Socialist Press no. 4

Mass Movements in Portugal

WORKERS REACH FOR POWER

SOCIALIST

PRESS

Who is to rule Portugal? That is the question posed by the new stage in the development of dual power, which has foll- owed the attempted right-wing coup of March 11th. It is an unmistakeable landmark in the development of the European revolution. As news of Spinola's bid to regain power came over the radio, barr- icades went up in the working class districts of Lisbon and Oporto.

Armed workers blocked the main roads into and out of the cities, searching cars for weapons, known right-wing politiciens, army officers and fleeing capitalists. Over 100 were arrested. in many cases the road blocks continue as workers mop those who collaborated for years with the Caetano dictator- ship. Up and down the country the hundreds of organs of workers' power - occupation committees, rank-and-file soldiers' organisat- ions and committees of poor far- mers and tenants • ramea to opp- ose the coup. By its armed inter vention the Portuguese working class has shown that, far from trusting the Armed Forces Move- ment, it is reaching out towards seizing its own power. The universal slogan of workers n Portuguese cities is "Death to Fascism. A mass united front against the coup emerged. The Daily Telegraph reported : "Bitter electoral bickering between Communists and Soc- ialists was forgotten as party flags and banners mingled and support- ers linked arms in the parade down the Avenida de Libertad. Jeering slogans were directed against the Popular Democrats, the other civilian components of the Prov- 1s1onal Government, under const- ant attack from the extreme left."

In the immediate attermath of the attempted coup has come a and farmers, of large sums paid to political shake-up of the two support the right-wing capitalist main classes. The lead was taken parties and the moderate Pop- by the bank workers. They had ular Democratic party. Photo- copied details of correspondence cheques, deals and statements letied the Caetano regime with strikes and other industrial action have been published revealing in the years before the overthrow the whole system and its corrupt- of fascism on April 25th 1974.

101. On March 14th they marched These exposures have gone on in 15,000 strong through the streets wholesale defiance of the 'normal" of Lisbon in support of the decis- confidentiality of commercial ion by the Provisional Government and tinancial secrets. They reflect to nationalise Portugal's banking the fact that the government's system 'nationalisation' of the banks was intended only to contain the real

WORKERS CONTROL

control that had already been established by the working class This decision had come after the What is required now is workers' banks had been taken over by management of the hanking system. Tor three days, unal tei demands for workers control were met.

MANAGEMENT

Following the announcement of nationalisation hastily prepared "People's Bank" banners inscribed The committees of workers were hoisted over elegant entran- ces. Walls and windows were cov- already established in control of the banks now must, under nat- cred with revolutionary slogans.

At the mass rally in the Lisbon ionalisation become the direct management. This would give the Sports Palace tollowing the march the bank workers started a national working class control over the development of industry, and campaign to open the books of finance and industrial capital.

give protection (through cheap From then on leaflets and left- credit) to the poor farmers. This demand must also be linked to wing Dapers nave carned documen- ted details of the export of huge that of nationalisation of the land and of all major industry sums abroad of the restriction of credit to smaller employers, The hostility of the capitalists to workers management was brought out clearly by the Financial Times saying: "The nationalisation decision was taken by the still unnamed Supreme Council of the Revol- ution in face of the workers threats to keep the banks shut Lisbon, May Day 1974, or take over the administration themseives. Bither way this would have rapidly brought the country to the brink of economic chaos.

[Emphasis added] In other words, the nationalisat.

ion of the banks under a state manager, (even if elected by wor- kers) with the inviolability of private accounts secured, leave the banks under control of the capitalist state - which remains intact in Portugal. Nationalisation under workers' management, with workers in control of accounts and the avail- ability of finance, is something quite different - calling into imm- ediate question the very existence of capitalism. It also lays a sound basis on which to begin, in conj- unction with committees of wor- kers ' control in other industries, for beginning to develop a nation- al economic plan independent of capitalism. The crushing of the right-wing coup has strengthened and expan- ded the organs of workers power in Portugal - but of themselves these cannot take the working class to power. The demand must be to organ- ise these committees of workers, soldiers and boor farmers. inte workers councils or soviets. These soviets must be brought together into a national organisation con- stituting a rival power to that of the capitalist state. The groups of armed workers which have sprung up all over Portugal must be organised into a workers militia controlled by the workers councils with the trade unions. The army must be disbanded and replaced by the militia. These are the crucial questions racing the portuguese working fought for by a party which clearly grasps the class nature of the present government and the need to fight now for a work- ers' government based firmly on the strength of the workers' coun- cils. This party must be a revolut- ionary Trotskyist party as part of the Fourth International.

BATTLE

This is in direct conflict with the perspective of the Comm unist Party and the Socialist Party, who seek to direct the whole move- ment along the peacefil path of campaigning for the parliamentary elections in April. The mass movement must not bina workers to une couen batte ahead, The capitalist class, though frightened and confused, is cons- cious of the dangers which face it, and is trying now to reorganise the state machine prior to election day - April 12th. The Armed Forces Movement has reorganised itself into a so-called 'Revolutionary Council', purged of the elements most openly compromised by ass- ociation with fascism. It includes also direct nominees of the Comm- unist Party - controlled Portuguese Democratic Movement. Military power has been concen- trated under the command of the nation-wide security force COPCON (Continental Operation- al Command), drawn from those units regarded as loyal to the off icer corps and the Armed Forces Movement. COPCON was set up last July when Spinola was still head of state, to provide a force immune from fraternisation be- tween soldiers and workers. Such fraternisation has developed to the point where whole detach- onstrations (as happened recently in Oporto and at Setubal, where workers broke up conferences of right-wing parties. COPCON ex- cludes regiments in which the private soldiers' committees wield real power, such as the Ist Light Artillery - nicknamed the "Red Regiment" - whose barr acks at Sacaven were bombed in Spinola's attempted coup on March 11th.

NON ELECTED

Neither COPCON, nor the Armed Forces Movement itself, are elected or answerable in any way to the working class. Pretending to stand "above the classes, they form the peak of a Bonapartist regime.

continued on back page, col 4

FORTNIGHTLY PAPER OF THE

WORKERS SOCIALIST LEAGUE

NO 4 * 20th MARCH 1975 * 10p

SCAB TROOPS

IN GLASGOW

The Labour-controlled City Council in Glasgow voted on Saturday to ask the government to send troops to break the nine- week old strike of 350 dust cart drivers, out in defence of a living wage. The council used the tale that they had "no alternative" because the growing piles of rubbish cancerous to health aTe It is clear however that a politi cal attack has been launched agast une orveus in order to protect the Labour government's treacherous social contract. The deliberate use of troops as an organised scabbing force is des igned to beat the drivers into sub mission as well as establish a pre- cedent tor strike-breaking on a much wider scale.

ACTION

As we go to press the drivers were about to meet to consider action against the military inter- vention on Wednesday. One thing that stands out clearly is that they have been left wide open to this attack by the class-collaboration of the T&GWU leadership two nave refused to make the strike official and have made no response to the Council's clear determinat- •ion to smash the strike, other than the inadequate response of Alex Kitson, T&GWU National Officer, who said the implications of the move were "very grave"

GENERAL STRIKE

The back-pedalling of the bureau- cracy is matched by the leisurely attitude of the local Trades Coun- ci, Which has called an emergency meeting for Wednesday evening - a whole day after the use of troops is scheduled to begin Every class conscious worker will reject with contempt the pitiful pretexts used by Glasgow Labour councillors for this action, and the Labour ministers responsible for sending in the troops. The sharpest fight must be taken up in the Lab- our movement to hound out these scabs and replace them with people prepared to defend the working class. The call must go up through- out the T&GWU and all unions to support the drivers, to make the strike official, and to ensure their fight is not broken by this attack on traac umonism General strike action is called for to defend the unions against this latest attack ov the state.

Page 2

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

cost of living), and with a series of

FRANCE

one-day lock-outs at the Sandouville, Huns and Sail-Jean-de-le-Ruele The question of a fight TaCones for workers control of production The determined resistance of has been posed in this complex of struggles, with management claim- carworkers in the giant Renault plants in the Paris area made the contrary - that shortage of itself felt throughout French parts justifies their actions.

politics during March. Renault Background to the struggles in workers faced a concerted Renault is accelerating inflation management campaign for lay- the French economy. Both Commu- offs and short-time working, nist Party leader Georges Marchais, and an equally determined and Socialist Party leader Mitterand, attempt to victimise and sack have been forced to put Renault at the centre of their main political militants. speeches. But they have limited At the Le Mans plant management

LICHAEYES LO COMERSTARENE

unilaterally posted notices cutting Gaullist Prime Minister Chirac the time of 4,200 production wor- step in to make Renault negotiate kers by four hours a shift. The more realistically. workers allected replied by wor- Chirac, for his part has made it king the full shift. Since (Like most clear nat management are actly French workers) they are monthly in line with government policy, as paid, the full crisis in the plant is explained by him recently to the suspended till towards the end of company's president. the month, when an angry and The Stalinist and social-democra- solid reaction is expected if munage- tie officials in the unions have no ment attempts to carry out the policy to defend Renault workers nay-cuts threatened. Edmond Maire, leader of another main national union (the CFDT)

MILITANTS

put it, Renault's refusal to nego- tiate is carrying the unions 'into All he could the Sea of Storms' At the Billancourt plant (centre of propose was that "We believe in human will, and its determining struggle during the general strike against De Gaulle in May and June, intluence on the development of the crisis." As if the crisis was just 1968), management served sacking something in the heads of workers

MOLICES OH SEVERICCA MIRENS

three of whom are shop stewards - and management, which would go away if they thought about some- several ortem Arcans and Al- thing else! The main unions, including gerians. the Stalinist-led General Confedera- tion of Labour (CGT) took a post-

POPULAR FRONT

tion against the sackings, but with- out proposals for action.

Unofficial stoppages have taken It is the strength of the working place both at the Le Mans plant class, especially in the great plants, (where a mass demonstration was and its refusal to bear the burden of the economic crisis and inflation, held a week ago) and at Cleon.

Management has added to its attacks which lies behind the long-running by flatly refusing to negotiate on a sniping-match between Communist 250 franc (about E23) per month Party and Socialist Party chiefs on flat rate pay increase (in any case the interprutation of their electoral insufficient to keep up with the common programme (the present

USA

hand, is desperate to restore back- ing and confidence for their reac- tionary and puppet regimes world- The crises in Indochina and 170 e the Middle East now come together in Schlesinger's plan for a massive build-up of US forces in the Indian Ocean, centred on the British Island of Diego Garcia. It is the

WAR MACHINE REFUELS

need to invade suddenly with large numbers of ground troops that is the key factor, not the reported increase in Societ forces in the US Defence Secretary James While the US has about 200,000 troops in the Far Schlesinger last week unambi- East, and effective control of the guously repeated his war threat 800,000 NATO men in Western agains t the Arab countries. 'I Europe and the Mediterranean, they think we should recognise that have only a tew hundred in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.

circumstances can change very rapidly, and in circumstances

PERSIAN GULF

in which the American people feel their interests are being dramatically affected they Schlesinger stressed that Most of would be no more averse to the industrialised world is depen- the use of power - of military dent on the flow of petroleum out of the Persian Gulf. power - than they were in the The domination of the oil resources of the Persian period after Pearl Harbour', he Gulf arca would dramatically alter said in an interview last week.

the configuration of world politics.

Schlesinger's interview came as He added that the cut off, by Congressional haggling over his 104 Congress of military aid to Turkey billion dollar 'defence budget for in January had been "an extraordi- 1976 reaches its height. He speaks nary event'. US military schemes of course, not for the American include not only an increased "people, but for the US and inter- 'presence in the Indian Ocean and With Ford national imperialists. the surrounding states, but plans and Kissinger, he hopes to steer to increase the forces through Congress a package that by almost a quarter - from the will limit spending on nuclear wea- present 2,100,000 men - by 1977, pons - now being negotiated with and to greatly expand military air- the Kremlin in the *Strategic Arms lifting capacity so that, for example, Limitation Talks' (SALT) - and an entire Army division could be set much greater resources free for transported from the United States the US to directly attack revolu- to Western Europe every few days.

tionary and liberation movements Similar plans are afoot for the world-wide. The issue at stake in troops in Japan, South Korean and US backing for the Lon Nol regime Pacific islands. in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Pehn was the questioning of the

"AID"

fidelity of American commitments, and that, I think, is the most impor- tant aspect. US imperialism, with Schlesinger's US military forces themselves are only part of the picture. Spending military planning and Kissinger's flying diplomacy working hand-in- on military and connected aid con form of the coalition which gave Mitterand 49 per cent of the poll in the presidential election follow- ing Pompidou's death). The 'common programme" is in fact a recipe for Ponular Front be- trayals, tying the workers parties "liberal" parties of the bourgeoisie, thus preventing the adoption of a socialist programme. Its vague and reactionery character is producing splits even among the top Stalinist leadership.

ARMY

On March 6th Marchais was forced to step in and repudiate a letter to President Giscard d'Estaing from Henri Fizhin, leader of the Paris Communist Party federation.

The Paris bureaucrats stepped into line soon enough, and the CP leadership set about mobilising the rank-and- file behind a series of meetings cul- minating in the March 19th protest against are mercase in petrol prices which now, together with value added tax, cuts deep into workers pay packets and into local government social spending. On other tronts, too, the common programme' is showing itself increa- singly tattered. Following widespread demonstrations by army conscripts in support of their political freedoms the Komer Rouge liberation to which the government replied with forces in Cambodia during a cabinet reshuffle placing General Bigeard, notorious for his role against the FLN in Algeria, in the Ministry of Defence- CP and Socialist Party leaders vied with each other in pro claiming their "patriotic loyalty to the "national" forces. But on March 13th Marchais - reflecting the pre- ssure from Moscow was forced to attack right-wing Socialist Party leaders for 'deviating' from the common programme on the in- dependence' of the French nuclear strike force. These reactionary positions on the forces of the state are the most OCCA ESCOTLe Mass collaborationist character of the Stalinists and Socialists "left unity".

tinues to grow as the US struggles to prop up sympathetic govern- one of the things brought 15191560 into the open by the scandals and investigations concerning the Cen- tral Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been the enormous role of the highly-secret National Secu- rity Agency (NSA). Spending over a thousand million dollars a year, the NSA is officially restric- ted to intercepting and decoding telecommunications. NSA person- nel were recently evacuated from a station in northern Ethiopia as the Eritrean Liberation Forces in the area gained ground against the Addis Ababa regime. The NSA post was set up in 1960, the US Senate was told, following an agreement to sup ply 147 million dollars of military aid to the (later deposed) Ethiopian 'emperor' Haile Sclassic, (for back- ground see feature in Socialist Press of February 20th). One of the top priorities of US foreign policy is now to restore "security" to the southern exit to the Red Schlesinger Lon Nol's troops collect dead after attack by liberation forces

CAMBODIA

THE END DOMINO

The tremendous advances of February and March have shaken all the US-backed pup- pet regimes in the area. fighting As the Khmer Rouge almost unaided, with only a trickle of help from China and North Vietnam - tightened their grin or the Cambodian capital of Phnom Pehn, administration officials in Washington began to revive the "domino' theory: that even the most corrupt and shaky of puppet regimes must be propped up at all costs, less their collapse fracture American foreign policy as a whole.

The domino thoery does repre- sent the most realistic outlook of US capitalist politicians.

The suc- cesses of the Cambodian liberation fighters have immediately strength- lened the struggle against US imperia- lism throughout South-East Asia.

VIETNAM

In South Vietnam six provincial capitals tell to liberation troops in a week, despite massive airlifts of men and ammunition by the Thieu government. In Thailand, Cambodia's western neighbour, the jerry-built coalition of Seni Pramoj Sea, giving access to the Israeli- held ports in the Sinai peninsula

WAR

US military planning, in the teeth of an economic crisis in which domestic 'welfare pro- grammes are being savagely cut, shows with crystal clarity how capitalist crisis accelerates the The CIA cow drive towards war. provides President Ford with a daily computerised calculation of the chances of war in the Middle Immediately before Kissinger's latest tour it was run- ning at 60 percent - 1e. more than evens! The world-wide role of US imperialism now demands of workers everywhere a principled struggle for unity on revolutionary policies.

OPPOSE

union movement must oppos the maintenance of a standing capitalst army tied into NATO, and must demand that the Labour government withdraw all US mili- tary facilities, including those in the Indian Ocean. SOCIALIST PRESS, Thursday 20th March, 1975 collapsed only a week after it was formed, just eighteen months after the military regime was ousted by student demonstrations. This was despite Pramoj's promise to remove the 23,000 US air force men sta- tioned in the country. And the next attempt to form a coalition, led by Pramoj's brother, immedia- tely got embroiled in accusations that the narliamentary ballot was The compromise Laos government - a coalition of the Communist Party and capitalist politicians - is clearly threatened by the developments in the rest of Indochina.

And libe- ration forces continue to press for- ward in Burma and the Phillipines.

KOREA

Even the South Korea regime solidest bastion of US imperialism in Asia sance the 1950s - feels it- self at risk. As the ambassador in Washington expressed it: *... we 10Ok at the merican dilemma tar way: where will the US draw the line in resisting communist pres- sure? The question eventually boils down to the suggestion that maybe all of Asia is kind of inscru- table to the Us, and that the line should he drawn in the Middle Eas and Europe. It is this "pressure, expressed in the victories and popular support of the Khmer Rouge, that is for- cing the divisions among American ruling class politicians to crisis point, and opening the door to further international blows against

POLAND

Polish: Prime Minister Piotr Jaro Lewice has admitted that the country's economy faces severe crisis, comparable to the situation which forced a change of leadership follow- ing strikes against food prices by Danzig shipworkers. Speaking on 'International Women's Day' (March 6th), he said in Warsaw that the government had taken 'necessary and efficient steps' in the previous few days to control the supply and prices of meat, milk and other dairy products. His statement Followed demonstrations against shortages, especially in butchers shops, by housewives Armed mili- tia men were reportedly needed to disperse some of the demonstrations.

Jaroszewicz told his audience that We are counting on your under- standing and your patience at a time when we must pass through a period full of difficulties.

Blam- ing the weather for some shortages of supply, he went on to indicate that the state was revising its pur- chasing policy for dairy products to even out "fluctuations' in supply.

But, as every Polish housewife knows, the other side of the 'shortages' is an almost universal black market in foods, on which those who can afford it can buy as much as they

SOCIALIST PRESS, Thursday 20th March, 1975 The re-arrest of Ndabaningi Sithole, one of the leaders of the Zimbabwe African Natio- nal Union (ZANU) by the reactionary settler regime of Ian Smith a fortnight ago fur- ther illustrates the impossibi- lity of a peaceful road to victory for the national libera- tion struggle in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia). It also illustrates the fundamental mistake of any illusions concerning In ably or progressive Amcan hourgeois leaders like Kaunda of Zambia to effectively support such struggles. The current atmosphere of detente" between Black Atnica and the Vorster regime in South Africa goes back to last October with Vorster's famous 'voice of reason' speech. Vorster and the Afrikaner bour- geoisie have finally faced the need to come to terms with the remova of the Portugese colonial regime in Mozambique which up till now has served the role together with Rhodesia, as an effective buffer between Vorster and Black Africa.

"BUFFERS'

With the accession to power of the FRELIMO government in Mozambique, the whole strategy of "buffers' has collapsed.

And with it the importance of the Smith regime to Vorster. In addition, as the world recession gathers pace, the South African bourgeoisie has become more con- cerned to capture Black Africa, as a market area for the continued expansion of South African capital, from dependence on US and Euro- pean imports. Kaunda responded ecstatically to Vorster's overtures as 'the voice of reason for which Africa and the world has waited" Kaunda has his own reasons for detente with Vorster, and for settling the question of the Smith regime once and for all. The closure of the Zambia/ Rhodesia border has cost Zambia Emillions in export costs due to difficulty of access to the coast Also the continued activity on the Zambian borders of the Rhodesia The London-based Gulf Committee last month publi- shed a special report that makes clear the complete denial of democratic and trade union rights throughout the area.

The report, entitled Political Prisoners in the Oil States: Oman, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iran, gives a number of harrowing accounts of tortures, executions and exten- ded detentions without trial in all the countries named. In Iran alone, there are well over 30,000 people working for SAVAK, the notorious secret police whose activities have been noticed as far afield as here in Britain, and there are perhaps the same number of political pri- soners. On 6th June 1974 the Guardian reported that Sz Omani workers involved in political and trade union activities in the nearby oil state of Abu Dhabi were arrested, tortured and deported back to Oman, wherertliere are no trade union or democratic rights of any kind.

TORTURE

When rumours are constantly spread about that the Shah of Iran is just going to 'save' British Leyland or some other ailing corner of -capitalist Britain it should not be torgotten that this regime rests on a range of torture ait but unknown Release Sithole army and the South African para- military police hunting Zimbabwe guerillas is creating problems.

The sticking point to detente is the Smith regime itself. Kaunda and his fellow bourgeois African leaders cannot openly abandon the national liberation struggle tor tamoaowe without carcarents their own stability. Therefore as a precondition for detente they have insisted on majority rule in Zimbabwe.

NO CONCESSION

But Smith cannot make this con- cession. It was precisely to avoid it that the regime made its famous unilateral declaration of indepen- in the first place. The whole basis of the settler regime rests on the denial of democratic rights to Africans and the control of the land by the settler bourgeoisie.

A democratically elected African majority would be under heavy pressure trom the masses to resolve the land question and so destroy the basis of settler power.

But Smith has to talk. He is now frightened that the FRELIMO regime in Mozambique will cut off his links with the coast. Coupled with this the guerillo movement is gaining support especially in the north cast of Zimbabwe. Thus, earlier in the year, Kaunda, together with Nyere of Tanzania, the FRELIMO leadership and Seretse Khama the president of Botswana, persuaded Smit' to re- lease Zimbabwe nationalist leaders from jail and fly them to Lusaka for talks. During the talks, Smith pressured by Vorster, conceded the release of 300 political prisoners (which he has not yet carried out) and promised swift moves towards a constitutional conference.

Vorster obligingly withdrew his police to barracks. But in return for this Kaunda has forced the Zimbabwe nationalists As Trotsky to castrate themselves. argued in the theory of permanent revolution, the national bourgeoisie in underdeveloped countries is in- capable of carrying through the ele- mentary bourgeois democratic tasks of national independence, the agrarian reforms and democratic rights, This is because it is too tied

WILSON'S FRIENDS AT WORK

anywhere else in the world. The Sunday Times of 19th January described a number of cases of appalling injuries done to political prisoners during interrogation, par- ticularly by applying heated elec- tric frames to their bodies.

One such prisoner called Massoud Ahmadzadeh, an engineer from Teheran, managed to reveal his terrible wounds to foreign legal observers who were attending one of the few open trials held in the country, before he was led off to be shot. What the Sunday Times report made clear was that such injuries were by no means unique, but indeed typical of the methods of the Iranian regime in suppress- ing its political opponents.

One wonders what British trade mister relet snore nao to say about these matters during his recent visit to fix up a trade deal with the government of these but- chers and totturers. Perhaps he swooped stories about the methods employed by British soldiers agai- nst republican prisoners in Ireland.

One wonders also whether the Stalinist rulers of China ever men- tion the torture and death done to many hundreds of Maoists in Iran during the junketing and frequent visits to Peking of the Shah and his representatives. In recent weeks it has become against the liberation struggles of the Southern Prince of Dhofar in By John Lea to imperialism on the one hand and tear of its own working class on the other. This is graphically illustrated by the role of Kaunda. Ase quid pro quo for Smith's concessions he is trying to force the Zimbabwe nationalists to lay down the most important weapon they have at preset: armed guerilla struggle. Kaunda and bis tellow bourgeois heacis of state in the 'Organisation for African Unity' have refused all furtler assistance to armed struggle in Zimbabwe while the talks procede thus for- cing the nationalists to walk naked into the conference chamber at a time when, because of the victory of FRELIMO in Mozambique, the guerillarstruggle could have entered its most effective phase.

Furthermore Kaunda has insisted on 'unity' of the nationalists under the umbrella of the right wing re- formist African National Council which rejects the armed struggle.

The bourgeois leaders of Black Airca want a 'settlement' not outright victory for the national liberation struggle. Thus they have forced this compromise and left the revolutionary clements in the nationalist movement defenceless.

DIVIDE AND RULE

But it is precisely this that has played into the hands of Smith, It has given him the chance to attempt a divide and rule policy with the nationalists. The arrest of Sithole must be seen in this context.

Sithole was arrested on the grounds "planning assasination that be was of certain of his opponents whom he considers to be a challenge to his bid for leadership of the ANC" As the Financial Times observed: "The Rhodesia government strateg) would seem to be to try to isolate the ZANU militants so that a deal can be concluded with the more moderate 'old' ANC element" The Stalinist movement continues to civice the world into reactionary and 'progressive" elements and to regard Kaunda as one of the latter.

We can in effect see the reactionar nature of stalinism in the anties of Kaunda whose actions intentionally or not, have the effect of assisting Smith to divide and weaken the Zimbabwe national liberation movement and delay the struggle Oman is developing in intensity On 11th March the Times reported that one British mercenary and two British officers 'on loan' were shot down and killed in a helicop- ter by liberation fighters.

Times of 10th March also stated soldier has been killed in Oman since the beginning of the year The liberation forces have also published the names of various Iranian soldiers they have killed in the area in recent weeks, inclu- ding intelligence officers from

SAVAK

WITHDRAW TROOPS

A demonstration organised by a number of bodies including the Iranian Student Society and the Gult Committee marched through central London on 9th March to call for the immediate withdrawal of all British and Iranian troops from Oman. A delegation from some of the London branches of the WSL participated in the demon- stration in support of this demand and called for victory to the People's Front for the Liberation of Oman.

The WSL intends to continue to campaign throughout the labour movement for the Labour govern- ment to immediately cease all activity in support of this reactio- nary war and to break off all rela- tions with the harbarous regimes of Oman and Iran. Page 3

WHAT IS THE

WORKERS SOCIALIST

LEAGUE?

The Workers Socialist League was formed on December 22nd after over 200 members were expelled from the Wor- kers Revolutionary Party.

The reason for the expulsions was that Alan Thornett, who was at the time a Central Committee member of the WRP, set out to bring about a discussion within that party on the wrong positions being taken by the Healy leadership and the Workers Press.

The issues were first raised on the Centra Committee and that com mittee agreed to circulate a document written by comrade Thornett, containing a statement of his differenoes, and to arrange a 'full and free! discussion within the party prior to the first annual conference.

That free discussion never took place.

Anyone who in any way sup- ported the document was expelled This split was a product of particular political conditions. The ra- pid development of the economic crisis and the forward movement of the working class all over the world produced the conditions to huild revolutionary parties.

Yet it was precisely in this period that the WRP began to decline in all its areas of work.

It was this decline more than any other factor which raised questions which led to an examination of the political positions of the WRP leadership and to Alan Thornett's documents.

As the split emerged, the sectarianism of the WRP, its departure from the Transitional Programme, and the way its maximum programme isolates the WPP from the working class became clear lo understand the response to comrade Thornett's documen n the WRP it is necessary to recognise the period we are now ir The uefence of jobs through the fight for the sliding scale of hours without loss of pay; the defence of living standards through the tight for the sliding scale of wages related to rising prices; the challenging of the employer and the preparation of the struggle for power by the fight to open the books and establish workers control in the fight for nationalisation under workers' management; are now called for ir this situation in the form of a programme of transitional demands which will form a bridge between the present consciousness and struggles of the working class to the need to take power.

Yet the WRP right up to the opening of the discussion by comrade Thornett had never seriously fought for any of these demands. Instead it re- stricted itself to the sterile maximum demand "nationalise the econo without compensation under workers control" The impossibility of any kind of opposition within the WRP forced us to found the Workers Socialist League as an independent organi- sation which will maintain and fight to develop the traditions and principles of Trotskyism.

We will continue to maintain a critique of the WRP leadership, but most important for us is our ability to breal from WRP method and turn to recruiting and training the new forces thrown into the struggle in this period - trade unionists, professiona!

workers, housewives, students and youth - in the fight to construct the new party. We will fight against all forms of revisionism state capitalism and the Pabloite revisionists of the IMG, against stalinism and reformism.

Aiready it is clear that cour struggles for Trotskyism in Britain take place under conditions which must create similar splits and discus- sions throughout the world.

We are confident that our mesement will soon he able to play an important role in the strengthening of the Trotskyist Fourth International and the development of revola- tionary parties in every country to fight capitalism.

Only five weeks after forming the League we were able to assemble the necessary political, editorial and material resources to begin regu- lar publication of a Trotskyist newspaper.

We are certain we can win a big response and very rapidly go forward to a weekly paper as the organiser of a movement of considerabie political strength.

I would like more information about the

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HEALY REVISES MARXIST

Page 4 G. Healy, National Secretary of the Workers Revolutionary an 8-page Party has written attack Alan Thornett's on *Second Document on Party Policy and Perspectives" (writ- ten while Thornett was still in the WRP and which was supp- ressed by the national leader- ship who expelled him and all those in agreement with his politics just before the first Annual Conference of the

WRP).

Healy is only able to take up one aspect of the document - and only quotes one passage from it. This is torn out of its context and shorn of its content in the document, then distorted and finally made into a plank of Healy's argument.

We begin by showing the passage in its context - Healy's quote is italic- ised: "...the International Committee polemicising against making many correct points, but at the no stage -iS concrete brought into the discussion. At no point discuss programme (emphasis in original). Philosophy is transformed into its own field of debate [by the WRP and I.C.] divorced from the class struggle Itseil and divorced from practice. All knowledge begins from the struggle of man against nature, now in the form of the class struggle• the conflict of revolutionary theory in the form of the party with spon- taneity in the form of the class.

That mist he the starting point and central reference point in our polemic. That is not (emphasis in original) the starting point in theor- etical education in our party [WRP] of this is that The consequence cadres are not trained in Marxism.

They are trained to repeat formulae of dialectical materialism and given some grounding in principled strug- gles which are the history WRP as a section of the Internat- But, living Jonal committee •in terms, no education takes place, because there is no real discussion or analysis with tue party of the party's practice in the class struggle!"

EVASION

Healy's selective quote sidesteps the points being made. The conflict man and nature and bet- ween the and the class is party stressed here by Thornett because the WRP's propegandism and abstr- act approach theory separates Marxism and the revolutionary par- ty from the living movement which is its material base. He consciously avoids answering on the I.C.'s refus- al to discuss programme, and dod- ges the other major points contain- ed in the section method of which deal with the Trotsky's Transitional Programme.

In misquoting Thornett in this way Healy reveals an important aspect of his own revisions of Marxism.

Healy also willfully obscutes the fact that the document is not inten- ded as a full exposition of Marxist but is specifically replying to hi own challenge to explain the "his torical, philosophical, and class con- the degeneration" of the

WRP

The truth is always concrete as the man who fell out of the sky- scraper said. But to get to it one must often pass through a certain number of abstractions and - some times - of of Healys docume air. The aim Healy's document "Some Notes Towards a Study of Thomett's Philosophy": 9th Feb.

1975. is to justify "philosophicaly (ie after the event) the suppression of the discussion opened by Alan Thornett in tch WRP last vear At the same time Healy's doct- ment revises the fundamentals of dialectical materialism and 1s a qualitative leap" in the degener- ation of the WRP under the press- me of the middle class. In the struggle to develop a polit- ical consciousness in the working class going beyond the reformist trade union consciousness (which arises spontaneously from workers' daily experiences), the philosophic- al method of Marxism is indispen- sable. It must therefore be defend- ed and developed in opposition to all attempts to revise it.

As Lenin wrote in What is to be Done?: "...to belittle the " socialist ideology more openly the working class and the capitalist class enter into con- in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to stren- flict with one another, the louder the gthen bourgeois ideology." (Collec- do apologists of bapitanst ted Works, Volume 5, page 384] preach class collaboration in order to head off, and ultimately to crush class fears One thing the ruling above all, therefore, is the develop the struggle of the working class to ment of Marxist philosophy, overthrow capitalism. ASTMS leader Clive Jenkins mou- guide to action, within the workers The essence of this phil- nts a platform with Enoch Powell movement. osophy is the method of dialectical to campaign for 'national unity materialism, which studies the against the Common Market.

Jen- world as matter in motion, which Kins himself becomes a puppet in develops the rearmament of the Tory Party through the unity and conflict of opposites within it.

to enforce political and moral 'uni- Dialectical materialism is the phil- ty on society, preparing to use the osophy of revolution - it sees noth- scared middle-class as shock-troops ing as eternally fixed, but every against the trade unions.

Wedge. thing as in motion, in a continuing wood-Benn adds his efforts in the process of conflict. As a world-view, 'unite' trade unions and drive to seeking in material reality and the employers in board-room class- struggle of classes the basis of all collaboration under the Industry linking with the 'unity' of ideas, moods and theories Bill ine thrown up by social development, the social contract forms the "sinews" of the body It precisely this pressure to of theory with which the revolut- which Healy succumbs when he ionary party struggles to win the writes on apparently abstract ques- conscious leadership of the working tions of philosophy. The philoso- class, through the development of phical core of his document cen- and fight for a programme which can establish the bridge between two essential opposites: man the as yet only trade union cons- nature; thought and being.

cious masses of the organised work- this question ing and the revolutionary with here. In discussing this most of capitalism. Only by overthrow general unity and struggle of grasping all of the opposed forces sites he is of necessity expressing at work, not just within the workers his approach to development in all movement, but amongst all classes spheres: in nature, in society, and society, revolutionary within the WRP itself. • And on the movement correctly defend princi key he is devastatingly question Porward tactics which can assist the programme clear. He attacks Thornett (and with him, Lenin) precisely for in strategic aim of preparing the class sisting that the conflict of oppo for power. sites is absolute, and that their exists only relatively to this

NOT JUST IDEAS

conflict. Let us look more closely at the quotation Healy uses from Thor- The philosophy of Marxism, of nett's document: dialectical therefore "All knowledge begins from the is unlike all previous philosophies.

struggle of man against nature, now It is not just a body of ideas, to be in the form of the class struggle - argued by 'theorists' outside the the co form of the omarty theory day-to-day struggles of the working in the form of the party class. If placed outside these strugg- spontaneity in the form of the class les it withers into an abstract set of That must be the starting point outopsy bumming mto its ooposite and central reference point in our an obstacle to the political develop- polemic. ment of the working class From this quotation he undertak- One of the basic tasks therefore es to prove that Thornett holds "a of the Workers Socialist Lenguc vulgar one-sided materialist concep is to educate its members in the tion of history, which in turn leads main ideas of dialectical material- the author into the swamp of sub- ism, to explain and discuss these (Healy, p.1) jective idealism. ideas as clearly as possible, and always to encourage their use in

CONFLICT

developing a fuller,

TELET KIOW

ledge of political developments. We fight to defend dialectical material- As we shall show, the opposite is ism against all attempts to distort thu case. Any reformist of empiricist. ary theory in the form of the party or revise it, or to take it out of the will tell you that there are two sides hands of workers and make it the to every question, but unless these sole preserve of intellectuals and theoreticians. It can only be devel- two sides capress une essence or ene matter, and the conflict between oped by a party containing both them is grasped, thought will rem- intellectuals and workers and fight- ain superficial, undialectical, unable ing on a programme to lead the to grasp the source of movement.

working class to power. Science evaporates and the question This is why we now challenge the becomes merely which side the leadership of the Workers Revolut- emphasis is exactly how Hally proceeds is ionary Party on their revision of 1 proceeds. He the central question of philosophy quotes a number of passages fron - Marxist dialectics - and its relation Marx and Engels which minimis to the idealist dialectics of the the conflict between man and nat- German philosopher Hegel (1770 - stressing instead 'unity".

For 1831), from which Marx and instance: "Being, that is living man's unity and dependence upor ific socialisn One of the problems ness"? (Healy determines all conscious- ın taking up the wrong philosoph- ness". p3; emphasis added) Such quotations are interspersed ional Secretary Workers with Healy's own comments, which Revolutionary Party, in the. past attempt to lead awayfrom conflict is that he has put so little of his by generalisations on the "Universal philosophy in writing, preferring to Movement of Matter" (capitals in confine himself to lectures. We wel- original! Healy p. 8) come therefore his venture into "Man is part of Thus he states print with an 8-page pamphlet att- Nature as an integral part of the acking the Workers Socialist League.

universal movement of matter"(em- phasis added p. 3). Yet as it stands

UNITY

such a statement is the equivalent of saying. for instance, that the working class is an "integral part" How does Healy revise Marxism?

of capitalism. On a certain level of Like all reactionary thought abstraction this is true - capitalism 2-015 thinking reflects the world in a dis- needs the working class, and the The material world working class is an oppressed class Lorea Tomm. itself exists and moves through the only because of capitalism - but unity and conflict of opposites - for revolutionaries it diverts from the this is the kernel of dialectical essential relationship, which is not materialism, manifesting itself in of unity but one the harsh anta- all areas of society and politics. The Under the of gonism opposites sharper the economic crisis, guise of philosophy Healy smuggles in exactly such a reactionary con- ception,

CONTEMPLATION

Worse - by blindly amalgamating together the development of the "universal class struggle and the moment of matter", precisely the element of consciousness which dif- ferentiates man's actions from those of animals and the uncons- cious movement of the objective world he confronts is eliminated.

Healy thus reduces the class struggle Maris philosophy urned into a mere 'natural process contemplation "universal novement of matter Healy sets out his pos- More fully ition as follows: "Man is part of nature and in conflict with it. That is the starting Point of all knowledge and not Thorett's one-sided assertion that knowledge begins from the struggle of man against nature.

PHILOSOPHY

"Thornett subjectively separates the struggle between man and nat- (emphasis added) of nature, thus destroying the dialec- tical relationship between the sub- and the jective (mens" thoughts) objective material world.

"He (Thor- Healy then goes on: nett) then transfers the source of consciousness to the brain as some thing separate from nature."

SLEIGHT

This sentence is the incredible sleight of hand on which the whole of Healy's case is then constructed The assertion that Thornett trans- fers the source of consciousness to the brain" - in other words starts from consciousness determining be ing - is nowhere contained in Thor nett's material. Lets look at the quotation Healy uses from Thor- nett again and see what he actually says: "All knowledge begins from the of man against struggle (which is material) now in the form of the class struggle - (which is material) the conflict of revolution- (not in his head) with spontaneity in the form of the class.

(Emphasis added) Healy goes on: "Here is the basis of all idealism, that it is conscious ness which determines being and not being which determines cons- ciousness. Having subjectively sepa- rated man's struggle with nature from the unity (emphasis added) of this struggle with nature, Thor- nett can only start from the thread- bare baggage of idealist reasoning which begins within his own head and is arbitrarily used to prove any argument which he thinks necess- ary to attack the Workers Revolut- ionary Party. That is why we desig- nate his method that of subjective idealism." (Healy, p4) Healy The problem Healy has to cont- end with is that Lenin polemicised SOCIALIST PRESS Thursday, 20th March 1975 for precisely the opposite concep that unity is relative and tion conflict absolute. There is, as Lenin said "an absol- ute (ie. the struggle of opposites) within the relative (i.e.their unity" [Collected Works, Volume38.p360] Revolutionaries will, for example enter into a (relative) unity with syndicalist workers, reformist bur- (and even centrists like Healy!), on a basic question of wor- Kers rights such as the release of the Shrewsbury Two. But within this unity there must be a struggie for the revolutionary leadership of the class. This is the 'absolute' ques tion. The conflict of opposites itsel conflicts with their unity. Only thus does the world change.

As Lenin puts it (crystallising his exposition of the world-view of Marxism in On the Question Dialectics, Collected Works, Vol 38 p.360): "The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is cond- itional, temporary, transitory, relat- ive. The struggle of mutually exclu- sive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absol ute." (The passage in which Lenin repeats this fundamental point - in several ways - is on a page facing one of Healy's own main quotat- ions.) This passage is well known to Healy and the whole WRP leader fee boothet In Defence Of Thot- booklet In Defence published in Feb 1973 skyism it is used as a basic plank in the the oretical argument against the Fr nch OCI. In fact it is the very pa age quoted here which the IC co rectly accuses the OCI of deliberate ly omitting in a quotation. At that time its omission was taken up sharply in these terms: "As Forgontier (OCI theoretician) well knows.- and here he must have decided quite consciously to obsc- ure the point, since he had the text before him - it is precisely on thi omitted paragraph (emphasis added) that the split in the International Committee turns! The relation be tween theory and practice, betweer and class is a relation of party The of struggle. uniti theory and practice is established constantly re-established, only thr ough the struggle of inutually excl usive opposites.

CAREFUL OMISSION

(....) Forgontier (.....), by his care- omission, emphasis added finds himself able to speak about unity and conflict of opposites as some sort of equally co-existing aspects [emphasis added], to be contemplated: 'Lenin underlines at the same time that the conflict of opposites is inseperable from their unity, he says. Un Defence of Trotskyism, pp20- Yet the philosophical position put by the OCI theoretician then is almost identical to Healy's posit- ion now. This indicates firstly the continuing theoretical degeneration of the WRP since 1973, and the subjectivism and incoherence to which the mass expulsions and the internal repressions continuing with- in the WRP have forced Healy along with Banda and Slaughter.

Secondly it indicates the flimsy theoretical base of understanding on which Healy split the Internat- ional Committee in 1971. The WRP leadership is now repeating the very revisions of Marxism of the OCi, which supposedly caused the split.

This is the slippery path down which must slither all thos who abandon the principles of Bolshe vism and the lessons of Trotsky's struggles for the Fourth Internatio-

SOCIALIST PRESS Thursday, 20th March 1975 nal. This philosophical revisionism is arance, centrist practice of the WRP. While fect, Heely "philosophically places unity conflict, on a par Workers Press busily angles for 'unity' at the From the end of their Wigan building workers

LIKE

clusion that on the shrewsonry Can DIET with fake-left Tribunite MP Sidney Bidwell. It trumpets a welcome for Bidwell's support without mention- idea (ideas). contemplating ing that he voted for the Jenkins reactionary "Anti-terrorism Act' which is already being used to jail We trades unionists and Irish republi- cans! ordinated to rial ance. sion),

STAMPEDE

must be made. Another aspect of Healy's docu- they must ment must be dealt with iberately befuddle and sets out to stampede-WRP members who have not had the opportunity to study 104)) struggle tor and especially Hegel's Hegel's struggle dialectical world- view. It was the main text which Lenin read during his work on phi- losophy in 1914; Lenin's rough necessary. notes on published in his *Philosophical Notebooks , Collec- ted Works, Vol 38. Healy has a long record of utilis- ing snippets from Volume 38 out of context as virtual biblical references completely in order to give himself a bogus pre- point stige 'theoretician" whose word is law on philosophy.

It Is important to however remember that the book is not written in any process, Hegel form which can be simply read through and quotations pulled out.

In many passages Lenin is merely paraphrasing the idealist philoso- pres Temen expounding Marxism at all.

JUNGLE

himself Healy, however rooting round an- The struggle xiously for material with which to Thornett, rummages the through Volume 38, and in the last pages of his document (pp. 7-8) confusingly Hegelianisin strings together a series of philoso- justify arbitrary phical of concepts or categories) from the Science of Logic, without the slightest explanation of where they come from or what their con- (Slaughter's article in Wor- tent is: phical questions, kers Press 27th, sup- view of Marx-Engeps which springs posedly a review of struggle Collected Works Vol. I, does the party same thing, but in an even more compressed form.) In two pages (after having never written any thing on them before Healy skates class to power. through semblance, reflection, appe existent object, positing, causality and ef essence, actuality, moment, the objective idea the Notion and (last but not least) absolute truth (to list just some).

whole jumble emerges. a rabbit from a hat, the con- we again proceed to posit living perception (dialectical thought concepts) on our abstract We do this not by the world but by changing it through the building of the Workers Revolutionary Party* cannot begin to clear this jungle in a single newspaper article.

(We intend to publish a lot of mate- on Healy's philosophical revi- But three essential points Firstly, it is evident that Healy has never read Lenin's notes deal be read in parallel the Science of Logic itself. (As Lenin put it, he was "trying to socialism. They read Hegel materialistically' (vol.38 reading for all This is why Healy gets. "categories" supporters the wrong order (see the "Table of Contents'to Science of Logic). In pailosophy some 'contemplating of books

POINT MISSED

Secondly, for this reason Healy economics and politics. misses the essential that Hegel's "categories' all arise from the conflict (or con- tradiction) of previous 'categories.

ment to Healy simply unites them in a single working class on a world scale.

and dishes up the wl ole the three volumes, the material This of them. from Trotsky's many culture until the national politics that today.

HISTORY

Britist social political development, decline and the build-up empire following the olution of the Trotsky's statements point to the profound effect all aspects of particular on the catastrophic den oped organically culture. and prejudices, only of capitalism. of bourgeois civilisation" ploited the nineteenth century, the inner contradictions" caboodle as Marxism What Mar- letarait an economic interest in her asm takes from Hegel's philosophy is not its system of categories, but dialectical method by which they arise from one another.

Most important of all, however, imperialist interests. Ipp. 13-14].

Healy's document on Thornett is an insult to the intelligence of any development and their effect on comrade seriously struggling to train the woking class had been emphas- dialectical ised by materansm for Marxism within time that Trotsky wrote. However the party, and for leadership within Trotsky class, has nothing to do with Healy's superficial understanding of attention to the effect of the form- Uscd to expulsions. This the course is, as this article shows, working class movement, Trotsky the subjective idealist method.

also pointed out how this was main- The Workers Socialist League will tained and defended through the take up the study of these philoso- ideological weapons provided by but in a way the middle class "friends of labour" from the concrete and development of the and class itself by leadership programme and bureaucracy. "Ideology, by its very to develop a Marxist leadership for.

essence, the working class, the only leader- the socialist ship which can lead the working Trotsky (p.172). In the past such ideology had come from capitalism

TROTSKY

Leon Trotsky Writings on Britain (3 volumes) New Park Publications 1975 £1.65 each volume The extracts and major works contained in these vol- unes cast numerous shafts of light on the nature and devel- opment of British capitalism and thus contribute a great to- understanding the methods necessary for its over throw and its replacement by are essential members and of the Workers Socialist League in our strug gle to build a revolutionary leadership in the working class Though remote in both time and space from many aspects of what profound understanding of British This could only come from an application of Trotsky the methods of dialectical material- the emancipation of the but in the future it had to develop In the first part of this review of through the struggle for Marxism unity and conflict we will cover contained in the first working class. includes quotations speeches and

UNION LEADERS

writings dealing with British history general, and also with the development of British imperialism and the working class In a striking 1920's. Trotsky points to the -By of the support given to the position looking at the first capitalist nation in the light of the subsequent inter- of the trade union bureaucracy by the many forms of bourgeois ideo- developments, Trotsky was able to say much about British The mentality of the present-das remains important British trade union leader is a mix- ture religious and of the period prejudices restoration of St. Paul's Cathedral practical skill of a trade union official at the height The earliest extracts in the collec development, the tion point to the slow tempo of snobbishness of a petty bourgeois fighting to be and to the grad- and the uneasy cons- respectable feudal institutions cience of a labour politician of industry and has repeatedly betrayed the work To this bourgeois rev- be added the 1640's. influence of intellectuals, of prof- Many of essors and Fabians; of the Socialist moralisings of Sunday preachers, of this history on life in in the rationalist schemes Britain, ists, the dilletantism of "Guild Soc- British worker: *For him......there was not the sud ialists", and the stubborn and hau ghty Fabian narrow transition from the closed little world of the village In another volume of this collect- particularly in to modern industry; he had devol- Britain Going? Trotsky from his remote his explanation of these phenom- ancestors into gradually changing ena and of how they should be conditions of factory life and urban overcome. In his mind there still to The second big contribution that this day sit old, medieval craft ideas Trotsky made to an understanding modified in of the development of British capit- forn and adapted to the conditions alism was in his recognition of the [Page 21] significance of its decline and the Trotsky also shows how the fact social crisis which would inevitably that Britain was (p.6) "the pioneer follow. In the first World War the the civile lordin bloody contest for "the liberty of during exploitation" brought "softened imperialist about "a new imperialist division of viding the upper layer or the pro- the world's peoples". (p.56) Afte Britain and Germany had exhausted dominion of the world". Such wor one another then, predicted Trotsky in 1918, "American capital will ap kers developed the habit of "put- pear as the heir who will plunder ting pressure on the bourgeois part- , and of identifying with various the world". (p.67) It was to this changing balance These aspects of British historica Trotsky, referred, from a socialist point of view, in the only passage quoted in a singularly philistine review fo these volumes which ap Marxists, even before the peared in the Guardian of 20il added two important February last. The author of the points to this analysis. In drawing was referring to developments which er strength of British imperialism in at the time, but which were to be creation of reformism in the of considerable future importance.

RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

transmitted to the working ise danges he the balance of means of the labour these changes in the imperialist forces, and particularly plays an enormous part in their relationship withthe Russian movement" wrote revolution of November 1917, that much of the latter part of this first Page 5

ON BRITAIN

volume is concerned. Trotsky makes mans mportant points about ine desperate efforts of the political leaders of the chief imperialist pow- ers to regulate their relations with another and to strangle the one first workers' state. They failed in both of these tasks, but there are many important explanations of this contained in the first volume that summarised in this review As Commissar of the Red Arm in conflict with an alliance of al the capitalist powers and various reactionary forces in Russia, Trotsky naturally tock a deep interest in what had until then been the chief imperialist power. The British navy was still the world's mightiest arm- oured force with the task of polic- ing the entire world. Trotsky const- antly reminded the soldicis who fought under his command that they had to look beyond such forces: "Alongside the Britain of profit, violence, corruption and bloodthirs Britain of

CHES ICTE

labour, intellectual might, and inter- with the national solidarity. Against us fights arrogant and dishonest stock excha- Britain, Labouring people's nge Britain is behind us. This perspective was of consider- able importance in the defence the Russian the passage (p.16) IrOm armies of intervention. In July 1920 importance the London dockers refused to load munitions to Poland for use against the Soviet Union. In the following August all the main organisations of the British working class set up a Council of Action and threatened a General Strike against any further social of the intervention of the British army in the war. Trotsky greeted this latter r asserting with some justice that rest tintin capitalist that has possibly not since the age of Chartism lived through such a period of working class reawakening of interests and (p.105) strivings.

INTERNATIONAL ROLE

Trotsky's emphasis on the inter- pacific class was of mortanice tor ing class was importance for continued survival of the Russian mindedness." Revolution. This was fought for despite and not because of the Where actions of the reformist trade union extended and labour leaders of the type of Messrs Snowden and Ramsay Mac- Donald. These people were more concerned with the defence of the puppet regimes set up in Georgi Transcaucasia and elsewhere by th imperialists in a desperate attempt to present a buffer to the new workers" regime With the lull in the class struggle after the betrayal fo the miners or •Black Friday in April 1921, ther followed the election of the first and perhaps the most cowardly all Labour governments in 1924 In this period Trotsky was clear that the crisis of British capitalism had not been resolved, and so the of forces that most heroic (p. 172) For Chartism will fade. the success of this struggle he was certain that the established Labour and trade union leaders would have to he "thrust aside and thrust out" review seemed unaware that Trotsky «Chrough The constration of a com- The method for this was munist Party free irom routine and the surface sectarianism, and closely bound u with the mass organisations. (p.17: It is clas battles of May 1926 and of how enormous the Communist Party failed to pre- pare for them that the second volume of this collection is concer ned. These issues will be taken up in the next part of this review balance by John Docherty

"Their country before "The political art of the British bourgeoisie consists in shortening the revolutio- nary beak of the proletariat, and so not allowing him to pierce the sheil of the capi- talist state. this complete lack of confidence in the pound abroad." (Dec. 3, 1964) "The beak of the proletariat is its party. If we look at MacDonald, "I was followed by Callaghan who Thomas, Mr. and Mrs. Snowden.

said that we were going to crack up we have to contess that the work of the bourgeoisie in selecting public expenditure could be halted... of the Civil Service, which even a neutral budget would fail to snort-oined and sort-owed nas oeen crowned with astonishing success win the confidence of the bankers for these individuals are not only (Feb. 11, 1965) fit for the piercing of the capitalist skull, but indeed are not fit for

SPINELESS

(Trotsky, Where is Britain Going?

p. 53) But easily the shrewdest of the To read the published extracts assessments made by crossman 1s from Richard Crossman's diaries is when he examines the helpless- to have confirmed with inside de- mess and spinelessness of his tellow tail, all that Trotsky wrote in this reformists: "Callaghan is really represénting lamous amalvsis of the abour Party in 1925. the MacDonaldite attitude to the The Labour Government that bankers in 1931. Like MacDonald came to office in October 1964, when these diaries start, was domi- nated throughout by the develop- ment of the world crisis of capita- lism, revealed in Britain in a balance of payments deficit of some C800m, and in the complete lack of confi- dence of international bankers in the ability of British capitalism to take on the working class. No capi- talist wanted sterling at any price, The bankers wanted increased save capitalism; the diaries show how the Labour Government lined up with the bourgeoisie to do just that.

There are very important lessons Government imposing the wage- siding over and threatening increa- sing unemployment today. The facade of 'democracy", which Crossman is so proud of, is exposed Crossman as a fraud, as any policies for the defence of the working class, who elected the Labour Government are he is open to moral blackmail by sacrificed one after the other to the Lord Cromer (Governor of the dictates of the handful of financial Bank of England) and so are most magnates in the banks. of my working class colleagues.

One could see at Cabinet how,

CYNICISM

whether they belong to the Right or to the Left of the Party they This is carried out by the Labour of the City and of the Bank of England when a crisis of this kind leaders with the most brazen cyni- blows up and they feel they must cism - principles are laughed aside.

put their country before their class".

Crossman writes of his first cabinet (Feb 11th 1965) *a mere formality only concerned The point is clearly made: the poor terrorised, pliable reformists with the economic crisis and, honest- cannot measure up as a leadership ly, we were told as little about it for the working class against the.

as the National Executive of the ruling class in its boardrooms, who It really was an Party Is ever told. absolute farce to have George Brown on their part proceed with class determination to use their immense saying 'Naturally, you won't want resources for the sabotage of the to be told. for fear of the inform- ation leaking, how serious the situ- most minor socia retons. Troussy writes: ation is. You won't want to be told "The resources of State destruc- what methods we shall take but we tion, and legislative and adminis shall take them." (emphasis added) trative sabotage in the hands of But a month later realisation of the crisis broke through to him the possessing classes are Immense since, no matter what their parlia- A Journalist friend tells hun: The City, he said, mentary majority, all the state have lost con- fidence. apparatus from top to bottom is After all Callaghan (Chan- cellor of the Exchequer) threatens inseparably linked with the bour- To it all belongs: all the the City daily with corporation

MEDIATE

Press, the most important organs tax and the capital gains tax, and the City feel they don't know what of loca. government... the banks and the whole system of social to fear, they lose confidence.

T OU

are heading straight for devalnation.

credit "It is absolutely obvious that all *Callaghan's budget speech really had been a flop. these gigantic means will be Confidence brought into action with frantic had not been restored, at least not in the City: and with heavy violence m oract to dam tac act- selling and speculation in Zurich, vity of the Labour Government, we were in the kind of classical to paralyse its exertions, to frigh- financial crisis socialist govern- ten it. and finally to cause a financial panic, ments must expect when they to terrorise the achieve power and find the till upper ranks of the workers' organisations and to sap the empty. (Nov. 22nd, 1964) Pensioners are the first human strength of the proletariat.

Where is Britain Going? p. 80.

sacrifices made to appease the ban- NeTS. 1лc Torommists go to tae Lask with enthusiasm:

CRISIS

"George Brown got up and did magnificently, he rallied the Party he indicated the danger and pulled Since the employers are forcing the pace, so that Labour policy the backpenners rowna to atop the idea of any further concessions has to step into line with the to the pensioners. (Nov. 24, 1964) requirements of the whole chaos And social services are the next of capitalism in crisis, it is not on the shopping list for those defen- surprising that Crossman con- ding capitalism: tinually makes helpless noises "Now so far there has been no such as: suggestion by Harold or James that "There is no inner Cabinet, no we should actually cut social services.

coherent policy on home affairs, No wonder we are still faced with and we are drifting along. That's their class" a By Rick Roberts really the lesson of this deplorable show." (Feb. 3rd 1964) An important item of the bour- "legislative and admini- geoisie's strative sabotage" is the power Crossman continually bemoans with the desperation of abject: weirdesness "oughtn't i to maxe one real effort to get some samity and cen tral strategy into our conduct of affairs? Here we are, with our momentum halted and the Civil Service taking over more every day. Crossman describes with great and very instructive detal how "Whitehall ensures that the Cabinet system is relatively harmless.

The whole job is pre-cooked by off- cials dominated by the Trea- sury". When once this system works for him, Crossman declares: "The Cabinet was effectively rigged". The question is, of course, how has it come about that the leader- ship of the working class, the only revolutionary class in society, has passed to such spincless, oppor- tunist and treacherous politicians The bourgeois parties, liberal and Tory, held undisputed sway through out the nineteenth century when Britain was the most powerful industrial country in the world with enormous wealth. Part of this wealth could be sacrificed for forced concessions to the growing strength of the working class, and to create in the process a privileged layer in the working class wilich was tied to capitalism by such concessions. But foreign compe- tition displaced Britain from the position of world domination at the end of the century, and in Trotsky's words "Towards the beginning of the present century it produced a state of internal want of confidence. and fer- ment among the upper classes, and a protound molecular pro- cess of an essentially revolutionary character among the working class.

Chief place in these processes was occupied by mighty conflicts bet- ween labour and capital."

Where is Britan Going P. It was under this decline of th power of British capital on the one hand, and the mighty revolu- tionary movement on the other that there developed the political awakening of the working class, applied to found and build the LaDour Party

DEFEND UNIONS

Spurred by the need to defend the unions from the Taff Vale judgement which made them finan- cially liable for striking, workers achieved a large Labour Party fraction for the first time in the General Election of 1906, with

42 MI'S

Restrained by the treacherous position of its leadership during the war, sirces continued alter- wardson a grand scale till the triple alliance of miners, railway- men's and transport leaders bet- rayed the general strike of 1920, and, paralysed in the economic struggle, workers directed their energy to the political plane The Labour Party, composed o he political reflection of thi aristocracy in the workers move ment grew out of all expectation and finally achieved a Government in 1924. So the Labour Party is a party of On the one hand contradiction built during a revolutionary up- heaval by the working class for its own voice in Parliament, and on the other taking leaders drawn from a privileged reformist layer which has nothing but dread of the revolution which these reforms were intended to forestall.

This petty bouregois privilege can be seen when Crossman revealingly "The radical measures which measures in the sense that they would require us to accept the confiscation of Prescote Manor was "a lovely manor house in the country" with a farm of 500 acres which Crossman owned In consequence of this Trotsky defined their role: "In struggling against proletarian class-conscious- mess the rerormists are m tae lasu resort the instrument of the ruling class" . (Where is Britain Going?

p. 48) The Labour Party rules by virtue of the comparative historical weak ness of the ruling class in the face of the developed strength of the working class. But the conservat- 1 ism of its upper circles means that a socialist programme for the working class is put off to the in- definite future while in the pres- ent it manages capitalism for the capitalists, Thus Crossman repeats the usua bleat of the retormist, impotent to challenge the rule of capital: We are now, as a Cabinet, faced with the most difficult problem we have ever had. What sanctions should provide against employers who refuse to freeze their prices their wages in the period of the wage freeze? Once we have sanc- tions of this kind it means that conceivably a trade union or trade union leader could be punished for industrial action.

WAGE FREEZE

*I get the impression that this is one of the assurances Callaghan must have given to Fowler from the American Treasury when he was in Washington 1965] This is one of Crossman's few reterences to the Prices and inc omes Board set up in April 1965 to erect une desired mcreased ex ploitation of the working class through freezing wages and thro- ugh productivity dealing.

In the name of this Anglo-Amer Wilson ican "special relationship' had to fit in with American imp- erialist plans, to support their anti- working class slaughter in Vietnam and to increase defence expenditure.

But whatever happened to the left' in the Labour Party - all those MPs who make speeches about socialism and the class struggle but who almost invariably turn out into the lobbies to vote for Wilson? There is a real requirement in the Labour party now for all those members who see it as a socialist party to get up and fight for the removal of the right wing - the Wilsons, Jenkins and Prentices. Yet always the "left' has proved unable to fight the right wing in the Labour party. The Tribe unites today refuse to fight for the release of the Shrewsbury Two and the removal of Jenkins as Home Secretary Nowhere does the nature of the left come out more clearly in Crossman's dismes than over imm gration, Crossman's position is clear. On February 5th, 1965 he writes: "Frank Soskice is a disaster as Home secretary..... ne nas been gradually dragged out of his pure- ly liberalistic attitude to a recog nition that we haveto have tight immigration controls... Immigra- tion can be the createst potential vote loser for the Labour party if we are seen to be permitting a flood of immigrants to come in and blight the central arcas in all our cities" [emphasis added]

IMMIGRATION

The Immigration white paper d August 1965 proposed to restrict commonwealth immigrants from 208,000 to 7,500, for profession- al and skilled workers only.

From the Labour party Confer- ence, Crossman reports: "We felt we had to out-trump the Tories by doing what they would have done. (emph added *I think so because I am an old fashioned Zionist who believe that anti-semitiom and racialism SOCIALIST PRESS, Thursday 20th March, 1975 are endemic, that one has to deal with them by controlling immig.

ration when it gets beyond a cer [Sept 29th, 1965] Thus, like all retormists, Crossman blames the working class for hisoown weakness, stating that racialism can't be fought while refusing to fight.

he descripes tre ert response knowing they pose no serious threat: "The talk was now about th immigration debate, and all the corridors were humming about the great sell-out of socialist prin- ciples in the White Paper, and how the T&GWU were going to side with the anti-government people There was Vicky [the cartoonist] looking white with anger, sitting with Michael Foot. All the left were up in arms against the bet- rayal." [September 28th 1965] anen came ene loit attack. wac again I realised that in the Labour party the real discussion is berween practical policy and emotional pro- test. Very rarely have we discussed alternative policies or even alternat ive attitudes. The left don't say they have a different policy from supp- ort for the Americans in Vietnam.

The left say, That is the official "[Sept line and we object to it 29th, 1965, emphasis added]

TROTSKY

To quote Trotsky once more: *The lett wing of the Labour party represents an attempt at the resur- rection of centrism within the social-imperialist party of MacDon- ald. It thus reflects the agitation of a part of the Labour bureaucracy for a connection with the leftward moving masses. It would be a mons- trous illusion to think that those left elements of the old school are capable of heading the revolution - ary movement of the British prolet- ariat." (Where is Britain Going? PP 129-30)

LEFTS

As centrists, the'lefts ' are incapable of an independent policy, and cannot lead the working class. They have no overall system of policy and so allow the right, who have such a system, to control the Labour party. If they were forced into power on the backs of the working class, they would im- mediately surrender it to the right- wing if the working class under a revolutionary leadership was not powerfully enough organised to take It over trom then So we demand of the 'left': Throw out Roy Jenkins, Reg Prentice and the right-wing in the Labour party who will not carry out the wishes of the working class. and replace them with those who will fight.

Workers who have illusions in the lefts" vill rapidly see their true role ex- posed under conditions where the lefts are called upon to act rather than just talk. We maintain therefore, that above all, the need is to build a principled revolutionary leadership in the wor king class, able to analyse and fight the betrayals of both the "right and "left wings of the Labour leadership. This is the main lesson we must draw from the Crossman diaries.

SOCIALIST PRESS, Thursday 20th March. 1973 Workers Diary

LEATHERY JUMPER

Aeronautics enthusiasts will have noted with interest the new discovery in Texas of the skeleton of a huge pterodactyl-like flying rept- le with a wing span of over 51 feet (wider than many jet fighters). In its heyday (some 60 million years ago) this creature would zoom around on leathery (feath- erless) wings, like a prehistoric Concorde. But the debate among devotees is now a herce one.

For with the enormous amount of energy (and fuel!) required by such a creature to take off con- ventionally it is now being asked up to some handy hill-top or cliff and leap off, gliding gently to the ground. This might seem rather a point- less pastime but if you are born with 51 foot wings there is not reallv a lot of choice. Yet there could be a brighter side to the problems of the unnamed reptile.

Concorde design staff are believ- ed to be considering this method of take-off as a fuel economy measure. Tractors (or even horses) could tow the plane to a suitable cliff where a trained crew would give it a good push, thus pleasing both the environmentalists and the Energy Minister!

"NO FACTIONS!" - POPE

Tie 237 delegates to the 32nd general congregation of the Order of Jesus (the Jesuit priesthood) dispersed in Rome on March 8th, after over 100 days of sessions, to the mingled sounds of satis- faction and bewilderment.

At any event (reports our Eccle- stastica Correspondent) tne con- ference managed to resolve a tri- cky logical and theological dilem- ma. The central problem arose from a rank and file democrat- ising' faction, led by delegates from Latin America and Africa Their proposals included changing the Order's heirarchy, in which on- ly the highest level at present takes a special vow of obedience to the Pope, by proposing this vow be open to all ranks. Only objector to this scheme was Pope Paul himself.

This posed a problem: obedience to the Pope would thus have requ ired.. disobedience to the Pope!

Eventually delegates were persu- aded to drop the idea, forcing one of them to depart with the consol- atory formula that: "Obedience is not synonymous with submission to authority Jesuits are long accustomer to the naradoree of anedience Tig founder of the Order, St. Ignatius Loyola, took (in the sixteenth century what would todav be regarded as an extreme position *If the Church shall have defined anything to be black which to our eyes appears to be white, we ought in like manner to pronoun- ce it to be black." (Rules for Thinking within the Church, Latin edition, 1534).

MINER IRRITATION

NUM leader Joe Gormley had a narrow escape the oth- er week. Students kidnapped him and demanded a ransom from the NUM of 1p per union member as a contrib- ution to their "rag". Although the NUM rapidly in- tervened and agreed to pay £2,500 they only just forestalled a move by Yorkshire miners to offer even as long as the students

NOTE -

kept Gormley! A Yorkshire miner, who declined to be named, told Socialist Press "*1 would of thought the students should pay us to have the bugger back!" Hospital workers have taken a further step forward in their fight to drive private practice out of the National Health Service. Incensed by the refusal of the Labour Government to fulfill even its modest election pledge of a 'phased withdrawal' of private prac- tice. ancillary workers throughout the country are now relusing to service private patients in an attempt to force the government to take Already hospitals in Wales, the North-West and London have been forced to close private wards whilst , such as the Christie Hos- at olners, ancillary wor- bital in Manchester ker members of NUPE are preven- ting non-csschmal cosme opera tions on private private patients from going ahead.

LINK

The link between opposition to private practice and defence of the NHS is clearly seen at the West- minster Hospital in London.

There the management wishes to close down NHS beds because they can- not afford to pay substitute staff whilst regular staff are on holiday.

The local NUPE branch hus insis- ted that the private beds must be the first to go in these circumstances, and is refusing to provide service for fee-paying, patients.

And in answer to management plans to transfer private patients to neigh- touring hospitals, they have called for extension of their action to these hospitals. At other hospitals, the fight to abolish private practice has had to face up to a new threat from the At Moorfields Eye consultants. Hospital in London, 16 part-time consultants have banded together to finance a new unit at the exclu- sive Wellington private hospital where rooms for the rich cost up- wards of 656 a day. At the beginning of last month the director of the US Federal Reserve Bank, Dr Arthur Burns, announced that the dollar "remains bas- ically a very strong currency": As if to deliberately prove him wrong, the dollar has since follow- ed an almost continuous path of decline on the international mar- kets. This decline is of course a resp onse to the developing crisis o the US economy reflected in gro- wing unemployment and inflation As previously reported in Social- ist Press, it will be increasingly difficult to reduce inflationary pressures in the US without a major confrontation and defeat of the working class. At present the American ruling class is not

PACHO SAME COHTOHLELIOE

preferring to attempt a reduction oi unemplovment by hoosting purchasing power with a tax cut of $ 28 billion. This will only serve to increase intlationary pressures as capitalists react to increased consumer spending by raising prices further in an attempt to protect profit rates.

INTEREST

US domestic inflation has, and will further, reduce the desire of foreign banks to hold large sums of dollars which can be exchanged against fewer and fewer US com- midities. At the same time, the reduction in interest rates by major US banks like the Morgan Guaranty last week further rein.

forced the trend against the dol- lar on the international money markets. As the recession develops and profits fall, the bank interest rate on loans has plummeted downwards in a desperate attem- pt to encourage investment des- pite low profit expectations.

But at the same time, precisely

NEW PAY BEDS

OFFENSIVE

organisation, the British Medical Association, demands that the Government should act to stop unions "unilaterally and illegally" closing down pay beds. Secretary of the BMA. Dr. Derek Stevenson threatened that the clo- sure of private heds could only mean that part-time consultant: woul not be so readily availahic to NHS patients.

LEADERSHIP

But whilst the consultants use Barbara Castle their wealth against the health By transferring their fee-paying service, the leadership of healt workers offers no way forward in patients to this luxury clinic the its defence. The demand for consuitants are hoping to get round the action of NUPE mem- Government action against private bers which has prevented all pri- practice is coming trom the union vate admissions at Moorfields.

membership in the branches and The NUPE action has made more until the recent upsurge of unoffi- beds available for NHS patients, cial actions, NUPE's executive had but because of tie consultants taken no lead in demanding that action, 20 of these are unused.

Lour should corry out its pledge Consultants elsewhere have been to removerprivate patients from the quick to follow the Moorfields N°s (e process that was scheduled lead, and at Rochdale, where con- to start three months ago).

sultants have closed the outpatients And the leadership of COSE, department of the Rochdale Infirm- the other large NHS union, has still ary, 18 of them have contriated not called for any action, even €1,000 each to convert and extend though opposition to private prac- a local nursing home to take in tice is union policy. private patients. These leaders are quite willing to At the same time as the consultants collaborate with the Labour Government in dismantling the attempt to smash up the NS, their Decline of the Dollar because of the falling interest a major recession and destruction rates foreign depositors have less of capital. reason to invest in US banks, At the same time the growing in effect, less reason to buy doll- US recession has reduced the de- ars. mand for oil, resulting in the The decline of the dollar on cessation of pumping by a major the international money market Saudi-Arabian pipeline and com- petitive price cutting by some Has ancady causca worry among the oil producers about receiving However the oil pro- their revenues in a rapidly deter- ducers cartel OPEC is currently lorating currency. At the begin- planning co-ordinated production ning of February Iran decided cutbacks to prevent falling demand to value its own currency no leading to price competition. Such longer in terms of the dollar but a cutback scheme is currently be in terms of the IMF's "Special ing sponsored by Iran, Kuwait, Drawing Rights" ie. a mixture and Algeria. of US and European currencies The necessity, from the strategic view point of the American ruling

MAJOR

class to carry through Kissinger's attempt to smash OPEC once and for all, remains, therefore, as ever.

But this is no solution. The SDR's But at the same time, the econo contain a substantial dollar element The dollar is still the major world reserve currency. Despite its grow- ing weakness, it cannot be replaced with another currency or mixture of currencies. This is for the simple reason that the problems which beset the US economy and the Education is one of the dollar, also piague every other maj- major casualties of Wake- or capitalist country and its curr- ency. field's Labour controlled As national capitals compete District Council's planned more and more ruthlessly for the cuts. More than £1.000,000 diminishing world surplus value is to be cut from the educa- and profit, there is no steady de- mand for the commodities of any tion budget plus probably one country by others. Thus the another £2,000,000 from demand for the various currencies the capital works in the ed- is constantly fluctuating with the ucation field. result that their exchange rates are more and more unstable in This means that even the planned relation to one another. CECaSe Lie number or Leder This is accentuated as capitalist ers of less than 2% cannot he met.

states price themselves out of ence of schools, the furniture one another s export markete through inflationary and equipment grant, and the credit exp- ansion aimed at holding off as amount available for students long as possible from mass unem- grants has been decimated.

ployment and the destruction of We say that the working class and its children will not be made capital accumulation. The fact is that the currency of to pay for the crisis. There must no canitalist economv can ani be an emergency NUT meeting longer serve as a stable means of to discuss a campaign to fight the international payment. Only gold cuts. They must get the support can serve this function but then of the rest of the working class only through the mechanism of Page 7 health service. The fight against pay beds must take place in opposition to these reformists since these issues raise the question of the ownership and control of the whole health service. A resolution adonted unanimous- ly by Oxford and District Trades Council on 14th March points the way forward now for all workers to defend the free health service and the wages and conditions of all NHS workers: "This Trades Council deplores the Statements of Regional Consultants in the Health Service and the Battle Plan of the BMA in calling for mass withdrawals and resignations from the Health Service in defence of private practice. Council calls on telegates to take back to their branches support for the blacking of all private work within the NHS, in line with ASTMS national policy recommendations, and in defence of the NHS, demands the restora- tion of all cuts in health spending and me aponnon or private practice inside the Health Service: to imple- ment these demands, Council calls for an electod committee of trades unionists representing both Health Service workers and consumers of health services, to examine the day to day running of the Regional and Area Health Authorities, to super- vise and control the deployment of resources according to the health requirements of all." mic means to achieve it are slip ping away. An essential part of Kissinger's strategy was President Ford's plan to reduce oil imports through protective tariffs. Con- gress nas just rejected this as likely to be too inflationary in the context of the already infla- tionary 28 billion dollar tax cut.

The increasing inability to deal with OPE by economic means only serves to increase the attrac tiveness of military methods to the US ruling class. Yet as Cam- bodia and Vietnam show, the world working class is not about to sit back while military interven- tion takes place. Thus the weak- ness of the dollar reflects the grow- ing class contradictions of capital- ism and imperialism on a world

SCHA

OPEN THE BOOKS !

in the area, including the miners, to prepare for strikes throughout the area. The Counci Shop stew- ards meeting must make clear their opposition to these attacks.

Their policy must be: "No education cuts. *No redundancies. For the amount of work available to be shared among the whole council work- force with no loss of pay.

*For all details of the finances of the connei to be made avant able to the Shpp Stewards comm- ittee. *For an end to private contracts.

For a massive programme of public worke To prepare for District-wide strikes to support these demands.

We also callon the Labour Council to refuse to carry out The attacks on the working class.

"lefts" on the council should fight for these demands and should campaign to kick out all the car- eerists who work only for them- selves.

The "discission" now op- ening up, on the television and in the capitalist press, over the Common Market referendum is a fraud, to give some credibility to the Labour leadership's smokescreen of "renegot- iated terms". What all the media and the reformists are anxious to obscure is the class question of the Common Market - what is it, and in whose interest does it operate? The European Economic Community, as it is otherwise called, is a strategic aim of Eur- opcan capiansm to me some common ground on which they can rally their joint economic political and military strength in order to confront the competition of Japan and the USA under con- ditions of slump, and in order to combat the rising militancy of the working class.

TARIFFS

The dropping of internal tariffs, alongside the erection of barriers to imports from non-EEC counte ries is an attempt to give Europ- ean capitalism an advantage, though at the same time it opens the door to the start of trade war and economic nationausm within the USA and Japan.

Equally as important to the em- ployers is that as recession and unemployment begin to grow throughout Europe, the Common Market opens up the scope for The decision of the T&GWU National Executive to call on the TUC for a one-day gener- al strike to force the release of the Shrewsbury Two is a step which must not be over- looked. It reflects the pressure on the bureaucracy from militant trade unionists throughout the country on this issue, and is a conscious call for all-out general strike action It is most important that resol- utions continue to flow in to District and Regional committees and National Executives of all unions, as well as to Labour party GMCs calling for indefinite gener- al strike action to free these pick- ets. Any attempt to limit the action to a one-day stoppage means that the way is opened for further bureaucratic evasion.

Alongside the call for general strike action must go the demand that the Labour party "left' MPs light to remove Jenkins as Home Secretary. The Workers Socialist League fought for these policies when it took part in a demonstration of 1,000 trade unionists who Not on any terms! Europe-wide "rationalisation".

In this way production would be moved to the most weakly organ- ised and impoverished areas in Europe in order to break strikes and drive down working condit- ions. Such moves are already be- ginning - as can be seen in the threats of Fords and Chryslers to close down British plants in order to operate from Europe, if speed- up and redundancies are not acc- opter.

POLITICAL STRATEGY

Yet the Common Market is diso a political strategy for the bour- geoisie, which goes hand in hand with a strengthening of military alliances and cooperation. The concept of "European Parliament" and of centralised economic dec- ision-making is of course to pro- vide instant sanctions against governments which show weak- ness in the face of the working class. Thus any planned policy of nationalisation would be open to control from Brussels. At the same time any eruption of the class strugele in local areas could be dealt with, under EEC strategy, "neutral" troops from other EEC countries. In every way the Common Market shows itself as the bourgeois preparation for recession.

These class issues show why any opposition to the Market must be along class and not nationalist lines. We reject the fake idea of *British sovereignity peddled by reformists, Stalinists, and anti- Market Tories alike (often from the same platform). This means merely the sovereignty of British capitalists over the working class.

We reject any attempt to turn as

SHREWSBURY '2'

LEICER

1872 LA

TRADES GN

The Leicester Trades Council Shrewsbury Two demonstration marched to Leicester jail on Sat- urday 8th March. The following motion has been passed unanimously by T&GWU 10/76A Branch (covering Hollis Bros, Hull) : "This branch meeting recognises that the January 14th lobby of Parliament demanding the release of the Shrews bury Iwo has not achieved its aim. In fact since that date brothers Warren and Tomlinson have been removed trom an open prison and sent to separate closed jails, thus making their term of imprison-

LICILL HILOIC HIRES

This branch calls on the Hull and District Trades Council to demand of the TUC that an off- icial General Strike should be called and maintained until their release is secured.

It was quite clear that their imprisonment by the last Tory government was an attack on the right to picket, and their continued imprisonment is a condemnation of the Labour government's Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, who should be removed from office and re- placed by a Home Secretary prepared to use the power at his disposal." in "alternative" once more to th uper-exploitation of the workers and peasants in the ex-colonia.

and Commonwealth countries.

Our call to vote "NO" to the Common Market is based then on opposition in principle to what the Market stands for. The Labour leaders consciously divert away trom such a stand with talk about "terms We say "NO - on any terms. The interests of the work- ing class cannot be defended by reforming capitalism, but only l attacking it, weakening it, and destroying it. An important step in this is therefore to attack tre employers strategic line of defence - and pull Britain out of the Com- mon Market. This can then open up the way for the fight for soc- an capitalist country. To the BEC we therefore counterpose the struggle for the United Socialist States of Europe.

CLASS LINES

Only if the Common Market i ought on these class lines can th role of the 69 traitors within the Labout party who preserved the Tories in office and sold out their own members by voting for the EEC entry be exposed, and these men driven out of the Labour movement. For these reasons we reject the reactionary nationalist platform of the "Get Britain Out" camp- aign (patronised jointly by Tories and trade union leaders like Clive Jenkins) and call on Trades Coun , and trade union bodies to join with Labour Party constituenc organisations in leading a campaign for a massive rejection of the Com- mon Market by the working class

YORKSHIRE

JOBS FIGHT

At Imperial Typewriters in Hull the occupation contin- ues despite the weakness of its leadership and the refusal of the T&GWU to pay strike benefit. It is being supported by black- ing action from Hull dockers and the National Port Shop Stewards Committee. The Yorkshire Divi- sional Council of ASTMS has also donated 1500 Other major firms have also ann- ounced closures ans redundancies - Thorn Consumer Electronics in Hull is to close throwing up 225 jobs, and in Bradford, alongside the continuing slump in textiles 900 are to be made redundant at Bairds colour television factory, the biggest plant in the town In both Bradford and Hull the WSL. is actively campaigning on the call for mass meetings factory occupations to fight all redundancies and short time and to establish the sliding scale of working hours with no loss of earnings, In the course of the occupation the books of the employer must be forced open to the view of trade unionists, to prove the case for the firm's nationalisation by the Labour government, without compensation. A programme of public works, to integrate nation- alised plants into the beginnings of a planned economy is vital to protect all jobs and expand pro- duction of necessary commodit- ics. A resolution passed by Leeds No.1 UCATT Branch for the UCATT Regional Conference in May, puts forward means of fighting layoffs and wage-cuts: Printed and Published by the Workers Socialist League.

31, Dartmouth Park Hill, London NWS IHR. Printed by Trade Union Labour

WORKERS REACH

iversity hoisted Portuguese flags to celebrate the defeat of Spinola's

FOR POWER

coup, reflecting the impact of these events, which will redouble (continued from front page) and surge throughtthe millions Trotsky described in 1936 the of workers already posed with class battles in defence of jobs mamn traits or bonaparasm as: "the independence of power and wages throughout Europe.

This situation makes concrete the from parties and programmes call for the United Socialist the liquidation of the parliament- ary legislation by means of emerg- States of Europe to be fought for ency powers, the rising of the in opposition to the capitalist Government in the guise of the Common Market, Just as in 1968, when the May- "arbiter above the struggling June General Strike in France comps, i.c., factually above the nation." [France at the Turning was followed by revolutionary Point] struggles in Czechoslovakia, this Only from this class standpoint, development, beginning in the fascist and the capitalist countries secing through the left demagogs is it possible for the working class can rapidly spread to the deformed workers' states of Eastern Europe, to understand the Portuguese re- and to Russia itself, threatening gime. Thus although leading fig- the very existence of the Stalinist ures, such as COPCON commander bureaucracy with the prospect of General Carvalho. make vociferous attacks on the US Ambassndor in political revoltition Thus the Kremlin dreads the Lisbon Fran: . Carlucci (who is de- nounced in Paris and Berlin as a prospect of revolution and seeks to head it off, operating directly CIA official), these speeches through Cunhal and the Portuguese remain shadow-boxing, to cover ese CP. In this counter-revolution- the regime's decision to remain ary stance they end up in the in the reactionary NATO alliance, same camp as the US capitalist and to allow Carlucci to remain class who also fear Portugal as the in Lisbon. class who also fear the events in

PARLIAMENT

Portugal as the seeds of the over- throw of capitalism in countries The bogus natureof the regime throughout Europe. This coincides and its lack of programme makes outco stuss snowtone aul uta liberation forces in South-East its leaders seek to set up the cover of a parliament. But the parlia Asia, which are striking further hammer blows at imperialism.

ment of April 12th will be the servant and not the master, of the Armed Forces Movement, and behind them, , of the capitalist

LEADERSHIP

class. The AFM will keep a power of veto over all legislation, and It is precisely for such condition the power to propose and carry as these and the need within them through measures of its own. The for revolutionary leadership that day-to-day ruling of the country the founders of the Workers Soc- will be through the AFM's direct ialist League first took up the nominees on the "Revolutionary Council" - a cabinet imposed on al Programme within the sectarian a parliament before it even exists Workers Revolutionary Party, and The parliament can be nothing precisely why it became necessary but a fraud, ompotent to act, to maintain the continuity of the under the control of the officer fight for Trotskyism in the build- corps. ing of the WSL The Socialist Party, led by Soares The most critical question in has been greatly discredited by its Portugal is the crisis of leadership attitude to the March ith coup.

in the workers movement. As any The main political support given Glasgow dustman can tell Portu- to the regime now comes directly guese workers, the standing army from the Stalinist Communist P is neither 'above' classes nor con- Party, whose Secretary Cunhal trolled by the working class. Yet is a diehard advocate of the Mos the existing mass workers parties cow line. Under his leadership in Portugal are dedicated to preserv and through the influencesof the erving a 'unity" with the armed CP in the mass movement, the forces and the capitalist parties, political energies and initiative of holding back the power of the the working class are being directed working class. into the campaign for the parlia,- To fight now means to demand mentary elections. that the CP and SP break from The Stalinist leaders join in con all bourgeois parties and the AFM demnation of the break-up of con- and form a workers government frences of the right wing parties, with a programme to unite workers and willingly aquiesce in the off- and peasants, and based on the icers latest actions banning parties existing organs of workers power of the "ultra-left" - the Maoist centralised in a national body.

against Pabloite Trotskyist with threats Above all however stands the against Pabloite need for a leadership able to groupings such as the LCI. Itself anderstand and to defeat reformism armed Forces Moventent's Rev- aar Stalinism - a Trotskyist party.

Armed Forces Movement's olutionary Councu, and the prop- osed civilian parliament, the Com-

WSL PUBLIC MEETING

munist Party now forms the most "For a Workers' Government obstinate brake on all attempts to in Portugal strengthen and unify the independ- 15th April, 7.30 p.m ent organs of the workers? power.

at "THE ROEBUCK It is no accident that the Stalin- (corner T'tenham Ct Rd and ists move in this way. The out- Manle St. nr. Warren St Tube) Sreak of revolutionary struggle in Portugal, in conditions entirely € 500 monthly different from those which enablec the fascists and the military to prepare the base for a coup ir Chile, is already having an inter- development national impact. In Spain, students at Madrid Un- Tund "That this conference rejects the attempts of the employers to The enormous movements in the force workers to pay for the ec- working class internationally pose onomic crisis by unemployment sharply the question of programme and inflation. It calls upon UCATT and of leadership. It is to resolve Executive to negotiate a sliding these that the WL and its paper scale of wages and hours so that Socialist Press have been founded wages increase in line with the The response which our paper cost of living and the amount of and the policies it fights for •have work available is shared among been able to win in the workers the whole labour force with no movement shows that we must loss of pay. Unemployment must be eradicated by a massive pro- expand the paper from an 8-page fortnightly gramme of public works. So that these works should not be exploit- We are therefore appealing to our readers for a £500 monthly ed for profit by employers this development fund. conference calls on the Labour Donations should be sent to: government to nationalise the Socialist Press, 11 Lower Basildon bullding industry without comp- Near Reading, Berks. ensation.