The Next Step: No. 4, 24 January 1986

DukeunitesTories and TUCbehind Britishindustry

WOULD YOU BUY

A CHANNEL

FROM THESE MEN?

tns thenextstep Revolutionary Communist Party • 24 January 1986 • ЗОР

TUNNEL

The National Front's role in racist attacks pages 6,7 Too much talk at Ford's page 4 The dangers of European disarmament page 5 Israel and the peace process page 8 4

he appearance of beleaguered trade secretary Leon Brittan, alongside the Duke of Edinburgh and TUC chief Norman Willis, at last week's launch of Industry Year, struck many people as incongruous. A special feature made for the occasion by Channel 4 - another backer of portrayed Britain's Year Industry carmakers as "European coolies ordered about by American cowboys. industry in the face British domination is a major theme of Industry Year. Yet Brittan is well known to be a staunch supporter of the bid by the US firm Sikorsky to bail out Westland Helicopters.

He is widely suspected of leaning on British firms involved in the projected European rescue package. predicament reflects Brittan's difficulties facing the British government as a result of the growing divergence between rival strategies for protecting Britain's stake in world affairs and for salvaging what's left The of the British economy. government looks to the traditional special relationship' between Britain and the USA that has flourished through the close affinity between the prime minister and president Reagan. Since the Second World War the Atlantic alliance has been the central axis of British foreign and military policy.

STAR WARS AND CHUNNELS

anti-American However in recent years and pro-European sentiments have gathered strength within the British establishment.

There is growing trend with

EEC

countries cooperation economic and defence issues.

While some British manufacturers are still hoping to benefit from Reagan's programme, many more are looking to the channel tunnel to revive their fortunes. The European link is now being championed by cabinet renegade Michael Heseltine as part of his wider challenge to the Tory Party leadership. The Labour Party too has taken up the anti-American line as a way of distinguishing itself from the Tories without appearing antagonistic to British interests.

The party which once distinguished itself by its chauvinist hostility to the EEC is now trying to prove that it is more patriotic than the Tories by asserting its commitment to Europe. Brittan's ambivalent position in the Britain versus America controversy reflects the Tories' pragmatic approach. The British establishment has long operated under the wing of the USA but, while it remains tied to Washington, it wants to keep its options The decision to go ahead with the open. Anglo-French channel tunnel project was, The pro-European after all, Thatcher's. camp is equally pragmatic.

While every Labour Party politician denounces nuclear missiles and bases in Britain, this conference year's party overwhelmingly in support of the Nato alliance. Both sides proclaim their devotion to the national interest, differing only in their views of the best way of guaranteeing it. movement The official labour Britain against the USA and it is ready to make the sacrifices necessary to make British industry more competitive against all But what does this its rivals overseas. approach offer the working class?

Year launch the At the Industry Prince Phil lambasted industrious "Marxists' who snipe at industry 'because it is capitalist and bishops who 'sniff at it because it is materialistic. Meanwhile TUC 2 • the next step • 24 January the next step Revolutionary Communist Party weekly • 24 January 1986

BRITISH INDUSTRY

PREPARES FORWAR

leader Norman Willis declared the unions' willingness to cooperate in the revival of British coordinating the print unions' offer of a noflexibility strike/total Murdoch's new Wapping plant indicates the sort of contribution the TUC will be making to Industry. Year. Murdoch's humiliating deal, rejection of this in negotiating even more favourable terms Reviving through a separate deal with the electricians of US union, indicates the likely outcome of the TUC's grovelling approach.

In the controversy over Westland the white collar engineering union Tass has come out forcefully in favour European option. According to Tass chief Ken Gill, the Sikorsky offer would mean *British technology the Atlantic' and reduce Westland workers to 'welding American parts'. Gill's members at impressed Westland are not arguments support of the European consortium at a Thatcher mass meeting last week. The vast majority go along with the Westland board view that American offer the presents guarantee of job security. Over the past two years the unions at Westland have accepted redundancies, working deteriorations Whether American businessmen take over, the unions will be forced to make further concessions to save the firm.

NOTHING TO CHOOSE

towards The strife among print unions and the on divisions among the unions at Westland are the inevitable outcome of the pursuit of capitalist solutions to the collapse of British WaIS industry. Choosing and Tory rationalisation Brittan's Us package Heseltine's European consortium, different choosing • between capitalist exploitation. Given the decay of the British capitalist economy no revival strategy can work unless it destroys effective trade unionism and forces workers to work harder for less pay. The Tories have made clear that the offer of jobs on the channe!

tunnel project depends on acceptance of a no-strike deal. Taking sides in the wider European- American conflict could lead to even graver consequences. Today the conflicts among the rival Western powers are confined to the spheres of trade, investment and diplomacy.

But the pressures unleashed by deepening recession point towards an intensification of these tensions to the point of open warfare.

Leaders of the labour movement who today jump to back Britain in its economic battles will tomorrow be ready to lead workers into war on behalf of the British ruling class.

US It is time the unions left the Industry Year stunts and the boardroom squabbles to the voted bosses and insisted that whatever solutions they come up with, jobs and conditions must be preserved. The labour movement should refuse to choose between rival capitalist between employers nations. For workers there is nothing to backs choose between working for European or American bosses. Workers have nothing to gain from going to war to fight for the British capitalist establishment. The British working class has gone down the slippery slope that begins with conflicts over trade and investment and ends in world war twice already in this century. As their squabbles intensify we should make sure we don't get fooled again. Publisher Revolutionary Communist Party, BM RCP, London WCIN 3XX ® copyright Printer Morning Litho Printers Ltd (TU), 439 North Woolwich Road, London E16.

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London WCIN 3XX. ISSN 0144 350 X 24 January 1986. Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office.

• No 4 in Willis role deal at Rupert favour of the flying across the worker voted in the best shift working and other conditions. European between Thatcherite A wet/TUC and contacts means styles of a rule that years to 15 or 20 years. authorities, by winning 'Ulster' the struggle of the IRA. movement councils. rival capitalist process'. what happened in -controlled county sioners.'

TORIES PLAN IRISH ELECTION BAN

KING VOTES

FORVIOLENCE

The British government suspended wants to make local nothing yet. election candidates in Northern Ireland sign voting for an oath renouncing recognise violence to stop Sinn Fein embarrassing the authorities by winning violence council seats ccording to a weekend report written by Chris Ryder, a journalist with close in the security forces, Northern Ireland secretary Tom King wants a 'peace oath' to prevent a repeat of rule! Sinn Fein's success in last May's local elections. Now he is to introduce it alongside would extend the period of disqualification from office for a candidate freedom. with a criminal record, from the present five The planned election ban exposes the hypocrisy of the British establishment. For years it denounced the Irish republican British movement as a small clique of gangsters without support, who would not dare stand in elections because they'd get no votes Since 1981 republicans have thrown that challenge back in the faces of the British elections to the Assembly, the house of commons and local councils on a platform supporting These victories were a significant propaganda success that proved the republican among had popular support nationalists in Northern Ireland. Now, like a spoilt child who wants to take the ball home because he's losing the game, King is out to put a stop to Sinn Fein members sitting on In the eyes of the authorities, being a 'democratic organisation' in Northern Ireland means declaring loyalty to the British Crown.

Republicans who stand up for freedom have always been denied access to the 'democratic When Britain divided Ireland in 1921 and set up Northern Ireland as a province of the 'United Kingdom', councils that refused to accept the authority of British colonial power were simply disbanded. Last week republican councillor Paul Corrigan told ins •When olutionary Fermanagh: politics. Partition was imposed there was a nationalist council, which voted donation against the Treaty and refused to send its minutes to the government in Stormont. The British disbanded it and sent in commisand paramilitary And troops, police. The councils where Sinn Fein won seats in May have already effectively been disbanded by Loyalist councillors, who have republicans them until are banned. Liverpool and Lambeth ain't seen People who support Sinn Fein are not voting for violence for its own sake. They are peace in Ireland. But they that peace will not come until every violent arm of the British government is forced out of their country. The British position to start and nationalists being incompatible. Which Irish people elected the 30000 gunmen of the British Army, Ulster Defence Regiment and Royal Ulster Constabulary who rampage around their streets? Who voted to abolish juries and let a judge send republicans to jail on the word of a paid police agent? And get their where did the security forces mandate to torture opponents of British Britain's latest anti-republican moves show Thatcher's new deal with the Dublin government is all about beating the struggle for Irish Loyalist leaders have called this week's Anglo-Irish by-elections to protest at the agreement which, they claim, is the first step on the road to a united Ireland.

But the the government's actions since accord was signed in November prove they are committed to keeping Northern Ireland under their heel. Republicans; not Loyalists.

have been rounded up, beaten up and locked up over the last two months. And nobody is asking Loyalists to sign an oath condemning the violence of the security forces. But the British government wil tind. as all lis predecessors did, that it cannot ban the fight for Irish freedom. Mick Hume

ROP

REVOLUTIONS

AREN'T CHEAP

The Revolutionary Communist Party aims to organise the working class to take control of all the wealth in society. But if we are to achieve that aim, we need you to give us enough wealth to produce the propaganda and build the branches that can make revcommunism count British -In If you want to help workers take power, then take out a standing order or rush a fighting fund. an It'S

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reland

THE BATTLE BEHIND THE BY-ELECTIONS

TERRORISTS

eon Brittan is not the only establishment figure telling fibs lately. The British commentators covering the Northern Ireland elections, who claim the main conflict is now between the Loyalists and Britain over the Anglo-Irish deal, are just as guilty. I've been down to the Border constituency of Fermanagh/South Tyrone, which is a long way from Fleet Street. And the people there know the real battle is still between Irish republicans who want their country to be free and the British authorities occupying Northern Ireland.

The rolling hills of Fermanagh make it the most 'country' county in Northern Ireland.

The winding roads that ring the lakes and farms are dominated by two types of dark green truck: horse boxes carrying cattle and landrovers laden with British troops. Some of the bulls are off to be slaughtered. And some of the bullies in British Army uniforms are butchers. Locals still talk of how troops pitchforked two farmers to death in 1972.

OBSCENE POLICE

of As we drove to the Enniskillen on a rainy day last week, the national news was another scare-story about attacks on children. But Irish parents in Enniskillen have to worry about another sort of strange and violent man stalking their streets. The shadowy figure in a plastic mac who stopped us as we approached Enniskillen was a member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, at the police gunpost that guards the town. And the hand stuck in his waistband gripped a pistol. He was more like Dirty Harry than a dirty old man. But he was a British Crown policeman, holding up Irish men, women and children at gunpoint on Irish streets. And that's what I call obscene.

In the run-up to the by-elections, the British authorities, who rant about rebuilding morality at home, have encouraged the RUC to commit sex crimes to disrupt the republican movement's campaign.

Shortly before we arrived police dragged local Sinn Fein worker Anne McDonnell from her

BRITISH V

home Locked her in a room and abused nei for a week. 'She got a very rough time,' Sinn Fein councillor Paul Corrigan told us in the party's office, *She physically was and indecently assaulted by Special Branch officers interrogating her. Those people who think the worse thing our government does is lie about letters, think on.

As we go to press the by-election results are unknown. But the British authorities don't much care who wins elections in Northern Ireland. They rule by the gun. They say they're dealing with 'IRA terrorists' who don't respect But that lie is older than the democracy. Fermanagh hills. The British government and its occupying forces use terrorism to disrupt democracy in Ireland, holding one corner of the country captive against the wishes of the Irish people. And the Irish republican movement is fighting for real freedom. As Mitchel McLaughlin, Sinn Fein's director of elections for the Six Counties, told us, 'We've fought for democratic demands in these elections: self-determination, British troops out, the release of political prisoners.'

Over the last five years, nationalists in Fermanagh/South Tyrone have voted for those demands and ignored the propaganda put out by Thatcher's friends in Fleet Street.

When a couple of republican suspects were arrested in Holland this week, the media oranded tem te two most wanted men in Northern Ireland'. Well, IRA men are wanted by lots of people in certainly Fermanagh/South Tyrone, but not in the way the British mean. In 1981 locals wanted one IRA man so badly that they elected him their MP. His name was Bobby Sands, leader of a hunger-strike by republican prisoners demanding that Britain recognise them as prisoners of war.

more than died 30 000 Refore he nationalists Sands voted tor and his demand. But the British authorities didn't like that display of Irish democracy, so they refused to recognise it. "The people gave Bobby Sands a great mandate, remembered republican councillor Tony Maguire, who

IRISH

ELECTIONS ARE SUPPOSED TO SHOW THE BRITISH SYSTEM AT ITS

MOST CIVILISED. BUT THIS WEEK'S NORTHERN IRELAND BY-

ELECTIONS EXPOSE THE BRITISH AUTHORITIES AT THEIR MOST

CORRUPT. MICK HUME REPORTS FROM IRELAND

PAUL CORRIGAN

was in jail himself at the time, 'But of course the British government chose to ignore it, as they always choose to ignore electoral victories by republicans. Democracy's OK when it suits them. When democracy doesn't suit them the British get out the guns and the jail keys.

After Sands died his Westminster seat was won and held for two years by Sinn Fein's Owen Carron. When it became clear that Carron would again be a key figure in this week's elections, the RUC nicked him on gun charges. "Local people saw that as an act of repression, says Paul Corrigan, They held Owen on a trumped up charge, he was caught with nothing. I think people will rally Carron was chosen as round him.' After Sinn Fein's by-election candidate, the RUC thought the same. So they gave him bail.

VICIOUS ASSAULTS

One look at life in Fermanagh/South Tyrone shows Thatcher's deal with Dublin is another disguise for British terrorism against supporters of Irish freedom.

We found Francie Malloy, Sinn Fein's local director of elections, sitting in a green and white caravan in the nationalist town of Coalisland, County vrone. It was sur rounded by 'council surveyors', dressed like the Sweeney in anoraks and cloth caps. who absently gazed away from his office. As we the caravan they swung their entered equipment round and 'surveyed' us intensely.

The authorities are using every trick they know to tighten the screw on republicans.

*People who ring our office in Dungannon are getting the RUC barracks,' Malloy told us. "And the vicious assaults on nationalist people are up since the Anglo-Irish deal, we've had two this week in Dungannon, one dislocated shoulder and one damaged neck.

The RUC have been given the go-ahead from London to get stuck in." It was the same story in Enniskillen. Paul Corrigan's house and farm were recently raided by the

RUC.

*They took old council minutes, took 'one of my children's autograph books, took

DEMOCRATS

TONY MAGUIRE

my wife's family address book, took three broken car aerials and an old car number plate." To get this damning evidence, eight carloads of armed officers held his family prisoner and ransacked his home. Perhaps they all wanted Carron's autograph Republicans laugh bitterly at the idea that the new accord will reform British repres sion in Northern Ireland. Take the 'reformed' rule that says the RU will patrol with the Ulster Defence Regiment keep the -TO infamous Loyalist militia under control.

Paul Corrigan told us of three incidents over one recent week in Fermanagh when UDR patrols unaccompanied fired at nationalists. On the first occasion the RUC came along afterwards and stole the victim's car. On the last the police turned up just after the shooting and, said Corrigan, Instead of sorting the business out they baton charged the young fellas who'd been shot at.

The only change since Thatcher's deal with Dublin has been the arrival of extra troops to rebuild RUC stations wrecked in the latest round of IRA operations.

We drove through the village of Ballygawley just as two huge Army truckloads of rubble pulled away from what was left of the police fortress. Nationalists are not sorry to see such destroyed. *Local

LOTLUIC

Centes people have suffered so much at the hands of the RUC that the police get very little sympathy when anything happens to them, said Corrigan, 'Our voters are under no illusions, we've said on many occasions that we support the right of the IRA to take armed action against the forces of occupation' The only way to bring peace is to take the immediate step of removing the British out of agreed Tony Maguire, The British government has brought us nothing but grief. That's what we're saying to the British people, and it's so simple.' That's what we're saying to them too, I assured him. We drove away from Fermanagh as darkness fell on the fields, and the people who voted for an IRA volunteer began another night of looking behind them for British terrorists.

the next step • 24 January • 3

Labour movement

CARWORKERS' JOBS ON THE LINE

FORD:

he most provocative part of Ford's offer is the 'no-strike' condition. For 20 years Ford's Dagenham plant was renowned for wildcat strikes' and militancy. The latest proposals are designed Under the off this tradition. kill company's terms the unions would have to "no economic disruption', and promise would be responsible "for the automatic remanning of jobs' during unofficial strikes.

Management proposals for job flexibility are another reason for the defiant mood among Ford workers, who voted 2:1 to The company wants to reject the offer. introduce a new contract for hourly-paid employees. Refusal to carry out any new tasks would result in disciplinary action. For a kick-off this means: • electricians must do work outside their trade, and learn new skills • workers in die maintenance, pressline repair and automation must do all three jobs • workers in the body and assembly plants must be interchangeable with toolroom and shopfloor maintenance • production operatives must keep work areas clean, identify and repair defective work.

•PICKING US OFF

At Dagenham Ford's plan is to reduce the number of specified jobs from 500 to 57.

Increased job flexibility would allow drastic job cuts and intensify the rate of work for those who remain on a job. On the shopfloor at Dagenham there's no mistaking what One welder told tns he "flexibility' means. do cleaning and point would have to changing in addition to two spot welds, 12 welds, opening and closing the clamps and fitting a panel on 38 Fiestas an hour. 'Cutting labour", is how one high-bay loader *The offer is summed up the proposals: dangerous, they might as well pick us off one by one - that's what they're trying to do."

In return for all this, Ford's claim to have made a 15 per cent pay offer. In fact the offer comprises 3 per cent on the base rate this year and 6 per cent in 1987, with 4 per cent productivity bonus and 2 per cent allowance - those who work on the for lineworkers track. And Ford's offer is binding for two years. İn effect, Ford UK hopes to peg down 4 • the next step • 24 January

TIME TO GET INTO GEAR

wages until 1988. For working four extended night shifts, from 9.30pm to 7.15am, a grade C (semiskilled) worker carrying out final touch-ups on the body shell now takes home about €125 a week. Welders in the body plant take home around €103 after five day shifts.

Under the terms of the current offer they couldn't hope to top £120 before January 1988. This is no recompense for the sweat and boredom of work on the track, or the 100-mile drives some workers make to clock on. Workers require a living wage, not petty compensation for the brutalisation of their lives. There is a mood of defiance in the Dagenham plant. One worker told tns he'd *fight even if it means they put me outside the gates', and the others on his section felt the same: "The company knows there's no jobs

SOCIAL TRENDS

eing 'economically active' - according to the official definition - means or being work either being registered as unemployed, but available for work. The 'economically inactive' include the sick, disabled and retired. They also include an additional category which — "keeping house" applies to women only The proportion of women engaged in 'housekeeping' has declined from 50 per cent of all married women in 1971 to 28 per cent in 1984. However a significant proportion of single women - around 10 per cent — also do full-time unpaid household work. Nearly 3.5 million women work exclusively in their own homes. "economically inactive' does not Being mean doing nothing. 'Keeping house' means an average 35 hours hard work a week. But women's work in the home is isolated from the work of the rest of society, and the women who have to do it are isolated from the wider life of society. The fantastic waste More than 37 000 workers have voted to reject Ford UK's new terms. Now they need to reject their unions' old strategy. Andrew Calcutt and Keith Jackson report from Dagenham out there but we've got to stick it out this time. In the past union officials have taken votes to reject the employers' final pay offer as a mandate to organise strike action. But this year they are using the ballot result as a negotiations. When lever to re-open convenor Tony Doyle asked the rank and file to put us back round the negotiating table, he was evasive about what they could expect from another round of talks. Doyle's 'vital' priority is to safeguard his negotiating status, regardless of the cost to union members.

PAVING THE WAY

The union officials have made clear the limited extent of their opposition to Ford's proposals. Most of the changes will have to be accepted if the UK plants are to compete effectively,' writes Mick Murphy, chair of the national joint negotiating committee: *That said, I believe the company's attempt to introduce such changes during our wages and conditions negotiations to be wholly unwise and for that reason I believe very strongly that they ought to be rejected.

Murphy's strategy is not based on the need for workers to fight and win, but on the protection of the negotiating process itself - and his stake in it. Workers can get 'displaced' so long as it doesn't disturb the work of Murphy's committee.

The equivocation of union committees has paved the way for management's plans.

The proposed level of flexibility is only an working practices of current extension introduced with union backing. One TGWU

WOMEN'S WASTEDTIME

of human resources resulting from the privatisation of household work and its lowtech inefficient character is even greater than the waste resulting from mass unemploy.

ment. Yet while the unemployment problem is acknowledged by every politician, trade According to statistics just published in the official Social Trends, 72 per cent of people who are 'economically inactive' in Britain are women, writes Kate Marshall member told ins how he started at Ford's as a metal finisher. "Then they took me off that because they wanted to cut down the labour and put me on door hanging. Then I was off sick for five weeks and when I came back I was put downstairs doing spot welding they're trying it on all the time."

Only a few weeks ago the company used a slow-down on the Sierra track-speed to reduce the number of door hangers by 75 per cent. And when lineworkers struck over union officials further job

CULS

management's position and persuaded them to go back. Murphy doesn't deny the unions' policing role. Last October he told management that, 'The absence of a lineworkers' allowance is causing discontent which we are controlling.' Ford's "no-strike' clause is only an extension of existing union practice.

UNION MANAGERS

The pathetic role played by today's unions seems a far cry from the days when Dagenham was a byword for militancy. But in one crucial respect the Dagenham unions have been consistent throughout the last 20 years. The starting point for their demands has always been the level of company profits. What's different today is the drop in Ford's profits, and consequently its unwillingness to pay out.

This year's wage claim document is a case Drawn up by the trade union section of the national joint negotiating committee, it begins by disagreeing with management over Ford UK's real worth, then protests about the level of car imports into the UK, and defends productivity rates The real at Dagenham and Halewood.

requirements of workers at Ford come way down the list of priorities, as if the document was written by a group of junior product managers. The unions' identification with company interests has enabled, Ford to assimilate every wave of workers' anger. The legacy of this process includes thousands of lost jobs 13 000 since 1982. With delcal calle demoralisation. Many of the workers who are left have learnt from bitter experience that the traditional trade union strategy Just doesn't work.

TAKING ON THE MACHINE

Most of the unions at Ford's have already signed 'no-strike" deals in other companies.

They have discarded militancy, and given up what was left of their independence. Ford outright rejection of the deal workers' demonstrates their willingness to fight. But the officials readiness to talk on management's terms shows they are only out to defend their own status as negotiators To win, rank and file militants must take on the union machine as well as Ford management. We need to control our own struggles for a living wage, and ignore the bosses problems of profitability. If Ford workers reclaim their unions, they can regain their leading place in the labour movement.

union leader and bishop, women's household burden is accepted as though it were natural. Social Trendsshows that even women who are economically active outside the home are obliged to take a disproportionate share Women when it comes to 'keeping house.

do most of the day-to-day running of the home and childcare. "A significant survey finding is the tendency of married men to overstate the extent to which they shared housework Although men do more housework now than they did 20 years ago, they still avoid washing and ironing, the worst jobs cooking, cleaning, shopping. Yet rather than suggest simply that men should do their fair share it is important for women to demand that these jobs are carried out by society with childcare from birth as the top priority If women were freed from childcare by the provision nurseries universal

TOI

enforced 'economic inactivity' would end.

AFTER STAR WARS AND WESTLAND

EP THOMPSON

P Thompson, the leading force behind Disarmament, European Nuclear summed up at End's packed London I meeting last week. His theme: the Westland affair is all about star wars.

American helicopter giant Sikorsky has a star wars technology stake in Westland bid is another example of how US defence corporations are "hoovering up' all Britain's indigenous skills in technology and design. Our nation's civilian talents in these areas are now being twisted to military ends, claims Thompson, and in the process British manufacturing industry is being turned into a no-hope assembly operation for American products.

America, Thompson argues, is trying to reduce Britain and Europe to the status of third-rate metal-bashers. End's task, then?

scientists and forge alliances computer experts hostile to American star wars rip-offs such as Westland. And End's slogans? Not just against star nuclear weapons, but for the proper use of British brains to manufacture socially-useful civilian products. Through trade in such Thompson concluded, producis, could form a fresh axis with the third world independently from which could, militaristic superpowers, take third world peoples out of famine and poverty for good.

DISASTROUS DIRECTION

Thompson's speech greeted rapturous applause. But the direction he gives to Britain's peace movement spells disaster for the working class. Thompson might deny it, but his voice is another addition to a growing chorus — Michael which supports Heseltine included industries Europe's America's. And however it is packaged, such a campaign can only lead to supporting the aggressive measures necessary to protect European capitalism against its rivals.

'Can star wars defend Europe?' is the name of a special GLC symposium to be held next month, entrance fee £7.50. The symposium, which is to be treated to a keynote speech by Labour's foreign affairs will, heavyweight Denis Healey, Thompson, give this question a resentful and resounding 'NO!" But what does the "defence' of Europe mean?

The Western European powers They satellites. American are plunderers in their own right, responsible for dominating large sections of the third world.

They need to 'defend' themselves against the resistance of those they oppress and against their rivals, such as America and Japan, in the third world power game. Campaigns to 'defend' such slaveowning

DOES THE CONTINENTAL

The peace movement is The backing Europe against American militarism. and its And that, argues James Wood, is like saying science, you'd rather be damned by the devil you know states serve as a war-cry. In 'defending' Europe, Denis Healey will not only reject Reagan's he Wals. alternatives of his own. We can be sure that the symposium will not discuss the "defence' of Europe against Ireland, Argentina, Chad wars and and New Caledonia - all of them countries with territory under British and French military occupation of the third world, plus a posture Britain of greater military America, are the only possible results of Healey's efforts to 'defend' Europe.

The discussion on star wars has become a discussion of how best to defend Europe It shows the millarly convergence between the peace movement with (which Thompson admitted has "failed' to do more than outlive three defence ministers since Cruise arrived), the Greater London Council movement of left-wing careerists (shortly to be abolished) and the Labour Hilary against before Thompson at the End rally, drew this out very clearly. The leader of the GLC's •Popular Planning Unit, Wainwright is a specialist in diverting workers' resistance to redundancies into a futile quest to convert arms factories into factories that turn out socially usetul products.

support to those members of Britain's youth who have been moved by Bob Geldof's Band Aid, she argued that the peace movement like had to widen its emphasis from Cruise missiles to 'the arms economy. American arms technology, she contended, cripples British manufacturing. It had given America are not and Japan robot factories, but "wasted the rapacious skills of our scientists. What Britain ought to be doing is developing a different kind of computerised manufacturing, such as that consumer pioneered by cooperatives in northern Italy.

What the Americans and Japanese do to Europe with cars furniture and defend itself. Heseltine leading give each other all American will propose But military "independence' from increasing all-comers militarily of modern military hardware.

West Germany's Wainwright, the final speaker Europe is saying, difference between Appealing for defence products and video recorders, troops' Wainwright says, Europe must do back in Britain's From clothing. Habitat to Italy's Benetton, Europe must This is a most ominous development. Of course, such a 'defence of Europe is often couched in peaceful terms. EP Thompsor "invasion". himself demurred at the possibility of West Britain into a European military block. But the radicals in CND make it quite clear nowadays that this is what they have in mind. In the latest issue of CND's Sanity, Peter Tatchell of Labour's soft left calls for the countries of Europe to of mutual the pledge barbarians'. support and solidarity in the event of any member state being subject to unprovoked aggression'. What is needed is the removal of troops and bases from European soil and their replacement with a 'European collective security agreement'.

EUROPEAN STAR WARS

Tatchell, like the Kinnock leadership he supports, looks forward to a Britain and a Europe that are properly defended. He wants a whole new, conventional weaponbased posture drawn up for Europe 'as the divergence of interests between Europe and the United States intensifies and a stronger European identity emerges. Tatchell need not worry. For all their feuds in the EEC, the Europeans are already preparing to take on Collaboration embraces helicopters and every other piece society. chancellor Kohl and France's president Mitterrand will meet in Paris at the end of February to discuss joint manoeuvres, joint officer training and — yes, No, *a joint anti-missile defence system.

Reagan's president Strategic Defence Initiative cannot defend Europe. But a European version of star wars "anti-missile defence' — can.

There might seem to be a world of Thompson's talk Europe liberating the third world and the Mitterrand/Kohl plot to equip themselves for foreign wars. But as the rivalry between the USA and Western Europe hots up, the anti-Americanism they share will bring all the forces backing Continental capitalism together against the "common foe" The chain from the platform of London's Conway Hall stretches to Paris and Bonn.

The links in the chain are formed by exsecretaries, royal institutions, corporatists, boffins, ecologists, municipal socialists and union officials. A motley lot.

it's true. But if the peace movement has its way, many more will sign up as soldiers in the transatlantic battles to come.

THE

PROPAGANDA

WAR

THE CHUNNEL

The channel tunnel might have been the idea of Napoleon, Emperor of France, but it was one of which the Russian revolutionary Lenin fully approved Writing in 1913, Lenin observed that London and Paris were the foremost cities of the most civilised countries in the world, yet they were separated by an eight to nine hour journey. He noted that engineers regarded the construction of a tunnel as feasible, that 'the capitalists of Britain and France had mountains of money', and that 'profit from capital invested in such an enterprise would be absolutely certain' 'What then is holding the matter up?' he inquired. It seems that the same sort of people who oppose the project today on the grounds that it might lead to an influx of international terrorists as well as rabid foxes, then feared that a tunnel would facilitate the invasion of Britain by enemy As Lenin said, "The madness and blindness of the civilised nations makes astonishing reading. Observing that "modern technical devices' could make any tunnel safe against invasion within seconds', Lenin commented on the way the British bourgeoisie, 'in order to hoodwink the workers', was compelled to frighten the British people with idiotic tales about Lenin was amazed how a whole group of capitalists' who stood to lose "good business" through the digging of the tunnel' were 'doing their utmost to wreck this plan and hold up technical progress. He concluded that the civilised nations' had 'driven themselves into the position of Have Thatcher and Mitterrand now delivered their civilised nations from Lenin's scathing indictment? Only up to a point. The tunnel will undoubtedly be a triumph of civil engineering and a significant technological advance. It will leave a monument to Thateher's Tory government in the same way that Livingstone's Labour GLC leaves behind the magnificent Thames barrier. At a time of rising unemployment and growing British insularity the construction of the channel tunnel will provide welcome jobs and strengthen Britain's international connections. It will make overseas travel faster and potentially cheaper and by making contacts between people in Britain and the continent easier it could help to undermine the chauvinism of British Yet just as the decision not to build the tunnel in 1913 was a sign of capitalist barbarism, the decision to build it in 1986 is a sign of capitalist desperation. The British entrepreneurs who did not dare to build the tunnel when they had a global empire, or even when they were flush with cash during the post-war boom, now regard the tunnel as 'good business' at a time when the rest of British manufacturing faces ruin The only people who can make money in Britain today seem to be musack dispenser Andrew Lloyd Webber and stripped pine and futon king Terence Conran. Meanwhile the men who made Britain the workshop of the world are forced to seek salvation through a massively state-subsidised hole in the ground. "The Britishers' fear of the tunnel is fear of themselves,' wrote Lenin. If he were alive today he might write that the British capitalists' desire for the tunnel reveals a fear of their own future. Capitalist barbarism' was 'stronger than civilisation' in 1913 and it still is. 'But, as Lenin concluded, the new order is growing and will emerge stronger in spite of all."

the next step • 24 January • 5

WORKERS AGI

OR QUANGOS AG

Racism

THE

FASCIST

MYTH

*W le believe that the growth in racist violence is not unconnected with developments inside the extreme right-wing fascist organisations, and their attempts to increase their activity in East London.' (Community Alliance for Police Accountability Annual Report, 1985) *The facts show...the very real correlation between membership of fascist groups and racial (The murderers are amongst crimes. Searchlight special publication) Today the organisations of the far-right are in a feeble state compared to a decade ago. In the mid-seventies the National Front boasted a membership of more than 20 000. Membership was matched by electoral success, especially in the local elections where in some areas of East Front replaced the London the National Liberals as the third party. In the Greater London Council elections in 1977 the NF won 100 000 votes. By 1979 the established parties had moved to reclaim the ground occupied by the NF. Labour politicians declared their commitment to firm immigration controls and Margaret Thatcher proclaimed her sympathy with those Britons who felt that their national culture was in danger of being 'swamped by immigrants. In the 1979 election 303 NF candidates got an average of 633 votes each and all lost their deposits. The fascists fared even worse in the 1983 elections. A total of 110 NF and British National Party candidates won an average of 366 votes, barely half the 1979 figure.

The decline of the National Front was accompanied by its organisational disintegration. Party leader John Tyndall, who had tried rather unsuccessfully - to cultivate a respectable high Tory image, left the party to found the New National Front (later renamed British National Party). dissolved into a series of factions. In 1984 Martin Webster, 'that yob from Peckham' as the more respectable NF leaders dubbed him and the fascists' most successful publicist, was expelled after bitter internal wrangles. A new middle class leadership, including Oxbridge graduates Ian Anderson and Nick Griffin, and North London Poly philosopher Patrick

DAVE POURK

6 m the next step • 24 January Harrington, took

OYCE.

proletarian — Joe Pearce — last month for publishing racist material, after he was left to take the rap in court by the leadership. The new regime has steered the NF in a more us, populist direction. politics and animal rights, American nuclear weapons, while retaining its traditional racism and anti-semitism and its hostility to the IRA. Yet none of this has halted decline in membership. combined membership organisations stood at 8000, less than half that three years previously. of the NF beginning of 1985 the NF's membership was barely 1000. It is at the level of street activities that the decline of the far-right has been most evident.

In the seventies the NF could guarantee to four-figure attract demonstration. Yet all 17 national marches and rallies in 1980 attracted less than 6000 people in total. Last year only 150 turned up to confront the Bloody Sunday demonstration in Leicester and the 60 who appeared at the Irish Freedom Movement march in August were soon seen off.

The joint mobilisation by a number of far-right groups for November's Cenotaph parade was greeted as a triumph when around 800 showed up. The organisations of the far-right today are fragmented and tiny, canerence fascists are largely responsible for the racist attacks? There have been a number of highly publicised convictions of known NF members for racist The NF itself 1980 five attacks. In convicted of racist attacks; last year the figure was seven. office's underestimation, there were more than 7000 racist attacks in 1984, a figure which would certainly have been topped last year.

Other reports show NF convictions make up a tiny proportion of racist attacks and only a small NF MEMBERSHIP FIGURES SHOW THE MASTER RACE IS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES The NF's token • was imprisoned azine, It now supports green and opposes By 1980 committed are by of all the far-right organisation or racist group.

By attendance any past five years. Investigation have political So what is the evidence that the been by teenagers known fascists were groups. Yet, even according to the home ordinary British racists.

proportion of the total number of convictions.

Searchlight, the national anti-fascist magrecently produced a well-publicised pamphlet, The murderers are amongst us. It set out to provide a comprehensive picture of the crimes committed by fascists and their allies'. In fact 35 per cent of the convictions listed in the pamphlet are of people who are not members of any fascist organisation. Another 12 per cent is composed of 'sympathisers' or former members of such organisations. Barely half the crimes members of any fascist There is no doubt that there are a number of committed racists in fascist organisations who are capable of carrying out racist attacks. But the organisational weakness of the fascist groups at a time of mounting racist violence suggests that the vast majority of racist attacks are carried out by people who are not involved in any fascist organisation. This is indeed the experience of Workers Against Racism which has been actively involved in fighting racist attacks in East London and elsewhere over the ot even some of the most serious racist incidents last year revealed no NF involvement. In May the Aslam family were burnt out of their home in Walthamstow. Two 17-year old youths living in the same street and unconnected with any far-right organisation have since been charged in relation to the Electric attack. In August the Miah's flat in House, Bow, was destroyed by racist arsonists.

Previous arson attempts at Electric House had from local estates Chandrakant Randerwala's shop in East Ham has been under attack over the past five years by local youths who are not involved in any fascist The experience of Workers Against Racism confirms that the vast majority racial harassment, from routine verbal abuse through physical assault to arson, is carried out by W

HOW TO STOP

The consensus tha are caused by t • exaggerates t fascis • underestimates racist • leads to narrow racist For Workers Ag problem of racist reduced to the moronic individua British politics. people are the ou that hold sway spe

THE

REALITY

OF

RACIST

ATTACKS

Thile the notion of the Tascist threa is patently a myth, the rise in raci attacks is very much for real. Offici statistics on racist attacks notoriously unreliable because of the reluctanc of many black people to report such incidents t the police. However there is a wealtn ( information showing the level and ferocity racist attacks. A poll for London Weeken Television in December found that one in fol Asians living in the boroughs of Redbridg Waltham Forest, Newham and Tower Hamle had been racially attacked, one in 10 seriousl Nearly two-thirds of the respondents expecte to be attacked. Poli to the Metropolitan According commissioner's report there were 1555 raci incidents in London in 1984, compared to 127 in 1983; the first six months of 1985 saw 11 incidents in Tower Hamlets alone. Over tr whole year 495 racist incidents were reported t the police monitoring group in Tower Hamlet 28 per cent up on the previous year. In the fir three months of 1985 reported racist attacks

AINST RACISM

AINST FASCISM?

ACIST ATTACKS

most racist attacks e National Front e strength of the groups the real problem of attacks and ineffective antiactivity. ainst Racism the violence cannot be ctivities of a few s on the fringes of Attacks on black come of prejudices cross the political trum Newham were up by 100 per cent on the same period in 1984. How serious y even these figures underestimate the real level of racist attacks is demonstrated by a GLC study on housing estates in Tower Hamlets. In a nine-month period the team recorded 250 incidents — one a day. Add to this the number of attacks on the streets, in schools and in workplaces and you begin to get some idea of the real picture. One of the most striking features of racist attacks over the past couple of years is their increasing ferocity. There were 28 arson attempts in Waltham Forest alone last year. This problem was tragically highlighted by the murder of Shamira Kassam and her three children in Ilford in July. The danger of racist attacks is much more serious than the threat from a handful of fascists.

During the course of 1985 East London Workers Against Racism was involved in dozens of cases of racist attacks right across East London. In almost every instance the attacks were perpetrated by teenage gangs, not by NF members.

In most cases the victims know who the assailants are and where they live. Take the Bancroft estate in Bethnal Green, where Elwar has been organising against racist violence. The constant harassment of black families on the estate is carried out by a gang composed mainly of teenagers from surrounding estates. Many are pupils at Morpeth school, where the Bangladeshi students went on strike last week to protest about the level of racist attacks. Sometimes the racists contine themselves to verbal abuse, often they physically harass black tenants. Occasionally they go further still - like last November when Shuna Miah was nearly murdered by a racist gang that stabbed him five times. Even at Daneford school, centre of the most vicious attacks, none of the racist ringleaders are in any fascist organisation. Most attacks are spontaneous outbursts of racist anger.

The problem of racist attacks is much more pervasive and widespread than the NF. It will take more than pointing the finger at a few isolated fascists to stop racist attacks trom taking place.

ANTI-

FASCIST

SHADOW

BOXING

n recent years many anti-racist activists have been drawn into state-funded community relations bodies, police monitoring groups East …ana omer anu-racist quanges. London the Community Alliance for Police Accountability in Tower Hamlets and the Newham Monitoring Project are the main official anti-racist organisations. Both receive substantial funds from the GLC and other state agencies and employ several full-time workers Last year these bodies got together with Searchlight, another GLC-sponsored enterprise, to launch Anti-Fascist Action. At a time when the various anti-racist groups were feeling.

considerable insecurity because of the impending demise of the GLC and lacked a clear focus for activity, they hoped to use a campaign against the NF to rally wider support.

Having chosen an illusory target, the antifascist organisation had no choice but to organise artificial activities. • Anti-Fascist Action's main activity in its first six months was to protest against the NF parade at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day Apart from this attempt to show that antifascists were more patriotic than the 'Nazis', AFA has confined itself to leafleting, providing protection' for left-wing meetings (though when the organisers of a women's conference at County Hall requested AFA stewards, they were informed that AFA had no women members and therefore could not oblige), and NF candidate exposing Newcastle parliamentary by-election forged the signatures of his sponsors.

It sometimes appears that AFA seeks to invent a fascist threat where none exists simply to justify its existence. For example it singles out the antics of a notorious British National Party thug from Dagenham and gives the impression that a few fascists are masterminding all the racist attacks in East London.

Focusing on the fascists allows the anti-racist movement to ignore the real problem of racist

ITS

WORKERS AGAINST RACISM FIGHTS FOR DIRECT ACTION AGAINST RACISTS AT DANEFORD SCHOOL attacks. Every Sunday morning AFA activists in East London leaflet in Brick Lane to protest about the handful of old men who have been selling fascist papers there for decades. Yet the same activists have consistently argued against Elwar's proposals for practical measures to stop racist attacks at Daneford and other schools only a few hundred yards away. And while Elwar has been organising to counter the racists the surrounding estates, and providing defence for families under attack, the local AFA has been conspicuously absent.

The narrow anti-fascist focus of state-funded anti-racist activity fits in well with the other activities of the anti-racist quangos. The East London anti-racist quangos were established in the early eighties in response to the growing willingness of black people to fight back against racist attacks and the growing success of Elwar's movement for workers' defence.

The quangos incorporated local black activists together with middle class professionals into a would framework which keep anti-racist activity under firm establishment control. They work hand in hand with the local Labour Party machine and with other state agencies.

We work closely with the Labour Party, observes the latest Capa annual report, and have close working relationships with officers of the GLC police committee." The quangos concentrate on casework with the individual victims of racist attacks and on campaigning for police accountability.

While the police are responsible for a large number of racist attacks in East London and turn a blind eye to a great many more, the quangos want to turn them into an anti-racist force. They are often sharply critical of the police, but only within the limits defined by their role as a buffer between the police and the black community. In of practice the quangos act asd containment and as a source of intelligence for the police and other state agencies.

Quango reports continually stress the fact that we are not anti-police'. Capa emphasises that it is "the responsibility of the police to catch and apprehend the criminals and calls for the police to put their full technological resources into the fight against racism: *Sophisticated surveillance equipment could be used to monitor the situation on the estates where Asian families are most under attack. Undercover policing methods and personnel such as the Special Branch could be employed to identify the perpetrators and their sympathisers.

In a television interview after the Ilford murders in July the head of the Newham called for the Special Monitoring Project Branch to be drafted into the area. As many black people know from bitter experience, the only consequence of inviting more police surveillance and repression will be more intense

ROSCHOOL

DEMAND

harassment of the black community and of antı- TaCIStS. It is a measure of the irrelevance of the quangos that while black people in East London are daily battling for their survival against a very real racist onslaught, the antiracist groups have been forced to create an imaginary fascist threat to ensure their own AFA is merely political survival. uing the fine tradition of British liberal antiracism' — ignoring the racists, looking to the state to fight the battles and leaving blacks to fend for themselves.

REAL

ANTI-

RACIST

ACTION

or Workers Against Racism direct working class action is the only really effective way workers to tackle the racists head on and to create a new climate of opinion which is as hostile to racist behaviour as the current atmosphere of British society is conducive to it.

For example on the Bancroft estate in East London, Workers Against Racism is organising against racist attacks. Working with local tenants, black and white, especially young people, we are beginning to turn the tide against the racists. By patrolling the local areas under attack we have deterred further direct assaults. By challenging racist prejudices in door to door discussions and arguments we are beginning to build up a wider anti-racist sentiment which makes it difficult for the racists to operate We are opposed to calls for police action against racists. The police are useless in combating racism. In fact they are worse than useless. Countless Elwar supporters recall how appeals to the police for help have led to hostile interrogations, passport checks and attempts to blame attacks on the victims rather than action to apprehend the offenders. Many others can testify that workers' action organised by Elwar is an effective way of stopping the terror of racist attacks. The wider political campaign to isolate the racists is just as important as physical defence Statements by British politicians, press and police constantly reinforce racist prejudices in society. Tory Party chair Norman Tebbit blames blacks for Britain's disintegrating social fabric. Metropolitan Police commissioner Kenneth Newman declares that blacks are 'in need of greater discipline'. Labour leader Neil Kinnock blames "tribalism'.

These are the notions that make racism and racist attacks part of everyday life for black people in this country For Workers Against Racism the campaign against immigration controls has been the cutting edge of our counter-offensive against the barrage of racist propaganda. The Tories and the Labour Party and the Alliance are united in their commitment to regulations that exclude people from Britain on the ground of their racial origin. These racist laws ratify the view that immigration is to blame for problems of unemployment and housing and provide a cover for the systematic repression of black people carried out by the immigration British authorities, the police and ordinary racists. Arguing against immigration controls is central to mobilising resistance to every form of racial discrimination and harassment.

So long anti-racist movement as the concentrates on the idiot fringe of British politics, the racists will continue unchecked Workers Against Racism has taken on the task of challenging the real racists. It sabout time we buried the sham that passes for anti-racism in this country and ensured real solidarity with black people. Kenan Malik the next step 24 January • 7

Middle East

PERES IN LONDON

W hile US destroyers patrol the underline Libyan coast Reagan's threat to use armed Middle force in une European leaders prefer a more diplomatic approach. After six months of Palestinian raids and US sabrehijackings, Israeli rattling, European leaders are desperate for peace talks to reduce the tension in the region which threatens their vital oil supplies and export markets. The Peres visit gives the Tory government a chance to show off its credentials as a 'peacemaker' at a time of turmoil in the Middle East. Thatcher hopes to strengthen her hand in the Middle Eastern diplomacy stakes by persuading Peres to make some conciliatory gesture towards Egyptian pres- Mubarak's plan for Palestinian settlement to the Whether they use talks like Thatcher, or Western leaders gunboats like Reagan, objective in the Middle East is always the same - to hang on to their stake in the oppression of the Arab world.

Ever since the USA helped set up the Israeli 1948, on Palestinian Stale deployed brutal coercion and West has diplomatic intrigue to frustrate the struggle of the Palestinian people against Israel and to suppress Arab support for the Palestinian cause. Israel, financed and armed by the USA, has done most of the dirty work, while Western politicians cultivate polite diplomatic relations with Arab leaders to neutralise the hostility aroused by Israel's Through its diplomatic relations exploits. with Arab regimes from Saudi Arabia to Egypt the West has isolated the Palestinian wider Arab backing and struggle from fostered deep divisions among rival Arab rulers.

MUBARAK OF EGYPT

The peace initiative launched by Mubarak and Jordan's King Hussein follows the set It was prompted by the West's Paler. defeats in the region in the early eighties. In 1982 Israel, backed by America, invaded Lebanon to destroy the Palestine Liberation Organisation in its last stronghold in the Middle East and to establish a pro-Israeli regime in Lebanon. The invasion failed the resistance of the against American forces had to Muslim militias. beat a hasty retreat after 241 marines were blown to pieces in Beirut in 1983. And Israeli troops completed their withdrawal last May.

The defeat in Lebanon exposed the West's weakness in the Middle East. Israeli defence minister Yitzhak Shamir had promised to impose a 'final solution' to the Palestinian The debacle problem, and failed. Lebanon showed that even Israel's powerful military machine, backed by US marines and destroyers, cannot cope with the scale of The collapse of current Arab resistance. Lebanon's Christian pro-Western regime in the turmoil unleashed by the invasion was a shock for the West. The question now is country will crumble next in the Which climate of crisis hanging over the region.

The latest Western-sponsored peace in- 8 • the next step • 24 January

THATCHER'S ANSWER

TO REAGAN'S GUNBOATS

As Thatcher prepares East, to play host to Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres this week, Sabena Norton looks at Britain's attempt to play a bigger role in Middle Eastern affairs itiative a teeble TeDrescuLs contain Middle Eastern conflict and retrieve peaceful some of the ground lost since the early conflict. No serious believes that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict can be resolved diplomatically. The continuing resistance of the Palestinian people after 40 years of British, Israeli terror shows that they are not easily swayed from their fight for freedom. But the promises of concessions to the Palestinians do serve a useful purpose for the Western powers. Peace talks can help shore up shaky Arab rulers like Mubarak and Hussein who face strong opposition at home from those who identify with the Palestinian cause. Talks can deepen existing divisions in the PLO leadership, And they serve to shift the focus of PLO activity from organising action in Israelioccupied areas to shadow-boxing at Western conference tables. It costs the West nothing to promise the Earth to the Palestinians. In fact there has been no lack of Western promises to the PLO almost during TOUr oppression. The problem is the promises have only filled the gap between rounds of anti- Arab terror. Under the terms of the Camp David Agreement betwee concluded under the aegis of the USA in 1979, the 'final status' of the Israeli-occupied West Bank Gaza negotiation period. No negotiations ever took place

SOUTH AFRICA

he apartheid regime moved to throttle the tiny mountain kingdom of Lesotho after the spread of guerrilla activity by the African National Congress within South Africa. Since five whites were killed Lebanese by a landmine near the Lesotho border before Christmas, president Botha has been under pressure to take action and allay the anger of his supporters. With the bravado of neighbourhood bully, the mighty apartheid state chose to hit the weakest of its neighbours. The economic blockade was meant to force the Lesotho government to sign a peace" treaty outlawing the harbouring of ANC acrusees weekend's events mean South The Africa's bully-boy tactics seem to have worked. As supplies of food, petrol and spare parts dried up government was plunged into crisis. On Monday Major-General Lekhanye, a longtime opponent of the government's pro- ANC stance, overthrew premier Jonathan wash leaders to Western terror. date in the and no Israeli attempt to Western politician American and strengthening the moderates decades of Israeli Israel and Egypt for was open during a five-year transition

PERES OF ISRAEL

COUP IN LESOTHO

and seized power. Lesotho has Lesotho the Instead, having neutralised Egypt on its southern flank, Israel began its war-drive against Lebanon in the north and extended its settlements in the occupied territories.

The only real effect Western promises have ever had is to provide an excuse for Arab their hands of the Palestinian people and close their eyes to In the current round of peace diplomacy the 'promise is of some ill-defined Palestinian involvement in running a Jordaniancontrolled West Bank at some unspecified in exchange for future Palestinian recognition of the state of Israel now. The West Bank is occupied by Israelwill cede government occupied territory except at the point of a gun. The only merit of the spurious scheme is that it provides the West with a pretext to pressurise the PLO leadership to abandon put the armed struggle against Israel. Egypt and Jordan are being used to endow the West's future Thatcher games. Pretoria's been a haven for ANC refugees since the organisation was banned in 1960. An estimated 11 500 blacks took refuge in Lesotho after the Soweto uprising in 1976. The apartheid regime has launched frequent raids into Lesotho to kill ANC home This week Chief Leabua Jonathan of Lesotho was sought deposed in a military coup sparked by a South African economic blockade. Charles Longford explains why

THATCHER THE DIPLOMAT

scheme with an aura of Arab support Britain is well placed to play an important part in these manoeuvres. Britain's low-key role in the Middle East since it was squeezed out by the USA in the late fifties means it does not attract the same hatred from the Arab masses as does the USA. Reagan could contemplate strolling around Palestinian refugee camp. But when Thatcher visited West Bank camps last summer her reception, though cool, was relatively calm.

Britain's close relations with some of the key actors in the game are another big plus Jordan's King Hussein, who has ruled as a British protege since 1952, is now Britain's most valuable asset in the diplomacy stakes.

Through Hussein Britain has been able to moderate Palestinian pressure leaders in the occupied West Bank, whose collaboration is indispensable to any sell-out of the Palestinian struggle. Britain has used its influence with Hussein to push for direct negotiations between Jordan, hand-picked Palestinian moderates and Israel about the This Palestinian people of the approach aims to outmanoeuvre the official PLO leadership which. despite its con the peace plan, ciliatory approach remains a focus of Palestinian unity that the West wants destroyed for good We will have to wait and see what schemes and Peres hatch auring men meeting in London this week. But one thing is certain: Britain's peace moves are just as lethal as Israel's iron fist and America's war-

KING HUSSEIN MEETS THE POWER

BEHIND THE THRONE

refugees. In 1983 more than 40 were shot dead in their beds in a single helicopter night raid and last Christmas nine blacks were gunned down in a similar operation at a Christmas party in the capital of Maseru.

These methods have tended to attract a great deal of hostile Western comment. So the South African government wants Lesotho to expel ANC refugees instead Lesotho had little choice but to accede to Although formally wishes. independent — as a result of its past role as a British protectorate in South Africa - the country is at the mercy of the apartheid regime. It depends for more than 90 per cent of its trade and supplies on South Africa. In right-wing ruler recent years Jonathan — who used to rely on the South African police to sort out his enemies at distance his attempted government from the apartheid regime. By projecting a more anti-South African stance and welcoming ANC refugees. Jonathan placate his opponents. removal by the pro-South African Major- General Lekhanye will facilitate Botha's plans to deprive the ANC of a vital base in the heart of South Atrica.

Botha can easily strangle Lesotho. But his attack on his weak neighbour will only provoke still greater hostility and turmoil in the region. Black resistance is now forcing the apartheid state to take ever more brutal steps to secure its survival.

REVIEW Sjunius

MONEY CANT

MAKE THE

WORLD GO

ROUND

Harold Lever and Christopher Huhne, Debt and danger: the world financial crisis, Penguin Special Although it is further from the headlines than two vears ago, the problem of the third world s unpayable debt still has the power to make international financiers tremble. In 1984 the debt crisis brought the world's money markets to the brink of collapse. The solutions then implemented by the International Monetary Fund are today losing their efficacy. Debt and danger is a useful addition to the new range of Penguin specials. The authors are Lord Lever of Manchester, formerly a member of Harold Wilson's cabinet, and Guardian financial writer Christopher Huhne. They provide a good historical survev of the origins of the debt crisis.

They also dismiss some of the more fashionable

THE MACHINE AGE

THE DEVIL AND

ALL HIS WORKS

Humphrey Jennings, Pandaemonium: the coming of the machine as seen by contemporary observers, Andre Deutsch €12.95 Reviewing a book which brings together the opinion of the Louvre voiced by Humphrey Davy, inventor of the miners' safety lamp (he thought it a frames), Samuel collection wondertul Bamford's recollection of the Peterloo massacre, and John Milton's description of the construction of the city of fallen angels - Pandaemonium seems a daunting task. If like me, you are suspicious of books made up entirely of extracts from other sources, you might expect Pandaemonium to be a mish-mash thrown together to make a few pounds for the author and his publishers. But in this case you would be

KITSCH QUEENS

AND MACHO MEN

Kiss of The Spider Woman. Hector Babenco (director) I don't explain my movies - it ruins the emotions, says Molina, setting up one of the oppositions on which this film is based if you!

pardon the explanation). Warm feeling against cold reason, the sensitive romantic against the hard-nosed politico, the feeble victim against the fighter, the personal against the courageous political, the form against the content; these are the oppositions starkly embodied by the two some South inmates of a brutal prison American police state. As oppositions they are of course in many ways false.

Mona wan Hurt), a gay window dresser serving time for seducing a boy, is an extravagant queen. Valentin (Raul Julia) is a political prisoner, an ex-journalist recently turned revolutionary. Macho and dour.

he just wants to keep his mouth shut.

The movies Molina won't explain are those he 'tells' to Valentin in their cell, in particular a Nazi France. propaganda • piece Deploying his considerable theatrical resources and the depth of his identification with the "marvellous German officers' and 'cabaret stars of the highest rank" he conjures up a divine' fantasy world. He does it in such a captivating way that Valentin, who is repelled by the fascist politics and outraged by Molina's indifference to them, is soon hooked on Molina' s performance and urging him on. We too see the films within the film so that we can share the reactions of both men. They are very much the embellished and exaggerated product of Molina's kitsch fancy rather than real ally historical films, but as such provide amusement and also dissipate that claustrophobic effect normally associated with prison cell films.

Kiss of The Spider Woman is based on a novel of that name written in 1978 by Manuel Puig who, like Hector Babenco, is an Argentinian living in Brazil. In the film at least (screenplay by Leonard Schrader) the opposites are resolved as Molina

AT THE BOTTOM OF THE DEBT MOUNTAIN

downplay its seriousness.

arguments which on showing how concentrate Instead they deepseated the problem is and on the difficulties facing both bankers and debtors. They point out that the rescheduling of payments due around 1982 so that they become due in 1987, the first "solution' to the crisis, has only postponed the day of reckoning. At the next round of rescheduling agreement will be almost impossible.

The banks nave Ic protect their balance sheets by restricting loans in wrong. Pandaemonium is a difficult and flawed work, but above all it is exciting. Its 372 separate short texts demand and repay the reader's close attention. Humphrey Jennings made his name in the thirties and forties as a documentary film-maker.

He was a pioneer of the Mass Voservation movement which documented aspects of British social life in the thirties, seeking to discover an anthropology of our own people'. Its method was to write reports on any and every aspect of daily lite. The documentor gave the content of these reports shape and expression by their association with each other. Jennings carried over this technique into his film-making books and the Pandaemonium, attempt evoke experience of industrialisation, the texts images as he preferred to call them — perform the same function as the Mass Observation reports.

Jennings claimed that his purpose and his choice was 'entirely objective', but that he found a theme emerging from the collection almost comes to love Valentin and ultimately to join his fight against the forces which oppress them both.

and Valentin comes to appreciate the value of Molina's perceptions and strategies for survival..

and to care for him deeply. It is a moving process.

but much of the dramatic force of the resolution derives from the initial sleight of hand in setting up the two men as one-dimensional stereotypes.

Molina is the limp-wristed inadequate who wants to have a "husband who is the boss" to come and live with him and his mother.

vaenan is te repressed brute who can only mutter my life is the struggle and is scathingly intolerant of those outside the 'noble cause'.

At first Molina is by far the most forceful and sympathetic character, puncturing valenun s hackward assumptions at will. The fact that Molina is played by a non-Latin actor reinforces a rather smug feel to the critique of the South American macho revolutionary, at least as consumed by London audiences. Certainly his observations that if men were more like women there would be less violence in the world and that love always comes before politics had a palpable resonance in the crowd I saw it with. It is very appearance of sensible order to give •the accounting. The debtors on the other hand need more and more foreign currency, including more loans, just to pay the interest on their debts. The other main source of foreign exchange — export of goods — is increasingly closed off as the US economy slows down and imports fewer goods from abroad. The workers and peasants of the third world are not prominent in Lever and Huhne's account. But the real danger to the international financial system in its attempts to resolve the debt crisis comes from a revolt by the masses of the third world particularly in Latin America. Lever and Huhne are well aware that social unrest in the debtor nations is mounting as a result of the austerity policies already imposed by the bankers on third world governments. Lever and Huhne convey the sense of despair within the establishment about the debt problem They show that each 'solution' contains the seeds of its own destruction. Whatever the international bankers do can only make matters worse in the end. There are only two possible solutions to the crisis. There is the bankers' solution of making the masses pay or there is our solution — getting rid of the system that nas reacned the Impasse se accurately described by Lever and Huhne James Malone spontaneously' — that the coming of the machine was destroying something in life'. This assertion indicates the strengths ane weaknessc Pandaemonium. On the positive side there is the formal innovation and range of imagery against which have to be counted the methodological chaos and fear of industrialisation which imbues the work. Whatever Jennings felt about the machine age he was not a slavish admirer of rural idiocy and his own images of the railway, industry and the natural forces harnessed by human creativity give view of and less one-sided industrialisation than he 'objectively' intended.

Jennings had about him much of the spirit of the liberal English intellectual born to regret the security that shaped his outlook, but who could not help admiring the rich vein of insight and association he uncovered. Like Milton's vision of the city of Pandemonium Jennings' book glitters with human achievement. Alan Harding refreshing then to see the characters develop in a much more even and interesting way as the film wears on. As Valentin gets closer to Molina he repeatedly urges him to fight back and never be humiliated or degraded again. And in the end Molina accepts that his life as he has been living it amounts to waiting for nothing and resolves to get involved. The film is worth seeing for the performances of William Hurt and Raul Julia. Hurt is brilliant quickly belying the early caricature and making the most of a rich script (for example his comment one night after the candle is extinguished). What finally won me over though was how in the end (without giving it away) Molina gets to play the role he really identifies with and Valentin gets to star in one of Molina's films. Just right.

Pat Ford

CHANGE CHANNELS

Journalist Stephen Pile sets out to show just how bestial animals are in Pet hates (Sunday Channel 4). Pet hates was a victim of increased censorship during 1985. Originally scheduled for showing on Christmas day, IBA programmers decided this expose of the real lives of animals, in the wild and as pets, was unsuitable as family viewing.

The revelation that all animals do is eat, shit, copulate and occasionally kill each other would have made too many of the clean up TV lobby choke on their Christmas pudding. Most of the things that Stephen Pile's animals do are done off stage in Dynasty Il: the Colbys (Friday BBC1) but sufficient reference is made to these activities in the script to hold the viewer's interest. Eating, shitting etc in this second-hand soap opera set in Los Angeles are Charlton Heston (last seen worrying sheep as Moses in The 10 commandments) and Barbara Stanwyck times are obviously hard for movie stars who failed to achieve cult status by dying tragically in a vehicle accident. Times are also pretty hard for those who still Socialist Worker believe in Labourism. television columnist Eamonn McCann looks at the experience of Militant inside the Labour Party in Diverse Reports (Wednesday Channel 4).

publications By-election fever When the results of the Northern Ireland by-elections start coming through this weekend will you be relying on Vincent Hanna's exit poll on Newsnight? Will you have to trust the Sunday papers? Or will you be consulting the handy summary of election results and voting patterns in Northern Ireland over the past 20 years contained in The Irish War?

The Irish Freedom Movement handbook contains the tacts you need to make your own judgements about events in Northern Ireland You don't need to rely on the British media when you've got The Irish War. All this and much more for only £2.95 plus 85p p&p from Junius Publications, address below.

Also available from Junius • The roots of racism, the revised and updated second edition of the Workers Against Racism account of the rise of anti-black prejudice to its present strength in British society and how to fight it. £1.95 plus 40p p&p • Moral panics and Victorian values, Kate Marshall's popular survey of how the Tories are using propaganda on issues of sex and morality to reinforce women's subordinate position in society.

£1.50 plus 40p pap • Taking control, Mike Freeman's handbook for trade unionists, more relevant than ever at time when the TUC is losing control over the forces of fragmentation in the labour £2.95 plus 85p p&p • Black blood on British hands, Charles Longford's survey of the struggle in South Africa, the role the British establishment is playing and the role the labour movement could play £1.50 plus 60p p&p All publications from BCM JPLTD, London WC1N 3XX. Cheques payable to Junius Publications Ltd bulk orders (five or more items) post free. the next step • 24 January • 9

LETTERS STEPPING

REPUBLICAN PEARSE MOORE AND SON

MICHAEL DIED IN A DERRY FIRE LAST

MONTH

THANKS TO tns wish to take this opportunity to thank you and your readers for their kind thoughts and support at the tragic loss of my son Patrick Pearse and my grandson Michael. These past few weeks I have thought of the hardships and harassment which Pearse and many other young men and women have had to endure.

Your paper and readers were a constant solace to us during the time of his imprisonment under a paid perjuror, and your highlighting of these injustices and the continuing threats on his life by the British forces after his release, give me and my family comfort in knowing that the British people were being given the truth as to what is happening in our country.

It is difficult for me to thank everyone individually so I am grateful to you for allowing me to avail of your paper to express my gratitude to you all. Is misé Teresa Moore Bogside Derry

ILEA SPELLS

LIARS

One hundred Bangladeshi students at Morpeth school in Tower Hamlets, East London, walked out on strike on Monday morning in protest at racist attacks inside their school. On the Friday before two Core so seroy serges aracked Bangladeshi students and a teacher with knives and metal bars. This was the latest of many racist attacks at the school.

When the Inner London Authority found out about the action, it accused East London Workers Against Racism of stirring up trouble by distributing leaflets to Asian pupils urging them to take action against racist attacks.

As it happens, the Morpeth pupils are more capable than Ilea in its arrogance gives them credit for. They organised the leafleted for it and voted to return to school on Wednesday when the school authorities gave them assurances that they would stop the assaults. They reserve the right to come out again should Ilea's promises prove to be empty. The liars in Ilea's press office were so eager to stick the boot into Elwar that they even managed to contradict themselves and their friends in the police. Ilea spokesman: *There have been attacks at the school and to school. Ilea and police on the way spokesmen: *Elwar's accusations of racist attacks are fiction. The school has a very good record. lea's bare-faced lying nothing new Last year Ilea chief Barry Stead poured scorn on stories of 'alleged racist attacks' at Daneford school. Unfortunately for him, leaked private correspondence between Ilea and Daneford's headmaster acknowledged the frequency and severity of racist violence at the school. The 'anti-racist' bureaucrats of Ilea have all eyes on their re-election prospects.

Incapable of confronting racism in the Labour stronghold of East London, they spend their time slagging off those who won't trade the interests of black and white workers for a tat state salary Alex Farrell Elwar 10m the next step • 24 January

POLICE AGAINST

THE LEFT

harassment of left-wing paper sellers even before the new public order legislation comes into effect. Out selling tns in Camden over past few The questioned by the police, made to stand away from passers by and even stopped from selling. The police called another left-wing paper seller a "black bastard' and said if he carried on selling he would be arrested. I've heard that similar things are happening around the country. This is a serious attack on our civil rights, and it urgently needs to be opposed. If the police find they're successful in this petty harassment it won't be long before they feel more confident to prevent us from selling altogether or arrest us. editorial really hit the nail on the head when it made the point that we shouldn't let the police push us around. wingers are victimised in this way we should get together to defy the police and stand up for the right to put our views across.

Claire Middleton London NW5

LABOUR AND THE

UDM

Somey oople saw the Laboas arty is the party of the working class. But after spending the 12 months of the miners' strike condemning miners for fighting for the right to Labour Nottinghamshire is now sidling up to the scab outfit, the Union Mineworkers. Last Saturday I went on a organised by the miners' next step campaign outside local Labour MP Frank Haynes' surgery in trying to help build a movement to counter the UDM and build effective opposition to the National Coal Board, Haynes gave up his sponsorship as an MP from the NUM because of the miners constituency joined the UDM.

Predictably Haynes locked himself in for half an hour. Then he tried to placate us by sending out a parish eventually he spoke to us for 10 minutes. He said that as an MP he had to represent both the interests of the UDM and the NUM. One Education picket told him quite clearly that one is a pupils' scab anti-working class organisation while the other has potential for being a positive that tights acceptance of both unions is impossible if you claim to be fighting for the interests of the working class. Needless to say, he didn't resign his post. The class can working representatives like Frank Haynes whose concern is to get elected rather than fight for our interests. I've joined the miners' next step campaign to start building a real working class fighting force. Richard Nottingham

ANGER AT

COUNTY HALL

Workustr Grated emplOymeirs industry is department ground to a virtual standstill last week. Both management and Labour bosses have been thrown into a panic as the smooth running of their plans thousands of workers have been thrown into disarray. Following a mass meeting work on department publications was blacked and the joint trade union committee called a halt to all work with the management team and with London boroughs. This action is the result of widespread frustration at the politicians and their managers to defend jobs or to arrange for future employment.

All of the department's 280 workers face the sack on 31 March. clear jobs. reliance of workers days, we've been Only the challenged the out the sackings. defend jobs. demoralisation Last week's tns Wherever left resistance. The and the government Don Milligan County Hall Party in of Democratic protest throughout the country. Kirkby in Ashfield. Far from campaign for popular student support. his whole city. councillor but and musicians to for jobs; and that without do the clear an active fighting campaign.

Jo Cartwright Coventry employment get rid of to ins tallure of Labour

BCM JPITD

The present action is a that despite Ine imminent abolition of the GLC we can still mount an effective campaign to save those But the outstanding problem remains the In on their bosses calling on management to 'make a case for the direct transfer of jobs to the inner London boroughs the department's joint trade union committee has once again given the initiative back to the employers.

Fight Back campaign has councillors and

-UHO

bureaucrats over their commitment to carry Many rank and tile militants, and shop stewards, are still looking to councillors and managers to But the resulting and divisions among workers at County Hall has strengthened the employers and the government.

The action of workers in the industry and employment department is a clear indication of a willingness to fight. It confirms the relevance of the Fight Back campaign and underlines the urgent need for a strategy to stop the Labour politicians' clampdown on priority be the

HUSL

Brittan. organisation of maximum disruption based on the demand for jobs for every worker.

This remains the only way of extracting significant concessions from the employers

FIGHTING FOR

FREE NURSERIES

I position sana single parent student pers really sympathise with Kim Pepper's was unable to attend college because of the lack of free nursery facilities. Unfortunately it's a common situation for women students At Coventry Polytechnic we launched a a free nursery which got We organised petitions (and got nearly 2000 signatures), held lively protests in the city centre, and had a successful picket of the Labour council.

The fight for a free nursery on demand soon became common knowledge throughout the Positive stuff, you might say, but the student executive decided to take a different approach. They tried to treat the whole thing like a charity and persuade student societies for the raise mone nursery. The consequences were disastrous.

Firstly, the nursery campaign came to be seen by some students as a pain in the neck rather than something you need to fight for.

Secondly, it let the student executive off the hook from campaigning for extra money • from the directors and local authorities. The executive even informed us that they'd spent four years campaigning for free nurseries, which was news to most students!

It was by our campaigning methods and political argument for free nurseries on demand that a campaign was formed with the support of most students.

We had the advantage that the women's officer and the women's committee support the RCP, so I would advise Kim to ignore the NUS who tell you not to go "too far — you'll alienate people' and all that sort of tripe, and go straight to the union membership to build Write to will not. London WCIN 3XX

OUT

A sub-plot to the Westland affair developed in Fleet Street this week, concerning the origins of Tory-in-the-doghouse Leon Brittan and his brother Samuel, columnist on the Financial Times. The Guardian claimed the father of the two free marketeers was a radical who named his sons after Leon Trotsky and the late American union leader Samuel Gompers.

Sam has since heatedly denied this, insisting that the brothers Brittan are named after relatives and that his father's most socialist sin was to vote Labour once or twice. I must admit, it seems strange that somebody could connect Leon Trotsky, a leader of the Russian Revolution, with Samuel Gompers, a racist and rabid supporter of US imperialism. But perhaps it's no stranger than an expert on the British economy being related to Leon A few weeks back I reported how 'Dear Deidre' of the Sun's problem page had toured for phone calls from rape victims, posing as a sympathetic friend with whom they could share their 'awful secret. A fortnight later the Sun ran a shock-horror series on rape cases packed with titillating detail. Now Deidre is back on the phoneline, expressing a wish to help mothers and fathers whose sons are homosexuals or daughters are lesbians'. "Anguished parents' are offered the chance to 'share your experiences with someone who really cares This appeal appears next to an article headed 'Pervert pair go to jail', about two men convicted of importuning teenage boys So now you know the sort of stuff Deidre's after for her next series, get on the phone.

And blow a whistle down her ear 'ole.

Deidre's not the only hypocrite in the lobby against sex, violence, pornography etc After last week's story about how home secretary Douglas Hurd, a Mary Whitehouse fan, was having his dirty book serialised on TV comes a tale of two Brighton policemen. PC Charles Busher and PC Bernard Kelly have been in court charged with stealing two porn films. The PCs pleaded guilty and have been suspended from duty. They purloined the pictures from a crashed car, and one took them home for a private viewing. But he only ran them through on his video machine's "fast forward' button, so that his wife and children wouldn't have to watch. I think the British police are wonderful.

What's left of the Workers' Revolutionar Party continues slinging mud at its oustea guru Gerry Healy. The great man's former minder says Healy had an unattractive habit of getting as much grub as possible into his mouth and talking loudly enough to spray it all over his victim. He once got an orange caught in his gullet, vomited various fruit remnants everywhere and asked his protector to clean it up for him. Great leaders, as we Marxists say, are born of great upheavals. Two thoughts for the week; one from the right, one from the left. Comedian Stan Boardman(?) upset stage workers by telling a racist joke during his Liverpool panto.

Bigoted Stan was bemused by the fuss: *1 crack gags about everyone - including Germans, Chinese, Irish and Scots. There's no prejudice there? There's no English there either, Stanley. Meanwhile the ailing Morning Star says 'the entire planet could be nuclear free by the year 2001': 'What a vision to inspire and exeite the imagination of everyone in the peace movement. Nuclear weapons have no place in civilised society now. They certainly should not hang like the sword of Damocles over the third millenium.' Nukes may well do just that.

But we can console ourselves with the thought that the Morning Star certainly

EDDIE VEALE

Reports

BRIXTON POLICE

outh London police have launched Swamp '86. operation SPG units have moved into Clapham, and 50 adamonal plain officers out "target dic Call YI surveillance in Brixton. The operation will last at least two weeks. Five years ago a similar police operation, Swamp '81, sparked the first Brixton riots.

In response to the riots the establishment branded all black youth as criminais and cor tooce uo or me nex time, giving new weapons and new powers to the police. North London police are already 'swamping' Tottenham's Broadwater Farm.

South London's Swamp *86 is the latest stage in the campaign to criminalise black youth. Commander Gordon Lloyd, police chief of south London's "L' district, told the press that the purpose of the operation reduce street robberies'. For Brixton's black people it was a warning of more dawn raids on their homes, more stop and search on the streets, and more beatings in police cells.

They know what to expect. In October there were 60 raids in the Brixton area - nine of them without search warrants. Last year police raids led to the deaths of Cherry Groce and Cynthia Jarrett.

The usual routine goes like this: first they smash down the front door sledgehammer, then photograph the occupants and ransack the house through all the personal papers they can find. The victims of these attacks are often threatened with theft charges if they can't show receipts for their possessions.

charges are rarely brought. The raids are just exercises in intimidation.

CRIMINALISED COMMUNITY

The police don't bother trying to kid black youth about what they're doing.

you know what's going on these days,' said a student from Tulse Hill school, you they're going to hit you before you're even in the van.' Terry from Brixton Hill told us how he and his friends were stopped and searched last week: "All six of us were arrested. They kept me in for seven hours but didn't even tell us what it was about.

A week before the start of Swamp '86 the trial began of the 32 Lambeth councillors, who face charges arising from the Labour campaign against rate-capping. At a rally their defence Lambeth council leader Ted Knight strongly condemned the Tory government for criminalising people 'whose represent the community. Yet the Labour councillors have failed to campaign against Swamp '86 and the criminalisation of the black community. Swamp "86 has already begun as we go to press. Lambeth's deputy leader Graham Norwood has told the London Standard that "like everyone else' he is delighted to see the crime figures being brought under control', although he wants to see some sensitive policing'. Norwood's guarantees 'sensitive policing' are worthless to Brixton blacks. The council's police committee support unit, set up to monitor and liaise

LAUNCH SWAMP '86

with police, cannot stop them smashing up Uniformed people's homes. After October's raids the unit could only 'recommend that the council clothes should write a letter to Commander Lloyd and complaining of the insensitivity.

Lambeth council itself has ordered the use of 'insensitive' police tactics. Last autumn the council sent police into Brixton to evict local people running a day nursery. And in British 1984 the council used riot police to evict squatters in Brixton's Effra Parade.

One member of the police committee support unit says Swamp 86 is nothing to get terribly worked up about. Actually it's an extension of normal policing.'

aumission says at about ne counch and Its failure to represent the community.

Lambeth council helps to finance L' district police. and its police committee contributes "multi-agency' the *is to Metropolitan police Newman. But Brixton's blacks don't want police thugs in their community - and they don't need representatives' reports and deliver nothing.

Lambeth council and the police rely on cooked-up statistics and scare stories te stimulate demands for police intervention.

Black businessmen provide a false picture of "community" support. In order to contain the threat from black youth the establishwith ment must first criminalise them to isolate them from wider support. - rifling

LET'S GET ORGANISED

Most working class youth hate the police and most contact between working class But people and police is hostile. But because establishment law and order propaganda unchallenged by towards the police remains confused and Workers unorganised. wants to get it organised.

*They let Instead of increased police action in the lives of working class people we propose "They tell workers' defence of working class areas. As essential first step towards workers' an defence we need to expose the truth about police attacks. readers to inform us of all incidents of police harassment, in particular in Brixton and Clapham as Swamp '86 gets under way.

We want to mobilise resistance to the drive to criminalise and terrorise the black community. If you want to get involved in campaigning against police racism, Against Racism on 01-729 0414 01-729 3771 Deadline for news and reports: Monday 9am

TROOPS

OUT OF

IRELAND!

This vOUs McLellan Galleries Sauchiehall Street approach of Glasgow chief Kenneth Sessions who submit Tickets £1 (50p UB40) US! Bradford • Bradford hostility ELa0OUT Thursday 23 January 5pm Against Racism Thornbury Barracks Pudsey Lane End • Sunderland Careers Block St Mary's Place To this end WAR asks Ins Sunderland Polytechnic phone Workers Get ins evers week for a veal 419 in Britain or Ireland Cheques/POs pavable to Name Address - Come along! The Anglo-Irish deal has provoked instability across Northern Ireland, with Loyalists calling parliamentary byelections and the IRA renewing its campaign along the Border. Yet in Britain the accord has only provoked an unrivalled display of unity among establishment parties, and confusion among many who want to see an end to the Irish War. It is now crucial for supporters of Irish freedom to take a stand against the agreement, and tell British workers that Thatcher's deal with Dublin, like every other British initiative,

• WAITING FOR KINNOCK -

OR FIGHTING BACK NOW?

Since the miners' defeat many workers have drawn the conclusion that direct action is ineffective. But we can't afford to rely on the Labour Party to come to our rescue. At this conference we'll be putting forward a strategy to win what the working class needs now, instead of making concessions to the Tories. Come along to hear our point of view and put Scottish day of discussion and debate Saturday 8 February 12-5.30pm • One year after the miners' strike • Fighting the Tories - a new approach • Can the Labour Party be changed?

• Fighting back RCP-style in '86 Refreshments and childcare available

• YOU'RE NOT RECRUITING

marry? The British army is on a drive to recruit students to terrorise the victims of British imperialism. RCP students are protesting against Colonel BJ Smith in Sunderland and at the local barracks in Bradford Parachute Regiment Wednesday 29 January 11am-12.30pm Take LAS regularly Junius Publications Ltd. BCM JPI TD. London WIN 3XX.

For full subscription rates see page?

can only mean more suffering for the Irish people. Get involved in the movement to force the British government to take the only step that can bring peace - the immediate withdrawal of its gunmen, judges and jailers from Irish soil.

• Leeds Thursday 23 January 7.30pm The Three Legs The earow • Pontefract Thursday 23 January 7.30pm Red Lion Hotel Market Square • North London Friday 24 January 7pm What is to be done in Britain?

Oxford Arms Camden High Street/Jamestown Road (Camden Town tube) • South London Saturday 25 January 11-4pm Blow up in Lambeth Peace Gardens!

(Brixton tube) Join 'our protest where we'll be releasing hundreds of balloons for Irish freedom

• STOP THE RACIST SWAMP!

Workers Against Racism will be out on the streets of Brixton again this week to oppose the Swamp 86 police terror operation (see opposite).

• Swamp '86 - open meeting Thursday 23 January 7.30pm The Voltaire Rooms Clapham Manor Baths Clapham Manor Street (off High Street) (Clapham Common tube) Speakers: Alex Farrell (War), worker from Thornton Heath dole striking againsi race checks • Stop Swamp '86 - street protest Saturday 25 January 2pm Prince of Wales pub Brixton centre

• FIGHTING OPPRESSION

À course at the London School of Economics on the Marxist approach to winning real freedom, convened by Kate Marshall author of Moral Panics and Victorian Values. In the first two discussions: Kate Marshall asks • Marxism and Feminism - will they ever Thursday 30 January 6pm Don Milligan looks at • Gay oppression Thursday 6 February 6pm Both meetings in room A40

• RCP STUDENTS SOCIETY

Revolutionary communist students are starting the new term as we ended the old, by campaigning against all cuts and raising the political issues that matter most. If you thought student politics was all beer and bureaucrats, try a different approach. Ring Kerry Andrews on 01-729 0414 the next step • 24 January • 11

tns Ireland

SPOT THE

TERRORIST?

SOMEBODY IN THIS PICTURE IS AN ARMED AND

DANGEROUS TERRORIST IN NORTHERN

IRELAND. BUT IT'S NONE OF THE BELFAST

RESIDENTS STANDING ON THEIR DOORSTEPS.

IT'S THE BRITISH SOLDIER CROUCHING IN

THEIR GARDEN AT THE BOTTOM OF THE

When he's in Belfast he gets his guns and money from a foreign regime - the British government occupying Northern Ireland. And he's a terrorist because he uses armed might to impose the will of his political paymasters on Irish people who want their country to be united and free from British domination.

Behind all the ballyhoo about *British democracy' spouted around this week's Northern Ireland by-elections, the gunmen of the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary rule Northern Ireland with an iron fist. Loyalist leaders might have called the elections in protest at the Anglo-Irish agreement. But they're wrong to claim Thatcher's accord with Dublin undermines their status in the 'United Kingdom'. Deal or no deal, the British government can be relied on to send its terrorist troops rampaging through as many Irish streets and gardens as necessary to keep control of its oldest colony. Fourteen years ago next week terrorist 14 British paratroopers shot dead

IRELAND

TROOPS OUT NOW!

Bloody Sunday demonstration 1pm, Sunday 2 February,

IRISH FREEDOM MOVEMENT

Phone 01-729 0414 unarmed Irish marchers in Derry on Bloody Sunday. Since then the nationalist community in Northern Ireland have had to live through a Bloody Monday to a Bloody Sunday every week of every year. Machine guns, plastic bullets, torture, no-jury trials, supergrasses and CS gas are just some of the *British initiatives' that have made their lives a misery. Their suffering will only end when every British terrorist is chased out from behind every Irish wall and kicked back across the Irish Sea.

Movement is The Irish Freedom fighting to build a movement in Britain that will support the Irish people in their war against the British authorities. The anniversary of Bloody Sunday is as good a time as any to take sides with those struggling for real freedom in Ireland.

our rally and join us on the Come to march. Take a stand against the British gunman at the bottom of this Belfast garden, and the other 30 000 Crown terrorists like him. Rally for Irish freedom This is the only

NO BRITISH

British

SOLUTION

solution 6.30pm Manning Hall Speakers' Corner, Hyde Park, London London WC1 Saturday 1 February Name Address University of London Union, Malet Street Telephone

ROP

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 in the local area.

Phone Fenna on 01-729 0414 or fill in the form below. Send to BM RCP, London WC1N 3XX