The Next Step: No. 20, January 1982

No 20 January 1982 the next step No turning back!

1981SURVEY1981SURVEY

British unions, French occupations Russian workers, Polish generals American labour, El Salvador massacres Revolutionaries on the rise, radical left demise Middle Eastern debacles

PLUS

CLEANSING OUR RANKS

a platform for anti-racist trade unionists

IRELAND • REVIEWS • LETTERS

RCP action: around the branches

COVENTRY

IRISH SOLIDARITY has always been a top priority for RCP members in Coventry.

At the end of November local supporters of the Smash the PTA Campaign staged a public rally outside the town hall on the PTA. More than 50 people heard speeches from Eddie Caughey of Sinn Fein, one of the very first PTA victims, and from Glyn Cohen who was picked up during the recent wave of arrests. PTA Campaign also spoke. The rally was harassed by police and prevented from to demonstration by officers who said they feared 'an insurrection'!

Sunday march in Coventry is the main activity for January (seep19), the council workers' strike became a national focus in November and December. RCP members and supporters gave their full backing. As of workers to defend their living standards was undermined by the politics of the Labour Party and the long public debate it has sponsored in Coventry on how to manage reductions in local government controlled council held a referendum over the question of whether to economise through direct cuts in services or rate rises. Less than a quarter of Coventry's voters opted for cuts by a majority of seven to one. The fruits of this experiment in democracy were announced at next council meeting: cuts £2 million - and a 15 per cent rate increase -110 Y workers weren't going to take this lying At the end of September cleaners at Coventry Technical College began industrial action against the proposed cuts.

Throughout October there were sporadic protest actions. Early in November 4000 NUPE workers in Coventry went on indefinite strike against proposals from the council that they take a 10 per cent cut in wages and hours, and accept redun- 8 November as a result of all-out strike While leading councillors considered union leaders were working on a deal.

NUPE branch secretary Joe:Little said at the outset that he saw 'natural wastage and voluntary cutbacks' as the solution to Contents Editorial Over the edge in '82? Workers Against Racism Cleansing our ranks the council problems. After protracted negotiations NUPE agreed on a return to work early in December on the old terms, the dispute was referred to the Many militants were dismayed that the strike was called off before the battle was won: they have little faith that ACAS will back them against the council. After a month on strike they have little confidence either in the much-vaunted alliance of public sector unions against the cuts.

Although individual NALGO, NUT and TGWU members joined picket lines, their leaders followed the NUPE line of looking for alternative ways out of united indus- But joining the party that's attacking them is no way forward for the NUPE workers. Only by rejecting the arguments of the Labour council that rate rises and cuts are scrugary hard in the beeks, working class living standards, will these attacks be fought effectively. This was the argument that RCP supporters took to the Coventry. picket lines — and it's an positive response as the strike wore on.

EAST LONDON

THE CAMPAIGN

getting more and more support (see p20).

Meanwhile East London Workers Against Racism has been in action again - against police harassment in Tower Hamlets and Brick Lane cops blow their cover three years of a successful experiment in community policing, the local constabulary beat up, racially abused and arrested a well-known local Asian youth Shoaib Chowdury. come to the assistance of some Banglabeing attacked by 15 racist thugs. Clearly the police hadn't read their race relations manuals properly, otherwise they would not have told Shoaib to shut his fucking mouth', thrown him against a wall and kicked and beaten him up.

On Tuesday 8 December 300 people packed out the meeting called by the Bangladesh Welfare Association and local groups to protest at the incident. The meeting unanimously voted to break off all relations between the local community and the police.

liaison committee resigned on the spot.

Quotes of the year Labour movement Why Laurence Scott workers fight alone

1981 SURVEY

British unions in retreat 7,8 Europe under control The Soviet bloc cracks up 10 Poland's generals move in 11 Building the Party in '81 12 The USA stands firm Central America in turmoil 15 Middle East: end of diplomacy 16 British left on the defensive 17,18 Ireland No TUC bans on Irish solidarity!

19 North London on the march 19 NUS reaction rules 19 The meeting also voted to stage a mass court when Shoaib's case came up and organise a one-day protest strike in Tower All this is a blow not only for the police, but for those who've been carefully nurturing the idea of police accountability' in the area. At the public meeting members of 'CAPA' - the Committee for Police Accountability, initiative - noted that this was a setback for their work and tried to down-play the racist side of the police attack.

attack us all, black and white, and that's why we have to make the police accountlocal Asian militants have been making policeman and discover a racist goon.

THE RCP's newest branch has only been in operation a few months. Yet it already sells almost 1000 copies of each issue of actively involved in building support for the Bradford 12 (young Asians charged with conspiracy to make petrol bombs in especially for the summer riots), national demonstration in Bradford in December. However, the first major event staged in Leeds was the Smash the PTA Campaign's northern conference at the beginning of December, writes Gary Simpson. More than a hundred people attended from Yorkshire and the North East. In talked about the role of the Prevention of Terrorism Act and urged British workers to oppose it, not because it was bad for Britain's image of justice and fair play, or even because it could be used against individual British trade unionists, because British workers as a class had every interest in supporting the struggle drew on the militant traditions of the experiences in the Laurence Scott struggle In workshops, Wear Valley trade union activist Dave Ayre introduced a discussion question in the labour movement; Annie Dillon gave a first-hand account of recent developments in the Six Counties; and obstacles to Irish solidarity work in the students' unions. Manchester RCP member Kate Marshall opened the final plenary Remember Bloody Sunday 19 20 Labour's hypocrisy Reviews Baker: the far left 21 Hudson: Rhodesia. to Zimbabwe D'Arcy: Armagh abused 21 MacShane: limits of Solidarity 21 Holland: Belfast since 1969 22 Gamble: national strategy 22 Letters

CND

23 SWP and PCL 23 A problem of words 23 Bani-Sadr and the Kurds Rule 12 Rule 14 23 RCP in action Branching out New Year activities 24 session with a detailed analysis of British strategy in Ireland and how we intend to fight it, provoking a lively discussion from the floor - a feature of all the conference sessions The conference concluded with a call to take the arguments and the action against the PTA to a wider audience, Challenging the PTA is a working class response to bourgeois anti-Irish hysteria.

It should give a boost to Irish solidarity work in Leeds for months to come.

MANCHESTER

IN ADDITION to their active involvement in the Laurence Scott dispute (see pб), Manchester RCP members have been involved in a wide range of struggles in Asian family suffering racist attacks • mobilising for a demonstration to • convening the first meeting of the Women for Communism group to discuss • publicising the cases of Irish students picked up under the PTA at Manchester airport en route home from the National organising pickets of the detention centre Sunday commemoration march in Coven-

SOUTH LONDON

EVER SINCE IT was formed in response to the riots last April, South London mitted to extending the fight against racism into the organised labour movement. The first meeting around the new WAR pamphlet, Cleansing our ranks, held in Lambeth Town Hall in December took Members of a wide range of unions a1 Eden outlined the campaign of action we need to fight racism in the unions (see p4). The discussion indicated the range of problems: an engineer reported on the widespread hostility to blacks in civil servants talked about the nationality checks that are imminent in hospitals and unemployment benefit offices; local teachers complained of mounting police harassment of black children at school All left the meeting with a commitment to take on this challenge, together with other anti-racists inside the unions Editorial board Editor Mike Freeman Editorial board Tony Allen, Annie Dillon, Nick Jenkins, Judy Harrison, Anita Lloyd, Marcelle Reynolds, Frank Richards, Helen Simons, James Wood Published by Junius Publications Ltd BCM JPLTD. London WIN 3XX Printed by Morning Litho Printers Ltd. (TU) Typeset by Junius Publications Ltd (TU) ISSN 0144-350X January 1982

IN 1981 THE protagonists in the great conflicts of our times squared up to one another, exchanged menacing looks and held back from a decisive combat. It was world-wide intensified great power rivalries and class antagonisms, but did not East were racked by internecine strife and plagued by Western interference; but so far they have averted the longbetween liberation movements and the US puppet regimes has dragged on at bay. Even in Eastern Europe, Poland has staggered through economic collapse In Britain the recession has raised the stakes in the class struggle. While mass unemployment has put the employers in a strong position to hold down wages and cut living standards, the Tory Government has so far held back from a the to fight in defence of jobs and conditions, has not yet begun to challenge the ruling class' right to rule and the rotten system the next step we survey the class struggle in 1981, in Britain and abroad. There is capitalism. The major capitalist countries and the major social classes of capitalist society cannot postpone the resolution of their conflicts indefinitely. To survive the imperialist powers need to redivide world; and they need to discipline their working classes to pay the heavy price for restoring profitable accumulation.

beginning of a New Year reminds us that Yet a review of 1981 reveals the working class movement everywhere in a state of weakness and confusion, prepared for the urgent tasks that con- *The historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of revolutionary leadership' wrote Leon Trotsky in the 'thirties, and thrown up by today's recession. In the backward capitalist world, workers are fighting and dying in their thousands in their interests are subordinated to those of bourgeois and petit-bourgeois forces.

The tragic consequences of the failure of the working class to lead these struggles in a consistently anti-imperialist direction are particularly evident in Iran, where the hegemony of the petit bourgeoisie over the anti-Shah movement has led to a carnival of reaction as these forces try to stabilise a capitalist regime on the the Western capitalist countries the best measure of the lack of political failure to obstruct the barbarous activities of the Western powers in countries like Iran, El Salvador and through the whole identification of the fate of the official labour movement with the fortunes of its own nation state, a tendency most marked on the left wing of social democracy. Tony Benn's call for a national from the 'colonial' domination of the USA and the EEC expresses the chauvinist outlook that ensures the subordination of the British labour movement to the Throughout Europe, social democracy is being revived to cope with the danger Greece, Mitterand and Papandreou have pulled the left behind a programme of capitalist rationalisation. In Spain and yet provide the way to save bourgeois democracy in Britain, where the stagnation of the class struggle has created an opening for a bourgeois centre party, the long-term trend is towards a much more prominent role for the left wing of the Labour Party.

The Revolutionary Communist Party has set about building a revolutionary party as a genuine alternative to the existing leadership of the working class reflected in our change of name, in May; from Tendency' to 'Party', and in our growing influence. The events of 1981 have confirmed the importance of our identification of Ireland and racism as being the key issues in forging a disponse to the deaths of the Irish hunger black youth to police harassment congeois order in Britain in 1981. However, it is important to note how the British ruling class has been able to use these threats to its own advantage. The main reason it succeeded in doing this was because it could turn the labour movemovement of the oppressed .- into sympathetic supporter of the state in its attempts to deal with resistance to its absence of revolutionary leadership more serious, than in the response of the labour movement strikes and the inner city riots. It is significant that it was through building working class movement, that the RCP The Labour Party plays a leading role in trying to maintain what it calls racial harmony': the acceptance by blacks of their oppression and the endorsement of this state of affairs by the labour movement. When angry Asians, together with ELWAR supporters, proposed organising physically against fascist harassment on a Labour's chief front bench spokesman on the next step Over the edge in '82? soften racial oppression and defuse the explosive situation in the inner city areas The RCP wants to end racial oppression altogether, and to mobilise the working class to achieve this. The difference in these two approaches became clear during TO summed up in the way the Party has excesses; it condemned the violence of black youth, while sympathising with their problems; and it proposed better 'communication' and liaison' between the police and the black community as the way to prevent future recurrences.

agents of a state that has nothing but defended their right to fight back; and we rejected all illusions in making the police more responsive and accountable in favour of organising to defend the victims of the riots and their aftermath During the summer, Workers Against Racism groups were formed in Brixton, - scenes of some of the most violent incidents. The RCP put forward a strategy that cut through the apologetics of the reformists to show a clear way forward with practical consequences for workers ready to The first Brixton riot erupted the day after Bobby Sands, already more than half-way to his death on hunger strike, was elected MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone. The campaign to win support for the hunger strikers' demands for political status was the single biggest claim on the resources of the RCP and its supporters in 1981. Just as the biggest obstacle to rallying working class support for black people was the politics of the labour labour movement act as a bulwark of British establishment when it came The right wing of the Labour movement in the TUC and the parliamentary Labour Party backed the Government's stand against the hunger strikers unreservedly: its position is well symbolised by Don Concannon's visit to the H-Blocks that he could expect no support from the Labour Party. The left wing was more equivocal: several MPs and much of the extra-parliamentary left expressed sympathy with the prisoners and urged the Government to deal with them less not become fully clear until later in the year when the British state came under much more direct attack from the Irish liberation movement in the form Sympathy soon turned to condemnation Labour's spokesmen capitulated to their own chauvinist instincts and the pressures of anti-Irish public opinion The GLC's Ken Livingstone provided the most dramatic example of this transition.

Hostility to the Irish liberation struggle from left to right in allegiance to the movement, the Labour Party proposed, at its Brighton Conference, a programme for a more benevolent British administration culminating in 'withdrawal' at some unspecified date long in the future.

unconditional support to the republican solutions as a denial of Ireland's right to determine its own future. Nor did we ask Britain to reform its concentration camps as the most radical British reformists did in their tentative support for the hunger strikers. We demanded that the Government recognise their status as political prisoners and we urged British workers to back them as soldiers in a national liberation army fighting And we showed, through the activities of the Smash the PTA Campaign in 1981, that putting anti-imperialist politics to the fore was the only way to win wider support for the cause of Irish freedom. As a result of our initiatives, from the Coventry Conference in March to the Workers' March for Irish Freedom in September, Smash the PTA Campaign groups sprang up in many parts of the Breaking the mould 1981 was a bad year for the fudgers. As the radical left drifted into the Labour Party, it increasingly gave up any pretence of independent activity on the key concern became defending the Labour Party against the challenge of the RCP.

Every time the Anti-Nazi League was relaunched, its activists had more difficulty explaining why rock concerts and the Right to Work Campaign were a better way of fighting racism than building workers' defence in the unions. And, as all the big radical left groups pulled out of the Troops Out Movement leaving only handfuls of members in various remaining supporters seemed more concerned to defend Ken Livingstone and Ernie Roberts than to join in activities in support of the Irish struggle independent from the labour bureaucracy.

Unable to make any headway on issues that represent such a threat to the British state that only working class politics can groups have taken refuge in non-issues.

They have thrown their energies into the TUC's attempts to control the young People's March and the Jobs Express.

They have rushed to mobilise the masses against the dangers of nuclear war in the future, while doing nothing to fight war and oppression in the present. And they have enthusiastically joined the campaign for democracy and Tony Benn in the Labour Party. As 1982 begins, the scene is set for a re-run of last year's great distraction in the form of a campaign to defend the left of the Labour Party from a witchhunt launched by the right.

In 1982, we aim to break the mould of British politics. Time is short to build the sort of party we need to win the battles ahead. It is too short to waste in the sideshows of the left and too short to spend on the sidelines of the class struggle. Join the struggle for revolutionary communism in 1982!

Why should black workers stand alone? 'UNITY IS STRENGTH' is one of the basic principles of trade unionism. Trade union leaders divisive; the TUC festations of racism. Yet racism exists, not only outside, but inside the trade union movement. of trade unionism do not apply to black workers. In numerous industrial disputes at Imperial Typewriters, Mansfield Hosiery, Red Scar Mill - black workers had to fight alone.

The TUC leadership has published a mass of pamphlets and leaflets urging fair and equal It even has its own guidemembers. lines: Black workers equality of opportunity. cannot be fought with paper declarations, only with action and organisation. For the past two years trade union supporters of Workers Against Racism have been monitoring racist activities trade union movement. shows disturbing trend. widespread at all levels of the union movement. Moreover, it is institutionalised at the workplace in many industries.

Discrimination exists in hiring, promotion, grading and working conditions.

We want to change this state of affairs for two reasons. paralyses the working class. workers are at each others' throats, the easier it is for the employers to get their way. Second, the only class that can fight effectively is the working class. We believe the trade union movement can and must become an effective weapon in the anti-racist struggle. But we must put our own house in order first, we must cleanse our ranks. Fighting racism in the public sector Workers in the special responsibility for fighting racism because they work for an employer - the British - that puts considerable state resources into the enforcement of racial oppression. State employees are called upon to execute government policies such as the regulation of the movement of immigrant workers and control. The civil service monitors ethnic minorities and repression With Supporters of WAR, particularly in the civil service unions, union-wide support for a activities which assist the implementation of anti-immigrant policies.

There is an even more pressing issue facing anti-racists in the public sector.

To overcome the crisis of profitability the ruling class is prepared to cut back ruthlessly on government spending on education, health care and social services.

The authorities are also determined to reduce the real value of pensions and dole money. To implement these cuts the state uses traditional divide and rule tactics. In the first place, cuts are often directed against and "immigrants'. immigrants have widespread support, the can easily get away Lovement these measures and they soften up public service workers to accept further cuts and reductions in services. Nationalism and racism are powerful levers for pushing through the strategy of the ruling class.

Higher education provides example. For the past five years the state has campaigned overseas students: their fees were more than doubled, they were deprived essential services and their position was made insecure. The unions, particularly the Association of University Teachers (AUT), restricted their response to verbal protests. Many lecturers were prepared to accept racial discrimination in order to save their own necks. But matters did not 4 the next step, January 1982 recognise that racism is condemns all mani- The basic principles Courtaulds, treatment for its black - a charter for But racism motion inside the Our evidence involved Racism No racist laws! First, because racism The more Workers defence! public sector have a their internal provides the forces of valuable information. should fight for boycott of unpopular foreigners' Because attacks on says: with of Cleansing in the labour should get it'. another end remorselessly against of university and conditions. sectors, higher cautionary No racist employment policies!

• rank and file action for jobs and equality "positive discrimination' and 'equal opportunities' who tolerate or support racist practices • opposition to all racist legislation and immigration controls • non-cooperation with all racist surveys, inquiries and questionnaires • full citizenship rights for migrant workers the state or the bureaucrats • workers' defence against racist attacks - at work, at home, on the street • trade union action against racism among the unemployed trade union support for black people against police harassment

CLEANSING

OUR RANKS

A platform for anti-racist Workers Against Racism 20p NUPE official Bernie Grant think Workers Against Racism has done good work fighting racism.

I welcome the production our ranks. Every trade unionist who wants to take on raciem movement with the overseas students.

The recession deepened and the cuts intensified and today thousands of lecturers and staff face the chop. Their inaction over the victimisation of overseas students in the past renders them ineffectual today in defending their own jobs As the same approach extends to other education provides a The Department of tale.

WORKERS AGAINST RACISM

Cleansing our ranks A platform for anti-racist trade unionists Workers Against Racism trade union activists stand for action against racial discrimination at the workplace, in trade unions and in the community. We stand for: • resistance to discrimination in hiring, firing, apprenticeships, grading and pro- • opposition to colour bars - to be led by the trade unions and the officials • TUC action against racism at work, including support for anti-racist activists, the appointment of full-time anti-racist officials and the expulsion of officials • workers' discipline against racist workers - not measures taken by employers, trade unionists Health and Social Security leads the way.

It hopes to bring in a set of racist criteria for reducing health service and benefit payments. No pass laws in hospitals The DHSS has authorised a survey of the nationality of people treatment in hospitals. A pilot project has been launched in 10 hospitals to survey patients as a prelude to with Wythenshawe to the working class. special Council Harber opposed this trade union bodies we 1981) rights of immigrant lementary benefits. not speak English. that she available for junction ing the everybody knows it will put immigrant claimants immigrant class. Society of Civil and representing in the has the hospitals and dole cannot seeking

NHS

services which introducing survival of the working class.

charges for overseas visitors.

Patients foreign-sound ing names' or of "foreign appearance' face rigorous checks.

The three main unions involved - NUPE, NALGO and COHSE - have urged their members to boycott the racist survey.

Unfortunately none of the unions has organised its members to make sure that the DHSS plans are wrecked. WAR has organised a successful boycott the in Hospital in Manchester But this is only the beginning. In early 1982 the Government has plans to publish regulations for introducing charges for 'overseas patients of the NHS. Hospital workers must organise a campaign for non-cooperation with these regulations.

Racial discrimination in the hospitals will lead to even further losses of services There is little time to lose. Officials representing the NHS unions have already accepted the new government policy. A memorandum drawn up by ASTMS divisional officer Donna Harber shows that at the NHS General Whitley meeting most officials were prepared to allow the victimisation of foreign patients. To her credit, Donna measure and circulated a report appealing for support: 1 am circulating a full report on this subject because 1 consider it an extremely important one, because I think members have a right to know how their representatives acted and what odds we are up against, and because I think it vital to the future of the NHS (as well as the fight against racial discrimination) that we take every opportunity we have in whatever are represented to condemn and oppose the Government initiative.'

(NHS charges to overseas patients, 28 October Stop the dole queue inquisition!

The DHSS has also been attacking the workers to supp- Recently an Indian woman was disqualified from obtaining supplementary benefits because she could The DHSS decided was failing to make herself because work' she did not speak English. Now the DHSS has launched a more ambitious programme for reducing benefit payments. In • con• with the Department of Employment, a plan has emerged for identifyethnic origin of unemployed people before dealing with their claim.

A Department of Employment circular of 4 November 1981 claims that the survey has only a statistical significance. But that if implemented considerable pressure on and potentially deprive them of their benefits.

The circular itself reveals that a major purpose of such statistics is to encourage civil service workers themselves to police workers. The Department of Employment nationality checks, like the DHSS checks in the hospitals, are part of the mechanisms the state needs back up the new Nationality Act and set its seal on racial divisions in the working The reaction from the civil service unions up to now has been muted. The Public Servants, and supervisors unemployment benefit offices, criticised the plan for being 'insensitive and likely to breed suspicion and alarm'. And that's about all.

Trade unionists in the public sector cannot turn a blind eye to the apartheidstyle regulations now being imposed in offices. They become accomplices to the institutionalisation of racial discrimination in the public sector and hope to save their own necks. Workers who refuse to defend the rights of their black fellow workers will be contributing to the destruction of are necessary for the

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1981 we our political range presentation of the review. For workers fighting for their jobs and wages and workers who are moving to take on the ruling class on a broader political front, the next step has become an invaluable weapon. In 1982 we aim coverage of major issues wider and more immediate. We want its polemics against the bourgeoisie and its apologists in the labour movement to be sharper and more forceful in advancing the working alternative. We appeal to our readers to send us whatever they can afford now! Only a genuine workers' readership. There gold nor Washington silver available for the cause of real working class politics.

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builders bombings Brixton riots any other or And, unlike the cannot dump half our even journalists on the Fleet went monthly, expanded and improved the pounds a week (28 February) to make its tourniquet.' class relies on its neither Moscow Assocfields (26 November) Collected by Paul Foster

FAIR COMMENT

"My politics have not changed.'

Communist Party student leader Sue Slipman on her conversion to the SDP (The Times, 12 February)

BIBLE STUDY

'Jesus turned out the money-lenders out of the temple - I feel it is right and reasonable to object when a political moneylender seeks to use a church pulpit as their platform A Young Communist League member on his local branch's heckling of Margaret Thatcher in church (Morning Star, 7 March)

PRIORITIES

'At the moment we are showing more concern over the future of BS than the company is.' CSEU general secretary Alex Ferry on his (Financial Times, 9 October)

LOW-LIFE POLEMIC

There are some revisionist political groups like the dubious Revolutionary Communist Party and its paper Next Step' (sic) who are so politically depraved and so utterly subservient to the pettybourgeoisie (sic) that they accept the without cavil or criticism.

"British socialists", they unashamedly scream, "have no right to criticise the tactics of the IRA when that can only fuel British chauvinism." (Next Step', November 1981). stop criticising the Labour and trade union bureaucracy for fear of aiding the Tories or the Soviet bureaucracy for fear of aiding imperialism?' WRP general secretary Michael Banda on the IRA's Wimpy Bar bombing ('Grave dangers of terror campaign', The News Line, 17 November)

PATRONISING

PETIT BOURGEOIS AWARD

'Understandable, but not excusable.'

'Militant' member and aging Labour Party 'Young Socialist' Claire Doyle about the (New Standard, 9 July)

WISHFUL THINKING

'The riots washed all that away!

SWP leader Tony Cliff about the prevalence of racism among white youth ('Jobs not jails', Socialist Worker, 18 July)

BRAZEN IT OUT

The council that cares.' The News Line on Lambeth council, following its decision to raise rates on working class council tenants by several

METAPHORS WE HAVE KNOWN

We are not prepared to see this country bleed to death and this lobby is the first ASTMS supremo Clive Jenkins on a big rally calling for import controls (The Times, 22 October) "Tony Benn's defence of conference policy on renatrenationalisation without compensation has set the congealing fluids of Labour Party politics running hot and fast again.

Socialist Organiser editorial on Benn's promise to expropriate the North Sea oil

66 QUOTES OF THE YEAR99

unemployment

NON-ANTAGONISTIC

CONTRADICTION

FIGHTING TALK

proposals

TRANSFORMATIONS

socialist.'

COP OUT

march, let them.' (The News Line, 6 March)

WHERE THEY STAND

be protected Party conference (The Times, 3 October) "Irresponsible' Out Now, LP conference 'Criminal' bombing (November) in Ireland (Daily Mail, 4 December)

BACK-TRACKING

munism.' utionary movements?' movements. special cases.' (10 September)

BRILLIANT ORATORY

yours and we'll shoot ours.

could be confined to Europe (The Times, 22 October)

WORDS, WORDS

(sic) support this.' Spartacist Britain on Poland (November) Ignorance spawns red herring on youth (Morning Star headline, 12 December)

'DEFEND BRITAIN - BAN THE BOMB

Morning Star headline on the day of the 150 000-strong CND demo, 24 October 'The casualties will be the employers.'

Len Murray on Tebbit's new anti-union (Financial Times, 24 November) We've decided to change the way we describe our overall political outlook from socialist/feminist to feminist/ (The Leveller collective, 'A new perspective, November 27-December 10) 'If the human dregs of the NF want to We are not anti-police and they have to Eric Heffer, on the riots, at the Labour Peter Hain, on the demand for Troops (Morning Star, 30 September) Spartacist Britain on the Wimpy bar I support the Labour Party's official stand and that is as far as it goes. I do not condone acts of terrorism or violence.

Peter Tatchell on his backing for Britain A. 1 pursue a left-wing policy in the name of socialism - which is not com- O. 'A policy which supported revol- A. 'Yes, authentically revolutionary O. Was this also true for Africa?'

A. 'I do not confuse things. There are French Premier Francois Mitterand, interviewed at the Elysée Palace by The Times I don't honestly know. I think again, until some place.. all over the world this is being research going on, to try and find the defensive weapon. There never has been a weapon that someone hasn't come up with a defence. But it could...

and the only defence is, well, you shoot Ronald Reagan, asked if a nuclear war We do not "call" for a Soviet "invasion", though were a Soviet intervention to suppress Solidarity's pro-imperialist counter-revolutionary course, we would

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ONE WEEK before Christmas Manchester Crown Court Judge Blackett-Ord granted LSE owner Arthur Snipe an injunction barring picketing at his Doncaster base.

Frank Stubbs and Dave Hallsworth now face trial in March. Under the terms of the new Employment Act they face the possibility of surcharge for Snipe's lost production, which could run into thou- However, the Judge's decision was only the final blow to the 'secondary' industrial action which aimed to hit Snipe's operation where it mattered, in Doncaster, and force him to preserve 650 jobs in the now boarded-up Manchester factory. The Doncaster picket had in fact been called off a few days before the court hearing, products in the coal industry had virtually come to a halt. Both the picketing and the blacking had ceased to have any effect on Snipe as a result of the machinations of the trade union officials at every level engineering and miners' unions, before the Judge finally put the boot in.

The Doncaster Liberation Army The recent picketing of Mining Supplies used helicopters to get past the picket lines in Manchester and airlift vital products out of the besieged factory. The call for a picket came from a conference on LSE called in Manchester on 14 Nov- Group in consultation with some LSE platform for Labour MPs such as Michael Meacher to give the flagging Tony Benn campaign a boost. And it allowed local of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions and Dougie Daniels of the AUEW to cover up their record of compromise and prevarication throughout the dispute with radical rhetoric. In the event no Labour MPs, IMG activists or trade union officials showed up on the picket line. It was manned by rank and file workers, supporters of the Right to Work Campaign The pickets braved appalling weather and finally heavy snowfalls at the beginning of December decimated their ranks.

The pickets gradually shrank to a few problem was not the weather, but the fact that fellow trade unionists kept It proved impossible from the start to pull out the Mining Supplies workers in sympathy with the LSE workers. Earlier victimisation had weakened union organisation, at the Doncaster plant; Snipe refuses even to recognise the convenor.

Fearful of their jobs, the Doncaster workers accepted the propaganda broadcast from loudspeakers and posters around the factory: the LSE strike was unofficial and they should ignore the picket. Yet Snipe could still have been brought to his knees if the pickets had succeeded in turning away vital supplies - particularly of liquid oxygen - from the factory. But, although some lorries initially respected the pickets and turned back, when the pressure increased the drivers brought Most of the pickets wanted to try to deal with this through the official union picket lines knew this was useless, They pursued drivers who went into Mining Supplies back to their depots and tackled knew nothing about the LSE dispute or why the workers were picketing come officials had offered messages of support and promises of solidarity; but they had

CHRISTMAS ON THE

LAURENCE SCOTT PICKET LINE

Victims of the courts - and King Arthur never taken the argument to the workers who had to give the solidarity practical effect. Not surprisingly, the token gestures of the officials proved meaningless when livelihoods on the line for a cause they had not been convinced was worth fighting.

It was the same with the decision of many sections of the miners' union all worth colliery near Doncaster, one of the largest in Europe, is a good example.

pickets its hostel and canteen facilities.

But from the start the LSE workers noticed, in the way the miners in the certain lack of conviction in the struggle As with the drivers, the solidarity was why the miners should support the LSE workers, when they had been been won among the ordinary miners.

Thus, when they were threatened with lay-offs as a result of the shortage of machinery and spare parts provided by Mining Supplies, their support crumbled.

Why should we risk our jobs, when the support their own?', said one miner.

Courtesy of the Sheffield and Rotherham steelworkers, every striker in the nine-month long dispute at Laurence Scott and Electromotors in Manchester was presented with a Christmas turkey and toys for their children. But thanks to Judge Blackett-Ord and miners' leader Arthur Scargill the strikers' strongest weapon - the picketing and blacking of LSE's parent factory Mining Supplies in Doncaster - has been rendered Swift reports on the latest developments in this union officials weakened the LSE struggle, both among the Manchester workforce, and in terms of winning wider support.

The radical left groups sycophantically tailed after the Broad Left officials and backed up their tactics. It was left to the RCP to push the arguments necessary to fight a determined employer like Snipe the sunport for the struggle among rank and file workers.

dangers of the strategy of trying to work through the official channels are nowhere more apparent than in the role Arthur Scargill has played in the Scargill had been tentatively criticised in the radical left press for his failure to mobilise the full weight of his Yorkshire miners behind the LSE workers. However, what Scargill has done is in fact much worse than what he has failed to do.

Scargill's predecessor as president of the Joe Gormley responded to a brass by instructing all pits that blacking of Mining Supplies' products should stop because the LSE action was unofficial.

Scargill modified this directive in early December to insist that only those lorries that had actually picket line should be blacked, and that all other Mining Supplies products should be used. In other words, he restricted the blacking to a small proportion of Snipe's products in a way which rendered it ineffectual and impossible to operate.

Scargill's directive coincided with the growing threat of lay-offs; it brought the blacking to an end around the same time the pickets were finally called off. It was a cynical betrayal of the LSE workers at a time when he feared to antagonise the big barons of the TUC and prejudice his campaign for power in the NUM. Yet the left's adulation of Scargill carries on him an 'open letter' pleading for support reported his election victory in glowing terms without even a mention of LSE and his scabbing role (16 December).

Left-wing Labour MPs and the radical left camp followers are all agreed that the LSE struggle is a magnificent symbol of resistance' to the employers' attack on But the LSE workers are not much interested in being a symbol - they want their jobs back. Unfortunately the leadership of the strike is as far away from a strategy that could save all the jobs today as it was when the occupation began last April. This is how the Broad Left officials presented the LSE workers' case to the National Committee of the AUEW in December in a final appeal for the strike to be given official recognition: In spite of the hard-line position taken by Mr Snipe we feel he does want to re-oper the Manchester factory and that the previous arguments for this by the stewards still apply.

We feel sure a favourable decision by the Committee reistate benefit and official support could ensure a re-opening of talks to ensure the following three points are inserted in any agreement: 1 No enforced redundancies (with now 230 left in dispute this should not be hard to achieve 2 Negotiations to be held on contracts and terms (as Mr Snipe has assured redundancy 3 A commitment to keeping LSE open for longer than three months, rather than the trial This cringing appeal sums up the approach influence the convenor and the shop stewards) throughout the dispute. The bureaucrats constantly tried to justify saving jobs by the profitability of the company, not the needs of workers; they constantly approved voluntary rearbitrary dismissal. No wonder 'Mr Snipe' wonder the AUEW felt free to reject the appeal. The strikers fight on alone To carry on the fight, and particularly to defend the six militants who face trial soon, the LSE workers more than ever need to reject the bureaucrats' arguments.

They need to put to the fore their needs 'Mr Snipe's' problems for him. The LSE workers have shown great courage and determination through a long and difficult struggle. But their leaders' politics have proven a symbol of how not to win. On the other hand, the politics of the RCP supporters have, throughout the struggle, indicated a consistent way forward in the To see the consequences of the left's 'symbols' the LSE workers only have to engineering works a great symbol indeed a symbol of victory in 1980 There, officials represented the acceptance of voluntary redundancies instead of compulsory redundancies as a triumph; and the radical left applauded lustily.

In the past 12 months the workforce has shrunk from 2300 to 1850; now the bosses want 450 more redundancies of them enforced. When asked Communist Party his comment. Times, 11 December).

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1981 Survey in Britain. The year of the in retreat Employers on the attack DESPITE A RELENTLESS onslaught on working class living standards over the past two years, the Tory Government has not yet succeeded in solving the problems facing the capitalist class. Early in 1981 The Economist lamented that 'for those who hung on to their jobs, 1980 was a fat - too fat'. The ruling class has year carried through its solutions unemployment, more wage reductions, more cuts - with devastating effect. By Financial Times December the boast that the shake-out' would have far-reaching effects on Britain's industrial structure'. Manufacturing industry was particularly hard hit: crisis measures in the motor industry, engineering, docks, textiles and construction put hundreds of thousands of workers on the dole.

Mass unemployment and the general generated by the recession insecurity created a climate in which employers felt confident they could take on their workforce and win. The capitalist class has moved forward on several fronts. Employers have held wage rises down below the rate of inflation; some have even got away with cuts in money wages.

have reorganised work practices, weakened shopfloor organisation and eliminated workplace union organisation altogether. Whole sections of industry have simply been closed down.

Closures have generally actively opposed by workers opposition emerged - at Staffa Products, Laurence Scott and Electromotors or Lee In 1981 British workers backed down from Thatcher while French workers went on the attack against Mitterand. Workers in the Soviet Union had challenged the bureaucrats on a wider scale than for many years; in Poland they have had to send in the tanks in a desperate attempt to retain control. In the USA Reagan still has the labour movement under his thumb, which is more than he can claim for Central America where liberation movements battle on, at enormous cost, against imperialist domination. In the Middle East too the Western powers have yet to impose a final solution on the masses of the region.

Our survey of 1981 includes a review of the activities of the RCP last year and concludes with a look at the state of disarray of the left trade unions Jeans - the workers fought alone, with little official backing. Even organised Scotland gave in to closure without a fight. September rejected strike action over the closure of the Royal Docks. The announcement of the closure of naval dockyards in Portsmouth and the Medway Towns was met with bitterness and resentment but no concerted action. Take it or leave it Fear of unemployment has given employers a free hand to force down wages. The state led the way with its four per cent cash limit on the public sector.

-more engineering employers got away with a five per cent could employers went even further: more than 1000 workers at Pan Am were forced to accept a 10 per cent wage reduction and a wage freeze for 1982. At British Caledonian a 'voluntary' wage freeze was accepted and several thousand workers had to forego two previously agreed four percent cost of living increases.

Hoover, management at first proposed a 10 per cent wage cut and then graciously offered to negotiate this 'offer' together with a reconstruction plan involving 2000 redundancies. workers were forced to accept a wage freeze in 1981. Management by ultimatum was not They confined to the wages front. Press baron Rupert Murdoch suspended the entire Sunday Times staff because of a dispute sometimes with one print chapel. Other employers used the threat of a lockout to get their way. 'Accept our terms or we'll shut down' was a threat which many workers felt not been Where powerless to. resist. Dobson factory sweet workers were asked to choose between a break and Royce has introduced and practices men have all been scrapped.

Vignoles widely-known examples. wages and conditions. members attack to have civil• service workers outside announced that decentralised, local bargaining ment often wellthe Talbot Linwood factory in dockers London kept out altogether. pay and conditions The Some wage settlement. skill in siderable At All in all about 300 000 battalions of the labour with the aim of the civil servants. At the Barker and never in Liverpool 90-day notice of closure or new working arrangements, including a reduced lunch continuous production. Rolls Japanese style' quality circles - a management device for boosting productivity. Tea breaks, lunch breaks, rest-time, long-established working arrangements mutually agreed between shop stewards and fore And manproposals agement has taken advantage of its position of strength to get rid of some militant shop stewards for good. Several leading troublemakers' have been isolated and successfully victimised. Mike Cooley at Lucas, Frank Curtiss at Evershed and and Conway Xavier at Great Ormond Street Hospital are the most New industrial relations The employers' offensive has drastically weakened shopfloor organisation.

Shop stewards and combine committees have proved ineffectual in defending jobs, the motor industry shop stewards committees are now often ignored by employers. The well-known Lucas Combine Committee 571095 has virtually collapsed. When workers at two Lucas factories in Birmingham went on strike in August against the introduction of new technology without extra during payment, their picket lines were broken first by EETPU and then by AUEW-TASS The employers have not confined their shopfloor traditional forms of national bargaining also come under pressure.

The Government unilaterally abandoned the principle of establishing pay levels in the by 'comparability' with In the public sector. September the British Steel Corporation there would be national wages award in 1982. By November the craft unions had agreed to suspend national negotiations in the steel industry and accept the Corporation's offer of In newly-established plants, managethe dictates procedure from scratch. Unions have been forced to flexible' accept continuous production, cover working and punitive productivity deals.

action. In some new plants unions have been The new Marconi Space and Defence Systems factory in the Wirral has set up a non-union staff and BL council to 'participate' in discussions on The Tories and the TUC The Tory Government directs the employers' offensive. The state has used its power to inflict the maximum damage in the working class. As a major employer, the Government has pushed forward to curb the living standards of its own employees. The Tories have shown contheir approach to industrial disputes. In February a potentially disruptive miners' strike was averted when Margaret Thatcher announced the postponement of the pit closure programme. Thatcher did not want to fight the strongest section of the working class.

The Government has avoided the big movement in favour of picking off weaker sections of teaching the whole working class a lesson. Thus the ambulance workers were crushed with the help of a well-orchestrated media campaign after a month-long dispute. But the biggest success of the Government was its defeat The Government

CITIPO

wavered in its determination to smash the civil servants and show the rest of the public sector that the Tories will not be intimidated by industrial action.

The defeat of the civil servants gave the Government the confidence to impose its four per cent pay limit. This public strongly sector pay policy has in turn influenced settlements in private industry.

In November the Government announ ced more legal curbs on the trade unions.

Employment Minister Norman Tebbit's limit designed to the are effectiveness of trade unions without undermining the influence of the central union bureaucracy. The details of the proposed legislation are not very impor tant. After all, the Tories' earlier antiunion law, the 1980 Employment Act, has scarcely been used. At present the Government does not need the courts to keep the unions in check. The aim of this new programme is to legitimise anti-union propaganda and to prepare now for the battles of the future. Bureaucratic paralysis The labour bureaucracy is in full retreat.

In September the TUC leadership admitted that union membership had declined by in the previous 12 months. These figures underestimate the real drop The TGWU alone in union membership. has lost more than 500 000 members The TUC's the last two years. falling membership reflects its inability to look after its members' interests. Workers in struggle have found it virtually impossible to get official backing. Women workers who occupied the Lee Jeans Scotland had to factory in Greenock, wait more than six months before their union made the strike official. Workers who occupied Laurence Scott had their strike pay cut off by the AUEW at a crucial stage in the struggle. The fight against redundancies at Ansell's brewery, Birmingham was defeated in June because the TWU withdrew official backing and negotiated a sell-out. Even when disputes had official backing the labour bureaucrats spent more time policing the rank and file than fighting In the middle of the ense overs ambulance workers' dispute, NUPE insisted on its members providing emergency - thus reducing the impact of the At BL the unions used every opportunity to limit the scope of the November tea break' strike.

The final deal cooked up by the union officials accepting substantial meant reductions in rest-time and even worse conditions for night-shift workers.

The labour bureaucracy has been most prepared to fight when its own position was under threat. The union leaders in the civil service had no choice but to resist the Government's attacks. Not only did the Government want to drive down wages, but it was also bent on scrapping the Pay Research Unit, , the traditional method of pay bargaining in the civil service. The series of official one-day strikes and selective action showed the outrage of the union leaders and their concern to retrieve the traditional forms of bargaining. However, the civil service union leaders remained committed to restraining the militancy of their rank and file.

Senior bureaucrat Tony Christopher warned the Government of the dangers of militant direct action: In some parts of the country there is a depth of feeling and militancy that I have never seen before. I am very worried that there could be some physical action. Of course, we would deplore such action by our members, We would expel them. But I do fear such action could take place. We have already had hints of it. The risk is there.' (Daily Mirror, 9 February 1981) The union leaders worked overtime to limit the action to harmless selective When groups of civil servants, such as those in the Scottish dole offices and unemployment agencies, got fed up and launched a wave of unofficial strikes continued on page 8 the next step, January 1982 7

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stone computer centres, the bureaucrats sent in to sabotage the resistance. The far as unofficial action goes, the unions centrally have been able to contain it' (Financial Times, 26 May 1981). When it comes to a head-on conflict with the leaders would rather face defeat than risk unleashing the power of the rank and file.

The price of coal Union leaders have tried to save their own skins by setting up common fronts with beleaguered British industrialists.

Rather than rely on the mobilisation of workers, the union bureaucrats try to use employers. In 1981 scarcely a week went by without some joint union-management representation to the Government. Close collaboration between the NUM and the National Coal Board was the keynote of the miners' dispute. When the Government announced the postponement of the pit closure programme, The Economist comfront: bowed down in front of the coal industry Sir Derek Ezra, chairman of the National Coal Board, is just as much a victor as Mr Mick McGahey...or militant Mr. Arthur Scargill' (21 February 1981).

In reality it wasn't class collaboration but the strength of the miners that forced the was weaker, collaboration led to direct defeat.

Even in the coalfields the NUM's colpace of pit closures. On the railways the unions sought an more state investment. British Rail chief was ready to go on the offensive during negotiations on the annual wage award. He refused to accept an Industrial Tribunal recommendation of a 10.5 per cent wage rise approved by the unions. The unions threatened strike action for the end of August but gave in when they saw that Parker meant business. The final settlement gave the unions the 10.5 percent - but only in exchange for productivity increases which mean more redundancies Joint union and management initiatives work only in the interest of the bosses and the labour bureaucrats. This approach legitimises the measures that capitalists require to restore their profits and it places the future of the working class in the hands of the bosses. The union leaders may be able to strengthen their own position through collaboration with management, but only by becoming their stooges, rather than as fighting represen- The TUC leadership is reluctant to risk its resources in a fight against the employers. It has chosen a strategy of minimal action combined with rhetorical denun- Express are designed to show workers that the unions still count for something.

Money spent on these public relations exercises is seen as a good investment for The TUC did little more than organise publicity stunts in 1981.: It more or less vacated the field of industrial struggle.

This craven approach is clearly seen in the public sector. When Thatcher announced the four per cent pay limit, the TUC and the public sector union leaders immediately responded with militant speeches and the threat of a united public sector industrial campaign. Within weeks the TUC climbed down and privately conceded that a united campaign in the When Tebbit announced his proposals for his anti-union legislation the TUC union leaders might not be able to keep Successful actions against union funds for heavy damages could serve to weaken control 'An inexpensive ritual' aptly sums up Though the TUC has done nothing for its members it has done yeoman's service for the employers. Its class collaboration has weakened resistance in the unions; its reluctance to back workers in struggle has turned industrial action into an unrealistic proposition for thousands of workers.

Barriers to workers action Strike statistics show a fall-off in industrial activity. During the first 10 months service dispute accounts for almost a quarter of the total: with the exception of 1976 it is the lowest for 14 years.

However, these figures only tell half the Workers have been ready to fight back shown the will to resist. The strike over tea breaks at BL illustrates this trend: after several defeats, workers at Longbridge were still prepared to come out and stay out for more than four weeks formula was only carried by 46 votes!

Even traditionally conservative sections of the labour movement were prepared to strike, the staff at highly secret governcommunications installations and Scottish Polaris nuclear submarine bases reflected the concern of the bourgeoisie at this advance of trade union attitudes: suggests that the habits and morality of trade unionism have now superseded any other public morality in the government of their conduct' (20 March 1981).

Time and again workers in struggle came particularly transparent with the attitude of the central leadership of the Instead of assisting workers in struggle, it has fought to isolate disputes and conduct of the AUEW leadership over BL, Staffa Products and Laurence Scott are illustrations of this approach and its Unfortunately, even at the local level the struggles remained isolated. The local officials, many of them left-wing, backed the struggles in words but did little to mobilise rank and file support. Even shop proved ineffective when it came to the crunch. Workers who occupied Laurence Scott received many messages of solidarity this support had little consequence.

During the picketing of the Doncaster plant of Laurence Scott it was difficult to organise blacking and to force lorries work had been done to mobilise rank and venors, shop stewards approached shop stewards and pledges of solidarity were passed on. But they neglected to discuss the dispute on the shopfloor and did not draw the rank and file into the struggle As a result 'solidarity' had a bureaucratic character which could do little to overcome the isolation of Laurence Scott The class struggle in 1981 has shown that the institutions of the labour move ment are ineffectual during a period of prolonged recession. When so much is at stake, even the best organised workplace is powerless to resist the barbaric forces unleashed by the capitalist crisis.

When militants also face a labour bureaucracy closely allied to the employers and the state the difficulties they face become general offensive against the living standards of the working class can only be halted by the united power of the working class. The official trade union movement is the institutional expression of workers isolated from each other and divided along industrial, sectional and craft lines.

yet this divided working class is united around the institutions dominated stitutions are not only dominated by the labour bureaucracy, they are also instruments of collaboration with the state and The way to unity The institutions of the labour movement are not independent of the capitalist class.

But the problem we face is a political one, for these institutions express the politics of class collaboration. From the TUC down to local officials and shop stewards' committees, bourgeois politics capitalist objectives of competitiveness and profitability, productivity and viability, have been accepted as legitimate goals for workers to pursue. The realism of the employers dominates the labour movement and paralyses workers who want to fight for their own class interests, regardless of the consequences for their working class. The postponement of pit closures was justified on the grounds of the importance of coal as a source of energy for the British economy. But what workers base their actions on the economic arguments of the capitalists then For many workers fighting for jobs or for better wages seems an unrealistic figures express this point of view. But because the mass of the working class is wedded to the realism of the bosses. If we accept their argument that the money is not there, if we accept the realism the capitalist accountant, then more jobs will go and more intolerable conditions will be imposed on us. It is their realism or ours. Their class interests or ours. A labour movement that can't fight for its the unrestrained brutality ofits exploiters potential will only be realised if we reject the narrow politics and institutions condition for a successful fightback is to liberate our movement from the policies of the labour bureaucracy.

natives are straightforward: isolate the influence of the labour bureaucracy or they will isolate every group of workers that goes into action.

Class struggles in France IN MAY the European left greeted Mitterand's election victory as a major step forward for the working class. Seven months later the reality of life under socialist rule is being brought home to French Having rid themselves of Giscard, they are saddled with another government that is doing its best to make workers pay the price for the capitalist crisis. Three months after it fulfilled its election promise of a 10 per cent rise in the minimum wage, the Government clawed back the money workers' pockets by raising taxes on alcohol, tobacco and petrol. And in November it increased workers' contributions to national insurance and imposed a tax on unemployment benefits.

While bad enough for the workers, this isn't good enough for the bosses.

The French employers' federations and right-wing politicians are watching the new government with growing As unemployment soared past the two million mark, inflation reached 14 per cent, investment continued to decline and bankruptcies multiplied. Right-wing oppoto Mitterand and his crew grew sition increasingly vociferous. For the bosses the honeymoon with Mitterand is drawing to a close - they want to see the goods. The tenuous relationship between the socialist Government and the French bourgeoisie was best illustrated by the recent conflict between the Minister of the Interior, Gaston Defferre, and 'his' police force in Lyon. Arriving at the funeral of a policeman killed on duty, Defferre was met by a two thousandstrong police assembly who refused to give him the customary honour and accused him instead of murder.

"Tighten your belts!' To save their necks, socialist ministers are doing the best they can to comply with the demand for wage cuts, speedups and redundancies in industry and for curbs on trade union rights. Talk about reflation as a solution to unemployment and industrial decline, rampant at the time of the election, has become a thing of the past. Today socialist and communist ministers talk the same lanas their predecessors: 'statutory restraint, 'attack on inflation, wage 'productivity' and "competitiveness'.

In November Prime Minister Mauroy announced that, if necessary, unemployment would be dealt with by measures 'that will obviously be stiffer, that is enforced retirement' (The Times, 11 November 1981). The trade union leadership backed him up. Socialist trade union federation leader Edmond Maire recently criticised the less outspoken members of the government for not being honest about the sacrifices workers will be requested to make: 'Some people are going to have to accept a stagnant or even falling purchasing power if emo ovment is to be eglitaniv shared Peonie are also going to have to accept more flexible working hours to provide a better service to the public in nationalised industries.

they don't seem in a mood for this.' (The Guardian, 17 November 1981) The Government's left alternative strategy, just like its British equivalent under the last Labour Government, boils down to this: restraint, cuts in wage social services and rationalisation programmes designed to make industry hold up to foreign competition. Its nationalisation programme, misrepresented by the radical left as a socialist policy, has the approval of such staunch representatives of the ruling class as the Financial Times as an 'effort to galvanise the nation's industry' (25 November 1981).

A central plank in this strategy is industrial relations reform: participation' in industrial management.

of out impatience. class struggle. This is the aim of the Auroux Report on •Workers' rights' recently presented by Labour Minister Jean Auroux, Its object is to establish effective institutions for class collaboration. tried in vain to introduce far more timid proposals to extend control over France's traditional militant rank and file. Mitterand's hope is that, coming from a socialist government and dressed up with phrases about democracy and national solidarity, Auroux's plans will be swallowed by the Pierre workers. Already both communist union bureaucrats have thrown their weight behind him. Faced with declining membership and a growing tide of unofficial action. welcome industrial relations reform as a means of extending their control over the rank and file and enhancing their own importance in French society A rude awakening The working class, however, has thrown the works. a spanner in honeymoon been brief. In September it was cut short by a wave of militant working class struggles which continues to gather mom- At present entum. Thousands of workers in many different industries and services taken strike action wage cuts, redundancies and closures.

While the bureaucrats hoped to contain workers' resistance to the bosses' attacks through an official campaign to reduce the working week by an hour, workers up and down the country have taken direct action in the fight to defend living standards and working conditions.

These struggles have in most cases been obstructed bureaucrats and their friends in Socialist (PSF) and Communist (PCF) Parties. What really shocked them was the strike at Renault - the state-owned car firm that is supposed to be a model of worrero socialist industrial relations.

WESTERN EUROPE

Workers against Mitterand Recession in Western Europe has forced the capitalist class on to the offensive. In Spain, Belgium and Greece traditional centre parties are crumbling under pressure for more aggressive anti-working class politics.

The labour bureaucracy has also shifted to the right. During 1981 the union bureaucrats of virtually every European country have collaborated with the employers and the state to rescue the capitalist system. In Greece and France they have been rewarded for their efforts and social democratic parties have been placed in government. In this survey we concentrate on developments in France where the labour bureaucracy stands ready to throw back the first wave in the new phase of the For years Giscard them back to work. has socialist and would be bureaucrats the that must now vicious. Mitterand's with French workers has have - against speed-ups, ouvrieres, 14 November 1981).

appeals to divide force in and vilified by the the violent clashes between workers. Instead of presently and al parties. involves residence Stalinist migrant the oration. and Renault relying on their leaders Renault workers took unofficial action against speed-ups on the production line. When the bosses both in responded with a mass lock-out of over Stalinist 4000 workers at the main Renault plant in Paris-Billancourt in mid-October, the the bureaucrats worked overtime to get November, Communist union boss Henri Krasucki saw the strike as a direct affront to his plans for responsible' trade unionism in your nationalised industries. For months he toured the country recommending Auroux's proposals to bosses and workers.

Dialogue and participation, he told them, 'profitable in the general interest' (La vie ouvriere, October 1981).

For Krasucki Renault was to be the model of a new type of social relations be established in our national industries'. When Renault workers told him to stuff it, Krasucki got As the strike spread to involve not only the workers locked out but also other plants (Renault Nimes was occupied on 28 October), the communist union federation stepped up its efforts to force a return to work. Leaflets denouncing the strikers were put out - calling the strike the 'action of irresponsible adventurist minority groups who misuse industrial action in order to sabotage the process of social change' (Informations The bureaucrats used openly racist the mass of workers Second, from the hard core of strikers. The workthe plant in which the strike started was composed mainly of North African and Jugoslav workers. On 5 November the bureaucrats managed to force nationalism, a return to work which took place amid predominantly unskilled (and black) strikers and skilled But the strength of working class anger against the bosses' attacks at Renault ensured that the bureaucrats'

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victory was only a temporary one. Within a matter of days workers at Billancourt were out on strike again.

Workers' unity The Renault dispute is in many ways typical of the pattern of class struggle France. unfolding in Most strikes have been started by low-paid unskilled workers in many cases blacks women who have been treated with contempt by the unions and politic- The struggle at Orly airport against redundancies and regroupment mainly low-paid catering and maintenance staff. Some of the most militant struggles are being waged by black migrant workers in the Paris region.

At least a dozen small and medium sized sweatshops have been occupied in the struggle to get regular work contracts.

These struggles against the Government's vicious race laws - under which at least 300 000 workers are being denied legal have received no union support whatsoever. Indeed, most of the migrant 'sans papiers' (workers without a permit) are non-unionised. Their conditions of intense exploitation and state oppression are the responsibility of the reformist and bureaucrats who have backed state racism to the hilt. Only nine months ago the PCF was leading pogroms against workers' hostels as part of its disastrous election campaign.

Breaking the chains The current strike wave shows that it is most oppressed sections of the French working class that are presently giving the lead in breaking out of the stranglehold of bureaucratic class collab- It has also shown that as the attacks on the class as a whole intensify, the potential exists to break down racial sexual divisions. Thousands of workers joined the struggle started by the black workers Militant workers are also beginning to articulate their hatred for the bureaucrats word and deed. At Renault officials were beaten up by striking workers. And at a mass meeting during the railworkers' strike in Paris in an old railwayman recalled the Stalinists' betrayal of the working class at the end of the Second World War when the official PCF slogan was 'tighten belts'. He condemned the PCF Transport Minister Maurice Fiterman to thunderous applause from a railwaymen's mass meeting: *If Fiterman believes he can make us "tighten your belts" again, he's got a rude awakening coming. He must come out straight and tell us whose side he is on. And he'd better remember that he only became Minister because we chased Giscard. (Informations ouvrieres, 14 November 1981) The urgent task for French workers and revolutionaries is to consolidate this movement towards class unity against the bosses and the reformists that is emerging among French workers. To achieve this a number of political problems will have to be pushed to the fore. First, the spontaneous unity of black and white workers at Renault can only be shortlived and without substance until white workers join in the fight against racist pass laws and discrimination in the unions and workplaces. French revol utionaries must make this struggle into a priority for active workers workers' contempt for the class collaboration of their socialist and Stalinist leaders must be translated into a conscious rejection of their political programme. That means fighting French rejecting the reformists' plans to involve workers in discussions about how to increase profitability and competitiveness, and spreading the lesson that with friends like Mitterand and Marchais - who needs enemies?

Sabena Norton the next step, January 1982 9

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The year the Soviet bloc began to break up AT THE END of 1981 Poland plunged into chaos. Announcing the imposition of martial law on 13 December General Jaruzelski declared grimly that our country is on the edge of the abyss'.

The upheaval in Poland is only the most dramatic expression of the political crisis that afflicts the entire Soviet bloc. From Romania to the Caucusus, as well as in Poland, workers have moved into action against the bureaucracy. The Polish 'disease' in Russia Political unrest in the Soviet Union in 1981 was more widespread than in any other year in the post-war period. Riots and strikes in Estonia challenged the authorities throughout the In wear October workers in Ordzhonikidze, a regional capital in the North Caucasus, fought pitched battles with police and the army and besieged the local Communist Party headquarters in protest against racist violence, police brutality and corruption. Even when tanks and tear gas were used against them, the demonstrators continued to pelt the police with bricks. Rioting was followed by transport strikes throughout the region.

The bureaucracy is concerned about the influence of the Polish events, particularly on the working class of the Ukraine, the Baltic states and the Russian Republics. It has tried to prevent the 'Polish disease' from spreading by conceding to workers' demands. Two strikes in Kiev over the summer were even led by official union and Party activists. In one factory workers objected to new work norms, in another they protested about the disruption of the local water supply.

Instead of the usual repression, the authorities responded by improving conditions to avoid further unrest. In October Soviet Politbureau member Constantin Tchernenko aimed to forestall the emergence of Solidarity-style independent 10 the next step, January 1982 by that the official unions insisting unions do more to defend the rights of workers. The worried that bureaucracy 1S deepening economic crisis and major shortages than in Poland. worse During the whole month of November no butter could be bought in Moscow. The provincial towns fare even worse: fruit, vegetables, dairy products and meat are constantly in short supply.

goods all sorts Consumer difficult to come by. The extent of this problem was illustrated by an investigative journalist working for Literaturnaya Gazeta. He was sent on an assignment to Krasnodar (a city of over half a million people with instructions to bring with him no toothbrush, soap, razor blades. shaving cream, underclothes, socks or writing materials, but to buy them on arrival in the city. After a full day in Krasnodar he couldn't find any of the items. In the end he had to purchase these basic commodities on the local black market. The Soviet bureaucracy claims to be taking a hard line on black marketeers.

The press is full of exposés of economic saboteurs, speculators and hoarders. But public relations exercises will do little to satisfy the public outcry for food and consumer durables. The chaotic economy Growing political instability is a result of the inability of the Soviet system to provide for the needs of its people. The Soviet economy declined steadily through 1981. According to official statistics, both industrial output and labour productivity fell well below growth targets for the year. The real situation is even worse as the published figures make insufficient statistical adjustments for price increases.

A better indicator of the state of the Soviet economy is the actual volume of production. If we examine increases in units for individual industries physical we find a small or negative increase. Thus, output of the following products has actually declined: coal, rolled steel, cars, lorries, timber, footwear and meat.

The crisis of the Soviet economy is above all due to the inability of the bureaucracy to plan the allocation, production and distribution of society's resources. Plans are drawn up and targets are proclaimed. But in the absence of democracy workers' these plans are bureaucratic decrees. Individual simply enterprises have no incentive to raise productivity they just have to meet the targets set by the centre. Managers try to hoard as many resources and workers as -possible, and give up as little as they can get away with to meet the requirements of the plan. In a capitalist economy productivity increases benefit the individual capitalist.

But in the Soviet Union productivity increases may mean higher targets and norms and a decrease in the allocation of resources for the enterprise concerned Soviet managers often feel that the raising of output and the rationalisation of production techniques is actually against their interests. A nation of gardeners In the Soviet economy output figures are padded, shoddy goods are produced and resources wasted. In July Partinaya Zhizn reported one example of the Soviet economy in action. In February the Kalyona Hydroelectric Station was supposed to go into operation. However, upon inspection it was discovered that the Station had been turned over for use in an unfinished state to meet planning targets. In addition, the generator had major design faults. As a result the plant operated for 10 days at 10 per cent capacity. It was then shut down for four months so that construction could be completed. Workers have no incentive to work.

What's the use of higher wages if most essential goods are not available in the shops? Many large enterprises try to motivate their workers by offering their employees an allotment on which to grow food. It is estimated that in Leningrad alone there are more than 300 000 plot holders. Not surprisingly workers put little effort into their work and save their energy for their gardens.

The proliferation of city allotments is the result of the crisis of Soviet agriculture. Food shortages are a permanent feature of Soviet life, so people try to grow their own food. There are 33 million private plots in the Soviet Union - one for every two Soviet households!

In 1981 the food situation deteriorated further. For example, according to the plan, collective and state farms were supposed to have sold 7.7 million tons of vegetables to the state; but by mid- August less than one million tons of produce had arrived at the marketing agencies. Stagnation in agricultural output is above all due to the inability of Soviet industry to provide the inputs necessary for rational farming. Bad planning and transport and the lack of an efficient system of distribution and storage make things even worse. To prevent famine the Soviet Union has to rely on large imports of grain from the West. Structural problems The Soviet Union has come to rely on Western technology to run critical areas But it cannot simply of its industry. increase its technology imports without increasing its debts and its reliance on the capitalist world. The current five-year plan aims to limit imports of Western goods to an annual increase of 4.1 per

Y1981SURVEY1981SURVEY1981SURT

The year the army moved in Necessity has forced a revision of cent. this figure: in 1981 exports to the Soviet Union went up by 27 percent.

During the past year attempted to introduce experts have reforms to stimulate production.

has been considerable discussion about restoring elements of the market mechanism and realigning prices with the real value of goods. But these reforms cannot be effective if they are introduced piecemeal. And any major reforms would lead to the restoration of capitalism - something that the bureaucracy is not prepared to accept. The attempt to link enterprise management bonuses to the fulfilment of delivery contracts provides a good illustration of the impossibility of reforming Soviet system. Enterprises are notorious for meeting the physical requirements of targets rather than producing industry requires. Last summer bureaucracy tried to overcome the problem. of enterprises not meeting delivery deadlines decreeing by that would be paid to enterprises that came up with the goods on time. In response to the decree. managers at the

POLAND

THE DECEMBER COUP was precipitated by the inability of the bureaucracy to rule Poland. The working class was able use its strength to prevent the functioning of the Polish state throughout 1981, but it could not go forward to smash the bureaucracy and take power in its own hands. The coup marks a setback for the Polish working class which, however, remains undefeated.

Solidarity's dead end As far back as October 1980 the next step warned that the trade politics of Solidarity represented a dead end for Polish workers. The leaders of Solidarity declared that they interested in politics. In the summer of 1980 Lech Walesa said: I am a trade unionist, politics do not interest me.

This reformist perspective held workers back and prevented the emergence of independent working class politics.

We noted that trade unionism makes no sense in Poland. Many workers discovered that higher wages didn't stock the shelves of the food shops and began political solutions. Solidarity intellectual Jacek Kuron, who in 1980 was the leading proponent of narrow trade unionism, was forced to retreat: We would be a sailors' trade union on a sinking ship, demanding wage increases rather factory in Moscow started paying more attention to delivery contracts. This had positive effect: government worrying about the total tonnage of the castings the factory produced and started There making more of the lightweight castings that many of its customer plants wanted.

Stankolit However, the promptly penalised by the Machine Tool Ministry for falling short on the tonnage target. Deputy Minister GN Fedorovski chastised the Stankolit managers, explaining that 'you can't get by without tons in our business. Resources are allocated with them. And everyone's used to them. Reforms implemented in one enterprise immediately

TUBE

constraints. Central targets are measured the according to quantitative not qualitative criteria. Deliveries of raw materials, machine tools what the and other inputs are Transport is another problem. necks in distribution wreak havoc with bonuses plant level decisions. recent study, underinvestment in roads in the Russian Republics has resulted in an Stankolit average speed for lorries of 30kph.

than boarding up the holes that are making the ship sink. It is the overall situation of the state that forces us to undertake actions contrary to the normal functions of a trade union.' (Standar Mlodych, October 1981) By the summer of 1981 workers had had enough of Solidarity's weak-kneed trade unionism. At its September/October conference, keep control over rank and file militants.

Throughout the conference workers denounced the political system of bureaucratic rule. Unfortunately, in the absence of a unionist distinctive proletarian perspective, right-wing nationalists began to make the The reactionary KPN was not running. weren't denounce reluctant to regime. As a result, right-wing nationalists began to build up considerable following among the militants. In the autumn Solidarity began to disintegrate. A social democratic club was established to counter the influence of the KPN. At the local level Solidarity branches began to of political parties demanding political change. Splinter parties began to emerge Even throughout Poland. Most discussion and debate was focused on the coming local elections in February demand that emerged was for guarantees that the elections would be free and open.

The radicalisation rank and file coincided with the decline managers stopped not good. factory was of production. the existing system. They figure in the plan. battle. Because it into external the And there are other obstacles.

their interests. unpredictable. Bottleout the Soviet Union According to national independence a of its leadership. Polish October Solidarity Walesa was barely able to meeting (General Jaruzelski). the the Stalinist the Karol Modzelewski assume the form moderation. The main 1982. of the Solidarity Things falling apart the The prospects for the Soviet economy are Western technology, bought with gold, oil and other natural resources, The has so far prevented the collapse of industry. But without a major reorganisation Europe. things can only get worse. The restructuring of the economy, however, cannot be achieved within the present relations And the Soviet bureauing cracy will fight tooth and nail to defend The bureaucracy is fighting a losing saw Pact cannot raise living standards it faces the prospect of growing instability. Chronic labour shortages give working class some leverage against the bureaucrats. Despite widespread repression, workers are well placed to defend An upsurge in workers' struggle is on the agenda for 1982.

The Soviet bureaucracy also faces pressure from national minorities. Throughmovements for are pulling the country apart. From the Baltic Republics to Central Asia resistance to the Great Russian chauvinism of the Soviet bureau- The collapse of the economy forced the Solidarity leaders to compromise further.

On 29 made a dramatic appeal to workers to end wildcat strikes in the interest of the national economy.

standing' On 4 November Solidarity agreed to a three-month 'social truce' after a top level of the union (Walesa), the Church (Archbishop Glemp) and the state This social truce could not work.

The harsh economic climate provoked the further polarisation of Polish society.

Workers fought back against growing state repression. During a meeting of the national commission of Solidarity, held in but to act. Gdansk shipyards hours before the military coup, Walesa finally lost control.

National The militants led by Jan Rulewski and forced the commission to adopt far-reaching proposals - including the holding of a referend um on 15 January 1982 tó decide on how Poland should be ruled. But it was too little too late. As delegates voted launch a general strike, the bureaucracy's troops had already taken over Gdansk Solidarity became a victim of its own is the only Behind the coup The Polish bureaucracy was reluctant be built. to launch its offensive. Throughout 1981 sought to avoid confrontation.

Its cracy is on the increase. At a time when economy is disintegrating, national struggles are an important threat to the integrity of the Soviet Union.

most immediate threat to the Soviet bureaucracy comes from Eastern The bureaucracy fears the consequences of unrest in the Eastern bloc for its internal authority, as well as the difficulties it will encounter in maintaincontrol over its satellites. While Poland poses the greatest problems, the economic crisis spares none of the War- Romania countries. faces a major economic crisis and virtual famine.

Along with Czechoslovakia it has been forced to introduce a system of informal rationing. The wave of strikes in Romania's largest coal field in the Jiul Valley in mid-October shows the shape of things to come in 1982. 1981 marks an important turning point for the opposition movement in Eastern Europe. Until recently it was dominated by isolated groups of intellectuals and professionals. The in Poland, events Romania and the Soviet Union have shown that finally the oppressed workers of the region have moved into battle. strategy was to rely on the Church and the Solidarity leadership to control the mass movement. In early November, out of desperation it even toyed with the idea of establishing a 'front of national underwith representatives of the Church and Solidarity. But this move too came too late to avert a major confrontation between the bureaucracy and the working class. Neither the Church nor Solidarity could retain control over the mass movement. The moderate oppositionists had outlived their usefulness. Once it became clear that the mass movement was out of control, the bureaucracy had no choice Jaruzelski's Military Committee of Salvation cannot. solve the problems of the bureaucracy. Whatever happens in the next few months Poland will never be the same again. The last two years contain important lessons for Polish workers. The Church and Solidarity are no friends of the working class. Resistance which stops short of challenging the power of the bureaucracy can make no lasting gains for Polish workers. A political programme based on the perspective of destroying the bureaucracy and its state foundation on which the future victory of the Polish workers will Pat Roberts

The year of the hunger strikes The year of the fight for jobs

TUC

HANDS OFF.

WORKER

MARUI

FOR

RISH E

The year of the riots

PEOPLES MARCH

MUST SUPPORT

POLITICAL

SILWAR

NOW!

SCOT

•LAURENCI

SOLIDAR

WITH

LAUREN

SCOTT

SIT

SCUTT

in 1981; thousands didn't.

OUT

SGOTT

• The New Cross Massacre in January (far left) was only the most extreme of many cases of racist violence and arson encountered by Workers Against Racism in 1981.

• During the July riots a WAR conference in London voted unanimously (near left) on a resolution pledging to take WAR nationwide.

The fascist British Movement (below) didn't do much marching last year - but racist violence continued just the same • With the support of WAR, Tajinder Jit Singh (right) successfully fought off deportation

1981SURVEY

• The Smash the PTA Campaign labour movement delegation on the Derry Day of Action in April (far left).

The Workers March for Irish Freedom (near left) on its 3-day march to the TUC at Blackpool in September.

Pickets of the TUC headquarters at Congress House below drew attention to its complicity in the deaths of the hunger strikers.

The Smash the PTA Campaian linked the fight for job: with the fight for Irish freedom, winning the support of many People's Marchers (far left) and the hostility of the

TUC.

RCP supporters took the lead in the Laurence Scott pickets, this time at the AUEW headquarters "Give us a future' said the TUC hacks; 'Give them the sack' we said, and many unemployed people agreed.

PARTY

the Building the next step January 1982 13

1981SURVEY

REAGAN'S

November 1980 election victory was widely hailed as an oppor tunity for fundamental capitalist renewal in the United States. Fourteen months later, however, his administration was in a mess. National Security Adviser Richard Allen was forced to resign for accepting bribes from Japanese journalists, Secretary of State Alexander Haig proved a continual source of friction, and Budget Director David Stockman twice offered his resignation after calling for U-turns in economic policy. Stockman, previously regarded as the main inspiration behind 'Reaganomics', had a grievance alright. By December 1981 unemployment was exactly where it was when Reagan took over from Carter 8.4 per cent, or nine million workers, and rising. Inflation hadn't dropped below 10 per cent and was on its way up.

The Dow Jones index of industrial share prices had fallen from more than 1000 in January to around the 800 mark. Bankruptcies were 40 per cent up on 1980's record levels, as companies wrestled with interest rates of 15 per cent and higher.

And, most damning of all - since balancing the books was always considered the centrepiece of Reagan's doctrine USA's budget deficit for 1981-2 looked like rising to anything between $80 billion result of Washington's decision to make up in military hardware (cruise, Pershing and MX missiles, the Rapid Deployment Force) what it lacks in economic clout.

Reagan's bourgeois critics didn't disagree on the need for America to rearm rapidly. Nor did they differ with him on to sim down lopped nearly $20 billion secondary/higher education and extended unemployment benefit, and they weren't at all upset at seeing 400 000 (about one in 10) public sector workers lose their was whether Reagan's much-vaunted 30 per cent tax cuts would really put US industry back on its feet again. They were also worried whether Reagan's cuts, because of the reduced revenues they entail, would really be compatible with a All the signs were that tax cuts would only produce inflation, not investment.

Though Stockman & Co did not say so profits will enable business to pick up once more more attacks on the American working class. They mean doing something about the fact, for instance, that labour costs on US cars are still some $1500 higher than they are on Japanese imports.

That's a big job - but Reagan, unlike the dissidents in the White House, can justifiably claim to have started work on it already.

Ronald on the rampage It wasn't just the air traffic controllers who got it in the neck last year. Section after section of the US labour movement received setbacks, as trade union membership went into steeper decline than ever and as unemployment made negotiations for higher wages almost impossible.

In steel, on the railways, everywhere the pattern is the same: cuts in money wages, intensification of labour, formal employee participation in the work of baling out bankrupt enterprises. There is another common feature: desperate atunion bureaucrats to sell tempts by enough workers' livelihoods down the river to be able to convince the bourgeoisie that, despite all its successes, it still has need of their services. However, ruling class attacks on the American proletariat do not stop with assaults on the movement. The la bour capitalists are also working at deepening the divisions in the working class along racial and sexual lines. 14 the next step, January 1982 Com bate On race, positive discrimination in the regation in schools. This year America's Voting Rights Act, which gave hundreds of thousands of Southern blacks the right to vote when it was passed in 1965, is thrown off the statute books. As indigenous blacks go on bearing the brunt of manufacturing redundancies and welimmigrants will be recruited to slavelabour factories in the South, there to be rights. Meanwhile, Ku Klux Klan membership will probably go on rising, as will the Women too are under attack. America's Moral Majority is making considerable progress spreading the view that men and come under fire and the USA's substantial gay population has been singled out for Last year the District of Columbia became the twenty-fifth state to outlaw homosexual relations between consenting adults, and police harassment of gays in San Francisco, New York and elsewhere continued to mount. This year, a bill known as the Family Protection may well be passed: it will deny federal funds or pay to any organisation or individual going on the record as being Reagan vs PATCO

PUBLIC SECTOR?

WHAT PUBLIC SECTOR?

WHEN THE 13000-strong Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organisation (PATCO) came out on strike on 3 August 1981 Reagan knew he had to act. Other public sector workers had caused major disruptions to Carter's administration, and more than a million employees in posts, telecommunications, federal government and local government needed to be taught a lesson. Why? They're due to settle major wage contracts in 1982.

Along with the Teamsters, PATCO had backed Reagan for President. But when 80 percent of its membership stopped work in support of their demands (for a rise that barely kept pace with inflation, slight improvement in conditions on the job, a shorter working week and earlier retirement), Reagan had no compunction in hitting his erstwhile allies hard. Public sector strikes are illegal in the States, and Reagan takes law and order seriously. He fined PATCO millions of dollars, clapped

SURVEY198ISURVE

The year of Ronald Reagan Labour on the skids For 50 years the exploited and downtrodden of America have been held back by an alliance between the trade union bureaucracy and the Democratic Party.

when Carter was trounced in the elections of 1980. Now the labour bureaucrats are fighting for their very survival.

by Reagan, they have placed all their hopes on the return of a left'-leaning.

Democratic President in 1984.

This means three things. First, a new relationship with the Democrats. Lane Kirkland, president of the AFL-CIO - America's equivalent to the TUC - has done a lot here: unlike his predecessor George Meany, he has fixed things so that his organisation no longer takes a formally neutral line on the USA's two big parties, but comes out firmly against the Repub- The biggest unions have, for instance, pledged an unprecedented $2m to back Democratic candidates in the elections due to be held over the next three years.

the demanded a greater say in the nomination and selection of such candidates, and has representation on the Democratic Party's Second, the labour bureaucracy has begun to bring Democratic Party ideology more into line with workers feelings to make it a real alternative to Reagan's from blue collar workers in November 1980). The outline of its overhauled programme was made clear at the AFL-CIO union leaders in irons (literally), froze strike funds, fined and dismissed every striker and put them all on an official federal blacklist, sent in army scabs and moved to have the controllers' union 'decertified' - stripped of its power to represent its members. All within four days. That Reagan won and PATCO doesn't officially exist any more is hardly surprising. Like public sector unions the world over, PATCO argued that its deserved members special treatment because their skills were special. But they weren't controllers as the military Reagan drafted in to replace them showed.

Only a strike throughout the USA's vital but crisis-ridden air transport industry could have got the controllers what they wanted. The way forward for America's public sector workers is through class politics, not special pleading.

American correspondent national conference three months ago. It includes: • restoration of some of the job creation schemes cut by Reagan • a Reconstruction Finance Corporation to offer loans to industry • temporary import controls • limited personal tax cuts • reduced taxes on investment.

(New York Times, 17 November 1981) This amounts to little more than a halfcentury-too-late revamp of the old New Deal platform of Franklin D Roosevelt.

Like the New Deal, its consequences will be entirely reactionary. The AFL-CIO conference made great play of not inviting Reagan to its proceedings and Kennedy cheered Edward when he denounced the man in the White House the most anti-union President in history'. But Democrat stalmodern wart Walter Mondale had previously made it clear what a different administration would entail. Speaking to the 500 000strong demonstration that was held against the Reagan regime in Washington in September, he remarked: *Sacrifice. will be needed.

We must contain federal spending, and reduce it unti we eliminate federal deficits... We must care for our defence needs. And we believe in free enterprise: we want it to work.' (quoted in The Guardian (US), 30 September) The third offensive launched by the AFL-CIO is to give it and its Democrat allies more solid organisational base in the working class. This was the aim of the Solidarity Day demonstration; it is also why the AFL-CIO has begun a number of expansion drives. Last year it re-admitted United Workers the Auto Union, and 1982 may see the United Mineworkers Union and the Teamsters back in. It has tightened up its own apparatus and made regional conferences a regular fixture as a means of sampling and controlling grassroots feeling And it has embarked on major efforts organise non-union cities such as Houston, Texas. Not a Labour Party! The union leaders are working overtime to save their skins. But the worst part of it is that the lower echelons of the labour bureaucracy - particularly in the public sector - are acting as a left cover for the AFL-CIO bosses. They do this by raising the demand for a Labour Party. In 1982 the demand for a Labour Party can mean only one thing: a call on the labour bureaucracy to form a party representing its interests and its interests alone. At present there are no forces around to ensure that a Labour Party of the future reflects anything progressive.

A Labour Party led by Lane Kirkland would be just as much bad news as a Democratic Party led by Teddy Kennedy.

The task of building a workers' party in the United States will be a long and difficult one. Much patient work must be done in reassessing the traditions of the American working class and especially the traditions of the American left. At the same time there is an enormous amount of immediate practical work that must be begun, especially as the labour movement stands by while the rights of women, blacks, migrants and gays are being taken away wholesale.

The picture is far from bleak. The labour bureaucracy's attempts to revive the New Deal are almost certain to fail.

Despite the cynicism with which it was led, last September's demonstration shows how disgusted workers are with falling living standards and mass joblessness Reagan's administration is wracked by just as much dissension as Carter's was The American left could make a fresh beginning this year - if it puts 1981's prejudices behind it. Kevin Green

Y1981SURVEY1981SURVEY1981SURV

WAS THE YEAR in which El 1981 captured the attention of the Salvador world. Now more than 30 000 workers and peasants have died fighting the brutal USbacked junta. Yet, despite the opposition's losses, Christian Democrat President José Napoleon Duarte cannot win Ronald Reagan knows it. Indeed, Washington has now become frightened that what started with the overthrow of the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua in 1979 could spread through Guatemala. Even the unchallenged rightists who run Honduras and the parliamentarians who rule Costa Rica are in American eyes. US imperialism has $3 investments tied up in Central America.

It's the USA's 'front yard": to the north Mexico, lies oil-rich to Panama canal and a further $30 billion of investments - plus a lot of trade. In 1981, therefore, the tration decided to make the defeat of the anti-imperialist movement in Central a priority. It drove Salvadoreans of their country refugees and poured $100m of 'aid' and scores of military trainers' in. It let Somoza's supporters set camps on US soil, helped Duarte's forces operate out of Honduras, and threatened Nicaragua with invasion. And, to strengthen its hold over the whole area, announced a package trade arrangements about which Secretary of State Alexander Haig could say have offered such a never before to any region' (Financial Times, 5 December 1981). But Central America is not just important to the USA. While Thatcher fully backed the White House's policies towards it (she authorised a flm loan to Duarte last August and decided to maintain a strong military presence in independent Belize), both British and Continental reformists proclaimed their support for the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and the oppositional forces in El Salvador. Even Reagan's line on the region, advising that a 'solution' there political reached and means, not military ones' (Jaw-jaw Si, war-war No', 3 December 1981).

With friends like these, the rebels of El Salvador don't need enemies. To win they need real solidarity from workers in Britain and other imperialist centres - and anti-imperialist politics.

Violence is nothing new to the people of Central A merica. Spanish in the sixteenth century, col onised by Britain and dominated by the USA in the twenthe local Indian population has tieth, been driven from make way for coffee and banana plantations. In Nicaragua as in Panama, many have been exterminated, in El Salvador, the majority lived under the yoke of foreign landowners. Companies like United Fruit, formed in 1899, carved out enormous tracts of land and developed them as export enclaves peasant labour. In these conditions only indigenous bourgeoisie could develop in Every native each country. had to bow to the interests of US imperialism: and when those interests were had threatened, America about sending in the marines. It occupied Nicaragua almost continuously between 1912 and 1934 before power there to Somoza, and it landed troops in Central America once a year, 1904 between average. to prop up or install puppet governments.

Profit-making in Central has of necessity always been a ruthless business. Only the luxury of bourgeois-democratic rule.

In El Salvador, the rural rebellion that and El Salvador to unsafe billion of the south the Reagan adminissome 30 U00 of 50 years of military rule.

Many times 100 000 and elsewhere, as policies. training up capitalist of favourable lifestyles 'we Their preference 14 families. What this struggle in by oligarchy newlyan The Times criticised because they can and should be diplomatic

USA,

parliament a interests. Central the working class. Invaded by the in the nineteenth Though it fertile territory to and Costa Rica, ariat. Guatemala and important class working class using cheap Marxist, weak a struggles. capitalist qualms no handing over 1924 America Costa Rica has enjoyed The year of massacres in Central America Communist Party leader Farabundo Marti led against the government in 1932 was met with the 'Matanza' - the massacre of This, the people. plus execution of Marti, marked the beginning since, in Guatemala the military has stepped in to crush mass revolts and to put a halt to the implementation of liberal The dynamics of struggle In Central America, as in other backward regions of the world, the parasitic character of the native landand factory-owners is clear for all to see.

'Western', their atel wealth conspicuous and their numbers few. In El Salvador, for example, the ruling class is known as 'los catorce' - the means is that the class America takes a Central particular form. It consists of a struggle "the people' against the oligarchy' more or less clearly capitalistic in nature, more or less clearly tied to imperialism, but an oligarchy all the same. Urban workers, rural labourers and peasants participate in this struggle are oppressed; but so do small capitalists, small landowners and the middle classes, because they worry about the oligarchy's concessions to the oligarchy's jealous of the position and are angry that it denies them their -to ex oress That is why, today, almost all of the opposition movements in America include the terms *Popular' or 'Democratic' in their names, whether or not they claim to be based on Now, since the mid 'sixties, workers have played a key role in the movements.

in type, has been uneven industrialisation in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala has led to a rise in the relative weight of the city-based proletfor instance, the In El Salvador, working class has conducted a number of strikes and unprecedented against the regime. The problem, however, is that the growth of the working yet to be as a social force has matched by the growth of independent Populist, politics. not leadership has been the main feature of most of the anti-government Stalinist populism Although populist movements are ready to fight imperialism and its client regimes, their politics can lead them promise with the interests of their own The bourgeoisie. Communist El Salvador (CPS) reveals the reactionary consequences of populism vividly. After forming an electoral alliance with the Christian Democrats in 1966, it backed Duarte himself in presidential elections and joined a USbacked junta in 1979. Many of its members have been shot by the very govthey have helped ernments neither these have proved nor 'democratic' Stalinism has a long record of betrayal of anti-imperialist struggles.

the tragedy of El Salvador is that more radical opponents of the Duarte regime have not made a decisive break from the strategy of the CPS. remains the case the tendency to establish with, "progressive elements in alliances the bourgeoisie only conflict with those of the oppressed - will persist. A glance at the organisation known as the Farabundo Marti People's Liberation Forces (FPL) confirms this.

The FPL was founded in 1972, three years after Salvador Cayetano Carpio, general secretary of the CPS, split away from his organisation. Today, with its broader front body, the Popular Revolutionary Bloc (BPR), it is the principal force in the struggle against Duarte; its members are renowned for their dedication and heroism in battle. Influenced by Castro, Maoism and Vietnam's it rejects the 'guerilla foco' theory - the idea (popularised by Regis Debray) that revolution will come to Latin America through purely military actions mounted countryside hideouts. from favours a 'people's war' against the state.

Today's FPL leaders came out of the CPS because of its refusal to take up arms against the imperialists. Like many freedom fighters in rejected the consequences of Stalinism.

But although they embarked on the armed struggle, they did not make a decisive break with the politics of Stalinism. They recognise that the Salvadorean bourgeoisie is too weak to consummate a democratic revolution, and they have polemicised with the constitutional cretins of the CPS for attempting, as they put it, to "rescue" the legal and "democratic" domination to tinental the working class. imperialism support that struggle. vadorean to com- Party of as its military wing, political its important statement El Salvador's 1972 sectors install: position. 'popular' In Sandinistas should But part of So long as this bers the 'mixed economy'. whose objectives can

USA.

General Giap, the against Instead, Latin America, they support from more Common mask that conceals the exploitation and which people are

OUT

subjected' (BPR, El Salvador: the development of the people's struggle, Tricon- 1980). Society, June However they continue to identify the small capitalists and rich peasants as part of the exploited, and thus as consistent allies of The class struggle in Latin America is bound to pit the petit bourgeoisie against - and British socialists must But in the end, capitalists, however small, fear the working class more than they hate the imperialists For the Saland the local ruling class.

seek anything more lett to than tactical blocs with the petit bourgeoisie is to court disaster when this unstable social force sells out to imperialism and turns against the masses.

However, the July 1979 victory of the populist Sandinistas against Somoza in Nicaragua has endorsed such a strategy.

After the Salvadorean opposition united early in 1980 - later to form the FMLN, and the FDR as wing Carpio made an on the kind of revolutionary government he would like to see. It would not be a socialist regime, but rather a 'government of all social except the 14 families'. This outlook dominates the Salvadorean opreality, the of the experience warn that such an approach is not able to withstand the pressure of imperialism and safeguard the future of the revolution. The Nicaraguan 'government of all social sectors' imprisoned 100 Communist Party memin November for criticising the new regime, and is having to defend Solidarity with El Salvador!

The big power in Central America is the However, the other imperialist But the powers are eager to move in.

masses in Central America, while they correctly identify the USA as their main enemy, will not tolerate oppression from anybody. To further their designs, therefore, the USA's rivals have got to be subtle. House-trained social democrats are their best ambassadors in the area.

Eric Heffer (Britain). Willy Brandt (West Germany), Felipe Gonzalez (Spain) - all sorts of reformists have spoken out USA's policies towards Nicaragua and El Salvador, These protests often express sympathy for the oppressed masses, but in reality they are of little use to the insurgents of Central America.

They aren't just dishonest, vote-catching gibes against Reagan; they are gambits intended to curry favour with the oppositional forces, the better to prevent them from going too far'. They are, in a nutshell, attempts to ensure that the revolution in Central America does not disturb Europe's trade and investments there.

The recognition Francois Mitterand's regime has given the Salvadorean oppos ition is a sure sign of this.

So is the Mitterand's initiative received respectable quarters (see Central America, sen se in Financial Times, 9 September 1981).

This year will seemore attempts by Europe to arrange a 'negotiated solution' to the Salvadorean conflict. Workers must resist them at all costs. It is not enough to be moved by John Pilger's accounts of massacres in El Salvador; it is absolutely wrong to look to the British state or a future left-Labour government to give the liberation forces 'assistance'. Our unions must be rallied to give all possible practical aid to the masses of Central America.

A blow against imperialism there would weaken the USA and help stop the schemes of Europe's rulers too.

Tony Allen the next step, January 1982 15

1981SURVEY

1981 the trends towards internal IN breakdown and external intervention unmistakeable throughout the became Iran's chaos Middle East. do mestic deepened as the war with Iraq, backed by the West, dragged on. In Egypt, President Anwar Sadat was assassinated as he reviewed his own troops and the USA staged its biggest ever military manoeuvres in North Africa and the Gulf only a few months later. The annexation of the Golan Heights by Israeli Premier Menachem Begin in December showed that after another year of European, American and Arab 'initiatives, the Palestinian question is even further from any resolution than it was 12 months ago. The failure of super-power diplomacy around the Fahd Plan to settle relations between Israel and its Arab neighbours reflects the tensions that have torn the Middle East 1981. The inability of the apart in imperialist powers, particularly the USA, to control events in the area makes the interference of Western troops on a large scale in 1982 a real possibility.

Shoot first Discussions between Egypt and Israel on the future of the West Bank have got nowhere, not least because Israel can find few Palestinians in the occupied territories willing to cooperate with its plans. Those who do usually meet the same fate as the prominent collaborationist, Youssef El Khatib did in Ramallah in mid-November.

He was shot. Incidents like these have prompted the USA to look very hard at its policy in the Middle East. They have brought home the fact that, as far as the Arab regimes of the area are concerned, rantings about the Soviet menace' are no substitute for progress on Palestinian autonomy. Saudi Arabia and Jordan, the two states most threatened by the Palestinians, simply won't buy Reagan's arguments about the Russians. They know that, unless the

USA

is seen to be doing something about Palestine, Arab nationalism threatens to sweep through the Gulf and overturn all the despotic governments that rule there. Washington is convinced Nevertheless, that defending its oil interests and its investments is a more urgent matter than finding a political solution to the Palestine question. This first became clear when US Secretary of State Alexander Haig visited the Middle East last March. Since then the Reagan Administration has, dismay of its European allies, to the shown itself prepared to go much further than Carter in its willingness to intervene in the Gulf. It has shot down Libyan jets, mounted its •Bright Star' troop exercises in Egypt, Somalia, Oman and Sudan, and sold lethal AWACS planes to the Saudis. The more the West plays tough, however, the more it reveals its inability to The nuptials Washington stabilise things. held with Saudi Arabia last year are eloquent testimony to this.

The new errand boy Renowned for its economic riches, Saudi Arabia made a meteroic rise to political prominence in 1981. Following.

the so-called Syrian 'missile crisis', it played a major behind-the-scenes role in negotiating a ceasefire between warring PLO and Israeli forces in the Lebanon.

It could see that the PLO was not about to take a pasting, so it pressured Syria to persuade the PLO to pull back, offering Damascus £400m for. troops stationed in Lebanon as a 'deterrent' force. In this manoeuvre the Saudis were aided and abetted by the USA. And, having completed it, they found themselves in a strong position to propose a general for solving Palestinian strategy the question - a Camp David for the whole of the Middle East, not just Egypt and Israel. In August, therefore, Saudi 16 the next step, January 1982 Arabia's Prince Fahd came up with a plan which proposed the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital, in return for Palestinian recognition of Israel.

The crucial point was Palestinian Yet in acceptance of the Israeli state.

fact this wasn't new: when Sadat spoke to the Israeli Knesset at the start of the Camp David negotiations in 1977, his remarks were much more radical. What was Fahd up to? Fahd knew his plan was unlikely to be accepted by many Arab states. But if they could be involved in a discussion on the rights of the Palestinians while the USA got on with the job of strengthening its military position and its alliances in much the the region. better. In other words the USA, no longer able to put itself forward as a mediator on the Palestinian issue, would let Riyadh do its dirty work. With previous con-

USNI MUBARAK & SADAT

ARE TWO TAGE JOR ON B COEN GAILED T

THE MIDDLE EAST

The year the diplomats reached the end of the road tenders for Arab leadership discredited (Egypt) or busy fighting on other fronts (Iraq), Saudi Arabia's time had come and hard-pressed America was only too pleased. Once more, however, US imperialism's designs on the Middle East were frustrated. The Fahd farce Real interest in the Fahd proposals developed in the wake of Sadat's assassination. Then, with all hope of Camp David coming to anything having disappeared, the Great Debate was commenced. Thousands of column inches in newspapers and hours of airtime were devoted to the pros and cons of the Saudi initiative. The Saudis wanted at least paper acceptance of their plan so that a 'dialogue on Palestine could continue. They were helped by the chairman of the Apartment blocks in Beirut destroyed in an Israeli air attack on 17 July 1981.

• PAHD PROJECT EQUALS CAMO

Beirut posters display the Palestinians' refusal to compromise with imperialism and its local allies.

EEC's Council of Ministers, Britain's Lord Carrington. But things began to go wrong very quickly. Even Fateh, the largest and most moderate Palestinian organisation, split on whether or not to back the plan. And, while PLO leader Yasser Arafat announced that it had 'positive elements', the PLO executive committee outvoted him by • fourteen votes to one - even though Arafat can usually rely on seven or eight votes.

Most Palestinians opposed the plan.

Some argued that they had the right to return to the whole of Palestine, not just the West Bank. Others felt that it was foolish to make any concessions without getting something from Israel and the USA in return. Many believed that talk of a West Bank state was utopian anyway, as Israel would never allow such a thing to come into existence. For the thousands of Palestinians in refugee camps scattered around the Middle East, the only real choice is to fight. It was probably Palestinian hostility to Fahd that convinced Libya, Algeria and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen to oppose the plan. However Syria, the leading member of the anti- Israel Steadfastness Front, had reasons of its own. Syria's ties with the USSR conflict with Fahd's clear exclusion of the Soviet Union from future negotiations on the Middle East, so Damascus had to come out against. In any event the Arab summit that was called at Fez to discuss the Fahd plan turned into a farce. Only seven out of a potential 20 Arab states came out unambiguously in support of the plan, and all seven were notable for their financial dependence on Saudi Arabia. Even Iraq joined the opposition. Due to last for three days, the conference collapsed within six hours. The future after Fahd Fahd's failure to get his plan accepted by the Arab states has several important consequences. First, Saudi Arabia and its 'moderate' allies were defeated politically, and the Steadfastness Front has come away with a major victory. When added to the Palestinian's military successes earlier in the year, this is likely to strengthen the hand of the leftist forces in the PLO and, consequently, the hand of the USSR.

Second, the Fez episode is a major blow to Arafat's prestige. Although he voted with the Steadfastness Front in the end, he has clearly left himself open to charges of compromise. In the longer term this could lead to a strengthening of the pro-Soviet Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) within the Palestine National Council and the PLO executive.

Third, the seizure of the Golan Heights is probably only the beginning of a new series of Zionist thrusts. While outwardly gleeful about the outcome of Fez, Israel would undoubtedly have preferred some commitment to peace on the part of the Arab regimes assembled there. Now that the USA is bereft of friends and influence in the Gulf, the Israeli hawks, already angered by the AWAS deal, will be on the ascendant. There can be no peace in the Middle East until the Palestinian issue has been resolved by the achievement of full selfdetermination. While the USA understands this, it believes that it can play for time by intimidating the Palestinians and their supporters in surrounding countries. And, while Britain and the major EEC countries are more bent on compromise than the White House, they want to make sure they are not left out of the action. This is why they are pushing so hard for inclusion in the Sinai 'peacekeeping force' - something which five years ago they would have left to the Fijian or Malawian army.

Nick Jenkins

The rise of Shirley, fall of Tony... and end of Taria?

THE

RISE

of the Social Democratic Party in 1981 has exposed the weakness of the Labour Party. Mass unemployment has depressed trade union militancy and produced widespread political disorientation within the working class. elections, first at Warrington, then Croydon and finally Shirley Williams' triumph at Crosby, have shown that the Labour Party can no longer rely on its working class vote. Tony Benn's campaign for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party showed the strength of the left among the activists in the Party and the trade unions. His defeat, and Labour's losses to the SDP, reveal the left's narrow base of support: it largely consists of radical workers. white-collar The has assumed the continuing allegiance of the working class to the Labour Party.

The success of the SDP in national and local elections demonstrates that Labour candidates can no longer rely on trad- ¡ itional Labour voters to put them in office. Workers have little confidence in the Labour Party. They have seen the consequences of Labour Party politics at national and local level and they have no faith that the left's alternative economic strategy will be any different from the last Labour Government or any better than the Tories. Thus, even in some of Labour's most secure areas like Wales and Scotland, workers the Tories and the SDP. The recession has shaken the British working class but it does not yet, in any substantial number, see that the only way forward lies through a frontal challenge to the system. As revolutionary politics does not seem a viable alternative, workers turn to a party which is nothing more than the Labour Party of the from its trade union base. But the SDP.

Liberal alliance promises something that receives some resonance among workers - to break the mould of British politics'.

Although there is considerable scope for the SDP to upset the delicate balance of the Parliamentary parties, it will never mould of class politics in break the Britain. As a middle class party whose programme assumes economic expansion, it can have little long-term appeal either to capitalists or workers in a period of recession. The rise of the SDP is a result of the persistence of the recession and a reflection of the downturn in the class struggle it has produced. Shirley Williams and the rest have inflicted a setback on Tony Benn and his project of reviving the Labour left. Benn may centre stage when an economic upturn unleashes working class militancy on a scale which requires a radical Labour Party to play its traditional role of mediation between workers and the state. In the meantime the Labour Party has to adjust to the existence of the SDP as a serious competitor at the polls. This is why the success of the SDP means the demise (at least temporarily) of Tony Benn and the proscription of groups like Militant and activists like Tariq Ali and Peter Tatchell.

Pressures on Labour The SDP's successes have compounded the anxieties of trade union leaders whose membership and influence have plummetted over the past two years. Led by GWU chief David determined to revive the Labour Party: Despite the divisions within the Party and the desertions at the polls, the trade unions are more determined than ever to remain with the Labour Party and to put the Party back into a winning position by the time of the next General Election.' (Morning Star, 14 November) Basnett has expanded Unions for a Labour Victory campaign to include leaders of every major union. He has also coopted top officials Alex Kitson (chairman), Varley (treasurer) and Ron Haywood (general secretary). The aim of this highpower committee is to raise money strengthen the Labour At the same time Basnett acknowledges that there has been disillusion among Labour's former supporters, and doubts whether the Labour Party Byepractice pursue a progressive social policy without imposing the major costs average or low-paid workers, or whether it would be able to work constructively with the trade unions'. Basnett's answer to this widespread doubt and disillusion' is the new social contract outlined in the Economic issues facing the document next Labour Government in July, currently undergoing ment in the top-level TUC-Labour Party left Liaison Committee. more right-wing bureaucrats NUR or UCW for example backers have further The proscribe it: they know they may are drifting away to capitalist majority government trade unionists divorced withdrawal, while "sixties couple of years must stop now' however, in no ber. picking well return to hopes, image in time for the next election.

left right. The Labour they are fought, whether it's deputy', Labour Basnett, they are his Trade Labour Party Eric After claiming a series of spectacular conference victories ever and since Labour went into opposition Party machine. in 1979, the left and it's campaign the democracy in Party came to the end of the road at Brighton this vear sensus on the Labour left is that could in now is not the time to continue the fight for accountability. But on what are the results of more than two years of relentless activity at every level of the Party?

Control of the manifesto still rests with the parliamentary party, in practice the party leader, after major defeat of the the and drive to give the final word to the further develop- National Executive Committee at this year's conference.

1981SURVEY

The SDP itself has made little headway among the trade union leaders. Its hostility to state intervention is an obstacle to winning the support of some of the in the whose unions are reliant on the public sector.

The strident anti-trade union postures of some of the SP's more petit-bourgeois alienated trade union support. However, the SP does serve a purpose for the bureaucrats - it is a useful stick with which to beat the left.

trade union leaders are more concerned to contain the left than to ban and need Benn & Co when the rank and file gets restive. Thus the union bureaucrats put the emphasis on unity, not witchhunts.

As Basnett insists, it is absolutely essential that the Labour Party remains a "broad church" if it is ever to form a again'. Leading are happy to embrace popular radical causes, like CND and EEC demanding that 'the wrangling and intolerance of the last The Parliamentary Labour Party is, mood for compromise with the left. The SDP has struck terror into the heart of every Labour MP: the right-dominated PLP is the driving force behind the witchhunt on the left. The backing of the right has grown in confidence as a result of its successes at this year's Brighton Conference, its regained control of the National Executive Committee, and the paign for disarray of the left following Benn's defeat by Healey in October, his showdown with Foot and subsequent expulsion from the shadow cabinet in Novem- Meanwhile, the SDP stormed on, up more and more defecting Labour MPs and destroying the very concept-of a safe Labour seat. Late in the year the right decided to assert itself. It by forcing Foot to expel the extremists and curb the left, to restore Labour's moderate 'party of government' (Socialist Organiser, The left has been in retreat ever since Thatcher came to power: 1981 marked a further convergence between the Labour and the radical left outside the 10 December). Labour Party, and a further shift to the left increasingly dictates the issues and the terms on which Benn for Party democracy, unthe employment, or activity on racism and the the Irish War. The close of the year finds the left on the defensive against a right-wing attack that puts Labour's time-honoured faith in Parliamentary democracy to the fore as the crucial issue of the moment.

and ever If the right says that the question of how the Labour Party is to take state power and retain it is critical at a time when the labour movement cannot even defend its continued on page 18

THE DEMOCRACY

The con- • The party leader is now elected by an electoral college dominated the trade unions with 40 by of the votes) cent per parliamentary party and the cons tituency parties share the rest of This replaces the votes equally. system in which old the parliamentary party voted' for a leader approved informally by the senior trade union bureaucrats.

left's MPs are All ahom to reselection. subject own weak position - who is the left to disagree? The British left is today divided only over the degree of extra-Parliamentary pressure required to effect the transition to socialism and how and where this pressure should be built.

Over the year the left has divided into three camps over the issue of extra-Parliamentary struggle. The first holds that the People's March was fantastic and what is needed is to develop its apolitical populist style further. The second also thinks that the People's March was fantastic, but it needs the sharp political edge provided by a radical alternative economic strategy and a link-up with left MPs and trade union struggles. The third agrees that the People's March was fantastic but what really matters is building up the extra-Parliamentary struggle from the workplace. Let's take them in turn.

People's power The moderate populist faction includes junior trade union bureaucrats like Jack Dromey and Pete Carter who supervised the TUC's schemes for side-tracking the young unemployed. It is supported by the right wing of the Tribune group of Labour MPs, the 'soft left' whose numbers have risen steadily as MPs deserted the Bennite camp under the pressure of the SDP and the right. It enjoys too the enfeebled Communist Party and the dominant factions of two Labour left pressure groups - the Labour Coordinating Committee and the Cam- Labour Party Democracy both of which have become distanced from Benn since the events of the autumn The soft left has succumbed to leadership pressure to drop its campaign to transform the Labour Party in favour of 'unity' against the Tories and the SDP Thus CLPD leader Vladimir Derer discerns a mood in the Party that democratic reforms have gone far enough and concludes that the struggle for further changes would only exacerbate divisions 12 November). CP executive member Dave Cook agrees condemning that sectarian trend within the Labour Party' and the left's obsession with "internal questions' (Morning Star, What is the soft left's answer? Cook counterposes 'a much broader conception of extra-Parliamentary mass politics to the still primarily electoral orientation of Labour left'. The People's March is model - "broad, non-sectarian and tied to no particular party'. The broad' character of the People's March meant • that its organisers extended open arms to churchmen, media personalities, Liberals Tories -and beat up anti- H-Block campaigners. The no particular party' that organised this 'non-sectarian' campaign like a borstal on the road was

DISTRACTION

handful of right-wing renegades has been ousted the vast majority of MPs have been reselected without difficulty but left-wingers the like Renee Short and lan Mikardo now face tough opposition from the right. the In other words the great drive for democracy has achieved nothing distract attention excent to from the real political problems of the day, for which the Labour nou left has no answers While the next step, January 1982 17

trade union bureaucrats and the Tribune upsetting the schemes of the labour The soft left is a useful tool in the hands of the leadership against the rest of the left. Its leading members on Labour's Lestor - have backed Foot's call for a witchhunt. Tribune members Frank Field and Jack Straw have led the clamour for the proscription of the entrists over the Committee executive member Nigel Stanley has appeared on television exposures of the Militant Tendency and has implicitly approved the rejection of Tariq Ali's membership application 4 December 1981). And the Stalinists can always be relied upon to back bureaucratic suppression of political differences - especially where it suspects Trotskyists' The radical populist faction is led by Tony Benn and a hard core of 15 to 20 Tribune MPs. It is supported by a section of the Labour Coordinating Committee and by radical left activists in the Labour around papers such as London Socialist Challenge and Militant. For the only way to fight the challenge of the SDP is by carrying on the battle to win the Labour Party to left policies, by strengthening the links between Labour MPs and constituency and trade union activists, and by boosting the The strengthening of the right and the desertion of the soft left have, for the time being, stopped Benn in his tracks.

The plans for a Labour Representation Committee' or 'Labour Liaison Committee, proposed by Benn and his close supporters Reg Race and Bob Cryer, to Parliamentary struggles have disappeared without trace since the Brighton Conbe no going back: there is no future for him in a Labour Party under Peter Shore or Roy Hattersley. Thus he rejects the narrow approach that leads the soft left to prostrate itself before the Parliamentary leadership. 'It is not a sectarian indoctrination where you take people in them only one solution, he told Dromey and Carter who politics should have been presented to the People's Marchers (Marxism Today, December 1981). Benn has work to do, work in which he needs the support of the First, he needs to promote policies that distinguish the Labour Party from the SDP and command some popularity opposition to nuclear weapons and hostility to Europe are the most import- Given the lack of working class pressure on the Labour Party, the incoherence of the alternative economic strategy is not an immediate problem.

Indeed, it is an advantage. As the editor lends itself ideally to fudging' (26 November). Another Bennite explains that: the struggle, then, is not to create, as the right allege, a party of "socialist purity" but merely a party of "socialist credibility" capable of defeating the SP and which will prevent Labour from consigning itself to the wilderness for a generation.' (Nigel Williamson, "The left response, London Labour Briefing, December Second, Benn must try to extend his base of support beyond his present fan club of middle class constituency Thus Benn appeared at rallies with Arthur Scargill during his campaign for the presidency of the NUM.

He visited the picket line at Laurence Scott and made sure he featured prominently as a supporter of workers in struggle against redundancy in the pages of the left press. The radical left is ennew but its own trade union support is too sparse and too close to the bureaucracy to guarantee Benn anything more than a very limited audience. Benn may have to bide his time, but his brand of traditional radical reformist politics is the only long-term hope for the Parliamentary movement (such as existed association with militant trade unionists like Scargill, Benn and his Parliamentary British working class to British capitalism in a way that the SDP and the Labour Socialist orders Party. For the SM the problem with the Labour left is its orientation towards Parliament when what is really required is action outside it. Socialist Worker warned the Labour left against trying to fight the witchhunt inside the •If they turn instead to the militancy of the picket lines where sackings and wage cuts are being resisted; to the burgeoning peace movement; to the flickers of resistance among all sorts of people who feel that something must be done to stop the Tories now, then there is hope that Labour's vicious swing to the right will not engulf so many of the socialists who The SWP's criticism of the Labour left here is not of its politics but of its tactics: it justifies its existence outside Labour Party by its commitment to working 'where power really lies - in the workplaces and not in Parliament'.

In reality, as Tony Benn has often observed, there is no contradiction here simply a division of labour. Benn is very keen for left-wing activists to take up the possible scale at all levels of extra-Parlcampaign is based on this sort of activity.

He argues his programme in Parliament and the radical left mobilises working class support for it in the workplace. As long as the left accepts Benn's politics, Benn is happy to accept its activism Worker might not appreciate it, the SWP does not in fact agree with Benn's programme. For an alternative explanation of its differences with the Labour left turn to Socialist Review, the SWP's monthly.

(As one of its readers once noted, SWP publications - Socialist Worker, Socialist Review and International Socialism, its theoretical quarterly - are aimed respectively at • O', 'A' and 'BA' levels of socialist comprehension'; he did not comment on the fact that they contain contradict- Leading SWP theoreticians Chris Harman and Pete Goodwin now concede that Benn's politics are reformist, nationalist and explicitly supportive of class collaboration. Right. And they argue the need for a different sort of politics'. Right again. But what sort of politics? Here is *It has to be an argument in practice as well as theory, basing itself upon working class struggles against the effects of collaboration, organising these struggles, giving them direction, showing that in the self-activity of workers there is an alternative to what the left Parliamentarians offer them.' (Socialist Review, The trouble is that the 'self-activity' of workers contains no alternative to the politics of the Labour left. In every working class struggle that takes place at present, militants are heavily influenced of responsibility for the notions the national economy and faith in bourgeois solutions like import controls and influenced by the politics of the Labour self-emancipation of the working requires Marxist politics': The dogma of "self-activity" represents the politics of fatalism. It is an abdication from the fight for revolutionary leadership. It means that the role of revolutionaries is reduced to enwaiting for struggle to burst out. In reality it means the SWP "supporting" workers in their industrial disputes, while leaving Tony Benn to dictate the political terms.' (' "Self-activity" makes you blind: a reply to Alex Callinicos The Socialist Society The British left may be divided on how much extra-Parliamentary pressure on the Labour Party is needed and how best to exert it, but, as the year closes, its diverse factions join together on a new project in a truly seasonal spirit of unity and reconciliation. Prominent members of the Labour Party, the Communist Party, IMG and others have the clubbed together in the 'working group for a Socialist Society'. A new Socialist Society 'dedicated to research, debate, education and polemic' is to be launched renewal inside the labour movement and help those fighting for socialist ideas in December 1981). It's certain that 'those fighting for socialist ideas in the Labour Party' need all the help they can get. But is a new Socialist Society the answer?

Its founders include members of the editorial boards of all the left's heavy journals - New Left Review, New Socialist, International Socialism, Marxism Today, History Workshop Journal, International and others. Given the failure of these periodicals to develop socialist theory independently, it is difficult to see how assembling commitment of British left groups and publications to the peaceful coexistence of competing political tendmovement means there is no tradition of debate or polemic among them. Again, it is difficult to see how gathering representatives of these trends together, socialist principles', could advance the bridge professor and Socialist Societ founder Raymond Williams explains the need to educate the working class to accept the sacrifices that will be necessary future. Labour government (November/ and lacks real sovereignty to boot' The witchhunt on Tariq Ali and needs some modernisation. This They are indeed, as they constantjust wants to settle down under a protest, harmless reformists.

reformed Parliament, preferably up Neil Kinnock for suggesting EEC. Foot should let him.

Labour must buy the British state as it is today' (The Guardian, 2 November). For Ali, like Tony Benn, the House of Lords, royal December 1981). He writes of the need to develop an understanding which includes the admission of all the unpalatable facts about the long-run crisis of the economy', in other words an acceptance that mass unemployment is permanent.

He urges the widest possible processes of which should specify and cost the real admit and above all share the object of the Socialist Society is to pave Socialist Society is a cosy retreat from the real problems of working class theory and strategy thrown up by the deepest recession for half a century. After a year of setbacks for the working class movement and especially oppressed by British society, the working group for a Socialist Society' can only see The dramatic rebirth of CND on a new European basis, and the widening scope of the women's movement and of feminist programmes, raise vital issues of socialist responsibility As a matter of fact CND has not been reborn on a European basis. What has is that in every country an anti-war movement has grown and moved rapidly in a national chauvin- Campaigns against nuclear war in the future have distracted attention from the political problems of the present, while channelling the anti-militarist sentiments of millions of young people into movements which can do nothing to prevent The 'widening scope of the women's movement is simply an invention.

women's movement scarcely exists in Britain today as an organised force. It was last seen in the late 'seventies conducting the narrowest possible defence of abortion rights - by defending the restrictive legal curbs. While hospital cuts have further curtailed access to abortion, the women's movement has remained silent and inactive. The middle class 'personal' politics of Beyond the fragments (two of whose authors are founders of the Socialagainst women's oppression in the womand beyond. As for "feminist programmes, no such things exist outside the heads of a handful of The real growth of pacifism and the imagined strength of feminism are the 'encouraging signs' for the new Socialist Society. This development at the end of 1981 has exposed the extent of the convergence of radical left and reformist politics. It may be an encouraging sign for a New Year in which the further degeneration of the British left will make it less of a barrier to the emergence of genuine

TARIQ &

TATCHELL

which is antiquated in contrast | afternoon's sit-down occupation of the Westminster area' (London similar assemblies elsewhere Labour Briefing, November 1981).

His other idea is for the GLC to sponsor a Tent City' of the unemployed and homeless within sight' of the House of Commons Whatever next? How about all of Parliament to see if their faith ion is of a march on the House of Commons led by 250 Labour MPs and a thousand Labour mayors and councillors and involving an

Prevention of Terrorism Act.

union movement. We urge Trades Council delegates to reject the PTA Campaign Conference and stand up for Irish freedom!

ON 27 NOVEMBER the Smash the PTA Campaign gave its answer to the recent arrests and general anti-Irish hysteria demonstration 400-strong North London, from Camden to Archway.

The spirited march demanded Smash the PTA!' and British terror gave its full support to the Irish liberation Troops out now!' struggle, calling for for the Irish "Self-determination and people!'. As is usual on Irish demonstrations, the police harassed the marchers from agreeing to a torchlit the start. After procession they banned the use of torches.

NO TUC BANS

ON IRISH

SOLIDARITY!

After the year of the hunger strikes the Irish War goes on. It rages in the ghettos of the Six Counties where Irish men, women and children are being regularly arrested, beaten up and killed by British troops and their paramilitary police auxilliaries. It rages too in Britain where the IRA's recent bombing campaign has provoked the usual patriotic backlash and a wave of arrests of Irish people in London under the The official labour movement continues to back Britain against the Irish people. Last year it proscribed the Smash the PTA Campaign's Coventry Conference in support of the hunger strikers. It also overturned the Southport Trades Councils' Conference's decision to support the hunger strikers' demands for political status. Now, in response to the success of the Smash the PTA Campaign's Workers' March for Irish Freedom to the TUC in September, the bureaucrats want to go even further in blocking Irish solidarity initiatives in the trade The TUC has urged all Trades Councils to adopt a new rule banning individual members from sponsoring the Smash the PTA Campaign.

'Rule X will allow a Trades Council executive to expel any delegate who personally endorses the Campaign. We urge trade unionists to attend our conference. Ireland - time for British workers to act attempts to stifle debate in the labour movement in opposition to British repression in Ireland. Oppose Rule X', sponsor the Smash the Smash the revention of Terrorsm Ar Campaign demans*

TROOPS CUT OF

NOW

North London march: 400 say 'Smash the PTA'! they were lit up by stewards, When police charged in and tore them from marchers' hands. The march was followed by an indoor through Speakers from the Revolutionary rally. Communist Party, the Irish Republican •Stop Socialist Party, the Troops Out Movement and the Revolutionary Gay Men's Caucus addressed the meeting. This march showed that it is possible to stand up in support Irish struggle and build wider of the support for it, at a time when the bombing campaign, and the reaction it generates, underlines the Irish solidarity in Britain.

of Students: other issues, National Union of of the Irish War taking place.

recent PTA arrests Through a manoeuvres, the by Labour, TUC's bureaucratic of the Irish had for British imperialism in Ireland.

their voice republicanism service was uncommitted solidarity in Britain. PTA Campaign are attention towards the labour February. We Irish policy in same in Easter 1982. Remember Coventry 31 January, 1.30pm Cobden Street Stony Stanton Road people had wounded, one mortally. mander importance of building National Union level. Reaction rules THE LEADERS of Britain's student unions take their politics, on Ireland as on from their seniors in the trade union movement. For years the has been Students ruled by a clique of Communist and Labour Party hacks. Their major concern at the December NUS winter conference in Blackpool was to prevent any discussion Secretary The bureaucrats successfully kept all motions on Ireland off the conference acceptable agenda, despite sustained pressure from Smash the PTA Campaign supporters and measure. others in many colleges, And they blocked emergency motion condemning the stiff upper - several of which teeth. involved students. Support for a speaker from the Smash the PTA Campaign to address the conference fell just short of the required two-thirds majority.

of. bureaucratic serjes conference fixers also prevented Fermanagh and South Tyrone MP Owen Carron from speaking to the delegates. They produced a leaflet (signed Communist and Liberal, Social Democratic Party students) pushing the familiar TUC line that any recognition liberation struggle would nail bombers'. damage the marvellous unity the NUS built up around its solid backing Owen Carron did, however, speak to several hundred students at Blackpool at a fringe meeting organised by the Socialfrom his Given ist Worker Student Organisation.

the reluctance of the bourgeois parties to of reactionary • criticisms this in public debate, provided by SWP student labour leader Pat Stack. He used his position on military the platform to explain to a largely audience why the SWP condemns the military tactics of the movement represented by Owen Carron.

This sort of adaptation to British chauvinism can only weaken the cause of Irish Student supporters of the Smash the now turning their mobilising for the Bloody Sunday march in January and Counties. conference in •movement organising will also be win backing for an anti-imperialist student unions around the country. We want to make sure the NUS leaders don't get away with the tactics at the next conference orate Bloody Sunday 10th Anniversary Commemoration March AT FREE DERRY corner on the afternoon of Sunday 30 January 1972, crack British assault troops of the First Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, began concentrated and extended fire on a dispersing crowd of unarmed civil rights demonstrators. The firing continued until, 13 This been killed and sixteen The operation was directed in person by Battalion Comall Lieutenant-Colonel Derek Wilford, overseen in person by Commander of Land Forces in the North General Robert Ford, and authorised in advance by the British government at the highest There was never any question of the Paras getting out of control. Neither was there any question of the military men taking decisions better left to politicians.

The factor that governs all others in the Six Counties is Britain's ability to enforce its domination on the nationalist minority. By 1972, faced with open revolt, the Faulkner collapse of tne Government, and the prospect of outright civil war, the only political solution was to inflict a blow on the nationalist population that would break their morale. In a situation where Tory Northern Ireland Maudling spoke not of the defeat of the IRA but of aiming for 'an of violence, Bloody level Sunday was a necessary and. calculated In Britain, the authorities put on the lip and lied through their strength of British the Given chauvinism, the state was able to deploy its black intelligence procedures in the crudest fashion with relative impunity.

The official account of what happened consisted in the first instance of a flat British had done the denial that the shooting. General Ford's 'information' on the day was that the Para Battalion fired three rounds altogether. Provo snipers their own were alleged to have shot people. Later this was changed to forced retaliation against a crowd of snipers and Two months later, in March 1972, the British government was obliged to sus pend Stormont and introduce Direct Rule from Westminster, as the only way of keeping order in Ireland.

Following on up for success covering in Bloody Sunday, Home Secretary William Whitelaw presented the introduction of Direct Rule as a progressive move. He claimed, with the approval of the official that more in tense movement. of the nationalist coercion community was the way towards peace.

As for Bloody Sunday, an inquiry' was set up under Lord Widgery; the affair was rendered safely sub judice, and after a decent period, all concerned were exonerated. Better than exonerated, Colonel Wilford got an OBE by way of a commemoration of Bloody Sunday.

In 1982 there are still more than 11 000 British troops in the occupied Six They are supported by 7230 Royal Ulster Constabulary officers and 4800 reservists and 8000 members of the Ulster Defence Regiment - a total of more than 30 00 soldiers and para militaries. Force of arms remains the only way that British imperialism can maintain its grip on Ireland. On 31 January 1982, Sinn Fein has - called a march in Coventry to commemslaughtered Bloody those

COT

Sunday. Already the forces of the state are moving against the march. The rightwing Coventry Evening Telegraph demanded at the end of November that the police ban the march as a threat to public order. So far the police have not responded, but whatever action they take, the commemoration of Bloody Sunday will go ahead in some form. The Smash the Prevention of Terrorism Act Campaign fully supports Sinn Fein's call for a march through Coventry on 31 January. Accordingly, we have helped to set up mobilising committees in London (North, South and East), Manchester, Leeds, Coventry, Canterbury and Portsmouth. All political organisations have been invited to participate in them. If there is a committee in your area join it!

year's Bloody Sunday commem- Oration march offers an opportunity for workers, students and socialists to stand up and be counted on the side of the Irish people. the next step, January 1982 19

ERNIE ROBERTS has regularly forward the view that the British Government should try to impose a 'political solution' in the Six Counties as a more effective means of defeating the republican movement than naked coercion. His first concern has always been the reputation of the British state and the stability of British rule in Ireland, During the hunger strike, Ernie Roberts • opposed the immediate withdrawal of Bobby Sands' MP siatus after his election in Fermanagh/South Tyrone because 'to expel him with such indecent haste would international condemnation undermine the authority of parliament' (Morning Star, 13 April 1981) • criticised Labour's Northern Ireland spokesman Don Concannon because his repudiation of Bobby Sands' death-bed demands was not in the slightest bit helpful to a solution and...could have been sent by post' (The Irish Times, 7 May 1981) • criticised Margaret Thatcher's intransigent stand because of his violence will escalate as a result of the provision of more martyrs for the IRA' (The Daily Telegraph, 13 May 1981) • proposed that the British Government improve conditions in its Six Counties concentration camps, but not concede political status to republican prisonersof-war: I have never supported violence or assassination by either side' (Hackney Gazette, 11 December 1981).

The local Labour Party and the Labour group on Hackney Council follow Roberts' line on Ireland. It was only after an intense reaction to the deaths of the first two hunger strikers, in Ireland and abroad, that any discussion or activity took place in the Labour Party on the issue. Indeed it was not until 23 September - one week before the of the hunger strike, when 10 men were already dead - that Hackney's Labour group wrote to Thatcher asking her to improve conditions in the H-Blocks. The Labour Party's concern throughout was not to build support for the strikers to force the Government to concede their demands. Its aim was to try to get the Government out of a difficult situation, by means of what Roberts repeatedly described as an imaginative breakthrough'. Real work in Hackney The Hackney Labour Party claims that the Smash the PTA Campaign's work around the Council began after the Labour group passed its hunger strike resolution in September. This is simply untrue. When the hunger strike began back in March our supporters Town Hall put a motion to Hackney NALGO calling for support for the hunger strikers' demands for political status and support for the national struggle. Although it was May before the motion came ur it provoked widespread discussion and a packed union branch meeting of 350 people debated the issue.

Out of this initiative emerged the group of Hackney council workers committed to taking this work forward.

Nor was the work of the Smash the

PTA

Campaign confined to resolutions. From the very beginning of the hunger strike we resumed the regular street activities we had been carrying out in the area during the last hunger strike.

We held regular rallies outside the Town Hall, at Ridley Road street market and in Stoke Newington. Some members of East 20 the next step, January 1982 put of Irish freedom. and "fear that end hunger in the HACKNEY NORTH and Stoke Newington Constituency Labour Party wishes to make the following statement on behalf of itself, its councillors, its MP Ernie Roberts: liberation The party has for many years taken a clear position on the need for a political settlement in Ireland and is opposed to solutions imposed by the British Government and the British Army.

In line with this policy, the party is in favour of pulling British troops out of Ireland.

of giving political status to republican prisoners and is against the use of the PTA, which by allowing detention without trial undermines the basic civil liberties which every person has the debating right to expect. The party wishes to make it quite clear, however, that it is in no way associated with the petition Communist Party under the name of the Smash the PTA Campaign, a monument to be built outside Hackney Labour's hypocrisy Hackney Labour Party has condemned the petition raised by the Smash the Prevention of Terrorism Act Campaign for the borough council to erect a monument to the Irish hunger strikers outside the Town Hall Yet the local MP Ernie Roberts, his constituency party and the Labour group on Hackney Council have all expressed sympathy with the cause Their bitter attack on the Smash the PTA Campaign initiative exposes their own hypocrisy and their endorsement of the Labour Party's consistent stand against the Irish liberation struggle.

Press statement from Hackney North and Stoke Newington Constituency Labour Party Town Hall, passed in September demands. organised by the Revolutionary which calls for November Bobby time a clearly Hackney. hostile to socialists freedom. opposition. As a party, we welcomed the resolution by Hackney Council backing it. Labour group and sent to Mrs Thatcher and Michael Foot, which in effect, called on the Thatcher Government to settle the H-Block hunger strike by granting the prisoners' five It was only after this that the RCP with its usual opportunism showed any interest in to Hackney Council. The demand for a monument is an idiotic irrelevance which could do nothing widest to win sympathy and understanding for the problem of the Irish people. The main objective of the RCP members seems to be to discredit and undermine the real work done by others, in order to promote their own tiny organisation.

It is disgraceful that the memory of the dead hunger strikers should be so cynically used to serve narrow and sectarian interests which have nothing in common with socialism.

London Troops Out Movement and the Socialist Workers Party cooperated actively. Labour Party activists were conspicuous by their absence.

Delegations of Hackney trade unionists mobilised by the Smash the PTA Campaign attended numerous national events during the hunger strike: the Coventry Conference in March, the labour movement delegation to Derry in April, the Kilburn H-Block/Armagh march also in April, the Workers' March for Irish Freedom to the TUC in September, to name only the most important. Hackney supporters of the Smash the PTA Campaign played a central part in organising pickets in support of Irish republicans and socialists picked up in response to the current bombing campaign and in building for the anti-PTA demonstration in North London. The petition for a local monument to Sands emerged out eight ot months' hard campaigning in Hackney and other East London boroughs. At a when the Government (with the full backing of the Labour Party) was whipping up anti-Irish hysteria in response to the latest IRA bombing campaign, the petition aimed to rally sympathy and support for the Irish struggle around defined objective. And we didn't take our petition to the House of Commons bar or the committee rooms of the Labour Party -but out on the streets and onto the housing estates of Already more than 1200 local people have signed it.

'Cynical and sectarian' Why is the Hackney Labour Party so this initiative? Be cause it resents having to put its money where its mouth is, having to put its words of sympathy into of solidarity. The Labour Party in Hackney, as elsewhere, wants it both ways. It wants to win the support of Irish people and of British who back the cause of Irish But it also wants to retain its allegiance to the British state and its accommodation to British chauvinism.

Thus it likes to pass harmless resolutions on the quiet - but when it is pressed to take a clear stand against British prejudice on the Irish question, it responds with vicious public attacks on supporters of the liberation struggle. Labour councillors were happy to vote for a sympathetic resolution and even sign the petition for the monument - as long as they did not have to do anything or face up to any When the monument was condemned by the local right-wing press, prominent Labour representatives turned venomously on the Smash the PTA Campaign, some lying that they never signed the petition or were hoodwinked into What is cynical about using a monument to Bobby Sands to rally support for the continuing struggle in Ireland?

Sinn Fein is campaigning along similar lines in the north for a commemoration the Manchester Martyrs. What is sectarian about trying to mobilise the support including Labour Party supporters around activities in solidarity with the Irish struggle? It is cynical to try to cover up the Labour Party's disgusting record throughout the hunger strikes with token resolutions And it is sectarian to pretend that nonexistent real work' by the Labour Party in Hackney has been undermined by the Smash the PTA Campaign.

DEAD MOLE?

Blake Baker, The far left, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London 1981. ENTRYISM AND ENTRYISTS are all the rage these days. On radio and television, in all the newspapers vou can read how the Trots are taking over the good old Labour Party, booting out defenceless, loyal MPs and turning this venerable institution into a roaring Bolshevik party. Most left groups are either in the Labour Party or vigorously rooting for the left against the right. Red-baiting articles appear every other day in the press. This book is a typical Former chief industrial correspondent on The Daily Telegraph Blake Baker is now a 'special writer' for its editor. He is extremely worried about the far left. He wants to inform all good patriots of what's going on and how this widespread and dangerous conspiracy' is intent on destroying British society as we know it. Baker's book is a predictable melange of true and dubious details on the left and the usual prejudices about socialism and socialists.

Baker's conception of socialist organisation is the typical one of an evil conspiracy led by extraction - aided and abetted by dedicated, humourless, ruthless zealots exploiting the fears of the young, the impressionable and, especially, the unemploved. Their aim is to impose a nightmare 1984-type society upon this green and pleasant land Baker sees nothing but a growing conspiracy slowly eating away at the foundations of this society, but in reality the far left' is not much of a threat to the Anglo-Saxon way of life. He claims the Workers Revolutionary Party repres ents a formidable, purely revolutionary force.

We too have seen its formal Marxist statements but we have also seen its support for rent and rate rises and cuts made hu left Tahour councils makes People's March Baker of the muCh getting 'full colour treatment' in The News Line every day but he omits to say that this coverage was totally devoid of any criticism of the TUC's manipulation of the young unemployed.

He describes Militant as the most dangerous Trotskvist organisation' Again Baker takes an organisation's formal adherence to Trotskyism at face value. In the civil service a leading Militant sold out an anti-cuts strike in Glasgow in 1979 by arranging a back-to-work deal with management behind the backs of the strikers.

Militant clones have consistently opposed any moves towards the blacking of work involving the deportation of immigrants. About the only accurate thing Baker says about them is that the Grantites' were the dullest, most repetitious and intellectually unadventurous, reputation Militant Tendency supporters enjoy to this day. It's a bit much to reckon that the International Communist League was experiencing 'a strong resurgence and advance' at a time when it was frantically courting the Workers Socialist League in the hopes that a merger would stave off each group's terminal decline.

And who but a paranoiac right-wing columnist could imagine that the Communist Party of Great Britain is a grave threat to the bourgeoisie?

Baker's conspiracy theories descend into farce when he encounters the Popular Front for the Liberation of the CPSA. It's so obviously a spoof organisation that it's hard to imagine anyone taking it seriously. Baker does. It's easy to tell that the PFL is a Private Eye-type set up.

But Baker insists that its propaganda and constant conchiratorial tactice illictrate the relentless fight for control of the machinery of government. He must sleep in dread fear of a guerrilla attack by the PFL's Peter the Painter Squad of the Fortress London Brigade'.

For a stalwart of a paper whose hatred of the Labour Party knows no bounds, Baker is really concerned about the future of that party.

He details at great length the activities of the entryists, saying that they are using Benn 'as a figurehead to be manipulated or eventually replaced' in their efforts to make the Labour Party a revolutionary force. But it will be the Labour Party that will benefit from the entryists, not revolutionary politics. Despite its worthy intentions, the left is helping to rebuild the Labour Party so that it will hold back the working class in the future.

Baker concluded that 'the only moral which I would draw is the need for vigilance by those who still believe in freedom', It's the same old song - capitalism means freedom, socialism means oppression. But capitalism has nothing to offer the vast mass of the world's population but insecurity, poverty and war. Deep inside Baker recognises this and knows that the desires of the masses for security, peace and a decent standard of living will bring them into sharp conflict with his class. Blake Baker is a worried man. We hope his worries will increase ten-fold in the New Year. Paul Foster

MILES SMILES

Miles Hudson, Triumph or tragedy? Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Hamish Hamilton, pp252, £9.95.

IT IS APT that the title of this book is a of the, class question because the outcome struggle in Zimbabwe is still uncertain. However, Miles Hudson (Sherborne, Trinity) and his class (British, ruling) are not dissatisfied with progress so far, This should cause some dismay to those British socialists who celebrated Robert Mugabe's compromises with imperialism at the time of the Lancaster House talks in 1979, and after his election triumph in 1980 - as victories for the anti-imperialist movement. If nothing else, and it is only a potboiler put out to enable Miles to recreate his days at the Foreign Office while he 'farms' in Hampshire, this book should provide a lesson which even the most ostrich-like elements of the left should be able to absorb. Hudson patronises the blacks (they laughed easily and were tolerant to a fault) and indulges in nostalgia for the good old colonial days when the old-fashioned virtues were admired, the old-fashioned vices tolerated'. He takes pride in Britain's final intervention in the conflict in Zimbabwe to impose a favourable solution, confessing that it was embarassing for Britain to be saddled with responsibility for a situation over which she had scant control.

Britain's reluctant heroes were Alec Douglas Home, Lords Soames and Carrington, and of course, Miles Hudson. It is to their undying credit that Zimbabwe emerged from a situation which 'could have continued for a considerable period before deepening chaos would have led to a total surrender under even worse terms and in a vastly worse atmosphere, than they eventually achieved'. Britain's objective was to secure 'the establishment of a stable and viable Zimbabwe looking towards the West for help'. To achieve this the Government appreciated that it would have to integrate that section of the nationalist movement which still retained the support of the masses. The key to the diplomats' success was their recognition that Mugabe and his ZANU-PF represented the best hope for stability in a capitalist Zimbabwe. The only question that remained was would Muge play the white man? ZANU-PF plays cricket The best people to answer that question are Mugabe's ministers themselves. Economic Planning Minister Tom Mswaba declared in a recent interview that guidelines for foreign investors were was ecessary Our national track record is much more important and that's something people can understand and judge us by. Our first job, really, is to establish confidence between the government and investors African Business December 1981) That's the sort of talk to keep the smile on Miles Hudson's face down on the farm.

But it's still a bit vague. Western commentators are still worried that Zimbabwe's potential will not be realised. Transport bottlenecks and a skilled labour shortage are major problems.

But they are dwarfed by the worry that the regime will not indefinitely be able to suppress Zimbabwean the people. The last budget pushed up taxation and inflation is cutting real wages. More direct attacks on strikers - called "traitors' by the Mugabe Government - have also taken place. Squatters, impatient at the pace of resettlement, have moved to government and whiteowned farming land and defied attempts to remove them. The euphoria of independence is vanishing but the militancy of the working class has not been dampened. Political meetings are on the increase. The regime has responded by breaking up rallies and campaigning for a oneparty state. This has nothing to do with the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is on the one hand the resolution of the bickering over the spoils of power that characterises petit-bourgeois politics. On the other hand it is a clamping down on all forms of working class politics.

Local Government Minister Eddison Zvobgo sums it up like this: *Reorganised ZANU-PF would simply leave no room for right-wing parties or left-wing opportunist groups that may want to cash in on our present situation where the party has had to make peace with progressive elements whose views the party does not necessarily share at all.' (Africa Research Bulletin, political and cultural section) The Observer recently reminded Rhodesian whites that their attempts to 'patch up' an anti- ZANU coalition are misplaced: 'they must be barmy; Mugabe is infinitely the greatest hope of stability Zimbabwe has'. While the bourgeoisie still fears the masses, it has high hopes for Zimbabwe in the 'eighties. Socialists should read Hudson's book and learn never to represent the sell-outs of what he calls the black elite' to imperialism as victories for the antiimperialist movement. Alan Harding

ARMAGH ABUSED

Margaretta D'Arcy, Tell them everything, Pluto, London, 1981, pp127, pbk £1.95.

THIS BOOK has two subjects. One is the heroic struggle of republican prisoners-of-war Armagh women's prison in the occupied Six Counties of Ireland. The women in Armagh have been through all the forms of protest for political status carried out by their male comrades in the H-Blocks. They have refused to succumb to Britain's criminalisation policy; they have refused to slop out in the prescribed manner and embarked on the 'dirty protest'; and they have gone on hunger strike to win their demands. They have all suffered terribly for their refusal to succumb to the barbarism of British imperialism in every aspect of their lives.

Where the character of this struggle emerges from the pages of Tell them everything, the book is interesting, moving and it makes you angry. What makes you even more angry is that the story of the Armagh women is throughout this book subordinated to its other subject - Margaretta D'Arcy. The author introduces her- Reviews

MAIREAD

FARRELL

RMAGHW

FOR

OPS OUL

GERSTRK

self with characteristic modesty as one of Ireland's 'few internationally-known playwrights' She spent more time and energy trying to get into Armagh prison than many people have, no doubt, spent trying to stay out of it. The book gives a full account of the squabbles among feminists and republicans that led to her three-month sojourn inside for non-payment of a fine incurred as a result of a vicious police attack on an International Women's Day picket of the prison in 1979. Her discussions with the prisoners reveal an encounter between a bourgeois Dubliner and working class northerners, as much as any clash between feminism and republicanism. However, it is the self-obsession of bourgeois feminism and its voyeuristic preoccupation with the physical aspects of the Armagh struggle, at the expense of its political content, that permeates D'Arcy's tale.

It is a pity the Armagh women could not tell everything to someone who could tell their story without obscuring it with all their owr petit-bourgeois prejudices. They richly deserve a better author than Margaretta D'Arcy.

Niamh Eardley

THE LIMITS

OF SOLIDARITY

Denis MacShane, Solidarity: Poland's independent trade union, Spokesman, 1981, pp172, pbk £3.50. THE SUPPRESSION of Solidarity in December will provoke many retrospective examinations of Poland's 'experiment' in free trade unionism.

Denis MacShane's shallow apologia for Lech Walesa and the growing bureaucracy in Solidarity in 1981 unwittingly provides a useful insight into the limitations of trade Union politics in Poland. MacShane explains the economic crisis in Poland as a reformist would explain the crisis in the capitalist West: as the result of waste, corruption, wrong investments and the capitalist recession. By focusing attention away from the problems inherent in the economic system in Poland, MacShane tries to make it appear as though the economy can be reformed without challenging the power of the Stalinist bureaucracy - despite all the empirical evidence to the contrary which he presents in his book. For, like so many union bureaucrats in the West, MacShane is an apologist for Stalinism East and West. As Alex Kitson said recently about the Soviet Union, they have economic planning. And I want control of the commanding heights of the economy here too' In fact, 'they' do not have planning. Like the bureaucracies in the other countries of Eastern Europe, the Polish state has been unable to raise productivity because without either a capitalist market or workers' control of production it is impossible to allocate resources rationally This much is becoming more obvious to many on the left in this country. What is not so continued on page 22 the next step, January 1982 21

Reviews continued from page 21 clear is how an alternative leadership can example, the Socialist Workers emerge. For Party's conception of how a revolutionary party could be built in Poland is for the radicals in Solidarity to start pressing for the structure of direct workers' delegates that makes up Solidarity to take over the running of the whole of society' (Socialist Review, November 1981).

The SWP proposes a programme with three key points: an end to privileges enjoyed by the mass of bureaucrats: an end to wasting six per cent or more of the output of the economy on Warsaw Pact forces designed to put down Solidarity-type movements; and an end sacrifices designed to help pay off loans to Western bankers. Whether or not any of the radicals' in Solidarity's leadership would wish to join a revolutionary party, such a party must be built independently of the trade unions - and independently, therefore, of any responsibility for the crisis. Instead of campaigning against the misuse of resources, it should put at the centre of its programme the demand for workers to overthrow the Stalinist state and establish their own armed dictatorship.

Moves Within Solidaritv last vear to achieve decentralisation of economic decision-making to the level of individual enterprises were a diversion: central control of the economy, as of the militia and the armed forces, will remain in the hands of the Stalinist state until that state is overthrown.

MacShane is right to argue that part of the explanation for Polish workers' respect for the Church results from the example it set in how to resist incorporation by a one-party state and Ireland under British rule, Church offered a spiritual national identity that provided solace to a people whose political selfexpression was denied by the foreign occupier'.

But in Poland the growth of the Church has also been a result of the bureaucracy's efforts to gain social support. In today's crisis Poland's rulers still rely on the Church to play its 'mediating' role. The Stalinist regimes of the Eastern bloc have survived, despite the weakness of their economic systems, through continuous political and economic compromise with imperialism which ensured them a relatively stable place within the world division of labour. At the same time the bureaucrats were able successfully to put down opposition from the working class. But now things are cracking up. Capitalist crisis in the West means that the bureaucrats of the Fast have less and less room for man oeuvre in staving off the collapse of their own economies. And throughout Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland, the working class is putting up increasing resistance to the austerity measures the regimes, backed up by the Soviet bureaucracy, are demanding.

Any new movement for workers' revolution in the countries of the Eastern bloc today must settle scores with the bureaucracy. In so far as Solidarity accepted responsiblity for the problems of the economy it became tarred with the sordid brush of Stalinism, Only arevolutionary party can free Poland of domination by the Soviet Union and guard against imperialism.

Gareth Evans 22 the next step, January 1982

ENGLAND MAY

KEEP FAITH?

Jack Holland, Too long a sacrifice: life and death in Northern Ireland since 1969, Dodd Mead, New York, 1981, pp217 (distributed in Britain by Colombus books, £7.95).

JACK HOLLAND is a journalist who was born and raised in Belfast. His family is predominantly Catholic, although a Protestant grandfather resulted in some relations across the religious divide. Holland's book is a journalistic account of the troubles weaved around their impact or his own family as it traversed the sectarian geography of Belfast, from the Markets, to the Loyalist Rathcoole, to the republican Falls and finally to nationalist Andersonstown.

For the most part it is a well-exécuted book.

Written for an American readership - Holland apparently could not find a British publisher it contains a few curious Americanisms (powersharing he describes as a kind of political affirmative action program'). However, Too long a sacrifice provides a useful introduction to the events of the last 13 years, covering developments in the War and British strategy, and the changing character of republican and Loyalist He communicates a organsatoes. sense of the poverty and harshness of working class life in Belfast and something of the deep suffering of its people through more than a Especially poignant are the decade of war. letters written to the author after he left Belfast from his parents still surviving in the city. Well, everything is quiet at home, concludes one note from his father, 'except for the assas sinations which we are getting used to again."

Who are the sectarians? In one of the most interesting chapters of his book, "Identity crisis, Holland examines the outlook of the Loyalist paramilitaries.

though his analysis is narrowly psychological, he does go some way towards explaining the peculiar virulence of Protestant sectarianism.

The Catholic in Belfast can understand his poverty as a result of British oppression; but the poor Protestant cannot - hence the elements of self hatred and hopelessness in the Loyalist mentality. The Catholic turns his anger against the representatives of the British state in the Six Counties = Unionist politicians, British soldiers, the RUC and UDR - as a means of bringing his oppression to an end. The deprived Loyalist's anger is turned on the Catholics, victims identified as deserving of their oppression, towards whom the Loyalist paramilitaries display a ritualistic brutality and a characteristic desire to degrade and humiliate.

Sectarian violence in Belfast is typically a Protestant response towards Catholics. Holland, who is currently working on a history of the Ulster Defence Association, exposes the direct involvement of that organisation in 400 sectarian murders in Belfast between 1972 and 1977. Undoubtedly there have been killings of Protestants by Catholics in Ireland; but sect arian assassination has never been the policy of any republican organisation. The IRA's attacks have always been directed at the Army and the police, and at economic targets. By contrast, random sectarian killings have, for long periods, been the central activity of the UDA. While the IRA numbers hundreds of enemy officers as its victims, the UDA can claim to have killed only one Provisional in its long and grisly murder campaign. It is important to establish what 'sectarianism' really means in Belfast because of the widespread belief in Britain, not least on the British left, in the essential equivalence of Protestant and Catholic sectarianism tsalsa important to establish, as Holland fails to do, the dependence of the Loyalist mentality on the British occupation of Ireland.) Take the latest issue of the Communist Party's theoretical journal Marxism Today, which carries 'exclusive interviews with the UDA and the Provisionals as though they were symmetrical organisations In fact, the first is an organisation which has been responsible for the torture and barbaric killing of hundreds of ordinary Irish Catholics, tor no otner reason than the region. ine second is an organisation which is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of soldiers and policemen in the struggle to end British rule in Ireland. The fact that Marxism Today treats the UDA's Andy Tyrie and John McMichael while presenting Sinn Fein's sycophantically, Danny Morrison in an unsympathetic manner, only makes its interviews even more offensive.

Brits Out! British socialists should read Holland's account of the UDA and treat organisations which equate this pro-imperialist murder gang with an anti-imperialist army with the contempt they They should, however, be more sus deserve. picious of his political conclusions which are essentially those of a British liberal.

In his final chapter, Holland surveys the possible scenarios for a solution to the Irish War. His conclusion is that a British withdrawal is the only long-term hope. But because he misstays in understands why Britain Ireland, he underestimates what will be necessary to force it to withdraw. Britain has been fighting a war in Ireland since 1969, not because, as Holland thinks. it 1s concerned about what might happen in Ireland if it pulls out, but because it fears what might happen in Britain upon the break-up of the United Kingdom and the British state itself. Britain will thus fight in Ireland until it is defeated - either there, or at home, more likely, both. Holland's Or, solution, ad mits, is futuristic'; but by he crediting Britain with the potential to play a progressive role in Ireland, his perspective undermines the struggle that must go on today to drive British barbarism out of Ireland. For England may keep faith For all that is done and said, wrote Yeats in the poem (Easter 1916) from which Holland has taken the title of his book. That England may keep faith with Ireland is a myth that has dogged the Irish independence movement far too long.

Unfortunately, it is a myth perpetuated by Jack Holland's book. Mick Kennedy

WAS MOSLEY

A BENNITE?

Andrew Gamble, Britain in decline, Macmillan Press, London, 1981, pp279, pbk £6.95 BRITISH ACADEMIC Marxism is famous for its diffuse argumentation and shoddy research.

Perhaps that's why academic Marxism has become so popular in the social science departments of British universities. Gamble has turned inconclusive generalisations into an art form.

In Britain in decline he presents the reader with reverse the decline of numerous strategles to British capitalism. . Gamble faithfully presents some of the arguments for and against the different strategies. But where does Gamble stand? Here we need a private detective.

The facade of objective commentary absolves Gamble from taking responsibility for his point of view. Gamble supports the Alternative Economic Strategy (AES). Unlike many supporters of the AES, Gamble is fully concsious of its chauvinist character. He correctly links the AES with the tradition of the social imperialist movement of Joseph Chamberlain around the turn of the century and the British Union of Fascists in the 'thirties.

However he doesn't openly argue for this tradition. He makes his sympathies known in little asides: The failure of first social imperialism and then fascism in Britain to change the liberal world orientation of the Kritish state made the subordination of Britain to the United States inevitable after 1945.

Britain had adopted If only economic nationalist measures she could still be Great.

But there is still hope for budding economic nationalists: Gamble welcomes the AES as 'the first clear sign for a generation that serious strategic thinking. about socialism has reemerged on the British left. And in case anybody is worried about the AES's link with British reaction, Gamble assures us It is more radical than anything envisaged by Joseph Chamberlain or Oswald Mosley'.

This radical strategy turns out to be a rehash of economic nationalism combined with a good dose of corporatism. Through protectionism Britain would cut itself off from the world economy and foreign capitalists would be kept out. Patriotic trade policy is supplemented by patriotic calss consensus. There would be full employment and of course an incomes policy.

And trade unions? Well, trade unions wouldn't he trade unions anv more Trade unions would have to be fully incorporated into the national planning system, their privileges and powers as independent organisations in return for participation in the making and implementation of economic policy.' In other words, unions would become part of the civil service, not the defensive organisations of the working class. Gamble delicately adds: Whether such a transition would be an easy one is another matter Having indicated where his sympathies lie, Gamble retreats into a confused discussion of what may or may not be possible and what may or may not be desirable. Emulating the Gamble talks in riddles and Delphic Oracle, the proverb The dogs may conculces with bark but the caravan moves on. Too true Frank Richards

Sad about the Bomb* AS A READER of the next step, I almost always find myself in agreement with your policies and tactics. No Marxist could disagree with your analysis of capitalism in your recent article on CND ('No peaceful road", the next step, No 18, November 1981). But wrong conclusions have been drawn from this analysis.

The weaknesses and limited objectives of CND have long been recognised by the Marxists that work within it. Even its leaders make no claim to be able to achieve immunity from the effects of a nuclear conflict by striving for a nuclear-free Europe. Nevertheless, the appeal for a nuclear-free zone is meeting with a tremendous response and it would be foolish to ignore the fact that, by aiming for this, we can generate class conflict. NATO is crumbling - and the fact that we cannot be assured of lasting world peace until capitalism has been destroyed does not mean that we must sit back and wait for another imperialist slaughter to break out. You suggest that the top priority is to unite the working class against unemployment and wage cuts.

But this is easier said than done: unemployment is quite accentable to man workers (particularly those over 50 years of age), and indeed workers can often be seen falling over one another to sack themselves and get redun- Moréover, as a result of media dancy pay. propaganda, many workers have demonstrated their willingness to accept wage cuts to 'save' their factories. Hardly a sign of working class resistance to capitalism.

The fact cannot be escaped that capitalism still offers a fat living for many millions of workers compared with that in the so-called communist countries. The only viable option we are left with is to generate class conflict on the basis of the genuine concern that millions of workers feel about the arms race, nuclear weapons and survival, Organise a demonstration against unemployment and wage cuts and one meets with a very poor response. On the other hand, a demonstration against nuclear weapons can bring half a million people onto the streets.

Is it correct for communists to remain aloof from the struggles of the peace movement, which is making rapid advances? Or would it not be better to join in and help whip up the struggle for the goal we all desire?

Neil Fisher Newport Gwent *This letter has been shortened.

We don't agree that fighting for a nuclear-free zone generates class conflict. It's not just that such a zone is, as our correspondent hints, a mirage; it's also that disarmament is, by its We can't sit back', our correspondent says.

Precisely. But class conflict is in fact generated todav's recession - and incidentallv. in much greater measure than our correspondent imagines. Where we come in is to direct that conflict in such a way that workers prepare, politically and organisationally, to disarm the bourgeoisie and thus prevent a nuclear war, In contrast to the overwhelmingly middle class membership of CND, workers care more about their immediate livelihoods than about a future war. We therefore intervene on issues like jobs and wages, but we do so using propaganda that points to the need for a violent, internationalist Insofar as workers remain unprepared to resist redundancies and cuts in living standards, that is the fault of their leaders - leaders whose public nightmares about the holocaust to come square only too well with their contempt for the rank and file, its "apathy, etc. CND is part of the very problem our correspondent is so pessimistic about. It isn't part of the solution.

THE POLYTECHNIC OF CENTRAL LONDON

SWP tries harder, could do better FOLLOWING THEIR initial refusal to support an occupation against cuts (see 'U-turn at PCL', the next step, No 19, December 1981), SWP students at the Polytechnic of Central London have continued to prevaricate over the struggle there. Once the Students' Union had, at the instigation of supporters of the next step, agreed to occupy, the SWP argued that action should he down the contined to shutting Poly's administration. Our proposal that courses should be closed too as a mark of our determination would, it said, 'antagonise people. Likewise, when police raids on the occupation were in the offing, the SWP. came out in favour of individual "passive resistance' rather than disciplined defiance of the state (a militant, arms-linked departure from the building). The consequences of the SWP line were soon clear for all to see. When the police broke the at Sam •One two.week.ono occunation , - complete with roving video cameras morning - "passive resistance' was of little use. Four Iranian students, the Union general secretary and a supporter of the next step were arrested.

Now, too, the college Rector has taken a leaf out of the SWP's book and attacked the Union for closing the building down. Instead of closure being a thing to be proud of, it's now, thanks to the SWP, a source of guilt among many students. Despite SWP sabotage, however, both a new occupation and a national campaign against the cuts at PCL have been bianned tor the new term. Sympathisers of the RCP will be arguing for an all-out strike; hopefully, after a rest at Christmas, SWP members will improve their performance next term.

Farouk

PCL

What's in a word? THE NEXT STEP is the best paper I have read, Not only does it show up the left for what it is (and for what it isn't), it also provides an alternative to this milieu, by putting forward the Marxist revolutionary Communsm tradition in a way that I and many other workers can relate to. Political your journalistic content apart, presentation is on the whole to your credit, especially compared with that of other leftwing papers. But I do have some criticisms, There seems to be a temptation to display your obvious grammatical intellect, and to use unnecessarily obscure words. Take the next step, No 19: "pusillanimous, 'obdurate', 'pernicious, 'erudite' 'amorphous, "vignettes". These may be words familiar to those who have had a good bourgeois caucation, but i car assure you they are not to those who you political message is ultimately aimed at, the working class. I hope you take my point. Keep up the good work. A reader London James Wood writes: We refuse to talk down to workers. To organise a socialist society the working class must master all aspects of bourgeois culture - 'unfamiliar words included. And any worker who has thought about life at all wants his or her children to have what our correspondent calls "a good bourgeois education.

Marxism is a science and, like all branches of natural science, has had to develop a specialised vocabulary in order to describe reality. There is no way round words like 'proletariat', labour- "imperialism. However, what our power' or correspondent objects to is not the use of technical terms of Marxism, the but the employment of 'normal' words with which he is unacquainted. We take this as a compliment.

The aim of the next step is to acquaint workers with things they don't know: our articles are written to be thought about, not digested in a minute and then forgotten. The same goes for our words. We don't try to be difficult, but if our paper makes militants go out and buy a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary, so much the better. Bani-Sadr and the Kurds YOUR ARTICLE on 'Khomeini's chaos' (the next step, No 19, December 1981) misses the fundamental point. It is no good trying to keep politics "pure' and intact. We all know our Bani-Sadr's record from the past and he himself has recognised many of his errors.

The important point to see is that so long as Bani-Sadr is involved in the National Council of Resistance he cannot be used by the reactionary forces. It is utopian to criticise the policy of building such a broad front because if these forces are not with us, they will be with Khomeini. As for the Kurds, at no time have they ever asked for independence. The Kurdistan Demo crat Party, which is now in the NCR, has always letters put forward the slogan Democracy for Iran, autonomy for Kurdistan'. Nobody in Kurdistan supports your demand for self-determination.

Mansour Liverpool nez anda writes. Even if we accept that Bani-Sadr has realised the mistakes he made in the past and has become a friend of the people, the Mojaheddin still call for an alliance with all sections of the population from the peasants through to the national bourgeoisie. And this alliance accepts the terms of the bourgeois forces. Of course revolutionaries accept the need for alliances with other classes - particularly with the peasantry and petit bourgeoisie - but not at of their expense maependent polluca The stand of the NCR over Kurdistan indicates that the Mojaheddin has accepted the VieW ol the iranian bourgeoise on kurdisr It is not for us to say whether autonomy. or not the Kurds should have autonomy or But revseparation - that is their choice. olutionaries have a duty to support the right of the Kurds to self-determination, even if they choose not to exercise it. Without accepting this right, the Kurds (and other national minorities) are being denied the possibility of exercising their full democratic rights.

They can't rub me out Because I recently agreed to put my name plus the words Manchester Trades Unior Council, in a personal capacity' on a list of sponsors of a Smash the Prevention of Terrorism Act Campaign initiative, the executive committee of Manchester Trades Councit has promised to use the Rule 12 against me should I repeat my crime. Rule 12 states that no Trades Council delegate shall be allowed to associate his or her name with any movement without permission, and that the whatever' names of those who do 'shall be erased from une register This manoeuvre is clearly a trial run for country-wide attempts by Congress House to silence opposition to its policy on Ireland Co have taken advantage of the Murray & fact that Manchester Trades Council already has a rule on its books that approximates to what they want every trades council to adopt. I am going to carry on fighting for my right, as a British trade unionist to support the Irish struggle, and to campaign in the trade union movement to win others to do the same I hope other trade unionists who come up against censorship will also reject it.

Alan H (TGWU, in a personal capacity) Manchester After Rule 12 - Rule 14 I AM WRITING in the aftermath of a Trades Council meeting in Middlesborough. main topic was affiliation to Workers Against Briefly what happened was this. A Racism. WAR speaker skilfully put the case for affiliation and following the example of East London WAR (physical defence of blacks against racist attacks, resistance to deportations and police harassment, etc. He also - in my view correctly - stated that he was a member of the RCP.

This woke the old hacks of the Trades Council They quoted Model Rules for Trades UD. Councils' No 14, which states that in no circumstances' shall Trades Councils 'subscribe to the funds of any organisation whose policies or activities are contrary to those of Congress, ie the TUC. Then they got the issue of affiliation referred to the executive.

Personally speaking there is no way that the matter will end if the executive rejects affiliation. I will mobilise support on the Trades Council and among other trade unionists to keep the pressure up. A working class unable to defend itself on racism will be unable to fight the bosses when they go on the offensive more belligerently than they have done.

Gerald K (ASTMS) Redcar Cleveland the next step, January 1982 23

COVENTRY

COVENTRY

Picket of Coventry Magistrates Court in support of youth in 13 July riots. Drop all charges!

Stop the criminalisation of black youth! Thursday 11 February, 10am. Bayley Lane. RCP public meeting. No to the Scarman Report. Smash all immigration contols! 14 January, 7.30pm. Student Union building, Warwick University.

EAST LONDON

Poland: the tanks move in. 13 January, 7.30pm. Dalston Labour Club, Dalston Lane, E8. Film and discussion: Rosie the Riveter. 11 February, 7.30pm.

Dalston Laböur Club, Dalston

RCP ACTIVITIES

Lane, E8.

IRELAND

Easter 1982 Youth Delegation to Ireland. Friday 9-Monday April. Further details from: Box Exchange 33, Corn Hanging Ditch, Manchester M4 3BD, or phone 01-274 3951.

RACISM

Manchester Workers Against Racism conference on fighting racism in the NHS and DHSS: 'Cleansing our ranks. 13 March 1982. UMIST, Sackville Street, Manchester, Delegates: union: £2; individuals: £1.

Bloody Sunday

COMMEMORATION MARCH

31 JANUARY 1982

Runicing Catureav ~time for 10am-5pm

LONDON

South London Smash the PTA Campaign Mobilising Committee meetings: • Monday 4 January • Monday 18 January Lambeth Town Hall, Room 2, Acre Lane, Brixton. 8pm. South London Smash the PTA Campaign film showing: PATRIOT GAME'. Ritzy. Cinema, Coldharbour Lane, Brixton.

Sunday 24 January. Phone 274 3951 to confirm venue.

Bloody Sunday coaches leave from Lambeth Town Hall (Brixton tube) at 9am. North London Smash the PTA Campaign Mobilising Committee meetings • Tuesday 5 January • Tuesday 19 January Camden Labour Club, 4 Carol Street, NW1. 8pm Bloody Sunday social. Video of 274 3951. Kilburn Square at 9am South East Library Smash the Prevention of Terrorism Act Campaign National labour movement conference Ireland British Saturday 6 February 1982 Caxton House, St John's Way, London N19 EVENING: Concert for Irish Freedom East London Junction). 7pm.

COVENTRY

ping centre.

THE

Avenue.

MANCHESTER

LEEDS

Bloody Sunday, music. Saturday 23 January, 8pm. Details from Bloody Sunday coaches leave Leeds 7. from Camden tube at 8.45am and step sellers. Smash the Prevention of Terrorism Act Campaign Public Rally 'Bloody Sunday - ten years on' Thursday 28 January 1982, 7.30pm Essex Road, London N1

WURKERS

MARCH

FOR

IRISH FREE

workers to act Smash the PTA Campaign Mobilising Committee meetings • Wednesday 6 January • Wednesday 20 January Dalston Labour Club, Dalston Lane, London E8 (near Dalston

BLOODY SUNDAY ACTIVITIES

Mobilising Committee street rallies. Every Saturday 11-1pm • 9 January. Bell Green shop- 16 January. Gosford Green.

Pounds • 23 January. Four • 30 January. Foleshill Road/ Station Street junction. Public rally. 22 January, 7.30pm The Railway Pub, Boston Place, Lockhurst Lane, Coventry.

Smash the PTA Campaign Mobilising Committee meeting • Thursday 14 January, 6pm Room 5, Students Union, Manchester University. Smash the PTA Campaign Mobilising Committee meeting Turday 14 Sanuary, 730pm Leeds Trades Club, Savile Mount, For details of coach write to: Cookridge Box LAP RCP, Street, Leeds 2. Or see the next