Years of Socialist

Scan page 4

PRESS 1977 was the year of the British Leyland toolroom strike; the Lib-Lab Coalition; mass picketing of Grunwick; the rejection of a formal Phase 3; the imposition of the 10% pay limit; the firemen's strike -scabbed on by the army and the TUC; and the sellout of the miners £135 pay claim. Internationally, there were major developments in Southern Africa and the spread of Popular Front type governments itor throughout Europe. PRESS And it was the year in which Socialist Press, the only paper to have consistently analysed and provided programme and perspective in the course of these upheavals, acquired the material and political resources to go from fortnightly to weekly publication, beginning last October.

The Third Anniversary of Socialist Press is for us an occasion both to look back on the record established by the paper in the class struggle, and to work for further expansion and development of its sales and coverage.

Daily fight

From the very first edition of Socialist Press six weeks after the formation of the Workers Socialist League (from forces expelled from the Workers Revolutionary Party) the programme and policies we have put forward have drawn not on surface impressions of events, but on analysis of the experience of our members' daily fight for the Trotskyist programme within the working class.

This has made our paper different from any other left wing paper.

It has been this strength Lister examines the record Press' over the past year. that has enabled Socialist Press to arrive at the correct analysis that the working class would not tamely submit to Phase 2 of wage control.

Coalition

It led us to forecast the explosion of militant struggles on pay that eventually took place in the first months of 1977 and brought the Leyland toolroom strike, and major struggles at Heathrow Airport and Port Talbot steelworks.

And while almost every other left' group took Callaghan at his word when he gave assurances that the Lib-Lab pact was simply a parliamentary arrangement, Socialist Press produced special edition to ram home the fact that what was involved was an undeclared coalition to enforce a third phase of wage control.

Refuted

The opportunists and sceptics who doubte d this analysis have been amply refuted by events.

Despite a summer period in which union conference after conference made it The first OCIALIST -PRESS BANG [JAIL FOR' AIN PLA 'OPENING THE BOOKS?

BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD SOCIALIȘT PRESS SPECIAL ISSUE The Special issue Lib-Lab coalition impossible for the TUC to endorse a formal Phase 3 of wage control, Chancellor Healey, in harness with Liberal leader Steel, unilaterally declared the imposition of a 10% limit on pay.

And it has been the refusal of the TUC leaders to challenge that limit, linked to solid parliamentary support on wage control from the Liberal Party and complete prostration from the spineless LEFTS MUST FIGHT NOW DEFE D PORTUGUESE VOLUTION I First issue on newsprint EDITION ( -Whe contralled the rating?

LEYLAND • Why are plant results suppressed? BALLOT - How mary workers knew what the deal contaRts?

ISH CIAL Miners must pr ITRACT SOC CIAL IFLICT Cor weekly Socialist Press Labour "lefts' that has preserved both the Callaghan-Healey government and state control of wages.

Only Socialist Press has consistently shown that the government policies of wage-cutting, mass unemployment and social service cuts can only be defeated through a fight which will break the Lib-Lab coalition and remove its class-collaborating supporters in the unions and "Regain and Defend Living Standards" we were able to expose and fight the manoeuvres by the union bureaucrats who throughout the summer attempted to create enough elbow room for the introduction of a formal Phase 3.

We spelt out the necessity for an end to all wage controls, for full catching up claims, and for agreements to include cost of living clauses to protect against inflation.

International struggle And we traced week-byweek the betrayals of the TUC leaders who consciously isolated and betrayed the firemen, allowing mass military strike breaking bigger than any time since 1926, in order to preserve the Lib-Lab coalition government.

These struggles take place as part of the international struggles of the working class for its political independence and against capitalist and imperialist exploitation.

Socialist Press has closely followed the liberation struggles in Southern Africa, the fight against Franco's heirs in Spain, the battle against vicious dictatorships in Latin America, and the age-old struggle for self-determination of the Irish people.

An eleven part series on Ireland has been a part of the theoretical and historical material presented in Socialist Press over the last year, which also included an important series on the rise of fascism in pre-war Europe.

Break from The emergence of new class collaborationist 'Popular Front' governments-comprising social democrats and PHOTO: Andrew Wiard (Report) Parties-has been analysed continuously with the consistent demand. that the workers' parties break from the bourgeoisie and form a And Socialist Press has carried series of articles analysing the "Euro-communist parties and their leaders' adaptation to the capitalist class in their "own" countries.

Alongside this basic coverage we have waged a fight against the unprincipled drive for "Socialist Unity" which has led the self-styled "Trotskyists" of the International Marxist Group to formally abandon their party press and, more important, to drop any pretence of a fight for the principle of defence of the Soviet Union against imperialism.

Important And we have exposed the ultra-left and opportunist posturing of the Socialist Workers Party which tailors its demands and actions not to workers' objective needs but to the prevailing mood of the working class.

The third year of Socialist Press has therefore been an active and an important one.

We urge every reader to play a role in ensuring that this work can be taken further in every field in our fourth year.

Take an extra copy of the paper to sell at work or to a friend. Give a donation-however small or large-to the Socialist Press Monthly Fund.

Give us the material basis to expand our work and improve the paper as the vehicle for the Trotskyist programme in the workers' movement.

----- pull-quotes -----

REJECT PHASE II F COALITION IN THIS

sOCIALIsT -PRESS *

SACK WILSON TO DEFEND JOBS! TO DEFEND JOBS

SOCIALIST FIRST WEEKLY PRESS including