Workers Socialist League

Socialist Press, Trotskyism Today, Woman Worker, Class Fighter and the Trotskyist International Liaison Committee, 1975–1984

BYA: Where does Healv stand?

Socialist Press no. 57, 30 March 1977 · scan p. 12 · about 529 words

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doalition deal. This was also being spelled out on the same day but in very different surroundings by Liberal economic spokesman John Pardoe, who announced that he rough linepressing for "a very rough on wages, which means "Now't in terms of a pay increase" after this July.

Under these conditions the fight to break the coalition means Over 200 people crowded into the meeting of the Islington 18 Defence Committee on March 15 and gave enthusiastic support to a call for a local demonstration on Saturday 23 April.

Tha moosh will staet ot tha SLAIL dE LIEG racist Highbury Magistrates Court and pass by the four local police stations in which the youths were brutalised into making 'confession statements'.

Another demonstration will be beld outside the, Old-Bailey on ment. SOCIALIST number of this summer's union conferences, and in the spirited discussion that took place on the programme in the course of the Conference, many more political lessons were learned in Birmingham on Sunday than can be drawn from any number of Stalinist dominated protest activities along the lines of those to be staged over the next two months. April 25 when the trial begins.

The meeting also launched a petition calling on the three local MPs, together with councilors, to support a public investigation into police brutality and to have the local CID withdrawn in the meantime.

The mother of one of the 18 spoke of her experience of the 11. -police invading her home and of her fears concerning her son, who, at 18 has been refused bail, who faces the possibility of years inside and who now stammers severely as a result of his treatTwelve people face death sentences in Libya for belonging to illegal political parties, according to a report from Amnesty International in London last week.

The twelve were among 40 prisoners tried in camera earlier bers of , Marxied an de in onskyist" organisations and of the Islamic Liberation Party.

The "Peoples' Court" specially set up in January of this year passed sentences of up to 15 years on them. Libyan "left-wing" dietator Gaddaffi has now overruled his own courts and increased 12 of the jail sentences to death penalties.

All the accused have been held in prison since April 1973 when Gaddaffi launched his "popular revolution" - Acquitted by the ordinary courts, they were released in December 1974, but immediately rearrested by Gaddaffi's police.

Since 1970 all parties except Gaddaffi's "Arab Socialist Union" have been banned.

In 1975, in reponse to growing opposition, membership of illegal political organisations was made punishable by death.

In January 1976 about a dozen students were killed by police during demonstrations at Benghazi University against government-rigged elections.

Hundreds of students were reported iniured and arrested in similar clashes at Tripoli in April 1976.

At about the same time three Army officers were reported to have died under torture in prison.

In England the Trotskyist' Workers Revolutionary Party led by G. Healy, has carried repeated uncritical articles in its daily newspaper Newsline glorifying the Gaddaffi regime.

We now challenge the WRP to state clearly their position on these barbaric attacks on the workers' movement by this anticommunist dictatorship.

← Contents of Socialist Press no. 57, 30 March 1977

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