PRINT BARONS FOLLOW LEYLAND Cameron speech shows that ENDANGERS WORKERS STATE

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As the pangs of its deathagony become more acute, imperialism finds all but the most desperate remedies useless to relieve these torments.

The British Chief of Defence Staff's speech in Peking was a further symptom of this ravaging crisis.

At one level, Sir Neil Cameron's visit to China was part of the coalition government's drive for increased arms sales, which has already taken ministers and senior officials of the state bureaucracy to iran and some of the other most reactionary regimes in the worid.

While partly aimed at boosting exports, these moves have also been directed at bolstering the defence of capitalism against all those forces which threaten to engulf its rule.

Open declaration

Overtures to the Chinese leaders have played a crucial role in advancing these tactics. But the Marshal of the Royal Air Force caused the Labour Party leaders some embarrassment by his crude and open declaration of intent.

Speaking to officers of the Sixth Tank Division, Cameron declared that:

"Our two countries are coming more and more together. This must be good because we both have an enemy at our door whose capital is Moscow"

"There are men here with great spirit who will fight their tanks to the death if needed in the defence of China"

«We must share, I believe, our common experience so that we are in the best position to take on the Soviet tank force if this should ever be necessary"

Authorised

In justifying his remarks, this loyal servant of the British ruling class explained his motives:

'I'm certainly not speaking for the British government, 4000G except the British government has authorised that I go to China and have discussions on defence philosophy with Chinese leaders"

This incident raises in a sharp form issues of crucial importance to the working class. Just who was Cameron speaking for? Why can imperialist agents act to drive a wedge between workers' states?

Drunk

None of these vital questions can be answered by the Labour 'lefts' who called with impotent rage for the dismissal of Cameron, or meekly suggested that the Marshal had been drunk.

Callaghan and Defence Minister Mulley countered these bleatings by criticising the phrasing of Cameron's speech, without in any way rejecting an ounce of its content.

Despite this bland response, it is clear that the 'Defence' Chief had been given no authorisation to make any such speech.

His statement was further evidence of the power and authority possessed by high ranking figures in the apparatus of the bourgeois state-figures like 'Colonel B', whose sole responsibility is to safeguard the interests of the ruling class.

But there must be more a suspicion that the speech had been discussed in advance with Tory leaders.

With the 'Colonel B' affair and the issue of forces' pay, the Daily Telegraph has led sections of the bourgeoisie in a hue-andcry as to the 'irresponsibility' of the Labour Party, and its inability to defend 'the nation'-that is, the capitalist state.

A central plank of the Tory alternative to the policies of 'detente' and popular frontism, pursued by social democrats and liberals, has been to cultivate an alliance with the Chinese bureaucracy against the bureaucracies of the Soviet Union and the other deformed workers' states.

Exploit rivalries

In their visits to China, Heath and Thatcher have been in the vanguard of this imperialist campaign along with Nixon and Kissinger.

Their objective is quite simply to exploit the rivalries within world Stalinism, so as to paralyse DAHthe workers' states in internecine strife.

But the possibilities for such a manoeuvre have been created solely by the bureaucracies themselves.

Sabotage

Parasitically dependent on the gains of the October Revolution and the nationalised property relations in the deformed workers states of eastern Europe, Cuba and east Asia, each national Stalinist bureaucracy has substituted the doctrine of 'socialism in one country for the revolutionary principle of proletarian internationalism.

In practice, revolutionary struggles internationally had to be restrained and sabotaged if Stalin and his successors were to maintain their privileged status.

While suppressing democracy within the workers' states and preventing the development of socialism, they worked to preserve the international balance of forces with imperialism.

Inevitably this counter-revolutionary strategy led to conflicts between the national sections of Two Essays on Post-war Soviet missile Stalinism, according to their specific national requirements.

The antagonism of the Chinese bureaucracy to the Kremlin clique provides the major example of this tendency.

Every independent struggle of the international proletariat is weakened or crushed by the demands of the diplomacy employed by these rival gangs of traitors.

By these methods, the parasitic cliques at the same time threaten the very property relations on which their power rests, and reveal their inability to defend the deformed workers' states against the ambitions of imperialism.

While we condemn every counter-revolutionary action by these Stalinist leaders, we call on all workers internationally to take up the unconditional defence of both the Soviet Union and the deformed workers states against imperialism.

It is the task of revolutionaries to lead this opposition to the designs of international capitalism for the destruction of the progres. sive property relations in these states, which represent a gain for all workers.

WHILE PLEDGES for our Special Fund and details of money raising schemes continue to arrive at our office we have only received £37 in cash (including f5 from a comrade in Denmark) over the last seven days. they struck over pay and manning.

The management attack is in the classic mould. A statement sent out to all the print unions declares that senior management spent their whole time, trying to solve disputes, prevent disputes or clear up the after-effects of disputes.

The letter said that 7.7 million copies of the newspapers-20% of total output-has been lost in the first quarter of the year.

"Suspension will last until we are wholly satisfied that publication can be restarted on a basis of reasonable statt, etticient working and uninterrupted The Times is seeking no strike clauses, a procedure system which will stall off all action, and drastic cuts in staffing levels.

The print response can be seen from the cynical comment on the letter from Les Dixon, president of the NGA:

"We have to take it that Times Newspapers are sincere and genuine in what they say and for our part we accept that there has to be change in the face of threats from the rest of the media.

"It is about time something was done about Fleet Street, and we are all opposed to unofficial stoppages"

Profits Times Newspapers are not bluffing when they say that the profits of the company are shaky. But the defence of working conditions and jobs nevertheless starts from a demand to open all the accounts, working practices and plans of the company to elected trade union committees from the chapels.

The militancy of the workers must be placed behind programme to take the offensive against the employers.

Instead of a policy of redundancies the workers should advance work sharing on full pay without a single loss of a single job.

No powerful national newspaper should be in the hands of private capitalists. The workers should demand the immediate nationalisation of the Times and Sunday Times-without a penny in compensation to the owners.

Management of the newspapers must be placed under the control of the workers, financed without strings by the The timing of the Times Newspaper letter is connected with the dispute in Thomson Regional Newspapers where journalists at Hemel Hempstead, Reading, Cardiff, Middlesborough have all been sacked and others are on strike in support over a claim for extra money over and above the 10%.

Journalists at the Times and Sunday Times had been asked to hold mandatory chapel meetings to consider supporting industrial action. The quickest repiy to management would be for those meetings to go ahead and strike action in support of the regional journalists to be called.