Jumblatt Gunned Umor

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in scale, represented an increasing determination within the working class to fight wage controls and defend their living standards.

In these conditions, the vast majority of trade unionists could not be trusted to support a second year of wage controls so they were simply not consulted. There were only two major exceptions: the miners and the building workers.

'UNREPRESENTATIVE' As a matter of fact the majority of miners voted against further wage controls, the votes of 11,000 foremen and powermen alone giving the NUM bureaucracy the result they wanted, a majority for Stage II.

The vote was so close that it was not repeated in any other union except UCATT, where a deceptive ballot was held to change a Conterence decision to overwhelmingly reject further wage controls.

George Smith declared that he would not be bound by the Conference since the delegates were "unrepresentative'!

By the time of the special one day TUC conference in June 1976 ro decide on Phase II-a 442% wage increase-most union executives had already taken a decision in favour without consulting their members at all. At the end of the day the TUC accepted Phase II by 17-1 with only ASTMS of the major unions voting against.

MATERIAL CONDITIONS However, the sudden reversal in the gradual downward trend in inflation, together with the impact of both the £6 limit and now the 4½% produced the material conditions under which the working class would be forced into action over wages.

Even the argument that the The murder on 16th March of Kamal Jumblatt leader of the so-called Lebanese Progressive Socialist Party and of the 'Lebanese National Movement' marks an important turning point in the development of Arab politics.

Jumblatt was a feudal chieftain, leader of the Druze Moslems, whose doctrines are no less reactionary than those of the mainstream followers of the prophet Mohamed.

VETERAN

He was also a veteran of the Byzantine intrigues of Lebanese politics; minister, politician, plotler, maker and breaker of Presidents and political alliances.

Yet Jumbiatt stood at a particular strategic point in the development of the Arab Revolution, and in particular of the Palestinian liberation struggle.

Arafat He was the leader of those popular forces in the Lebanon who moved into alliance with the Palestinians against the Arab reactionaries, against all the forces prepared to accomodate with Zionism and its imperialist allies.

EXPLOSIVE FORCE

The popular forces at whose head Jumblatt stood are by far the most explosive force in Arab politics. The thousands who spilled into the streets of Cairo earlier this year, the hundreds who armed themselves to fight against the fascists and the Syrians in Lebanon in recent months, these were the forces that hold in their grasp the future of the Arab Revolution.

The Palestinian National Council, meeting at Cairo when the murder became known naturally denounced it.

PLO leader Yassar Arafat said Jumblatt was the equivalent of several armies fighting on our side' Jumblatt Again, the reference is to the forces that rallied behind the man.

At the same meeting, Naif Hawatmeh of the Democratic Front declared that he saw • the hand of American imperialism' behind the assassination.

There can be no doubt that it bears many of the classic hallmarks of a CIA operation, attempting by a short burst of gunfire to do down an entire popular movement that has not yet been destroyed by the Syrians and their fascist allies.

SUSPICION

Raymond Edde, leader of the Christian National Bloc party and himself the target of a number of assassination attempts pointed out that there must be grave suspicion of the involvement of the Syrian army, who had a post only a few hundred yards from the spot where Jumblatt was killed.

The military sections of Juming Syrian forces during last year's civil war and destroyed a number of their tanks.

Since then, says Edde, they swore vengeance. Palestinian leaders also had little doubt about the involvement of the Syrians. The British capitalist press who insist on understanding nothing in Arab politics insisted that the death of Jumblatt is of limited significance.

The Times said that he had "ceased to be a figure of importance' GREATER DANGERS Howeyer, the fact is that now greater dangers and opportunities are faced by the popular forces in Lebanon and throughout the Arab world.

For Jumblatt embodied not only the strength of the Arab masses but also the effort to tie them to the Arab bourgeoisie. Jumblatt's 'Lebanese National Movement' which included various brands of Stalinists, also encompassed patriotic' Christians, Baathists, Nasserites and others. It had all the elements of a classic popular front, armed to head off the development of mass struggle.

COVERT SUPPORT

* The Stalinists: operated with their accustomed hypocrisy. not only through this, but also by their covert support for the Syrians.

The real challenge now both to the Palestinians and to genuine socialists in the Lebanon and elsewhere is to construct a movement to mobilise the masses independently of those forces who are tied by strings however varied to the imperialists and their Zionist allies.

When the mourning has finished and the bursts of retaliatory gunfire silenced, it is the construction of a revolutionary leadership capable of the independent mobilisation of the masses that is now posed before the Lebanese and Palestinian masses.

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fage Lecturers and professors threw SOCIALIST 'RESS, ednesday