The Next Step: No. 12, 5 July 1985

media panic about IRA bombers. The establishment is whipping up anti- British terrorists the nextstep Revolutionary Communist Party weekly • 5 July 1985 • 30p rampage A joint police-army operation at Heathrow airport followed a week of terrorist hysteria to justify further police and military interference in British society. on the What makes the IRA fight? p6,7 Zimbabwe goes to the polls p8 The Tory dilemma p5 Labour's reselection stakes p4 12

tns Revolutionary Communist Party weekly • 5 July 1985 • No 12 A new partnership 'A new partnership — a new Britain' is the title of the joint Labour Party-TUC policy statement published this week. It proposes a partnership between 'a Labour government and working people' with the aim of giving the country 'a new sense of common purpose. With up to two years to go before the next general election the particular policy proposals in Labour's latest programme are of little consequence. The general drift of the new document is to replace specific promises to the working class with bland eneralities to reassure middle class public • inion. The core of the old alternative economic strategy has now been openly abandoned. Import controls, controls on the export of capital, large-scale reflation, planning agreements, and shopping lists for nationalisation are all out. Opposition to the EEC and the IMF is also toned down and there is no undertaking to repeal Tory anti-union laws. Labour's emphasis is on *the widest possible cooperation at home and abroad'. Yet the Labour Party still promises a radical change from the current direction of Tory government policy. It offers an immediate and substantial programme of public investment and repair. The new document declares that the first priority for a Labour government would be to boost production and create create jobs, wealth. But where is the money going to come from? The Tories are already grappling with this problem. They want to indulge the demands of their middle class supporters by cutting taxes. Labour wants to boost public spending to meet the demands of the working class. But both parties face the problem of financing their plans at a time of deep recession. Limited options "In other words', concludes the influential London Business School's latest forecast, *there is no scope for tax cuts unless much tighter control is maintained on public pace of and wages, or the spending privatisation is significantly increased.'

The cabinet is divided over proposals for further austerity measures. 'Radicals', like Nigel Lawson and Nicholas Ridley, want cuts in taxes — and drastic cuts in jobs and services to pay for them.

'Consolidators' - the Tory wets - are fearful of the electoral consequences of such drastic policies (see page 5). The Labour Party too has its radicals and its consolidators. Making the running in the radical camp is shadow chancellor Roy Hattersley with his often repeated call for an incomes policy under the next Cutting workers government. wages is a traditional Labour policy and it would provide the most likely fund-raising option for a Kinnock government.

consolidators, like the Tory wets, have their eyes on the opinion polls. They fear that Hattersley's explicitly anti-working class approach will alienate traditional Labour voters. Michael Meacher, Labour's social security spokesman, is representative of this trend. He offers compassionate welfare policies as Labour's alternative to the Tories. does Meacher propose to But how finance Labour's caring policies? His usual response is to plead that all the answers are Walworth Road still deep inside the When put under pressure he computer. concedes that Labour's approach will be to redistribute the burden through the existing Publisher Revolutionary Communist Party, BM RCP, London WIN 3XX ® copyright Printer Morning Litho Printers Ltd (TU), 439 North Woolwich Road, London E16.

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2 O the next step • 5 July 1985 social security and taxation system. But this leads Labour straight back to the problem summed up by the There is no scope for Business School. spending more (either in tax concessions or welfare benefits) without cutting more.

Meacher blunders on, but he is continually getting tied in knots as a result of this basic contradiction in Labour's policy.

Take the issue of housing.

recently suggested that one way of raising revenues to provide extra benefits for the needy would be to abolish mortgage tax relief, which disproportionately favours middle class people. Yet even this modest suggestion for redistribution caused a was immediately storm of protest. it denounced by a Labour leadership desperate to win middle class votes. Meacher and the Labour leadership were then outflanked on the left by the report of a body prestigious housing made up academies and bankers bishops, headed by the Duke of Edinburgh.

Duke's committee called for mortgage relief to be abolished and the funds to be into investment in diverted improved housing. In its quest respectability Labour has become more moderate than the royal family.

When Meacher criticised the Tories announcement of cuts in child benefits last week, they had a ready reply. Whatever happened to Meacher's earlier proposals that Labour would double child benefits abolish married and another indulgence to the allowance, middle classes? Meacher had no reply: these modest measures have too been sacrificed to electoral expediency. The Labour Party used to betraying its promises when it got into office. Kinnock's Labour Party is reneging on its promises two years before it even gets the chance of forming a government.

The capitalist barrier The barrier that limits the scope is imposed by the government policy capitalist system. No capitalist government can avoid the restrictions dictated by the crisis of capitalist profitability.

will be invested in British industry and jobs created only when profitability is restored.

The only way profitability can be restored is by cutting back the burden of public spending private profit, effective trade unionism and holding down wages. As long as crisis-ridden British capitalism defines the horizons of the economic policy debate, the working class will have to pay the price. The whole debate from Tory right to Labour left is about sharing out money that can only be raised by brutalising the working class.

This is why Labour's partnership is out of the question for the working class. There 'sense of common purpose The can De between workers and a system that can only survive by impoverishing and oppres sing them. For the working class unity is only possible against the capitalist system, not with it. This is the fundamental difference in approach between the Communist Party and the ta housense y.

Our objective is to create a common purpose among workers about of the capitalist getting Beginning to forge this sense of common purpose is the central aim of our Preparing for Power conference which opens on 19 July (see page 12). e £24 • Middle East and North Africa £26 Circulation 01-729 377|. Newsdesk 01-729 3771. Correspondence to The Editor, the nexi step, BCM JPLTD, London Prais o

TAK OUT

London Meacher of and Act. Prevention of Terrorism new and for

PTA

has man's tax but to get be accused of by armed police secretary three main powers is also illegal to means being Irish. Capital smashing Revolutionary British people that every activity. system. Neighbours of circus same message across. solidarity!

FREEDO

Smash the PTA!: Irish Freedom Movement protest at Paddington Green last week Prevention of Terrorism Act A witch-hunter's charter When Britain's political police swooped on acquainted Irish communities during last week's IRA bomb blitz' scare, they were following a wellestablished pattern of terrorising the Irish in Britain under the Prevention of Terrorism The 24 men and women arrested under the Act last week brought the total number of PTA detentions close to 6000 since the Act was introduced in allowing the November 1974. The vast majority have been Irish. Of those 6000, only around 170 (three per cent) have ever been charged with committing or conspiring to commit an opposition movement. offence under the PTA. The rest have just been held, interrogated and released.

been used to silence opposition in Britain to the war in Ireland.

The aim of the Act is not to get convictions, Irish people in Britain to understand that they cannot talk about what the British authorities are doing to their country without running the risk of being dragged out of their beds in the early hours every day. The PTA gives the police and home • Proscription: the IRA and Irish National Liberation Army are banned, and it is an offence to raise money or support for them.

raise support for fighters. "terrorism in general'. Usually, this just • Exclusion: any Irish person can be kicked out of Britain. No evidence of any offence is required. Under the original 1974 Act, an Irish man or woman was only protected from exclusion if they had lived in Britain for 20 years (not including any time spent in jail). Having got shot of most of the longterm Irish residents they didn't like the look of, the government shortened the required period of living here to three years in 1984.

• Detention: police can detain 'terrorist suspects for 48 hours without charging The them or allowing them legal advice.

detention can be extended up to seven days on the nod from the home secretary. Irish detainees have been subjected to mental and physical torture. Some have been driven to suicide by the shattering experience interrogation, as Irishman Leo O'Neill was in May 1984. PTA detainees have no right to remain silent: three people detained last week have been charged with witholding information about terrorist offences.

The broader aim of the PTA is to convince woman should be suspected of criminal The authorities have tried to insulate British politics from the ideas of Irish freedom by portraying Irish people in Britain as a community of mad bombers.

and workmates of Irish people raided by gun-toting police are left in no doubt that the victims are terrorists". The SAS men on road blocks, courthouse roofs and armed police convoys which accompanies PTA arrests gets the The authorities back up the PTA with all manner of propaganda devices to popularise the suspicion that the Irish family down the road could well be murderous outlaws. Last week the gutter press claimed that police had discovered a list of 'IRA sleepers' who were 729 0414 "living ordinary lives around Britain. The mysterious "chancer" behind the supposed

PIA

summer bombing campaign was said to be Gerard Tuite, an IRA with volunteer who escaped from Brixton jail in 1980. When Tuite was on the run, police warned the British public that he was a master of disguise - in other words, he could be anybody you meet with an Irish The PTA has succeeded in making Irish illegal in Britain, and republicanism wing to monopolise right debate on the Irish War. One reason for this success has been the lack of any real the British labour from A Labour government introduced the Act in 1974. Since 1983 Labour has been formally opposed to the PTA. But the miserable record of Labour MPs actually turning up to vote against its renewal indicates that the party's opposition to the PTA has more to do with winning Irish votes at election time than with defending Irish people who are under attack When Tory minister and Brighton bomb victim Norman Tebbit took the Labour Party to task last week for risking innocent people's lives' by opposing the PTA, Labour leader Neil Kinnock was quick to deny that his party was any friend of Irish freedom criticism of the PTA has 'Our always been that does not prevent -1T terrorism,' insisted Kinnock, 'the risk of extended to the some sympathy being Provisional IRA arises from the way the PTA sometimes operates.' Kinnock is all for stopping people sympathising with Irish liberation, but wants the authorities to be a bit more selective in terrorising Irish people in Britain. Not one of the left-wing Labour MPs who are fond of posing as friends of the Irish opposed the Kinnock line or spoke out against the latest anti-Irish witch-hunt.

While Labour spokesmen backed the police in last week's arrests, Irish Freedom police Movement supporters organised station protests in London and Brighton.

The demonstrations aimed to make it clear that Irish freedom fighters are not British criminals, and to challenge the authorities attempts to brand every Irish man and woman as a threat to the British public. We oppose Britain's anti-terrorist laws because we reject the idea that those who fight for Irish freedom are terrorists to be hunted The aim of our demonstration in London on 10 August is to build a movement which can dismantle the PTA and the whole machinery of legal repression which the British state uses to keep the Irish down.

DEMONSTRATE

IN LONDON ON 10 AUGUST

• TROOPS OUT OF IRELAND!

• PRISONERS OUT OF JAIL!

Assemble 1pm, march from Jubilee Gardens to Brixton, followed by rally BR/Tube: Waterloo

IRISH FREEDOM

Organised by the

MOVEMENT

Further details from BM IFM, London WCIN 3XX, or ring Carol Taggart on 01-

Why Britain needs a terrorist bomb plot Tot to be outdone by the USA's hostage crisis in Lebanon, Britain has launched its campaign of anti-terrorist own hysteria. The pretext is the round-up of an alleged IRA active service unit and the of a supposed plot to bomb 12 exposure seaside resorts over the summer holiday season. The object is to create wider public sympathy for measures of state repression in Britain and in Ireland. the truth of the We'll never know allegations that followed the arrests of a number of Irish people in Glasgow on 22 June. According to the police this led to the discovery of a bomb in the Rubens Hotel in central London and a wave of arrests in Blackpool and Brighton. The Scotland, police claim to have prevented the seaside bombing plans and to have discovered an arms and explosives cache in Glasgow. For a week the press speculated that the police had smashed the IRA unit responsible for every bombing in Britain over the past five years, not to mention kidnappings and jailbreaks in Ireland. Last weekend the police finally charged Patrick Magee with responsibility for the Brighton bombing that killed five senior Tories during last October's party conference. Magee and five others were also charged with conspiring to cause explosions this year. The whole story could easily be a fabrication. The details of the case of the publicised Maguire family, recently on television, show how the British security forces are well capable of making up such a story. Anne Maguire, her husband Patrick and their two sons and another relation were all convicted on charges of running 'a bomb factory' at the family home in London and all served long prison sentences. The only was forensic tests evidence against them which have subsequently been discredited.

The family is still campaigning - with the support of Tory MPs, members of the House of Lords and the churches - to clear their name. At the time of their arrest in 1974 the papers were full of tales about Auntie kitchen' Annie's bomb just as they fantasised about the exploits of 'the chancer' last week. The enemy within It is possible that the police have picked up some republican sympathisers or even activists, and dreamed up the seaside plot to dramatise the issue to their own advantage.

Whatever the true facts, two things can be said with certainty. First, a seaside bombing campaign would be entirely out of character The only for the republican

SO VOICEE

seaside town the IRA have ever bombed was Brighton and that attack was evidently directed at senior members of the Tory Party, not at holidaymakers on the resort's famous beaches. Republican bombing campaigns in Britain have been generally directed at political or military targets pubs used by soldiers, army barracks. regimental displays in central London.

The second point is that while seaside bombs would be a bizarre move for the IRA, a terrorist scare campaign of the sort we have seen over the past week is entirely typical of the British establishment.

Christmas in London would not be the police exercise same wilnour a major alerting all shoppers to the danger of IRA bombs, with identikit pictures of wanted terrorists and warnings about suspicious packages. And what do the same ordinary people who go shopping at Christmas do in the summer? They go on holiday — to places like Blackpool, Torquay, Bournemouth, Great Yarmouth, and all the other places on the IRA's supposed summer blitz' hit list.

What better tocus for a summer terrorist bomb scare? The aim of the anti-terrorist hysteria is to turn every Briton into a policeman and every Irish person into a terrorist. The message of all the carefully staged police press and briefings make conferences

ACTION

IRA 'seaside bombing campaign'

ACCESSORIES + LEISURE DENINE

O NPER

DO

THIS

AR It's all done by mirrors: police theatricals keep up the anti-terrorist hysteria everybody British feel that they must be on the look out for IRA bombs and IRA bombers. It is well known that sniffer dogs and listening devices are useless at finding concealed explosives in large buildings. Yet every news bulletin for days was padded out with theatrical displays of police searches and dogs sniffing around

MOTE TOORS

'Don't panic' senior police officers exhorted the public, just make sure there's no bomb under the bed in your holiday hotel.

The official response to the mortal danger of the Irish liberation struggle to the British state is to try to present it as a grave threat to every individual British citizen. This is the object of the whole performance of the hotel searches and the paramilitary displays Glasgow and around police stations in London where the alleged terrorists were being detained. The media even succeeded in dragging that symbol of the unity of the - the Queen - into the British people bomb scare. Her majesty made clear her courageous determination to go ahead with a visit to Great Yarmouth in several months time. The message was clear — the IRA was the enemy of all the British people against which they had to be vigilant and united in Cendice. Anti-terrorist hysteria helps to create an atmosphere of fear and apprehension. This is conducive to the government climate extending the range of repressive powers available to the police. The arrival of police in tanks at Heathrow airport last week sums up the trend towards the militarisation of civilian life in modern Britain. The recent joint police/army operation against hippies at Stonehenge was illustration of the repressive anotner methods which anti-terrorist hysteria helps to make widely acceptable.

The object of the heightened public awareness of the dangers of terrorism is not merely the IRA, but every Irish person in Britain. The message of the media is that anybody with an Irish accent could be an IRA terrorist. Any Irish person who speaks out against the British occupation of Ireland suspicion of must under certainly sheltering a bomb factory or at least of harbouring terrorists. Spreading the idea that the IRA is planning to blow up ordinary British people at random helps to justity whatever measures the British government wants to introduce to tighten its grip over its oldest colony. It is not necessary to look far to explain why now is such a good time for an anti-IRA Britain. The republican campaign movement has scored a number of successes since its spectacular attack on the Grand Hotel in Brighton last October. Sinn Fein won 59 seats in local councils in Northern ireland in May and more in the South last week. The IRA has renewed its military attacks on the armed forces in Northern Ireland with devastating effect in recent weeks. It has launched mortar and bomb attacks on police and army posts in Newry and South

NO PARKING

POLICE

VEHICLES

ONLY

Armagh killing a total of 19 RUC officers. A wave of anti-IRA hysteria in Britain will provide useful cover for the joint RUC/SAS

FOR IRISH FREEDOM

No to British terror! THE BRITISH ESTABLISHMENT has closed ranks against the IRA. In the House of Thatcher Commons last week Margaret fulsomely congratulated the police. They had prevented a disaster which was calculated to maim and kill many innocent people at seaside resorts'. Neil Kinnock echoed the prime police. He minister's praise for Ene their 'remarkable detective congratulated work and the success they have achieved against the Provisional IRA'. He declared that 'the whole nation had cause to be thankful.

The unity of the British establishment against the IRA shows how seriously the ruling class takes the threat from the Irish liberation movement. The British authorities recognise that the movement for Irish freedom threatens the break-up of the United Kingdom and is a grave threat to the integrity of the British state itself. This is why they are so concerned to unite the British people against the IRA and in support of any measures the British state may require to deal with it.

When the British establishment closes ranks against the Irish struggle it is a crucial moment for those in Britain whose interests run counter to the British state to stand up in solidarity with the Irish fight for freedom We support the republican movement in its fight for a united and independent Ireland free from British occupation or interference.

We support this struggle irrespective of the particular tactics follows, whether these are the methods of the ballot box or the armalite. We do not withdraw our support in response to the anti-Irish prejudices of the British media.

We unequivocally reject the chauvinist hysteria of the current anti-terrorist panic shoot-to-kill squads to go into operation against the nationalist communities which They support the republican movement.

have killed almost 70 people in the past five years and may be expected to be in action again shortly. Whether the British authorities have really captured an IRA active service unit and what its planned activities were remain a mystery. What is certain is that as long as the British occupation of Ireland continues, the republican movement will continue to fight back against the British state Given the intimate relationship of Northern Ireland to Britain within the so-called United it is inevitable that the IRA's Kingdom, military resistance will extend into Britain. It is regrettable that innocent people will die in But the this as in any form ol war responsibility for all the suffering of the Irish War lies squarely with the British terrorists who occupy Ireland and are increasingly displaying their techniques on the streets of Britain. Mick Kennedy The British authorities have put on a carefully staged performance to legitimise of their the build-up and deployment repressive apparatus. All the restrictions on democratic rights now justified by the will urgency of beating the terrorists ultimately be used against the working class.

The anti-Irish hysteria will inevitably be used to justify further measures of British terror in Ireland. Our response to the 'IRA terrorists' panic is to demand • Troops out of Ireland! " • Prisoners out of jail! These two demands will be to the forefront of the national Irish demonstration on 10 August. Be there!

REP

The Revolutionary Communist Party is hard a new national centre, Setting up up. weekly paper and publishing launching our more books and pamphlets have seriously stretched our resources. We have ambitious plans for the rest of the year — to extend our national network of branches, build up the circulation of our paper, launch a theoretical journal and publish more books. We have set up a special fund-raising appeal to help us réalise our plans. The RCP gets no money from Moscow, We rely on our Washington or the GLC. readers and supporters to send us whatever they can afford. Our special thanks this week goes to Geraldine from Preston. Please send contributions to Special Appeal, BM RCP, Make cheques/POs

WCIN 3XX.

London payable to RCP Association

Last week Neil Kinnock denounced 'sectarians and splitters' who are 'wrecking' the Labour Party. He declared there's no place for people like that in our movement'. If he meant that there was no place for socialists in today's Labour Party he was right.

Kinnock wants to clean up Labour's image in preparation for the next election.

He has made it clear that the left must learn subservience to the leadership line or get out.

Nowhere has this been demonstrated more ircloly than m te reselecuon process The business of reselecting parliamentary cancidates lor tne election has so far gone according to Kinnock's plan. More than half of all Labour MPs have been reselected without a hitch. Only one sitting MP sponsored Michael McGuire in Makerfield — has been deselected. This was not because of any right-left conflict, but because he failed to support striking miners in the area.

The Labour leaders have every reason to be confident that they have already got the left on the run. Where the left has fielded candidates for selection they have been trounced Former radicals moce aLes. proved their willingness to toe the Kinnock line, especially in the rate-capping disputes in local councils, have won endorsement as parliamentary candidates in winnable seats.

Ken Livingstone has finally achieved his ambition to stand for parliament in Brent East and David Blunkett has been chosen as the candidate for Sheffield Elsewhere the 'hard left' has withdrawn its threat to sitting MPs or allowed moderate candidates an easy passage.

The loyal left The reselection contest has been nightmare for Militant and a measure of its marginalisation within the party. Militant's James Cameron, widely tipped to win selection in Glasgow Provan, lost by a single vote to Strathclyde regional councillor Wray. Militant received a second James setback in Glasgow Pollock when another Strathclyde councillor James Dunnachie David Churchley. beat its candidate Militant also did badly in East Kilbride. In Brighton Kemptown Rod Fitch, who fought and lost the last election as a Militant candidate, was himself deselected.

In Birkenhead right winger Frank Field easily won reselection, after threatening to by-election if he precipitate Recognising the inevitability of Militant's prominent Merseyside figures all backed out of the contest. Instead they drafted in Cathy Wilson, whose distinction was to win the lowest ever vote for the Labour Party in a parliamentary election, as Militant candidate in the Isle of Wight in 1983. a spate of After damaging Militant's reselection defeats seem to confirm Kinnock's boast that the Tendency has been Labour's national executive has "licked'. launched investigations into all Militant's from the youth trade front organisations, union rights campaign to the South African Labour Education Project. The Welsh and Scottish Labour Parties have taken a hard line against Militant supporters.

The conference of the traditionally leftwing Nupe voted to support the witch-hunt agaist Militant and other unions have taken a similar stand. Last week's TGWU conference gave Kinnock a standing ovation for his virulent attack on Militant, though it stopped short of approving expulsions. Yet expulsions are already in full swing. Militant members have been kicked out in the Rhondda, Mansfield, Newcastle Newcastle-under-Lyme and Warley east. West. The rout of the left goes further than Militant. Other left-wing challengers have fared just as badly in the reselection polls.

Striking miner Graham Skinner was an early 4D the next step • 5 July 1985

EVENTS

Labour Party the casualty of Labour's quest for respectability.

In March he was ousted from the reselection Danue by working macis m Labour Party. In another mining constituency, Barnsley Central, right winger Roy Mason easily defeated a left winger despite the challenger's vigorous denials that he had association with Militant.

any candidate John Nicholson backed down challenging Gerald from Manchester Gorton in tavour councillor Ken Strath. In Ashton-under- Lyne Bob Sheldon beat off a tough challenge Labour's from local left winger Paul Stonier.

next The response of the left to the leadership offensive is to play safe, keep its head down and not rock the boat. Militant is so keen to prove its loyalty to Kinnock that it has joined

NUM-

Peter Shore and the national executive in a witch-hunt of left wingers in Bethnal Green and Stepney Labour Party.

Last month Ian Allett, an active Militant supporter and vice-chair of the constituency party, proposed a motion to suspend three leading left wingers from the general management committee positions as officers in Holy Trinity ward.

by who have The eight Militant members committee and two Socialist Organiser Tower Hamlets councillor Sue Carlyle, all

RATE-CAPPING

The game's up Brightside. lost. defeat, main attacks, While Ted Knight prays for a the RCP's Jean Smith miracle, (above) Is fighting for a change in the GLC by-election In Vauxhall large-scale THIS WEEK LAMBETH council leader Ted Knight faces the collapse of his campaign and against rate-capping surcharge and disqualification from public office for carrying on the campaign so far in defiance of the law. Everybody knows that the Tories are determined to cut jobs and services in local government. But the real problem - and the Reselection: the left retreats voted for the suspensions.

Sherwood newsletter depicting Kinnock,

TUC

chief Norman striking miner in the back.

Hard left Kaufman of local running campaign against Shore.

motion calling for and from their leadership'. the on supporters of the bulletin, including challenge from the left. politics of the the threat of confident that The official reason for the suspension of Michaels Chalkley, Phillip Cunningham and Geoff Cade is that they produced a ward Shore and stabbing Willis The leaflet accused the labour leaders of being traitors to the miners' cause. But Chalkley and the others are adamant that the real reason for their suspension is their consistent stand against racism in the party and their long- Militant pushed for the suspensions to win approval from Shore and stave off any threat to its own organisation. There was a us to be expelled," explains Chalkley, 'Militant couldn't be seen to favour expulsions, but they proposed the next best thing.' He says that Allett's speech *brought together the left, the right and the racists and we were finished'. Cunningham agrees: Militant are scared stiff of being expelled themselves and therefore they are going to jump through every hoop for the His view is that Militant is saying to Shore "how about this, will this save us? The consequence of Militant's manoeuvring in Tower Hamlets is to make the seat safe for Shore by undermining any campaign left the counci left give

STOP THIS

MADNESS

cause of Knight's predicament is the Labour Party. •We are the fight we can take forward, Knight told a 'who dares wins conference against rate-capping 10 days ago He then admitted that 'we have no majority in the council chamber to carry on the fight This sort of doublespeak has become the hallmark of Labour's rate-capping The left's collapse in the reselection stakes is symptomatic of its broader retreat before the leadership offensive. Militant is prepared to take everything that Kinnock throws at it without a fight. Militant leaders still proclaim that they would keep faith with Labour even if it was purged from the party.

Such humility is the defining characteristic of an organisation which, as Kinnock explained, is incapable of building its own party independent of Labour Militant is not completely isolated. The Socialist Workers' Party now devotes pages of its newspaper to sucking up to its old rival. Socialist Worker faithfully reproduces Militant's apologies for the anti-working class policies of Liverpool council. It urges Militant supporters to link up with the SWP to build a socialist alternative to Kinnock and the right. Militant's (subservience to the Labour machine renders it incapable of defending the working class. The SWP's defence of Militant exposes its inability to forge a real alternative to the Labour left. For the SWP the priority is to protect Militant's position in the Labour Party. But the real priority is to protect the working class against a party that is prepared to make any concession to the system to get back into office. Joan Phillips Labour left wingers have adopted defiant postures against the government. But the commitment of the Labour Party to the principles of capitalist administration in local government and to respect for the wider authority of the capitalist law has ensured that the defiant councils have given in to the government. In every rate-capped council right wingers, or left wingers moving to the right, have taken the responsibility for asserting capitalist principles and calling a halt to the left's anti-rate-capping postures.

The fact that, at the end of the day (and even fairly early in the day in many cases), the along with principles goes these doomed the rate-capping campaign from the Knight is the most left-wing council leader in Britain. But as a Labour council leader he has administered the affairs of Lambeth council along capitalist lines. He insists that Labour council is committed to maintaining jobs and services. Yet Lambeth has jobs by maintaining cut hundreds of unfilled vacancies as a matter of policy and raised rates by nearly 300 per cent. "Do you think you can opt out of the capitalist system?' Knight demanded of one critic of this policy. If you do you must be living in a fantasy world,' he fumed. The notion that you can fight the cuts without opting out of running the system prevails in the fantasy world inhabited by the Labour Last November Knight outlined ratecapping tactics at a meeting of Labour councillors. He told them that they had to Patrick Tory minister Jenkin the impression that they were prepared to go to the brink' even though everybody knew they were prepared to go no further. The idea wa that this would force the Tories to make concessions. In the event Jenkin called their bluff and has been laughing all the way to the abolition of the GLC ever since. Knight: decision to go over the brink personally and face legal action is consistent with the gesture politics of the whole rate-capping campaign. It will be little use to council workers and tenants whose resistance to the cuts has been confused and demoralised by the antics of left Labour councils Knight tried to console his supporters last week that all they could do was pray for a miracle. While Knight prays for divine intervention, Jean Smith and the RCP are fighting the cuts. Vote RCP in the Vauxhall GLC by-election on 11 July.

THATCHER'S RESULTS AND PROSPECTS

Can she save British capitalism and the Tory Party?

The Tories are having a hard time. The government has lost its sense of direction and all the opinion polls show Thatcher's growing unpopularity. The Tories problem is that every measure they take to salvage the British economy makes them even more unpopular with voters. After six years in government Thatcher has begun to lack conviction and credibility.

The Tories" repeated claim government has halted Britain's economic decline and started to build the foundations for prosperity lacks plausibility.

living standards, cuts in services restrictions on civil liberties have created a general sense of unease. Insecurity about the future is now widespread and even those with jobs fear the consequences of government policies. Even traditional Tory voters are beginning to doubt the wisdom of the government's course of action. Small businessmen are angry about the burden of taxation, interest rates and rates levied by local councils. Teachers, doctors, university lecturers, top civil servants and scientists have all protested against government policy.

Many Tory supporters feel that Thatcher is going too far. History has been unkind to Margaret Thatcher. Her government faces electoral difficulties despite a fine record of achievement on behalf of the British ruling class.

By any standards the Tories have scored some notable victories over their opponents.

Thatcher's biggest success has been in disciplining the trade union movement. The Tories have changed all the industrial relations and pushed through harsh anti-union laws. They have even managed to get many union leaders to accept their 'new realism'.

Thatcher's second achievement has been in dominating public opinion. She has come out on top in every important debate. The Tories have always managed to retain the political initiative over the Leading SDP theoretician David barues. Marquand recently conceded that the government still faces no political alter- 'Mrs As he but it. opponents have not yet made a coherent intellectual appeal. The Tories' third achievement has been in The Conservative dilemma re-educating the other parties. The Labour Party in particular has been forced to make one concession pressure. New Labour Party issues from the sale of council houses to defence all bear the Tory stamp of approval.

Having set the terms of political debate, the Tories are now able to influence Labour Party policy. Labour's emphasis on moderation and its purge of Militant are direct that the responses to Tory criticism.

Unfortunately for the Tories, their considerable achievements cannot hide a fatal Falling and flaw. he success of against the trade unions and the opposition parties stands in sharp contrast to its failure to solve the problems of the British economy.

The government has not been able to resolve the crisis of British capitalism.

Indeed since 1979 the decline of British capitalism has accelerated. The manufacturing base of the economy has continued to and Britain has become more Stasiate reliant on its service sector. The government is now beginning to lose the battle against inflation, once its major claim to economic SuCCeSs Thatcher's economic policies have not failed because of any lack of effort on the part of government ministers.

done everything that the capitalist class has demanded and their policies have been the only option from a capitalist point of view.

The problem is that there are no policies that can solve the crisis of British capitalism.

Britain's economic disintegration is simply out of the government's control.

Take the problem of the money supply. A rules of key component of the Conservative government's monetarist philosophy was to curb the money supply. Yet the money supply has ignored the government's good intentions and continued to grow. Bank lending in particular has caused chaos for the treasury.

Today the monetarist philosophy is all but forgotten and the attempt to control the money supply has been quietly abandoned.

opposition The only area of the economy which the government can directly influence is state expenditure. Thatcher has been ruthless in Thatcher's cutting spending on public services. But despite the cuts, overall state spending has not been reduced. The government has been forced to sell valuable assets like British government's billions required to generation on the dole. much further than voters. John Biffen and Peter ruling class economic policy.

save British capitalism. the recession demands manoeuvre. government that after another to Tory Tones in one policies on enthusiasm for Kinnock, government action the next election. manage its pointing They have Telecom just to balance the books.

The proposals in Norman Fowler's review of the social security system are certainly going to hit the working class. People relying on state benefits will suffer even greater hardships. Yet the savings made by Fowler's proposals will make little impression on the bill. Pennytotal welfare pinching cuts will be outweighed by the maintain a whole The Tories know that they will have to go Fowler if they are to reduce public spending substantially. They will have to cut benefits further, shake out tens of thousands of jobs in the public sector and reduce the real wages of the rest. But this strategy is bound to be unpopular with The current cabinet revolt led by Walker against treasury proposals to cut taxes is an attempt to limit the electoral damage resulting from Government ministers may argue over the details of particular policies, but they have no choice but to carry on with their crusade to Yet Thatcher can no longer avoid these policies becoming an electoral liability. As and more drastic measures even middle class people are now wondering whether they might be the next victims of Thatcher's axe.

Despite the appeals of the Tory wets to go easy the government has little room to Thatcher's harsh economic policies are the only ones available to any wants to manage the capitalist system. The government is limited to making the occasional gesture to appease its critics. To win votes in Thursday's byelection at Brecon and Radnor the government agreed to drop its plans to close a local hospital and a military training camp and to pay up to rebuild a crumbling school. This sort of selective generosity might help the by-election, but it only underlines the fact that the government lacks the policies to win a general election.

Thatcher's remaining hope of re-election is the weakness of the opposition. Her growing unpopularity has not been matched by any corresponding increase in public Owen or Steel. Both Labour and the Alliance have gained in the polls because millions of people are fed up with the Tories. Their advance has little to do with the appeal of their alternative policies. The fact that the opposition parties lack realistic alternatives means that, despite their unpopularity, the Tories may still win The Tories' difficulty is our opportunity.

The disarray of the Tory cabinet is a reflection of the inability of the capitalist class to Thatcher's personal system. unpopularity is in reality the unpopularity of capitalist solutions to the crisis. Instead of just the finger at Thatcher, workers should direct their anger against the system she represents. The Tories sense that they have lost their grip. All that remains to be done is to take everything out of their hands.

Frank Richards

THE

PROPAGANDA

WAR

Neil & Tony Leon Brittan was certain that the bill represented 'the morality of the terrorist and revolutionary'. David Steel agreed, adding that it was an indication of the other much grimmer face of the Labour Party'. Outraged parliamentary voices across party lines denounced the latest threat to the British way of life.

The bill in question was Tony Benn's Amnesty Bill proposing an official pardon for all miners convicted of offences arising from the 1984-85 strike. It certainly provoked a display of the anti-working class prejudices of our leading parliamentarians.

The Tories and the Alliance made clear that they would never agree to a pardon for workers who fought for the right to work.

The Labour left's reply was to cite the precedent of 1980 when Lord Soames granted an amnesty to the illegal white racist regime in Zimbabwe. Surely, if the British government could pardon racist murderers then it was not too much to ask forgiveness for striking miners?

It seems that Neil Kinnock was the only one to realise that Benn was joking.

Kinnock could confidently reassure the public that 'this bill cannot be taken seriously by anyone. In fact he could not 'even imagine that it had been drafted with any serious purpose'. Kinnock has seen the funny side of Benn's antics before. A couple of months ago Benn wrote of his 'abiding impression of the growing powerlessness of the House of Commons over key decisions.

That it took Benn 35 years to realise what is obvious to everybody else says a lot about his capacity for self-delusion. But these long years have not impaired his sense of humour. Benn could still keep a straight face as he called for a new Reform Bill to strengthen the authority of parliament.

As long as Benn keeps within the bounds of good taste, Kinnock will not protest too much. While Kinnock gets on with the job of trying to win the election, it is useful to have someone around to keep in touch with working class activists. Kinnock knows that Benn's gestures count for a lot with those workers who have more or less given up expecting anything from the Labour leadership. Benn's capacity for self-delusion ensures that he can effectively combine his vision of social change with advocating loyalty to the Labour Party. Down at Walworth Road that is much appreciated. It's a harmless charade...unless of course you happen to be a victimiscur allick Kinnock is not the only one to profit from Benn. With Benn as the left's leading figure, the right can come out looking good.

Leon Brittan and David Steel use Benn as their straight man. Having acquired a reputation for 'extremism', Benn can be used to make right-wing policies seem acceptable. If Benn's harmless Amnesty Bill can be labelled as 'the morality of the terrorist, then any practical measure that might really benefit the working class can be easily dismissed. That is why Brittan and Steel are always ready to make an issue out of Benn's latest ramblings.

As long as there is a Tony Benn with influence over militants, Brittan and the rest need not lose much sleep. The ruling class would rather have militant miners putting their faith in parliamentary bills then organising on their own. History has shown that fighting for workers rights through parliament is the most effective way of dissipating class anger. That's why life for Neil Kinnock is unmanageable without Tony Benn. the next step 5 July 1985 0 5

to hate the Brits' 'You don't have to be hard When the 'IRA terror blitz' headlines hit the British press last weekend, a tns team was in Northern Ireland. Mick Hume reports on how the British occupation forces ordinary Irish men and women to take on the Crown. 6 O the next step • 5 July 1985 Why Irish people back the IRA Thursday Passing through Belfast •Welcome to the Ulster games,' declared the banners strung around Belfast's Aldergrove airport. The British authorities seemed well pleased with their success in persuading stars of track and field like Zola Budd to appear in the city's big athletics meeting. The games, like the reopening of the Grand Opera House and the New Vic theatre ('we proudly present Frank Carson in "Cinderella" '), help Britain portray Belfast as just another provincial city in the UK But they cannot disguise how the lives of Irish people are shaped by the real "Ulster game": the war being fought between the British forces of occupation and the republican fighters for Irish freedom It's been murder here these last few weeks,' Sinn Fein councillor Brendan Curran told us as he waited for somebody in the airport lobby Before he was elected to Newry and Mourne district council in May, Curran was almost murdered by a British SAS assassination squad Since taking his seat he has had to put up with threats and abuse from Unionist councillors infuriated that Irish people should show their hatred for their London overlords by voting Last week the word was that republican. Sinn Fein Curran and the other 58 new councillors were considering wearing bulletproof vests in the council chambers, to protect them from the Loyalist defenders of 'British democracy. These days the authorities pull all kinds of stunts to dress Belfast up as a civilised British city and to hide the reality of the war from prying eyes at home. But without much success The men dressed in rabbit suits who gambolled about the city last week, handing out leaflets asking you to volunteer to clip the toe nails of the aged and infirm, could no doubt be seen in Birmingham or Glasgow. The troop convoys prowling the streets and the Army base built on top of the Divis flats in nationalist West Belfast could not. Watching an African drum and dance group in the heart of Belfast shopping centre might make you think you were in London's West End. But a walk around the corner, to where workmen were still clearing the debris from the 1000lb IRA bomb which had wrecked Chichester Street days earlier, would soon remind you that you were in occupied Irish territory, not Covent Garden.

You drive out of Belfast along tne nev 'Westway' motorway extension, which has been used as a convenient excuse for building a 15-foot security wall around staunchly republican areas of the city on the Catholic west side of the 'peace line'. In Belfast, even the roads are part of the British machinery of repression.

Friday Dining in Derry Eating dinner in an Irish home in the Bogside district of Derry gives you a crash course in living with British terror. An Army surveillance helicopter hovers directly above the estate "That boy's been up there all day,' says our host, 'something must be going off? Right on cue, two blasts go off on the other side of the city "That'll keep the bastards busy, says somebody.

of the family Another member arrives: 'Nobby's been lifted. He's in the Crum.' The news that a young friend of the family has been arrested by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and shipped off to Crumlin Road jail is received with a lot of bitterness, but little surprise. If you live in the nationalist Bogside it's odds-on you'll see the inside of a British jail cell sometime.

Sean MacIlkenny, from another nationalist area of Derry, has seen more than enough of British jails and Loyalist jailers lately. In the last two months his home has been raided six times.

ended up with Three of the raids neve MacIlkenny detained for a week under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. The first time in April, he told us, 'the police knocked my head off for two days. Then I decided to knock one of them back. An Inspector came in and broke up the fight. When I made an official complaint about the beating, two new boys came in and started on me again. Family on the front line: Sean Maclikenny hi third

While Sean MacIlkenny was getting it inside, is pregnant wife Martina was on the receiving end on the outside. The RUC trapped Martina n her home. 'When I asked to go to the toilet hey told me to use the fireplace. One of them hoved me hard against the wall. I was five months pregnant then. They put me in hospital or a week and I nearly lost my baby?

MacIlkenny's biggest worry is the pressure he harassment puts on his family. Every time le's lifted he can't sign on, and their benefit Irops £17 to just £27 for Martina and their two hildren. The British authorities have already orn apart Sean's side of the family. His father is n jail in Britain as one of the Irishmen framed or the Birmingham pub bombings. The last ime Maclikenny tried to visit him was when he vas 17: "They wouldn't let me in because I was a "security risk". I don't even bother writing 10w, the letters just get censored or "lost".'

Now the RUC have told MacIlkenny and two other Derry men that they're going to be shot.

His house has already been raided by masked SAS men, but he was out. The Monday before we met them the Mcllkennys had woken up to ind police marksmen pointing rifles at their edroom window. Sean MacIlkenny knows hat the security forces are quite capable of carrying out their threat. In 1981 he was convicted of membership of the Irish National Liberation Army. In February 1983 his friend, INLA volunteer Neil McMonagle, was shot dead in cold blood by the SAS in the Shantallow district of Derry. But MacIlkenny is not prepared to go along with police blackmail. 'Every time the RUC lift ne they try to get me to sign incriminating statements. But I won't. You just get to hate them so much you'll never give in. It's not a question of eing hard. I would never let on to be a hard man.

But you don't have to be hard to hate the Brits.'

Irish people in Derry have been hating the August 1969, Brits since when the troops naded to end the bloody *Battle of the Bogside, fought between the nationalist community and Loyalist mobs led by armed RUC men. At first the Bogsiders welcomed the Army as a replacement for the bitterly sectarian police. They soon discovered that only the aniforms of the men raiding their homes and shooting at their children had changed. 'People were marching all over Derry the day the troops came in, one local told us, "but Jesus they veren't marching the week after. When they did march it was in protest against the of their city. In 1972 British occupation replied by gunning down 14 paratroops anarmed Irishmen on Derry's Bloody Sunday.

Today the British terror campaign and the rish liberation war dictate every aspect of Bogsiders lives. The struggle decides where you can shop: many boycott a store in 'the Bog' because it refused to close in the community trike that followed the death of republican hunger-striker Bobby Sands in May 1981. It decides where you can work: last week the IRA ssued a death threat to contractors building a new RUC station behind security walls in the Loyalist Waterside district. The people of the Bogside thought that was fair enough. l'd rather stay on the buroo (dole) than build British jails,' said one. The war even decides which streets you can walk down: 16-year old Fergal McDaid still wears an eye patch where he was shot with a plastic bullet when he and his is two children, Martina carries their girlfriend strolled too close to an RUC squad.

been charged riotous

NOW

behaviour to cover up the police barbarity.

The night MeDaid was shot, the Irish people of Derry elected five Sinn Fein councillors.

*We knew what we were voting for,' one told us, 'we were voting for the boys who put that bomb in the courthouse last night.' Driving through the Border checkpoint on the road from Derry to Buncrana, a British military policeman sticks his head through the car window. 'You from London? This is a funny place to come for a holiday. Still, it's safer here than London. You don't get mugged here. You get hijacked but you don't get mugged. Oh yeah, he added as an afterthought, "and sometimes you get killed. "If he's worried about getting killed he should get himself back to London and stay tere, said our irisa passenger. Saturday South Armagh British propagandists call the Border area of South Armagh 'bandit country" to conjure up images of bloodthirsty bands of marauding IRA men. But in this stronghold of support for the republican struggle it is the British security forces who have to sneak about like thieves in the night. Driving south towards the Border the roads suddenly become gashed and broken The British authorities don't bother Inse na hemeann Irish martyrs' memorial, Crossmaglen repairing them because the Army is too scared to use them. Here the British move everything by helicopter. The Army base at Bessbrook is one of the busiest airports in the world. Last week the Prince of Wales Own Regiment celebrated its 300th anniversary on duty in South Armagh. A 100lb cake had to be cut up and flown out to the troops cowering in bunkers across the region's mist-shrouded hills.

Yards from where South Armagh meets the Irish Republic lies the legendary village of Crossmaglen — 'Brits graveyard' as the local graffiti painters call it. On the day London police discovered the bomb in the Rubens Hotel, the IRA launched a mortar attack on the joint RUC/Army barracks in Crossmaglen, hitting a helicopter. Only weeks before the republican forces had hit another flying British gunship with an M-60 machine gun.

press howled about the The pro-British "heartless violence' of the latest attack because it took place just around the corner from where crowds of people were enjoying a local festival. In fact the mortar-squad's timing only reflected the fact that taking on the resident British terrorists is central to any Crossmaglen event. The villagers accept the war as part of everyday life. A few months ago an IRA bomb sent rubble rattling against the local church during mass. The service just carried on as normal.

The little streets around Crossmaglen's town square have been the scene of plenty of IRA action over the years. By 1975, 30 British

AMIALE

Jumann

SO DEIRMS

OnOIRdAr KCámomn

MAC RAOKE

AmloG Sinn Fein councilior Brendan Lewis soldiers had been assassinated in Crossmaglen, 17 of them in the square itself. Local feeling about the "IRA bandits' who operate in the town is summed up by the statue dedicated to those who have died in the struggle to liberate their country, which has pride of place in the square. 'Glory to you all praised and humble heroes who have willingly suffered for your unselfish and passionate love of Irish freedom,' reads the inscription. The local security forces' base reflects the way the British terrorists fear the people of Crossmaglen. In the little Loyalist towns . 'Orange holes' the around the Border nationalists call them - the RUC station is often just a house surrounded by high wire and video cameras. In the tiny town of Crossmaglen the base is a massive expanse of steel and stone housing a permanent garrison of 100 troops one for every 15 people in the village.

The recruitment poster outside the fortress - *The Royal Ulster Constabulary has a job to do' — is more of an ironic joke than a serious appeal. The armed police in Crossmaglen have to be shipped in from outside areas. The Irish population wants nothing to do with them. The Crown forces don't get served in local pubs and shops. Two Vietnamese refugees have opened a successful Chinese restaurant in the square by adopting the "No Brits here' policy.

place,' runs an *Crossmaglen is a happy Army jingle, 'keep your head low and blacken your face.' One company of occupying troops in Crossmaglen used 2336 tubes of camouflage When the British cream in a single month. bandits have come out blacked up they have wreaked havoc in the town and the county.

South Armagh was the first place where the Conference 19-26 July, London IRELAND at Preparing for Power Preparing for Power is the Revolutionary Communist Party's week long summer school in London, from 19 to 26 July.

It includes a special course on Ireland as well as a number of workshops and discussions. Speakers include Mick Hume, author of the pamphlet After the Brighton bomb, and other experts and activists in the Irish solidarity movement in Britain.

Sessions include: • Why does Britain stay anyway?

• What makes Ian Paisley so popular?

• The Catholic Church and the IRA • Power politics in Dublin • Irish solidarity in Britain SAS was officially used in Northern Ireland, in 1976. In April that year they shot dead IRA staff captain Peter Cleary at his fiance's home in Forkhill. In August 1976 the SAS machinegunned 12-year old Majella O'Hare on her way to mass. That December Britain's top assassins killed Patrick McGeown when they opened fire on a South Armagh pub. Since the first year of SAS operations British terror has become less dramatic, but equally effective in turning ordinary Irish people into armed enemies of the Crown. The British have come up with bizarre and racist explanations for the successes the republican fighters have achieved in Crossmaglen London 'scientist' and south Armagh. One claimed that the outstanding record of the IRA in the area was due to 'the insularity of the unit and the thick-headedness of the rest of the IRA'. The real reason why the IRA can strike across South Armagh is the depth of support the fight for Irish freedom has in a desolate region that has been economically wrecked and militarily raped by the British authorities. 'Our people are fed up with it, says Sinn Fein councillor Brendan Lewis, who topped the poll in the Fews constituency in May.

"They know that the old ways won't get them anywhere and they want to fight. I mean bread and butter issues in the election, in all honesty, didn't count for that much. The big issue here is the national thing." National liberation is certainly the bread and butter issue in Brendan's home town of Camlough, close to Crossmaglen. The telegraph poles in the tiny village have been used to erect alternative nameplates in Gaelic.

Posts, trees and even children's trikes in the area carry the republican Tricolour. Using the single red public telephone box is the closest the people of Camlough come to cooperating with the British authorities. In May 1981, as IRA hunger-striker Ray McCreesh died in the H- Block concentration camp, his comrades from Camlough blew five British soldiers out of Ireland for good. 'People voted for me because they support the freedom struggle that the IRA are carrying on, says Brendan Lewis.

From Belfast to Derry to Crossmaglen, the everyday experience of life under the British heel has made Irish people determined to back the the freedom struggle that the IRA are carrying on'. They have no time for the liars of Fleet Street with their hysterical IRA terror blitz' headlines, or for the hypocrites of Westminster with their pompous talk of "British democracy' and 'the rule of law'. They are not about to submit to British terror.

On our way back to Derry, we were pulled in at an RUC road-block. The police gunmen were trying to cope with a coachload of young Irish men and women from a local republican band.

who were taunting the RUC squad that had thrown them off the bus while it was searched.

*The boys will keep that up all night until the police have had enough and let them go,' we were told. The Irish people will keep up the fight. But if the British working class threw its weight behind the Irish people, together we could end the long night of British state terror that they have lived through for 16 years.

PREPARING

FOR

OWER

Plus • After the Brighton bomb • Irish jokes and rebel songs Preparing for Power also offers • An excellent creche • Swimming pool, gym, jacuzzi • Free accommodation • Lots of other courses and workshops from An introduction to Marxism to Religion today and Women's oppression in the eighties.

Preparing for Power is being held at the University of London Union, Malet Street, London WC1, from Friday 19 July to Friday 26 July. Preparing for Power costs £15 if you're working and £12 if you're not. Phone Carol Taggart on 01-729 0414 for details or write to BM RCP, London WCIN 3XX. the next step 5 July 1985 0 7

e will never go to war again. For what? To fight for whom? To fight for someone to enjoy while we suffer. All our grievances show how much we have been forgotten.' (Ex-Zanla guerrilla, Moto, March 1985) This week the people of Zimbabwe go to the polls in the first general election since the country gained independence in April 1980.

Last Friday 35 000 white voters elected their 20 MPs in a separate poll under the terms of the imposed British Lancaster House eement ended the war of This segregated voting

BCOCIOCCO.

procedure highlights Britain's continuing Innuence over us tormer colony. it alsc reveals the survival of white privilege in the new Zimbabwe. According to the Daily Telegraph, black majority rule under prime minister Mugabe, suits the white settlers "very nicely. The Zimbabwean people are less enthusiastic.

Black government has brought the workers and peasants neither the political freedom nor the economic progress for which they fought in the war of liberation through the seventies. Many white settlers who fled the country the war are now returning to curing Zimbabwe. Compared to South Africa, where many took refuge, Zimbabwe has become a haven of capitalist stability.

During the past three years the country was plagued by recession and drought. But now, Zimbabwe after a record maize harvest.

looks set to benefit from a modest upturn.

Western investors and local white landowners have been most impressed by the Mugabe government's efficient management of the economy. Mugabe has cut the balance of payment deficit and honoured the country's debts to Western banks. A quarter of Zimbabwe's wealth now flows directly into banks in Europe and America. Western observers acknowledge that the old settler regime would never have been able to make the people accept such sacrifices without major upheaval.

Austerity Since 1982 state wage controls have kept workers' already low incomes down while inflation has shot past 20 per cent. A shakeout of industry brought a steep rise in unemployment. Only 13 per of cent Zimbabwe's workers and peasants are covere casa conomy less than before independence. In 1983 the Mugabe government succumbed to pressure from the Western financiers of the IMF and implemented a drastic austerity programme.

This marked the end of the modest welfare reforms introduced after independence. It brought home forcefully the consequences of the country's continued domination by the West. Health services, food subsidies, housing programmes - and even drought relief — were slashed. It is not surprising that Western leaders who used to regard Zimbabwe's •Marxist- Leninist' prime minister with suspicion still rub their eyes in wonder at the Zimbabwean 'miracle'. The containment of the struggle for liberation in Zimbabwe is one of the greatest success stories of imperialism in Africa.

Stable capitalist rule could not have been Zimbabwe without Britain's restored in intervention in the final phase of the war.

The middle class leaders of the nationalist Zanu and Zapu movements Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo - wanted to overthrow white settler rule and establish an independent black state. The abolition of capitalist exploitation was not on their But the war itself unleashed a acted. broader struggle against oppression and The peasants poverty. and workers of Zimbabwe fought the white settlers to gain real social change, not merely to acquire a new constitution and new rulers. More than 25 000 died in the fight for freedom. But Britain's intervention helped to ensure that the transition to black majority rule took 8 O the next step • 5 July 1985

INTERNATIONAL

Zimbabwe at the polls Mugabe's sell-out place on the most favourable terms possible for the West. The Lancaster House agreement was signed by Mugabe and Nkomo in London in November 1979 and its provisions remain in force. It laid down Britain's terms for the creation of the new state of Zimbabwe.

These included a ban on the expropriation of capitalists and landowners, the continuation of the white-controlled civil service, reserved seats for whites in the new parliament and guidelines for the administration of the country's army and police force The Lancaster House deal was a betrayal of the demands and expectations of the people of Zimbabwe. power capital was Ine strengthened, rather than weakened, and Britain's role as the arbiter of the fate of Zimbabwe was reaffirmed. The key sell-out took place over the issue of land Five ownership. years after independence, only 33 000 black farmers have been allowed to settle on land they were forced to buy from rich white landowners at great expense. Britain was so determined to protect the wealth of the white landlords that it insisted that payment should be made in foreign currency. The result is that 6 500 white farmers still control around half Zimbabwe's land and dominate much of the country's economy. For the 80 per cent of the Zimbabwean people who still live on the land little has

BEIRUT HOSTAGE CRISIS

Assad's helping hand THE KEY FIGURE in the final stages of the Beirut hostage negotiations has been Syria's president Assad. Since the Christiancontrolled government of Lebanon disintegrated after the Israeli invasion in 1982, Syria has emerged as the new dominant power in the area. But the people of the Middle East will yet have to pay a heavy price for Assad's role as mediator with the mighty and vicious USA.

Syria used to be regarded as an irritant by Western leaders. Its close relationship with the Soviet Union in the fifties and sixties and its longstanding hostility to Israel and to pro-Western Arab leaders marked it out as a potential troublemaker. But Syria's more recent efforts to play a 'constructive role in Lebanon have been greatly welcomed in the

USA.

Syria and the USA share a strong interest in restoring political stability in Lebanon.

Assad is concerned that the conflict could with British Imperialism changed since the days of lan Smith's regime. The country's 850 000 subsistence farmers and their dependants still eke out a living in the barren regions of the former "tribal trust lands in much the same conditions as before independence. In a recent interview a former Zanla guerrilla expressed the indignation of the black farmers, saying that it is 'only the people who were prospering before, during and after the war who are prospering now.

The continuity between the old Rhodesia and the new Zimbabwe runs through every sphere of life. The repressive institutions left behind by British imperialism are still in use.

Smith's Emergency Powers and Industrial Conciliation Acts are used to suppress strikes. The Central Intelligence Organisation, the vast security operation which used to keep tabs on Zanu and Zapu, now protects the new state against subversion.

Even the new trade union federation ZCTU bears the stamp 'made in Britain'.

The government engaged Jim Mortimer, until recently general secretary of the British Labour Party, to set up a servile trade union bureaucracy. Mugabe's repressive state is more a product of London than of Mugabe's supposed leanings towards Moscow.

But Mugabe's grip on Zimbabwe is becoming increasingly insecure. The climate of tension surrounding the elections reflects growing disaffection and instability. So far spill over into Syria which also has an unstable balance of rival Muslim factions.

Internal tensions have grown as a result of The recession austerity. Syrian government is also keen to overcome its isolation in the Arab world, a result of its past anti-Western rhetoric and longstanding rivalries with the rulers of Iraq and Jordan By assuming control over Lebanese affairs Syria hopes to strengthen its hand at home and abroad. The USA's position in the Middle East has been so seriously weakened that it will gladly reach out for any helping hand. The record is a dismal trail of humiliation for the USA the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, the withdrawal of US forces from Lebanon under the fire of Shiite artillery and bombs in 1983, the defeat of the Israeli invasion and the chaos it has unleashed The West now faces the prospect of losing The people who put Mugabe in power are stlll paying the price for his deal the government's chief concern has been the unrest among the country's main ethnic Ndebele, in Matabeleland.

minority, the Poverty and repression have provoked resentment among the Ndebele who suspect that the mainly Shona-supported Zanu government is discriminating against them.

Raids by the notorious Fifth Brigade and the murder of more than 1000 civilians by government troops have intensified the crisIs. Nkomo, Mugabe's main political rival and a leader of the Ndebele, has played on ethnic conflicts to strengthen own position. Mugabe has disrupted Nkomo's election campaign even though the prime minister's victory was secure without any such measures. Repression has become a feature of everyday life as Mugabe attempts to maintain control over the restive masses.

Five years of Zimbabwean independence have exposed the consequences of Mugabe's surrender to Britain. In 1979 the British left supported Britain's role because it felt anything which would end white settler rule good. That tragic misjudgement allowed the Tory government to impose its will on Zimbabwe without opposition at home.

Only the defeat of British imperialism can bring Zimbabwean workers the freedom for which they fought for so long, but which still eludes them. Andy Clarkson control over a region of vital economic and strategic importance. In response to this danger Western leaders are preparing for more direct intervention. The problem for the West is that it cannot rely on any of its traditional allies. Jordan and Egypt are willing, but weak. The pro-Western leaders of the Gulf all fear following the Shah of Iran to defeat at the hands of a popular rising. Israel has become more an expensive hability than a support for the USA. Reagan is eager to win new friends who can help to keep him out of the Middle Eastern quagmire. The hostage crisis has been resolved by diplomatic means. But Arab resistance will continue. Both Assad and Shiite leader Nabih Berri showed their capacity to act as hitmen for Western imperialism when they authorised the butchery of 600 Palestinian freedom fighters and refugees in the Beirut camps last month. The masses of the Middle East will continue to pay the price in blood as long as they have leaders whose real aim is to win recognition from Western imperialism, not to fight it. Sabena Norton

REVIEW Sjunius

ANIMAL RIGHTS

It's them or us Keith Thomas, Man and the natural world: changing attitudes in England 1500 - 1800, Penguin, £4.95 Peter Singer ed, In defence of animals, Basil Blackwell. $4.95 As a historian, Keith Thomas recognises that the ascendancy of man over the animal and vegetable world is a precondition of human history. In Man and the natural world he documents the changing attitude of man to his relationship with nature auring une penoa rom the midale ages to the industrial revolution. At the beginning of the period the views of biblical scripture, endorsed by mediaeval theology, prevailed.

God created the world natural order under man's the dominion. "The brute creation are his property, subservient to his will, and for him made.'

By 1800 science had increasingly revealed that man was a part of the natural world, not a totally separate form of life. Thomas shows that a growing number of educated minds began to find tne nodon ol mans absolute ascendancy over It did not nature increasingly unacceptable.

correspond to their rational outlook and it was abhorrent to their moral and aesthetic sensibilities.

They developed the concern with the treatment of amais and me waer nawura environment wnica persists tocay. Inomas provides a wide ranging and penetrating survey of the development of man's views on nature. Yet he tends to explain changing attitudes solely as the result of evolving ideas. He never

FILM

Tom Bell and Kika Markham In The Innocent Romantic depression John MacKenzie (director), The innocent Set in the Yorkshire dales in the thirties, The innocent is All creatures great and small with a social conscience. It is a perfect film for romantic radicals, evoking rather than addressing problems of mass unemplovment. the effects of the First World War, the perils of puberty, and mental 1llness. In The innocent, everything is seen through the eyes or te central character tim (Andrew Flawiey).

Tim is a withdrawn adolescent, perplexed by the Iclanonsno berween nis molner, latner and a mysterious former officer. Because he is 'not all satisfactorily explains why these ideas emerged and how they changed. Thomas' book covers the period of the transition from feudal society to the era of modern capitalist industry. It was the era in which the manufacturers and merchants and They seized control of

SOCICLV

challenged the old landowning ruling class under une sane ormc acnocauc acuares or locuy.

equality and the rights of man. The individualistic outlook of the emerging bourgeoisie extended to its attitude to animals. For some philosophers the notion of the rights of man was lounded on man's capacıtv te experience pain and pleasure. As animals were evidently capable of similar responses, they too were entitled to recognition and respect individuals. Thomas quotes the British philosopher and economist Jeremy Bentham, who proclaimed the defence of animal rights in 1789 The day may come when the rest of animal creation may acquire those rights which only human tyranny has withheld from them". In a society characterised by tyranny and exploitation, Bentham projected his concern about oppression on to amas. Bourgeois society was formally committed to the equal rights of man. But the system on which it was based - capitalist production - demanded the exploitation of one class by another. The rising capitalist did not allow moral scruples to inhibit his quest for profit. But his bad conscience was expressed in a new concern for the welfare of animas. as var observea memberso or une Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals exploitation of was compatible with ruthless human beings. Capitalists could afford to indulge there' he is isolated from other boys his age. His only comfort is watching a kingfisher fly upstream every dav. Predictablv the kinetisher dies. the victim of a malicious prank directed at Tim.

Mackenzie confronts Tim with secret affairs, sexual yearning. wite-beating and adolescent When things get too much for him. he runs away, coughs. splutters and has a tit Like Tim, Mackenzie too finds the problems he history book images of the thirties. His vision is all flat caps, pints of bitter and idle youths lying on grassy slopes overlooking the industrial town or stripping down for a game of football.

Social realities rarely intrude.

The innocent tries to capitalise on the 'thirtieseighties times are hard again' market. But the romanticised view of working class life retailed in The innocent bears no relation to the reality either of the thirties or today.

Ed Branigan in sentimental concern for animals' welfare since animals were less and less used in production. In defence of animals is a collection of essays by people concerned about animal rights today.

Their case for animal rights is based on the same contention as the old bourgeois philosophers that men and animals have the same basic interests.

Both want to avoid pain and live as long as the can. They too believe that animals should enjoy the same rights as men. But are the interests of animals and man the same? Man is part of nature, but, unlike all animals, he is also capable of standing apart from • nature to change the environment within which numan society can develop.

Es is se basis or civilisation that human marks ll ollas qualitative evolutionary advance on the natural world. Man can oppose his force to that of nature in order to master it. Marx wrote that men began "to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence'.

The capacity for the conscious application of labour to control nature and develop society distinguishes men from animals.

The concept of animal rights is an absurdity.

The equation of human and animal rights implies a devaluation of the very concepts of humanity and human society. Supporters of animal rights seek to free a part of nature from man's control.

They aim to prevent human society from taking ¡un devantage ol tne natura wore to ennance une potential of human society. Whether they aim to do tnis by parlamentary or direct acuon metnoos the goal is antithetical to the objective of the working class - the maximum possible develop.

ment of human society. Liz Groves

POLITICAL FICTION

Powerless Brian Sedgemore, Power failure, Quartet, £7.95 You would have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at the tragic finale of Brian Sedgemore's second novel. The resignation of a humiliated energy secretary Bob Misson (Tony Benn) on the eve of a national miners" strike; the desolation of Labour prime minister Roy Pennington (Neil Kinnock) facing the imminent collapse of his government; and the death of George Mortimer (Brian Sedgemore) in a car crash in Wales, all come as welcome moments of light relief at the conclusion of this turgid exploration of the gibbering paranoid hallucinations of the left wing of the Labour Party: Sedgemore, currently Labour MP for Shore ditch, aims to give the reader an insight into the reality of power. He fails. What he achieves is an exposure of ine cynicism, nypocrisy, senumental ity and oportunism which Sedgemore takes as the defining virtues of himself and his colleagues Power failure rips along in the language of someone writing instructions for laying cement The plot — terrorist Greens destabilising a future Labour government — is absurd. The characterisation is about as convincing as Neil Kinnock promising socialism. And the descriptive passages sparkle like a three-week old shopping list.

Sedgemore's descriptions of sex between Mortimer and first his wife Margaret and then his girlfriend Glenys really stand out. He expresses the kind of passion most people reserve for choosing between tinned carrots and tinned peas at the supermarket.

If Power failure has a it is that message Sedgemore is still on the make. His description of the Labour leader Roy Pennington from the valleys* is a self-serving fantasy. Pennington can *paralyse his opponents with fear" of his 'stinging invective, so that they would have preferred a physical beating to the verbal lashing which they got. This should ingratiate Sedgemore with a Labour leader whose oratory is widely known to be as stimulating as an overdose of valium publications The Irish Freedom Movement

IRISH

handbook the

WAR

E2.95 plus 85p p&p The second, updated and extended, edition of the Irish Freedom Movement handbook.

*Clear-eyed and, level-voiced arguments supplemented by an exceptionally useful guide Time Out All publications from BCM JPLTD, London WCIN 3XX. Cheques payable to Junius Publications Ltd; five or more items post free.

A handbook for trade unionist

TAKING

Mike Freeman

CONTROL

£2.95 plus 85p p&p

THE

ROOTS

RACISM

OF £1.95 plus 40p p&p

TRACISM

Theminer hch Our day will come 50p plus 30p p&p

TRANSITAN

Moral panics £1.50 plus and 30p p&p Victorian values the next step 5 July 1985 0 9

LETTER SSTEPPING

Gay pride Last Saturday's gay pride march was the biggest I can remember. We all had a good time. But it had nothing to do with fighting for gay rights. If you looked up you could see a zeppelin balloon bearing the legend Hippodrome is proud to announce that it is gay on Mondays'. The whole of the march, and the week of events leading up to it, was dominated by the commercial gay scene.

Gay pride week was an opportunity to highlight the attacks on gay rights that have happened over the past year hysteria, police raids on gay pubs, the trial of Word bookshop Gay's the directors. But the organisers of the parade had to assure the proprietors of the gay scene that there would be no politics.

The organisers even dropped lesbian and gay from the official march title and from publicity and badges. They abandoned the fight for gay rights in favour promotional party for the pink economy.

John Johnson North London Don't trust tribunals! Last week in Leeds an industrial tribunal decided that Alan Scott, a Nupe shop steward, deserved to be sacked as a caretaker with Calderdale council. His "crime' was collecting for his brothers in the NUM in the run-up to last Christmas. Alan denied taking unauthorised time off his work and said the council's accusations, which he accept, would only have meant he had been paid £4.41 in wages to which he was not entitled. With treatment like this being doled out to sympathisers of the miners' strike what can sacked miners expect when they come before these tribunals? Yet NUM officials are still coming to branch meetings and telling us that sacked men will get a fair deal when they come before the tribunals. They should tell that to Alan Scott! Terry Anderson Yorkshire Look back in anger The miners have been back at work for three and a half months now. "Was it worth it?, 'should we trust the unions again?' are the questions I've been asking myself.

The strike started by dividing us from day one. We forgot the first principle: united we stand, divided we fall. As long as the rank and file kept control up until the fifth week we had momentum and were always on the offensive. When the area leaders took control that was the start of the rot. They sat on their backsides telling us how to picket. They took control to organise, but they failed to organise properly. The lights stayed on after the promises of power cuts. The union failed 10 O the next step • 5 July 1985 to keep the loyalty of the members and distanced itself from comrades who took the fight as far as possible.

The men became disillusioned with the union and the drift back started. Scargill came on telly to tell us that nobody was going back. But we live in communities and we knew men were going back. So Scargill started to tell us lies and tried to make "The everyone a scapegoat. The alca themselves up as cowards when it came to picketing. They never came to picket lines to give moral support. When they did come they spent more time shaking hands with the police and helping them organise to let coal Aids or scabs go in. I witnessed the police beat up a miner while the chairman of our lodge kept staff and shaking hands with the police.

At present we have man against man, pit against pit and area against area. The area leadership's bureaucratic approach is to leave well alone when they should be uniting the membership. the final believe responsibility for defending our lives, our ola freedom, our jobs, our communities and our hopes for a socialist world lie in our hands.

Please send me five copies of Our day will come, see you at Preparing for Power.

Paul Williams Disillusioned NUM member South Wales didn't

TOUCHE

PAS

A MON

POTE

Badges against racism If you were told that the French state was helping to finance a massive anti-racist rock concert in the heart of Paris — a sort of Woodstock-on-Seine probably conclude either that Mitterrand and his cronies had taken leave of their senses or that there was something very phoney about SOS Racisme, which was organising the event.

SOS

Racisme is a distinguishing feature is the sale of a badge - an arresting hand with the inscription 'touche pas a mon pote' ('hands off my mate'). This badge does not represent an anti-racist campaign fought on concrete issues. Instead the badge is the campaign. If, for instance, a racist murder is committed in sundry, garlic if a vampire were loose.

right-wing parties coercion of immigrant workers.

by the recession. loyalties if it is to be effective.

Louis Dufoix Paris and lodge leaders showed the GLC? it seems a contradiction prepared to democracy. analysis and revolutionary communists achieve by standing in elections?

Caroline Russell London N16 own understanding of the issue.

politicians' Labour disrupted by the changeover).

propaganda on this question.

campaign. Vaughan Leslie Todmorden you would the group whose campaign

BCM JPLTD

some town, SOS Racisme descends en masse and sets about selling the badge to all and in the way one might distribute This anti-racist shadow-boxing is well suited to the needs of the liberal bourgeois establishment and more particularly to the French Socialist Party. At a time when the socialist government is pursuing economic policies that represent the untrammelled demands of capital it is useful to have a bandwagon that can distinguish it from the without in anv way compromising the authority of the French state. SOS Racisme obliges by focusing antiracist sentiment on Jean-Marie Le Pen and his Front Nationale while the French state is left to get on quietly with the day-to-day SOS Racisme and similar organisations seek to ensure the political loyalty of the immigrant communities to the French state even at a time when they are being hit hard A genuine anti-racist movement in the future will therefore have to take up the broader question of political Why stand for I have read tns for several weeks and I really like your approach to issues like racism and Ireland. But last week I discovered that you are standing a candidate in the Vauxhall byelection. After weeks of explaining why the state, run by either Tories or Labour, can't fight racism or get the troops out of Ireland, that you are participate in British state what Could you explain are wyngto ceiling, I can't square Jean Smith's statement (in ths 9) that the RCP opposes the abolition of the GLC, with comments in tns 11 and with my The Tories are abolishing one form of bourgeois local democracy and replacing it with another. No disenfranchisement of the working class is involved (although some bedrooms. might be

CO COS

The Labour Party is making an issue of the supposed attack on democracy because it won't stand up and resist real attacks on democratic rights, jobs, services etc.

But why does the RCP go along with this 'Defend local democracy' bandwagon? If as you say 'people in Vauxhall know that local democracy is an even bigger sham than parliamentary democracy', then the Labour Party would not find it possible to raise the bogey of Tory attacks on democracy, to obscure Labour's cooperation in attacks on workers. Unfortunately, many active wor- Party kers have succumbed to Labour It is better in my view for revolutionaries to dissociate themselves from the Labour campaign against abolition - and expose it for the fig leaf it is. Best wishes in the election Write to London WCIN 3XX

OUT

If I didn't know that nice commander Crawshaw from the Special Branch better, I'd think the whole 'IRA seaside blitz' carry-on was dreamt up by some bright spark at the Yard. There have certainly been some fishy goings on in Great Yarmouth - home of the kipper' and "merely a sprat in the shoal of Britain's holiday resorts' as Paul Callan, the Oscar Wilde of the Mirror, put it this week.

Norfolk police have been stuffing local letter boxes with a leaflet which reminds people that 'A bomb does not look like a bomb'. So remember, don't touch anything at all in a Great Yarmouth hotel. Not that you'd want to without gloves on anyway.

Dozens of tiepins and cuff-links have apparently turned up in the grubby corners of local bed and breakfast joints, cleaned this week for 'the first time in years'. The dirty war rages on. Meanwhile the Palm Court Hotel in Torquay, home of Fawlty Towers, was evacuated after a receptionist claimed to have recognised a recent visitor among police 'IRA suspect photos. Twenty-year old Rachel Walling said, 'I wasn't sure if she had been a resident, as I saw her in the ladies' toilet'. The evacuation which followed the terrorist in the toilet scandal clearly wrecked the lives of countless Palm Court residents. Hotel chef Roy Kennedy admitted under pressure from reporters that 'we served dinner a bit earlier than usual.

Will the terrorists stop at nothing?

The Palm Court saga, part two. The Army bomb disposal unit who took apart the room where the bomb was supposed to be certainly enjoyed themselves. The two tourists ousted from their holiday home explained that, 'Strips of wallpaper have been torn from the the carpet pulled up, cupboards removed and a hole dug down in the floor of the wardrobe. Everybody got very excited and said this was 'evidence' that there really was a bomb there. I can't think why. Any Irish family from West Belfast or Derry's Bogside will tell you that's how British soldiers always behave when they get into other people's Final word on the 'terror blitz' goes to Don Haigh who, wearing his anorak and using his wife Doreen as a shield against the wind, spoke to the Mirror's Callan on the beach at Great Yarmouth. I'm more annoyed about the bad weather than the bloody IRA, chirped Don. Never mind.

Don. You could always join the pensioners up at the Shadingfield Hotel, who spent the night singing round after round of Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag'. Only watch where you tap your feet. Remember, in 'the home of the kipper", 'a bomb does not look like a bomb'. I'm sure former left-wing Labour MP and current anti-communist columnist Woodrow Wyatt speaks for us all when he says that *the left-wing bias of the BBC is fast becoming a national disgrace. But concerned readers will be relieved to hear that sanity prevails over at much-maligned Channel 4. Their Asian magazine, Eastern Eye, is mounting a concerted challenge to Shaw Taylor of ITV's Police Five for the mantle of TV's top crime fighter. This week's edition hunted down abortion clinics which arrange operations for Asian women without 'reasonable social justification'. Of course, TV programmes can only point the finger. It is up to the guardians of British justice and democracy to decide the consequences. Eastern Eye has thus decided to send all relevant details, including patients" names, to that well-known champion of Asian women's rights, health minister Kenneth 'Bongo-Bongo Land' Clarke. Any further information is welcomed by the Channel 4 champions of justice. So as slimy Shaw Taylor would say, "Keep 'em peeled.

REPORTS

Boycott Golden Wonder Last Saturday RP supporters in Coventry organised a blockade outside Tesco and other large supermarkets.

We asked local shoppers not to buy Golden Wonder crisps, peanuts and other products in solidarity with a national strike by workers at Golden Wonder factories. Workers at Widnes, Corby, Roxforth and Long Buckby have been out on strike in support of a 12.5 per cent wage rise since the end of May. Bill, who has worked at the Long Buckby factory for 10 years, told us that the strike was three years too late: •We've had to put up with rubbish pay and working conditions for years now, but it's one factory played against always been another'. Now Bill has got a national strike he wants to make sure that the action is effective. Management has already organised to get its products turned out at firms like Riley's in Lincoln. Bill's boss is paying scabs £6.50 an hour and putting them up in Coventry Arshad Aslam and what remained of her home after racists called *This place is like a prison to me. I live in fear of my life and spend all day wondering when the next attack will come. Arshad Aslam from Walthamstow, east London, had her house burnt down by racists. They took a dustbin, filled it with paper, put a match to it and set the house on fire. Arshad, her husband Mohammed and their three-month old daughter were lucky to escape with their lives. But, like thousands of black families, the Aslams feel that there is no real escape in a society that makes racism respectable.

Today the Aslams live in Hollydown Way, an estate in Leytonstone notorious for racist attacks. The Hussein family, living a few yards away, also had their flat burnt by racists. The local council seems indifferent to the problems facing black people and the police just do not want to know. The biggest fear, explains Arshad, is knowing that you are completely alone: "The council's not on our side, the police are not on our side. If we want something done we have to do it ourselves." East London Workers Against Racism Free abortion on demand! Last week revolutionary communists brought a meeting of Huddersfield health authority to an abrupt conclusion when they protested at the low level of NHS abortions in the district. Protest organiser Fiona Ryan was frog-marched from the room by a hired bouncer when she demanded to know why the health authority had not abortion facilities in the area for three years.

Huddersfield is a blackspot for women seeking free and safe abortions. A survey carried out by RCP supporters in the run-up to last week's meeting revealed that local women are angry that they have to suffer unwanted pregnancies thanks to the antiabortion prejudices of Huddersfield's three consultant gynaecologists and local doctors.

528 abortions carried Huddersfield in 1983 (the latest available figures) only 35 were performed on the health service. This eight per cent compares badly with other areas in England and Wales where the figure is nearly 50 percent.

Our investigations proved that the only hotels. In Corby the employers have been coax them back to work. The strikers are not yet so well organised. Most are getting £35 fortnightly strike pay, Roxforth report that they have not yet had any. The main concern of most strikers, however, is that blacking action has not been organised on any systematic basis.

Bill says that there is too much at stake to hold back. In the past every wage rise has meant workers" productivity and manning levels in return lor a pittance, The women who make ur most of the workforce have to work at top speed without a break for poor wages. Shop steward Dore Griffiths says that the women are determined to make sure that the first strike in Golden Wonder's 20-year history succeeds. Coventry secondary action to black Golden Wonder products to prove Dore right.

Racism: let's get organised haselong argued that the fight against racism is in the hands of ordinary people. There will not be any escape for families like the Aslams until workers take sides with black people against the establishment's attempts to divide us. The only answer to racist violence is organised defence by class people. This Monday meeting in East Ham to discuss how best to organise against the racists. Be there!

01-729 3771 Deadline for news and reports: explanation for the low level abortions in Huddersfield abortion stance ot the profession. Huddersfield Royal Infirmary, Benster, Feeney and Jackson, are fervent anti-abortionists. Benster is known to have discussed performed one NHS abortion three years ago, nobody can remember when Jackson's last performance was and Feeney is reported to sacrifice his Catholic principles when the financial reward makes Women in Huddersfield are stuck with this team because the person largely responsible for appointing consultants in the area is Leeds University pro-life professor Scott.

RCP supporters and in campaigners in out enough of local bigots dictating how women should run their lives. campaigning on the streets for women's rights and we will keep disrupting health authority meetings until we win the fight for free abortion on demand. tougn workers al

AK OUT

making concessions on Terrorism Act! RCP is organising Brighton. Jo Cartwright Other events Racists off the streets! Monday 8 July 7.30pm East Ham Town Hall High Street E6 (East Ham tube) Do animals have rights?

RCP

Thursday 18 July 7.30pm Springfield Pub Springfield Road, Brighton what it means for women Glasgow Saturday 6 July 10am-5pm Partick Burgh Hall How to beat the Torles working ELWAR is eighties Manchester Thursday 11 July 7.30pm Black Lion Kenan Malik Chapel Street Liverpool Friday 12 July 7.30pm AUEW Hall Mount Pleasant Who are the real terrorists?

Monday 9am Edinburgh Wednesday 10 July 7.30pm Trades Council Picardy Place of free local medical The three consultants based at Messr. £19 in Britain or Ireland it worthwhile. Cheques/POs payable to women's rights Name Huddersfield have had Address We will carry on Tel Lesley Woods Come along! was alsolidarity Smash the Prevention of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad has been Leeds busy this week trying to convince the British public that the IRA poses a mortal threat to the great British holiday. The establishment's seaside scare stories provided the pretext for raids on the Irish community from Glasgow to The Revolutionary Communist Party has Sheffield also been busy this week organising police station pickets and street protests to counter the anti-Irish hysteria promoted by press and politicians. The Tories hope to use the current East London Workers Against Racism meeting on fighting back against the racists and planning pracuca acon against altacks Brighton Animal Rights Group debates the Moral panics and women's rights Dayschool to discuss the new morality and Frank Richards outlines a strategy for the Take LinSregularly Get tns every week for a year Junius Publications Ltd, BCM JPLTD, London WIN 3XX For full subscription rates see page 2 anti-terrorist climate to their own propaganda advantage. But we can turn the situation to our advantage if we can cut through all the cant and put the case for Irish freedom Over the next month the RCP will be working all-out to build the Irish Freedom • Movement demonstration against British terror in Ireland (see page 2). We will also be mobilising opposition to the harassment and intimidation of Irish people in Britain under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. Come to the meetings and get out on the streets to build support for the demonstration!

Western terrorists out!, Who are the real international terrorists?

Forum on the imperialists' bloodbaths in Ireland, Lebanon and Central America Saturday 6 July 1pm-6pm Swarthmore Centre wooenouse solare Irish blood on British hands Meeting on British terror in Ireland Friday 5 July 7.30pm The Mailcoach West Street Vote RCP In Vauxhall! With less than a week to go before polling day RCP candidate Jean Smith is getting out and about in Vauxhall. Come to the meeting and comc our canvassily Belfast to Beirut - stop the Tory terrorists! Public rally with RCP candidate Jean Smith and Mick Hume, author of the Irish Freedom Movement handbook The Irish War Thursday 4 July 7.30pm Flaxman Sports Centre Carew Street. London SES Mass street canvass Come out and help us put the case fo revolutionary communism Saturday 6 July 11.30am Stockwell tube Become a Revolutionary Communist Party supporter If you like what you've read in ins become an RCP supporter. We meet weekly to discuss the issues in the paper and to plan action in the local area. none renna on 0i-/29 0414 OT write to BM RCP, London WIN 3XX, or talk to tns sellers in your area.

the next step 5 July 1985 0 11

tnS

FOR

entertainment organised by the Revolutionary Communist Party London Union, Malet Street, WCI Reagan's death squads in El Salvador. The working class. Preparing for Power is for everybody who wants to know what it takes to make a revolution in Britain. We will be looking at the key questions of the moment in fullscale plenary discussions, 13 specialist courses, high-powered debates and hundreds of smaller, more informal workshops. In the evenings there will be lighter plenaries and entertainment — music, films, dance. Don't miss the most exciting event of the summer.

Take a look at what's on offer and send off the registration form below.

Special courses • Religion and the decline of capitalism • Introduction to Marxism • The rise and fall of Labourism • The West and the South • The Britishness of British politics • Introduction to Marxist economics • Leninism: the politics of liberation • The Russian Revolution Marxism for non-beginners • The roots of racism • Women: their morals and ours • An anti-imperialist's guide to the Irish War • The West and the Eastern bloc Debates and discussions • Where is the British left going? Labour's John McDonnell, the Communist Party's Dave Cook and the RCP's Kate Marshall air their differences • Do animals have rights? The Animal Liberation Front vs the RCP • Moral panics under Thatcher: Kate Marshall and Mick Hume on Millwall fans and other deviants • Any questions? Ask our panel anything you ever wanted to know about revolutionary communism

PREPARING

WER

A week of meetings, discussions, debates and Friday 19 July - Friday 26 July, University of Power is the issue of the eighties. Power was at the centre of the battle between the coal board and the miners. Power inspires Shite suicide raids and Revolutionary Communist Party's week-long summer school is about power and how we can win it for the • Rupert Murdoch vs Marxism Today: tns writers look at the left press • After the miners' strike: a round table Issues • World Wars Two - and Three? Phil Murphy and James Wood draw the lessons of Belsen and Stalingrad for 1985 • Thatcher's targets: Ann Burton surveys Clive Ponting, picket-line militants, surrogate mothers and all the other people who get up Thatcher's nose • The Arab revolution: Inez Landa and Daniel Nassim look at the spiral of conflict in the Middle East • British working class culture: Frank Richards asks have we got one?

• The left in continental Europe: Sabena Norton surveys the left from Portugal to Papandreou • Kinnock and Hattersley, Skinner and Scargill, Healey and Benn: Cathy Barrett assesses the career prospects of today's • The banana skin factor: Rob Knight looks at the splits in the ruling class and the debates in the Tory party Entertainment • Saturday night dancing: live band Easterhouse, late bar and disco • Every night at the movies: films include I married a communist, Sam Fuller's Pickup on South Street, Gillo Pontecorvo's Quetmadal, Bruce Beresford's Breaker Morant, Fritz Lang's M, Alfred Hitchcock's The thirty-nine steps • Evening cabaret and comedy with surprise guests • Friday night boat trip down the Thames with food, drink and dancing Russell Osborne (reflex) makes it so special.

PPRSFPARING

Conference organiser Ann Burton took five minutes off work to talk to tns about who's coming to Preparing for Power and what *At the last count more than 650 people had registered for the conference and there's still more than two weeks to go.

This will be my fourth Preparing for Power conference and it looks like it's going to be the biggest and best yet. My biggest headache at the moment is sorting out accommodation for everybody.

I remember I was really impressed at the first conference I went to. I think it's the best way to find out what the RCP is all about. Preparing for Power is the opportunity to ask us whatever you want to know about any political question.

Whatever topic you want to know about we'll have our experts there on the day.

*Preparing for Power is different! Most left-wing conferences tend to be pretty academic, dry and dull. Ours isn't like that at all. The whole event is geared to getting the party into shape to prepare for power so all the sessions have some practical conclusion even though they are pitched at quite a high intellectual level.

*This year there's been a real change in the sort of people who are coming along.

In the past the conference has mainly attracted young radicals, trade union militants and students. This year there's a much wider cross-section of people. We've got miners and their families, trade unionists, intellectuals and lots of young

SWER

people. I think the conference will have a different feel to it. *Preparing for Power is open to anybody interested in politics and how to build a revolution in Britain. We're not interested in academics who want to discuss the meaning of meaning. We want people who want to find out how the world works so that they can change it Anybody reading the paper who hasn't made up their mind whether to come should act now and fill in the registration form. I guarantee that you'll learn a lot and enjoy yourself." Preparing for Power costs £15 if you're working and f12 if you're not. We will provide you with transport and accommodation, a creche, a swimming pool and a jacuzzi. Make cheques payable to RCP Association and send to BM RCP, London WIN 3XX Register now! Name Adores. Telephone Accommodation? Transport? reche