The Next Step: No. 17, 16 August 1985

REVOLUTION

tms the nextstep Revolutionary Communist Party weekly • 16 August 1985 • 30p -it could happen here (To find out how, turn to page 6) The left - what price unity? p5 Race rows hit Labour councils p4 We review banned IRA film p3 Uganda disintegrates p8 17

Revolutionary Communist Party weekly • 16 August 1985 • No 17 The declaration of the results of the ballot on the political levy in the electricians' union this week is expected to bring to 10 the number of unions voting to retain their poltical lunds. These results are causing the Tories some concern, as the Labour Party celebrates successes that appeared beyond its reach only nine months ago when the new Trade Union Act became law. But are these victories for the Labour Party? The answer is — yes and no. The results do reflect a significant anti-Tory swing among trade union members since the 1983 general election. Then only 39 per cent of trade unionists voted Labour, and Labour's support among white collar and skilled workers was even lower. The fact that the white collar union Apex voted by 73 per cent to 27 per cent to retain the political fund is particularly significant in a union in which 31 percent of members already contract out of the levy. The engineers five to one 'yes' vote is also significant since the defection of skilled workers was a key factor in Labour's defeats in both 1979 and 1983. The results confirm opinion poll evidence of mounting dissatisfaction with the Tories. They also suggest that the many of Labour's lost response of supporters to five years of Thatcher is to return to the Labour fold.

On the other hand, given the character of the union campaigns to save the political levy, a vote for the political fund cannot be equated with a vote for the Labour Party.

original objective was to theories widen the gulf between the unions and politics, rather than to bankrupt Labour Party, they too can claim some success from the ballots. At the outset of the campaign the union leaders recognised the lack of enthusiasm for the Labour Party members. among response was to downplay the Labour Party. connecuon in mel propagande around the ballots. "Threatened traditions' A specially established union Lcall. formally independent of both the Labour Party and the TUC, coordinates the whole operation. Its propaganda makes out that the issues in the ballots are the rights of unions to conduct campaigns, to affiliate to bodies like CND, or to lobby parliament.

Publicity material implies that the traditions of British parliamentary democracy are threatened if the unions' political funds are lost. As we have shown in past issues of tus this is nonsense; under the Act, the only issue in the ballots is funding for a political party, in practice for the Labour Party.

Last week's claim by engineers leader Gavin Laird that his union 'emphasised the close links between the AUEW and the Labour Party' is disingenuous. coordinated union campaign operates at two distinct levels. It issues propaganda for activists and propaganda for ordinary union members. It issues separate pamphlets, leaflets and even videos aimed at these different target audiences. For the activists the Labour connection is emphasised their commitment to the Labour Party can be taken for granted. For the ordinary members, the workers whose support for is in doubt, propaganda

SHOES

emphasises *the right to a voice in parliament and keeps very quiet about the Labour Party. Laird refers to the June special edition Publisher Revolutionary Communist Party, BM RCP, London WCIN 3XX ® copyright Printer Morning Litho Printers Ltd (TU). 439 North Woolwich Road. London E16 America, Asia and Southern Africa £27 • Australasia £32 • Libraries, institutions £30 Aul cacques payable to jumus ruoncations LEd.

2 O the next step • 16 August 1985 Victories on the political levy?

of the union journal which featured the political levy issue and highlighted the union's commitment to the Labour Party.

It is no secret that the AUEW journal, packed as it is with detailed accounts of the daily activities of the union's divisional organisers and turgid articles by senior bureaucrats and Labour politicians, does vast readershir enjoy ordinary union members. It falls into the category of propaganda for the activists.

It is significant that the part of the journal most likely to be seen by a rank and file engineer - its front cover — carries the headline The right to opposition cost this country a lot - don't throw it away.

Behind an image of a modern engineering worker stand Aneurin Bevan, the post-war hero of the Labour left, and Winston Churchill, former Tory Far from highlighting the links with the

ALEW

Labour Party, the highlighted the official labour movement's calculated identification of the political levy with a commitment to British patriotic traditions. It showed the union leaders' readiness to redefine the political objectives of the unions in terms that would be acceptable to any Tory. Break the links The labour bureaucrats' low-life propaganda may have won them some victories over the Tories in terms of safeguarding Labour's supplies of union money. But as long as the union leaders are campaigning to reinforce workers identification with the traditions and institutions of British the democracy, the Tories have performed a considerable service for the establishment.

In the short term the machine may be strengthened. But the Tories have succeeded in pushing the Their labour movement further to the right and in further depoliticising the working class.

The course of the political levy ballots so far confirms the need to step up the campaign to expose the union leaders cynical strategy. Our aim is to win wider support among trade unionists for breaking the link with the Labour Party and setting up an independent political fund to be used according to workers' requirements. The new programme issued by the abour Party and the TUC last week confirms Labour's pragmatic commitment to run- British capitalism. The attachment to this programme restricts the scope of independent action to defend workers' interests now. elected on this government was ever platform the unions would be tied to an even more catastrophic version of the last government's social contract. 32001 Indeed the capacity to deliver trade union acquiescence to austerity measures is one of Kinnock's electoral trump cards.

The Paying the political levy to the Labour Party is not just a waste of money. It perpetuates a paralysing division of labour between the unions and the Labour Party.

It depoliticises the unions and allows the Labour leadership to impose its middle class political outlook on the working class movement. This is the exact opposite of what we need. We need politicised trade unions and a party that fights unequivocally on the side of the working class. Breaking the links between the unions and Labour is a crucial step in advancing the cause of the working class. Annua suoscription rules o butain and Ireland ty • europe 124 • Middle cast and Norta Airca +z Circulation 01-729 3771. Newsdesk 01-729 3771. Correspondence to The Editor, the next step, BCM JPLTD, London WCIN 3XX. ISSN 0144 350 X 16 August 1985. Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office along prime minister. campaign past 16 years of the Irish War.

Labour Party Constabulary patrol. guerrilla armv. unions' Charles English If a Labour ordinary 21-year extraordinary Corner, commemorate the Republican soldier killed in Derry Death of an Irish freedom fighter The appearance of banned Noraid spokesman Martin Galvin in Derry last Friday hit the headlines as a one-off event. But the occasion at which Galvin appeared — the funeral of an IRA volunteer killed in action — is a tragic event that has become all too familiar to the Brown nationalist people in Northern Ireland over the The IRA volunteer whose coffin Galvin and Martin McGuinness carried for the cameras was 2l-year old Charles English from the fiercely republican Bogside district of Derry. He died near his home three days earlier, when his rocket launcher blew up in his face during an attack on a Royal Ulster Charles English was typical of the Irish men and women who take up arms against the Crown forces in Northern Ireland. He was young, working class and popular. He was known as a gamesman locally because of his sporting prowess. He was a young man who, in a different time and place, would have had everything to live for. Yet he was prepared to risk his life as part of a small often using home-made weapons to fight against the 30 000 gunmen of the sophisticated British war machine.

might have been an old, in but heaved extraordinary freedom. times in an place. The experience of living under the British heel in the occupied six counties of Charles Northern Ireland taught him that he had no choice but to fight, if he and his people were to achieve the basic rights and freedoms which people in Britain take for granted.

Charles English died near Free Derry almost in the shadow of the Rossville flats. When he was five-years old, in August 1969, the boys of the Bogside not much older than him stood on top of those and rained down petrol bombs to protect their community from rampaging women Loyalist mobs led by the Royal Ulster Constabulary. That anti-Irish pogrom had been sparked off by a peaceful movement demanding civil rights for Irish people. It taught Charles English's neighbours that peaceful protest would get them nowhere.

Charles English died within a stone's throw of the Bloody Sunday memorial, erected by the people of the Bogside to 14 Irishmen gunned down in cold blood by the terrorists of the British paratroop regiment in January 1972 when he was still a young boy. The massacre of the unarmed marchers united the Bogside as one behind its defenders in the IRA.

Charles English's own family has suffered more than its share of grief at the hands of the British forces terrorising their community. In April 1981 his elder brother Gary, aged 19, was on the streets of Derry when local youths took on the RUC in support of the republican hunger-strikers who were demanding the right to be recognised as prisoners of war. He was not involved in the fighting. As Gary English and his friend Jim

RUC

(8) crossed the road an landrover hurtled towards a group 01 rioters. The Loyalist police didn't let a little thing like two young Irishmen stop their charge. The landrover mowed them down, then reversed over Gary English, tearing his body horribly and killing both. The killers in Crown uniforms were released by a British court on a charge of 'careless driving'.

After Gary English's killing the boys father, Michael, became a leading member of Silent Too Long, an organisation uniting the relatives of more than 600 Irish victims of British/Loyalist terror since 1969. He toured Britain with the Irish Freedom Movement, to get the reality of life in Northern Ireland across to British people The suffering endured by his family and friends at the hands of the British forces explains why Charles English joined the IRA, and why he was crouched behind a wall with a rocket-launcher last week; to strike back at the British terrorists who have brought death and destruction to Ireland. He died standing up to the British gunmen and fighting for his Hundreds of Bogsiders walked behind English's coffin and wept at his graveside on Friday, in recognition of the fact that the armed men and women who live and fight in their streets are their only defence against British terror. The people of areas like the Bogside remain solid in their support for the Irish liberation struggle and their opposition to every aspect of British law and order in Ireland. They refused to let police or troops close enough to the funeral to arrest Galvin. The sight of eight Irish arms linked across the road holding back 40 armoured RUC landrovers summed up the spirit of the Irish people in the wake of Charles English's death.

The English family is one of many that has been torn apart by the British occupation.

Michael English's sons would still be alive today if Ireland was free, united and at peace. Our job in Britain is to support th Irish people in their struggle to bring that situation about. For now, the death of an IRA volunteer is a cause of celebration for the British authorities. We want to make it a tragedy that will strike terror into their hearts, by building a movement that can bring British workers on to the streets demanding revenge every time an Irish man or woman falls victim to the British killing machine at work on Irish soil.

Mick Hume

TRISH FREEDOM MOVEMENT MARCHES AGAINST BRITISH TERROR, LONDON, SATURDAY 10 AUGUST The continuing row over the dropped documentary featuring Irish republican Martin McGuinness has caused a constitutional crisis the

BBC,

and provoked last Wednesday's strike which stopped almost all news broadcasts and put the BBC world service off the air for the first time. But all sides in the argument remain united in wanting the British authorities to win the propaganda war against the IRA.

The government first pres.

rised the BBC governors to scrap the At the edge of the Union documentary about McGuinness as part of the Tories' attempt to counter the propaganda success recently achieved by the Irish republican movement.

The election of Sinn Fein representatives who give public backing to the IRA has proved to the world that the armed struggle for Trish freedom has popular support among nationalists in occupied Northern Ireland. In Britain, this success threatens to undermine the image of Irish freedom fighters as isolated criminals — an image the brush autorites nave calvated to consolidate public approval at home for their war in Ireland. The Tories have tried to re-create antiterrorist hysteria in Britain in order to limit the damage done by the republican victories.

The ban on the McGuinness documentary Is one of many government measures designed to reaffirm the republican movement's The decision of the BBC board of governors go along with home secretary Leon to Brittan's request and drop the programme brought howls of protest against censorship from BBC management, broadcasting unions and the Labour Party. Yet the impression that the Tories have suffered a major setback in provoking such opposition is misleading.

The republican movement has certainly got a lot of publicity out of the government's clumsy handling of the affair. But that is no thanks to the Tories' official critics. While disagreeing with the ban, they all agreed with Brittan on the need to keep the message of Irish freedom out of British politics. The consequence of this is that, despite all their the Tories have won the key blundering, debate on the programme among British public and political figures.

Last Wednesday, the day At the edge of the Union should have been broadcast, Brittan Young met BBC chairman Stuart and Alasdair Milne. Milne director-general emerged blustering that he had regained 'It was a grand march and a great day all round, was how one member of the Rising Sons of Ireland flute band summed up Saturday's Irish Freedom Movement march through south London. Supporters

IRELAND

Tories, Labour, BBC, they're...

control of the BBC from the governors and the government, and that the programme would be shown. In fact Milne had accepted that the documentary should not -be broadcast until after Christmas, and that "amending. -The even then it needed amendments will include more footage of IRA violence, to emphasise McGuinness' supposed 'terrorist' connections, and changes to play down the republican movement's The finished product will electoral success. be just the kind of sanitised, anti-republican piece which the British authorities expect their broadcasters to produce.

The opposition to the ban voiced by the Labour Party leadership has been just as ineffective as BBC management's protests.

Neil Kinnock wrote to Thatcher last week, objecting to the government's interference in BBC affairs. But he added an obligatory patriotic rider to his note. Obviously', declared Kinnock, 'there can be no reasonable person among those who have voiced criticism of these actions who has anything but loathing for terrorism and determination to defeat violence.' The Labour leader's main concern is to improve his credentials as a 'reasonable' British politician who 'obviously hates Irish freedom fighters. His dispute with Thatcher is over the best tactics to be pursued in silencing the republican movement. But having accepted the Tories' starting point, Kinnock cannot offer any effective alternative to the punch-line of their anti-Irish policy. Even the thousands of workers who took industrial action against state censorship last Wednesday were influenced by the narrow outlook of Kinnock and Milne. BBC journalists and technicians who spoke to tns on the picket lines were at pains to point out that the dispute was not about the Tories' attitude to Ireland.

It was simply a protest against government interference at the BBC. Ken Barker, a broadcasting industrial council member for the NUJ at Broadcasting House, summed up the view of the strike •We've avoided the issue of Ireland', he told us, 'in fact we've gone out of our way to put the content of the programme side.

BBC,

with 1000 at one In the journalists, we recognise there are differing political views. What we discussed is the principle." All Barker asked was that the Tories their repressive consistent in attitude to the Irish, and not request the BBC to keep elected representatives off the air. If of Irish freedom from all over Britain marched behind the band from Limavady.

County Derry, on the demonstration which marked the fourteenth anniversary of the introduction of internment without trial in United against the IRA the government had the courage or deter proscribe Sinn Fein there wouldn't be these problems."

The unions' focus on the 'principle' of resisting government pressure cannot protect either their own members or the Irish people from the Tories. The government objected to At the edge of the Union specifically because it gave an unacceptably kind view of the Irish republican movement. As with every past interference ol government Tas ance broadcasting, it was prompted by the crucial issue of the Irish War. By avoiding the question of Ireland, the unions have ignored what the ban was all about. Barker's idea of banning Sinn Fein as a solution to the conflict of principle' draws out the negative consequences of this

REVIEW: AT THE EDGE OF THE UNION

A question of balance It is not surprising that the BBC board of governors stepped in on government instructions to stop the BBC from broadcasting its now notorious documentary on Northern Ireland. Paul Hamman's production of At the (his eighth film edge of the Northern Ireland and, he says, the most depressing'), displays a serious lack of balance in dealing with the Irish War.

The programme depicts Gregory Campbell, a councillor representing lan Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party in Derry, as a cold and austere man consumed by hatred and bigotry for the representatives of the nationalist community. It shows Campbell fondling his government-issue revolver and loading it with bullets before he goes out to a constituency meeting. He seems to relish the prospect of turning his firepower on his political enemies. His speeches seem to consist largely of strident demands for more shoot-to-kill murders by British forces and threats that Loyalists will take matters into their own hands. His house is fortified like a Northern Ireland police barracks and he goes to church in his armoured car with a full military escort. By Martin McGuinness, a Collast, councillor representing Sinn Fein in Derry, appears as a softly spoken and reasonable opponent of the British occupation of Northern Ireland and demanded 'British troops out of Ireland - Irish prisoners out of jail'. At the Brixton rally that followed an Irish Freedom Movement speaker gave the message of the march: Whatever the attitude. It endorses the idea that Irish republicans are criminals, and legitimises the British authorities right to proscribe their opponents - including their right to ban TV programmes that offend the establishment.

The lesson of the ineffective opposition offered to Brittan is that you can't fight Tory bans on Irish republicans if you support the Tory campaign against the republican movement. The only wav to challenge governmen censorship is to uphold the Irish people's right to speak out for their freedom within Britain.

That means dismissing the notion that Irish freedom fighters are British criminals, and battling to silence the real voice that whips up violence and hatred in Ireland - the voice of the British ruling class.

Fiona Foster Ireland. Under pressure he admits with pride to having played his part in active resistance to the occupying forces in his home town in the seventies. But he does not glorify violence, regrets that anybody should lose their life in the course of the war and lays the blame for all the casualties squarely at the door of the British state. On the public platform McGuinness pays tribute to those who have given their lives in the struggle for Irish freedom with a restrained dignity Away from the public eye McGuinness is portrayed as a relaxed and affectionate family man. But things are all upside down! Loyalists may be a bit eccentric but they are supposed to be the upholders of decent democratic values and patriotic principles in Northern Ireland. Republicans, especially ones said to be IRA chief of staff, are supposed to be blood-crazed pyschopaths or least at criminal thugs. The lack of balance in At the edge of the Union does not lie in the production of this programme but in the way in which the Irish War is traditionally depicted on British television screens. Do not adjust your set — the fault is in the reality of the British occupation of Ireland. Don't sink into the producer's depression either his show reveals where the hope for peace lies.

Mick Kennedy backing Brixton Midland SE Marks& Spencer MORL EUS B33 Cureys Late Tories and their BBC lie machine say, the real terrorists in Ireland are the gunmen in British uniforms. the next step • 16 August 1985 • 3

Several recent disputes have highlighted the problem of racial divisions among local government workers and the failure of the devise a strategy for fighting unions to of Labour independently their council employers. Racism was the issue at the centre of two strikes in Islington and Hackney in recent weeks. Both disputes revealed problems that are common to most local council unions.

• The Islington race row began in April when a personnel sub-committee of the council found three workers in the housing department guilty of racial harassment. The sub-committee reprimanded all three, cautioned one and suspended another on Nalgo members voted to take full pay. action against the council's too late, too light' reaction. The union adopted a policy of non-cooperation, demanding that the council should not allow the racists to work public in the neighbourhood with the housing offices. Finally 440 Nalgo workers came out on strike when the council sent one of the racists to do just that.

• The Hackney strike started when the council suspended a white fitter for calling a council courier a "black bastard'. Half the direct labour force walked out in protest.

Union officials demanded solidarity from other council workers on the grounds that management had no right to make arbitrary suspensions and workers had no right to cross union picket lines. The Nalgo black workers' group condemned the strike and called on the council to sack the fitter. The strike crumbled and finally ended when the council's industrial relations panel received a letter from the black courier explaining that he had just returned from holiday, that he had never made a complaint against the fitter and that he did not wish to pursue it, as were commonplace. such arguments Management withdrew the suspension and with the stewards the strike finished claiming victory. at Islington, Hackney and STakes elsewhere have exposed the unions' failure to fight against racism in an effective and consistent manner. Town hall unions have always tolerated job discrimination against blacks and failed to challenge the chauvinist traditions of the British labour movement.

Workers lose out On rare occasions the unions have even taken the lead in mobilising against black workers.

Refuse collectors at Westminster threatened to go on strike if the council employed blacks. Manual unions at Southwark have rejected the council's ethnic monitoring scheme and devised their own racist questionnaire. Union officials usually keep their heads down and pretend that racism is not an issue. In Hackney, union officials backed away from confronting the problems and argued that the strike was not racially divisions were motivated, although evident on the picket line.

The unions' failure to seriously confront the problem of racial divisions among their members has had two consequences. First it has allowed Labour council employers to manipulate a divided workforce to their own advantage. Second it has encouraged black workers to look to their Labour council employers to give a lead in the fight agaınst racism. employers have gained from the The unions' failure to fight for black rights.

Black workers have been the immediate victims of this lack of solidarity. But the working class as a whole has been the real loser. In countless disputes the employers have played one section of workers off against another. The first consequence of the unions' failure to root out racism in their own ranks is a workforce which stands divided before the employers' attacks.

black The cynical attitude ot many workers to their unions is understandable.

For years they have listened to labour 4 O the next step • 16 August 1985

EVENTS

Race rows hit council unions Rout the racists was trapped inside with the man screaming to Allah, just screaming for somebody to come and help him.' (Sury Farnoudi, Electric House tenant) Electric House is a crumbling council tenement block just off the busy Bow Road in Tower Hamlets. Last Thursday racist thugs turned it into a death trap. They poured petrol into the building and set it ablaze. All but two of the families on the estate are Bengali. An Asian family of nine was burned out.

East London Asians are facing a virtual pogrom. Four weeks ago the murder of pregnant Shamira Kassam and her three children in another racist firebombing in Ilford hit the headlines. In the weeks before the Kassam murder racists launched arson movement rhetoric about fighting racism while suffering the reality of discrimination and racist attacks alone. It is not surprising that they should look to the left-wing Labour councils for something better. A few years ago some blacks began organising black workers groups within town hall unions like Nalgo and putting pressure on the Labour councils to do something about their problems. Now nearly every Labour boasts host of equal horough opportunities and positive discrimination policies. These policies have made little difference to the vast majority of black workers whose chances of employment or promotion fall outside the scope of the councils token gestures. But they appear to be more than Labour bosses can't fight racism Asians fleeing last week's racist firebomb left a trall of blood and broken glass *The flames were everywhere and the family attacks on Asian families in Custom House, Limehouse, and on the Bethnal Green estate.

A few days after the Ilford fire racists burned down a halal meat shop in Green Street, Newham. Last Saturday two Asian men were in hospital after an arson attack on a terraced house in Leyton where 15 Asians lived in rented rooms. Last week a spokesman for East London Workers Against Racism said that it was time to get organised to stop the rising flames of racist violence: "The only way to prevent such is to organise workers in East tragedies London against the Labour council's racist housing policies and the racist firebombers.

ELWAR will take whatever measures are necessary to defend black families from racist Kenan Malik attacks. the unions have ever done. As one black activist put it during the Hackney dispute: •Why should we stand on a picket line to be fellow union members? The insulted by unions have done nothing for us, at least the council appears to be more progressive in its policies." Given the failure of the unions to take up the struggle against racism this attitude is understandable. But the tragedy is that black workers now look to the council employers, the local arm of the state, to fight racism. The problem is that one section of workers has acquiesced to racist attacks and another section has put its faith in the bosses rather than fellow workers to solve its problems. The left has compounded the dilemma.

In Islington the Socialist Workers' Party has gone even further than Nalgo in calling on the council to deal with the racists. Last week's Socialist Worker stated that the demand needs to be raised that racists be

SWP'S

flip side of the sacked". I ne subservience to the council is its inability to take on the racists where it matters: in the Thus its members

WEIC HOLE

outspoken in the Hackney case. Like the union stewards the SWP preferred to ignore the racial divisions in the strike and pretend that it was a dispute over management Even though black workers were subject to the same racist abuse in Hackney as in Islington, the SWP did not demand that the racists be sacked. Indeed it did not even mention the strike in its paper.

There are two arguments against leaving the anti-racist struggle in the hands of the One is that they are Labour councils. of fighting racism effectively.

incapable Another is that to do so is to abandon the only people who have a direct stake in the anti-racist struggle: the working class.

How to fight Fighting racism is not a matter of having It good intentions. requires understanding of the roots of racism and a programme that is founded on the interests of the working class. The Labour Party lacks both. Labour politicians share the common prejudice that the working class is the most racist section of British society. Thus leftwing Islington councillor Keith Venness told SWP members that they were "not living in the real world' if they thought that sacking racists was a solution to the problem: It would mean sacking 4000 people. Most white working class people are racist. Venness thinks that the working class is racist, yet he thinks that sending racists on a racial awareness courses where they are told to be nice to black people is a right on thing to do. only is Labour incapable of Not challenging the roots of racism, its positive discrimination policies can only worsen Every Labour council has racial divisions. given up the fight to defend jobs and services There is nothing against the Tory cuts. wrong with giving workers equal access to jobs and services. But the left-wing councils are only heightening racial divisions by claiming to favour blacks at a time when they are cutting jobs and services across the board. Rather than fight for every worker's right to work, the councils are denying some at the expense of others.

The left's demand that the employers should get rid of the racists is not just naive.

It is an abdication of responsibility for forging an anti-racist current in the unions.

The SWP's strike bulletin asserts that racist intimidation must be halted. The council Workers' act.Socialist Party must members have argued that they (the racists) should be sacked.' Of course racism must be challenged. The question is who is going to do it. These examples show that there is great black confusion among union militants, workers and the left about the best way to fight racism in the workplace. But if we follow three basic, principles there is no reason why we cannot go forward: • Stop pretending that racism is not an issue: unless we confront the problems of racial divisions head on we will never unite the working class against the bosses.

• Stop backing off in the unions: we have got to tackle the problem of racial divisions wherever they emerge. We must root out the ranks and organise racists in own independently of the bosses.

• Stop relying on the council: the employers cannot fight racism because they are part of the system that sustains it. The working class is the only section of society with a stake in fighting racism and the system.

Joan Phillips

THE LEFT DEBATE

Mittant Strike to defend councils

INSID

Socialist Worker

WITH TORIES IN A MESS

No time for left retreat Neil Kinnock's success in consolidating the Labour Party around his shift to the right has provoked a flurry of unity initiatives on the far left. Everybody wants unity, but the real problem is how to advance the cause of the working class, not how to arrest the decline of the old left. The left's papers are full of open letters, interviews and exchanges of opinion among individuals and organisations about how the left can regroup its forces.

The Socialist Workers' Party has appealed for unity with Militant, union boss Ken Gill still hopes that the fragments of the old Communist Party can be reunited and left-wing professor Ralph Miliband has called for the left to unite in a new socialist party.

Miliband well sums prescription of its dream party: What is needed, and has been needed for many years, is a socialist party that would bring together a lot of different people, with many different concerns and passions, men and women, young and old, black and white, blue collar workers, white collar workers, and many others who would be working in an organisation that was open, democratic and no doubt disputatious, totally committed to the struggle against capitalism, sexism and racism, and to the struggle against the global crusade conducted by counter-revorunonary the USA and its allies.' No doubt existing recognise themselves in this description. Its themes have long the been currency of the left outside the Labour Party. The fact that Miliband is discreet enough not to single out the particular ally Britain as a focus of antiimperialist struggle for his new party places it firmly within the opportunist traditions of the British left. What price unity? I SOCiALiSt AcTIoN. G. Wu

CHALL

Defend the

TUBE STRIKE

TGWU!

support of the earlier movements, but they have fully shared their political weaknesses.

The result has been that they have shared a similar fate. The 'socialist unity' drive of the late seventies is a good example.

Older readers may remember an organisation called the International Marxist Group.

It was active in the unions, in Irish solidarity and anti-fascist activity, movement and among could mobilise seventies. numbers of demonstrations and international solidarity rallies. It published a weekly paper which kept changing its name — from Black Dwarf to Red Mole to Red Weekly - which had a wide readership. The demoralisation resulting from the wage and welfare cuts carried out by Harold Wilson's Labour government after 1974 hit the left hard the left's Trade union supporters, drifted away.

HECTORS.

response was to launch its 'socialist unity" campaign in 1977. The IMG changed the name of its paper again, this time to Socialist Challenge.

name was taken from the book of the same name by Labour left MP Stuart Holland, a major influence on the evolution of the left alternative economic Labour had adopted as the basis of its programme in 1973. Socialist Challenge was declared no longer the property of one faction, but as a paper contributors committed to the realignment of the left. In the same spirit Socialist Challenge promoted socialist will candidates parliamentary elections. Common The IMG aimed to unite the left, but on the basis of anger at the betrayals of the USA's Labour leadership, programmatic alternative to Labourism. It never produced a critical evaluation of the left alternative economic strategy which led directly In Wilson's wade cutting social paper Is now work for the Labour Party. linking up in the women's second to the quest for students in the substantial - will continue to hold sway.

Reject Labourism Because never very The IMG's attempt to clear The pole of attraction Committee, strategy, which united political organisation.

all open Militant is that 'we unity" local council and election rather than Street. became increasingly preoccupied with the internal affairs of the Labour Party. It soon became just another Labour left pressure rOn 1981 Socialist Challenge lent a helping hand in Tony Benn's unsuccessful campaign for the deputy leadership. In 1983 the IMG decided to enter the Labour Party en masse and renamed its paper Socialist Action. This largely filled out with interviews and speeches and articles by Labour Party politicians and trade union bureaucrats. Trying to achieve socialist unity without challenging the politics of Labourism resulted in the IMG drowning in the Labour Party swamp. For all practical purposes the organisation no longer exists.

Miliband's proposed new socialist party is destined to drift down the same road as "socialist unity', if it is ever launched. Its commitment to take seriously the context of bourgeois democracy in practice reduces the question of winning political power to achieving a parliamentary majority.

But even if Miliband's party won a majority in • parliament, the state would still be under the control of the generals, the police chiefs and the top civil servants. In fact Miliband's party is unlikely ever to be confronted with this problem because he subordinates its political strategy to the electoral ambitions of the Labour Party. Miliband takes the view that 'activists and revolutionaries do have to of Labour return government. But why form an independent party if you want Labour to win in elections?

Miliband's alternative to Labour is an organisational, not a political one. This is the common failing of the British left over the past 60 years. It is fully shared by parties such as the SWP which remain formally outside the For the SWP the only hope for the left lies its feeble forces in one organisation. Its recent open letter appeal for unity with Militant admits that we have had all manner of differences in the past.

"But", it continues, 'all this pales before the and opportunities we now face Political differences now come a long way organisational But downgrading politics inevitably means that the strongest political force in the labour movement - Labourism manifesto the left needs a united organisation to save it from the assaults of the right, political differences are a thing of the past, of no immediate consequence. A recent SWP internal bulletin, issued in an up the widespread confusion created in the organisation by the unity initiative, explains that what is posed by the swing to the right in the unions and the Labour Party is the need for a political in opposition ito Kinnockism'. "That", concludes the Central would be best provided by a The SWP offers a pole of opposition to the Labour leadership but has nothing to say about the political basis of this opposition.

In fact the main justification for its appeal to are the two biggest groupings on the left, with the implicit admission that they need to get together to halt their decline. But as the next general opposition. draws nearer the Militant to succumb to the Labour leadership will grow even greater. Instead of uniting the far left, the SWP will end up tailing Kinnock all the way into Downing The left's unity drive evades all the real ecues The workine case does not need

THE

PROPAGANDA

WAR

SHOCK HORROR

It was "terrifying' said Tory energy secretary Peter Walker. It sent a 'shudder of horror through the nation, said employment minister Tom King. It meant "big brother Britain' said the Sun. It would bring 'vicious tax penalties' which would 'hit thousands' said the Daily Mail.

What was it that threw the Tories and their press hacks into such a froth last week! It was the publication of the joint Labour Party/TUC programme, A new partnership - a new Britain. 'If you want Arthur Scargill to run the nation you will only have to vote Labour in the next election,' proclaimed Walker. Tory party chair John Selwyn Gummer, Thatcher's other peodle, agreed: "It was the most extreme left-wing programme ever proposed by the Labour Party in Britain.'

The twin themes that Labour's new programme would mean handing state power over to the union barons and the introduction of a stream of extreme socialist measures ran through the speeches of Tory ministers and the banner headlines in the tabloid press. In the more sober up-market papers wiser counsels prevailed. "Modified Reaganomics' commented the Financial Times. It congratulated the Labour Party on 'coming out from its past", for being 'more pragmatic' and avoiding any commitments to re-nationalisation or to the repeal of anti-union legislation. The Sunday Times commented on a 'noticeable drift back to the centre compared with Labour's 1983 The question that often arises when the tabloids go over the top is this are the top Tories and their friends in Fleet Street stupid or merely cynical? The truth lies somewhere in between. There are undoubtedly some politicians and journalists whose anti-working class prejudices are so strong as to incapacitate them from any sensible judgement about even the respectable official labour movement.

But it would be foolish to underestimate the ability of senior Tories and newspaper editors to make a shrewd assessment of Labour's pathetically moderate programme.

At the same time they appreciate the value of keeping up the pressure on the Labour leadership by raising the old bogey of union power and labelling its policies as extremist. The Tories too have their electoral problems and they need to do everything they can to discredit the By mobilising public opinion against Labour's 'extremist' programme the top Tories and the tabloids unwittingly provide a service for the party. When the Daily Mail raises the threat of Labour's tax proposals to people with holiday villas on the Algarve, it starts to appear to many workers as their sort of nropramme. There

THE MOULD

within which is more difficult to fight and more dangerous to liberty. The miners' strike is an attack on democracy and the rule of law. The country must stand firm and militancy must not win. At the time Thatcher's declaration of war was met with injured bewilderment Labour DY politicians. Instead of recognising the statement for what it was, the Labour left pleaded with Thatcher that she was not playing fair. In South Wales, Labour politicians even took it upon themselves to parade miners' families whose sons had given their lives fighting for Britain in the Falklands or in Northern Ireland.

Thatcher's instincts proved correct.

The miners lost because the leadership of the working class demanded fair play instead of fighting a class war. However, Thatcher's victory came at a high cost. The bosses' victory exposed the vacillation and the ineffectiveness of the leaders of the trade unions and the Labour Party. The TUC and Labour leaders who have guarded the front line against social upheavals in the past cannot be relied on to be so effective in the future. The miners' strike undermined the carefully fostered political arrangements that have made Britain famous for its conservatism and consensus.

It is not only the case that Labourism is exhausted. The institutions that have regulated the relations between labour and capital for 40 years have given way to more direct forms of class domination. This is why the Thatcher government is more and more inclined to use the language of class war. As the miners who have faced their employers' provocations in the aftermath of the strike have discovered, fair is strictly for SDP/Liberal Alliance play luncheon parties. Thatcher counts the British establishment's blessings: a Labour Party that supports the system and trade union leaders who support the Labour Party The new forms of political control exist only in embryo. The old stability of consensus is no more, but before it can be replaced by a new stability, class relations in Britain must go through a more volatile phase. The class struggle cannot escape taking a more directly political form. The main casualty of the erosion of the foundations of stability has been the Labour bureaucracy.

Labour can still influence the working class, but in conditions of mounting class war Labour's white flag of surrender will not be able to hold back workers' resistance for long.

The inevitability of more intense class conflict creates new scope for politicising the class struggle. The essential ingredient that has been missing from the class struggle since the Second World War is class politics. Liberalism in the guise of socialism has kept the class struggle in Britain within the bounds clearly defined by the trade union and parliamentary leaders. The heritage of Beveridge and Keynes has ensured that the element of proletarian independence which is expressed in every struggle has been contained within the horizons of the capitalist system.

The intensifying class war provides the basis for the growth of a revolutionary movement.

But not directly! A revolutionary movement cannot arise directly from the class struggle, but through politicising it. This only reversing the process through which the British ruling class has influenced the outlook of the It demands a political labour movement. approach that is based entirely on the independent interests of the working class. It demands not Keynes or Beveridge but Marx.

We are not alone in attempting to politicise the class struggle. In its own way the ruling class is doing this all the time. It chooses issues of terrorism, football hooliganism, drugs or baby battering to forge an all-class unity against its opponents. Even the Labour Party is desperately trying to influence the class struggle. It may lack convincing policies but it is still able to appeal to the mood of passivity by urging moderation until the next Labour government.

What chance do revolutionaries have against such formidable opponents? Our approach begins from developing the active side of the working class response to the current situation.

The differences that count inside the labour movement are not fine distinctions between different brands of Labourism, but the gulf between those who want to fight back and those who do not. The people who want to fight are very much in the minority but they express the active element within the working class. At present much of their activism is no danger to the capitalist class. This is partly because lack activists are isolated and political direction. It is also partly attributable to the fact that many of those who want to fight back have been drawn into the ineffectual campaigns such as the rate-capping circus - organised by the Labour bureaucracy. We are confident that Marxism can connect with the aspirations of active workers. This is not a matter of faith, but because Marxism provides an outlook which corresponds to the desire to fight back. It also provides the only to Labour's defeatist approach Kinnock is right to say that the alternatives on offer from the Labour left are a fantasy. The assumptions of Labourism from right to left all lead inexorably down Kinnock's road. For Marxists who recognise only workers interests it is Kinnock's course that is a fantasy.

Common sense tells workers that, given the realities of capitalist society, there are no economic alternatives to the policies of the Thatcher government. Marxists point beyond this instinctive recognition to the political solutions that the crisis demands. In capitalist society discussion of economics presupposes the relation between exploiters and exploited No matter what economic policy emerges the exploited must remain what they are — passive objects of exploitation. The solution unemployment, low pay and falling living standards does not lie in the sphere of economics. Nor can parliament change things fundamentally because, whatever party has a majority at Westminster, the capitalist class would still have all the power. Thatcher has been fighting the class war to preserve the power that allows a small group of capitalists to control society. Workers' interests can only be advanced by seizing this power.

The real issue in our society is not who has the best policy to fight inflation or bring down interest rates, but who rules. Everything that matters is decided in the sphere of power politics.

In the miners' strike Thatcher and MacGregor made the coal board's 'right to manage' a central The NUM leaders characteristically issue. evaded this issue by talking about the economics of coalmining. The result of the NUM avoiding the question of power was that the initiative and the power - remained in the hands of the employers. Any working class strategy that claims to be realistic has to confront the political power of To ignore this the British establishment problem is to rely on the generosity of the capitalist class, a course of action which has always proved disastrous. Instead of pleading for mercy like the Labour leaders we need a serious strategy for taking control over the resources of society. We need power so that we can establish a society in which decisions about the allocation of resources are determined by the interests of the majority rather than by the laws of profit. Kinnock's road is the real fantasy for it imagines that the capitalist market can be operated to the benefit of the majority of people in society. In his flights of fancy Kinnock even imagines that a Labour government could play a progressive role. In the real world it is those who have the power who make the decisions. As everybody saw in the miners' strike, in capitalist Britain it is the state machine that enforces the power of the capitalist class.

The question of power, which is so well understood by the British establishment, needs to be popularised in the working class. This is what we mean by politicising the class struggle.

This is not some artificial intervention in an imaginary conflict. The question of power is given by the relation between the two main classes in British society - it is thrown up every time workers come out on strike or when any victims of oppression take direct action against their oppressors. Nor is it a prescription of extremism for its own sake. Our advocacy of fighting for power does not mean that nothing can be gained until after the revolution. The working class can achieve results in the present if it organises itself into an independent force.

The secret of Britain's stability has been the integration of the labour movement into the That's why the ruling class dreads system. nothing more than workers who are organised independently. Workers whose loyalties are only to their class will remain indifferent to appeals for patriotism and sacrifice.

The Falklands factor which operated with such devastating consequences in 1982 would be exposed as a third-rate propaganda ploy The British ruling class fears a working class movement that thinks for itself and needs no middle class experts or benevolent advice from a Keynes or a Beveridge. The bosses will go to any lengths to frustrate the expression of proletariar independence. We can win back the independence the establishment has hijacked by spreading the recognition of the importance of independent working class initiative. It is the responsibility of revolutionary communists to ensure that every active worker is inescapably drawn towards this recognition. the next step 16 August 1985 0 7

he first task of lieutenant general Tito Okello in the aftermath of the recent coup in Uganda is to reconcile the various factions tearing the country apart. The coup that brought Okello to power was the culmination of a decade of mounting chaos. The new regime is now attempting to restore order through the established techniques of terror and intrigue. Looting and atrocities, round-ups and pogroms against the Asian community have become commonplace. The prospects of peace and order in this troubled former British colony appear bleak. Speaking in London last week, Omwony-Ojwok, for spokesman Liberation Ugandan National demanded the release of all detainees, the dismantling of concentration camps and the withdrawal of troops to barracks. He told tns that his organisation was appealing to all Ugandan organisations 'not to be tricked unite and fight for a genuine but to settlement' through an international The legacy of British rule in conference. Uganda explains why there is little hope for stability in one of Africa's potentially most prosperous countries. The British occupied Uganda in 1893.

Fertile land and a favorable climate made it a suitable site at first for cotton plantations and later for coffee production.

dubbed Uganda the pearl of Africa'. In more recent years Uganda's copper deposits have become an important national asset The British colonised the region, together with neighbouring Kenya and Tanganyika They imported workers now anzania. from India to build the railways and staff the administration. From the earliest days missionaries process colonisation. As the chiefs of different ethnic groups were 'converted" by different Christian denominations, sectarian religious conflicts compounded ethnic divisions.

Divide and rule The British authorities cultivated the support of the Baganda ethnic group in the area around the capital Kampala, soon became the most developed region.

Protestant converted the Bagandan chiefs who were used as stooges by the British. But the Bagandans made up only one fifth of the Ugandan population and the authority of the Baganda chiefs was not secure even among their own people.

Catholic missionaries made headway among groups hostile to the Bagandans and even among Bagandans unsympathetic to their chiefs. The ethnic and religious divisions fomented by the colonists have had a lasting and malign influence on life in Uganda.

In 1962, Britain pre-empted emergence of a nationalist movement, such as it had faced to its cost in Kenya, by handing over power in Uganda to a coalition of Bagandan chieftains and Protestant notables from other ethnic groups.

leader selected as the figurehead of the new regime was Milton Obote, a Protestant from the northern Langi group. Obote's Ugandan People's Congress succeeded in mobilising wider support by playing on hostility to the traditionally conservative role of the Baganda chieftains. In 1964 he kicked them out of the coalition and two years later suspended the constitution and declared himself president.

Obote now increasingly took up the anti- Western rhetoric of 'African socialism' to rally support for a more independent stand against continuing British influence over the country. By the early seventies Britain had had enough. Just as Obote was about to inaugurate his common man's charter which would have nationalised 60 Uganda's economy, a British-backed coop installed army commander Idi Uganda's ruler. It was a move the British came to regret. from Amin came the small grouping linked with the Nubians across the border in Sudan. To secure his rule Amin 8 O the next step • 16 August 1985 Turmoil in Uganda Amadi

-BEC

Front, Churchill East Africa of Lake Albert which

ZAIRE

Lake Edward the

RWANDA

The took full advantage of the ethnic divisions popular that British rule had already intensified. As he had no base in Uganda outside the army, had to purge the army of its Amın predominant Acholi and Langi influences. In particular he made the Asians, who had become a substantial trading community, into the scapegoats for all the country's ills.

In 1972 he horrified his British masters by expelling 20 000 Asians, many of whom went to Britain. Amin offended Britain in other ways too. He became a convert to Islam and championed the Arab cause in the cent of Middle East. Even worse, Amin nationalised all foreign enterprises in Uganda. As far as London was concerned he had to go.

Amin as While he lasted Amin served a useful purpose for the British establishment as a Kakwa target of racist propaganda. For the British press Amin's personal peculiarities became the explanation of all the failures of black

INTERNATIONAL

The legacy of British rule

SUDAN

Acholi Lango Victoria Nile Luwero

KAMPALA

Baganda Entebbe 7-d Lake Victoria TE Uganda to ruins. new coalition Goodbye Milton Obote (left), hallo Idi Amin, goodbye Amin, welcome back Obote, farewell once more Obote, come in Tito Okello: Britain has presided over a series of coups, leaving Uganda bitterly divided country. to the

COULLEY.

SLICE T

heads. Kampala.

KENYA

Earlier the British

TANZANIA

IUS

corridors Africa after a decade of decolonisation. In fact Amin was a corrupt dictator of the sort the British had installed in countries around the world. He was trained by the British, installed by the British and he used British techniques of exploiting ethnic divisions to consolidate his rule in Uganda.

He was supported by the British until his pursuit of regime his personal ambitions ran into conflict with facing the British requirements in east Africa. In the end. he was removed by a British-backed invasion by Tanzanian troops in 1979. The combined effects of the world recession, Amin's economic mismanagement, Western current sanctions, civil war and invasion reduced The British at first attempted to form a But it soon govern became clear that the anti-Amin coalition could not contain the rivalries within the ruling elite. Obote returned to power in Uganda in May 1980 from his exile in Tanzania. Six months later Commonwealth observers ratified the results of rigged elections favouring return Coote chastened Obote obediently followed British dictates in running the country. In 1982 he introduced special measures to encourage private investors and dismantled many of the 97 parastatal concerns that dominated the economy. Britain, the country with the biggest foreign investment stake in Uganda, was the biggest beneficiary.

The British government authorised a Commonwealth military force to help rebuild the army and a private British security company, Falconstar, was contracted to train a 5000-strong "special forces' unit. But Obote proved unable to stabilise the antagonised the powerful Baganda forces who rallied around former defence minister Yoweri Museveni. After the dispersal of Amin's forces the main concern of Obote's army became to contain the revolt of Museveni's National Resistance Army operating in the Lowero 'triangle' just north of Kampala. Last year resistance to the Obote regime grew and reports of atrocities committed by Obote's British-trained army began to leak out of the US According to government 100 000 and 200000 estimates between people have been slaughtered in this war 1981. At the Obote same time antagonised Acholi elements in the army, who felt that they had borne the brunt of the fighting, by promoting Langis over their frequently Tensions mounted resulting in outbursts of shooting Uganda disintegrates this year Amnesty International reported that conditions for political prisoners were worse than they had been under Amin, whose atrocities had been widely exposed in press. In June foreign office minister Malcolm Rifkind was forced to call on the Ugandan government to mount an inquiry into the allegations.

Last month's coup - led by Acholi elements in the army under Okello - cut this process short.

The significant feature of last month's coup was that it was the first change of government to take place in Uganda outside of Britain's control. Obote's attempts to keep control over Uganda unleashed forces that his regime could not contain. During the past few months large areas of the country have come under the control of rebel forces and the army has been racked with internal conflicts. The even greater problem for the Western powers and their other stooges in the region is that Britain can no longer step in to sort things out. It now lacks either the economic strength or the political authority to influence events Uganda disintegrates. The fear that the mounting chaos in Uganda might spread to in this already insecure neignbours economically and strategically crucial region is causing considerable concern in the London and of power Washington. The biggest problem for the new military rulers is to make a deal with the Bagandan guerrilla forces under Museveni who played the key role in destabilising Obote. There is already a danger of conflict breaking out in the bush. Whatever arrangements the new establishes, the biggest problem Ugandan people is further Western interference of diplomatic, economic or military kind. For almost a century Britain has ruled Uganda and its influence has reduced the country to its plight. When British politicians wring their hands about the barbaric events that are now taking place throughout the African continent, we should let them know that the real barbarians are in the West and sooner or later they will be called to account for their crimes. Andy Clarkson

REVIEWS

CHILE BEFORE PINOCHET

Burning illusions Antonio Skarmeta, I dreamt the snow was burning.

Readers International, £4.95 First published in Barcelona in 1975 I dreamt the snow was burning captures the passion and the doomed tervour of the Chilean working class movement in the last days before the military takeover in 1973.

A FAMILY FILM

Breaking up is hard to do Paul Cox (director), My first wife (15) Life in Melbourne is very comfortable for John, a classical music DJ. Ah, but he's not yet aware of the darkened, rushing trains which are spliced ominously into the introduction to his film. He's certainly not aware that his wife Helen is having an affair with his friend. When she suddenly tells him she's moving out he falls apart. Shock and sorrow turn quickly to anger and hate and then to despair and nervous breakdown. Helen remains strong and is only moved to compromise by his blackmail, by a sort of bitter pity and by the mounting pressures upon her.

"So what?' it might be appropriate to ask. The whole film is preoccupied with the charmless the middle problems oT. classes. overwhelmingly from the man's point of view.

There is much however of interest in the film, not least performances from outstanuing Hargreaves and Wendy Hughes.

her John or Holennet nighe no yu sith either John or Helen, let alone 10 years marriage. He's smug and boring, she's sulky and Their CulE controntations. in

SHOT

unrelenting takes, are convincing and disturbing.

Cut into the story are interludes and images such as snatches from the past, home movies of their There is too an insistent wedding. the trains theme, a piece of classical music - something he can relate to. nese devices give richness and depth to both the context and the evocation of the crisis. They are carried by a refreshingly direct approach to the main issue by director Paul Cox.

The same techniques were used to much more powerful effect in his earlier Man of flowers, and by comparison his latest film is a disappointment.

The fetishistic Man of flowers and his friends may have been less normal than this pair, but they were Cox says that his films generally explore the isolation of modern man. Here he focuses on man's inadequate emotional resources when it is the woman who does the walking. It the men's group tone sounds dodgy so is the direction taken by Coxs exploration.

•We must love one another or die, quotes John from his sick bed. Well, fair enough John. But like John, the other powerful presences in the film — his daughter and his dying father cmpnasise mal It Is in the tamily and in a recognition of duty that this love should be nourished. Got that Helen? The film closes with the child between each parent being led hand-inhand from her grandfather's burial.

Compare" My first wife with Wim Wenders' Paris Texas, another film about a man who couldn't cope, also set in the new world by a European (much has been made of Cox's Dutch birth and his Russian cinematographer Yuri Sokol). Wenders' film, despite its final loss of nerve, confronts more bravely personal isolation in the face of fractured relationships. He displays a surer grasp than Cox of the problems of the family and the pressures upon it, and he knows too that after break-ups like this there should be no going back. Skarmeta political crisis of Salvador Allende's Popular Unity government — the first popular socialist government in Latin America.

understated style expresses the Chilean workers' confusion and growing sense of foreboding at the military's role in background the army is already preparing its blows against the workers' movement.

Skarmeta's central character Arturo stands for the experience of the whole Chilean working class under Allende. A youthful peasant, Arturo is sent to the city by his grandfather to find work.

Arturo's own ambitions are to become a football star and to get laid. Nothing in the city matches up to his expectations. Instead of overnight success seen John long A militant in exile Nancy Harrison, Winnie Mandela: mother of a nation, Victor Gollancz, €8.95 White South African journalist Nancy Harrison's biography of black South African Mandela is a moving account of one family's war with apartneld. Mandela's opposition to the South African regime led to harassment, brutality, separation from her husband and children, and finally banishment.

Harrison's account turns

- CABICSS V

aspects of the Mandela story. But the Mandelas are no ordinary tamily. The name Mandela is virtually synonymous with the struggles of black people in South Africa. Winnie's husband Nelson is leader of the banned African National Congress and the world's most famous political prisoner currently serving a life sentence in the prisons of the South African regime.

Winnie, who married Nelson in 1958 during his trial for treason, is herself an international political celebrity. The South African government packed Winnie Mandela off to internal exile in Brandfort in May 1977. The regime hoped to suffocate her opposition in the tiny settlement in the middle of the staunchly Afrikaner Orange Free State. When the order banishing her arrived even Winnie did not know where Brandfort was.

Pat Ford Her exile has put Brandfort on the map. Earlier political life in the city when she needs resolve. unfolds his tale set during the sensitivity to the His carefully concerns of many In the This conversation

REBEL AGAINST APARTHEID

her Winnie Harrison shows how Winnie arrest, and intimidation.

be sona country it stole from me.'

black the Arturo gets an education in the dangers of Arturo befriends a left-wing militant called 'Fats'. When 'Fats' is beaten up by a fascist street gang Arturo does nothing to help. He lapses into self-pity and sees the incident as a means fulfilling his second ambition by playing on the sympathy of another militant Susannah.

Susannah is a vivid portrayal of the real tragedy of Chile. A young, attractive militant, she fights hard for her politics and is not above kicking Arturo in the balls to cool his ardour. She displays her weakness, however, when she gives in to Arturo's self-pity after the assault on "Fats'. Like the Chilean left Susannah shows compassion I dreamt the snow was burning is a rich and thoughtful novel. The personal concerns of the main characters are complemented by Skarmeta's 60p p&p wider concerns of Chilean workers and the left. In a brilliant dialogue among a group of engineering workers who have just occupied their factory he articulates the workers at the effectiveness of their tactics. "Tell me", one of the workers demands, if you really believe this thing is gonna be sorted out by working, that we're gonna win out with voluntary work and marches?'

greater evel poignancy set alongside Skarmeta's euphoric description of a mass demonstration in support of Allende. Immediately after it the army controlled Charles Longford £2.95 plus 85p p&p this year US senator Edward Kennedy visited her £1.95 plus in Brandfort accompanied by the world's press.

40p p&p Internal exile was the climax of a vicious police vendetta against Winnie which Harrison recounts in harrowing detail. After the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela in 1963, Winnie continued to speak out against the regime. The government responded by banning her - restricting her to the magisterial district of Johannesburg, forbidding to ner caucauona establishments, and forbidding her to meet more than one person at a time. During the 14 years until her banishment she faced repeated dawn raids on her home, house State harassment of Winnie Mandela has 50p plus continued. A week ago her home in Brandfort was raided again. Through it all Winnie has refused to 30p p&p be intimidated into surrender to the regime. She is contemptuous of the offer of a free passage to live in the nominally independent "black homeland, the Transkei: "How dare a racist, fascist, minority settler regime offer me passage out of the very Harrison's biography focuses on the personal tragedy of the Mandela family and, byextension, on the tragedy of South African blacks. The daily rituals of brutality meted out to Winnie Mandela are the common experience of those she speaks for townships Ol nannesburg Capetown and other South African cities.

Unfortunately Harrison does not go beyond an £1.50 plus account of the courage and sacrifices of the 30p p&p Mandelas, and thousands of other South African families, to look more closely at the political strategy of the movement against apartheid.

Jenny Graham Junius publications The Irish Freedom Movement

IRISH

handbook the

HAR

£2.95 plus •Grab a copy before it is sold out, because it's crammed with facts on everything related to Northern Ireland - its history, geography, politics and judicial and military goings-on and, perhaps most helpful of all, short profiles of most of the main activists, past and present, ranging from Gerry Adams and Peter Archer to Willie Whitelaw and Sir Arthur Young. There is also a comprehensive listing of all the involved political parties and organisations.

The Irish Post All publications from BCM JPLTD, London WCIN 3XX. Cheques payable to Junius Publications Ltd; five or more items post free.

A handbook for trade unionists

TAKING

Mike Freeman

CONTROL

THE

ROOTS

TRACISM

Theminers, for jobs Our day will come Moral panics and / Victorian values the next step 16 August 1985 0 9

LETTERS

Sanctions and South Africa John Pearson's article •Western sanctions don't work' (tns 15) was informative, but told us what is blatantly obvious already, that Western imperialists will do nothing for class South Africa or Ine worke anywhere else. Socialists should oppose calls for sanctions against South Africa, when those demands ultimately mean interference by Western imperialism. But surely there is another consideration, and the effect economic sanctions (if they worked) would have against the black workers in South Africa. Weakening South Africa's economy even more would ultimately mean the Botha regime stepping up its repression of black workers. We all know that in a crisis it is us, at the bottom of the pile, who get it in the neck first and foremost. In Sabena Norton's article on page two, it was pointed out the weakness of the African National Congress, and the lack of any real revolutionary vanguard among black workers. Sure, black workers have become politicised during the recent struggles but as yet no movement exists to give the militancy of black workers in South Africa any guidance. Demands for economic sanctions against the apartheid regime, and their implementation, would leave black workers in a worse position than they are at the moment, as, without an anti-capitalist movement, they would be unable to take advantage of an economic crisis in the country.

James Alex Leeds Troops out I have recently left the Troops Out Movement in Brighton, and have become a supporter of the Revolutionary Communist Party. This was prompted by TOM's refusal last week's Irish Freedom to support Movement demo, even though it tully supported the demo's two demands.

Richard Stanton, Brighton Labour councillor and TOM member, had recently caused an outrage when he was quoted as saying that the Brighton bombing was 'an act of war'. We in TOM felt that this publicity was a problem (as did Brighton

ROP

The Revolutionary Communist Party needs hard cash to take the message of revolutionary communism to a wider audience.

Lne months ahead we have plans to extend the circulation of tns, launch a new theoretical journal and publish more books and pamphlets.

We need your help to succeed.

We have launched a special appeal to make the to keep money the we propaganda flowing from us to you. Please sure send contributions to Special Appeal, BM RCP, London WCIN 3XX. Make cheques/ POs payable to RCP Association.

10 O the next step • 16 August 1985 Labour Party which feared the damage to its electoral prospects, promptly distanced itself from Stanton, and censured him). We had deliberately avoided the whole issue of the Grand Hotel bombing, keeping a low profile until things settled down' again. This was not untypical of TOM!

The Troops Out Movement believes that by presenting the severity of British state repression in Ireland, eg plastic bullets, strip searches and the shoot-to-kill policy, broad based withdrawal movement can be built from this appeal to common liberal morality the sentiment same and sentiment and morality that motivates the anger and outrage in response to republican bombings! Campaigning around the Prevention of Terrorism Act, TOM concentrates on the denial of civil rights rather than the real intentions of the terror act, which is to criminalise Irish people. By presenting the facts, TOM expects to create spontaneous support for Irish self-determination.

As was reported in tns 16, the Irish Freedom Movement had arranged a public debate with Brighton TOM. We saw this as a great opportunity to present the IF's arguments to a large audience. Unfortunately TOM pulled out, one of the reasons being that Richard Stanton has undertaken not to speak on behalf of TOM in public, as demanded by Brighton Labour Party!

With this political approach to the Irish Irish

TOM

will never build an issue, solidarity movement. This can only be done by taking sides in the Irish War. Only when the British working class realises that it has every interest in opposing the British state, for the Irish liberation can real support struggle be achieved. Chris Griffiths Brighton NUJ and Ireland On Wednesday 7 August the Irish Freedom Movement supported a picket of the BBC protesting at the banning of the Martin McGuinness film. The National Union of Journalists were there too holding a one-day strike, as they explained to us, not over the particular ban but the principle of journalistic freedom. They told us that our presence might associate them with the IRA and damage their claim to the right to freedom of the press. So keen were they to appear 'objective' in the eyes of the public that they suggested to the police that we should be removed. The police complied, threatening to arrest two protesters who held a banner calling for "Troops out of Ireland".

The NUJ are wrong to think that the ban was a general criticism of their 'objectivity".

It was quite clearly intended to prevent republican views being heard on British TV.

By themselves encouraging the police to silence the demand for Irish freedom on the streets of London, the NUJ officials are complicit in the British state's distortion of War. What price journalistic the freedom, if bought at the price conformity? Carolyn Price North London Socialist bans On Wednesday 7 August myself and a friend went to a Socialist Workers' Party meeting in Pontefract. We went to hear Tony Cliff reassure himself that workers can beat the Tories? We knew the answer to Tony's daunting question. That's why we left the Labour Party and became RCP supporters, but we wanted to hear what the leader of the SWP had to say for himself.

We also march for intended to raise our Irish freedom among people there.

On arriving we were told that we were banned from all SWP public meetings an the grounds that we were not "progressive left-wing Other organisations Militant (who last week were on the streets of Leeds shouting 'smash the IRA') and even *progressive Tories' were not banned. I was accused (all seven and a half stone of me) of being a disruptive element in their meetings, and told that the bouncers at the pub had been warned about us and would remove us if we went in. We would expect the SWP to steward their own meetings, but to ask paid thugs to do their dirty work is something

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As I've never spoken more than a couple of sentences in any of these meetings before.

it was obvious that we as people were not banned but the politics we represent were; those of revolutionary communism.

Linda Joyner Pontefract Not 'our' boys Two weeks ago under the heading 'No more heroes' you published a letter concerning an ex-soldier's experience in Northern Ireland It pointed out rightly the hypocrisy of the media in its portrayal of the current war.

IRA bombings are taken out of context and presented as the work of a small fanatical group bent on mindless violence. Yet the British Army and its atrocities of the Loyalist allies are ignored.

He also talked about the divisions in the working class in Ireland and asked how we can overcome them. The divisions between the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland will always exist as long as Britain oppresses Ireland. Protestant loyalty to the crown was fostered by successive British governments through a series of measures designed to discriminate against Catholics and maintain Protestant supremacy.

However the letter, in highlighting the rough deal British soldiers receive is in danger of capitulating to the chauvinism of the 'Bring the boys back home' school of thought. This approach is perfectly compatible with a pro-British (and anti-Irish) outlook, since it plays upon workers nationalistic sentiments viz-a-viz concern for the safety and well-being of 'our boys'.

But it does nothing to defend the 'well-being of the Irish — not their right to fight back against the British military machine.

Our emphasis should be different and one which takes an explicitly anti-British stance.

rallying behind the Until workers stop Union Jack they will continue to be slaughtered in ruling class wars that are not their own. It is in our own interests to take sides with the Irish in their struggle for national liberation against Britain Pandora Anderson Bradford Write to

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London WCIN 3XX

STEPPING

OUT

Today's National Front supporters seem a rather muddle-headed Master Race. Fifty NF fans turned up at Saturday's Irish Freedom Movement march carrying 'Ulster is British' placards and Union Jacks. When 20 of our stewards explained that they'd made a silly mistake and come to the wrong march, the Pride of Britain's Youth all ran away dropping flags and lumps of wood.

One kindhearted Scottish steward made strenuous efforts to give the NF their piece of timber back, but they didn't seem to want it. Somebody even displayed the dropped Union Jack at our apres-march party that night so the owner could claim it, but nobody came forward. (This was just as well as the flag was soon burnt in a tragic accident.) Why do the young British patriots suffer this loss of memory? Perhaps it's because they put their heads through glass windows, as one did on Saturday. Or perhaps it results from imbibing certain substances' found in another's pocket at Kennington nick. I ask you, is this any way to rebuild an Empire? Then again, maybe the fascists were confused by speaking to the Sunday Mirror reporter. Her piece said the march was for Irish freedom and against internment, but that the marchers were 1500 Ulster Loyalists'. I used to think Fleet Street journalists were slick operators who deliberately confused their readers about Ireland. But after talking to this woman, I realise that the hacks genuinely don't know their Andersonstown from their Eire Nua.

The National Association of Probation Officers has just joined the TUC and sent its first motion to next month's conference.

Being a bit green, Napo thinks the TUC discusses political issues, and its motion calls for a campaign for gay and lesbian rights. The TUC barons are not taking this from the Johnny-Come-Lately probation officers. They are leaning on Napo to withdraw the offending motion, published in the preliminary agenda. Will it make the final list? Or will it suffer the short printrun which traditionally befalls motions that might upset the TUC stalwarts? Watch this Fight apartheid the TUC way! Last month's meeting of the TUC's international committee South African discussed how to get the subsidiary of a British firm, BTR, to recognise black trade unions. The confidential minutes record the conclusion: "It was pointed out that some British unions might have investments in BTR and it was suggested that they should put pressure on the company as shareholders.' So, if T've got the TUC line right, Britain shouldn't invest in apartheid but it's alright for British unions to invest in the British companies that sponsor apartheid, because that's the best way to fight apartheid in Britain OK? Right brothers, next business from the July minutes: 'Central America'. Maybe if we bought a few shares in the Contras Corporation, we could stop them killing Nicaraguans.

A two-way mirror has just been installed the wrong way round at Brighton police station. It was supposed to let the cops watch the ne'erdo-wells. Instead, it allows suspects to observe the local law combing their hair and pursuing their other personal habits. Who dunnit? •We are not sure whose fault it is, but we are certainly looking into it', quipped a police Maybe he was talking about the punster. Brighton bomb. Latest figures show Sussex police have spent f860 000 looking into that one, but they're still "not sure whose fault it is' Our advice to the forces of British law and order: if you really want to know, look in the mirror.

REPORTS

Militant-run Liverpool council is struggling to make savings that can help spin out the housekeeping in Its Militant's recipe for council budget. administration in Liverpool is the same fare as that served up by past Liberal and Labour leaders, only spiced with Militant's special variety of hypocrisy. For starters there is the traditional nonfilling vacancies, garnished ot proposal for early retirement involving lump sum payments of up to f12 000. It sounds but it saves the council three yearly salaries of superannuation and insurance payments.

Making a little go a long way is Militant's speciality. The Labour bosses have hinted at 20 early retirements in the administration side of the council's maintenance department. Militant calls this overheads. It really means rationalising caving in to Tory measures to make direct labour organisations profitable at the expense of jobs and services.

Militant told the last meeting of the joint shop stewards' committee that it intended to 'muddle through' the rest of the financial year. Liverpool workers will not like what's on the menu. The council has imposed expenditure guidelines for only. Emergencies do not include paying the of travel expenses social providing pens for office workers. They do include commissioning a report to discover how much it would cost the council to make all 30 000 workers redundant. The Militant For Asian families living in Tower Hamlets, being bombed out of house and home by racist thugs is just the beginning of their problems. In July Rusmom Ullah, his wife and five children were burned out of their flat on Bethnal Green estate. stuffing out of an old settee, doused it with petrol, set light to it and pushed it through a back window in the flat. Today the Ullahs are one of 20 families dumped in bed and breakfast accommodation in Southend by Tower Hamlets Labour council.

The families got no help with removal expenses and two men have lost their jobs because they are no longer in travelling distance of their workplace. Many families are not receiving social security payments and are literally starving. Tim Rathbone of Tower Hamlets homeless families campaign told tns that Tower Hamlets council was to blame: They refused to accept responsibility for paying rent, nor did they make it clear who should be paying it.? Social security staff demanded to know if the families had just got off the boat. The families were placed in Southend by Merendase Property Services Ltd, which acts as a servicing agent for a number of hotels. The company receives a 15 per cent commission for placing homeless families in bed and breakfast accommodation. One of the Merendase directors, Martin Pharoah, owns five of the hotels managed by the company. Not only does Pharoah receive rent for the families, he gets a commission for 'placing' them in his hotels.

The other company director is Dave Militant cooks the books shoestring payıng

OCCO ALOE

with the say, f10 000 plus would be "irresponsible windfalls building and stringent "emergencies" penalties, give workers or tab. Southend slum scandal Today, Racists took the council and to pay out more? reports: Sparce fare for Liverpool workers from Militant's Derek Hatton regime has not seen fit to tell the unions the It is not an emergency to move a young woman with a small child into a property in Norris Green with no gas supply when gas is the only source of cooking and heating. The guidelines also cater for getting around out the council's much-vauntec allowance. paid it wilbe sometime. But if the council can hold out long enough there will be less pensioners around to be paid. Still, as Militant leaders council has slow down to expenditure because to let the money run out Add up all this and more in the way of adjustments and unexpected and a reduced to superannuation funds and you get about £ 10m of savings. But this still leaves a large gap to fill. The clever money is on £20m of capitalising revenue expenditure. Militant's leading chef Tony Byrne describes this as a bloody disgrace'. But this has not stopped Militant doing it in the past. It's a simple dish for a radical cook. It means paying dayto-day maintenance expenses out of capital funds for new housing stock.

This brings us to the magic figure of £30m.

In the wonderful world of local government finance this would slash governIt the council £90m and overcome the budget crisis. Militant serves Kinnock and Liverpool workers pick up the Alan Harding Poulten, until December the housing welfare officer for Southend council. While working Tor une counch ne was dole to pass on homeless families to his friend, Pharoah.

Poulten's previous employer proving very helpful in touting for business for Merendase. Some people have hinted at possible collusion between Tower Hamlets Despite being Merendale. offered commission per room, the council insisted on paying commission per head.

Why should the parsimonious council want The dirty dealing in Southend underlines the Labour council's sordid record when it comes to housing homeless Bengali families.

The council has let them burn to death in squatted slums and rot in miserable bed and breakfast hovels rather than provide them with the permanent accommodation they need. It is high time East London workers got together to put the corrupt landlords in Patriot Square out on the streets.

Kenan Malik 01-729 3771 Deadline for news and Monday 9am paid ad Build the Irish Freedom Movement The publication of the second edition of the Irish Freedom Movement handbook, The Irish War, and the success of last week's London demonstration, have confirmed the IFM's status as the leading force in Irish solidarity work in Britain.

Now is the time to spread the influence of the IFM and reach new audiences with the message of Irish liberation.

To this end, IFM supporters around the country are organising viewings of the banned BBC film At the edge of the Union.

We will be discussing the issues raised by the film and working out a strategy for building the IFM in the months ahead. Be there! (Ad from Journalists for Irish Freedom.) Bradford Thursday 15 August 7.30pm Central Library Liverpool Thursday 15 August 7.30pm Braddock Lounge University Students' Union Pontefract Thursday 15 August 8pm Blackmoor Head Sheffield Thursday 15 August 7.30pm The Mailcoach West Street Leeds Friday 16 August 7.30pm Trades Club (off Chapeltown Road) Solidarity with black workers in South Africa!

The apartheid regime is starting its fourth week of intensified terror under the cover of the state of emergency. While black resistance to apartheid remains unbowed, blacks in South Africa need the support of British workers. On Saturday 31 August the Revolutionary Communist Party is organising a day of solidarity action, meetings and street theatre in Manchester.

Join our Manchester day of action against apartheid! Ring 01-729 0414 for details, and watch this space! Student alert When the new term starts in the colleges and universities we want to be ready to organise meetings, filmshows and other events. This means setting up Revolutionary Communist Societies in as many colleges and universities as possible.

Take IS regularly Get tns every week for a year £19 in Britain or Ireland Cheques/POs payable to For full subscription rates see page 2 Name Address Tel L Start my subscription from issue No.

Come along! South London Brixton Hackney Hackney Town Hall Duke of Clarence Clarence Road ES North London Ossulton NW1 Brighton Springfield Hotel Springfield Road Glasgow AUEW Hall West Regent Street City Centre Manchester Black Lion Chapel Street Newham Theobald Room Durning Hall Earlham Grove Forest Gate

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area. Witnesses wanted get in touch: Junius Publications Ltd, BCM JPLTD, London WIN 3XX Saturday 17 August 3pm St Matthews Meeting Place Tuesday 20 August 12.30pm Wednesday 21 August 7.30pm Wednesday 21 August 7.30pm Hampden Community Centre Thursday 22 August 7.30pm Thursday 22 August 7.30pm Thursday 22 August 730pm Thursday 22 August 7.30pm British Crim

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If you are a student and need some help getting organised, get in touch with Ann Burton on 01-729 0414. Become a Revolutionary Communist Party If you like what you read in ths become an RCP supporter. We meet weekly to discuss the issues in the paper and to plan action in the local area. Phone Fenna on 01-729 0414 or write to BM RCP, London WCIN 3XX, or talk to ts sellers in your The Newham 7 Defence Campaign is appealing to anybody who witnessed arrests on the following demonstrations to 27 April at Forest Gate police station 11 May at Plashet Park Phone the campaign on 01-555 8151 the next step • 16 August 1985 • 11

SCREWS YOU UP

Blood Diseases We are after you,' declared Thatcher last week, announcing a major crackdown on drug dealers and addicts. In the nineteenth century Britain launched the opium wars to subdue the Chinese people. Today establishment created heroin abuse to declare war in the inner cities.

"The future of the nation' is threatened by *the heroin scourge' declared the coroner in last week's inquest into the case of 14-year old Jason Fitzsimmons, 'cocktail' drug overdose In Liverpool. The press is full of gruesome tales 'heroin epidemic' among Britain's of a wasted youth. Grim forecasts generation of drug-crazed outcasts stalking *bare, torn streets where drugs and poverty meet like vile brothers" reading. Drug abuse has long been a feature of capitalist society. In England Friedrich Engels noted that under capitalism drunkeness, opium prostitution and every other social problem "ceased to be a vice for which the vicious could be held responsible. Engels argued that it was inevitable that a system which brutalises the working class would spawn such social problems. In the 1840s and 1850s laudanum, an opium derivative like heroin, came into widespread use. Women working long hours in the mills were compelled to leave their children at home or in the care of a nurse. The result was the widespread use of narcotics to drug young children and babies Druggist to sleep. shops in the Capitalism Skin Infections Limbs ping Liver Complaints Constipation districts mixture, cordial' and the British resulting a panic about around capitalists who died of a Croxteth, of make chilling London. nineteenth century abuse, grim grey else to do but smack. the drug heroin scourge"? 'lower

HEROIN

Mental Problems Wasted Muscles stocked supplies of *baby's "mother's 'child's quietness', "soothing syrup all sweetened preparations of laudanum. The children stupefaction undoubtedly contributed to high rates of infant mortality. The authorities made no attempt to regulate the drugs trade until the turn of the century. recognised that the tree availability of narcotics was the only thing that guaranteed the availability of most mothers for work in the factories.

Heroin is the drug of Thatcher's Britain.

The modern day equivalents of the lower districts of the nineteenth century are the 'smack city" estates like Croxteth estate in Liverpool and Aylesbury in south east miles outside Dumped tour Liverpool off the East Lancs Road, Croxteth is a classic post-war housing project, already nearing dereliction. The Aylesbury estate is a more modern concrete construction of aerial walkways, windswept passages and buildings. Locals have appropriately renamed one of the concrete storeys 'cell block'. As one young man from Croxteth put it last week 'there's nothing Drugs provide an avenue of escape from the horrors of everyday life under capitalism. The always been prepared to tolerate widespread drug abuse as long as it remains under their control. So why have they suddenly decided to make an issue out of 'the One thing is certain: it is not because of any dramatic increase in the incidence of drug abuse. The statistics are notoriously unreliable, although a figure of 50 000 addicts is widely quoted. like the reports, recent committee report Misuse of drugs, are forced to admit that the scale of the problem is uncertain'. This gives ample scope for the press to invent figures or to extrapolate from unrepresentative and unreliable surveys.

Anybody reading the papers would think that half the country's youth are on heroin and that thousands are dying. A recent report in the British Medical Journal noted that around 100 addicts die every year.

Around 100 000 die every year as a result of cigarette smoking and several thousand die from alcoholism. every year as a direct result of their work.

Yet the press and the politicians do not choose to focus on these killers.

The heroin scare serves two purposes for the ailing capitalist class. It helps to rally the nation in support of traditional family values.

And it helps to justify the increased powers which the police, courts and army need if Britain's rulers are to keep a grip on society.

Tory radical Digby Anderson blames the "heroin epidemic' on the lack of discipline and moral relativism in schools. Tory MP Ivor Stanbrooke blames Britain's long-term religious and moral decline' for the drugs plague. Others have pointed to the collapse of family authority, the growth in the number of one-parent families and the decline of 'positive leadership' in schools.

Last week the press all-party search Committee dealers. pub in performance paramilitary-style scores of young blacks. Heroin war the gutter drugs royal family, special Even official social services into a vehicle for the day keeps At least 1500 people die nerom coldemic working deals them out. blamed Jason Fitzsimmons' father, himself a former heroin addict, for not setting a proper example to his family. A spate of stories about baby addicts being born to junkie mothers has fuelled the Tory drive to restore the sanctity of motherhood. The anti-drugs furore is part of the Tories' broader crusade to promote family values and put women in their place.

The drugs scare has served as a pretext for more intensive policing in inner-city areas. It has been used particularly to justify a crackdown on the black ghettos. A recent Commons report Colas Lice claimed that the heroin epidemic is the most serious peacetime threat to our national well-being. It called for increased stop and powers for the police and life sentences for pushers. It urged that the army and air force be brought in to deal with the warlike threat from the hard drugs industry.

chair Sir Edward Gardner wanted the government to hang drug In the Lozells and Handsworth districts of Birmingham the police have used the drugs scare to raid black pubs and to step up harassment of local youth. In May police staged a major drugs raid on the Villa Cross Lozells. They did a repeat at the end of July. Three hundred police surrounded the pub in a operation and lifted In Brixton the local police consultative group has helped to popularise the idea that the black community is the source of the heroin epidemic. It has approved major antidrugs raids and called for even harsher measures against the pushers. After a recent raid in Clapham the group complained that the police were too selective in their antidrugs action. They demanded to know why other drug selling centres dealing in hard drugs were left alone and why there are still 'no-go areas' on 'the front line' of Railton Road. Many local people suspect that the answer is that the police are themselves complicit in the drugs trade.

The present drugs furore heralds a major assault on the inner cities. "It's war' declared press in response to the appointment of former anti-terrorist chief Colin Hewitt as head of the new national intelligence unit. The Mirror commented that Hewitt was 'the right man for the job' because 'quite literally, he has been in charge of the safety of the realm. His brief is to use the same terror tactics against working class inner-city areas as he used against the Irish community in his last job.

'He is a man who knows where the bodies are buried. And he'll dig them up So far the drugs panic has been very successful.

A host of community-based anti-drugs campaigns are calling for stiffer penalties for drug dealers and more police action. The pop stars and television all lent their support. Princess Diana recently backed a two-hour show called Drugwatch which featured 100 celebrities urging viewers to say 'no' to drugs. The Thompson Twins have recorded a "haunting song' called Doctor Dream which warns of the horrors of drug addiction. In the autumn the BBC plans to turn the popular Grange Hill programme Tories" anti-drugs Respectable soft drugs users have also got in on the act. A new campaign, "cannabis users against heroin', has the slogan 'A spliff the dragons away". In Edmonton in north London the National Front has organised anti-drugs vigilantes to target black people as the culprits for the Dope pushers are not the real problem.

Capitalism creates the conditions that give rise to every social problem that afflicts the class. Drug addiction inevitable result of a system that survives on the degradation of the working class. The only way to rid the working class of drugs and degradation is get rid of the system that Writing more than 100 years ago, Engels dismissed the charitable work of middle class radicals who attempted to save the working class from sin through anti-drink campaigns.

He argued that the only way the working class could escape the brutalisation of the capitalist system was by 'cherishing the most glowing hatred, the most unbroken inward rebellion against the bourgeoisie in power.

Joan Phillips