The Next Step: No. 8, 27 February 1987

Police strangle black youth - Wolverhampton erupts They twisted his head off 23-year old Clinton McCurbin in Wolverhampton last Friday in broad daylight on a busy shopping street. They were supposed to be arresting the black youth on suspicion of using a stolen cheque card. They handed tus the nextstep Revolutionary Communist Party • 27 February 1987 • 30p Police strangled out a summary death sentence instead.

Which way to fight racism? pages 6 and 7 Labour dances to Tory tune page 4 page 5 Irish election: coalition, cuts & Charlie Eye-witness account - Turn to page 3

the next step Revolutionary Communist Party weekly • 27 February 1987 • No 8 he Tories are the most brazen bunch of confidence tricksters in Britain.

Last week they sold off the doomed Leyland Trucks to the Dutch, while Westland helicopters returned to haunt them and demand another hand-out.

Yet the Conservatives had the nerve to claim that the government's current cash surplus, gives chancellor Nigel Lawson scope for tax cuts, proves that British capitalism is full of beans. The government income figures prove only that Tory boasts of economic recovery are flatulent. The cash which the Treasury wants to spend on tax cuts is a one-off windfall. It comes from sources that show the crippling sickness of the British economy, rather like the lump sum compensation you might get that an injury puts you out work for good. The Tories have made money from selling off assets like British Airways. They have taken extra customs duty brought in by a flood of foreign imports. They have pocketed surplus stamp duty paid by the speculators now frantically buying and selling shares in the City. They have received record amounts of income tax because they have failed to cut our wages as the system requires. They have made millions from VAT as the credit-card economy produces a consumer spending boom. In sum, the true secret of the Tories' public finance "success" is that British capitalism is approaching bankruptcy, and that the ruling class is trying to unload its stock on the cheap and steal anything that is not nailed down before the creditors and bailiffs arrive. Far more significant than any two or three cut is the fact that new per cent tax investment in British industry has fallen by 10 per cent in the last year. The Leyland Trucks and Westland sagas show what is happening at the business end of British capitalism. Both caused heated political debates last year. Their return to the news indicates that the Tories' past attempts to paper over the problems of the British economy are now falling apart.

Last year the Tories tried to sell Leyland Trucks to the American giant General Motors. They cancelled the deal in face of all-party opposition. Yet the crisis of the British motor industry has now forced the government to unload its truck outfit on to the DAF corporation. The chauvinists of the British establishment are fond of depicting Holland as a cross between a haven of rural idiocy where people wear clogs and grow tulips, and a den of iniquity full of international drug smugglers.

Now they have been forced to concede that even the Dutch are better equipped than British Reagan's crisis his week the Tower Commission report is set to explode inside Ronald Reagan's White House. The investigation into the US arms deal with Iran is expected to expose a catalogue of lies and cover-ups reaching to the top of the Reagan administration.

Whatever the of the fina outcome furore, Reagan's authority has been shot to pieces.

The crisis now coming to a head is about much more than Reagan's attempt to swan guns, cakes and bibles for hostages and influence in the Middle East. It is about the fact that American imperialism is losing its way in the world as its economic power declines. Before Reagan, America had slipped unchallenged trom its post-war the depths of defeat in supremacy He Vietnam. has sought to reaffirm Publisher Revolutionary Communist Party. BM RCP. London WCIN 3XX = copyright Printer MPS Ltd. 159 Acre Lane. London SW2 Annual subscription rid and Sautiend rica 219 A strain 212 diEs and No Africa 126 e America All cheques payable to Junius Publications Ltd.

Circulation 01-729 3771. WCIN 3XX. ISSN 0144 350 X 27 February 1987. Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office.

2• the next step • 27 February 1987 Tory tricksters businessmen to run a modern motor industry. In January 1986 the row over whether Westland should be sold to its American or European competitors caused bitter Tory ranks. It was finally In resolved, after two cabinet ministers had resigned and Thatcher had threatened to follow them, in favour of the American helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky. Now the Tories have had to place another pricey order for Westland machines which they neither want nor need, to keep the West Country firm hovering just above the abyss.

Today, behind its boasts of an economic boom, the Conservative Party stands revealed in its true colours. It is the political machine of a corrupt ruling class, presiding over an outdated and exploitative system, whose aim is to concentrate the wealth of society in the hands of the privileged and propertied few. It lies to us about popular capitalism', while pursuing polices which are popular with money-grabbing capitalists but which cost thousands of carworkers and others their jobs. The remarkable thing is that the Tories get away with it. For that, we must thank the official opposition.

The Labour Party debates economic matters in terms which any Tory could understand. It argues about which strategy is best suited to keeping Leyland or Westland going as a capitalist concern, and it quibbles over whether the City financiers have the best interests of their fellow exploiters in industry at heart. Labour provides no challenge to the fundamentals of Tory philosophy. This has allowed Thatcher to tough out every economic crisis. During the Westland row and the current debate over government policy, she has had more to fear from her Tory critic Michael Heseltine than from Neil Kinnock, who is supposed to represent the political interests the Kinnock's commitment to salvaging the capitalist economy amounts to an oath of loyalty to those who live off our labour. Our loyalty lies elsewhere, with working class people. They have been forced to build the system for the benefit of the employers, and are now expected to endure mass and unemployment, growing poverty intensifying exploitation while the management absconds with the takings.

They need an alternative to the capitalist order and its political supporters. A first step towards providing it must be to organise those who are willing to fight for our class today. That is the aim of our campaign for The Red Front (see page nine). If you have had enough of the tricksters, join us.

America's status as leader of the Western world and policeman of the third world.

through displays of gunboat diplomacy in Grenada, Libya and Central America and outbursts of gung-ho jingoism against those who would challenge the USA.

But the mounting problems of the US economy and of American foreign policy from Nicaragua to Iran have caught up with him, and reduced the great communicator to silence in the days agare the ohere strps dublict ins Reagan may have slipped, instinctive understanding of America's need to lash out if it is to stay on top remains a sound The victims of American Ole. imperialism can expect little respite from the lash of Washington's whip, whoever shuffles White House in the in and out of the weeks to come. Newsdesh 01-729 3771. Correspondence to The Editor. the next step. BCM JPLTD. London

ESTINIAN REFUGEES SURVIVE IN BOMB-BLASTED HOVELS

"Nothing but war alestinians are starving to death P each day in the besieged refugee camps in Lebanon, surrounded by Syrian tanks and by Nabih Berri's Western-backed Amal militia. On the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Sirip, the army has launched a wave of terror to break Palestinian demonstrations and strikes against the genocide in Lebanon.

For 40 years the Western powers have used their client state of Israel and their local Arab stooges to deny the Palestinian people their right to self-determination and to keep Palestine under the heel. Britain, America and the rest have banished Palestinians to grim refugee camps, where they are forced to fight against poverty, hunger and violence.

Peace can only come when they win their freedom. tns: What is happening in the camps now?

Rima Milhim: "Last week the media made a big fuss about the three UN trucks which finally went into Bourj al-Barajneh with supplies. In fact they were mini-buses. Every adult got a pound of flour and just under a pound of powdered milk. By now that's definitely all gone. At least 45 people have already starved to death.

*The siege has lasted for almost four months now. But the process really started in April 1985, when Amal launched its war against the Palestinian camps. For almost two years most Palestinian men have not been able to get out of the camps and look for work, for fear of being picked up, tortured or killed by Amal, who have roadblocks all over the place. The economic situation in the camps has been very bad even before the siege. Western media have focused on Bourj al-Barajneh. But the situation in other camps is even worse. Rashadiye in southern Lebanon has been without food for almost six months. In Chatila all adults have gone on a voluntary fast to save the remaining food for breast-feeding pregnant and women and children. Chatila is militarily very exposed. All 7000 inhabitants permanently live in underground dug-outs.

Last week a doctor managed to get in. He is now feeding people intravenously to keep them alive.' tns: How are the people managing to hold out?

RM: The Palestinians have no choice. They are fighting for survival. If the camps fall there will be a mass genocide. If we lose, all Palestinian organisations will be wiped out

VICTORY TO THE PALESTINIANS!

and pogroms' Rima Milhim is the London correspondent of the Palestinian news agency WAFA who was brought up in the Chatila refugee camp in Beirut. Daniel Nassim asked her about the siege and starvation now afflicting the Palestinian camps in Lebanon or come under Syrian control. The people eel there is no way thev will become subservient to Syria or Jordan or any other state. Everyone in the camps, old and young, has known nothing but war and pogroms.

This is what gives people the strength to resist. *The population in the camps is very more than half the people are

YOUL

under 19. The PLO fighters who have tried to come back to the camps have not been able to get through. So it is the local boys — and girls who are doing the fighting.

Strategically the camps are impossible to defend, particularly Chatila, which is on low ground. The Syrians and Amal have tanks, long-range missiles and the most up-to-date artillery. All the Palestinians have is light and medium-weight weapons and a few short-range rocket launchers They are running out of ammunition. Call it heroism or desperation — It is a miracle they've held out for four months in these conditions.'

What about the resistance outside the camps? RM: "Last week 3000 women who managed to flee the camps demonstrated outside Bourj al-Barajneh. The resistance has been strongest in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza. There have been demonstrations in every town and village. All universities and schools have been occupied, and workers and shop-owners in the cities have organised general strikes.

"Israeli repression has been vicious. Fourteen people were shot in a demonstration on the West Bank. The universities at Bir Zeit, Najah, Bethleham and Gaza have been raided and shut down. Shop-owners have had their permits withdrawn. There have been mass arrests. In the occupied territories people get a minimum 18-month sentence just for raising the Palestinian flag.

*What is happening in the camps is very tragic. But it is not exceptional. It has been the same since 1948' [when the West robbed the Palestinians of their homeland and created the Israeli state. camps war cannot be looked at in isolation from the situation in the Middle East as a whole These things will continue until the Palestinian people are allowed to live freely in their own country. In the Western press the siege has been portrayed as a case of mad Muslims fighting with each other, or of poor people eating cats and dogs. But nobody ever talks about the real problem — which is Israel and its oppression of the Palestinian people

BARBARIANS!

FURY ON THE STREETS AS POLICE LOAD CLINTON McCURBIN'S CORPSE INTO THE AMBULANCE ON FRIDAY AFTERNOON T hey got their arms around his neck and turned it round, it looked like they were twisting his head off, and the next thing we knew he was dead." This was how an described the police killing of 23-year old black man Clinton McCurbin in Wolverhampton on Friday. Black anger exploded as news of the strangling spread and more than a dozen people were arrested in fighting with the police. It was lunchtime last Friday when police put Clinton MeCurbin in a stranglehold as they tried to arrest him on suspicion of using a stolen credit card outside the Next clothing shop on Dudley Street. Another witness remembers the scene: "A police officer who I recognised as the one who gives us hassle in the shopping centre, was pinning down Clinton McCurbin on the pavement.Then they dragged him into the shop and held him down on the floor. We could see what was happening through the window. They didn't treat him like a human being. They got his neck up and back.' Police claim that Clinton McCurbin put up a violent struggle, but another bystander told tns that he didn't have a chance: 'We tried to get into the shop. But they closed the We could see they were doors against us. using undue force to restrain him. He was hardly moving, he didn't have a chance to struggle.' The photograph on our front page shows the police practising their stranglehold on another black youth arrested later in outside the shop. the disturbances martial arts hold is standard treatment for any black person who falls into police hands.

As an angry crowd gathered outside the shop police barred the doors and called in The killing of Clinton McCurbin takes police violence against black people to a new level of barbarism.

Early one September morning in dogs with police armed the door of 1985. Normandy Road in Brixton, shot 38down smashed year old mother of six Cherry Groce and left her lying paralysed in a pool of blood on her bedroom floor. In the police otticer who crippled Cherry Groce for life walked January free from the courts after being found In October 1985 black mother of not guilty five Cynthia Jarrett collapsed and died during a police raid on her home, after police had arrested her son Floyd for 'stealing' his own car.

Her death sparked a revolt against police terror on Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham. In December 1985 the inquest returned a verdict of 'accidental death'. The jury decided pushed Cynthia Jarrett, but didn't think that it was that the police Last October Anthony 'Crumpet' 'deliberate. Lemard, a young black man from Notting Hill, died in a police cell shortly after his arrest. Police claimed he died from a massive injection of drugs, but the hundreds of black people who marched on Notting Hill police station didn't believe them. In eye-witness reinforcements. An ambulance arrived at the side entrance. An hour and a half later the ambulance moved round to the front and backed up to the entrace, so that its open This doors blocked the outside. Tempers flared and people demanded know what was going on. community relations counsellor went in and

LICENSED TO KILL

January 1987 Trevor Monerville was found battered and brain-damaged in Brixton prison after two days in police custody in Stoke Newington.

Police pleaded ignorance about how he got his awful injuries.

week police chief Kenneth Newman complained that in some Last areas of London a police arrest make an invoking the wrath of local people: cannot *Indeed his experience if he lays hands on a black man may very well be that others will unite to prevent the arrests and perhaps to assault him.' When police lay hands on black people these days, it's their victims who are lucky to get away with their lives, never mind a beating.

Thatcher's Britain paradise where police get away with harassing Cynthia Jarrett to death, shooting and crippling Cherry Groce in Brixton, and battering blacks to oblivion inside police cells.

now the police have got away with every act of brutality against the black community, whether it be in the privacy of their own homes or in a dark corner of a police cell. Now they think they can get away with killing black people in broad daylight on busy shopping streets. They must be made to think again.

RACISM

POLICE STRANGLE BLACK YOUTH

The police can't lie their way out of this one. They killed Clinton McCurbin with their bare hands back of the ambulance. view of the people local T Thatcher's Britain. slammed the officer refugees into without like so much cheap meat. The divisions Sinhalese population and is a racists Up to has been in it up to its neck British consulates Tamils since 1983. emerged after half an hour to announce that McCurbin was dead. Some time McCurbin's lifeless body was put into the When news of the killing became public knowledge police declared that McCurbin died of a heart attack brought on by drug abuse. But the post-mortem revealed no

TORY GANGSTERS

GUN FOR TAMILS

he spectacle of 58 Tamil refugees stripping on the runway of Heathrow "genuine" airport last week, to stop the British home office deporting them to their deaths, summed up the way in which black immigrants and refugees are abused in Tory immigration minister David Waddington Tamils were 'gangsters' who the gOL Britain for running al immigration racket and slated them for treating the Tamils "just like cattle". But the real gangsters are the British politicians who have backed the butchery of Sri Lankan soldiers against the Tamil, and herded the refugees from detention cells to deportation between the majority minority the Tamıl community that provoked the conflict in Sri Lanka were imposed and maintained during 150 years of British rule. 'We can't go back to be massacred like the 200 people centres hacked to death last month," one refugee told tns. A month ago he fled from Sri Lanka as the Sinhalese army stepped up its pogrom against the Tamils. The British government Other refugees told us that the Sinhalese army is using British arms and British mercenaries: "There are British pilots for the helicopters and big tanks for Sri Lankan troops." Officially the Tories have nothing to do with the mercenaries. But they have been deployed, with government approval, from all over the country These British-backed gangsters have played an active part in the slaughter of 20 000 trace of drugs. Clinton McCurbin died of *asphyxia consistent with restraint during a violent struggle'. On Monday his mother, who was out of the country when her son died, threw a wreath of red and white flowers into the shop where police killers struck. She was not allowed inside to see the spot where her son's life was squeezed away.

Contrary to Waddington's claims that easily obtain refugees can passport out of Sri Lanka, refugees are putting their lives on the line to do it: The passport office in Jaffna was closed in 1983: one refugee told ins, 'people have to travel to Colombo to get papers, last year a busload of burnt to death at a military checkpoint." Rather than risk their lives on road to Colombo, many refugees have had to resort to using Sinhalese agents to smuggle them out Tamil refugees who have made it to Britain really do know what it is like to be treated 'like cattle'. As soon as they arrived last week immigration police tried to herd the refugees back on board a plane before anybody could protest. The Tamils had to go through the humiliation of stripping off their clothes on the tarmac before the authorities agreed to let them in.

Next they were shunted into detention like bo Latchmere House to interrogated by the home office pending •Latchmere House is a real deportation. prison,' one of the Tamils told us: 'You get one visit for 15 minutes, you're banged up in your cell after 6pm, if you want to go to the toilet you have to use a bucket." The British authorities are treating Tamil refugees like cattle before sending them back to the slaughter they tried to escape The Tories have triggered a scare about Tamil refugees to try to turn people against an imaginary foreign threat to the British way of life. Our job is to turn people's anger against the Tory hypocrites and gangsters who are trampling over refugee rights.

Andrew Calcutt the next step • 27 February 1987 • 3

Kinnock rises to Tory bait The Greenwich by-election has shown how the gutter press and the eirdre Wood, Labour's candidate in the Greenwich by-election, broke down and cried at a weekend press conference. Her party leadership had forced her to endure the humiliating ordeal of facing the media to reply to a scurrilous family in about her

SLOLY

Sunday's News of the World. Instead of dismissing the dirty trick. Neil Kinnock's team allowed the sordid scribblings of a puerile 'newspaper", produced behind Wapping, razor wire at the expense of 5500 sacked print workers, to become a big topic of political debate. Wood's televised tears summed up the way in which the Labour Party now expects us te offer ourselves up to be judged by the standards of the Tories and the gutter press.

SOCIALIST CONFORMISTS

As we go to press, Labour still clings to its lead in Greenwich, though the Alliance is closing the gap. But whatever the result on Thursday, the establishment has used the by-election as a successful exercise SIn pressurising the Labour Party to conform.

Kinnock has risen to the bait, banning any hint of radicalism from Labour's campaign, and instructing Wood to forget any ideas about being a member of the hard left.

The Greenwich campaign indicates how the Tories and the media, abetted by the Alliance, have turned the Labour Party itself into the biggest issue in British politics.

Their attacks on Labour's 'loony left' figures such as Wood, on Kinnock's lack of statesmanship, on Glenys Kinnock's 'domineering', etc, now dominate debate and divert attention from real isues like unemployment or racism. The Tories dropped a commons motion containing a vicious personal attack on Kinnock, because they recognised that too many individual insults might offend the ast week Dave Hallsworth returned to Kirkby, where he won 664 votes for the RCP in November's Knowsley byelection, to debate the idea of The Red Front with a local Labour Party activist.

Hallsworth took up the idea that events in Knowsley, where Kinnock had unilaterally replaced a left-wing candidate with his own He pointed to the lan.

WCIC

softening of hard-left candidate Deirdre Wood in Greenwich as an example of the same process. Kinnock's slogan is "Don't rock the boat"; Hallsworth said. Everyone in this room knows what is happening and that we can achieve nothing by a Labour government anyway. It doesn't put the working class in power. We are arguing for.a strategy, through The Red Front, that shows it is possible to fight back."

•We are asking you to put your class before the Labour Party. The local Labour activist agreed on the need to find a way forward, and branded those leading his party as "pure bastards".

But he argued that the Labour Party was the only representative of the working class.

and that to avoid polarising or splitting the left, we should join the Labour Party and fight. In the discussion after the speeches, it soon became clear that everybody agreed with the basic demands on jobs. housing.

trade union rights and equal rights for the oppressed, The Red Front outined in platform. The differences arose over how to fight for them. Labour supporters upheld the importance of unity, and claimed that 4 • the next step • 27 February 1987

FROM GREENWICH TO GLENDA JACKSON'S GREENHOUSE

Tories are dictating Labour Party policy DEIRDRE WOOD LEANS TO THE RIGHT TO FIT IN WITH KINNOCK'S CONSERVATISM electorate. But they seem to be on to a winner with their political assault on the Labour Party. Whether the discussion is on the economy or defence, the question that comes to the fore is about the lack of credibility in Labour's alternative the Tories. The Labour Party has proved vulnerable to attacks from the right because it shares its opponents' commitment to salvaging the capitalist system. Kinnock is attempting to outdo the Tories in presenting Labour as a responsible party

DEBATING THE RED FRONT IN KIRKBY

"Put your class first' they could see no contradiction between objectives and supporting these campaigning within the Labour Party.

Our supporters argued that unity within the Labour camp meant unity on Kinnock's terms. They pointed out how the Labour leadership had already abandoned black youth quest for respectability, and that Kinnock was now turning on his own supporters like the Statesman over Zircon. New Any militant action was to be stamped on in case it with Kinnock's interfered election campaign. This closed down any possibility of fighting for our demands in the Labour Party. •We haven't got the luxury of waiting years for Labour to save us,' said one. 'We're being hammered now, and we need to fight back now. The Labour supporters were angry at Kinnock, but resigned to his cause as the best on offer in the election. What else can we do? asked one. 'We have to hope and pray that a Kinnock government will do something.' Our supporters pointed to evidence that groups of workers and activists, from the gay community to the coalfields, were looking for a way to do something else and to have a go now.

Instead of sitting back and praying for Kinnock to be converted, we should be out organising them in a campaign to defend our class, around The Red Front.

The debate on The Red Front has only just begun. If you want to have your say.

write to tns. Alan Harding

THE RED FRONT

of government that moderate and middle class voters can trust. He has submitted the labour movement to an examination set by the establishment, and has to come up with the answers it wants to hear.

When the Tories pick out Labour policies and ask 'How much will it cost?', 'Do you support the police?', 'Are you a patriot?', Kinnock replies on their terms. In effect, the Labour Party's policy statements and speeches are being written by the authorities.

LITTLE ENGLAND

Labour's latest party political broadcast captured the Kinnock approach. It featured Glenda Jackson in a greenhouse, comparing the problems of the British economy to those of a suburban flower bed. The message was clearly directed to voters who potter about in English country gardens. The broadcast was an advert for Labour's loyalty to the Union Jack and its chauvinist Little England mentality. The main theme was the need for more patriotic economic policies to keep up with the competition symbolised by a flowerpot holding a miniature Japanese tree being put on top of a box of British blooms. Left-wing Labour supporters in living rooms across the country must have been curling their toes up in embarrassment.

Kinnock's how dare you suggest I'm subversive attitude gives the right wing scope to crack the whip on every political issue. The Tory campaign against Labour's credibility is reflected in the opinion polls which still give the government a narrow lead, especially in marginal seats. The panic this is causing among Labour chiefs was Which way forward for the working class?

EDINBURGH: Debate between RON BROWN (Labour MP for Leith), BILL MORRISON (Scottish National Party prospective parliamentary candidate for Leith), MIKE FREEMAN (Revolutionary Communist Party) Friday 27 February 7pm Chamber Street House Chamber Street Edinburgh University PONTEFRACT. Discussion with speakers from Telecom engineers' strike miners' union activist, sacked print worker and eye-witness from French rail reflected in national executive member David Blunkett's remark that he would starve if he put his last fiver on Labour the But the winning general election. problem for the working class is even more serious. The pro-capitalist direction of Labour policy means that, if we put our shirts on Kinnock, we will suffer even if he should win the election. The Labour leaders" instruction that activists must not rock the boat is becoming more strident, as the general election looms nearer and the party's prospects appear bleaker. Greenwich Labour activists were told to forget about the by-election, because the party machine was running the campaign via the media. Many on the left are giving in to the pressure to keep quiet about Kinnock's crimes against socialism, because they can see no way forward other than electing a Labour government of some sort.

A CHANCE TO FIGHT

Yet there is an alternative to waiting for Kinnock. Several struggles reveal that we can begin to get organised to defend our class now, if we give people a focus to fight around. Last week we explained how the George Roucou Defence Campaign in Manchester had mobilised 1500 workers for a work-time demonstration against the council shop steward's deportation. This week we report on the victory of the Wombourne 12 Defence Campaign, which has forced the authorities to drop the charges against nine gay men and three lesbians arrested for protesting gainst a Tory who wanted to gas them. Elsewhere.

the Inner London Teachers' Association has taken principled stand against the authorities and the Labour Party leadership The teachers are refusing to cooperate with a video made by the police and their Labour employers, the Inner London Education Authority, because they have a policy of not allowing members of the racist police force to educate' their classes.

None of these initiatives will change the face of British politics between now and the election. But they indicate that we have a chance of organising to fight for what we need, instead of blindly hoping that Kinnock will both win the election and then become an ally of the working class The Revolutionary Communist Party contested the Greenwich by-election to raise the possibility of fighting for a change. We are campaigning for The Red Front as a bloc of left-wing individuals and organisations who won't pay Kinnock's price (see page 9).

It can provide a focus for all those who are more interested in hitting back than in digging the garden. Unless we build such an alternative and prevent Kinnock having his way with our movement. Deirdre Wood won't be the only one in tears.

strike Thursday 26 February 7pm Red Lion Pub

Ireland unfree and Last week's election in the Irish Republic put a new party in power, but it won't The inconclusive results of the Irish T election, in which Fianna Fail failed for the fourth time in a row to get an overall majority, exposed the shaky in the state artificially pontical set-up created by Britain's partition of Ireland 66 years ago. Fianna Fail won 81 seats, three short of the 84 needed for outright victory, but enough to make its leader Charles Haughey the next Taoiseach (prime minister). Out- Gael went down to a devastating defeat and its Labour coalition partner polled poorly.

Des O'Malley's Progressive Democrats, a Fianna Fail breakaway formed last year, failed to "break the mould' of Irish politics, but moved into place as the third party in the polls. The hung Dail holds out the prospect of another bout of electoral upheaval.

The fudged outcome of the election is nothing new in Irish politics. Since 1973.

every election has produced a change of government, indicating the lacklustre appeal of the two main parties. Indecisive voting in the early eighties resulted in a narrow defeat for Haughey in May 1981, an equally narrow defeat for FitzGerald in January 1982, and a slim majority for the Fine Gael-Labour coalition in November 1982. Three elections 18 months revealed the impasse In establishment politics in the South, which has not been broken this time round.

The fragility of the political system stems from the economic domination of the Twentysix Counties by foreign capital and its political The Irish Free State resembles a European outpost of the third world, in hock to foreign capital. Its per capita national debt, a legacy of the Irish industrial revolution in the sixties and seventies and profligate public spending in the eighties, is the highest in the world, and servicing it absorbs every penny of the country's massive income tax toll.

Unemployment stands at 20 per cent and a third of the population lives on wel-

DUBLIN DISREPUTE

The parlous state of the economy was the overriding issue in the election and all the establishment parties accepted the need for big cuts to bring it back from the brink. Even the parties which claim to speak for the working class - the Labour Party and the Workers' Party - speak the same language of crisis and cuts. The Dublin establishment is not just an depends on British patronage for its political survival. Through the partition of Ireland in 1921, Britain has maintained its control over both the Six Counties in the North and the Twenty-six Counties in the South. While a nationalist in the CommuneY North, the Border has created an inherently artificial and unstable entity in the South.

The Dublin establishment can only hold it pounded the historical weakness of Irish capitalism and created a volatile political The Irish establishment has always had trouble getting a grip on society because it has never really controlled the power levers.

narrowed the

DRESS

scope for the development of Irish capitalism and undermined the authority of the ruling elite. The economic and social chaos wrought by the recession has weakened its standing even turther. law and order have served to

ELECTION STALEMATE IN THE SOUTH

unstable bring peace to Ireland's unstable political system underline the instability at the heart of the Irish Republic. Dublin's descent into lawlessness has brought the feeble Twenty-six County regime into further disrepute.

In recent years the Dublin establishment has come under pressure from Britain to put order. ror years governments felt free to leave the South to its keeping control in the Northern war zone. But the British authorities now have to contend with growing instability in the South, as the recession ravages the economic and social order. The nightmare prospect of upheaval North and South of the Border is keeping Britain's rulers from their sleep.

The unusual prominence the British press gave to coverage of the Irish election shows Whitehall's worries about what goes on across greeted the collapse of the faltering Fine Gael- Labour coalition as a merciful release and prayed for a majority government. The paper indulged in wishful thinking and mused that *the Republic could benefit from having a healthy left-wing party." Anything that could help contain the threat to the established order in the South - even a socialist alternative to the mainstream parties — is OK by Britain.

The Anglo-Irish agreement which Thatcher signed with FitzGerald in November 1985 is in part an attempt to restore credibility to the beleaguered Irish bourgeoisie, and keep the lid on growing popular dissent. It has got the backing of all the establishment parties in Ireland who are as desperate as Downing Both Fianna Fail, which claims the mantle opposed the treaty which partitioned Ireland in 1921, and Fine Gael, which emerged out of ine pro-parton forces, sull make nanonals!

noises as a sop to the residual support that exists in the South for a united Ireland. But both are right behind the Anglo-Irish deal which ratifies partition and brings the South under closer British supervision. Even Charlie republican party, made clear his commitment The British and Dublin regimes have united in their efforts to solve the political stalemate in

CHARLIE HAUGHEY: BACK IN THE DRIVING SEAT BUT NO LONGER

THE DARLING OF IRISH VOTERS

the South. But the only force which could break through the impasse in Irish politics - the Demographic and structural changes have changed the shape of the Irish electorate, and upset the traditional alignment of political forces. They have also created a formidable working class. But the established parties are too steeped in the past to keep pace with the changing contours of modern Ireland or to relate to the new political force it has brought The majority of Ireland's three million people no longer live off the land. The rural standards, but since industrialisation in the sixties and seventies it has been overtaken by town and city dwellers and depleted by British domination, Ireland's main export is still people, who are now leaving in droves of 30 000 a year. Others have flocked to the towns and cities to find work and escape from the industrial desert of Donegal and its

BREAK THE STALEMATE

A third of the population now lives in the greater Dublin area in sprawling corporation housing estates like Ballymun, teeming with teenagers and children, where 25 per cent of people are out of work. Ireland's modern dispossessed care little who fought with whom in the civil war of the twenties. The majority turned out to vote for Fianna Fail in the election to prevent the possibility of a Fine Gael-Progressive Democrat coalition. Sinn Fein, which stood 24 candidates for the first time on a non-abstention ticket, found little support for its economic or social policies.

The working class could be a powerful force for change in the stagnant marsh of Trish politics, but it lacks a leadership which could More parties contested last week's election than ever before, but for ordinary people there was less choice than ever. The hung Dail is a fitting testimony to the dead-end politics of the existing party system. Until the working class gets a party which can unite the struggle against the decrepit Dublin regime with the fight against imperialist domination, Trish politics will remain locked in a stalemate.

THE

PROPAGANDA

WAR

JUST SAY NO

Last week's decision by the Inner London Teachers' Association to boycott school showings of a police video on the dangers of sex attacks on children was principled and courageous. Now London teachers need to step up their resistance against a Labourconcerned to obey Tory dictates than it is to defend the rights of pupils and teachers.

The video Have Fun, Take Care, was produced jointly by the Inner London Education Authority and the Metropolitan police. It features friendly bobbies and England football manager Bobby Robson all warning children of the dangers of being abducted and abused by strangers. It is part of a wider campaign by the establishment to stir up fears about sexual crimes and thus win wider approval for more intense police surveillance and interference in The police are very keen to promote an Image concern over chid abuse. A spate of shoot-outs and violent deaths in police custody has created an unprecedented level of public suspicion and hostility towards the forces of law and order. The police are out to cultivate a softer, caring image and thus The police are particularly interested in finding an excuse to enter schools in inner-city areas. They hope that this will provide them "troublemakers' as well as enhancing their status as the forces of law and order in the opposed the intrusion of police into the classroom. They point to the proven history of racism' of the police in London and the resulting high level of hostility of children towards the police. In East London, where teachers have taken the lead in cutting off links with the police, there is a long record of police brutality towards black people, and of indifference towards savage racist Education minister Kenneth Baker has angrily condemned the teachers' stand. He motives of the police were 'anti-black and anti-working class as 'twisted logic". Given the record of police repression in inner-city areas, in the miners' strike and at Wapping, this seems an admirably straightforward and logical description of their motivation.

Baker went on to issue instructions to Frances Morrell, left-wing leader of the ILEA. He demanded that she 'exert her authority" and force teachers to show the video and allow the police into London classrooms. Alliance leader David Owen devoted a special press conference in the campaign to demanding firm action from They need not have bothered. Today's Labour Party is so concerned to display its deference to the establishment and its respect for law and order that Morrell had already set about whipping the teachers into line. "We strongly recommend the video Morrell declared. She insisted that it was up to headteachers to get together with school governors to ride roughshod over Inner London teachers have got a fight on their hands. Defending civil liberties against police interference in schools now means taking on the Labour Party as well as the Tories, the police, the media and the the next step • 27 February 1987 • 5

HOW CAN WE

FICHT RACISM?

Black Sections: fighting inside the

MARC WADSWORTH: BLACK SECTIONS IS THE BIGGEST THREAT YET

he Tories are going to use racism as a major weapon at the next election. It has already started with the introduction of people from visas for racist there has been then coordinated attack by the state on black people And countries. in St Pauls, Handsworth and Brixton - where I Yes, these attacks by the state's bully boys come from. have been coordinated. They means of breaking have resistance of the most oppressed and the most undertaken as a militant section of the working class We saw the way the state acted at Orgreave, during the miners" struggle. Now youth. Wapping at seeing it we're black communities.

MASS PARTY

Earlier last year something very significant happened for the left and black people: the socialist Campaign Group of MPs voted to struggle for the right to selfsupport our organise in the Sections are involved in [the left-wing umbrella Labour group] Labour Left Liaison on the principled basis that the groups inside it support us.

Some people argue about us being in the Labour Party in the first place, because of its racist past — its support for immigration laws, But Labour is the mass party of the working for instance. And 99 percent of black people are working class, so there's not a great deal you class. can teach us about class politics.

Neil Kinnock thinks he is black because he has been down a coal mine. He thinks he knows best, like so many labour movement bosses.

They are long on virtuous statements about equality and working class unity. But where's What have they got to say when black people the action! 6 • the next step • 27 February 1987 are under attack? What do they say about the racist visas? Perhaps they're scared of a racist backlash from their white members. Institutionally racist structures in this movement have operated as viciously against black workers as black anything repressive managements have thrown the at us. Black self-organisation - Black Sections is the biggest threat yet mounted to that.

To help in this process, and not continue to left white it, the hinder forever its imperialist past.

been In a speech some time ago I talked about the the white, colonising left. The traditional tendency has been for white left wingers themselves to - black decide the political priorities and then mobilise us behind them. We never got a look in.

The left has always seen black people as on the and in edge of political development.

At last year's Labour Party conference we Curran, resentative on the national executive, attack Frances witnessed Black Sections on behalf of the right wing only a few days after they had expelled her socialist colleagues from the party.

Now Black

OVER YOU

Douglas, the Labour Party Young Socialist Now we've representative — the first black person on the national executive - chairing the divisive and committee. It's divisive in its very title. You see, black neo-colonialist Black Sections unite people of Asian and African descent according to our own selfdefinition of black. Well, I appeal to Linda Douglas to stop doing the work of the hard right for them and resign from the committee.

ideology. As Paul Robeson Jr put it, 'You can walk with us - that's fine, even if we're arguing as we walk. But if you stand in our way, we'll walk over you." Labour Party M Labour Party the ideology he declares. Sections suggests otherwise.

Take the Lewisham party and the Labour leadership.

fight with the Labour leadership.

Kinnock and his supporters.

in participated abandon must given up without a fight.

'FLAWLESS RACISM

тер- Militant's got the spectacle of Linda Party leadership. Asian advisory and Hackney North, We won't be dictated to by whites of any arc Wadsworth's plea for support for and for Black Sections is not very convincing. We won't be dictated to by whites of any The history of Black question of the right of Black Section delegates to participate in the selection of Labour parliamentary candidates. In 1984 Russell Profitt was selected as the candidate for East. The Labour Party national executive declared the selection invalid because the Black Section had taken part. The decision led to 18 months of wrangling between the local The Black Sections declared it to be a crucial issue in their The result has been a complete victory for In not one instance since the debacle at Lewisham East has a Black Section delegate a black of the selection candidate. This is true even in constituencies with strong Black Sections, such as Nottingham East, where Sharon Atkin was selected.

Indeed, Amelda Inyang, the Black Section nominee in Deptford last year, warned Black Broadwater Sections to 'keep a low profile' in the run-up to her selection conference. Black Sections have accepted the national executive rules and have The The final humiliation for Black Sections came back. in Lewisham East. Last October, Profitt was confirmed as candidate by the Labour Party leadership — after the local Black Section agreed not to take part in a re-run selection procedure. Far from standing up to whites of any ideology, Black Sections have meekly accepted the dictates of the Labour If Black Sections have grovelled to Kinnock on the question of delegates, they have been equally abject over policy issues. Last year prospective black MP Diane Abbott publicly declared her support for Roy Hattersley's economic programme — a programme which accepts mass unemployment and the necessity for wage restraint. Ernie Roberts, the white left sitting MP whom she is set to replace in at least had the merit of standing up to such anti-working class policies.

Keith Vaz, prospective Labour candidate for Leicester East, wrote in Tribune last year that "Labour's policy on race is almost flawless.'

Really? Could this be the same party which supports immigration controls and police raids on black communities? Is this the same party Keith tribute to PC whose leader paid Blakelock after condemning the youth on FR The Tories are central issue Marc Wadswor Black Sections, and Kenan N Racism, recently debated anti-racist movement should contribution from the page Workers Against Rac fighting for unit

KENAN MALIK: BLACK SECTIONS ACCEPT DICT

Tottenham for using "mindless violence', and also accused blacks in Farm in Handsworth of "tribalism"?

that Black Sections have consistently put the interests of the Labour Party truth is before the interests of the black community.

The real debate between Neil Kinnock and Marc Wadsworth is not about how best to defend black people's rights. It is about how best to ensure that the Labour Party wins the Kinnock is afraid of losing the racist white vote; Black Sections are worrie next election. that the black vote might slip away from Labour Party Labour when the conducting its inquiry into black representatio Last year, in the party, the leaders of Black Sectior pleaded to be allowed to act as a transmissic belt from the black community into the part They warned the party about the key marginals, constituencies where the black v could decide the outcome of the election. Bla Sections were necessary, they argued, to ens that the black vote went to Labour in th key constituencies.

STRANGELY SILENT

There was barely a word in the Black Secti inquiry about the the submission to • suc problems facing black people police harassmer controls, immigration race checks. Nor have the Black Sections their vast resources and their links wit "Labour Party to mobilise behind the struggles waged by blacks over the pa

ACTION NOT WORDS!

ONT

going to make racism a in the general election. h, chair of Labour Party alik of Workers Against the question of how the respond. We reprint their of the black community newspaper, The Voice. ism:

ATES OF LABOUR LEADERSHIP

years. Where have Black Sections been in the campaign against the deportation of Metso Moncrieffe or in the fight against race checks in Wadsworth is strong on rhetoric about the dole offices? white, colonising left when he writes for The Voice or makes speeches to black audiences.

When it comes to real black struggles, though, Wadsworth is strangely silent. Instead he gives his allegiance to the Labour Party — a white, colonising organisation if ever there was one, and a party that has disgraced the cause of antiracism since its foundation.

RED FRONT

On one point 1 am in agreement with Marc Wadsworth. The coming election will be crucial for the working class and for all black people in Britain. For the first time we are not going to be faced with an unappetising choice of Labour, Tory or Alliance. The Red Front, an electoral bloc of individuals and organisations committed to working class politics, will be contesting seats across the country.

of The Red Front includes opposition to all immigration controls and all platform The forms of discrimination, and support for all anti-imperialist struggles. It also demands the repeal of all anti-union laws and the right of eal and housing. a decent job Against Racism is giving its everybody support to The Red Front. Our message is simple Workers ised defend black people's rights, not the real Labour Party. two T his week it was the Tamil refugees, last summer it was visitors from the Indian subcontinent, before that it was "black muggers and drug dealers' in the inner cities. Ever since Margaret Thatcher raised the spectre of Britain being 'swamped" by immigrants before the 1979 election, the Tories have stirred up racial prejudice to strengthen their own position and to put Labour on the defensive.

Anti-black statements by Thatcher, immigration minister David Waddington and home Douglas Hurd all give an official SeCretary stamp of approval to an army of freelance racists. While the politicians stir up fears that the British way of life is threatened by an alien horde, the racist thugs go to work in and workplaces, Housing the streets.

CHALLENGE COMPLACENCY

Monerville, a 19year old black man Trevor from Hackney who recently emerged from the custody of the Stoke Newington police brain damaged and partially paralysed, is one victim of the racist climate of Thatcher's Britain. The question of what direction the Monerville campaign should now take has provoked a fierce debate between local Labour politicians and supporters of Workers Against Racism.

One big problem we face as the Tories step up the racist offensive is the weakness of antiracism in the working class. The official labour movement's record of indifference or even hostility towards anti-racist activity has forced many black militants to organise and fight on their own. Challenging the labour movement's complacency on the issue of racism and fighting to overcome the isolation of black people are urgent priorities for anybody concerned to defend the whole working class from the Tory onslaught. The Labour Party is an obstacle to the emergence of an anti-racist current in the working class. Labour governments have introduced and upheld the immigration laws that underpin racist prejudices in British Neil Kinnock has reassured British society. racists that any future Labour government will will apply keep immigration controls and them "firmly". Despite Labour's racist record, many antiracists Labour Deleve a tuture government would fight racism.

activists have become Many anu-racist involved in the Labour machine, either in radical local councils like Hackney, or in Black Sections. Labour's equal opportunities committees, police consultative bodies and black full

THE TREVOR MONERVILLE CAMPAIGN

constituency organisations may provide some jobs and resources for black people and may eventually help to put a few black faces in parliament. But because these bodies go along with the Labour Party's nationalistic anti-immigrant policies, they cannot help in the wider struggle against racism. In the end it is the Labour Party, not the black community or the cause of anti-racism, that benefits from the race relations quangos and Black Sections. These initiatives allow Labour to project an anti-racist image, while keeping intact its support for the police, the courts and the immigration authorities.

The Revolutionary Communist Party stands for action against racism, not for token gestures. We set up Workers Against Racism to mobilise opposition to all forms of immigration control and to organise resistance to racist attacks. The difference in approach between the Labour Party and Workers Against Racism was highlighted at a well-attended public meeting organised by the Trevor Monerville campaign committee in Hackney last week.

On the platform were local MP Brian Sedgemore, prospective MP Diane Abbott, and Barnor Hesse, until recently a salaried employee of the Hackney council police committee support unit. The Labour dignitaries emphasised the need for a patient pursuit of the facts about what happened to Trevor Monerville between 1 January, when he was taken into police custody in good health, and 6 January.

when he was released without charge as, in his father's words, "a mental wreck'.

Although the meeting began with the insistence of the Monerville family and all those present that two police officers leave the room, the Labour politicians tried to keep the protest campaign within official channels and procedures.

'REFORM RACISTS?

Sedgemore had earlier appealed for a public inquiry. He favoured this, not as an expression of outrage, but as a safety valve to release the pressure building up in the community. In a letter to the council he said he feared that there might be an of anger if the explosion authorities refused to take action.

At the meeting Abbott emphasised the need to reform the police — the same Stoke Newington police who have a long and grisly record of racist violence (see Ins 4, 30 January).

Hesse has consistently opposed calls for a demonstration outside the police station. At the meeting he insisted on the importance of maintaining relationships with the authorities.

floor, councillor Tommy Sheppard, From the Trevor Monerille

WHO DID

JOHN MONERVILLE NEEDS TO PUT PRESSURE ON THE AUTHORITIES TO FIND OUT WHO PARALYSED HIS SON chairman of Hackney council's police committee, tried to use the case to show the need for "a different kind of police consultation process Shepherd's scheme for establishing fraternal relations with local police led him into a meeting with Metropolitan police chief Kenneth Newman this week — he hopes to persuade Newman to act as an intermediary between the council and Stoke Newington police station.

Representatives of Workers Against Racism.

who have actively backed the Monerville campaign committee from the start, challenged the cynical manipulation of the campaign by the Labour bureaucrats. The only way the Monervilles will get any satisfaction from the authorities is by mobilising the biggest possible campaign of protest to shake the Stoke Newington police out of the conviction that they can rule the streets with a reign of terror. In six weeks since Trevor tne Ine case of Monerville became public knowledge, the anger of the local community has already been allowed to dissipate. Workers Against Racism wants to make sure that the Trevor Monerville case is not buried like that of previous victims Stoke Newington police. In 1983 Colin Roach, a black youth, was found dying of shotgun wounds in the doorway of Stoke Newington police station Four years later, when the case has • been forgotten by all but the immediate family, the Labour-sponsored inquiry has yet to report.

We don't want the Monerville case to disappear into the same official channels.

Thousands of people in Hackney, white as well as black, are outraged at the racist violence of the police. If this anger is directed into militant protests, their voices can be heard. The thugs in Stoke Newington police station, and in all the agencies of the British state, will begin to get the message that we will not tolerate attacks on black people. This would strike a blow against the racist system and a blow too for the cause of working class unity For the British working class, taking a stand against racism is a matter of immediate selfinterest. It means mobilising resistance against every attempt by the Tories to make black people the scapegoats for the failure of their system. It means, too, taking direct action in defence of black people, in defiance if necessary of the Labour bureaucrats who want to keep protests within the strict limits dictated by Kinnock's appeal to moderate (and moderately racist) middle class voters. Keith Tompson

THIS?

the next step • 27 February 1987 •

JOIN COMMONWEALTH?

the Commonwealth shows how Britain is muscling in 'M arxist Mozambique is getting help from an unlikely quarter in its battle against famine and sabotage by South backed insurgents. Since president Samora Machel died in mysterious circumstances in a plane crash last October, doubled its military and economic aid to the beleaguered front line state, while British charities lead the international relief campaign.

Thatcher's offer to help Mozambique is part of a shrewd scheme to influence in southern Africa.

Mozambique has been at war since the sixties. It gained independence from Portugal in 1975, after 10 years of liberation struggle sparked a revolt in the Portuguese armed forces which brought down the Caetano dictatorship. Since then, Portugal's former colonies of Mozambique and Angola have suffered terror and sabotage campaigns run by South African-sponsored mercenaries.

The Mozambican National Resistance Movement (MNR) is the agent of apartheid inside Mozambique. Its terror gangs have killed more than 20 000 people since 1979.

Their campaign has helped to wreck the economy and infrastructure. An estimated tour million people are now starving to death. Mozambique's desperate Frelimo government Is seeking British Commonwealth.

SCRAMBLE

Britain's colonial past and its big stake in the apartheid system put it in a unique position to exploit the conflicts in southern Africa. Britain enjoys close links with both South Africa and the embattled former British colonies on its front line: Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania and Malawi. This allows Thatcher pursue a subue backing South Africa while embrace its victims. British Mozambique helps aidto disarm Commonwealth critics like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Kenneth Kaunda Zambia, who are Thatcher's opposition to sanctions against South Africa. The new policy helps Britain keep the Commonwealth states in line, without making concessions on its support for the apartheid regime. importantly, aid to Mozambique assures Britain of its privileged position in the scramble for control over the country's vast untapped mineral wealth.

SABOTAGE

Until recently the British approved of South Africa's attacks Mozambique. They served to bring country's radical leadership to heel, and softened it up for Western interference.

Britain took advantage of Mozambique's isolation during the struggle for Zimbabwean independence. When South Africa, Britain and neighbouring put the squeeze on Mozambique, president Machel agreed to act as mediator in the conflict between the white racist regime in "Rhodesia' and the black liberation forces.

In 1979 Machel threatened to expel all Zimbabwean guerrilla bases. This helped to force Robert Mugabe to the conference table at Lancaster House in London, where he signed the settlement which safeguarded interests British the of Zimbabwe. the eighties the South sponsored MR rebels have sabotaged 8 • the next step • 27 February 1987

MALAWI

African- Britain has Cabora- Bassa consolidate British

SOUTH

AFRICA

shelter the strategy, offering to to embarrassed by Even more government on the Commonwealth states T new Sale Africandestabilisation

IMPERIALISM IN AFRICA

BRITAIN MOVES IN ON MOZAMBIQUE

MARXIST STATE' TO

Mozambiques moves towards membership of on southern Africa, writes Andy Clarkson

TANZANIA

Lumbo Nampula

INDIAN

OCEAN

Beira

MOZAMBIQUE

Maputo

.. RAILWAYS

MOZAMBIQUE

WESTERN GREED,

AFRICAN HUNGER

he West disclaims all responsibility for the fact that four million are starving in Mozambique. It blames the economic chaos on South Africa's campaign, and on the Mozambique's ports, cut its rail and road links and destroyed its electricity and water systems. The Mozambican government has been faced with annihilation.

Mozambique submitting to Western demands.

Last month the government agreed to introduce a far-reaching programme of economic readjustment in return for a paltry but much-needed $75m International Monetary gramme is designed to turn the mineral-rich country into paradise investors. It will finish efforts to create a more egalitarian society through price and rent controls, subsidies, free health care and state farming. The first to benefit from the liberalisation' of the Mozambican economy is the British-owned Lonrho corporation, which has vast agricultural, mineral and tourist interests in the country.

STARVATION

Oxfam and Save arrived to mount a badly organised and under-funded famine relief operation. Meanwhile Western governments and investors are moving into Mozambique.

The British Military, Training Team (BMATT), based at Nyanga barracks in eastern Zimbabwe, Mozambican soldiers to officer training standard for years. Now it has doubled its

FAMINE IN MOZAMBIQUE

policies of the Frelimo •economic government. But the Western powers projecting themselves as the true friends of the Mozambican people are guilty of genocide in Africa.

course. Hall and instructors ambican commandos attacks by MN surrogates. be soon Mozambican forces.

EXPLOITATION

The West has had little choice about loan from the moved in Fund. The profor Western off Frelimo's capitalists wen in. Stoles gas and oil. Their the Children have up rise phoney Advisory and The way to freedom has beer of foreign domination. Portuguese agriculture. built by shunned vetoed all Mozambique. EEC leaders starving Africans. been caused bi continent is stopped. intake to 120 soldiers on each 12-week Whitehall has allowed British security firms like Defence Services Ltd and Watts to use their ex-SAS train hundreds of Moz •tO In 1981 British aid to Mozambique stood at a meagre f1.8m. This year it is budgeted to reach £25m. EEC funds are being used to shore up Mozambique's crippled transport network and port facilities, such as the 180mile long Beira corridor.

This vital artery comprises a road, a railway and an oil pipeline. It is Zimbabwe's shortest route to the sea, and has been the target of sustained South Africa and by The Beira corridor's capacity is being beefed up to provide an alternative road and rail route for black African exports, which currently have to travel via South Africa.

Day and night, 12 000 Zimbabwean troops guard the length of the corridor. They will joined by British-trained the its military and pollays economic aid to Mozambique as a selfless gesture to help lift the Mozambican people out of the chaos and starvation caused by their South African neighbour. But its real purpose is to build the infrastructure needed to make the country fit for exploitation When Machel died last October, Britain with offers of protection.

The British government is happy to let South Africa intimidate and tame Mozambique.

But it has no intention of letting apartheid grab Mozambique's Besides its agricultural potential, Mozambique's barely touched mineral wealth includes reserves of coal, titanium, tantalum, copper, bauxite, graphite, phosphate, marble, diamonds. The Mozambican people have been fighting imperialism for more than 20 years.

Portugal in 1974 over inspired the peoples of southern Africa to Now against their oppressors. Mozambique is on the defensive. Britain's 'Commonwealth of nations' can offer no respite. It is just the diplomatic front for another gang of thieves and butchers, equally as bad as Portugal and South Africa.

for the people ol Mozambique lies in joining the black South African working class in the fight to throw all imperialist powers out of Africa.

South African sabotage has brought Mozambique to its knees. But it only exacerbated the problems of an economy whose development was stunted by centuries For nearly 400 years, Mozambique was a colony. During that time nothing was done to develop industry and Portugal plundered Mozambique and left its people to rot. It couldn't even raise the capital needed to exploit the country's mineral wealth. Mozambique's single major engineering project, the Cabora Bassa hydroelectric dam, was a frequent target of Frelimo attacks during the liberation war. It epitomised the country's degradation by imperialism. It was largely South Africa, which exploited Mozambican resources to produce electricity back to and then sold thi Mozambique at a tidy profit.

WESTERN PLUNDER

After independence, Mozambique was Western aid excluded from capital markets. Until recently West Germany, a big investor in apartheid,

EEC

development aid for In 1981 president Reagan stopped US aid after Mozambique expelled six CIA agents. Even today, the famine relief operation is being hampered because the EEC insists on sending its own surplus grain, which takes weeks to reach southern Africa, while next door in Zimbabwe a huge stock of maize is waiting for buyers.

protection of grain see thi prices as far more important than the plight of The famine in Mozambique and across Africa is not a natural phenomenon. It has the greed of Western governments and financiers. It won't be ended until the Western plunder of the

READ THIS!

KED

FRONT

A platform working class unity Revolutionary Communist Party £1 (plus 40p p&p) Order from Junius Publications Ltd, BCM JPLtd, London WC1N 3XX.

Cheques payable to Junius Publications Ltd The Revolutionary Communist Party's new, updated programme - Front: A Platform for Working Class Unity - sets out our challenge to the capitalist system and the forces that are dedicated to its survival. It also spells out why the working class cannot afford to stick with the Labour Party. Under Neil Kinnock Labour has made clear that it sets more store by saving the system and securing a place in power than it does by defending the working class.

Our programme points to the need for an alliance of all left-wing groups and individuals in an electoral bloc - The Red Front - to give the working class a voice in the election.

If we are to detend our jobs, our livelihoods and our rights we need to rally our forces around a basic platform of demands which we summarise below. Work or full pay needs either a job at a living wage, or the same level of income in the form of benefits.

We cannot afford to go poor just because emplovers cannot make enough profit out of our labour, or because the state cannot afford to maintain our living standards.

Defend union rights We stand for the repeal of all laws that restrict the rights of workers to take action in cerence or worke class meless veecc all state intervention in strike ballots, union elections or any other labour movement deuviLy. Equal rights for all We are in favour of the widest extension of civil liberties and for equal rights for all. We oppose discrimination against women anc campaign tor tree. all-day nursenes and tree abortion and contraception on demand. We oppose discrimination against black people the Aids panic as a propaganda device designed to proscribe homosexual activity and goister conventord Her dirty.

Stop the war drive We oppose all forms of militarism, both conventional and nuclear, and all alliances among imperialist powers. We condemn Western military interference in the third world and support countries such as Argentina or Libya against imperialist aggression. We support all anti-imperialist struggles and put priority on supporting the fight for freedom in No em read. Roy Hattersley, Choose Freedom: The Future of Democratic Socialism, Michael Joseph, £12.95 Eric Heffer, Labour's Future: Socialist or SDP Mark 2?, Verso, £4.95 opposite Party, yet their books reveal some striking convergences Be wing or Harold mison nder 1964, Bo of ooo a Wi to 1945 wing of Harold Wilson for inspiration, and both look forward, with different degrees of enthusiasm, to a Kinnock government Labour is to election, it needs a new ideology. Through a turgid he attempts to reaches this following Momentous concuorol too little freedom. make possible. knowine where to draw trie dividing line.

COBBLED

Hattersley's long-winded redetinition or socialsn amounts to a call for a fairer The Red agree with in Hattersley's theories. Williams comments Mohammed H Heikal, Cutting the Lion's Tail: Suez through Egyptian Eyes, Andre £12.95 is being savaged by the proverbial dead sheep. Tony the 1956 Cal Tor a tul vesueduor tolewed the bud cation of 30-year rule at the Overkill When the Wind Blows, Jimmy T Murakami (Director) The title of Raymond Briggs' trom the hao Rock-a-ove nis sen-conscious film. Throughout, the nomey are me which is both moving and Sock account on

• HATTERSLEY AND HEFFER

A tragic convergence Hattersley and Heffer represent wings of the Labour Hatterslev's thesis is that if win the next discussion of equality and liberty provide one. He oo me equalit resuits in But the active promotion of total equality may actuallv inhibit the treedom that greater equality is intended to The problem is

IN POWER

distribution of wealth and power.

bot nine villars are cl vines one Livingstone have found much to mal haulelsey Has come close

THE NASSER I KNEW

The West of Eden Deutsch, Lord Hailsham must feel as if he Benn's main contribution to the class struggle this year, apart from referring the Zircon film row to the commons committee or privileges, nas been to demand into Hailsham's role in Suez crisis. This daring Ocean. secret cabinet papers under th end of 1986. Benn's complaint was not even most people at the time that the government, of which Hailsham was arer umor menue, was

ANTI-NUCLEAR ANIMATION

Armageddon. cartoon-strip book, on which this animated tilm is based, is taken You remember, When the wind blows the cradle will rock.

understatement is typical of the juxtaposition of the childish, the powers that be Innocent wIw the horrible reality or nuclear wa is designed to impart a frisson chilling. All it imparted to me was a smug, senumental, patronising nostalgic aura which suffocated a potentially very funny and very council.

REVIEWS

THE LABOUR PARTY NEEDS YOU: HEFFER WANTS SDP MARK2

to losing any distinguishing characteristics socialism once claimed to have. This is quite true, but it doesn't bother . who demands to be tne tirst to congratulate une author on a brilliant ideological defence of equality However, when Hattersley view. lying through its teeth to the house of commons about its role in the crisis then unfolding in the Middle East. In October 1956 the British had launched air raids on Egypt's main cities and dropped paratroopers on the main towns in the Suez canal area. The British attack supported by rrench troops followed an Israeli invasion of the Sinai peninsula. The British asserted that their assault on Egypt was intended to prevent the war closing the canal, the vita are between me Mediterranean and the Indian Mohammed Heikal confirms ama eve one coland the West. knew that Israel's invasion of the Sinai peninsula was a put-up job to give Britain ane trance an excuse to allaur Egypt and overthrow the radical nationalist regime of Gamal to her Our cartoon characters are a retired working cass couple. i and Hilda Bloggs, trying to three-minute muddle through the warning and the tortnient ot tall out after the bomb has dropped.

Briggs is not content even to depict them as decent. simple people. He insists on making them stupid too, inviting us to laugh at their gullibility, when we are no peme toucHed by tel onoc nature tis nor enougt that they quietly believe in the . represented nere county courich and covernmen eates ne Householders' Guide to Survival and 'Protect and Survive'). Jim has to intone solemnly that the lease mis seen authoritative, coming from the draws out the policy consequences of his new theories. we nine me inconerent mix of policies that Labour has cobbled together from its old orogrammes of the seventies ane trom me astwo lo manifestos. Thus he wants to abolish public schools and Abdul Nasser. Heikal, an Egyptian journalist and friend of Nasser.

provides a clear account of the crisis from the Egyptian point of The real aim of the invasion was to protect the Suez canal from the Egyptian government. In nationalisation of the canal company. Egypt's principle asset, which had been controlled from Pans ane London since tood The Anglo-French invasion was preceded by three months of crude and vicious propaganda in which kritish orime miniser Anthony Eden compared Nasser to Hitler because his government challenee DIEST authority in the Middle East The Suez crisis is not just a The problem of mater or ston declining economic and portical power, which provoked Britain's bloodthirsty assault on Egypt in 1956, grips all the Western states todav. The people o Lebanon, Chad and Libya can testify to the modern West's Benn may growing brutality. prefer to tarpet the blear old windbag who presides over the Hilda responds to the news that war is on the way by putting the kettle on and taking the washing in, more concerned about marks on the wallpaper an const care see core of refuge'. A pre-emptive strike is something the blessed in the unions get communists vo to m. who talks in what die meant to be engaging malapropisms, takes charge as befits the man of the house. He sers aboul savis l implementing the letter of the official instructions, even nipping out to buv a protractor to get the angle right when he leans the doors against the living room wall. They are so unbelievably trusting and clumsy however that when the bomb falls and the radiation sickness overcomes them. there is more bathos than patos in then denise Jim and Hilda may be one dimensional but they are certainly more than a few broad StroKes or ine cartoulots pen They are precisely denneated to represent a particular vision of private medicine owners is bians the 'SDP Mark 2'? He repeats phrases about the need for a is not until the last chapter that we get any idea of what this might mean. He then provides a including demands for nationalisation, the 35-hour week. ete Yet Heffer recognises that "Labour will go into the next election with the present determineo ov- olicies tall bear little relation to his list. He acknowledges that the left is so desperate or a Labour victory That is rectant to tast legitimate criticisms of the way in which the party is going. And he encorses us eensve outlook, declaring that it would be counter-productive to challenge the leadership betore the next election netter will keep his radical policies in his back pocket campaigning to put the SP Mark 2 into power.

PYGMIES

Despite his intransigent radicalism, Heffer's acceptance of the horizons of the Labour Party means that he is destined pygmies like Hattersley and Kinnock. Even in this short book history of the working class movement and of the • Marxist Hattersley. wnose attempts to confront Marxism are simply embarrassing Hattersley's book is insomniacs, but Heffer's reveals much about the predicament of today's Labour lett and deserves a wider readersho John Hann house of lords for events which haopened 30 vears ago, but the lessons of Suez have yet to be learnt by many on the left in brildin The British attack in 1956 provoked a wave of spontaneous protest throughout Britain which was similar, albeit on a greater scale. to the recent protests al the british air-suike or Tripoli and Benghazi. In 1956 as in 1986 the Tories kept control (even though they were torced to ditch Eden, they remained in government for another eight years). In 1956 as in 1986 the movement failed to direct the spontaneous anger of the Trafalgar Square crowds agains the government. They were too convincing their supporters and the establishment that they were ever moe oopusee to tic "mad dogs' of the Middle East.

Nasser and Gadaffi. than they were to the military attacks.

fights for his ciass. We need to know who will fight for ours.

Englishness. They live in a of rural picture postcarc d corner Sussex where the postman and milkman call like clockwork and Jim enjoys a pint with the local farmer. To them a world war is a rosv memor or narch ana Monty and VE Day, something we won. It wasn't a nasty nuclear business. you knew where vou were with it. Just ir case we aren't getting the picture. the voices of John Mills and Peggy Ashcroft (as Jim and hial are mere to cudk us utt rest of the way. In their darkest hour our unhappy couple turn. of course to me consulation u religion. We don't need an image of a society which never existed. and WICH WE WOOL WaTE LU invent to make us 019 To survival. We don't need a 'Listen ' lesson to teach us with Mother the obscenity or war conventional or nuclear We don' need a model of helplessness and inevitability. We don't need

US THE

Pat Ford the next step • 27 February 1987 • 9

Greenwich guts campaign, Greenwich Labour councillor Trevor Allman had the courage to denounce the Labour Party as a barrier to socialism' and to pledge his vote to Revolutionary Communist Party candidate Kate Marshall. The Labour Party told him to resign straight away. Aman se est colesal of where Kinnock's party is going put all the gutter press smear stories about Labour's left wing into perspective. Far from controlling the party, many Labour activists are deeply concerned about the way their ideas are ignored este abo su courts moderate voters. In Greenwich, we met The right track IN early January, 1 argued with fellow London Transport workers that the ballot and the one-day strike called for by the National Union of Railwaymen was a ploy to get the officials back into negotiations about competitive tendering. Many workers found that hard to accept and went on to support the officials. Now, a leaflet from the NUR tells us been set up to 'ensure that used fairly. Workers know, not least from what the NUR itself said in building for the ballot, that competitive tendering mears redundancies and wage cuts.

but now tal the union officials have got their feet table, they tell us that it can worker I spoke with, 1 am no commie but you people certainly got it right about this. The only way to defend our jobs is to do it ourselves and control it ourselves. We are right about that, too.

Denis Ryan London Transport Caterpillar slows down THERE'S a lot of doubts and divisions gnawing away at the occupation of the Caterpillar plant at Uddingston against management's plan to close down and cut 1200 jobs. Members of Apex, Tass and Astms have pulled out and because they doubt where The joint occupation committee is determined to win, but lacks a way to victory. Time and energy are being wasted trying to get the government to put pressure on Caterpillar. Nobody seriously believes the ories will bal out Scottish workers - except perhaps the Labour MPs who've been chatting up secrelary ul state Malcorn Rifkind. Neil Kinnock met some of the stewards in a Glasgow notel he sala ne coulan t come to the factory because *If the Labour Party becomes too closely associated it may 10 • the next step • 27 February 1987 many left wingers who voiced similar views to councillor Allman. We hope thev will now follow his lead in making Te beck au ave mer support to The Red Front.

John Gibson RCP election agent Greenwich Greenwich Greens FOLLOWING Markus Widera's letter (20 February), can l reassure you that my interpretation of Green politics, and that of many people I know, is anticapitalist. I say this as a working electrician who has no option but to be a Maxwell's Wapping I SEE that Robert Maxwell's London Daily News hits the streets this week. some commentators have wondered why he's bothering to bring out this 24-hour rag, as it has little chance of competing with the nationals in the morning and London's evening paper market is down from its peak of two million to around 500 000.

The answer is that Maxwell's new paper is an make the government less inclined to hear your case. In fact, he didn't want to asociate himself with the he got a bad press. Glasgow workers can't expect anything but double-dealing if this man gets to power. In any case, we can't afford to wait. Lobbying for sympathy from politicians didn't keep the Gartcosh steelworks open. Caterpillar workers can only rely on the strength of the working class. Thousands have already given money to

FICHI

LETTERS

member of the EETPU. I welcome your exposure of the Labour Party as a to offer the working class.

Kate Marshall has been saying some very sensible things in the Greenwich byelection and using simple, accessible language to get through to people. in left-wing politics is the amount of time spent in quibbling over dogma and factionalism. I welcome all socialists (and I regard myself as a Green socialist to find what they have in ways to a better world. Graham Bell Green Party candidate Greenwich unions. Murdoch used his mis usud grussitss, Has Inside the Mirror Group headquarters in central London, the London Daily News is produced in two 'security foors sealed ofi One journalist told me that everyone on the paper was frightened to say anything their jobs. The News also transfer all Mirror Group printing out of Fleet Street, using tibreoptic tecnology to print all his titles at the Street unions. The Independent has already done this. officials last week for distributing a leaflet opposing management's criticises Murdoch for not But his own actions show as any other. Andrew London NUJ the occupation. Now Caterpillar workers should approach their supporters directly and argue for company's goods. Frank Durkin Glasgow

WILL

944

DON'T PLAY

CAT MOUSE

WITH

62M

OUR

compromising band with little What Greens find difficult with anti-labellist tendencies) trap common with the Greens and to recognise there are many Listening is as important as Service attempt to finish off the print imaginary London Daily Post Wapping. Maxwell, displaying actually set his paper up. But the aim is broadly the same.

from the rest of the building - a sort of Fortress Holborn.

out of line, for fear of losing paves the way for Maxwell to provincial sites and bypass Maxwell sacked two Sogat Cupluyeto rationalisation plans. Maxwell doing things 'the British way'.

that the British capitalist way is just as dirty and devious dockers, railwaymen, truckers and engineers to black the Dockers in Greenock and support. Those ieading the Caterpillar occupation should make it clear that blacking action is the only strategy for victorv, he determination o Caterpillar workers must not talk about.

CATERPILLA

WHERE'S

CHE

ILTA'S RIGHT

FIGHT

BAKER!

Teachers' I AGREE with the Haringey NUT member (letters, 20 February) that teachers are of ineffective industrial action. But I think the key factor is the union's acceptance of the settlement proposed by the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration The NUT leadership recommended that we accept the Acas deal so we wouldn't have Baker's plans forced upon us. Many teachers disagreed, but the leadership's propaganda in favour of the deal persuaded the middle ground to vote its way. The 'lesser evil accepted by the NUT is no such thing. The Acas deal is Civil service witch-hunt A LIST of 122 Militant 'activists' and 147 'sympathisers' in the civil service has been sent to the Yard. This could signify the resumption of the tradition of official witch-hunts against left-wing government In 1948 the Labour government declared a purge of civil service left wingers.

Although few were actually affected by the hysteria, it played a key role in whipping up Cold War anticommunism. In 1962 the Tory government, faced with a pay revolt, produced the Radcliffe report which said Casual cuts MY rep from the Inland Revenue Staff Federation recenuy askea me to attend an important union meeting.

When we got there it wasnt a union meeting at all. In fact, the union had invited management to address permanent staff. The people wno were missing were tre casual workers, who have never been recruited to the union. But it was the casuals that management wanted to Their wages come out of the computer budget which has now run out. So management wants to phase them out - fast. They offered two alternatives: keep the casuals on until the end of this month, and limit clerical assistants' overtime to four hours between now and the end of April; or keep them until the end of March, and cut out the assistants overtime altogether. Without the casuals. our workloac would be ridiculous, and depend on overtime to top

ILTA'S RIGHT

PIGHT

TA'S RIGHT

BAKER!

almost identical to the rejected two years ago, and in many ways makes teachers' conditions worse.

While our leaders talk about stopping Baker's law what they want above all is lo preserve el negoudling procedures. Their backing for me acas semene shows their willingness to sacrifice this end. Many teachers feel that there's no point opposing Baker, as we've already lost the battle. We should fight Baker, but not the way our leaders want us to. The first step towards rank and file control is to expose the traitors in our midst. The sister in Haringey we have wu edi the rules if that's what it takes to win. Jenny Midwinter Leeds NUT the civil service unions were riddled with communists Absurd as it was, such was the turore that all the anger over pay disappeared within days. We don't know who produced the latest hit list, but judging by their frenetic red-baiting over the last 40 years, I wouldn't be surprised if right wingers in the CPSA involved. It's not just Militant supporters wro ale r danger. Anyone who defends ine members against une bosses will be targeted. And we will all sufter if a witchhunt against the left is successful. We must defend all activists who come under attack and expose anyone who colludes with the Tories and police. Paul Foste London CPSA I pointed out that casual staff should be present, that this wasn't a union meeting, and that we were talking about people's jobs. I said that we should fight for permanent jobs for the casual workers. most of whom are young single mothers. If we don't start fighting for the casuals they'll get away with murder on our jobs. It's going to be an uphill struggle with manadement and the unior joining forces to stitch things up. Sue Manchester If you would like to respond questions or comment on what you have read in the next step you can write to tns, BCM JPLTD, London WOLN 3XX. Or phone the letters page over the weekend on 01-729 3771

GREENWICH: WHAT WE LEARNT

The RCP campaign for Thursday's Greenwich byelection has been a difficult challenge, but a valuable experience. Our Tirst problem was that we had no recoe o work te area, so few local people had come across the RCP before. It was fairly clear Ten tree. week campaign would not be long enough to acquaint Greenwich voters with our policies. We knew we could only have a marginal impact on the election. Nevertheless, the Political Committee of the party felt it important to take this opportunity to promote the party's programme, and to gain some useful experience for the future.

The RCP was effectively the only left-wing party contesting the election. This followed the pattern of last year's Knowsley North by-election. In Knowsley, the Labour leadership imposed a right-wing candidate on Name Address Postcode

DIARY

LEEDS. Wednesdav 4 March.

7.30pm. Open forum on Aids.

Speakers RCP. Leeds Gay witennoare ane Nade Ales working group. Main Council City Hall chamber. LONDON: Tuesdav 3 March. 7.30pm. Living Marxism forum: The problem of class consciousness. University of oncon union. Maestreet WC1 (Goodge St tube)

SHEFFIELD:

Thursday 5 March 7.30pm. Public meeting: betend Turkish Workers ve more deportations! Speakers include James Wood (RCP). and Mustapha Palcik and under threat of AnGula hom deportation). At SCAU, West Street (opposite the dole) the local party. In Greenwich a hitherto hardleft candidate was transformed into a faceless moderate. The effect was the same in Dom elections the working class was offered no real alternative to the pro-capitalist candidates. Greenwich highlighted the Labour leaders don't rock the boat warning to activists. Their message is that getting Labour elected is all that matters. To achieve this, all sections of the Labour Party are to fall in line and refrain from raising issues likely to be controversial with middle class voters. This quest for respectability has often preceded general elections.

But events like the Greenwich campaign show that the Labour leaders are now taking it further than at any time in living memory. Our supporters working in the campaign reported that gets you the next step for five weeks!

Become a regular tos reader - get your first five copies of tns post-free for £1 Starting with tns no Telephone Make cheques payable to Junius Publications Ltd and send to BCM JPLTD, London WC1N 3XX.

THE

voters showed little enthusiasm for any of the parties. Many people on the working class housing estates supported Labour but few expected to get anything much from voting or merculonal Darty. We came across a surprising number of working class people who said that they would not vote. Some took this attitude because ley weren't concerned about politics, while others declared that there was no point voting for Labour since Kinnock's party would make little difference to The ves. • An angry minority said they would abstain in protest at the miserable choice offered by the old parties. The main failure of our campaign was that we didn't convert this anger into positive support for the RCP alternative. The party will have to relate to this mood and learn how to

PARTY PAGE

convince people that it is possible to fight for a chanee. It Is our responsibility to mobilise these people, to prevent working class anger turning into anonymous, isolated abstentions. Our supporters were struck by the insecurity and intense concern for the future felt by local Labour disturbed about the direction in which their party is heading. They were often prepared to accept our criticisms of Labour Party policy, and made no bones about admitting that it offered nothing to the working class. But they stuck to the belief that change could only come through Labour winning. and concluded that working with Labour was the only way forward. This unwarranted faith in Labour has a long tradition.

It is a view that is not I want more information about the RCP I want to make regular contributions to the RCP I want to help set up a new branch in.

• Name Address Postcode easily susceptible to rational argument. One o the most frustrating things about left-wing politics is that even though we can win the arguments on specific issues, so many activists remain immune to accepting the consequences of our case and breaking with Labour.

Despite this, the present profound disenchantment with Kinnock among Labour activists is an important development. It adds argument that now is the time to start building an alternative. Whatever result the byelection brings, our intervention in Greenwich has shown that attitudes are far from fixed and that many people are prepared to consider new ideas. The campaign has been a useful exercise in teaching the party some lessons. It has posed the questions which we have to answer Become an

RCP

supporter!

STRIKING BACK!

A day of discussion and debate on the way forward for Scottish workers. Saturday 7 March. Registration 10.30am. Woodside Halls, near St George's Cross underground, GLASGOW. Tickets £1.50/50p from RCP PH8, 340 West Princes St, Glasgow G4 9HF. Or call (01) 729 3771 convincingly to become credible. It has also shown that the party still lacks the experience to key into the prevalent mood among angry people who distrust the Labour option. This is why we must take ever opportunity, both in elections and in other struggles, to enter into a dialogue with this section of the working class. Finally, the Greenwich experience has confirmed ine relevance or our perspective of building The Red Front as a bloc of all those who want to fight for the working class. From day one of the campaign, we met people who were mad at Labour but couldn't see a way to express this anger.

The Red Front could give shape and coherence to their sentiments. in potential for The Red Front is there we now need ine will and the imagination to realise it. Frank Richards • I want to become an RCP supporter • I want to sell tns the next step • 27 February 1987 • 11

Behind the 'IRA bomb plot' The hysteria over the arms and explosives found in Cheshire woods last week, and the arrest of two 'IRA terrorists' in Manchester, is another attempt to conceal the truth about Britain's colonial war in Ireland The Wombourne 12 have won!

A campaign to defend homosexual rights has forced the authorities to drop the charges against 12 militant lesbians and gays, arrested for protesting he British police were cock-a-hoop T about finding some explosives and arresting two Irishmen last week. The papers were full of stories about how the security forces had brilliantly tracked down the 'terrorists" and 'smashed an IRA bomb plot". But if you go over to Northern Ireland, you don't have to be brilliant to of explosives across tonnes You can see hundreds of hi-tech weapons.

them on the streets every day, being toted by British troops and Loyalist police to enforce the Crown's rule over Irish nationalists who want to be free from British domination.

The British authorities make the most of every opportunity to portray the IRA as a handful of ruthless killers threatening the British public. Scare stories about what two.

Irish republicans are up to in Britain help to hide the facts about what 30 000 members of British security forces are doing in the Ireland. The IRA is no murder gang. It is a with thousands of liberation movement supporters. fighting for Irish unity and independence. The IRA only exists because the British government insists on holding counties as an outpost of the Empire.

The two Belfast men arrested in Manchester last week were pulled out of their car at gunpoint by police in full battledress. Local residents said they were shocked by the sight police squad of a paramilitary shotguns in an English city. Those who live in nationalist areas of Irish cities like Belfast or Derry are more shocked if they manage to get through a day without being searched, harassed or arrested by an armed patrol of police or soldiers.

Thousands of Irish nationalists do not Tombourne had seen nothing like WE On Monday. marched through the Staffordshire village in defence of lesbian and gay rights. The demonstration had been organised to defend the Wombourne 12. nine gay men and three lesbians from the Lesbian and Gay Youth Movement. They were due to appear in the local magistrates court that day to face public order charges Brownhilm the Tores at the hon South Brownhill. leader Staffordshire council who had called for 90 per cent of gays to be gassed as a cure for Aids. But after a spirited defence campaign, the police announced that they were backing off and dropped the charges. The demo went ahead. partly as a victory parade, partly to demand why the 12 had been held in jail for a and week over Christmas. need emphasise campaign against bigots like Brownhill.

*Aids abuse, no excuse — equal rights for all chanted the marchers as they wound through leafy lanes to a rally outside Seisdon magistrates court. While vanloads of police lurked in sidestreets, the rally was addressed by speakers from the Wombourne 12, the experience British government through the polite conventions of parliament or the bland bureaucracy of the civil service. They feel the force of British rule through the boot that kicks in their door at bam, through the plastic bullet that is fired at their child on the way home from school, and through the no-jury court that jails their friends and neighbours for life on the strength of a paid liar's evidence.

and Those who join the republican struggle against this British injustice risk their lives in the cause of liberty. If they are ambushed by armed agents of the British Crown, they can experience a far ruder shock' than anything the residents of that Manchester street have six Irish waving stopped, RCP. and the Labour Campaign for Lesbian and Gay Rights. The crowd gave a rough 500 people continued the next step ever seen.

INST FREEDOM MAS

MOVEMENT

SMASHRA.

TROOPS

ПОЧЕМЕНТ

PTAI

IFM SUPPORTERS BROKE THE SILENCE ABOUT BRITAIN'S DIRTY WAR

against Tory bigotry

LESBIAN

AND

WOMBOURNE 12

GAY

POLICE O

An inquest now running in Northern Ireland has heard how the SAS trapped three young IRA volunteers from Strabane in a field and opened fire without warning. The Irishmen were hit 117 times — the last three bullets being shot through their heads at point-blank range. This is the dirty war which the British authorities want to bury by focusing attention on 'IRA terrorism'.

The gutter press used last week's arrests as the pretext for a completely speculative story about how the captured "IRA unit' was out to assassinate Margaret Thatcher. They claimed that "intelligence sources" had discovered' this plot. You don't need much intelligence to nOW,

NOTI

01-729041 Organiser Room C3.7

IN IRELAND

ride to his appeal for a Labour vote in the general election. Referring to Neil Kinnock's moral fight.

ITS

Chillic

WOMBOURNE 12. POLICE 0: WE WON THE DAY

AGAINST THE BIGOTS

discover that Irish nationalists have little love for the British prime minister. Thatcher has presided over fierce repression in Ireland. She sentenced 10 hunger-strikers to death by refusing to grant their right to political status, she introduced the supergrass and showtrial system, she stepped up the shoot-to-kill policy against republicans, and she has signed the Anglo-Irish agreement which endorses the division of Ireland. She is only the latest in a long line of British rulers, from all political parties, who have treated the Irish people with the contempt that characterises an imperial tyrant.

As the two accused Irishmen were driven into Lambeth magistrates court last week. surrounded by armed police and helicopter escorts, Irish Freedom Movement supporters demonstrated outside calling for Troops out We are not prepared to let official British lies and distortions go unchallenged No amount of hysterical headlines and screaming police sirens can alter the fact that Britain's occupation of Northern Ireland is responsible for every bomb and bullet on both sides of the Irish Sea. Debate Ireland: a socialist solution?

O'Mahoney editor of Socialist Mick Hume - canor or the net step Wednesday 25 February 7.30pm Chesham Building Bradford University confession that he was a reactionary' on matters, marchers chanted *Brownhill, Kinnock — one struggle, one The march moved on to protest outside the police station The success of the Wombourne 12 Defence Campaign shows that we don't have to let the right dominate the debate about Aids and lesbian and gay rights. We can begin to win back some lost ground, if we organise our forces to take on the enemy and make no concessions.

The need for an active campaign on lesbian and gay rights is pressing, as several left-wing of Labour councils are showing signs buckling under pressure from Kinnock, and watering down their policies for fear of If we don't offending prejudiced voters.

made around the the start -On Wombourne 12, the Brownhills are set for an unopposed field day at our expense Monday's march ended with a call for a solidarity contingent on this year's Lesbian building support and Gay Pride march. from the labour movement and the left. This will be an important focus for us in the runup to the summer march. Don Milligan