The Next Step: No. 11, 18 March 1988

THE BUDGET AND THE MYTH OF THE BRITISH

'ECONOMIC MIRACLE' — see pages 3, 10 and 11 Irish victims of shoot-to-kill campaign • Gervais McKerr • Eugene Toman • Sean Burns • Michael Tighe • Roddy • Gerard Mallen • Thomas Reilly • Bridget Foster • Brian Campbell • Colm McGirr • Mark Marron • Declan Martin • Henry Hogan • William Price • John Downes • Tony McBride • Danny Doherty • William Fleming • Sean Mclivenna • Paul Kelly • Gerry Logue • Charles Breslin • Mickey McElwaine • James McKernan • Declan Arthurs • Seamus Donnelly • Tony Gormley • Eugene Kelly • Patrick Kelly • Jim Lynagh • Patrick McKearney • Gerard 'Callaghan • Anthony Hughes • Aidan McAnespie • Mairead Farrell • Daniel McCann • Sean Savage • Kevin McCracken

FUNERALS

TROOPS OUT NOW!

ins the next step - 11 Revolutionary Communist Party Weekly 49

DERRY LAST YEAR

Support our fighting fund pay for your tns 18 March 1988 Carroll • Seamus Grew • Patrick Elliot • Francis McColgan • Niall McMonagle • Anthony O'Hare • Martin Malone • Brendan Covery Devine • Davy Devine • Francis Bradley • Tony Gough • Seamus

THE BIG

LIE ABOUT

IRELAND - see pages 8 and 9 40p BEFORE the three Irish republicans shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar could be buried in Belfast, the British Army had shot dead another IRA volunteer. That makes 49 funerals of Irish nationalists shot dead by British forces since the controversy over a shoot-to-kill campaign began in November 1982.

There are only half a million nationalists in Northern Ireland. If the same proportion of the British population had been shot dead by the Army and the police, the death toll would be 5500 in just over five years.

(Continued on page 2)

A WOMAN AT WAR

EYE-WITNESS REPORT ON BELFAST

FOR years the British establishment has peddled the lie that rish freedom fighters are little more than deranged psychopaths, gormless victims of tantastic tales of British atrocities told by grandmothers around kitchen fires. The life of Mairead Farrell, shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar, tells a different Born in

SLOTY.

Belfast, parents were nor republican, and as she said herself, it was the experience of those years the Falls growing up in which led her to take up arms.

Mairead's academic abilities gave her parents hope that she would take a university degree and pursue a professional career. Mairead had other ideas. In 1976, withdrawing political status from republican prisoners, she enlisted in the Belfast Brigade of the IRA.

Within had

BOULES

captured while on a bombing mission. One of those in the threeperson unit, Sean McDermott, was shot dead as he tried to escape. The other, Kieran Doherty, was to die on hunger-strike in 1981 protesting the removal of political against status.

BARBARIC

For the next 10 years of her life, from the age of 19 to 29. those years when most young people are getting jobs or starting families, Mairead Farrell was taking on the barbaric prison regime in the Six Counties. In opposition to of Tensoval StaLus. Mairead led the 'no work' protest.

In retaliation, the prison authorities lockea me orisoners in neir cells for 23 hours a day, and refused to allow them to 'slop out. When the screws realised the prisoners were of the cell throwing urine out windows, they boarded the windows. They lived in these excretaencrusted caves for 13 months. On 1 December 1980 Mairead and two other women, Mary Doyle and Mairead Nugent, went on hungerstrike. That fast was broken by the Ireland office,

NOTICEE

agreed to the prisoners' demands, then reneged when they had given up tell last.

DIGNITY

When Mairead was released in 1986, one of her first acts was to report back for duty to the IRA. At the same time she enrolled Queen's University Belfast for a course in politics and economics.

Even the seats of learning in Ireland are organs of British rule, and even in death, they spare not their malice Irish freedom When fighters. news of the Gibraltar killings reached Belfast, students at Queen's demanded that the authorities close the college tor the funerals and the flag be flown at half mast as is the custom when a dies. lecturer student college authorities refused.

The students at Queen's, like thousands of nationalist people, recognise Mairead Farrell as one of their own, who, were it not for the British occupation, could have studied and lived in peace, but who would rather have fought with dignity and honour than live as a slave to the British Queen.

Mark Ryan 2 • 18 March 1988 West Road been the which (continued from front page) at • FOURTEEN of those killed in this campaign were nationalist civilians with no active involvement in the conflict. The first was 17-year old Michael Tighe, shot repeatedly by a Royal Ulster Constabulary hitsquad in a haybarn near Lurgan, County Armagh in November 1982. His death has since been at the centre of the Stalker affair. Other civilian casualties or the shoot-to-Kill The campaign include youths execution for joy-riding or arguing with British Army patrols. . The latest to die was Aidan McAnespie, shot without warning by a soldier as he walked near the Aughnacloy Border post last month. • The other 35 shoot-to-kill victims were republicar volunteers - 29 from the Irish

MAIREAD FARRELL

49 FUNERALS

Republican Army, five from the rish Nationa beration Army Some were unarmed and shot without warning volunteers Mairead Farrell, Sean Savage and Daniel McCann, shot at close range by the SAS in Gibraltar (see centre pages). Some died in gun battles members Declan Martin and Henry Hogan, who defeated an SAS squad, killing one soldier, before themselves being shot dead by SAS reinforcements in February 1984 at Dunloy, County Antrim. Most were ambushed while on armed operations against the British forces. And many were wounded, then executed with a single shot through the head.

These are all casualties of Britain's colonia war in ireland.

The civilians were killed because the British forces of occupation regard all Irish nationalists as hostile natives.

FUNERALS - NEXT WEEK'S tns I've missed out on to me.? Mairead Farrell, from prison, September 1986 British troops and paramilitary police - like IRA • like IRA of occupation. A illegal 'You're asking me if I feel something? You mean the way women are expected to be thinking of babies and marriage? It's never been what I've wanted. I think it depends on what you think is important in life. The unification of this country is important interviewed in Magill magazine on her release must The republicans were killed because they would not endure military rule by a foreign power without a fight. None of them would have died as they did if Ireland was united and free from the attentions of 30 000 The five-year shoot-to-kill campaign is an intensification of the war which has raged in the North of Ireland since 1969. The two sides in the Irish War have been out in force again this week. On one side, the thousands of Irish people who turned out to show their repect for the republicans killed in Gibraltar. On the other, the British forces determined to drive Irish nationalists off their own streets. The Army and RUC have now attacked almost of 1983. There will be more shootings, more funerals and more fighting until the war for Irish liberation has been won.

The only way we can speed the end of the slaughter is to support the nationalists in their struggle for liberation, and campaign for the immediate withdrawal of the British Army

POLL TAX

Labour SayS: "Pay up' fortnight before Scottish householders were due poll tax registration receive forms, the Labour Party met in conference at Perth last weekend surrender opposition the Tory tax. There was loud applause at Perth speakers who said that thes would refuse to pay the poll tax. But there was muted support for a motion proposing a non-payment campaign. Instead delegates voted for a legal campaign against the tax and postponed discussion of an recal protes This conference in the autumn. formula keeps Labour on the right side of the Tory law, while keeping up hopes that resistance will come at a later date. Labour leader Neil Kinnock spelt out the true position in his opening speech which mentioned the poll tax only once: If you go to the polls, you must pay the poll tax.

Last week's relaunch of Labour's •Stop It campaign confirmed that poll tax has no opposition to thi Party Labour's policy. place in leaders are urging people to send forms back poll tax registration without filling them in, as the law entitles them to if they feel they should not be treated as household heads. The irony is that the forms will be issued by Labour councils.

which have warned that it large numbers of people refuse to pay, they will take 'action to compel payment. It is not too late to start a real resistance movement. The Smash the Poll Tax Campaign, initiated by Glasgow supporters of the Revo- Communist Party, lutionary campaigns around three demands essentia to buld an effective movement: • Break the Tory law: a commitment to defy Tory legislation and defend those victimised for non-implementation or non-payment of the charge of starting point be tne opposition to the scheme.

• A working class campaign: the campaign must be based on working class action, not appeals to middle class sympathy, and should involve trade unionists, community groups, in the home and women working the unemployed • United action by council workers and the community: the campaign must be built around united action in defiance of the poll tax by the council workers who are being told to implement the poll tax procedures, and working class people who are expected to pay it. Carol Taggart

READ THIS.

IS THERE A SCOTTISH

SOLUTION?

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JOIN THE DEBATE!

IS THERE A SCOTTISH

SOLUTION?

The working class and the assembly debate Wednesday 23 March 7.30pm Speakers include Brendan O'Hara, Scottish National Party, Derek Owen, kevolutionar Communist Party, and an invited speaker from the Labour Party City Halls, Candleriggs, Glasgow the next step

Revolutionary Communist Party weekly No 11 THE protests organised by the health service unions to coincide with budget week chancellor Nigel Lawson to do day strikes here, lunchtime demonstrations there, the handing in of a big plaster cast and a blue cake at Number 11 Downing Street; Lawson could safely ignore it all and get on with wortylis about te real problem of his battle with Thatcher over the pound. The official health union protests were never intended to put genuine pressure on the government. They were token acts designed to appeal to public sympathy for the NHS, in the hope that the weight of opinion could somehow persuade Lawson to come up with the cash. Give us a break, Nigel' said the slogan on the plaster cast delivered to the chancellor. This notion of appealing to a minister's better nature is naive and dangerous.

It is based on a complete misassessment of the way in which the capitalist system works. The idea of focusing the health campaign on the debate about the budget has influenced all sides of the official labour movement over recent weeks. Many left-wing groups took their lead from the union leaders, and campaigned around slogans like Make NHS day budget day. They ought to know better. A state budget is not a charitable hand-out decided according to how generous the government is feeling. It is a presentation of accounts on behalf of the capitalist class, drawn up in strict accordance with the laws of the profit system as applied to prevailing conditions.

Today, those laws dictate a shift away from state spending on social services. The world economy is in a fragile state, and the British system is shakier than most (see pages 10 and 11). In these circumstances, the Tories concern is to cut back on unproductive state spending and concentrate as many resources as possible in the nands or private capitalists.

This has little to do with the personal predilections of a Thatcher or a Lawson. Every Western government is engaged in a similar exercise of tilting the balance away from public spending. The USA might run up huge budget deficits through spending on the next step the next step

THEIR SYSTEM,

THEIR BUDGET

sectors like defence, and the invest in its infrastructure. But share a common need to cut back on the amount of money which, according to the standards of the system, is 'wasted' on health and welfare services. Most Tory ministers might well have no private objection, i principie, to giving d lutie more to the NHS. But such abstract principles count for nothing in the harsh world of capitalist economics. Their budget options are defined by the demands of a system of production which stands or falls on its ability to improve profitability, rather than to make people better. The most basic grasp of what capitalism is about should tell us that there is no point in asking te government to ve over the health good sports service. Yet left-wing organisations which claim anticapitalist credentials still concentrated on requests for more NHS funds and no tax cuts from the budget. The left sought to identify with the widespread mood expressed in media opinion polls. In so doing, it denied angry health workers any voice ancillaries were left trailing along behind a moderate NHS lobby which looked to the Queen Mother for a lead while complaining about Lawson's 'waste of taxpayers' money' a middle class prejudice more usually expressed against *excessive' pay rises and overmanning' in the public sector.

The result is that health London RCP Public Meetings Fight Now to Stop the Tories All at 7.30pm Islington: Tuesday 22 March, Islington Central Library, Fieldway Crescent N5 Haringey: Wednesday 23 March, Black Boy pub, 268 West Green Road N15 Hackney: Tuesday 29 March, Rose and Crown pub, Stoke Newington Church Street, N16 Brixton: Tuesday 22 March, St Matthews Meeting Place Brixton Hill SW2 Publisher Revolutionary Communist Party, BM RCP, London WC1N 3XX ® copyright Printer Morning Lithe Printers Ltd (TU), 439 North woolwich Road, London ELb Annual subscription rates • Britain and Northern Ireland £26 • Europe and Irish Republic £34 • North Africa and Middle East (airmail) £34 • Americas, Asia Central and Southern Africa (airmail) £37 • Australasia, Japan (airmail) £40 • Outside Europe — All desunations sunrace mall iss All cheques payable to Junius Publications Ltd.

Circulation 01-729 3771. Newsdesk 01-729 3771. Correspondence to The Editor, the next step, BCM JPLTD, London WC1N 3XX.

ON 01440 AL Mare se Keastered as d newspaper al me rost unce Editor: Mick Hume workers have got nothing from the campaign. excent another demoralising experience of The only pressure which a dovernment has to take account of in its calculations is Wat seneraca by te class struggle. The government will set aside the immediate demands of its system only if the operation of the system itself is threatened by the working class. The way to force resources out of the Tories to a decent pay rise in the NHS is to set about orsarisis Tor united all-out action among nealm workers, and active solidarity from others. Instead, the leirs concem to keeo in with mainstream public opinion has helped to demobilise the campaign. This week, health workers took token action then went home to watch the budget debate on the TV news.

The working class has no interest in becoming involved ruling class can make ends in the health service is not an argument for putting tuppence on income tax. It is an argument for a new way of organising society. We can never bring that about by quibbling about how paper wealth is distributed on budget day. The problem with capitalism goes far deeper, to the division between exploiter and exploited at the point of production. This is the source of all the social evils in modern Britain. Demanding 'no tax cuts for the rich' only serves to disguise that fact, by creating the impression that our problems could be solved by a minor adjustment in the chancellor's calculations.

An effective campaign of working class action is the only meet health workers' immediate needs. But even that would be a temporary success. The capitalist class will continually attempt to wrest back any gains we make, as its crisis-stricken system grows hungrier for profits at Buenese solution is to take on the It is no use asking the state to give us a break on budget day this year or next year or ever. We have to recognise that state as the guarantor of the capitalist order responsible for our problems, and set about breaking its control over the wealth which we create. opened sterling. Because up foreign currency. through

WCCK

backing careful management. The opinions counter-crisis strategy. band of the policy necaca to Lalco. Capilal into sterling up. doing

TORY LAWSON CUTS TAXES...AND HIS BIRTHDAY CAKE

THATCHER V LAWSON

THE UNSOUND

POUND

ory celebrations about the prospect of another taxcutting budget were marred last week by disagreements between Margaret hatcher and chancellor Nigel Lawson over their policy towards the pound.

The argument about the sterling exchange rate reveals the difficulties they face in resolving the problems of British capitalism. It provides a timely counter to all the bluster about economic miracles. Since the Big Bang of October up the London to foreign investment, massive amounts of capital have flowed into Britain from overseas.

These investments are made in pounas, wus mernanonal unanciers have had a growing need for Their demands have exerted upward pressure on ne pound against other currencies.

red. Lawson Was

WULTCU

about the damage this does to the competitiveness of British exports, he pursued an informal policy of pegging the pound down at the leve of three German marks. c this end the Bank of England spent such €20 billion in the past year buying

DOCTRINAIRE

Despite this De band tase the barrier last Lawson responded by declaring the higher sterling rate to be 'unsustainable'. But Thatcher expressed the contrary view that sterling must be allowed to find its own level tree trom government intervention. She gave government a policy directly opposed to Lawson's attitude of Conservative views about sterling reflect differing about how rapidly the Tories should proceed with their Thatcher is influenced by a small doctrinaire most academic monetarists. She believes that the expansionarv monetart buy enough foreign exchange to stop sterling's rise would be bound to cause a renewed round of inflation. Her preference is for higher interest This would attract more The and push Thatcher wants to make it clear to British capitalists unal uncy must occome connoculvi by stepping up their attacks on pay and conditions - as the Tories are public

LUTE

SECLOT

Employers cannot, warns Thatcher, expect the government to provide any artificial props through currency mutanon. Lawson has no disagreements with the anti-working class thrust of Thatcher's approach. But he himself prides on being nondoctrinaire and intellectually independent and he wants to protect his reputation as Britain's economic miracle man. Most importantly. he is less convinced about the ability of British bosses to live up to Thatcher's expectations.

ACCELERATE

Lawson believes that a policy of letting sterling rise is selfdefeating, it would ont accelerate Britain's rush towards economic crisis. Trade figures for the last quarter of 1987 show how Britain's current account 15 moving further and faster into the January's deficit biggest on record. In the short term, a further surge in sterling's exchange rate can only aggravate the uncompetitive state of British industry and produce still worse trade figures. In the longer term deficit could increase downward pressure on the pound beyond the Tories' control. This is because it will raise among foreign Cats investors about the future of the British economy, which could lead to a flight of capital out of the country and a run on the value of the pound. Lawson appreciates that British capitalists are a long way from recovers caveness. The protests from the Confederation of British Industry over rising sterling rates illustrate their weakness. Lawson wants to ease the pressure, by cutting interest rates to stem sterling's rise. In the run-up to the budget he argued for modest tax cuts, leaving enough in end government ine collers lo borrowing Lawson claims that this would prevent a cut in interest rates from increasing inflation Lawson's real fear is that rising sterling rates provoke balance of payments crisis long before the employers have increased attacks on pay and conditions sufficiently to compensate for this.

Tories would then be faced with the prospect of turning the screw on the economy to save sterling. Their economic miracle would be exposed tor the mth that it is. Whatever happens to interest rates in the wake of the budget, the debate indicates that the Tories are running out of options. Tony Kennedy 18 March 1988 • 3

avid Alton's Bill to reduce the abortion time-limit from 2 to 1 weeks now being. debated committee stage in parliawomen's Many rights campaigners have already accepted that some variant of Alton's Bill will law, and favour amending it to allow abortion on to 12 weeks request up pregnancy in line with European practice. This is a concession to the prolobby, life' criminalise all women seeking and fighting for the right to abortion on demand which all women need.

Labour MP Jo Richardson is keen to bring British practice into line with European law, which only limited generally imposes abortions. restrictions on early gynaecologist and Wendy obstetrician savage conthat if abortion siders available on request up to 12 weeks the number are would be halved. Labour shadow health minister Harriet Harman recently finding tour in Europe, welcoming a 12-week limit because it would encourage women to early decision.

NO TO

ALL

TIME-LIMITS

Certainly we want to see improvements in the system to allow for but not at the carly abortions. expense of women's right to have an abortion whenever they need it.

The problem with accepting the principle of a 12-week limit is that it endorses the view that abortion is inherently wrong, and something be restricted. that must impossible to challenge the state's attempt to crumtause women who have abortions if we concede the late abortions are argument that reprehensible. once we well establish that some enemies lo abortions should not be tolerated, well-placed to then they will De go a step further and argue that more and more abortions ought to be made illegal. that Continental The idea laws offer

DO LOR

alternative myth. Europe imposes In restrictions on women's right to abortion. Britain ine Abortion Act and the 1929 Infant Life (Preservation) Act specify that abortion is permissible up to weeks when a woman can satisfy two doctors that her circumstances fit the strict criteria enshrined in the aw Even so. most women have difficulty getting an NHS abortion after 12 weeks, and some find it impossible to get an abortion at all.

In France abortion is available on request by law up to 10 weeks after conception. After this, a woman must convince a doctor and a psychiatrist to permit termination on medical grounds.

'EVIL'

The Dutch system has no official time-limit, but it is difficult to get 12 weeks and an abortion after impossible after WeeKS Denmark hospitals are obliged to provide women with an abortion twelith to the week Although here pregnancy. there is no official time-limit, after 12 weeks, trying to get an abortion is a nightmare. The woman must apply to a committee of doctors, established by the ministry Swedish system justice. I ne abortion on request up to 18 weeks is widely regarded as the ideal. But alter lo weeks every abornon must be approved by the national board of health and welfare. Everywhere in Europe the legal abortion as system sets up social evil. The formidable array of rules and procedures which 4 • 18 March 1988 its of from was -lact- Dandore Anderson is

JO RICHARDSON PREVARICATES...

liberal Every medical practice sanction to those who want to 1967 abortion Whether acceptable allows terminations at 10, 12, 18 or 28 weeks its effect is the same: it criminalises abortions. By lobbying for a 12-week limit for abortion on request in line with the European

MOOC

campaigners here are in danger of endorsing the criminalisation of women. As long as the state dictates who can and cannot have an abortion, and when they can have it, women do not stand a chance of achieving equal status in society. We should regard abortion as a right which by definition is not negotiable, and that means making concessions on Fighting for women's rights means campaigning for an end to all legal restrictions on abortion.

NO TO STATE

of

CONTROL

too Allowing abortion on request up to 12 weeks might appear to give more

WORCH

of abortion, of experience proves, it does challenge the control exercised by the profession. As many thousands of women discovered have bitter experience, request does not mean abortion on demand. Women might request an abortion, but the state does everything to make them change their minds.

regulate

EXPOSING THE EUROPEAN

'ALTERNATIVE' TO ALTON

ABORTION RIGHTS

ARE NOT

NEGOTIABLE

Fenna King takes issue with those who argue that the European model provides an alternative to Liberal MP David Alton's attempt to outlaw late abortions gives legal cooling-off unballoting and la w the use employers who need act women's who Is mauc. woman to time-limits. It freedom

OVCE

but as the European London WC1N 3XX and the medical trom abortion The ingenious French authorities have copied the industrial model of period between striking. Many the time-lag between a vote for a strike and the of downing tools to put pressure on the workforce to call off the action. In similar fashion the authorities compel a woman has decided to have abortion to undergo compulsory counselling before a final decision The one-week waiting period between counselling and termination puts pressure on the reconsider. It is designed to make women think twice about going ahead with an abortion, and gives more scope for Those husbands, boyfriends, parents and friends to influence the outcome.

is the same under the whole system Policing the Family examines the key themes of the official morality - the sanctity of the family, the crimes of permissiveness, the need for national regeneration - and explains their purpose in a society where division and conflict are becoming sharper £3.95 plus 80p p&p Cheques payable to Junius Publications Ltd, BCM JPLtd,

PUBLIC MEETING

THEIR MORALS AND OURS

Speaker: Joan Phillips Thursday 24 March 7pm Central Library, (off Northumberland Street), Newcastle The women bigotry the

....DAVID ALTON PONTIFICATES

supposedly liberal Dutch system.

Here the woman must go through a counselling session and a fivethe day "bedenktijd" (reconsideration) period. If she sticks to her guns and decides to go ahead, the doctor still has the final say over whether her decision is justified. In Sweden where women are meant to have the right to abortion on request up to 8 weeks the system makes a mockery of the law. After 12 weeks women have to submit to a special investigation and intensive coun selling by a welfare otticer. o qualify for an abortion a woman must be a Swedish citizen or must have lived there long enough to be like granted the privilege who are Britain calling for abortion on request up to 12 weeks ignore the fact that the deny

WOKS

women control over pregnancy.

1967 Act Abortion was carefully framed to give the state and the medical profession full control over terminations. Here have confront the -LO that is rampant in the medical profession, convince two doctors that they are deserving cases, and then go through the trauma of being lectured by an abortion counsellor. So long as state control ot system prevails, any law which allowed abortion on request up to 12 weeks would be of little use to women.

• Fighting for women's rights means campaigning for an end to all state controls which deny women the right to regulate their own fertility.

NO TO

ABORTION

CUTS

Even when the state appears to women limited rights denies them the abortion, facilities to make this possible. Those who champion the European system demonstrate an ignorance of the shoddy provision available and choose to forget that our own could third-rate service not support any liberalisation of the law even up to 12 weeks. Although French law requires all hospitals to provide a special abortion service, in some regions such as eastern France abortion Elsefacilities non-existent. are where the limited provision just cannot keep up with the demand.

Lille Hospital's 16 special beds are always full. Women often complain that the level of medical expertise is and old-fashioned appalling, surgery leaves many infected. The picture of minimal facilities and poor treatment is much the same in every country in Europe In many cases European women granted the right to request abortion are expected to pay for an operation which they cannot afford.

After 14 years of being lobbied by women's rights campaigners.

Dutch government finally agreed in 1986 to pay for abortions on the health service. But since most women in Holland find it faster and more efficient to go to a they are forced to private clinic, pay about £80 out of their own In Sweden the state DOCKeLS provides a free subsidised service for teenagers alone Abortion services in Britain are first to when cuts are threatened. The national health service now offers a skeletal service in most parts of the country, and no service at all in many places.

More and more manage to gain permission to terminate a pregnancy are forced to go private for a princely sum Even the service offered by private agencies is now under attack, as the authorities tighten up the rules and regulations. Demanding free and easy access to abortion up to 12 weeks in these circumstances is asking for manna from Fighting for women's heaven. liberation means fighting for free abortion demand and thi facilities to make this possible.

POLICING

Social controlin THE Thatcher's Britain

FAMILY

Joan Philips the next step

M Ps voted by 254 to 201 last week in favour of the witch-hunt Clause in the Local Government Bill which bans local councils from promoting homosexuality. The persecution ot lesbians and gays will receive the Royal Assent in April. When the legislation comes into torce in June any bigot will be free to take a local council to court to stop them spreading what the Tories have dubbed filth on the rates. The Clause means that councils could be stopped from funding lesbian and gay groups. homosexuality could removed from public libraries Teachers could be sacked if they dare to suggest that homosexuality Is anytning other than unnatural or "immoral". Councils who hire out facilities to lesbian and gay groups will run the risk of being court the legality lesbian and gay student clubs will be questioned, and gay pubs and nightclubs will have their licences reviewed. bigots Tory had a clear run in parliament. The Labour leadership insisted that it too was opposed to local councils which allowed lesbians and gays to flaunt their homosexuality. Labour environment John Cunningham spokesman supported the Mause at committee stage, and only later decided to oppose it. But Labour's latest Campaign Briefing indicates that there has been no change of local authorities should"teach" or "promote" homosexuality. But we believe everyone should encourage of people's differing acceptance lifestyles and sexuality. Labour of liberal a show tolerance, accepting prejudice that homosexuals should be neither seen nor heard.

HEEL

The Tories have displayed none of the ambivalence of the Labour camp. Nicholas Fairbairn caught their uncompromising mood well: who comprehends the "Anvone libidinal and psychological origins of male and female homosexuality should understand that It Is a major and unnatural perversion.

While the Tories got straight to the point and declared that homosexuality was a perversion, Labour the issue and talked in dodged vague terms about "human rights' and 'artistic freedom'. Once the opposition had conceded this vital Tories had the ground. Margaret Thatcher only had to hint at the 'threat' posed children by glamorising' homosexuality, and Neil Kinnock was forced to come to heel. Now that the Clause is about to come into effect, the Tories do not doubt that councillors will uphold will do Some enthusiasm, and some with shows of sadness. But stance, every Labour council will obey the courts and implement the provisions of the Clause. Gay MP considering Chris Smith forward bringing to abolish member's bill Clause, wnre overs are planaug to take the matter to the European parliament and Court of Human These

KONS

calculated to channel the resistance and gays ot lesbians constitutional lines.

THREAT

We must reject this approach for It does not tackle two reasons. popular prejudice against sexuals, and it does not deal with the immediate threat to lesbians and gays posed by the new law.

Appealing overrule the Clause as a violation of human rights does not confront prejudice widespread promoting homosexuality violation of morality. The Tories have managed to convince many people that homosexuality is an family values attront to the next step Books be of corruptive influence on susceptible school children. We must persuade people that the lesbians and gays is a denial of democratic rights that we cannot tolerate, and that sexuality can never be a problem working class. Tor are problem we face is a capitalist class which uses offıcıal moralıty to justify its system of exploitation

COULCOSU

Pleading with the courts to overturn the Tory law is a futile exercise which confront the attacks on lesbians and gays that are under way now.

Instead of putting the lengthy legal wrangles, we need to won. with private the

ILEA'S NEIL FLETCHER

ory and Labour politicians are ale arguing over who should get the credit for London Compact, a along joint venture between employers and educationalists. At the launch of their Acaon 101 Conservative chiefs gave Compact a big plug. . At county hall across the river, Labour leaders of the Inner homo- London Education Authority were boasting about launching the pilot Compact in Docklands in 1986. But Compact is nothing to crow about.

The Docklands experiment reveals it as nothing more than a scheme to indoctrinate school students and vet that them for low-paid jobs. Compact's sponsors claim it will build a bridge between Britain's divided communities. They say they want to give local people living amid and a

MPS VOTE FOR THE CLAUSE

'QUEER-

BASHING

BECOMES LAW

Last week's commons vote to outlaw the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities makes it legal to terrorise lesbians and gays — Don Milligan reports organise try obedience of oppression workers now aperson s The real homosexual Tory bigotry. capitalist does nalisation of homosexuality, by fuelling our faith in morality.

LONDON COMPACT

ALL-PARTY

INDOCTRINATION

past in inner-city developing Docklands. The are promising formers leaving schools in June.

STRINGS

other cheap-labour scheme.

away because are reduce their intake as Compact membership following criteria: Cities initiative, Not less of deadlines for salmallor participation effective dislibrarians, among teachers, and town hall clerical and The law must be turned into a dead letter if we are to prevent the exclusion of lesbians and gays from public life.

This means winning working class people to the conviction that they have a stake in standing up for rights against We have to confront the attack on lesbians and gays head-on, by demanding the complete decrimiand Tory resistance to for others.' the dereliction of Britain's industrial wastelands the chance of a bright new future in the like yuppie belts of London aim Compact is to provide a transmission belt for local school-leavers to get jobs in local industry. In Docklands, 22 member companies of Compact 300 jobs fifthfour Docklands Yet Compact is a lot like every The employers are not giving anything 300 jobs, many of them in notoriously low-paid sectors such as retailing and hairdressing, their standard annual intake.

The bosses reserve the right to required. There are no strings attached to But local students have to tie themselves in knots to get on the "priority hiring' list. To qualify they must meet the than 85 per cent attendance at morning and afternoon sessions throughout fourth and fifth years; not less than 90 percent punctuality at morning and afternoon registration throughout fourth and fifth years; fulfilment of 90 percent alassienments including homework; certificates of credits gained in Maths and English; completion of

LWO

weeks' work experience; satisfactory attendance on a full social and health education course, to include community

THERE'S A LAW AGAINST THIS: WE MUST FIGHT IT

service project; and evidence of they developing self-respect and respect city Unless your name is Goody-twoout, shoes, you're unlikely to meet these requirements. You're not meant to.

Compact's "personal goals' aim to help employers select only the most Tories conscientious students. London Compact will not create a single new job, nor guarantee any job which currently exists. Member companies have joined the scheme because it gives them free access to as much pre-tested factory fodder as

YUU

rating.

TORY KENNETH BAKER

Mutilated for being Iranian LAST September 37-year old Iranian Mohammad Hajiazim left his car on a double yellow line outside a bank in Hounslow High Street, Middlesex. He went into the bank and stayed inside for less than five minutes. When Hajiazim came out, police charged him with a parking offence and arrested him.

They took him back to the station where they punched him and broke his glasses. They beat him so savagely that they smashed one of his testicles.

Hajiazim's parking offence need. For working families living on delapidated innerestates and noong or a wa dead-end exit it is another local constructed sabour authorities and Tory central government Compact is a useful way for the stamp standards on inner-city communities, and indoctrinate working class kids with the Thatcherite self-help ethic.

You can bet you won't get anywhere near the priority hiring list unless improve your performance from one of the teacher Docklands schools explained why the Tories are so keen on Compact *If I was one of them, every time I looked out of the window and saw these housing estates, I would start wondering how to stop local people invading my patch. Apart from the barbed wire,

OOVIOLE

answer. might well have come up with a moral fibre-type scheme like London Compact.' All that Labour can say is "We thought of it first."

Andrew Calcutt came up in court last week.

The magistrate found him guilty of obstruction,' and fined him £100. There has been no action against the officers who Dear nim up. what week H September the British media whipped up a frenzy of patriotic fervour against Iranian 'fanatics who were threatening Western interests in the Gulf.

That was enough for the police to mutilate a man of Middle Eastern appearance who parked his car in the wrong place at the wrong time. 18 March 1988 • 5

SOUTH AFRICAN FAR RIGHT GRABS HEADLINES, BUT...

BOTHA NEEDS NO

LESSONS FROM 'NAZIS'

W TV screens are estern full of images of Afri- Resistance Movement (AWB) leader Eugene Terreblanche surrounded by strutting chanting storm-troopers and giving Nazi-style supporters salutes. In the florid prose of the British press, Terreblanche takes on the characteristics of a Hitler or a Goebbels. The Sunday Times pale-eyed, describes him as a mesmeric orator who is expert at whipping a crowd into a frenzy.

The Times notes this ex-policeman's capacity for 'spellbinding oratory' Journalistic exaggeration aside.

the growth of right-wing Afrikaner organisations has become something of a problem for president PW Botha. The recent by-election his ruling defeats suffered by National Party point to the continuing erosion of the govern- Afrikaner ment's traditional power-base. opposition Conservative won the by-elections and Party holds 22 seats in

TOW

Nationalists* former Transvaal stronghold. The Conservatives are closely allied to the AWB. The Afrikaans press still backs Botha, and was at pains to point out the Party/AWB link Conservative before the by-elections, in attempt to scare off

VOLCISI

media revelations did little to stem Conservatives, support for the that many Transvaal signalling think Terreblanche waites talks sense. than half the Afrikaners Less (who make up 60 percent of the white population), now support Botha's National Party. The far right is without doubt a very nasty proposition opponents of the apartheid regime.

Besides its blatant racism and antiis also probably seminist responsible for a great deal of freelance violence against radical organisations and trade unions.

AWB members openly flaunt a range of weaponry. wide Terreblanche frequently threatens to take up arms in pursuit of his ends. At a recent rally he spoke of having to train for the night when we will have to claim what is rightfully ours.

BARBAROUS

The by-election losses certainly a psychological blow to the Nationalists, after 40 years of unchallenged power. But position is not really at risk.

majority of the white population Sull supports inemam a genetal election the current swing away from the government would leave Botha anaculary majority more than Dramatic neo-Nazi parades notwithstanding, he is still firmly in control The current emphasis on the far right in the Western media is a diversion. dangerous It those who back Botha, like the Tories, to depict him as a wellintentioned reformer who should be supported against apartheid extremists. This serves to disguise the big problem facing black people in South Africa: an increasingly barbarous which is taking ruthless steps to safeguard the foundations of apartheid. 6 • 18 March 1988 the an But Terreblanche While theatrically, Botha gets on with the for job of containing black resistance.

The Nationalist government is pursuing a twin-track strategy. It has made some minor concessions derail designed opposition movement and create a of pliable black stooges.

while Meanwhile, it shows no mercy to those who refuse to be bought off by these phoney. reforms. The few token reforms which Botha has conceded nave provoked resent ment among his erstwhile hardline.

paltry concessions insignificance next to his ruthless campaign of terror against black are opponents of the apartheid system.

• It is the Botha government, and not the AWB, which has thrown more than 30000 opponents into apartheid's jails since clamation of a state of emergency in June 1986. 100. • Terreblanche supporters have assassinated some black activists and trade unionists. But Botha's government organises tematic liquidation of resistance leaders. Even when official South African police and troops take a allows back seat in the conflict, the Botha regime is still behind most of the deaths in South Africa. The government has used its informal network of hired vigiundercover squads lantes, stooge homeland Botha establish a reign of terror.

combined efforts of these apartheid agents have helped to drive open.

apartheid off The far right in South Africa is big news at the moment. But, argues Russell Osborne, the Botha regime, not the militant right, is still the real problem for opponents of apartheid WHILE TERREBLANCHE PULLS FACES, BOTHA PULLS THE HANGMAN'S ROPE streets of South Africa. In the struts Kwa Zulu homeland, the conservative black Inkatha movement led by Botha's stooge Chief Gatsha burnelezi, nas cone lar more to se back the struggle against apartheid black than has the AWB. Inkatha thugs the have massacred hundreds of black activists in the last few months alone, while Buthelezi keeps up his posture apartheid. In most of the other independent black homelands, black banned by the sham governments But these which carry out Botha's bidding.

pale into • There are almost certainly AWB supporters in high places in the and army ponce bican peoples, and the large-scale shooting of township youth armed the pronot the consequence of a tew tarrunning out ministry the Sharpeville gallows. Mass the official apartheid policy.

syslifting of some apartheid".

OCUL

often harass formerly

WELC

demanding and measures to keep them out.

regimes The the anti-squatting secrecallon tures ressure right-wing problem for Botha. of restructuring resistance. trade unions have been Botha Lace. systematic But South African army genocide against the

AWB

Namibian, Angolan and Mozam- Botha's supporters his with only bricks and bottles, are

GUARANTOR

right policemen and troops The The control. sending SIx lo une murder is individual • The AWB laments Botha's of the strict the segregation laws which made up AWB goons black residents of city suburbs of the to The Botha regime has certainly altered right challenge the letter of the law which forced Nationalists. PW Botha blacks to live in segregated slums or starve in semi-desert labour needs a 'Hitlerite"? "reserves. But in practice nothing much has changed. Police and soldiers now drive 'surplus labour' out of town at gunpoint under public health laws, rather than the old housing a disenchanted white electorate channelled through organisations is a It limits his room for manoeuvre apartheid the system so as to reduce mass black But right's the tar bluster is only a more excreme version of what has long been the government's stock-inofficial, large-scale violence against the black population. Pointing to the bogey can even provide win a con venient excuse for measures like 17 antirecent ban apartheid organisations. barrier which stands between the black majority and democracy in South Africa is not the AwD, or even bolla as all politician. It is the apartheid state over which Botha presides. That state was built on oppression of the black population, and still stands as the guarantor of the discriminatory capitalist system in South Africa.

We should not allow our opposition apartheid state be distracted by stories about the farto mamsucau got wnen you ve in government, who

LIVERPOOL

PORT WORKERS

HOT-CARGO

APARTHEID

URANIUM

PORT WORKERS in Liverpool are taking action to halt the movement of products manufactured from Namibian or Last month a consignment of 13 containers of uranium hexafluoride, manufactured by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd at Springfields, near Preston, arrived at the docks. When port workers demanded information about this consignment, they were informed that BNFL would not provide any documentation.

But BNFL did admit that 50-80 percent of their export processing work is done on and that all uranium oxide fed into Springfields is systematically mixed so all the output from Springfields ought to contain that proportion of Namibian uranium.

BLOCKADE

The Liverpool port workers refused to accept BNFL's assertion that it was impossible to identify any particular consignment as South African in origin, and slapped a ban on handling the containers. Although management eventually got nine of the containers loaded, four remained on the quayside after the Atlantic Container Lines vessel sailed for America.

On Tuesday 2 March, ACL attempted to load these containers on to another vessel. The port workers again refused to handle the cargo, and BFL was forced to have them driven back to Springfields. Latest reports suggest that BNFL could attempt to break the blockade by re-routing the containers through Felixstowe, or by obtaining a court order against the Liverpool blacking action.

SPIRIT

Direct action by British workers remains the only effective way of showing solidarity with the black people of South Africa and Namibia. It is no use appealng to me Tories to impose sanctions. As me eyes seewee BNFL show, they are up to their necks in supporting apartheid.

At last week's meeting of EEC foreign ministers, Britain and West Germany even tried to veto any discussion of the new bans in South Africa. Instead of sitting back and looking to the government to act against apartheid, we need to spread the spirit of active solidarity which has been glimpsed in Liverpool. Send union messages of support for the Liverpool port workers c/o Transport House 37 Islington, Liverpool 3.

the next step

WE are activists in the North- West Campaign for Lesbian and Gay Equality. Now that everyone has finished congratulating themselves on the success of the Manchester march last month, our meetings beg the question 'Where do we go from here?

It seems common sense that we should build towards a bigger, more effective campaign, whose aim is not simply to fight against the Clause but to fight for the full equality of lesbians and gay men. In our last meeting we had a discussion about building support in the trade unions, particularly among council workers and teachers who will be asked to implement the Clause from June. We drew up a motion calling on the union membership to fight for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, to reject the Clause, and to support union members who refuse to implement it. To our dismay, some people in the campaign have argued against this. They say it is utopian to expect union •••

HACKNEY

SQUATTERS

HACKNEY COUNCIL

justifies its mass evictions policy on the grounds that homeless amilies in bed and breakfast must have priority over squatters who occupied empty DOC ECCEne Stamford Hill estate. Coming from a council which has closed its homeless persons section to the public, with the result that single homeless and homeless families cannot even get into bed and breakfast accommodation, this is pure hypocrisy. Unfortunately, the orricial union response has been equally negative. Housing director Janet Jones did a deal with a few squatters whereby they would be offered tenancies for the most delapidated flats which homeless families turned down. The senior housing shop steward, a Militant supporter, then presided over a Nalgo housing department meeting which came out .....

BOSSES

OUT OF

OUR UNION

ON the spot sackings are Islington council's new policy. due to be ratified within a few days. Heads or departments will be empowered to implement instant dismissal against the next step

DON'T COMPLY

WITH THE CLAUSE

hunt. backwards for the working class. Penny, lan and Paul Manchester

WAITING FOR EVICTION FROM STAMFORD HILL

against the squatters and criticised the council for abusing normal allocations procedures and work practices. This failure to defend all homeless people, including squatters, against council attacks, left the way open for a great deal of misinformed vitriol from the floor about queue-jumpers, etc. While all this was going on, the police were going on to the estate and forcibly evicting 300 people. The Stamford Hill squatters are now occupying a former Salvation Army hostel, employees who, in their estimation, are 'guilty of offences like bad timekeeping or 'excessive sickness'. If this isn't bad executives wielding these draconian powers are members of my union, Nalgo. When the issue comes up at branch mecungs, tey will be entitled to listen in on our discussions about how to resist them. My opinion is members who won't fight for their own jobs to support lesbian and gay equality. They also argue that by raising the issue we risk alienating support from less radical sections of the campaign.

The best way to lose support for a campaign is to make it ineffective. A defensive strategy may not alienate liberal churchmen, but it is a step away from building support among ordinary workers — the people who can block the Clause, and who stand to gain from refusing to implement the moral witch- The alternative to noncompliance is compliance. If activists back down from building a non-compliance campaign, local authority workers will be pushed into participating in the Tories' offensive. This can only lead to further isolation of lesbians and gay men, and a step and the council has warned of further episodes in its get tough policy This is the same council which is using a redeployment scheme to mask hundreds of redundancies, including the loss of per percent of jobs in the housing department. Hackney council is clearly not on the same side as council workers. But our local union officials are too much in cahoots with Labour group councillors to lead the fight for homes or jobs. Hackney council worker that managers who want to join a club should apply for membership of the Labour Party. I'm sure they are the kind of people that Margaret Hodge and Neil Kinnock are looking for. But our union should be exclusively or workers who need to defend nemselves against council employers, wietner rory, Labour or SLDP. Islington council worker letters page •• ••

AN AFGHAN

ANSWER

PAUL FLEWERS (letters, 4 March) doesn't think there is any answer for the Afghan masses caught between Soviet occupiers and Islamic fundamentalist rebels. He notes that the Soviets and the mujahideen are both reactionary. However, he falls to take account of the way in which the influence of one form of reaction (fundamentalism) is largely a consequence of the record of the other (Stalinism). Since the twenties, the Soviet Union's foreign policy has been designed to create buffer zones between itself and the Western imperialists. To this end, the Soviets have picking up and then dropping national liberation struggles and left-wing movements. The Soviet authorities have also learnt how to build mutually beneficial relationships with local ruling classes. This opportunistic policy has had catastrophic effects, and it has discredited Ideas throughout the third world. In a number of countries in Asia and the Middle East, where Soviet influence has been strongest, Islamic fundamentalism now occupies the place where the left should be. Afghanistan is a case in point: the growing influence of the mullahs ..... I WAS looking forward to using the article on llea (tns, 11 March) to argue for all llea workers to unite in defence of jobs, pay and conditions. But I found that the article put too much stress on Tory plans to dools Hea, anc not enough on Labourcontrolled lea's plans to abolish 6000 jobs. agree that abolishing lea, as an elected attack on local democracy.

But this fact is being used as a cop-out by Labour politicians and union leaders. At the rally after last Tuesday's llea Write to tns

BCM

JPLTD,

WC1N

3XX ••• • •

POLICE

USE CHILD

ABUSE

SCARES

POLICE recently carried out a dawn raid to capture an alleged 'child abuse rine on une broxtowe

ILEA: JOBS OR DEMOCRACY?

TEA

ILEA IS A JOBS-BUTCHER TOO

workers march, they argued that we must stand with the Labour administration, cuts and all, against the Tories. Although they came in for some barracking from the 300 activists who stayed around to hear them, their save lea al all costs) approach has an influence on many of the people ••. ••

GIBRALTAR:

A UNION

RESPONSE

AT our Nalgo branch meeting in Hammersmith on 10 March, a large majority condemned the SAS assassination of three unarmed Irish people in Gibraltar. . When somebody criticised the motion, talking about the IRA's murder of innocent civilians', one speaker after another demanded child abuse itself. Recurring child abuse scares are part of a wider strategy to create more tolerance and sympathy Tor direct intervention by the state. Whether or not there has been child abuse going on in Broxtowe, the intention of the authorities was to stir up suspicion and win support for a greater police presence in the area. They were successful on both counts. On the day of the raid, people were checking up to see if their neighbours were missing. All The people we spoke to were in favour of police

HHILCEVCHUOM

Faced with mounting anger and bitterness, the authorities are using the horror we all feel about child abuse as a ticket into our communities. We must remember their motives, and their record of abusing men, women and children throughout the world, before welcoming them Bernadette and Joanne Nottingham Afghanistan, poses the immediate barrier to social progress for the masses. Hence we are opposed to the Soviet presence. In addition, there is another, greater threat which hovers over the whole region imperialism. We want to see an end to Soviet interference so that the workers and peasants of Afghanistan can engage in a direct struggle against their biggest • the imperialists and their local agents. James Malone Buick Bakar Butcher hands of Baker

ILEA

hands off

ILEAL

who had left, or who weren't on the demonstration at all. I think it would have been better, therefore, to put a more single-minded emphasis on the fact that Labour llea is an employer which is just as ruthless as its equivalent in Tory central government. Southwark teacher to know how anyone in the union could support the British Army's occupation of Ireland. The union reaffirmed its support for the right of Irish people to fight for their freedom. We agreed to send a message of sympathy to relatives of those murdered; and the branch has agreed to pay for a republican speaker to come over from Ireland to address a Hammersmith Trades Council meeting in the town hall on 6 April. Sheona York Hammersmith Nalgo 18 March 1988 • 7

the propaganda

TOGETHER

WE CAN

CRACK IT

I WANT to grow up on an estate where the big kids don't smash everything up with riot batons and evict homeless squatters. I want to grow up in a place where my gran can open her front door and not be frightened that people will take her things and call it the poll tax. I want to grow up in a world where my sister can eet an abortion without being bothered by nomore men wi stewoscopes and dog-collars. But perhaps most immediately, I want to grow up in a world where me, my gran, my sister and everybody else can switch on the TV without being assaulted by anti-crime adverts put out by a Tory home office to dupe the public. The high-profile TV advertising campaign 'Crime: together we can crack it' - features an array of sad-looking school children appealing to us to build a crimefree future. It is a cheap and unsophisticated attempt to manipulate viewers emotions. The campaign, backed up by a free booklet, marks a new advance in the Tory policy of hyping up scares about crime for political purposes The government hopes that it will serve several related functions.

First, it is an exercise in the politics of Don't worry about that, worry about this.' The authorities are always on the look-out for ways to divert our attention from major social problems like unemployment, which are caused by the system, towards manufactured panics about crime or football hooliganism, which are blamed on anti-social individuals.

At its crudest, this means telling London commuters that the big problem on the underground is a few robberies - at a time when cuts and staff shortages have caused 31 deaths in the King's Cross fire, provoked passenger revolts over repeatedly cancelled trains, and turned the tube system into a filthy, rodent-infested Dickensian ruin. Second, the anti-crime campaign is designed to win public sympathy for the police, and to endorse the idea that all those who oppose the authorities The militarisation of are criminals. the British police force, and its increasingly up-front, brutal methods, have knocked some big dents in the traditional image of the impartial, unobtrusive, local Plod. The powers that be hope to win back support for the police with adverts emphasising their supposed role in protecting the young, the old and the vulnerable from child abusers, violent robbers and rapists. If the police are public servants, It also follows that the pickets, black youths or gay men they are attacking and arresting must be public enemies.

Racism is always the strongest theme underpinning official anti- Of course the crime propaganda. adverts don't say 'Help the police to persecute black people'; they don't need to, because the authorities have already drummed home the message over recent years. For example, the newspaper 8 • 18 March 1988 war ads accompanying the TV broadcasts list 'mugging' before rape as a major violent crime.

They work on the implicit understanding that mugging' is interpreted as street robbery committed by young black males.

The last element of the anticrime campaign is an attempt to turn the working class in on itsell and destroy any notion of collective identity. The adverts and booklet emphasise the need to take personal responsibility for crime prevention. we are all advised to build six-foot walls around our homes, fit locks everywhere, and keep a sharp eye 12190010C000010 down our street. The aim is to convert our class into countless little frightened family units, each one safely locked up behind its security system, peeping out from milkman is really an axe-murderer.

The home office propaganda talks a lot about 'community cooperation against crime, and Neighbourhood Watch schemes.

What it means is forming a police supporters club and spyms on your neighbours who don't fit in.

The latest campaign will probably be really effective only among those who are already sympathetic to its message. Many other people retain a healthy cynicism about such initiatives.

There may be 42 000 Neighbourwood Watch committees. but these are overwhelmingly concentrated in middle class suburbs: two vears ago a report discovered that there were more in Croydon than in all the inner-city London boroughs put togemen ter even many people who don't trust the Tories matter of major concern. Their complaint is that the government should pay the same attention to solving other problems, like the crisis in the health service. But we should go further, and say that the anti-crime campaign is entirely reactionary. Its sole purpose is to weaken the working class, and to strengthen the hand of the state's legal and policing machine against us. There are other issues which demand our exclusive attention today. I want to live in a world where an Iranian can park his car in Hounslow for five minutes without having a testicle smashed by the police and being fined E100 for obstruction. I want to live in a world where an Irishman ФАРСО СОРА МАТО НІРА НОО football match in Aughnacloy witout bens accidentally snot dead by a British soldier. I want to live in a world where a health worker is not called a cheat because she has to do two jobs to make ends meet. The world I don't want to live in is one where the police feel free to maraud around working class estates, while we are preoccupied keeping 'em peeled behind the double-lock double-glazing. •When That was how an insider at Army HQ in Northern Ireland explained the Gibraltar newspaper: that the rules of war are the only rules which the British authorities recognise when dealing with Irish nationalists and Irish republicans particular. Daniel McCann and Sean Savage are the latest victims of Britain's Irish War. lately about whether the government has introduced a new shoot-to-kill Dolley in Ireland. We should be clear that shooting-to-kill is and is not just a "policy" to be introduced and withdrawn again, like something. the British WIde occupation are in Ireland to do.

protect themselves? British government's best bet would be to leave them locked up in Aldershot. Whal las intensification against Irish Royal Ulster Constabulary Ulster Defence see these denials.

RUTHLESS

The controversy began Irish nationalists British since then has now risen to 49 killings illustrates took place In dead of night at 4am. typical SAS operation, blackout, had happened.

COCKY

local residents blank range. display of cocky savagery summed up how the opposition here. supporters of Irish in Britain. The reaction to shootings among Linda Ryan

SAS

is the committed there is normally an understanding that no prisoners will be taken."

killings one "No prisoners will be It is clear confirmation Mairead Farrell, There has been a lot of debate Northern nothing new, initiative shooting-to-kill is forces Why else are they given guns? To If protecting its troops were the its

CONSCI

happened in recent years is not a new policy, but an of the campaign The nationalists. Tories have now spent more than five years denying that they are engaged in a shoot-to-kill campaign in Ireland. Meanwhile, the bodies of those shot dead by the Army, anc Regiment have piled up so high that we can hardly making the end of 1982, when the RUC shot dead six unarmed Irishmen in County Armagh. Those shootings have since been at the centre of the Stalker affair. The total number of shot by the Twenty two of them were armed; 27 were not. The nature of the Gibraltar a further advance in the open ruthlessness of British attacks on Irish republicans.

The last time the SAS shot dead three unarmed IRA volunteers was in February 1985. That shooting cowfield Strabane, County Tyrone, in the It was a sneaking about through Irish fields under cover of darkness and of a media witnesses. When the SAS ambushed only cattle for an IRA unit at Loughgall last year, and shot eight dead, they even killed a bystander to ensure that nobody would tell exactly what But in Gibraltar last Sunday, the SAS came out in casual clothes in mid-afternoon on streets where and tourists were strolling, and shot three people repeatedly at point- According to one family, an SAS man who bumped into them even said "Excuse me" seconds before he caught up with and executed Sean Savage. It was a that confident the support of the British forces now are that they can get away with killing Irish people Heffer at will in public. The main reason the deaths. for this arrogance is the state of British politics, and the collapse of This is the problem that we need to focus on about Commons the Gibraltar the press and opposition parties here shows why the Tories and SAS are now almost over-confident about such operations.

The response in Britain to the SAS shootings in Gibraltar illustrates how the authorities get away against Irish republicans.

extracts from Mick Hume's meeting sponsored by the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Irish Freedom Movement last Friday IRA TERRORISTS ON PARADE WITH STRONG BACKING FROM NATIONALIST SUPPORTE First the authorities lied about the presence of IRA bombs and foreign Geoffrey Howe admitted to the Commons that they had lied and told some new lies of his own. The leaders of the opposition sat there ike good mule chuaren, lakmg n all in. When Howe had finished they got up to agree with him. The Labour spokesman said that the House spoke "with one voice" in SAS. Only Eric raised doubt about a Later that day, Labour MPs and Tory ministers did almost come to of whetner the Scotland Electricity Board should obey a court order. As far as the the concerned. was execution of three Irish republicans in cold blood was uncontroversial in comparison. Days later, when the government had consolidated

AFTE

with their dirty war Here we reprint speech at a London its victory, the Labour leadership came out with a timid request for an inquiry into the shootings. Even then, they waited until Doctor Death had called for an inquiry given it the stamp of first, and statesmanlike respectability.

he authorities begin trom the "understanding that no prisoners taken". will The official be opposition replies with "can we inquiry please?" This have an mismatch is the main source of the government's confidence on Ireland

EXECUTED

Let's go back to look at the of lies which progression the authorities came out with - and got away with - about Gibraltar.

It indicates the scale ol ollicia Irish War today, and the way it is swallowed as tact

LLING THE BIG LIE

BOUT IRELAND

Before we do so, however, it is important to understand that even if the IRA volunteers had been armed when they were shot it would not alter our view. Whatever the circumstances,

SAS

they were executed by the because they were engaged in the free the Irish people struggle to from British oppression. The cause of their deaths North occupation the Ireland. It is worth examining the British lies about bombs and arms, "guilt" not to establish the "innocence" of the Irish republicans, but show how authorities disguise and divert attention trom the their colonial war in Ireland.

LIES

of First all, 4.45pm at On Sunday, the ministry of defence announced that a 500lb bomb had been planted, discovered and dealt with, and that three IRA members had been killed in a gun battle with the Gibraltan police. Now, this was a bit much even by British government standards.

Nobody was going to believe that the Gibraltan police, the Iberian equivalent of the Clapham Common Neighbourhood Watch Committee, had really defeated an IRA unit in a gun battle. Especially not since every news bulletin kept telling us that the three dead republicans were "among the most hardened IRA terrorists". So the authorities modified the story slightly. At 9pm on Sunday, the ministry of defence admitted that "the security forces" had done the shooting but only after clearly warning the armed suspects. They kept in the bit about the bomb being planted and discovered.

faithfully his story Was produced by the British press on Monday morning, an heroic display of the independence freedom that Fleet Street editors are always on about. The more enthusiastic added bits of their own. The Sun even found "an eye-witness" who Boatman had apparently read the MoD release. According to the press Sun, "A teenage boy who saw the shootings said *The gang were They were ordered to surrender. armed. Suddenly there was a burst fell to of tiring and they ground.' " It might seem strange that this "eye-witness" should describe a casually dressed couple strolling along as a "gang". More strangely still, the same short article referred to the IRA unit as a "gang" on five other occasions.

Apparently Gibraltan nave tae same vocabulary as sun sub-editors.

CONGRATULATIONS

The this ministry kept up cock-and-bull story parucular Then afternoon. until Monday Howe stood up in the Commons and said it wasn't true he RA members hadn't planted any bomb and didn't have any guns on them.

He told MPs a new story instead.

suspended their And mey Just disbelief again and soaked it up.

R THE GIBRALTAN JOB

Howe said the "security forces" decided there was a bomb in the car when one republican was seen spend some time adjustments in the vehicle". Their suspicions, he claimed, "appeared to be corroborated by a technical inspection of the car". security forces challenged the three who. according to Howe movements" which forced the SAS of to shoot them. opposition party leaders accepted the revised Tory version as the full and unabridged facts, agreed that the the circumstances shootings, and congratulated the SAS. Buried away deep inside the Irish however, account of a briefing reporters had asked a Whitehall spokesman to decode The official admitted contents. that the suspicious "adjustments" the republican made inside the meant looked in the The inspection", which was supposed to have confirmed that a bomb had planted, been glancing at the outstde of the car; it seems that the Bionic Man has now joined the SAS, with the ability to see a bomb through a car boot.

And the threatening "movement" the republicans made was to spin around — which was hardly surprising seeing as, independent

CYC WILLCOSCS

had already been shot several times without warning at a range of four feet.

CRIMINALISATION

simple deciphering of So a Howe's coded comments could reeasily have established that the three dead were gunned down in Gibraltar solely because they were identified as Irish republicans. It and was a no-nonsense act of war in which the SAS sought to take out of the

INCHOCIS

enemy on sight. Yet the official opposition went along with the explanation offered by Tory propagandists, accepted that the SAS were simply carrying out a crime-prevention exercise on behalf of British tourists in Gibraltar. Why do the authorities get away successive lie about with each Ireland? It isn t opposition is stupid believe all. The leadership and the rest put up with the little lies because they accept the big one. The big lie which underpins every aspect of British policy is that Irish republicans are criminals and terrorists who must be dealt with by the forces of British law and order. In the words of Northern Ireland secretary Tom King, the big lie brands the IRA as *a small bunch terrorists", or as Labour spokesman George Robertson described them last week, just plain you accept this, any action against republicans becomes acceptable. If you believe the big lie, about the details of one shooting don't matter. The Tories and the making Then the "made The press and justified the Was at which Howe's had supposedly probably glove technica according to they

ON HOSTILE IRISH STREETS

SAS can always win through, by insisting that their necessary to achieve the "common aim" of destroying the republican struggle. especially the army hammered into opinion. It is not surprising that the Labour leaders accept it from the Tories today, since the last and Labour vented It when it took away political status from republican prisoners of war and branded them as common criminals. politics now depict the IRA as public enemy because the with enough to associated imaginable. The media's descriptions Labour of the weaponry with IRA is supposed to be threatening the Great British public gets more and more After this Switzerland, I fully expected to hear that the IRA had developed a new deadly avalanche.

QUIBBLES

of thugs and The anti-republican whipped up around the big lie "evil. Once within Britain provides the cover for the more ruthless pursuit of the doubts war in ireland. scream about "evil IRA terrorists" the louder we can

BRITISH *PEACE-KEEPERS' SKULK ABOUT IN ISOLATION

gunfire actions are One The big lie about the Irish, and those

IRA,

has been British public who put executions. party leadership government largely inin the mid-seventies, with the Gibraltar, of number were unarmed. every

TACTICS

which the This is no fantastic each week. opposition week's events Britain weapon the confronting hysteria criminalisation. The louder they ratner than the be

SUIC

is echoing around the North of Ireland or even Gibraltar.

problem face we in challenging the big lie about the Irish War is that it even influences Tory policy. criticise Take Eric Heffer, the Labour MP down the Commons motion criticising the Gibraltar This certainly put his Yet to Shaae even Heffer and his supporters insisted that they wanted to defeat "terrorism"; they only disagreed methods the and thought that the three should have been captured instead of shot, because they no way to popularise to the within wall It cannot undermine the British authorities, because it does not challenge the central plank of their justification for committing crimes against Irish people. It is an attempt to take on the little lies about a single shooting. without the big lie Its effect can only be to reduce the debate to a technical one about which tactics the SAS should use, raising central political issue of Britain's military occupation of Ireland. What does Heffer-style opposition offer Irish nationalists who oppose occupation? Another spell in jail as a criminal.

Mairead Farrell had already suffered 10 years of that generous treatment; she led a prison hungerstrike against it in 1980. And what about the 22 Irish republicans shot dead when armed in the last five years? Are we supposed to concede that their deaths at the hands of foreign gunmen were acceptable?

CRACKS

Many on the left in Britain think unal narrowing me debate to one about whether or not a particular shooting of unarmed republicans was justitled is an easy way to win public support. In fact it is a guarantee of failure. Unless we challenge the big lie about IRA "terrorism", then people who don't like what happened in Gibraltar will ultimately put with it, on the basis that the Britisp forces are on the side of democracy.

Conditions are now very favourable for us to challenge the central lie about Irish criminals Recent events open important cracks in the propaganda wall which the built around Ireland. We can exploit these to bring home to more British people the fact that the conflict is a colonial war.

For example, the open gunning down of republicans in Gibraltar and in Northern Ireland provides strong evidence that British law and order for the nationalists is simply legalised oppression The support shown for the republicans in Ireland recently is equally strong evidence that they are not isolated criminals. Countless thousands of British people will have seen coverage of the funeral of IRA volunteer Brendan Burns Crossmaglen, South Armagh, the day before the Gibraltar killings They will have seen local people defending the IRA men carrying coffin against paramılitary police and soldiers. They will have Army using Chinook seen the military helicopters, the biggest ones Nato has got, to ferry forces in to attack the funeral. You don't have to be an expert to know that tne autornes woulan t use suci hardware against a little criminal The Kray twins were not gang. chased around East London by Chinooks.

RIGHTS

All of this provides ammunition for our argument that there is a Ireland, between the war on in oppressive British state and Irish people demanding their freedom We have already found that a lot of British people are what's going on. We will waste that unease if we get involved in a discussion about what tactics the SAS should have used in Gibraltar To take advantage of the unease about the little lies the authorities are putting out, we have to address the big one, and take the debate about the Gibraltan job outside limits acceptable the establishment. If we want to end a war in which the SAS takes "no prisoners", it is good starting an argument whether members 200l should be captured instead of shot We have to address the far more basic and fundamental issues: that Britain is an occupying colonial power in Ireland, and that the Irish people have the right selfto determination - - and the right to fight for it. The solution is not a new operational manual for the

SAS,

immediate British withdrawal and freedom for Ireland.

The Irish will be a lot closer to re actively supported by a Britis opposition movement which doe not sit back and believe that Sir Geoffrey Howe and the Special Air Regiment Services are honest representatives of democracy ana Tusce 18 March 1988 • 9

DON'T BELIEVE

IN MIRACLES

Phil Murphy takes a more sceptical look at the prospects for the British economy than did Nigel cross the Western world A politicians and economists are trying hard to put the October stock market crash behind them. The business as usual' signs have gone up again everywhere. Almost every forecast about the world's econprospects for this omic contains a phrase to the effect that: 19 October t's happened.' With the benefit of hindsight, commentators now argue initial fears that the crash would devastate production levels were overstated. hose economies like Japan, which were growing relatively fast before Black monday are forecast to continue that way in 1988. The experts expect those which WelC sluggish, like the USA and West Germany, to avoid recession this year, even if they do not improve.

Such complacency seems s placed when consider

YUL

nothing has been done over the past four months to deal with the factors which crash in the caused the first place. The economy, influences what happens across the globe, continues to survive on state funding financed by massive flows America from of capital into Europe and Japan. West Germany's rulers have yet to get to grips with the domestic recessionary pressures Walen continue to prop up the dollar, and sparked their October's financial crisis.

When Black Monday brought the capitalist nations to the edge of their survival the precipice, instincts forced a further bout of liquidity expansion and coordinated interventions on exchange markets. This means that the capitalist system is living even more on borrowed time and money) than it was In October. Another crash is onlv a matter of time. Against this background the Talk In economic miracle. The Thatcher government assures us that Britain has turned the corner of economic decline, and things are looking up.

Britain's international competitors nave omea mn me celebranons Addressing the Institute Directors' conference last month, Japanese ambassador Yamazaki declared that the old *British disease' of low productivity, strikes and balance of payments crises was now a thing of the past.

On the surface the certainly look impressive. Output grew by nearly five percent last year, the best performance since 1973. In recent years output and have been productivity faster than in any other industrialised country. competitiveness has improved by 30 per cent since 1981 and profit rates have more than doubled since the low-point of the early eighties.

What factors account for the buoyancy of the British economy.

and can this dynamism last?

• Exchange rates The fall in the value of sterling between 1986 and 1987, which had more to do with dollar-yen-mark developments than with anything intrinsic to Britain, boosted the competitiveness of British goods on the world markets. This helped stem deterioration the Britain's trade account and stimulated comesuc production th 1987. The pound's appreciation since the middle of 1987 and into 1988, again for reasons which are largely outside government control, wi reverse this shortterm benefit. • Credit boom Lending to consumers has far outstripped the increase domestic production since 1979.

Consumer credit has been powerful force behind the growth of domestic demand which has helped to keep British industry 10 • 18 March 1988 year more that going. It doubled between 1979 and 1986, and grew by another 20 per cent last year. The credit boom appears have survived LO off October crash. But each monthly increase in personal debt to yet nigher record levels only brings closer the day when debtors will be called to account. The impact of extra borrowing has taken the ratio of savings to income to its lowest level for 30 years.

Bank lending to companies shot up last year, contributing to the general air of buoyancy. But much early more of this money financial speculation and company takeovers than into real investment in more efficient plant and machinery. Manufacturing vestment remains below its 1979 level, and the growth forecast for this year will do little to alter this picture. • Financial services of Since 1979 this has been Britain's most dynamic sector, growing at oshio more than three times the rate of the economy as a whole. There has been more investment in this sector in absolute terms since 1980 than figures in the whole of manufacturing The increasing nificance of this sector for the British economy, in contrast to manufacturing, transformation of Britain into a rising major parasitic service-based economy which survives by commissions from the worldwide movements of capital. The City of London, dominated American, by European has taken advantage of the huge increase in actions on the foreign exchange and other financial markets. Bul the money made here, which has contributed significantly to British output figures, of this continuation financial merry-go-round.

It has little to do with British financing of world trade flows, through which London secured its position of financial dominance in the nineteenth century. Today 90 per cent of London's

CAT

foreign exchange business arises from speculative flows of capital between Tokyo, Paris, New York, Bonn and other capitalist centres, the taking advantage of the volatility of international exchange rates.

As London n te bris economy in the rest of the world economy, and its efficiently and make went into will bring. • Industrial rationalisation nificant since siglack of competitiveness on world market highlights the off creaming Japanese and sectors of British industry and wiped

COIL

stepping cumulative impact o depends on the the same process occurred here global striking and more illusory.

industry feeling financial as these arrangements continue, the City of percent drop in will benefit. But the fact that the whole phenomenon is outside its 2U UUU JObS. control only emphasises Britain's dependence on what is happening after SCCIl inability to produce home. The projected 20 000 City redundancies arising from Black Monday will be nothing compared to the decimation of the City which the next world financial crash ceeds da Some sectors of British manufacturing have notched up sigproductivity increases 1982 in comparison with strength their international competitors.

But while these increases have been widely celebrated by establishment commentators, they have not been able to compensate for Britain's percentage the and productivity. The productivity British gains are a statistical reflection of the earlier impact of the world in recession in Britain, and therefore of an earlier phase of rationalisation.

industrialised The major cutbacks incapacity and jobs in British manufacturing gains took place between 1979 and 1981.

Large parts of the most inefficient thirds that of were two million manufacturing jobs disappeared.

and the USA. This Now that most European powers up closures and redundancies in response to the reCessurel trends - five or more years after the statistical gap between Britain and the rest becomes both more

IS BRITAIN REALLY BOOMING?

Lawson in his Budget speech this week Just when what's left of British a record growth in productivity and protit, European competitors are Europe's the squeeze. largest electronics firm, the Dutch giant Philips, has announced a 20 prolls and I planning to rationalise production from 200 to 120 plants, and axe The real differenc between Britain and the rest will be this rationalisation. when it will be possible to compare like with like. Philips will remain a world leader in consumer electronics, while Britain's consumer electronics sector gave up the ghost in the early eighties. Even Alan Sugar's Amstrad company, often example of British regeneration, has only a minimal amount of production capacity has British manufacturing is certainly "leaner', but it is hardly fitter.

The growth in productivity is more a sign of weakness and contraction than an indication of The and dynamism. slump in British industry during the recession of the early eighties was so precipitate that the rebound inevitably takes the form of big increases in output competitiveness has improved since 1981. But the gap productivity British industry and the rest of the remains word enormous. Even taking the recent into British with manufacturing productivity is two Italy, half that of France and West Germany, and and even further behind that of Japan is reflected in the gap growth of British trade deficits —a measure of the relative competitiveness of British-produced goods with the rest of the world — at the same time as output has recovered Output in key electronics -the sector has doubled since 1980, but the trade deficit has more than trebled from £600m to f2 billion Across manufacturing as a whole the picture is much the same While manufacturing productivity has risen by 40 per cent between 1980 and 1987, the share of the home market taken by imports has increased from 28 per cent to 35 per cent. This trend was expressed in the manufacturing figure: moving into deficit in 1983 for the time the industrial since revolution. Even in the 'miracle year of 1987 the trade gap in an important sector like cars rose by three percent to f4 billion The effect of past rationalisation Britain's been to reduce manufacturing base to a handful of - ICI, Glaxo, household names Rolls Royce,

GEC

and British a small Aerospace. number of industries - aerospace, chemicals and defence electronics Britain has few names which rank as world competitors. There are a handful of other specialist producers — Jaguar luxury cars.

Courtaulds in textiles - but they no longer have the scale or resources to compete in the bigger markets that matter. For most of the eighties net investment in industry has been negative: spending on fixed assets has been insufficient to keep up depreciation. capitalist economy can prosper indefinitely unless it invests in new technology more efficient processes. Britain has international carmaker, no significant telethe next step

communications enterprise, firm that can compete semiconductors. Foreign firms account for an of Britain's increasing share manufacturing output. Britain is being used by foreign capital as an for world assembly the plant market, and especially the European market. Such companies have contributed to the growth of recent years. The 'British miracle' has little to do with home-grown entrepreneurial panache or technological innovation. The domestic appliance industry, which grew by eight per cent in 1986, is dominated Sweden's Electrolux and the USA's Hoover. Japanese investment accounts for the rise television and microwave cooker output. UK car output has risen because Ford and General Motors have transferred production here from Europe, and Peugeot have expanded their Nissan British operations. • Exploitation rates Higher rates exploitation, especially over the past year, have contouted to mercases mn oulpul and productivity. Whether they work in homeowned or foreign-owned concerns, in services or manufacturing, those with jobs have been put under more pressure performance. Improvements in productivity growth are the result, not of a but of technological revolution.

harder. workers working employers have introduced more intensive flexible work systems involving multi-skilling, production lines, multi-shitting and more overtime. In the firt 10 months of 1987, overtime working rose trom an average 8.6 to 9.7 hours a week.

Comparing. the ratio of company profits to wages and salaries to give an indication of the movement in the rate of exploitation, we find an increase from 25 per cent in 1980 to cent in the third quarter 31 per of 1987. The employers are stepping up OeRSve workers and seamen, civil servants and health workers - to make sure we pay the price for the crisis To sustain the of their system. myth of the British 'economic miracle, the bosses are compelled to adapt the workhouse conditions the Victorian to of cid economic landscape ot the Thatcher These measures ycals. alone cannot overcome the crisis of profitability, they can help keep their system alive at the expense of our living standards, working conditions, and health and safety. the next step In aRe The faster

THE BRITISH

ECONOMY HAS

ABOUT AS MUCH

Ca.-

CHANCE OF

BOOMING AS

THATCHER HAS OF

LOSING ALL HER

the

MONEY IN THE

TOMBOLA DRUM

6,000 SQ. FT.

TO LET

in "" Marcus King &C0 suue In bad shape THERE have been significant structural changes in the British economy over the past nine years. But they are not the ones Nigel Lawson likes to boast about. The component parts which make up the balance of payments say it all about what has become of British capitalism. The current account is an indicator of Britain's standing in the world in relation to goocs and services: in the years from 29ou to sool IL movea rom d £3 billion surplus to a £1.7 billion deficit. Let's look at the four main factors which underlie this dramatic shift.

ON THE 'VISIBLES

SIDE:

• Oil trade North Sea oil has been a godsend, moving from a zero balance in 1980, to £8 billion at the peak of 1985, to £4 billion last year. Production will now steadily decline and this contribution will be whittled away. • Other materials, including manufacturing The most significant secular development as Britain has been priced out of one market after another: from a £1 billion surplus in 1980 to a £14 billion deficit in 1987.

ON THE 'INVISIBLES'

SIDE:

• Services, including a major contribution from the City Increased from a surplus of £4 billion to £5.9 billion. • Net proceeds from the export of capital Over this period the lack of profitable investment opportunities at home has resulted in a threefold increase in direct foreign investment.

Contribution to the balance of payments up from zero to £5 billion. British capitalism has become a more parasitic system. It depends on a more exploited working class and on what it can reap from investment abroad or servicing financial operations around the world.

Today Britain's rulers preside over a system which is much weaker and less self-sufficient and one which cannot for much longer avoid going down yet again with one symptom of the *British disease'. The return of balance of payments crises will expose Britain's true position in the capitalist world. January's record trade deficit was inflated by new customs red tape, but when the figures smooth themselves out in two or three months the deficit won't be much better and we'll be back to runs on sterling.

Hence Lawson's 'cautious' budget. The chancellor wants to honour the Tory pledge to cut taxes, but he doesn't want to pump money into the economy which will only boost imports and hasten the payments crisis. he myth that the British ng our side for what is to come. 18 March 1988 • 11

to the Winter run-up Olympics in Calgary, ABC-TV bombarded Americans bold, red-white-and-blue gold medals adverts predicting all round for Team USA. Viewers tuned in with high hopes, but soon slumped in their chairs as one by one US athletes fell. Disappointed fans switched channels for good when their hockev team took a drubbing at the hands Soviets. By the end the USA had showing since 1936. This dismal performance another small reminder to Americans tHat mugs are not waat mey used to be. underlined the sense general unease about the USA's standing in the world which has DCIvasIVe Everything from the months. Winter Olympics fiasco to the fall of Christian fundamentalist preachers and the problems of the space programme reinforce the feeling of failure in the USA. A mood of uncertainty overtaken the American public. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll revealed that for the first time since the days of Jimmy Carter's presidency, most Americans are fearful about the future. This air of pessimism contrasts wiin the upbeat It's morning in America again' mood of the early Reagan years. In the early eighties Reagan pledged to restore America's selfconfidence, but as the nineties approach he finds his country soul-

SCO C2

JINGOISM

Reagan's tavourite target back in the 1980 election campaign was president Jimmy Carter's help- Iranian students who had taken embassy staff hostage in Tehran.

Reagan depicted Carter's indecisiveness as a sign of the moral malaise at the heart of US society, and swept into office on a wave of soul Hand Da basans Reagan promised to make America great again, by ending the so-called Vietnam Svndrome made the USA wary asserting itself internationally. He blamed the defeat in Vietnam on a lack of national resolve, dismissed the Vietnam Syndrome psychological problem that do d could be overcome by a return to the traditional small-town American values of John Wayne.

Reagan offered moral rearmamilitary rearmament abroad as the solution to the problem of US decline.

His government put the issues of pro-family morality, school prayer high and anti-abortion Reagan's homepolitical agenda. R eagan's second-in-command George Bush emerged from "Super Tuesday' - the string of primaries across the South the likely Republican candidate for president. The vicepresident carried 16 out of 17 states, making it difficult for his senator Robert Dole, to catch up.

Bush. the The tact that second-rater widely dismissed as a wimp' last month, has now become the most popular candidate, reflects the unimpressive and inconclusive character of the election contest.

CLOSER

While the Republicans moved towards singling out a candidate, the Democratic results were closer.

The colourless technocrat Michael Dukakis proved that he can support outside his base in North-east when took contests in Florida and Texas. But he is far short of the number of delegates needed to ensure nomination at the party convention in 12 • 18 March 1988 with of the Was ot has US spun mom-and-apple-pie philosophy sought to regain the innocence he claimed America had lost sometime in the late fifties. At the same time US rulers boasted that they would make America the leading power-broker world once Reagan's deall foreign policy was wielded against and small nations like tiny Grenada which could not answer back.

BLUFF

For seven years attempt to disguise the continuous process of US decline met with some success. Less than two years ago Americans, gripped with flagwaving patriotism, were celebrating of the the centenary Liberty with the biggest fireworks display in US history. It was the most flamboyant Fourth of July in Not so Super Tuesday July. Superman lookalike Albert Gore, conservative boosted ratings by five states. rival, win the

BUSH: WOODEN

THE USA CANNOT ELBOW ITS WAY BACK TO UNDISPUTED SUPREMACY

bluff had been called. intractable US economy.

CRASH

politics big-stick The Wall Street October revealed the fragility of an economy crippled by massive trade and budget entered office. American people a commitment to Reagan's "get the government off your back" through a supply-side revolution' Old Cuts. stration turned to federal borrowing on a massive scale and encouraged a much greater reliance on the Statue was the

USA

creditor. Eight years later it is the biggest debtor nation. The dollar, winning the Democratic nomination, Democrat. but his support is still impressive.

winning The black preacher secured 26 per cent of the super luesday vote.

behind Gore's 27 per cent and just ahead of Dukakis' 25 per cent. Well over 90 percent of blacks voted for him. whites. Many see him as a powerbroker at a split convention: in 1984 Jackson after a couple of his advisers were given jobs in the national campaign.

NOBODY

Before Super Tuesday Bush said that whoever was the convincing winner' the next US president. But nobody is dominating the contest, and it is far from certain who victorious in the election. What is clear is that whoever takes over the reins from the old cowboy Reagan, the next president already looks set to go down in history as a flop.

THE USA IN DECLINE

IT'S MOURNING

IN AMERICA AGAIN

In the closing months of his lame duck presidency Ronald Reagan's bluster about 'making America great again' has given way to a mood of anxiety about a nation in decline - James Malone reports living memory. By 1988 Reagan's The new mood of questioning reflects the problems facing the

FEARS

America's last crash deficits. When Reagan gave the houses. decline, Instead his admininame. *The Eagle" When Reagan came in, the world's largest possibility following terminal decline. post-Reagan era. Unlike Jesse Jackson has no chance of the East, along with 10 percent of backed Walter Mondale hostages

BLOW

clear and would become beat a will emerge foreign policy which was once thought to be as 'good as gold' and a symbol of US supremacy, collapsed to a record low at the start of this year.

economic troubles are widely talked about. Oliver Stone's film Wall Street, based on the Ivan Boesky insider-dealing scandal of 1986, is packing movie Paul Kennedy, a Britishbut pts dappened te write a book on US economic has become a household He has appeared on more American chat shows than Eddie Edwards. His bestselling book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, considers the of the US empire the British one into Kennedy has been catapulted from the ivory towers of the academic world into American living-rooms because his book keys into deep-seated tears about what lies ahead in the the earlier crisis of confidence in the seventies, today's doubts betray an appreciation that the problems will not be so easily tackled the second time around.

USA

suffered humiliating political defeats in Vietnam and the Middle economic recession appeared to many as an aberration.

In the eighties, political setbacks such as the rangate arms-torscandal have provoked further dismay - and today the USA s economic crisis is no longer seen as a temporary lapse.

Reagan's crusade to revive US met with fortunes abroad has failure too. In 1984 US troops had hasty retreat from Lebanon after the bombing of their Beirut base sent 242 Marines home in coffins. The invasion of tiny Grenada by a vastly superior US task force is the only clear-cut Reagan can celebrate. The revelations of arms transfers to Iran and the channelling of funds to the Nicaraguan Contras was a blow to the president's authority. Before Irangate Reagan had inflated the threat of mad mullahs running amok in the Middle East to win support at home for his militaristic stance. When his covert dealings with the Iranians were exposed, his of anti-terrorism was

COCLOC

shown to be a sham.

DISBELIEF

The contrast between the past and present images of America's space programme is another example of the advance of pessimism 1961, president in John F Kennedy US boosted prestige after the foreign " police debacle over Pigs the Bar invasion of Cuba, by promising to beat the Soviets in the space race.

By 1969 American astronauts were playing golf on the moon - the ultimate symbol of US supremacy earth. 1987 the ageing Reagan set the

OUL LO

• clast ignominy of Irangate by proposing that the USA shoot for Mars. But when his space experts cannot even get the much-vaunted shuttle off wants to ground, nobody Before the Challenger Know explosion in January 1986, space was optimistically reterred to as an endless American frontier. Now Americans look on in disbelief while Nasa announces that it will collaborate with the Soviets to grow protein crystals in space, and Reagan's Star Wars becomes more and more ot a

SWAGGART: SINNER

Reagan's attempt to purify the nation has backfired. His bornagain Christian following is still from reeling the 'evangelust' TV confessions of millionaire preachers. Michael Agnello of the New Life Church confessed to his flock that 'there's sin in the camp', and proceeded to repent his affair with abov Parton lookalike. Agnello's admission came hot on the heels of Jimmy Swaggart's tearful and televised 'I have sinned' performance before 7000 worshippers in Louisiana. Some people suspected the long revivalist spirit of the Christian empire was nothing but a cover for crime and corruption But the scandals damaging particularly because Reagan had staked the future of the of USA on the purification moral values. National unease about US decline provides the backdrop for the presidential election campaign (see box). All the candidates are conscious that this sentiment is widespread, yet they are no more able than Reagan to get to grips with the economic crisis which is at the root of US decline. Their main concern is to avoid embarrassment at all cost, and steer clear of scandal and corruption, adultery and drugs. None of the contenders dare come on strong with upbeat talk about 'morning in America'.

The Reagan years show that America's problems be - Calliol explained by personality failures nor overcome by political bluster The USA is in for a prolonged period of doubt and instability.

the next step

Washington's half-cocked "drug thugs' panic against Latin America's narcotrafficantes provides further evidence of the crisis of US foreign policy, argues Andy Clarkson atin American drug thugs' have almost displaced 'mad mullahs' top figures within the today. Washington's enthusiasm hunting

TOE

pedlars like Colombia's Medellin cartel follows. Nancy Reagan's "Just say no' anti-drugs crusade.

Her a thinly campaign was disguised crackdown ethnic minorities within the USA.

Now the US authorities have exported the idea, using a panic about Latin American cocaine suppliers as an excuse for reasserting US authority over the continent.

But Washington's scheme has - partly because run into trouble the Latin American drugs industry which it now rails against largely a US creation in the first place. At least since the Vietnam War, trafficking in hard drugs has been an integral part of US foreign policy in the third world.

In recent years Washington has used the drugs panic to justify hounding small Caribbean islands like the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos whose rulers had a hand in the cocaine trade. But not all drug traffickers are as bad as each other in the Reagan admini- For example, stration s Reagan has refrained from taking action against Mexico, any largest source of heroin marijuana exports to the USA, also responsible for handling up to 75 per cent of the cocaine trade. As the pressure mounted acmmisuanon to explain suca d selective approach, it became clear that the only difference is that Washington cannot risk alienating such an important ally as Mexico.

CONCESSIONS

Assistant secretary of state for narcotics Ann Wrobleski explained why Mexico has been exempted US economic trom salculous drug trafficking: against cannot afford to risk undermining a friendly regime and its replacement by communist insurgents."

This admission of the need to make politically inspired concessions to the drugs trade embarrassing enough. But where in Latin America, the drugs panic is having more severe for Washington's repercussions foreign policy. Senate committee exposés of the drugs trade have revealed that the CIA was behind the boom in hard drugs production in Latin America, the US Drug Enforcement and complicit Administration regulating drug imports the States. Manuel Noriega General heartily condemned

OCCI

Washington since he ousted the president of Panama last month.

In particular, congressmen have harped on about Noriega being a drug smuggler. But this is a dangerous line of attack for the USA to pursue. Noriega has been a CIA stooge since the seventies, and Nicaragua. the next step was the and the *We was simply carrying out normal Once procedures. in Noriega branched off on his own.

The CIA's drug trading activities Noriega have given alternative was soulCes which help him resist US pressure elseimpose austerity Panamanian masses. The CIA has been a major factor in the international narcotics trade since the Vietnam War. To help its local there, the CIA flew heroin from Burma and Laos to sell to GIs on furlough in Saigon. When the war in Afghanistan began in 1980, the into CIA expanded the traditional drug production of that region to help has finance mujahideen's Soviet struggle. heroin-refining factories operating in Afghan refugee camps within Pakistan.

ADVANTAGES

Drug trafficking has a number of for advantages operators. It matches a plentiful

THE USA

IS THE BIGGEST

DRUGS BARON

publicity of requesting a loan from business, congress. crucial one. Since access to successive been reluctant to send US troops ot income into action in third world troubleon the spots. Despite his rhetoric, Reagan is no exception. world policeman has been forced like the Afghan rebels and the collaborators US constrained by openly offering large-scale aid to these reactionary its surrogates, an unce-c-counter There are now 16 started to Latin America. the Since commodity prices in

CIA

TES

BEHIND REAGAN'S

WAR ON LATIN

AMERICAN

TRAFFICKING

This last factor is the of Latin America. the defeat in Vietnam, administrations have

INSTABILITY

Washington's new Instead, the US to rely on promoting surrogates Contras as 'freedom fighters'. But presidents have often been Reagan's congress from thing torture, forces. By sponsoring drug trafficking among Washington found of providing the money they need.

The problem is that things have has get out of hand in slump in world the the eighties, hard drugs have become almost the countries by only third world product for which there is a big demand at high prices.

and countr •neck

THE USA RAILS

AGAINST DRUG-

RELATED KILLINGS IN

COLOMBIA (LEFT),

WHILE CIA-BACKED

DRUG TRAFFICRING

FUNDS CONTRA

MURDERERS IN

NICARAGUA (BELOW)

DFS,

al c business classes, the military and the peasantry of the northern half The Medellin crew are the products of this CIAinduced narcotics bonanza.

on the war drug barons is an attempt to cope with the instability created by the economic crisis in Latin America It has nothing to do with any distaste for their brutal methods; Contras could teach the narcotrafficantes a two about murder, and rape

COLLUDUOR

Rather, the USA's own decline as a world power has raised questions about its authority even within its traditional "backyard". This problem been exacerbated by unrest among the starving masses Latin America, who are suffering under the impact of recession and imposed on their Western financiers. They are pushing even right-wing leaders to take action. token, against the USA. and past US policy of popularising the drugs traffic and installing some pushers in power, this campaign only raises the threat of more unrest. After reporting that many Colombian peasants regard the Medellin cartel as 'Robin Hoods' because they provide jobs, houses transport, Time magazine pointed Washington's out how anti-drugs crusade also risks destabilising Latin American If Colombia's political regimes: leaders are being challenged by the drug dealers, some of Panama's leaders are the drug dealers.

This problem has prompted some US commentators to argue that a campaign against prominent drug barons is counter-productive As one Latin American specialist Irom southern Illinois Universits put it: Why damage the whole [Panama] rid get of Noriega?'

BACKLASH

The recent exposés of the drugs trade have also created something of a backlash within the USA. Ever since the Irangate affair showed up CIA involvement in trafficking for the Contras, US backing for drug of barons nas become a source Viceembarrassing debate. president George Bush, the Republican frontrunner to succeed Reagan in November, is up to his in Noriega's Panamanian drugs racket. As a CIA director in the seventies, Bush had Noriega on his payroll. A former Bush aide, Admiral Daniel Murphy, helped Bush set up a special task force it Florida supposedly to combat the activities of Latin American drug smugglers. In fact, Murphy used the force to put pressure on the Drug Enforcement Administration and the US customs service to turn a blind eye to Noriega's drug trafficking operations. Even if this particular scandal is swept under the carpet, the political effectiveness of the anti-drugs crusade has been diminished now that leading establishment figures - including possibly the next US president - have been identified with trafficking And the Bush affair is only a small part of the scandal. From Florida to California, police forces and business comare involved narcotics racket. For instance, the Mexican internal security service which is in "close contact with the CIA, regularly bribes US customs personnel $50 000 a time to let their dope shipments cross the border.

CONCERN

The foreign policy implications The more serious.

CYCH

hounding of the Medellin Lords of Darkness' has acouired an extra urgency with the need to take the heat off the CIA. But behind the hysterical headlines lies a real concern at how many more Latin American products of the CIA's dope tratficking are going to turn "rogue'. As Time put it: 'With the drug merchants increasingly brazen, Colombia is slipping into the kind of lawlessness that may with someday risk comparison Lebanon's." The comparison with Lebanon, albeit 'someday, is a worrying one for Washington. The US marines out of Lebanon in were blowr 1984, a setback which exposed America's loss of control in the third world. Washington now fears losing its grip over its Latin American surrogates. Times have moved on since the turn-of-the-century days when president Theodore Roosevelt's could bring gunboat diplomacy the whole continent to heel with ease. A direct US intervention in Colombia, or even Panama, today would set Latin America ablaze create a crisis of historic Washington. The expresses Us 18 March 1988 • 13

FIGHTING FOR LESBIAN AND GAY RIGHTS

A DEGREE IN OPPRESSION?

Dr James Le Fanu, Eat Your Heart Out: The Fallacy of the Healthy Diet, Macmillan, £10.95 Over the past decade it has become widely accented that meat and dairy products are a major cause of disease and death in Western society.

Doctors and nutritionists have taken to the press and TV to tell us that health and happiness depend on a diet low in cholesterol and salt, and high in natural fibre and vitamins. The arrival of 'health foods' in every supermarket, and the preocupation with polyunsaturated fatty acids, E-factors, muesli and wholemeal bread show that the middle classes are convinced. The proletariat, however, remaining firmly attached to white bread, sugary tea and meat pies - or worse still, crisps and burgers, cone ana muk sulakes obviously needs more public health propaganda.

Dr James Le Fanu, a GP in Clapham and a medical debunk the notions that for our ill-health and that improve our chances of particular on the dietnecess Le Fanu opens with the striking contrast between today's medical wisdom and that of 50 years ago.

In the thirties, doctors Noel Halifax, Out Proud and Fighting: Gay Liberation and the Struggle for Socialism, Socialist Workers Party pamphlet, £1.00 This skimpy pamphlet on the history of the fight for gay liberation does not add much to the existing literature, but it does reveal an important confusion about the subject which is prevalent on the left today. Noel Halifax argues that working class lesbians and gays are the most oppressed. the least likely to be out, the ones most excluded from the reforms and gains of the sities and seventies...the fundamental division in society, gay society included, is one based on class.' Here he expresses a fundamental misconception at the heart of the Socialist Workers Party's strategy for fighting oppression. Precision is important from the outset in this mate womers are exploited in the sense that they are subject to a system which forces people, in order to survive, to work for an employer who takes the surplus-value they create.

Oppression is a different matter. Sections of society are oppressed in the sense that they are denied equal rights and equal treatment oy the state, and subjected to all the i-treatment which flows from this. The relationshio of exploitation is the basis of the division of society 14 • 18 March 1988 took to public platforms to declare that national survival depended on everybody eating more red meat, eggs, butter and milk the very same foods that are now labelled as potential killers. Through a detailed survev of the epidemiological evidence, Le Fanu exposes the lack of a sound case for either of these contradictory sets of dietary advice. He shows the remarkably unscientific atitude of doctors who accept olausible theories without adequate evidence and turn a blind eve to the results of investigations which do not fit in with their prejudices. There is a superficial appeal in the notion that Tal in te arel ls responsible for furring up the coronary arteries and causing heart disease. But it requires really major changes in the diet to change the level of cholesterol in the blood changes which have not occurred and hence cannot explain fluctuations in the incidence of heart disease. Furthermore major population studies with heart disease do not into classes. Oppression system is too crisisridden to guarantee the basis for equal treatment: enough for all. To survive, the ruling class divides and weakens the working class by treating certain

ALL HOMOSEXUALS ARE DENIED EQUAL RIGHTS

DOCTORS AND DIET

EAT YOUR HEART OUT

CHIPS WITH EVERYTHING WON'T KILL YOU

consume more fat than those without, and that there is no correlation between the amount of fat in the diet and the risk most important finding of these studies is that, except for those people with abnormally high levels of cholesterol as a result of an inherited biochemical abnormality, reducing the amount of dietary fat has no influence on the incidence of heart disease. Le Fanu concludes that 'the simplest and most powerful argument sections of society less scapegoating them. Clearly lesbians and gays who are working class suffer on account both of their sexuality and of their class; and working class lesbians reviews page against the diet-heart thesis is neither the circumstantial evidence in its favour, nor that it has been refuted by experiment; but that it is an outrage against common sense.' The fact maintain a constant adapting to a vast variety food intake suggests that important role in either causing or curing a major disease epidemic. It is when he turns to examine how such absurdity has been able to flourish in and gays will, for many reasons relating to their position in society, be their middle class counterparts to their oppression. This does not, however, make them "more oppressed', as if the midst of the intellectual sophistication establishment that Le Le Fanu identifies a crisis of modern medicine which has triumphed over number of other ancient amictons, out remains powerless before chronic degenerative diseases of the heart, circulation and joints. This may explain why the doctors are ripe for jumping at any scarcely explains why their Secious ticuries su readily command endorsement from governments and the media. Promoting changes in diet as the way to obvious appeal to Western governments which are concerned to encourage a spirit of self-help in all areas of societv. Even it it fails to result in cuts in dietary propaganda that health and happiness can be achieved in the kitchen rather than on the streets. People who are orint on packels or soud are not exactly going to build the barricades. oppression were a quantitative matter. Still less does it mean that so far as their opression is concerned there is ta fundamental division' between them and middle class lesbians and gays. This has important

COSCUBRO CRISE

posing such a division suggests that the oppression of nonworking class lesbians and gays is of less importance. But unequal treatment. respective of how it affects any given inolvidual, is someting that the working class cannot tolerate at any price. If we tolerate any instance of oppressive behaviour whether it De a rich rock star Deis dragged through the mud Decause ne ukes to sicer with young men, or a reactionary imam being fire-bombed at a mosque, or an Asian businessman beine beaten in the then we are

SECES

allowing the ruling class to get away with its divisive prejudices. How then successfull can we these prejudices within our own ranks? Indeed, by targeting rich and prominent gay men or black people, the authorities can give their prejudices a more It is significant that the diet-heart thesis and its related preocupations find the greatest resonance among the middle classes. The public sector professionals in particular are frightened and the prospect of growing social conflict; hey are attracted too by the offer of individual solutions to social problems. If heart disease, cancer and Aids are in a sense metaphors for a decaying order, low-fat, high-fibre diets, jogging condom/safe sex crusade are the bale images of petit-bourgeois resistance.

seized with a Messianic fervour to preach these irrational survival strategies to a working class which, having more pressing problems, remains studiously indifferent. Le Fanu has escaped from the medical survivalist bunker and made a bolt to the right.

As Celtarass trails off into incoerence his main concern seems to be to save the medical profession from the loss of prestige resulting from its involvement in a propaganda campaign which lacks basic scientific validity. What we should be asking is what else are they lying to us about? Mike Freeman populist appeal. I have heard left wingers on demonstrations chanting *Harvey Proctor is a spanker, Harvey Proctor is as if the real a wanker' crime of this Tory reactionary was his sexuality rather than his politics. If we set up decrees or opression we can expect more of It is easy to see how Halifax has strayed into this dangerous territory.

He wishes to play up the importance of 'socialism and the class struggle. But you can't take short cuts. The working class the divisions in its ranks when it detends ir practice all those who are ongressed. t will certainly not heal those divisions by abstractly invoking the class interests which all workers have in common. We know already that "black and white unite and fight' is a meaningless slogan unless the working class that unity by defending black people and by fighting racism. We should not follow Halla and the SWP in making the same mistake. Don Milligan the next step

NEW

DIRECTION

NEEDED

AGAINST

ALTON

IT HAS NEVER been more a one me fight for abortion rights, because never before has women's access to abortion been more under attack. David Alton's Bill to reduce the abortion timelimit from 28 to 18 weeks is now poised to go into its penultimate stage in the house of commons the committee where MPs will discuss and amend it before it comes back for the final vote. But even now its aims are being put into erect The City and Hackney Health Authority in East London is already implementing a 12-week time-limit on NHS abortions. As the health Cue steee and more health authorities are cutting back on abortion provision. A recent house of lords select committee report spelt out the limitations of private abortion clinics and charities. Even before the vote on the Alton Bill, the limited access to abortion granted by the 1967

OURE

RIGHT

ITS

ABORTION

FIGHT

THE

ALTON

BILL

the next step Abortion Act is being curtailed every day. Unless we build an effective movement to fight for abortion rights now, it will be too late for too many terminate an unwanted pregnancy. In this sense it is worrying that the Fight Alton's Bill campaign seems to have lost its initial impetus. Many local groups have more or less folded, and those still going have reduced their activity to occasional petitioning sessions. The anti-abortionists have been quick to take advantage of this lull, touting their new video (introduced by Charlton Heston) around the colleges. In some places they have succeeded in changing student union policy from a pro-abortion to a non-aligned one. We have to assess why the momentum has gone out of the FAB campaign if we are to relaunch the fight for abortion rights before it is too late. The most common explanation is that abortion is no longer the

WOMEN WED

ABORTION

NICHYS

ASEA

POSSIBLE

AS CATK

NECESSAR

Pandora focus of public debate. This does not explain anything. We cannot really depend on the media to provide the publicity on which we can build our campaigns. Of course it is a bonus if the issues we campaign around are in the news. But the only way to keep the issue of abortion rights on the agenda of political debate is by building a movement that people cannot ignore.

Five months ago FAB meetings were attended by hundreds of people. Today it is evident from the low attendances that the approach pursued by the nationa FAB leadership has tended to demobilise support for the campaign rather than give it a fighting focus One problem is that very little has been done with the arguments they need to fight the anti- Many potential allies in the fight for abortion a pave become discouraged as a result. AclIvIsts meeungs orlen aiscuss mue more unan who can put up posters. This is necessary, but not very stimulating. If it is the onlv thine on the agenda people will not be A recent caucus of cuccave on London FAB groups revealed that there was a direct correlation between the success of the FAB groups and the time spent that people were having arguing against Alton. Where there was political discussion people came back again and got involved. • Another problem is that for the first five months of the campaign there has mobilisation for groups to around. This week's Hateral demonsuation Is the first event which has given local groups a chance to muster their forces. Past events have had a largely symbolic character like the women only torchlit procession in January. photo-opportunity for the Rather than stressing the need to build a militant movement to take une onensive on te issue of abortion rights, campaign organisers have regarded mobilisations as an adjunct to parliamentary lobbying Even now, the emphasis of the FAB steering committee is on making parliamentary committees, and this weeks demonstration is seen as something of a sideshow. The only way to challenge the antiabortion climate created by the debate around Alton's Bill is to go on the offensive and mobilise the vast opposition that exists. The demonstration this week should be seen as an opportunity to relaunch FAB, by giving activists the political defeat the antiabortionists and win new allies in the fight for Anne Burton party page

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Tuesday 22 March 9.30am Demonstrate against the threatened deportation of Som Raj from Birmingham. Picket Thanet House, 231 The Strand, London WC2 Name Actress Post code Phone Send to BCM JPLtd, London WC1N 3XX Revolutionary Communist Party summer school Friday 22 to Friday 29 July Central London

IRISH SOLIDARITY

EVENTS

• London Irish Forum Wednesday 30 March, 7.30pm 'Ireland - Britain's Vietnam? Final forum in the Irish Freedom Movement series Room S53, St Clements Building, London School of Economics, Houghton Street WC2 (Holborn tube) • London March for Justice Sunday 20 March, 1pm March for the release of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four, and the repeal of the Prevention of Terrorism Act Called by the Irish in Britain Representation Group. Assemble:Speakers Corner, Hyde Park, march to Kilburn for rally Please send me tns for 12 months starting at No...

18 March 1988 • 15

MARCH AGAINST ALTON - SATURDAY

19 MARCH, 11AM EMBANKMENT, LONDON

ins the next step - 11 Revolutionary Communist Party Weekly Revolutionary Communist

WOMEN

NEED

Stop the Party Alton Bill

ABORTION

FE RIGHTS

LAST WEEK artist Rick Gibson was charged with 'outraging public decency with an exhibit featuring a pair of human fetuses at a London art gallery. If the authorities now consider a work of art which fails to regard the fetus as sacred to be outrageous and indecent, women Support our fighting tund. ET pay for your tns who dare to terminate an unwanted Liberal MP David Alton's attempt to abortionists success in shitting tre to abortion. Alton and his supporters have rights of the fetus and removed the question of women's rights from the by a house of lords select committee that time-limits on abortion were now climate in which women find it would serve no purpose.

'QUEER-BASHING'

BECOMES

LAW - see page 5 18 March 1988

AS EARLY AS

POSSIBLE,

AS LATE AS

NECESSARY

pregnancy can expect far worse treatment.

reduce the abortion time-limit from 28 to 18 weeks has focused media and public attention on the abortion controversy. The debate about Alton's Bill reflects the anticlimate of opinion towards an acceptance of further restrictions on women's right successfully elevated the question of the agenda of political debate. A recent report acknowledged this achievement by arguing unnecessary. The lords were so convinced that the state, the medical lobby and the professional moralists had established a increasingly difficult to get abortions, that they concluded that further legal controls We have to win back the initiative from

ABORTION

RIGHTS ARE

NOT NEGOTIABLE

- see page 4 40p the moralists. That means confronting their arguments head-on, and making the iccue of women's rights the locus of political debate. So far, the campaign against the Alton Bill has avoided this challenge. The anti-abortionists have been able to dominate the debate because our side has fudged the issue.

Alton played on people's emotions by presenting countless thousands of aborted fetuses as victims of the abortion laws Many of his critics tried to reply in kind by stressing that women who were carrying disabled fetuses would be forced to endure the trauma of giving birth if Alton's Bill became law. This attempt to make a play for public sympathy ignored the problems facing the much larger number of women who need abortions for other reasons.

Once Alton said he would compromise on the disability issue, the ground was cut from under his opponents' feet. Now that it looks likely that some form of Alton's Bill will become law, his opponents merely favour amending it to provide abortion on request up to 12 weeks. All down the line Alton's opponents have retreated, until they have lost sight of the issue at stake. Alton's insistence on defending the rights of the fetus means denying the right of women to play a full role in society. We have to say loud and clear that the only issue for us is defending women's rights. As long as the state denies women control over pregnancy, their second class status in society as bearers of children, domestic skivvies and part-time labourers will remain unchallenged. We need to fight for free abortion on demand to free women from the bind of child-bearing and child-rearing, and from domestic drudgery in the home. We need free abortion on demand to free women from economic dependence on men, and improve our chances of finding decent employment. We need it most of all to free women to play a wider role in political life, and to enable us to start organising against our oppression. Fighting for all these things means making a stand against the moralists and refusing to make concessions on abortion rights.