Polish crisis

Scan page 2

tunity for the Unionists to pull out-how, they asked, could they ever think of discussing with a man who believes in amnesty for IRA men?

Mason and Neave's rage is thus not directed at Lynch's blather, but at the fact that it spoiled their little "round of talks", and scuppered their attempts to give Northern Ireland independent administrative functions.

But even if the talks had gone on they could not have solved, even partially, the Irish question, precisely because there is no bourgeois democratic solution to that Lynch's speech may have caused a flurry in diplomatic circles, but it altered not one whit the situation existing in Ireland today.

ITALY From Front the CP leadership.

It also raises the possibility of a new election which CP leaders would tell their rank and file would lead to CP losses.

The Stalinist leaders will most likely try in this way to patch up some new formula for supporting the Christian Democrats in parliament.

But no such solution can be expected to last long.

The CP leaders' treachery cannot any longer be hidden from the Italian working class.

There is no possibility of gaining mass backing for any kind of deal with the party of Italian capitalism.

It is becoming increasingly evident to Italian workers that each "development" of the CP's policy is in reality the same as the previous one.

Each and every one of them imposes more heavy burdens on the workers.

In two day 'conference' of the Polish CP last week, First Secretary Edward Gierek revealed the utter bankruptcy of the parasitic caste which constitutes the Polish bureaucracy.

Gierek pathetically admitted "problems, even "penury', in housing and food supplies but offered only empty promises to resolve them.

Prices

More food would be imported-but, added Gierek ominously, prices would have to go up.

It was the refusal of the Polish working class to accept such cuts in its standard of living which led to the overthrow of Gierek's predecessor Gomulka and in 1976 rocked the Gierek bureaucracy itself to its foundation.

Gierek wooed the Catholic leadership and appealed plaintively to "all patriots" to contribute to the "prosperity of our fatherland".

Such an open abandonment of any pretence to base himself on the working class reflects the fact that the interests of the working class and the interests of the Stalinist bureaucracy are mutually hostile.

Parasitic clique

In the last four years workers have shown Gierek and will show again, that they are aware of that and are prepared to fight Gierek's parasitic clique.

Some sections of the bureaucracy have no stomach for this fight-something reflected in a recent letter pleading for "more democracy" by fourteen leaders of the CP, including former head of state, Eduard Ochab.

A spokesman of the party dismissed this protest by saying that the signatories of the letter were "entitled to their opinions" but were very old and should be allowed to end their lives "with dignity and peace"

"To take no position on their behavious is a humanitarian attitude"

But Gierek knows that Ochab's tame opposition is a reflection-however distorted-of that of the working class, which he cannot deal with SO contemptuously.