The Next Step: No. 15, 18 April 1986

The real mad dogs

HANDS OFF LIBYA!

tns thenextstep Revolutionary Communist Party • 18 April 1986 • 30p uesday's air strike on Libya by F1-11 fighter-bombers 35 US was a barbarous act of war directed against a feeble third world country by the world's leading capitalist power. Early reports indicate civilian casualties hundreds of residential areas of Tripoli and Benghazi.

The fact that this raid was launched from US bases in Britain with the full British government backing of the makes this atrocity a particular concern for the British labour movement.

Reagan's murderous assault on Libya - the second within a month - follows a prolonged propaganda war against Libya and the country's leader, Colonel Muammar Gadaffi. Reagan has labelled Gadaffi a mad dog and described him as Britain, and a barbarian. In "flaky' politicians of all parties and the media have echoed US condemnations of Gadaffi as the driving force behind 'world terrorism'. the leader of a small, Gadaffi is sparsely populated and generally im- Even the poverished African country.

American authorities, who have excelled in 'discovering' evidence of communist subversion to justify US interference in Central America, have failed to come up with any convincing links between Libya and recent terrorist incidents in Berlin or around the Mediterranean.

Gadaffi bogey is an American The invention to provide a pretext for the Demonstration Sunday 20 April March to US Embassy, Grosvenor Square USA to display its military might to upstart Arab regimes and restive European allies alike. The USA lost face in the Philippines, it is losing control in Central America, and its influence in the Middle East is waning.

Reagan could do nothing to save his old pal Marcos, he is struggling to keep the Contras going in Honduras, and his allies in Israel and Egypt are facing increasing internal turmoil. For a bully looking round for a victim on whom to vent his frustration and show the world he still packs a punch what better target than Gadaffi? Reagan's racist abuse of Gadaffi and his military escapades around the Gulf of Sirte have rallied patriotic support for his admini- Britain backs Reagan We back Gadaffi

HANDS OFF LIBYA!

Assemble 1pm, Speakers' Corner Hyde Park, London Rally Trafalgar Square time of considerable stration at a economic and political difficulty.

establishment too has The British used the Gadaffi bogey to stir up chauvinist anti-Arab sentiment and to bolster up its popularity. The revelation that the miners received donations from the Libyan trade unions during last was regarded as the year's strıke employers' greatest propaganda success.

secretary Tuesday Tory foreign On Howe cited the incident in Geoffrey which a British policewoman was killed in a shooting incident between rival Libyan factions in. London two years ago to justify British complicity in the Continued on page 12

the next step Revolutionary Communist Party weekly • 18 April 1986 • No 15

THE OSSIE O'BRIEN FACTOR

W ho? You may well ask. Ossie O'Brien was the man who won the Darlington by-election for Labour in March 1983 in a campaign which became the model for Fulham poll last week. Labour in the Following only weeks after the crushing defeat of Labour left winger and gay rights activist Peter Tatchell in Bermondsey, the party fixers were determined to project a different image in Darlington.

O'Brien was sold to the voters as a moderate middle class candidate, with deep roots in the local area and a respectable family life. The party's elder statesmen - James Callaghan, Denis Healey were welcomed in Darlington, and left wingers like Tony Benn and Eric Heffer were told to stay away. John Cunningham, now a front runner in Kinnock's shadow cabinet, acted as • Bren's minder. The formula seemed to work. After a run of defeats, bour won the seat and a triumphant O'Brien set off for Westminster hailing a turn in Labour's fortunes at a time when everybody knew that a general election could not be too far away.

After Darlington, Fulham. Nick Raynsford faithfully followed the O'Brien approach. He hugged the middle of the road, spurned the left and won the by-election.

Arriving at Westminster by Thames riverboat, Raynsford was greeted by a jubilant Kinnock and Labour activists were ready to believe that their party leader might after all soon be in a position to form the next Labour Our early prediction of an SP win in Fulham turned out to be wildly mistaken. We underestimated the polarisation of ine constituency between incoming up-market who remained loyal to the homeowners Tories, and local working class voters who stuck with Labour. In recognising the increasing volatility of British politics, we also underestimated the strength of the established party machines. In constituencies where the Alliance starts out a poor third, the old Labour/Tory mould can prove The SDP candidate had more durable. trouble than expected with the record of the Liberals on Hammersmith council.

He ended up being squeezed between Tory and

VOTE RCP ON 8 MAY

his week the Revolutionary Com- T munist Party opens its campaign for the 8 May local government elections.

For the first time people in most British cities will have the chance to vote for a party which views the democratic process not as an instrument of change, but as a device for rallying support for the politics of change on the streets, in the workplace, in the home, throughout society. We present our candidates on pages 10 and 11.

The early response to our campaign has been overwhelmingly positive. the Pontefract area, for example, where we played an active part in the miners' strike and in the campaign against the scab union, we are running six candidates. Many local people - especially miners — are cynical about the old parties. They have endured the full force of Tory policies and they were sickened by Kinnock's refusal to back the victimised and imprisoned miners.

The only people who seem enthusiastic in supporting Labour are the left-wing paper sellers who are usually critical of Kinnock, but have now become Labour's most active Publisher Revolutionary Communist Party, BM RCP. London WCIN 3XX ® copyright Printer Morning Litho Printers Ltd (TU), 439 North Woolwich Road, London E16 Annual subscription rates • Britain and Ireland €19 • Europe £24 • Middle East and North Africa £26• America. Asia and Southern Africa E27 • Australasia £32 • Libraries, institutions E30.

All cheques payable to Junius Publications Ltd.

Circulation 01-729 3771. Newsdesk 01-729 3771. Correspondence 1o The Editor, the nexz step, BUM JPLID London WCIN 3XX. ISSN 0144 350 X 18 April 1986. Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office 2 • the next step • 18 April 1986 Labour candidates who had little difference with Alliance policies. Raynsford's 3500 majority was a good Yet before Labour result for Labour. activists rush to prepare grant applications to a reprieved GLC, they should take a more sober look at Kinnock's prospects of arriving in Downing Street. On the evidence of Fulham he still has a long way to go. The by-election followed the most disastrous period in Thatcher's fortunes. The Westland and BL fiascos and the Heseltine and Brittan resignations have tarnished the government's authority. As the economy slides into ruin, the Tories have more or less given up trying to pretend they can do muc By-elections generally present an exaggerated picture of national trends. Yet the 10 per cent swing to Labour in Fulham would still leave Kinnock short of an overall parliamentary majority. Given the Tories' Labour will have to do much

BRODICUS.

better than it did last week to convince the world that its general election bandwagon is on the move. The Tories came second in Fulham, but they can afford a sigh of relief. Despite all the government's recent difficulties, the swing against the Tories was no more than the average in by-elections during the present parliament. The Tory vote held up well against the Alliance, a key factor if the Conservative Party is to retain middle class support, particularly in the south, in the next election. The Alliance was the undoubted loser in Fulham, managing to increase its share of the vote by only one per cent from the poor 18 per cent it held at the general election.

The by-election result confirms that the future of the Alliance is not in the hands of David Owen and David Steel, but depends on the success or failure of the two major parties. The lesson of Fulham is that where both can mobilise their traditional constituand avoid major cock-ups, the prospects for the third force are dim.

Whatever happened to Ossie O'Brien? He lost his seat in the Tory landslide of June 1983, only weeks after his historic byelection victory. canvassers. It is even more bizarre that the same hard left activists accuse the RCP of selling out by standing in local council elections. The left's reaction underlines the need for

RCP

candidates local and national In elections. For years working class people have had to choose between voting Labour or staying at home. After experiencing nothing but promises and betrayals from Labour, many have become cynical about politics altogether. Our candidates are not giving credibility standing: to the state's institutions by councils and parliament are already widely recognised as legitimate governing bodies.

We are saying that the only way for people to get what they need is by organising against the system. We are putting forward a new set of policies around which to organise. A vote for the RCP is a vote for action, not an alternative to it. If you want to get involved in our campaigns, get in touch with Ann Burton on 01-729 0414, or write to the address below.

WORKERS FACE SACK FOR OPPOSING RACISM

IN HACKNEY TOWN HALL OR THE HOME OFFICE, RACE CHECKS ARE RACIST

DON'T TRUST

THE COUNCIL

algo members at a Hackney firm face the sack for refusing to cooper with the Labour council's plans ethnic monitoring - better described as race checks. They work for Outset, a market research outfit specialising in surveys among disabled people, which manages a project funded by Hackney council and the Manpower Services Commission. In February the council made any further funding of the project conditional on the workers implementing race checks, which would involve recording the 'ethnic origin' of those surveyed. Outset staff voted unanimously not to comply with this instruction. Last week management sent them letters by recorded delivery, claiming to have 'discovered' instances where workers had not completed the ethnic monitoring question. Each worker was invited to attend a review of the matter which would instigate disciplinary procedures. If workers did not attend the review management would assume "that you have chosen to exercise your option of terminating your contract of employment with Outset. Twenty Hackney workers fighting the Labour council's ethnic monitoring scheme are up against both the bosses' threat to fire them, and their union officials' attempt to contain their struggle Outset workers oppose the race checks because the scheme is a racist surveillance exercise, as Kenan Mank. one of tne 'Since the threatened workers, explained: introduction of the 1981 Nationality Act, the authorities have been keen to ethnic monitoring. The Act provided them with the means to keep a check on all blacks in Britain, and ethnic monitoring provides the means to carry this out by giving the authorities detailed information about black people." Left-wing Labour councils like Hackney insist that ethnic monitoring can help them combat racial discrimination, by telling them how many blacks there are and what they need. But such data cannot help the council provide decent jobs and services for blacks. Because Labour councillors accept the spending constraints imposed by the system, the best they can do is to give blacks

JAVE HOURNE

a bit more of the few resources available.

Ethnic monitoring is the means to share out the misery', as one Hackney councillor put it, in a more equitable way. At present 17 per cent of Hackney council jobs — almost 1400 - are untilled. Unfreezing these jobs would be a far more effective way of providing jobs for black people. But ethnic monitoring is not just ineffective in fighting racial discrimination. The information collected is always used against black people. This is as true of information collected by local authorities as it is of information collected by Hackney the home office. council itself has given the anti-terrorist squad the names of 2000 Irish tenants. And radical Labour councils often let police snoopers have the information and hideouts they need to check up on black tenants.

'The councils cannot be trusted,' says Kenan Malik. "That is why the race checks must be opposed by local government workers as well as by workers in central government departments."

PLAYING GAMES

After Outset workers received the threatening letters last week, they voted unanimously to strike until management withdrew them. But on Monday, before the action began, a left-wing shop steward came up with alternative that sidelined the an struggle He convinced the members that they should go through the proper channels: wait until their action was endorsed by the executive of Nalgo's all-London voluntary organisations branch, attend the disciplinary hearings this week, and sign a procedural agreement with management. This would allow them to take case to the their government's arbitration service, Acas, and to spin out the dispute until the project ends in three months time. And this, the steward insisted, would let the workers say that they had never implemented the race checks.

As the Outset dispute continues, Kenan Malik and other Workers Against Racism supporters are still pushing for direct action against the council's scheme and manage.

ment's threats. "We can't beat the checks by playing games to spin out the procedures.

Malik. •We won't have won the says argument against them, and the next time the scheme is introduced we'll be back where we started. The only way we can win a real victory is to take action now to defend our jobs, and to get other council workers to show solidarity with blacks by refusing to implement the checks. Instead of waiting for the union to do something, we need to campaign among the rank and file to force the union to take a stand against the checks - and against the councils that use them to reinforce racist discrimination."

CRIME WAVE

Racism

POLICE PERSECUTE BLACKS

RACIST

POLICE OCCUPIED NEWHAM LAST SUMMER - AND THEY'RE STILL THERE TODAY A wave of propaganda about crime is being used to justify a police Clampdown on young blacks in inner-city areas he drug menace is the latest form of British criminality The establishment is trying to blame on black people. The official investigation year's Handsworth riots concluded that they were instigated by drug dealers. In fact the revolt was provoked by a brutal police assault on a young man, following a series of raids and incidents of intimidation. Now the police are using the Newham police riot ne recent Monday afternoon, 120 baton-waving policemen chased 35 black youths down Upton Lane in Newham. The police caught up with David in Whytevale Road: 'They held me so tight I couldn't breathe." Pinned down by three policemen, he was head-butted and batoned over the head. When he got to West Ham police station he had a big lump on his head, a bruise over one eye, a cut over the other, and handcuffs biting into his wrists.

The police rampage began after the young blacks gathered to protest outside Forest Gate police station. Police had picked up a local black youth during an anti-drugs stop government's nationwide campaign against drug abuse to provide the cover for stepping up harassment of blacks Back in the seventies the police invented the crime of mugging when they first decided to get tough with black people. The police and the press got together to proclaim a startling increase in violent street crimes in Britain's black ghettos. The message behind the artificially created wave of muggings was that young blacks were to blame for violent crime.

THE REAL ISSUE

black people Labelling as criminals is central to the British establishment's drive to contain the threat of revolt in inner-city areas.

Everybody is afraid of being robbed and nobody sympathises with drug dealers. By making a spurious connection in the public mind between various sorts of crime and black people, the police and the media have created a climate of opinion which supports and search operation, and held him inside days, charged with possessing cocaine and heroin. His mates turned up to protest because they are sick of the constant stop and search harassment, the police surveillance and the plain clothes policemen trying to buy them drinks in local pubs.

Sledge explained how the trouble outside "The police were the police station began.

provoking people and abusing us, then more arrived in a van and then they charged us."

Sledge was chased into a betting shop by four policemen. "They pointed at me saying I had punched a sergeant in the face. They grappled with my arm and forced it behind a campaign of terror against young blacks.

The view of the Revolutionary Communist Party is that whereas crime is not a burning issue for the working class movement, racism is. The wave of public concern about crime, drugs and violence against women and children has been stirred up by the British establishment as part of its law and order drive. There is little hard evidence to suggest any great increase in these social menaces — the statistics can be manipulated to illustrate whatever trend the authorities choose to emphasise. But there is plenty of • by evidence to prove that racist attacks the police, immigration officials and ordinary racists - are on the increase.

Candidates from the RCP and Workers Against Racism standing in the council elections in Newham, Peckham and Bristol will be campaigning against the criminalisation of black youth, and mobilising workers' defence against all forms of racism.

See pages 10 and 11 for details.

my back. They got handcuffs and cut my wrists.' Joe and Wayne had been playing pool in Lestor's, a local club. When they went outside to see what was happening they were roughly arrested. Now they and half a dozen others face charges varying from obstruction to bodily harm Newham's Labour, council backs the police anti-drugs drive. But the drugs scare is just a pretext for repressing the black police community. After their rampage, dropped the drug charges against the man they had originally detained Alex Farrell Repression in Bristol • Bristol police, in association with the social security offices, have devised a new way to brand blacks as criminals. Any young black suspected of making false claims risks being arrested for pimping. Seven who didn't sign on at the right time are now in jail on remand, charged with living off immoral earnings" • In a recent pub attack one Asian was and his brother stabbed in the back sustained a broken ankle. The police detained mem coln without any meancal attention. Police then arrested their father who had not been present at the incident and charged him with wounding.

• Early morning house searches have become part of life for some black families One woman has been raided 17 times in two years. Police have tranquilised her Doberman and torn ce flore boards When police were stoned and a panda car burned out as thev tried to make an arrest in the St Paul's area recently, the local press proclaimed 'mob rule and accused the police of going soft because they had been forced out of the area. Given the climate of racism and systematic harassment of black youth, revolts of this sort are inevitable.

Drugs panic in Peckham A t Ipm last Thursday police cord.

oned off Peckham Road. They claimed there had been a bomb scare, but events soon revealed the real purpose of the road-blocks.

One hour later vanloads of uniformed and plain clothes police launched a series of raids in Peckham Road. They stormed into the Britannia pub and arrested half a dozen people. They raided a nearby betting shop and a record shop. All black male passers-by stopped, questioned and, if they were resisted, pushed into the police van.

A removal van parked in the street turned out to be a specially hired black maria for transporting prisoners to various south London police stations. In all police held around 15 people

AT THE BOTTOM

Tensions are running high in the area Black people have nowhere to go except the Britannia and a few local shops. Now they are not safe there. The council closed their community centre last year, while the law launched a community policing scheme - *to get information today to arrest us tomorrow' Cedric, bitterly says cynical about the community approach.

The pretext for the Peckham raids turned out to be drugs. The operation revealed a few small bags of cannabis worth a few pounds. Whether or not we sell drugs we'll still be harassed, says Orlando. 'As long as black people stay quiet about being at the bottom of the pile then the media and the government can say to everyone else, "If blacks can take it so can you." That's why all this harassment is directed at people at the bottom'

ROP

We need your help to tide us over until our first cheque from Colonel Gadaffi arrives. Rush donations our fighting fund at now to BM RCP, London WC1N 3XX. Cheques payable to RCP Association. the next step • 18 April 1986 • 3

reland

THE ROYAL ULSTER CONSTABULARY

STILL SECTARIAN

ome bricks and bottles make bigger news than others in Ireland. When against the supporters riot Royal Ulster Constabulary, it warrants one paragraph in the press. But when Loyalists lob rocks at RUC officers, it's headline news. The difference reflects the unique character of Northern Ireland's police force. The RUC bears little resemblance to the constabularies which control London or Glasgow. Nor, despite its machine guns and armoured vehicles, is it just a paramilitary police force on the Continental model. The RUC is a Loyalist militia — the armed wing of the Protestant population. More than 90 per cent of its members are Protestants. The Crown employs them as professional bigots to brutalise the Catholic, nationalist community, and to ensure Ulster remains part of the 'United Kingdom'. When Loyalists start shooting at the RUC, it seems to go against the history of Ulster policing.

*The poor old policeman is piggy in the middle complained a again, Royal Ulster Constabulary man last week, as both the IRA and Loyalists attacked his colleagues. Mick Hume disagrees with him The idea of a Protestant police force was first suggested by war minister Winston Churchill in 1920. Then, the British authorities were waging a war to keep the whole of Ireland under Crown control. The fight for Irish freedom had been concentrated in the south and west of the island, where the British forces were at full stretch trying to contain the IRA. When the struggle spread to the north, Churchill suggested that Lloyd George's government should look to the loyal Protestants to police their areas.

*What would happen, he ventured, 'if the Protestants in the six counties were given weapons and...charged with maintaining law and order and policing the country?'

Churchill's brainwave soon became British strategy. The Ulster Volunteer Force, an illegal Loyalist paramilitary force reformed World War to defend the after the First Union by terrorising Catholics, was stuffed into makeshift uniforms and renamed the Ulster Special Constabulary. The criminals carried on attacking Catholics, but with the British government's blessing. After Ireland province of partitioned and the was Northern Ireland established in 1921, the gang evolved into the Royal Ulster Constabulary. From the first, the RUC existed as the armed expression of Loyalist power. Britain built Northern Ireland as a sectarian statelet, where its Protestant allies enjoyed privileged access to jobs, houses and political positions over the Catholic community. The province's first prime minister announced that Ulster's Stormont assembly would be a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people'.

The RUC's job was to keep the sectarian set-up intact, by repressing nationalists who sought Irish unity and independence from Britain. Its rules on who were decent citizens and who were criminals differed from the 4 • the next step • 18 April 1986

AFTER ALLTHESE YEARS

GUESS WHICH FOUR ARE BREAKING ULSTER'S LAW

state's normal standards. For the RUC, a person's innocence or guilt hung on whether they saluted the Union Jack or the Irish tricolour. who opposed British rule were Those automatically outside the law in Ulster, as Unionist leaders told the British authorities in discussing the new force's operational and recruitment policies: 'No rebel who wishes to set up a republic can be regarded merely as a "political opponent",

DUL USIOC

repressed.' They insisted that 'appointments to the constabulary should all be those who are prepared to accept this new form of government'. There could be no question of asking Ulster constables to act as mediators between those holding loyal views and those desirous of establishing a republic'.

For almost 50 years after Partition, British turned a blind eye to the governments sectarian excesses of the RUC, accepting that internment without trial and public flogging were necessary to keep Northern Ireland under Crown control.

ORANGE LAW

The Stormont parliament is now long gone, and Northern Ireland is run directly from Westminster. Yet no British government has altered the basic role of the RUC.

When Northern Ireland erupted in August 1969, as the RUC led Loyalist attacks on nationalist districts, the Labour government sent in the Army to 'uphold law and order'.

But, as Labour minister Richard Crossman revealed in his diary, top cabinet members like James Callaghan and Denis Healey had no intention of challenging the sectarian legal system: 'Callaghan and Healey both reminded us that our whole interest was to work through the Protestant government."

One naive cabinet member asked the telling order question: "Does and

RUC,

who are Protestant whatever the Orangemen, define as law and order?' No answer is recorded, but we can picture Labour's leading statesmen quietly nodding their heads. Upholding law and order in Northern Ireland has always meant protecting British rule and Protestant privilege. Nationalists have seen the RUC as an alien force. Unlike any British police force, it has to police without the consent of a sizeable minority of the population. This explains why RUmen carry high-velocity rifles rather than highpitched whistles. As RUC chief Sir John Hermon admits, nationalists in Northern Ireland do not ask the RUC the time of day: •We subscribe wholeheartedly to the concept of community policing. Sadly we do not this enjoy the freedom

OUE

important role without armed back-up in some areas. The RUC can only carry out community policing in its own, Loyalist, community. Yet today the RUC itself is under attack from Loyalist bigots. These tensions reflect the reforms Westminster has introduced in Northern Ireland since 1969, to try to improve the image of British rule.

has and

RUC

The re-equipped been retrained as a more efficient anti-nationalist force. But it has also undergone cosmetic The Royal Ulster Constabulary has a bloody history of attacking Catholic civilians. The old Ulster Special Constabulary carried out horrific reprisals, like that perpetrated in 1922

IRA

shot British June after the statesman Sir Henry Wilson. The next day a lynch mob of Ulster police drove into the Catholic of Cushendall, County village Antrim, and opened fire on a crowd in the street. Then they dragged three Catholic youths up an alley and butchered them. The Northern Ireland authorities claimed the police had been fired on, and no charges were brought. Today, the tradition of off-duty reprisals has been passed on to the Ulster Defence which was formed after the Regiment RUC's 'B' Specials reserve was abolished in 1969. Five members of the UDR are now on surgery to try to convince the world that it is impartial. The Anglo-Irish accord brought this process and inflamed to a nead Protestant opinion. Since 1976 British governments have upheld the 'primacy of policing' in Northern Ireland, presenting the Irish War as a case of British police pursuing Irish criminals. This means that the RUC often replaces the British Army in the front line of the war.

Last year the IRA killed 23 RUC officers and just two British soldiers. The RUC has built its own assassination squad, the E4A, in the image of the SAS. And it carries out most raids, arrests, and plastic bullet attacks suffered by nationalists. One of its favourite games today is to baton charge republican funeral processions. But the British authorities have also tried to make the RUC more acceptabe to moderate nationalists and British public The

RUC

had opinion. has to make conciliatory gestures, like running 'Blue Lamp' discos, and has arrested Loyalist paramilitaries as proof of its evenhandedness. The Anglo-Irish accord threatened to take these reforms a step further. To support for the undermine nationalist republican movement, the British authorities dropped heavy hints about RUC officers being forced to swear an oath of impartiality.

And the police have had to re-route and ban Protestant parades provocative brougl Catholic areas.

MORE BRUTALITY

None of this has altered the sectarian roots of the RUC But it has incensed hardline Loyalists, and caused the attacks on RUC men. The Loyalists' complaint against the RUC is very different from the hatred for the police felt by many nationalists. Nationalists oppose the RUC as a repressive power enforcing foreign rule in their country.

Loyalists normally support the RUC for the They more police Same reason wall brutality, not less, so long as it is directed at the traditional Catholic target. Their fear is that the RUC might stop behaving as a body of Protestant bigots. But there is no danger of that. No matter how many Loyalist marches are banned or how many moderate nationalists are won to sympathise with the police, the conflict that counts will be between supporters of Irish freedom and the RUC The existence of Northern Ireland as a British province cannot be reconciled with the aspirations of Irish nationalists. Catholics will always be outside Ulster's law. As one RUC man complained at a meeting of Police Federation, the Anglo-Irish accord is designed "to appease people in this community who never have or never will uphold law and order. Behind today's talk about token reforms, British the

RUC

policy towards has remained unchangedfrom Churchillthrough Callaghan to Thatcher. The authorities arm the Protestant people to police Ulster, and nationalists get their law and order out of the barrel of a British gun.

POLICE CRIMES

trial for shooting a deaf Catholic council worker in the back of the head.

The modern RUC tends to carry out its killings on duty. No nationalist of any age is safe. In December 1982 an RUC hit-squad blasted two 17-year old Catholic youths apart with machine guns and shotguns at a farm in County Armagh. One died instantly, the other was crippled - and charged with possessing arms to cover up the

RUC

outrage. In November 1983 the RUC arrived at a post office in County Tyrone to confront armed raiders. The robbers had gone, so the police opened fire on the Catholic customers instead, killing a 77-year old woman. This is the sectarian police force's equivalent of helping old ladies across the road.

LESSONS OF POUNDSWICK

THE BATTLE IN EDUCATION

Save

SOS

Our

POUR WICK

ciending standarde при wang Caucanog

GASMALLE

MANCHESTER'S LABOUR COUNCIL HAS LET THE RIGHT DICTATE TEACHERS' AIMS ighteen Manchester teachers are still Poundswick high suspended from school in Wythenshawe, for refusing of to teach five pupils accused daubing school walls with obscene slogans The dispute has about their colleagues. prompted Manchester teachers to call a campaign of selective industrial action in the run-up to the 8 May local elections. Now it break into the elections

CALCIS

1LO1 themselves, as two Liberal candidates are standing on a 'Poundswick Parent' ticket.

They expect to win votes by opposing the Labour council's suspension of the teachers.

Teachers can only defend working conditions by organising against the government and councils that attack their rights.

Keith Tompson reports from Manchester The suspended 18 are members of the National Association of Schoolmasters/ Teachers. Union of Women The union's dispute with the city coming to a head since last June, when the Poundswick teachers first refused to teach the alleged obscene graffiti artists. The head teacher suspended boys, governors recommended their expulsion.

But in September, the council's education sub-committee came out against the teachers' action and the governors' decision, and ruled that the boys should return to normal schooling. Since then the row has raged on.

As teachers were suspended without pay, 99.5 percent of their colleagues voted for protest strike action, and thousands marched through the city behind the slogan 'Save Our Standards'. The debate about the Poundswick affair

SEE OUR

standards has thrown up two responses, one from the left-wing Labour council and one from right-wing crusaders for a return to the education system of the past. Neither offers any way forward for teachers.

The Labour council's approach is summed up by councillor Peter Keenlyside, member of the education sub-committee and supporter of the left Labour news sheet Socialist Organiser. Keenlyside has tried to justify suspending the teachers by blaming them for *The decision to send teachers the crisis: home is not one socialists would take with any enthusiasm, although given the state of affairs in the school it is difficult to see what other action could be taken....In reality the dispute is a wholly reactionary one.'

Keenlyside's approach depicts the guilty pupils as hapless victims of society who cannot be held responsible for their actions.

So teachers should just sit back and suffer the consequences - presumably until Neil Kinnock arrives in No 10, to put the world to rights and end the evils that brutalise The best advice working class youth. Manchester's socialist council can offer teachers is to deal with abuse at work by acting the Christian and turning the other cheek.

LABOUR LIBERALS

The Keenlyside position on Poundswick is the approach of the social worker and the middle class liberal. It ignores the fact that section the labour teachers movement, with the right to demand decent working conditions in which they don't get sexist and racist abuse thrown at them. The council's outlook seeks to justify anti-social behaviour, and denies the victims any right The logical outcome of this of defence. approach is to sack teachers who refuse to put up with such filth - which the left-wing council has come very close to doing.

With the Labour Party offering such flabby liberalism, it is no wonder that the right has been able to channel teachers action in a reactionary direction. The anti-council Save Our Standards" campaign reflects the outlook of the new moralists, who see more disright-wing cipline as the solution to social problems.

The Freedom Association, a notorious scab outfit that finances strike-breaking operations, has promised to donate t1000 to the campaign and to cover any legal costs incurred by suing the council. Head teachers are keen supporters of the campaign because it upholds their right to manage their schools - and their staff.

It is ironic that Labour councillors should condemn the dispute as reactionary, as they are to blame for its right-wing direction.

When the only choices on offer are either to sympathise with the teenagers who abused the teachers, or to defend the decision to expel the culprits, it is obvious which one will win wider public support. Only a fool or a dyed in the wool liberal — could see the pupils as the victims and the teachers as the problem. If they are to salvage something from the Manchester teachers Poundswick mess, must reject both options now on offer and plot an entirely new course. Teachers must fight to force Manchester city council to reinstate the 18 suspended Wythenshawe staff. They should dismiss the notion that anti-social behaviour should be tolerated.

But they must also ditch the current Save Our Standards' campaign. The repressive climate created by demanding more discipline and upholding head teachers' 'right to manage' can only be to teachers' disadvantage. It will be used to justify tougher controls over teachers as well as pupils. At a time when the Tories are discussing the introduction teacHer appraisal, which will allow them to discipline teachers they deem inadequate, we have to take a stand against all attempts to tighten management's regime in the schools.

in -The big problems facing teachers Poundswick, and throughout the country, are not caused by declining moral standards. They the government's attempt to are due to restructure the British education system so that it is cheaper and better suits the needs of British capitalism.

TORY STANDARDS

Spending restrictions mean many schools are already collapsing about the occupants' while parents have to pay for Cars. textbooks. Last year spending on defence outstripped education spending for the first time in 20 years. Yet the Tories need to go much further with their plans to cut the cost of education. Their latest money-saving schemes include under-funding the new GCSE exam, and creating 'Crown schools' in the inner cities. This will give central government direct control over spending on these schools, cutting out the inner-city education authorities which have spent too much for the Tories' liking. There is also talk of encouraging the speculators in the City of London to finance top-flight education establishments, while the state presides over a collection of crumbling schools for those outside the elite. Tory education secretary Sir Keith Joseph justifies his policy on the grounds that it will raise standards in the important sectors of the education system. Teachers cannot resist Joseph's hatchet-job by echoing his appeal for a return to a mythical age of discipline and dedication in our schools. Instead of right wingers behind Save Our joining Standards' banners, teachers have to organise to defend their working conditions, and to win the resources the Tories deny them.

Education promises to be an important issue in the run-up to the next general election. Revolutionary Communist Party candidates in Manchester's local elections are intervening in the Poundswick affair to put our approach across. We must have nothing to do with the moral crusaders who pretend tighter management discipline is in teachers' interests. And we must turn the heat on the Labour council whose liberal outlook has built the right-wing campaign more effectively than the Freedom Association could ever have done.

THE

PROPAGANDA

WAR

PAGE 3

Have you got your Save Page 3' lapel badge yet? Or a car sticker to show your support for the Sun's "Save Our Sizzlers' campaign? You could stick it on your Cortina window, next to •Windsurfers do it standing up' and Honk if you had it last night. Why is the Sun mobilising wankers?

Should we support Labour MP Clare Short's attempt to ban displays of topless models in the national press?

Clare Short is a left-wing MP who wants pictures of semi-naked women banned from the papers, on the grounds that they lead to an increase in rape and violence against women. Opposition from Tory MPs was predictable. 'I wish I looked like Samantha Fox, and so does my husband, claimed Edwina Currie. Nicholas Fairburn (whose wife agrees with him) said, Most sex crimes are committed against children and old women A picture of a nubile girl is not going to make someone rape a 90-year old And Robert Adley claims that if a man gets hot and steamy, these pictures act as a release, not a stimulation to rape. I thought the debate was a hoot and I had lots of jokes about Wapping and knockers up my sleeve.'

These comments, ranging from the puerile to the nasty to the bizarre, prove the Tory Party is full of idiots. But that shouldn't drive us to back Clare Short. Her approach also trivialises women's oppression.

Rape and violence against women is a serious issue. But rape, violence and degradation can only be fought by freeing women from domestic drudgery, imprisonment in the home and economic dependence. As the Sun itself points out, rape is not caused by men looking at pinups. Rape was as common in Victorian times when women's bodies were constantly hidden from public view, and during the fifties when strict censorship prevailed.

In any case rape is not the issue here The present media and police obsession with rape has been orchestrated to legitimise more spending on law and order and attacks on women's rights. Short's emphasis on rape, rather than the less shocking aspects of women's oppression - poverty, unemployment and the lack of childcare and abortion facilities - lends support to the moral majority. Norman Tebbit's argument that permissiveness leads to the breakdown of the family and violence in society is strengthened by Short's approach. Juvenile jokes about knockers aside, many Tory MPs sympathise with Short and are prepared to back her Bill. Had she instead drawn up a Bill to guarantee more nurseries or rights for part-time workers, she would have challenged the moral consensus instead of endorsing it. And had she won support for such a Bill, it could have made a real difference to women's lives.

If Page 3 vanished tomorrow it would make no difference to women's lives. It might undermine the Sun's position in the tabloid circulation war. But it would strengthen the state's hand for imposing more extensive censorship. More censorship would particularly affect lesbians and gay men, whose sexuality is already considered obscene by the authorities. It would give the state greater powers to define obscenity not only could many classic novels and plays be banned, but so also could publications like Republican News or tns.

The working class must develop its own definition of obscenity. Every page of the Sun is obscene. And its management's ban on trade union rights is an offence to our caneares the next step • 18 April 1986 • 5

LABOUR'S

RADICALS

Tony Benn bows to Nick Raynsford

OLD

RETIRE

The absence of the left from the Fulham byelection campaign confirms that it has accepted a position on the margins of British politics, where its main concern is with its own survival 6 • the next step • 18 April 1986

DAVE HOURNE

lony Benn used to argue that the reason T why the Labour Party had lost popular support was that it had moved away from its traditional socialist principles.

According to Benn, the way for Labour to revive its fortunes at the polls was not to promote a more moderate image, as recommended by the party leadership, but to present the electorate with bold socialist policies and a vigorous campaigning party. The lett's absence from the by-election campaign in Fulham shows that it does not really believe its own rhetoric. Instead of engaging in real political battles, Benn has been busily organising a circus. He has invited senior diplomats from the American and Soviet embassies in London to take part in a public discussion on East- West relations in his Chesterfield constituency this weekend. The Chesterfield summit can only be a farcical reenactment of the stage-managed Gorbachev- Reagan exchanges, with no consequences at international, national or constituency level. It reveals the retreat of the left from politics into showbiz.

NAVEL GAZING

The left has grudgingly accepted the view of the party leaders that it is an electoral liability.

Ever since Kinnock's humiliation of Derek Hatton and Arthur Scargill at last year's party conference, the various factions of the left have bowed to the leadership's terms. Prominent left wingers in parliament, and the far left groups outside, have restricted their activities within the limits imposed by the leadership.

As a left result, the become even more nas preoccupied with internal matters, and even more remote from important issues in the real world. The narrow organisational focus of the left's activity reveals its increasingly inward-looking character. The most dramatic initiative ever taken by the hard left Campaign Group of MPs was last month's walkout from the national executive meeting, over attempts to discipline prominent members of the Militant Tendency in Liverpool. The Campaign Group never took such decisive action over the refusal of the national executive to back the miners against police attacks in 1984; there was no walkout over the Labour leadership's shameful endorsement of the Tory Anglo-Irish deal in November The hard left's showdown with Kinnock took place not over any of the long list of policy concessions he has made to the Tories, but over the cherished rights of factions to organise within the Labour machine. Even then Eric Heffer, Campaign Group spokesman, was at pains to point out that the seven had stormed out of the executive meeting not because they supported Militant in any way considered that the pro our because uncy ceedings violated 'natural justice'. For Labour's hard left, a high court judge's ruling on how the hearing should be conducted came before any political considerations.

The rest of the left has followed the Campaign Group in making a priority o opposing the expulsion of a dozen Militants Party. A collection Labour Labour's radical factions has even produced several issues of a broadsheet entitled Witch Hunt News. Nothing is more important to the left than defending its protected corner inside the Labour Party. This week's conference of the Militantsponsored Broad Left Organising Committee in the unions will be devoted to rallying resistance against further attacks on Militant from the Labour leadership. Any discussion about how to defend workers against attacks from the employers will have to be fitted in after the main business of Militant self-preservation. Over the past three months Militant leaders have toured the country speaking at rallies against the witch-hunt. These have been organised in ar attempt to hold Militant's forces together without turther antagonising the leadership rallies sensitive Militant avoided have constituencies like Fulham, and cities like Liverpool, Coventry or Bradford where Militant has sitting or prospective MPs. In these areas Militant has adopted a low profile, in the hope of avoiding further conflict with the leadership and further expulsions. In Liverpoo the national speaking tour has had the added bonus of keeping Derek Hatton out of the city where he is regarded even by Militant supporters as a serious liability in Labour's council election campaign. Militant activists are happy to push the hapless non-Militant counci

Fulham: the left comes nowhere

PADD MORRISON

leader John Hamilton to the fore. Coventry Militants had to travel to Birmingham to see the Hatton show while Militant councillors were discreetly lobbying the right-wing Labour group on the council, which had previously excluded them from its ranks.

Even left-wing organisations outside the Labour Party have accepted that the dispute between a leadership determined to convince the public of its respectability, and a faction which upholds a fairly moderate version of Labour's programme, is of some wider importance.

The Socialist Workers' Party has fly-posted the country proclaiming its concern to defend the Labour left against Kinnock, organised numerous meetings on the same theme and written a series of open letters proposing unity with Militant. The left never asks the question - what difference does it make to the working class whether Militant pursues its Labourist policies inside or outside the Labour Party?

MACHINE POLITICS

The left's preoccupation with organisational matters goes beyond the issue of Militant. Pick up any left-wing paper and you will find articles by Vladimir Derer of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy. After more than a decade of agitation over the terms of the party constitution, Derer has now discovered that 'the powers given to the NEC under clause II(3) of the constitution are also in urgent need of revision'.

This has something to do with suspending local parties like Liverpool, a matter which Derer also wants dealt with by a new appeals tribunal.

He concludes with the familiar contact address for those seeking model for October's party conference.

You will also find articles by activists such as Marc Wadsworth of the Labour Party Black Sections National Committee, or Ann Pettifor of the Labour Women's Action Committee.

Wadsworth reports that 37 black sections have now been set up and that 11 prospective black parliamentary candidates have been selected — half in winnable seats. Pettifor announces that the June Conference of Labour Women has decided to elect five representatives for the national executive, in defiance of the rule that says only the full party conference - that is trade union block votes - can elect women to their reserved places on the national executive.

len days before the Fulham by-election, Labour's Nick Raynsford was asked to comment on Derek Hatton's imminent arrival in Fulham. Would Raynsford join Hatton in addressing a Labour Party Young Socialists meeting in Fulham that week?

I will send a Raynsford responded testily.

message to tell him he's not welcome,' he said. I will not speak on a platform with Derek Hatton, and I do not welcome his involvement."

Then Raynsford remembered the date April. What a good April Fool joke it was — the very idea that the left might hold a meeting during the campaign! Joining in the merriment, Raynsford recovered his composure — and his campaign resumed its confident stride.

Well before 1 April, Labour declared Fulham a no-go area for left-wing policies. The hard left would have to soften, or keep out.

Party canvassers were required to reinforce Raynsford's moderate middle class image: Respectable campaigners like Glenys Kinnock and agony aunt Claire Rayner were welcome in Soft leftie Ken Livingstone Fulham. WaS welcomed, a little more warily, and carefully campaign platform balanced by on the heavyweight Denis Healey.

PROFESSIONAL MODERATE

For the hard left, only Dennis Skinner made the three-mile trip from Westminster. His brief contribution to the campaign comprised a lowkey visit to Labour's Fulham headquarters, and an unreported canvass. He left Raynsford's campaign as he found it — slick, professional and moderate. Labour's tactics stymied the opposition.

Alliance officials complained that there was nothing wrong with Raynsford. On election night, SDP loser Roger Liddle implied he would still be in the Labour Party 'if it were full of nice Labour's black sections and women's campaigns appear to be indifferent to Labour Party policy affecting blacks and women. Black sections campaigners do not campaign to change Labour's policy of support for racist immigration controls, or its approval for police harassment of black youth. Labour women's activists have made no attempt to challenge the parliamentary party's consistent refusal to take a clear stand on the abortion issue.

In reality there is nothing left-wing about these - they are simply groupings of individuals concerned to strengthen their own position, through factional intrigue and the manipulation of resolutions, committees and conferences within the Labour machine. But that is what the term left' has now come to mean.

The irrelevance of the traditional left is most forcefully exposed when it is confronted by the realities inescapable of the class struggle. Rupert Murdoch's lockout of 6000 print workers at Wapping is the most recent example.

The Campaign Group's immediate contribution was to introduce a Bill into parliament calling for Murdoch to be deported as an 'undesirable alien'. Such ideas reinforce the chauvinist prejudices of the print unions and strengthen the hand of the state when it comes to getting rid of other 'undesirable aliens, whether they are political activists or illegal immigrants.

BILLS AND BENN

Through skilful use of commons questions, Militant MP David Nellist has revealed that the razor wire fence around Fort Murdoch at Wapping does not have the required planning permission from the local authority.

While Murdoch rallies the resources of the state, Labour's most extremist MP looks to the bylaws of Tower Hamlets council to defend the

THORS

Outside parliament the rest of the left has obeyed the instructions issued by the print union leaders, turning the fight for jobs and union rights into a charade of token gestures and appeals for public sympathy. The left has mobilised for 'mass pickets' that the union leaders have turned into disorganised rambles with all the fighting spirit of a funeral march.

The left's response is a few grumbles and calls to increase the numbers. The left's latest cause is chaps like Nick'. Some Labour supporters, though euphoric at their party's victory, were less than happy about the middle-of-the-road campaign. One commented that there have been no concrete policies: what we have said about unemployment, for example, amounts to nothing. At the beginning of March, when Ransford's campaign was warming up, Tony Benn addressed the miners' strike commemoration rally at the Albert Hall. 'The Labour national executive, he said, 'won't build a new society.

We will have to build it ourselves. Don't wait for permission.' But when Kinnock denied him permission to speak in Fulham, Benn stayed silent. His only public involvement in the Fulham campaign was to write a letter to the Guardian saying he had taken part in it. The letter, published after the announcement of Raynsford's victory, did not specify what his contribution had been.

SOCIALISM ON THE SHELF

It is only three months since Benn's left-wing constituency party published the Chesterfield manifesto. Hailed by the left as a significant contribution to socialism, it listed certain rights which must be won and maintained' including 'the right to useful and satisfying work'. Benn declared that 'the only way is to for it present a real vision and fight consistently. The Fulham by-election was a chance to present the left's vision and programme to the public. But Benn accepted Kinnock-Raynsford brush-off and the the Chesterfield manifesto stayed on the shelf.

Local left wingers were told to keep a low Raynsford's campaign newsletter profile. reassured voters that the few extremists that do exist are being firmly dealt with by the party.'

Militant supporters who usually proclaim their the National Council for Civil Liberties report on the nuisance to local residents resulting from Murdoch's But strike-breaking operation. bleating about the inconvenience caused by Murdoch will do nothing to restore jobs or union rights at Wapping. The left generally prefers to avoid issues in With his Campaign Group the real world. supporters, Tony Benn has drawn up a list of around 40 private member's Bills which have no chance of receiving parliamentary time and are divorced from any public campaign.

The only purpose of Benn's Bills is to let the world know that he and the Campaign Group are still in business. They also confirm the parliamentary focus of the left's activities.

TOO BUSY

Other members of the Campaign Group have Tam Dalyell is still more esolene concenes. living off the glories of the Belgrano, pursuing the case of Hilda Murrell, the 78-year old rosegrower he thinks was murdered by the security forces in the course of the cover-up. Following his revelations about the Johnson Matthey Bank, Brian Sedgemore is preoccupied with corruption in the City, though he missed the first meeting of the committee on the Financial Services Bill because he was having his portrait painted. Anticipating that he is next in line for the inquisition after the Liverpool Militants, David Nellist is sponsoring a campaign to introduce a Hungarian teaching method for disabled children in the Midlands.

Meanwhile unemployment rises, trade union rights are being ravaged, black people are subjected to mounting racist attacks and women are the targets of a propaganda barrage designed to reconcile them to an expanding role in caring for children, the elderly, the sick and disabled — not to mention men — in the home.

But the left is too busy with internal affairs for matters like these. Two examples illustrate the traditional left's abandonment of important political issues The only candidate to make Ireland an issue in the Fulham by-election was the eccentric Loyalist Boyd Black, who scraped home somewhere between Captain Rainbow and Screaming Lord Sutch. The Labour left which has its own Irish committee - had an ideal opportunity to publicise its opposition to indefatigable activism at election time were by their absence Individual

CO CUBES

Militant supporters were allowed to campaign for Raynsford if they dropped their militancy.

Left wingers outside the Labour Party acted in sympathy. The local Socialist Workers' Party organiser said that 'we ask people to vote Labour, but at the same time we let them know they won't get anything out of it. The SWP too kept out of public view lest it embarrass Raynsford: it limited its local activity to calling on the •Socialist alternative to Kinnock', timed to begin 90 minutes before polling finished.

HOLDING THEIR PEACE

In his victory speech Raynsford said that the Fulham vote would put Kinnock on the road to Downing Street. Ten minutes later he crossed the Fulham Road to join his celebrating supporters at the Hibernia club. While the party faithful hailed the MP. Raynsford new addressed his audience as 'comrades", a word not heard during the campaign. This was his only concession to the largely left-wing London activists. The rest of his speech remained safely within the limits of Kinnockite orthodoxy When the DJ played Cliff Richard's Congratulations, Labour's dancing activists congratulated each other on the undisputed victory of the right. Labour's right wing dominated Raynsford's by-election campaign, and the left accepted its terms. When Labour's leaders decided that leftwing policies would be a vote-loser, the left agreed to keep quiet. The Fulham by-election was a challenge to left wingers — a challenge they left unanswered.

Instead of arguing for their policies, they chose self-imposed silence.

They played their part in turning Labour's left into an April Fool.

Andrew Calcutt the Anglo-Irish agreement and its support for a united Ireland. But the left goes to some lengths to keep these positions secret, or at least to confine them to obscure journals and internal When top conferences. Kinnock aide John Smith declared that Ireland was not to be an issue in Fulham, the left agreed to hold its peace. Loyalist revolt, sectarian murder and state harassment of republicans raged for the duration of the campaign, but the left accepts the Westminster consensus that Ireland should be kept out of British politics.

Or take the current Western offensive against Libya. For months the press has been filled with chauvinist and racist abuse of Colonel Gadaffi, while the British government has given moral and intelligence support to Reagan's attacks on Libya. The left's papers report these events, but they have no consequences for its propaganda When it comes to internationa issues, Denis Healey, Labour's veteran rightwing leader, lays down the line, and the left hurries off to polish up its resolutions for the next party conference. When World War Three breaks out the left will still be campaigning to "democratise' the Labour Party.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

A recent pamphlet sums up the plight of the hard left. Which way forward for labour? is the product of the trade union rump of the Communist Party, reformed as the Communist Campaign Group since the wet Marxism Today laction took over the party last year.

recommends that the left take a stand around the old alternative economic strategy, upholding free collective bargaining, nationalisation and withdrawal from the EEC.

While Kinnock re-fashions the Labour Party into an SDP Mark Il for the eighties, the traditional lett takes refuge in policies which were discredited in the seventies.

The retreat of the old left from the pressing political issues of the present confirms the urgency of building a movement that puts the interests of the working class before its own internal squabbles, and campaigns on issues which can unite and strengthen the working class in the struggle for a new society.

Mike Freeman the next step • 18 April 1986 7

Internationa

TARGET LIBYA: US JETS IN THE GULF OF SIRTE

fter recent bomb attacks on a TWA A flight between Cairo and Athens, and on a disco frequented by US Washington servicemen in Berlin, wasted no time looking for evidence about Citing obscure intelligence culprits. Ene reports of Libyan involvement, despatched the gunboats of the sixth fleet on a new offensive against Gadaffi, only weeks after US strikes on Libyan targets around the Gulf of Sirte. 'International terrorism' once more serves as a pretext for the world's top imperialist state to show its military might in the Middle East.

Ever since Reagan became president in 1981, he has relentlessly promoted Gadaffi as a bogey figure. By depicting Gadaffi as the psychopathic mastermind behind world terrorism, Reagan has won popularity at home — and put pressure on Western Europe to support a more interventionist brand of foreign policy.

But the purpose behind sending the biggest naval task force since the Falklands War into the southern Mediterranean has little to do with stopping bomb attacks on civilian airliners or discos in European cities. Vice- George Bush explains the real president objective of US policy as to exert the US right to conduct naval and air exercises in every part of the globe. Given its economic and military weakness and its isolation from the more conservative Arab regimes of the Gulf, Libya is the ideal target for Reagan's attempts to show the world that America is still the boss.

ROLLING NOWHERE

In the early months of 1986 the USA has of setbacks suffered series international arena. Loyal US stooges Baby Doc Duvalier Haiti and Ferdinand In Marcos of the Philippines were ousted by popular uprisings. Both had to be rescued from their own peoples by US forces, and taken into protective custody to enjoy their ill-gotten gains in exile. The reopening or hostilities against Libya reveals ton's determination to win a foreign policy compensate

ITS

SUCCESS

LO humiliations. Hence Reagan has stepped up support for right-wing forces in Honduras, Angola and Afghanistan and sharpened his attacks on Nicaragua, Cuba and the Soviet Union. 'It is the foreign policy of a zealot, not a statesman, according to the liberal Observer, wide West European alarm at America's renewed drive to 'roll back' Soviet and left-wing influences in the third world.

The problem facing the US establishment is 8 • the next step • 18 April 1986

THE USA GOES TO WAR IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

DEADLY GAMBITS

that, behind all the hype, it finds it increasingly difficult to sustain its global influence — never mind roll back' anything.

For five years Reagan has ranted about of communism in America and terrorism in the Middle East, Reagan to compensate tor influence in the world. But his failure to produce results America's credibility. Neither the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua nor Gadaffi's government in Libya has been overthrown, despite the concerted attempts at destabilisation by the Pentagon. James Wood reports on Reagan's latest offensive against Gadaffi The USA's aggressive posturing and armed interference in Central America and the Middle East American sentiment After last month's border clash between USbacked Contras in Honduras and Nicaraguan forces, a high ranking official in Honduras told the press that his government never felt threatened militarily by incursion. He response was 'exaggerated", Reagan's campaign to approve aid", and that it might plunge Honduras into war. This the disclosure by region — which provides the vital bases for the Contra campaign — reveals the difficulties facing Reagan's attempt to roll back' the Sandinistas. American prospects in the Middle East also appear gloomy. Washingthat Reagan had scored a seemed when he SucCeSs. president Mubarak to mobilise his armed recent forces for a show of force on the Libyan border after the hijacking of an Egyptian airliner. But US hopes of using Egypt as its policeman in the Middle East have dimmed since the outbreak of internal disorders in Egypt this year. Recognising the need to accommodate anti-American and Mubarak has distanced Reagan's campaign against Libya.

weeks ago he sent a trade delegation to relations with the Soviet Union.

Central America's declining has further undermined alike. critics of US militarism.

have heightened anti-

REAGAN DOCTRINE

in the third world. third right-wing Sandinista the complained that the US

-LWO

"just part of brutal Pinochet America's key ally in the doctrine' was declared. that Washington now Last November big persuaded Egyptian world and the pro-Arab feeling, himselt from Two decav in policing role. Turkey, Moscow to restore Egypt's formerly friendly The triumph of 'people power in the uncertainty. Last Philippines showed that, under the pressure of mounting social unrest, America's client states in the third world are slipping out of its grip. Reagan's strident rhetoric and his gunboat diplomacy are designed to create a sense of purpose in US foreign policy at a time when its general incoherence is clear to third world insurgent and European ally early years of the Reagan presidency, foreign policy was guided by the pragmatic distinction formulated by United Nations representative Jeanne Kirkpatrick between 'authoritarian' and totalltarian' dictatorships. In the former camp were premiers like Marcos and Duvalier.

who were deemed to be entitled to US support. Into the latter camp fell Nicaragua's Ortega and Libya's Gadaffi, who deserved Thatcher's to be deposed at the earliest opportunity.

However, since the events in the Philippines and Haiti, the USA has discovered a new distaste for reactionary regimes.

This, it hopes, will pacify domestic and European In a speech last month promising action to defend 'freedom' around the world, Reagan promised that the USA would now oppose world dictatorships as much as left wingers. To show that he meant weeks ago Reagan sponsored a United Nations motion condemning the dictatorship Chile In Meanwhile US television featured meetings between American officials and opponents of the US-sponsored dictatorship of Chun Doo Hwan in South Korea. A new Reagan The shift in US foreign policy indicates admits what has become an incontrovertible fact: that many of America's client dictatorships in the third viable. longer Reagan's pompous 'doctrine' shows that, to maintain a semblance of authority, the US leadership is forced to make a virtue of necessity. By distancing themselves from old allies like Pinochet or Chun, and trying to take some credit for easing in the new regimes in Haiti Philippines, US leaders hope nobody will notice that the ring of client regimes through which America controlled key areas of the world has now disintegrated.

The big factor behind America's interoffensive. national crisis is the depth of the crisis of the US economy, and the extent of economic the third world. The world of US recession makes assertions power more necessary than ever, if the USA is to live up to its role as a global policeman.

However, the weakness of the US economy, and the sheer scale of social and political dislocation in the third world, make it more and more difficult for the USA to play a In 1985 the USA's trade and budget deficits reached record levels. The collapse of its share of world exports, increasing penetration of the US market by foreign imports and soaring state expenditure are symptoms of the decline in America's To the competitiveness. protect market, American leaders have to resort to protectionist measures, not only against more dynamic imperialist rivals like Japan, but even against a growing number of developing and newly industrialising coun tries around the world.

T-SHIRTS AND PASTA

The irreverent treatment George Bush received during a recent visit to Turkey highlights the link between America's economic malaise and its political decline.

the usual diplomatic etiquette Turkish premier Turgut Ozal used a banquet laid on to welcome Bush to launch a blistering attack on US import barriers against Turkish textiles. Undignified public squabbles between the USA and Portugal, Brazil and South Korea over t-shirts, pasta, cereals and steel indicate the extent of America's decline.

The American crisis provokes growing tensions in the US establishment over the Bitter direction of government strategy.

rows and resignations among White House and Federal Reserve Bank officials over the budget, interest rates and the soaring cost of US military expenditure, reflect this mood of week the collapse in oil prices provoked serious disagreements within the Reagan administration. While Bush felt the threat to national development was security because it threatened to destroy Texan oil producers and destabilise the House spokesman credit system, White Larry Speakes proclaimed the benefits of lower oil prices for industry.

In a more bizarre turn of events, Federal Bank chair Paul Volcker was indicted by White House right wingers, for fighting inflation too hard by keeping interest rates too high. In their attempts to unseat him and propel America into a Keynesian cheapmoney recovery, the conservatives saw their man, Fed vice-chair Preston Martin, resign in a blaze of publicity. Reagan has not yet faced a crisis of confidence on the scale of Westlands But debacle. the underlying trends are the same.

BLUFF CALLED

The continuing haggle between the White House and congress over Reagan's Central America policy exposes the tensions in the US establishment. When even state governors refuse to allow the National Guard forces under their command to participate in US military manoeuvres in Honduras - a: eight of them threatened to do last week — confidence in US foreign policy is evidently wearing thin. Reagan's opponents always back down as soon as he plays the anticommunist card or waves the stars and Stripes at Gadaffi. But persistent dissent over funding the Contras' dirty war shows that, in the absence of real results, the credibility of the government's foreign policy is strained. Reagan's achievement has been his ability to neutralise his critics, and hold his administration together, by focusing attention on the twin menaces of communism and terrorism.

However, as Washington's overseas problems pile up, the limitations of this strategy are being exposed. Reagan's bluff has been called too many times and he is now forced into putting on a show of strength.

By bullying Libya, the USA hopes to reassert its In so doing, status as a world power. however, it makes the imperialist powers of Western Europe more resentful. As America and Europe squabble over who really runs the Mediterranean, the ordinary people of Libya will be the victims of Reagan's latest

junius publications Trade union rights The Labour Party's new charter of trade union rights proposes to uphold the rights of individual workers as opposed to the collective rights of trade unions. But the only reason workers formed trade unions in the first place was because they recognised that the protection of the rights of the individual enshrined in the law provided no real protection for the rights of the working class.

Only by organising collectively against the employers have workers been able to enforce their rights at work. The role of the courts at Wapping and during the miners' strike shows that the law remains an instrument for use by the employers against the working class.

Labour's charter is a capitulation to Tory anti-union propaganda. The right of an individual to join a union is also the right of the freerider not to join a union. The right to go on strike or picket is also the right to break strikes or cross picket lines.

Labour's charter of workers' rights is a scab's charter that can only compound the damage the Tories have already inflicted on the unions.

The law can never protect workers rights - only collective working class organisation and action can stop the employers' ruthless quest for profits at any price. This is the approach recommended in Taking Control, Mike Freeman's handbook for trade unionists. £2.95 plus 85p p&p Also available from Junius Moral panics and Victorian values, Kate Marshall's pamphlet takes on the new moralists and puts forward the case for women's liberation.

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and olougnton 114.90 •uDoorine ine counter optore i sorean West nationalities appear as oraves, une rener war to the Reds the Royal Marines No (director) Alan Bleasdale Surrender, which lapped bemused himself. and comedians. usual misuemeanours. they, most perfect timing, and Whalley, small and weak part. Christopher Dobson and John Miller, the Day we Almost Bombed Moscow: the Allied war in Russia 1918-1920, Hodder At the end of the First World War, the voung Bolshevik regime in Russia taced a combined nilitary assault by Britain, • America aru Jaudhi. revolutionary White Russian forces, the Állied powers set out crush ule hussial nevolution Dobson and Miller approach this little known war from a political position somewhat to the right or ine heaters Dipest All the British are the cowaroly. me Japanese sneaky, the Americans naive and, as for the Bolsheviks they were unspeakable The book is rescued by the authors' rigorous research into une bruis intervention. which contradicts their own prejudices about the war. The evidence forces them to concede that the Waltes nae a me cares steeked in their favour, but still lost the Dobson and Miller publish the first full account of the mutinies in the Yorkshire regiment and in Murmansk and Archangel. The British commanders were eventuals forced to ship tanks to Russia, not for use against the Reds, but

TOOOS

revolt in the British-occupied areas. The authors admit that une war was lust because vi Surrender, Peter Smith At least running through Boys From the Black Stuff there was a good dose of passion and fight, bena ns tosser aneune Walters' struggling housewife. In 's new film, No wete back of here Me sevsee outte sentimentality and fatalism away at the earlier Win are now Tuls Tood. It Is signiticant inat the central character is cast as a benign observer of the mad world around him.

because it is a role which Bleasdale obviously covets for Micnael Angels Is mike, ine new manager of a desperate nightclub in some distant, cerelerteach or ever ooo. Tar past the metal-shuttered job His first night is New Dookee mue JArs Tom a oca Orange Lodge and an equivalent of Irish Catholic pensioners, not to mention a COLOMS Cas MaCcas — variously gay, pathologically nervous and sub- Out the back the old manager is being beaten to a pulp for the anu d Loyalist terrorist is hiding in the toilets. Bernard Hill is the such bouncer and Joanne Whalley the that in a backhanded sort of But as Ray McNally James tills lead the toothless rrotestall ane batnone Tactions Into bate mere s ime either they dor The cast is orinced, cast is magnificent, registers every outrage with the anarchic flavour. Bleasdale calls the film a 'deadpan farce' and the idea is tnal wnile we are laugning we depths are to ponder ruefully the to which a combination of age orgotry, poverty and brutality can sink the human condition, and then marvel at the rehabilitation Some nedEs of gold. There are some good

REVLEWS

REDS AGAINST WHITES

How the Bolsheviks beat the Brits

THE RED ARMY DERAILED THE ALLIES

disaffection among British The Tommies generally disliked the Whites. Some thought the Whites and the Reds

• BLEASDALE'S LIVERPOOL

Black stuff £5.95 laughs, and the mixing of forms i as farce and naturalism preauces some 200d perspectives, bou grim and humorous. But even on this leve the one-liners are not quite funny enough, the absurdity of numan penaviour not sharov focused enough (Alan Bennett could teach him a thing or and the plot too contrived and schematic for d sumciendy Bleasdale is hailed as the knows about the victims of Thatcherism, but what is most SulKing about us HIm Is uE sheer superficiality of his view. It is not just the gratuitous use of the Irish War as a metaphor fo human blingness vet again.

Misery is reduced to individual or collective madness, or worse gigglingly comprehended as a 'as bad as each other. But some Reds. The authors reveal that some of the best soldiers in the intervention armies backed the sort of surreal nightmare. Then, spectacle (and of course relished that good old Scouse wallow in the glow of some glib, easy gestures which are supposeu to release us mom Es Mike, for example, stands tall when he says 'I may be a nobody' and the leading Orangeman phones home at midnight to wish his Catholic (!)

son-law d naboy Ivew tedi never having spoken to him before. There's a couple of

HISTORY OF SEXUALITY

Sex and the single woman Shella Jeffreys, The Spinster and her chemies. reminism ane Sexuality 1880-1930, Pandora books by radical teminists otten have their moments. In this book, Sheila Jeffreys issues a retesaney bunt callenge t the cult of motherhood that is now so popular among liberal eminists. but ner ore udice against men and heterosexual extreme that it makes ner reading ot historv suspect Jeffreys portrays the middle class social purity campaigners of the 1880s, , spinsters who eralacu sexual mercouise as d social evil, in a postave ligat She celebrates as early manifestations of feminism what were cacuonary tolgious Justnicatons for cenpacy and male self-control. Most moral purity campaigners were ant-women ane cal working class. They opposed prostitution and child abuse on une arounes mari uncermined the Victorian family. Celibacy or lesbianism were not freely availabie options lor women.

circumstance ratner than choice dictated whether they got married or remained single.

dependence of women upon Bolos', as they called the Bolsheviks. Sergeant Silver Archangel, described the Whites as 'a clique of bloodsucking, inieving. murdering, sarist amm officials 'The majority of the people here are in sympathy with don't blame them. In fact I am -nine tenths Bolo myself and they mY pis Bolt tea der daton.

*Bolo leader drew up a wny the Allies were wignung une Bolsheviks. He was threatened with court martial and execution was awarded Iwo weeks later ne me bruse Millar Medal. to 'exceptional initiative and good by General judgement in action, Dobson and Miller are right to say that the Allies would have stood a better chance without me nate wales out essensior in the ranks was not the sole cause of their defeat. The aumors weveces wine mem te the extraordinary achievement of the Bolsheviks in creating in Ole siloit year • all ally ill Take on me wore A tragic farce' was how one British participant summed up we wal. out tus book was Dubishee i was a arce a ou forgotten in Britain. Read it, and see how the world's most bowe tu emotes were seaten o the courage of a young revolution and the sympathy it deadliest enemies. Andy Clarkson solutions for you. Boast about home why don't you. It makes you wonder what the working class and te mish people nave been doing all these years somewhere that I read Bleasdale, for all his success Teruses to make me usua move to London. That doesn't stop him from being deeply patronising Liverpool. He passes himself off as a hard observer of and doughty fighter for the people No ourrender. ne eave up before he started. Pat Ford men in heterosexual relationsnips nas provided the foundation stone of male inability to select lesbianism or esendence rom men is based on economic and social inequality. Our sex lives reflect, later tan cause. our oppression The chapter on lesbianism provides an incisive account of establishment debates on homosexuality y in the twenties. Accorame to te nouse of commons, there were three ways of dealing with lesbians. The could be 'stamped out acal penaily, me could be cou Tor vene ockee to in lunatic asylums, or they could be ignored. The honourable chen took me tara polion introduce anti-lesbian legislation, fearing that it might introduce into ne mias or perrecty innocent people the most revolting thoughts' In her conclusion Jeffrevs tries to distance herself from today's equivalent of the nineteenth - the Century Mary whitenouse/ Lord Longtord brigade. But her book shows she has more in common with them Kate Marshall the next step • 18 April 1986 • 9

AMOS

TULSE HILL

Yasmin X Arnould Growing Belfast and London, Yasmin Arnould has experienced police repression and racism first hand. Working GLC she has learned that municipal social way

ISIN

use anomer running the system. She been active radical black politics and the womens movement ane in une cause or Irish freedom.

NEWHAM

UPTON

Kenan X Malik Karan Mans ave in the anti-racist movement since the late has since save a legame tole in organising racist attacks, opposing race checks more ounces dra ow centres ane in tientime eiserimination and deportations. He is cursecretary of Workers Against Racism.

ST GILES

Kim Pepper Kim Pepper is a single parent and is a polytechnic student in south London. She has lived in eckham tor three years and ras been actve invo veein campaigning for nursery facilities in the area.

BIRMINGHAM

Richard Ardern Birmingham-born Richard we -knowa activity. He was involved in the the victimcampaign against Mills aL OLS Longbridge and in Mohammed Idrish's fight against deportation. He racism on YTS schemes and opposed plastic introduction bullets into Birmingham. 10 a the next step • 18 April 1986

LAMBER

FERNDALE

Kunle Oluremi Kunle has lived London tor most or nis liTe and worked at the GLC until it was abolished last month. He shop steward. As a student he was involved in radical black politics. joining the RCF he has played an active part in workers Against Racism.

NEWHAM

FOREST GATE

Alex X Farrell joined teeP where was trade, Alex A carenter shop steward in the bullding workers union, angry al une you scratch I'll yours collaboration vetween umons and manage ment. He is currently organiser of East London Workers Against Racism.

ISLINGTON

SUSSEX

Ed X Branigan Film maker Ed Branigan first oecame involved in the Ror through working film about Ireland. He subsequently became acuve viavo vee in ine Irish Freedom Movement, the He sa de vies about about made playing active part in practical campaign work.

MELROSE

Carol Taggart Carol Taggart is an unemployed originally from worker. Belfast. She campaigner for the withdrawal or brush troops trom ireland Over the past year she has opposed Liverpool council's policies ot empty rhetoric and cuts. She has also been active supporting the Wapping strikers. a CANDIDATES

RCP

CLASS

STRUGGLE IS

THE ONLY PROMISE OUR

CANDIDATES MAKE

WHITE CITY 8

SHEPHERD'S BUSH

Fiona X Foster Trainee journalist Fiona Foster first became involved in the

RCP

at the time of the Irish 1981. She hunger buines has since become we -known campaigner for Irish solidarity. present she is campaigning in support of the are subjected to daily strip searching in Brixton jail.

NEWCASTLE

ELSWICK

Dave Clark Dave Clark is an moved member of Usdaw, the shop union. His first political activity was with Workers APainst hacism. me ker santiracist campaign, in Manchester.

moving to Newcastle he been involved in Callio aas cushe health service, organising solidarity with workers in South Africa and print workers at Wapping.

COUNCIL ELECTIONS

OUR

MAY'86 • VOTE

REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNIST PARTY

BRIGHTON

HANOVER

Mark Whittaker Mark has lived in Brighton for nearly 10 years. After doing a variety of jobs in the catering sector, ne neieu setup a 1o0d co-op three years ago. The co op's failure to provide decent wages convinced him that co ous were no Solution to Brod pay job

OTOW

insecurity, year he joined the RCP.

NEWCAS ILE

BENWELL

Claire X Foster Originallv from Deeside Claire Foster disillusioned with the Labour Party over the Cosure oronoton stee works She was a founding member of Workers Against Racism Coventry and was also active womens Tens ISsues has camp che aigned for contraception abortion facilities and for gay

LAMBETH

TOWN HALL

Nigel Myers Born in Tooting and brought up in Lambeth, Nigel works in local nospital. A Tormer Labour supporter, he began to have government tus at top government troops Husuild WOTKeS • wvner Lanour backed Bone police during the 1981 riots he joined the RCP to play an active

HACKNEY

CAROGE

Denis X Ryan Born in London, but brought up Dublin, Denis • Ryan In irelana, britain and Germany currently works for electronics firm in London. He ls well kiown as dudde unlor activist and as a campaigner for Irish freedom.

BRISTOL

ASHLEY

Jim Walker since before the war and is a veteran trade union activist. He is a memser orue awu anec member of the executive com mittee of the trades council. He has been involved in numerous inoustia oiseutes.

SOUT

has particularly fought to political issue: rights, racism, Ireland - into the ale senere

EDINBURGH

CALTON-LOCHEND.

Eve X Anderson Eve has recently moved to Edinburgh from Liverpool where she was a well-known activist one played a leading role ir last year's campaigns the attempts by Victoria Gillick ane coen rower to reste women's rights to contracep tion and abortion. She i also is active ot ine

LAMBETH

LARKHALL

Don Milligan Don has lived in Lambeth for yeals

WEH-KITOWE

campaigner tor gay rignts, Dor played a leading role in the Fightback campaign redundancies month. Don intends to carry on for through the election campaign

RECTORY

Kerry X Andrews Born in Liverpool, Kerry we vea son megoe to cake work. After working in a variety of jobs she became a student East became Technic also active in campaigning against racism and for women's rights.

LOWER STOKE

Tom Bruggen amateur middle weight boxer, now a student at Lanchester polv. Tom Bruegen has become we -known as aloca activist. He protested against social security against lace checks in me dole ane nospitals backed the miners last year and is currently supporting the print workers

GLASGOW

QUEENS PARK/CROSSHILL

Alison Hill Alison has lived in Govanhill for three years and currently working on an Msc scheme looking after handicapped children. She has played a leading role in campaigning TaCiSI are women's rights to contracep tion and abortion. She is also active OT Ine supporter

PONTEFRACT SOUTH

Danny Lees Power worker Danny helped to solidarity pickets during Danny ane nIs WiTe Linda were active members of the Labour Party before resigning in disgust over the party's betraval of the miners. Danny has since played a central part in the miners next step campaign and other RCP activities.

LEEDS

HAREHILLS

Emmanuel Oliver Born Hacknev London, Emmanuel's of racism led him Workers Hadils! Macism. tne campaign. Since to Leeds he reckons that racism Is probably the most important He's standing to focus attention on racism and the need to fight it.

SHEFFIELD

HEELEY

Steve X Brown Steve Brown is a former shop steward in the hospital workers' union Nupe who t been has Sheffield for veas. hes now unemoloved and he says prospect of either Neil Kinnock David Blunkett doing anywe'll have to do it for ourselves.

War

STOP RACIST ATTACKS!

ORGANISE WORKERS'

DEFENCE! Speakers from outline our approach to fighting racism. LEEDS: Wednesday 30 April 7.30pm, Prince of Wales Hotel, Mill Hill (Leeds BR) MANCHESTER: Thursday 17 April 7.30pm, Black Lion Blackfriars Street 22 April 7.30pm, Checkpoint, 45 Westgate NEWCASTLE: Thursday 24 April 1.50pm, west ena Learning and Leisure centre (Well), Elswick Road

ANTI-RACIST BENEFIT

LONDON: Monday 21 . April 8 til late, 100 Club, 100 Oxford Street, W1 (near Tottenham Court Road tube). Workers

PONTEFRACT NORTH

Steve X Roberts Steve Roberts, who works at nice or wales conle soen in Armley jail during the miners' strike. With his Steve was involved Labour Party the ana mune Nevison suboo groue nock.

by Labour's refusal to defend the jailed miners, Steve left to play a leading role in the miers next step campaign.

SEACROFT

Eileen X McEvoy A former member of the Labour Party, Eileen says she got fed up or all the empty LaIK especially on issues like women's rights. She decided that the only way to cerwilal mey needee was ov for it. That's why she Tenand joined the RCP, and why she's standing for the council.

SHEFFIELD

FIRTH PARK

Carolyn Pryce Carolyn Pryce's first experience of politics was in the women's movement. She savs she soon got frustrated with the emphasis on 'searching our own souls other people's find solutiors te broolems une worie one loined the Rop because offered action instead of navel gazing Diary NOTTINGHAM: Thursday 17 April 1.30pm, county hall, Trent brage. Protest against police harassment of black youth LEEDS: Thursday 17 April 12 noon-1.00pm, Leeds universit birectors conterence ISLINGTON: Thursday 17 April 10.00am-12 noon, Islington town nai stoo Dollee terrori Protest outside council police committee meeting 10.00am, Sussex university.

Protest against police speaker at ramily Planning AssocIatIon conference Also Friday 18 April 7.30pm, Sussex university students union.

Meeting on mora panice BRADFORD: Monday 4pm, Bradford town hall End Racism in the schools!

caucation committee meeting LEEDS: Wednesday 23 April 1.30pm, Leeds town hall. Stop

KNOTTINGLEY

Joe Watson Joe valson was born arreant and has worked as a contract sites

TIC TUW TVCO TE

cortenael aleis unemoiover He has a long record of activity He is use of ring in me

YUERIHE

miners next step campaign.

MIDDLETON

Rob Matthews sional Tootballer wales, hoo matews nas lived in Leeds for three years.

He actively involved in the nurs work me Torkshie aurine strike and sub- Ine miners sequently in the miners step the agalist Of sureda or te scab Union Democratic Mineworkers.

SHEFFIELD

SHARROW

Edmund X Price Bolton-born Edmund followed the tamily tradition and became ar engineering apprentice leaving school. He also joined the Labour but having experienced the failure of the Labour Pany to detend work.

ers' jobs and rights in industry • joined the RCP in Sheffield last year.

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SOUTH ELMSALL

Keith X Hammond Keith Hammond works at the Prince of Wales colliery and is well-known locally as an acti vis. ne was arrested several times during the miners' strike and served time in Armley jail. He has suffered further police Harassinent ds a result or ns activity in the miners next step campaign, which he helped to found at the end of the strike.

BRAD-ORD

HEATON

John Bähr Born in Bradford, John has lived the Thorpe Edge estate. He is a trade but has bricklayer wee runch ploycu silice lie was vicE miseR Tor union acavities experience racism, and wants to make sure that anti- Tacist action is an issue in the election.

MANCHESTER

RUSHOLME

Pardeep Singh Formerly a shopfloor worker at ine agar plant in coventry Pardeep is now a student Manchester polytechnic. plaved an active

SCHE

workers Arainst Racism RCP's anti-racist campaign, supporting against deportation and opposing race dole CHecKs noseitas. offices and job centres.

SPECIAL

DEAL

SOUTH KIRKBY

Toby X Banks Toby Banks is out of work and sick or me anure ot all the od parties to do anything about joined the when he was at Tal school but left because 'it was the RCP because they were the only people offering a fighting alternative.

BRADFORD

TONG

Amanda Kent former shop steward Nalgo, Amanda is now unemployed like 18 per cent of active in campaigns against unemployment and intends to make this a central issue in the count electens. one has alse been involved in campaigning against racism - another key issue in Bradford.

MANCHASESS

GORTON NORTH

Mary Ann Malloy Working a temperar secretarial worker, Mary Ann experience of how

WOTACT.

- are when She aisputes, most recenty at the local Kaywool factory. She is an campaigner active for Women s Tens

(FULL SURSCRIFTION FATES ON PAGE 2)

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HEMSWORTH

Jenny X Midwinter Jenny Midwinter is an active member of the National Union of Teachers During Leeds SUKt sne Was Middleton Involved miners wives support and helped organ ise pickets at power She 10CallVi •as came aigner for Irish freedom and women's rights.

GRAB-ORB

UNIVERSITY

Manjit Singh Manjit the Punjab, Born came to Britain with his family zu years ago. At school in Eas encountered the sort of racist violence which is now rampant in Bradford. He alc workcu arous Daper ham plant and became active in the union. He joined Workers Against Racism, the RCP s anti-racist campaign. ir now active WieR Bradford,

REDDISH NORTH

Ken Lavin Ken Lavin works in a chemical 1 Trafford Park and is ar acuve membe or une fawu He has campaigned for many for and conditions, duon Tor nis etons seamste use The council elections t the need for fight me poncies in te unions.

the next step HANDS OFF LIBYA! Continued from front pase American air raids that devastated whole streets in Libya. The Falklands War revealed that Britain is even more desperate than the USA to prove that it is still a world power. Britain too welcomes any excuse to show the third world that it is still in the big league.

The USA's shift from aggressive rhetoric caused alarm to armed aggression has allies. Monday's its european meeting of EEC foreign ministers voted to condemn Libyan terrorism' and agreed to restrict facilities for Libyan diplomats. At however, the European the same time, powers rejected US demands for economic sanctions against Libya and urged restraint on both sides' in the military field.

The European countries are happy to go along with the propaganda offensive against US wary of further Libya, but they are intervention in the Mediterranean and the They fear widening anti- Middle East. Western sentiment throughout the region, and any attempt by the USA to strengthen Their newits position at their expense.

found preoccupation with the niceties of international law reflects their concern about the changing balance of power in the are worried European capitalists region. about their profits in the Middle East, not the mangled bodies of the people of Libya.

In Britain the leadership of the Labour Party endorses the cynical posturing of the European leaders. Kinnock and Healey have no objection in principle to Western powers brutalising other countries: they have fully supported British militarism in the South Atlantic and in Ireland. They have joined in the chauvinist denunciations of Gadaffi in way for British Britain that paved the complicity in the US strike. When Thatcher denounced the miners for receiving donations from Libya, the Labour leaders added their condemnations. On Tuesday Kinnock had no words of condemnation for the butchers of Washington and London and no words of sympathy for Instead he offered their Libyan Victims.

GADAFFI

No threat to the West he American government claims its barbarous war against Libya is an act of 'self-defence against Libyan terrorism. This is strange. When did Libya attack the USA? We have yet to hear reports of Libyan attacks on New York, Washington or Chicago. Where are the bombed US cities and the American civilians maimed and killed by Libyan terrorists? The answer is that they do not exist.

Reagan's claim that Gadaffi is at the of a terrorist conspiracy against centre America and against its European allies is blatant nonsense. Its purpose is to whip up fear and hatred against the Libyan people and to obscure the real objectives behind the war America has launched against them.

The USA did not send its bombers to Libya to defend itself against attack.

It sent them to defend its right to terrorise the people of the Middle East and to show people throughout the third world how it intends to deal with any country that dares step out of line. Colonel Gadaffi is the leader of third world country that has a long history of Western domination - first by Italy, then by Britain and the USA in the post-war years. Despite the development of its oil reserves in the sixties, it remains a poor nation whose problems have been greatly exacerbated by the recent cut in oil prices.

Gadaffi has attracted the West's wrath for the simple reason that he has tried to achieve a degree of independence for his country, rather than submit to the dictates of the and western powers and their bankers generals. The West denounced Gadaffi as a villain long before terrorism became an issue in Western politics. Ever since he closed US bases and expelled US military advisers from Libya shortly after taking power from a corrupt pro-Western monarchy in 1969 Gadaffi has been a target of American The fact that the new Libyan hostility. US-owned oil government nationalised corporations to launch a programme of economic development and social reform was regarded as a dangerous example of third world insubordination.

In the seventies Gadaffi attempted to win allies in the Arab world to overcome the tactical advice to Thatcher and Reagan about how to go about "fighting terrorism' more effectively. His main concern was that Reagan's action would strengthen Gadaffi's position in the Arab world rather than undermine it. Reagan and Thatcher and their generals do not need Kinnock's advice about how to go about terrorising third world countries. They are experts.

The British labour movement • needs a leadership which can take a firm stand against Western militarism instead of endorsing the chauvinist prejudices used to justify it while quibbling about how it is carried out.

Party Communist The Revolutionary US/British condemns the unreservedly assault on Libya and gives its full support to Libyan resistance against Western attacks, The real threat of whatever form it takes. war and terror around the world comes not from Tripoli but from the imperialist rulers Washington and London and other Western capitals. Their agents are behind all the bloodshed in the Middle East, in Central problem of Libya's weakness and isolation.

The Libyan government pledged its support for the Palestinian liberation struggle and appealed for cooperation among the Arab states to offset Western power in the Middle East. Gadaffi's appeals found little resonance Instead among conservative Arab rulers.

they provoked even greater anti-Libyan hysteria in the West. In 1977 the USA declared Libya to be an "international terrorist state'. It withdrew its remaining diplomats and sponsored its first military attack. Egyptian forces, discreetly backed by the USA, launched an unprovoked raid on the Libyan border town of Musaad.

The USA's campaign against Libya has continued ever since. The idea that Libya poses a threat to the USA or to any other Western power is cent of More than 90 per preposterous. Libya is desert: the country is inhabited by a mere 3.5 million people, mostly farmers and herdsmen. Libya's brief period of prosperity in the oil boom of the seventies is now a distant memory as US sanctions and falling oil revenues combine to push it into deeper debt and impoverishment. Its armed forces, though expanded in the seventies, are unable to defend the country against US attack never mind launch an offensive against America and its allies. Libya has been singled out for US attack, not because it is a threat, but because it is vulnerable and isolated. Reagan aims to show world the the Arab people throughout treatment they can expect to receive if they dare to fight back against Western domination.

The British-backed US attack on Libya is a war aimed at strengthening the grip of the Western capitalists over the whole of the Middle East. British workers must take sides with the Libyan people against Britain and America and help them to kick the West out of the Middle East for good.

Sabena Norton

HANDS OFF LIBYA!

Central London rally Friday 25 April 7.30pm Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1 America, in South Africa, and closer to home in Ireland. The attack on Libya is an occasion for the British labour movement to take a decisive stand on the side of the people of Libya.

That is the way to turn the tables on the real mad dogs who bark about terrorism in the West to justify their savage attacks on third world countries they hold in the grip of debt and poverty and backwardness.

If you like what you read in tns become an RCP supporter. We meet weekly around the country to discuss the issues in the paper and to plan action Phone Fenna or in the local arec 01-729 0414 or fill in the form Name Telephone Send to BM RCP, London WC1N 3XX.