Crushing answer to Lib-Lab policies

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"In Defence of a Revolutionary Orientation"

statement on our struggle against sectarian r ons of Marxism which led to the split of imbers from the Workers Socialist League Nkomo shoddy deal with any figures willing and able to betray the revolutionary struggles of the Zimbabwean masses for self-determination.

British socialists must take up the fight against this latest sell out attempt, and pass resolutions in labour movement bodies demanding:

*No recognition to the Muzorewa-Smith regime!

Build political and material suport from the labour movement to the black liberation armies!

Throw the right wing agents of imperialism oi it of the labour movement-l ireak the Lib-Lab coalition! not The Labour Party suffered a crushing defeat at Ilford-a defeat born of nearly three years of rigid wage-cutting pay policy, social service cuts, record unemployment and concerted attacks on working conditions.

It is worth making this point at a time when the cohorts of servile apologists for the Labour leadership are chiming in unison with the most cynical observers in the bourgeois press, stressing Labour's "achievement" in limiting the size of the Tory win.

Anti-working class

The sole "achievement" that counts is that a Labour majority of nearly 800 was turned into a Tory majority ot 5,500.

If this were repeated in a General Election, Thatcher would sweep to power, to implement a battery of measures even more viciously anti-working class than those undertaken by Callaghan and Of course the swing to the Tories was less than many had expected, and less than in previous by-elections.

But since Labour was exhibited for all to see as a party completely unable to offer policies to benefit the working class, and tied to the coat-tails of the Liberal Party, it is hard to see workers drawing any great comfort from this fact.

Spawning ground

They have been treated to the sickening spectacle of the arch wage-cutters and dole queue millionaires that make up Callaghan's right wing Lib-Lab cabinet parading themselves as anti-fascists.

Denis Healey, for instance, had the temerity do describe Tory leader Thatcher as a recruiting officer for the National Front-when Healey himself as Chancellor by implementing Tory policies has created the •social conditions of falling living standards and decimated social services that provide the spawning ground for the fascists.

And Home Secretary Merlyn Rees, even while thundering about preserving "peace on the streets" and warning the National Front to "watch it" dealt a major blow in practice at the workers movement by invoking a two-month legal Thatcher its Second Annual Conference ban on marches the London area.

This attack on basic democratic rights is just the latest reflection of the increasing turn by the Lib-Lab government to use of the state apparatus to hold back and attack the . independent mobilisation of the working class.

Last summer Sa W thousands of police turned out to escort scabs through mass pickets at Grunwick and huge police squads to protect National Front meetings and marches.

The firemen's strike saw the most massive military scabbing effort since the 1926 General Strike-and wa was followed by threats that similar measures would be used against petrol tanker drivers should they strike.

Now every independent move by workers to crush the emerging forces of the National Front are blocked by police sent into action by self-professed anti-fascist Merlyn Rees.

And the Police Federation is openly talking of the need for additional forces to police a General Election campaign -to general murmurs of approval from government ministers.

That the National Front was reduced to 2,500 votes under such conditions is no thanks to the hypocritical breast beating of reformist leaders.

Rees It is an expression of widespread revulsion against the fascist politics of the NF, whose supporters are now consolidating into simply brutalised and vicious squads of anti-union, racist thugs.

The NF cannot be defeated peacefully through the ballot box. It must be confronted by a workers' movement mobilised in independent struggle in defence of living standards, jobs and working conditions.

This means a clean break from the reactionary policies of the Lib-Lab coalition.

Workers must demand those 'left' MPs that claim to oppose the ban on marches take action to break the Lib-Lab coalition that imposed it and campaign throughout the Labour and trade union movement to oust the Callaghan-Healey leadership.

In the course of this struggle workers will recognise the need to go beyond the 'left' rhetoric of these leaders and construct a revolutionary leadership within the workers movement.

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