but unaided neither the old regime nor the new, bourgeois one can break the deadlock.

King and royalists ceaselessly conduct secret negotiations for foreign intervention to restore their power.

And at each moment of crisis the more revolutionary section of the bourgeoisie is forced to lean on the suns-culottes for support.

When this is lacking they fall.

Again it is the King who provokes the next phase. He attempts (the "flight to Varennes' June 25th 1797) to escape across the frontier and lead foreign war against the revolution.

The plan misfires, Louis XVI 15 brought hack under heavy guard; officially he has been kidnapped by 'enemies of the revolution'!

But in Paris nass demonstrations back the demands from the Left of the National Assembly for his abdication and for a republic.

are suppressed by the juard. But the • Id "l 1780 is now d finit Portilion R bren "Jacobins" in the Assembly, backed by the democratic clubs and the sans-culottes in the districts of Paris.

Robbespierre opposes the declaration of war against Austria (April 1792; defeat in Belgium and spreading reports of royal treachery strengthen the Jacobins' position.

The crisis of August-September 1792 sees a new "revolutionary? commune of Paris take the royal palace.

The King is deposed, the republic is proclaimed; the new "National Convention' - elected well to the lett, by a much wider electorate - is its government.

From. now on the battle ground shifts. The old order is dead (in January 1793 Louis himself is guillotined).

ARMED

The bourgeoisie now face the task of establishing their rule over the sans-culottes which they have armed. The workers have no party of their own, but it is nonetheless they who define the divisions and struggles within the Convention.

The Girondins are the most consistent spokesmen of provincial interests and above all of the bourgeoisie (-fast: growing rich from the war, and from property and land confiscated from the Church, and abandoned by royalist aristocrats who have fled.

The Jacobins (also known as the 'Mountain' since they occupy the high seats on the left of the chamber) have their power based not on the number of deputies but in the enthusiasm of the workers and poor of the capital for their more radical policies.

As the struggle between burgers and sans-culottes moves to a climax in the first Republic, the Jacobins are to become its barometer.

It is on their initiative that the King is sentenced, that Christianity is abolished (autumn of 1793) and that the new, revolutionary calender, starting with Year I, is declared (October 1793).

'MAXIMUM' LAWS

In February-March of 1793 food riots bring a fixing of the price of bread; in May they enact the first of the "Maximum' laws, whereby local authorities can control a wide range of prices (and in theory, wages).

Pressure grows for the Girondins to he purged. At the heginning of June this is done.

The Constitution of 1793 gives universal male suffrage; in practice power shifts more and more into the hands of the centralised committees of the Convention (original ly sel up by the Girondins and especially Robespierre's 12-mar "Committed of Public Safety"

and to ihe leaders of the clubs.

assemblies and militias of the sansculottes in the Paris sections.

The crisis of the Paris revolution

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SOXIALIST PRESS. #ednema: Is barr ON rebellions in the provinces and by foreign war; in August a young gunnery officer of no political significance, Napoleon Bonaparte, distinguishes himself by freeing Toulon from English siege.

Robespierre, elected as a "liberal', , becomes by the end of 1793 the chief organiser of revolutionary dictatorship.

'His Committee of Public Safety directs accelerating: repression (the 'red terror') against 'enemies of the people - first the leading Girondins, then the centre, then sections of the Jacobins themselves.

But his dictatorship remains one of the bourgeoisie; as it centralises power in its hands, it begins to lose its active support among the masses.

GUILLOTINE

The guillotine decimates the politicians who formed the Republic, but it cannot cut back the price of bread.

By the summer of 1794 Robespierre's dictatorship is squeezed into an impossibly narrow political space.

The bourgeoisie and the middle classes demand elbow room for profits and (since the war danger has temporarily receded) an end to the terror.

The workers are deeply hostile when the Maximum laws are used to try to cut wages.

Robespierre and his young lieutenant, Saint-Just become isolated within a divided Committee of Public Safety. On the Ninth of Thermidor (27th July, 1794) they ate booed in the Convention; the following day they too mount the guillotine in the Place de la Revolution.

The 'white terror' which follows, Robespierre ution into the 'stages' it would have liked.

To this day it stands in fear of the forces it once relied on, then crushed.

Robespierre has been turned into a monster by bourgeois public opinion. In fact more people are killed now each year in road accidents in France than perished in his 'red terror' of 1794.

The revolutionary "principles' advocated by the merchants, lawyers and journalists in 1789 were in reality enacted by a working class in its infancy, driven into action as much by the price of food as by the force of ideas.

And these two were in practice never separated.

The sans-culottes continued to struggie.

Driven into submission by Thermidor and the 'white terror' they rose again against months of inflation and assaults by bourgeois thugs (the 'gilded youth') - in the insurrections of March (Germinal) and May (Prarial) 1795.

The women of the streets wore two slogans on their blouses 'Bread' and 'The Constitution of 1793!' But as a class their weakness was expressed in the fact that they found their own political voice only after they had been physically defeated: Gracchus Babeuf's 'Conspiracy of Equals' - the first genuinely communist movement in history - was suppressed without difficulty in 1796.

Where the Russian proletariat had grown up, physically and politically, to produce a Lenin the sans-culottes of Paris could put their maximum weight only behind Robespierre, the greatest and purest of bourgeois revolutionaries.

Industrial tribunals set up in 1971 were hailed as courts which stripped the judges of their wigs.

The new courts allowed 20th century language; lawyers had little but their expensive suits to distinguish them from claimants; and most important of all trade unionists were beckoned up to sit on the dais alongside the employer.

Any startling impact was spoiled a little by the complete refusal of the trade union movement to have anything to do with the tribunals.

This was not because they raised doubts in the minds of trade union leaders, but because they were part parcel of the Industrial Portions ass had decared the working class all out war.

When that battle was won and the Labour government ushered in the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act of 1974 those same leaders fell upon the tribunals with cries of delight.

These courts were perhaps one of the most pernicious devices of the Tory government.

Where the no-strike clauses and the bans on closed shops attacked the trade union movement from the front, the tribunals were the equivalent of an opiate slipped into the water supply.

It was not surprising that the Labour Party and union leaders eagerly took over dealing in these drugs and started to inject larger and larger doeses into the independent struggle of the working class.

The aim of the tribunals was, and is, to reduce areas of conflict, cut down the numbers of strikes and compromise the trade union illusions that tribunals were created to spread.

An employer has to be a fool or a hot head to sack someone so that their dismissal will be deemed unfair.

EXCLUDED Totally excluded from the Act is the biggest single cause of sacking - redundancy.

The layman's guide to the 1974 Act - A Guide to Unfair Dismissals - puts the point clearly:

"Redundancy itself is a fair reason for dismissal... The test is whether the employer needs fewer employees to do work of a particular kind."

Even where the employer does not intend to cut the total workforce but merely transfers work from one factory to another, that does not constitute unfair dismissal.

Also excluded from consideration are cases where a worker is sacked for not being good enough, not having the right qualifications, or misconduct.

PEzE:

striking in defende oi jobs or trate union principles.

"If you have a case. why don't you go to an industrial irituna! has become the favourite parrot cry of every barrack :00m crossing the picker line.

ORGAN OF STATE

It is not just that tribunals are blatantly and flagrantiy proemployer. it is not just that no tribunal can order an employer to take back a sacked worker - but can merely recommend It is possible that a Labour government under pressure could redress the balance slightly on these matters.

The real point is that a tribunal is an organ of the state in the same way as is a criminal court, or the police force. Its role therefore is to uphold the dominance of the capitalist class over the proletariat.

That is the central requirement which can never be changed by reforms.

In The State and Lenin wrote:

"The forms of bourgeois states are extremely varied, but their essence is the same: all these states whatever their form, in the final analysis are inevitably the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The transition from capitalism to Communism certainly cannot but yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat". (original emphasis).

What goes for the state as a whole goes for those organs which the state sets up to protect itself.

MORE DANGEROUS In fact the more that the tribunals are reformed, the more dangerous they become. Their essence is to remove the clear call for united struggle in opposition to the employer, and to replace it by an appeal for "justice" to a body run by the employer

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