OCR POLICIES Defend basic riahts

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As the capitalist crisis deepens the democratic rights of the working class increasingly come under attack.

This general tendency takes many forms. Legislation is prepared which gives the police a free hand to harass the immigrant communities.

Efforts are made to remove the elementary right to mount an effective picket in an industrial dispute.

Laws like the Prevention of Terrorism Act are introduced, and we see the increased use of troops alongside the police force.

The WSL and Socialist Press have fought to show what lies behind such developments.

is an international one. in The assault on basic right Italy the Moro kid lapping has been used to ncrease repression against the workers' movement in general -yet the state still receives the eager support of the Communist Party Stalinists.

In countries like Chile the onslaught on basic rights has been taken to its conclusion witn the imposition of military-police Bonapartist regime on the working class.

The WSL, and genuine Trotskyists internationally. stand at the forefront of every workers' struggle ir Ive of basic rig ms holds true whet icr the attacks of the ruling class are fronted by Tories reformists, Stalinists fascists Decades of bit have been necess the right to vote, organise, the right march, and so on.

Sham

The working class must now defend these rights however limited they may be, and use them in the battle to establish socialism.

Of course in one sense democracy for the working class under capitalism is always a sham.

While the capitalist class dominates economic life it dominates all other spheres of society.

To put it sunply, freedom of the press' means much more to the man with the capital to set up and run a print shop. For the working class such rights' and fredoms are chronica ly restricted and limited.

Moribund

Yet even ese into conflict ith ments of capitalism The demands the elim all obstacles to a dramatic all obstacles increase in the ite ation It is t ter ary to win the right to to publish, rights x ms the res uire.

mori sund stem inatic n of drai natk ol ex pluit o pr capil to the called people The overall utiona: dence and its The -ettis: wilch stands vehind the increased reliance of guvernments upon the strengthening of the state apparatus, and the growing independence of police and army.

For this reason the WSL stands opposed to all measures which strengthen the hand of the state against the working class-even when they appear to be of a progressive type.

The recent example of the Ilford by-election proves the correctness of this. The call by reformists, Stalinists and revisionists for the state to act against the fascists ended up with the Public O der Act being used against the labour movement itself *Democrats Democratic rights can not defended today by appeals state. In fact the so'democrats' are the least of all capable of ng democracy working class must itself as part of the struggle for its revoly political indepenfrom the ruling class agents. defence i democratic rights is a complete fiction if it is seg arated from the overall programme of transitional demands necessary to prepare the working class for the seizure of power From time to time ultra groupings and vays on ine maren aemanaing individuals have said that it is not necessary, and even wrong, to defend democratic rights. After all, they say, isn't the whole thing a sham under capitalism anyway?

Lenin long ago answered such critics:

"But Marxists know that democracy does not abolish class oppression. It only makes the class struggle more direct, wider, more open and pronounced, and that is what we need.

The fuller the freedom of divorce, the clearer will women see that the source of their 'domestic slavery' is capitalism, not lack of rights.

The more democratic the system of government, the clearer will the workers see that the root evil is capitalism not lack of rights"

Che case cannot be put any more clearly than this. Democracy creates the best conditions for the struggle for socialism.

Though this may not always appear obvious in bourgeois-democratic Britain, it will be so to anyone who has tried to organise the revolutionary struggle under conditions ot rascist dictatorDULIALID IKEDS, Weanesaay a Apru, 19/0 rage 10

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In a bitter lesson for all those who argue that class collaboration and no-strike clauses save

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OXFORD NIL FASCI COMM