The Next Step: No. 26, July–August 1982

the next step review of the Revolutionary Communist Party

OUT:

BLAC

• 8 W

TOGETHER...

WE CAN WIN

RACISM DIVIDES AND WEAKENS THE WORKING CLASS

IF THE UNIONS DON'T FIGHT RACISM THEY WON'T FIGHT ANYTHING

MARCH TO THE TUC!

TURN THE UNIONS INTO FIGHTING ANTI-RACIST ORGANISATIONS

•

WORKERS MARCH

AGAINST RACISM

LONDON -TUC IN BRIGHTON

4-8 SEPTEMBER

WAR FEVER - Malvinas, Lebanon, Soviet Union • STRIKING OUT - in the hospitals, on the railways

the next step Forty percent of British people opposed Britain's war against Argentina; 44 per cent supported Argentina's claim to sovereignty over the Malvinas.

cent were in favour of Britain's defeat.

These are the remarkable findings of an opinion poll specially commissioned by the next step at the height of the war in the South Atlantic. THE SURVEY covered a representative cross-section of council housing estates in London, Manchester, Coventry and Sheffield. In all, questionnaires were answers showed a consistent pattern in all areas of the country, as the pooled figures indicate. at home and abroad. £4 for 12 issues send to BCM JPLTD, London WCIN 3XX.

Contents Editorial Labour's crisis - workers' opportunity 3 Malvinas Opinion poll Propaganda war Ireland Britain's other war Labour saves Prior's neck Irish neutrality 2 the next step, July/August 1982

WEST

FALKLAND

And 16 per Birmingham, task force 257 completed. The the Malvinas. prising y 16 per cent, Make cheques payable to Junius Publications and 'Forget the war' DeLorean delusions Stuff Jellicoe NALGO stalls again Labour movement Women Rulecan overruled Gay rights 'Defective characters' Racism They shall not be moved Workers March Imperialism Heading for war

UNEVEN

SUPPORT

FOR

'OUR

BOYS'

Do you support Britain's war to regain Malvinas/Falklands?

Do you think Argentina has a legitimate claim to the islands?

Are you in favour of Britain's defeat in this war? Do you believe media reports on the war? Our survey suggests that the extent of working class support for the war claimed by Tory spokesmen, bourgeois commentators and radicals alike has been greatly exaggerated. Official opinion polls claimed 70-80 per cent backing for Britain.

In our survey, less than half supported the and even less, 37 percent, thought Britain had a legitimate claim to Most significantly, a surminority of the poll, large wanted to see actually Britain defeated by Argentina.

6 -smash the PTA British rail, London Transport Hazards for health workers 10 10 11 12,13 It's the same the whole world over 14 15 The next step opinion surveyon the South Atlantic war

EAST

FALKLAND

A

DARWIN

Yes (%) No (%) 127 (49) 104 (40) 96 (37) 114 (44) 40 (16) 193 (75) 24 78 (30) 143 (56) The British left has been outraged by the jingoism of the popular press during the war and is regularly to be found lamenting its pernicious influence on working class opinion. (It is, after all, easier to moan about the pro-imperialism of the bourgois media than it is to fight for an anti-imperialist position through the media of the left.) But our survey shows that the left need not depressed about The Sun and the BBC working class consciousness: perverting most workers don't believe a word of it.

the paper that supports our class Soviet Union encircled Rape of Lebanon After Khomeini's victory Europe French U-turn Reviews Rousset on the Soviet Union Costello and the Sticks Moscow and Dusseldorf Labour and mass politics Coote and Campbell Gorky Park Letters Before the storm New Statesman defended Off our backs RCP Activities

STANLEY

Don't know (%) 26 (10) "The Falkland 47 (18)

SERTUSE

naturally (9) 36 (14) of the war. the war 15,16 17 18 19 Editor Mike Freeman 21 Editorial board 21 21 22 James Wood 23 23 23 23 23 24

IS 0144-350X

Argies red cra ship co THE Argentines may be phoney Pheir garrison on the Falkia hospital The Task Force have been v the the lookout for • Bahia Paraiso which is b be inside the 200-mile war The junta transport ship ha: paintec on her side claimed sue is peng usea te reasons only. But t troops and supples to t navy have beer to board her if sighted.

QUEEN

LASHES

ARGIES

Continued from Page One ing shown b people. the cause of freedom. dent: conflict In the the honesty Islands skill with performed we are as ally and proud the Well over half our sample, 56 percent, said they did not believe media reports the next step survey, like all the best opinion polls, confirms our suspicions.

Far from being swept by of a wave jingoism, most workers were ambivalent towards the South Atlantic war. While the gutter press whipped up support for among the most right-wing sections of the working class, there remained a large body of opinion which opposed the war. There is an audience for anti-imperialist politics in Britain: what it requires is leadership as determined and decisive as that given by Margaret Thatcher to British chauvinists.

Nick Jenkins Editorial board Tony Allen, Nick Jenkins, Judy Harrison, Sabena Norton, Marcelle Reynolds, Frank Richards, Helen Simons, Published by Junius Publications Ltd BCM JPLTD, London WCIN 3XX Printed by Morning Litho Printers Ltd (TU) Typeset by Junius Publications Ltd (TU) July/August 1982

-workers' opportunity THE SOUTH ATLANTIC war has speeded up the polarisation of British society.

The Conservative Government, having pursued a consistent policy and ruthlessly implemented it, is now enjoying the fruits of victory. The Tories have rallied middle class and substantial working class backing, to give them broader popular support than at any time since their election to office in 1979. The Social Democratic Party has been marginalised and the Labour Party seems to have been precipitated into terminal decline.

Labour won no credit for its vacillations over the war. The right supported the war - but always wanted the softer military option. Some of the left opposed all the military options, demanding that the war be fought with economic sanc- All sections of the party took tions. refuge at the United Nations, which they wanted to fight the war on Britain's behalf. This approach provided no alternative either for the Government or the labour movement. The ruling class confident of military victory, so was less? Workers wanted why settle for answers to the Tory justifications for the war and a strategy for stopping it.

Labour is paying the price for its irrelevance in declining electoral support.

The squeeze on Labour Tory The triumphant re-conquest of the Malvinas has compounded the longstanding problems in the Labour Party resulting from the impact of the reces- The plight of British sion. desperate capitalism dictates a hard-line attack on the working class. The Government leads a relentless drive to shake out jobs, hold down wages and curb trade union rights. As we see on the railways see page 7), it is a strategy that leaves little scope for the labour bureaucracy to carry out its traditional functions of mediation and conciliation between employers and workers. On the other hand the severity of the onslaught has thrown the working class on the defensive. Under the burden of three or four million unemployed, the trade unions and the Labour Party appear increasingly useless to many workers. While many are still ready to take on the fight for jobs and wages, others have become cynical about the future. The most striking feature of Labour's crisis is its crisis of leadership. After his performance over the Malvinas, Michael Foot commands respect neither in the country nor in his own party. But the pathetic figure of Foot conceals a deeper crisis of policy. In his recent attempt to rally support for his position, Foot commended Labour's realistic policies for economic expansion'. But the depth of Britain's crisis means that Labour's schemes of state intervention to revive the national economy have little hope of even Labour's policy makers

SUCCESS.

unable to take them seriously. seem There has been a steady retreat from the more optimistic aspects of the 'alternative economic strategy?. Even on some of its more popular clear signs there policies, are already of the party backing down. Even though Britain's humiliation by the EEC over the common agricultural policy opens up new possibilities for mobilising populist hostility to Europe, Labour's increasingly sober realism holds it back. Leading leftwinger Eric Heffer and AES theoretician Bob Rowthorn have both recognised that the EEC is vital for British capitalism and that immediate withdrawal is not a viable proposition. And while CND can still mobilise hundreds of thousands for nuclear disarmament, Foot hedged at a conference whether press Labour's next manifesto would contain pledges to close American nuclear bases and to block the siting of cruise missiles in Britain. Britain's defence needs in an increasingly insecure world weigh heavily on Labour's patriotic disarmers.

Left in a mess The Militant Tendency is the unfortunate victim of the build-up of bourgeois pressure on the Labour Party in the absence of any significant countervailing influence on the party from the working class.

Militant exemplifies the plight of the Labour left. It is constrained within the Labour Party, having to take responsibility for its past and present failures and all its reactionary policies. But it cannot exist independently of the Labour Party. Hence Militant's cringing response to the recent National Executive decision to introduce a list of approved organisations, for which Militant, as presently constituted, would not qualify. Its leaders indicated their willingness to do virtually anything short of appointing Roy Hattersley as editor of Militant to preserve their parasitic relationship to the Labour Party.

The weakness of the Labour left is borne out by its endorsement of the So far both witchhunt against Militant.

the Labour Coordinating Committee and Tribune have acquiesced to the new approved list, effectively backing Foot's drive to expel Militant. Inside the party, the left is isolated and impotent.

Tony Benn could only swing a couple of dozen MPs to his anti-war posture; his attempts to commit the Labour Party to the abolition of the House of Lords or to a detailed debate on the next manifesto at Conference were defeated by Foot.

Outside the party the left has failed to establish a relationship with any section of the working class. Last year the Labour Coordinating Committee launched a drive to build in the unions and to set up workplace branches. Nothing came of this strategy, not surprisingly, in view of its support for incomes policy and its deference to the trade union leaders. This year the LCC has adopted a new tack: it has given up on the working class in a turn to try to consolidate Labour's new base the liberal, state employed the next step Labour's crisis professional middle classes (the LCC's Labour and mass politics is reviewed on page 22). The new approach is a synthesis of Liberal Party community politics and the broad democratic platitudes of Eurocommunism. This might some support for the Labour salvage Party - it won't do anything for the working class. Downturn to despair What remains of the left outside the Labour Party is just as dependent as the entryists on the survival of their ailing host. As the Labour Party has shifted to the right over the past couple of years, the left has continually restricted its activity within the bounds of what is acceptable to the labour bureaucracy. The debacle of the left's response to the South Atlantic war - when it refused to mobilise any movement against British imperialism independent of the pro-imperialist positions of the Labour left - is the outcome of a long process of collaboration. The Socialist Workers Party provides the clearest example of the demoralisation of the radical left. Ever since the Tories won the last election it has been lamenting 'the downturn' in working class militancy, sucking up to the Labour left and proclaiming that now is not the time' to take independent initiatives.

When Irish hunger strikers were dying last year, the SWP decided that the time was not right to build an Irish solidarity campaign in Britain. As racial attacks from the state and from racists and fascists have mounted, the SWP has run down the Anti-Nazi League. While the offensive on women's rights gathered momentum, it seized the time to disband its Women's Voice groups. Even the Right to Work Campaign's activities have been strictly tailored to fit into the token protests against unemployment organised by the TUC, the Communist Party and the Labour Party Young Socialists.

The SWP's latest response to the downturn' is to abandon its 'rank and file groups in the unions. As Tony, Cliff argues in the latest issue of Socialist Review 'you can't have a rank and file movement if the factories are empty. Cliff sternly admonishes his members for their efforts to build the party through trade union activity. Now is not the time for such ambitious work - he has much more humble aims: If we stop pretending that we are some thing bigger than we really are, we will actually become more enthusiastic socialists and better trade unionists.' Now is not the time to build a party in opposition to Labour - Cliff wants to limit the SP's perspectives to what is necessary to keep up the enthusiasm and basic trade union activity of the members. The abject pessimism of the British left is totally unjustified. The crisis of the Labour Party opens up enormous opportunities for building a working class alternative to labourism. Labour's lack of confidence in its basic policies, the degree of fragmentation of its organisation and its enormous loss of working class support all indicate better conditions for challenging reformism than have existed for half a century. Now is the time In the trade union field, the recent spate of strikes in the public sector shows that workers are ready to take on the Government - and their union officials to defend their living standards. The posi tive response of workers in the NHS dispute to the politics of the RCP (see pages 8 and 9) reveal the potential for breaking the conservative grip of the bureaucracy on major sections of the working class More importantly, the South Atlantic war has shown the growing significance of international issues for domestic politics. The Falklands factor' may have helped the Tories in the short-term; but as our opinion poll reveals there is a crucial section of working class opinion that is open to anti-imperialist politics.

Instead of trying to give a lead to the more class-concious workers, the left, terrified of being isolated, chose to hang in there with the Labour left. Every radical left group still hopes that some of the mould will crumble in its direction. Over the Malvinas the radical left fudged its formal anti-imperialist positions and proclaimed to the world a hysterical anti- Thatcherism and a soft pacifism. This was the price of unity with the Labour left. The result was that the radical left was dragged along behind the Labour Party's patriotic non-opposition to the war. The confusion of working class opinion was compounded and potential resistance to the was paralysed. Wall Nothing could expose better the dead end of the radical left's 'united front' approach to the Labour Party.

As the Labour Party stagnates and the witchhunt gathers momentum the left will concentrate its energies on trying to save the Labour Party. But who needs the Labour Party? The tremendous response to the Workers March Against Racism from throughout the labour movement shows that it is possible to win support for working class politics from working class people. We desperately need a party that will really fight for working class interests in the grim times that lie ahead. If we can build such a party now, why waste time and energy trying to salvage a party that has consistently betrayed working class inte rests from the day it was founded?

The Workers March Against Racism will provide the main focus for RCP activity throughout the summer. The Preparing for Power conference in Sep.

tember will provide a forum for discussion of the great issues of war and the class struggle today. Join us!

THE MALVINAS ARE ARGENTINA'S

THE PROPAGANDA WAR

The Falkland Islands: the facts, HMSO, 50p, pp12. The Workers Revolutionary Party, Defeat enemy is at British imperialism: the home!; 30p, pp16. Anthony Arblaster, The Falklands: Thatcher's Labour's Socialist war, guilt, Society, 90p, pp19. Ted Grant, Falklands crisis: a socialist answer, Militant, 15p, pp7.

THE GOVERNMENT'S pamphlet The Falkland Islands: the facts is boldly produced presented. and confidently It contains a clear advocacy of the interests of the British ruling class. This is how it begins: The invasion of the Falkland Islands by Argentine Armed Forces on 2 April, followed by the military occupation of South Georgia, was an act of unprovoked aggression - a clear violation of international law and of the fundamental principles of settlement of disputes by peaceful means and of self-determination of peoples, both of which are enshrined in the UN Charter.' And this is how it ends: *Britain remains fully committed to the search for a diplomatic solution to the crisis, which is obviously preferable to military confrontation. Nevertheless, failing such a solution, Britain is fully justified in exercising her inherent right. Her use of military force is governed by the principles of necessity and the use of force proportionate to the threat, as British forces required by international law.

deployed with the sole limited objective of securing, with minimum casualties on both sides, the withdrawal of Argentine forces from the Islands, as called for by Security Council Resolution 502. They form part of the graduated pressure - diplomatic, economic and military - to induce Argentina to return to the negotiating table.' This sums up the arguments with which Thatcher won the war at home hands down. When we turn to look at some of the opposition we begin to see why it was so easy. 'British imperialism = Thatcher' The best of the three left-wing pamphlets is the WRP's. It begins by claiming, with typical bombast, to be 'the only political organisation in the workers' movement to totally oppose the Thatcher Government's imperialist aggression against Argentina'. This is true in the same sense as the Stalinists' claim that the Morning Star is the 'only daily paper of the left.

The strength of the pamphlet is its grasp of some of the ABCs of the Marxist tradition which the rest of the left cannot.

Britain is an imperialist comprehend: country, Argentina is a country dominated by imperialism, British socialists should, therefore, support Argentina against Britain whatever the nature of the Argentine regime. So far so good.

The great weakness of the pamphlet, however, now it tries to blur the distinction formal antiits between 4 the next step, July/August 1982

LET US

GO FORWARD

TOGETHER

imperialist position and the outlook of left-wingers in the Labour Party who opposed Thatcher's but war strategy broadly endorsed British objectives in the South Atlantic. It achieves this by redefining British imperialism as the Thatcher Government. By focusing on the personality of Margaret Thatcher, whose photograph features prominently on the front of this pamphlet, the WRP gives credibility to the only visible alternative government - the pro-imperialist Labour Party. The WRP often appears paranoiac and slightly zany. Towards the end of this pamphlet it issues the following sombre warning: Thatcher is assembling the nucleus of a junta in Britain; her inner cabinet. high-ranking Whitehall officials, the service chiefs and chief constables and her ardent supporters in the suburbs. Her aim is to weld these elements into a force which will follow in the footsteps of the notorious German 'Frei Corps' - the predecessors of the SS. However, while the WRP talks big about the need for a workers' revolutionany government based on community councils, its real objectives are much more down to earth. The emphasis of this pamphlet is on the need to oust the Tories; they could then be replaced by a Labour Party in which the WRP's idols Ted Knight and Ken Livingstone and others of their ilk would play a major role. But this would not bring any nearer the defeat of British imperialism which this pamphlet urges in its title. The proimperialist politics of the Labour left would ensure that Britain's domination of the backward capitalist world remained secure. Academic chauvinism The worst of these pamphlets is that written by Anthony Arblaster for the Socialist Society. The Socialist Society is a discussion circle newly set up by the editorial board of the New Left Review: it incorporates the British children of May '68, now rapidly reaching senility, the feminist fragments, some left-behind Eurocommunists and all the clapped-out intellectuals of British The South socialism. Atlantic war has provided an early opportunity for the Socialist Society to demonstrate just how degenerate and reactionary academic Marxism has become.

The Socialist Society goes almost all the way with the Tories. It agrees that Argentina guilty was of unprovoked aggression and it upholds the rights of the Falkland Islanders to self-determination The beginning and the end of its criticism of the war is that the British response was out of proportion to the injury suffered and the objectives desired: *Clearly something had to be done to ensure the safety of the islanders, who could hardly feel secure under a regime such as Argentina's'. But if not the fleet, then what? Arblaster is silent.

As the pamphlet's introduction reminds us, it

MALVINAS

ARGENTINA'S

are war, Atlantic i myth Britain and Argentina. real the

WCIN 3XX.

is for socialist intellectuals to raise 'fundamental questions; they cannot be expected to answer them.

The concept of imperialism is way beyond our Socialist Society intelligentsia. 'Is not the fragmentation of humanity into antagonistic nation states, exercising their vaunted "sovereignty", a menace to any liveable future on earth? asks the introduction profoundly. Is not rainy weather a drag?. Too true. Is not British imperialism a menace to millions of people day in day out in every corner of the earth? That is what the Socialist Society would dismiss as an outdated, dogmatic and sectarian point.

Arblaster cannot even understand the process through which Britain established its domination over Latin America in the nineteenth century. He thinks that the movements of national liberation that precipitated the collapse of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the area were inspired by 'the ideas and example of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. In reality they received most of their inspiration from British businessmen who used these movements to oust the Spanish and consolidate British influence in the area. Arblaster credits General Manuel Belgrano as 'a leading figure in the national struggle for independence.

In fact he was the most servile lackey of British interests in the region: hence the irony of the fate of the ship that bore his name in the recent hostilities.

Arblaster devotes a major section of his pamphlet to answering the question - what is the war about? He toys unconvincingly with Britain's possible economic objectives in the region: oil, gas, the resources of Antarctica. But his central explanation why Britain went to war is because of the "belligerent personality' and "belligerent politics' of Margaret Thatcher. He endorses the view of rightwing Labour MP Tom Dalyell that it was "the war of Thatcher's face'. He condemns her 'wholly repellant relish for military 'coldness' and her 'chilling action, her indifference to the loss of soldiers' lives Britain's need to preserve its position as a major imperialist power - by sending the fleet to teach Argentina a lesson thus reduced to the peculiarities of Thatcher's personality Arblaster concludes that the war was unnecessary, hypocritical and futile. But he accepts its basic objectives. How then, we are entitled to ask again, should they have been pursued? Here the emptiness and irresponsibility of Arblaster's polemic becomes clearly apparent. Many on the left-wing of the Labour Party called for British interests to be imposed UN negotiations and

EEC

through sanctions. This had the merit of being a consistent, if an ineffectual, pro-imperialist policy. What was the Socialist Society's position? It just ignored the whole It simply indulged itself in question. cheap Maggie-bashing without putting forward any alternative at all. Arblaster The RCP's pamphlet on the South the focusing of Argentine fascism and between relationship . Send 60p for p&p to BCM JPLTD, London willed the end but not the means - he wanted the Argies defeated but did not want any blood on his carpet.

No proven need Of all the pamphlets reviewed here, Militant's is the most ridiculous.

'Marxists do not put forward slogans which are meaningless' comments Ted Grant wisely.

Oh no? Here is how a Militant Labour government would sort out the Argentina problem (once it had nationalised the top 200 monopolies): If necessary, British workers and the Marxists will be able to wage a war against the Argentine junta, to help the Argentine workers to take power into their own hands.

But only a democratic socialist Britain would have clean hands. A Labour government com mitted to socialist policies would probably not need to wage war, but could issue a socialist appeal to the Argentine workers to overthrow and then the monstrous junta, take power, organise a socialist federation of Britain and the Argentine, in conjunction with the Falkland Islands.' Militant's grovelling capitulation to the Labour leadership over the South Atlan tic war has made it the fashionable target for attack throughout the left. Every radical left paper has published its critique of Militant. It is as though they instinctively recognise that Militant has only pursued further positions which are common to the left. It is thus very important for the left to differentiate itself from the consequences of its own politics.

Despite the absurdities of Ted Grant's pamphlet, and some of the more reac tionary slogans Militant has issued - for example, calling for British workers to impose sanctions on Argentina through industrial action - the broad lines of Militant's approach are widely shared on the left. It condemns Argentina for its 'fascist methods' and characterises it as an imperialist country - so do most SWP It anti-imperialist sentiment to anti-Tory rhetoric - like all the radical left papers. And it disguises its refusal to fight British imperialism by emphasising its commitment the working class struggle in Argentina - a familiar cop-out. Militant was not alone in using the alleged strength of jingoism in the Labour movement to justify its own decision to back down on the struggle against imperialism at home. The universal response of the left to bourgeois attempts to whip up war fever was that this made it impossible to rally support for the defeat of British imperialism. Thus the left abandoned the battlefield of working class opinion to the Tories. It whined and moaned about how much the war was costing in dead soldiers and resources spent. But it never tried to confront the Tory arguments head-on, by taking a decisive stand on the side of Argentina against British imperialism. If British socialists want to find out why they lost the war they should forget about The Sun and the Daily Star and read these pamphlets

LABOUR

SAVES PRIOR'S

NECK

LAST YEAR'S Labour Party conference approved a three stage policy on Northern Ireland. In the short-term, Labour backed Direct Rule; in the medium-term, devolved government; and in the long-term, a united Ireland. Labour's long-term policy went straight into the party's socialist millenium' file - along with Clause 1V and the abolition of the House of Lords. These historic commitments have been gathering dust there for more than half a century, so the new Irish policy will have time to mature while it takes its turn on Labour's long list of priorities. Meanwhile the rest of Labour's policy has guided its day to day approach to the war. The rancorous debate in the Tory Party is, in essence, a conflict between hard-liners, like John Biggs-Davison, who want Direct Rule to remain unchanged, and those like Prior, who want it softened through token devolution. In other words, it is a dispute between the same positions as are encapsulated in Labour's short-term and medium-term policies.

It was thus natural that, when Prior found himself in difficulties against his own right wing and Ulster Unionists, he should turn to Labour to bale him out. Labour's top Irish spokesman Don Concannon leapt to the rescue. He fulminated against the 'Get Prior Brigade' on the Tory backbenches and gave his full support to the spirit of the devolution proposals. When Prior finally imposed a guillotine on the Bill - to forestall further opposition by pushing it through Parliament without debate - Labour agreed guaranteeing the Tories an to abstain, overwhelming majority. Winding up for Labour, leadership pretender John Silkin urged abstention because 'our attitude to this bill, while it is not one of wild enthusiasm, is that we are prepared to see that it has a run'. It is difficult to imagine Concannon or Silkin being wildly enthusiastic about anything, but they were happy to give Labour's seal of approval to a scheme which is nothing more than a face-saver for Labour's short-term policy Direct Rule. Whatever the fate of Prior's Bill, in reality, Direct Rule will continue for the foreseable future.

While a dozen Labour MPs voted against the guillotine, the left has been silent throughout the debate. No Tribunites or Bennites are to be heard berating the leadership for betraying conference policy. Indeed conference policy has not been betrayed, but followed to the letter.

Prior's Bill has shown that Labour's Irish policy is as bipartisan today as it has been through 13 years of war.

IRISH

NEUTRALITY

ANDTHE

BRITISH

CONNECTION

THE SUN was outraged by Irish Premier Charles Haughey's withdrawal from EEC sanctions against Argentina and his revival of the Twenty-six Counties' traditional neutral posture. 'Stick it up your Punt-a!'

shrieked, turning its jingoist fury momentarily from the Argies onto the contemptible, treacherous behaviour of the Irish Government' (19 May). It Britain's other war They brutality. opinion in ruling class circles: builders find themselves on the defensive.' (6 June 1982) attrition carefully controlled.

rule in Ireland with even more brutality than before.

aspects of British imperialism in Ireland and the struggle to defeat it.

proposed a boycott of Irish butter and Irish holidays - it's not much, but it's better than giving succour to our new enemy. But had Haughey really struck a serious blow at his London masters?

The more astute spokesmen of the British ruling class took Haughey's posturing in their stride. They knew that Ireland's economic muscle against Argentina was unlikely to decide the outcome of the war. And they welcomed Ireland's continuing support for UN resolution 502 and British sovereignty over the Malvinas. More importantly, they appreciated that on the issues that really matter in Anglo-Irish relations, the Dublin Government was far from neutral. The Financial Times noted that 'cooperation mundane areas of mutual in the more interest does not appear to have suffered •..day to day cooperation in the real world, between policemen seeking gun- The British bourgeoisie's triumphant success in disguising its attack on Argentina as an altruistic defence of the rights to self-determination of the Falkland Islanders has reinforced its determination to pursue a similar strategy closer to home. For 60 years Britain has justified its oppression of the Irish people through its idealistic commitment to upholding the rights of a minority of settlers in the northeast of the country. In the flush of victory over Argentina, right-wing Tories have taken the lead in encouraging the Government to give up its latest pretence at reforming British rule in the Six Counties - the Prior Bill.

want to see less waffle and more Falklands-style British military The political editor of The Sunday Times summed up the climate of 'The Falklands are pulling in their harvest. Ulster is one such picking.

The military solution seems both more justifiable and more necessary, even though it is no solution at all. Peace-makers and constitution- The problem is, as the paratroopers know to their cost, Crossmaglen is more difficult territory than Goose Green. It is much too close to home, and too accessible to television cameras, for the forces to be able to unleash their barrage of cluster bombs and other heavy artillery without provoking a storm of protest in Ireland and in Britain. Shredding 'Argies' 8000 miles away is one thing; doing it to 'British citizens' in a part of the 'United Kingdom' is quite another. So the charade of 'political solutions' has got to be maintained and the level of military James Prior's Bill to create a devolved assembly in the Six Counties will now be forced through Parliament, despite Tory opposition. But there can be no doubt that the British ruling class, with its imperialist arrogance rejuvenated by its South Atlantic adventure, will impose its In this issue of the next step we look in brief at a number of different men, bureaucrats rationalising gas resources and businessmen will go from strength to strength' (24 May). Britain was happy to let Haughey sound off about neutrality, so long as his regime delivered its full support to British attempts to crush the anti-imperialist struggle in Ireland. May was in fact a very good month for Anglo-Irish relations. Suspected IRA man Dominic McGlinchey was given a new choice in a Dublin court: and go to prison in the plead guilty Twenty-six Counties or plead not guilty and face extradition to the North. After taking the latter course he was handed over to the British authorities. Owen McCartan Smyth,a Monaghan man accused of killing Unionist politician Sir Norman Stronge in South Armagh last year, went on trial in Dublin before a bench which included Mr Justice Hutton, a judge from After a brief hearing, the Six Counties. Ireland he too was handed over into RUC custody. On the same day, three men from the North convicted of having firearms near the border were sentenced to eight years each. Gerry Tuite, who recently escaped from Brixton prison, went on trial for bombing offences he is alleged to have undertaken in London.

And John McKeever from Derry was imprisoned for membership of the IRA after confessing his role in the 1979 bombing campaign in Britain When former Taoiseach Garret Fitz- Gerald appealed in his acclaimed Dimbleby lecture at the end of May for an all- Ireland judicial and police force, he was only proposing the ratification of the system that, in practice, already exists. The courts now work closely together across the border: the RUC have close links with the Garda Siochana. They have direct the telephone connections at border trouble spots and the Garda has a special Security Task Force based at Monaghan.

According to The Irish Times, 'they are said to be almost permanently crossing in cars, armed with handguns and Uzi submachine guns and ready to respond to radio calls' (16 June). A garda at the border village of Scotstown said that 'ninety-five per cent of our time is spent watching subversives, searching and on border patrols'. The Garda works in close cooperation with the Irish army, which has three battallions on permanent border duty, plus four more as a back-up. Of the Twentysix Counties' 15 000 troops, 2000 are on regular border duty In 1980 the Army and the Garda undertook 6755 joint patrols; last year the number increased to 10537. The repressive forces of the 'neutral" Twenty-six Counties are simply an adjunct to the machine of British domination in Ireland.

'FORGET

THE WAR,

WORRY ABOUT

NUCLEAR

WEAPONS'

THE South Atlantic War has exposed the shallow anti-militarism of many British socialists who oppose nuclear war in the future but refused to fight Britain's war against Argentina. Now the same socialists who have failed to build a movement against the British occupation of Ireland want to extend the politics of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament across the Irish Sea. 'Did you know?' was the ingenuous opening to Out Movement a ltooDs leaflet given out on the 6 June CND demo 'Did you know? Britain has in the north Ireland nuclear bases that (continued on page 6) the next step, July/August 1982 5

Ireland Continued from page 5 endanger the lives and freedom of all Irish people, both north and south?'

the killings and maimings But hundreds and thousands of Irish people over the last 13 years have nothing to No nuclear bases. do with prisoners have been starved to death by cruise missiles. Thousands of Irish people are ground down by unemployment and police harassment, north and south. But the oppression of the Irish people results domination not nuclear British from weapons. you know? The independant •Did (sic) Twenty-six Counties of Ireland have been neutral, and nuclear weapon-free for 60 years?' Twenty-six Counties are neither The independent nor neutral; they are dominated by Britain through its partition of country. They are nuclear weaponthe free only because Britain has no need of bases south of the border - but that fact has not stopped the Dublin government from deploying a wide range of repressive measures against anti-imperialists.

know? An •Did you neutral united Ireland would be a severe Britain and NATO's nuclear threat to strategy?' united Ireland would be such a severe threat to Britain that it would up its entire nuclear capagive sooner bility than relinquish control over the six north eastern counties of Ireland.

Anti-militarists can be won to the cause of Irish freedom - but only through anti- But. imperialist arguments. Out Movement never learns. For years it has been trying to find a short-cut from liberalism to anti-imperialism. Its confused and opportunist attempts to win nuclear disarmers to the Irish cause are destined meet the same fate as all its past to campaigns.

DELOREAN

DELUSIONS

John Zachary DeLorean deluded himself that he could sell thousands of stainless steel, gull-winged sports cars on the Amemarket at $25 000 each. sold his delusion so successfully to top ministers in the last Labour government - Roy Mason and Don Concannon - that they gave him f90 million to set up his factory at Dunmurry in West Belfast.

The British authorities were prepared to subsidise 3000 jobs in a nationalist area of the occupied Six Counties in the hope that it would bring some stability to the area. Last month, after a prolonged period of short-time working, layoffs and redundancies, the DeLorean Motor Company finally collapsed. The last desperate occupation of the plant by the workers has given rise to more delusions - this time on the British left.

British socialists have long placed their hopes for political progress in Ireland on the intensity of economic depression producing a united anti-capitalist response Catholic and Protestant from This pleasant dream has the appealing that it relieves British socialists feature themselves from doing anything - they of just sit back and wait for the recession to work its magic. employed Catholics DeLorean political Protestants; both took part in the sit-in.

alchemy had worked apparently.

The Socialist Worker celebrated the occupation as 'an unity' (5 June). The News Line acclaimed one of 'the greatest movements of Protestants and Catholics hated Tories' (18 June). Doing the splits When DeLorean set up shop in West Belfast in 1978, munity (unemployment above 20 per cent) welcomed the prospect of jobs.

However, shortly before the plant opened, leading members of the Ulster Defence Association, a Loyalist paramilitary force, met representatives of the British government. They obtained agreement that at least half the DeLorean workforce would (Andersonstown Protestant be independent 29 May 1982). But a mixed workforce is not a united workforce. The Protestants at DeLorean were concentrated in the skilled jobs; the Catholics filled the lower paid positions.

And the workers were divided politically on the central issue of everyday life in the Six Counties, the British occupation.

Last year, DeLorean's Catholic workers marched on demonstrations in support of hunger strikers against the British the. Troops the were not joined by state; they Protestant workmates. At DeLorean, just as in every other Northern workplace division in the working class undermined trade union solidarity. The trade unions in the Six sectarian discrimination in employment.

DeLorean The workers at unionised - in the TWU, AUEW and APEX - but the unions never questioned discrimination at DeLorean. While the company pretended to be a fair employer', union industrial relations' It was not surprising that the official labour movement did nothing to defend the workers against closure. The bureaucrats accepted every sacrifice requested And he by the company right up to the final when they closure, protest. Even then, they cooperated with the official receiver to allow the release of vital components. British occupation The DeLorean occupation was an angry gesture of workers facing the dole queue against their millionaire employer and his Government backers. It was expression of the consequences of working class disunity than an example of united Protestant and Catholic action.

reality, In only be won over to unite with Catholics when the force that divides them - British imperialism - is defeated. When British socialists delude themselves union issues can unite Protestant and Catholic workers, they forget that unity come through only Call of British domination. cop-out from fighting British imperialism in Britain. workers.

STUFF

JELLICOE

-SMASH

and

THE PTA!

example of working class the united against the local Catholic com- News, won't worry Jellicoe unduly.

their Ireland, the Counties endorse and sustain were fully of their members. 'good officials maintained endorsed a token more an Protestant workers will that trade the ending Worse, it is The Following this year's re-imposition of the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the Government has set up an inquiry into the Act under Tory peer Lord Jellicoe. His Lordship is currently sifting through submissions from various organisations including the National Council for Civil Liberties and the Connolly Association.

Last The NCCL follows the well-worn path of separating the PTA from its purpose in criminalising opposition to the Irish war and pleading that it is harmful to civil liberties'. Indeed it argues that it is an ineffective deterrent to opponents of British rule in Ireland, that 'instead of preern venting terrorism, this legislation creates injustices'. The Stalinist-influenced Connolly Association agrees. It wants to see the Act modified because it 'encourages militant tendencies' amongst Irish people (Irish Post, 5 June). This sort of opposition While Jellicoe drags out his inquiry, the PTA is still very much in operation.

Two delegates from Belfast and Armagh to last month's COHSE conference in Bridlington were detained under the Act at do Liverpool. One was held for seven hours.

the other until after the end of conference. Trade union delegates from the Six Counties frequently get this sort of treatment. Only a week earlier half a dozen mitted union representatives were held up on The their way to a TGWU conference.

worse of it is that trade union leaders have tolerated these attacks on the rights At the COHE conference members of the Irish Freedom Movement won widespread support for a motion to suspend standing orders and debate an emergency resolution demanding immediate action to secure the release of the prisoners. The leadership, however, refused to put the motion to conference. Thus conference carried on regardless while two delegates Many languished in police custody.

COHSE militants were outraged by the Freet ven The Irish Freedom Movement banner on the annual march to the grave of the founder of Irish republicanism, Wolfe Tone in Bodenstown, County Kildare.

bureaucrats' indifference to the suppression of not only the rights of Irish people but also those of their own members.

PTA in the fight against the unions goes on. Join the IFM in fighting the PTA! Write in for model resolutions and PTA information! And if you know of any PTA arrests ring our 24-hour PTA service on 01-274 3951 immediately.

NALGO

STALLS

AGAIN

who run year the bureaucrats the local government workers' union, NALGO, blocked a number of motions in support of the Irish hunger strikers at annual conference. They made sure that the union's official policy of extending links with the Loyalist-controlled North- Service Association Ireland Public After the con remained unchallenged. the officials surrepference was over, titiously slipped into the Annual Report a for the campaign condemnation of political status. Even though the matter was never discussed at conference, the report insisted that concessions to the 'would serve to boost hunger strikers recruitment by the Provisional IRA'. As loyal British public servants, that was the last thing the NALGO chiefs wanted to This year supporters of the Irish Freedom Movement attended the conference and mobilised opposition to the official policy. A motion on the Irish War, sub- Green wich and by Haringey branches, was pushed onto the confedelegations Around 20 rence agenda. were mandated to support the motion; many more were open to arguments from an anti-imperialist perspective.

But yet again the union leaders succeeded - through bureaucratic intrigue in preventing the Ireland debate from reaching the conference floor. So now the struggle goes back again to the branches Many delegates signed up to join the Irish Freedom Movement which will be carrying on the campaign in NALGO, and in To find out more about other unions. our activities, contact Peter Nash, IFM, c/o BM RCP London WCIN 3XX.

Disaster on the railways OVER THE past three years the trade union bureaucracy has suffered a series of reversals. Although,

NUR

General Secretary, Sid Weighell put it, they have "delivered, the Government has treated them with contempt. The NUR leaders, like their colleagues in other unions, have accepted productivity deals, mass redundancies and insulting wage increases for their members. But their efforts have not been rewarded. Indeed, Thatcher has launched an all-out attack on traditional industrial relations practices. Union leaders are no longer 'consulted', bargaining procedures in the public sector have been scrapped and the labour bureaucracy has been left licking its wounds.

Sympathy comes cheap The NHS dispute was a Godsend for the labour bureaucrats. Here was a strike with widespread public appeal - a useful weapon with which to retrieve some of the old prerogatives. Everyone jumped on the bandwagon. The TUC General Council agreed to launch a campaign of support. It hoped that its flagging fortunes and its disastrous against campaign Tebbit's Employment legislation would be forgotten in the euphoria of the NHS workers' dispute. Arthur Scargill thought While he along similar lines. delayed action against the threatened pit closures in Kent, he promised a show of strength on behalf of the health workers.

This display of solidarity generous covered up the deep-seated malaise that prevails in Congress House. Take the transport workers union, the TGWU. While the health workers' dispute was going seven TGWU members were hauled before Uxbridge Magistrates Court for illegal picketing. These workers were of the TGWU sell-out of 2000 victims workers at Heathrow airport in February. At that time the ramp workers were the best organised trade unionists at Heathrow. Today their defeat means that British Airways receives 13 000 applications in response to its demand for 9000 voluntary redundancies. TGWU general secretary Moss Evans kept quiet about all this while joining the THE CUTS are due to begin at the end of July. They intend to take 865 buses off the road, tighten up shift-working and make 680 engineering workers redundant.

LT is sticking to a five per cent wage offer - while cutting bus services by 15 per cent. The first round of cuts will avoid redundancies on the 'operating' side; drivers and conductors will be forced off rotas, back onto the spare lists.

But the 'inside' staff, workers who maintain the buses, will lose jobs, mainly at Acton, Chiswick and Aldenham works.

The employers plan to alter all the shifts and cut down on 'unsocial hours' benefits for week-end and late-night shifts. Many people will be pushed back onto basic wages. This, coupled with the five per cent rise, would result in a loss in real earnings for many workers of between £5 and f10 a week. Closures of routes and the conversion of some garages exclusively 'one operated' man their commitment to support the NHS workers.

British NHS dispute. chorus of union bosses promising solidarity with the nurses and ancillaries. Just what this amounted was made clear at the union's general executive meeting in May.

Evans declared that there would be no official backing for NHS unions, but workers were free to take 'spontaneous action. This kind of gesture is as cheap as it is inconsequential. The editor of The Daily Telegraph noted with obvious relief: 'So far the secondary action has been an old-fashioned demonstration of sympathy, not really damaging' (24 June).

Sympathy action has been widespread entirely because of rank and file action, not because of national directives. Workers have shown real class solidarity in this Livingstone's legacy The NUR's decision to call off the strike on the London Underground - which was joined by several bus garages - means that swingeing cuts already threatened will probably be forced through. Bus worker Peter Bush blames Ken Livingstone's GLC and the leaders of the NUR and the TGWU for the recent setbacks to transport workers in the capital.

buses will lead to the enforced movement of staff. Thanks Ken This onslaught on our jobs and conditions comes just over a year after the Labour Party took over the GLC under the radical leadership of Ken Livingstone.

Labour's transport policy was one of the main planks of its platform in the election: it promised 'fair fares' for passengers - and a fair deal for transport workers.

Now we're in a mess, people are paying twice as much to go the same distance, but Livingstone is riding high.

Only a couple of months ago he claimed that the transport issue had "produced a tremendous degree of support for us, as the party that introduced the fare cuts'. His conclusion was that: I think we will really benefit. And, while we face cuts and job losses, it is true that Livingstone has really gained in populari- Public sector strike wave At first it appeared to be the first serious industrial challenge to the Thatcher Government. The public sector seemed to be about to erupt as health and power workers, firemen and railway workers threatened to fight. In the wings stood the miners and other unions proclaiming But, after only one day, on 28 June the conference of the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR) called off the national strike, and a day later forced the London Underground workers back to work. Suddenly, the ruling class was back in the driver's seat. What went wrong? On this page we look at Rail and London Transport; on pages 8 and 9 we survey the dispute. As for the union leaders, they were happy to see their members take action - it put no demands on the union coffers and they got good publicity for doing nothing. The stitch up The NUR never really wanted to fight British Rail. The union simply wanted to make a point, and the general climate of unrest in the public sector provided the opportunity. When the strike was called off, the NUR bosses didn't worry about the demoralising effect that their action would have on other public sector workers. The NUR leadership had more important concerns than the success of them.

ty. How has he got away with it?

The GLC has neatly avoided its responsibility for the LT fiasco by passing the blame onto the Tory Government and the courts. It was Tory minister Heseltine who put the squeeze on local government finance; it was the Tory law-lords who wrecked Livingstone's policy. But this was simply the way the dictates of capitalist rationality were imposed on LT. The GLC radicals were always committed to sound financing within the limits of the profit system; they didn't like it the way it was forced on them, but they didn't fight it either. They just gave in and handed us over to the Tories - and then claimed the putting their gory or tongues out at them. Thanks Moss and Sid The unions' campaign faction, led by Moss Evans TGWU and Sid Weighell's the health workers: its main objective was the destruction of the train drivers union, ASLEF. The Government is out to teach railway workers a lesson and the

NUR

wants to make sure that it is ASLEF which pays the price • In this operation they have the employers' full support. ASLEF's militancy has been a thorn in the side of the employers for some time.

The British Rail Board's goal is to force ASLEF to take industrial action in order to smash the union. With the NUR strike out of the way the battle lines are drawn.

Peter Jenkins of The Guardian commented on the way BR had set up ASLEF *The NUR strike was never supposed to happen. The chief battle is with the declining engine drivers' union ASLEF, and that battle is now about to begin. The next move is to send a virtual ultimatum to the ASLEF headquarters.' (30 June 1982) Two days after the NUR returned to work, the Labour Party and the TUC joined in the battle against ASLEF. Of course, at the same time the TUC publicity machine continued to churn out the circulars, press releases and leaflets promising full support for the NHS workers.

The fiasco on the railways is a culmination of two months of disgraceful manoeuvring by the umion bosses. While public sector workers surprised everyone with their militancy, the union leaders made resounding delcarations at press Workers fought for conferences. their jobs and living standards. But their cause sabotaged by a union bureaucracy Was that was only interested in fighting for its own narrow privileges. While workers were ordered out on strike one day, only to be recalled the next, the union bosses negotiated for themselves.

Public sector workers have shown they can fight. But to win they have to fight on their own and reject the divisive and defeatist leadership of their officials. The dead-end of the NUR strike and the drawn out, selective actions in the NHS demonstrate that as long as we allow the union bureaucrats to remain in control our sacrifices will end up saving only NUR, has centred around a campaign to "save London Transport'. The slogan goes 'Hold on tight. to your industry'. Its the old story of trying to make out that screwing the workers is bad for business: "Any decline in public transport in London will damage the future well being of industry and commerce and threaten jobs in the capital'.

The trouble is this is rubbish. British capitalism needs to run its transport system with a drastically reduced workforce.

The trade union leaders would rather waste their breath trying to persuade LT that Britain needs more highly paid bus workers than mobilise the rank and file to fight for their living standards, whatever the consequences for LT. Their mishandling of resistance to the cuts has meant a face-saving campaign of token resistance, culminating in the recent abortive strike attempt. Next time, we'll do it ourselves. the not aton lulAnanat 100m

Labour movement

WENEED

32% FOR ALL

Hazards for health service for a display of its determination to reduce pay in the public sector. For the second consecutive year it has imposed wage rises way below the rate of inflation for some of the lowest paid workers in the country. The trade union leadership has responded more in sorrow than in anger, like a faithful old dog kicked so hard by its master that it had to bark in protest. Here we look at the way that angry and militant health workers constantly came into conflict with the And we indicate how supporters of the next step around the country developed the strategy and the tactics to take forward the struggle for a living wage in the NHS. THE TORIES are sympathetic to the plight of devoted but impoverished nurses, if not towards the other workers who keep the hospitals in operation. But, as The Times explained at the start of the dispute: *But wages account for 70 percent of all NHS costs. The control of public spending is so central to the Government's strategy that it cannot make more than minor concessions on the claim...without jeopardising all that it seeks to achieve.' (27 April) As the campaign gathered momentum, it re-stated the Government's case, after more crocodile tears about •dedicated service, long hours and low pay. But...

But the need to restrain public expenditure remains imperative. The NHS is the largest single employer in Britain, and a percentage point more or less in the settlement costs millions.' (26 May) The Government's system of cash limits on spending in the public sector allowed it to pit wage rises against cuts in jobs and services: The unions' per percent claim world cost €380m more than is budgeted for, according to the Government. Any concessions would have to be found within the cash limits, at the expense of services.' Health Minister Norman Fowler was not slow to inform Parliament that while jobs had disappeared in their hundreds of thousands in manufacturing industry, employment in the NHS had actually risen by 47 000 between 1979 and 1981 (11 May). (He did not point out that this was largely attributable to increased parttime work and that understaffing remained endemic throughout the service.)

Fowler's point, however, was clear: the TUC estimated that the Government's marginally increased pay offer in June (7.5 percent instead of 6 percent for nurses, 6 percent not 4 percent for 8 the next step, July/August 1982

STRIKESINTHENHS

health workers The Government has selected the one million plus workers in Britain's noisy but toothless union leaders assembled together by the TUC ancillaries), to be funded by cuts worth at least £500 000, would cost around 12 000 jobs. The Tory strategy is simple and brutal.

The Government's hopes of reviving the stagnant economy rest on the ruthless rationalisation of public services. Fowler's repeated message is that the survival of British capitalism depends pushing many hospital workers on to the dole queues and the rest below the poverty line; it also requires making the hospitals more squalid and inefeven ficient than they are already.

Grovelling to defeat The trade union leaders' strategy was the product of a balance of fear. On the one hand, the bureaucrats were afraid of being pushed into open conflict with the Government. On the other hand, they were terrified of the militancy of their own members. The result was vacillation before the Tories and manoeuvring to stay in control of the rank and file.

Instead of responding to the Government's hard-line approach with an equally instransigent stand on behalf of their members, the unions constantly pleaded with the Government to turn back from confrontation. Their loudest plea was for the intervention of the state arbitration

ACAS

The Tories have used service ACAS to good effect against workers in the past, and they were prepared to let its chief, Pat Lowry, intervene informally in the NHS dispute. But they felt strong COHSE and enough to take on NUPE, the rest without using this mask of impartiality. The continued unions to appeal for fair play - the judges, senior civil servants and police had got big pay rises, and even the firemen and miners had got slightly over the odds - why not make health workers another special case? The Tories were totally impervious to this approach - they never pretended that their 4 percent was fair, it was simply what the interests of the capitalist class demanded. While the Government ruthlessly put the ruling class boot into the health workers, the unions refused to mobilise an equally aggressive labour movement Instead, the bureaucrats cult-

ICSOULSC.

ivated the sympathy of health service administrators whose managerial positions were threatened by the Tories' intentions to decimate services. The Government simply sacked the four Regional Health Authority chairmen who had criticised the conduct of the dispute, leaving the unions isolated. Leading from behind Squeezed between a hostile Government and an increasingly angry rank and file, the unions had no alternative but to step up industrial action. And they stepped it up with all the gusto of a geriatric patient trying to walk after an artificial hip operation.

'COHSE

members to

TUC

support one-hour pay protest' proclaimed Health Services, the COHSE newspaper, at the onset of the dispute But it was soon forcing the pace - with calls for a two-hour stoppage. And so they dragged it on and on, through oneday strikes, and then a two-day protest (spread over a weekend) and then, after a four-week pause to catch their breath, a three-day walk-out. The trade union leaders did what was necessary to keep a grip on their members, not what was required to beat the Government. They allowed the petty squabbles that have long divided the health service unions to weaken the campaign. They made little attempt to coordinate union action at a local level except in collaboration with manage- Leading from behind was the universal approach: if workers took action, the unions endorsed it - they made scant efforts to promote or organise effective strikes. The unions did not try to direct local activity - they simply left it up to branches to decide whether to take action and the forms it should take.

Indeed, the only clear directives from the union head offices concerned restricting the scope of strike action through TUC guidelines on emergency cover and picketing. The bureaucrats' terror at the prospect of losing control even limited the TUC's attempt to channel the anger of the NHS workers into its flagging campaign against the Tebbit anti-trade union legislation The contrast between Len Murray's Union Day on 10 June, more a day of mourning than a focus of struggle against Tebbit, and the growing success of the days of action in the NHS, suggested a broader usefulness of the health workers' dispute for the TUC. But when the health workers began calling out miners, engineers, steelworkers, postal workers and many others and engaging in open defiance of the picketing laws, the TUC got cold feet. Murray reprimanded the rank and file militants, sternly reminding them that 'the right to call strikes is the jealously guarded prerogative of unions' and making clear that the General Council 'opposes law-breaking. While the bureaucrats squirmed, workers took the fight for decent pay into their own hands. They had no alternative The basic wage of hospital ancillaries is as low as £59 a week: two-thirds earn less than £80. Four per cent of £59 is an insult; the six per cent offered to nurses was not only insulting, it was so prodivisive that even the rightvocatively wing Royal College of Nurses rejected it, stimulating the first united pay campaign in the health service. Despite the difficulties organising industrial action in OI hospitals, workers knew they had to fight to keep above the bread line, and they set about the campaign with imagination enthusiasm and anger. Leeds TWO MASS meetings of hospital workers in Leeds brought out the problems facing the campaign for a 12 per cent wage rise.

They both took place on 11 June, the first at Leeds General Infirmary and the second a couple of hours later at St James Hospital. The meeting at the LGI followed a week of all-out strike action. During the 4 June day of action management had used scabs in the sterilising department: the workers' response was to withdraw emergency cover and declare an indefinite strike. Workers attended the meeting expecting to hear proposals for strengthening the strike. They were to be bitterly disappointed. The NUPE official focused on the problem of the scabs. There was no way that workers could oust the scabs or force their dismissal - 'that's the law".

They would have to work alongside one another. He told the meeting that he had won the agreement of management to discuss concessions on the use of scabs, even suggesting that the bosses might take sanctions against the scabs! He added that he had persuaded management to reduce the number of hospital gates in use to facilitate picketing! The official then proceeded to take a vote without clarifying the real point of all this - that he was asking the meeting to endorse a return to work. When the meeting voted to accept his from the promise of concessions employers, he turned to the next question - when do we go back to work?

There was uproar. NUPE steward Betty Ellis led the storm of protest: I've finished with the union, they can stuff it. I've been out on the picket line for a week and I'm not going back for nothing'. But, using a combination of deception and confusion, the bureaucrats carried the day against the more militant workers. The action of the local officials followed the refusal of the TUC two days previously to call an allout strike in favour of another one-day protest. The workers were disgusted - "they're not leading us', said one domestic, we're leading them'. Another expressed the general frustration with token protests: 'If we stop for one day we do the work when we go back the next day. We're stopping out here till we get our money. Who cares about the union leaders?'

But while the bureaucrats discussed trade union business with management they failed to coordinate action among different sections of the same hospital, never mind among the various hospitals in the area. The result was that the workers actions were fragmented and disorganised and their anger and energy was dissipated.

The NUPE official's hext stop was St James, where he told workers of the great victory at LGI - his success at getting a return to work. At St James, too, here had been an all-out strike over the use of scabs. This had been undertaken despite the bureaucrats' insistence that it was'in defiance of the TUC's guidelines on

emergency cover. 'Scrap the TUC guidelines', said one worker, 'we're taking over'.

Porter Gerry Docherty explained how the guidelines played into management's hands: "The emergency cover required by these guidelines becomes an experiment for management to see how far you can reduce the workforce in different sections of the hospital.'

Staffing levels described as emergency' were often in fact higher than on a normal working day, because of chronic staff shortages in some departments. But after a week of action, including angry scenes on picket lines, the bureaucrats at St James were anxious to get back in control and get everybody back to work.

The COHSE official followed up the announcement of victory' at the LGI with an ingenious secret ballot of the mass meeting at St James. Here are the four options and the total of votes cast for each of them: Continue strike, with emergency cover 96 Return to work 250 All out strike, no emergency cover 100 Selective strike action

LOU

Thus 356 were in favour of some form of strike action while 250 wanted a return to work. This was not how the bureaucrats interpreted the result: they declared a majority for a return to work and called off the strike, amid scenes of bitter recrimination. *The union has defeated this strike, shouted one worker, 'not the management'. Supporters of the next step challenged the bureaucrats at both meetings and at every opportunity in the dispute. After the collapse of the strike action in mid- June we issued a leaflet, in cooperation with the unofficial joint shop stewards committee, drawing out some lessons for the ongoing campaign: • the emergency guidelines are barriers to effective action...the strike committee should control emergency cover..

members should decide what's an emer- • organisation and communication must action must be determined at mass meetunder our control - not that of the • one-day strikes are worse than useless •..we must take control and initiative into our own hands and go for all-out As the protest continues there is a growing response for this approach from workers, disillusioned by the bureaucrats at national and local level, who desperately need to win this strike.

Gary Simpson Sheffield BOB RADCLIFFE spoke to a COHSE shop steward at Lightwood House Mental Handicap Unit. 'Right from the beginning we were under attack, not only from management but also from officials of our branch (Sheffield Wadsley). After the first one-day strike on 17 May they said we had gone too far.

We had been "totally irresponsible", caused "needless suffering to patients" "acted and outside union guidelines". We decide *But these TUC guidelines - especially the emergency cover provisions - ignored the fact that we were in the best position to establish what constitutes emergency After all, we have to cope every cover. day with the cuts in facilities, staff and The union guidelines really food. meant leaving it to management's dis- - and for them present staffing cretion already "emergency CORSETTeS levels'. 'So we decided what sort of cover was necessary. We told management that for every scab who crossed the picket lines we would remove one person from emergency cover. And we made it clear that any harmful consequences to the patients were the direct responsibility of the administrators and the scabs.

We also made sure that no strikers benefited from doing emergency cover.

To make sure that scabs did not try to get around the pickets by claiming to be emergency staff, we insisted on proper under our control which alternated periods of work and picketing.

FIGHT

THE CUTS

SAVE

ANNA

All out *There is a strong feeling around Sheffield for an all-out strike - we've made contact with other strike committees - but we still haven't got a proper unofficial area strike committee. We've been very successful in getting support from other workers. Our early morning picket of the Aldwarke steel Rotherham WOIKS In brought the entire plant three mills and a slag reduction plant - to a standstill.

It gave a great boost to our campaign.

*Everybody knows that we're never going to get our pay rise through these one-day stoppages. But the officials in Sheffield have been quite successful in persuading people that indefinite action would bankrupt the union. And they've also made it clear that the union will not defend anybody taking unofficial action against victimisation. Many workers are reluctant to take on the union as well as the Government, so the result is that people have got a bit disillusioned. But what's the union for if it's not to fight for us? It's no good having a well-off union with us on the breadline.

We'd have a much stronger union if we fought to win instead of giving in without a fight.

*The officials have just limped along behind us. Communication has been appalling. When workers in NUPE complained at a regional mass meeting on 17 May that they had received no notification of forthcoming action, the officials just laughed and said "Don't you read the papers?". In Rotherham COHSE members were so disgusted with the indifference and incompetence of the leadership that some of them tore up their union cards are being blackmailed from all sides. The unions' determination to stagemanage strike action has filtered all the way down to branch secretary and shop steward level. A NUPE branch secretary here instructed a shop steward that it entirely up to individuals whether they took action or not and that there was no official call to strike. This gave scabs an official excuse and left others The majority took action anyway - but only after a lot of argument that we have to go against the only if we take it out of their hands and Coventry TRADE UNION leaders in Coventry have invented a new form of industrial action.

You don't have to organise workers to go on strike - you just persuade the employers to lay them off. Health workers in the Coventry area are as determined as any others in the country to take on the Government to win better wages. Mass meetings at all the major hospitals in the area showed a strong feeling for militant action. But the union official on the local Health Action Committee formed the workers' work-to-rule campaign from being a weapon against the Government into a means of pressing the local NHS management to close down Committee spokesman explained the strategy to the Coventry Evening Telegraph. We are following the TUC instructions to try to get health authorities to reduce their services to accident emergency only.' (4 June) In other words, he was taking control of the dispute out of the hands of the workers and handing it over to the authorities. He continued, explaining that the Action Committee believed this to be 'the best way to bring pressure, rather than involving the members in one-day strikes'. What he meant was that it was the best way of taking pressure off the bureaucrats. Management jumped at the bureaucrats' offer. What an opportunity to impose cuts in services, save money and undermine the effectiveness of the health workers' action! Action Committee leader and Socialist Organiser supporter Julie Redman claimed a victory: They have now accepted that a reduction in services is better than the chaos caused by the work-to-rule.' (Coventry Evening Telegraph, 15 June) Coventry's evening paper commented with relief that 'pickets are not being mounted outside hospitals because nobody is on strike. Some victory!

The inevitable result giving the initiative to the employers was that they seized their advantage over the workers Knowing that they could walk over the Action Committee with impunity, they took the next opportunity to do so. On the next national day of action on 23 June, the authorities ignored their agreements to undertake only emergency services and went ahead with the usual routine of clinics, outpatients, etc. At first the unions acquiesced. At the Covand Warwick General Hospital, entry however, supporters of the next step had argued consistently against the official strategy. Before long, porters, ambulancemen and other hospital workers rejected the Action Committee line and imposed a tight picket line around the hospital.

The whole strategy of letting them organise how we run our campaign has been thrown into question. We aim to show that the first step towards beating the Government is taking control of the dispute from the administrators and from our own officials. Fran Eden Labour movement Manchester

WORKERS

FROM LAURENCE

and Electromotors had a thorough schooling in hard picketing during their recent 12 month fight for jobs. When the NHS dispute began, some of them took their experience down to the hospital picket We got off to a good start down at the major hospital in Tameside. We stopped vehicles, taking particulars of those who chose to ignore the picket, and the pickets were in good spirits. But then one of the stewards called us in to the union office in the hospital, where we met the and NUPE branch secretaries.

They were a bit shame-faced. They said that management had been on to them by phone, threatening that unless we nonhealth workers left the picket line they would call on the police to enforce the 1980 Employment Act against secondary picketing. We said: We've been through all - let them go ahead. But they replied that they had a good relationship with management that they didn't prefer us to leave. We moved on to an- This story shows up some of the prob lems workers were up against. On the picket lines at different hospitals workers were far from happy with the conduct of the dispute. They had seen no sign of the officials, they had no idea what was going on at other local hospitals and 'volunteers' were creeping in through whatever entries were available. They were well aware that 'emergency manning levels' meant normal working for most wards. The burden of the token protests was falling heavily on the ancillary workers and while it was having little real effect, it was costing them dear. When you take home around £50 a week, a day's pay makes a big hole especially if your husband is on the dole, or you're the breadwinner for a one-parent family. The strains that develop are the breeding ground for disunity. The hospital workers can overcome these difficulties and take control of the dispute into their own hands.

We put forward a number of suggestions that emerged from our experience last year.

First, there is the problem of every strike - money. This was seen by many workers as the obstacle to an all-out strike. We proposed they do what we did and raise the money from other workers, through winning their backing on the principle at stake. Then, there is a special problem of emergency cover - obviously health workers want to hit the Govern ment, not working class patients. The health workers should draw up their own emergency roster and issue this to management. They should tell them that if they use volunteers' or otherwise try to weaken our control over emergency services, then cover will be withdrawn and management will be to blame for the consequences. Finally, winning any strike requires regular mass meetings to ensure maximum participation and support, and effective committees to organise and coordinate action at hospital and area level. Everybody knows that it's easy enough to spell out what is required, but another thing to bring it into practice.

Health workers have a choice either they attempt this course of action or they face another setback. Dare to win!

Labour movement Women for Communism Rulecan overruled Limited, a clothing firm in Runcorn, Industrial Tribunal. official approved by the women THE FIGHT FOR women workers' rights at Rulecan is of vital importance to the The Rulecan dispute labour movement. shows how the employers used the courts, industrial tribunals and trade bureaucracy. It also shows, through the intervention of Women for Communism, how women's interests at work can be defended. No holds barred When the Rulecan workers called for the blacking of the company's products by workers at the mail order firm it supplies, the bosses lost no time in slapping on an injunction on secondary action of this sort. When Women for Communism

GAY OPPRESSION

Defective characters ON 26 MARCH 1981 Mrs Thatcher asked the Security Commission to review the security procedures of the state.

Commission's review, headed by Lord Diplock, was considered urgent. Roger Hollis, ex-director of MI6, had with his been caught trousers (literally) by the Soviets. ment of Britain and the NATO allies required reassurance. And this is what they got. The Commission's report of course, will not be made public, but a statement on its recommendations was published in May. It recognised 'that the external Soviet bloc intelligence from threat services, although it has been contained success than before 1961, with greater remains undiminished. On the internal threat has altered the hand considerably': "The fall in Communist Party of Great Britain membership, however, has been accompanied by the proliferation of new subversive groups of the extreme left and extreme right (mainly the former) whose aim is to overthrow democratic parliamentary government in this country by violent or other unconstitutional means, not shrinking in the case of the most from terrorism to extreme groups their aims. Membership of individual groups for the most part, active and is small but. conspiratorial. Statement However, startling contains a rainer more recognising that mission. While utionaries pose a threat to the security of the state, it sees the principal threat to government secrets coming, the next step, July/August 1982 Don't buy here! supports trade rightsi

UNION

ON 23 June the women on strike for union recognition at Rulecan Cheshire lost their appeal to an The Tribunal ruled that Rulecan boss Raymond Rattle was not obliged to provide access to the factory to the union Derek Cattell of the tailors and garment workers' union. However the 60 women, after four months on the picket lines are determined to fight on. Carol Taggart reports.

launched nation-wide pickets of C&A, Rulecan's biggest customer, courts. went to the claims for damages were served on anybody who acted in solidarity with the union Rulecan women. For the employers, the Industrial Triwas a useful delaying bunal provided a cover for negotiations with the national executive of the women's union. Early in June Rattle, under pressure from the picket lines, made a deal with NUTGW general Smith. The agreement provided for 45 women to be 're-engaged' at a new factory two miles down the road from the plant in dispute. 'Re-engagement' rather re-instatement' than revolutionaries, but from 'defective characters': The The Commission observes that character defects rather than disloyalty for ideological Sir reasons or subversive tendencies have been the cause of all known cases of disclosure of information to hostile intelligence services that down have occurred since The govern- 1962).' The Statement recognises that recruitment of individuals willing to betray this for ideological country continue to be treated as an ever-present danger'. But the real hole in the imperialist state's security blanket is seen to be individuals who 'may be inveigled into disclosing through indiscretion the secrets of the ruling class. Apart from the odd drunk and a few other heterosexuals with unconventional sexual or an intemperate fidelity in marriage or financial dealings, homosexuality remains the biggest single defect' that 'character security of the state. The reason for this is clear. Irrespective of class, all homosexuals ience of concealing their sexual identities from family, relatives and friends. Therefore, it is not surprising that the men achieve from the Special Branch experience such difficulty in cracking open the closets of civil servants and high officials.

It is in these state has decided to deal with the situation Security rationally. admore 'unconcealed, revolthat relations in Great Britain with stable another consenting adult of the same sex in which no homosexual act takes place from wing senior bureaucrats the Rattle again Injunctions and device. It Alex secretary meant that the to blackmail stitute a security risk'.

have been istry Maclean, Radcliff (reported in because they they were homosexuals. Civil Service, reasons must took place attitude to the spring of 1954. threatens the possible courses have some considerable experclass. action. circumstances that the The Statement argues acknowledged and ity. women would lose their protection from unfair dismissal, and their entitlement to redundancy money and maternity leave The union also agreed to replace the local official, Derek Cattell, with more right- While the union encouraged the workers to put their faith in these compromises and in the outcome of the Tribunal, the employer was not constrained by agreeof trade ments. When the date for 're-engagement' came on 14 June, he dragged his feet the new factory 'wasn't ready yet'. When Tribunal came out in his favour a week later, he claimed 'a total victory.

As its rulings were not binding on him, he stood to win whichever way the verdict Even Derek Cattell, a left-wing union official, who actively supported the Rulecan women from the beginning, put more faith in agreements and negotiations than in rank and file action. At a critical stage in the dispute, he scaled down the picketing at the factory and urged Women for Communism to call off the C&A pickets that were putting the heat on Rattle to facilitate talks. Once the heat was off, the "They needn't think that they've got one over on me, it hasn't been the union that's won if it's been anyone, it's been those communists!'

(from Raymond Rattle's pep-talk to the Rule- Supporters of Women for Communism played an active part in the picketing of the Rulecan plant and a leading role in the secondary action at C&A and elseorganised meetings to broaden support for the women on strike. This was elemenbeginning tary. What really mattered was the politics in public no longer involves a party to such a relationship in any vulnerability and thus does not con- In openly offering security clearance to bourgeois homosexuals in the Home Civil Service, the Security Commission hopes it will diminish their recruitment to the Foreign Office, the foreign service and the defence ministries (from where they are still barred). It is in these areas that well-concealed defective characters' have presented the greatest threat to the secrets of the ruling class. From 1950 to the present day the men from the minhaunted by Burgess, Vassal and Blunt not just but because were spies, This new move to liberalise the Home has its roots in the Cold War period. In the 15 years following the outbreak of the Second World War there was a fivefold increase in the number of indictable homosexual offences known to the police. Between 1938 and 1955 the numbers of gay men proceeded against rose from 719 to 2504. There had been a steady rise in prosecution throughout the 'thirties but the really dramatic increase 1949 and 1955, between reaching a peak in the winter of 1953 and The ruling class was faced with two It could of action. intensify the purge and damn the consequences, or it could begin the process of sorting sheep from goats; protecting the bourgeois homosexual in the context of heavier penalties and more repression for ordinary gay men within the working They chose the second course of In 1954 the Moral Welfare Council of the Church of England produced a document on The problems of homosexual- The church demanded reform. The Wolfenden Committee started work, and in 1957 its report urged that the law be changed to protect people from black- The Rulecan women got very little labour movement support. The Labour Party put them at the front of its London women's demonstration in June - but it refused to give them financial or any sort of practical support. (It wouldn't even pay the train fare for the strike committee to come to London to attend the march - it had to come out of the strike funds.)

For the rest of the left Rulecan was a case Tories, unionists against the something to fit into its anti-Tebbit cam- Women for Communism emphasised workers faced as women. They work in a sector of industry characterised by hard-nosed bosses who pay their workers very badly to work very hard in very poor trade unions with a record of collaboration with employers and indifference towards their own members. Parttime, irregular work for a predominantly support of other workers for the Rulecan women, not just as fellow trade unionists, but as women workers who were entitled to solidarity from the whole labour move For us the demand for a woman's right to work' is not the pious platitude it is for Labour Party feminists. It must be at the centre of our movement to unite the working class against capital. As the leaflet to the Women for Communism Rulecan strikers put it: Women for Communism raises the demand 'for a woman's right to work' in the context of the necessity to oppose all redundancies and sackings, and in the context of the urgency of against the bosses

BULLDACK

today. That is why we have no option but to mail by legalising homosexual relationships between two men, aged over 21, Ten years later these recom mendations were incorporated into the The Act legalised what nobody ever bracing in a public place or private club, smiling at another man in a public toilet, another man in a pubic place or private club, or inviting another adult man to have sex can all be, and used as the basis of prosecutions The reform of 1967 increased maximum prison sentences and, homosexual men fined and imprisoned has risen fourfold. ment of full security clearance to homostable relationships' has to be seen this context. It is an entirely pragmatic and rational response to the impossibility of keeping bourgeois homosexuals out of Commission will put them to work in areas where they will have access to the Communists must be clear: the recommendations of the Security Commission will have no effect on the situation of lesbians and gay men - is being intensified as the ruling class moves to deploy morality and social chauvinism in defence of imperialist interests.

extension of the 1967 Act to Scotland and the North of Ireland and the provision of security clearance in the Home Civil Service are intended to strengthen the state. Such reforms are designed to refine and sharpen the legal instruments * Statement on the Recommendations of

THEY SHALL NOT

THE GREATER LONDON COUNCIL

recently made an important discovery.

They found out that for at least 30 years Bengalis have been all but excluded from modern council estates in the East End.

This, according to new GLC housing chief Gerry Ross is highly regrettable, but it is about to change. A man of his word, Gerry has already allocated six Asian families places on a new estate in Spitalfields (Royal Mint Square).

The GL's new policy has impressed nobody, least of all the local Bengali community. Six flats don't make up for 30 years of over-crowded living in the most squalid estates - with the alternatives of squatting or paying extortionate rents to private racketeers. And since the GLC is cutting back rather than expanding the total housing stock, many local people, born and bred in the borough, are outraged at the news that Bengalis will be getting 'their' homes. White workers in the East End regard the better council property as their birth-right because that's been council policy - both locally and at County Hall - for decades. Gerry Ross may not know it yet, but his benevolent gestures are about to produce a racist back-lash in the Borough. The first victims, as always, will be the Bengalis he professes to want to help'.

Cable Street - how it's changed More than 35 years ago East End workers fought a famous battle in Cable Street, Mosley's black-shirts and their agallist police protectors. On Saturday 19 June another battle took place on the same site. It was less heroic. In fact it wasn't heroic at all. This time the target wasn't a marauding mob of fascists, but a Bengali family the Alis with three young children between five and nine years old. They had come to Cable Street to move into a GLC council house on Glamis Estate. Taking a leaf out of the history books, their protagonists had decided the only way to deal with this formidable threat through direct physical action. When the Alis arrived with their furniture van on the Saturday morning they were greeted by around 40 white tenants who had barricaded the house to prevent them moving in. They waved placards declaring PAKIS OUT and hurled racist abuse. Unfortunately for these latter-day heroes of Cable Street, the Alis didn't turn and run. With the help of ELWAR supporters and local Asian organisations, they moved in. It wasn't easy. The police, true to their role in 1936, spent most of their energies trying to chase ELWAR off the estate. They somehow managed to be out of sight when Ali Asghar - a local CRC officer - got beaten up by one of the racists. Only very reluctantly, when Nayor Ali produced his GLC rent book, did they allow the family to begin moving in. They didn't seem to mind when the racists, who became more and more frenzied as each piece of furniture went inside, tried to trap one of the children on his own inside the house. Cries of "They're filling the place with their bugs', "Paki-lovers' and "You're a disgrace to your race (to white supporters of the family) and 'Go back to the jungle' to every black in sight apparently didn't constitute behaviour likely to cause a breach of the peace. The battle was over by Saturday night.

The racists retreated to plan their next move. ELWAR mounted a 24-hour guard on the Ali family's house. The real war was about to begin. If at first you don't succeed Glamis Estate is quite a pleasant place to it refuses to rehouse on the steps of the Foreign Office. Summing up the aggrieved' because it had to bear the burden of housing so many of the immigrants who fly in to nearby Heathrow airport.

their cue from Lord Diplock. JUDY HARRISON reports.

bring up a family - providing, that is, your faces fit. Built in 1974, it looks very different from Shadwell Gardens the Estate on the other side of the road which is old and run-down. The GLC clearly believes Bengalis don't fit in on Glamis Estate because they never offer them homes there. They did once, by accident, to the Miah family. But the Miahs soon got the idea they weren't welcome (our local heroes made sure of that) and they moved to Shadwell Gardens. There at least they fit in.

Over 50 percent of the tenants are Bengali. When, after a five-year wait, the Alis were made an offer of a place on the Glamis Estate the same mob was outraged.

Since their 'leaders' happen to be selfappointed officers of the Tenants Association, they decided to put some pressure on the council. It worked. The GLC withdrew the offer and tried to fob the Alis off with accommodation elsewhere.

But much to the GL's embarrassment, the Alis refused it. They fought the GLC and won back their house on Glamis Estate. That was when the racists decided direct action was the only way.

"GET

OUT NOW - NF and PAKIS OUT' were

RACISM

BE MOVED

On Thursday 17 June the House of Lords ruled the Commission for Racial Equality cannot investigate the housing policies of the London Borough of Hillingdon. The council is infamous for dumping Asians case Lord Diplock commented that Hillingdon had long been On Saturday 19 June a mob of white racists in East London took daubed on the door. Shit was shoved through the letter box. When a friend came to view the house a few days before the move, one of the women ring-leaders innocently inquired when the Alis would be moving in, and alerted her neighbours.

Their strategy was very straightforward: make it impossible for the Alis to move in - or make life hell for them if they did and the GLC would be bound to climb down again. And so they would have done, if it hadn't been for the solidarity that's already building up on the estate and in the local community.

The big cover-up What the Alis have unwittingly exposed is a cesspool of racists on the estate, including at least one prominent local Labour Party activist. For years they've run things their way, colluded with the GLC to keep the estate free of "Pakis'. And they have been allowed to get away with it by those who should know better. In fact the racists are only a small minority. ELWAR has already canvassed the whole estate and found many tenants who were disgusted by the events on 19 June. Sympathetic neighbours have been visiting the Alis to welcome them to the estate. Many tenants are prepared to take some action against the racists and rebuild the Tenants Association.

But there are also those who say 'we mustn't stir things up', who regard the presence of ELWAR as a provocation to the racists. We say to them - burying your head in the sand won't make the problem disappear; the Alis are still under serious threat. Their children have been told to "fuck off into your own garden' when they tried to play in the communal yard. Stones have been thrown at the window, threats made and - most seriously of all - Mr Ali's workplace was visited by some of the racists to check when he came and went. The local Home Beat Officer' has displayed the usual care and concern. He turned up once, four days after the Alis moved in. "Settling in nicely?' he inquired, 'Don't worry they'll soon get used to the colour of your skin'.

After this reassurance he disappeared into the night. Constant protection of the family by ELWAR supporters and local tenants is necessary until the racists have been isolated and dealt with Covering up the problem only plays into the hands of the racists. But for the local political establishment there's a lot to hide. The area is riddled with closet racists like Labour Councillor Lilley who, when asked if he would help Mr Ali observed that 'there are already too many Alis in the country: they're still coming in at Heathrow in hordes. And there are the Labour Party members of the Tenants Association who took part in the infamous That's why battle to keep the Alis out.

local politicians are surreptitiously sending the Social Services around to make offers of "alternative accommodation'.

Council officials sorrowfully shake their heads and say there's no long-term solution - in other words, they'd do everything short of telling the Alis to clear out.

The very presence of this Bengali family threatens to expose not only the overt racists but the degree of toleration they've received from the local Labour Party machine. The real enemy Nayor Ali and his family have faced physical and verbal terror as a result of the stand they've taken. Their ordeal is still going on. But behind the racists on the estate stands the much more respectable racism of the council. If white the intrusion of Bengalis tenants fear onto their estates it's because of the council. It's the council which operates an apartheid housing policy, mean while maintaining a chronic housing shortage that inevitably leads to tenants competing with one another for decent accommodation. It's the council which has created conditions which are fertile for the NF to move in and exploit the situation.

All the ingredients for such a confrontation were there Glamis Estate. on They're also present down at Royal Mint Square, where the GLC is promising to allocate new homes to Bengalis. Already some residents on the nearby Peabody Estate are up in arms about it, complaining that they've been promised these flats for years. At the end of the day the GLC will shrug its shoulders and blame white for resisting its token tenan Is concessions to the Bengali community.

The one thing it won't do is build more homes. ELWAR has begun to show how the divisions the council has created can be healed, and how the frustrations and anger of tenants can be turned on the real enemy. The Alis have already struck a blow for all Bengalis in Tower Hamlets, and for all white workers too.

THEY

SHALL NOT BE MOVED!

WORKERS MARCH AGAINST RACISM • BRICK LANE-BRIXTON-BRIGHTON • 4-8 SEPTEMBER

WORKERS MARCH

AGAINST RACISM

Every year the Trades Union Congress discusses 'race relations'. They might as well not bother. The This year it's going to be different. Five hundred marchers will be descending on Brighton to demand • direct action against the fascists at work and on the streets • trade union solidarity with black youth against the police

REMEMBER - UNITED WE STAND - DIVIDED WE FALL

Get your trade union/organisation to support the march.

Send us money (it costs £30 to get each marcher on the road).

JOIN THE MARCH!

IF YOU

DON'T

ASK

PEOPLE told us that mobilising marchers to go to the TUC would be almost impossible. And mobilising them to march against racism - that, we were told, was a real non-starter. Perhaps if we chose a more popular issue we'd have more chance of success. Well, we're proving all the pessimists wrong. With two months still to go, the

WORKERS MARCH AGAINST RACISM

won fantastic support all has already round the country. It's become clear that there aren't just 500 but thousands of activists who want to do something about racist divisions in the labour movement.

In one week alone we've had support from

• SOUTH

YORKSHIRE

Committee WORKERS (Joint Crafts BSC) - they're sponsoring five marchers at £30 each and insist they wear STEEL WORKERS AGAINST RACISM' T-shirts!

VERENA O'CONNOR: Regional Convenor, CPSA (Department of Employment), North West Region *The unions have got to put the fine words they preach into practice. They have to be prepared to see the fight through to the end. If that means going on strike to oppose ethnic monitoring in the dole offices, it has to be done! I see this march as the beginning of a real fightback against racism in the unions, particularly ones like mine who are carrying out the discrimination.' more the bosses use racism to divide the labour movement, the less the TUC does about it.

• industrial action against deportations, fishing raids and passport checks • an end to racist hiring, firing and promotion practices - no more colour bars!

• Imperial Metal Industries TGWU 1/311 (Birmingham) - they're sending KEN MONROE to represent them march and paying his way • The REVOLUTIONARY GAY MEN'S CAUCUS - they're supporting the march, have issued their own publicity and are building a large gay contingent

• LONDON

LABOUR

they invited WAR to speak at a recent 500 conference and are urging Constituency Labour Parties in London not only to back the march, but also join our East London anti-racist street patrols • BRIGHTON Anti-Nazi League - they sent £5 and want to help build the Brighton end of the march • SHEFFIELD POLY - they're sponmarchers and laying on a soring four coach to London. At NUPE's national conference last month WAR supporters not only received overwhelming backing for our motion of opposition to the NHS race checks; dele.

queuing up to support the gates were march, invite speakers to their branches and make generous contributions to the

STEEL

campaign. It was a similar story at CPSA.

NALGO, COHSE and other trade union conferences in recent weeks.

If you don't ask, you don't get! WAR has been fighting hard for over three years to build a working class movement against racism. Now more and more people are DOT O'DRISCOLL: Unemployed, Coventry *The WORKERS MARCH is exactly what we need in Coventry.

What I saw last year - the racial violence on black people and the murders - sickened me and made me determined to fight. It would only take a spark for it all to start up again. When we go out on the streets building for the march we're doing something really important to stop the racists in their tracks. I'm hoping a lot of my friends will get involved in the march too.' acknowledging the value of our work and giving us their support. the main, abandoned anti-racist work on the believing it's too difficult a task. No wonder they get no results.

The march is building up momentum.

Our ranks are growing fast. But we've still got problems. Problems like Sue Slipman (a former Communist Party leader who

BRIEFING

defected to the SDP) who turned up at NUPE's Race Relations Advisory Sub.

Committee and tried (unsuccessfully) to stop them supporting the march. And the much £10 000 in the next eight weeks. In spite of all the support we've received, we're still a long way from reaching our minimum target of £20 000 - the amount it costs to get the march on the road.

Rush us your donations now. Get your workmates The only thing that can stop is money - it's your job to make sure that doesn't happen.

WE'RE

MARCHING

TO

THE TUC

"coon, The left has, in bigger problem of raising and white and friends to contribute.

us now The uncomfo Cleansing our ranks: a platform for anti-racist over six months ago. The response we've recei racism in the unions is well overdue. One fo writes: I didn't know the unions were meant complain about racial abuse the union official black worker, Mohammed Nawaz, complained (a Leeds engineering firm) had victimised him fully advised to 'go to the race relations board, it Join the marc Mohammed Nawaz is one reason why you shou ference organised by WAR this September.

Roland Steven is another. Roland, a black fir from his job because he 'over-reacted' to racist ab his dismissal was reduced to a reprimand, but ne an industrial tribunal. At the tribunal fire offic gollywog, "nigger' and other choice n intended in a 'good-humoured and jocular vei Abdul Aziz is another worker without the ri how he can't see the joke in being off work f refused to be down-graded from his job as a fitt to a labourer's grade. Abdul isn't the only black this way. One Asian worker was forced to clear specified he did not have to do) after working after five years in the job, was suddenly told his forced to accept a lower grade job while he we labourer was recently sacked for bad time-keep was being by-passed whenever better jobs becam less experience always seemed to get them. In - has done next to nothing The unions are ours We expect the bosses to be racist. The same police, the courts and, for that matter, industri such practices inside our organisations, inside th meant to represent all workers. In practice, the says racial harassment and discrimination is 'n bosses' man who, when it comes to the crunch, That's the case at Birmingham Batteries wh recently framed up on assault charges - wor workers' union is run by a magistrate Not surp as a matter for the police. But plenty of worke -are prepared to back up their as no better than management.

Rhetoric Our union leaders are strong on anti-racist rheto NUT, the teachers' union, declared (in its e inquiry into ethnic education) that it will not c when it comes into effect. But racist practices the future. The Nationality Act is being imple quotas for black students are everyday practice children don't go to school for fear of racist playgrounds. The NUT's rhetorical anti-racism d WAR supporters in the unions are fighting f Roland Steven, Abdul Aziz and Pino Kahn. We right of Bengali children to go to school in safet the divisions in the labour movement and isolat have no time for token gestures. We demand a why we're marching to the TUC. And that's why

BLAS

AFAE

• WORKERS MARCH AGAINST RACISM • BRICK LANE-BRIXTON-BRIGHTON • 4-8 SEPTEMBER table truth trade unionists was published just ed shows that the struggle against andry worker from the Midlands to be on our side. Every time we says we're over-reacting. Another to his AUEW official that Cattons on racial grounds. He was helps not the union's job'. d join the march to the TUC conreman from Lancashire, was sacked use from his workmates. Eventually evertheless Roland took his case to cers admitted they had called him ames. But they claimed it was all n'. The industrial tribunal agreed.

ht kind of sense of humour. Someor months without pay because he er with British Rail in Birmingham, worker in his depot to be treated in the toilets (something his contract there for 10 years. An Asian fitter, English wasn't good enough - and at to evening classes. A West Indian ing', one week after complaining he e vacant. White workers with much Il four cases the union - the NUR in them back goes for state institutions like the al tribunals. But we cannot tolerate labour movement. The unions are kind of union representative who ot his concern turns out to be a vill sell out all his members.

ere Pino Kahn - an Asian worker ks. His branch of the engineering risingly it regarded Pino's problems rs at Birmingham Batteries - black orkmate. They regard the union' ric but weak on action. In June the the Swann Committee idence to ooperate with the Nationality Act in education aren't a problem for mented now. Passport checks and In Spitalfields at least 200 Bengali attacks on the streets and in the es nothing about this. or the rights of Mohammed Nawaz, re fighting in East London for the y. In doing so we're breaking down ing the racists in the workplace. We tion from our union leaders. That's you've got to be there too!

Sponsors: Jayaben Desai * Anwar Ditta * Nasira Begum Cynthia Gordon * Reggie Yates * Najat Chafee Nesta Moodie * A Sivanandan * Avtar Jouhl Bradford 12 Campaign * Thornton Heath Campaign * Reggie Yates Campaign * Paul Worrell Campaign * Asian Welfare Association Pakistan Workers Association Welfare Association * Bangladesh Workers Association * Peckham Black Women's Group Asian Youth Association * Birmingham CARF Brighton ANL * Society of Black Lawyers Arthur Scargill * Phil Davies (FTAT NEC) Rodney Bickerstaffe (NUPE General Secretary) Pat Denning (NUPE President) * Terry Wood (COHSE EC) * Dennis Barry (Laurence Scott's Convenor) * Lou Lewis (UCATT Covenor London Region) * Nirmal Roy (Ealing NALGO Executive) * John Kirwin-Davey (President Leeds Trades Council) * Jack Taylor (Yorkshire Area NUM President) * Derek Cattell (Merseyside Area Officer NUTGW) NUPE Race Relations Advisory Sub-Committee Camden Trades Council * Battersea & Wandsworth Trades Council * Lambeth Trades Council * Tameside Trades Council Holborn NUR * ASTMS NE London Medical Branch * AUEW Aston No 2 * Hammersmith NALGO Executive * ASTMS Coventry City NALGO Walsall Council * COHSE Manchester 332 * NUPE Manchester Royal Infirmary Hackney NALGO Executive * COHSE Wadsley branch (Sheffield) * AUEW (TASS) Leeds South Yorkshire Crafts Committee (Steel industry) * Bow Bus Garage TGWU 1/311 Imperial Metal Industries TGWU 5/177 ASTMS Manchester * TGWU/ACTSS 1/128 TGWU/ACTSS 6/389 * Tower Hamlets AUEW Kaplans Strike Commitee * South East London

BRADFORD 12 GO FREE

for workers' defence goes on.

FREE THI

BhiQFORD

ROLLNITY ON

BLACK

INDON SUPPORT.

NAZRA KHAN: East London Tve had it up to here from the racists in this place. I've seen my mother pushed around by the council, treated like rubbish when we tried to get a decent flat. My brother was arrested when he protested about it to the housing office. And there's all the attacks going on round here. Are those good enough reasons to want to march?' CPSA (DE) * Leeds Unemployed Group Brighton's Women's Centre * TGWU 9/10 (South Yorkshire buses) * Birmingham Housing Management District Direct Labour JSSC Tony Benn MP * Ted Knight * Paul Boateng Ken Livingstone * Valerie Wise * Reg Race MP Jo Richardson MP * Joan Maynard MP Joan Lestor MP * Les Huckfield MP John Tilley MP * Alf Dubs MP Bernie Grant (Deputy Leader Haringey Council) Lorna Cohen (Leeds Labour Councillor) Tariq Ali * Denise Robson (Hackney Labour Councillor) * Matthew Warburton (Lambeth Labour Councillor) * Judy Thomas (Leeds Labour Councillor) * Neil Taggart (Leeds Labour Councillor) * Arthur Latham (Chairman Greater London Labour Party) * Vidya Anand (EC Greater London Regional Council) Ann Bliss (Lewisham Labour Councillor Russell Profitt (Lewisham Labour Councillor) Jeremy Corbyn (NUPE full-time official) George Mudie (Leader Leeds City Council) Dave Sullivan (Lewisham Labour Councillor) Phil Turner (Leader Camden Council) * Chris Knight (London Labour Briefing Editorial Board) * Graham Bash (London Labour Briefing Editorial Board) * London Labour Briefing * David Fryer (Southwark Labour Councillor) * Selly Oak Labour Party Revolutionary Gay Men's Caucus Rulecan Women's Strike Committee London Students Organisation * Kent University SU * Brunel Univeristy SU * Kilburn Polytechnic SU * Brighton. Polytechnic SU Polytechnic of Central London SU * Sussex University SU * School of African and Oriental Studies SU * Kingsway Princeton College SU Queen Mary's College SU * Sheffield Poly technic SU

AUPAIRS * PIGBAG * BABYLON REBELS

ATILLA THE STOCKBROKER * AFRICAN

STAR * ALTERNATIVE CABARET

AMAZULU * AKIMBO * BENJAMIN

ZEPHANIAH

After several months in prison on remand, a year under restrictive bail conditions and weeks in court on trial, the Bradford 12 were acquitted of all charges against them. Their victory is an inspiration to us all. But Britain's black community still lives in terror of racial attack; the fight

KEN MONROE: TGWU 1/311

Imperial Metal Industries, Birmingham: TGWU Power & Engineering district committee "Let's face it, there's a lot of racialist views inside our movement. And it's making it easy for the employers to get what they want by setting us one against the other. It's high time we got our own house in order. WAR's doing the job and that's why I'm marching. We've got to make sure this march is a big success."

racist attacks. Saturday 17 July Stanton Social Club 243 Stanton Road Coventry

NORTH WEST

Saturday 31 July Longsight Library Longsight Manchester Saturday 17 July Swarthmore Centre Woodhouse Square Leeds

LONDON

Saturday 10 July Desai, Reggie Yates.

EVENING

Abeng Centre Gresham Road Brixton SW9

BRAL

Saturday 24 July Racism. Outside Burtons London SW9 Saturday 24 July

TO THE RIVER!

Name Address Tel No € enclosed London for

REGIONAL

DAYSCHOOLS

WORKERS MARCH AGAINST RACISM

REGIONAL DAYSCHOOLS

Pre-march dayschools for activists and marchers, with sessions on: • Fighting racism in the unions.

• Speakers include Jayaben Desai (Grunwick strike leader) and Nesta Moody (victimised black trade unionist) • Workers' defence against police and • Speakers from the local labour movement and Workers Against Racism.

WEST MIDLANDSO

10.00am - 5.00pm 10.00am - 5.00pm

NORTH OF ENGLAND

10.00am - 5.00pm 1.00pm - 6.00pm

BRIXTON BONANZA

Workshops, music, dancing, exhibitions, stalls. Guest speakers include Jayaben 8.00 -12.00pm BABYLON REBELS and

MOTORBOYS MOTOR

11.00am - 1.00pm

LONDON ALL-STARS STEEL

BAND

play for the Workers March Against Brixton High Road 9.00pm-1.00am

WORKERS AGAINST RACISM TAKES

Benefit aboard a river boat. Join the boat at Westminster Pier!

£5/£3.50 UB40

BAR, FOOD, BANDS

Join us! I/We want to march on/sponsor/make a donation to the WORKERS MARCH AGAINST RACISM, London - Brighton, 4-8 September. TU/Organisation No of marchers Make cheques/postal orders payable to WAR and send to Workers Against Racism, Box 22, 136 Kingsland High Rd, 01-274 3951 E8. Phone details.

It's the same France Racism the whole ViCToMS EMiGRANTS America RACISM IS as American as apple pie.

The murder of a black worker by a gang of white racists in New York on 23 June only unusual because of the media coverage that it received. most insidious development on the race front, however, has nothing to do with the traditional forms of racial harassment.

The American state has turned its attention on immigrant workers.

officials state have launched an antiillegal immigrant campaign primarily at Hispanic but also Filipino and Chinese people. According to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), there between six and 12 million immigrants (60 per cent of them Mexican) in the US. For decades now illegal immigrants have played an important role in the Vulnerable economy. to pressure and isolated from the rest of society, illegal immigrants provided an ideal pool of cheap workers ready to work at any job at any price.

For decades the employers used illegal immigrants to solve their labour shortage problems. Nobody complained about them. Occasionally, racist union officials would demand their repatriation on the grounds that immigrants kept down. But until the current depression the state was reluctant to upset this happy arrangement for the employers.

Now matters different down "illegals' creates jobs for Americans and it also helps sustain divisions within the working class. Like rabbits It started in April. In nine major cities 400 immigration agents launched a series of co-ordinated raids. Within a week, they hit 275 companies and rounded up 6000 "illegal aliens. One employer, Ratts, who was prevented from entering his Oakland furniture factory, while 35 sanders and assembly workers arrested, commented: I had the feeling they were chasing rabbits, not people The targets of the attack were Hispanic workers, but the raids were designed to terrify and intimidate all 'foreign-looking' employees. 'Operation Jobs' was directed 14 the next step, July/August 1982 world over

DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SOCAL

PARKIN

STopEMiGRATiON FREE the WalL. Mexican workers. placed on waiting buses and transported from the factory gates direct to Mexico.

wide A week after 'Operation Jobs' came The 'Operation ballot box'. This initiative was launched by US Attorney Joseph Russoniello. A circular went out to Northern California district attorneys and registrars requesting names of 25 randomly chosen non-English speaking people who Federal and requested bilingual voting information for the June primary, elections. Within three directed days the names started rolling in many cases exceeding the targets.

object of this campaign was to put the finger on the Spanish and Chinese speaking are "illegal" communities. across San Francisco's Chinatown, where some 3000 voters receive bilingual voting material. Both 'Operation Jobs' and 'Operation police ballot box' had a purpose which went beyond their immediate targets. The state wants to make immigration an issue so that it is seen to be about unemployment. The next phase of this campaign 1S - LO immigrant opinion around support for a immigration law Mazzoli Bill) currently before the Senate.

The aim of this new legislation is to introwages duce a national identification system for all job seekers to stem the flood of aliens. Special courts exercising 'quick justice against immigrants are also enhunting visaged. Just what this justice means is well illustrated in Florida where hundreds of Haitians are illegally interned in camps.

Refugees from El Salvador are at present refused asylum and rounded up at a rate of 1000 a month and returned home.

This is just the beginning.

Sub-committee on passed a series of amendments to increase Tony the powers of police and immigration officers and to tighten up entry into the US. Hunting down aliens has become the Number One solution to prevailing social were problems. After decades of equal opportunity programmes, race relations legislation and positive discrimination, nothing much has changed. Racism remains the central political question for the American working class. Algeria thumb Against *Looks like haven't things improved? promised a new deal

SERVICES

was 15 January idence and work permits. they when Hundreds were our ranks, said Rene. wants more prevent the - In The climate of fear swept doing something systematise anti- (the Simpson- The House Immigration has all immigration. for jobs and wages. in Europe. Anita Lloyd WE ARE SITTING in a run-down canteen on the outskirts of Paris. Two workers, one from Senegal and the other from through the Workers Racism literature I brought with me. Rene looks at Ali and laughs: sparked we won't be moving to Britain, it's no better there than here' But what about the socialist government; "On paper maybe", says Rene, "They for immigrants When Autain, the Minister for Immigration, introduced measures to legalise the employment of illegals many immigrant leaders thought we had finally made it. Of course there was a catch. To obtain legal status you had to prove that you had stable employment since January 1981. The cut-off date for applications this By April year. over 140000 applications were made but only about 80 000 were given resface Ali explained how the new system worked: "Many were afraid to apply. For good reasons. Thousands who asked their employers for evidence of stable employment were refused and many were sacked for asking. Do you know that if you succeed with your application they only give you a one year work permit? In effect nothing has changed. Only about a quarter of the 400 000 illegals have amnesty and the rest face increased after the hassles from the cops. Meanwhile, the socialist pigs showed their true colours announced that 20000 came illegals would be expelled in June'.

I could have written your Cleansing "The unions are the worst because they're such hypocrites.

They're up to their necks in it. The CGT (the Communist Party-dominated union) immigration officers to exploitation of migrant workers by unscrupulous employers. Get that! They want more of these bastards to run us down and they have the gall to say it's in our interests. Do you know that the unions have opposed almost Germany defensive. Another Turkish worker killed by racists.

GERMAN CAPITALISTS have nothing to learn from anyone. Since the recession they have expelled some 600 000 workers and 500 000 of their dependants as a contribution to solving unemployment.

The union bureaucracy is fully behind prepared these attacks and has called for a ban on racism. After all, harassing immigrant workers is easier than fighting Immigrant workers in Germany have always been among the most oppressed tian But recently the situation has deteriorated further. In recent elecevery action we took. Every time we do something one of them says "It's not right what they are doing to you but if you act on your own it's divisive" We then turned to the strike at Citroen, off when the almost entirely migrant workforce at the Alnay-sous-bois assembly plant in Paris stopped work The five week strike eventually spread to other factories. The dispute was fought ruthlessly by the employers who brought in thugs to break the strike. One worker was killed and more than 50 injured. In the end, the employers were forced to make concessions: a 10 percent wage rise, and the right to organise.

Rene takes up the story: "Two aspects of this dispute should be noted. The press argued that conditions at Citroen were exceptionally bad. Many articles were written about the racist abuse that the workers suffered at the plant. But for us, Citroen is not an exception. Immigrants the same problems every where. Secondly, the role of the unions was predictable. At first they weren't interested.

But when we closed the plant down they came crawling with advice. They saw it as a straight economic issue and ignored the racist aspects. This allowed the employers to go out and tell French workers that it's only immigrants making trouble.

The union bureaucrats ignored these attacks'.

Did the employers manage to isolate the immigrant workers? 'At first, yes. But first week things began to change. When the fights began with the strike-breakers a lot of French workers down on our side. Who knows, maybe there is something in class solidarity after all? Of course, once we got their support the union leaders became very brave and started to make a lot of fine speeches. In public they were fine. But behind the scenes they hurried to end the strike before it got out of hand' Ali showed me a picture of a group of strikers armed with sticks and bricks.

'See, we have been doing a bit of what you call cleansing our ranks as well.'

Louise George Since this interview took place racial tensions in France have boiled right over, with very serious race riots breaking out in Marseilles, Villeurbanne and Mulhouse tions fascist organisations have mobilised considerable support for their anti-immigrant stand. Racist violence on the streets is widespread. Recently a young Turkish woman burnt herself to death in a Hamburg street in protest at the treatment Turks receive in Germany. Immigrant community centres have been vandalised and burnt down. The growth of right-wing activity has put the mainstream politicians on the West Berlin senator has prepared a proposal for the immediate expulsion of any foreigner engaging in any political activity. He is certain to win support from at least one leading Social Democrat. Mr Hans-Jurgen Wischnewski went on record as saying: "You can't expect neighbours to put up with Turks who slaughter sheep in the bath.

The present wave of racist hysteria has paralysed the left. For many it is too hot to handle. Others want to develop a race relations industry along British lines. The knives are out - but at present nobody is to mobilise workers against Yet, thousands are ready to demonstrate against Reagan. The labour movement's lack of interest in the racist threat paves the way for an even more reactionary government under the Chris- Democrats after the next general election, and a broader offensive against the working class. Tom Pfeiffer

HEADING FOR WAR

THE SOVIET UNION ENCIRCLED

'Crisis' has become an over-used word.

But no other word expresses better the state of international now permanent politics. Nothing can be taken for granted, for so much is out of control - as the former US secretary of state, Haig, has found out to his cost. In the old days everything was straightforward; on one side stood the Free World, on the other the Iron Curtain bloc. Cold War ideology is still churned out for public consumption, but it is now reserved for American Presidential visits to Europe: it is a tired ritual, more likely to cause embarrassment than forge a new sense of purpose. True, the Pope's visit and a royal birth can always be relied on to uplift the national soul. But although the spirit is willing, the flesh cannot but yield to the forces of darkness - interest rates, trade wars and hard cash. The British invasion of the Malvinas has thrown US foreign policy in Latin America into turmoil, and Israel's war against Lebanon pushes the Middle East closer to the brink. The French foreign secretary offers to despatch his army to Beirut, the British Prime Minister lectures on the evils of aggression and both Thatcher and Reagan dismiss their foreign secretaries. Every capitalist nation is digging in for the battles ahead. Increasingly redefining political the recession realities. This is inevitable, because just nobody can regulate the so too international relations system, treaties and to old prove impervious *special understandings'. Before our eyes the old equilibrium of the imperialist order has disintegrated. The restoration LIKE ANY RULING elite, the Soviet bureaucracy seeks to exploit international own political conflicts to increase its security. Throughout its existence it has diplomatic had to face enormous addition to the military pressure, in economic pressure of the world economy on its backward industry. Its survival is testimony to its ruthless repression the working class and peasantry at home and its construction of a large-scale military machine. In retrospect it seems barely credible that the Soviet Union was able to drive the German army back after the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942. Certainly, it was at the cost of some 20 million Russian lives and was greatly helped by supplies of American equipment. But it would not have been possible without the development of Soviet military industry from scratch in the 'thirties. as advanced as the Panzers tanks were while all around the they confronted, economy was in chaos. How was inis possible? The price of security By the time of Lenin's death in 1924 had been virtually the working class. destroyed by war and famine. It was not until the late 'twenties that industrial production was back to pre-war levels.

With the decimation of the working class and the rise of the new bureaucracy went the destruction of democratic control over production. The primary aim of the of rapid industrialisation programme which was launched in 1928 was the construction of modern industry General of this equilibrium requires the redivision of the world. West against West "The economic peace of Versailles, painstakingly constructed by the heads of governments of the seven big Western industrial economies, is in tatters - within three weeks of that much publicised summit meeting.' ( The Observer, 27 June 1982) During these three weeks these seven imperialist nations did everything but act as allies. after another attacked the Reagan adminicapitalist stration for its high interest rate policies.

President Mitterand was especially bitter, blaming the US for measures on France. The Reagan back. On 11 June the US Department Reagan, the relationship to reality. and of military production directives of the Fifteenth Congress of the Communist Party emphasised that the role of the First Five Year Plan was to focus maximum attention rapid development of those sectors of the national economy, industry in particular, rapid bearing the main role in ensuring defence and economic stability Russian country in time of war'. The dictatorship of the bureaucracy made it impossible for the masses to exercise effective control over the production of essential products.

But the War Department, as an influential grouping within the bureaucracy, ensured that at least the weapons produced by the ramshackle economy worked.

To provide for its military defence, the bureaucracy has to this day continued to build up a very wellequipped military machine. is not industry is more efficient than civilian industry; in fact there are good grounds for believing that it is even less efficient.

But the bureaucracy has given it priority in supplies and concentrated most scientific research on it. Large quantities of for of dramatic arrest of Japanese engineers caught stealing One European Prime Minister forcing austerity administration struck Thatcher and other imperialist cold warriors never tire of denouncing the Soviet threat to the 'free world'. But the portrait of Soviet Union as a dynamic and expansionist empire bears no Soviet involvement in Central proven to be a fiction of the Washington propaganda machine. And the passivity of the Soviet Union during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon belies all the talk about the real menace to the Middle East. Indeed, the appalling performance of Soviet-built tanks and missile systems in the war raises serious questions about the Soviet Union's military capacity.

Gareth Evans examines the constraints on Soviet foreign policy.

cost. The substandard at any five years. more

OLL

by 1955 to 52 per cent in 1980.

the Today, of the considerably limitations talks with the resources that the military rightly Soviet military the seventies. balance. national desperately Brank evERE Commerce slapped high duties on European steel to protect its own industry.

At the same time it tried to sabotage the speak Soviet-European gas pipeline project. To powerful curb Europe's independence, and to whip NATO allies behind US foreign policy, Reagan extended trade sanctions against the Soviet Union to cover the delivery of vital equipment for the project from US affiliates and licensees in Europe.

The computer secret docu ments from IBM was part of a concerted campaign aimed at opening up the Japanese market to American imports.

It is not business as usual. In the past a dynamic American empire ruled over a stable world market. The post-war balance of power was based on the overwhelming proletariat. superiority of US imperialism. The decline technology America has and products are rejected, whereas in civilian industry they would be passed. Since 1960 military spending of the has increased more than 60 per cent every This has been made possible squeezing consumption, down from Recently 60 per cent of the national product in stantially Soviet military spending is probably nal hindust and seer to grow national product and set to grow the faster than the stagnant foreign Soviet economy in the 'eighties. This 1s the reason the Soviet elite is so determined to establish a new round of arms the

USA.

Those who view Brezhnev's speeches about the need for peace as pure bluff are mistaken.

Antarctic. The Soviet Union was unable to generate for military necessary production from domestic sources even during the last decade. As the Pentagor argues, a crucial component of technology and equipment necessary for industry was provided through trade with the West throughout Imperialism of US capitalism and the growing productivity of its competitors, particularly Japan and Germany, has upset this This process is closely intertwined with the world capitalist depression. The fight is on for market shares and spheres of influence. Cooperation is ruled out when the survival of every capitalist class only be Calm bought about at its rivals' expense.

Summit meetings can no more stop this collapse into economic conflict than they could stop the South Atlantic war getting out of hand. The Western world is not at one. It is an uneasy alliance of rivals trying to slow down the inevitable. The Middle East is of special importance in this respect.

There, the Iran-Iraq war and the invasion of Lebanon show that imperialist domination is fragile and threatens to get completely out of control. The imperialist powers cannot because of the with one voice conflicts of interest. These themes have been discussed in previous issues of the next step. We continue our survey of the breakdown of the international order with articles on the Middle East and the Soviet Union.

These articles are not designed simply enhance readers' understanding of foreign affairs. Imperialism is very much a domestic issue. No war is simply fought abroad. As the Malvinas conflict showed war must also be fought at home. From Argentina to Palestine we need to speak out against imperialism - with a distinct voice that represents the interests of the (continued on page 16) The Soviet bureaucracy pays for its and machinery imports by exporting raw and semi-finished materials - gold, oil, natural gas, timber products The Soviet of minerals. pattern foreign trade is much closer to that of a backward capitalist country than to that of an advanced capitalist country. It is unable to export industrial or consumer goods to the West, with the exception of a few Lada cars. It only manages to palm off the occasional steel plant or Moskvitch onto backward capitalist countries via a complicated network of barter deals But as reserves in the western regions depleted, it country become becomes increasingly difficult to extract the raw materials needed for export the Soviet Union has suboil reduced its longstanding subsidies to Eastern Europe in order to release supplies for hard currency sales at higher prices on the world market. But bureaucracy's strategy for securing exchange depends critically on developing natural gas deposits in Siberia for supply by pipeline to Western Europe, West Germany. particularly These deposits, however, are located in permafrost conditions almost as inaccessible as the • They require highly sophisticated and robust drilling equipment for their extraction - to say nothing of the thousands of kilometres of pipeline to carry the gas. This technology is available only in the West. It is being supplied on barter terms by a consortium of banks and industrial firms, including US firms which in theory were subject to Reagan's the next step, July/August 1982 15

Eastern bloc itself. from Western Warsaw Pact Soviet Union The embargo. The Soviet the imperialist whose governfrom nationalism Union's four has March Malvinas. has always these areas is against Soviet 4000 the imperialist of the movements to the Soviet Union which offered loans at 2.5 per cent interest (compared with West's 7.5 per cent). The Soviet Union did not export capital, so it was not interested in equity participation in Indian industries. It accepted payment of interest and repayment of principal in rupees, which it used to purchase consumer goods - tea, coffee, spices, etc.

February 1982). The Soviet contribution to the Indian economy was a number of plants producing steel, oil and natural gas. But given the backwardness of its own industry, the Soviet Union could not extend its influence beyond the most basic sectors of the economy. A Bombay business journal commented recently that 'as Indian companies go in for technological tember 1981). Soviet Union India with weapons worth But an Soviet economic into a more relationship with minimal: Western the Soviet Union Aswan of arms Dam for commitment But for its OWn the Soviet military But when invests in a stroke. markets and process, with the Middle $7 billion on Soviet Union Vietnam and In Africa these regimes Comecon, as neighbour South Zimbabwe, manoeuvre ilisation into China, the Soviet to Morocco, in the Over the same Soviet Union, Cuba to Ethiopia each by is being being reduced.

AFTER KHOMEINI'S VICTORY

THE ISRAELI INVASION of Lebanon provided the excuse for the Iraqis to call an end to the Gulf war. They urged Iran to halt hostilities so that attention could be focused on events in Lebanon. Although this has saved the Iraqis from total humiliation, it is unlikely to deter Iran from claiming billions of dollars in war reparations and the removal of Saddam Hussein. Khomeini has already suggested that he should commit suicide!

But is Iran likely to push into Iraq, or for that matter, into any of its other neighbours? This is unlikely. The present regime has made it clear it will respect Iraq's borders. Talk of exporting revolution is now saved for speech days. Instead the Iranian regime will have to turn its attention to domestic issues and re-establishing relations with the West.

Success begins at home It is a year since President Bani-Sadr was deposed and the more right-wing nationalist sections of the Iranian bourgeoisie took power in Iran. In twelve months they have long gone a way towards stabilising the Khomeini regime.

The greatest successes have been against the - the Mojaheddin and leftist opposition organisations. Up to 20 000 of their supporters have been executed in the last many after severe torture.

Thouyear, sands more languish in the prisons. Some organisations, like Peykar, have been virtually wiped out. While sections of the working class remain combative, any potential leadership has been hard hit.

At the same time as smashing the left the regime has gone all out to reduce workers' living standards: employers have introduced rest-day work in many places cut wages, reduced rations and introduced oaths of loyalty. The ideological reaction Iran, against women and national minorities in particular, has helped the regime implement these measures.

In decimating the left the regime has acted to ensure its own survival. There has been little outcry in the imperialist countries. Imperialism may like

-HOE

fundamentalist Islam, but there is a quiet satisfaction in the White House and the European chancelleries at the carnage which has taken place. The West still needs a strong power in the region and Iran's leaders have clearly shown their determination to resist any move towards Hussein's position in doubt.

socialism. If the economic indicators are to be believed then some form of reconciliation is not far away.

The fall and rise of the Iranian economy The overthrow of the Shah created disruption in an already tremendous very sick economy. The Iranian Bank Markazi up the situation in summed March 1980: The industrial sector was in deep recession.

On the basis of a sample of 38per percent of the large industrial units, industrial production during 1979 showed a 23 per cent decline...of which production in the motor and turbine industry declined by 58 percent, in the metal tools industry by 53 per cent."

Nationalisation of large parts of industry and finance at first had a beneficial effect. Although the cost of the war with Iraq and damage to oil terminals exacerbated problems, a slow recovery took place in 1980 based upon rationalisation and the reduction of working class living standards. But this led to an increase in imports, of 30 percent, as industry and small-scale construction work improved. • The growth in imports was most apparent during the first part of last year when the demand for foreign exchange almost bankrupted the regime. By July Iran was importing goods - mainly foodstuffs worth $1.7 billion a month.

To overcome the foreign exchange shortage the regime began making a number of barter deals, exchanging oil directly for other commodities. The price of oil was reduced below the OPE market price and sold on the spot market to After 20 months Iraq's military adventure against Iran has ended in disaster for the Baghdad regime. The pretext for the war was Irag's territorial claim to the waters of the Shaat-el-Arab which divide the two countries at the northern end of the Gulf. In reality the war marked a bid to smash the Khomeini regime so that President Saddam Hussein could take over the role of strongman in the Gulf, a position left vacant since the fall of the Shah. The bid has failed, with enormous casualties on both sides. Iraq has nothing to show for its dead, its development plans are in ribbons and it is now saddled with war debts to the tune of $22 billion to its Arab neighbours. The defeat of Iraq now puts Saddam The reactionary Gulf leaders and some of their Western backers now fear that a victorious Iran will create instability in the region and undermine their regimes. Are their fears justified? Nick Jenkins investigates.

ensure a certain sale. This led to bitter recriminations earlier this year at the OPEC summit in Vienna when Iran refused to back the OPE minimum price agreement and stick to its sales quota.

The regime has had most success in its agricultural policies. Premier Moussavi, in important policy statements, has emphasised the urgency of making Iran selfsufficient in wheat and rice and cutting down on the annual food import bill of around $4 billion. High import tariffs and financial massive encouragement, coupled with the threat of expropriation if the land were left unused, has led to a small (five percent) increase in the amount of land cultivated.

Farmers are being offered better prices too. Wheat is up from 12 000 rials per ton to 28 000 rials. As one publication noted: 'Farming offers a better return on investment than almost any other activity and the sector that was once the most depressed in the economy is now the most active' (Arabia, May 1982). Agriculture has a major political significance in addition to its economic importance. Much of the regime's backing comes from peasants and petit-bourgeois producers who have benefited from the recent growth of agriculture.

However, much of industry is still at a standstill and political stability is far from assured as unemployment remains at high levels.

Back to the West There are significant divisions within the ruling Islamic Republican Party over the way forward for industry While the central aim is to strengthen petrochemi- Imperialism cals, steel and copper to reduce the dependence are disagreeon oil, there ments within the ruling class over the role the state should play in industry. Seventy per cent of industry is nationalised - too much according to some of the. more technocratic and independent capitalists.

They argue that the 'political' appointments in the state industries should be rescinded and experts - even foreign ones - encouraged to return. Already Italian German, Japanese and South Korean firms are at work in the country.

The insecurity of officials, uncertain of whether they will keep their jobs, has paralysed the bureaucracy. A recent Bank Markazi report refers to the 'multiplicity of decision-making centres' in industry.

As Iran enters a period of reconstruction the pressures on both sides of the debate to increase, possibly with are likely bloody consequences. Returning to the welcoming arms of imperialism is evidently not going to be a straightforward process. There is for example a strong emphasis on building relations with other backward capitalist countries - Turkey, Brazil, India - and with the Comecon countries.

And Iran now imports just 61 percent of its goods from the West compared to 86 per cent before the revolution. But it can only rely on its supposedly favoured trade partners for relatively unsophisticated commodities. High technology goods can only be supplied by the major imperialist countries. Here the figures show that despite the foreign exchange crisis, the old trading links remain very strong.

Iran hasn't even begun to break with 'the great Satan. Indeed sections of the ruling stratum - avil servants, technocrats and businessmen - - are working behind the scenes to renew links with imperialism. The more traditional wing of the ruling adminstration finds the move towards reconciliation a threat to its interests. Now that the Iraqi war has drawn to a close, tensions within the ruling circle are likely to be exacerbated.

Workers in Iran have no interest in supporting either side in this conflict.

They should strike out on their own to defend their interests and those of the oppressed national and religious minorities, women, the unemployed masses and the dispossessed peasantry.

the next step, July/August 1982 17

THE REAL TARGET IS THE WEST BANK

Imperialism The rape of Lebanon THE WAR has been a major test for the Palestine Liberation Organisation and its allies in Lebanon. It is now clear that only the Shiite AMAL organisation, which until recently had been fighting the PLO in the south, stood alongside its former adversaries in the fighting.

The Lebanese leftists, in particular the Muslim Druzes led by Walik Jumblatt, clearly agreed not to take part in the fighting. The Syrians, unwilling to risk a major confrontation, sent only token forces against the Israelis when their positions attacked, and simply retreated to positions to defend the road to Damascus. Syrian President Hafez Assad exaggerated the scale of the fighting to improve his image in the Arab world.

The Arab regimes, while issuing ritual denunciations, remained remarkably calm as the Israelis advanced. In reality, none of them has any love for the Palestinians.

in each successive war the Israelis have fought against their neighbours they have had to face at least one less Arab adversary.

The Arab regimes are just as keen as the Israelis to deal with the Palestinian problem. There has been no talk of an oil embargo from Saudi Arabia's new pro-American Monarch King Fahd. The Soviet Union has also stood by and watched its erstwhile ally Syria humiliated by the destruction of its SAM-6 missile batteries in the Beka'a Valley and the outgunning of its Soviet-supplied aircraft and tanks. While Israel's declared aim was to clear a 25-mile cordon north of the border to protect its settlers in Galilee from rocket attacks, it never intended to stop there. Indeed, the real objective of the military operation lies, not in Lebanon at all, but on the West Bank of the Jordan and the Gaza strip, the areas occupied by Israel in 1967. The decision to go all out to smash the PLO as a military force is a vital part of Israeli ambitions to annex these territories. The raid into Lebanon is primarily punitive, to weaken the PLO and hence the Palestinians' ability Thus it to resist annexation. has the tacit support of the USA which has financed and armed the Israelis.

The main reason why Israel decided to invade Lebanon is because the Camp David treaty which neutralised Egypt has now run out of steam. With its withdrawal from Sinai and the destruction of the settlement at Yamit in April, all that remains of Carter's original Camp David the next step, July/August 1982 maimed while the world sat and watched.

only worry had gone too far. their long-term interests in the Middle East.

plan is the talks on the status of the West Bank. These have got nowhere in all the months of haggling between Israel and Egypt. American-sponsored efforts to continue the "peace' dialogue, such as the Saudi Fahd plan, have offered no way forward. So Israel has decided that where no agreement can be reached, it will a solution. threats to impose Earlier invade Lebanon came to nothing only because an invasion would have made it impossible for Egypt to carry on the Camp David process, and more importantly, win at least acquiescence to. it in the Arab world. 'Creeping annexation' In pursuit of its policy of creeping annexation', Israel started some time ago to undermine the authority of the PLO dominated municipalities on the West Bank and in the Gaza strip. Last year the mayors of Hebron and Halhoul - Arab towns on the West Bank - were deported.

This was followed by near-successful assassination attempts on the mayors of Nablus and Ramallah. In November 1981 the Israelis announced the introduction of "civilian' rule on the West Bank, followed a month later in the Gaza strip. Far from being civilian, the new administration is headed by Colonel Menachem Milsom, and many of its local functionaries are simply army officers in civilian clothes. Lieutenant Colonel Albert Behar heads the Bethlehem branch and in the Gaza strip the former military commander, Brigadier- General Yosef Luntz, was appointed as the new "civilian' governor.

He has not even bothered to take off his military untorm. The new regime has attempted to weaken the legitimate Palestinian municipalities by cutting off the steadfastness funds, administered jointly by Jordan and Once again, thousands of Palestinian people have been killed and This time the scale and ferocity of the Israeli onslaught even pricked the conscience of many in the West. The invasion of Lebanon revealed yet again that the people of Palestine cannot rely on the surrounding Arab states any more than they can on the United Nations. As for the imperialist countries, their was that political instability in the Middle East would erupt out of their control. The Western powers felt that this time Israel They were not moved by the plight of the Palestinians, but worried about the damage that the invasion could mean for the PLO. Worth $100m a year, these funds are used to finance welfare projects in the Occupied Territories which the Israelis will not fund in Palestinian areas.

Instead the Israelis have tried to build up the collaborationist Village Leagues, financed directly by Israel, but with little success. The Israelis stepped up the pressure last December when they annexed the Golan Heights, captured from Syria during the 1967 war. The inhabitants, mainly Syrian Druzes, resisted annexation by burning their Israeli-issued ID cards and mounting a general strike, which the Israelis were unable to break. Bir Zeit, the main Palestinian university, just to the north of Ramallah, was also closed down from November to January in a move weaken resistance to the designed to introduction of the new regime. Only a month after it was reopened, it was closed down yet again and it remains closed up to the present.

The construction of new Zionist settlements in the Occupied Territories has been stepped up months. recent There are presently 126 on the West Bank and Gaza, containing around 20 000 Zionists, many of them members of the extremist Gush Emunim sect.

But Israel hopes to have settled 100 000 people by 1985 and has allocated $600m for this purpose. This does not include the 60 000 settlers already in East Jerusalem, all of whom arrived after 1967.

All of this takes place in an area no bigger than Luxembourg. The Zionists' aim is to 'encourage' as many Arabs as possible to leave (a quarter of a million have done so since 1967) and turn those who remain into a mobile and cheap labour force for Israeli industry. Israelis already own or control half the cultivatable land in the Jordan Valley. Many of the fanatical settlers forced out of the Sinai will be directed towards the West Bank: 15 new settlements are planned, one for each of those closed down in Sinai. The main forces behind the increased settlement drive and the invasion are Premier Menachem Begin and Defence Minister Ariel Sharon, Begin's likely successor and part of Likud's hardline right wing. However, it is clear that large parts of Israeli society, including most of the Labour Party, agree with their aims, however squeamish they may be about the methods being used to accomplish them. Despite demonstrations in Israel against the invasion, there has been no attempt to call a vote of no confidence in Begin's aggressive strategy.

A new stalemate The invasion of Lebanon has brought only short-term gains for the Zionists. Inflicting a severe blow against the PLO's military capacity is one thing, but defeating the Palestinian people is another. Begin's aim of establishing a united Lebanon under Christian domination, possibly with Shi'ite Moslem participation, appears doomed from the start. Years of conflict have taken their toll on Lebanon.

This devastation and chaos cannot be through a foreign-imposed overcome solution - least of all by Israeli dictate.

However, having driven his troops to the fringes of Beirut, Begin may now find it difficult to withdraw. The rape of Lebanon will inevitably recruit more fighters to the struggle against Zionism.

The invasion shows that Israel is well able to deal with the forces of the Arab states. The corrupt ruling class of Syria has no real interest in defending Palestinians. But Israel cannot defeat the people of Palestine. Time and again the freedom of Palestine fighters have stood anc fought against overwhelming odds. And as long as the Palestinians are denied the right to determine their future, they will continue to fight. But Israel's deployment of its vast military superiority against the PLO is in reality a sign of weakness. To ensure its domination over the West Bank and Gaza, it has had to invade Lebanon. This has not created stability in the West Bank - it has only stored up new problems for Israel in Lebanon. ( The Middle East stalemate continues. It will only be resolved through the destruction of the Zionist state.

Pat Roberts

AS SOON

AS it took office, France's new Socialist Party/Communist Party (PS/PCF) administration began putting the heat on the working class (see Workers against Mitterand', the next step, No 20, January 1982). Since the New Year, however, each month has seen insult added to injury: • January: Delors tells businessmen he wants a social contract between them and the unions. "That's OK with us', say the capitalists, 'so long as you stay in charge for the next five years' • February: Industry Minister Pierre Dreyfus writes to the 44 newly-appointed chiefs of Mitterand's much-vaunted nationalised concerns, calling on them to improve competitiveness, realise sufficient profits to ensure the development of their companies and achieve a satisfactory return on capital • March: in the wake of major setbacks for the left in France's local elections and the franc, heavy Premier Pierre Mauroy tells the press that his programme of social reforms (a 39-hour working week, five weeks' paid annual leave, a higher minimum wage, etc) is at a definite end' • April: Interior Minister Gaston Deferre calls for the police to be equipped with more powerful handguns, to be allowed to make more spot identity checks, and to be granted the right to shoot merely after having given a warning.

Deferre also demands the deportation of 50 000 immigrants • June: under the slogan of economic "rigour, the Government establishes a four-month pay freeze and cut public spending by more than f2 billion. And this is just the beginning. As the economic crisis mounts much tougher measures will be required to save French capitalism.

Given the scale of the difficulties before him, how is Mitterand going to cope? How is he going to get the French working class, one of the most militant in the world, to agree to the sacrifices that required? It's here that the are unions come in. The dynamics of France today Mitterand's May 1981 election victory showed that the Socialist Party (PS) had finally succeeded in turning itself into a new kind of party. Though most of its deputies in the National Assembly today are teachers, the PS is no longer the weak and wholly middle-class organisation it once was. Since the early sixties it has worked hard to win workers away from the Stalinists of the PCF. And, thanks to the rapid industrialisation de Gaulle presided over and to the growing weight of the whitecollar working class) in French society, it has succeeded. Most important of all, it has won a base for its reformist ideas in the unions. This is why, last year, the French bourgeoisie decided to give it a try in government. The problem for Mitterand is the French economy. Having weathered the crisis of 1973/4 fairly well, it is now running into the full impact of the world recession. But unlike the last Labour Government in Britain, which hit similar difficulties in the late 'seventies, Mitterand doesn't quite have the trade union bureaucracy in his pocket.

In France the trade union bureaucracy has only come of age relatively recently - ovel the same period, in fact, as the PS has France was a "late-developer' as an imperialist power, and its class struggle has been characteristically stormy for most of the twentieth century. France has in the past had little use for such mediation as its trade union leaders could offer. French unions represent only 28 per cent of the working class; they are seriously divided among themselves, chiefly between the PCF-influenced CGT and the upstart, PS-influenced CFDT; and administration? James Wood reports.

their membership has been declining for the past five years. Mitterand's Government wants workers to tighten their belts. But this will only be possible if it can get the trade union agree to carry bureaucracy lo the Mitterand message right down to the shop floor. This means finding union officials responsible positions, giving them experience in capitalist economics, and paying them well. The snag is, though, that the trade union bureaucracy is relatively feeble and the working class not a little suspicious. So Mitterand has had to move fast. Jobs for the boys First, in February, Mitterand nationalised enough firms to bring the state's share of industry from 18 to 32 per cent. Critics have noted French state had that the informal control over much of manufacturing and finance even before the move; that most of the enterprises were taken over because they were unprofitable; and that the compensation paid to private investors But the real was significance of Mitterand's nationalisations goes beyond this. By making the state a bigger employer than ever before, the Government can consolidate the power of the trade union bureaucracy at national level. French unions are at their strongest in state-owned concerns. A law on the •democratisation of the public sector, to be debated in the autumn, will ensure that the tripartite (government/management/ unions) board structures prevalent in old state firms like Renault will be roughly duplicated in newly-nationalised indus- Trade union incorporation will be tries. the norm even in firms which have some private capital sunk in them.

Second, Mitterand has begun to institutionalise industrial relations procedures at the level of the individual workplace.

His aim here is to give the unions a big say in the anti-working class rational- France's isations economic crisis has made necessary. Since 13 May, the National Assembly has been debating a comprehensive programme of workers' participation developed by Labour Minister Jean Auroux. Among the measures

A FRENCH

U-TURN

On 13 June, the French Finance Minister Jacques Delors announced the end of the Mitterand experiment. Just over a year in office and the socialist Government has come to its senses. As we predicted in previous issues of the next step, the alternative economic strategy has turned into an anti-working class austerity programme. The Economist mused: 'This is good news for the West, not just for France' (19 June Austerity is one side of the Mitterand Government's programme. But what about the much-vaunted trade union reforms promised by this due to become law in April 1983: union/management works councils to be company-funded; shop stewards to have 10 paid hours a month off on union works council union members to have greater access to company information that on new technology; to be able to call in accountants and technology consultants; to be able to go • negotiations on • workplace unions to be able to bring national • unions with more than half of a firm's workforce to be able to veto agreements struck between the bosses and the minority (usually right-wing) unions.

As Auroux noted, 'democracy in the firm is the harbinger of economic efficiency' (Le Monde, 14 May). And, though French CBI doesn't want union leaders to have too much leverage in the factories, it supports the spirit of these unions to decide the fate of their own members is its best bet for pushing through speed-ups, wage cuts and large- Mitterand's ingenuity extends beyond nationalisation and labour reform. He has given the railways, the civil service, the ministry of health and France's valent to Britain's YOP schemes to PCF leaders to run; and he has put a PCF/CGT chief at the head of the coal industry, a PS left-winger at the top of Thomson, a PS/CFDT bureaucrat in charge of a new energy-saving agency, the leader of the big teachers' union in control of the ministry of leisure' and both a PCF man and a PS figure at the helm of the Paris Metro. Through Auroux, he has asked the trade unionists who sit on the board of France's unemployment benefit fund to come up with proposals for cutting its deficit. He has given the unions a much bigger role in the national administration of social security and in the managementby-committee of health and safety in the workplace. He has encouraged managers to follow Japanese practice and workers set up 'quality circles' to improve productivity: already, 180 firms have such circles in operation (Le nouvel economiste, 3 May). Since 1980, he has helped the PS raise the number of its workplace branches from 1100 to 1700 He has made sure that Mauroy invites all the unions to his 'round table with the employers on issues like the working week. And he has fixed things so that neither town halls nor nationalised concerns can become the focus for unrest directed against the Elysee Palace. How?

Very subtly: by decentralising government from Paris and by telling the chiefs of nationalised concerns that it's up to them how they run their businesses.

At the crossroad Despite his elaborate precautions Mitterand faces a rough ride from French workers. Recent, bitterly fought strikes at Renault and Citroen leading to pitched battles against scabs illustrate the combativity of the French proletariat. In March alone there were 550 strikes involving 120 000 workers - the second highest figure since May 1968 Nor can Mitterand rely on his friends in the union bureaucracy to bail him out The CT faces considerable rank and file pressure to deliver some goods to the workers for a change. It has been losing ground to its competitor the CFDT. It has lost over 600 000 members since the recession and has lost out in a number of factory committee elections. In response to its decline the CGT has tried to become the extra-parliamentary conscience' Government. of the In February, attacked some of the new nationalised industry appointments as too technocratic and spoke out against restrictions on pay in the civil service. At its 4lst congress in Lille, in June, the CT gave Mauroy and his wage freeze a hostile reception.

The CGT is no direct threat to Mitterand - it was quite prepared to sell out car workers at Renault. But its susceptibility to class pressure makes it an unpredic table ally of the Government.

Even the PS-influenced CFDT finds it difficult to retain control over the rank and file. At its 39th biennial congress at the end of May,

CFDT

the general secretary's calls for austerity met with howls from delegates. The balance of class forces in France remains unstable and unpredictable. For the ruling class the central problem remains the inability of the Government to contain the tremendous militancy of the French proletariat. The sort of combativity that ensured that 37 out of 46 of those recently hospitalised in hand-to-hand fighting at Talbot Poissy were scabs this won't easily be deflected by the feeble labour bureaucracy.

For active workers in Britain, the current evolution of the French trade union movement should be the excuse neither for pessimism nor optimism. Because Britain, along with most of the world, is today ruled by imperialist "monetarism', union leaders' claims for the Labour Party's Alternative Economic Strategy can sound convincing no matter how vaguely they are made. But in France the reactionary consequences of the AES have been thrown into sharp relief. In Britain the TUC's calls for the renationalisation of industries recently privatised by the Tories seem attractive; but in France the self-serving, corporatist designs behind such calls are apparent for all to see. In Britain Labour promises to undo Tebbit's laws when it gets back in office; in France we can observe what such laws are likely to be replaced with. France today is a test-tube for reformist politics in action.

Our job is to wave that test-tube and its unpalatable contents in front of union militants still dallying with the Labour Party and ask them whether it represents the kind of experiment they want to undertake here. the next step, July/August 1982 19

Understanding the Soviet Union David Rousset, The legacy of the Bolshevik revolution: a critical history of the USSR, Vol 1, Alison & Busby, London 1982, pp333, pbk £5.95. The degeneration of the Bolshevik Revolution has proved to be a major disaster for workers around the world. The spectacle of a system which combines police terror with economic stagnation has provided the imperialist ruling Class we songest propaganda The Soviet Union has become the weapons. focus of a deep-seated anti-communist outlook in the labour movement. The causes of the degeneration of the October Revolution have been much debated and to this day the experience of the first successful working class revolution stil influences discussions on strategy and tactics. David Rousset's book, published in the early seventies in France and recently translated into English, is an interesting recapitulation of some familiar views on the Soviet Union.

Rousset provides some useful insights into the political mechanisms through which the revolution was derailed. His discussion of the rise of the bureaucracy in the 'twenties shows the fragile foundations on which the revolution was built. His examination of the Left Opposition shows how the revolutionary wing of the Bolshevik Party remained a prisoner of the bureaucracy. However, these episodic insights into the process of bureaucratisation of the revolution are clouded by an outlook which is fatalistic and at times verges on the irrational.

Now is not the time One of the dividing lines between revolutionaries and reformists is deciding when the time is ripe for fundamental change. For revolutionaries the capitalist crisis reveals the necessity for destroying capitalism. Unless the capitalist system is overthrown the proletariat will pay a heavy price for its salvation. Reformists, on the other hand, see the crisis as a problem which has to be solved before the working class can make any important advance. After the First World War reformists argued that economic chaos was so profound that no real change could take place. They said that revolution would be doomed by poverty and chaos and should, therefore, be postponed. Leading social democratic theoretician Karl Kautsky predicted in October 1917 that the Bolshevik revolution would only hold out for a few months because it was premature. Reformists today still cling to this cautious outlook: the acceleration of Britain's economic decline is seen by the Labour left as a problem that will inevitably slow down the implementation of its economic strategy. The Bolsheviks were well aware of the difficulties that the Russian Revolution would 20 the next step, July/August 1982 encounter. But postponing the revolution was not an option that they could countenance For Lenin, only revolution could avoid the intensification of the exploitation and degradation of the working class. The Soviet revolutionary leadership knew that a single workers state on its own could not survive for long. That's why it directly linked the future of the Soviet Union to the European revolution. The defeat of the European working class at the close of the First World War was at the same time a crippling blow to the Russian Revolution.

Reformists welcomed the defeat of the European and the revolut ony movement degeneration of the October Revolution as confirmation of their prejudices. Rousset gives the reformists sigh of relief and their smug self-vindication a facade of theory: *Russian backwardness operated in a world dominated by the technological situation transcending the capitalist impossibility of mode of production. That is to say, relief could not have come from outside Russia. Western Europe did not possess the means to reverse the conjuncture. Lenin's waiting strategy had no real foundation. (Rousset, p44) Rousset's conclusion that the Russian Revolution failed because it was premature is nothing new. However, he goes further and claims that even Western Europe was not ready for 'transcending' capitalism. Rousset's reasoning is simplistic. His claim that industry and technology were too underdeveloped to sustain socialism ignores the central benefit of a socialist economy. It can develop the forces of production at a much faster rate than possible under capitalism. "It was inevitable' is no explanation. It simply attempts to turn the advantage of hindsight into a theory. But if everything is inevitable, what is the point of analysing the course of events? And yet he sets out to offer policies which the Bolsheviks could have pursued to avoid bureaucratic degeneration. His criticisms of Lenin are devoid of any theoretical content since he has already said that the 'objective impossibility of going beyond the capitalist mode of production did not merely pronounce the doom of the first revolution; it also determined the means by which it would be destroyed.

A Greek tragedy Social theory has gone beyond the fatalism of Greek tragedies or the doctrine of predestination. So Rousset is forced to present his discoveries in appropriate theoretical jargon. He declares that the Soviet Union is state capitalist, but he makes no attempt to elaborate the laws of motion of a state capitalist society. The reader is forced to take the author's word for it.

The last part of Rousset's enterprise is to find capitalist-type relations in the appearances of Soviet society. This part of the book is very much a rehash of Tony Cliff's Russia: a Marxist analysis. Like Cliff, Rousset does not like what the Soviet bureaucrats do - and if they are nasty, they must be capitalists.

Rousset even adopts Cliff's bizarre procedure. Cliff believes that the tendency towards state intervention under capitalism converges with state control of the Soviet economy. He ignores the facts that state intervention can be governed by different forces and can have different dynamics. For Cliff, superficial parallels suffice: The difference between the Russian economy and the Nazi economy much smaller than the difference between the Nazi economy and the economy of Adam Smith's time'. Rousset continues where Cliff left off. According to him Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were the products of the same forces: *the concentration camp institution made its simultaneous appearance (to within three years in Russia and Germany' (Rousset, p191). The fact that Germany and Russia both had concentration camps is conclusive proot that they're the same. The fact that concent- Germany served different ration camps in functions from those in Russia is, of course, irrelevant to the author.

In Greek tragedy everything could be explained by a fatal flaw. The theory of state capitalism is the same. Things are bad in the Soviet Union because it is (state) capitalist and it is state capitalist because things are bad.

Rousset clarifies Cliff's theory by simply explicitly stating that it was all inevitable, the revolution was premature.

In the hands of reformists the theory of state capitalism is not so much a theory, it is more a justification for inaction. The Labour left's alternative strategy is an attempt to promote state capitalism. In reality it serves to reconcile workers' demands for change with the continuation of the capitalist system - for state capitalism is a utopia (see Revolutionary Communist Papers, No 4). Those on the left who declare that the Soviet Union is state capitalist inadvertently provide reformism with a theory to justify its objectives. State capitalism in Russia is another way of saying that the revolution is always premature.

Frank Richards A score still unsettled Seamus Costello, 1939-1977, Irish republican socialist: political biography and tribute from his friends and comrades, The Seamus Costello Memorial Committee, Dublin, 1982, pp76.

The life-story of Seamus Costello is in many ways a history of modern Irish republicanism.

Born in Wicklow in 1939, he joined the IRA at 16, was wounded on active service in Derry at 17 and by the age of 20 he had already served two years inside the Curragh internment camp.

On his release in 1959, he plunged himself into trade union and local community politics becoming a councillor in his native Bray in 1967. Costello became a leading figure in the republican movement in the 'sixties as it moved towards electoral politics in the Twenty-six Counties and to civil rights agitation in the north. When the movement split in 1969-70 he stayed with the Official IRA as its Director of Operations and Vice-President of Official Sinn Fein. However, when it became apparent that the Officials' socialist rhetoric concealed an acceptance of British imperialist domination over opposition to was driven into the leadership. Following his expulsion from the Officials in 1974, Costello formed the Irish Republican Socialist Party which he led through stormy years of war in the north and savage repression in the south until his murder in 1977 by an agent of the Officials (now the Workers Party). Costello personifies much of what is best in the long struggle against British imperialism in Ireland. By the testimony of the contributors to this pamphlet, he was a natural leader, an indefatigable activist, talented organiser and an inspiring speaker. He was deeply involved in campaigning around tenants' rights, trade union issues and the concerns of small without ever losing sight of the farmers fundamental issue of Irish politics, the national question of British domination. He repudiated the approach of those in the republican movement who advocated downplaying the national struggle to win unity with Loyalist workers on 'community' issues, such as a proposed Belfast ring road. James Connolly labelled William Walker, who put forward a similar strategy in 1912, 'a gas and water socialist'; in the 'seventies Costello called them 'ring road socialists".

Costello appreciated the crucial role of the modern working class in Ireland in the struggle for Irish freedom and he acknowledged it in his commitment to a socialist republic. But he never succeeded in articulating the political Reviews connection between the bread-and-butter interests of Irish workers and the broader struggle against British rule in Ireland. He thus became the unconscious victim of the reformist politics of the Irish Stalinists who took over the republican movement in the 'sixties, led the Officials in the 'seventies and today form the Workers Party. Costello himself was a leading advocate of participation in elections, the key issue on which the Officials split the movement.

Costello and many others failed to appreciate that behind the Stalinists' proclaimed commitment to practical politics lay an insidious accommodation to the British-sponsored institutions of Irish political life.

When Costello finally left the Officials it was in response to the consequences of Stalinist politics, not as a result of a rigorous repudiation of the Officials programme. Costello was expelled - he did not force the split. His subsequent acknowledgement that he should have left two years previously reflects his lack of political clarity about the issues at stake.

Indeed, no section of the republican movement has ever undertaken a decisive critique of the politics of the Officials. The result is that their programme, coherently restated in The Irish industrial revolution in 1977, retains considerable influence in Ireland. The failure to settle accounts with the Officials destines republicans to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Costello's final contribution the broad front' of anti-imperialist forces - is nothing more than a revival of the Officials' call for a 'national liberation front' shortly before the split in 1969. The central problem for Irish revolutionaries is to clarify the place of the working class in the struggle against British rule: talk of 'broad fronts' paves the way for compromise and collaboration with other social forces - it is the road back to the Stickies.

Seamus Costello lived as a committed fighter for Irish freedom. He died at the hands of the Irish Stalinists whose organisation he opposed but from whose politics he never decisively broke. Last month, the INLA finally shot Costello's assassin in retribution. Fair enough.

But it will take more than bullets to destroy the pernicious influence of Stalinism in Irish politics.

If this pamphlet stimulates a more systematic attack on the politics of the Official IRA/ Workers Party, then it will be a fitting tribute to the tragically curtailed life of Seamus Costello.

Mick Kennedy Retrieving our revolutionary traditions Diane Keonker, Moscow workers and the 1917 Revolution, Princeton University Press, 1981, pp420, pbk f21.30. Mary Nolan, Social democracy and society working class radicalism in Dusseldorf 1890- 1920, Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp376, pbk £27.50. Today much of the European labour movement is on the defensive and is in ideological disarray.

Any examination of the history of the German and Russian working class snows tnat over tae decades a real regression has taken place in the ideology, culture and consciousness of the labour movement. Therefore any serious examination of our past tradition may have impor tant lessons for our movement. These authors, although sympathetic to their subject matter, are not committed to working class revolution.

Nevertheless as serious social historians they have provided two valuable studies.

The working classes of Dusseldorf and Moscow in the early years of the century had more in common than would meet the eye of the contemporary observer. Dusseldorf was one of the leading industrial centres of a dynamic Germany, while Moscow's industry reflected the backwardness of capita list development in Russia, the labour move.

ment in both cities had a strong attachment to socialism. This was primarily due to the prevail-

Reviews ing authoritarian political order which stimulated a strong sense of proletarian identification.

Although economic opportunities for Dusseldort workers were greater than for their Moscow comrades they all faced a rigid social system which reduced them to the status of second class citizens. Workers in both cities took part in revolutionary upheavals: in Moscow the workers won whilst in Dusseldorf they went down to defeat. The two studies under review tell us what went wrong in Dusseldorf and why we won in Moscow. The working class and its leadership In the later decades of the nineteenth century workers throughout Europe founded labour organisations to defend their interests.

In Moscow labour movement institutions had a limited scope. Many workers had only just arrived in the city from the country and they still tried to keep up links with the villages as an insurance against sickness and unemployment. State repression forced proletarian political organisations underground while unions maintained a precarious existence. Things were different in Dusseldorf. Although a large section of the labour movement had recently migrated into the city, workers soon developed a keen awareness that their only hope of security lay in the establishment of working At first the influential class organisa tons. Catholic Church was able to limit, the growth.

of proletarian institutions but by 1904 they mushroomed into a veritable alternative society.

The Dusseldorf working class had immense creaenergy. Operating through the Social tive Democratic Party (SPD), workers set up new institutions covering all spheres of social life daily newspapers, youth and women's associations, theatres and cultural institutions and consumer cooperatives. The existence of such a high level of organisation reflected workers' awareness of their interests as a class. Unfortunately these institutions tended to bureaucratise working class politics and strengthen reformist tendencies in sne German labour movement. By the end of the first decade of this century the SPD had become transformed into a reformist party reconciling the aspirations of the proletariat with capitalist social reforms. According to Mary Nolan, Dusseldort was an exception to this trend - the local SPD was strongly antireformist and a fierce critic of the party leadership. Nolan attributes Dusseldorf radicalism to local peculiarities. The Dusseldorf bourgeoisie was confident, strongly anti-union and contemptuous towards its factory workers. This hostile environment exacerbated class antagonism and radicalised the labour movement. Thus the militancy of the Dusseldorf labour movement was more a reaction to local circumstances than a conscious rejection of reformism. As a result the local party remained merely a loyal opposition to the national leadership.

In Moscow the scope for the development of proletarian insti utions was more limited.

However, workers made up what they lacked in organisation through the development of an working class tradition. intensely pollucal Repression forced working class politics underground - but it also stimulated discussion and debate. Political differences which were debated within the SPD could not be contained within a single Russian socialist organisation. Thus the Moscow labour politically Was fragmented and Social asse Men sheviks Revolutionaries representing its reformist sections and the Bolsheviks representing its revolutonary wing The war and the proletariat Despite socialist agitation against militarism most workers in both Dusseldorf and Moscow supported the war drive of their respective ruling classes. By the middle of the First World War this support was more limited as workers began to realise the issues at stake. However, the opposition to the war was more successful in Moscow than in Dusseldorf. Why?

The German SPD supported the war from the start. The Dusseldorf leadership was critical of this stance. Indeed as early as 1913, the Dusseldorf social democratic daily paper noted that throughout the International reformism and bureaucratisation are widespread, and there to suffocate all revolutionary is an errort strivings'. Unfortunately these views had no organisational consequences. The local party, despite its criticisms, remained tied to the SPD.

In 1914 press censorship paralysed the local paper and the SPD's pro-war views monopolisthe labour Anti-militarist, internationalist policies did not acquire an independent organisational expression and radicals in Dusseldorf, as elsewhere, feared a split in ine working class But the war unleashed forces which undid this artificial unity. As the German economy began to collapse and more workers died on the battlefields, proletarian opposition to the war gathered momentum. Workers' experience at home and on the front convinced them of the futility of the war and heightened their suspicion of the SPD. Strikes and other forms!

of protest flared up and threatened to get out of control. Mas pressure finally forced the split in the SPD which the radicals were keen to postpone. In 1917 the left wing of the SPD set up a new party, the independent social democrats (USD). Virtually the entire Dusseldorf membership of the SPD formed the new party.

The USPD was not the product of a conscious process of political struggle. It came about as a result of the pressure of events and the party continually lagged behind the workers it was supposed to lead. When the German revolution broke out in 1918 the USPD vacillated and sought vainly to keep the movement under control. The USPD tried to defend the working class, but because it was not prepared to fight the revolution all the way to the finish it became an obstacle to the realisation of proletarian interests. By late 1918, the new com- 'the Spartacists' became party the

HELLES E

leadership of the working class. More audacious than the USD, the Spartacists emerged too late to change the course of events.

The revolutionary upheaval in Germany was defeated in 1919. During most of the previous five years the left lacked the political maturity and determination to fight for a revolutionary alternative. When workers took the path of revolution they lacked a leadership. The USPD was a makeshift response to proletarian radicalism and the Spartacists arrived too late. In any case by 1919 the counter-revolution was on the march throughout Germany - Dusseldorf was one of the last bastions to fall.

The experience of Moscow is in direct contrast to that of Dusseldorf. Diane Keonker attempts to minimise the role of political leadership by emphasising the different forces that generated mass protest. Koenker sees spontaneous forces, not the Bolshevik Party, as the driving impetus behind the revolution: The Bolsheviks' ultimate success as a party in Moscow lay in their ability to exploit this strong class hostility held by workers and to channel it along political lines.

Class antagonisms were certainly strong in Moscow, but without revolutionary leadership the outcome would have been different.

The Bolsheviks agitated against the war. And their message, while unpopular initially, cap tured the imagination of the masses as the war went on. By 1917 the Bolsheviks had contributed to the development of a class conscious vanguard in the Moscow working class. Even Koenker is forced to admit that this leadership was able to reflect the experience of the proletariat. The Bolsheviks, however, had offered the most consistent class interpretation of the revolution, and by late summer their interpretation appeared more and more to correspond to reality." Unlike in Dusseldorf, where the left trailed behind the workers, the Bolsheviks led the movement and made a revolution.

The different experiences of the working class movements in Dusseldorf and Moscow have an important lesson for the movement today. The Bolsheviks in Moscow gave an organisational expression to the interests of the proletariat thoughout the war. Even when Moscow workers queued up to join the army the Bolsheviks' message The Was Can enemy is at home - our war is with the Russian ruling class. Their ability to express the interests of the proletariat, regardless of short-term unpopularity, meant that when class tensions intensified the workers spontaneously gravitated to the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks' years of agitation and education strengthened an internationalist outlook among Moscow workers and won the Bolsheviks credibility. Without this work the Bolsheviks would have been left behind instead of being at the head of the struggle in 1917. The left today shares many of the assumptions of the Dusseldorf radicals. Fear of isolation forces the left to maintain unity with the Labour Party at any price. This reluctance to fight for an organisational alternative allows the Labour Party to retain the initiative.

The experience of the Dusseldorf working class shows that criticisms which have no organisational consequences have no political impact.

As long as the left remains united with the Labour Party it will become part of the problem rather than the solution.

Pat Roberts Community cop-out Labour Co-ordinating Committee, Labour and mass politics: rethinking our strategy, 70p.

In the next step we have often been critical of Labour left politics as ineffectual and utopian with a tendency to demoralise the working class.

In recent issues we have pointed out that the left's solutions lack plausibility and often drive workers to the right. The interesting uning about Labour and mass politics, a pamphlet just published by the Labour Co-ordinating Committee (LCC), is that it broadly accepts our assessment of the Labour left's programme.

Labour and mass politics admits that Labour has 'come to be seen as an "establishment Party". It notes that the left's Alternative Economic Strategy (AES) is not popular among workers and it emphasises the Party's lack of appeal to youth. The pamphlet is also forced to recognise that Thatcher's appeals to individual interests have a strong resonance in the working class. So far so good. However, the realisation that its programme is becoming increasingly irrelevant leads the authors, not towards independent working class policies, but in the direction of the Liberal Party.

Community - not class The authors are irritated by the working class.

They feel that the left has concentrated too much on workers; they wish instead to promote the cause of class collaboration. Like reformists in the past they feel that working class politics are too narrow and too parochial. They propose a wider alliance with other sections of the com- Community politics' is the latest label for old-fashioned class collaboration - in the past this approach has gone under the of 'national unity, "popular front', names "progressive bloc', "broad democratic alliance, 'historic compromise. The LCC upbraids the stick-in-the-muds of the traditional Labour left: There are too many within the Labour Party who believe that there can never be any basis for unity with "class enemies" such as for example, sections of the churches ' (p4). The term class enemies is put in inverted commas because the authors aim is to reconcile conflicting social forces, not acknowledge their antagonism. They explicitly deny the need to pursue independent proletarian policies. "Many Labour activists claim, in understand.

able reaction against the ideologically loaded concept of "national interest", to be unable to distinguish between the sectional interest of a group of workers and the wider interest of the community as a whole. But such can sometimes conflict. It is another part of the left's "image problem" that, in wishing away such conflicts, we come to seem to be dominated by workers' immediate interests at the expense of others.'

The authors recognise that class interests conflict. But rather than choosing the side of they opt for a fictitious ine working class community of interest in case they alienate potential allies. The LCC is obliged to move towards the because itis irrelevant tothe working class. It is not that the Labour left has been so resolute and unyielding in its defence of workers in struggle. Far from it During the last five years the policies of the Labour left have been no match against the arguments of the ruling class. The labour movement has lost all the arguments. The views that trade unions are too greedy and too powertul and the primary cause of Britain's decline finds widespread resonance. The view that the national interest must come before the needs of the working class influences many, even in the labour movement. Labour and mass the next step, July/August 1982 21

Reviews politics is merely a concession to the prevailing ideological climate. Of course the authors try to portray their move to the 'community' in a progressive light.

They talk about the need to link up with ethnic minorities, women's groups and youth. But this is just rhetoric. Racism, the oppression of women and the marginalisation of youth do not hang suspended above the class struggle - like any social issue they have to be approached from a class point of view.

Lost for words The pamphlet is an attempt to revitalise the Labour left's appeal. At present the LCC and other sections of the Labour left lack conviction and ideological coherence. Even the bread - the and butter of the reformist programme welfare state and the nationalisation of industry - lack appeal. •Yet state economic intervention is far from popular at present. For too many workers public enterprise is synonymous with poor service - an equation obviously influenced by media hostility, but also drawing strongly on people's own experience of the nationalised industries. For too many expeworkers ute rience of the traditional nationalised industries, largely because of the circumstances in which nationalisation took place, has been one of decline and job loss.' Much of this is true. But the pamphlet forgets to mention that it was the Labour left that popularised the notions that state intervention is progressive and that nationalisation represents a step towards socialism. They must bear full responsibility for the demoralisation that these policies have generated in the labour movement. It is one thing to recognise your irrelevance.

It is another to overcome ideological paralysis.

Cheap rhetoric about the community will not do the trick. The authors of the pamphlet grasp at straws. Instead of offering positive policies they regurgitate empty but fashionable platitudes about a 'campaigning' Labour Party, "participation' and democratic forms of economic management. They even implore the Labour Party to change its 'traditional style^ and broaden the 'experience of party members.

Changing 'styles", searching for new constimight appeal to the radical middle tuencies, class activists. the teachers and towl plannels, and social workers that the LCC the socialites represents. But the very terms of the discussion, the pre-occupation with its image problem, shows that the LCC cannot resist the ideological offensive of the ruling class.

Helen Swift Freedom betrayed Anna Coote and Beatrix Campbell: Sweet freedom: the struggle for women's liberation, Picador, London, 1982, pp258, pbk £1.95.

SWEET FREEDOM is one of the clearest expositions of feminist politics published in Britain, Unlike the much-acclaimed Women's oppression today by Michele Barrett (reviewed in the next step, No 14, June 1981), it doesn't seek refuge in academicism and pretentious jargon. Its account of the history of the modern movement is straightforward and feminist Sweet freedom itself accurate. Moreovel, reflects the changing direction of the women's movement. Coote and Campbell are unaware of this: like the women's liberation movement, they have forgotten many of the original aims of the fight for women's rights.

Philosophy of compromise Coote and Campbell are proud of the tradition they represent. They see the survival of the women's liberation movement as a real achievethat the movement has ment. They note "remained a loose federation of small group inked chiefly by a sense of involvement an a common cause. They claim that the fact 'that it has survived for more than a decade is a measure of the strength of the idea that has held it together. It is true that the diffuseness of the movement has helped it to survive. A decentralised structure appealed to loose difaudience, that heterogeneous ferences never came to a head. But is survival the only objective of organisation? The survival of the movement as an informal association of individuals has been achieved at a high price. In the end women's groups survive because issues are not forced to any conclusion. Differences have no practical consequences and certainly find no organisational expression.

Conflicting views are not tested out in practice and debate assumes an academic character. This liberal form of organisation, characterised by a fear of argument and reonly ensure the survival of an solution, can institution which restricts itself to the role of a talking shop with very modest aims. And that's exactly what has happened. With every passing year the aims of the women's movement became more modest. Since the movement can only unite around the lowest common denominator, the original objectives of the women's movement have increasingly been abandoned.

Anne Coote - autonomous from everything, except Labour Party Politics.

The four basic demands elaborated by the Women's National Co-ordinating Committee in 1971 were ones that every communist must support: equal pay now, equal education and job opportunities; free contraception and abortion on demand; and free 24-hour nurseries. At the time, many women enthusiastically supported these demands. Unfortunately, it required more than an informal organisation to carry out an effective struggle around them. It also required an explicitly anti-capitalist perspective. But the heterogeneous politics of the movement prevented it from systematically pursuing activity in this direction. The one issue which could not be avoided - the attack on abortion rights - immediately precipitated a rethink of the original demand. To preserve the incoherent unity of the women's movement, the National Abortion Campagin dropped the demand for abortion on demand as its cam paigning slogan and narrowed its horizon to the defence of the status quo. Of course, NAC activists protested that they still believed in abortion on demand. But in the interest of unity with parliamentarians, this principle had to be dropped in favour of defending the 1967 Abortion Act. the Instead of fighting for its demands, movement chose issues which were compatible with its organisational survival. By the late most women's groups opted for sevente soft issues which could provoke liberal outbattered women's centres, sexist advertisements and sexual violence became their of course, real preoccupations. These were, problems, but without a struggle around the original demands, the activities became frag campaigns for piece-meal reforms, mented increasingly complementary to the activities of various agencies of national and local government. It is interesting to see how much Coote and Campbell have forgotten the heady days of 1971. Looking back over the past decade they conclude that in many ways, Women's Aid has been the most productive of all campaign: within the women's liberation movement. Undoubtedly, Women's Aid has received widespread public support. Even state agencies and voluntary organisations have been prepared to finance houses for battered women.

But success in helping a few women victims, however valuable to them as individuals, has little to do with the original objectives of the movement. These objectives were important because they constituted the basis for the only realistic defence of women as one of the most oppressed sections of society. The limited objectives of today's movement correspond to its informal organisation. An effective movement for the liberation women requires an organisation which demands of its supporters the determination to fight to change society. The myth of autonomy The myth of autonomy is very strong in feminist circles and it permeates the pages of Sweet freedom: 'From the beginning, women's liberation developed into an autonomous political movement. It was self-starting, self-regulating and self-directing, owing no allegiance to any other organisation or set of beliefs The concept of autonomy has played an important role in cohering the feminist movement. In fact, autonomy in anything but a metaphysical sense cannot exist. Society is divided into conflicting class interests which express themselves in ideologies. Everyone of us is influenced and acts according to, these interests.

by, Feminists may have 'autonomously' decided their slogan for abortion on to abandon demand during the NAC campaign. But this shift in policy owed its allegiance to the influence on the women's movement of a definite org anisation and set of beliefs Those or me Labour Party. The very fact that the women's movement between classes and represents an alliance refuses to connect its objectives with those of the working class makes it susceptible to rethe radical formist ideology. That is why slogans of the early days have given way to pragmatism and respectability.

Sweet freedom itself cannot sustain its faith in autonomy. It winds up calling on its readers to get serious: "The women's liberation movement has so of institutional far remained the edge politics, dabbling a toe in the water, finding it cold....If we are seriously planning to transform society and liberate ourselves, we shall have to get in and swim.'

The authors quickly add: This doesn't mean abandoning our politics. The way forward lies in the Labour Party, where there is a strong feminist drive to achieve fuller participation for women - an expression not of ruthless careerism, but of a will to transform Labour politics. The authors are right - joining the mean 'abandoning' does not Party Labour feminism. Indeed, autonomous organisation has merely disguised a division of labour between a reformist feminist movement and the Labour Party. Today, most leading feminists are in the orbit of the Labour Party - in body if not in soul. The soul yearns for autonomy but as the years go by autonomy turns into a circle of great friends. Today, the leaders of the women's movement of the 'seventies have given up the of fight for women's liberation in favour fighting to make the Labour Party, that bastion of chauvinist prejudice, more feminist. That's how much things have changed in the 10 years since the movement began in Britain.

Anne Burton Spies still out in the cold Martin Cruz Smith: Gorky Park, Pan Books, London 1981, pbk €1.95. It is customary in left-wing literary reviews to discover political meaning and intent in works of fiction. So perhaps it would be best to stop, just say that Gorky Park is a fine thriller, and leave it at that. But Gorky Park is not just a fine thriller. It is also a piece of fiction that manages to capture and portray aspects of social tension in the Soviet Union. It is doubtful whether Cruz Smith set out to write such a - he is much too caught up in cold war myths for that. But his rigorous handling of the subject matter has allowed him to gain impor tant insights into Soviet social life.

In the Soviet Union social relations are relatively transparent. The absence of com prevail. modity fetishism means that the ing ideology cannot obscure the ruthless and cynical actions of the state. There is no sentimentality here. The struggle for survival breeds degree corruption, atomisation and a would surprise Western These the traits that thrillers readers. are conventionally ascribe to secret service agents But here the whole of society is imbued with callous indifference and self-seeking.

Why should this book be so popular in the West? Anti-communism? Perhaps. More likely the Western reader finds much corresponds to • an experience which is his own experience much easier to assimilate if it is depicted elsewhere. Cruz Smith alludes to this in the symmetrical relations that he draws out between the of the East and the West. Of secret services course there is no symmetry between the two the real barrier to social progress lies in the West. But then Cruz Smith writes thrillers and not articles for the next step. Enjoy the

DOC.

Gareth Evans

BEFORE

THE

STORM

A Derry correspondent continues his recollection of events in the 'sixties before the War.

their sirens along Derry's dockland as midnight approached on New Years' Eve 1967. Comrades gathered to welcome in the new and bid farethe old with a number of homeless families who shared one tenement. Songs were sung from the Young Republican Association news-sheet, and one activist arose to read selections from the Special Powers Act as a partypiece. He read from Regulation 24 A, Statutory Rules and Orders of N. Ireland No. 35, 1922: *Any person who becomes or remains a member of an unlawful association or who does any act with a view to promoting or calculated to promote the objects of an unlawful association or seditious conspiracy shall be guilty of an That New Year's Eve party had been arranged to raise funds for the YRA's anti-eviction campaign and was therefore technically illegal. The following 12 months would see Powers Act come under attack, and by the close of the year the very state itself would be the focus of world attention and popular revolt.

On a cold February day, six people sat in the the housing situation in the city, and in particular the case of the four women present. All had lived in flats at Limavady Road. Their landlord had cut off the electricity supply; cooking had become impossible and the rooms had to be candle-lit. This was the humble beginning of the Derry Housing Action Committee, later to New Statesman defended I read your article a bit ago on the Falkland response to it. You claimed that the New Statesman unequivocally supported the Tory In the first week of the crisis the New condemned the sending of the task force. A couple of weeks later its front page had a picture of Mrs Thatcher with the caption "the war monger". If this indicates unequivocal support for the war then Ronald Reagan is editor of the next step.

There are enough supporters of the war The New Statesman's position on the war was support for imperialist war' in the next step, No 24, May 1982. Indeed, the New Statesman could never be accused of being 'unequivocal' about anything. But what was its position?

The New Statesman in general condemned Thatcher's conduct of the war - it did however find space for a full-page article on 30 April entitled Why Margaret Thatcher was right to send the fleet'. Its central theme was the need for a more rational, conventional military policy. On 7 May it called for 'a new navy with more ships and greater flexibility observing that a handful of frigates could have prevented what we now seek to reverse with a task force of more than 60 vessels. Duncan Campbell officiated as Labour's accountant to Her Majesty's armed forces, wringing his hands weekly at the cost of the become famous. The inaugural DHA meeting was held at the City Hotel on St Patrick's Day weekend.

One important decision was to go to the monthly meeting of the City Council on 29 March.

When the council met, a homeless mother tried to address it by reading from a prepared statebut police were called to the council chamber and in an energetic fashion carried out yet another eviction. This type of disruptive activity aroused much interest in the press and media generally, and the council's meetings became a monthly date for all DHAC activists and supporters. The aim was to expose the council's inadequate housing programme and to demand an extension to the city boundary both highly political issues. The DHAC maintained monthly protests right up to the abolition of the council in March 1969, and played an important part in alerting the world's media to the ghettoisation of the city's nationalist June witnessed the first really militant action by the homeless and their supporters. At 1lam on the 22nd, at the caravan home of the Wilson family, DHAC activists assembled. The family had recently lost a child - whose death living conditions. The caravan was dragged bus-route at the Junction of Hamilton and Ann Streets. It remained there for some hours, surrounded with placards and a revolving human picket. The action attracted much local sympathy and active support and was repeated The summer of '68 In the summer months the political climate hotted up. While at Easter less than 20 people had attended the annual commemoration meeting at the Little Diamond, there were many engaged in social agitation around homes and jobs. The national question and the social question for most were two separate issues. But the year 1968 was the Connolly Centenary, and this helped not only to change ideas about struggle but also to strengthen the shift towards alternative navy would not only defend Britain's interests better - it would also be cheaper.

After Britain's final victory, the New Statesman could only gasp in admiration at this "remarkable feat of arms" and criticise Thatcher The odds against a successful military opertion at that range, without any remotely proximate lana base. effective air cover, in the South Atlantic in midwere far higher than any responsible politicians should have accepted.' (11 June) If this is the New Statesman's opposition to the war then who needs The Sun to drum up Off our backs Most workers only experience of liaising' with the police occurs late at night, in Black Marias or sound-proofed interrogation cells - where the closest they get to 'consultation' is being Greater Manchester Council's latest attempt to involve the Moss in a liaison exercise with the police ended in a near riot. Over 100 black and white residents turned out to the GMC's recent meeting in the area, weren't too interested in what the but they platform full of Labour councillors had to say.

They wanted to know why the local constabulary were rumoured to be sporting a new line in ties with an emblem showing a hand wielding a truncheon and Moss Side "81 underneath? And what about the van-loads of pigs who'd been seen cruising up and down Princess Road, beating their truncheons on the roofs and shouting 'Nigger, nigger, nigger - out, out, out?

As one white resident said (to a storm of applause), 'Never mind the police protecting us, I want someone to protect me from them!

Slogans appeared during darkness reading: The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour.

A small group was established known as the James Connolly Society which saw its role as linking both aspects in a common fight against soon emerged to celebrate the Connolly Centenary, and this once again resulted in conflict The RUC banned the planned commemo rative march from entering the city centre.

When the Commemoration Committee then applied for the right to hold a protest march against the ban, this was also banned by the police despite protests from the Committee.

But the significant thing was that this was the last time a ban on parades was to be recognised.

The Connolly Commemoration finally took the form of a rally, which attracted several hundreds, and it will be best remembered as a turning-point in attitudes and strategy. After that police ban, activists felt they had had enough.

They would no longer permit the authorities to deny a fundamental principle of freedom of This new feeling of defiance and disgust spilled over into the DHAC, where a number of members of the James Connolly Society executive positions. As the controversy over the route lasted for some weeks, it was clear that the youth were becoming more inclined towards socialist ideology. The blocking of the main bus-route in the Bogside had much to do with these developments, and it soon became obvious that the RUC would not be content with merely imposing bans. The DHAC was now its target, because they clearly recognised that nationalist and socialist forces had been attracted to its Eleven people appeared before the Bishop Street court in July faced with charges arising out of the road block. All were bound over for a period of two years to keep the peace' and several received fines. Within a few weeks of the court case, however, the Wilsons obtained The meeting ended in uproar, with two people voting for the proposed liaison panel" while the rest tried to lock the chairman inside the hall to answer a few more questions. Like, what was this they'd heard about the Moss Side precinct cop shop being expanded into Moss Side workers want the police off their backs. And the local Workers Against Racism group is fully behind that demand.

We're currently fighting a legal and political battle to stop the non-stop harassment of the Blair family - a black family in Moss Side whose members have suffered terrible physical and mental treatment at the hands of the local 'community police'. And we're holding a daylong conference on 31 July to plan Will practical steps can be taken to defend the community from the police. the next step readers in Manchester should contact us to get Manchester Workers Against Racism 164-166 Corn Exchange Building Irish Freedom Movement I am writing to relate my recent experiences with my trade union branch resulting from joining the IF Youth Delegation, part of the cost of which obtained through branch sponsorship. Raising the Youth Delegation and therefore indirectly the question of British military occupation in Ireland, provoked a level of discussion and debate that members confided that they had not seen in years.

While the vast majority present at these discussions by no means supported the Irish letters

CONNOLLY

Assembly at als p.m. at thi

OX SUNDAY, 2SY

COMMEMORATION

As the court hearings proceeded one of the most successful DHAC protests took place during the official opening of the lower deck of Craigavon Bridge to traffic. JJ O'Hara (older brother of the 1981 hunger striker), Tony O'Doherty, Roddy O'Carlin, Niell O'Donnell and Sean McGeehan sat down to block the Mayor crossing the road in the city Rolls. The RUC immediately moved in and grappled with walked into the crowd and dragged away a leading member, Finnbarr O'Doherty. At this a DHA sympathiser, John Lafferty, obstructed Sergeant Albert Joseph Taylor in the execution of his duty by landing a well-directed blow with with a furled umbrella. All were taken away in police tenders, singing civil rights songs, to the "Vic', the name given to the local RUC barracks.

O'Donnell and Carlin refused to enter into bail and so each served a period of one month in prison. Their imprisonment was the centre of protests and pickets in Belfast, London and Cork. On the evening of their release a group of DHAC members and supporters met them at the station and carried them shoulder high back people's struggle for liberation, nor could they be said to be aware of its importance for the British labour movement as a whole, it was obvious from the outset that they did have political opinions to express and wanted to do so when an opportunity presented itself. The effect of my report back on the delegation has been to stimulate some heated argument and

STESUES.

The branch executive has been split into two, roughly equal, factions. One side opposed any association with the FM and adopts a chauvinist stand, while the other side is defending my right to bring class politics into the branch. This conflict of views has been very sharp. Heated arguments have taken place and there have been calls for a written statement by the union executive to all members disassociating itself entirely from my activities and politics; proposed my sponsorship; and one executive member has even resigned in protest at the union's sponsorship of the delegation after my I think that the response to my report shows that it is still possible to provoke interest in such issues! From the younger, more openminded union members there was also a significant positive response. This contrasted with the reactionary attitudes I have seen displayed by right-wing trades unionists and bureaucrats, both where I work and at a national level.

No doubt at the next branch meeting there will be continued argument as to whether the union should become involved in questions like the Irish liberation struggle that take place outside the union's immediate confines. I will be continuing to argue for their full support as the only way of making members realise their class interests both inside and outside the branch. The debate that has taken place will help to bring these issues out.

Andrew Perry Refuge Assurance, ASTMS Branch (Manchester) the norteton InlulAnact 1001 12

RCP

Activities

BIRMINGHAM O

Thursday 8 July Remember the hunger strikers!

Victory to the Irish people!

Picket in commemoration of the death of hunger striker Joe McDonnell. Outside the Irish Centre, Digbeth.

COVENTRY

Wednesday 7 July Making the unions fit for women to join. Public meeting with speakers from the Rulecan strike committee and Women for Communism. The Queen, Primrose Hill Street, Coventry.

the next step is sold every week at Parkcourt dole 9.30-11.30am Mondays and Tuesdays. GPO 12.00-2.00pm Wednesdays and Thursdays. Foleshill Road and the precinct 11.00-1.00pm Saturdays.

SOUTH LONDON

South London Irish Freedom Movement activists group meets fortnightly at Lambeth Town Hall, Brixton at 8pm. 5, 19 July 3,16,31 August. Newcomers welcome. Phone Russell 274 3951 for details.

MANCHESTERI

Manchester Irish Freedom Movement activists group meets fortnightly on Fridays. For details of these and other local activities see the next step sellers or phone 01-274 3951.

SHEFFIELD

Tuesday 6 July No British solution! First showing of a new video made this year for Sheffield Irish Freedom Movement. Sheffield Centre Against Unemployment (SCAU), Bridge Street, Sheffield.

Thursday 8 July Remember the hunger strikers!

Victory to the Irish people!

Join the demonstration in solidarity with the cause for Irish Freedom. Town Hall steps, Pinstone Street. Sheffield Irish Freedom Movement activists group meets fortnightly to plan solidarity work in the trade unions, street activities, and to discuss recent developments in the Irish War.

For details of all these activities, see the next step sellers.

the next step is sold from 9.00- 11.00am Mondays to Thursdays at West Street dole office.

Workers March Against Racism

BRIGHTON

Brighton Workers March Against Wednesday 7 July Racism mobilising committee meeting to build for the march in the south. For details, see the next step sellers or phone 01-274 3951. Bristol Workers Against Racism

BRISTOL

meets regularly in the build-up to the Workers March. Build the march in the South West! See the next step sellers for details or phone 01-274 3951. 8.30pm

BIRMINGHAM•

Friday 9 July Drop the charges! Free Pino Khan! 7.30pm

COVENTRY

Saturday 17 July BABYLON REBELS and

RANKING DEAD

Benefit in aid of the Workers

SOUND SYSTEM

March Against Racism.

BAR

Stanton Road, Coventry.

LONDON

NORTH LONDON!

Tuesday 6 July

BAR

SOUTH LONDON

Sunday 25 July Film benefit. Ritzy Cinema, Brixton SW9. Saturday 14 August 7.30pm 7.00pm 9.30am Picket of Victoria Court, Corporation Street. Organised by Birmingham WAR and the Pakistani Workers Association.

8.00-12.00pm

E2/E1 UB40

Stanton Social Club, 243 Stoney 7.30pm North London Workers Against Racism meeting for activists and marchers to build for the Workers March Against Racism. West Hampstead Community Centre, 62 Mill Lane, NWG. 8.00-12.00pm TALKOVER and PINSKI ZOO Thursday 29 July Benefit in aid of the Workers

E2/E1 UB40

March Against Racism. Pied Bull, 1 Liverpool St, N1.

12noon Harlan County and Malcolm X.

€1.50/E1 UB40

Oval. Brixton 11.00am Workers March Against Racism Motorcade and street meetings in Brixton/Thornton Heath/Croydon Meet Brixton Oval. Come early and help decorate the lorry!

For details of weekly street meetings, activists meetings and other events, contact Marcelle 274 3951.

WORKERS

EAST LONDON

LONDON

Join our nightly anti-racist street

AGAINST RACISM

EAST

patrols. Come to regular ELWAR activists meetings. Phone Keith Tompson on 01-274 3951

MANCHESTER

Manchester Workers Against Racism activists group meets fort nightly on Mondays in the buildup to the Workers March Against Racism. See the next step sellers for details. Sheffield Workers Against Racism

SHEFFIELD •

meet fortnightly. See the next step sellers for details.

Name Address

FOR

POWER

FOUR DAYS OF DISCUSSION AND DEBATE

With the Falklands war, the law and order debate, redundancies, the ruling class seems to be winning all the The third international conference of the next step is for people who Why? They have good allies in the labour movement.

Discussion will focus on the urgent problems facing the working class: want to change this situation. - • Plus courses on racism, women, Ireland and the unions.

• What's behind the war drive?

Can we stop their war? • What about the Soviet bloc?

Caxton House, St John's Way, London N19 1/We would like to attend the Preparing for Power conference 11-14 September 1982 £8.50, 65 (UB40) TU/Organisation Tel No Creche needed?

PREPARING

cuts and arguments. wage Make cheques payable to RCP Association. Send this form or write for more details to BM RCP, London WC1N 3XX (phone 01-274 3951).