[racists have had to call more and more…]

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racists have had to call more and more of the white male population into the army and this is threatening production in the rest of the white economy.

DECLINING More than this, the white population is declining fast as white Rhodesians abandon the sinking ship of racist rule.

This year the net white emigration rate is 15,000 a year which is a loss of well over 5% of the white population.

A further sign of strain is the finance of the war. The recently announced budget proposes military spending for the next year of about 20% of the Rhodesian national income-the equivalent of £56 a week for every white family.

Not surprisingly, therefore, Finance Minister David Smith is making every effort to shift the financial burden onto the blacks by raising indirect taxes.

He is still, however, very constrained in this since any ECEVIT RESIGNS The resignation of Prime Minister Ecevit, following the indecisive result of the early elections in Turkey-in which no party won an absolute majority-has brought a further setback to the plans of the Turkish bourgeoisie to cover up its political and economic bankruptcy.

The Turkish economy has hit its worst state of bankruptcy-with a hefty trade deficit, insufficient currency reserves and sky-rocketing inflation.

Both Turkish and international capitalists were hoping for the end of coalition governments, and the prospect of a majority administration charting a course towards restored profits and attacks on the working class.

Instead the traditional party of the Turkish bourgeoisie, the Justice Party, suffered a heavy defeat, while the liberal-reformist Republican Popular Party attracted considerable support for its populist programme.

Ecevit had already prepared a arogamme which abandoned many * a promises which won him I= particular. he had decided zeatest legislation against lock-outs;

Mansi credits to peasants and small *sness: against social insurance fo: peasants. and against cancelling reactionary laws numbers 141 3nÉ 14_ (fascist laws taken from Mussolini's constitution).

The political task facing Turkish corkers is therefore the same as Delete the election-to split the = orien movement away trom any ailure with bourgeois parties. and apparently got a Chinese commitment to supply more arms to the liberation forces.

This is, of course, an opportunist move on the part of the Chinese bureaucracy: the price of these arms was reportedly an anti-Soviet pronouncement by Mugabe.

Smith's own desperation magnifies the desperation of the imperialists.

The British and American governments, with ambiguous support from South African Prime Minister Vorster, continue their pressure on Smith to accept a compromise neo-colonial settlement before it is too late.

However, last week's resignation of the Rhodesian Front's chairman Frost and the recent expulsion of 12 MPs from the ranks of Smith's party underlines the fact that Rhodesia's white population increasingly polarised between those, who are fleeing and those who are preparing to defend the racist dictatorship whatever the cost.

Those expecting a mighty anti-imperialist phoenix to arise from the ashes of the old Troops Out Movement (TOM)

must have been sorely disappointed by the London "Open Conference" this weekend.

Not only did the conference fail to present any coherent political analysis of the demise of the old TOM, it also showed every sign of reproducing all its predecessor's basic mistakes.

The conference had been called because of a split in TOM last April, when a majority of branches at the National Delegate Conference walked out in protest at the undemocratic way in which the meeting was being conducted.

These branches then joined together in the "Committee for a Free Ireland" (CFI). and issued a call for the open conference-on the basis that the old TOM Has nou On June 13 nearly 1500 people crammed into the Technical University's Central Auditorium in West Berlin to take part in a preparatory meeting of the "Russell Tribunal" which aims to 'investigate aspects of repression in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRD)"

Set up under the auspices of the British Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, a liberal-democratic trust, the tribunal is expected to focus its attention on the expansion of the governmental machinery of control and repression, restrictions imposed upon counsels for the defence, political censorship ond, musserbot, upon the practice The latter term is the name given to the practice of political witch-hunting for communists and leftIn all, some 150 peoris representing no fewer than political organisations attended the conference.

Most claimed agreement with the two demands advancedimmediate withdrawal of troops, self-determination for the Irish people.

But all proposed widely differing strategies for raising these demands in the labour movement from the RCG's call for debates with the Communist Party to the IMG and Big Flame's gimmick of an International War Tribunal on British crimes in Ireland.

Yet despite these differences, the maiority of representatives agreed that it was possible to band together in a single organisation.

and to campaign jointly on the single issue of troops in Ireland.

What the conference thus estatlished was a less rigid variation o:

the old TOM-a propaganda bior of myriad political tendencies which sane nutside the organised labour wing sympathisers in the Civil Service which, since becoming law in 1972, has investigated over 800,000 workers for so-called "loyalty to the constitution"

Only having passed strict political screening do German civil servants become part of the "beamte" classification-ensuring them a relatively high salary, special pension insurance and strong job security.

The SPD-FDP (Social Democratic and liberal coalition) leadership has fueled rather than checked the spread of such right-wing policies, arguing that criticism of cutbacks and lay-offs are detrimental to the "national interest"

The speakers at the Action Committee's meeting, an assortment of petit-bourgeois libertarians and legal experts, failed to highlight the links between the fall in living standards of the working class and increased state repression.

STRIKES

Only a vigorous campaign of strikes against such attacks and a fight within the public sector unions against the cutbacks in state expenditure pose a real alternative to the problems facing such political repression.

If the demands for increased public expenditure are labelied as inflationary or a fiscal impossibility then the demand for committees of state employees elected from their respective unions, along with specialists answerable to their unions, to examine the accounts of the particular state industries in question must be advanced.

NO COHERENT ANALYSIS AT TROOPS OUT CONFERENCE But a glance at the history of the old TOM would have told the conference that such a structure is doomed to failure.

The old TOM was not destroyed by the machinations of the clique around Gery Lawless-although Lawless's considerable appetite for bureaucratic manoeuvring undoubtedly hastened its end.

On the contrary, it was paralysed because it was nothing other than the sum total of groups possessed of different political analyses and strategies. Consequently when it came to any practical action there were as many different approaches as there are 3n ations, each believing 32 fighting ic: is i= :: == imple mented 308227 013512: ume reiore TOM everted to its constituent parts.

By setting up exactly the same i pe oi propaganda bloc, the conference revealed that it had

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ЛЮМЯ EXAOS SOCIALIST PRESS. desss :hai*In the preamble to the new draft Soviet Constitution, published on June 4 by Tass, we read that in the USSR an end has been put "to exploitation of man by man, to class antagonisms and to national ea developed socialist society" enmity" NTERNATONAL Brezhner has now emerged. zil 13 years of "collectively" STIL power with Podgorny and Aler Kosygin (Soviet Prime Minister). the worthy successor of Stalin ai Kruschev.

In May 1976 he received i military rank of Marshal of t Soviet Union, and since then has been referred to as Vozi