Socialist Press no. 76

SOCIALIST

PRESS

Weekly paper of the Workers Socialist League * No. 76 * November 23, 1977 *

FIREMEN

MUST NOT

FIGHT

ALONE

* As the firemen dig in for their second week of strike action in support of their 30% pay claim, the silence from the TUC leaders is deafening. None have offered real to the fireaten, support they know that

HOUSE

workers other sections of claims outstanding wiw pay took strike action now, the 10% limit could be decisively broken. Manoeuvres Instead unere nave been a series of evasive manoeuvres by NUPE leaders representing one local authority milon by leaders manual workers, of ambulancemen and hospital telephonists. miners' And while left leader Arthur Scargill has of the

SUODOT

firemen, his support has been Soldiers scah on firemen's dispute as leaders leave strike isolated.

15p We're calling on unions opposing 10% limit "It's hard to which see Parry and the

FBU

way leadership will move to head off this strike" Bucks Brigade FBU Chairman Mick 'Socialist Rowlinson told Press this week. "Right now EC members visiting picket lines trying to find a pull back in support. "But there's still no chink in the membership. And with Rees determined not to buage, teres no real room for Parry to man- oeuvre." Rowlinson warned of the restricted to a verbal gesture.

With the miners own 135% payment pay due for Scargill has three weeks ago made no move to press for strike action As

TUC

leaders conspire to isolate the firemen, shelter- ing behind the reactionary 12-month rule or meaningless talks in off

OTOCT

SLaye

FBU,

action alongside firemen face an added danger from their own leadership Secretary General Parry has done nothing but scuttle to and from TTe Merlyn Rees, where he has been offered nothing now but a form of words on possible increases pay in a year s time. Parry was opposed to the strike in the first place: now he is doing nothing to streng- then it, biding his time for a tresh sell-out attempt. No answer The efforts of union mislead and leaders TO confuse the working class on the firemen's strike were week by 40 'left' aided last Labour MPs, who demanded not an end to the 10% policy but for the firemen to made a "special case" Among those who latched on to this line were a few MPs and Tony Benn, Tory Energy Secretary who the worked so hard to smash the power workers pay struggle.

To argue that the firemen are a "special case" does not answer the problem faced by every section of workers now claims-that wage the 10% limit must be broken and IT they are living standards defend slashed under wage controls.

The union bureaucrat and 'left talker this fight is because avoles the 10% limit is crucial to the survival of the Lib-Lab deal that keeps coalition Callaghan in office. Pact threatened Liberal spokesman Emlyn Hooson stated in Parliament last week that the pact would be at an end if the firemen break through the 10%. Rather than welcoming Inside: State Capitalism and SWP politics ..pp.6-7 Ireland (The Easter Rising) .

• p.5 Press Gang... India (Book review).. • p.8 .Back Page Sadat Visit. beginnings of a witch-hunt, with us out. "We would call for immediate Labour right wingers claiming that the Socialist Workers Party assistance from the trade union were the cause of the strike. This, movement. secretary of the Ayles- 1 am inked to the lory call tor nir station equipment to be given to bury and District Trades Council emergency resolution raise non could be the next move

LTOODS

this was happen, thi emercency resolution the picket lines would nesday calling for financial and guys on more bitter, know other r support. want to bring together ing they were in tor a long strike yve all those unions who have calms opposing the 10% policy to act "Those who are now confused all together would see that Ine trooos are nor "The FBU strike can rebound their old buddies, but •strike through the breakers whole trade unio This is a "moderate" "And Rees would be showing union, but the members' support that he nad abanconed necoll ations and had decided to starve is absolutely solid. Any 'left' MP who claims this prospect and denouncing to support the firemen must the limits every 'left from be called pulled back real upon to actively councils of support such action, and all wage struggle Strong monti that threaten the rule and the 10% limit While workers' leaders week's debate in hesitate and delay, the Tories Labourite Parliament left are stepping up their demands Dennis Skinner declared that on Kees to make nre scallor firemen should be the available to the equipment special case if the rest of the scab troops-in direct conflict working class could also be a with picketing firemen. special case Despite the bankruptcy of their leaders the firemen Vote against remain strong. He must be forced to draw Demands that army fire- from fighting depots be picketed the conclusion such to cut off fuel and supplies statements-and declare - LO

SPECULCIS

NATIOC

48 Hrs. 246-71 are growing in some areas publicly that he will

VOTE

Trade union support for against any motion of confid- the firemen's struggle at shop ence in the coalition govern- ment and against its Liberal floor level is enormous Workers know if the that policies. FBU destroys the 10% policy Oust they will all benefit. be must be And Skinner must support called on to organise a cam- turned into action. The fire- throughout the labour men must not be left isolated Dall and trade union movement in their struggle to oust the Callaghan-Healey the Workers This is why leadership. Socialist League has called for In this way those leaders the setting up in each area of who simply talk left can be Councils A CHIOn strengthen and to extend the distinguished from those pre- fight in active firemen's strike, and to pared provide an organised basis on support of workers' struggles, leadership fight against mass which to and a principled built, adequate to the needs army scabbing and attempts of the working class at picket busting.

Page 2

- INTERNATIONAL'

The struggles of the Polisario Front in West- ern Sahara have escalated to a new level with the capture of eight French technicians in neighbour- ing Mauritania and renewed attacks the on and mining centres garrison towns controlled by the Mauritanian and Moroccan armies. As the grisly details of last days of anti- apartheid leader Steven Biko begin to emerge, news has been released that yet another black South African has died in police detention. police According to 18-year old school- reports, boy Bonaventura Malazi himself" the "hanged police Krugersdorp security headquarters.last week. This brings the deaths of black in South detainees African jails this year to 21.

The news comes as the into the death ot B3is People's Convention cader Steve Biko unambig- South Airica's Security Police is ite ones responsible for his Bico died on the night of Sorense: 12 last, official oi a hunger and 35dt tie bed begun on 3u is version of the last =! Biko's life has been ribbons by the enders slowly emerging at see a Pretoria inquest currently being According to police Biko had a fight ersdent. five security policemen with on September . during the pumper his head againsta which Frisco mall and cut his lip.

This incident was allegedly rent book by the 10 These moves have dragged the French government of the towards centre of gathering vortex forces bearing down on the Maghreb (Arab-dominated northwest Africa). No sympathy It is not, of course, sym- pathy with the nationalist the Saharoui of aspirations leaders that has provoked this involvement, Thereon

BIKO MURDER

COVER-UP EXPOSED

Under cross examination Snyman admitted that he had actually Biko not seen "bump" his head, and allowed, therefore, that the incident may not have taken place at all. In the official statement released by "Justice" Minister Kruger after Biko's mention of this death, no incident is made whatsoever.

Kept naked According to further evidence given by Snyman Biko was kept naked. In leg- irons and in manacles or ita floor of his cell from Septer:- ber 6-8. Again, this rather salient of information piece omitted from Kruger's state- ment-despite his declaration surgeons further TRaI diagnose no physical problem" offered Fine third evence the day the on of Biko that mouest revealed was transported, nakea and shackled, 750 miles from Port Elizabeth to Pretoria in the back of a Land Rover, with a single container of water "medical equipment". Died within hours Biko died within hours of his arrival in Pretoria. Once again, Kruger's statement omits these points, blandly recording instead that "'MI Biko was taken to Pretoria" the press this police mo uest

HELO

SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday 23 November 1977

SAHARAN

regime's the expansionist policies the whole one level represents an extention wat of the long-standing rivalry

PEOPLES

between 'revolutionary Morocco and 'socialist' for the mineral wealth of the north- ern Sahara.

FREEDOM

Pawn The principal supporter of the Polisario in the past, the

STRUGGLE

Algerian government, formerly regarded the Front as a pawn to be deployed in its own nationalist and bureaucratic interests Recent signs of cooling industry, vital to the fragile but competition for the 1.5 Algerian enthusiasm for this billion of phosphate Mauritanian economy particular gambit, may well control the Their forces deposits in the region. have prompted the guerrillas whole desert region outside seize the french engineers 'Green march' the mining and military as hostages. centres where the occupatior Hassan has used the escal- These reserves have long armies tied down are coveted by the ation or the contact to revive been with the A gerian territorial claims over western government backed and Russian equipped once more eliminate competition and anc Saharoui. threatening a border war.

boost its own declining share Populist tactics of the world market. Meanwhile Algeria King Two years a8o revolu mediation for the engaged in Hassan-self-styled The key to the situation is release of the French captives Morocco's tionary monarch' of Morocco to be tound in but in competition with the -launched the 'green march' role. Libyan government. of 350,000 unarmed civilians Threatened by interna Gaddafi has eagerly rushed crisis, into what was then a Spanish economic in, also waving the icon of a rural discontent and recurring colony. Maghreb united-but under Although this force with- outbursts revolutionary his leadership. opposition from the urban drew, subsequent negotia- Whatever be the may tions between the Moroccan, working class, Hassan took success ot the libvan dicta refuge in populist tactics Mauritanian and Francoist tor's maverick strategy, it is defend his beleaguered dic- brought the clear 1121 agreed partition of the tatorship government will be a heavy The stage props of sham between the two loser irom any sellement Ul African states. democracy were the war. assembled, "free' (ie, 60,000 nomadic with The tribesmen of Western rigged) elections earlier this the Verge of collapse Sahara were not party to this Behind facade of the Madrid agreement. February 1976 the parliamentary democracy, with its economv on the In verge of collapse as the result Hassan's own ministers engin- Polisario major ront line warfare, nationalist grouping) declared eered support for war initia- of guerrilla Mauritania was forced to turn brandishing the Saharan Arab Democratic tives by 'Greater Morocco for a guarantee Republic, and formed rhetoric Maghreb'. government. might as safely guerrilla The leaders of the oppos- Since then the tactics of the Polisario have ition parties avidly pursued approach a lox or a cure i myxamatosis-Mauritania had this deliberate diversion away successfully prevented the of from the problems always export any phosphates, Deer Equally chauvinist, target of Hassan's imperialist and their attacks have serious- Morocco. they clamoured in support of ambitions. disrupted the iron will undoubtedly emerge. What is clear at this stage is that Biko was murdered by and Africa's police, South that a grandiose cover-up has been attempted, stretching from police interrogators and James district surgeons Kruger and the entire South African government. Protestors holding a banner accusing the German state of murder at the funeral of Baader It may be that the inquest Ensslin and Raspe. will who the actual revedl murderers were, and asa New victim of German result these racists may have scapegoats be made Vorster's # hite governmer: state terror would Bi: that solve Steve nothing for basically Biko died because of his opposition to the entire apar- Yet another member theid system. changing shifts. was the sixth case of of the Red Army Faction Hers an RAF member dying while Contempt

(RAF)

guerilla unit has continement in a verman victim to the rav- fallen jail his Vorster armed ages of the West German To prevent even the small- forces have nothing but con- state. est ripple of suspicion reach- tempt for inquests. night of November ing those commentators who he On the Asked got his were a man 12 Ingrid Schubert, a tounder had gone some way towards powers from to keep member of the unit, was 'dis- questioning the circumstances in chams, ponce culel colone covered' from her surrounding previous Goosen retorted: deaths, the Bavarian Minister cell window in Munich- "We don't work with the Justice for acted quickly. law, we work with our own Stadelheim prison powers". According the bour- He summoned an immedi- to Suddeutsche Zei- ate post-mortem examination South Africa's black prol- geois daily astonished of the body. Pending labora- prison etariat should take tune the HOLe tory tests the verdict of 'sui- Goosen's remarks. Only by governor was struck dumb by cide with no evidence of out- relying on their own powers for basic Gathering his thoughts to- side influence struggle

PEO

the suggested nounced. democratic rights they gether This will certainly suffice South Africa of its that the guards, supposed to that the fake-lefts 24 hour-a-day barbaric apartheid keeping system. be LO ensure watch on her, had somehow in the SPD withdraw their avenge full debate murders of Steve Biko. Вола- or other missed catching her cut up and knot a bed-sheet.

over the deaths during the I ventura valazı ano ine black out her cell door win- week others who have been and take has sun life the Although during course of the war the Mauri- has grown from Laal all 2,500 to 17,000 troops, the country is now largely con trolled by the Moroccans.

With wider focus, the full significance of these developments becomes clear.

French both supplies occupying armies equipment With military advisers: the move ment of parachutists into the border region of Senegat was only an extension of this But the direct implication of Hrance is lust one part 0l the total imperialist effort.

taking aggressive political stance, Hassan is not simply responding the of the requirements Moroccan ruling class. This foreign policy corres ponds with imperialism's need to employ a policeman on the spot in Africa. Vassal states Since the victory of the Vietnam, liberation forces in US policy has shifted away from costly wars of inter- vention in search of reliable vassal states that will accept for regional responsibility interests of defending the international capital. Benin, Zaire and now Sahara, Hassan has acted in this way as the local agent of .US as his capitalism, much Shah close partner, Iran, Gulf operates in alla In the their struggles, Polisario face not only the immediate armies of aggres them but behind the sion, needs of internat- desperate ional capital. Although, as we shall show of Socialist issues in tuture Press, the Polisario Front has political Showi extend yet socialists must weakness support the struggle for selt.

determination of the Saharan peoples. Workers in West Germany however must see death yet another reason to press ahead in their demands for a workers' enquiry into the incidents That the struggles of these terrorist fighters against op proved futile pression have Their noW clear. methods have served only to give veneer of legitimacy to ye more turns of the repressive screw throughout the coun- trY yet far from obscuring the class nature of the state and rallying the country round the government's demand to "hunt out the terrorists" their deaths must lay bare for all to see the real purpose and nature of the state Pam now lor al worker to see is the depths to which "¡ustice" 0 øæz g

It is not only US imperialism that befriends the Shah, here seen riding through Belgrade with Yugoslav President Tito.

U.S. COPS' SAVAGERY GREETS

CARRILLO SCABS ON US

NTERNATIONAL:

BUTCHER SHAH

Nothing could have huge * number prisoners more glaringly exposed the fraudulence of Carter's "human rights abour 10.000. crusade' than last week's The Shah's Washington visit to by the Shah of Iran. number is only 2,500. While Carter feted and flattered "Liberalisation" this criminal dictator, United Tne States police were engaged in beat- a new ing up Iranian students who the had come to Washington to admitted to demonstrate against the Shah.

political prisoners. The repression of the demonstrators in Washington limited very followed police which has been introduced in other parts of the United the last few weeks. States to prevent the Iranian Intellectuals organising their permitted protest. number In Chicago on October 28 and letters asking for liberal- police invaded a meeting of isation 40 Iranian students and Shah by former Twenty of them supporters. Mossadeq's arrested and the same WElC Party. number injured in the police attack and later when in extent a detention. regime. But in essence it is the kind of cosmetic liberal- Hostility isation which regime demands of its more The of the Washington embarassing friends. protest also had to contend with the activities The which forces the masses into Savak (the Shah's obedience or imprisonment, gestapo) who are allowed by Carter to operate freely in the US just as they are allowed unchanged and by the government to operate the even as in Britain). student demonstrators have In view of all this, the 'shown. large attendance at the anti- Shah needed Shah demonstrations (well over 10,000) testifies to the hostility of the of and students not a shred of Iranians outside as well political right exists. inside the country to the dictatorship. protest about The Iranian authorities American and British imper- could only to get ialism need the Shah's regime 5,000 along to the Welcome iot two major tasks. the Shah demonstration even though the Savak threatened the region of the Gulf where come the Iranian army has played stuuents

WHO

along and offered the air fare, an important role in fighting $100 rebellion in cash and several the days of free food and lodging 1980 there to those who came. 60,000 American and security Ferocity Iran. Second, Iran is important In Iran itself the last few to the imperialiststates for its weeks have seen a series of oil wealth. militant anti-Shah demon- strations by students Major assistance Teheran, Qum, Shiraz Rey, all of them put down The Shah has already given with the usual ferocity by the major assistance to the British police who fired and government injured many students. money and oil The leaders of these moments and buying British demonstrations have been goods. the arrested and now join Concorde of political Iran's jails. International estimates the current total at government has recently claimed that the of political prisoners But even this blatant lie is departure since it is first time the Shah has holding any The admission is part of a 'liberalisation' have been circulate of protest petitions have been sent to the Carter leaders of National cars. Front The American capitalists All this reflects to some need now his help to join weakening of the Saudi Arabia at next round of OPEC price talks keeping down the inter- oil price. And this the Carter the Shah has already promised to do. _ repressive apparatus, death, remains as active treatment of Santiago Carrillo is the first leader of a Western Communist Party to For the workers, peasants permitted entry to the United States since the Second World War. And Carter is making no that because Carter's government couldn't have made a better choice because this 'commun- ist' continues to show himself First, to help them police good friend of American imperialism and an enemy of the working class.

He began his lecture tour Oman. By by concrete giving very are due to be of this when he example military twice crossed a picket line to in personnel give lectures at Yale Univer- sity, where university workers are on strike tor higher wages.

The strikers union and the US embarassed Communist Party had both appealed to Carrillo to cancel the visit to Yale. Carrillo responded by ex- pressing "sympathy" for the crucial strikers' at. cause as he marched through their picket. The of the Yale especially armaments, leader and Chrysler strikers refused to , speak to the reactionary Quabous come to large leading lem Awar. Much less press to a defection Rabi Awad Sultan's own who horrified to increasing extent the regime is being foreigners, British his press Mussalem few nOW the guerrilla These some of the why the workers' reasons all Soviet and movement cannot look imperialist frauds like Carter ameliorate the dictator- ship; their in the preserving it. Ethiopia The letter to Carter from Labour MPs Stan Newens Wilson, request- and William base which Shah to ing nim to ask Ine respect human rights, is there- fore a dangerous diversion.

of. This kind of 'opposition'

ETHIOPIA

to Shah's dictatorship means nothing. two of number The Labour 'lefts' who oppose the Shah have consis- been removed from tently refused to fight in the and apparently murdered by Labour Party for the break- Derg chief of all ins iran and for or enforces economic links been eliminated in this way in ment of these boycotts by the internal action by the labour move- since the Derg was formed in ment. That is the most concrete that, though assistance which the British army has labour movement can give to ised the situation in Ogaden the struggle of the Iranian where it is fighting the West masses for democratic rights Somali Liberation and for the overthrow of the tion, has dictatorship and its replace.

ground to the Eritrean libera.

tion movements in the north.

ment by a government of the workers and peasants.

PICKET

Carrillo, who with cries of yelow from was from the strikers. Carrillo showed his usual unconcern about

SUCH

matters and tried to justify himself by saying that: "In Spain we think that American trade to the right of the Spanish right", The response to this from the

CPUSA

has not been revealed. The American capitalist and class its representative Jimmy Carter, are "I more to am Senor Carrillo's taste and in needs technology, his lecture he defended their ments and credits to develop: interests unstintingly As a commúnist, a supporter He supported US military of socialisin. bases in Spain as long as the assurance that foreign invest- Soviet Union kept bases in ments will Eastern Europe. us". About He American invest- repeated ment in Snain he said. known positions an Page 3

DHOFAR

FIGHTS ON

The continual claims said to be low numbers in the capitalist press that involved. But the same paper claimed that the fighting the war in Dhofar against finished altogether two years Sultan ago! of Oman has Another interesting indic end were an ation of what has been given the lie in a number happening be gathered of ways in recent weeks. from a careful reading of the Situations vacant columns of article was some papers in recent weeks.

published for example in The A company called Airwork Times about the defection of Ltd is preparing to Services member of the appoint staff captain, Popular Front for the Liber- quartermaster, infantry ation of Oman, Salim Mussa- company officer and intantry company command- publicity has er to go to Oman. been given in the capitalist Fluent in the opposite direction by Captain The applicant for the post, Marzo of the which pays a year armed forces, tax free plus £5000 gratuity said that he had been numerous other perks, discover the is to run newly reorganised which regiments and must, said the run by advert, be fully fit for fiel especially the duty, have at least two years experience with Arab soldiers conference, be fluent in spoken Arabic Awar tried to say and have held a command were left fighting appointment at company or in a com- war and The level Times carefully recounted the British Army Unit Valaill In BRIEF

SOMALIA

PORTUGAL

As opposition wage Somalia has broken control and economic auster.

ity grows, President Eanes has diplomatic relations with the USSR and Cuba and expelled appealed for social calm as demonstrations rival Cuban tech- are organised, and Premier Mario nicians. This is the final repri- sal for Soviet and Cuban mili- Soares has issued an ultima- if tum that, minority tary and political support for "socialist dictatorship in Söcialist pro- government does ended gramme not get the the support of the USSR's first friendship treaty centre and with an African country, The right wing bourgeois parties USSR loses a Red Sea naval the end of the month, he by will resign. imperialists are now jostling to get hold

SPAIN

The first national strike Colonel Atnafu Abate, the against the government's the ruling wage freeze was carried out military junta or Derg, has by the militant air-traffic con- trollers and brought air traffic power to a standstill for three days Mengistu. More than half its members have

TUNISIA

power struggle The wave of short strikes 1974. Latest reports indicate has continued. Called origi- nally to the Ethiopian protest against death threat to the national temporarily stabil- leader of the *trade state union, the strikes are begin- Organisa- ning to express deep rooted lost further discontents the Tunisian ot working class with the Bour- giba regime and its policies Carrillo (centre) at this year's Labour Party Conference realist. Spain that what was needed was a inyest- government of national unity and that 'The monarchy at present played a positive rote an in the restoration of demo. cracy respected by This was, of the asone Yale strikers shrewdly his well- remarked, wierd kind of Cnain - communist?

Page 4 14 Million set to follow FBU in payqueue

BOREDOM RULES

Clearly the Confeder- ation of British Industry has been taking lessons from the TUC. Its outing to Brighton for a first public conel- ence last week included the trappines l many lamilar a union conference-manoeu- against vIes militancy, carefully balanced speeches aimed at offending the least numbers of people and a selection of motions TUC in Blackpool and fitted by the chair that avoided the in at

OLIC

main divisive issues. easily as at the other. press-puzzled as to Reg Prentice--the The role was whose what its exact Labour ministers once rallied, supposed to be-found was present representing IT, stupifyingly best boring in bulk and acciden- of actions against the Allende tally marious m pal. government in Chile. The Financial Times noted that correspondent in pay increases, more collab- *skilful platform manoeuvi- oration with government and Lord Watkinson, the ing by CBI President, fended off a TUC (despite lower top membership revolt". reporters Other StriCter 'blandness and pickets and in support of complained of sackings. and lack of razamataz. But despite Not even the faces were all different. Various expressed from the floor the that CBI refused to employers and Tory spokes- on post entry closed shops of spectators at the ank and File

CONFERENCE

RANK & FILEISM NO

The Socialist Workers Party-prime in movers this Saturday's 'Rank and File' conference in Man- chester, clearly hopes to discussion to restrict of their own mixture and against the SWP's. demands minimum abstract calls for 'nation- alisation'. File conference

SWP

members have dis- tinguished themselves in Cowley land's arguing wages struggles by Plant: claims that include This against protection against inflation itself fight to through cost of living clauses, and insisting instead on a flat * To £15 demand. bring action Government. month rule And nowhere in Socialist limit. Worker's populist rhetoric is *For there any analysis of the Lib-

CRECAM

with claims Lab government clauses whereby wages standing rigidly behind the point by point rise pay limits. cost of living The basis for a fight In case there is any doubt the about the importance coalition government attaches firemen's defeating the strike, it is worth noting that 500,000 far than less workers have settled claims since the end of Phase 2.

words the remain- the pay queue, sager a watch in pay crack Healev's arbitrary 10% limit.

And of the 34% of workers settled, there have been who have no recorded instances of worker!

settling substantially below the

AT BOSSES

TALK-IN

other overt union many seaside resort as basming measures. Their problem was realism.

government Tory • MP The which CBI with provided the defence Ture TAne wage and job cutting policies require still has members known for its financing the name 'Labour' nailed to its mast. The leadership of the TUC role. The CBI urged moderation has also played All that was left to blame the working class-not was the best propaganda for what protests), was supposed to be a show- and ot tax conference-with laws against strikes case delegates noting that "selfish' workers often seemed to be their own union the feelings officials Murray's sentiments call for a ban exactly! An earlier Rank and File Conference in Birmingham

ANSWER

elected committees of trade bankrupt positions however is laid in a unionists. the Rank and *For a campaign inside the from the labour and trade union move- breaking of the 5/293 TGWU Branch at Ley- ment for the Assembly Lib-Lab coalition, and for the removal Callaghan- pledges Healey leadership of the Conference inside the Labow Party. *Abolition of cash limits working class on the follow- ing points of poliorkers into in the public sector, and a a sliding scale of fight for break the 12- public expenditure. and the 10% *Equal pay. *£60 minimum wage *Reject productivity deals.

This conference pledges to up fight in all Wake cost of living branches and shop would stewards committees with the these policies, as well as the as decided by Scottish TUC. officials. figure for single figure 10% originally as sums tal in antiation rates to lessen ne behind demanded by He so 000 bureaucrats are also doing every with Indood the already settled includes the thing mn their powar to isolate claims 57,000 Ford workers who settled This with 12% plus Tringa Denetits stalling

NUPE

substantially in excess of the 1080015 million And it is clear that thousands 43,000 firemen workers of holding back the hopes of negotiations getting a better settlement. Nor mally by this time of year 17% the firemen burst through of workers have settled their pay bitter and determined present reviews, as anainst the bitter and 3%%. will be clamouring to follow.

But part of this delay is also cases" will manipulation by union deliberate HE

DUNKERS

The Labour Party Young Socialists' unemployment last Wednesday. to declare yet again their Alaun Heffer and however, not connected to any fight to break the Lib-Lab coalition.

LEWISHAM POLICE

KEEPUPATTACKS

Police harassment of was nabbed the black community in along the South-East London who was "wanted" sign of letting shows no On arrival at up. station he was told that it was The latest major assault in- "all a mistake". volved a raid of seven houses, 8 youth were from which be provoked into "offensive" thrust into waiting police vans. cops Custody for. As we go to press, six of them, including a 14-year-old boy, remain custody, have spent the where past four weeks, charged with robbery. In arguing against bail, the police have announced their swoop again, to

HELORLON

move which the release of the youth might, they other claim, hinder. Two of those arrested are of the Lewisham members all of still 21, whom alt a bewil- trial awaiting on dering variety of charges, in- cluding conspiracy. The midnight visits of po- lice are only the most spec tacular aspect of "legal' timidation. Minor charges By a conservative estimate, or 60 Lewisham some waiting to youth are before the courts on minoi charges such as "suspicion"

PHOT

favourite trick of the A police is to pick up young blacks for such Sensus picious acts as waiting for a bus. If the "offender" is pro- voked into defending himself, he is then charged sault. beyond Although the police clear- dreams of its leaders. developed these techniques to keep the com- Seven munity in a state of fear and tension, their application not entirely random. "demand" their Raids pay Indeed, so of Lewisham The family Committee up hear Defence chair- Laurie Sapper's rousing David Foster, fOI man to 'Rectify example, has suffered a series of raids, arrests and beatings second show. that can only be understood an attempt to scare them of professors on into inactivity. Praying earnestly for a claims. union

NUM

claims affecting The harsh reality every labour workers one bather about bract Left-talking NUPE Assistant stem that kind of General Secretary Dix

CROYDON

NEEDED HOME

NOR GNEST

WASTED:20000

BUILDING

VORKERS ON

LE DOLE

platform after their lobby of Parlisment against youth The lobby gave an opportunity for such fake lefts as Eric opposition to unemployment. It was, The need for community Last week the younger son supported by while walking self-defence police the entire labour movement street by refused to reveal why he is nowhere more clear than in Lewisham. the police *Release the arrested youths!

the *End bai condition tor Fortunately, he refused to "Lewisham 21"! •Fore harassmeng iry the behaviour, which would have the harassment _ponce Shey were doubtless looking excuse black community! DOnS' mASS

PAY PROTEST

AUT

ABBY

Dons dress up for their protest Government The lobby of Parlia- not шакс quake in its boots ment by members of the Not a word was uttered Association of University against the savage effects of Teachers on Wednesday, cuts in education spending 16 November, succeeded The only concern of the bureaucrats-and, it must be wildest the Rested or mere sind members-is

AUT

thousand dons, persuade Minister for Educa- tion Shirley Williams that a many of them clad in gowns and mortarboards, converged hefty rise for the dons does break on Westminster in support of really the pay not since it was promised higher policy, for before Phase I. The main anomaly needins many queued

AUT

"rectification" is the AUT's Secretary call widespread elitism and com Anomaly" plete refusal to fight shoul the that he was forced to hold a der-to-shoulder with non- academic and student unions in defence across the board of It may be that the spectre strike does the education system

'LEFT'S BID TO HEAD OFF

SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday 23 November 1977 The: Parliamentary debate on the Firemen's strike brought the pay now familiar spectacle of Labour leaders joining hands with Liberals and of Tories support Healey's wage-cutting 10% limit. Home Secretary Merlyn Rees spelled out that despite cost of the FBU the huze action the pay policy would de upnela. Yet on the picket lines sections of firemen are begin- ning to get a guage of the importence of the action brought down Health and we'll bring down this bastard" an Oxford fire- announced man last week. Pressure And throughout the work- ing class continued pressure on unon ollicials for out fight on wages indicates scant respect for the Lib- Lab government or its pay policy. if workers the But and capitalist parties are each in their own way becoming clear the issues involved in the FBU strike, the same is not true of Labour's 'left' MPs.

40 of them staged a token revolt' during the debate by the refusing government whip. They knew in advance of that their votes would be than made good by Tories and Liberals supporting government policy. Obscure Not only did of none MPs would draw the these political conclusion from sup- port the firemen, they could actually did all they The SS men could not have known what had hit Had been them. they reading the British press for the past two or three must have years they thought that their arrival in Britain would go unre- marked. of the news- The record papers on racial tension in this country is one of consis- tent support for immigration laws and hysteria at the num- ber of black people in Britain.

So -it not gracocide. was right- greeted The stormn that them has been noticeable not just for its ferocity but for its direction. been the voice of It has the Express and the the Sun, Daily Mail which has shouted as loudly as any. The only attacks on the Home Rees, have been that he was incompetent in his banning.

Thẻ Times said he had foolish' been made to look but that "he probably was

PAY OFFENSIVE

40 force vote on firemen — but back off Lib-Lab Coalition

A FIREMANS

SPECIAL?

CASE

Firemen's wives demonstrate in Romford 'lefts' remained diplomatic- to obscure it. Instead of declaring that ally silent. the firemen are simply among Tragedy the first sectons of workers struggle against the 10% in Party Scottish Labour limit, and opposing that res- "lefts' 'left' Jim Sillars said it was a triction on the wards "tragedy" that firemen of all tried to pass off the firemen be forced onto people should as a "special case" instead of pointing the street. And He urged the government out that wage control Lib-Lab "flexible" fundamental to the to wage coalition, and declaring their control. Welsh Labourite Neil intention to withdraw all sup- Kinnock for that coalition, also warned the port

PRESS GANG

Night of the Long Knives of left men in" future exclusion The Sun said "It was an wingers. And, like the Public Order blunder to allow incredible taken ex-Nazi SS officer Hubert Act, action against fascists or neofascists Meyer to hold a Press confer- has always been directed as a ence before being kicked out lever against the left. of Britain." It is the task of the work- The Daily Mail called it with the "ludicrously inept". ing deal class fascists. We do not ask be These opinions

CAR USI

coalition government to do it Rees made the questioned. for us. exclusion order under the The effect of the ringing racist 1971 Immigration Act.

Rees is the Home Secretary editorials weakened by the knowledge that Colonel Who used the

SURE

ALL LO

Philip Agee and Mark Meyer was being driven round expel London by ITN and by the Hosenball last year for writ- ing about the activities of the Daily Express. There not single

CIA.

national newspaper which ac- He is the same Home Sec- the Press along retary who pursues, conference with the whole Labour Can face ban. Socialists who inet, action against the fami- nings in future can expect no lies of black residents in this such chauffeur service from country-under the same act Fleet Street. If the Daily Mail which he has now used to ban gets its way there will be no the Nazis. is in charge of And he chance. [!] 'If a liberal minded the equally repressive Preven- like ouTs can't de- tion of Terrorism Act, which country its powers of exclusion has been used to exclude Irish ploy and deportation deftly and In using the 1971 Immi- with the minimum of fuss, had better not deploy them against the Nazis gration Act not to the government use "straight- jacket. Bu 10% as a But he did not call for an end to the limit. Eric Heffer and Audrey Wise joined in this call for the firemen to be regarded as a "special case" No initiative Dennis Skinner appeared go one better, agreeing that the firemen should be a special case-provided that the rest of the working class could also be a special case.

Yet • Skinner has launched no initiative anywhere in the labour movement for a break in the Lib-Lab coalition. He has not even himself declared vote for it he will refuse on motions of confidence.

the To talk of breaking pay limits wide open with- out making such a stand is patently ridiculous. It gives the impression of opposition while bringing none of the action necessary. Electoral chances A hint as to why the 'lefts" have been pressed into these sudden declarations the their long firemen after silence on the power workers, 10% on Fords and on the itself came from "left' policy NEC Chairman Joan Lestor Speaking Friday she on that Labour warned the Party's electoral chances could be damaged if the fire men were not made a special case. As Labour's right wing wheels out the troops strike breaking, direct the 'lefts' now begin to play their key role as a smokescreen to the conceal class issues involved in the firemen's action. Withdraw support To the gulf their words and between their must actions honkers demand these "lefts' follow through their claimed support for the firemen, and organise a joint declaration that they will withdraw parliamen- tary support for the Lib-Lab coalition. same time they At the

NOW!

Page 5 Labour ... gag rule used Eighteen months ago PHOTO. Chris Davie notorious 'gag' the rule 15 was bureaucratically imposed on Trades Coun- cil constitutions. It forbade Trades Councils to cooperate with any organi.

sation policies Healey to the reactionary must be called on to declare

TUC

adopted policies by support and campaign Congress actively for the setting up of And it dictatorial gave councils action each Council

COT

Trades

DOTTEN

with the perspective of Chairmen suppress dis to strengthening the firemen's dele. strike, and bringing out other regarded "disrup. gates as sections of workers on their ters" alongside claims Now similar moves are

FBU

being made in London by "lefts" The evasions Party bureaucrats those questions will confirm hold back the anxious to need for alternative the an growing tide of workers leadership in the organised labour movement. The Executive Committee Greater the London Regional Labour Party has this month endorsed a letter affiliated from an union which asks that before giving moral or financial support in industrial disputes they should seek advice from the "union" concerned, by which the Labour bureaucrats mean union officials. Repor has Already this policy PHOTO: Chris Devies been used in North Islingtor Labour Party to rule out of discussion a resolution fron for calling two wards O'Halloran to support the tunnellers' dispute and him self attend the picket line probably ori ginated from APEX bureau- Kinnock outraged at labour crats movement mobilisation over Grunwicks. Most Labour Parties would probably disregard the circu lar The tunnellers' dispute of against the use lump labour by a Murphy firm of 'subcontractors, was particu larly embarrassing "Murphy's-man" O'Halloran PHOTO, Iohn Sturock. Report Trades Councils for the most part ignore Rule 15. But Stalinist-dominated Islington Trades Council has used it o a number of occasions to rule of fighting resolutions

OHI

order. The rule is a dangerous precedent for bureaucrats to must be ethicity reyected by their sleeves have London CLPs Skinner

STOP SECRETS CASE

Berry is accused of giving Two journalists- Campbell and Aubrey inform and Duncan Campbel ation-about the operations of Aubrey-and Crispin the Government Communi- Signals corporal former cations Headquarters. This is part of a world- John Berry were commit- wide signals intelligence oper- ted for trial at the Old ation known as "Sigint". Friday Bailey on under Government witnesses told the Official Secrets Act.

the court that not only was the Sigint set-up secret, but Each faces sentences of Ul the fact that it was secret was to 14 years imprisonment i also secret! convicted. The charges against them, under Section One of the The labour movement Official Secrets Act, are nor- must mobilise in defence of used against foreign mally Aubrey, Berry and Campbell.

espionage agents. Workers must demand the The case certainly raises dropping of all charges, and of the issue of the right the repeal of the repressive journalists to investigate Official Secrets Act. secret government activities.

This means also demand- press At of WIcH ing the removal Home barons are whining contin- Secretary Merlyn Rees and "press about free the Lib-Lab coalition govern- dom at the proceedings ment, who are pressing these Tottenham Magistrates Court charges in the interests of the exactly how have shown bourgeois militarv machine

Page 6 co the People of Ireland!

"Our Freedom must be had at all hazards."—Wolfe Tone.

band, to do day wil come ra the did a wil are to le deadly: to trada or Dad as one as The solbads of discipline and alertarss and the roans of power la treín our hands, aro provided b "The price of Liberty is Eternal Vigilance." Progroseive Natlenalter with the Democralic forces of Ireland, and its pollcy in to aebiere thati, fo

THE IRISH CITIZEN ARMY.

aluation enabraces the full procloses a name blee Birth, Privilage and Creed under common basao of the diBorance Theobald Wolfe Tone died, and John Mitchel suffered.

AN INDEPENDENT IRELAND.

Irishen! Join be Olzen Army. NOT and halp un to bulld up die irish Cooperative Commanmealth.

All inquiries to be addressed to:

HON. SEC., LIBERTY HALL, DUBLIN

Duscail do Dhisneach, a Bhanba !

Ireland

ROOTS OF

TODAY'S

CRISIS

PART THREE

The Easter Rising by Maurice Walters rebels could men from the Irish Volun- Indeed the •The tradition of the Castle seized Dublin teers and almost 200 men of have dead generations weighs itself if they had tried the Irish Citizen Army (virtu- like a nightmare on the ally its entire strength) seized Tricolour living." throughout of the key buildings brain wrote Marx in 1852. Dublin. the first day of The tactical plan thus on could have His statement circular area the rising the leaders could hold a roughly Irish Re- with been -contented: enclosing Dublin Castle-Brit- have publicanism in mind. in Ireland-using the the tricolour of green, white HO all the events in And of (symbolising General Post Office in and orange 1 0€ the Republican calendar, it is peace between Catholic and City Centre as headquarters 1916 Easter uprising the Boland's Bakery Jacobis Protestant) flew

O-CI

which is commemorated with Factory and the South Dub- GPO; the proclamation dec- the greatest fervour. were taken in the 'the right of the people Union aring each Easter Sunday the ownership South on thee tier Lifey thousands of year brings Liffey of Ireland, and to the unfet- Courts on the on to the Catholic of Irish desti- volunteers tered control seized and streets in commemoration of nies, to be sovereign and inde- the positioned "Fenian dead", and welc Ireland's stations and on the feasible". had been read br Tallway Padraig Pearse on behalf of above all the lo leaders exe- North Wall. cuted by the British in 1916.

Gov. 7-man Provisional there Surprisingly: ine of Ireland, and little or no resistance to these ernment Disaster posted throughout the city government first moves-the their wildest And yet the actual rebel- forces never m for which The Republic, dreams expected the Irish "to lion itself was nothing short there had been 4 uprisings in so when open reb- the preceding 120 years, had, of a disaster. they ellion did come It began on Easter Sunday along it seemed, finally come into tors quite unprepared for it.

being These initial hopes were to prove illusory though. Within days the rising crushed, and at 3.30 pm was April 29 Pearse on unconditionally surrendered to the brilisa lorces Within 4 days the execu- tions of the leaders began: by May 10, British Prime Minis- was telling the ter Asquith that there had Commons 14 73 executions, been sentences of penal servitude.

6 of hard labour and 1,706 from Ireland. deportations 'Ultimately there to (16 be 90 death sentences roughly carried out) and and 79 women 3,500 under sentence. arrest who had James Connolly, the wounded during been fighting was course to a chair and shot strapped on May 12. last of the leaders, Roger Casement, was hanged Prison Pentonville August 3 With the executions over crushed, the and the revolt British Cabinet felt

CONTEN

its eyes and began to turn pressing matters: mote Brusilov's offensive in Russia, the battle of Verdun and the sea battle at Jutland. calm which fol- But the lowed the rising and the exe- entirely decep- cutions was tive. Resistance reprisals and repres- The sion had not knocked the re- Irish the sistance out people; on the contrary, that inspired resistance was nationally and was to develop following years into in the the War of Independence. The fact that the rising it- self failed has provoked many times the comment that was nothing but a putsch-a conspiratorially arranged in by surrection executed with no handful of people base of support at all. On the surface such a view reasonable view seems enough: the rising was con- exclusively fined almost Dublin, was confined tiny insignificant minority of the country, numbering most 1,000. It was divorced from any mass alone could guarantee which Moreover the insurgents badly armed: they had were been relying on a shipment of from Germany, Friday-the 21-Good Apri ship carrying the weapons was intercepted by the British off the South of Ireland Cobb Before , it was scuttled by its harbour, Spindler commander, Karl this the On news hearing Chief of Staff of the Irish Re- Brotherhood, Eoin publican MacNeill, actually counter- manded plans for the rising and, through the pages of the anti-working-class, viciously anti-republican Irish Indepen- dent, called off the Easter which Sunday manoeuvres were to prepare for general- ised national rebe lion No putsch this, the leaders Despite in Dublin decided to go ahead their plan- and carry knowing that it would fail and knowing that they would die as a result. Yet for all that the Easter cannot strictly rising characterised as a putsch. In a Karl directed polemic Radek amongst others, writ- 1916, Lenin ten denied that the Irish rebellion was a putsch. putsch," he "may be employed wrote, when the attempt only revealed insurrection nothing but a circle of con- maniacs, spirators or stupid and has aroused no sympathy among the masses. centuries-old Irish "The having national movernent, passed through various stages of class combinations and interest, manifested itself, in mass Irish particular, Congress in Am- National which called for Irish erica... independence; it also manites-

SUCIALISI TRESS,

street fighting ted itself in conducted by a section of the urban petty bourgeoisie and a section of the workers after a long period of mass agitation, demonstrations, suppression Whoever newspapers etc. of calls such a 'putsch' is either hardened reactionary, or a incap. doctrinaire hopelessly social able of envisaging revolution as a living pheno.

menon. Discussion on Self-De (The Summed Up) termination (emphasis in original). The main point is that the did Tun Irish er to the direction not counter to of Irish which the and fars farmers were workers slowly but surely moving It was an event which both sparked off and anticipated a movement mass It against British imperialism.

had aiso been prepared for years the Drecoung had been Indeed, a decision taken as early as September stage a revolt, and 1914 to during the war detailed plan for the insurrection ning began in the summer of 1915.

Volunteers The bulk of those who 1916 came were to fight in from the Irish Volunteers, ar which had movement armed been formed in 1913 partly in response to the creation by the Northern Unionists of the Ulster Volunteer Horce resist whose object was to British attempts by the government to pro claim Home Rule in Ireland.

By the summer of 1914 this force numbered 180,000 and although most followed John Redmond into support 1914-18 war, some for the for 12,000 stayed, ready revolt. The Volunteers were aug- the forces of the mented by Citizen Army, Irish working-class militia based on Transport and Irish General Workers Union Dublin after the formed lock-out of 1913 under the Larkin leadership of lames and James Connolly. So, although the numbers physically taking part in the revolt were small, they were all tied to organisations which did have roots in the working bourgeoisie and class petty peasantry. Moreover, the leaders were 'stupid far so. They Denne had decided maniacs'. the basis that to rebel on 'England's difficulty was Ire- land's opportunity'. Torch himself saw the Connolly uprising as being the torch 'a Euro- which could cause conflagration that will pean not burn out until the last throne and the last capitalist bond and debenture will be shrivelled on the funeral pyre of the last war lord. The rebellion for Connolly was to be a blow against the imperialist war which he had opposed from the very out set. of the The misfortunes uprising was its Easter pIc maturity, the fact that it took place "before the European of the proletariat had revolt mature'. (Lenin op to anne cit). No party But perhaps a greater mi fortune was that i lacked party revolutionary Russian worker: the if for such possessed; had organisation bolshevik existed in Ireland, the bour revolutior geois democratic been carried ou could have the framework within socialist reorganisation of th De Valera in 191 country. absence of such The and a programme f party working-class independen and leadership of the natior struggle meant that throug out these years the workir class were suborumatel the national bourgeoisie.

James Connolly's speci this respect w failures be dealt with in a later arti in the series, but the grap of this sub demonstration seen in t dination can be which ois it between the bourgeois petit-bourgeois Irish and the working-el leers, Irish Citizen's Army. Army tail The Citizen behind the Volunteers, es allowing them to be memb the accepted unblinkingly Volunteers' programme codified in the 1916 Pros mation. This document which Connolly 1916 35 signed by member of the Governme possesses a radi certainly but nonethe tinge

SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday 23 Notember 1977 bourgeois nationalist programme. The leadership of the post 1916 National Movement was handed over to the thereby bourgeoisie which, weak and rid divided, were unable to of Ireland imperialist oppression. This was the birth Irish Republican Army. There can be no doubt that the struggle for inde- pendence was and with daring, tenacity courage. But there can also be no doubt that the leadership were determined at all stages confine it to the limits of to a bourgeois revolution. No attempt was made to demands integrate working class demands, with despite the fact that the years from 1917 onwards saw con- siderable working class agitation. December 1917 saw a suc- cessful strike by Belfast ship- higher yard workers wages; druggists and munici- Porta- pal workers struck in down in 1918, and by the end of that year the issue of the 44 hour week began to loom large. Strike action 1919 the Bel- In January fast District Committee of the Federation of Engineering Shipbuilding Trades and

(F.E.S.T.)

for ballotted strike for the 44 hour week.

The result was 20,225 to 558 for strike action although denounced by

F.E.S.T.

leaders in London, the Belfast workers secured support from shipbuilders the Clyde, and Tyneside, Humberside strike began on and the January 25, 1919. In one of the most impres- sive displays Protestant oI Catholic working class and Liberty Hall after bombardment during the rising solidarity-although the mass of. were Protestant. the strike man, Charles McKay was a Catholic-Belfast slowly ground to a halt. Shortly this after troops were sent in to re-open public services, and shortly after that again the strike ended, having settled for a 47 hour WEeK Nor was this agitation con- fined north. in south the membership of the

ITGWU

5,000 rose from in 1916 to 100,000 in 1920.

In September 1918, Dub- lin papers were comparing the events of situation to the 1913. And even at the start of 1919, industrial struggles noticeable were more in cities southern than the guerrilla campaign which was getting underway in the countryside of the south west. Indeed, the refusal of Irish transport workers to handle munitions or troops during these years was probably greater blow to the British than the effective IRA undoubtedly guerrilla tactics. Nationalists-Sinn this class agitation was a woe- full distraction from the main must wait, said Sinn Fein leader Election, interns official lunar did wait-sanctioning only token strikes against British oppres- sion, such as the one day anti- Indeed, it didn't stand any candidates Dec- at all in the ember 1918 elections, abdica- ting thereby the entire leader- But their very indiscipline Royal Irish Constabulary at from effec- Soloheadbeg to Sinn Fein. in Co. Tipper- prevented them tively carrying out their task, deaths, the first This failure-in a period "hese class British fatalities since 1916, which was in any case made when the working beginning of the difficult by the fact clearly wanted to fight mark the ostensible War of Independence. that the enemy imperialism, and when the based itself in the country divisions sectarian in the For the rest of 1919 the and adopted the 'hit and run' north could have been over- guerrilla campaign was direc- come (as exemplified in the tactics of all guerrilla groups.

ted largely at the RIC, with the Tans And though 1919 strike)-was nothing some spectacular results.

retaliated--burning Cork City short of criminal, and is an IRA units led by Michael 1920-they December important factor in explain- Collins ás Director of Intelli- proved incapable of suppres ing the continued imperialist gence, systematically infil- led oppression Ireland, the sing the nationalist destroyed trated and the divisions between movement. deep service, espionage Catholics and Protestants in effectively paralysing the Instead Sinn Fein and its the north, as well as labour's entire imperialist intelligence

IRA,

wing. dionnedi influ- inability decisively increased in and service in Ireland. contidence ence curtent southern Irish deaths in the general election of May With military politics. who will suffer most by this foreign war It is the you sons RISH-WOMEN, it is you bosom that will be sent to be mangled by shot and torn by shell; it is your father reared at your corpses will pave the way to glory for an Empire that despises you; it Is husbands and brotbers produce of Irish soil out of is sent country children who will starve at home if the

TO YOU WE APPEAL TO AID US IN THIS STRUGGLE TO SAVE IRELAND

FROM THE HORRORS

OF FAMINE.

FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN, if we allow the farmer to sell his crops for export our people will starve; if we allow the profit-monger to sell the products of our land to be exported to foreign Already we are threatened with famine prices: already the gaunt frame of hunger looms large in the outlook because the people think that you will do in 1914 as your fathers did Is it not better to take the risk and responsibility of preventing a repetition of this than to die as our fathers died of hunger and of fever begotten of famine?

prevent it. To the men And you can who are armed we say, Keep your arms and use them if necessary.

If God created the fruits

NO THE A HOSE SA REP T

not allow and ours.

AT HOME BY THE STRENGTH OF YOUR RIGHT ARM:

KEEP THEM AT HONE!

For Foldoms osted tend lear

GOD SAVE THE PEOPLE!

Published by National Executive Irish Trades Union Congress and Labour Party.

(Signed), I. J. EGAN, T.C.. J.P., Cork.

JAMES LARKIN, Dublin. O'BRIEN, Dublin. R.

CAMPBELL,

Belfast.

THAT C.I

JAMES CONNOLLY, Belfast O'LEHANE, Dublin MacPARTLIN, Dublin.

THOMAS

THOMAS CASSIDY, Derry R. P. @'CARROLL, T.C. Dublin P. I. DALY, Secretary.

CITY PAINTINE WORKS, SUBLIN.

An anti-war poster put out by the Irish TUC 1921 they won 130 seats out As it was Sinn Fein swept mounting and with troop of a possible 80. 1918 elections, halted by the the winning movements this electoral 73 the Irish Party's actions of transport workers, seats to at the Dublin IRA unit 6, and the Unionists' 26 the British Government success, first tried intensify carried out the most success- to ful urban action of the military repression. war Sinn Fein In January 1920, curfews when, on May 25 1921, they Customs the were imposed destroved was straight- on lnew poncy March, the 'Black seat of nine British adminis- separatist-boycott forwardly

SLOWIN

departments, render- and Tans'-whose names trative the British House their hybrid ing it a thousand times more from Commons, and form instead derived the black and khaki uniform- difficult

CONNIE

exclusively parlia- rICh "assist' country, with all records, files the ment (The Dail) based on the were sell regular forces. destroyed. etc. 1916 Proclamation. of with the failure Faced 21, 27 Sinn On January military this repression Tans accord- Fein representatives point there were some 60,000 ingly met in the Mansion troops and policemen in Ire Recruited by and large Dublin estab- and with growing land), lumpen-proletarian lished the first Dail, voting a from British working class agitation layers in Britain, the task of constitution, a Declaration of Lloyd against the the "Tans' was to perform the and pro- George decided to negotiate.

role the German Freikorps gramme of democratic rights.

1919-to On June 15th, he sent a an IRA had played day, letter to De Valera proposing and bludgeon into unit led by Sean Treacy and

LETOLSE

a peace conference; on July 8 submission all opponents of Dan Breen dril General Macready arnved killed two members of the imperialist rule. Street fiehting in the Easter Rising Mansion House with the peace proposals; and at noon July 11 1921 the truce came Into encel One other factor had been bringing about operative the ceasefire. The May elec tions-held under the Govern Act-had of Ireland HICl been designed to form the home-ruke of basis two governments in the country.

The six north eastern counties were to have their limited parliament own, were the remaining 26. Not feasible The IRA had opposed this scheme and it was clear that the south it was totall unfeasible But in the north the Unionists ruled the roost, and didn't although they want devolved government, they for it way opted as i a strengthening their positions Having comfortably won in the north in the May elec.

tions the Unionists, led by Si James Craig, formed a govern ment and on June 22, 192 King George V to came opened the six. Belfast and county Parliament. the Having secured foundations of : the Northern Ireland state, Lloyd George's strategy was to negotiate with the southern republicians more willing and woo those thereby compromise, splitting them. This he effectively did of securing acceptance recognised the treaty partition of the island; which did not recognise the south a an independent republic; and which, stipulated that those elected to the souther parliament shoule take allegiance to th oath British Monarch. Acceptable Clearly the Treaty fell fa short of everything that bar the pre been fought for ir ceding years, but it did pros acceptable to those represen ing Ireland's bigger farmer (eg. Collin and businessmen and Griffiths). was ultimately That it acceptable to all prove of Sinn Fein leaders period was not immediatel apparent. On January 4 1922. Dail voted to accept treaty by 64 votes to 5 The war with Britair mostes but within over, Civil War wes to engul south as the genis consolidate 1a

Page 8

IN REVIEW

GANDHI'S

EMERGENCY

EXPOSED

Dave Whitfield reviews 'An Eye to India' by David Selbourne, published by Penguin, price £1.50 below the 'subsistence level'.

State of Emer- The defy gency declared by Prime Such figures almost comprehension. Minister Indira Gandhi in They regularly invite the June 1975 was imposed response of religious defeat- with its full force for forms: the ism, various In long and terrible history of twenty months. itself testifies all too India During that period the well that the narcotics suffered Indian people piety and mysticism can only that degree oppression deaden such pain, not remove rivalled the worst excesses of

TO RODR

British colonial rule. The Emergency high- Yet the Emergency was aspect of the lighted every not as liberals claimed a break problems of India: economic from the 'democratic' tradi- crisis, political crisis, social tions of India since 1947, but crisis of every form. another intensified merely of the prolonged expression "Crisis crisis of Indian society.

In develop- of that particular, The

DIO POLLINS

ments during Gandhi's dicta- crisis are on a colossal scale: brought sharply into torship a land millon which could be self-sufficient focus the crisis of leadership in the working class. food, but where The central economic pro- million people 'survive' on or contradic- blem lies in the tions at work in the relation under-developed India's world economy

CLO

imperialism. As Selbourne makes clear: "one secion or me ruing classes must resist the agrar- which ian revolution needed by another for the development of capitalism; .

The other seeks to build, and partially succeeds in building indigenous an capitalism, held while itself near thraidom (circumscribed by shortages of resources, insut- tainance of Internal Security and ficient investment its Act. inherited position within the Behind all this was clearty division international the objective of Gandhi's the world Congress ruling faction economy, with its disorderly Party, to establish a corporate succession of slation and no.

state. coveries, bid In this preserve recession, and its control mark o. India for capitalist exploita- both capital and frontal attack on tion (P.11) took workers peasants Beset by these crushing priority. the Indian problems, Wages were slashed and economy was then assaulted strikes banned. The indepen- by the current international trade unions were dent of crisis capitalist profita- restricted and outlawed bility. the Indian according to Express Recession *The workers and the trade which aspire The effect was to produce accreditation with the gorern- and inflation: recession, are required to accept ment factory unemployment, and special obligations. new idle machinery; closures, prices spiralling upward at an from distance increasing wages. The poor peasants became more indebted; the landless labourers continued to starve were driven into bonded labour. And over all this presided the Congress Party, ruling the thirty years India for from independence. Here the landlords and industrialists were forced together in uneasy alliance against the workers and peasants. This bourgeois party gained mass support from its constant barrage of populist endless proclama- rhetoric: of faith not just tions but in socialism democracy, for India. Apparatus Selbourne firmly places the origins of the dictator- ship in the previous history of Congress rule, when the same methods had been employed but on a smaller scale. He then moves on to shou how the Emergency legisla- tion was implemented. Selbourne documents thoroughly the whole appara- repression: strict forced sterilisa- censorship; tion, mass demolition of poor beg- housing, ups gars, torture, detention with- all the out trial and provisions of the 1971 Main- "They are called upon to abjure strikes and agitational methods, to strive for higher production and productivity, subordinate their and to immediate sectional interest sake of long for for the national gains economy.' (p.181) conditions These WAlt acceptable Congress to Party's own stooge union- and to that of the pro-Mos- Communist Party of cow almost India Indeed any was acceptable to condition these Stalinists, as one of these leaders explained: "Achutha Menon told me clearly, and then retracted his when I opinion wrote down in my notebook, (that "there are no significant ideol- ogical differences between the CPI and the Congress' (p.186)

'DEMA

was a situation these moves attractive to foreign Yo y investment: low wages, extremely high rate of exploi- tation-and every concession the government. ("Wild Iron conjectures circulating are We nationalisation have no such plans", said the Prime Minister. "Our purpose to increase production. (p.236)) Dominant Multinational corporations dominant grew the over economy, ling 30% of the private cor- porate sector. The increase in economic exploitation developed together with the destruction of democratic rights and the whole battery of emergency They existed in a nicasure. inter-relationship complex that cannot be simply torn apart in analysis. Complex picture Selbourne's method of problem is this essentially to bring together five ways of seeing India: the of writer's own observation specific scenes; statistics of the condition of India; socio- analysis of those economic statistics: commentary • from India of different classes; and a special category, the propa- ganda of the dictatorship.

all set against These are an elaborate each other in to give a complex pattern picture of emergency India.

Selbourne argues that only 'combination of such SOCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday 23 November 1977 Modern equipment in Indian steelworks ledge can carry the reader to the heart of the matter'. Certainly the result is far more than a sterile collection impressions and opinions sub-titled The hook The Unmasking of a Tyranny, and its juxtaposition of the bland optimism oI grotesque lies of government with the 'information detailed reality they distort, generates a power which-at level-annihilates the dictatorship's pretensions 'democracy' and 'socialism' But that level is criticism, and long as marx observed ago, 'Not criticism, but revol- ution is the driving force of history' An Eye to India does not its analysis of emer- engage gency India with the contin- uing struggles of the Indian workers and peasants, to of product action that can develop those level. Crucially, Selbourne seems not to see the central impor- tance of building TevoL- leadership through utionary the fight for that programme leadership which stand as a genuine socialist alternative to which have betrayed Indian masses in the past, and left them prey to the right- wing Janata coalition that succeeded Gandhi in office.

But the book remains a mine of valuable material-or rather, it provides a supply of material, already extracted but only partly processed.

STATE CAPITALISM - POINTER TO

SWP'S RANK&

FILE POLITICS

As the Socialist Soviet Union and the West leading positions: Workers Party's Rank determined-despite the "This happened are not best efforts of the Stalinists- gradually, but by a succession and File conference by the fact that the Soviet qualitative changes by assembles at the weekend Union is not capitalist in any which the mode of operation few of the delegates will sense at all. of the party was brought into be giving a thought to the line with the demands of the Workers' state central bureaucracy. Each of question which created these changes qualitative the International Social- The Workers Socialist could only be brought about League holds that the Soviet ists in the first place-the by direct confrontation with Union is a deformed, corrupt, question of what sort of those elements in the Party workers' perverted state-a which, state is the Soviet Union.

for whatever reason, where political state revol- still adhered to the revolu Why on earth should any is a necessity and the ution tionary tradition." building of a Trotskyist party militant want to defend the (Socialist Worker, 5.11.77) Soviet Union? What is left, in an urgent task. whole thing is thus that country where Trotsky- But it remains nevertheless nothing presented as ists were hounded and killed, a state where the property Yet than a battle of ideas. to defend? relations overthrown and the from this vague old evasion, we When a Stalinist bureau- capitalist state machine are presented with the con- cracy rules through a police destroyed in 1917 have never clusion that state, when politics has been been restored. "By 1928 a new class had reduced to the fawning of the Despite Stalin, despite his taken power in Russia, It did it remains at its party sycophants, when successors, not have to engage in direci workers' base a workers' state. democracy has military conflict with the become a cruel joke, is it not This novel gain workers power time to say "There is nothing It held position. was by direct workers' because left of the revolution"? Trotsky, who had more power had not existed since than anyone to hate This is the logic of the reason 1918." SWP's position. the Stalinist bureaucracy, But many nationalisations Such questions come until these forces did not take place until 1918 The naturally. murdered him in 1940. either! In other the words not. After his exile Trotsky's October Revolution that the major task was to assess the "celebrate" Incredulous SWP claim to role of Stalinism as the great- given a total life of between counter-revolutionary They require an approach six and twelve months before force in international Ine "state capitalism" which goes beyond gut reac- began to workers' movement. sense" tion, "common and set in! He the other substitutes for Marxist approached Yet the

SWP

have to question as a Marxist, seeking analysis. ignore economic reality in the the material forces Many members of the SWP Wilch Soviet Union to uphold their Stalin, and the threw up incredulous that their views. social forces would should walch state still owns the 1 ne overthrow Stalinism. attacked because it assesses of means production, "state Soviet Union as controls the flow of foreign Conservative capitalist". They shake their heads at But Trotsky specifically the thought that the issue is rejected the notion that the considered more than had Stalinist bureaucracy academic interest. taken the place of the capital- Indeed would be ist class. difficult for rank and file He characterised Stalinism SWP members to think other- as a conservative force arising The wise. state capitalist

"TOEKCTS

position is more often stated because of real material diffi- than argued, and is given culties, determined to limit secondary importance to the of the revol- the pursuance membership. ution and settle for 'socialism Yet the question is not in one country'. secondary, nor is it academic.

Cliff and his But Tony It is the issue on which Tony followers exesses, but not Cliff and his supporters were historical the processes, Fourth expelled from the outward and visible form of International in 1951. the state. They do not like what Both 'capitalist' they see. is clearly It not socialism Cliff argued in 1951 that Therefore they conclude, since the Soviet Union and knowing only two colours, China were both "capitalist" black and white it must be states there was nothing to capitalism-"the of opposite and between choose them socialism". And if the private US imperialism. owners are not around then it the conclusion Drawing must be "state capitalism" from this, he and his They do not answer the followers refused to support obvious the the Stalinist-backed Korean Bolsheviks overthrew the liberation forces against relations in 1917, property world imperialism when war when were they restored? broke out. «We can give no support Transformation camp", they to either It is clear enough to the declared in Socialist Review.

SWP when the overthrow of Meanwhile Trotskyists capitalism took place in the internationally were braving a Soviet Union-October 1917.

huge jingoistic and Cold War The mammoth social witch-hunt in order to oppose upheaval and civil strife that the imperialist intervention brought about this trans- and support the Korean and formation was the first Chinese forcés. wealth to give the But in the late 1960s, with to the propertyless class in the witch-hunt largely abated society-the proletariat. and opportunist pickings to Yet according to the SWP be made from student working the class allowed hostility to the Vietnam war these gains fo be taken away the "International Socialists' again with not so much as a position-to give whimper or moan-and apologetic the

SUDOUIL

certainly no civil war. Vietnamese NLF Unconditional defence of The SWP leaders try to skate around this by claiming the Soviet against Union imperialism remains a touch- that the counter-revolution attitude SOme a correct took place over a perioo ol to international work. time; certain people with Relations between the reactionary ideas moved into reversed inside a year. exchange rate and does noi allow market forces to run The bureaucracy controls this state, does so through control of the work- class politically-not ing • of through exploitation private property relations.

Impressions revolution in Britain which toppled the ruling class from power have to expropriate the land and the factories and other means of production the Soviet Union would find „political revolution no need to alter the property relations. The method of the SWP is to pick on external impres sions and examine them 180- ated from political and social forces which produced them. And this inability to see through surface appearances is exactly the method that renders the SWP so impotent fighting the trade union bureaucracy in Britain. Outraged by the obvious scabbing and by sabolage Lenin in Red Square in 1918-the SWP theory suggests that the October Revolution was Red Army men-did they give up the gains of October without a fight.

union officials at Grunwick, Desoutters, 'at and the hotel unionisation strikes this year, the SWP have each time seen the answer not in con- fronting these officials and mobilising workers within the union against them. Instead they seek to sub- stitute themselves the organisation tol union. This is the method underlying Rank and Pile Ine Co-ordinating Committee, which has yet to lead a single struggle

SELLOUD

anywhere in the country. The fact that trade unions have been politically usurped by the bureaucracy does not that mean workers task is to build immediate unions or alternative bodies. Leadership Nor does the fact that political power has been usurped in the Soviet Union mean that workers need once property relations. cases the fight is for Trotskyist conscious political leadership to throw the parasitic bureauc racy and establish genuine workers' democracy. Trotsky spelled out ene link between these problems "The trade unions France, Great Britain, United States and other countrie the completely support counter revolutionary politic their Thi bourgeoisie. does not prevent from labelling them trade bony from supporting their pro. steps and

ITOD

defending them against the Why bourgeobie impossible to employ the same methods with the counter revolutionary workers' state? In the last analysis workers state a trade union which has con.

quered power. (In Defence of Marxism, The SWP distinguishes itself by its policy both on the unions and on the Soviet Union. This is why the issue of 'State Capitalism importance. to every SWP member.

LEPTU

PRE-

CONFERENCE

CARVE UP

Chapple, Frank extreme right wing leader Electrical of the and Numbing Trades Union pas hit the headlines on the of eve the union conference with an aston- thing 'left' speech. He warned the government ot to attempt to intervene o uphold the 10% pay policy shen negotiations begin for EEPTU's 50,000 the electricity embers in ipply industry. Credulity The rather speech rang Chapple's attempts end official action by power porkers last month. He claimed however that this allow was so as not to prejudice these workers to actics for the main pay talks.

Chapple stretched But predulity. to arm's length declared that, ben

DARLINGTON

The weakness that the mployer has been for in the arching strike for a arlington saralists' closed shop as found last week after probing by hours Press and estminster of the print leaders rions. week the strike This ecomes the longest the IT's history. Faced with the bal choice of escalating the bike in line with chapel and soup chapel policy or knuck- under to the threat "GA print leaders to pull out the dispute, the strike sent a resolution o the National Executive of NUJ calling on it to delay cziation. Tacit agreement Executive asked the who were only too happy to that proach Westminster to should be made, this *ith the aim of securing : agreement to a closed ite

INDUSTRIAL NEWS

PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report Chapple although he was loyal to the lysed lifts in office blocks and Labour government: flats all over the country.

"My first loyalty is to the people who pay my wages".

Disbanded days of this announcement Particularly outraged by this statement must have of the been members 3,000 ACAS specialise in shrewd- Cardiff

EEPTU

strong branch, which was disbanded by the right wing Executive only weeks before the Black- pool conference. was the The conference six yearly rules revision con- ference, Cardiff and branch due send a was strong left wing delegation to cratic dictatorship of Chapple fight democratisation of for the 450.000 strong union dominated which is entirely by right wing officials. Skilled workers at British Leyland, including Head off makers and electricians have set committee up

U LUL

Meanwhite

EEPTU

the which they hope will obtain have moved bureaucrats separate negotiating rights with a bid to head off the the within new corporate determined strike by 5,000 structure. lift engineers that has para-

STRIKERS' FALSE STEP

Since to face The rules revision con- ference. of the

CPSA,

meeting in Southport defeated last Monday of a highly campaign extreme right wing group aiming to introduce ballots postal for the election of the Executive Committee. This move, which had the cordial support of Bernard Levin, Tory party and who every right winger thought he could gain office Fleet Street witch- through hunts, was roundly defeated card vote by 116,094 to 94,793.

MIRROR

PAY

CRUNCH

sacked by their manage- NUJ members on Altogether about 250 journal- ists are involved. move has been made The under the watchful eyes of Fleet Street employers whose Publishers Assoc- Newspaper iation no longer negotiates centrally with the NUJ 'Hot weather' Instead each national newspaper group

CORCHUES

house deals with local chapels which has allowed both sides to ride a coach and horses through pay policy in agree- ments which have never been detailed. Mirror journalists were paid 'hot weather' money summer of 1976 during the Right wing fail in CPSA plot the This represented an ever most conference defeat for the right attacking the right wing for worse than may appear, niceties of constitutional pro- majority since cedure, , without dealing with

O-ARITOS

other way would have the real issues of wages and Ine been necessary to bring about fight 10% the change. limit. Something of the real Vetted feelings of delegates could be seen from the standing The right wing in group ovation which greeted an ex- the

CPSA,

member who spoke firemar 200,000 members the 15 on the FBU case. largest of the civil service unions, is based solidly on the First to suffer carefully vetted Civil Servants who work in the Ministry of The phoney campaign- Defence and other "security" «Week of Action''-for nex sections. The right wing group pro- week demandıng ine restor ation of the "pay research duces well printed material unit' will do little to tackle financed and Is sala to be the issue of Civil real the Truemid bv

JULO IUE

when they Servants' wages organisaLIon are always the first to suffer Since the right wing seized under government pay control in May last, it has controls. fought to make the union campaign is essential less democratic and has tried around on such olestions to sack at least one union demands for direct negotia- officer because he is a sup- tions and strike action where porter of the Militant paper. for wella Jessari The left wing opposition sliding scale of wages and of which is a confused amalgam public spending if conditions of Communist Party members are to be improved and the right wing Comes over a less extent the SWP, spent : are to be consolidated.

SEAMEN

THROW OUT

PAY OFFER

Meanwhile strike ballot papers have been issued to the Mer- shins officers which would offer 10½% Navy and Airline chant total wage bill, Officers Association, follow- ing the refusal of the ship- and which was linked to owners to improve on of £4 Phase offer the maximum, made in June. majority vote strike action, ships could rapidly be laid seamen working in up poTts all over the world as officer. refuse to sail them back to Seamen negotiators correctly Britain. the offer a: Another has pay dispute in the port stopped shippin 42 lock gate does not even keep pace with of Manchester keepers have stopped inflation over the last period.

work after rejecting offer pay 10% limit, para- will in rt lysing shipping in Manchester and ships waiting to get in.

Ambulancemen to - follow firemen? of the four unions involved- TGWU and

NUPE,

COHSE,

GMWÚ-only met last Friday to finalise the claim. All out strike action along side the firemen is the only way that ambulancemen will be able to win their claim ir arrogant the face of such action by the employers. Propaganda And • despite govern ment's NHS cuts which have drastically reduced the ambulance service, the ambul- ancemen will have to face the same propaganda of putting lives at risk as now confronts the firemen. It is the Lib-Lab govern.

will be the real ment that culprit. Like the firemen ambalancemen will find that 00 T808590028*9

PUBLIC SECTOR "WEEK OF

SOCIALIST PRESS,

Plans to axe 24,000 steelworkers' and jobs completely close of steel plants number over the next two years now drawn up by are Treasury officials. 12,000 jobs which alleg- edly make the industry "over- manned" at present, should be at. once, say the axed Treasury, headed by coalition cabinet minister Joel Barnett.

figures, BSC lost £200 million between April and September of this year. They claim that annual losses are now at the £500 million level, and that a £600 million is further needed for new investment.

Steamroller Such figures are deliberate- ly used at this point to steam- roller officials

LILO

acceptance of swingeing cuts in the labour force. No has real worker any these way of on checking statistics at present. Nor can steelworkers explain how such huge losses could be accumulated while „rev comande lo be exmoneo on the shop floor with wages slashed by inflation linked to rigid wage controls. The pronouncement that the industry is "overmanned" comes from management, not from committees of workers.

Meanwhile part of the for the slump demand the for steel government cut- deliberate backs in the construction in- the dustry, coupled with chronic low level of produc- tion in manufacturing industry. Both are prompted by the profits crisis of British employers. "Foreign" British Steel is now sugges- ting that a cutback of 40,000 to ov.vv m ne workorce would be necessary to reach what they describe as "foreign" staffing levels.

Discussions already are proceeding bureaucats to determine the size of possible buy-off davment to ensure thousands of "voluntary" redundancies.

Figures between £15,000 have been and thrown around. But the cost to the working class losing further thousands of jobs and the enforced speed-up that will follow for those that re- main cannot be calculated in Lills way It is obvious that the cost of maintaining BSC's 208,000 Javes

JUR MAN AT THE TOP

Heanesua" "3 ботетоет 19

MASSIVE THREAT TO

STEEL JOBS

WORKERS MUST

OPEN BSC BOOKS

ACIOUS

Sheffield steelworkers marching last year against sackings Where for instance is the workforce is a minor element "investment" such a monumental cash £600 million be spent? How many CrISIS. LO The starting point for any private suppliers are creaming action by steel unions must fortunes from the "national- ised"" steel industry? be to elect independent trade private steel with the How many commitees to make power to coopt sympathetic firms continue experts and to demand profits while the state sector saddled with immediate the the to remains accounts and plans of BSC investment and most costly production processes? management.

ACTION' KNIFED

The biggest through in every area of the protest public sector by manage- march since the Tory ment backed by the collab- Industrial Relations Act oration of union bureaucrats.

took place just over a been a Where there has from year ago. fight the shop-floor there has been a response. Eighty to one hundred The Elizabeth Garrett Ander- thousand workers, many involved protest for the son hospital remains open functioning-despite first flooded into and time. declare their government plans to axe London willingness to fight cuts in the over a year ago-as a result of work-in action. have still not And a similar work-in But they the Hospital been called on to do so by Hounsiow such that union officials. rallying support Instead 'natural wastage', management took the step of wreck backdoor deals and outright attempting to the forced hospital, and forcibly snatch- have been

CURS

HYDE PARI

A NIGHTMARE:

LAKE UP. MR O'FISHALL..

ITS ABOUT THE WEEK OF ACT

THE BASTARDS,

-NOT

CALLING FOR

AGAIN!

ACTION!

Sirs How many private manu- profit from steel facturers supplies subsidised through BSČ? These questions and many more remain to be answered drawing up workers' plan develop the steel industry And union leaders must be spell out that steel forced to workers jobs are not up for ing the remaining patients.

A shop stewards' call for against this protest action-called by the Com- mittee of London Area Stewards the Health in

(CLASH)

Service brought stoppages in many hospitals.

national union ofticials have remained silent local have and struggles rem ained deliberately isolated. all-out Demands for national action to stop the for restoration of cuts, government spending, and for social services to be protected against inflation through

TELL THEM IVE CANCELLED

THE COACHES, BUT I CAN TAKE

FOUR IN MY CAR

hege

INDUSTRIAL NEWS

REJECT HOTEL

SELL -OUT

The full details of last Wednesday's Hotel Worker Wages Council meeting have yet to be publisher that rises of 13%-17% on th However, it seems of around £32 have bee present minimum negotiated. Predictably the Tories, both in their press and Parliamer have attacked the rises as a serious breach of governmer incomes policy. Nevertheless employe such Tiny Rowlan Maxwell Joseph and Charl auction. despite public Forte the industry has will rest easy in t temporary shortage of work, that unie available be the work must KnOWICuRI officials • will be fighting f divided between the whole acceptance of this increase of loss Workorce. willoul which will increase take-home pay. nothing to end the paying not the starvation wages to worke product of workers or the in the hotel and cateri unions-and workers

TO DS

industry. not now bear the cost of it However such policy First test immediate fight mens taken against must up The first test of the settl

ISTC

bureaucrats such Noventil em menes Bill Sirs, General Secretary November when stated his who has aredus Centre Hotels resume negoti 'help" solve willingness tions on their claim for BSC's crisis-which can only £50 minimum wage mean his willingness to trade Stewards, who three wee in the jobs of his members ago rejected managemen Meanwhile the other side offer of 137 derisory of BSC's offensive against its; now be asked by be in workforce can seen time officials to regard management's refusal to offer 13% as a major victory more than 7% in the current hotel workers. round of pay negotiations.

In rejecting this betras and reaffirming their comm Sliding scale ment to the £50 minimu Job cuts are linked insep- claim the Centre branch can provide a lead i arably to wage cuts and to speed up all other branches with clair 1,000 GMWU members at pending. the Stanton Iron works Device Derbyshire are now on strike against demanding a tirise polied policy, As we pointed out in la week's Socialist Press it with a further 40p for every Wages Coun vital that the 1% rise in the cost of living.

structure is challenged by ti The dispute remains un- spread of the £50 claim official as yet, and messages This body is a class colla and donations should be sent oration device for perpert to B. McGinley 29, Glendon ing low wages paid Road, Kirk Hallam, Derby- industry ensunng shire. super profits continue made. Any fight for dece wages and conditions means fight to end this structure Events at Metropo -where workers have been e strike since October 10 fo £50 minimum wage look li sliding scale of spending have taking a new turn this wer bureaucratic fallen on deaf with management impleme carNow, a year later, public ting threats of dismissal.

sector union chiefs have set Support that no-one prove cares about the They cuts. Such an act challenges t have called a Parliamentary right of trade unionists lobby with restricted dele- strike ove wage. gations. conditions The Ser And such is the level of still out on workers stri frustration at union officials' must not be allowed to passivity that some union victimised in this wa members are even refusing to GMWU branches througho protest petitions against sign the industry demar must Le Curs that the union leaders take i This situation can only be a fight for their reinstateme transformed by • fight in and support those the public sector unions for a strike with finance and dei principled leadership and gations on the picket lines serious programme of strike action.

SOCIALIST

*

PRESS

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SOCIALIST

PRESS

SADAT'S VISIT

DELIGHTS

IMPERIALISTS

of Egypt's tility towards the oppressed The visit masses of the Middle East.

Sadat to Anwar last weekend This Jerusalem must have part of was not simply publicity than the strategy of US imper- international diplomacy since and Chamberlain's visit to Munich ialism to isolate in 1938. crush the national rights of the Palestinians. imperialist every It also a desperate was and media effort by the bourgeois Sadat world capitalist regime to abandon the battle execration of against the Zionists in order of to solve their desperate econ- Maudlide Palestinians. omic crisis at home. The television showed enormous crowds of If there is one thing that security men unites the imperialist puppet government in Israel and the and the dutiful applause oi Arab bourgeois nationalists, it evely land grabber and gangster.

is their common fear and hos- Rolls коусе stay firm on pay strike Rolls or return the ballot papers.

An attempt by strikers management to Royce well clearly old end the 10-week all their demands. North the strike at Management London Park Ward plant has failed. production. the Management, using Society, Reform Electoral had tried to ballot individual The compromise pressure strikers on package proposed on Novem- Royce Rolls ber 1. deal comprised This erised offer of a 10% wage increase (the former offer was adjacent to increased sick pay of Hythe 5115 and are per week previously increased begin work there. 5:0 week), per soliday pay of £64.68 gross an agreement to scrap ine present bonus scheme.

increase, Conditional pay at average however was deal are now within grasp.

this strikers ramional gering to widescale revision agreements. Donations Lucas

E BESTER

Middlesex. ==: sorriete TV did not What the Palestinian show was the refugees who have been left international visit behind in their camps to the received Israeli mercies of tender any piece of arid fascist para- bombers military forces. The public speech of Sadat mentioned a national home It received the applause of for Palestinians, but as even exploiter Times correspondent the the entire pointed out, Israeli PM Begin and the did not find it necessary to supporters include any such spence. the rights for speak for anyone national rights pictures except Zionist settlers. This bilateral discussion is and journalists the terms in exactly Zionists have always Zionist parliamentarian wanted to negotiate 'peace' between states already set up now Constable of Chief placed to win Manchester, Greater James Anderton, was the being are who recently con- forced to make greater con- man cessions in an effort to restart negotia- ducted secret tions with the National of Compromise? the Front on route their march, in order to is further stop it being attacked by intensified by the fact that last week the working class. announced that it had bought provided He also a 32,000 square feet factory police thousands the struck plant protect Martin Webster. Willdesden, Road, Now he has spoken out in obviously eager to public right. his own ln a in Preston Anderton lecture The strikers' demands for showed how openly political a 17% across the board wage the police are becoming. His sick pay speech also shows that the average earnings, for holiday of the development mass earnings and thuggery the Grunwick for an improved productivity Special by the picket Group is not an The biggest danger seems Patrol isolated example but part of a to be in the possibility of a general trend compromise settlement which he He began by saying could involve laying men off.

would like to see the future Buck to: "a future in which we can be Avenue. Harrow. more thankful. knowing that at least we are working for.

not against each other whole and ignoring populations whose existence not even acknow- they do ledge. Bloody This latest step in Middle East diplomacy has confirm- Trotskyists have what always said about the struggle for Palestinian national rights -they will never be achieved the in any alliance

TRIES

Arab bourgeoisie. As predicted in after time the Time week's conflict of interests has been the shown between fighters against Palestinian mitted by Zionism and the ruling groups throughout the Arab world Heathrow at times in a most bloody and instead bitter way. increase Programme tivity deal. Yassir Arafat of the Pales- detailing their offer tine Liberation Organisation Airways described the visit correctly for Zionism as a sure gan and imperialism" However these forces will out that the shift pay only be defeated by a move- incremental increases ment with a programme to rally the Arab masses against have been Zionists and their DOTe the Arab friends bourgeoisie. productivity

POLICE CHIEF

ated British

SPEAKS OUT

concerned men other words where everyone works for capitalists and none clause against them). He went on: in crease l "We could begin by hard that honour, ensuring dedication were work and

DACK

justly rewarded . and that non-conformists, the social idlers, parasites, malingerers, cheats and spongers, frauds, were criminals unrepentant shrift very short given indeed" One can only assume that about when he talki conformists he means pickets, those who strike against the and demon- Social Contract "Idlers" are presum- strators. ably the unemployed. This is confirmed by his next statement: 'We must stop pampering Among those who bite with increas hand fury every single ing that feeds them. They, too, Oxford £7.59. have their responsibilities, but invariably command they only their rights. that would appear discussed Anderton mON than the secret route of the NF march with Webster!

HEATHROW

CLAIM REJECTED

scheme-which the hore to last Press' time negotiate 'Socialist January- introduction British Airways have rej- when they will until

AOTI

ected the pay claim sub- men a lump sum for pay the engineers the first four months. If industrial action "causes and Airport loss of productivity" the mer offered a 10% will forfeit that money. and a produc Division The European Shop Stewards Com- mittee has met and rejected In a four page document the company offer. It remains British whether the be seen management Overseas Division will do the that they are prepared to pay same. There is some talk of all grades £6.75 a week extra being prepared to them But British Airways point discuss and with management about a possible productivity will. between deal. agreeu The British Airways offer them and the unions involved inadequate and are due for payment in totally restore the living standards of will now only Heathrow engineering paid on the condition that a LIlT workers. Shop stewards must deal is negoti- their national off dis- officials to break are

ALWAYS

cussions on such an offer and proposing a productivity deal prepare the membership for which is open ended as far as indefinite strike action in sup- altering conditions of work is port of the original claim, the shift pay and the incremental The maximum increase the could receive regardless increases. time other At the same of the extent of the changes sections of the 55,000 strong is £3.37. Part of the produc- workforce on the airport who tivity deal includes a no-strike submitted have themselves claims substantial wage order to ensure that a should be called on to lanc has taken place BA manager productivity simultaneous strike action in support of their own claims.

ment are proposing to hold the payments

MONTHLY

FUND

Another good week has brought us within striking distance of our monthly target of £600. With one week to go to the end of the month we have £509.85 in hand, of which £172.34 was added during the last seven days.

£8.75; Hull contributions received were Birmingham £10; South London £15; Anon £70; Hackney £1; Rally collection £50; Health Service workers £10; One final push is needed to reach the full amount.

All donations should be sent to: Socialist Press Monthly Fund 31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR