Oxford Cuts Fiasco

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The bureaucratic coalition of Communist Party and right wing installed in the leadership of Oxford Trades Union Council last summer following the disaffiliation by the TUC of the old Oxford Trades Council has once again shown its complete opposition to any Last Thursday at a public meeting to discuss "opposition" to the cuts in social services spendingattended by a mere 124 instead of 1,000 predicted by the organisersthey exhibited the most bureaucratic methods yet of controlling a meeting.

John Power. Trades Counci President. looked round the the previous week to amend or vote on the document (which had been drawn up by the Stalinists and the right wing) Power blandly ignored three amendments from the 5/293 TGWU branch.

These amendments set out to make the document into a fighting document against the Social Contract, calling for national strike action against the cuts and support for local sections of health or education workers taking action Power avoided the amendmenis by refusing to let Alan Thorett, Chairman of the 5/293 Branch speak and propose these positions, arguing that he had already allowed one speaker from the 5/293 Branch.

In the uproar and confusion which followed. with large sections demandine the

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In drawing the lessons of the revolution und counter-revolution in France between 1848 and 1852, Marx wrote that "All political upheavals perfected the state] The meaning of this, he was later to explain, was that the destruction of the bureaucraticmilitary apparatus of the capitalist state was "the The first "real people's revolution' in which this Though its deficiencies were many, its weakness apparent from the start and its life short, the Paris Commune was the first prototype of the workers' It was destroyed after two months in an obscene orgy of bourgeois vengeance - but not before it had lived long enough to establish fundamental lessons which all later proletarian revolutionary movements 28, 1871, was the highest point of the political upheaval in France which followed the defeat of the French army in the war against Bismark's Prussia and machine instead of smashing it."

precondition for every real people's revolution" precondition was met occurred in Paris in 1871.

state.

have needed to learn.

And its very occurrence heralded a world history - the epoch of capitalist the proletarian revolution.

The declaration of the Paris Commune on March the abdication of the Emperor Napoleon Il.

Louis Bonaparte had declared himself Emperor in 1852; this was an example, as Marx remarked, of one of the great characters of history occuring, SO to speak, twice... 'the first time as tragedy, the second as farce'.

Napoleon Ill's reign, like his coming to power, haa been a caricature of that of the man he claimed was his uncle.

While the first Napoleon was the conqueror of Europe, Napoleon Ill was a consistently unsuccessful dabbler messy diplomatic intrigues around the world.

He had involved France directly jor indirectly in a long string of wars from the Crimea, from which he emerged with slightly less discredit than the British, to the ill-fated French expedition to Mexico to new epoch in decay and of SOCIALI The fallen statue of Napoleon. RESS, Wednesday April 27th, 1977.

"Citizens, Our mission is at an end. Wa new and rightful representatives.. Citizens, Remember that the men who will choose from among your ov yourselves and suffer the same hard Beware, of the ambitions of concerned only with their own are indispensable.

Beware, too, of wind-bags w speech, a rhetorical effect or a wit else. And avoid those whom fortun are rarely disposed to considering th We are confident that if you f have achieved an authentic people tatives who will never see themselve National Guard, March 25 1871.