The Next Step: No. 6, 1980

the next step out the outlines of another Social Contract.

What they say. THE RT HON LEN MURRAY OBE and his friends condemn the Tory Government's economic strategy and industrial policy. They all Te Tons Thatcher and Joseph for ignoring 'trade union opinion' and moan about how they haven't been consulted over issues which affect the what they mean. The leadership of the labour movement has no real alternative to the Tory strategy.

It is prepared to accept Prior's Employment Bill, the need for 'sacrifices' and rising unemployment. The only difference the labour bureaucrats have with Thatcher is one of emphasis. The TUC Labour Party share the of restoring capitalist profitability putting industry back on its feet. They would just prefer to fulfil it through the co-operation of the working class.

During the past month more and more union leaders have come out in favour of a social contract. Ken Baker is an elder statesman on the TUC General Council and president of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions; he told the CSEU's June prepare for a new social contract. Moss Evans of the TGWU agreed.

But Baker and Evans were only echoing The TUC and the Labour Party conference

NO TO ANOTHER

SOCIAL CONTRACT!

If you thought the last Labour Government was bad enough, take a look at what the Labour Party's preparing for next time around. Everybody from Tony Benn to Moss Evans now agrees there'll have to be some sort of wage control; and they all accept unemployment as a fact of life. The official labour movement is passing its summer conference season working denounce Tassine his accebrance 'national interest. from wages to include, work, and the Brighton and Tories' aim delegate will and about the living standards. nothing to against the conference to the idea that Labour leader Callaghan first floated at the party's special conference in May. Even Tony Benn, Callaghan's bitter rival and star of the Labour left, wants a new incomes policy. Of course, when he was interviewed on the ITV prog "Union Power', Benn presented of wage control very delicately. He said he wanted 'a broadening of the area of collective bargaining at the place of what happens to the profits' (The Guardian, 7 July 1980). Whichever way you twist the words, they add up to the same thing - wage control.

All the TUC and the Labour Party have to offer is more of the same treatment we've had from the Tories. At Blackpool, delegate after make militant speeches evils of the system and the viciousness of the Tories. But, as usual the labour bureaucrats are busy hammering out another way of cutting working class •..and what they've done The labour leaders have done next to defend the working class capitalist attack. They've organised a few demonstrations and rallies.

They've printed a lot of stickers. But this scarcely hides the fact that they're not prepared to lift a finger to oppose the review of the Revolutionary Communist Tendency 20p 'Don't look at me — the man's priced himself out of a job' new employment laws or defend workers in struggle In fact the bureaucrats ever act decisively is against their own mem here leader Frank Chapple has moved swiftly to crush democratically elected left-wing representatives of his members in South Wales. Railway workers' chief Sid Weighell had no hesitation in pushing through a motion at the NUR July annual ference calling for a witchhunt against the left. Terry driving left-wing full-timers out of the engineering union. The labour leaders' main concern is to consolidate their domination working class. This objective unites TASS leader and Communist Party member Ken Gill with the AUEW's John Boyd of the most right-wing supporters the Labour Party has. The central thrust of the union leaders' attack on the Tories - Thatcher's refusal to talk to the unions concerns only the position. If they are to maintain credibility with the rank and file, union leaders have to show that they are important enough for the Tories to consult with them.

Unemployment their biggest crime Because the labour leadership believes in regenerating British industry, it is prepared capitalist

TUC

their motives or the ex treme 23 June 1980) labour leadership solutions. working class. organisations the working and the Labour Party instrument. only time the labour Electricians' union con- Duffy has been busy

INSIDE

over the - one on Vietnam in the USA bureaucracy's own bosses The case for revolution in the AUEW Black Bolshevik to allow the working class to pay for the crisis. The bureaucrats thus accept unemployment as a necessary evil.

Bob Wright, candidate of the Broad Left for the presidency of the AUEW, put it bluntly in his recent announcement that trade unions cannot fight unemployment.

Given the consensus of the left and the right-wing of the bureaucracy on the inevitability of mass unemployment, it's surprising that the TUC has plans to organise the unemployed. Confidential documents sent anonymously to the next step reveal the real reason behind this sudden concern for workers languishing on the dole. At the June meeting of the and General Purposes Committee, the union bureaucrats made clear by arguing that: Unless effective action was taken groups of unemployed would be organised and used for their own purposes by the extreme right left.' (Committee minutes, The TUC is worried about the influence of 'extremists' on the unemployed. The will take steps to counter this or any other threat to its position. Its solutions are the bosses' The annual public relations exercises carried out around the TUC and the Labour Party conference are designed to make these solutions palatable to the Transform our movement! There is a major fight ahead. The problem is not merely the labour leaders, but the and traditions that perpetuate the domination of Labour politics in the working class. The leadership of class is able to play its reactionary role because its politics have strong roots on the shop floor. The way the labour movement is organised doesn't only reproduce the divisions that capitalism imposes on the working class; it keeps industrial disputes separate from political struggles. The division between the TUC - between economics and politics - is the most effective for destroying the united strength of the working class.

The crisis of working class leadership is not one of personnel. It is an ideological crisis that can only be overcome in the struggle to build a political alternative in the labour movement. Until workers take on the Labour Party and its reformist programme, our movement will continue to be dominated by the Callaghans, Benns and Wrights of this world. Now is the time to show our fellow workers that to go forward we have to challenge the right of the Labour Party to speak on our behalf.

Ireland: the TUC, the PTA...

and the anti-war movement 2,4,5 Another racist murder in East London: ELWAR on the offensive Socialism = nuclear power + a cruise missile aimed at the 8,9 12 Review: Harry Haywood,

Ireland THE TUC has responded unequivocally to Tameside reaffiliation. For the Congress bureaucrats Tameside is now 'outside the official trade union movement; there can be 'no appeal' against the Council's withdrawal of recognition (TUC, minutes of the Consultative Committee, 29 May 1980).

There, thought the matter ended. Trades Council's campaign against bans has grown from strength to strength.

Since May, no less than 46 trades councils have passed resolutions in its defence.

Numerous union branches have discussed the victimisation have condemned the TUC. As a result the discussion of the Irish War in the labour movement has been important impetus. Her Majesty's Communist Party The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the organisation that started vland-ten years of wr the next step Fighting redundancies the next step

CAN LABOUR

FIGHT THE TORIES?

• 1,896,643 reasons for taking I want to fight unemployment with the next step and the next I would like more information about the RCT step I would lik I would like the next step (1 year to order to order (10 copies to subscribe extra copies of -£2.00) - £3.20) Teach the TUC a lesson! Trades Council's fight for House continued General Trades Councils' Joint members Hallsworth said: bureaucrats, the But it didn't. Tameside

TUC

of Tameside and save "our" industries.' "These an given other the next step

SMASH THE PIA

devana

THE CRUNCH

the next step

THE PRICE OF

TUC LEADERSHIP

can get and deprivation. the witchhunt against Tameside (see the next step, No 4, April/May). And it has obstruct the campaign against the TUC ban. When ex-Tameside secretary Dave Hallsworth told the truth about Tameside's expulsion at the 19 June meeting of Liverpool Trades Council, CP were enraged. Here's what It was not the labour movement that disaffiliated Tameside Trades Council but the class collaborators at the top - the TUC and their good friends in our ranks the Communist Party. Both line up with the British state when faced with the war in Ireland. Faced with the crisis in Britain, they wave the Union Jack and call on workers to support import controls to But, while one old Stalinist spluttered sectarians worse than the are Trotskyites in the docks in the 'forties, "Trotskyites' were silent Loo Reformists in Militant and radicals in the SWP were embarrassed by Hallsworth's attack on chauvinism - their cosy relation- Zimbabm Who won? the next step T1X in actini, Labour Party in conference Don't let them drag us down!

With James Callaghan in the lead of the attack on the Tories' record unemployment levels, people on the dole need all the help they What they need most of all is a way of getting together with workers who still have jobs in a common battle against the system that can only survive through creating mass misery Every issue of the next step contains the politics for fighting unemployment and the bankrupt leadership of the Labour Party.

Make sure you get it by taking out a sub.

scription (1 year - £3.20). Take a few extra copies to sell at work or outside the dole office (10 copies - £2.00). Better still join in some of the action supporters of the next step are organising in August (see p14 for details).

ship with the CP had been upset. All they could say was that the 'case' for Tameside has not been well put. The Tameside campaign has begun to show the lengths to which the CPGB will go to defend the Rt Hon Lionel Murray and his fellow opponents. Given the importance of the Irish War to the British working class this was inevitable. middle ground between the Irish people and the British state for the CPB to occupy. It has demonstrated where it stands on the issue anti-imperialists. We can now see bureaucrats of the TUC phrase official trade union movement.

They provide an important service for the capitalist state. In return the state certifies them as 'official". The Tameside campaign indicates that working class support for the liberation struggle in Ireland is an important step towards bringing the of the organisations dig deep to help the next step expand.

1 The war in Ireland drags on. While Atkins tries to work titutional solution, still being shot, new regiments are moving onto the streets of the Six Counties and the Orange Lodges are growing in strength. step analyses developments like these scientifically of building an anti-imperialist movement in Britain Fighting redundancies is a task more 2 urgent than deveaves is a rasa mies are closing down or cutting back. the next step is unique because it consistently puts the defence of jobs above the demands of the capitalist economy.

The Labour Party remains the biggest political obstacle to the defence of the working class. It wants fairer cuts, a fairer version of the last social contract, fairer immigration oppression of the Irish...We want to be "fairer' on the Labour Party Contents Editorial The fight for jobs Ireland Teach the TUC a lesson! Fighting the Irish War in Britain What sort of anti-imperialist movement? 5 Racial oppression Stop these racist murders!

Warrington fights back Nuclear power. ..nuclear weapons Anti-nuclear campaign? No thanks!

The pacifist fraud Labour movement No to another social contract!

The Permanent Arms Economy' The battle in engineering The case for revolution in the AUW The Labour left: born to lose Imperialism South Africa: party or trade union?

South Africa erupts Letters them: the workers. dignitaries from their There is no comfortable thousands Defend Tameside - by its attacks on what the labour mean by the of the TUC! labour movement Five good reasons for going monthly Since we launched it in December last year, we've been bringing out the next step every six weeks. Now we're ready to go monthly but we need £3000 to do it. Here are five good reasons why you should out a consonly 8. republicans are 4 Only the next -and with the vital aim Zimbabwe, Worldwide movement controls, fairer RCT Association -by The RCT the next step RCT activities in August Imperialism conference Review Editor Frank Richards Editorial board James Wood. ISSN 0144-350X August 1980 under the control of those who built Teach them a lesson Supporters of Tameside will be in Brighton to remind the TUC that Tameside will not go away. A march to the TUC Congress has been organised for 3 September to protest against the disaffiliation. Our appeal is not to the officials, but to the of workers who defend their class interests.

Trades Council! Support Tameside's lobby March to assemble on Wednesday 3 September at 12 noon outside Brighton train station.

Public meeting: Tameside and the fight ahead Wednesday 3 September, 7.30pm, The Playhall, Resources Centre, North Road, Central Brighton attacking it 12 times a year instead of The TUC wants to see another Labour government as soon as possible. In the meantime it'll settle for a Tory U-turn - if that means more consultation and less confrontation, more of the sensible Prior and less of the madman Joseph.

Supporters of the next step on Tameside Trades Council have caused some headaches at Congress House: we hope to cause more in the future.

5 strubab against miserialism goes on Afghanistan, Iran - the Monthly issues of the next step will allow us to cover developments in that struggle more quickly, the better to prevent the British labour from falling prey • to the bourgeois hysteria that greets every upsurge of the oppressed Send your contributions to: MRCT, London WIV 6XX Five good reasons for a monthly 14 14 16 Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik Tony Allen, Lindsay Finch, Mike Freeman.

Kevin Green, Nick Jenkins, Fenna King, Published by Junius Publications Ltd BCM JPLTD, London WC1V 6XX Printed by Anvil Printers Ltd (TU) Typeset by Junius Typesetters (TU)

THE DRASTIC RISE in unemployment capitalism's crisis. Official unemployment figures stand at almost two million. But add to them the thousands of married women and youths who do not bother to register, the thousands more who receive subsistence level dole money on government employment schemes, No section of industry is immune to industry which are suffering collapse such as steel, shipbuilding, the docks and texseemed beginning a massive shake-out of labour.

redundancies: 2000 jobs are to go at Ford, Talbot and 8000 at Lucas. And the list is Unemployment must be understood from the standpoints of the opposing classes in society. For the capitalist class it is one of the measures needed to restore profitable production. Capitalists take advantage of the large reserve army of labour to discipline the workforce and keep wages down. In this way they can force those workers who manage to hold on to their jobs to work harder and produce more surplus-value. At the same time, the control of the capitalists over the entire labour movement increases as divisions between employed and unemployed take on a greater significance.

For the working class unemployment is a direct attack on the only serious right it has left in capitalist society the right to employment. This right is fundamental to the survival of the working class.

Unemployment threatens to destroy the labour movement as growing numbers of workers are thrown into a bitter struggle for physical survival. If the labour movement accepts the impoverishment of sections of workers, it will have to accept its disintegration as a social and political force. Every time a redundancy notice goes by unchallenged, the capitalist class becomes that much more able to push through another round of sackings.

Too important to compromise Faced with the threat of a factory closure or redundancies, the labour bureaucracy tries to find a compromise. Again and again labour leaders enter into negotiations over the numbers to be sacked. This, they is the only realistic alternative to more job losses and more factory closures The union leaders are not prepared to fight all redundancies because they hold same importance to the survival of British industry as to the welfare of workers. As economy The TUC and the Labour Party aim to ease the burden of unemployment, not to defend jobs. They ask for more palliatives such as Manpower Services Commission schemes for school leavers, "job creation' schemes and temporary employment subsidies. They want to be consulted: to be allowed to discuss with the government and the bosses the location, time scale and number of redundancies. In other words, they want to ensure that jobs are cut in the fairest way possible.

Many workers have seen through the actions of the labour leaders. They know that they can expect little help from the TUC. There are still many militants who ask "can we fight redundancies?', "can anything be done to stop the dole queues rising?'. There is no magic formula for fighting tnere nothing wrong with demands for a 35 hour week, a sliding scale of hours or call for the creation of new jobs through a programme for useful public works. The trouble is that, presented in this abstract fashion, these demands bear no relationship to the experience and consciousness of the working class. workers to fight unemployment. Because they ignore the political experience of the working class they can The trade union leadership has managed to integrate the rank and file into the come to see industry as their own' and are prepared to subordinate their distinct class interests to those of the bosses. All too often, when redundancies are announced, workers dissipate their energies trying to find a solution to 'their' industry's problems, in an attempt to minimise job losses. Instead of fighting redundancies regardless of the consequences for industry, they seek answers in import controls, netter different capitalist options we must make two things clear. First, the running of capitalist industry is the affair of the bosses; if workers make it their business they will be unable to defend their own class interests. Second, the starting point for fighting redundancies is the recognition

JODS

requirements of capitalist industry are fundamentally antagonistic.

At present few workers are prepared regardless of the state of British industry.

As a result workers ranks are divided in the face of the bosses' attacks. The employers know this and are extremely Whenever job losses are on the cards the employers seek to play off one section engineering industry they attack white collar staff first. Once manual workers have been lulled into a false sense security the chop hits them. At BLEdwardes has given assurances to the skilled AU workers and successfully isolated them from the unskilled TGWU workers.

This tactic has worked in numerous plants.

To diffuse the response to unemployment the bosses have picked on the weaker sections of the School leavers are an obvious target. The trade union leaders feel little pressure from their members to defend the thousands of young workers on the dole. Blacks are also in the front line. During the past year, unemployment among blacks has risen four times as fast as among whites. Racism in the labour movement has ensured that nothing has been done to defend the jobs General slogans about worksharing and the like do nothing to unite a divided working class. The fight against unemployment must begin with a political offensive against the labour bureaucracy. Our aim must be to build a class leadership that counterpose our class interests to A class conscious leadership that can fight the collaborationist policies of the bureaucracy is a precondition for uniting the labour movement against the capitalist offensive. But there is no point in waiting the next step

THE FIGHT FOR JOBS

for such a leadership to drop out of the skies - we have to build it now in the day to day struggles. Effective opposition job cuts LO requires a concrete assessment of the balance of forces in each dispute. General slogans are a barrier to grasping the issues at stake in a particular struggle. There are, however, a number of issues which active workers must have answers to in every redundancy dispute. Opposition to all redundancies.

bureaucrats will say that this is unrealistic, that it is better to lose a few jobs than risk losing them all. If we give even an inch then the battle is lost. The right of the bosses to sack whoever they like will have been established, and the right of workers to employment sacrificed, This realism is the realism of the bosses. Whether we can defend our jobs depends, not on some mystical force, but on the relative strength of both sides. It has always been that way. Capitalists will do they can get away with it. On the other hand, if they are confronted with the united power of the working class they "realistically' make concessions to No to the politics of class collaboration.

A fight against redundancies is about defending jobs and nothing else.

Every attempt to cloud the issue by examining the viability of the industry concerned, the nature of the commodities produced or the problems of competition from foreign imports must be fought. Let the bosses run their business - our concern is to defend every job. Joint strike committees. Only the most militant action can thwart the employers' plans to cut jobs. This requires that, at the outset, strike committees composed of delegates from all sections of the workforce are established. The bosses like to negotiate with section at a time. one Trade union bureaucrats often encourage negotiations to make separate deals at the expense of members of other unions.

Active workers must not remain tied to the existing union structures. A united response is more important than the long established traditions and bureaucratic procedures. Every effort has to be made to counter craft prejudices. All negotiations should be conducted by delegates of strike committees represent all Who the workers - not by full-time trade union officials. No wage cuts - no productivity deals.

Every time workers defend their living standards they are accused of pricing themselves out of their jobs. Capitalists often threaten that redundancies are necessary • unless wages fall behind inflation or productivity is increased. Active workers must reject any attempt to link the defence of jobs to changes in working conditions. Jobs cannot be made conditional on the criteria set by the bosses.

The demands put forward by strike committees will depend on particular circumstances. In certain industries an effective struggle will be able to maintain the status quo. In weak industries the bosses will have to run the plants at half capacity or seek a subsidy from their fellow capitalists. Whatever the final outcome, all jobs must be safeguarded without loss of pay. Worksharing or a shorter working week can be accepted as long as wages are not reduced. In all cases it should be the representatives of the shopfloor that decide how worksharing should be implemented. Factory committees should not allow management to have any say in who works, when and for how long. Nationalisation — a temporary solution.

If the industry is near collapse, workers will have to force the capitalist class as a whole, through its state, to guarantee all jobs. At the same time, workers must has a conte vew that the state positive role to play, or that nationalisation is a progressive step. Only a determined struggle can force the state to safeguard all jobs. Only the vigilance of the working class can prevent the state from throwing workers on the dole at the first opportune moment. The continuing crisis of the capitalist system that every successful casures struggle against unemployment is only a temporary reverse exists the right to employment is partial: it depends on the ability of the working class to defend its past gains. That's why a consistent defence of jobs requires the overthrow of the capitalist system.

until the immediate struggle has will be resolute to defend every single job.

The unemployed. The reserve army of labour exists and is growing every day.

Workers cannot remain indifferent to the plight of the unemployed. Unemployment weakens the working class as a whole.

Active workers must force the unions to organise the unemployed. They have to reject the token concessions that union leaders make to their unemployed members. The unions must force the capitalists to provide jobs and full wages to workers on the dole. Special attention must be paid to school leavers who have no experience of the labour movement and who are particularly susceptible to demoralisation.

The fight for jobs today is a political struggle that cannot be reduced to a few successful we have to change the attitudes and traditions that have been perpetuated by the labour bureaucracy. The basic contradiction between the right to profit and the right to employment has been blurred over by reformist clap-trap about British industry and the nation.

obstacles to effective working class action.

Many organisations have sought refuge in fancy slogans about the sliding scale of hours and wages which fail to address Others have opted for trade unionism, hoping to defend basic labour movement principles. Both alternatives are irrelevant.

Neither confronts the political problems For the RCT the fight against redundancies cannot be separated from the struggle to develop the political independence of the working class. We fight against all attempts to subordinate workers to alien class interests: in particular racism and chauvinism which unite worker and capitalist against other workers, and bourgeois realism which depicts workers' living standards as conditional on capitalist prosperity. We place this political struggle to the fore because until workers speak with an independent voice even the most basic right will be up for grabs. That's why the defence of the most fundamental right of them all - the right to employment - requires a broad proletarian, anti-capitalist outlook August 1980 3

NO HOLDS BARRED!

Ireland No news is good news During the last ten years the state has acted again and again to suppress news and reports of the War. It does not object to portrayals of the facts of repression.

The Labour Government's 1979 Bennett Report confirmed that the torture. and beating of republican sympathisers still is The condition and standard practice. treatment of prisoners in Armagh and Long Kesh has been widely reported. The bourgeoisic is quite prepared to admit to its bold measures - and to justify them as necessary. It does, however, object to any coverage which shows that the struggle in Ireland is a war. TV, radio or newspaper reports which suggest that the IRA is a well organised guerrilla army, or reveal the widespread support it has among the Catholic population, invariably meet immediate suppression. In the late sixties, when opposition to British domination mainly took place through the campaign for civil rights, news coverage of events was permitted.

But as the Irish people were forced into armed conflict with the British army, state control over media coverage became tighter. In 1971 the Government banned an ITV film 'South of the Border' simply because it included shots of a Sinn Fein Ard Fheis (annual conference). Last year a TV crew filmed an IRA operation in which fully-armed freedom fighters took control of Carrickmore, a village in the strongly republican county Tyrone. As soon as rumours about this film reached Whitehall, the police were dispatched to the BBC to seize the offending reels. The government takes no chances. It has agree- Fleet Street, the BBC and ments with ITV: all coverage of the Irish War is monitored by government officials to ensure a consistent pro-British, pro-army outlook. Liberal protestors about media censorship on Ireland always miss the point.

They protest that the public is being denied the facts and not told the truth.

The real problem is that people are fully informed about the progress of the war from the British point of view. It's no use asking editors and broadcasters to put the case for Irish independence.

We expose the complicity of the media in the British domination of Ireland to show the sensitivity of the British state to antiimperialist politics. Our response is not to call for the facts but to make the events of the War part of a political appeal to the British labour movement to stand up to government propaganda and oppose the war in Ireland. That struggle begins in Britain. 'We make the rules!' When dealing with the Irish War the police have not hesitated to throw the rule book out of the window. The end has always justified the means. To maintain the integrity of the British state and suppress the liberation struggle, democratic rights and normally sacrosanct legal procedures are forgotten. Their abuses conveniently extend through the whole range of police 4 the next step, August 1980 As long as the war in Ireland continues the government will have to suppress Irish and British opponents of its military occupation in Britain. The Special Branch was founded in the nineteenth century to deal with republicans; today the Anti-Terrorism Squad specialises in terrorising antiimperialists. We review the background to the Prevention of Terrorism Act and the work of the Smash the PTA Campaign in the city where the PTA is in daily use - Liverpool.

activity, from the detention and questioning of suspects to the conduct of trials.

Detainees have frequently been held for longer than the law allows. Even before the introduction of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which made such measures legal, they were denied the right to contact friends, relatives or a solicitor.

It's the same in court. In the Six Counties trial by jury has been abolished for Republicans. In Britain where this might be too much for public opinion, the state operates more discreetly. Jury-vetting, the checking up on the political and social background of potential jurors to ensure that they have no sympathy with the oppressed and can be relied on to convict, has been standard practice since 1974. The approach of the police is summed up well by Sir Robert Mark, former head of the Metropolitan Police.

decision Referring his to detain to suspected

IRA

members beyond the permitted without charging 24 hours them, he remarked: *If we played the game strictly according to the rules we should have released them to Of course there was no return to rennes the us doing anything of Cueston held kind hombers were for four days.' incommunicado at baling (Sir Robert Mark, In the office of constable, 1978). When it comes to defending the integrity of the British state there are no holds barred. The law to fight the War Between state 1969 and 1974 the developed most of the rules and techniques it needed to fight the War in Britain. In late 1974 they were brought together in the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Although it was rushed through Parliament in the aftermath of the Birmingham bombings, supposedly as a means of aiding the fight against IRA Active Service Units, the PTA has a far broader purpose. Its aim is to legitimise the harassment of the republican movement, its sympathisers and the entire Irish community in Britain, and to root out any opposition to imperialism.

The Act allows the exclusion from Britain of persons involved in 'terrorism' and the detention of suspects for up to a week without charge or access to a solicitor. It outlaws financial contributions which might aid terrorists, and the withholding of information. In this way the

PTA

has legal sanction to the given continuous monitoring and suppression of anti-imperialist activity. This much is clear from a review of its use. In its first year only 63 of the 1067 people held by police were charged with any offence at all - and only three of them with an offence under the PTA. The remainder were simply locked up for seven days, interrogated for scraps of information and, frequently, given a good beating.

On top of that the PTA makes a major contribution to ruling class attempts to maintain the appropriate climate of public opinion to conduct its Irish War. A regular part of police activity is to inform a suspect's employer that he is a potential terrorist. Six years after the Birmingham bombings there are still posters on trains and buses throughout Britain informing passengers of the dangers of unattended and The media packages parcels. of Irish occasionally issue warnings labourers buying transistor radios: they could be members of Active Service Units assembling the components of a deadly explosive. The climate of anti-Irish chauvinism has made police swoops on the Irish community and the barbarity of British rule in the Six Counties acceptable facts of British life. Smash the PTA! The RCT devotes most of its work on the Irish issue to our Smash the PTA Campaign. Our approach is distinctive. Most groups oppose the PTA because they see it as a taste of things to come, an indication of measures which the ruling class has in store for the British labour movement. Others have protested against the Act because it is used against trade unionists. In fact the PTA has not been used against trade unionists - unless they happened to be Irish or involved in antiimperialist politics. For us the PTA is a taste of things that are already here. It is a major weapon the bourgeoisie has in its war against the Irish.

Trade unionists will not be won to oppose the Act by arguments that it is a potential threat to them. No militant who fails to oppose Britain's right to be in Ireland and accepts the measures the ruling class takes in conducting its war, will fight actively against the PTA. This is why no campaign against the PTA can remain neutral on the question of the Irish War. SPTAC has outset. We side taken sides from the 100 per cent with the struggle against The bourgeoisie has imperialism. inhibitions about conducting its war in this country. The British working class must have none either. Rob Knight Fighting the PTA on Merseyside MUCH OF THE ACTIVITY of the North- West Committee of the Smash the Prevention of Terrorism Act Campaign concentrated in the Liverpool area. On Saturday 14 June SPTAC arrived in Church Street, a busy city centre shopping area, to hold a street meeting protesting against the PTA. • It was intended as a follow-up to one held a month before which had attracted an audience of more than 80 people - before the police intervened to halt it. This time the Special Branch was there to prevent any speeches at all. Before STAC supporters had a out a megaphone they chance to TaKe were told in no uncertain terms that antiviews on Ireland would not imperialist be countenanced. The police in Liverpool has had plenty of practice. Take the PTA itself. In the last five years over a quarter of the 4600 arrests under it were made in the Merseyside area. Liverpool has 16 Special Branch men specifically detailed to find PTA and covertly employed at the docks, the airport and Lime Street station The city's Bridewell police station has a row of cells specially set aside for PTA detainees. Every person stepping off the Belfast ferry is a suspect, liable to arrest and seven days' detention without access to friends, relatives or a solicitor.

All this police activity wasn't the only reason why STAC thinks work in the Liverpool area is crucial. Another is the fact that, although the working class there is militant and well organised, it has never opposed the PTA. Employers steer clear of the area because they fear its militant reputation, but the police know they can detain people under the PTA at will without provoking a backlash from the labour movement. This, despite the fact that Merseyside workers have come up against the state time and time again in the Cammell-Laird strike of 1975, the Kirkby rent strike and the factory occupations of KME and Massey Ferguson.

The contrast between the labour movement's willingness to fight on economic of issues and its passivity in the face political repression was highlighted on 14 May. On Merseyside that day 10 000 angry workers marched against the cuts and Prior's Employment Bill. Unknown to them a group of Irish PTA victims were preparing to spend their third night in custody at the Bridewell. Their presence was only discovered two days later.

What me, a terrorist? People have tried to win labour movement opposition to the PTA in the past, but they've always failed. The first campaign against Britain's presence in the Six Counties - the British Withdrawal from Northern Ireland Campaign (BWNIC) set the pattern for all the radical left's work since. In November 1974, shortly before the introduction of the PTA, 14 members of

BWNIC,

, including two from Liverpool, were held under the Incitement to Disaffection Act (1934). They had offended the state by distributing a leaflet entitled 'Some information for discontented soldiers' which demanded the withdrawal of British troops from Ireland. But their offence to the working class movement was much more serious: throughout their 18-month trial they took every opportunity to distance themselves from terrorism' and violence. BWNIC was a group of liberals: its Liverpool branch eventually degenerated

anti-imperialist movement?

THE leaders of the national liberation struggle | of years, such as the 800 000 who marched in ment would be the more welcome, Republicans

WHO SHALL OVERCOME?

into the Merseyside Ad Hoc Committee to Change the World. So it was unlikely to come down on the side of the Irish with any firmness. But the Troops Out Movement, the radical left's longest surviving attempt at solidarity work, has shown the same weakness. Despite the fact that

TOM

calls (sometimes) for *Troops out now' and 'Self-determination for the Irish people, it too denounces 'terrorism'. When police detained prominent Irish trade unionist Phil Flynn in December 1977, Merseyside UTOM spokesman Alan Evans announced: *The use of the Prevention of Terrorism Act in this way to harass people is a suppression of democracy in this country. It is not being used to deal with terrorism? (Liverpool Daily Post, 31 December 1977, our emphasis Evans' comments were clearly not a slip of the tongue or a slander by a right-wing local paper. Liverpudlians who missed them could find the same statement made, without editorial comment, in Merseyside UTOM's pamphlet Repeal the terror act the Prevention of Terrorism Act exposed on Merseyside (pб).

STAC plans to change all that With this kind of politics to lead them, few workers in Liverpool have been convinced that they should oppose the PTA.

The responsibility for this lies with the groups who have failed to take antiimperialist politics into the labour movement, but its consequences weigh heavily on the whole working class.

STAC argues for support for the Irish liberation struggle for two reasons. First, because we want to see British imperialism defeated. Second, because we say that taking a stand on the PTA will add immeasurably to the political strength of the British labour movement. For that to happen the British working class must become an active participant in the Irish War - on the side of the Irish people. In Liverpool there is plenty of opportunity. The PTA is a daily reality. At the moment the most pressing need is for defence work. But this is at a very primitive level. After six years of the PTA's existence nobody has reliable information about arrests. That's why we will be arguing in the Transport and General Workers Union, which unionises the docks, that its members pass on information about detentions as soon as they occur. Once we have that information,

SPTAC

can organise the pickets and mobilise local trade unionists and antiimperialists. These are the first steps in a struggle which will gain real momentum when a PTA arrest in Liverpool is immediately greeted by thousands of workers from the docks and industrial estates walking out in protest. Alan Harding If you know anything about the use of the PTA in your area, or if you're prepared to support pickets and activities of the SPAC, write to us at: Box 33, 164-66 Corn Exchange Building Hanging Ditch Manchester M4 3BD What sort of

LESSONS

AMERICAN ANTI-WAR

ALMI

always recognised the importance in Vietnam of a broad-based movement against the war imperialist heartland being developed in the itself. They did not think it pointless or impossible to build a troops out movement. in spite of widespread support in America for the war - including amongst the trade unions.

The Vietnamese leaders always appealed for unity in action amongst the various anti-war organisations in America.

Xuan Thuy, ambassador to the Paris peace talks, put it like this: *Facing the serious situation as it presents itself now, I call upon the progressive American organisations in people ana aul ant-war United States to unite closely, to associate all forces and strata of the population irrespective of their skin colour, religion and political trend, thus making a united and strong movement so as to curb in time new military adventures by the US administration, to demand an end to their war of aggression in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, to demand the withdrawal of l me ta fendina and let the Indochina people settle their own internal affairs.' The principle is that an anti-war movement an imperialist country musT broadest possible forces behind the basic demands of 'troops out' and 'self-determination.

ACTION

The stress of the American anti-war movement was always on action, rather than, for example, on working in Congress. So, there were huge demonstrations against the war over a number Ciaran Dowd (AP/RN, 24 May 1980) argues that the protest movement against the war in Vietnam 'valuable' has lessons those

TOT

*committed to building a troops out movement in Britain. A comparison of the relationship of the US to Vietnam and that of Britain to Ireland shows conclusions which are different than those drawn by Ciaran Dowd. Vietnam was one of many liberation struggles that US imperialism faced in the post-war period. Washington's Vietnam deteat in was important but not critical for the survival of US imperialism. It was precisely because withdrawal from Vietnam did not constitute a direct threat to US capital- Ism that the anti-war movement was able to attract support from all sections of society Many Americans could remain good patriots and still argue for withdrawal simply because the continuation of the war was too high a price to pay. For Britain, the domination of Ireland is central to its survival. Unlike Vietnam and the US, the Six Counties of Ireland are directly integrated into the British state. And the ruling class of the Six Counties is the extension of that of Britain. A defeat for Britain in Ireland would represent a direct blow to British imperialism. It would severely undermine social stability in Britain itself. That's why British imperialism has no choice but to continue its oppressive policies regardless of the costs.

Every major politician of the Labour, Tory and Liberal party has instinctively understood that British imperialism could not afford to lose in Ireland. In December 1920, Churchill summed up succinctly when he said that Ireland was the 'heart's centre of the British Empire. Any distur- Over the past year several contributors (including the RCT) to An Phoblacht/Republican News, the weekly paper of the Irish republican movement, have discussed the way forward for the anti-imperialist movement in Britain. We reprint here the views of regular AP/RN feature writer Ciaran Dowd (24 May) who sees the US anti-war movement on Vietnam as a model campaign - and our reply which was published in AP/RN. Washington in 1971. There were protests, teach ins and mass mobilisations up and down the throughout the war, especially after country the draft was introduced.

This movement had two main principles First it had a non-exclusionary line, in other words anyone who supported the basic demands was free to participate. Secondly, it was a single-issue campaign.

which did not include in its programme points on broader political issues.

If these principles are applied in Britain what is the result? If the Young Liberals or Cyril Smith or a number of Labour MPs say troops out of Ireland', but take reactionary positions on other issues, then clearly this conflict is their problem and not that of activists in the troops out move ment, so long as their actions help in some way to build a troops out movement.

DANGER

It is always the danger in building an anti-war movement in a hostile situation of making it Republicans politically factional. would obviously like to see hundreds of thousands marching through London calling for the withdrawal of British troops on a principled, antithe imperialist basis. But, it may well be more likely that a Bring the Boys home' movement here.

will develop based on British self-interest and purely objective sense this could unwittingly result in action against British interests.

So, while a progressive anti-imperialist move- principles.

bance or movement there produces vibrations, almost convulsions, throughout the whole of our system of society. This view has prevailed ever since. At last year's Labour Party Conference, Stan Orme warned delegates that the Irish War threatened law and order in Britain, and that it 'could overflow into the cities of Britain, into the Liverpools and the Glasgows and the Londons, the Birminghams and the Manchesters. Because the maintenance of British imperialism is so intimately intertwined with its domination of Ireland, a troops out movement based on chauvinist sentiments cannot be built. Ciaran Dowd is wrong to suggest this possibility and to point to the anti-war movement in the US as a model. Everv attempt to utilise liheral moralism weariness has failed to and wai bulld an anti-war movement In Britain an anti-war movement can only be built from an anti-imperialist point of view. All too often liberal critics of British imperialism have served as its apologists - suggesting that Britain could play a different and more progressive role in Ireland. Only those who oppose their own state and their own ruling class can fight against Britain's oppression of Ireland.

There is a lesson that Ciaran Dowd does not draw from the US experience. The chauvinist US anti-war movement did not threaten the ruling class, indeed it allowed imperialism to extricate itself from Vietnam. Today when Washington more vulnerable, the COld leadership of this movement is right behind Carter's denunciation of Vietnam.

Nor is it accidental that Joan Baez, one of the stars of this movement, made common cause with the "peace people' in the Six Counties not so long Ireland cannot ignore the prospect of a movement saying troops out' for its own chauvinist reasons (let the Irish sort themselves out'). Protest action is what is wanted, no matter what the However, this movement the within radicals should, of course, try to educate people around the issues raised in the war.

TRADE UNIONS

As was stated earlier, the trade unions it America were mainly favourable to the war in Vietnam. This was basically on a pro-imperialist basis, and purely for self-interest because the war meant more jobs. Building workers in New York, the "hard hats', even violently attacked anti-war demonstrations in the streets.

Gradually, the building of a mass movement against the war, mainly supported by students and black people, turned the tide in the trade unions, and many came out against the war.

In Britain, it would seem the situation is troops out more favourable for building a movement within the organised labour move ment. Support for the Chile Solidarity Campaign (set up after the bloody military coup in 1973) was, for example, quite widespread amongst trade councils and unions.

On Ireland, most trade unionists seem to be not so much hostile as ignorant of the situation It is for those active in the troops out movechauvinist sentiment. This would seem to be ment to decide themselves how best to pursue what the Daily Mirror has been advocating. In a their activity. But the prospects look -good, if a principled yet flexible approach is adopted, based on the 'non-exclusionary' and 'single-issue A chauvinist anti-war movement is a ago. weapon that wil turned against the be liberation struggle when imperialism is under fire. Ciaran Dowd is right to suggest that there is considerable potential for building a troops out movement in the British working class but only if this work is approached from an anti-imperialist point of view will this potential be realised. Victory to the Irish people Andre Robinson

IRELAND'S VICTORY MEANS

BRITAIN'S DEFEAT

Northern Ireland Minister Humphrey Atkins has now produced his long awaited proposal on the future government of Britain's occupied territories in Ireland. As predicted in the RCT's latest pamphlet, he has no alternative to direct rule: military control over the Six Countie from Westminster is guaranteed in perpetuity.

Atkins' scheme is, by universal agreement, a non-starter. His constitutional alternatives either representation in assured Catholic Protestant dominated administration Catholic controlled second assembly to act as a block on an all-Protestant government are unacceptable: the first particularly the to Catholics the second especially to the Prot estants. So the war goes on.

The central theme of Ireland's victory means Britain's defeat is that the Irish War will be resolved, not by White Papers, but when either the Irish people drive out British imperialism or are crushed in the attempt. The aim of the pamphlet is to make sure the Irish liberation struggle prevails over British barbarism. building a movement committed to Britain's defeat in Britain itself.

Get it now from BCM JPLTD, LONDON WCIV 6XX. 35p + 17p postage.

the next step, August 1980 5

Stalinism blocks black liberation

BOOK REVIEW

Review: Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik autobiography of an Afro-American Communist, Liherator Press, 1978.

HARRY HAYWOOD was a prominent black leader of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA). A respected figure in the international Stalinist movement, he was one of its spokesmen on the question of black oppression. Haywood's book is an unconscious indictment of - the movement he helped to Stalinism build. The tragic Stalinism are particularly evident on the question of black oppression. Haywood's description of the CPUSA's internal life forties is of contemporary in the late relevance: 'It was an atmosphere which was conducive to the development of a particularly paternalistic and patronising form of white chauvinism, as well as to a rise in petty bourgeois narrow nationalism among Blacks' (p588). Anybody familiar with the traditions of the British left will find that Hay wood's picture of the

CPUSA

today. The left leaves anti-racist work to and does nothing to confront blacks chauvinism among white workers. Blacks are encouraged to organise among themselves so that the left is let off the hook of fighting racism in the labour movement.

Stalinism: a personal tragedy...

As an individual there can be no doubt on which side Haywood stood. His personal record is one of continual struggle internationalism. for proletarian own way he sought to fight racism from a working class point of view. Unfortunately was too immersed in the Stalinist he tradition to understand the reactionary forces around him. other militants he saw Stalinism as the of the contindation tradition. Haywood actively fought Trotskyism in the international working class He uncritically movement. Stalin's purge of the old Bolsheviks and Moscow show-trials of the 'thirties.

the As a Stalinist, Haywood was unable to comprehend the disintegration of the International. Communist from the exclusion CPUSA in 1938 and the adaptation of his party to chauvinism were developments he could not explain. All this he saw as a deviation from the Stalinist line rather than what it really outcome. Haywood became the victim of his own politics. ...and a victory for racism The rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy in Soviet Union and its domination of the the Communist International stimulated of nationalist trends. the growth bureaucracy's strategy of building social- 6 the next step, August 1980 significance of be defended within the followed 1S771 monopoly of consequences liquidation inside the and national Leninist racism a different story. has its replica published in what In his Like thousands of International Marxist-Leninist supported saw His sudden of the leadership Negro was: its inevitable The ism in one country rejected the practical proletarian internationalism. The working class no longer needed international solutions - its interests could boundaries of one nation. Once the Stalinist bureaucracy adopted this national framework nationalthe suit. Increasingly bureaucracy justified its position through appeals to Russian nationalism. By 1926 the Leninist approach to fighting Great Russian chauvinism had been reversed.

The Stalinist bureaucracy did not have Stalin's patriotism. of elements of revolutionary parties Western communist pushed the International in a reformist direction. Despite their militant rhetoric the communist parties fell under the sway of capitalist ideology. They became more international. The less of uncompromising principle struggle against imperialist oppression was abandoned in favour of more realistic alternatives. The communist parties fought but their deeds told in words, In 1926, the French Communist Party responded to a wave of hysterical attacks on immigrant workers by demanding 'the prohibition of collective immigration of foreign labour. The German Communist Party's answer to the rise of the Nazis was to publicise its commitment to what it called 'National Bolshevism'. A pamphlet demonstrated just 1930 meant: it "National Bolshevism' boasted that there wasn't a single Jew to be found on the Central Committee of the German Communist Party!

Popular nationalism To a considerable degree Haywood's faith in Stalinism stems from the decisions taken at the Sixth Congress of the Communist this 1928. During Congress, chauvinist trends were denounced by the Stalinist leadership. Elaborate theses were drawn up, giving guidance for the fight against the oppression of blacks in the USA and South Africa. Haywood position of self-deternew mination' for blacks in the USA as an indication of Moscow's commitment to fighting racial oppression.

It is true that for a brief period in the early thirties the CPUSA and its front organisation, the League of Struggle for Rights, fought against racism. Notable success was achieved in the South of the USA among share croppers and textile workers. But this brief interlude of anti-racist struggle was put to a stop by 1935. The CPUSA wound up the League of Struggle for Negro Rights and put anti-racist work on ice. Why?

The real purpose of the anti-chauvinist campaign at the Sixth Congress was to consolidate the controls that the Stalinist bureaucracy exercised national. Stalin used left rhetoric to get rid of Bukharin and his supporters. Under the guise of fighting bureaucracy imposed a new, more pliable leadership on the communist parties.

If the real intentions of the Communist International were early 'thirties they obvious by 1935. directed all communist parties to pursue the Popular Front strategy. The bureaucracy wanted to develop an alliance with the democratic imperialist powers against Hitler. This was the objective the parties were instructed to pursue. The communist much parties didn't need They saw the politics of democratic nationalism as a useful means for overcoming their 'extremist' image.

the Popular During chauvinist trends within the communist parties were consolidated. It was now acceptable for communists to be good The CPUSA's patriots. Worker carried pictures of Lenin and George Washington side by side, and The Star Spangled Banner' was displayed at its Nationalism meetings. acquiescence countries meant oppression of the colonial people.

Stalinists did not take long to learn this lesson. In 1935 the French Communist Party promptly ceased its support for the Arab national liberation struggle in North Africa. The defeat of internationalism Even with hindsight Haywood failed to understand the reactionary Popular Front politics. He could comfatal consequences prehend their blamed the destruction of the working class vanguard on certain individuals. He writes of Earl Browder, CPUSA leader at the time, that 'with hindsight, Browder's statements were actually a forewarning of what was later to become an entire theory, the justification for dissolving the party as a Marxist-Leninist vanguard' (p464).

Yet Browder was merely articulating the accepted programme of the Stalinist International. What Haywood was witnessing was the destruction of the working class vanguard during the 'thirties. In this period the Stalinist leadership forced the most conscious class to postpone the fight for socialism defend bourgeois and to against fascism defence This all-class democracy did not extend to defending the democratic rights of the oppressed. It was the defence of the democracy of one group of imperialist powers against the fascism of another group of imperialists thirties From the mid parties were communist imperialist oppression. over the Interchauvinism the They struggle. struggle people's still unclear in the should have been At this time Moscow on the convincing. *sabotage of the war effort' died period Front was to paper Daily and when throughout the war years.

imperialist the to The on the issue needed. was too nature political yei answer to imperialists today. movement the to imperialist parties in of immigrants. section of the working labour democracy Adaptation of bourgeois on wards the the • vanguard. implicated in During the Second World War the Stalinist parties denounced any serious attempts to fight racial and national oppression as a diversion from the fascist the Indian branded British imagainst perialism as 'unrealistic' and 'detrimental to the true interests of the Indian people.

But it was in Haywood's own party, the CPUSA, that chauvinist trends took The American clearest form. should Stalinists told blacks that they postpone their struggle for equal rights until after the war. Attempts to fight for the abolition of racial segregation in the armed forces and for the demand of equal pay for equal work were condemned as The reaction of the CPUSA to the 1943 Detroit race riot in which 34 people The Stalinists predictable. criticised the police and called for martial law. But at the same time they told blacks to go forget about fighting back back to work and not to disrupt war production. This was at a time when racist violence was an everyday phenomenon, been lynched blacks had Too little, too late It took Haywood until 1957, when the CPUSA, at its sixteenth party convention, explicitly adopted a reformist document of black oppression and refused to support independence for Puerto Rico, to realise that a new party But Haywood could not offer an alternative to Stalinism. He was much a product of the period of working class defeats to rise above his why Black tradition. That's Bolshevik is a warning rather than facing antithe problems It is a warning that the working class cannot afford to ignore Social-chauvinism is the greatest obstacle struggle in the anti-capitalist All the reformist countries. Britain and elsewhere accept the right of the bourgeois state to control the movement of immigrant workers. The protestations of the Labour left and the CB against racism mean nothing: they allow the state to control the movement Not only is the Western divided along racial movement lines: these divisions are perpetuated by the labour bureaucracy. chauvinism was the to most striking indication of the Communist The International's degeneration.

determination and effectiveness with which the working class fights racial oppression will be one of the most striking indications of proletarian of development Helen Swift

STOP THESE RACIST

smash us!' RCT is trying to turn the tables on the racists.

* 1978 - Altab Ali: stabbed to death in a Whitechapel gutter * 1979 - Ishaque Ali: bludgeoned to death on the street in Hackney * 1979 - Ankelsaria: kicked to death at Bromley-by-Bow tube station * 1980 Akhtar Ali Baig: stabbed in broad daylight in East Ham THE LATEST victim of racial violence in East London, a young man of Pakistani origin, was stabbed in the chest as he walked out of an office in East Ham High Street on the afternoon of Thursday 17 July. Four youths have been charged with his murder. Racism is on the rampage in East London. One day it's mass immigration raids, detentions and deportations; the next it's bricks through the windows of blacks' homes and bottles and knives on the streets. Every day black people get the blame from those who believe the country is in a mess because of foreigners and immigrants. The rantings of racist politicians and the immigration officials' "fishing expeditions for "illegal' immigrants have created the right climate for the racist gangs that hunt in packs in East London.

Blacks fight back Black people in Newham have had enough of being the target of physical attacks, police harassment and racist abuse. Within hours of the East Ham murder hundreds gathered on the streets and marched to the local police station, protesting about the stabbing and the fact that the latest victim bled to death on the pavement before an ambulance arrived. Two days later 3000 people marched from more than Plashet Park past the scene of the murder to Forest Gate police station.

They were in angry mood. Local Labour MP Ron Leighton tried to address the premarch rally: his speech lasted about 20 seconds before he was drowned out by Young blacks and ELWAR supporters.

Labour's record of encouragement for immigration controls and tighter 'community policing' is well known in Newham.

Leighton and his parliamentary colleague Nigel Spearing were treated with the contempt they deserved. They were left to East London Workers Against Racism says

MURDERS!

The Government's response to the unrest in Bristol in April has been to tighten the screw on black communities in Britain. Blacks in North London workplaces have been finding out about the Government's tougher approach first hand. They used to get picked up for questioning in ones and twos. Now they're being herded into cells in their dozens by squads of police and Home Office officials with dogs - squads on 'fishing expeditions'. As one victim of these expeditions told the next step: "There is no doubt about it - they're out to Every racist thug will take comfort from the response of the TUC and Labour Party leadership to these attacks. The labour bureaucracy is of course embarrassed but prefers to ignore matters that fall outside the realm of 'industrial relations'. Fishing expeditions and hunting parties are the bosses' response. Workers' defence is ours. Below we look at how the fraternise with the police and impotent 'community relations' officials while the march set off. Racists in East London have been shouting abuse at Asians on the streets for too long - but they got some of their just deserts on the demo. People who gesticulated against it from the safety of upstairs windows got bricks in reply; others were chased down side streets. A few who tried to drive cars through the march saw their vehicles receive heavy damage. Police had to battle with marchers to get every one of the 29 people they arrested into black marias. The demonstration stopped for an hour outside Forest Gate police station, demanding the release of those arrested.

ELWAR action ELWAR played an active part in both the immediate the East Ham responsero killing and in the later demonstration. Fran Eden of ELWAR was the only speaker from the British labour movement to address rally at the conclusion of the the

WARRINGTON

FIGHTS BACK

Warrington, Cheshire, is a community in crisis. In July 800 steelmen were thrown out of work, joining 5000 workers on the dole. For some time now, the local National Front branch has been trying to build on the frustration of the unemployed and of all those living in bad housing and facing bleak prospects.

Warrington recently when opened its doors to a number of "boat people' from Vietnam, the NF saw its chance and called a demonstration to direct workers' anger against them. Co-operating closely with the police, the NF kept details of its mobilisation secret. But, one week beforehand, the

RCT

got hold of the NF's plans. We organised quickly to oppose NF the march. She made two points. First, that the fight against racist terror on the streets of East London was first and foremost a battle against the politics of the Labour Party, that in both local government and at the constituency level Labour councillors and politicians have played a big part in making racism respectable in Britain.

Second, that ELWAR is committed to mobilising the working class to defend black people against racist violence.

Given the indifference of most trade unions to immigration raids and physical attacks, it is not surprising that many young blacks should take up the chant *Self-defence is the only way' in response to the latest murder. It is also not surprising that the handful of radical left supporters who turned up should echo this cry.

It relieves them of the hard but essential struggle to convince trade unionists to fight the victimisation and harassment of black people. It is this struggle that ELWAR has been fighting for the last six months and with increasing success. We held a demonstration in March outside West getting the support of members of the ANL, the SWP and the Labour Party. Most importantly the trade union movement was alerted to the threat of organised racists to the working class.

A counter-demonstration of 300 people overwhelmed a puny fascist turn-out of 60. The Warrington labour movement took a decisive stand: for solidarity with immigrants, against the racist filth of the NF. Attitudes like these will play a key part in strengthening the working class for the battles ahead. As one trade unionist told the next step: if we can mobilise the same • sort of class unit against the bosses then all new closures could be stopped.

RACIAL OPPRESSION

Ham police station to protest against police attacks on black people; later in the month we held another march over the murder of a black student in Spitalfields. We have held hundreds of street meetings and canvassed housing estates to persuade workers to get out and help defend blacks against racist attacks. In Plaistow we have helped Asian families to organise defence against gangs of racist thugs. We have distributed thousands of leaflets and put up hundreds of anti-racist posters in Newham, Tower Hamlets and Hackney. Despite attacks from the police and the fascists, our campaign is growing in strength Since the racist murder in East Ham, ELWAR has been centrally involved in building a defence campaign in the area.

An ad hoc committee composed of local Asian organisations, with a representative from ELWAR, has been set up. Its immediate aim is to mobilise for a national demonstration against racism on 2 August.

As we go to press there is every indication that this event will be a major success.

Isolate the racists in East London! Build working class opposition to the oppression of black people - join ELWAR! Call 01-274 3951 Write to ELWAR c/o Box 22 136 Kingsland High Street London E8 the next step, August 1980 7

Anti-nuclear campaign? No thanks!

NUCLEAR POWER

SWP vs the atom SIMONS CERTAINLY gets off to a bad start. His very first sentence states that *Everything around us is made up of atoms, each a central core of tiny electrons. This an inauspicious because the central core of an atom is composed of protons and neutrons, not Simons maintains that Next, electrous harnessing the atom first gained favour in and 'thirties, the 'twenties *politicians, scientists and workers alike looked forward to atomic power as a way of finding cheap, safe, abundant energy.

This is just untrue. And, to cap it all, Simons comes up with something truly outrageous in his account of the military origins of nuclear power. Referring to the USA's destruction Nagasaki by atomic weapons argues: The justification for that it would end the war these bombs - is weak'. No doubt a 'strong' quickly for one of justification the history of imperialism atrocities in would have been bener. But all this is beside the point. The point is, quite simply, that. Simons takes the stand of the the revolutionary the pamphlet we're up and governments The opening of the first gas cooled, graphite moderated Magnox reactors in 1956 'marked the beginning of a major confidence trick on the British public. Britain's second series of atomic power stations, the Advanced Gas Reactor, a 'fiasco'. Public debate "is long was overdue, to put it mildly.

traditions of the Sunday best 'Insight' team, it goes on.

ORKERS POW

PUCLEAR

POWER

Reactors aren't reactionary - 'anti-Nukes' are Until get Here it is: •We oppose nuclear power the dangers involved, because of the permanent threat to the lives of workers in the nuclear industry, because of the danger that at any time a nuclear "incident. will kill hundreds of thousands of people, because of the military implications of nuclear power...,But we also oppose it because it personifies the capitalist the next step, August 1980 work it. beginning if only workers bower workers' when (p46) Let's take But dangerous. of Hiroshima and Simons dropping will be the worst industries is wrong. bourgeois liberal, not worker. Throughout against guilty conniving companies. Britain's and Simons just understand that, establishments cluded - And so, in the Times vention nuclear power industry. of his nothing does not Simons' conclusion. Because body', of because the same closed the system: a ruthless, centralised operation that seeks power at whatever cost to those who •For us the fight against a nuclear future is linked with the fight for socialism, for a more democratic system. in which power...is not concentrated in the hands of the few, in the hands of the many - in which there i: That's why the choice is "Nuclear power or power". The two are incompatible.

the arguments one by one.

A danger to nuclear power workers All stages of the nuclear fuel cycle are whether nuclear technology is intrinsically more dangerous than coal mining, drilling for offshore oil or other means of energy production is something which only a workers' state To focus able to determine. on the hazards of nuclear work to the exclusion of those associated with other This is just what Simons does. But that's not his main error. Simons indulges illusions that the state can look after life and limb in the production process.

He gives the case of Wally Newton, who was subjected to high levels of radiation when taken on to strip asbestos out of Winfrith nuclear power station. Newton: "That this should go on in government establishments, with the knowledge of the Health is outrageous. Safety Executive, lets this by. He fails to under capitalism, all ingovernment ones are unsafe because they're run flat out for profit. The struggle for safety at work, in nuclear power as elsewhere, is a struggle against the profit system or it is nothing. Once workers rely on state bodies like the Health and Safety Executive to overcome work hazards for them, they will find it impossible to resist the interof armed guards and police in establishing 'safe working practices' in the A danger to everybody Simons is very worried about the dangers of a reactor exploding. Indeed the cover a diagram on it pamphlet has detailing the massive casualties that would follow such an incident. But what Simons misses is that the explosion of a reactor independent with do working class politics and everything to do with individual politics. Radioactivity between classes. discriminate mishaps affect 'everynuclear anxiety about them is first and fore most a matter of personal survival. By spreading it the SWP reinforces classless individualism in the labour movement - Thatcher individualism that wants to encourage through attacks on ballots and shop, secret restrictions on the right to picket. It turns workers away trom interests towards defence of civilisation as we know it. In other words, capitalism.

SWP follows biological instincts The rather than class politics.

this very clear in his Bob Light made recent review of Workers power...

first declare an interest in this Let me pamphlet. For most of my life, I've had an ambition That's one reason I am not to oe young opposed to nuclear power.' (Socialist Worker, 5 April 1980) Every danger that faces the working class stems from capitalist social relations. The bourgeoisie tries to obscure this by perfears about petuating natural forces. The recent spate of survival infernos, films about towering quakes, sharks and nuclear disasters is an attempt to distract us from Simons problems face we occupied with picking pension that he forgets about fighting capitalism. A danger to democracy concerned Simons most adoption of nuclear power will strengthen of the centralisation under political • power attacks the Central Electricity Generating Board because it is large and capital intensive and nuclear power because it 'is only usable with a national electricity grid. He recommends decentralised forms of alternative energy like solar panels and windmills because they can 'meet local needs' and provide electricity for one home or perhaps a small community In all this Simons goes directly against Marx and Lenin. Marx showed in Capital that the centralisation of production and the creation of large-scale industry was a progressive tendency of capitalism. Insofar can as capitalism foundation for socialism creates the Again, Lenin, in his State and revolution, explained to the petit-bourgeois liberals of his day that centralised political power was one of the features of capitalism that the dictatorship of the proletariat would have to emulate The fact that the SWP publishes a pamphlet with views like this in it isn't surprising. A defining feature of the SWP is that it regards the Soviet Union as a capitalist regime. Why? Because economic and political power there is centralised in the hands of the Soviet bureaucracy.

As if economic and political power would not be centralised under a real proletarian dictatorship! Simons has only drawn out the logic of the SWP's 'theory of state His conclusion: capitalism. beautiful. Wind power, not workers' power In rushing to protect the individual and democracy from nuclear power, the SWP Workers power, not nuclear power in the light of Lenin subordinates defence of their national interest. SWP docker Environment could provide alternative energy programme uncontrollable for political reasons earththe social is so pre his old-age ment memorandum to that the explain and economic He capitalism. Britain. nuclear power. ally, too, the behind. raise productivity it He tional. only them, against others uncritically. small is trade union official. Britain has been using nuclear power since the 'fifties; the Yet the Labour Party, left-wing trade union le moment to protest against nuclear power stations and leadership on the issues that matter, the left has harmless demonstrations against cruise missiles And we examine the call for disarmament i workers' interests to the The nuclear industry hides the truth about the use of energy in 'our society. Analysis by the Socialist and Resources Association (a Labour Party ginger group) shows that, among other things, tidal and wave power half our power up to requirements'. We' could develop better electricity storage systems. In fact, Simons argues, what Britain really needs is an Simons even argues that the Thatcher Government are bad capitalists because of the 'enormous cost' of nuclear power.

The argument that nuclear power is bad economics is used to justify the view that capitalism does need nuclear power - but Simons is forced to deny the plain truth that nuclear power is profitable to back up his moralistic critique. His conspiracy theory revolves around a secret but by now widely quoted Tory Governthe effect that adoption of nuclear power would be a good 'insurance policy against the threat of a future miners' strike. This is good cloak and dagger stuff but it fails to why every imperialist nation is - unless busy developing nuclear power they are all afraid of a miners' strike in When Scargill comes can the SWP be far behind? Arthur Scargill is an ardent opponent of His union, the NUM, is one of Britain's most militant. Tradition-

SWP

has always been prepared to abandon political principle in its desire to adapt to trade union militancy.

So when militant Scargill comes out in favour of using coal rather than uranium as a source of energy, the SWP isn't far Scargill's position isn't very excepmembers' jobs his sees threatened by the capitalist crisis; but instead of electing to defend them and defends his industry he - and therefore against the workers in others. But what is exceptional is that the SWP supports Scargill so For Scargill's logic leads to the sort of divisions exhibited at the Isle of Grain dispute in May, where engineering workers broke picket lines because they wanted to save their jobs at the expense of those of the laggers. Yet the SWP is ready to rush down the same road.

What can we say of Brother Simons pamphlet? It shows all the prejudices of the middle class amateur ecologist, all the hopes and fears of the energy planner and all the narrow sectionalism of the For the workers movement it is politics like these that an the problem, not nuclear power.

James Wood

s: the British army has had nuclear weapons for 30 years.

«ders and their radical allies have chosen 1980 as the atom bombs. Incapable of fighting the Tories or the Labour ken refuge in pamphlets attacking nuclear power and in • Here we look critically at Mike Simons' SWP pamphlet dictum that 'socialism equals electrification plus soviet power'.

contrast to the Marxist approach to arms and war.

Conference of the Allies, Yalta, February 1945: six months before Hiroshima, all they were saying was give peace a chance THE WORKING CLASS has every interest in opposing militarism and imperialist military However, opposition to the military must stem not from an abstract dislike of arms, but from the knowledge that the army and its weapons will be used by the state against the working class.

We are not against all wars. Just as the rule of capitalism violence, so its overthrow will require the concentrated violence of the proletariat.

The reason we support wars of a national liberation army directed against imperialist oppression is that the violence of the oppressed is the indispensable means for achieving basic democratic rights.

One of Lenin's merits was that he always approached militarism from a class point of view. He showed that militarism had an objective basis in capitalism and that imperialism necessarily led to war.

The ruling classes of the metropolitan countries had no choice but to arm themselves to the teeth if they were to defend their profits against rivals. The First and Second World Wars were not accidents that could have been avoided by more peaceful policies.

were the inevitable crisis of capitalism. Today's drive towards war is founded on the same inescapable logic. The West's renewed emphasis on military intervention and its desperate rush to increase arms spending are symptoms of the impasse capitalism has reached. Nuclear weapons and militarism cannot be reformed out of existence as long as the bourgeoisie is in The struggle power. only makes sense if it is aimed against the of system Pacifist dreams - workers' nightmares Lenin argued that it was important for revolutionaries to take notice of popular yearnings for peace. The question was how. Lenin rejected declarations of the pacifists of his time as hypocritical: they meant deceiving the people with illusion that the existing governments, the present-day classes, are capable "taught" a lesson (or rather without being eliminated) by a series of revolutions - of granting a peace in any way satisfactory to democracy and the working Labour Party against cruise missiles The pacifist fraud alliances such as NATO. that 'without revolutionary the democratic peace believing

INTO

is based on class means simply running away pleasant reality, not 23, 1916). forget their support for the fatherland.

their imperialist They outcome of the not only they meet force with force.

against militarism capitalist production itself.

military tactic. the resounding Lenin wrote тастет without being class' ('The Question of Peace', Collected Works 21, 1915). He continually stressed action by proletariat there can be neither a condition has disarmament'. Those who restricted their disgust with militarism merely to calls for peace and disarmament were only fooling workers that capitalism could exist without violence: • "Disarmament" from unfighting it' ("The "Disarmament" slogan', Collected Works prepare politically, It is a sign that their slogans are utopian that pacifists always drop them as soon as hostilities begin in earnest. Why else did 'thirties Labour left-wingers like Stafford Cripps, who campaigned for peace before the the Second World War, eventually wind up as recruiting sergeants for imperialism?

Wars force everybody to take sides - and when it comes to the crunch pacifists fine principles and rally ialism. Take those bombs off their hands! Calls for peace and disarmament are utopian but also reactionary.

They distract the working class from its prevent its outbreak. historic task of overthrowing capitalism.

Opposition to arms at a time when the ruling class relies on force for its very survival dooms workers to defeat. Force is used against workers on picket lines and on the streets. It is clear that ultimately workers can only defend their interests if As long as capitalism exists the working class must be prepared to countenance every The call for 'disarmament' makes no sense. No ruling class will ever voluntarily disarm itself and so end its hegemony peaceful over society. The bourgeoisie is no exception to this. Instead of pleading with its oppressors to lay down their weapons, imperialist wars the working class must take matters into its own hands and disarm the ruling class.

through peace a chance'. 'Our slogan must be: arming of the proletalways ariat to defeat, expropriate and disarm the bourgeoisie. These are the only tactics possible for a revolutionary class, tactics that follow logically from, and are dictated by, the whole objective development of capitalist militarism.

and between Only after the proletariat has disarmed the colntries bourgeoisie will it be able, without betraying its world historic mission, to consien all arm.

aments to the scrap-heap. And the proletariat will undoubtedly do this, but only when this been fulfilled, certainly not before.' ('The "Disarmament" slogan') Today the bourgeois state is marshalling its forces against both the working class and its foreign rivals. The increasing reason use of armed police, the new laws against picketing and the proposed modifications of the Public Order Act should alert us to organisationally and physically for the onslaught to come.

Peace today can only mean peace on the terms of the ruling class.

issues. 'Peaceful coexistence'? international labour movement Stalinists are the most consistent advocates of pacifism. To justify their repeated accommodations to imperialism, the Stalinist bureaucrats of the Soviet Union rejected Lenin's position that wars were the unavoidable outcome of imper- In its place they developed the theory of Peaceful coexistence' between East and West. They argued that everybody had an interest in avoiding war and that a concerted peace campaign could course The policy of peaceful coexistence meets the basic interests of all peoples, of all who want no new cruel wars and seek durable peace. This both policy strengthens the positions of socialism, enhances the prestige and international influence the socialist countries and promotes the prestige and influence of the Communist Parties in the capitalist countries. Peace is a loyal ally of socialism, for time is working for socialism against capitalism.' (Statement and appeal of the world's Communist Parties, Moscow, 1960) logic: It is only natural that those who peddled peaceful coexistence also argued for a road to socialism. The Communist Party of Great Britain thinks that the idea of peace is so compelling that will be avoided, and that the working class will achieve power gentle persuasion. Just 'give It is not surprising that Stalinists have The been in the forefront of peace movements like the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Their interests lie in maintaining the status quo internationally classes in the capitalist Aided and abetted by the

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Labour and radical left, they have provided the inspiration behind the 'No cruise missiles' campaign. Cruising off to oblivion Nuclear missiles have been with us a long time. So why the sudden interest in cruise missiles by MPs on the Labour left? The is simple. They need issues to distinguish themselves from the Labour right and the Tories. They can't really take up the cuts in wages or in social services because they accept the need to make economies in order to regenerate British industry. They need other, 'safe' The EEC is one; cruise missiles is another. Instead of making a class stand against capitalism and militarism, they whip up moral hatred for its most obvious excesses.

And, as ever, moralism goes with nationalism. Though they still want unilateral nuclear disarmament by Britain, their strongest words are reserved for American cruise missiles. They don't want those crazy Yankee fingers pressing the buttons to activate Britain's 'deterrent' Radical guidance systems The Stalinists don't like cruise missiles.

The Labour lefts don't either. And of neither does the radical left. The IMG tries to have its pacifism ways. concluding a Socialist Challenge centre-page spread on militarism, it makes one correct observation: •When the working class of the world has finally overthrown the imperialist warmongers, then human kind will be free of the threat of war and nuclear annihilation'.

It caps this with an astounding piece of "That is why we oppose cruise missiles in this country' (19 June 1980).

The SWP is at least more coherent: •We need a socialist campaign that not only calls for no cruise missiles, but for no nuclear weapons at all, that demands Britain get out of NATO, we don't want to be part of America's police force in Europe' (Socialist Worker, 21 June 1980).

Yes, comrades! America's to blame!

campaign against cruise missiles is a diversion. It can only retard the development of independent working class politics in Britain. Socialists must resist it in every way by popularising the need to disarm the ruling class.

Pat Roberts the next step, August 1980 9

Disarming the working class

LABOUR MOVEMENT

ARMS SPENDING is a favourite target Labour Party radical attack. for Communist Party spokesmen continually criticise government defence expenditure, complaining that the money better spent on hospitals and schools.

They recommend that the imperialist powers give up their weapons and resolve their conflicts peaceably.

Military expenditure has also played a reformists understanding part capitalism. During the years of rearmament before the many radicals believed that could only survive by into making weapons. Not survive in the imperialist struggle that was to come, but survive the economic crisis of the 'thirties.

Rearmament was seen to boost industry's profits, reflate the economy and cut unemployment.

After the war, understood as necessary to maintain the post-war boom. High levels of state spending, especially on defence, appeared to be the reason why there was no slump as after the First World War.

golden age of Keynesianism, an economic theory which holds that economic staghe avoided through state nation can policies. The term spending warfare state' was used in radical circles describe the greater levels of state economic intervention and the Cold War arms race. A theory is born The boom was an unexpected and inexplicable development for the British left. The radical left could not challenge the reformists impressionistic view that rearmament had provided a solution to the slump. It replied with moral critiques of militarism and waste. The theory Economy (PAE) codified current reformist prejudices about arms expenditure. Its essential thesis is that capitalism can avoid collapse through military spending. This how its former Michael Kidron, summed up the development of the theory: Its origins were in a heavily Keynesian view of the post-Second World War economic order.

...It was brought over with its Keynesianism more or less intact in an May 1957, and only Socialist Review. underwent a Marxist conversion. Even then it was never elaborated in any detail: a couple of articles in International Socialism, one of which is repeated as a chapter in a book, a few further passing observations in other articles, some of were collected in another book, and which that's all. Not much for an analysis that was meant to encompass the world order and explain its innermost drives.' (International Socialism, No 100, July 1977, p7) Not much indeed! But this theory was, and still is, one of the main distinguishing features of the SWP. The SWP likes to present the PAE theory as its original contribution to the Marxist analysis of capitalism. disposed of its claim to originality. Let us dispose of its claim to be Marxist.

Permanent capitalism Kidron's book Western capitalism since the war (1968, revised Pelican edition 1970) gives the most systematic exposition of the PAE theory. The key to 10 the next step, August 1980 The Permanent Arms Economy' The theory of the 'permanent arms economy' was put forward by the leaders of today's Socialist Workers Party in the 'fifties and 'sixties to explain the expansion and stabilisation of capitalism after the Second World War. Below we examine this distinctive theory of the SWP - and its political consequences.

and capitalist powers (p49). Kidron First, could be of Second World War, capitalism showed that pumping money as a measure The PAE theory tendency arms spending was society production is the This was the Second, ( aerospace, 'welfareas building, bility commodities. rate of profit (pp55-6). Third, the of the Permanent Arms However, leading advocate, the arms economy commodities. Cliff in article. by theoretical the ing Marxism, Kidron himself has already a working the boom. idiotic propositions. points in turn. capitalist stability is discovered in the permanent arms budget of the major The theory contains three major elements.

state maintains that expenditure on arms slows down capital accumulation because it is financed by taxation of private capitalists who therefore have less resources to invest in other spheres. The result of this, he contends, is that the organic composition of capital (the proportion invested in plant, machinery and raw materials compared with wages) rises slowly or not at all. Marx capitalist production as proceeds there is a tendency for the capitalist to invest more in means of production than in living labour-power.

The result is that the organic composition of capital rises and the rate of profit falls.

denies this inherent capitalist crisis towards - there is thus every reason to believe that the 'arms economy' will be 'permanent. Kidron concluded that 'arms and seemingly key, permanent, offset to the "tendency of the rate of profit to fall"' (p56).

Kidron argues that although arms expenditure sustains industries such and shipengineering in these rising investment spheres has no adverse effect on profita- "luxury' overall because arms are and bombs Guns, tanks cannot be consumed by workers, nor can they be used in industry. So, we are told, accumulation and a rising organic composition of capital in the 'arms sector' cannot bring about a decline in the average PAE theory notes that accumulation in the arms sector does not add to the productive capacity of. the economy because its products are wasted.

Arms - 'a fast-wasting end-product' - are either blown up or rendered obsolete by the 'arms race' among rival world powers.

provide arms spending does jobs and wages to buy the goods produced in other sectors of the economy. Thus can maintain full employment and a rising demand for Getting your missiles in a twist Thus in 1970 - on the eve of the most severe capitalist recession for 40 years architects of the SWP could see no fundamental reason why the capitalist boom should not last for ever.

Motivated by a petit-bourgeois distaste for the excesses of bourgeois society - its inequality and poverty, its chaotic organisation and squandering of resources, its philistinism and proclivity for military barbarism - the radicalleft looked around for anything that might 'destabilise' the seemingly unshakeable system. Abandonradical theoreticians took refuge in the possibilities created by uneven growth rates in the world economy, inflation and superficial impressions of made 'confident' by class The PAE theory is a travesty of scientific analysis, full of inconsistencies and take the Let us First, how could there be a post-war boom in the major capitalist economies if slows the growth of arms expenditure accumulation, as Kidron maintains? This In a recent attempt to mystery. is a rescue the PAE theory from the of its leading exponent, Chris criticism Harman tried to cover up this problem by arguing that growth 'fifties than in the periods of expansion before the war, but it was more steady (International Socialism, No 100). But a rising organic composition steadily capital would still depress capitalist profit rates, contrary to Kidron's conclusion.

On the second point more mysteries abound. Marx explained that an average rate of profit is formed by capital flowing from less to more profitable branches of Even if supported by the production. state, the private defence industries are still branches of capitalist production.

Commodities are produced which emand surplus-value. body value barrier is there between these and other industries that can prevent profit rates from averaging out? No answer.

Marx, Kidron and Keynes Marxist understanding The production is the opposite of Kidron's: accumulation in this sector has a particularly adverse effect on the rate of profit. If capitalists raise productivity in which produce commodities industries consumed by the working class, such as food and clothing, the value of these articles can be lowered and the value of labour-power reduced. exploitation to be increased. The same result occurs if productivity is raised in industries producing means of production.

machinery Cheaper lower the costs of producing all commodities. These ways of cutting the value of labour-power can't work for capitalists who produce luxuries - goods purchased neither by industry wages. Raising productivity here does not help the capitalists to increase the rate of So, as investment rises in exploitation. the luxury sector, capitalists are less able to fight falling profitability. The rate of profit falls faster. The last resort of the SWP theoreticians old reformist theory of underis the consumptionism. identify workers do not have enough money to buy what capitalism produces; the result is an overproduction of commodities that nobody can afford on the one hand, and poverty on the other. The traditional reformist solution is to increase government spending, put money into people's pockets and stimulate demand - industry will thrive and unemployment disappear.

For Kidron arms spending is the key source of the cash input that resolves the 'underconsumptionist' money is a deduction from the surplusvalue of private capitalists. Taxation for the military budget cuts into profits; it exacerbates the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. The central aim of capitalist to make profit production merely sell commodities. limits the expansion of capitalist production - and it limits the capacity of the state selfwas slower in the capital which made more efficient. of defeats. In bourgeoisie What and enjoy a boom. of luxury only stimulated the already existed Duncan Hallas, This allows got rid of the crisis: What did and raw materials nor with workers ament with edness, to provide accumulation. The problem they capitalist society is that already another PAE absurdity. stop at 1939. crisis. But this estimation - no ° the central This objective tendency of overcome the capitalist society towards crisis.

Booms and bangs The post-war boom had nothing to do with arms expenditure. It rested on two factors which allowed the bourgeoisie to raise the rate of profit and recommence accumulation after a prolonged slump.

of First, the enormous destruction resulted from the war enabled production to be reorganised and Second, the international working class suffered major countries, fascism some destroyed the trade unions and working class organisations. In others, the labour bureaucracy ensured that workers made sacrifices in the 'national interest. The increase its was able to exploitation of the working class.

Mass destruction and oppression allowed capitalism to emerge from the depression The world market was redivided under the domination of the USA. To maintain its hold, the United States had to spend money on armaments. Wishing to protect their profits Britain and other imperialist countries followed suit. But arms spending, like other forms of state expenditure, economy because the conditions for profitable accumulation This elementary Marxist appreciation of the post-war boom is beyond the SWP.

According to another of its theoreticians, rearmament itself can He argues solve capitalism's problems.

that before the war arms spending had end the slump. in Europe as well as in the USA, was armament production.

There can be absolutely no doubt about this.'

(Socialist Worker, 12 May 1979) Hallas ignores the fact that the slump itself gave capitalism some room for growth in the 'thirties, by cutting workers' living standards and wiping out the less efficient firms. He also confuses rearm- The economic recovery. rearmament 'boom' of the late 'thirties - state indebtwas founded on massive Britain. It raised especially in output and employment levels but failed basis for capital firm any For Hallas the war appears as a tragic accident, caused not by economic necessity but by political belligerence. There was no need for the imperialist powers to redivide the world, defeat the working class and extend economic wat

IN TO

military conflict because the crisis had solved! There 'can be been absolutely no doubt that this is yet The implications of the PAE do not Because it contains no assessment of the defeats inflicted on the labour movement before, during and after the war it ignores such vital facts as the increase in the rate of exploitation of the working class. More importantly, it gives of of the liquidation Marxism in the labour movement. This, political problem of our epoch, is not even recognised as a problem by the SWP. This is why the SWP can

glorify trade union militancy and ignore the hold of reformism on struggles. Specious theories like the PAE are testimony to the degeneration So is the unpreparedness of Marxism. our movement for the tasks which face it today. PAE in the sky How does the PAE theory explain today's crisis? Noting a fall in defence spending in the USA and USSR between 1968 and 1977, a recent issue of Socialist Review It is, of course, this steady proclaims: decline in the proportion of GDP devoted to defence spending in both the USA and USSR which explains the progressive undermining of the economy's stabilising role 1970s' (February/March 1980).

Did the drop in arms spending in the imperialist world cause the crisis? Not a chance, since it was not responsible for the boom in the first place. And any decline in military outlays by the state was more than offset by other forms of state expenditure. Following the theory, state spending on health, education, social security etc should play the same role as arms spending.

would take profits from private capital, slow down investment and create extra 'demand'. If the SWP followed its theory consistently it could not planation for today's recession.

But the crisis occurred anyway. The international decline in the rate of profit finally took its toll. Unemployment rose, capitalist production and stagnated. As far as the bourgeoisie was concerned, state spending only things worse. But Chris Harman sees a way out.

Skilfully blending the Marxist theory of crisis with the PAE theory, he arrives at the following result: "An increased level in military spending would permit investable funds to find an outlet in nonproductive investments and would end the recession' (International No 100, our emphasis). As if the crisis could be ended for capitalism by wasting what little profit it has! History has dealt unkindly with the PAE theory. In the last two years military spending in the NATO bloc has increased dramatically. But the crisis has gone from bad to worse instead of disappearing as Harman predicted.

At a time when imperialism is rearming in preparation for war, the SWP can only confuse the working class with this absurd theory. Superficially, it appear that the PAE theory highlights the relationship between capitalist crisis and arms spending. In reality, all it does is obscure the link. The PAE theory is a vulgar, reformist analysis of capitalism. It is unable to show the tendency towards capitalist breakdown, and by implication offers a counter-crisis strategy in state spending if not rearmament. Today we policies, have to fight capitalist attempts to make workers pay for the crisis - and for its war plans by cutting social services. The SWP creates an obstacle to this task by giving credence to reformist alternatives.

Tony Allen LAST CHRISTMAS the management at workers' Fairey's pushed through scores of voluntary redundancies among the plant's 1400strong workforce (see the next step, No 2, January 1980). To add insult to injury, it replied to the unions' subsequent demand for 'a substantial increase' in wages with an offer of six per cent. Five months later, when the official bargaining procedure on pay was almost exhausted, it proclaimed that more than 200 jobs would have to go. The battle to defend workers' livelihoods was on - in earnest.

News of the impending redundancies was first leaked to Fairey workers in a bulletin issued by factory supporters of the next step. Their colleagues were angry permanent arms at the threat of sackings. And the leaders during the of the unions at Fairey's were angry too, but only because they consulted'. The bulletin made two main points, both of which were taken up and discussed around the factory. It didn't just reject the redundancies and the management's derisory six per cent pay offer: it gave the

PAE

pontical arguments that rejection unequivocal. contended that the employers had to be This too made aware that Fairey workers would give up their standards to restore capitalist profits: If their system is in a crisis it is not of our making and we won't pay for its recovery.

find any ex- Second, it called on manual workers at Fairey's to defend the jobs of white collar workers there, and it called on white collar workers to support the manual workers' investment wages struggle. These two points - about the profitability made about the divisions in its workforce proved critical. Company viability, union disunity Back at Christmas the convenor of the AUEW/TGWU/EETPU Joint Shop Stewards Committee (JSS) at Fairey's and most of the stewards on it had allowed redundancies to go through. Why? Because • Socialism, of their commitment to seeing Fairey's through bad times, to seeing the firm a viable concern once more.

ment was all too evident when the new round of redundancies was revealed in May. Local full-time officials agreed to conduct a study to see whether slimming down the workforce was necessary - and the senior stewards backed them up. As far as they were concerned, the company's interests came before the workers'.

Loyalty to Fairey's wasn't the only might tactic the management could use to push through the sackings. By 9 June and the collapse of the official wage bargaining procedure, it was ready to employ another one: playing one section of workers off against another. The management's original pay offer had been put in percentage terms. Six per cent meant skilled workers would have got about f6 more and unskilled about The widening caused a lot of squabbles on the JSSC, all of them to management's advantage.

sow further dissension, the management had given white collar members of TASS a 16 per cent rise. The reason: it hoped staff members in APEX would turn against TASS. And it hoped the JSSC unions The battle in engineering Turning the tide at Fairey's Not a day goes by without employers in the British engineering industry announcing thousands of redundancies. Wage cuts are coming thick and fast too. Below, we outline how workers at Fairey Engineering, a Stockport-based bridgework/nuclear equipment/robotics factory which is part of the Pearson Longman group, have responded to their bosses' threats of sackings and reductions in living standards.

makers at the factory, resented on the bosses' tactics.) The strike, 'hadn't been What's the use of necessary to make First, it talking? jobs and living heard our they broadly agree with of the company and to save jobs and wages. So why are trade up discussions? convenor Keith it's together and the employers' attacks'. That commiton the employers and their pals trade union bureaucracy? workplace where standards. of differentials had To Box 33, 164-66 Corn Exchange Building, Hanging Ditch, Manchester M4 3BD would do the same. (The fact that both TASS and APEX, as well as the boilerwere not rep-

JSSC

favoured the Two strikes, a setback - and a gain too All this was history by 9 June. But when, following the breakdown in negotiations, was the JSSC called a factory meeting for the next day, it wasn't surprising that the management's new offer again came in percentage terms - nine percent.

secretary of the GWU branch recommended the offer. But the workers unanimously rejected it, called a one-day and determined not to re-open Many people who've seen the next step or arguments acknowledge that our point of view, but say they can't see the point of reading more about it and discussing it further. They're fed up with newsprint and talk - they want to see some action union supporters of the next step in the north west setting "Because, says group Tompson, 'we think important for shop stewards and couldn't militants from different industries to get work out the political arguments that can defend workers from discussion like this is vital if broad-based support for successful action is to be won.

The fortnightly meetings will focus on the questions militants on the shopfloor have to answer time and again. What's the basic cause of the crisis? Is it possible to fight redundancies in a declining industry?

How do you convince people that import controls are no solution? How do we take in the The second half of each meeting will concentrate on the situation in a particular our supporters active in the union. Set in a clear political context, this exchange of experiences will help broaden understanding of the class struggle and provide practical guidelines before for action to defend working class living If you live in the north west, want to separate join in the battle against the politics of opposition to the TUC and the labour leaders and want to turn back the tide of job losses, contact: witch-hunted

LABOUR MOVEMEN

Fairey negotiations until the management put a major increase on the table.

On 17 June the management came back with 11 per cent. Not content with trying to widen differentials by £3, it tried to get the indirect and inspection workers to endorse a new earnings ceiling on pieceworkers. The JSSC recommended rejection of this, and got it; and there near unanimous approval for two-day strike The warnings against disunity in the first and second factory bulletins put out by the next step had proved timely. The fight was on to build a joint committee representative of all the unions at Fairey's - and to go for across-the-board pay rises in line with inflation. But the management's threat to limit the bonuses paid to proved to be a decoy. piece workers It merely had to drop it for the convenor of the JSS to come out in favour of 'reluctant' acceptance of 11 per cent. His line was narrowly carried on the JSSC against opposition from supporters of the next step and narrowly carried again at a mass meeting on 24 June. All was not lost, however. As the third factory bulletin described the outcome of the mass meeting: *Twelve shop stewards and 173 shop floor workers resisted management's attempt to cut wages. This is a gain to be built on....The next step for Fairey's workers is to ensure that the coming battle against redundancies is won."

The workers who consistently rejected wage cuts and shabby compromises put their class interests before the well-being of Fairey engineering. As a shop steward supporter of the next step explained: If they can get away with pushing down wages and chopping jobs it will worsen the condition of all workers. We've got to save jobs and keep up wages to strengthen ourselves and weaken their grip.

margins - that's their problem. Our living standards come first. Preparing a fightback What about the battle over jobs? The local TGWU leadership began in high style. It launched a campaign against one of the militant shop stewards who had led opposition to management - and to their conciliatory attitude toward management attempts to impose a wage cut. Thankfully the campaign failed: the steward went straight to his own section, explained the issues involved, and won a unanimous vote of confidence. The politics of the next step are a challenge to the class collaboration of the bureaucrats and one which they will fight with every means at their disposal. the next step shows how to unite workers against those who place the bosses' profits workers' livelihoods union leaders included. The recent battles at Fairey's show the way we can begin to out a militant rank and file the employers and the bureaucrats. It was the politics of the next step that helped win support for the steward; the politics the next step show the way forward in the coming struggle against redundancies.

Keith Tompson the next step, August 1980 11

LABOUR MOVEMENT

THE WAY the SWP tells it, the rise of bureaucrats like John Boyd and Terry Duffy happened like this. In the 'sixties there was a powerful shop stewards' movement in engineering. The Broad Left, an alliance of Communist Party and left-wing Labour militants, organised British fact- - and built links between the ories well two. But the Broad Left had one fatal flaw: it spent all its time trying to get its candidates elected to high office in the AUEW.

When the Broad Left's favourite son Hugh Scanlon was elected president in the late 'sixties, the error in the left's approach soon became obvious. Scanlon turned against the movement that had put him in power. By the mid 'seventies he was, along with TWU leader Jack Jones, one of the main defenders of Wilson and Callaghan's Social Contract. He forced his members to accept wage cuts and betrayed a whole successior of strikes.

The SWP makes the point that Scanlon wasn't the only villain of the piece. As junior Broad Left convenors and stewards rose up through the union hierarchy, they increasingly collaborated with the employers. They moved further and further away from the shop floor, and closer and closer to 'moderate' politics. As a result rank and file workers became demoralised confidence in and lost unionism; while the remaining factory militants found their support dwindling.

The rest of the SP's account is familiar enough. Over the last year tens of thousands of engineering workers have The bosses have joined the dole queues. launched a vigorous assault on shop floor organisation and have succeeded in dismissing prominent Broad Left convenor Robinson in the process. In ad- Derek dition, Duffy and Boyd have tightened AUEW leadership their grip on the vanquished the and effectively have Broad Left. The SWP's solution to all this is simple: back to basics. Rebuild the shop stewards' sixties under a new movement of the a 'fighting rank and file movename It's a conclusion that's logical ment. enough, given the direction of the SWP's But that analysis analysis. is Selling the Contract... The SWP wants to get back to the 'sixties.

Then, because the British engineering was relatively prosperous and industry unemployment low, union representatives enjoyed a good bargaining position in their with management. negotiations wages and better conditions could be won workplace organisation through good and militancy. The SWP is correct to note that this struggle was led by the Broad Left. But the Broad Left was only one component in the Communist Party's scheme ofthings.

Anxious to complete its escape from the general isolation of the Cold the CP used the Broad Left as a means of furthering its project of 'Left "Left unity' meant campaigning with left-wing Labour Party members for the election of a leftward-leaning government. In the engineering industry policy meant convincing the shop stewards that their battles for higher pay were best assisted by the installation Labour of a 'progressive' Progressive, as the Broad Left's rank and file paper Engineering Voice in the sense that putting a radical Labour administration in power was the best way to prevent the British economy and British engineering going into decline.

-and it is just this The Broad Left that the SWP ignores - was a vital aspect of the CP's efforts to popularise reformist politics among the more militant sections Its politics were of the working class. persuasive. The argument went like this: you want easier work for more money.

will only be possible if our But that industry is revitalised. committed to left advance government 12 the next step, August 1980 SWP asks: revolution and the wage cuts of recent months.

can assure this. So fight for one.' All the organisational merits of the Broad Left strong trade that the SWP enthuses about can't hide the fact that Broad Left politics, conworkers' solidated viability of British engineering ...and signing it The consequences of Broad Left politics began to emerge as Britain's postonly war boom came to an end. engineering profitability enough to allow regular wage rises to be granted, the Broad Left's platform was not put to the test. But as the British economy began the slow slide into crisis, the reactionary nature of that platform and the vulnerability of the shop stewards' movement became The betrayals of the 'seventies are not to be explained, as the SWP suggests, by the Broad Left's fondness for the union ballot box. Nor are they the result of the right? fact that Scanlon and followers got 'out of touch' Scanlon and his followers betrayed AUEW workers because, longstanding loyalty to British capitalism ensured they could Labour wanted to regenerate British engineering. That demanded pay restraint Better and closures could not but accept. In fact matters went further. Stalinist stewards welcomed the Labour Government's National Enterprise Board and its efforts to restructure like companies of the working expense led fellow Robinson elaborate charade of "participation' with War years, Leyland management in decisions about the company's future. unity'. wound up worker sackings, speed-up and the dismembering Labour

CHARTER

militant government. made clear, Only a Labour Our imports - your jobs! what's wrong in engineering?

The case for in the AUEW At the end of June 200 members of the AUEW took part in a conference in London called by The Charter, the Socialist Workers Party's 'rank and file' paper for engineers. Much of what they heard was based on a new Charter/SWP pamphlet, What's gone wrong in engineering? The case for change in the AUEW. Below, we look at the SWP's diagnosis of the shift to the right in the AUEW - and at its strategy for fighting the redundancies, the attacks on union rights of shop floor organisation turned away from the commitment to the So long as inflation, was high 20 per cent. ever more obvious. is what the SWP ignores. with shop floor sentiment.

in a recession, their nothing else. do

AUEW.

measures that Scanlon British Leyland at the Derek class. engineering workers. militants into the Like He fixed it so participating place necessary the On engineering of Britain, Charter Rank and file AUEW members have organisational structures of the Broad Left because of the catastrophic effect of Broad Left politics. They weren't all that concerned about Scanlon's peerage, but they were no concerned about the Broad Left's inability to defend their living standards from the When privations of the Social Contract.

the bosses cried that wage rises caused when they contended that workers should take responsibility for the ends. mess their industry was in, the Broad Left could only agree. The tactics of the 'sixties than a proved ineffective when more million workers were unemployed and when inflation was running at levels of They're just as ineffective today. This Is Wright alright? Over the last five years the Broad Left in the AUEW has collapsed and the SWP's tiny 'rank and file' grouping has stagnated.

The defensive, selfeffacing tone of the Charter pamphlet reflects the beleaguered outlook of the radical remnants in the not 'No, trade unionists are ruining the country', it reassures readers, reminding us that even some Tories are trade union members'. However the most striking feature of the SWP pamphlet is not that it glorifies the record of the The Broad Left, nor that it fails to mention the SWP, but that it promotes Broad Left politics on all the important issues facing the Broad Left, What's gone wrong... uses economic arguments against a wage freeze. According to What's gone wrong..., wage increases do not create unemployment; indeed 'wage cuts lead to

CHARTER

blur protect Wright is the one! more unemployment'(p22). This is not the the SWP's dubious to take up Keynesian economics. But one thing is clear: the struggle to increase wages is to defend our class interests, not because it makes economic sense What if wage rises do deepen the capitalist crisis? Like the Broad Left, What's gone bring itself to wrong... cannot state plainly that the interests of the working class are fundamentally antagonistic to capitalist and we'll system that defend our class regardless of the consequences for the economy.

wages, What's gone wrong.. promotes Broad Left politics. On import controls it evades them. While Bob Wright, Broad Left candidate for the presidency of the AUEW, stomps the country telling workers to follow Michael Edwardes and keep Japanese goods out What's gone wrong... says nothing. There's not a word about import controls in the whole pamphlet. Backing Wright's bid for high office at the Charter conference, Charter supporter Mick Brightman gave a clue why: "the seriousness of the situation' in the AUEW was such, he said, that 'we can't afford the luxury of a long debate and our own candidate' Worker, (Socialist 5 July 1980). For the SWP, independent working class politics and the fight against national chauvinism in the labour movement are a luxury. So is a Charter candidate. The SWP has Bob substantial differences with Wright; it would indeed be a luxury to run somebody against him. Bob Wright is against the Tories, the SWP's against the Tories, therefore the SWP votes for Bob Wright. There the whole thing begins and The SWP needn't worry about getting back to the Broad Left traditions of the 'sixties - it's taken them on in their entirety. The old campaign for a new Labour government is the unifying spirit behind its fighting rank and file movement' of the 'eighties. The SWP has merely stepped into the space left vacant by the vanishing Broad Left Stop the rot! What's gone wrong in engineering? winds up with some timid proposals for getting workers more involved in union activity building up their confidence and making the AUEW more democratic. But workers need more than patronising advice like this. They need a genuine political alternative, not only to the AUEW leadership of Duffy and Boyd but also to the Broad Left - the force responsible for the rise of Duffy and Boyd way to stop the rot in only engineering is to destroy the political influence of the Broad Left. But all the SWP can offer is a re-run of that organisation. This is what the pamphlet has to say to AUEW militants about beating the likes of Duffy: •What is missing is an organisation, at rank and file level, which is linking all those groups of fed-up, sold-out workers together. If such ar organisation were built, as happened to pur Scanlon in, they would be in real trouble.' (p25) The RCT believes that fed-up, sold-out workers want more than another sell-out That's why we will be telling engineers to Wright and his platform of reject Bob economic nationalism when the election Every militant for president comes up. knows what to expect from Duffy and Boyd. But beware of Wright and his smooth campaign to link the defence of of engineers' interests to the survival British industry! Beware his attempts to opposing class interests an over foreig 'us" from 'unfair competition! In the past the Broad Let has created apathy and cynicism am engineering workers and has made It's time ants politically impotent.

learn from this and build an opposition the AUEW committed to class politi Judith Har

The left on the loose Ever since Margaret Thatcher walked into Number 10 last year the Labour left has been trying to give the party a new image.

It has striven to portray the Labour Party of the 'eighties as something different from the party in government between If the press is to be believed, rank and never apparently reveal overwhelming support for unilateral disarmament, the bEc remains committed to the three principles of party democracy' it has been campaigning about for the past year and more.

• have Labour's leader chosen, not by the parliamentary party (as at present), but by a broader electoral college • have the manifesto controlled, not by Shadow Cabinet, but by the NEC • subject all Labour MPs to mandatory The striking thing about the left's great causes is that they have little connection with the main problems facing workers: unemployment and falling living stan- All the left can offer is pacifism anti-cruise campaign, (the anti-EEC campaign) and old favourlike more nationalisation and the abolition of the House of Lords. On the issues that matter the left leaves it to the right: in Labour's offensive against the Tories on jobs, James Callaghan takes the lead. And as for the structure and policy of the Labour Party - the last word lies with the trade union bureaucrats.

The trade union leaders call the shots on issues in the Labour Party.

the left to knuckle under to their requirements for the future of the party. Under winger Eric Heffer has been forced to come to terms with the moderate party accepted the common call of the rightwing parliamentarians and trade union leaders to submerge their differences in united opposition to the Tories. Fearing been dragged along behind.

The trade union leaders have intervened decisively in Labour Party affairs because they are desperate for a new Labour government. Mass unemployment underalready they are being forced to accept wage cuts, punitive productivity deals and Terry Duffy put the question that the recession raises in the worried mind of every trade union official: Labour Party are not in power, how can they help us?' (The Times, 24 June 1980).

Duffy wants to get back to the good old days after 1974 when the senior trade union leaders were an established part of the scene in Whitehall. bureaucrats have always been the king-makers in the Labour accentanle alternative to Callaghan has yet emerged, they have made their position clear against his radical challenger Tony Benn.

left-wing union leaders like Moss Evans Clive Jenkins (ASTMS) and Stalinist Ken Gill (AUEW-TASS) have joined the right to back Callaghan.

cannot risk facing the electorate with the idiosyncratic radical- The ascendancy of the trade union right wing in the Labour Party, its endorsement of Callaghan and incomes policy The Labour left Born to lose party since its May special conference the right has been on the behind it. Then the right-wing Shadow Cabinet registered its disapproval of the left-wing National Executive Committee's draft manifesto by cancelling the press conference at which it was to be launched. Once again the right has the left on the run: we show why of the party leadership. reflects the strong position of the union leaders over their own rank and file. There have been some upsets - the leadership in the NUR and the UPW both had deals they approved on pay and productivity repudiated by delegate conferences. The conference rejected its leadership's right-wing policy Party inquiry. But in general the union bureaucrats have been under little pressure from below; they have enjoyed unusual liberty to pursue their own reactionary Always being so blue It is the destiny of the Labour left to be humiliated by the right. This has been its lot ever since the party was founded: it must always be so because however radical the left is, however hostile to the leadership, it has no basic differences with the right. The NEC's draft manifesto wants National Enterprise Board and reflation higher state expenditure; the Shadow Cabinet/TUC paper industry: a policy for expansion wants exactly the same. The left has been pushing the same strategy ever since its heyday in the early 'seventies. In 1973 it won the party to a radical programme featuring the National Board, planning agreements and industrial democracy. A similar programme was again endorsed by the Labour During this period the left's enthusiastic advocacy of Labour's 'alternative economic strategy' helped the party to win two General Elections and the For the leadership the left programme was a great success. It took over the core of the strategy: the drive to regenerate British industry through state promoted threw out elements of the programme that unrealistic (industrial democracy) or not expedient (import controls) for British capitalism. However these radical aspects of the programme helped the Government to win workers' acquiescence to wage controls and cuts. The result was the sharpest drop in living standards The left was angered and confused at its policies being used in this way. But its feeble protests were unjustified. The left's objective was to make British industry competitive - and the Labour leadership did its best to achieve this. The only way to make motors, engineering, shipbuilding and steel profitable was through mass redundancies, attacks on trade unions and wage controls. The working class paid the Reading the popular press you would think the Labour Party was in the grip of its left-wing. But in the internal disputes that have rocked the offensive. Late in June, AUEW leader Terry Duffy threatened to cut off his union's funds to the party unless the left quietened down. Early in July, the right effectively scuttled Labour's Commission of Inquiry by making sure that all the decisions are taken at the forthcoming annual conference where the leadership has all the big trade union bloc votes the dreams of the left always end up in the pain of defeat at the hands price for the left's illusions.

The left today is more sober. It no irreversible shift in the balance of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families. it promised in 1973 Instead the NEC's draft manifesto concedes it will take a Labour government half a decade to implement the more egalitarian parts of its plans first years in office, indeed, are likely to be dominated by our efforts to rebuild The left's dream is that it is possible attacking the working class. The right in the Labour Party does not suffer from these delusions. It knows the ledgers of UK Ltd inside out; it is ready to take whatever action is necessary to balance them. The leadership is backed up by all experience of seven terms of office, all the commonsense arguments of a host of journalists and academics. The left has nothing but hopes and dreams.

The Labour left sustains the myth that left sustains the myth that the Labour boundaries between the radical left and Labour Party is getting harder Militant, the Chartists and Workers are submerged in The IMG is half in and half out, although agreements and other 'Bennite policies' would "bring many benefits to ordinary people suggests that its disappearance is imminent. ('Leninism in the 'eighties?', Socialist Challenge, 12 June 1980). But the SWP, estranged from the Labour apart. Let's see how much it is The SWP has two reasons not to join the Labour Party. The first is that Labour concentrates on parliamentary, not extraparliamentary action. The second is that Labour's record has shown it to be organically incapable of achieving socialism.

The first is a tactical disagreement masquerading as one of principle, the second is an empirical observation masquerading Reviving the Labour Party For SWP leader Tony Cliff the problem with Benn and his friends is that 'they are (Socialist Worker, 14 June 1980). Close

LABOUR MOVEMENT

agrees that the Labour Party is 'far too to parliamentarianism' in new Party' entitled Refreshing the parts that similar to Cliff's: he wants to 'give a priority to extra-parliamentary action, and to concentrate on 'workplace action' movement, the Anti-Nazi League and the the recent Debate of the Decade, he 'fully supports' the parliamentary struggle' (quoted in Socialist Challenge, 12 June 1980). His record confirms this. successive Labour governments Benn has taken his radical alternative policies to rank and file workers in shipbuilding on the Clyde, to shop stewards' committees with alternative plans such as those at Lucas and to workers participating in his co-operative experiments at KME, Meriden and elsewhere. Benn's radicalism helped danger to the working class - is that he has always brought the politics of Labourof parliament, down Benn has been trying to get the radical left to campaign on his behalf. The recent gains of the right have pushed him further in this direction. Cliff thinks that the trade union bureaucrats and the party leadership. But at the Wembley conference his supporters clubbed together to launch Rank and File Mobilising Comcoalition is to defend "Labour democracy' against the right and advance the cause of Benn through a vigorous campaign to 'refresh' the parts of the labour movement Benn himself could not reach The SWP has no answer to Hain and Benn. Party leader Duncan Hallas could only applaud Hain's call for an activist Labour Party as 'SPLENDID' and pledge that the SWP 'will certainly co-operate enthusiastically' in his initiatives to revive 28 June 1980). But Hallas is sceptical.

Reviewing the recent record of the Labour change its spots?' In the end his polemic with Hain boils down to a difference of opinion on this question: "Hain thinks so.

We think not. The SWP has no fundamental political dispute with the Labour Party: if Hain's campaign succeeds there is no reason why Hallas should not join The SWP is not yet ready to make this move. In an editorial reply to Benn's latest appeal to the SWP to join up, Socialist Worker declared, almost apologetically: 'we still believe that the fight for socialism can be conducted most effectively on the picket line' (our emphasis, 19 July 1980).

The difference is one of time and place We do not reject the Labour Party parliamentarianism. activist Labour Party along the lines Hain outlines would be an even greater danger moribund bureaucracy. Parliament is a tactic which revolutionaries according to circumstances: we do not exclude it in principle. Nor do we reject Labour simply because disgusting though it is. We condemn the right and left, subordinate the working class to the interests of the British refresh the working class stupefies instead of stimulating; it lacks a punch but it carries a terrible hangover.

the next step, August 1980 13

RCT activities in August Letters Playing with words Dear comrades, Your review of the feminist publication Beyond the fragments ('Labour No5) ments, the next step, about time someone exposed the far left for its adulation of feminism and its total failure to relate to working class women.

We look forward to an article on the way feminists fight male changing the English vocabulary. Chairperson, spokesperson, and firefighters must be some of the greatest blows that the left has struck against women's oppression. Linguists of the world Learning a foreign language is unte easier than making a revolution.

Helen Monteith Pat Evans West Bromwich Too abstract? Looking at the next step No 5, consider that it is incorrect to make the call for "a single union for each industry'. It is true that there are too many unions in this country and the bosses can play on the sectionalism that arises from this kut a ink-up between unions will not necessarily prevent this.

In some instances militants would not call for a merger. The mooted amalgamation would certainly bring two million workers together in one union, but the fairly of the democratic sTructure disappear as it has been made clear that the new union would be run along tne notorously undemocratic lines of the EETPU.

Do you call for a single union for each industry' or its equivaient in local and national government? If so, it would be very dangerous. It mantestly absurd that should be in the same union as managers who supervise, discipline and sack them and are also implementing the cuts. Management throughout the civil service have imposed suspension notices on CPSA members taking industrial

LONDON

for more information ring (01)274 3951 Series of fortnightly forums on Ireland Wednesdays, 7.30pm University of London Union, Malet Street (tube: Goodge Street/Warren Street) • 30 July Bring the War to Britain!

Speaker: Alex Farrell Roebuck Pub, Tottenham Court Road (tube: Goodge Street/Warren Street) • 13 August The American anti-war movement and Ireland Speaker: James Wood • 27 August The Algerian struggle against French imperialism Speaker: Kevin Green Smash the PTA Carnpaign for affiliations and information write to SPTAC, BM RCT, London WC1V 6XX Affiliate your trade union branch, trades council, shop stewards' committee or student union to SPTAC. An affiliation gives you: • latest information about arrests under the PTA • details of our pickets and demonstrations: • a regular newsheet on the Irish War, Irish prisoners in Britain and antiimperialist work in Britain.

Rates: £1 individual £5 trades €10 national organisation 14 the next step, August 1980 words ovel movement in fragwas great. It's chauvinism by Patrick Foster London SES Criticism misplaced page 2, 1 secnonausm.

EETPU/AUEW

force. continually

AUEW

would problem, full-time trade ano ticipation of the workforce.

Naturally, workers panace for the ordinary traditions

SOUTH LONDON

Regular sales • Stockwell tube • Battersea market • Balham market • Balham tube • Brixton tube

EAST LONDON

Thurdays, 7.30pm, write to attacks deportations Weekly street meetings council or organisation Playing with Many of these and CuTs Pay management toadies are members of the SCPS - a TUC affiliated union. I don't want them in Union mergers would not necessarily avert such occurrences as the Isle of Grain dispute.

The thorny question of differentials will not disappear merely by unions merging; this and other causes of divisions will merely become intra-union rather than inter-union disputes.

Revolutionaries should not oppose union amalgamations in instances where such mergers are in the interests or the working class. but tne call made in tns 5 is too abstract. At a time when the LEIPU AUEW merger • wilch 1s in the interests of the bureaucrats and bosses - is a clear possibility, it is wrong to make such a demand which is very vague and could detract militant workers from the otherwise excellent ideas put forward in the article.

The establishment of industry-wide unions and strike committees will not in itself overcome We make this call to indicate the necessity to transform the unions. At present the capitalists are able to negotiate_with one union at a time. In negotiations they take every opportunity to foster divisions in the work- The struggle of the working class is undermined by sectionalism. Although this is not merely an organisational union bureaucrats can exert more control if the shopfloor is divided organisationally. Industry-wide unions factory committees allow for greater rank and file control and facilitate the parindustry-wide unions are problems facing our class. But in a struggle to transform the ideological of the labour and oreanisation movement they can become an important lever in broadening the political horizon of the working class. In each industry the struggle to Friday afternoon (5.15pm) Saturday morning (11am) Friday afternoon and Saturday morning • Elephant and Castle tube Weekly discussions of the next step and local, national and international events Hackney Labour and Trades Union Hall, 96 Dalston Lane, Hackney E8 (British Rail: Dalston Junction. Bus: 277) East London Workers Against Racism Box 22. 136 Kingsland High Street, E8 • defence against fascist and police • resistance to redundancies • opposition to passport raids and Saturdays, 10.30am - 12 noon • Stratford market shopping precinct • Ridley Road market, Hackney transform the unions will take a different form.

We don't give blanket support to union mergers - and certainly not where they would only serve the interest of bureaucratic manipulation.

Your fear of a single union in local and national government is misplaced. Victimisation militants by management personnel can of only be overcome by ridding the unions of them altogether. How managers organise themselves is their business Unity with SWP? I read a few issues of the next step, listened to RCT members' arguments at Marxism in the 'eighties and talked to quite a few of your comrades. I agree with many of the things you say. It seems to me that many of our differences - say over the Anti-Nazi League or Charter 80 are simply tactical. I think that the time of RCT comrades would be better spent if your organisation were to link up with the SWP. Your separation has the most negative results. Firstly, you spend so much time slagging off the SWP. If you were organisation your inside

OUT

experience could be used as part of a constructive debate over the direction of the SWP Secondly, because you have only a few hundred members it is difficult for you to put any of your ideas into practice. The end result is that nothing ever comes of them.

I feel that you should seriously working much more closely with the SWP with a view to joining us. After all, what we have in common far outweighs our differences.

(name and address supplied) Join the RCT! For the SWP the 'self-activity' of the working class is all. Programmatic and political issues are not very important; political debate is 'sectarian' and criticism • Whitechapel and Watney Street, near Whitechapel tube • Queens Road market, Upton Park Weekly street sales of the next step Sundays, 9.30am onwards, Brick Lane (tube: Aldgate East)

THE NORTH WEST

for more information write to RCT, Box 33, 164-66 Corn Exchange Building, Hanging Ditch, Manchester M4 3BD Smash the PTA Campaign - North West Committee Meetings Lobby the TUC - Defend Tameside Trades Council Speakers from SPTAC and Tameside Trades Council • Liverpool 12 August, AUEW Hall 46-48 Mount Pleasant 7.30pm • Bradford 19 August, Textile Hall Social Club, Westgate 7.30pm • Preston Windsor Castle Egan Street, 7.30pm • Manchester 2 September Whalley Hotel Whithington Rd/Upper Unity with the SWP? sations' basic of the shoulders forward for native to Labourism. skills and consider perhaps, but poutical movement. 'slagging off. Thus many SWP Warrington • 31 July • 14 August • 21 August • 28 August Regular sales • Manchester • Liverpool • Warrington 26 August, Bottom Room

SWP

SWP

members will agree that one of their organitheoretical positions the Permanent Arms Economy - is a load of rubbish.

Some will express serious reservations about 'state capitalism. But", they say with a shrug - 'so what?' For the RCT the problem is that the selfactivity of the working class in Britain today takes place under clear political guidance - that of the Labour Party and the trade union leaders.

It is also informed by a definite political outlook: reformism. Our objective is to break that leadership, transform that outlook and build a working class alternative. Our strongest weapon in that struggle is Marxism, and in particular the Marxist theory of crisis, which points the way the working class in today's recession. What would we have to gain from unity with an organisation which rejects Marxist theory on all the important questions facing the labour movement? On the origin of the crisis, the nature of imperialism, the Soviet Union, women's oppression and many other issues the SWP simply reflects radical bourgeois opinion.

The revisionism of the SWP means that for all its talk about action it cannot provide an alter- Our tactical differences with the SWP follow from our basic political disagreements. Take the Labour Party. The SWP called for a vote for Labour in the general election and now bolsters that party up by pursuing narrow anti-Toryism The RCT called on workers not to vote Labour and now continues to put the struggle against Labourism to the fore. Only tactical differences differences that reflect two profoundly opposed approaches to the dominant traditions the British labour of Our correspondent, like many SWP members, draws the wrong conclusions from his agreemen with RCT politics. He should have the courage of his convictions and work with the RCT. Why stay in a declining radical left group when you can join a growing revolutionary organisation?

Chorlton Rd, Moss Side 7.30pm Regular meetings. Ask the next step sellers for time and place Who needs the Labour Party? What's happened to the steel industry? Why we're fighting the Irish War in Britain Blacks must not pay the price for the capitalist crisis • 18 September Youth on the dole: up against the Tories and the Labour Party Friday 4 - 4.45 Piccadilly Gardens opp Lewis's Saturday 10.30 - 12.30 Church St shopping precinct Thursday 12 - 1.30 Saturday 10.30 - 1.00 Golden Square devpt Sankey St We also hold regular sales at dole offices, housing estates and factories in all these areas. Details from the address above.

PARTY

UNION?

reformism. Africa. IN RECENT MONTHS the Militant tendency has been holding meetings to publicise a new pamphlet on South Africa entitled The workers' movement, SACTU and the ANC - a struggle for Marxist policies. It contains a number of documents written by Robert Petersen, the editor of the South African Congress of Trade Unions' (SACTU) paper Workers' Unity, and his supporters. Petersen and three others were expelled from the African National Congress (ANC) in late 1979; the pamphlet focuses on political issues surrounding this move.

The pamphlet does make a number of statements that no Marxist could disagree with. It explains, for example, that the profitability of South African capital can be restored only by attacking the working class. Again, the pamphlet states that 'neither economic gains, liberation, nor democracy, can be secured for the black workers on the basis of capitalism, but only through an uninterrupted struggle to overthrow capitalism and begin the building of socialism'. But it is one thing to repeat the essentials of Marx's critique of political economy and of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution; it is quite another to apply them to the real struggles of the South African working class. For when we look beyond the pamphlet's unexceptionable generalities we find Militant opportunism at its worst. The party's over In their Introduction, the authors proclaim that they will continue to struggle for their ideas within the ranks of the

ANC,

SACTU and the South Communist Party, (SACP). This, despite.:• interests', the fact that the leaderships of all three organisations are, as the authors themselves point out, 'opposed to a socialist programme, being of the view that it is possible to achieve national liberation 'on the basis of capitalism'.

What is it, we are left to ask, that politically distinguishes the leaderships of these three bodies from their memberships? No direct answer is given. But we do learn two things. First, that when the Foreword was written the authors felt they were the victims of an offensive led well-known members' of the SACP, by but believed that the leadership of the SACP had 'the undoubted capacity to prevent such right-wing and anti-working class activities'. Second, that four months later the leadership was itself to blame: *One political faction within the ANC mprising the middle-class right wing and The struggle in South Africa

OR TRADE

The Militant tendency is a parasitic organisation. In Britain, Militant portrays Clause 4 of the 1918 Constitution as a socialist testament of the Labour Party to justify its accommodation with Labourism. In South Africa, Militant upholds the 1955 Freedom Charter as an anti-capitalist document to validate its adaptation to the Stalinist politics of the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party.

In both countries the Militant method of building within the existing organisations of the working class helps to strengthen the grip of We examined the role of Militant in the British labour movement in the next step No 3 (March 1980). Here we look at Militant in South leadership of the SACP - having gained positions of decisive power within the ANC-in-exile, is now using those positions bureaucratically to begin to eliminate from the ANC those who struggle for Marxist policies' (Pp 74-5, emphasis Why was this position only adopted when it was? Why adopt it at all? Again no The puzzle doesn't end there. In their 'Our political differences with the SACP leadership rather than with the comrades of its rank and file - run very deep. But nevertheless we stand for the right of the SACP to organise within the ANC and SACTU, to advance its own ideas, perspectives and programme and to compete democratically for positions of leader- That same right must be extended to all nor national revolutionary tendencies basing themselves on the struggle of the oppressed workers..

This is odd. Not just because of the fact that the SACP controls the ANC (as the letter notes), not just because it controls SACTU too, not just because the existence of other revolutionary nowhere proven, but because the letter defends the SACP's right to organise remarked that the SACP's theory of the South African revolution spells disaster for the working class' a mere three para- When we go back three pages, however, we discover a detailed - if inadvertent apology for this spineless liberalism. There from the ANC, a 'broad combination of African people with different 'dictate' to SACTU. They then go on to pursue their point more broadly: *Indeed, even between a workers' party and a trade union, there ought to remain a relationtheir ideas, policies and influence within the trade unions, ought never to attempt bureauor by manipulation to subordinate the trade unions to their command.'

We can ignore the words "bureaucratically' there to woo the unsuspecting. The point is that the authors are against any and all 'autonomy' for the unions, just as they want the SACP to have the 'right to organise' within them. In other don't want a revolutionary party at all. As Trotsky put it: - or that of the trade unions We learn from the ANC and SACTU, having content the idea of working-class indepen 'schooled' the best workers in the lesson that the struggle is for revolution, not reform (p33). The spontaneous forms of organisation developed in the mass move.

'generalise' the workers' life experience' of factory, township, mine and farm to its 'necessary political conclusions' (p48).

Answers to the questions of how to fight reformist tendencies in the unions and of nationalist politics of Chief Gatsha Buthelezi and their influence on the Natal unions 'can only be found in the field of practice' (p51, emphasis in the original).

This doesn't exhaust all the comrades mistakes. We are informed that, in strengorganisation and unity of the working class,' a unity 'arising from struggle' (p35, emphasis in the original). And just to Those who, in principle, oppose trade union autonomy to the leadership of the Communist Party, oppose thereby - whether they want to or not - the most backward proletarian section to the vanguard of the working class, the struggle for immediate demands to the struggle for the complete liberation of the workers, reformism to Communism, opportunism to revolutionary Marxism.' (Communism and syndicalism, 1929) The authors error on the relation between the party and the unions is not a new one. Lenin had cause to polemicise against those who made it in his day In What is to be done? (1902), Lenin empnasts) with the Economists for thinking that workers could gain a revoutlook spontaneously. argued that the spontaneous struggles of the workers, though a positive factor, were conducted on the terrain of bourgeois To exaggerate their significance role of the revolutionary party. It is this that the authors do time Workers' Unity, No 1, that blacks have begun 'by their actions' to answer the 'What is the way forward?', and that the task now is to "build up the organised strength of the working class.

The pamphlet maintains that the most urgent' question facing the workers' movement is how to fight the Wiehahn-Riekert attempts to shackle the trade unions. In Wiehahn-Riekert attacks' we are informed that the working class was 'strengthened' during South Africa's post-war boom, that it is even stronger now, and that the 'most vitally important task' is to build SACTU as a genuine, independent, underground trade union True, workers have already begun to create underground networks on their own initiative (p21), yet, as the memorandum says, SACTU's 'historic task' remains to fill with a revolutionary the trade union field' (p32).

organisations, the SACP (p37), but SACTU must still is SACP is the arena in

IMPERIALISM

stress faith in spontaneity, their the authors state that 'every worker who has taken part in effective strike action knows the logic of democratic centralism at first hand'. There is one simple message in all this.

The workers know it all. Trade unions, not the Leninist party, will free the masses Bowing to spontaneity We have just noticed in passing that the authors believe that the struggle against the petit-bourgeois nationalism of Buthelezi can 'only' be won 'in the field of point so as to downplay the importance of political struggle. The fulsome praise they lavish on the working class has the same purpose too. Take this passage from *The Wiehahn-Riekert strategy probes the working class with a knife, testing out points of weakness where new lines of division can be cut.

Their central aim is to separate the "settled" workers (those with Section 10 rights) from the migrants by promising some concessions to the settled workers. This aims to isolate the migrant workers.. Jt is a cynical manoeuvre to try and reopen the scars of the division which emerged among the African workers for a short time in Soweto and Cape Town in 1976, and which were healed as the struggle developed.' (Our Now, anybody familiar with the Soweto uprising knows that the division between migrant workers and settled workers that emerged there was 'healed' not spontaneously, not 'as the struggle developed, but by Buthelezi. Buthelezi rallied the workers together by appealing, not to their common class interests, but to their 'racial unity'. And without a revolutionary party Buthelezi will win out in the behind Buthelezi lies bourgeois ideology and organisation, against taneity has no chance The authors' underestimation of the political obstacles facing the answering the question they themselves raise: how have the reformists managed to maintain a grip on the black workers' unions in today's revolutionary times'?

The answer is not at all what they suggest - that "the regime picks off the best elements among the leaders and officials, thus clearing the way for those is to bend the unions to the No 5, quoted in the pamphlet). No, the reformists maintain a grip on the trade unions because all they have to cope with is the spontaneous actions of the working class. As long as the workers' struggle is restricted to the trade union sphere, the working class will be unable to fight for its class interests. Happily for the refor mists the SACP has made sure that it is restricted like this - by ensuring that the proletariat has no special role to play in the movement for national liberation Just as SACTU simply tells the working class to get on and fight the bosses, so the ANC instructs the liberation movement to go for the achievement of a few South African capitalism from the fight against apartheid.

result the reformists dominate the trade unions, while petit-bourgeois nationalism dominates the liberation struggle.

The way to combine the economic for to build a revolutionary working class party. Such a party be constructed through a resolute fight against the SACP. Yet the authors offer no political alternative to the SACP.

leads it inexorably towards Stalinism: the group wants to conduct its activities. So much for the 'struggle for Marxist policies'.

Charles Longford the next step, August 1980 15

ERUPTS

Soweto in June 1976. The growing mass movement In the last year, opposition to the South African regime has embraced every section Black and coloured of the oppressed. students, the settled black workers of Port and the Cape Elizabeth, Johannesburg area and the mainly unorganised and vulnerable migrants have all played a part.

The most decisive factor in the latest phase of the struggle has been the industrial militancy of black workers. Workers have struck many times over pay claims in the past. A recent strike in support of a dismissed nationalist leader was a significant new development. Thozamile Botha, a worker at Ford's Port Elizabeth plant, was sacked for allegedly spending too much time on local community affairs His victimisation sparked off a strike which was led by the Port Elizabeth Civic Organisation, of which he is a leading member.

Ford was forced to reinstate Botha after a series of mass meetings and a consumer boycott. The determined fight of the black workforce sent the employers reeling and Revolutionary Communist Tendency International Conference 'Imperialism in the 'eighties' 5,6,7 September 1980 'Imperialism (impi a rializ'm). IMPERIAL a. + -ISM.] 1. The rule of an when despotic. emperor, esp. principle or spirit of empire; advocacy of imperial interests 1881: The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary 'Hence we are living in a peculiar epoch of world colonial policy, which is most closely connected with the "latest stage in the development of capitalism", with finance capital. For this reason, essential first of all to deal in greater detail with the facts, in order to ascertain as exactly as possible what distinguishes this epoch from those preceding it, and what the present situation is. In the first place, two questions of fact arise here: is an intensification of colonial policy, a sharpening of the struggle for colonies, observed precisely in the epoch of finance capital? And how, in this respect, is the world divided the present in V I Lenin, Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism (1917) Shorter Oxford Unlike the Dictionary, Marxists understand imperialthe highest stage ism as development, an era in which capitalism condemns the mass of people to poverty their political rights. and denies Revolutionary Communist three-day conference on 'Imperialism in the 'eighties' starts from where Lenin left off. Each of the conference sessions will examine the present division of the world, relationship of backward the countries to the imperialist nations and the rivalry between the different imperialist powers. Fifty years of stagnation and revisionthe next step, August 1980 16

SOUTH AFRICA

As the next step goes to press first reports are coming in of a new series of disturbances in South Africa. On 24 July more than 2500 black workers joined strikes and boycotts in Soweto, a million and a half strong African township 14 miles south west of Johannesburg.

Johannesburg itself is threatened by a total breakdown of transport and refuse collection. Thousands of school children took to the streets to step up their school boycott, stoning cars and a delivery van.

South Africa is witnessing the greatest upsurge of opposition since the upheaval which culminated in the slaughter of over 500 Africans in became a major subject for discussion in the business press. This united response in defence of a dismissed worker was just as disturbing for the bourgeoisie as the fact that the Ford workers completely bypassed their traditional union, Auto and Rubber Workers Union.

union's moderate stand compromised it in the eyes of shop floor militants.

In November 1979 a strike and consumer boycott at Fatti's & Moni's, a company producing pasta and flour in the Western Cape area, was finally successful after seven months' struggle. The employers had to reinstate 78 workers during the dispute for union recognition.

the staff who had walked out in All support of their workmates won back their jobs. Militancy saw the results an aggressive struggle could In May this year, 800 workers bring. struck for higher wages at Kromco, an apple packing factory in the Cape. In the past they had been weakly organised and easily divided along racial lines. This time ism in the Marxist movement have left 1858 |f. their mark. The 'theorists' who claim that imperialism no longer exists are legion.

2. The Others have argued that backward capitalist countries like Brazil, South Korea and Iran could themselves become imperialist.

What's the limits to development in these countries?

What is the impact of the present world crisis on their economies?

We have already invited a number of it is speakers who different from those of the RCT. This conference will be a forum where the fundamental theoretical the international be clarified. There is, of course, little point in doing time?' English of capitalist The Tendency's capitalist play our future contracts from their the United The fired spread rapidly as workers string of dismissals

IMPERIALISM UNDER

THE MICROSCOPE

this unless we conference real answer? What are the the working class. both from Britain and abroad will be putting forward views strategy for destroying it.

facing and to register write to: issues Helen Swift working class can

BM RCT

London WCIV 6XX they resisted the employers' attempts to They off black against coloured.

won a 50 per cent increase, a guarantee that all workers involved in the dispute including 40 black migrant labourers who had been detained by the police - would be reinstated, and a commitment to honworkers By mid 1980 industrial unrest spread into South Africa's core industries - cars, energy, mining - and the public sector.

8500 carworkers struck in the Eastern Cape. At Volkswagen 3500 workers won a 33 per cent pay rise and secured a closed shop agreement. At the nearby Goodyear Tyre plant 600 more ignored the 'advice' which called their union demand for a 200 per cent increase ridiculous. On 16 July 18 000 construction workers at the state-owned SASOL oilfrom-coal conversion plants Il and II!

rioted and killed two whites in protest against the murder of a black worker. They were also angry at the presence of the boom. South African army in the plants, which was brought in following the ANC sabotage at the first SASOL plant. (Troops have become an everyday aspect of factory life.)

This spate of militancy has forced South African capitalists to think hard about their response. Some, such as Harry Oppenheimer's Anglo American Corporation, are doing well enough at present to be able to grant small wage rises. Anglo recently conceded rises in the black minimum starting salary of between 15 and 28 per cent. Employers desperately want to avoid any disruption in production while the present gold market boom continues and profits are looking good.

Other capitalists have resorted to more traditional solutions and scored some suc 100 cesses. There has recently been a whole black of 600 who had been involved in a three day strike in late July at the De Beers Finsch Diamond Mine near Kimberley; 250 from draw out the political Fee: consequences of a revolutionary approach.

Central to all the discussion at the will be the impact of prodoor imperial views on the labour movement and how they can be combatted. The Labour Party's "positive colonialism', its support for imperialism with a human face, has often been discussed in RCT literature. We hope to explain why it has such a pernicious hold over sections of We will outline our For details of the conference, a reading list Venue: Sunday a milling plant in Uitenhage and 30 at a steel plant in Johannesburg who protested against the sacking of a member of their works committee. Some employers used the hundreds of laws restricting the political and civil rights of migrants to expel involved in strikes. Thus 40 migrants who took part in a strike and boycott against the Table Bay Cold Storage Company in Cape Town, which had refused to recognise a unregistered trade union, were arrested and shipped off to the Transkei Homeland. Everything at stake The struggles of the last six months are taking a similar form to those of 1976 industrial strikes, school and consumer boycotts. There is, though, a crucial difference. In 1976 the South African economy was in the throes of a deep crisis Today, compared to the other imperialist nations, it is experiencing a temporary The rapid rise in gold prices has stimulated economic growth and given the South African ruling class some freedom to manoeuvre. It intends to use this period of temporary prosperity to deepen the divisions between settled and migrant workers and to weaken the opposition of a section of the black population to apartheid by granting some concessions. This is the strategy contained in the recent Wiehahn-Riekert reports. (For a more detailed assessment see South Africa: boom for whom?', the next step, No 5, and 'Unions under apartheid', the next step, No 1) The ability of the black and coloured workers to resist this strategy depends entirely on the emergence of a political bases its approach organisation which the interests of the per cent on working class. The coming months will be crucial for the South African working class movement. (see discussion article, page 15) Register now! All three days: £5 prepaid, £6.50 at the attendance: €2.50 per day, Part time £1.00 per session Registration at ULU, Friday, 5 September, 9.30am Sessions will include: • Imperialism - the current phase • British imperialism and Irelan • South Africa - the recen developments • Iran - where is the Khomeini regime heading? • Zimbabwe - who won? Debate on the theory of imperialism : Imperialism and Eastern Europe Afghanistan • The Palestinian question -what price settlement? • Racism, immigrant workers and imperialism US imperialism and Central America and many more... Friday/Saturday University of London Union (ULU) Malet Street, London WCI (tube: Goodge Street/Warren Street) Colombo Street Sports Centre and John Marshall Hall, Colombo Street, SE1 (tube: Waterloo) the next step