Red Carpet for Thatcher

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Maoist member of the AUEW Executive, went to Heathrow to instruct maintainance men to end their pay strike and got howled at by a hostile mass meeting.

On the very same day Tory leader Margaret Thatcher, universally reviled throughout the workers' movement, was greeted with full honours at a state banquet in Peking's Great Hall of the People.

There is no coincidence in this grotesque combination of events. Rather they reflect the complete corruption both of the Stalinist bureaucratic clique which holds political power in China and of those who ape their reactionary policies internationally.

VICIOUS

The Chinese bureaucrats have gone so far along the nationalist road of attempting to build "socialism in a single country" that they now prefer to ally with the most vicious and sickening agencies of imperialism than to demand assistance from the Soviet Union and the other bureaucratically controlled workers' states.

Indeed they now see precisely these workers' states as their main enemy. So Thatcher's chief credential for the Peking trip is her much-publicised hostility to the Soviet Union-which of course is inseparable from her bitter hatred of the working class internationally.

GORGING

While this leading political representative of British imperialism sat gorging herself on sea slugs, quails eggs and fish bellies, Vice Premier Li Hsien-nien described her as "our new friend"

and expressed agreement with many of her "firm views"!

And world capitalist leaders would have been even more delighted by his Wednesday speech attacking alleged kussian "aggression" in Zaire.

But while the Chinese bureaucracy seek capitalist allies against the Soviet Union on a world scale, their followers are obviously forced along parallel paths in every country.

And in Britain the minuscule, faction-ridden Maoist movement is no exception.

This is why Birch like any bureaucrat seeks to preserve his THLY FUND a setback in March with the final Since we commited ourselves to the edition of Socialist Press this shortEUROPE 6 issues. .21.15 12 iansce ...$2.30 24 lasues ..$4.60 .£1.50 .$3.00 .$6.00 a subscription to S ›cialist • issues, 1 enclose i Thatcher tucks in to sea slugs position by balancing between the strength of the union membership on the one hand and the requirements of capital on the other.

And when the chips are down, like any bureaucrat, he takes the side of capital. And in his spare time he studies Mao Tse-tung and the latest whims of Chinese foreign policy.

Presumably "Chairman Birch" is now working out how the finances of the British Maoists could be stretched to provide Thatcher with a welcoming fish and chip supper on her return from Peking.

THE RULING OF A HIGH Court judge that the AGM of the Newham North East Labour Party was not properly constituted and was "illegal" shows the deepening involvement of the courts in the labour movement.

The injunction to stop the meeting was obtained by rightwing supporters of Reg Prentice.

There must be a campaign in the Labour Party for the expulsion of those people who bring High Court judges into the running of the Labour Party, and who subordinate it to Britain's second capitalist party.

ZAIRE... Continued fro making a panic striken search for international aid. France and Belgium have sent extra military supplies and so, it is reliably reported, has General Amin of Uganda.

On March 9 1,500 troops arrived from Mcrocco where they have had experience fighting the Polisario liberation movement in the ex-Spanish colony of Sahara and Egypt is also sending help.

Mobutu has denied tumours that he is on the point of resigning and going into exile. "I will always live in Zaire" he told a press conference.

But in that case it is something of a mystery why he maintains luxury mansions in Switzerland, Belgium and France.

NOT WELCOME He cannot feel very welcome at home where the local peasants have apparently given full support to the invaders. And what was supposed to be a mass rally last week, organised by the one legal "political Party" the Popular Revolutionary Movement, attracted a mere 20,000 strikingly