The Next Step: No. 35, May 1983

the next step Why should we pay the price for their recession!

RACISM

Afia Begum deportation p5

STAGNATION

UNIONS

Making them fight for us p 18,19

STARVATION

GLO

Two years hard posturing pl6, 17

Contents Editorial United with them - we fall Racism Police terror now legal No more deportations Ireland Hammersmith harassment PTA-free zones TUC censorship Hunger-strike marches Irish handbook The Assembly and the Forum Women Abortion rights - under attack Imperialism Africa, Asia, Latin America World economy Ethiopia Zimbabwe France Austerity socialism Labour movement The Labour left GLC: 'Our hands are tied" GLC: jobs: the dream turns sour GLC: sharing the crumbs GLC: working for Labour Sheffield steel, Halewood, Cowley Housing I pay, you own, they profit Reviews Problems of Leninism Alternative defence

CND

Family Ideology Letters Gandhi, CND, Slanders Sheffield witchunt, Deportations Revolutionary Communist Party Preparing for Power Published by Junius Publications Ltd BCM JP LTD, London WC1N 3XX Printed by Morning Litho Printers Ltd (TU) Typeset by Junius Publications Ltd (TU) ISSN 0144-350 X May 1983

LIVERPOOL

Tuesday 17 May 7.30pm Public Meeting Unemployment - no Labour solution Swan Hotel London Road Liverpool 3

SHEFFIELD

Thursday 26 May 7.30pm Public Meeting Preparing for power Sheffield University Students Union

(STREET

world of work

THE

PERCE

2 the next step, May 1983 3 11 12 13 14 16 17 17 18,19

LEEDS

20 21 strikers!

SHEFFIELD

Public Meeting 23 23 AUEW House Furnival Gate 24

EAST LONDON

Tuesday 31 May 7.30pm ELWAR Public Meeting The Brady Club Hanbury Street E1 RCP meetings in May

MANCHESTER

Friday 6 May 7.30pm Public Meeting revolutionary party Speaker: Frank Richards Black Lion Hotel 65, Chapel Street Salford Sunday 8 May 2.00pm Manchester

BROOK STREET

reading the next step Take it. Publications,

WC1N 3XX

Afia will stay! to Home Office Minister David Waddington.

Activities in May Thursday 12 May 7.30pm Public Meeting and video Support the Aire Valley Yarns Leeds Trades Club, Saville Mount Thursday 12 May 7.30pm Police prepare for war No more deportations! Marxism, the working class and the A guided tour of Marx and Engels' Meet at the Black Lion Hotel Everyone's 12 issues for £5. Send cheques to Junius

BCM

JPLTD,

London WAR pickets the Home Office 50 people joined WAR's picket of the Home Office protesting the threatened deportation of Afia Begum. Despite police harassment, the noisy demonstration continued for two hours and ended with the presentation of a petition for political status. Activities in May

BIRKENHEAD

Thursday 26 May 7.30pm Public Meeting The fight for Irish freedom See the next step sellers for venue

LIVERPOOL

A series of forums on the Irish War Wednesday 4 May The sectarian state Wednesday 11 May The longest war Wednesday 18 May The IRA and the national liberation struggle Wednesday 25 May Britain - the way forward All meetings will be at 7.30pm in the McAusland Lounge, Liverpool University Students Union, Mount Pleasant, Liverpool 3 Victims of thePTA: Write to: Fight for Irish Freedom IFM street theatre The Irish Freedom Movement on the streets of Sheffield, building support for 1 May hunger-strike demonstration in Birmingham. Workers stopped to watch the IFM street theatre which showed the struggle of Irish POWs

BIRMINGHAM

Public Meetin Digbeth Civic Hall

LONDON

Irish War Wednesday 4 May The sectarian state Wednesday 18 May The longest war Wednesday 1 June liberation struggle Wednesday 15 June Malet Street, WC2 Contact the Irish Freedom Movement. Phone 01-274 3951

VIDEO

WAR

"I'M NOT A RACIST, BUT..

I'm not a racist,but... You've read about us in the next step, now see us in action: Order the new Workers Against Racism video now to show in your trade union branch, youth club or college. invitations for speakers welcomed, 33 minutes, colour - €5 to hire

WORKERS AGAINST RACISM,

BM WAR, London WCN 3XX or telephone 01-274 3951 Wednesday 4 May 7.30pm Remember Bobby Sand: Video: H-Block hunger-strike A series of fortnightly forums on the Republicanism and the national Britain - the way forward All meetings will be held at 7.30pm in the University of London Union,

United with them - we fall AS WE GO TO PRESS, transport workers' leader Moss Evans and engineers' leader Terry Duffy have accepted the BL bosses' refusal to back down in the dispute over 'washing-up' time at Cowley (see Page 18).

They have agreed to present the latest management formula be sacked accept a token bonus in return for an increased working time of more than one hour a week - to the Cowley workers, without any recommendations from the After four weeks on strike, the unions. BL workers are faced with a complete betrayal by their union leaders and the prospect of a major setback in working conditions. To negotiate a sell-out at Cowley, both Evans and Duffy had to take time off from important activities in relation to a the return of a longer term project - Both are deeply in- Labour government. volved in winning the widest trade union support for the National Economic Assessment - an agreement by the unions to collaborate with a future government in holding Labour Michael Foot's plea to British wages. capitalists and 'public opinion' is that "Labour is the only party which desires and can secure the working partnership between government and the trade unions essential to national recovery* (Foreword to Labour's plan: the new hopefor Britain).

The labour bureaucracy's commitment to 'national recovery' is destroying the working class movement in Britain.

Cowley the bureaucrats preface every comment on jobs, wages and conditions by proclaiming their commitment to the Maestro, to increasing its share of the car market and boosting BL's profits.

the past five years this approach has cost tens of thousands of job losses and led to the establishment of management tyranny on the shop floor in BL plants.

promise of partnership in British capitalist recovery means subordinating the entire working class to BL-style tyranny on a grand scale. Over the gateway to a future of austerity the labour bureaucracy has inscribed the slogan 'unity.

The road to hell 'Unity never heen more essentia nas and municipal workers' leader general David Basnett told the Scottish TUC in recommending its endorsement of the TUC-Labour Party plan, Partners in rebuilding Britain. Why? Because it is essential that this conference takes the view that it is a springboard for what is certain to be an election year'.

was beating the unity drum very loudly in Scotland to enforce the acquiescence of the official labour movement to the leadership's incomes policy plans.

It is scarcely six months since both the TUC and Labour Party conferences voted by large majorities against incomes policy.

of an election has Yet the prospect resulted in a united stampede in favour of another Labour incomes policy. The Scottish TUC one of the first union conferences of the annual season and one of the bastions of the left - was the first to fall. Proposers of a resolution from the miners, backed by the civil servants, calling for opposition to all discussions on wage restraint, including the National Economic Assessment, 'with this or any other government*, were persuaded to withdraw it in favour of a bland request for no return to "old-style' wage controls. The other union conferences can now be expected to respond to similar calls for unity behind Labour's election campaign with similar fudges. The trade union behind the Labour Party is a desperate ploy designed to ensure their own survival.

Their response to recession is to turn to the state to be their saviour. Hence Partners or in rebuilding Britain outlines new parastatal which institutions through leaders could serve capital - a Department of Economic and Industrial Planning, a National Investment Bank, National Planning Council with sectoral committees unions about company plans and developing strategies for whole sectors of industry. would be a bureaucratic Nirvana.

would be hell for the working class.

Caring for capitalism possible Basnett's slogan for the general election is "caring makes sense. justification for the central commitment down of the Labour Party campaign document: We will expand the economy, by providing a strong and measured increase in spending.

Spending money creates jobs.

How? Basnett explains why makes 'economic sense: If you build a hospital you take care of sick people, you workers, you stimulate the construction, the At engineering, the building materials, and equipment industries, and you do the same if you build houses for the homeless, schools for our children, roads and electrified railways for our industrial infrastructure.'

Over Thus the Labour Party promises to put back to work and bring about Britain mausual recovery. Labour's Basnett's commonsensical scheme is a fantasy. of the deepest recession in living memory.

For capitalists 'caring' whatever. to cutting back on expenditure on 'caring' in a relentless drive to raise profits on producing. As a matter of fact 'caring' made little sense for British capitalism even when it was expanding in the 'fifties and 'sixties.

That is why it preferred to run the NHS in Victorian workhouses, rather than build new hospitals - a policy followed by Labour as well as Tory governments.

What capitalism could not do in the boom, it will never do in the crisis.

programme for Labour's Basnett and revitalising capitalism flies in the face of every important trend in the world economy. in France have been implementing their alternative economic strategy for the past two years (see Page 15). It has developed into a programme of austerity that is the envy of Margaret Thatcher. The Mitterand Government has discovered that stimulating national recovery means subjecting the working class to the harsh dictates of the market. If Labour's programe lemented in Britain we would simply see a replay of the French experience. A rise in public expenditure would temporarily halt the growth in unemployment. But six months it funds clear that the were not being invested in industry.

only thing growing would be in- The A Labour government flation. then course and the next step bureaucrats' unity sector; industry Whichever way the union a tripartite Europe consulting mangement and are workers behind capitalist A future Labour government But it of the thousands This theme is the nobody: militants can to the Tories "caring' and Basnett. create jobs for health service of government policy. fan club paper flank. British capitalism is in the grip makes no sense Road masters. All their energies are devoted fraternal reforming The Labour Party's colleagues have voted against on other issues. future cuts in workers' was impdid not like Assessment, to distribute it to his members.

would become the Scottish TUC. available made would choice but to change bring in an austerity programme. Even if it baulked at this option State would make little difference.

funds would drift into the non-industrial bargaining would to stagnate and competitiveness to decline.

(19 April). Labour turned, its attempts to revive British capitalism could not avert the trends towards industrial collapse and the loss of millions more jobs.

inside The left kneels down The Labour Party and its fellows in charged with mobilising solutions to the crisis. "Austerity socialism' is today the most powerful weapon in the hands capitalist class. It demobilises of militant workers while demoralising millions of others. Howward any ever, it is not the popularity of Labour Party politics that allows it to remain the dominant organisation in the labour movement. Labour's programme inspires see the bureau- Labour. crats are just looking for a re-run of the 1974 Social Contract and they expect little to come from it. They continue to support Labour only as the lesser evil and because the left has succeeded in convincing them that there is no alternative to unity behind Foot Labour left leader Tony Benn is right behind the National Economic Assessment.

While Basnett tells the world that it's a new Social Contract, Benn tells militants that it's a means whereby they will have direct influence over every aspect As he told his Socialist Action, the National Economic Assessment can be read any way you like. The left gives credibility to this sort of cynical posturing and thus protects Labour's left In the unions the humble Communist Party can still do a job for its Walworth The CP has often proclaimed its hostility to incomes policy of any sort and it has ventured the usual criticisms of Labour's latest schemes for cutting working class living ment. standards. The Morning Stareven criticised the TUC's incomes policy and found it 'almost unbelievable that those on the left of the TUC general council could have allowed themselves to be bamboozled into voting for this document on the basis of assurances that it did not стасу mean wage restraint' (24 March). Leading CP trade unionist George Guy rethe plied angrily that the Star appears to show a complete lack of understanding of what working with the broad left means' (14 April). Guy and his Stalinist general council colleague Ken Gill could but our broad left colleagues might well have seen us as people they no longer wished to support for Many Broad left unity means voting wages to keep friendly with Labour Party members of the general council. Guy made it clear in a private letter to Len Murray that he gramme National Economic the but he promised dutifully The CP also played the unity game at Influential Stalinists worked behind the scenes to make sure that the explicit anti-National Economic Assessment motion was toned down and the Morning Star covered up the rear: the motion's supporters are expected to defeat. make crystal clear that its revised terms just as strongly prohibit any wage regulations or intervention in free collective government by Then why revise the terms?

That's broad left unity in action.

The last outpost of the labour bureaucracy is manned by the Socialist Workers Party. In recent months it has taken some satisfaction from the demise of the left This has prothe Labour Party. vided the SWP with some relief from the chronically depressed state into which it has slumped in response to what it calls 'the downturn'. While it looks forward to 'the upturn' and more strikes through which to build the party, it has the Labour become more critical OL left. However, the SWP cannot put forpolitical alternative to the traditional party of the labour move- Hence as the election draws near the SWP has come out with its familiar shame-faced at the polls position: Vote Socialist Worker editor Chris Harman explains that the SWP has to take sides with workers who want to vote Labour: When they vote Labour it shows a desire to do something collectively to change things, even if a very confused desire.' (9 April) In fact a vote for Labour expresses a wish, not so much to change things, but more to return things to the way they - before the recession struck.

were before - This is a preoccupation that unites the labour bureaucracy and the radical left.

This is what Labour politicians mean when they say that the Falklands factor is now receding and British politics are 'normal'. They dream returning to a return to economic expansion,.

full employment and consensus politics. The radical left dreams of a return to its heyday in the early 'seventies. This is the content of the SWP's 'upturn' scenario.

The economy will pick up, strikes will erupt and there will be picket lines on which to hold up Socialist Worker once again. While they indulge their nostalgia, they all unite to return a Labour govern- Their unity - our defeat The reality of the capitalist recession is that things are not going to get better, While the SWP is but steadily worse. waiting for an upturn, the labour bureauwill be either implementing cooperating in austerity measures against working class. The labour bureaucrats' first concern is to preserve their own institutions: this is at the heart of their unity drive for the return of a Labour government. The left responds - and denounces those who refuse to get on the bandwagon as 'sectarians'.

Workers' yearning for a united working capitalist attacks is class response to perverted to bolster the bureaucracy.

of the reluctant supporters Labour Party feel that it is premature to try to build a new organisation outside it.

The preparation for an austerity proin conditions of deepening recession confirms the urgency of this task.

There is an alternative to paying the price for the restoration of capitalist stability through industrial restructuring and mass unemployment, starvation and war.

The alternative is revolutionary communism.

It's never too early to build a party that working class to power can take the instead of following Labour to a certain the next step, May 1983 3

Racism Police terror now legal As the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill goes through its final stages in Parliament, the police have launched a wave of terror. In the West Midlands armed police have conducted a series of SAS-style raids on working class families, wrecking homes and intimidating people. A storeman at BL's Longbridge plant received hospital treatment for facial injuries after being taken from his house to a Birmingham police station for questioning about stolen car components'. He was lucky. In Coventry James Davey had to be put on a life-support machine after a few hours of 'helping the police with their inquiries' in March; he died a few days later.

going through the courts after being arrested in the course of protests about the mysterious death of Colin Roach, a black youth found dead from shotgun injuries outside a Hackney police station in January.

look at the Tories' repressive legislation and Labour's limited opposition, and report the case of another victim of police harassment - 13 year old THE ONLY CONCESSION the Tories have made to critics of their draconian Police and Criminal Evidence Bill exempt doctors and clergymen from compulsion to make confidential records The Bill has come under a storm of criticism from organisations of work keep records - possibly including incriminating personal details of people police the right to seize and record such from GPs and priests to journalists and about police powers to repress blacks and workers, than about the threat to their own position contained in the new law.

The loss of the vital element of confipatients and punters undermine their professional functions.

The Tories were quite prepared to accommodate at least the most powerful middle class lobbies - the British Medical Association and the Churches - as long as the central thrust of their coercive legislation The Police Bill underpinsthe Government's about the 'violent crime wave and 'statistics' fingering blacks as the culprits, the Bill provides for a major extension of tices and endorses the riot-style policing that recession-struck Britain needs.

new provisions of the Bill include powers • to stop and search 'suspects' at random • to search homes and workplaces • to seize and record confidential infor- • to imprison anybody suspected of a • to set up road blocks in an area where • to take fingerprints, photographs and blood samples, by force if necessary.

The Tories' proposals will become law by the summer: they are having no trouble in crushing the ineffectual protests of the While the BMA and the bishops fought a spirited defence of their sectional interests against government interference, the official labour movement's response was for law and order, for the fight against crime and for more effective policing. So why do they criticise the Tories' measures to make the police more effective?

4 the next step, May 1983 In London 96 people are The new Police Bill legitimises police terror. Fran Eden and Martin Stone The Labour Party dreams of a Britain without recession, class conflict or racial oppression where the police help old ladies across the road and find lost dogs and cats in a society of harmony and justice.

While something like this may have prevailed in Britain's suburbia during the postwar boom, this has never been the character of policing in working class areas. The future undoubtedly holds deeperrecession, higher unemployment, more rioting- and more repressive policing.

that the Tories' repressive approach will proclaims a utopia in which elected police police councils ensure harmonious relations between police The Tories are more honest. They do not pretend that 'civil liberties' and 'effecthat the recession means a growing threat to their system from blacks, the unemthat to defend their law and order they need tougher policing and less civil liber- As the Police Bill goes through Parliament, the Tories need only to refer to the latest armed bank robbery or attack Opposition into line. of the Labour Party's rhetoric about restoring the confidence and trust of the community in the police' is to reconcile the working class to more police terror.

This function is the special responsibility of the left which has made improving rela hols Labour's role as apologist for police repression is particularly apparent over local when there is an angry public response.

Labour councils around the country have set up special committees to cope with the outrage caused by the growing number of incidents of police violence.

Midlands police committee had to work fast to restore the image of local police Chief Sir Phillip Knights after his force's reign of terror culminated in the killing of Labour councillor Edwin James Davev. Shore emerged from a special meeting of the committee with the chief constable declaring that he hoped the meeting would allay public fears: We agree that we have in the West Midlands one of the best chief constables in the country.

Defend Leonard Lancicott! Police terror is a familiar experience to black people in the Notting Hill area of West London. was stabbed in the chest in an incident involving local police on 10 March.

He suffered massive haemorrhage, a collapsed lung and bears extensive scars.

Things have gone from bad to worse. The police try and drive black kids off the They operate their own curfew after 11pm at night. It means if your skin is black and you are on the streets after 11pm you've committed a crime.

The police persist in harassing and intimidating us. They have threatened to break down my front door on several occasions, come into my house looking for evidence - stolen goods, that sort of They never found anything. I'm sure some of them know the interior of my house better than I do. They've picked up my children for no good reason. They have tried to take Leonard to court before but charges have always been dismissed.

Most people round here have a story to tell about the police.

from my friends about how the police have fitted up young blacks on false charges. They are wantonly giving them criminal records.' WAR is seeking backing from community trade union branches and labour movement bodies to defend and support the Lancicotts and get the police off the streets and off our backs in West Contact Fran Eden at BM WAR, London All we ask in the West Midlands is that when mistakes happen, the police say: "sorry lads, we have made a mistake. We are human."" Not surprisingly, Davey's brother was not Labour Party's division of labour with the police: they beat people to a pulp in the police station - Labour sweeps the pieces under the carpet in the police committee.

The scale and ferocity of police attacks on white people is something new.

is the long-standing experience of blacks.

This has caused particular difficulties for Labour's police committees in containing black outrage against police violence in police liaison committee have been enthusiastic promoters of 'community policing' had to squirm in their seats as five black youths described how they had been stripsearched in the street on Railton Road in ment of 'community policing' the Labour Party has given the police a free hand to rampage around the Brixton area, ruthlessly crushing further resistance to the In Hackney, the borough's black population was so incensed by the police's handling of the Colin Roach affair that the Labour Council threatened to stop payıng its f4m precept to the Metropolitan Police.

This was just an empty gesture which the Council backed down on at the first sign of lors have been promoting the mediating absorb the simmering anger of the black Meanwhile it's police terror as usual down Sandringham Road, Hack- For Workers Against Racism, the police are simply the repressive arm of the capi- Lucille Lancicott lives with her four children off the She spoke to us shortly after her 13 year old son Leonard

DEFEND LEONARD LANCICOTT!

Notting Hill. Contact 274 3951 for details talist class and 100 per cent committed to They cannot be made accountable tions harmony between the police and the community can exist only if blacks the unemployed, and workers lie down and let the police walk all over them. This is the sort of relationship between the working class and the state that Labour mobilise the labour movement to fight back against all manifestations of state It is vital that the labour movement resists the Police Bill and further police paigning against all aspects of the Tory "law and order' is a legitimate concern for the labour movement. The only order that the police protect is that of the ruling class: only the working class can guarantee the security of working class people and working class areas. We should also reject the idea that 'crime' is an important probharassment. Once we get our sights clearly on the capitalist class as our No 1 enemy then we will have no problem dealing with anti-social elements in the working class.

appeal for 'effective policing'. Calling for 'effective policing' is like demanding a strong rope to hang yourself with.

more effective the police are, the more effective a weapon they become in the hands of the ruling class. Our place is side by side with the oppressed fighting back against state intimidation - not side by side with the police on Labour's fraterna

No moredeportations! country every year. BRITAIN black

ALL

OVER

are being hounded by the Home Office and its immigration police. The Nation- Act has made the immigration ality status of thousands of blacks increasingly insecure. The changes in the immigration rules accompanying the Act have been stringently: the operated in weeks of 1983, 56 per cent of the men who applied from the Indian sub-continent to join their wives or fiancees in this refused; the comparable country figure in 1982 was less than 10 percent.

Recent statistics on immigration released by the Home Office are a stark indication of trends

CHILD

have been slashed and deportations are on the increase. ister David Waddington was welcomed to the job in January by MPs who wanted to see a harder line on immigration from the Waddington's message is clear: in future immigrants can expect no mercy from the Home Office: If we waived our immigration rules for everyone who felt he would be better off here than at home we would rapidly find ourselves host to enormous numbers of people from all over the globe. It would be folly!' (The Times, 30 March 1983) Combatting these Tory attacks on black people must become a top priority for the labour movement. Afia Begum has experienced Britain's barbaric immigration laws at first hand.

"illegal immigrant'. Afia is an threatened with deportation because her husband was killed in a slum tenement Brick Lane in fire in Bengali ghetto. When Afia arrived at Heathrow airport in June 1982 she was told that her husband's death constituted a change of circumstance which Tony Benn - defending Afia Begum and immigration controls Afia Begum threatened with expulsion The threatened deportation of 19 year old Afia Begum and her baby highlights the barbaric nature of Britain's immigration laws. But Afia Begum is only one of many hundreds of immigrants who are shunted out of the Her case raises the question of how to fight against deportations - and win. Joan Phillips looks at the campaign.

people two deportation orders first Six threatened will Office business clearances New immigration min- Conservative Home Office. the movements other victim have taken She up East London's support within validated her right to take up residence in Britain. Since June she has received and has been hounded from one end of the country to the other with her one year old daugh- Afia's fate still hangs in the balance. She is presently in hiding while the Home Office once again considers her case and immigration police try to track her down. The background to her horrific deportation SO that it is tempting to think that the Home show compassion in her case. But the Home Office is not in the Afia of showing compassion. Begum is not a 'special case: thousands of other blacks have been deported in the past in similar circumstances.

How to fight Since September 1982 Workers Against Racism has been fighting to keep Afia and her daughter in Britain. Unlike many other campaigns, ours is guided by the principle of uncompromising opposition We do not to all immigration controls.

accept the right of the state to control of We are

WOKCES.

fighting for Afia Begum and for every of Britain's racist immigration controls. Our aim is not just to win a victory for Afia and other victims but to convince British workers that they have no interest in siding with their state against black people. That is why we Afia's case into the labour movement. We are demanding that trade union bodies all over the country take the issue of immigration controls The and adopt Afia and her daughter.

campaign so far has achieved widespread the labour movement with active support from rank and file Home Office pickets, public rallies and demonstrations. Never before has a deportation case gone as far as this one. The only reason why Afia is still in Britain today is because Workers Against Racism has been prepared to defy the law to prevent her deportation.

Most deportation campaigns are characterised by their legal emphasis and their appeals for compassionate and humane treatment. Their sole aim is to win a victory for one particular victim - not also to mobilise working class opposition to all immigration controls. It is fair enough to use every legal means available to avert deportation.

nothing wrong with appealing on compassionate grounds, so long as it is recognised that these methods are usually not enough to win a victory, either for the victim - or in the fight to build a movement aimed at smashing all immigration controls. In law, has no right to live in Britain. To fight for her right to stay means to reject the label of 'illegal' and to defy the law.

Labour hypocrisy WAR's campaign has support from constituency Labour Parties and Labour MPs. So far 17 MPs, including Tony Benn and Michael Foot, have given their backing to the campaign. has inspired this sudden rush on the part of Labour politicians to announce their support for this campaign and to associate their names with Workers Against Racism?

The simple reason is that Labour is becoming more sensitive to the electoral significance race. something like three or four percent of the electorate and more than a quarter of the voters in more than a dozen urban constituencies. put it: 'No politician interested in those seats can safely ignore their interests' (26 March). While giving no the cynical electoral posturings of Labour left politicians, WAR has employed their the fight to keep services in Britain. We have also Accept a grant for the Afia Begum Camp.

aign from the GLC's Women's Committee the first grant ever given to stop a deportation. but we won't rely on the Labour Party or the GLC to fight for this campaign. The way to win a real mobilising the working class all immigration controls the Labour something prepared to countenance For the past year and more the Labour Party has been denouncing the 'excesses' of the Tories' strategy and the injustices and inhumanity of the Nationality Act (which Labour drafted!).

Home Affairs Opposition Dr Shirley Summerskill objected recently that: *The whole immigration scene has been given a nasty atmosphere by Mrs Thatcher's pre-election word, "swamping"...We will have immigration and work permit control, but not • on a racist or sexist basis.' (The Guardian, 28 March 1983) ities. We or black and Asian Britons.'

for immigration purpose and Thatcher's controls, construction sexist about these imagination. our plans black and Nationality government! And there is has been

DOSC

the Campaign Afia Begum - credibility attracted some What ion Party. assumption Act: the movements Blacks now form As The Guardian credibility to Afia in been happy to humanity, Against We will take the money stance. immigration is by victory against which Party not on immigration the backing on a principled stand spokesman Send For Racism and the Labour's immigration policies Tories"? Labour's latest campaign document states the position very clearly: Through their immigration and nationality laws the Tories have divided families and caused immense sufferings in the immigrant communaccept the need for immigration controls. But we will repeal the 1971 Immigration Act and the 1981 British Nationality Act and replace them with a citizenship law that does not discriminate against either women The Labour Party fully accepts the need controls in the midst of a world recession. It merely argues that a fundamental difference of controls behind its kind of brand. Immigration we are told, are vital for the of planned socialist What is non-racist or noncontrols is left to In reality, Labour's for a 'citizenship law that does not discriminate against either women or Asian Britons' cannot be substantially different from the current Begum is not a Act. Afia Briton — she is an illegal' Bangladeshi immigrant. Her position would be no different under a future Labour administration than under the present Tory Left pedals illusions Labour's old 'new' immigration policy accepted uncritically by its supporters on the British left. The purorganisations like of umbrella Racist Laws Against is to improve the Labour Party's antiracist image and enhance its electoral CARL does amongst blacks. not actually do anything except to call a conference every two years followed by a demonstration five or six months later. CARL's demonstrations are meaningless gestures - their only object is to galvanise support for the Labour Party.

The turnout for the 27 March CARL demonstration in London was pathetic a fitting testimony to three years of inact-

CARL

and compromise. and its sister organisations on the British left are bound hand and foot to the Labour They do not question the basic underlying the Nationality the right of the state to regulate of the working class. They merely hold out the illusion that this can be carried out in a more humane fashion - by a future Labour government.

Their belief that immigration controls can be anything other than racist and brutal is both utopian and reactionary.

CARL campaigns against racist and sexist laws' and refuses to take a stand against all immigration controls.

This is not because it really believes all its about 'natural justice and but because it is not prepared to confront head on the racism Workers within the labour movement.

Racism has taken a different We argue our case for smashing controls within the working class movement. We have stated time and time again that if British workers are to defend their class interests they must make a stand against the bosses' attempts to divide workers along national and racial lines. There is all the difference in the world between winning a purely legal victory in a deportation campaign and in winning a fight which has gained of the labour movement

AFIA BEGUM WILL STAY!

of support and donations to Afia Begum Campaign, c/o BM WAR, London WCIN 3XX information contact further Joan Phillips on 01-274 3951 the next step, May 1983 5

Tameside Trades Council threatened reland harassment

SUPPORTERS OF

the Irish Movement have stepped up selling and leafletting on the streets of West London in the last three months to mobilise support for the 1 May demonstration in Birmingham. immediate response - from an enthusiastic population starved of discussion about Ireland, and from an angry F' Division incensed that the liberation struggle should threaten their regime of harassment Hammersmith, danon in Shepherd's Bush. Three IF supporters were arrested for obstruction in King Street, Hammersmith on 28 February and one of them was arrested a second time nine days later. On a number of further occasions supporters were threat of arrest: morning six paper sellers by police for 20 minutes eventually went into station. We decided to hit back. We enlisted the support of a number of local councillors, GLC councillor Dave Wetzel and the local MP, Clive Soley. Councillor Ivan Gibbons a series of letters Commander Mitchell At the same time we stepped up our activity on the streets and in the housing estates. On Saturday 26 March we organised a three-hour street meeting on King Street. Present with us were Dave Wetzel, from the an observer grapher and a local solicitor.

separate occasions we were told to move on or face arrest different officers ponce in this operation, in addition to verbal AS REPORTED in last month's issue of the next step, the TUC has taken to Tameside exception and discussing the IFM video watching 'No British solution'. showing of the video at the December meeting of the trades council TUC hack Monks John the Dave Hallsworth, demanding details of the meeting. On behalf of the trades council, the secretary replied that the members intended to decide themselves on the agenda of meetings, but that Monks was welcome to attend the trades council for an exchange of views.

response was an angry from the TUC of the of Tameside and its secretary.

Now the TUC has decided that when Tameside comes up for its annual reaffiliation, the TUC's top trades council watchdog committee sit in judgement. The threat to Tameside -is clear - toe the TUC line on Ireland, or recognition will be withdrawn. In 1980 Tameside was disaffiliated for organising on Ireland at a conterence presentatives of the republican movement were invited to speak.

self-appointed policeman of the labour 6 the next step, May 1983 Hammersmith Freedom they We have met with an out without supporters of and intim- Fulham and driven off the streets Saturday plainclothes one tailed were until they an underground The support behalf. every Ireland. to NCCL, a photofour for obstruction; 13 dom that has were involved of Trades Council Following the remind Len secretary further His condemnation "irresponsibility" this democratic isations will be called to the Irish War. support course its which rebureaucracy The TUC, harassment from passing police cars and a van. The police made it clear that what objected to was the selling of the next step with its front page headline Ireland: 13 years of British terror'.

Each time the police tried to move us on the solicitor intervened to point that for years others - including the National Front - had sold papers harassment, collected money and sung religious songs on the same spot.

Confronted with detailed statistics on the number of paces apart that sellers were standing and the frequency of pedthe police were forced On Saturday 9 April we celebrated our victory with an uninterrupted street meeting. There was scarcely a uniformed cop to be seen all morning - though the variety were everywhere, dressed in the most improbable disguises.

The lesson for all IFM activists is: don't let the police push you around.

Labour Party of local figures for our right to sell and leaflet publicly was important, and we thank them for it. However, in itself this can never be enough to guarantee the right to speak out on Ireland: the issue is not defence of some abstract free speech, but the determination to oppose each and murderous British sclution for Clive Soley supports our right free speech', but he is a vigorous opponent of the IRA. The only guarantee of any rights is the will to fight to defend them. It is the success of the IFM in winning local support for Irish freewon it the right to sell in Hammersmith without interruption.

Gareth Evans movement, is determined to crush any anti-imperialist views on Ireland in the trade unions.

Rank and file trade unionists should Murray of his remarks on trade union rights in Chile and Poland in the April issue of Public Service: It might be difficult for the military mind to grasp. Even politicians here in Britain have difficulty in understanding it, but authentic trade union leaders are not corporals or sergeants or even generals. Authority in unions moves in precisely the opposite direction from men and women upwards. Nobody but the members have the right to decide their leaders or the policies they are to pursue."

British trade unionists would welcome spirit in their organit comes to discussing Tameside Trades Council is mobilising for its right to take whatever members consider is in the interests of the working class movement.

It is also in conflict with the local labour over its plans for an independent unemployed workers' centre.

It has circulated the following motion spreading LABOUR COUNCILS around the country have publicised their stands on a number of political issues by Now they are under pressure from the Irish Freedom Movement to take a stand against Britain's war against Ireland by proclaiming "PTA-free zones'.

In West Yorkshire the council has already ducked its first opportunity of establishing a PTA-free zone'. On April the council received a delegation from the IPM, bearing a petition signed by several hundred people, Councillor Alex Wilson. addressed the council, 170 people had been detained in West Yorkshire under the Terrorism Act. We called for the council to back practical action against it - such as supporting victims of the PTA and withdrawing funding from if they insist on enforcing it. The Tories and some Labour against the proposal. Left-wing councillor MP and prospective that he 'would not support any move to take monev away trom which would make their job of combatting West Yorkshire any more terrorism In difficult. In the end the majority voted in favour of passing the proposal on to a committee to avoid any further action on the campaign. clear that 'we are asking for more than votes and words - we want to make the PTA inoperable. In the West Midlands four councillors, 136 Tames ide (a) Tameside Trades Northern reply adequate and the about for registration for 1983, Committee for consideration.

to trade union bodies. Take it to your branch or trades council: This branch/trades council protests against the TUC's attempts to and discourage debate at Tameside Trades Council and supports its right to decide its own policy on Ireland or any other issue free from outside interference.

PTA-free zones' nard Downey, declaring their signed a "apartheid-free", etc free zone. ward to resources sideration. "un wise the 1974 14 and including as The delegation But indicating that been its provisions in Prevention of for its the police being used councillors were Derek Fatchett It has the police ignored. Many Downey Our spokesman made it the liberation

MOVEMENT

TROOPS

OUT OF

IRELAND

FUNCTIONING OF TRADES COUNCILS

It was reported that the TUC office was in correspondence with the showing of the Trades Council. Council concerning had yet been received from the Trades Council Ireland at a meeting of TUC office had again asked the secretary of the Trades Council to provide a full report on this matter.

The attitude of the Trades Council had also raised questions its continuing recognition by the TUC and it was stated that if and when the Trades Council submitted its this would be refered to

MANCHESTER

Street meeting stifle Leningrad Square Wythenshawe including county council chairman Ber and 1000 others, have petition calling for a PTA The proposal has gone for the all-Labour 'policy and committee for further The plan has already been attacked by the Tory group leader as and stupid". Birmingham Evening Mail reminded its readers of pub bombings, insisted that 'nothing has really changed since 1974 "PTA-free zone' condemned the "too absurd to be taken seriously.

the PTA is taken very seriously by the hundreds of Irish people who have harassed and intimidated under the West Midlands ever since the wave of anti-Irish hysteria in the area which provided the pretext We introduction in 1974. will keep agitating against it as long as it is criminalise to opposition to the British occupation of Ireland.

The movement for PTA-free zones' has provoked public debate on the PTA.

pushed Labour representatives to speak out on an issue they have long - including Councillor have simply reiterated the official Labour line that the PTA should go because it is ineffective against, or We even actually encourages, terrorism.

have consistently put forward our view that the labour movement should oppose PTA because it opposes Britain c war in Ireland and supports the national struggle. a film on NO application the

NOTED

Saturday 21 May 11.00am No TUC censorship on Ireland!

Defend Tameside Trades Council!

Irish Freedom Movement handbook March 27, died 5 May after 66 days Ravmond Metreest Patsy o nara political status in 1981.

is mobilising nationally for the May Day march.

This handbook is for people in Britain who want to end the war in Ireland. For more than 13 years the war has raged in the cities, towns and villages of the Six Counties; its violent intensity has regularly spilled over the border into the Twenty-six Counties and across More than 25000 people the sea to Britain. have died, including more than 600 British soldiers and paramilitary policemen, more than 200 republicans and around 600 Catholic victims of sectarian attacks by Loyalists and British forces. Hundreds of non-combatants have been killed in more than a decade of bombings and shootings, rioting and repression.

An anti-imperialist's guide to the Irish War provides people who want an end to the war with the information and the arguments they need to counter the newspapers and the politicians and to win wider support for the cause of Irish freedom. It provides the answers to the questions that come up every tume the Irish War is discussed. Why does Britain stay in Ireland? Why don't they just pull the troops out? What about the Protestants? Why can't a political solution work? We examine the Six County state and British strategy during the war to deal with these questions and many more. The Irish Freedom Movement handbook is more than a collection of useful facts and figures. It is a guide to action.

include an outline of the way forward for antiimperialists in Britain in solidarity with the mish noeladon struggle. for Irish freedom... Hunger strike Commemoration Ine M-Donnell Martin Hurso lied 13 July after 4 1 May 1983 March & Rally "If they aren't able to destroy the desire fo freedom, they won't break you, they won't break mo wecause the desire for trecaor anuure trocuon the udy will cawn when all me peopie or freidnt wht have tiR desire vor treedon to snow.

"It is then we'll see the rising of the moon."

- booDy sands

ORGANISED BY SINN FEIN BRITAIN

ASSEMBLE HANDSWORINPANA 1.0Upm

UNOVC CANC

Birmingham Sinn Fein's commemoration of the ten hunger strikers who died in the struggle for This demonstration takes a clear stand on the side of the national liberation struggle against British rule in Ireland. The Irish Freedom Movement Hence we 25, died 2 August after 73 days An antiimperialist's guide to the Irish Freedom Movement

DAILY

Mirror

MIRROR COMMENT

relanes british broblem for the Irish People. Name of organisation or individual Address.. We wish to donate t. reforming British domination.

...not for a Labour Party solution

MAY 7

ORANSIN

COMMITTEE

Another thirteen wasted years in Northern Ireland

ULSTER:

HOW Bring greet home s MUCH the troops An awful LONGER? El human sacrifice 0,000 wo vears aco. ten vound men who orew up under these conditions of poverty. unemolovment an with foreign troops on their streets, died on hunger strike opposing Britain's presence in Ireland. Despite government was seated wit more repression amate arcial assass a

BRITAIN OUT OFIRELAND

SELF DETERMINATION FOR THE IRISH PEOPLE

We wish to sponsor the May 7th Demonstration for Britain Out of Ireland and Self-determinatior Please return to: May 7th Committee, Box 353, London NW5 4NH.

The Troops Out Movement celebrates the Daily Mirror and Ken Livingstone's latest call for a British-imposed 'political solution'. The organisers of this demonstration talk about 'self-determination for the Irish people' only to conceal their plans for April 1983 paperback illustrations 140pp Order your copy now! Send £1.95 plus 50 pence p&p to JP Ltd, BM RCP, London WC1N 3XX. Make cheques payable to Junius Publications Includes... Compendium of War facts • Directory of organisations • • Britain'smachine of terror • What happened when: a chronology • Irish prisoners in British jails Ireland

DEMONSTRATION

WHA BHAINHA

DONE FOR NORTHERN

IRELAND SINCE THE

TROOPS WENT ON THE

STREETS IN 1969.

WORK: Jobs in industry Peer than the 5 000 POVCHIT: One In TOU louses are considered unfit West Belfast and Derry are the most deprived areas in Europe, alongside Southerr YOUTH: 75% of prisoners generation in lal. Th the trans in wer Telephone number • Personalities of the Irish War • Information on Ireland a bibliography the next step, May 1983 7

Ireland usual. and the nationalist population.

an outing. class Catholic nationalist politicians.

DIRECT RULE is a constant source of strife among Unionist politicians.

it is only through military accepi that that Britain occupation CaIL Ireland and guarantee the grip

OIL

position of the Loyalist commspecial Yet administration unity. the Six Counties directly from deprives local Unionist politicians of any real role in the political life of province. Hence their continual yearning for a return to Stormont. But, while the war continues, Stormont will not return the Unionists are forced to try to so out a position for carve within the framework of Direct Rule.

The Unionists a spectrum with its extreme elled integration' and 'devolution'.

polarisation underlies the conflicts within the Ulster Assembly. The 'integrationists' are led by Official Unionist Party leader Molyneux and his James Enoch Powell. Their response to the loss of Stormont is assimilation of the Six United Kingdom. the of any measure or institutions - including the Assembly itself - which distinguish the Six Counties in any way from Cornwall or Kent. At the stands Democratic Unionist Party leader Paisley, supported in his calls for lan the devolution of administrative powers from London to Belfast, by substantial sections of the OUP. The 'devolutionists' of powers want the return local and in Belfast, to restore to local politicians, to some degree at least, the base that Stormont and local councils once provided. There is no dispute here over the sanctity of the Union of the Six Counties and Britain; controversy surrounds the role of Unionist politicians within the structures of British domination.

OUP wreckers Tory Northern Prior addressed the first session of the Assembly last December. As it had been boycotted by cratic and Labour Party and Sinn Fein (who between of the seats it had already a quarter failed in its central purpose. went ahead Assembly rather forlorn hope that something might turn up that would press the SDLP to participate. Ever since, has simply been a forum for the power Unionism. struggles within with 26 seats for the OUP, lined up 21 for the DUP, 10 for the middle class Protestant Alliance Party and two independent Unionists. Led by integrationists, the OUP was unsympathetic to the Assembly from the After the opening party withdrew from the Assembly 8 the next step, May 1983 The Assembly and the Forum Neither can bridge the gap In the occupied Six Counties British soldiers are busy brutalising the nationalist people as usual. And the economy is collapsing even faster than Times are bad for schemes to stabilise imperialist domination in Ireland through talking shops that try to mediate between the British state starters, but because their promoters are so desperate they have been given Both James Prior's Ulster Assembly and Garret FitzGerald's Forum for a New Ireland are already limping badly. The Assembly appeals for Catholic participation, but it is in fact a Loyalist rump.

appeals for Unionist participation, but it is no more than a clique of middle Power struggles They maintain ments to When the of the would, 1t London back into 'the It was made another Assembly. themselves are fragmented along poles lab- The block henchman ist wing of the undermine

OUP

to call for the total Counties into They disapprove with other extreme from Loyalist Kilfedder because, the both to to institutions of the a Catholic Ireland Minister James both the Social Demothem held more than Yet the out of Prior's It tried to Assembly the intransigence in The parties posing Prior's imperialism. ble session, the The two latest attempts are really non- The Forum the pretext that the speaker, independent Unionist James Kilfedder, was showing favouritism to the DUP in his appoint- Assembly the committees. Assembly failed to collapse in its first few weeks, as the OUP hoped Molyneux led his deputies February. the chamber in Dissensions over committee appointments continued - and so did the walk-outs.

before Molyneux not long attempt to wreck the In mid-March he demanded *one final confrontation' with Margaret Thatcher. He wanted either the immediate - or the end devolution of 'real power' As there of the Assembly talking-shop.

was no prospect of the former,

CYCLY"

body knew he really wanted the latter.

The DUP joined forces with the Alliance Alliance member what one called la cynical move by the integration- Official Unionists to the Assembly' In contrast DUP's wrecking tactics, the usually wild leader has been presenting an uncharacteristically moderate image.

DUP moderates? Paisley has played along with the Assembly the hope of winning concessions Westminster that would

-ICSLOIC

least some power and prestige to election The of politicians. suited Paisley speaker as although he was formerly in OUP, he is now more sympathetic to the 'devolutionists'. Paisley has been hoping - perhaps over-optimisticaly to gain from Prior's concept of rolling devolution'. Now that there is no danger rolling towards Assembly concessions to the nationalists, he hopes it may roll some way back to Stormont.

Thus Paisley has worked with the Alliance to set up the committee structure of the Assembly, showing a statesmanlike face to the world. When Kilfedder appointed of the - John Cushnahan Alliance Party - to chairmanship of the education committee, it was left to the OUP's McCusker to fight the 'no surrender to Popery corner which Paisley has monopolised for so many years.

Because the Assembly has no powers, and little chance of acquiring any, Paisley is treading a dangerous path. Hence the DUP has tried to use the Assembly to put across its distinctive Loyalist message.

avoid being outflanked OUP by proby the amendment calling for the public execution of terrorists.

Assembly has done nothing to make ruling Ireland easier for British But it has provided a useful forum for Britain's local agents to squabto secure their over the best way own positions under the British Crown.

Mike Wall it's Declaration din eur sentiences that Tobie ment hill alane el

THE 'FORUM FOR A NEW IRELAND'

was launched by Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald in March. He appealed for the participation of all elected politicians Ireland who repudiated - by which he meant the anti-imperialiist violence of the republican movement.

His appeal by both major Unionist Parties and the Alliance, and by the which thought 'unstatesmanlike'. The first inept' and meeting of the Forum's backers was held Dublin in 1n by the leaders of the three major parties in the Dail (Fine Gael, and the Labour Party) and the Social Democratic and Labour Party from the Six Counties. the hasty launch of the Forum: pressures from overseas, notably the political economic and Twenty-six Counties and the troubles of the SDLP. furore in the USA over the The position of pre-eminent republican fund-raiser Michael Flannery in the New York St Patrick's Day parade pushed the Irish again American political agenda. Loyal to his personal pal and close NATO ally Thatcher, President Ronald Reagan issued a stern

IRA

denunciation of the USA is keen to see some solution to the long-running war in Ireland. The Irish- American political lobby expresses this concern and it swung into action after the St Patrick's Day

COLTOYCISY.

the leader of this lobby, action to help solve the conflict.

American concern for Britain to settle its Irish problem is complemented by the EEC pressure from ment has recently authorised an inquiry into the situation in the Six Counties - partly to embarrass and partly to push for an end to a source of continual instability within Europe. Fraud show The Dublin government badly needs a new initiative on the North. The sharp deterioration Twenty-six Counties and of working class resistance to the government's austerity a gesture particularly timely. The mess FitzGerald proposed abortion that diversion is any deepening crisis of the Dublin The government has produced uncharacterrepublican rhetoric from Fine istically Gael, of Partition. the party Minister Peter Barry shortly after Forum plans which one commentator summed up as a blunt demand for Brits The face savers traditional Hianna rall Haughey violence' posals. Like Tre immediately rejected state. with the Workers Party, FitzGerald's invitation of details April: it was attended common The Fianna Fail FitzGerald, dramatic the Three factors prompted elections last

USA,

the the pontalans crisis by 14). Then, for more known well vanquished its War onto the take up to four seats. Yet Politicians traditionally Senator Edward Kennedy, the Twenty-six called for US whose parlia to tne House of the of the economy in the the upsurge measures makes such than the got himself into over his referendum means the nationalist welcome Counties. one side prevails. to make Foreign made a speech FitzGerald launched his out. This has created problems for the party of republican rhetoric, leader Charles Yet party has endorsed the Forum pro- FitzGerald he is aware of the danger of continuing war in North, at a time when social unrest in the South threatens to erupt against the Hence Haughey has gone along Forum, while trying to keep a distinctive position by quibbling over its and structure. strategy Who needs the SDLP? Kennedy, of concern and rest is Haughey the decline in the electoral fortunes of the SDLP. In the Assembly Fein sur- October Sinn prised the SDLP and shocked bourgeois Counties Six outside the winning five seats (to the SDLP's in its first council election in Carrick than years, more in March, the Sinn Fein candidate Sinn Fein the

SDLP.

As preparations for the forthcoming Westminster elections it is set to The polarisation that the of the nationalist community Sinn Fein regrowth in support for presents is a major threat not just to the SDLP, but to British rule in Ireland and to all those - including the Dublin who depend upon it. The main aim of the Forum is to revive the SDLP's fortunes by presenting it as a party with powerful friends and influence in and beyond Counties The British government has turned a discreet blind eye to the Forum manoeuvres. Prior knows that his Assembly is a dead duck and he is open to any institutions which give the impression world that political solutions are being worked out in the Six Counties It all helps to distract attention from the day to day brutalities of Britain's military dictatorship. Hence, when pressed in the Prior welcomed Commons, talks' around the 'constructive Forum. He too fears Sinn Fein's electoral advance and would dearly like to see the revival of the SDLP. The problem for the British government and all its friends is that the Forum will be no more help in solving the war Assembly. A war cannot be "solved' through Forums and Assemblies.

The British state knows this and so does the Six community war will continue unti The Our job in Britain is sure that it's the right side.

Exposing all the fraudulent manouevres that disguise imperialist oppression and pretend that it can be reformed is an important part of this process.

Mick Kennedy

LONDON'S HEALTH SERVICE is due to be cut by £27 million in 1983 with a possible loss of up to 4000 hospital staff.

For the first time since the inception of the National Health Service, health authorities have had their budgets cut in real terms. Inner London districts will be the worst hit. Atleast 10 authorities - inclu- West Lambeth, Camberwell and ding Lewisham, North Southwark, London East and Hammersmith Fulham - will each be forced to make cuts of more than f1 million.

Wandsworth Health Authority has been asked to 'find' an extra £3 million by April 1984.

money is to be found by reducing hospital bedsandstaff, particularly nurses, cleaners, laundry staff and porters.

hospitals in the London region face an uncertain future. The South Hospital for Women is scheduled to close and its workload is to be absorbed by other hospitals in Wandsworth. St John's Hospital in Wandsworth is to transfer its services to other hospitals in the authority.

The Dreadnought Seamen's Hospital in which provides NHS beds Lewisham, crucial to the borough, is also due to close with a loss of 300 jobs. The British Hospital for Mothers and Babies in Woolwich is also for the axe.

Most Area Health Authorities plan to with the cuts by implementing a cope productivity drive - aimed to get the number of patients through the minimum number of beds in the shortest possible time. But hospitals in London are already full to capacity and chronically understaffed. Patients are already being sent home who, under different conditions, would be hospital bed. A case is being investigated at the North Middlesex Hospital, where a nurse took her mother to the hospital after an apparent heart attack.

mother was discharged two hours later because there was no bed - she had attack, and is now suffering serious brain damage. No right to choose Where beds are not actually being cut facilities are being 'trimmed' to a bare minimum. Abortion facilities are often the first to go. In February the Obstetrics and Gynaecology Departmentat Lewisham Hospital issued a circular to local GPs: 14th February 1983. TERMINATION CLINICS - Lewisham Hospital.

There would appear to be an increasing demand for terminations in this District which our hospital facilities are not able to meet.

striction, of numbers therefore, will regretfully We propose the following nave to take sace. course of action:- 1. It is only possible to conduct 2 clinics (Tuesday and Wednesday) per present, and an absolute maximum of 8 patients will be seen in each of these clinics.

2. Booking in these clinics will be on a weekly basis only, and if the lists are already full, re-application for an appointment will have to be made at the beginning of the following week. 3. We would like to ask for the co-operation of General Practioners in screening their patients so that particularly social requests afford it could be referred to the Pregnancy Advisory Service or similar.

This new policy will take effect from mid- February. We apologise that this, of necessity, has to happen but we feel that our first duty is to our patients who have a real problem, and we cannot allow our work to be swamped by abortion cases. Lewisham's Obstetrics and Gynaecology Department is being swamped with abortion cases for one simple reason.

hospital that previously dealt with most of the area's abortions - St John's - was closed down three years ago. Lewisham's doctors are having to cope with an unmanageable workload. The consequence of this for local women is that they will have to turn to private agencies which will only be able to provide abortions at a considerable cost. This is no option at all for many working class women who simply cannot afford private abortions.

The limited access to abortion allowed City and and The At least 50 London London.

HAMMERSMITHL

offered a nayu Her EVoy week at under the 1967 Act is being withdrawn in practice as a result of health spending cuts.

Help yourself Access to health care facilities is no longer a right for working class people.

hospital treatment has become a privilege.

Admissions to hospitals are going to be decided according to strictly determined priorities: lists have already been drawn up. In most of the Inner London Health Authorities elderly people have been identified as a priority. In the document put forward by Wandsworth Health Authority on the services' we are assured that more money is actually to be invested in geriatric care.

But does this mean more hospital facilities will be made available? Apparently not.

For Wandsworth, priority means priority The "community care. in community centres are being set up local areas where elderly people can be looked after in a familiar environment.

Hospital in-patient care is only to be provided for those classified as medically sick.

This is one of the biggest frauds of all. It means that the responsibility of caring for the elderly is being shifted from the state on to the local community. It means that instead of the state paying for nursing care, friends and family will do the job for free. Abortion rights and health care under attack Fight Tory cuts! While Thatcher rants on about the joys of family life and the virtues of Victorian England her government is systematically depriving women of their rights through the insidious mechanism of cuts in National Health Service expenditure. Anne Burton reports on the situation in South

GLC & ILEA

LONDON

CENTRE WORKERS

noW nolg means a decline in services.

Decent service affect the and ancillary proposed changes in hospital Day centres and dren's wards lowest priority. care for them at home. priorities to For the government this means Nightingale role. inhuman. ment. concealed Woll services are profit closures. strength workers bility. and join us! massive savings, but for elderly people it Even if they are at a centre all day, where do they go when the centre closes? For their families (which means for their wives and daughters) this means an extra burden which most women cannot afford to take on These kinds of attacks on the health working class, entire but they hit women the hardest.

Most health service workers, clerical, nursing workers are women and most are already overworked and badly paid. The loss of 4000 jobs in a year represents a major attack on women's employment. At the same time, women are also the worst hit by the effects of the closures. It's usually the hospital facilities that directly relate to women which are the first to go in the cutbacks. Gynaecology wards, maternity wards and chilthese are seen as the As small local hospitals are closed down and facilities centralised in bigger district hospitals it is mothers and wives who are expected to cart sick children and relatives across the city - or As hospitals reorientate towards 'community care' it's the women who are expected to be caring giving up their jobs and their other be Florence cast in a Women who can't Women afford to do this are cast as brutal and "How could you think of putting your parents in a home?' is a question being thrown at us from the TV and from the newspapers The caring responsible haven of the family is emphasised more than ever. Is Maggie mad? Most people aren't fooled by government pronouncements that reductions in hospital beds and staff are a positive develop- What the cuts really working class people is only thinly veiled.

But the reason why it's happening - and why it's happening now - has been better The image of Margaret Thatcher as a pathologically mad axethoroughly irrational and lacking a heart - has been at the centre of most of the protests. Faceless bureaucrats on the District Health Authorities - out of touch with the needs of the local communities - nave also been bamed Labour MP Reg Race feels at ease sitting in a press conference and declaring that one of the central problems is that District Health Authorities are appointed, elected, and need to be made accountable.

But fighting the cuts means a lot more than making DHAs accountable.

Health not being cut because the ruling class is crazy, or out of touch with reality - but for very rational reasons.

With profit rates falling in industry, the government has to put the squeeze-on those sectors which do not produce any - the public services and in particular the health service. Effectively, workers are being asked to pay for the bosses crisis, and women workers are expected to bear the full brunt of the cutbacks and It's not a mad policy it's actually needed to get British capitalism back on it's feet The Tories recognise this and have acted accordingly - but so does the Labour Party. The Labour Party may now be squealing in outrage about "Tory attacks' on 'our health service' but they implemented the first round of attacks on the NHS We reject both the Tory and Labour 'solutions' to the crisis.

Why should and particularly women workers - have to pay the price for a de crepit and outmoded system? The bosses falling profit rates are not our responsi But the services we need are our responsibility - no one else is going to fight for them. In Lewisham, the Women's Right to Work Campaign has begun to fight back against the attacks on abortion facilities that have been implemented. We have launched a campaign involving local women demanding that all cuts and facili- We will ties are restored and extended. be organising a series of meetings, lobbies and pickets to make sure that women in Lewisham get the services they need come along to our next public meeting Public Meeting

NO CUTS, NO CLOSURES!

FREE ABORTION

ON DEMAND!

Thursday 12 May 7.30pm Brandron Road Community Centre, Brandron Road SE13 For more information contact Ann Burton on 01-2743951 or write to BM RCP, London WCIN 3XX the next step, May 1983 9

The coalition fantasy Labour movement THE LABOUR LEFT cannot be accused of inflexibility. All its members, from the rawest radical left entrists to the most seasoned machine campaigner, are well prepared even before their current crusade collapses, to launch the next. All valiant "fightbacks' of Labour left local councils have soon faded from workers pick memory as in rent and rate rises and deteriorating services. The hard-fought campaign to democratise the Labour Party been put on ice as bans and proscriptions have come to dominate the internal life of the party. Yet the Labour left stands ready with a torrent of new ideas. Tony Benn's proposal in early March to disestablish the Church original - at least in this century - but considered wildly ultra-left; no campaign was launched. The great issues hunting, hare coursing and the House of Lords were given their annual airing.

But a much more interesting proposal came from one of Labour's most radical factions - a campaign against 'coalitionism' and the damage it might do to a minority Labour government of the future. The 'threat' was first raised in The News Line, then popularised by Herald and promoted around the country by the Ken Livingstone and Ted Knight travelling roadshow. positive. response from the wider Labour left. Give and take The Labour Party is unpopular because its policies are implausible. This is why it stands so low in the opinion polls and does so badly in by-elections.

Labour Party has not even managed to into

CHELOVECL

issue. In contrast the Tories have successfully made the disunity and the 'extremism' of Labour into a subject of popular concern. The most Labour's crisis has The Labour left has never had any real from political independence leadership; even high his faction lacked support from the union bureaucracy nificant base in the working class. Thus, once the right-wing the offensive, left the and soon sued for peace. The left's retreat is covered by a cloud of rhetoric about party unity. A recent Party Unity Appeal launched by two left-wing pressure groups (the Labour Coordinating Committee and the Campaign for Labour Party symptomatic of the left's direction: We believe that the top priority for the party must be working for a majority Labour Government and that only can achieve this objective... But without some give and take on both sides the divisions within the party cannot be bridged.

Not everybody on the Labour left is prepared to appeal for compromise in such cringing terms. recent reveal that outlook typifies the Labour left.

The left's response hunt against Militant has been restricted to symbolic gestures and empty rhetoric.

Both the radical left's Labour the Witchhunt Campaign and Militant's Labour Steering Committee Witchhunts stopped short anything that would have the party leadership. Neither campaign interested in pushing was far. Militant was primarily interested in minimising the scope of the purge while the radical left were mainly concerned to go on the record as outspoken oppof onents witchhunts. response summed up the outlook of the left - if somewhat too cynically even for some Militant supporters. While vociferously denouncing the his local Labour proposed that 'note the expulsion of one of its merely 10 the next step, May 1983 the bill up has of England was of fox coalitionism its stablemate Labour readily drew a The political When serious casualty of been its left wing fighting the the party when Benn was riding government and it had no sigbureaucrats went crumbled board. by election was a ilised to image. Democracy) is Darlington the Healey and O'Brien their pet a united party affirmed disarmament (1 April). The left's But a number of election campaign this broad In general it was programme to the witchdecisions. Labour's plan Against Against of doing concentrated challenged National ales toe mise of dismissing Social Contract Ted Knight's demanded publicly implement it. expulsions he Party launched by Will the struggle against fox hunting be the Labour left's next great cause?

with the SDP-Liberal listening to them talking in their sleep members who was on Militant's editorial The left's response to the Darlington sign of the times. The left was pushed out of the campaign and veteran right-wing hacks were mob- Labour's moderate project The left diplomatically ignored cold shoulder while Callaghan, Hattersley and Kaufman took it in turns to lead Ossie around the like constituency poodle. The most dishonest response to Darlington was the editorial in Socialist Action which claimed that the candidate because here •WOl unilateral

COLLECTE

the party's response to document The New Hope for Britain is particularly revealing greeted as a radical that reflected ConeTeC The left perfunctorily criticised the National Economic Assessment, for an incomes policy. But in the main it was portrayed as a step the right direction. •The left simply the 'good bits' and ignored the fact that the whole reason for this document's publication was the Economic Assessment, a promaintain peace and to Class police the unions in the future. Instead this recipe for another of hand out the left right that the party's wing affirm determination to its Pressure towards party unity threatens to deprive the left of any distinct political identity. Yet another campaign has been the radical left entrists the cares of political life bear down too heavily on Britain's radical reformists they like to take the pressure off by dreaming about how they'll fight the battles of the future. It's so much easier than battles of today. The current favourite fantasy is the struggle against the Labour Party's participation in a future coalition Alliance. Pat Roberts has been Socialists for a Labour Victory attempt to give them an organisational In the desperate profile. please everybody and this campaign for radical socialist policies has been lost even before it has got off the ground. The left has been out-manoeuvred and domesticated and now has no prospect of influencing events.

of SLV know inspirers objective is simply activists something to do.

A much inspired issue The Labour left dream of the distant future because they know that their day is not today or tomorrow. They also know that their own linked to that of the party. Hence they are prepared to 'give and take' ..

give - to enhance the electoral prospects of their party. The issue therefore is not compromise, whether compromise and how to save face. This is why they have made the 'danger of coalition' into the burning the day. This is how Socialist Action outlined the problem: The prospects of coalitions and of re-runs of the Lib-Lab pact being at the centre of parliamentary life in the next period is growing more likely. This again will provide the opportunity for the right wing to junk conference policies, on the basis that compromises must be made with partners.' (8 April 1983) The Labour left papers are full of details of lurid behind-the-scenes negotiations over how a coalition is to be set up and vaguely directed polemics those who favour this course against of action. issue Labour Party the around a non-issue. the party long memory or history knows, the working governments have present party. only the purpose. yet have its day. - 11021 ment to struggle a left-wing offend nobody, those 1n The this their manoeuvring to give left-wing is that and is intimately irrelevance - mainly TO but how to with a or loyalty of issue Labour biguity. campaign class? deals and to waste windmills. workers' rights! The threat of coalition is a perfect It is very for the Labour left. therapeutic to deliver verbal body blows against a problem that may arise in the future. It distracts attention from the and the as it is today manifest incapacity of the left wing to do anything to influence developments in the real world either inside or outside the Labour Party. The campaign is not only a diversion, it is also insidious.

By portraying coalition as the problem, left implies that the Labour Party is all right the way it is. The left's message is that the Labour Party can deliver the goods so long as it does not enter into a coalition with the SDP-Liberal Alliance.

This legitimises the left's capitulation to the right, whilst allowing it the pretence of conducting an independent campaign Denouncing 'coalitionism' simply lets the Labour Party off the hook. It provides the perfect justification for uniting against an external threat.

In fact, as every worker with either a a knowledge of recent the Labour Party does not need to join a coalition to betray class. Labour Successive - majority or minority demonstrated a highly developed capacity to sell out the working class.

Left-wing Labour-run local councils have managed to cut services and raise rates In the without any coalition partners.

situation the The programme New Hope for Britain itself indicates the dimensions of the betrayal planned by the The only substantial difference between this programme and that of the Liberal Party or the SDP is a few billion pounds in state spending So who needs 'coalitionism"? Probably The spectre Labour left. of coalition endows the Labour left with a At a small cost it has given them an identity that they badly lack.

And if it doesn't work then perhaps the struggle against blood sports will Them and us The history of the Labour left in the 'eighties is a history of evasions. Ever since the election of the Thatcher Governthe Labour left has devoted its energies to pushing the party machine in direction. While millions of workers were thrown on the dole and employment were subjected to a ruthless attack, the lett conducted a campaign on party democracy and for a different deputy leader. For three years the left has spent its time on bureaucratic the of resand passing olutions and more resolutions. The result the Labour Party today is undemocratic and as much under the thumb of the trade union bureaucracy parliamentary careerists as it was on the day it was founded, It is a measure of the Labour left's that it has to invent the This campaign issue of coalitionism. reveals that the left's loyalty is primarily itself; it shows that to ensure its survival the left is prepared to go along programme directed against workers' interests. Loyalty to Labour to the working class? The left's response leaves no am- A series of diversions is all the Labour left has to offer the working class. The left has no distinct political alternative to the policies of the Social Contract. The 'coalitionism' is one against more compelling reason for active workers to shake off the yoke of Labour. Loyalty to Labour or loyalty to the working Revolutionary communists recognise only one interest - the independent interests of the working class. There are too many real dangers facing our class tilting time and energy at Join our ranks and fight for

Africa, Asia, and Latin America BE

IMPOVERISHMENT

NOBODY KNOWS the exact magnitude of the Third World's debt. It has been estimated that the total debt of the non-oil producing backward countries is in the region of $640 billion.

In effect this means that Western banks have a claim over a significant amount of the surplus value produced by the people of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

for Mexico, example, $200 million in fees alone for rescheduling its debt. Other Latin American countries Brazil, Argentina and Peru - face the prospect of handing over a considerable portion of what they produce in the form of interest payments.

The 40 countries that are unable to their debts meet under the thumbs of the Western banks.

These banks, organised through imperialist agencies like etary Fund, are able to exert considerable leverage over the economic and political life of debtor nations. Even a relatively powerful country like Brazil is forced to step into line and meet the terms laid down by its creditors. The trade rip-off The Third World has been badly hit by reductions in income from its agricultural produce, raw materials and While the prices of Western industrial been goods nave World commodities Third falling. Industrial stagnation has reduced the demand for raw materials and has pushed prices down. Between 1972 and 1982 the terms of trade for the Third World worsened by 19 per cent. For nonoil exporters in the has been worse still. In 1981 situation their terms of trade were 30 per cent worse than a decade earlier.

In 1982 world demand for the commthe odities of for the third consecutive capitalist will pay almost become more and have measures much percent in 1982, declined by five per cent.

the International Moncertain a state domination minerals. rising the prices of have been the population trition above 15 per cent. living on are Third World the Something like this year. Third World declined The rivalries force the yeal.

AND WAR

prices of certain metals in 1982 were less than half the levels of 1980, and in real terms even lower than the price levels of 1930. Thus backward capitalist countries are receiving less for the wealth they produce than ever before.

This sharp fall in commodity prices has impaired the ability of Third World countries to repay their debts. They have vulnerable foreign to To make domination. matters worse the imperialist countries imposed a series of protectionist keep out imports from Third World countries. Thus the Third World is forced to pay a disproportionate price for the crisis in world trade. Whilst the volume of world trade fell by two Third, World exports Starvation and coercion Even in the 'sixties and 'seventies, when backward capitalist countries experienced industrial growth, the vast majority of the population remained in of permanent impoverishment.

Since 1979 the situation has taken a drastic turn for the worse. Imperialist has brought millions to destitution and starvation. The crisis of agriculture has intensified and the output of food, has fallen behind population growth. In 80 backward capitalist coun tries in 1975 more than 10 per cent of suftered trom manu in 49 countries the level was World Bank today estimates that 600 million people the verge of starvation. 40 million people will die of hunger in Third World countries Direct intervention Recession and intensifying imperialist Western powers to tighten the screws on backward capitalist countries. The backward capitalist coun tries provide the most important markets for the exports of Western goods and capital. Control over these markets has essential for become any power trying to survive the depression.

All the imperialist powers are determined to establish their distinct spheres of influence in the Third World. Their aim is to use its resources and markets to bolster up the Japan has been particularly economies. successful in this enterprise. Japan has managed to carve out the 'yen-block' - an important sphere of influence in South-East countries provide Japan with its most important market, as well as providing raW materials Japanese imperialists have even ferred many operations to countries like South Korea Phillipines and managed to and the establish a division of labour greatly in favour of Tokyo. France has been active in shoring up poverty and disease imperialism. its and 'human backward imperialist stacles to lessly destroyed. faltering imperialist The Third World. so-called the Western supervise Asia. These for Japanese industry. be necessary transof their labour-intensive their troops in stopped by impoverished ing class. Imperialism The impact of the world recession in the West is everywhere apparent in the burgeoning militarism that accompanies de-industrialisation and mass unemployment in every imperialist country. For the Third World the recession brings even more - and the constant threat of military coercion.

Yet while the West slides steadily down the road to ruin, all the pundits are speculatingabout Both recovery. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher have proclaimed the end of the The recession. captains of banking and industry are less sanguine about their prospects. On the following page, Frank Richards shows that all the signs point to a deeper slump, not an upturn in the world economy.

Below and on Page 13 we examine what the recession means for the countries of the backward capitalist world. Here Helen Swift reveals the general trend towards economic collapse and the immiseration of the masses. Overleaf John Johnson looks at the particular case of Ethiopia to show that imperialism is responsible for the famine that stalks Africa in 1983. On Page 14 Bob Radcliffe examines the crisis in Zimbabwe and the consequences of Mugabe's compromises with 'franc-zone' in Africa while West German imperialism has been strengtharound the globe its influence The rules of fair play', "civil liberties' rights do not obtain in capitalist All obcounts be ruthprofit-making can That's why ward capitalist countries have become the main battleground for imperialist rivalries and the graveyard for millions.

is towards underlying trend greater and greater intervention in the The precedent is set by banks which carefully and direct the economies of debtors in their own interest. But with the deepening of depression more active forms of oppression will become the norm. Direct military interference will control Ove markets, investments and raw material sources as well as to keep imperialist rivals at bay. Britain's war against Argentina sets the trend: all the big powers are ready to mobilise task forces to assert imperialist interests around the world. The USA has its Rapid Deployment Force in an advanced state of preparedness to impose the US will in the Middle East. Other American forces supervise mass terror in El Salvador and increasingly inside Nicaragua.

In Southern Africa Mugabe's murderous 5th Batallion in Matabeleland and Botha's Namibia, Angola and Mozambique all help to keep the region secure for imperialist domination.

The growing war drive can only be the united struggle of the of backward capmasses italist countries and the Western work- The alternative is genocide on a scale that will make the Second World War look like a small skirmish.

This is the real price of capitalist recovery - we simply cannot afford to pay it.

the next step, May 1983 11

STAGNATION

Imperialism THE WORLD RECESSION which began in the early 'seventies is above all a crisis major class is not until dustry stored. Unable to solutions, petitors expense. protracted the iness during the important was the factured goods of the United States. dustrial collapse. longer create a Indeed the goods. hands to The boom in Borrowed money potential Intelligence Unit's 1983 summarised international system fundamentally the Western astrophe, Inside extension minimal poses of investment. The extension of output to be the "seven ties grew output. World, the Japan's The largest slice 12 the next step, May 1983 World economy The capitalist the slow and economic Even more for the way they countries countries face the parts of the world. Western companies they than given inbut it now looms here as the April). Outlook for *The 1S not

OSCUSE

domestic economy countries the have only a can As long as the capitalmore than allowed has Throughout faster than the Third oil-producing trade United States and three times the total EEC export more manufactured goods This growth in trade had an important countervailing effect on the world the fall in oil prices and growing indebtedness have combined to limit the growth of world trade. Trade began to level off 1982 the volume of world trade declined by two per cent.

In value terms the fall was even more in 1982 was six per cent below the 1981 level. The present period of stagnation of world trade has already lasted longer than any downturn since the 'thirties.

Rather than acting as the motor now reflects the underlying crisis of the imperialist order.

The shrivelling world market has stirred up competitive rivalries and has strength- To compensate other parts of the weak imperialist Britain. As British exports of British export was buswould be less nave, down' (19 closes stem the tide of It is an admission of the weakness of the failure of government policy to restore profitability.

1979, have failed to restore profitability.

The aim of deflation has been to raise the rupt. In terms of bankruptcies they have succeeded: last year, in the US alone 24 000 firms went out of raising profitability it has only made industrial stagnation worse.

Since 1979 industrial output in imperial- 1976. In the weaker imperialist countries British manufacturing industry at the end profit levels forced the capitalist class to cut back on its investments. In France, industrial investment fell by cent last year. In Britain it fell by 7.5 percent and investment in 1982 was lower than in any year Even Japan, the most dynamic of the imperialist powers, is expected to reduce its investments in manufacturing industry by eight per cent this year.

Deflation has not been able to clear the way for an industrial upturn because the capitalist class is not prepared to invest in the restructuring of industry.

Most industries are running way below capacity. Thus even a recovery in conwill have sumer spending investment in boosting One report noted the likely effect of this problem on the much erican recovery: Some US economists corporate sector has so much unused capacity lying around that a modest recovery that is shaping up for 1983 will be insufficient to stimulate much growth in capital expenditure.

(EIU, USA

Annual Supplement 1982) the working class and has allowed the bosses to increase their appropriation employment has been a powerful weapon the strength of basic trade union organisation has provided the only limited point of view of the ruling class there is much more scope for driving down wages below the value of labour power.

To assist recovery' they will want to cut state spending on social services even more - especially outlays on dole money While austerity can and will be stepped up to the benefit of the capitalist class, on its own it is insufficient to restore Attacks on the class are necessary, but not in themselves sufficient for overcoming the recession.

To restore profitability the fundamental structures of capital have to be reorganis- The capitalist class faces a stormy course to recovery. Industrial stagnation, falling investments, decline in world trade and the near collapse of the credit system create insurmountable obstacles to reterm. Since the seventies many of the counter-crisis measures have been used up and can no longer stimulate prodators today talk of 'recovery, they mean any slowing down in the pace of collapse.

Plans for recovery are entirely based on increasing consumer spending through a modified process of reflation. This is not so much a conscious strategy as a redeflation. One report motivated reflation Whatever the long term solution to the central problem of economic management in immediate future favours today a risk with inflation, because the recession is feeding on itself, in a most dangerous way.' (EIU, World American imperialism has taken a 'risk eight per 1964.

STICE

little effect industry. vaunted Ambelieve that the recession 99 USA and Japan, the 66when Thatcher and Reagan talk about 'recovery, they mean any slow down in the pace of capitalist collapse...

in reality the present period is not a prelude to recovery but the beginning of a protracted with inflation' by having a budget deficit of around $200 billion this year. This will stimulate spending and trade, but The same pattern is to be observed in Britain. February's Barclay's Industrial Survey looks to a lead 'given by consumer-orientated areas of the electrical/ construchon Growth of consumer-orientated output stagnation, but because of its marginal effects it cannot provide the basis for sustained recovery in the economy In reality the present period is not to a protracted period of depression.

measures already taken to stabilise capitalism have only increased the inter- In the years leading up to 1973 downof the imperialist world were offset by upturns elsewhere.

Today all parts of the world economy are effect of the recession has been to force The present fall in trade hits the econ of all the imperialist countries simultaneously. Indeed this synchronisation of the recession means that stagnation in one region has an immediate negative impact on developments else- The inevitable response of imperial.

ist powers to the depression is to inten of investment and access to cheap raw materials. Economic warfare, particularly of trade, indicates the bitter rivalries that have been unleashed not by signs of recovery, but by indications of the coming struggle to redivide world. Credit-encouraged consumer spending cannot halt the trend towards depression, economic warfare and war.

STARVATION

Ethiopia The last famine in Ethiopia claimed the lives of more than 250000 people. It also led to the overthrow of the corrupt regime of Emperor Haile Selassie I.

The imperialist powers are concerned about the new famine currently ravaging the area, not because they are worried about the plight of the masses, but because they fear for the stability of the whole region.

AWARD-SEEKING

Western television crews have rushed to Ethiopia to record the now familiar scenes of starving children: in fact the famine was reported six months ago by relief agencies and today it is estimated that three million people are affected, more than 100000 of them in government camps. Reports from the area have sought to discredit the pro- Soviet Derg regime under Mengistu.

Western powers hope to take advantage of the famine to strengthen their grip over the region, by economic measures as far as possible, by military force if necessary. But why is Ethiopia starving?

The imperialists are hard pressed to explain the misery which now afflicts, not just Ethiopia, but wide Africa. All their "explanations divert attention from the responsibility of the imperialist countries for shifting burden of the world recession on to the backs of the masses of the Third World.

One school of thought has it that the famine is entirely a work of God: there is a famine because there has been no rain.

A still more fatalistic form of this explanation is that it is simply the result of the south ward the Sahel desert march of region. As The Times put it - "farmers the world over have problems with the climate. where have sequences that it has in Ethiopia. Genocide cannot be attributed to bad weather.

Unnatural disaster Another theory holds that the blame for the advance of the desert and the immiseration of the people of the region can be put down to bad agricultural practices.

The World Bank suggests level of agricultural inefficient use of land and methods of preventing exhaustion of the soil - such as allowing land to lie fallow for several years at a time - worked well in the past. Now, however, the growth of the population has put such pressure on the land that the old methods of land use are breaking down. more intensively, but no more efficiently.

The result is rapid soil erosion and the steady advance of the desert.

itself espouses a version of this explanation, blaming the famine and the failure of its agricultural development programme on the backwardness of the Ethiopian peasantry and on sabotage.

This explanation does have the virtue of removing the problem from the realm of divine intervention, logic of its argument is to blame the famine on the people themselves.

they are too stubborn, too ignorant or simply too numerous. adds the element of the conflict between the Derg regime and liberation movements in Eritrea and Tigre in its summary of Ethiopia's problems as 'drought, war, too many people'.

No doubt shortage of rainfall and military disruption have hit agricultural output. But these factors cannot explain the inability of a country like Ethiopia to feed its own people. While the population has grown by three percent per year over the past decade, food production has expanded by an annual average of two per cent.

Yet the World Bank has estimated that Ethiopia has sufficient natural resources to support 310 million people - about 10 times the present population.

explanation for agricultural stagnation in Ethiopia has to be sought in its relationship to the world economy and in the patterns of land ownership and farming established under imperialist domination.

The myth of independence In 1880, Britain managed to establish effective control of the region through its sponsorship of the Solomonic dynasty in what was then Abyssinia. the Horn of Africa between the Italians who took over Eritrea and Northern Somalia - and the French, who established their base in Djibouti. power was maintained until 1936 when Mussolini seized Abyssinia and annexed it to the Italian territories.

The During the Second World War the Italians were ousted from the area and the modern state of Ethiopia was formed (including Abyssinia and Eritrea). While Britain's former role was largely taken over by the USA, the French retained their base at Djibouti. has been to preserve stability in the area areas of by backing first the reactionary monarchy of Haile Selassie and, since 1974, by discreetly cooperating with the Derg.

the USA has not been unduly about the pro-Soviet rhetoric of the Derg regime: it wanted a strong central authority in Ethiopia and it fully approved the Derg's use of Soviet weapons against the Eritreans and Tigreans. between the Mengist regime and both Cuba and the Soviet Union have provided the USA with a convenient pretext for extending the sphere of activities of its Yet crop failure does not everyinto the Horn. the same catastrophic con- French. and India, that the low development, the the crude opia. of cheaper European goods.

Land is being used of the export trade. The Derg the market. means of social control. but the essential Either tually European The Economist protracted remains the norm. nently on the edge of starvation.

The ship economy by introduced by responsibility agriculture. It carved up over large areas. allowed tO This balance of tenants. American policy The concerned Indeed the links Rapid Deployment Force from the Gulf The RDF now has a base on the Somali mainland at Berbera, a good position from which to safeguard the imperialist order - and keep an eye on the From the 1890s, the Ethiopian market was flooded with textiles from Manchester consumer goods from Italy and France, and cheap food from America.

Exports other than coffee and animal skins were effectively eliminated.

The stranglehold over trade meant that the imperialist powers effectively dictated the terms of economic development in Ethi- Capital investment, 90 per cent Ethiopia. Italian, was restricted to industries pre paring primary products for export. Local small scale capitalist production, partiproduction cularly of textiles, was stifled by the inflow In the coffee growing regions of the south some large scale farming developed under the impetus In the North the burgeoning small scale capitalist class was ruined by the flood of cheap grain onto The British-backed Emperor Menilik preserved the power and authority of the old landowners in the face of the threat of capitalist development as a Bread by radio While there was some improvement in remain farming methods in the south, and evenagricultural capitalist concerns moved into some areas, most starvation. agriculture stagnated under the archaic social system guaranteed by imperialism.

The effects of this can be seen today Although 70 percent of Ethiopia's land surface is suitable for arable farming, less imperialism. than 12 per cent is actually used and less than 6 per cent is under permanent crop.

Less than a fifth of Ethiopia's farm produce is intended for the market: subsistence farming in tiny, unproductive plots world trade The result is that three quarters of the population lives perma- The 1974 revolution mobilised the peasantry against the monarchy and the landowners, offering the possibility of a real change in the system of land owner- Under and the creation of conditions in which Ethiopian agriculture could develop.

However, the domination of the Ethiopian international commodity markets ensured that the land reform of grain. the Derg in 1974 was robbed of its progressive content.

To contain the social unrest in the countryside the Ethiopian state had to assume for the development of Rather than accepting the redistribution of land among the peasants the Derg began to implement state control Rather than being become landowners the aid. peasantry was reduced to the status of This was a backward step for the volatility in Somalia. only domination. of imperialism. Imperialism large numbers who had seized land in the process of the revolution.

When the social unrest continued, the Derg responded by attempting to force through a programme of collective farming. This only made matters worse. In 1975 the first phase of the coffee harvest was lost because of the disruption caused by the Derg's attempt to nationalise the coffee plantations.

In order to finance wars against the Eritreans, Oromos, Tigreans and Somalis, as well as to buy equipment, chemicals and fertilisers needed in the agricultural sector, the Derg was forced to fall back the traditional export earners The fall in coffee prices on the world market further reduced the Derg's room for manoeuvre. -Although coffee has continued to rise, the foreign exchange it has realised has fallen steadily over the last ten years.

In 1980 Ethiopia produced more than 80000 tons of coffee which earned $305.2 million.

In 1982 almost 84000 tons earned only $241.4 million. Earnings from coffee constitute 61 per cent of Ethiopia's GDP.

Yet Ethiopian exports make up less than four per cent of the world's coffee supply and the regulation of its price is completely outside the control of the Ethio- The result is that while the southern provinces of Ethiopia are devoted to an ever increasing acreage of coffee fo the world market, the northern province: locked into a system of subsistance farming. That is why ten million people live permanently in the shadow of The Ethiopian masses came to call the land reform Bread by Radio.

Worse to come Ethiopia is an important country for It is the second most populous black African country (after Nigeria) and potentially one of the three largest markets in Africa. It also has a key strategic position close to the main arteries of through the Indian Ocean and the Gulf. Over the last three years the USA has lost out to European and Japanese traders and investors in Ethiopia The instability resulting from the famine is prompting growing concern among all the imperialist powers involved.

the guise of aid, European countries in particular are trying to use the famine to their advantage.

Britain has already provided £250,000 for famine relief and the EEC has supplied 15000 tons They hope famine relief will stabilise the country and strengthen their positions as foreign investors. Most significant for Britain was its recent success in winning a f25m order for British shipbuilders for two general purpose cargo carriers for the Ethiopian merchant navy.

This will be financed substantially through aid: almost half of all investment in Ethiopia since 1979 has been in the form of Liberals and reformists who call for more aid for Ethiopia are simply ensuring reproduction of the relations of domination that currently threaten the lives of millions of Ethiopians.

The USA has refused to send more aid to the Derg, ostensibly because of its pro- Soviet postures, in reality because of the of conflicts within the ruling clique in Ethiopia. The Reagan administration has concentrated on building up its military strike-potential in the region.

Earlier this year the US Rapid Deployment Force engaged in its first exercises The famine in Ethiopia could yet generate an internal crisis which would provoke an imperialist intervention as the of ensuring capitalist However the imperialists carve up the Horn, the masses of Ethiopia will be forced to pay a heavy price in more famine and disease and death. The only hope for the masses in Africa lies through the defeat the next step, May 1983 13

Three years of compromises lead to repression and revolt Imperialism Zimbabwe and Ndebele ethnic groupings.

burden in poverty and coercion.

WHEN MUGABE'S Patriotic Front government came to power in April 1980 liberals and reformists in the West proclaimed a great victory. step we commented on of a successful British holding operation to stabilise capitalist relations in Southern Africa. a victory for imperialism the masses of Zimbabwe 1980). In the event stability has proved and short-lived Cone sIo years ago has become even more apposite today: "The interests of workers in Zimbabwe now lie in a challenge to Mugabe's compromises which oppression for the masses."

Revolt and savage repression in Matabeleland confirm the urgent need for the Zimbabwean masses to carry through their long struggle against domination and its local agents.

Mugabe's capitalism Ever since independence Mugabe has proclaimed his commitment to building Zimbabwe through capitalist cooperation with foreign and indigenous capital. His attempts to pursue this course in conditions of deepening world recession have meant a series of for the masses who fought to free Zim- Falling prices for Zimbabwe's babwe. mineral exports on the world's commodity markets, together drought on agricultural production (particularly of maize a sharp deterioration in the economy in 1982. Zimbabwe's balance of payments deficit increased by profit growth declined by 26 percent.

Deflationary policies supervised by the International Monetary sulted in a 20 per cent devaluation and a series of austerity measures: real wages fell by 20 per cent last year (Financial Mail, 8 April). The Mugabe government has everything possible to appease the imperialist multinationals which still directly cent of the assets control 70 per and industry. commerce Zimbabwean Conference on Reconstruction and Development (ZIMCORD) the state has promoted joint ventures beforeign domestic and Twee on terms favourable to overseas investors as an alternative to popular demands However, for nationalisation. wean workers have had to pay a heavy price for the imperialists' quest for profits. In 14 the next step, May 1983 The Western media is preoccupied by the conflict between Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and his leading opponent Joshua Nkomo, who recently fled the country, and by the 'tribal' animosities between the Shona important division in Zimbabwe is between supporters of Mugabe's repressive, pro-Western regime, and those who are forced to bear the ented on In the next strikes and the outcome The over (April/May capitalism in in its new three icular area. 'which mean poverty and imperialist brunt of class farmers setbacks remains unfulfilled. resettled with the effects of and cotton), led to 66 per cent and Fund have reecent jobs, crisis disproportionately society done of Through the capital, minority in the West. Zimbabrelentless several past

BOTSWANA

Gabarol In fact, as Bob Radcliffe argues, the most issues of the next step we have commthe way that the Patriotic Front government has ruthlessly crushed denied workers' demands ever since independence (see Betrayal in Zimbabwe', No 28, October 1982).

government's determination to make workers pay the price for building Zimbabwe is codified Labour Relations Bill. This gives the Minister of Labour authority to control 'the supply of labour of any class or category of person in any part- The voice of British business congratulated Mugabe on a measure would satisfy his South African counterpart and the most important piece of legislation since independence' (Financial Times, 30 March).

While industrial workers have taken a hammering since independence, the Zimbabwe's crisis has been borne by the 75 per cent of the population who still live on the land.

The greatest betrayal of the regime has been its failure to deliver on the promise of land redistribution, around which Mugabe mobilised mass support. The government has refused to take any action that might alienate the support of the rich white for his regime. The result is that after three years the Patriotic Front's promise to redistribute land to the masses Only a tiny proportion of landless peasants have been farms deserted by their owners during the war, and the pattern of landownership established by British imperialism remains substantially intact.

"Tribalism' The Patriotic Front government cannot reconcile the aspirations of the masses wages and land with the demands of imperialism. In its attempts to secure its position the governhas pushed the burden of the and favoured others, exacerbating divisions in Zimbabwe long fostered by imperialism. Hence the instability in the country resulting from government's acquiescence to imperialist domination takes the form of the majority Shona between grouping concentrated in the East of the country and the Ndebele - a 20 per cent of conflict between emergence ethnic groupings is itself an expression of the betrayal of a liberation struggle which was famous for uniting different language and cultural sections against imperialism.

ZAMBIA

• LuSaK

NDEBELE

ZIMBABWE

Bulawayo

MULAMBIUUE

SOUTH AFRICA

the Lancaster House agreement 1979: its ban on land seizure underlies mass unrest today In 1893, after the British defeated the Ndebele, who traditionally the Shona in Zimbabwe, they sought to exploit animosities between Yet it was only three years groupings. later that the Shona and the Ndebele united in the first rebellion against Ever since, the liberation British rule. struggle has striven to maintain black unity against the divisive tactics of the The imperialists. come to the fore today have their origins in the 'sixties in the conflicts between Mugabe and Nkomo. These disagreements were not essentially tribal, but were about the extent to which the liberation movement should compromise with imperialism. At the time, Nkomo stood for closer collaboration sued in secret negotiations with white supremacist Prime in 1978 - while Mugabe advocated a more radical line. A number of external factors exacerbated divisions.

Divisions In 1969 the anti-imperialist movement split between its two most prominent leaders. Nkomo's ZAPU organisation and its military front ZIPRA by Zambia (and to a lesser extent Botswana) and launched activities from these countries. As the war intensified in the 'seventies they tended to recruit from the Western, Ndebele, part of Zimbabwe. Mugabe's ZANU (and its ZANLA guerrillas) were based in Mozambique and drew support Eastern, Shona, from the Soviet Union's sponsorship and China's backing for Mugabe further reinforced the divisions in the movement. The war, however, tended to pull the different factions together against the enemy. vonnon were regular clashes, and in particular ZANLA allegations that it was forced to do most of the fighting while ZIPRA held back, the two sides united in the Front in 1976 Patriotic ented an uneasy unity through the 1980 elections. The decisive factor in provoking the most serious conflict ethnic groupings in Zimbabwe for more than a century is the course taken by the Mugabe government since "independence'.

Mugabe's wing of the Patriotic Front won an overwhelming victory in the elections largely because he most intransigent fighter for the black interests. His subsequent collaboration with imperialism has intensified internal tensions.

austerity programme has meant that he has had few favours to hand out; the result of his reliance on the ZANU- ZANLA section of the movement has been that his old supporters have been favoured at the expense of the ZAPU- ZIPRA wing. forces have been largely based on ZANLA, and land redistribution has favoured

ZIPRA

gruntled disillusioned trayal poverishment by government repression former caches supporters last year civil ployment vastated. attack and their For apace. Intelligence dominated the two divisions which have or programme. the struggle - a policy he pur- Minister lan Smith divisions. being either community. were backed seeks to their guerrilla provides largely The area. of Nkomo ing to Botha (see Although there of this, which presto build among the Front was seen steadily Mugabe's The reorganised armed imperialism where in the world. Mugabe's supporters. Meanwhile former have returned disguerrillas - and often still armed - to Matebeleland, where peasant farmers are at the government's beon land redistribution and im Intensifying drought. the arrest of ZIPRA leaders, the prominent expulsion of Nkomo from the government, the shoot-out that left 300 dead Bulawayo in 1981, the discovery of stored away by Nkomo - has led to virtual war. It has culminated in the deof the exclusively Shona 5th Brigade on a campaign of terror in Matabeland in recent months that has left thousands dead and large areas de- / The struggle continues While Mugabe has launched a savage dissidents in Matabeleland, his attempts to appease the white settlers proceed imperialist bacKers three years the regime has been trying to disarm former freedom fighters; now it has approved the rearmament of the white ranchers organised in the Commercial Farmers Union.

Mugabe has reinforced Smith's Central Organisation, retained the services of his notorious 'hanging judges' and turned the country into a police state as bad as it ever was before "independence. The inevitable outcome of Mugabe's attempts to stabilise capitalism in Zimbabwe is more impoverishment and coercion for the masses.

What is the future for Zimbabwe?

At present the dissidents in Matabeleland appear to lack any coherent organisation They have simply sponded to the consequences of Mugabe's betrayal of the anti-imperialist struggle.

The only way forward for the masses in Zimbabwe is to reorganise and complete for independence many thought they had won in 1980. This would provide the basis for overcoming the regime's attempts to foment ethnic Zimbabwe is very far from polarised entirely along ethnic lines. The geographical distributions of Ndebele and Shona overlap considerably; neither is a homogenous grouping and no leader can claim exclusive support from At present the revolt in Matabeleland is being manipulated by external forces for their own ends. Nkomo, in exile, exploit dissatisfaction with Mugabe to his personal advantage. But he political alternative to Mugabe - he is simply a bourgeois politician who has been outmanoeuvred His record is one of betrayal just as much as Mugabe's. The South African government has also tried to use the situation in Matabeleland to further its strategy of destabilising Zimbabwe and consolidating its domination over the region Botha's regime has given extensive backguerrilla actions in Zimbabwe causes bother, the next step, No 33, March 1983).

Clearly nothing progressive can come from South African interference in Zimbabwe. None however, the alters character of resistance to the Mugabe government.

This is not counter-revolutionary sabotage of the Patriotic Front's attempts socialism, as apologists for Mugabe depict. It is the revolt of the most em bittered sections of the ZAPU-ZIPRA forces against the failure of the Patriotic Zimbabwe regime to develop against the stranglehold of imperialism.

There is a lesson here for those in the British labour movement who celebrated the deal Britain imposed on Zimbabwe as a progressive solution. Reformists and •liberals who congratulated Mugabe on his presentation of his compromises with imperialism as a victory for the masses can now see the consequences of the stabilisation of imperialist relations under the Patriotic Front in Zimbabwe. While the masses of Zimbabwe carry on their long fight for freedom, our job is to condemn the barbarous role of British in Africa and expose its pretensions to a progressive role any-

The left alternative economic strategy in action Austerity socialism How can we be so sure that Labour's alternative strategy disaster for the working Just look at France out Labour's policies been trying for our future for the last two years.

TWO YEARS AGO the left throughout Europe greeted the election victory of Francois Mitterand's alliance with euphoria. In contrast the PSF-PCF alliance's narrow survival at the municipal polls in March provoked barely a mention in the papers of the left. This time it was the congratulated Mitterand. The editor of The Times expressed his concern that the Socialists should retain sufficient authority to govern effectively.

politicians and pundits have nothing but admiration for Mitterand's achievements in attacking the French working class.

Meanwhile the left has gone quiet on the subject of French socialism.

Since the March municipal elections, Mitterand has reorganised his coalition cabinet and launched the most drastic austerity programme France has seen in Under the 30 years. agreed by Parliament on 11 April a total of 65 billion francs - two percent of the national product - is to be taken out of workers pockets by means of a broad range of tax increases, special levies, cuts in state welfare spending and increases in state service charges. What happened to reflation?

The objective behind these drastic measures is to curb inflation and cut imports of competitive mainly goods. During the past year the value of franc declined has France's trade balance has deteriorated dramatically - it 1s now billion francs in the red. These developments in the sphere of trade and currency are symptomatic of the stagrelations nation of French capital. France's competitive position has tically particularly when with the much more resilient German economy. The turn to austerity exposes the utopianism of the Socialists' promise to solve the problems of the recession by of a reflationary means economic policy. The artificial injection of demand into the economy by means of increased minimum wages subsidies during 1981 to mid-1982 served only to accentuate the crisis of profit- Private investment continued to ability. stagnate and increased demand only led to increased imports of foreign dominantly West German - goods. While European other address the problem of profitability by means of severe attacks on working class living standards and jobs, the French policy of increased state expenditure only delayed the inevitable crunch. Now that the problem of declining profitability can no longer be avoided, French workers are being asked to pay a very indeed. The Financial Times' assessment of Mitterand's budget was that there has not been such a single massive deflationary dose amongst the major governments of Western Europe since the 1966 measof Mr ures Harold government in Britain'. And the budget is only the beginning. Already discussions are underway between government and union leaders over a proposed four per cent wage limit for 1983. With inflation running at 10 per cent this would amount to a cut in real wages of unprecedented proportions. Since coming to office in 1981, the Socialist-led administration has brought about a remarkable lurch to the right in French political life. social and would be a class? they've Socialist-Stalinist bourgeois press which Bourgeois buaget measures German the national Socialist-Communist steadily and class. almost 10 attention was laws were enacted and deteriorated drascompared West cracy over the control working class alternative duced the and state the government pregovernments began to programme high price the state uncompetitive industries.

Wilson's socialist ment. The government itionally most militant The federation, Mitterand strikes a Napoleonic posture as he steps out alongside Marchais in happier times current shift to direct attacks on the working class is only the most glaring expression of this trend. From the start anti-crisis policies of the alliance inevitably meant major setbacks for the working Until the winter of 1981 government focussed on creating channels for the containment of the New labour organised labour movement.

tripartite institutions were set up to strengthen the grip of France's fragile trade union bureaurank and file. Mitterand sought to establish a smooth partnership between the state and the unions to help In wellunrest. publicised gestures the government intro- 35 hour week and curbed excesses of entrepreneurial corruption.

How they did it This was also the period during which fulfilled its pledge to nationalise a number of major enterprises.

Many on the left took these activities as proof of the administration's 'socialist' credentials. In reality, all these measures aimed to create the framework for a of national capitalist restructuring. The nationalisation measures and the injection of vast sums into the new state-controlled industries were central to the Socialist's strategy of rebuilding French industry. Now workers are being asked to pay out of their own pockets for funds directed to salvaging Mitterand achieved what had eluded every French government since the late "sixties. He succeeded in making the restoration of a profitable capitalist economy a task for the organised labour move- Party

(PCF)

Communist played a pivotal role in the realisation of this class-collaborationist perspective. By drawing Communist ministers into the Mitterand gained an invaluable ally. PCF loyalty to the government meant the neutralisation of the and tradcountry's most important trade union the PCF-dominated

CGT.

Occasional socialist rhetoric and sporadic cosmetic concessions were a cheap price to pay for the integration of the CGT. In this way Mitterand was able to construct an alliance between the state and the trade union bureaucracy on previously unknown in France.

alternative economic policy was part of the deal. It helped to win at least temporary working class acquiescence to the government and the bureaucracy.

No room for manoeuvre However, despite Mitterand's remarkable success in neutralising the official labour the social consensus he has movement, achieved is fragile. coming under increasing pressure as a result of its harsh economic policies.

present the challenge from the right wing is particularly in the ascendant.

Setbacks for the PSF and a major defeat for the PCF in the municipal elections are but one symptom of the swing to the right and the emergence of right-wing antagonism against the government. The PCF lost control of local government in 16 of the 79 cities it formerly ruled. Paris and Lyon, the two largest cities, and the latter a traditional left-wing stronghold, were taken by Chirac's ultra right-wing Rassemblement Pour La (RPR). The industrial town of Dreux, 55 miles west of Paris, almost fell to a right-wing opposition alliance of the RPR and France's equivalent of the National Front, the, Front Nationale. middle class protests in the streets of Paris in the week following the announcement of the budget, were a further illustration of the growth of right-wing pressure against the government. Union chaos The trade unions too social base of the reformist administration are showing signs of disintegration Increasing militancy among sections of the rank and file - in particular black workers in the car industry - has undermined bureaucratic control and shown the potential for a working class fight back against austerity. At the same time the old trade union and the working class. and trade union movement. violent nantly black strikers. struggles. cards. competition

CFDT

and the Ouvriere), a CIA instability in France. - a phenomen-

CGT.

The pro-government line. ship The government is regional At annual council Republique Militant administration -the onlv real class politics. defended. act now. France structure is falling apart. Rising unemploycompetition in the labour market have deepened the divisions within Inter-union rivalries have reached a desperate pitch.

The recent growth of company-run scab unions powerful skilled and white collar workers' unions such as the CGC -the - indi- Confederation Generale de Cadre cates the process of disintegration in the The recent mass strikes led by black unskilled workers in the car industry see the next step, No 34, April 1983) have been characterised by bitter and often confrontations between white company-union scabs and the predomi- Similar conflicts have occurred in most recent industrial The French trade union movement has always been relatively weak with only around 20 per cent of all workers carrying This is reflected in the between the rival bureaucracies of the CGT, the Socialist-controlled right-wing FO (Force sponsored post-wat break-away from the CGT. Under the impact of the recession these divisions have deepened and multiplied.

The combination of all these factors has created a situation of acute political The fragmentation trade union movement and the simultaneous growth of right-wing organisations are danger signs for Mitterand's uneasy government alliance. The political structures he has built are being undermined by mounting class conflict.

Stalinism in agony The problems of the French labour movement are most acute for the PCF and the Since the late 'seventies the CGT has lost half its membership.

In a desperate bid to salvage its position the Stalinist bureaucracy carved out a role as the loyal "left wing' of the Mitterand administration.

At its last Congress in June 1982 the CGT leadership expelled opponents of its craven Henri Krasnicki the most hardened hack in the PF leaderwas installed as CGT leader to enforce tighter party control over the union.

Despite extreme bureaucratic manipulation - all Congress delegates were selected by CP leaders - the leadership's report received approval from only 49 per cent of the delegates.

Since then, the stream of defections has swollen. In the industrial city of Lille workers deserted the CT en masse to form an 'independent union'.

Elsewhere whole sections of workers are breaking away to join other unions.

This haemorrhage is only to be expected, given the bankruptcy and incoherence of PCF policy. Its desperate balancing act between its role as a party of government enforcing working class sacrifice, and its attempts to rally rank and file militancy cannot be sustained.

The PC's chosen role as a left front for the anti-working class Mitterand government arouses only indignation and contempt. For the government, however, it continues to tender invaluable service in articulating consent to even the most drastic attacks on working class interests.

The PCF MPs' vote in favour of Mitterand's austerity budget was a major propaganda coup for the moribund Socialist The political crisis in France opens up major opportunities for building new working class organisations based on real Two years of reformist government have shown that nothing less will do if workers' interests are to be Mitterand's turn to austerity must be a signal for militant workers to Sabena Norton the next step, May 1983 15

Two years of the Labour Greater London Council South Bank socialism

GLC

challenging the system. • creating 10000 new jobs • cutting fares by 25 percent on London Transport • halting the transfer of GLC housing to the boroughs • cutting the price of school meals • providing nursery facilities for working mothers It has done none of these things.

a gesture with the 'Fares Fair' and had transport committee chairman David Wetzel jumping on and off buses for a while. But the campaign crumbled and the 25 per cent cut in fares was restored as soon as the Law Lordsintervened.

As early as July 1981 the new Labour administration conceded defeat over the issue of transferring its housing stock.

And it soon basked meals when individual councillors were threatened with surcharges. The housing, jobs and nursery programmes never left the drawing board. Many socialists were GLC's pointed at the Labour Party left-wingers who had worked hard to install Livingstone at County Hall 'But' they told themselves felt betrayed. 'what else can he do when the GLC's hands are tied by the Tories?'.

Stark choices It is certainly true that the Labour GLC has had a rough ride from central government. Over the past two years Tory ministers Heseltine and King have deprived the largest local authority Europe of over £600 million in an attempt to force through cuts in public spending.

The GLC has responded to every Tory attack by saying Londoners face a 'stark 16 the next step, May 1983 It is two years since Ken Livingstone took power in London. Behind the rhetoric the record of his Greater London Council administration shows the consequences of Labour's attempts to manage capitalism without really 'Our hands are tied'

THE LABOUR PARTY

made a lot of promises in the May 1981 GLC cuts in vital services. elections. Theyincluded and homes worlds. aware what and It made by 14 percent in March. campaigli, down on school deeply disapperformance. to put up the rates. refusal to fight the Tories.

fitting the working class.

party

OWI

Western choice: rate increases to make up for what the government has taken away, or In practice there has been no choice; Londoners have had. rate rises and massive cuts in Jobs, housing and social services - the worst of all possible Mid-way through its term of office the Labour group at County Hall is acutely this will cost in votes. It keeps apologising to the ratepayers: loss of Government aid hits ratepayers ye again, says the billboard poster the GLC 'concerned boroughs' plastered all over London when the rates went up again Self-inflicted Nobody can accuse the GLC leader of being inconsistent. Many do, because they erroneously took his early declarations of war against the Tories seriously. In July 1981 he talked about resigning and 'going to the country; the following month he said that the GLC would force the Government to back down, to withstand being 'totally crushed into the ground, totally defeated'. In fact all that Livingstone was talking about was the GLC's determination The working class ended up paying the price for the GLC's In two years all that has changed is that statesmanship has imbued a deeper sense of realism, and there is less rhetoric about rate rises bene- Labour's hands are not tied by the Tories - but by the limitations of their The Labour programme. Party is committed to economy and efficiency in local government: the Labour GLC has always tailored its demands to When the what the system can afford system is in crisis and public expenditure is being squeezed, this means the working class accepting sacrifices in terms of the Jobs and services that local government provides. The Labour left's only quibble is over how the sacrifices are distributed: this is the essence of the controversy that has racked Labour groups over the past five years - raise the rates or cut services?

The GLC - like most Labour Councils has resolved the issue by doing both.

Petulant condemnations of Mad Maggie, Tarzan Heseltine and the Lords have all helped to disguise Labour's acquiescence to major setbacks in working class living standards.

The central feature of the Labour GLC is its refusal to challenge the whole rationale for economies in council spending.

Bound hand and foot to what is realistic for. capitalism in crisis, clique at County Hall is reduced to putting its collective tongue river in over the Westminster, meekly following the government's dic- The Labour Party cannot fight the tates. Tories because it accepts the horizons of their system as the legitimate limits on the demands of the working class.

When the opportunity struggle against the Tories arises, the GLC looks the other way. Labour councillors?

only contribution to the long and bitter NHS strike was to appear once or twice on picket lines and demonstrations to have their photos taken. workers on London Transport put in for a 15 per cent wage claim, Livingstone set a 'realistic' limit of eight per cent.

Workers in London who want to fight the Tories, and defend their jobs and services, will have to look elsewhere than to County Hall for a lead.

has to offer these days is the faint hope that Labour will be returned in a General Its own performance over the Election. past two years serves as a warning that workers would fare no better even then.

Jobs:

GLC

the catastrophic state docks have been ment in many chemicals, has it is nearer 400 000. 10 000 jobs by create jobs. London alternative strategy be not so much senile Law of creating workers unemployment. astrous Livingstone's iated Automation GEC, making pay at the Tories while operative' appeared. The lead a to has been level. labour which former When NUR Why has alisation answer lies in All the GLC specialists London Economic Tony Allen the dream turns sour

WHEN THE LABOUR

GLC took over at County Hall in May 1981 said that dealing with unemployment in London was its top priority. It surveyed of affairs in the nation's capital. Older industries like the declining for many years, but over the past decade employindustries modern engineering, manufacturing virtually collapsed. The

GLC

erected an enormous sign proclaiming the number of London's unemployed across the Thames to Westminster. Then the level was less than 300 000; today The Labour GLC promised to create 1985. It set up the Greater London Enterprise Board with an annual budget of £30m to save and Two years later the only real jobs the GLC has created are on its numerous quangos - and it has presided over the elimination of 2000 jobs from The GLC's Transport alone. has turned out to an alternative means London employment for to fighting alternative Market forces A brief survey of the GLC intervention in industry reveals that it has had disconsequences for jobs. Assoc was a subsidiary of telephones in Brent, with a workforce of 400. Since its takeover by the GLC it has become la cocalled Third Sector - and 280 of the jobs at the factory have dis

GLC

also took over Austinsuite, a furniture factory in East London, got rid of 250 of its 430 workers and leased it to a new employer. Output maintained at its previous This is the sort of shakeout of and boost in productivity of BL Michael supremo Edwardes or ex-BSC boss lan McGregor would be proud. Yet under Livingstone's GLC it is held up as a socialist achievement!

Labour's pledge to create jobs turned into a programme of rationredundancy? and mass The the London Industrial Strategy drawn up by the team of employed by the Greater Enterprise Board. The board's Policy Group outlined its guiding philosophy in a recent pamphlet: It seems to us to be economic and political madness to turn again to the crude axe of

profit and tight budgets as a way of reorganising the British economy... Profit is no longer an accurate guide to the way out of economic crisis' (Jobs for a change) The GLC's dream is that production can be planned and organised according to human needs rather dictates of capitalist profitability. This is a dream because under capitalism, which neither the GLC nor the Labour Party have any immediate perspective of overthrowing, production can only be geared to profit. Whether a firm is run by Michael Edwardes makes no difference: to stay in business in capitalist Britain in 1983 you have to sell your products and make a profit.

When it comes down to it, Livingstone knows this. to the Council on 'Monetarism in London' in October last year he estimated, as the basis of GLC investment in that the average industrial worker con- *E160 value-added" tributed to the capital's economy. "Value-added' is a term used by confused economists and guilty socialists when they profit. But this is not simply a theoretical matter, as the workers at Third Sector and Austinsuite can testify. As Economic Policy Group the in Jobs for-a change: bluntly alone funds cannot protect market pressures. much against depend on the workers' ability to make products. and sell new In of the capitalist market. GLC part of the same economy as atives are BL and BSC. In conditions of recession the same harsh realities cannot be evad- Hence Third Sector and good intentions of the the and jack up productivity.

union rights, wages too. Popular planning their to promote cynicism. Listen to Industry ployment Committee chairman ael Ward: The central belief movement and, in this instance, just society than this fair convinced that the economic their benefit.' (Labour Herald, 8 April) The intellectuals of the forces society oI capitalist class; the distribution resources of society takes place through market. This is chaotic, the inhuman, unfair and unjust capitalism. Socialism is a system in which the working owns Class of production and can plan the means and administer an efficient, fair and just society. To get from capitalism to socialism we have to destroy the capitalist state - then, and not before, socialist planning can begin. You cannot plan what you do not own.

*Popular planning for the clarion call of the GLC employment quangos, is a middle class fantasy. As the GLC's more mundane job projects con- Thursday 5 May 5.30pm GLC Workers' Group meeting Divide and rule - never! Speaker from Workers Against Racism and video, I'm not a racist. but" Sponsored by NUPE, NALGO, AUEW, UCATT and other GLC unions County Hall, SE1. Contact 01-274 3951 for further details rein to indulge house in London one job for than to fulfil the worker. centred' technologies, or Ken Livingstone side to In his major speech promoters free it in fact industry, exploitation in week per jeans factory mean company. firm spend their puts it

'GLC

workers 'workers' will 'alternative' production.

Some say recession They Austinsuite and say for the ogy capitalist attacks Austinsuite, only cut the by half, entirely. actually taken plans buyers. jobs was - forget it: crisis old defensive be rethought.

GLC

The wasteful, - but that's and controls humane, to help All it has social need', Meetings Thursday 19 May 5.30pm Women what the unions can do Campaign County Hall, SE1. Contact 01-274 3951 for further details front the realities of profit-making, the GLC's academics have been given free their wildest fancies. *Jobs for warmth' - a plan to create 13 000 jobs by insulating every council - has so far created an Islington community But the quest for 'humanalternative products and novel hallucinations continues apace at County Hall. Of the struggle to replace a system which can never provide for the needs of the working class, there is never a whisper.

'Don't fight back!" There is however a more insidious While 'popular planning. its that it prefigures claim and equal society of the future, workers' partic- Cacou does ipation and acquiescence in their own of the prethe society sent. For example, the GLC encouraged 200 women employed at the Lee Cooper in Romford into some 'popular planning' of the future of their Now 11 women work for called Poco of Romford' and time hawking childrens clothes around Harold Hill Estate. This is what the cynics of the GLC call a cooperative' engaged 'well at least the GLC is making an effort to provide jobs in the face of great difficulties caused by the Government' and the Tory Sector will point at Third and - well at least some jobs were saved'. This is simply an apol- GL's acquiescence to on the working class. Edwardes might just as well claim a socialist achievement the fact that he Longbridge workforce rather than close the plant Ask the workers who lost their jobs at the GLC co-ops what they think of Livingstone's job creation schemes or, for that matter, ask the ones who stayed what it's like under 'socialism'.

The pernicious influence of the GLC extends far beyond the firms that it has Now over. every time redundancies are threatened in London, the first thought of the trade union bureaucrats and the local Labour MPs is - get the GLC in! Instead of organising industrial action against job loss, workers' energies are directed into strategies to bale out their employers through

GLC

cash. At both Lesney's toy factory and Staffa Engineering in East London negotiations over a GLC intervention were simply a prelude to closure when the bosses finally decided to sell out to other Workers at the nearby Metal Box plant are threatened with a similar fate. The GLC's message to workers who wanted to take action in defence of in the present strategies need to has certainly been confronted by a grim unemployment problem in London. But Labour's strategy for tackling it, through playing the role of entrepreneur on the one hand, or pretending that it is organising projects in a future socialist utopia on the other, has simply made all the problems worse. At least Labour could have done something workers to fight organise the bosses and force them to maintain jobs.

The very least it could do is preserve every job in any company it takes over.

done is to demoralise and confuse workers further and discredit the name of socialism in the eyes of millions.

Paul Bamford GLC Workers' Group meeting - overworked, underpaid - Speaker from the Women's Right to Work

THE

STAND

GLC

has provoked the most controversy. For the right-wing a staple diet of scandal stories about grants antes. For the victims of capitalist opp ression and class conscious it was initially gratifying to see a local authority speaking out for a on important political issues. Unfortunbecause this is all the GLC does - talk about fighting oppression efforts have proved counter-productive.

Symbolic The GLC's approach to crimination is purely symbolic. It does not fight for the jobs, homes and services that would be required to provide everywith an equal opportunity in life, OlIC but prefers to make token prove its good intentions. These mainly consist of cash hand-outs to deserving minority causes. This essentially bureaucratic approach to the problem is most evident of all in the GLC's own back yard, amongst its 21 127 employees. Here, at least, the GLC might be expected to set an example by confronting racism and sexism, giving all its workers an equal deal. But the lofty ideals of the Women's Committee, the Ethnic Minorities Unit and the other quangos contrast sharply with the reality experienced by black and female County Hall employees: • most GLC cleaners and canteen staff women workers on the very are black lowest grades • there barely any black supervisory staff working for County Hall • only 8.5 per cent of entrants on GLC apprentice schemes are black • the creche for women workers promised two years ago has never materialised Despite expensive trips to the USA by GLC dignitaries ('to find out how they do it') there are still only 35 blacks employed by the 7000-strong London fire service - plus one woman. GLC electricians earn between 60 and 80 per cent of white workers' wages.

When Michael one worker, challenged this practice he was sent to Coventry by fellow trade unionists in

GLC

His members, low-paid manual workers, have seen no benefit from two years of 'socialism' at County Hall.

*At least with Harold Cutler (Livingstone's Tory predecessor) you knew where you stood.

He was out to get us and made no secret about it. The irony about Livingstone is that we put him where he is today, thinking he was a bit progressive and would do something different.

But now the manuals call him man", All we see from him are letters like the one he sent out recently saying the Council's lousy 4.5 percent rise for workers "went some way to meeting the needs of low-paid workers": Terry Barrett is scathing Council's posturing on issues like Ireland: "A lot of us want the troops out and a socialist Ireland. But we also want some socialism here at County Hall. A lot of what they say about Ireland, peace and the rest is a cover-up for the fact they ve got nothing to offer our workers. Yellow He is particularly concerned about the state the unions are in at the GLC. There more than 17 different unions reare presenting GLC manuals, and the majority of GLC workers are not even in a proper union at all but belong to the Sharing the crumbs it has the EPTU taken on the rights of women, gays and ethnic expect was an minoritiesis the aspect of the GLC's politics that gutter press it provides the IRA and vigiltransfer (where the are zero). workers change tices, perpetuate preferring to fighting disgestures to women, stantly homes and services to anc sulking cake.

LUTES

right: fields is Labour GLC. subsidies for other provision, youth Black class Bening,

LOVE CUS

who Hall quango gravy train. Working for Labour

BETTER THE DEVIL

you know' is the view of Terry Barrett, Secretary of NUPE's GLC general service branch. "the invisible the blue collar about the London between them divisions the initiative by they Issues including pay and conditions.

GLO

and informed by the personnel manager that the most he could 'inquiry" into his allegations. A black pastry cook was recently told by Mr Briscoe-Smith, head of County Hall's restaurants, that she had no chance of promotion in spite of her excellent work. She was told that she had better the school service prospects for promotion The GLC is riddled with racist prac and in many the departments unions collaborate with management to the But the Council has no intention of getting its hands dirty by confronting the problem.

hold discussions on

ITS

equal opportunities in the rarefied atmosphere of the members' lounge.

Divisive At the end of the day the GLC's token gestures make matters even worse for blacks and minority groups. Because the GLC has accepted that there is only a limited, and condiminishing, amount of jobs. go around, its 'positive discrimination' programmes are bound to exacerbate racism and chauvinism amongst Londoners. Instead of uniting the working class to fight for more of the resources that everybody needs, the GLC sets workers at one another's throats sharing out a Token anti-racist gescombined with acquiescence to cuts simply plays into the hands of the reactionary backlash against "positive discrimination' policies in all steadily gaining strength in London as a result of the antics of the In the context of its drive to economise spending on services, the GLC's grants to women's aid and ethnic minthan ority groups are often little more self-help schemes. Thus while councils cut back on nursery and the GLC 'grant-aids' cooperative child-minding groups, black clubs and 'ethnic' handicrafts workshops. The only people who derive any benefit from the GLC are the middle presentatives of the women's and the ethnic minorities have taken seats on the County Judy Harrison GLC Staff Association a yellow-dog union that is so reactionary its journal Town carried a spread glorifying the Falklands war. The Association gets 12 seats on the Whitley wage negotiations council, while the 17 manual unions have only one seat that hasn't changed either under the Labour administration' Terry and many of his fellow manual workers are determined to overcome the amongst trade unlolsts County Hall. His NUPE branch has taken calling a series of meetings for all GLC workers around the have got to confront discrimination racism amd against women, as well as redundancies, the next step, May 1983 17

Three recent strikes - in the Sheffield steel industry, at Ford's Halewood plant and at BL's Cowley factory show that key sections of the working class in manufacturing industry are prepared to take militant industrial report on the action in their areas. On the following page Mike Freeman comments on some general features of Labour movement Sheffield steel WORLD RECESSION is devastating the British steel industry. competition has stiffened, demand from stagnant British manufacturing industry has fallen drastically. capacity and falling profitability.

sponse from the management of the statecontrolled British Steel Corporation is a programme of rationalisation, closures, a major shake-out of labour and a ruthless productivity drive. In six years BSC's workforce has shrunk from 225 000 to 84000; in the last three years more 80000 than jobs have Workers in the industry have had no national pay rise for the past two years and they have been subjected to the reorganisation of production to raise work levels and end craft demarcation and traditional safeguards over working conditions.

Wales, for example, white collar In South workers have been pushed into manual tasks, and in Rotherham unskilled workers have been allocated to craft jobs.

organisation place trade union industry, always weak, has been effectively destroyed since the national strike in 1980.

This is the background to the rank and file revolt in Sheffield in April.

The strike began when two workers reported back to work after the Easter Bank Holiday to the Aldwarke Templeborough steel works and refused to accept the redundancy notices which management issued to them: in al.

workers were threatened with compulsory redundancy. They led an immediate walkout and were soon joined by most of the Yorkshire special steel division: South around 8000 workers remained on strike in Sheffield and Rotherham for the next 10 days. This action followed the reduction of the Sheffield steel workforce from 40000 to 10000 since the recession and a relentless management drive to introduce working arrangements and new shift patterns. Keeping the lid on Already in dispute with BSC over its refusal to negotiate a national wage claim for the third successive year, the leaders of the main steel union IST made the Sheffield strike official.

Scunthorpe mounted a 24-hour unofficial strike in solidarity with the Sheffield workers, pressure mounted on the union to extend the action to Scotland, Teeside and South Wales. explained the union's predicament to the Financial Times: it is not our intention to stimulate sympathy strikes. What we are trying to do is keep the situation under control. the oppose further job cuts in the steel industry and anything can happen.' (8 April) While the union devoted its energies to the workers contamms manacement to negotiate over the terms of its redundancy programme, the strike rapidly lost momentum. white collar workers in ASTMS and APEX crossed picket lines to go into work. At two South Yorkshire plants and Tinsley Park Lane already suffered heavy job losses, workers voted for an early return to work.

Stocksbridge, where officials gave little lead and workers' memories of the victimisations that followed the 1980 strike were still fresh, there was a drift back to When management announced work. that 79 of the 85 threatened workers at Ald warke and Temple borough collected their severance pay cheques, the union was in a good position to exploit the confusion its lack of leadership had created, and order a return to work.

The terms of the deal finally accepted by the ISTC leaders caused further division and bitterness. Craftsmen in the AUEW and EPTU the central target of the BSC attack on working practices in South Yorkshire - refused to return to work, and animosity against the ISTC ran high.

The six workers who insisted on keeping 18 the next step, May 1983 While international The result is over- The reinvolving disappeared. Workin the and 85 their jobs promised. at As workers in An anxious official at Halewood, But there is a sponmore to do

COULLLY

There are and pressing competition, producers, At all plants is to raise productivity Shepcote profit levels up. which have At the quest for profit. Last year is partly and of management's attacks had force. Ford's 1300 some March strike problems facing militants in the unions.

Templeat Aldwarke and borough discovered that they were not going to be allowed to keep their jobs indefinitely as ISTC chief Bill Sirs had They were merely given 14 days to find other workers who would volunteer for the dole queues!

' Vandalism' Halewood WORKERS AT FORD'S assembly plant Merseyside came strike for four weeks from mid-March over the sacking of Paul Kelly for allegedly 'vandalising' a bracket. The strike had little to do with this incident and with Ford's "After Japan' offensive against its British workforce approximately million more cars on the European market than there are buyers for them - and Ford has been losing out in the cut-throat especially from Japanese that results from glut. the The aim of 'After Japan', or 'AJ' as it is familiarly known in the Ford Empire, by emulating Japanese methods and thus keep Ford's Halewood is vital to Ford's UK operation; hence it is vital that its workforce is subordinated to there were 73 strikes at Halewood; the Paul Kelly strike was the eighth so far in 1983. The reason for this the plant's militant traditions partly a response to the ferocity the workon plans for Halewood include cutting the workforce of 9700 by with the threat of more job losses to follow. The 'AJ' plan also means flexible working, an end to Testrictive practices, and speed-ups.

The in the assembly plant followed a dispute in February when workers were alleged to have vandalised 100 Escorts when their pay was cut as a result of a walkout by foremen. The strike took place shortly before a threat- Striking back action against the bosses' onslaught on jobs, wages and working conditions.

the strikes and their significance for building an effective rank and file in the unions.

ened strike over redundancies in the body plant was due to take place. Many workers felt that the strike was provoked by management time al a were high and the bosses were keen to wear down resistance to the 'AJ' productivity drive. Union vandals' Kelly was sacked after an anonymous tip-off to management and on some circumstantial evidence from a foreman.

The strike began with a spontaneous walkout from the assembly plant: 3000 workers joined the stoppage and thousands more were laid off. A mass meeting voted overwhelmingly to stay out until Kelly was reinstated. The company demanded that case to an industrial tribunal. Well aware that less than one per cent of such appeals lead to a worker getting his job back, the stewards rejected After two weeks of dispute the TGWU was forced to make the strike official.

Senior union negotiator finally persuaded Ford management to refer the matter to the government's arbitration service ACAS and the stewards recommended a return pending the outcome of the inquiry. A mass meeting voted by a large majority Thus after four weeks out, to go back. Kelly was suspended on full pay, and production at Halewood resumed. As we go to press, law professor Cowan and retired bureaucrat Laurie Sapper sit in judgement over 'vandalism'. Cowley adamant AS WE GO TO PRESS the 'washing-up' time strike enters its fourth workers have just voted by an week: overwhelming majority against meeting to management's attempt to cut the six minutes a day "washing-up time. won this meagre privilege from the bosses 30 years ago and are determined not to it. Leyland lose is equally determined to remove another

NIA 742X

On this page RCP activists in Sheffield, Liverpool and the Midlands small Like Ford, when stocks recession. extra sales nothing for be referred attempt to abolish this proposal. reduced Following the shop steward Ron Todd was reduced to two work on the line. to had an body Wood, banker Kelly's make a deal. Cowley Cowley boss at their fifth any concosts They meeting management - British Steel Croret - The strikes also reveal some of the obstacle to the fullest possible exploitation of the Cowley workforce.

BL is a victim of the It is proclaiming loudly the success of its new model the Maestro - but the British motor industry is still in deep trouble. As the Financial Times commented: 'the bad news is that all the to do little or are likely and industry's the profitability' (9 April). Even with both the Metro and the Maestro riding high, BL's market share is still below 20 per cent: six years ago it was 27 per cent. In the same period BL has cut its workforce from 190 000 to 100 000, closed eight plants, smashed workplace trade unionism and raised productivity by 30 per cent. But it is still not enough.

For the Cowley workforce, the bosses' 'washing-up' time was the last straw. The Maestro production line brought Cowley flexible working, manning levels and speed-up.

victimisation of militant Thornett in 1981, Alan the number of full-time stewards in the assembly plant (the old Morris factory) nine went back It was the assembly plant workers who led the walkout over washing-up' time at the end of March. They that inadditional grievance creased bonuses paid to workers in the plant across the road (formerly Pressed Steel Fisher - but incorporated Austin-Rover since 1968) had not been given to assembly line workers.

Holding firm After two weeks AUEW President Terry Duffy led TGWU leader Moss Evans into negotiations with management to try to workers rejected their plan for marginal bonus improve ments in return for the loss of 'washing time just as forcefully as they re jected BL's first proposal. Austin-Rover Harold Musgrove then threatened first to suspend an investment programme at Cowley, and when that failed, to sack all workers who failed to turn up for work on Monday 18 April. Another mass voted overwhelmingly to stay out. While the bosses and the bureaucrats talked through the night, Cowley workers stood firm in defence of a basic feature of their working conditions.

tear up our union cards' That was the feeling of one shopfloor worker at BL's Cowley plant last month as union officials recommended that the workforce accept the loss of six minutes a day 'washing-up' time in return for minor bonus concessions.

The role of the trade unions in the Cowley dispute - and in the Sheffield steel strike and the victimisation stoppage at Ford's Halewood plant - highlights the need for a different sort of union organisation with a Bill Sirs: 'cringing' THE THREE STRIKES reported on Page 18 show remarkable rank and file workers to fight among back against the bosses. In both the steel and motor industries workers are reeling from successive body blows from management. Mass redundancies, punitive productivity increases, and emasculated workplace organisation are common features at Sheffield, Halewood Cowley. and still responded to further attacks with spontaneous walkouts, unofficial action (which has usually been endorsed by national union leadership considerable delay) and, in the case of Cowley, sustained action sure from management, the media and the union bureaucrats. has often crumbled in the face of such the collapse of the Shef- Pressures field steel strike is a more typical example.

Workers who Well found themselves isolated and unable convince their fellow workers that this was a realistic approach.

workers made compulsorily redundant at Aldwarke and Templeborough, could see no real alternative accept severance pay. holds workers back? The front line of of the existing system Grence trade union leadership. Top brass The approach of the trade union leaderships to the recent disputes was to use the workers' militancy to further their own objectives - or to contain it.

union leader Bill Sirs field strike official at an early stage because he hoped to use the stoppage as a lever on BSC management to press them into negotiations over the union's national pay clalm. his override commitment a return to work in British Steel: I don't want a long strike.

It's not good for us and it's not good for the industry'. Sirs are aggrieved that since the recession the bosses are less inclined to negotiate and consult with the bureaucrats and more inclined to impose their will direct- The only virtue of strikes for ly. national officials is that they may force management to use the mediating functions of the bureaucrats and thus restore some of their status. Thus as soon as BSC offered to consult with the union over redundancy in Sheffield, the ISTC called off the strike. Sirs also tried to use the Sheffield strike to draw the government's arbitration and conciliation into the union's other dispute with BSC •We might as well different sort of approach to defending working class interests.

over pay. back to work ACAS inquiry. recognises the to the circles. Engineering Duffy prefers a Evans 'washing-up' determination stagnant Wares But workers have only after against pres- Yet militancy prepared to fight Of 85 local and 79 provides no alternative. but What is it that is the pension Steel dispute made the Shefjobs'. At representatives But this did not When the to getting the interests of not object. Union leaders like

HOLOROUS

the body

ACAS

the senior stewards. This

TGWU

was the way official Ron Todd finally got Halewood on the promise of an The union leaders like ACAS because it is a state quango that authority of the union bureaucrats. It was set up under the last Labour government as a means of resolving industrial conflict. Although its findings are virtually always favourable bosses, it gets the bureaucrats of the hook and helps to enhance their prestige in government and management union president Terry more direct approach to the sell-out. With TGWU chief Moss under his arm, Duffy conceded time before the negotiations began and only tried to get some face-saving bonus formula from management to cover up the betrayal.

Many rank and file workers see right through the cynical manoeuvres of the national Terry Duffy: 'a direct approach to the sell-out' leaders. The bigger problem is that the workplace union leadership Limited horizons In Sheffield, the local officials limited the objective of the strike to the susnot the withdrawal of redundancy notices. Militant strike coordinator Keith Jones echoed the strategy of the IST leadership: We want the BSC to talk to us at national level on the jobs issue so that we can terminate the and have a dialogue to save Halewood the plant union astounded management and confused the rank and file by suggesting that the bosses get the police in to investigate the allegations of vandalism.

TGWU

leadership recommended ACAS - its favourite industrial relations policeman - the stewards could At Cowley the 'washing-up' time strike came under the leadership of TGWU full-time district secretary David Buckle, collaborator with both management and the union bureaucracy against rank and file militancy. However, so angry had Cowley workers become at BLs relentless productivity drive, that Buckle had no alternative but to go along with the strike. However, Buckle succeeded in drawing the senior stewards at Cowley into the secret sell-out neg otiations with management. When plant shop stewards turned up to attend a meeting between union officials and the bosses on 10 April, they were excluded with the consent of both Buckle and The incorporation of workplace representatives into the bureaucracy's schemes of class collaboration is a common feature in British industry revealed in the recent disputes. an independent strategy at the rank and file level. However, political, not an organisational problem.

Save our class Rank and file activists are tied to the bureaucracy by outlook. In all three strikes considered here militants put forward their defence of working class interests in terms of their commitment to the industry or company in which they 'Save our steel' is the slogan under which the defence of jobs is promoted. leaflet issued by the action committee against steel closures and redundancies' sums up vailing view. 'Job losses', it says: • are unnecessary • make plants unviable • undermine the local steel industry • destroy our communities Many trade union activists think that saving jobs depends company viable. disaster because, from view of any company in today's recession, exactly the reverse is true: restoring profitability means dundancy. It is impossible to jobs without rejecting any such concern with company viability. priate slogan is: Save our class - job losses destroy workers' livelihoods' At Halewood many stewards go along with management plans to raise productivity, because they accept the objective of a competitive Ford UK as their concern. Body Steve Broadhead says: 'we are not averse to talking about these changes, the company now says are to allow us to match best European practice.'

only complaint is that certain 'After Japan' speed-up plans have not been formally negotiated and agreed. Moss Evans: 'under Duffy's arm' The same outlook permeates Cowley.

In response to BL's threat to sack workers who failed to return to work, a joint statement from AUEW justified workers' insistence on 'washing-up' time in terms of the unions' record of collaboration: Our two unions are completely in favour of an efficient and successful British Leyland.

Our members there have accepted low wage settlements for a number of years and have also achieved very big increases in productivity.

This view of the bureaucracy was echoed in productivity exploitation crats sacrifice is italists' rifice conditions is can afford. Sirs mercy. His It reflects the lack of embarrassment this is above all a refusal rise for the industry: a common political cost of living. work. Thus in Sheffield maintain the 'South Yorkshire the prelabour bureaucracy. The make British industry keeping the This strategy leads to the point of militants places have Now that mass selves are under threat, defend The approthe rank and file. The codify the to saving priority. plant convenor particular

WATCH

His class collaboration every thus today in an this the bureaucracy. new strategy that cracy conditions the TGWU and the ment of rationalisation

BSC,

BL and hoods conditional unions Labour movement by local officials throughout the dis- The problem is that the unions' acceptance of past sacrifices only gives the bosses greater confidence to demand even more. They have won big increases - but BL still cannot make a profit, so they want to intensify even more. It is no good saying 'enough is enough' - the bureaufavourite slogan at Cowley.

No enough to satisfy the capquest for profit. But any sacin living standards more than any worker New direction The king of 'enough is enough' is Bill Every time Tories kick the the steelworkers in the teeth he appeals for anguished pleading is an the working to class. This was his response to the government's to negotiate a national wage If Mrs Thatcher has any principles at all she should say that the steelworkers, who have done everything that could be asked in terms of flexibility and sacrifice of jobs, should not be left out. We are not asking for the moon but for a reasonable increase in line with the In fact Sirs' claim was way below the increase that would be necessary steelworkers' wages: the Tories rejected it anyway.

Sirs" futile cringing is an expression of the consequences of the whole strategy of the bureaucrats' acquiescence over the past five years to the job losses and productivity increases necessary to profitable have led to serious setbacks for the working class. Hundreds of thousands of manufacturing workers have lost their jobs, have been victimised, workbecome like slave camps. the union machines them- . the bureaucrats say 'enough is enough'. Yet the bureaucrats continue to exert influence bureaucrats owe their survival to the British left. The politics of the Labour Party and the Communist Party bureaucracy's commitment British industry as its first The left sometimes criticises bureaucrats Duffy is a tavourite bogey - for selling out strikes, or for failing to give a lead in struggles.

But it never challenges the ideology of that paralyses independent rank and file Inluative on shopfloor in the country. It is incapable of overcoming the demoralisation that the activities of the trade unions have produced in industry.

The left cannot overcome the isolation of militants who want to fight the bosses, by channelling the cynicism of many workers about the unions as they exist anti-capitalist direction. Instead the left reflects the prejudices of the bureaucrats and blames workers who have lost all confidence in their unions for accepting redundancy money and backing down from strike action.

But the real problem is with the unions and their politics. Instead of tackling problem, the left apologises for Active workers in industry need a and effective workplace organisation. The only way to combat the demoralising influence of the bureauundermines every action workers take in defence of jobs and is through a ruthless exposure of the collaborationist strategy at every level. This means taking account of past mistakes - the unions' endorseprogrammes at the 'AJ' plan at Ford. And it means charting a future course which refuses to make workers' liveliupon the market position of British Steel, Ford UK or the sales of Metro and Maestro. Most importantly, it means reorganising our around this approach so that they fight for workers, instead of the interests of a corrupt bureaucratic clique.

the next step, May 1983 19

I pay, you own, they profit Housing measure. Mike Wall looks at the housing question.

HOUSING, along with food and clothing, is one of the most basic of human needs.

However under capitalist society the provision of people's needs comes second to the demands of capital. Modern industry requires a workforce which lives within easy access of the factory or workplace.

At the same time, the laws of the market dictate that workers should be housed as cheaply as possible so that wages can be kept down. The result is that since the industrial revolution there has been a permanent housing crisis in Britain.

of capitalist centuries

TWO

millions of working class people still live in homes that are cold and damp, often overcrowded and in a poor state of repair.

And as housing standards get worse, rents, rates and fuel bills are all increasing.

Private squalor, public squalor In the past, private capitalist entrepreneurs provided most working class housing. Mill, mine and factory owners built rows of cramped, back to back cottages, often in the shadow of their workplaces, to ensure a readily available workforce.

cities landlords and builders constructed Workers paid a acres of sprawling slums.

substantial portion of their weekly wages in rent for hovels for their families. However, screwing small sums of money out of large numbers of workers periods of time is not the most profitable capitalist enterprises. present century the profitability of the private rented sector has declined steadily.

The acute housing shortage that followed the First World War prompted the state to enter the housing market.

state began to provide the accommodation for workers that the capitalist class as a whole required, but private landlords could no longer sustain. rented sector has shrunk gradually: today it includes less than 13 per cent of the market. Now most workers pay rent to the council, rather than to a private landlord. subsidises public The capitalist CaSS housing through state expenditure to ensure that workers are accommodated in such 20 the next step, May 1983 As the recession brings a sharp deterioration in working class housing standards two myths continue to dominate the housing debate. One is the Tory notion that individual ownership is a natural aspiration; the other is the Labour Party prejudice that public ownership is a socialist a way that they will be able to make themselves available for exploitation each One principle guides public sector day. housing: parsimony people as possible as cheaply as possible.

The ugliness and squalor of council estates all over the country are testimony to the consistent operation of this principle. The tower blocks of the erected by Labour councils encouraged by Labour governments - are the most extreme illustrations of the same principle.

After Ruthless economy of space, materials and progress labour means a life of isolation and misery, and often cold and damp, for thousands of working class families.

vandalism and subsequent dereliction and decay have made many large scale housing developments uninhabitable; some have already been demolished and few are expected to survive two decades.

As everybody who lives in a council flat knows very well, socialist or progressive about state housing.

It is simply an alternative method to private renting which is more appropriate to the needs of modern capitalism.

is why public sector housing has expanded In the big during the Labour and Tory governments: there are million households in council now six accommodation, 32 per cent of the total natio nal housing stock. may have improved since the Second World over long War, in terms of the provision of running During the water, indoor toilets and bathrooms in most workers' homes. However, this reflects the capacity of an expanded economy to concede workers' higher wages and better conditions, more municipal munificence. The than any of blacks ghettoisation families' on the worst estates - patrolled by social workers, community The private and, increasingly, the police - indicates anti-working class state housing authorities in workers' lives.

The recession has brought a squeeze on all public expenditure and hence an attack on public housing.

class can no longer afford to sustain the council miserable level of currently supports. The class housing standards. Peter spokesman owner-occupation house as many Minister Michael sixties - mostly rations: stability. It stimulates The impact of ownership The inevitable more for protects it." talist society. there is nothing society. This post-war period under both building societies 55 percent of all housing.

Housing standards demands for The and problem workers interference of experience. and drudgery women, The capitalist ployed. provision. housing it Thus over the past cies. of stock of en tire Tories. housing by gage families are decade Labour and Tory governments have sought to push the burden of housing costs back on to the working class itself.

enthusiastic promotion home ownership' and the sale of council housing are part of this offensive against working On your own In the late 'seventies Labour's housing Shore claimed that 'satisfies deep-seated aspirations in our people'. Labour's 1977 Green Paper on housing explained that this was 'a basic and natural desire'. Tory Heseltine recently expanded on this theme, explaining why he wanted to encourage such natural aspi- Home ownership represents security and pride of ownership The is of itself a stabilising factor in society. To own is to identify a personal stake. To have such a stake is to care stability of the society that In fact it will take more than owning their the homes to give workers a real stake in capi- So long as the means of production are owned by the capitalist class, workers will be the underdogs with every interest in upsetting the stability of Moreover successive governments dancies have made sure that for many workers decent housing means - own your own.

employees. Subsidies, tax concessions, improvement grants, aid to construction companies and have all encouraged The workers to buy their own homes.

owner-occupied sector now accounts for vision. Working class home ownership transfers some of the burden of housing costs from Our sole And the capitalists on to the workers.

the ideology of home ownership helps to reinforce the grip of capital. "The Englishman's home is his castle' - even if it's a flat on a run down council estate. Home better. is where workers eat, rest, sleep and bring up the next generation of wage-labourers.

The promotion of the normal household where a happy family lives in isolation reinforces the atomised nature of workers 'Home sweet home' means a stultifying life of boredom, frustration - particularly be for many young people and the unem- The cult of home ownership also legitimises the further run-down of public The sale of council housing is the most visible aspect of this process.

Under their 'right to buy programme the Labour's lead in Tories are following encouraging "secure? council tenants to Both Harold Wilson's buy their homes. and James Callaghan's Labour governments consented to local councils selling off their Many Labour-controlled housing stock. councils have actively pursued sales poli- Newcastle, Bristol and Nottingham are merely the most notorious examples.

The right to buy In the 'seventies, the Labour government turned a blind eye to the vigorous selling non-Labour councils like Leeds and Birmingham, despite breaches guidelines that sales government should not threaten the authorities' ability to house homeless families, and transfer tenants out of redevelopment areas and There are many examples high rise flats. even today, when Labour MPs are screaming about "Tory attacks' on housing provisions. In Huyton, Liverpool the local Labour Party agreed to the sale of an council estate at Cantril Farm.

This is an extreme case of a trend for councils to sell off their stock to private enterprise trusts. The sale of council housing is part of a working class housing wider attack on which began under the last Labour government and has been accelerated by the Labour cut expenditure 17 per and reduced cent Both building programmes by a third.

governments have cut back on restoration As the better standard and repair work. housing is sold off to workers who still have jobs and can still stretch to a mortthe unemployed and low income condemned to the bottom end of the rapidly deteriorating council housing stock. April 1983, the Tories' Housing Benefits Act came fully into force.

The DHSS is going to deduct claimants' rents directly from social security benefits. This pioneered in the occupied Six Counties of Northern Ireland - will mean real problems for the unemployed, single parents and others who are struggling to balance up their rent bills with bills for other necessities. The DHSS itself calculates that around 65 per cent of counci accommodation is inhabited by people offi cially defined as too poor to afford rent and live a decent life at the same time.

The Tories intend to make sure that the state gets its rent money even if workers and their families go cold and hungry.

We want quality occupation and the rise decline in council housing both represent attacks on working class living standards.

Mortgage payments are a heavy, long term burden on workers, that encourages conservative attitudes. Owner occupation also means the working class directly bearing cost of repairs and decoration and maintenance. Council accommodation has always been appalling - now the Tories aim to make it worse. Cuts in housing expenditure and the privatisation of parts of the public sector also mean redunfirms, direct in construction labour organisations and among council We defend every worker's right to This means that we are decent housing opposed to any cuts in public sector pro This does not mean that we hold council housing in any higher esteem than we do paying rent to a private landlord concern is that workers are decently housed at the expense of the How they organise their capitalist class. housing policy is their problem. Our problem is to make sure that we get more and Thus we reject Labour's apology • for public squalor just as we reject Tory blandishments for individual ownership.

Only a society organised by workers, producing what we need, will be able to build the number and variety of homes that we want with all the necessary space But there's a lot to warmth and comfort. done today! Squatter's struggles homelessness, houses unfit to live in, and capitalism's permanent housing shortage - all these are problems to which workers their own answers. need to develop

Problems of Leninism Neil Harding, Lenin's Political Thought, Theory and practice in the Democratic and Socialist Revolutions, Vols 1 & 2, Macmillan Press 1983 pp 700. NEIL HARDING has written a readable, stimulating book which sets out to defend Lenin as an orthodox Marxist theoretician against claims that although he was a brilliant politician and organiser, his contributions to Marxist science weren't that impressive includes (Harding people like Tony Cliff and Marcel Liebman amongst these critics whom he correctly identifies as Menshevik). Harding seeks to show how Lenin based his views of party organisation and practice on a thorough Marxist analysis.

The book starts out to defend Lenin, but it ends by linking Lenin to the degeneration of the revolution under Stalin.

Harding is an honest academic. Buthe is too concerned with models, forms and schemes.

Volume 1 covers the period up to 1914. It should be read by everyone who wants to know mure about the early period of Lenin's political development. Harding captures well all the important debates. He covers the dispute with the populists in 1890, over their illusions in the communal forms of organisation of the Russian peasantry; the debate around economism with Rabochaye Dyelo/ Myst supporters in the early 1900s; the argument with the Menshevik faction over the question of party rules and the Iskra editorial board. His account includes the debate conducted by Lenin after 1905 against liquidationists' who argued for a more relaxed form of party organisation emulating the SPD and other European parties against the tight, illegal professionalism advocated by him. Harding explains Lenin's campaign against the 'Otzovists' - a left faction within the Bolsheviks who opposed participation in the Duma elections.

In Volume II, Harding traces three main themes. One is Lenin's analysis of war and imperialism: his discussions with Bukharin and debate with 'ex-Marxist' Hilferding; the degeneration of the SPD and the Second International; the treachery of Plekhanov; Lenin's polemic against Kautsky's ultra-imperialism thesis; and his attempts to build opposition to the war with a handful of comrades from the Zimmerwald conference. The second theme focuses on Lenin's work on the state. Lenin was convinced long before anyone else in the Bolshevik party that the time was ripe for a revolutionary insurrection in Russia in 1917.

In the midst of the most intense period of activity just prior to the Kornilov putsch, Lenin wrote State and Revolution to spell out what it meant for the Bolsheviks. Finally, Harding examines Lenin's writings after the revolution on the organisation of the new proletarian state, the role of the party, the proletariat and the peasantry.

State or commune? It is with respect to the state, that Harding makes his most important mistakes. We are told that there has always been an ambiguity in the writings of Marx and Engels on the 'form' of the proletarian state. Is the dictatorship of the proletariat a state, or is the existing bourgeois state 'smashed' and replaced by the commune which is not really a state? Was Marx a centralist in the period 1848-1851 who then turned to a decentralised structure after the experience of the Paris Commune? Is the commune the same as the dictatorship of the proletariat as Engels once proclaimed but Marx never said?

Sowing confusion, Harding takes us through a whole chapter on Marx and Engels' writings on the state and concludes that this ambiguity is carried into Lenin's State and Revolution and left unresolved. Harding maintains that for the first six months after the revolution Lenin emphasised the creativity and initiative of the 'masses", ie the decentralised, commune model of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Then, when the conditions the Bolsheviks gambled on failed to materialise - such as the extension of the revolution to Europe and class differentiation in the countryside to win over the poor peasant fully to the side of the proletariat - he reverted to the centralist 'model': It was not to be long, a matter of six months to a year, before this background model of the dictatorship of the proletariat emerged to the centre of the stage and drove the commune form into the wings.' For Harding this was the beginning of the end.

From then on, there was a narrowing of the goals of the revolution: 'it meant that the ambitious project for socialism in Russia would have to be moderated. It meant that a hybrid transitional regime preparatory to socialism would have to be established.

Soviet power, according to Lenin's new conspectus, would have to drop its claim to represent the realisation of socialism and accept that it represented no more than a holding operation, an attempt to conserve some at least of the gains of the revolution as the basis for a future advance when the European revolution finally broke out! "Declassed" This narrowing of the goals of the revolution was accompanied by the narrowing of the social base of the proletarian regime.

This became obvious in 1921 with the mass strikes in St.

Petersburg, the Kolchak uprising and the expression of this mass discontent for the proletariat in the document produced by the Workers Opposition which Lenin banned.

sponse to this was an appeal to the mostadvanced sections of the proletariat, to create forms of organisation such as the Workers and Peasants Inspectorate which would consist of the most exemplary workers to guide and control the party and the bureaucracy. Harding uses the Inspectorate to demonstrate Lenin's relinquishment of the project to build socialism in the Soviet Union. He claims that by 1921 the Russian proletariat had become "declassed". The closure of the factories and famine conditions in the cities drove the working class either back to petit-bourgeois existence on the farm or to small scale commodity trading in the cities, further exacerbating the loss of the social base of the proletarian regime: In the past, Lenin had responded to crises with a clarion call to the proletariat... Now he reviews knew that such a course would be to no avail.

The proletariat had become declassed, it was alienated from the regime. In any case it could not bring to the Party the skills and expertise it so desperately needed.' Thus, Harding explains the growing emphasis in Lenin's last writings on the choice of the individual cadre for positions within the party and state bureacracy: Isolated from class support, the significance of personal factors assumed enormous importance in Lenin's writings....

Almost nothing of his original project remained.

He had begun by arguing that only the reintegration of the state with society at large could save the world from barbarism, liberate the proletariat and usher in socialism.

Now he was obliged to argue the case, which Stalin was to appropriate as his own, that only the state could reform and direct the economy and society so as to establish the basic precondition for an eventual advance towards socialism.'

According to Harding, Lenin was unable to resolve the duality in Marx's theory of the state.

Under pressure of events, he opted for the centralised model rather than the communal form of the state based on initiative from below.

The essential connection between Lenin's Marxist analysis of existing conditions and practice was broken, to be replaced by empirical subjectivism - the very same methods Stalin perfected after him. Thus ends Lenin's political thought according to Harding. Proletarian state Harding's models and schemas prevent him from identifying the method by which Lenin sought to resolve the problems that faced the infant proletarian state. First, there is no ambiguity in Marx', Engels' or Lenin's ideas about the proletarian state. Marx and Engels never attempted to draw up a blueprint for the proletarian state.

What Harding identifies as 'ambiguity", 'duality" etc is simply Marx, Engels and Lenin studying different practical experiments in proletarian state power; they looked at the forms of rule which workers developed in their struggles and aspirations for control of society. The 'ambiguity' which exists in all their works is a necessary one. Second, in State and Revolution, Lenin declares unambiguously that 'Marx was a centralist' and goes on to distinguish voluntary proletarian centralism from bourgeois, military, bureaucratic, centralism.

Harding's primitive schema counterposes a centralised bureaucratic dictatorship of the proletariat to a communal, decentralised state. What Lenin sought to achieve was a centralist, voluntary, dictatorship of the proletariat. The cultural and economic backwardness of the Russian working class, however, prevented the evolution of these centralist and voluntary forms of organisation of economic and social activities Finally, what about Harding's theory of the 'declassing' of the proletariat as the basis of the final collapse of Leninism?

Although the number of industrial workers was reduced by more than 50 per cent between 1913 and 1921, this process was reversed by the New Economic Policy (although unemployment was a major problem until the 'thirties). Harding is correct, however, to identify the shrinking social base of the regime as the central problem of Lenin's final years. But his abstract concentration on 'forms' blinds him to the solutions Lenin was seeking. Lenin did not put forward the changes in party and bureaucratic structure of the administration of the state as magical formulas.

The proposals around the formation of the Workers and Peasants Inspectorate sought to rationalise and reduce bureaucracy, to train the best workers to the highest standard in the running of the state and educate and politicise the working class in self-government. Nor had Lenin by 1923, 'given up' on the working class.

In his recommendations to the 12th Party Congress he asks: 'How did we act in the more critical moments of the civilwar?" And he replies: We concentrated forces our best party in the Red Army; we mobilised the best of our workers; we looked for new forces at the deepest roots of our dictatorship.

Lenin was a Marxist, a revolutionary whose faith in the working class did not waver in the darkest of times. This faith came not from an idealist belief but from the method of scientific analysis he had developed.

Although he has written an interesting text, Harding has been unable to grasp this method.

Inez Landa Alternative defence Dorothy Thompson ed, Over our dead bodies: women against the bomb, Virago 1983, pp263 pbk £2.95 THIS BOOK is a collection of essays by women historians, novelists, journalists, poets, and peace-campers. Its concern to elaborate a nonnuclear defence policy for Britain is symptomatic of a growing trend in CND and Labour Party circles. Liz Foley asks: 'are nuclear weapons capable of defending us at all?' She answers that far from protecting us, they are a dangerous liability.

She asserts that 'there are those of us concerned with disarmament who feel we must deal with today's political realities; we must compromise absolute principles if that enhances our chances What she has in mind is comproof survival. military needs of British asses imperialism. Foley outlines the options open to nuclear disarmers: territorial defence, guerrilla tactics, frontier and coastal defence and civil defence.

Apart from being non-nuclear, these forms of defence have added advantages which 'any good, cost-effective defence strategy must take into account. First, they are much more economical and effective: 'relatively cheap and effective missiles like Exocet, and Precision Guided Munitions would be recommended because they can destroy armaments such as battleships and tanks that are far bigger and costlier. For example, HMS Sheffield, valued at £85 million in 1980, was sunk by one Argentine Exocet missile costing "only" €100000' Second, they present the possibility of restructuring the British Armed Forces to make them Continued on page 22 the next step, May 1983 21

Continued from page 21 capable of defending us properly. The theme that runs through this essay is that the defence of Britain is a legitimate concern of the peace Foley broadly approves convenmovement - while condemning tional British militarism nuclear weapons. A lesser evil Others in the peace movement also feel that now is the time to face up to 'political realities" and develop a non-nuclear defence strategy.

Tribune editor Chris Mullin recently argued that if CND and the Labour Party are to win the uncommitted to disarmament, then they must be able to convince them, that in the event of Britain being attacked, 'the invaders could be defeated without resort to nuclear weapons. This is not difficult he suggests, citing the recent example of the Falklands War.

Mullin's only worry is that conventional warfare has implications thatare electorally sensitive: It implies the capacity to mobilise the whole population, or at least a large part of it.

turn, implies some sort of national That in CND and the service for every young adult Labour Party should face up to this maturely.

If some form of national service is the price to be paid for a non-nuclear defence policy, then so he it.' (Tribune, 8 April) 'National service' holds no worries either for another socialist patriot - Peter Tatchell.

recent issue of Labour Herald (1 April) he stressed the need to construct a distinctly socialist defence policy. If major new peace initiatives are to win popular consent, he pointed out, then they must go nand in nand waw alterna live defence options which guarantee that Britain would be able to defend itself from aggression dr preserve our rigat to sen-determa non.

Tatchell states that the basis of a non-nuclear defence strategy for Britain could be territorial defence by a citizen's army.

The advantage of this strategy is that it would be cost-effective (always a central Labour Party concern) and it would provide an opportunity to 'democratise" the armed forces and create a 'genuine citizens' army. Instead of conscription, he suggests, a mass citizens army could be created through a radical reform of the Territorial Army to make it attractive both for men and women.

Foley, Mullin and Tatchell all indicate just how militaristic the British peace movement has already become. A Common meme nes bie *alternative defence' movement, female and male.

The individualistic response to the fear of war - "I don't want to get nuked' - slips easily into 'we must defend ourselves.

Individual survival becomes identified with the defence of the nation. The distinct interests of the working class are obliterated in this scenario; they are subordinated with every petit-bourgeois individual under the interests of Britain.

But what does the 'defence" of Britain mean? Britain is an imperialist power. Imperialist powers always Britain war to defend themsleves.

go to invaded Europe in the First World War to "defend' its ally Belgium and in the Second to 'defend' Poland. It recently invaded the South Atlantic and killed 1000 Argentines to 'defend' the rights of the Falkland Islanders.

Britain has ravaged half the world for more than a century to 'defend' democracy.

The "defence of Britain is simply an apology for backing British militarism. People today some- 'will the women's movement and times ask the Labour Party betray the cause of peace again as they have done in the past? Just look at the "alternative defence" debate - they already have. Joan Phillips A LabourParty front John Minnian and Philip Bolsover, eds., The CND story, 1983, Pp Alson and busby, 158, pbk £1.95 THISBOOk is an intormative account CND's 25-year history. It is particularly informative about CND's relationship with the Labour Party. According to both editors and contributors, CND is much more loosely linked to Labour than it used to be. A quarter of a century ago, "most of those who set up CND assumed that its aims would be achieved by winning over the Labour Party and then helping that party to victory'. Today 'there is a good deal more 22 the next step, May 1983 reviews No Would you trust this man not to wheel your baby into World War Three?

realism about the relationship between Labour Conference decisions and the performance of Labour governments. Everybody agrees that CND should be 'non-party political".

Under the thumb In reality, CND is even more of a Labour Party front today than it was when it was first set up by Labour left-wingers in search of a popular cause in 1958. In those days CND was capable of independent gestures against the Labour leadership. In a by-election in 1959, CND advised a 'voters' veto' on a pro-nuclear Labour MP, and a leading CND activist stood against Labour in the 1964 General Election.

The direct action wing of the disarmament movement was much more militant in the early "sixties than it is today. It was organised through the Committee of 100 which existed in continual conflict with CND over campaigning tactics. The Committee staged massive sit-down demonstrations in central London at one of which 1314 people were arrested and militant raids on military bases. Several of its members got substantial prison sentences - five served 18 months. The politics were as moralistic and patriotic as they are today, but the movement was less under the thumb of the labour bureaucracy.

In the forthcoming general election CND's national council has taken a firmly anti-Tory stand. Given the Conservative Government's record we have to create a position where people who support our stance cannot vote Conservative*, says CND chair Joan Ruddock.

And Ruddock has sternly admonished Greenham Common camper Helen John for her suggestion that independent 'peace candidates" should stand at the polls. CND says 'no vote for the Tories' and 'no independent peace candidates. So much for CND's independence from the Labour Party. As CND has subordinated itself to Labour's electoral ambitions, so the Labour leadership has become much more friendly to CND.

Twenty years ago most trade union bureaucrats were hostile to CND and Party leader Gaitskell conducted a vigorous camp- Hugh aign against its influence in the party. Now only a few extreme right-wing TUC hacks oppose

C.N.D.

INC

CND: most union leaders are enthusiastic disarmers. The Labour Party itself is now led by a former Aldermaston marcher, and nuc lear disarmament is at the centre of Labour's election appeal. The labour bureaucracy sees CND as a vehicle which can win it some of the public popularity it so badly lacks.

The direct action wing of the movement is today safely under the wing of CND.

The credit for keeping it there must go to the left to members and former members of the Communist Party and other left-wing groups, who help to preserve CND's credibility among its younger, angrier and more working class supporters. The CND leadership operates a clear division of Labour. As its spiritual director Monsignor Bruce Kent recently explained to the Socialist Workers Party - leave the women's peace movement to us - you mobilise support for CND in workplaces and trade unions!'

At peace with Labour CND's independent posture suits the Labour Labour is quite prepared to let CND Party. - and let it work for a Labour victory now extra-Parliamentary runcuon as ine rarty s conscience if Michael Foot ever becomes Prime Minister. That would leave Foot free to renege on his unilateralist commitments and pursue Labour's consistent commitment to British militarism. It will also leave CND free to criticise (if there's still time).

As this book reveals, the politics of CND have changed little in 25 years. The possible consequences have changed dramatically.

1958 the world economy was expanding and conflict between the big military powers was at a low ebb. (Of course, this did not stop them murdering peasants by the thousands in Africa, Asia and Latin America). In 1983, however, there is a world recession and there is a real possibility of war among the major imperialist Yet the peace movement in Britain powers. remains firmly under the control of a party that has supported every war waged by British imperialism and has participated fully in building up its weaponry (nuclear and conventional) for the next. Read this book and leave CND before it's too late. James Wood Family ideology Lynne Segal, ed., What is to be done about the Family, Penguin Books (in Association with the Socialist Society) 1983, pbk £2.50.

This collection of essays by eminent feminists looks at how the structure of the family has changed since the sixties and how the ideolo gical role of the family has mirrored these changes. According to the authors, family ideology - the portrayal of the family as a unit with father as economic provider and mother as domestic slave - has never been further from reality. Lynne Segal argues that this "bourgeois' picture is simply a case of harking back to the good old days when women were confined to housework, and bears no relation to today's She adduces a wealth of sociolo-

COME ORS

gical facts' to show how the ideas promoted by the Tories' Family Policy Group are just old fashioned Victorian values - which will carry little weight with most women today who go out to work and do not cast themselves in the wife/mother image. To some extent Segal has a point. The stereotype of the working father, homely mother and two happy kids bears little relation to contemporary reality. but ine pomt is unal taest images have never fitted reality.

What Segal fails to appreciate, however, is the resilience of the 'family image'. Most women may go out to work today and more women may be looking for nursery places - but the fundamental struc tural importance of the family remains.

The family is the place where workers' needs are replenished: where the domestic drudgery of cooking, cleaning and washing is done for free.

Even if a higher percentage of women have other jobs and responsibilities - their traditional role as domestic slave has not changed. Underneath all the superficial changes, the basic - whether 'nuclear", function of the family 'extended' or 'communal" - in modern capitalist society remains the same. Under capitalism the family is an economic unit which produces and reproduces labour-power for the capitalists free of charge. The family is an integral part of capitalist society - not a residue of outdated The fact that only a minority of ideology. families corresponds to the nuclear stereotype does not alter the basic function of the insti- Lynne Segal, Bea Cambell et al may tution. think that Thatcher's "back to the home' proposals are ludicrous - but women who are losing their jobs and suffering the consequences of cuts in health and social services just can't get the joke. Ann Burton

FREE

NICKY KELLY

NOW!

Since its formation in 1974 the Irish Republican Socialist Party has faced intense repression both in Britain and the Twenty-six Counties.

Following a mail train robbery in 1976, three IRSP members - Osgar Breathnach, Brian McNally and Nicky Kelly - were convicted in the no-jury Special Criminal Court in Dublin on the basis of signed confessions extracted by force, and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. Anticipating the verdict, Nicky Kelly jumped bail during the trial and went to the United States. As Breathnach and McNally began the long appeals procedure, the Provisional IRA publicly claimed responsibility for the robbery. After a long protest campaign, Breathnach and McNally were released in May Nicky Kelly returned from the US a month later to clear his name - but his appeal was rejected and he has been languishing in Portlaoise prison ever since.

After serving three years and having exhausted the judicial appeals procedures, Nicky Kelly has decided to go on hunger-strike from 1 May to protest his innocence and obtain his release. Kelly is only one of many anti-imperialists to suffer torture, frame-up and imprisonment at the hands of successive Twenty-six courtes governments A victory for Nicky Kelly will be an important step in exposing the common front between the Twenty-six Counties state and British imperialism in their attempts to smash the struggle for Irish freedom.

Gandhi and Greenham I disagree with the title of the article on Gandhi and 'non-violent direct action' in the March issue of the next step Good tactics, disastrous strategy. Surely one cannot divorce a tactic from the politics and the leadership that advan- NVDA tactics can never be politically justified by revolutionaries in the present epoch of imperialism. NVDA plays on people's aspirations for peace, gets them to stand up and then leaves them exposed. The political direction is always controlled by non-proletarian organisations, and always results in the slaughter NVDA is a non-violent response to I WOrKCIS. violent repression by the oppressors.

It can only lead to defeat and not victory for the working class. It is designed to get sympathy from the oppressors and other 'observers'.

all the years that the oppressed have suffered brutality (India, Ireland, Palestine etc), sympathy and melting hearts have never prevented the oppressors from getting their way, but have only created the conditions for delaying the eventual fightback. Every step forward by the oppressed has been achieved through the blood of thousands of comrades, never because of

NVDA.

Yes, the working class can participate in civil disobedience but always with the full preparedness to disarm any aggressor by whatever means necessary. The main heading should have been

DISASTROUS

TACTICS,

DISASTROUS

STRATEGY.

Jake Patel Birmingham Helen Swift replies. It is important to differentiate 'non-violent direct action' as the earliest response of the downtrodden against their oppressors and the manipulation of this response by middle class politicians. In India the peasants, new to political struggle, wanted to win freedom without violence. As Trotsky commented, the Russian peasantry responded in a similar way in the early stages of the revolution: The attempt to disguise its first rebel steps with legality, both sacred and secular, has from time immemorial characterised the struggle of every revolutionary class, before it gathered sufficient strength and confidence to break the umbilical cord which bound it to the old society.

This is more completely true of the peasantry than of any other class. NVDA was the first step forward by the Indian masses. What they required to realise their aspirations was to move forward, under the leadership of the working class, from NVDA to the inevitably violent overthrow of British rule in What they got was Gandhi and the Con- India. gress Party: the Indian landowners and middle classes exploited the strength of the masses, whose militancy they contained through making NVDA into a systematic strategy, to strengthen their ambitions for a capitalist India under their control. The masses paid a terrible price for the success of this strategy - and they are still paying it under the rule of Gandhi's daughter.

Around the world the oppressed have learned a lot since Indian peasants first challenged the British Raj. From Vietnam, through Zimbabwe to El Salvador and Northern Ireland, people have soon discovered that anti-imperialist violence is the only answer to imperialist violence.

Today NDA retains its appeal only among the liberal middle classes of the West, among people who object to the growing barbarism and militarism of bourgeois society but cannot face up to the necessity for its overthrow. This does not mean to say that some of the tactics used by advocates of NVDA around the nuclear disarmament issue are not creative and effective - the point made by the headline in the last issue of the next step. The problem with Greenham Common is not its tactics, which the left should emulate, but the whole direction of the protest. An effective challenge to militarism must focus on the wars going on now, in Ireland, the South Atlantic, Latin America, the Middle East, not on wars that might happen in the future; it must tackle British militarism as its first priority, not American missiles.

This is why the women's peace movement, despite its success in mobilising thousands of women into action for peace, is a diversion from the fight against war. Gandhi and India Reading your centre-spread the on peace movement (the next step, No 34, April 1983) i couldn't help feeling that you supported violence for the sake of it.

Although you clearly expose the consequences of Gandhi's politics for the masses in reconciling them their oppression, you ultimately fail to discredit the tactic of non-cooperation and civil disobedience, because, in the end it achieved for the Indian masses what they desired - freedom from British rule!

Dai Prakash Narayan Ealing London Mike Wall replies: We do not support violence for the sake of it, but because we recognise that a society which is maintained by violence cannot be changed peacefully. It was not non-violent direct action that drove the British out of India but the threat of violent mass revolt. The influence of Gandhi's politics over the masses made it easier for the British to partition the country (between India and Pakistan) and stabilise a system of imperialist domination that still condemns millions of Indians to poverty and exploitation. Easter peace protests I wasn't going to write to your paper, which I bought during the Good Friday "human-chain' demonstration from Greenham to Burghfield, but when I read some of the accounts of the day in other left-wing papers, I felt I would.

What surprised me was the way they said it was a great success. Well I have been on a few CND demonstrations before and I found this one a real anti-climax, really flat - and I think a lot of other people did too. It wasn't just the weather - that was much worse at Greenham Common in December where the spirit was much better. It was partly that it was so badly organised. I'm not at all surprised the chain was never properly made because nobody seemed to know what they were doing. And then you never got any sense that you were at any one moment actually in a chain. It was just an hour of standing in a line wondering what was going to happen - and then just drifting off asking one another 'was that it then?' When we walked down to the festival site it was just a big field with nothing much going on. And then there was a long, long battle to get out of the field again on to our coach.

Still, I think the general tone of your paper is too dismissive of CND and the campaign against cruise missiles. I agree that Ireland is important but I think it would be an important first step against war to block cruise and Trident.

And I think it is important that the Labour Party has now made a clear promise to do this if it wins the election. From there we could move on to getting rid of all nuclear weapons and getting Britain out of NATO. You have to start somewhere and cruise missiles will be here by December so why not start there?

Debbie Luton Helen Swift replies I was at the 'human chain' demo too. It struck me that its disorganisation wasn't so much accidental as part of a deliberate strategy. The CND leadership has become terrified of assembling all its supporters together at any one point, for fear that it might not be able to contain them.

With a general election coming up, CND'sleaders are particularly concerned that their close friends in the Labour Party are not embarrassed by militant direct action protests, sit-ins in the street or occupations of military bases. Thus all the Easter protests were dissipated as much as possible so that there was no trouble for the bureaucrats. This is what the radical apologists letters for CND meant when they said the 'human chain' was a great success - it was - for the Labour Party. Is campaigning against cruise a first step against war? The installation of cruise missiles in Europe is part of the American drive to assert domination over its NATO allies.

They are simply another addition to a battery of nuclear weapons which has long been based in Britain and its surrounding seas. Many bourgeois politicians and generals - especially in Germany, but also in Britain - are opposed to cruise missiles because want to assert their mey military independence from the USA.

linking up with this ruling class anti-cruise sentiment - which is reflected in media and public opinion hostility to cruise - the peace movement is allying itself with militarist forces in every European country. Many British politicians in the Labour Party and the SDP-Liberal Alliance reject cruise, but are in favour of Britain retaining nuclear weapons and building up its conventional forces. As the South Atlantic war proved, these have considerable destructive powers, which the British government is not reluctant to deploy. Hence the anti-cruise movement, far from being the first step towards peace, is more likely to be another step nearer to war. Slanders The Revolutionary Communist Group's Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! is well known for its low-life polemics. Its attacks on the RCP are generally based on quoting snippets of gossip, rather than taking up our positions as stated in our publications. This in itself is sufficient grounds for any serious reader to dismiss their criticisms out of hand. However, in the April issue of the paper a more serious allegation is made. In an article entitled RCP/IFM Slander Terry Marlowe makes a specific allegation about an article in the next step No 33, March 1983: The filthiest lie in this article is the allegation that a leading RCG member threatened pro minent Sinn Fein activists with physical violence".

The RCG's record of support for the Republican struggle, costing nearly 100 arrests including 3 under the PTA, is the clearest possible reply to this lie. Let the RCP|IFM lie machine substantiate it or withdraw it.'

First, it is clear that the RCG's record of arrests has nothing whatever to do with the incident which took place at Leeds before this year's Bloody Sunday rally. Second, I was present on the platform at the rally when the incident took place, as any of the 1000 people in the hall can testify. Marlowe, as the same people might not have noticed, was not present either on the demonstration or at the rally. I personally witnessed Mark Smith, who was pressing for speaking rights for the RCG which Sinn Fein had refused, threaten physical violence against Sinn Fein members. This can be verified by other speakers on the platform. Neither the RCP nor the IFM has a lie machine. We don't need one.

Phil Murphy National Organiser, Irish Freedom Movement he next step Sheffield witch hunt Sheffield Labour council leader David Blunkett has used the local Tory evening newspaper The Star to launch a smear campaign against the supporters of the Revolutionary Communist Party in the city. In a front page article he accused the RCP of being sponsored by sinister 'outside forces' and being 'bent on destroying the labour movement' in the city (7 April).

Despite being publicly challenged to retract substanuate these allegations, Blunkett has done neither. The Labour Party in Sheffield is evidently feeling under pressure. It has become used to having tame left-wing groups in the city that are happy to work in its shadow and accept its political domination. It is not used to having its record exposed and its influence challenged. The growing support for the RCP in the city has led people to question a council that talks about saving the steel industry but refuses to lead a fight for jobs, a council that proclaims a 'Socialist republic' but raises rates and cuts jobs and services, a council that is an 'apartheid-free zone' but refuses to challenge racism on its own city streets.

Labour's council leader cannot reply to the RCP politically, so he resorts to the oldest smear in the history of the working class movement. Marx, Lenin and Trotsky were all branded police agents and spies by their political opponents; today's slander is 'CIA agents. The working class in Sheffield will Blunkett's slanders for what they recognise are, and ask only why is the Labour Party so sensitive to political criticism?

Alan Harding RCP Branch Organiser Sheffield Deportation victory I am writing to tell you that my fight to stay in Britain has been successful: the Home Office has granted my daughter and I the right of permanent residence in this country.

I suffer from severe diabetes, yet the British authorities were quite happy to send me back to Ghana where insulin the medicine I need to stay alive - is not readily available.

In fact, you have to be pretty rich to get hold of it at all.

To return to Ghana would have meant severe illness or even death, I would like to thank my friends in Workers Against Racism for all the work you did to help me win this victory - for the meetings you organised and the pickets of the Home Office.

Tam convinced that I would not be here but for the public campaign. I know that you are now fighting for another black woman and her daughter who are threa tened with deportation. I wish you every success in this case and in all your campaigns.

Yours in struggle Joanna Ofusu Write to the next step Tell us what you think of the next step. What do you like, what don't you like? What should we be writing about? Tell us what's going on in your factory, office, or trade union branch. Send us letters and contributions to debate Write to: the next step c/o Junius Publications

BCM JP LTD

London WCIN 3XX the next step, May 1983 23

A LABOUR MOVEMENT CONFERENCE FOR THE 'EIGHTIES

A week of discussion and debate, politics and polemics Opening plenary - •Marxism since 1945: humanism, structuralism - and beyond • The Marxism of the Second International: revisionism and social democracy •The Marxism of the Communist International: from Lenin to Trotsky •Was Stalin a Marxist?: No •Is there a British Marxism?: Not Sunday 17 July- Friday 22 July •Introduction to Marxism If you think 'the fetishism of commodities is what goes on in sex shops or that abstract labour' is what people do in institutions of higher education, then this course is for you Or if you're fed up with selling your labour-power and simply trying to get the best price for it, and you want to know how to get rid of the whole wage system, then it's for you too.

I would like to attend 'Preparing for Power' and enclose £10.00 registration fee 60040)

NAME..

ADDRESS

TEL..

TRADE UNION/ORG

Accommodation • Creche D Cheques payable to RCP Association Send to BM RCP, London WC1N 3XX Enquiries: phone 01-2743951 Saturday 16 July Marxism after Marx •Developments in the Marxist theory of crisis: Grossman and Mattick the missing links •Marxism and women: Engels and after •Marx on Ireland: from the IRB to the IRA •Marx on the transition: workers' control means workers revolution PLUS - Marx's London - an early morning walk around the places where the great man lived and worked.

In the week Series of six workshops • Racism - what it is and how to fight it. Many people believe racism is a problem of attitudes, which are deeply ingrained spontaneously and reproduced, in the heads of working class people. We think racism is a product of capitalist society, progeneration after generation of Labour and trade union enders. nis course examines racism and anti-racism today. • The British working class The aim of this course is not to provide history lessons or to discuss The object is to "the downturn. confront the real problems arising out of the impact of mass unemployment, the changing structure of the working class and the weakness of its political as distinct from trade union) The integration and traditions. neutralisation of shop stewards; the incorporation of activists into local government and other state quangos; the paralysis of the TUC and the influence of radical reformist politics are some of the issues we will be dealing with. •Imperialism in Africa Africa is sinking into starvation and chaos. The British press hypocritically Erster Bani Don 1: Der to condemns the brutal mass deporfrom the artificial borders Britain barbaric solutions in impoverished

ABE CAR

and Morocco, this course will survey elites and the struggles of the masses.

•Women - oppression and emancipation The debate between feminism and Real Freedom will continue at of the family, the unions, abortion, employment and unemployment, and women and the revolutionary party. •Ireland - the longest war The war in Ireland has now been going on so long that many people becoming involved in revolutionary politics can scarcely remember when history of Britain's longest war in Ireland. It will also examine British Sulatchy in Ireland and the solidarity movement in Britain. anatomy of the classes. classless society. Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Oekonomie.

Soviet Union Mari Marx. • do Kapitali Hambur • Britain 1945? • The demise of the tations from Nigeria; but these result and France have imposed on Western Africa and the recession throughout the imperialist world which demands From the Horn to the Cape imperialist strategy, the African ruling creation fraud Marxism initiated by Kate Marshall's Preparing for Power. So will discussion women and peace, women and war, it started. This course will review the - military, political and ideological; the republican movement

PREPARING

FOR POWER

And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society, nor yet the struggle between them.

Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this struggle of the classes, and bourgeois economists the economic What I did that was new was to prove: (I) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production: (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a Leiter from Karl Marx to Weydemeyer, S March 1852 Other sessions Soviet Union and Eastern Europe • New directions for Andropov?

• The national question in the • Poland after Solidarity The working class in the West • Crisis for the communist parties • The new social democracy • The peace movement Revolutions betrayed Comintern 1929-1939 Issues in British politics •Who's afraid of Maggie Maggie Maggie? The myth of Thatcherism •Fighting for gay rights • Life in a socialist republic - the Sheffield experiment •Will the real Labour left stand up?

•Unemployment and the job 16-22 July Polytechnic of Central London New Cavendish St. London W1 • Women under Stalinism • The strange history of the theory of state capitalism • Moscow vs Washington - the new Cold War • Racism in the car factories • Reagan's domestic difficulties • Can Japan's workers rise again • Germany 1919 - 1923 • Germany 1929-1933 • Spain 1936 - 1939 •Who's next for a GLC grant? How the left became one big quango •Police prepare for civil war; left calls for community accountability •A short history of British socialism •De-industrialisation and depression - the West Midlands experience •Which way in the general election?