The Next Step: No. 14, 15 April 1988

VICTORY TO THE PALESTINIANS. -see page 2 Labour candidates are no match for Thatcher

"NEW

Revolutionary Communist Party Weekly Tory government has embarked on the most farreaching capitalist offensive in living memory.

There has never been a more pressing need for an effective opposition Yet the movement. election contests in the Labour Party confirm that the old opposition cannot answer the question of leadership posed by the political struggles of today. What are the Labour leadership candidates from left and right offering the working class?

SOMETHING

OLD:

In his challenge to Labour leader Neil Kinnock, Tony Benn has plenty to say about past battles but little to offer in the fight for the future. What is Benn's strategy for reversing the setbacks being suffered by ins the next step - 14 our class? I can't think of a single victory that did not begin with a defeat,' he says, 'whether you are talking about Dunkirk followed by VE Day or the Tolpuddle Martyrs followed by the repeal of the Combination Acts.' Benn's leadership strategy thus amounts to the observation that those who lost in the past sometimes won in the end. The problem of how we get from one to the other in today's conditions does not figure in his backward-

WE NEED

LEADERS

looking worldview.

SOMETHING

John Prescott is trying to capture soft-left and union support to unseat deputy leader Roy Hattersley. Prescott is linked with trade union bureaucrats who have adapted to the New Realism of bowing before the employers. He recently made an attempt to settle the ferry dispute, after being invited in by Support our fighting E1 fund pay for your tns 15 April 1988

NEW REALIST:

HOW BRITISH

TO SPLIT IRISH

see page 11 Job-Slashing P&0 boss Sir Jeffrey Stirling, who described Prescott as 'a total realist' who knows exactly what we are talking about. Prescott might understand the needs of a company which will sack thousands to make a profit. But so far as the needs of the working class are concerned, all he can offer is 'a crusade to change the function of the deputy leader of the Labour Party, - hardly the stuff to make the Tories turn tail.

TRICKSTERS TRY

REPUBLICANS -

40p

SOMETHING

BORROWED

FROM THE

BLUES:

Kinnock(and Hattersley, meanwhile, continue with their mission to adapt Labour policies to the Tories. They have already endorsed market • capitalism - as the most 'efficient' way to run society. Their latest plans include an open acceptance of permanent mass unemployment, by dropping their paper election promise to cut the jobless total by one million in two years. None of these candidates are worthy of our support in the contest for the leadership of the working class. We need a new opposition party, which can lead us into the battle against the Tories without either hiding in the past or adapting to the Thatcherite mood of the present (see pages 8 and 9).

he death of Tirza Porat, a 15year old Jewish girl from the West Bank settlement of Elon Moreh, has exposed hypocrisy of the Israeli establishment. Although she was the first Israeli civilian to die in the fourmonth uprising, her death led to calls more repression for even against the Palestinians.

Tirza Porat was on a nature

TORIES

SOW

DIVISIONS

AFTER months of playing into the Tories hands, the leaders of the NHS unions are now complaining about the government's attempts to divide the health workers.

Now that the Tories seem set to fund the nurses pay award in full, the union chiefs fear that they will do so at the expense of other NHS staff.

Figures leaked to the press 200000 ancillary workers and 12 000 professional and technical staff can expect a pay rise of 4.8 percent. By agreeing to fund the full award to the nurses the government hopes to split the ranks of health workers, and by restructuring and regrading the nursing hierarchy it intends to splinter the nurses too. *If the government thinks it can divide health workers by buying off nurses it is very 2 • 15 April 1988 Israeli state backs settler pogrom against Palestinians ramble with 17 other Israelis near the Palestinian Village Such tiyulim (trips) are designed to instil patriotic values and a love for Eretz. israel ('The land of Israel, including the West Bank and Gaza) in high school students. The heavily armed party would undoubtediy nave been seen as a threat by the Palestinian villagers.

When the Arabs found out the hikers much mistaken,' stated Cohse official Colm O'Kane. In fact the Tories have every reason to be confident. Union leaders like O'Kane have greatly aided the government's divide-and-rule strategy through their special pleading approach. From the start of the health dispute, the officials emphasised that the issue at stake was not health workers' pay but funding of patient care. They depicted nurses as ministering angels who deserved more charitable treatment, highlighted the special necus or particularly skilled sections of the service, and er the mass of ordinary nurses, technical and ancillary start on the side ines. Inis was an invitation to the Tories to pursue tell divisive pay strategy. Now that the government has accepted the Invitation, and the unions leaders' approach has divided were from Elon Moreh, one of the thuggish

THOS

settlements, their anger would have been intensified. village threw a few stones at the Israeli party as it approached. One security guard responded by firing 30 rounds from his M16 automatic rifle at the Palestinians, while the other opened up with an Uzi submachine gun. Palestinian youths, toll of at least 150 who have already died in the uprising.

JEERED

Initial reports claimed that the Israeli teenager was killed by a rock thrown by a Palestinian. This was seized on by right-wing Israelis, who demanded against the minister attended Tirza telling the mourners that 'God will avenge her blood', he was heckled for being too soft by the settlers General Amran Mitza, seen as a political liberal but the man who commands Israel's forces in the West Bank, was also loudly jeered army revealed that Tirza Porat died from shot-gun wounds inflicted by one of the Israeli security guards.

The report was organisation of blamed the Israeli settlers rather than the confrontation. All this made not the slightest difference, of course, to the official and unofficial reaction.

seething tide of hatred against the Palestinians increasing ever since the uprising began. The Israeli army blew up the homes of 13 villagers from Beita, at least eight of investigation results were leaked.

The authorities decided to deport eight from occupied Meanwhile outraged Israeli settlers are planning a mass return to Beita village this weekend.

WEAPON

Although they might disagree with mainstream Israeli opinion about the methods required to deal with Palestinian resistance, Jewish settlers on the West Bank are an armed wing of the Zionist state.

Some Israeli commentators have criticised the over-zealous settlers of Reita. for being a drain on the army's resources. Nevertheless, the settlements are subsidised by government grants, supported by most politicians and protected by the Israeli army.

They are yet another Israel's arsenal of terror against the Palestinians. Health workers need united action and demoralised the opposition, they are accusing the Tories of not playing fair.

How can we challenge the divisions among the health workers and unite our forces against the Tories? The answer is by emphasising what we all have in common - the need for a big pay rise and for a big Improvement in working conditions. A set of demands to maintain decent living standards and working conditions could provide the basis for overcoming the divisions that have long paralysed effective action in the health service. Unity around such demands could mobilise a powerful force against the Tories. If a million health workers were united, Thatcher would soon be compelled to concede to our demands. dewish Youths from the They killed two increasing the still harsher measures Cyprus. As Palestinians. When Yitzhak Shamir crisis funeral, Porat's Every latest twist

ISOLATION

A leaked report from the Israeli critical of the the outing, and Western Palestinians for the The young girl's death swelled the has been Western which Middle East. them after the bomb Palestinian activists territories. when British) car-bombing the 70 000 weapon in Daniel Nassim

WESTERN

HYPOCRITES AND

ARAB HIJACKERS

he British media have given a blow-by-blow account of une successive stages or the hijacking Kuwaiti of the Boeing 747 to Iran and press, the we go to still Two unfolding. Kuwaiti hostages have been killed from and there are rumours of an SAS the plane.

SLOLLE

news bulletin relates the and turn in the By focusing on the tense scenes on the tarmac at Larnaca airport have the media removes the hijacking from the context of the struggle for control of the Middle East. The powers always like to discuss the problem of terrorism in isolation from the conflicts which have given rise to it. Thus there has been scarcely any discussion of the background to the hijacking.

This would reveal that what the used West labels 'terrorism' is a reaction intervention in the The background to the latest hijacking is the imprisonment of 17 Arab militants in connection with US and attacks on the French embassies in Kuwait in December 1983. These bombings were organised by Shites, at a time American, French (and troops had invaded Lebanon to crush Shiite resistance to imperialist interference. Other Shite actions included the suicide of the US marine barracks in Beirut in October 1983,

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US a blow waich nastened ine withdrawal from Lebanon in 1984.

The current crisis must therefore be seen very much in the context of the West's attempt to stabilise the imperialist order in the Middle East by stamping out resistance the Arab The lasses 747 Boeing demand the hijackers for the release of the 17 Arabs imprisoned in Kuwait has featured in several hijackings in kidrecent years. and in the nappings of Westerners in Beirut.

i ne laenuty or tae mackers Is not yet known, but they are believed to connections with Shiite organisations in Lebanon.

It is not surprising that the Kuwaiti rulers, who are Sunni Muslims, have become a target for reprisals. The Kuwaiti regime has always taken a hard line against Shite militants, and is closely tied to the Western powers. Both Britain and the USA have the excuse protecting Kuwaiti tankers to justify their current warship patrols in the Gulf.

Western powers divided and redivided the Middle East for more than a century; they hijacked the whole of Palestine from the Palestinian people; they installed the illegitimate Zionist regime jn Israel; they created the sectarian state of Lebanon; they have robbed the masses of the Middle East of their rights; they are the cause of every act of violence and bloodshed. They have no right to preach to the oppressed Revolutionary Communist Party summer school Friday 22 to Friday 29 Jul Central London the next step

'UNLESANT: ROY HATTERSLEY

ony Benn insists that his challenge to Labour leader Kinnock - Neil about IS 'policies, not personalities".

Yet his most frequently expressed complaint is against the 'autocratic stvle of the Kinnock leadership team. John Prescott, on the other hand, makes no bones about the narrow basıs or hıs challenge to Kinnock's right-wing deputy Roy Hattersley. Prescoll: deciares aDout policies but about personalities to be precise, it's about the fact that Hattersley is unpleasant.

The insubstantial character of the leadership campaigns reflects the lack of a coherent political strategy wing of the Labour any Party today. Benn has begun his campaign by turning in typically stylish performances on television.

the relaxed and assured mediapose which Benn assumes cannot disguise the lack of any content in his campaign. He is keen complain about Kinnock adopting Thatcher's attitude of "Tina' *There Is No Alternative'. But he is less forthcoming in offering any alternative policies which could refute Kinnock's claim. Indeed, in Benn has acceted the pracuce logic of "Tina'. On BBC television on Sunday he admitted that he quiet during the general kept campaign and allowed election Kinnock to monopolise Labour politics, because he believed that this offered Labour its best chance of winning.

MEANINGLESS

Benn's campaign today is not a belated political challenge Kinnock's leadership. It is simply an attempt to rally the divided and demoralised forces of the Labour left. Asked what he stands all Benn can point to are Ior, meaningless generalities about the need tor democracv in Britam and lectures about the past. He has plenty to say about the Labour governments of the torties, sixties the next step

LABOUR'S

LEADERSHIP CONTEST

WHERE'S

THE BEEF?

What is the election contest inside the Labour Party about?

and seventies, but nothing to offer ordinary people for the nineties. At a time when the capitalist class is organising an offensive against our rights and living standards, Benn's rambling tour of the monuments of the British labour movement TeC adasl Prescott's decision to John the fray and rejoin IS, Hattersley says Labour today. His campaign has marinalised that of immediately Eric Heffer, Benn's running-mate on the Campaien GrouD the hard incicating of influence. It has also stirred up the internal conflicts among Labour leaders and exposed the shaky state of the party machine. But to •LO old Prescott hopes to use his trade union connections to block votes

SONC

deeply unpopular Hattersley, as a symbol of the disquiet over the Kinnock clique's shift away from the unions. But Prescott is at pains to point out that he has no political differences with Labour's drift to the right. Once Prescott intention to hallenge Hattersley purely tor speculation immediately began about whether leaders with no distinct political outlook, like shadow chancellor John their hats into the ring. Kinnock, meanwhile, Hattersley, leadership election a test of his authority. has they because meaningful idea between them.

RUMBLINGS

are all prepared to They Labour adapt Thatcherite climate politics. Their argument is about who should preside The process. Kinnock which deputy does he only programme to give his party a sense of purose. but he has not even got the strength of haracter to hold things together organi- Labour sationally. ineffective political leaders before.

But it has rarely been led by people who lack the presence even to keep their own shadow cabinet members in line. embarrassment for the Labour Party.

OCCausC tacy from the party's alternative to Thatcher. Rather, campaign exposes existence of any such alternative within Labour's ranks. While the candidates continue woolly platitudes unprecedented insults, Labour's policy lacks any direction and is being dictated by the pull of middle This opinion. leaked top-level proposals that will take Labour even Conservatives, by challenge paper policies as the commitment unemployment much dolul

CUL

million and disarmament. ticket, about anything, it is the irrelevance left's lack of this DalLy preoccupations to the real needs of the working class today.

'NO POLITICAL DIFFERENCES':

mobilise the against declared his personal casous. other Labour Smith, would also throw P oll tax has sided with making the deputy letter households None of these people political differences, don't -stage" have Labour, Liberal see further the to British is guaranteed over that rumblings against underle the contest suggest that.

• HOL

lack political had has well underlined memorandum controlled The election contests are a further council s This is not, as Kinnock claims, obtalneu Dy ws. distract

ALLCLLIU

the empty -Une

HOU-

It is swapping and personal will WO d class public termination week the press closer to the dropping such by one unilateral nuclear If Labour's election contests are and its internal evidence them to pay up.

PRETENCE

stages of the ducing respect For National Labour will

POLL TAX

EVASIONS IN

SCOTLAND

he reistraton forms began dropping through the of Scottish

BONES

week. The Scottish TUC (STUC) took the opportunity to launch its latest fivecampaign against the tax The 'all-Scottish' campaign includes Scottish Natonalist and councillors the same action councilors who voted to send out the registration forms and opposed calls to defy the Tories' poll tax law.

The campaign-by-stages approach to demoralise opposition to the poll tax. The first return to sender gimmick, where people are advised to send the form back with requests for more information and enquiries about rights of appeal. The tactic is not designed to stop the implementation oo hol lp a minis razi ye administrative procedure in council offices.

This approach is hypocritical as ineffective, point confidential by trom Labour- Strathclyde regional assessors' department The memo makes clear that the same party which is pretending to oppose the poll tax is piling the pressure on its snooper squaus to get results duties essenanaste allocated be undertaken with the wcmost angence and quite trankiy.

anything less will not be acceptable or tolerated. Poor and sub-standard may of employment or withdrawal or reduction of payment."

in pune local Labour leduers posture about opposing the poll tax, in private they are busy knocking the poll tax police force into shape. In their commitment to carry through the dictates of Tory law, Labour leaders will brook no insolence from its vietims. The memorandum goes on to point out how local councils intend to use snoopers gather against individuals and drag them through the courts to get The STUC strategy steers clear of any tactic which might bring the ofticial labour movement into a collision with the law. campaign involve asking politiciams to amend the poll tax bill for England and Wales in parlament, asking councils to give the minimal coperation in introthe legislation, asking churchmen and other dignitaries to front a summer protest jamboree.

The official opposition to the poll tax is characterised by its cringing and its hypocritical pretence at defiance.

STUC general secretary Campwere differences within the 'all- Scottish' alliance against the poll instance, the Scottish Party raised possibility of organising a campaign of non-payment of the poll tax. This has caused consternation among the other parties. But given that SNP councillors have capitulated to the fashion

UTEL

Christie is colleagues, 'nonetheless confident of all-party agreement. When it is a choice between upholding or breaking the law, all sides of his Scottish alliance constitutionalism opt 10] against confrontation. Smash Tax the pol Campaign is bulding support for a campaign of non-implementation in Glasgow. The • tirst

SLCD

organise collective resistance registration. We will be protesting at a meting of the council's snooper squads on Monday. If you want to get involved in this kind of direet with get touch the campaign at: PH8 340 West Princes Street, Glasgow. Come to the lobby 5pm on Ivonda y Borough Court Halls, Street, Glasgow City Chambers.

Fran Donald . • •• How to beat it UNITED action by council workers who are being told to imlement the community charge and working class people who are expected to pay it is the only way to beat the poll tax.

• ACTION NOW

Bulding a campaign of nonimplementation does not mean waiting until the tax is about to be levied before we do anything. We must use the registration process to start bulding opposition to implementation now

• COLLECTIVE

RESISTANCE

Many people will express their anger by destroying registration forms or filling them in incorrectly. But it would be far more effective " people who want to fight the poll tax got together in their own areas to agree on a collective response to registration and to discuss how to build a non-implementation campaign. If we act together we can maximise our impact.

• BREAK THE TORY LAW

A commitment to defy Tory legislation and defend those ictimised for non-payment or non-implementation must be the starting point for effective opposition to the poll tax.

• NON-COPERATION

Council workers drafted in to process pon Lax tesistation should refuse to coperate. We SHe enGiee redeployment into departments MT aTeSamea ana overworked. All victimisations should be vigorously fought.

• DEALING WITH SNOOPERS

Council workers should release information about when snoopers are going to hit certain areas so that local antipoll tax groups can organise against them. There are many ways in which we can keep them from coming back. We should be clear that people who accept the blood-money of 40p for every filled-in registration form are making a conscious decision to scab on the working class. They should be treated accordingly. 15 April 1988 • 3

NEW READERS

What we fight for he working class in Britain and throughout the West has suffered a series of setbacks These in recent setbacks have strengthened those who argue for moderation, 'realism' and strategy defensiveness. The Revolutionary Communist Party takes a different view. We believe that these setbacks are the responsibility of the old parties and union machines of the official movement. Labourist tradition has exhausted itself and can no longer relate to even the most modest aspiration of the working class. The exhaustion of Labourism in no way undermines the potential of the working class to change the world. The construction independent working class movement. Only a movement which recognises that the interests of workers are irreconcilably opposed to those of the employers can fight effectively in the struggles ahead. For

RCP.

working politics cannot be reduced to trade the affairs of the workplace. stand on every issue and express an independent point of view if we are to liberate ourselves. The fatal flaw of British Labourism is that horizons

SERGENC

WO KEES

economic matters, while it allows the emplover class to monopolise political debate. Workers define every problem from our point of view and fight for the rights of every section of society if we are to constitute a politically independent class. While the RCP supports the fight for real reform or improvements in the lives of working class people, we believe that no durable gains can be won within capitalism. The RCP argues capitalism provides the necessary precondition for the liberation of the working class and of society as a whole. The British state exists to protect the wealth and privilege of the The aim of the RCP is Capitalists. the destruction of this institution which maintains the conditions for exploitation. state cannot used for progressive ends. The attempt to use the soft side of the state - oca government, inner-city partnership, police authorities simply legitimises the state as a whole and thereby strengthens the authority of the main coercive instrument of the capitalist class. The RCP believes that workers British workers share the same interests as the exploited in other countries. British workers have nothing in common with the employers and must resist the appeals of patriotism chauvinism. As internationalists we recognise that the enemy is at home.

Since Britain remains an imperialist power around the world, the only international role it can play is that of the oppressor The class struggle is inextricably 4 • 15 April 1988

START HERE

IST PARTY

МОШТОНАКІ СО linked the struggle against imperialism. The RCP supports all anti-imperialist struggles.

who live in the imperialist heartland have a special duty to back those fighting against the British oppressor.

Thus we fight for the immediate withdrawal of British troops from for Treland determination. We opposed Britain's colonial war in the South Atlantic, and support the return Malvinas islands to Argentina. We British and the oppose interference in the Middle East. We destruction support Zionist state in Palestine and of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

We uphold the same principles in every struggle against imperialism.

The RCP is a fervent opponent of all torms or brush militarism, nuciedr and 'non-nuclear' alike. The RCP believes that the fight against oppression is central to the construction an working class movement. must defend the oppressed if we are to fight for our own liberation. This is why the RCP is wholeheartedly committed to the fight class #he struggle emancipation of women is another fundamental issue for the working We unreservediv oppose ant C25. discrimination form lesbians and gays and call for the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

Workers must take a stand on these issues, not out altruism, O1

FLU

because it is in our class interest te fullest extension of fight for the democratic rights. must need Workers sations capable of defending terests. the calling orgalsation: the labour movement singularly unsuited for this task. The RCP believes that the Labour Party is a bosses' organisation that should be fought and exposed. Despite its of working class Labour Party has always followed the dictates of the Whenever Labour has been in office, it has always betrayed the hopes of workers. The RCP is against giving any electoral support to Labour.

Workers need a party that is 100 per cent our own and only responsive to proletarian interests. The heavily bureaucratised and incapable any of representing the aspirations of their The RCP argues that rank and file trade unionists should fight to take control of the movement. Trade unionists should organise across the workplace and industry and demand that we run our affairs. Rank

OWLE

committees organised industry-wide basis could ensure truly their members. The RCP's britain and inter- We believe that this nationally. and perspective is no less essential in Europe Eastern Union than in the West. Only the working class has the capacity to liberate humanity. contribute practically realisation of this objective.

• 'A woman's place is in the nome, vectarea bearorastire week. The sooner some of he went on, 'the sooner we could get some of these lawiess children off the streets.' Following in the moral policeman James Anderton, Dyer has taken it Workers upon himself to be a mouthpiece for Thatcherite rectitude. rates, the Tories are selfof the Western independent Workers against for the against but organiour are the capitalists. Mark Reilly will round up events in the struggle for Irish freedom, unions to help counter the distortions which play an important part file propaganda on an • DelongTO aim is social spokesman cease its military activities, and the Soviet free from British influence.

Our job is to

• MONDAY

to the speculation

POLICING THE FAMILY

MORALS AND

MISCARRIAGES

chief constable Alan Dyer last these women realise that being a housewife is a full-time job,' By blaming working mothers for the supposedly rising crime

THATCHER

PAYS POLICE

TO

STARVE KIDS

MINERS' WIVES LEARNED THAT THE POLICE ARE OUR ENEMY IN 1984-85

THE IRISH WAR

Beginning this week, in the erate' rally in Distributive Unions, plicity in British government of the North. • SUNDAY 3 April: At the annual rally in Belfast to commemorate the 1916 Easter Rising, Sinn Fein Martin McGuinness declared that the IRA would not 'even for a moment until it achieved its exchange objective of Irish self-determination, Amid April: that conference encouraging people to take sorting out society's problems.

They know that most working class women have no choice but to work to make ends meet, and that it is unrealistic to expect them to give up their iobs to become full-time lal.

keepers for their kids. But they are keen to present uvenire delinquency as a problem more pressing even than that of unemployment or poverty, and to encourage parents to develop an unhealthy preoccupation with the moral welfare of their children.

• Mrs Karen Young, a

KEE

Your Cont

MOLE

involving all constitutional parties Six Counties was on the cards, born-again Loyalist 'mod- Peter Robinson MP told a Belfast that East the coffin, not the conference table was the place for the IRA.

At the conference of the Irish and Allied Trade John union Mitchell refused to withdraw his allegations of trade union comi recans from nationalist to Loyalist areas • TUESDAY 5 April: US senator Joe Kennedy, son of Robert, on a tour of reland to promote the Social Democratic and Labour Party and to improve his own credentials among Irish-American voters, came face to face with the British occupation. The brief said more about the British state's attitude than the weeks of hot air about progress towards a political solution.

Soldier: "Why don't you go back to your own country?" pregnant housewife from Blyth In Northumber and. discovered that staying at home won't protect workins class tamlie: from police violence. At 6am on 27 March a dozen police officers smashed down Mrs Young's front door with a wooden post while she, her husband Colin and their dauchter sarah Jane were asleep. The police claimed they were hunting for coal supposedly stolen from nearby down after the miners' strike.

They proceeded to drag Colin out of bed before taking him away, and ten set dooul his wife. The police pinned Karen Young against a wall by her throat, threw her on the sofa repeatedly and shouted abuse as they pushed her around. She and the house was burgled while she was away. She developed abdominal pains four hours later, was admittea to nospital the next day and miscarried a day later. Her husband has not been charged with any offence.

THATCHER

SNATCHED OUR MILK

NOW SHES

STEALI

David Kourke

BREAD

Joe: *Why don't you go back to yours? Soldier: "This is ours.' • WEDNESDAY 6 April: An IRA booby-trap explosion killed a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment near the Fermanagh/ Cavan Border. He was the sixth member of the UDR to be killed this year. Senator Kennedy continued his tour of the Six Counties.

Near Derry, Royal Conster man incensed by his Stabla impertinence to the squadale grabbed his gun holster rather than shake hands with the American.

The Democratic Unionist Party also refused to speak to him. For his part, Kennedy refused to speak to Sinn Fein. But he discovered, as many have before him, that there is no middle ground in the Irish War.

• THURSDAY

7 April: A Gibraltan count rejected an amateur photographer's request that police return his film of the assassination of three IRA volunteers by the SAS. State lawyer Ken Harris told the court that it was 'very much in the interests of security that these pictures should not be revealed...

The safety of certain personnel is very much in peril. Fear of IRA retribution against British gunmen is very much greater than the possibility of an official inquiry.

A UDR major was injured in a gun attack at Clogher, County Tyrone. Minutes later, shots were fired at an RUC man in the village.

the next step

the next step

AND CLASS

POLITICS

ON Monday night's Panorama, former Tory Party chairman Norman Tebbit attacked Prince Charles for toying with dangerous ideas about unemployment and inner-city regeneration. Tebbit's assault on the heir to the throne shows that the Tories don't care whose toes they tread on in the drive to redefine the acceptable limits of political debate.

The government is demonstrating how far it is prepared to go to banish all dissent. We should heed the warning about the sort of nononsense opposition that will be required to stop it. The aggressive behaviour of Tebbit and other top Tories has puzzled many media commentators. In the past, a government in the position now occupied by the Thatcher regime would have been relaxed and confident. After all, it is only nine months since the election in which the Tories won a parliamentary majority of more than 100 seats.

Since then, their position has been further strengthened by the collapse of the opposition parties into a state of impotency and turmoil. Yet the Thatchers and Tebbits still feel the need to lash out at all those who question them, as if their backs were to the wall. This is not just a demonstration of Tebbit's bloodymindedness. It is a reflection of the Tories' understanding that they are operating in new conditions, in which they cannot afford to respect old rules.

Since they came to power in 1979, the Tories have been contending with the chronic weakness of British capitalism. The last Labour government had made a start combating the effects of the recession which set in from 1973, by holding down wages and cutting public spending. But the profit system was in dire straits when Thatcher crossed the threshold of Number 10. The Tories recognised that the capitalist class could no longer afford to abide by the conventions, such as extensive government-employer-union cooperation, which had characterised the post-war British system. They broke from the tradition of class peace known as 'consensus politics', and adopted more direct methods of the next step Revolutionary Communist Party weekly

THE PRINCE

domination. The trade unions, local government, the unemployed, oppressed groups and anybody else who didn't fit the bosses' bill have since come under the hammer, as the government attempts to rearrange society on terms more advantageous to the weakened capitalist class. The superficial boom of the past couple of years helped to disguise the deep-seated economic problems facing the British establishment. But it only postponed the day of reckoning. The Crash of last October marked the effective end of that respite, and signalled the drift back towards full-blown world recession.

The Tories need to go much further if their class is to weather the storm.

This explains the government's increasingly open discrimination against ordinary people and in favour of the capitalists, as demonstrated in last month's budget and this week's vicious cuts in welfare benefits.

Against this background, the Tories cannot afford to rest on their political laurels just because the official opposition has gone into a state of paralysis. They have to create a new and even harsher climate in which they can force through unpopular policies. Thus the Tories need to keep up the attack against all of the old ideas and institutions, to recast the mould of British politics in their own image and stamp the authority of the ruling class on every aspect of society.

Their aim is to militarise and brutalise British politics to the point where all dissent from the Thatcherite view can be condemned as unpatriotic subversion.

The Prince of Wales has now joined the growing list of traditionally nonpolitical dignitaries and bodies which the government has sought to bring under its influence. No stone of the old and 'soft' structures of society can be left unturned if the Tories are to build their Brave New Britain on a firm foundation of capitalist common sense. This is why Tebbit and other hardline ministers have spearheaded the attack on traditional pillars of the British establishment which have dared to question their new methods.

The Church of England and the BBC considered sacred. wife, that has so upset the on all sides of the house of of individuals. suggesting that the prince's for anything' himself. Publisher Revolutionary Communist Party, BM RCP Printer Morning Litho Printers Ltd (TU), 439 North Woolwich Road, London E16 Annual subscription rates • Britain and Northern Ireland t26 • Europe and Irish Republic 234 • North Africa and Middle Easi (airmail) £34 • Americas, Asia Central and Southern Africa (airmail). E37 • Australasia, Japan (airmail) £40 • Outside Europe — AlI destinations (surface mail) £33.

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ISSN 0144 350 X 15 April 1988. Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office.

No 14 have already been savaged. (Tebbit's success in taming the Beeb was reflected in his use of Panorama, the primary target of his venom in the past, to launch Monday's anti-Charles campaign.) Now the Tories have gone for the Windsor clan, to make it absolutely clear that nothing can be What is it about Prince Charles, popularly seen as a sensitive wimp who talks to plants and not to his government? The prince's pet causes are the environment, architecture, and the inner cities. He has begun espousing these causes publicly and in liberal terms. He recently told a meeting of American architects that *if the money motive for development is the only serious force in urban renewal, then we shall not succeed.

Building is about more than just money and market forces. This sort of speech does not quite qualify the prince for the title of Bolshevik firebrand. A few years ago, it would have been accepted as fair enough commons. Today, however, it is viewed with suspicion as a challenge to the Thatcherite orthodoxy.

The crime of Charles has been to imply that unemployment, bad housing and pollution are social problems with social causes, which society has a responsibility to solve.

This is anathema to the Tories. They have presented all social problems as symbols of the nation's moral decline, brought about by the crimes • They have elevated the notion of individual responsibility into an article of faith. It has served as the basis for cutting social and health services, excusing attacks on collective organisations like the unions, and justifying the grab-whatyou-can methods of modern bosses.

In the last week alone, Thatcher has attacked unemployed people who are too idle to work for low pay, her social services minister Nicholas Scott has told single parents that their families will now have to support their children, and a police chief has blamed women who go out to work for rising crime rates (see opposite). This is all part of the cult of individual responsibility, blaming the oppressed for their own plight and absolving the system. In suggesting that communities might be more important than an individual capitalist's financial returns, the naive Charles has unwittingly sinned against the new morality. Tebbit rubbed this point in on Monday, 'dangerous and almost 'socialist solutions' were a product of the fact that the heir was jobless' and 'has not been able to take responsibility What a Tory animal like Tebbit thinks of a redundant royal like Charles is, in itself, of no interest to the working class. Its significance lies in the signal it sends out about the sort of government we are now up against - one which is playing by new rules and which respects only the laws of the marketplace. The additional problem we face, however, London WC1N 3XX @ copyright Editor: Mick Hume is that the official opposition refuses to recognise how far things have gone. Each time the Tories seek to undermine an established institution, the leaders of the Labour Party rush to defend the ruins of the old order.

They have upheld the spurious "independence' of the Church and the BBC. Now they are defending Charles against Tebbit. In its desperation to hang on to the past practices of British politics, the Labour Party has become a conservative squire to the Prince of Wales. If this is all the opposition we have got, the government is assured of an easy victory in battles like those over benefit cuts and the poll tax.

'It should not be a political issue was how Labour's rural affairs spokesman David Clark responded to the Tebbit attack on the prince's behaviour this week. This is the voice of the past, which still believes that there are certain things which a gentlemen does not discuss in public. But Tebbit is no gentleman.

He is a representative of a capitalist elite which must now politicise every issue on its terms, break all of the old taboos and bring everybody from princes to paupers within the scope of its class struggle for survival. It is a war now, and there is no point asking the authorities to return to the methods of polite diplomacy. We must organise to defeat them.

There is only one perspective from which we can match Thatcher and Tebbit. That is by emulating their contempt for the outdated institutions of British capitalism. We need feel no loyalty towards the BBC the C of E or, least of all, to the royal family. They are all servants (if temporarily surly ones) of the class which holds us in chains. Our only interest is in defending our people.

To do that, we need to organise the working class under its own banners to meet the Tories in a no-holdsbarred struggle for power.

The problems facing the working class are social problems, brought about by the exploitative workings of the capitalist system. The solution to them lies through collective action by working class people against the government and the system it protects. There is no room today for sentimentality or nostalgia about the good old days of consensus politics.

They weren't good, and they are gone forever. The working class has every interest in breaking free from the stifling constraints of the old consensus which reconciled us to the capitalist order, and in engaging in the sort of open struggle which the Tories now seek. Our class has the power to win that struggle. But only if it fights behind a clear political strategy based on an understanding of what is at stake.

If we join the Labour Party in hiding behind Prince Charles and dreaming of the past, we will lay ourselves open to a sustained assault of which social security cuts are only the first stage. But if we step out into the class struggle and fight for the future, Tebbit and the panicky Tories could really have something 'dangerous to worry about.

15 April 1988 • 5

BOTHA-INTERNATIONAL TERRORIST

hotographs of veteran ANC activist Albie Sachs crawling were splashed across British papers last week. Sachs was critically injured by a bomb planted in his car in the Mozambican capital of Maputo.

Nobody doubts that South African agents planted the bomb and the apartheid regime has not bothered to issue a denial. The attack is only the latest South African atrocity in Mozambique. Apartheid president PW Botha's MNR terror gang has reduced the poverty-stricken country astalc olstarvano and •near collapse. The murderous attack on Sachs is part of a general escalation in South African attacks on ponents at home and abroad. In the face of criticisms from the far right that his government has gone "soft" on the black resistance movement, Botha has moved fast reinforce his image a hardliner. • Last month South African killed the assassins

SHOL

ANC's Paris representative Dulcie September in a street shooting in the French capital. • South African hit-squads murdered seven people in neighbouring Botswana over the past month. Most were bystanders shot down or cut to pieces by exploding grenades. The Botha regime has carnage on

TUS CO

grounds that its agents were in hot pursuit of alleged ANC master- FIVE West German flight personnel working for Lufthansa are trying to establish a legal right to refuse to assist in deportations. The five, members of the transport workers' union OTV, refused work on flights used to deport refugees from West Germany to their countrv of oriein. Their union is now backing a suit in the Labour Court, seeking a ruling which will allow them to refuse to work for reasons of conscience. Lutthansa fles many deportees and extradited prisoners out of Germany.

Security personnel put the

GORBACHEV: 'GUARANTOR'

6 • 15 April 1988 UUdo i mind, Solomon Molefe. • Last month ANC exile Mazizi Magekaza was the Lesotho with gunshot alter a run-in with the Lesotho police in which one Deportation-battles in West Germany victims of German immigration law on the planes, often forcibly. The Lufthansa employees suspect that deportees are imprisoned and persecuted when they are dumped back In the countries escape. Many are arrested and taken away immediately upon landing • few are ever seen again. The Lufthansa personnel want nothing to do with this inhuman process, and are seeking protection against victimisation. Meanwhile, West German interior minister Friedrich Zimmermann has drafted s we go to press, it appears that an agreement 115 000 @troops from might be signed on Afghanistan and Pakistan would sign the accord, Union and the USA as 'guaran- Soviet

LOS.

Gorbachev says that his troops would begin to leave on 15 May.

No real headway during the past six weeks negotiations in Geneva, but the THE LONG ARM OF THE APARTHEID STATE REACHED OUT AND MAIMED ALBIE SACHS IN MAPUTO LAST WEEK hospitalised wounds coup organised by of his

AUF WIEDERSEHEN?

proposed changes to the immigration rules which will mean more handcuffed No peace in Afghanistan Kremlin has been trying hard to salvage an Soviet removal by the 13 April deadline.

The

USA

Afghanistan has Thursday. intransigent talks, reflecting its reluctance to with the Soviet lose the provided by the presence of the 'evil empire in Atghanistan. Even Vanal if the signing comes off, a lasting settlement seems beyond reach.

Was of conflicts mean that no paper deal can bring peace to the country.

A SOUTH AFRICA

comrades was killed. The Lesotho government has been openly pro- South African since a military window the Botha minister Leabua Jonathan. Police later that night.

'DEGRADES'

The already withdrawal between them direction accord on troop king, been the most favour a Islamic republic. parucipant mn unc

UNSTABLE

propaganda advantage Secondly, that outside Firstly, the unresolved internal signed or not. there yet guarding Maqekaza in hospital placed his bed beneath a large making it simple for South African assassins to execute him in a burst of automatic gunfire passengers on Lufthansa flights to the third world.

Zimmermann's proposals centre on the idea that the 'public interest must always come before the 'affairs of foreigners' - that is, the West German state has the right to do as it sees fit with immigrants.

Under Zimmermann's draft plan the right to settle would no longer be the automatic consequence of a certain length of stay in the country, but would be the exception.

After an immigrant had lived in West Germany for up to eight years, the authoritles would decide whether he could stay or be deported. Only children under six years of age would have the right to join their parents in West Germany; the authorities could use their discretion to decide the fate of those aged between six mujahideen rebels have deal denounced the because it maintains the pro-Soviet Najibullah regime in power. The resistance fighters, themselves split to ine into seven rival factions, remain united in their opposition to any torm of soviet-intluenced govern Kabul. They vow to continue fighting. But if a Soviet begins, the conflict over the future of Afghanistan will undoubtedly increase. The Muslim "traditionalists' are now talking of

USA

bringing back the exiled Afghan while the "fundamentalists" more Iranian-style the the strategic importregion. ance of this unstable region means interference will continue whether an agreement is If some Soviet troops start to leave, Gorbachev could still send • In a parliamentary which was blunt even by South African standards, law and order minister Adriaan Vlok admitted that 105 people have died in police custody over the past year. Fifty of these were said to have committed suicide for a euphemism murdered under insatance terrogation - while eight were allegedly shot attempting to escape These figures were released the day before the South African police force celebrated its anniversary in a blaze of publicity. Botha more

-BOW

concerned with boasting a hardline image at home than with cleaning Despite the embarrassment its brutality

SO CEC

allies in Europe, South Africa is likely to continue its campaign of

DOLCILS

apartheid. Besides a few token complaints from European governments. botna can rest assured that will be little comeback whatever he gets up to. There are CYCH BUSBICIOnS or cousion oy Western governments in atrocities like the of Dulcie September, for which nobody has been apprehended the French police. The Botha regime remains the ultimate guarantor of Western investments and influence in southern Africa and no Western its capacity to police the region.

Russell Osborne Zimmermann also wants to extend the list of reasons for deportation, to tighten up state control over immigrants. Anybody who 'degrades' the Federal Republic or the 'constitutional organs of the state or the lander' could be deported. Immigrants who have claimed unemployment benefit for more than a year are also in danger; until now only those living on benefits permanently have been lable for deportation. It all adds up to a charter for more deportations and tighter political control over the lives of immigrant communities.

Zimmermann's plans are likely to cause another row in the coalition government. But whatever the fate of these specific proposals, they certainly indicate the increasingly racist direction in which the West German state is moving. Fenna King them straight back in if renewed fighting breaks out. Moscow has refused to accepi Washington's demand that it stop all assistance Najibullah regime after troops come out The Americans will not guarantee any accord which denies them the right to arm the mujahideen, whom they see as proxy forces. The call for "positive symmetry reveals that the last thing the White House has in mind is peace. *Positive symmetry' means that the will increase military supplies to the mujahideen to match continued Soviet deliveries to Najibullah. No agreement can paper over deep cracks in divided Afghanistan turbulent If anything, the tensions caused by a history of Western and caaccreated o the Soviet invasion will increase in the near future. James Malone the next step

TEACHERS

AGAINST

THE CLAUSE

I TOOK part in the debate about the Clause at last week's National Union of Teachers' conference. The motion proposing opposition to the Clause was moved by a lesbian teacher who pointed out that, in speaking out at conference, she was putting her job on the line. She received a standing ovation from delegates, and the right-wing leadership of our union found it very difficult to argue for capitulation to the Clause in such an emotionally charged atmosphere. At this point we ran out of time but returned to the debate on the last day of conference. The motion included a commitment to defend lesbian and gay teachers who come out to their pupils (the issue in the recent Bradford victimisation), or teachers who provide pastoral support to lesbian and gay teachers or who promote positive images.

The executive's amendment proposed deleting this. Their alternative was to declare the NUT's opposition to *discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation' carefully worded to avoid confrontation with the law.

When a vote was taken (by a show of hands) many of us thought we had defeated the amendment. But the chair declared that it had won. We could have demanded a card vote, but with only a couple of hours of the conference to go we would not have got the result in time to vote on the main motion, and the result would have been no policy at all. The decision was, therefore, accepted reluctantly and we voted on the main motion, which now consisted of the executive's amendment.

THE CLAUSE

AND CENSORSHIP

TORIES on Haringey concil are demanding Matters bookshop under CLO eLOCe Government Act which Das COULO UI homosexuality. he witch-hunt adainst Reading Matters began

MAOCV

Telegraph said that the bokshop 'encouraged children to read anarchist cartoon books and homosexual propaganda'. The Sun, the Star and the bevee oe ee the story still further. As a es e snoo ece vee phone-calls and letters threatening fire-bombs. In March somebody smashed the plate glass windows. The fact that that a local bookshop has been singled out as a the next step

ONAL

Z

NUT CHIEF FRED JARVIS

against. us to fight. Jenny Leeds "homosexual group' because it stocks books dealing with lesbian and gay relationships is a measure of the climate of reaction we are now living through. The fact that Reading Matters is threatened with closure under a section of an act which is not yet in force is a warning ot the scale of the attacks we can expect When section 28 comec into effect at the end of May. It's not just our right to read that's under attack, but our right to express our sexuality. we won't stop until we decriminalise homosexuality and establish the right of lesbians and gays to equal treatment. Michael Fryer Haringey

CACHERS

Only about six delegates voted Should we call this a victory or defeat? Only few years ago lesbian and gay delegates were slow-handclapped at an NUT conference in Jersey, where homosexuality is completely illegal. Last week the fringe meeting on the Clause and speeches in the hall convinced many moderate teachers to vote against the executive's amendment, and we came within a hair's. breadth of a policy of noncooperation with the Clause.

There are plenty of teachers who want to fight. No doubt between now and next Easter there will be many occasions when we will find it necessary to do so. Activists have to campaign among teachers to make sure that we win the battles our leaders don't want Write to tns, BCM JPLtd, London,

WC1N 3XX

letters page THE crisis in Anglo-Irish relations has once again confronted Southern Irish people with the reality of war in the North of their island. The contradictory reactions to this crisis have demonstrated the confusion and ignorance which reigns here after 19 years of conflict. The shelving of the Stalker/Sampson report and the rejection of the Birmingham Six appeal stirred up an undercurrent of anti-British feeling, aroused by the shooting of Aldan cAnespie and the assassination of the three IRA volunteers in Gibraltar. Yet these feelings have, for the most part, been channelled by the Haughey government into support for the Free State's diplomatic manoeuvres with the British, and have been largely dissipated in the

FUNERAL OF THE GIBRALTAR THREE

KENYAN MATATUS CRISIS

IT is a testimony to the retarding influence of imperialism in Atrica that dous buycoll uy teeldnee van drivers can result in a national crisis. The impact made by the matatus strike here in Kenya is an example of the backwardness that is the legacy of Britsh Cools.

AGAIN ON AIDS

TUNDE (letters, 8 April) still misses the point of our position on Aids. Did the Aids virus originate in Africa? The answer is we don't know. On the evidence published by scenEss ane researene c in the field between 1982 and 1987 it appears likely that it did. However, new findings may well prove otherwise. Speculating about the likely origin of the virus has never been central to our understanding of the epidemic or our political activity on this issue. First, we have argued consistenuy uat te risk of the spread of the disease among heterosexuals in Europe and North America is minimal. Second, we have argued that the government message that 'everyone is at risk' is calculated to intensify hostility towards homosexuals and increase state repression gainst On both counts we continue to be proved

IRELAND: NORTH AND SOUTH

wake of the killing of the two British soldiers in Andersonstown. The average Southerner is almost as oblivious to the day-to-day realities of war In Northern reland as are the majority of British people. Free State censorship and propaganda have ensured that the conflict appears as an endless catalogue of senseless acts of violence, divorced from the pressing economic problems experienced by working people in Dublin, Cork or Limerick. This indifference was challenged by recent events, first beause of the mantest inlustice and arrogance of recent British actions, and second because this injustice and arrogance seemed to be directed indiscriminately against all Irish people, wether they be "innocent' of resistance The matatus are forms of transport which compete with the pathetic Kenya Bus Service (KBS); they range from the smallest of vans to minicoaches. Vans are fitted Wi cK. o Woo0 Ie serve as benches. They oue cle ci oveneva and are owned by anybody who wants to make extra right by the findings of government epidemiologists in North America ana europe, ane by the mounting offensive against homosexuals. Aids and HIV infection continue to be concentrated among gay men, intravenous drug users, their partners and babies. Inere is no sign of the disease spreading outside of these high-risk groups. Finding out where and how Aids originated will provide vital assistance to the scientists searching tor d cure, out tor the moment it must remain a matter of speculation. Challenging the oppression of homosexuals will do more than anything right now to uw aow une soreae ol the disease here, and that CouTe ne.te political action. It must mean stepping up ue fight for the •cena scuon oT homosexuality. Don Milligan London to the imperialist domination of their country. The reaction here has varied from anger among of injured innocence from colablisiitcut pundits. Yet because these underpinned by a common parutlonis mentality, Haughey has ween anie to channel them into support for "this country in its dealings with Big Brother next door. It is thus but a short step from the confusion of ordinary people to the hypocrisy of the Fianna Fail Gibraltar shootings: three TRA vo unteers are 'neutralised" by the British forces; and at the same moment they are neutrauseu too by oul Free State politicians. Alive, they were three terrorists' who would have been liable to narassment or imprisonment by the Free State: dead, they become just 'three Irish people', over whom we may shed a tear, as we huddle up TO Ou eDmARe representatives in There is a dire need mere tor d pontical perspective which can cut through this shabby sentimentality and expose the roots of the problem: Britain's domination of leland, North and South. Joe Connolly cash. They are relied upon very much given the poor service offered by the KBS in the cities, and the non- CAlbe IL elVISe Iud alcas Inev do not operate a standard fare system. You can pay one price for going to B and anther for geting back to A - faced with a walk averaging 15 kilometres most people don't complain. They cram in as many people as possible and drive at record-breking speeds to boost profits. They drive recklessly, overtaking in ine wrong lane and brake suddenly if someone flags them down for a lift. Official statistics say 200 lives have been lost since the start of this year: often rural accidents go unreported With the elections approdching ure government was under pressure t c someling about this mess. It proposed a test tor al matatus drivers, but given that arving licences can be had at the right price trom the authorities, this was seen as a sick joke by most people. But the biggest joke of all was the way the matatus owners turned the tables on the authorities by taking their vehices off the road Consequently, on 14 March, there was a countrywide strike. The result was chaos. That vening president Daniel Arap Moi annonced that 13 new buses would be put into service in Nairob - Wilal about the rest of Kenya? Edith Mombasa, Kenya 15 April 1988 • 7

the propaganda Why Thatcher is an Ozalite WHAT was Margaret Thatcher doing spending three days in Istanbul is normally a one-night stand at most on the itinerary of diplomatic high-fliers. And Turgut Ozal isn't exactly Mikhail Gorbachev. It was the first official visit to Turkey by a British prime minister since Winston Churchill went there in 1943.

The media made much of the amity in British-Turkish relations, making out that Thatcher had forged a deep bond of friendship with Ozal.

But what really brought Thatcher to Istanbul was business not bonhomie. As for Ozal, he was keen to find an ally to back Turkey's application for full membership of the EEC. Thatcher was chasing contracts for British business, and being none too subtle about it. Dropping a heavy hint

US USELE

British firm get the contract for the third Bosphorous bridge (a Japanese consortium built the second one), she told a banquet held in her honour that building bridges is one purpose of my visit.' As well as irvine to tie up a £200m deal for Rapier Missies, Watcher was pustlits for British firms Marconi, riessey, nacal ana DHuSI Aerospace to get the contracts to update the Turkish military's radar fire-control systems and She was also keen to clinch deals for drainage and water supply projects, and a $250m job to drive a nine kilometre expressway through Istanbul's city centre.

HOMAGE

So eager was Thatcher to fill her order books that she was prepared to forget the historical enmity between hailed Turkey's founding father Mustapna remar Ataturk as one of the towering figures of history, and paid him homage at his tomb in Ankara. Kemal Ataturk once was to Winston Churchill what Muammar Gadaffi now is to Margaret Turkish nationalist movement after the First World War, he was the bogey of the British Empire. Before the First World War the West tried to carve up the Turkish Empire, which sided with Germany when war broke out in 1914. The Turks were defeated on all fronts with the exception of the Dardanelles, where Ataturk led the forces which stopped a British-led invasion and killed thousands or Australan woops at walloon.

This humiliation led Churchill to resign from the cabinet. It was only the start of Britain's problems. The British occupation of Constantinople (Istanbul) after the war revived Turkish nationalism. Led by the hero of Gallipoli, the Kemalists established an alternative capital in Ankara, abolished what was left of the old and declared Ottoman amore. a republic in 1923. All this was forgotten last week, when the 8 • 15 April 1988 war only memories evoked were of Florence Nightingale and the Crimean War, when British and Turkish soldiers fought on the same side against the Russian Tsar. Ataturk embarked on a vigorous process of secularisation desiened to bring Turkey into line with the rest of Europe. in turkey last week Thatcher endorsed Ataturk's claim that 'the Turks have walked from the East in the direction of the West.' The British were the staunchest opponents of this process when the turks were alles of Germany. However, now that gain from closer ties with Turkey, Thatcher has nothing but encouragement for Ozal's overtures to the West.

ALIGNMENT

As far as Thatcher Is concerned, Europe no longer ends at the Bosphorous, the water-way which according to the atlas separates West from East. Since last week the British foreign office says that Europe now ends at Turkey's eastern borders with Soviet Armenia, dran and Iraq. But the only significance the Bosphorous has for Thatcher is that it needs a third bridge.

And the reason why Thatcher prefers Turkey to be aligned with the West rather than the East is because she wants it to award the Bosonorous contract to Britain rather than Japan.

stand at opposite ends of our continent,' effused Thatcher, want to see Britain and Turkey reach out across Europe to establish a new partnership for the future.' As a quid pro quo for being first in the queue for lucrative contracts, Thatcher had to make encouraging noises for full EEC membership, praising its indispensable role on Nato's eastern Mediterranean flank. She turned a blind eye to the Turkish regime's grim record on human rights, and even had a formal audience with the Turkish president and former general Kenan Evren, who seized office at the army's bidding in 1980. Thatcher intimated that Turkey's lack of democracy and torture of political prisoners were not barriers to Western approval. To ram this point home Thatcher toured Istanbul's army headquarters. The British entourage even refrained from chastising the Turkish press in public, after they rampaged across the Crimean War cemetery separating Thatcher from her security cortege and her husband Denis. In the late nineteenth century the British Empire ruled supreme and the crumbling Ottoman Empire was ridiculed as the 'sick man of Europe. In the late twentleth century Thatcher chokes on chemical fumes opening a gasworks in Ankara in a bid to clinch contracts to overcome the malaise of British capitalism.

Helen Swift A tinues. that the hard decisions postponed presidential election. be postponed out of however. of the day.

RUTHLESS

For all its confident talk pursuit of their profits.

stop al class interests. taken important steps fter the stock market crash of October 1987 a deceptive calm prevails on the economic front. The malaise of capitalist industry con- Big business has tried to avoid facing up to its problems by engaging in speculative ventures.

Credit has become an indispensable mechanism for keeping the system going. Sooner or later some painful adjustments will have to be made. At present the consensus is that change should come later rather than sooner, and it appears will be the US. until after The economic recession cannot existence Fluctuations in currencies and share prices are symptomatic of the underlying volatility of the capitalist system, despite the appearance of outward calm. One important indicator of the superficial character of the economic lull is the massive influx of capital into the Japanese stock market. Even in Japan, the most dynamic capitalist power, speculation rather than real investment in industry is the order big business is jittery. The capitalist class fears for the future because it understands that another crash could happen at any time. This sense of insecurity explains why the employers are so ruthless in the and attacks In Britain the Thatcher government has demonstrated that it will new nothing to defend its In recent months Thatcher has towards THATCHER CANNOT AFFORD TO COMPROMISE WHEN THE FUTURE OF BRITISH CAPITALISM IS AT STAKE Why v new o Frank Richards explains how every event in the class struggle today points to the need for a revolutionary part redistributing resources from the working class to the employers.

The budget, social security cuts on services are all designed to strengthen the competitive position of her class. The proposals on privatisation and the recent blows inflicted on the unions have the same aim. If this trend continues we will enter a new stage of mass unemployment and reductions in living standards.

Ironically, it appears that the steps taken by the Thatcher regime strengthen position The British capitalism are not going to be enough to do the job. British business is not even remotely competitive and is much too neavily acpendent on services and the financial sector. It is therefore inevitable that the present wave of attacks on living standards will be superseded by a more protracted and far-reaching assault on the We living class WOrKINg through the early stages of the capitalist offensive. privileges the to detend its class requires more capitalist laws and a more authoritarian political climate. In the period ahead every civil right which has long been taken for will be called into granted of question. The economics Thatcherism demand a culture of the repressive morally, stitutionalisation of coercion and a permanent law and order alert.

FUDGE

Many of the government's opponents have been stunned by Thatcher's audacity. Her inflexible and brutal assertion of the narrow class interests of the employers has surprised those accustomed to the old British way of compromise and fudge. As a result, many people on the left consider Tory policies to be irrational. There is a widespread belief that today's attacks are the product of petty vindictiveness o the part of a selfish grour of Tory hardliners. Such a confused response is not The government's surprising have accepted the opponents Tories' economic propaganda. They too believe that the economy is strong and that business If you believe in the booming. British economic miracle then it Thatcher's would that appear dictated miserliness not economic crisis but by personal spite From this perspective only individual can malevolence ex plain the inegalitarian budget or the squeeze on benefit payments.

The left's failure to appreciate the profound structural problems British capitalism has led the government's critics to base their opposition to Thatcher on a critique of her selfishness.

THE POLITICAL COMMITTEE

The denunciation of the govern- 'greedy' or wicked 1s misplaced. It implies that another politician or another party could act in a different way. It locates the problems confronting the working class in the psychology of the Tory than in the Party leader rather economics of British capitalism.

COLESOR

misguided, it also leads to political paralysis - because it holds out the hope that if only those in power more less wicked and were benevolent then we could all live happily ever after in a caring, sharing Britain.

SENTIMENTAL

The British left lives in a dreamworld, deluding itself alternative to the confrontations of the present lies in the conventions of the past. In fact, this is the main theme of the Benn-Heffer leadership campaign inside the Labour Party. Benn's sentimental attachold the good LO dominates all of his speeches. In contrast to what he portrays as the political styles Thatcher and Kinnock, Benn even had a few good words for the old Tory Party his speech In Basildon last week: 'Mrs Thatcher has set out to destrov the Conservative Party of Churchill, Macmillan and Heath and re-establish it in her own image - harsh repressive and centralising strengthening the power of the silence and crush any стате 1о dissent and destroy all opposition.

The rehabilitation of such fiercely anti-working

CRISS

pouracians Churchill, Macmillan and Heath is the consequence of Benn's reluctance to face up to the realities of today's situation. which the The conclusion government's opponents refuse to countenance is that there can be no return to the past. The decline of liberalism and the rise of of a society that symptoms polarised. increasingly capitalist precisely because the class can no longer afford compromise that so many policies appear brutal and greedy.

Instead of fantasising about the fifties and sixties, we have to prepare for a protracted offensive, greater polarisation ane intensive class conflict.

UPHEAVAL

Despite the climate of political reaction, more peoplenave involved themselves in struggle in the past few months than at any strike. miners Nurses, miners, carworkers and seamen only the are prominent examples of workers involved in industrial disputes and e need a position

LIVING IN THE PAST: BENN AND HEFFER

other forms of action. At the same time there has been a series of wellattended demonstrations issues such as the Clause. This response indicates that a significant section of society is prepared to fight and is ready to consider radical alternatives.

days The positive potential shown in the recent struggies of Marxists with a new audience for their ideas. But ThIS radicalisation will

HOL

spontaneously. The experience of at the past few months reveals that any movement of resistance faces major political obstacles, which it if it must be effective. The main problem evident in all and the recent protest movements has been the influence of conservatism.

This conservative political climate is not new. But there is one feature today's mood development on the past: the acute of the lack awareness alternative LO me runng itical orthodoxy.

ABSENCE

Since the June 1987 election even the semblance of political opposition has collapsed.

During the past nine months the Party Labour has spicuous by its silence. The union energies to avoiding confrontation, and have made it clear that they are not prepared to take on Thatcher.

OTTES

This manifest absence alternative has had the effect of strengthening conservatism in recent months.

more We should be aware that never Delore this century nas were been such In Yacuull! ary politics. The lack of a tangible alternative has meant that the struggles of the few past iragmented irom une start.

reluctance of the official labour to get involved only most confirmed the worst tears of every political activist. It did not prevent people from fighting, but it did demands and their action. For the over first time in living memory the class struggle has lacked a political the Alton Bill and focus resistance petered paign showed that even having provides potential pollucal alternative. develop those even of conservatism

DWINDLED

At the individual isolated they activists in that of polgeneral been conof any mood of parliamenthave been felt they they belonged to groups of individuals. positive could turn conclusion done. having activists the gap their colleagues.

COHERENT

Revolutionary weigh questions. selves determined assessment broad political influenced orner so duon. Y period so that encourage them to moderate their sense of them.

FOCUS

We should - even a Labourist one. Without a political focus, the The disintegration of the NHS campublic opinion on your side is no substitute for having a coherent Predictably, fought back became influenced by the climate and o w focus level these problems registered most acutely.

The most angry and active sections of our class soon discovered just Many were. the

NHS

discovered that with each week that passed the numbers prepared to fight dwindled. At the outset FORD STRIKERS COULD NOT FAIL TO BE INFLUENCED BY THE CLIMATE OF CONSERVATISM were part of a movement, but by the end they were painfully aware that they one o several smar For many activists, involvement in struggle has become synonymous with isolation. The very act of fighting back has highlighted the difficulties involved in resist- . There is a danger that the of fighting experience into negative that nothing can be The other danger is that sensed isolation once, will moderate their objectives in an attempt to close between themselves and DarL In the present climate it is vital that we project a full and coherent alternative. Our experiences in the NHS dispute, in other strikes and in the Alton and Clause campaigns confirm that we must promote the Communist Party as an alternative and not simply relate to the specifics of the struggle Those involved in struggles do not we merely have to consider the specifics of their experience - they have to the broad political "Is there an alternative? Will anybody fight for us? The way in which individuals conduct themonly specific struggles largely by their of broad political patterns. In recent months it has become clear that the absence of a alternative has the course of every single movement or resistance The main job of the party in its public work is to shield individual activists from the negative effects This is possible only if we provide our audience with a broad analysis of the present individuals can situate their experiences and make appreciate - that ir every situation that people find themselves in today, they will be forced to go beyond the specifics of their own particular experience. In every confrontation people will not be able to avoid the fact that the working class has no organisation of its own that is prepared to fight. Every individual militant, every group of workers, will have to think about what it means to have to go it alone. The role of the party in this situation is to provide through which the experience of specific struggles can of the working class as a whole.

At a time when the general trend on the left is to look backwards and to equivocate on all the major issues, revolutionaries must point out the dangers of this approach.

individuals, As a party and as of the

RCP

must supporters become the most single-minded advocates of class struggle politics.

This is not a theatrical gesture. It is an approach consistent with the growing polarisation of British society, and the only alternative to a futile search for the non-existent middle ground. Our arguments and politics must relate to the heightened sense of isolation which comes with activism The RCP has to show that this is a political problem and like problems it will yield to a solution The solution lies with the activists themselves. The revolutionary organisational the 1S instrument through which activists can enter into a relationship with each other and cease to operate as isolated individuals.

UNTENABLE

RCP supporters must learn to promote the party as something of direct concern to all those who want to fight. Too often supporters are inhibited about stating the obvious - that unless build a revolutionary party, individual struggles are going to remain isolated. In the past, when Labour appeared as a plausible such inhibitions were alternative, A year ago the understandable. argument that Labour was the realistic alternative for the working class was a difficult one to Today only the answer. most incorrigible Labour hack would defend attempt such untenable position. Instead of being defensive about the need to build a revolutionary party, we should go on the offensive and demand to know "Who else is going to fight? It would be unrealistic to declare the RCP as an alternative to the Tories: real alternatives are forged in the heat of the struggle.

present the RCP is in the business al igning or da duelaven practical terms that means we are trying to organise those activists who see the necessity politics. The RCP can provide the organisation and the arguments which are a necessity if those who want to fight are going to win the support of others.

RCP

have supporter: excellent opportunity to put the party's analysis into action.

Our party has a unique grasp of the present situation. Unlike the British left we understand that there can be no going back to the past, and that there is no prospect of middle-of-the-road options in the near future. The period ahead is one of growing class conflict Without a working class alternative such conflicts will be one-sided aftaırs. But it doesn't have to be that way. If the will to fight is fused with a Marxist outlook on the world then we can put Thatcher and her class on the run.

15 April 1988 • 9

JAPAN AND THE TIGERS TAKE ON THE WORLD

THE PACIFIC AGE

Daniel Nassim argues that the growing economic power of the Pacific Basin will have a profound effect on global politics he Pacific is the ocean of the moment. Experts and pundits have pointed to the surge in economic growth there, irom away traditional centres of the capitalist world on either side of Atlantic. Yet few so far have grasped the political implications of this economic shift. Japan is at the centre of the emerging new order. The Asian superpower can expect benefits and challenges trom the News Industrialising Countries (NICs) of East Asia known as the "four tigers' - Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea Taiwan. and USA faces stiff competition from these upstart powers and a shift in Is come centre to the west coast. possible

IDE

trends precisely how these develop, but it is certain that they can only result in a chalenge to tne world order established in 1945.

The Pacific main cconomies phenomenal growth experenced in the sixties and seventies, growth rates for Japan and the NICs never fell below 8.5 percent per year. In contrast growth rates for the USA, Western Europe and third world countries outside Asia averaged between 2.5 and three per Another indication

COILL

growing importance of the Pacific is the shift of trade flows to the USA. In 1960 US trade with the Pacific region was only half its trade with Europe; by 1980 it was about even; in 1982 it was 109.5 per cent of European trade.

KING

Japan is the indisputable economic king of the region. Its output is roughly the same as the other five regional centres combined (see box). The massive US deficit on trade with Japan is striking proof of the Asian giant's strength. Economic squabb es between Japan and the USA have become commonplace. In the past focused trade, they

OTE

conflict high centres on nology. The already

USA

dependent on Japanese microchips to drive its latest computers and, even more alarmingly for Washington, to control advanced weapons American

SVSLCTES.

"techno-nationalists' are now worried about losing their lead in biotechnology, new materials and "artificial intelligence'.

If Washington is making less of a fuss about Japanese trade, this is simply because more concerned about competition from

NICS.

Democratic Former presidential contender Richard Gephardt grabbed the headlines alleged South Korea when indulged in unfair trade practices.

He claimed that a Chrysler K car which sells for $10 000 in the USA costs a cool $48 000 in South Korea. businessmen have good reason to fear the four tigers: their trade surplus with the USA grew by 427 per cent between 1980 and 1987, while the comparative figure for Japan was only 202 per cent. The Asian NICs are not only a threat to US business, they are a source of anxiety in Europe too.

The EEC's combined surplus is projected to fall to about half of that of the East Asian NICs by 1989. With the US erecting more trade barriers, Asian goods could 10 • 15 April 1988 the the The predict will when be diverted to Europe. An OECD study estimates that by next year the exports of the four tigers will be worth 80 per cent of Japan's.

Thailand could soon join the club of booming East Asian states.

of the Its manufacturing industry is now larger than the traditionally strong agricultural sector. turn out Nike shoes, Arrow shirts, semiconductors and toys on slavelabour wages, and Thai exports to the USA have boomed over the Dast yeal The Pacific significant changes USA, whose industrial centre has switched from the east to the west coast. In 1986 Los Angeles became the top US manufacturing centre.

Trade flows and Japan and those California and the NICs are the largest in the Pacific. California's trading partners three

LOD

today tech-

CHINA

HONG KONG

Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, and eight out of the top 10 are in the Pacific. Signs of California's Pacific connection are most visible in Los Angeles. The city boasts the largest concentration of Japanese, Filipinos their home countries, and almost Thai workers 1000 Japanese operate there.

INTIMATE

Developments within the emerging economic centres have altered Age has brought relations within the regional leve munications and new institutions are developing. The airline market is growing rapidly and a fibre optic telephone network is being laid between California the pressing for the Asian tigers to be allowed to join the OECD, the club that includes are richer nations.

SOUTH KOREA

TAIWAN

AUSTRALA

SHIP

¡YUNDA/

• arwan Koreans companies also countries. foreign between them. On improved -comsea-bed. Japan rich neighbours the world's the lack Japanese

BASIN STATES

THE Pacific Basin includes countries which are culturally, economically and politically diverse, but which can be divided into six economic groups. • Japan is the economic superpower in the region, but is wary of playing a high-profile political role.

• The Newly Industrialising Countries (NICs), which include Hong Kong Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, have experienced rapid economic growth in recent years. • The Asean (Association of South East Asian Nations) includes Singapore (a NIC), Brunei (a tiny oll-rich state), Malaysia (relatively

NEW ZEALAND

after free. Apart from Japan's intimate ties with the USA, it is developing closer relations with its neighbours.

South Korea depend heavily on Japanese parts for their cars and electronic goods.

Meanwhile the rising yen is giving Japan a greater incentive to invest abroad. Japanese investment is not only flooding into the NICs but Asian

OUCH

Japan is the largest investor in Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia, and the second largest after the USA in Singapore and the Philippines.

Investment abroad could dramatically change Japan's relationship with the rest of the world. Foreign how investment in some of its mineral- - like Indonesia and Australia - helps Japan secure its sources of raw materials. Given of resources the mainland this of

UNITED STATES

Los Angeles

HAWAII

affluent), and Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines (severe political problems). • Australia and Neu Zealand are relatively prosperous but are dependent on agriculture and extractive raw materials.

• Mainland China is extremely poor in terms of income per head, although it has a population of one billion, and its total trade is still less than that of Taiwan. • The US Pacific states (California, Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Hawaii) have close ties with Asia, especially California. particular importance to Tokyo. A for planners is the combination of Japanese capital and the vast pool of cheap labour in mainland China.

Japan has also sought to increase its influence through economic This year Japan is set to become the world's largest aid donor, with $10.4 billion going abroad, mostly to Asia. Since its constitution, imposed by the USA the Second World War, forbids Japan to have military forces far from home, aid is an important mechanism for spreading its influence.

FEAR

But Japan's relationship with its neighbours is far from trouble- The most obvious source of tension is straightforward economic Most third world competition countries stand no chance competing with an economic giant like Japan, but while their strength should not be overrated, the four tigers are potential rivals.

Asian countries have good reason to fear the prospect of Japanese military expansion in the future.

Korea was occupied by Japan between 1910 and 1945, and the 700 000 Koreans living in Japan are denied citizenship Japan also occupied Manchuria in China before the Second World War, and even now some Asian countries look favourably on the USA for driving out Japan during With Japan emerging as the war. the world's third largest spender on defence, after the USA and the USSR, its neighbours are acutely conscious of other potental sungs We cannot anticipate exactly the of pattern

CORNER

alliances and rivalries in the Pacific will develop. But we can say that the emergence of new economic centres will have BrOlOUne political eftect inside and outside the region. the next step

BRITISH MEDIA DREAM OF IRA CEASEFIRE

KITE-FLYERS FOR

Mick Hume looks at British attempts to stir up divisions within the Irish republican movement rovos join secret talks for end to campaign terror' announced recent headline in Sunday Times. The article claimed that, at three meetings held this year, leading representatives of Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic and Labour Party had discussed the conditions permanent IRA ceasefire. It also claimed evidence of a serious split within the leadership of the Irish republican movement, between the 'doves' led by political Adams and the military "hawks' under Martin McGuinness. theme has since been picked up and pursued by commentators.

TROUBLE

These stories have less to do with reporting facts than with flying kites, to see which way the wind is blowing among Irish republicans.

The aim is to make trouble within republican movement, encourage a split which might open a tenaency reaching some sort of political accommodation with imperialism. It is significant that the Sunday Times article which set the tone for media comment was written by Liam Clarke, who has a real axe to grind against the IRA. He is a former member of the old Official republican movement, which split from the Provisionals in 1969-70 and.has since deteriorated into the moderate and viciously republican Workers Party. Clarke's facts are as foggy as his motives are clear. For example, as evidence of developing split republican leadership, he cites the tact that Gerry Adams has publicly named Martin McGuinness as the head of the

IRA'.

He fails to mention that this was a tongue-incheek remark to a small boy at the Belfast funeral of IRA volunteer Kevin McCracken — a remark probably directed at the flapping ears of British reporters, in an attempt to wind up the hacks who have often accused McGuinness of occupying that position.

DEMOCRATIC

Leaving Clarke's well-known personal prejudices aside, what is all the kite-flying about? It is part of a well-tested colonial strategy divide-and-rule which Britain has employed around the world.

During long decades of Empiremanaging, British imperialists have become adept at manipulating the tensions inherent in any national liberation movement. National self-determination is a basic democratic demand no one class has monopoly. This means that many different sections of an oppressed nation can support the demand from different perspectives. Thus national liberation movements are made up of contending Various wings forces. of the movement will express differing degrees of hostility to imperialism, the next step of the for Gerry The British and British and have their own aspirations as what they

WISH

Bourgeois nationalists antioppressed nation may only want to establish a politically independent national capitalist base which can take its place in the imperialistthe dominated world order. A working class wing of an anti-imperialist movement, however, more likely to liberation as only one aspect of a wider struggle for social liberation capitalist exploitation. from ot Britain's classic colonial strategy has been to locate and exploit such tensions. The imperialists seek to split the liberation movement, draw a moderate wing political compromise and make it easier to SO are and hardline elements. dependent' regimes in colonies were installed in this fashion. The final de-colonisation of deal signed by the more pliant leaders of movements in Africa and Asia was done on terms advantageous to the departing colonial power, over the dead. bodies of thousands militant workers and peasants.

PARTITION

over In the past, the British authorities have also had some success in helping to bring about splits within the Irish national movement. Back in 1914, John Redmond's bourgeois wing of the Irish Volunteers bowed British pressure, class accepted the partition of Ireland gave support to British imperialism in the 1916 further conflicts War In

IMPERIALISM

MARTIN McGUINNESS: ELECTED 'IRA LEADER' BY BRITISH PRESS within the to achieve. those who took part in the Easter Rising, including James Connolly's In working class Irish Citizen Army.

In 1921 the British under Lloyd George signing the partition treaty with the middle class republican leadership would be This provoked a civil war, which ended with the defeat of the antiview national Treaty forces by the Free State government backed The The consequences of that split sent militant sidelines of Irish politics, until the crisis of 1969 and the arrival of British troops on the streets led to the emergence of the modern IRA.

hoping to The British dearly love to hammer political accommodation with the Many opposition today that could end the *informer present phase of the Irish War.

of press and political commentators with kite-flying about splits liberation fissions in and ranks. They are always seeking to a supposedly clare wing of the republican movement, and to encourage a shift away from the armed struggle towards more mainstream applying this colonial trickery to the Irish War, however, faced with two serious problems.

RESISTANCE

First, the level of resistance among effectively the nationalist community, which sustains the republican struggle.

And second, the fact that Northern First World Ireland's incorporation within the British state rules out the sort of and republican leader. rule situation authorities struggle. - nas agent. LTeG nil Murphy representative Volunteers isolated Sunday Times. Concensa ended the Tan War by the dar appeared, of the the by Britain. republicanism the to been achieved.

HOSTILITY

This is authorities would reach another West Belfast. This explains the preoccupation the republican 'dovish' political activity. In old-fashioned of cent ocue ve unar ine British imperialists are made their circumstances oTer The the deals done in other colonies.

Today the British pundits have decided to set up Gerry Adams as the man most likely to do a deal.

Tomorrow they may well move on attribute the quality some other But whoever they pick on as the target of their propaganda, it will make little class difference in itself. Even if he wanted to, no individual could corrupt the struggle against British while popular remains intact. Take a hypothetical where the British tind Balanc (LO republican leader willing to accommodate them and ditch the There is nothing suggest that he would be able to carry the core of IRA support with him. Every trend in republicanism which has sought to play down the struggle against British imperialism Over the past 19 vears - most notably the old Official movement ended up isolated and discredited among the nationalists of the Northern war zones As in any liberation movement, the Sinn Fein leadership is not a It present Is the of a collective demand for freedom arising from among ordinary nationalists.

Events around the recent negotiations confirm that it is not about to come running at a signal from the The details of the between Sinn Fein and the moderate SDLP are, of course, unknown. But at Easter commemoration marches held on Clarke's piece unal Adams both and McGuinness sought to make clear that an IRA ceasefire was not on agenda. McGuinness assured audience in Belfast that the IRA would not cease its armed struggle 'even for a moment' until Irish self-determination what republican supporters want, and expect, to hear.

Contrary to reports in the British press, the killing of two soldiers at an IRA funeral has not created any "wave of revulsion' in republican The people there have learnt that such acts of war are inevitable so long as the British - occupation continues. They do not regard the Sinn Fein/SDLP talks as some sort of short cut to ending the conflict, and neither are they prepared to settle for the sort of sham settlement which the British government would like to achieve.

Recent polls indicate that 81 per Northern nationalists Anglo-Irish agreement, the Tories political achievement in Ireland, no difference to Their hostility to British interference is what brought the IRA into being, and what sustains the struggle.

Faced with similar resistance in its far-flung colonies of old, Britain proved prepared to grant formal independence, which would economic leave ins political interests there more or less intact. But this compromise, *Zimbabwe called the solution' is ruled out in Ireland by the second distinctive feature of the struggle; the unique relationship between the British state and his best colony The Six Counties are incorporated within United Kingdom' itself - that is, within the jurisdiction of the British state British ruling class cannot grant unity to Ireland voluntarily on any terms, because it would dismantling the existing structures of the British state. This would have important repercussions throughout the UK. It would do irreparable damage to state which Instan the authority of the gualanice British establishment on both sides of the Irish Sea.

CONTAIN

words, In othe withwhereas drawing from overseas colonies blow to the prestige of the British capitalist withdrawal from abroad, Ireland would represent a mortal blow to its power where it counts most — at home. This is why the British state will not leave Ireland until it is forced out. It closes the door on any compromise political solution, and ensures that the cycle oppression and Lesistance will continue In these circumstances, the best the British authoritiés can hope to achieve through political IS contain the •tO republican struggle. Their kite-flying about splits and accommodations has a more modest aim than in the past.

It seeks to disrupt the republican movement, undermine the morale of its supporters, and hype up the prospects of a diplomatic solution This approach has helped to limit active support for the republican struggle within Ireland. But it has not succeeded in "politicising' the war, by drawing hardline nationalists away from the armed struggle.

Any real British success along these lines would be dependent on the spirit of resistance crushing the nationalist people And that is a goal which the authorities are no closer to reaching now than they were 19 years ago.

CABANARCO

15 April 1988 • 11

THE 'PEOPLE'S

POWER' FRAUD

Corazon ilipino president F champion of freedom and democracy by Western commentators. As the suc- Ferdinand Marcos,

COSSOL CO

Aquino is said to have transformed a brutal military dictatorship into People's Power. and created a model of Western-style democracy in the third world. The USA's Time magazine voted her Woman of the Year in 1987. People in the Philippines have a different perception Aquino's attributes. For millions of urban workers and rural People's peasants, Power become a bitter joke. A recent report by Amnesty International of the the brutanty compares Aquino regime with that of Marcos, and the 'democrat' does not come off any better than the dictator.

WARLORDS

In the cities the "salvage" squads which assassinated trade unionists in use bad oe davs under Marcos have been superseded by official police and army outfits carrying the countryside local warlords still conduct a ruthless campaign terror against peasants demanding land reform. The major demands of the mass popular movement which Marcos packing - for land reform and for the removal of US bases from the country - are as far from being met as ever. Most Filipinos eagerly backed the popular movement swept Marcos from power in 1986.

As financial scandal undermined the regime and the guerrillas of the New People's Army began to pose a serious military threat, Marcos supporters at home and abroad stemming the mounting disaffection and unrest. The crisis of the Marcos regime 1983, had begun when the In dictator's longstanding Benigno Aquino, returned to the Philippines from exile. Marcos interpreted Aquino's home-coming of his own impending as a sign demise, and in time-honoured fashion had him eliminated on arrival at the airport. Coming after this blatant political execution, open electoral fraud by Marcos supporters in the presidential with Aquino's

CULLCOL

Corazon was too much even for a firm Marcos fan like Ronald Reagan. The USA withdrew its support and Marcos was removed in a coup organised by own generals.

CORRUPTION

The Aquino dynasty traditionally had as little popular support in the Philippines as Marcos did. But with sopaisacated b-backed electoral machine and a powerful Catholic hierarchy behind her, Aquino was able to create the that her regime commanded widespread support.

Most importantly, she received the tacit backing of the mass popular the National Demoalliance cratic Front - which had led the resistance to Marcos The Aquino family is well-known for corruption and brutality in the rural fiefdoms which it controls, but endorsement of leading lady lent credibility to the The NDF's approval of Aquino encouraged the Filipino masses to put *their trust the In president's vague

COLORSCS

reform. With a little help from her friends in America Aquino successiully narnessed popular of Marcos behind a resentment People's Power movement which offered some hope of change.

Instead of experiencing a real transformation of Filipino society, however, people were asked to be content with seeing one ruling elite take the reins from another.

12 • 15 April 1988 of sent which widow succession of attempted military coups has since led Aquino to his move even further to the right in an effort to placate her critics. The concessions which made to the generals warlords mean that life for the average Filipino is even worse than it was under Marcos Unfortunately, •Ene experience is far from unique; from Sudan to South Korea the USA has had hand in similarly managed transitions • Sudan 1985, widespread resistance to Sudanese president Jaafar al-Nimeiry army into action. Nimeiry fled to Egypt and new military rulers took power. • El Salvador its The right-wing warlord Roberto D Aubusson was elected head of the national assembly in 1982, but pressure from the USA prevented new him from assuming leadership of of In 1984 he the country defeated by Christian Duarte in the presi- Napoleon dential election. In this way the El Salvadorean regime managed to retain a slightly more appealing despite the fact that the army never ceased counter-insurgency strategy.

• Aubusson's Arena party has recently achieved a majority in the national assembly once again.

FROM THE PHILIPPINES

TO SOUTH KOREA

Russell Osborne explains how mass resistance movements in the Philippines and elsewhere have been derailed by the USA's People's Power strategy.

GENERAL NAMPHY: THE US IDEA OF A 'DEMOCRATIC' ALTERNATIVE TO BABY DOC IN HAITI • Haiti Events in Haiti followed roughly the same pattern as in El Salvador.

Aquino has his associates fled the country in and rural 1986 headed by General Namphy and other Duvalierists. After bloody and fraudulent elections, Filipino Namphy regime was succeeded by the equally corrupt regime led by Leslie Manigat, which has resisted the thorough purge of the state demanded by opponents of the Duvaliers. Haiti continues to be ruled by a brutal military, and the

USA

popular Call takeover by a more popular regime has been averted for the moment.

Source le • South Korea In the first election for 16 years, Roh Tae Woo replaced dictator Chun Doo Hwan of South Korea last year. Roh is now being feted as a democrat and defender of civil liberties, but his record tells another story. He is a former general, an ally of Chun and a supporter of the 1979 coup was Democrat which started the. current round of dictatorship.

DEBACLES

All these successful changeovers but

BLES

CHance Reagan's accession to the presidency precipitated important strategic changes in policy. Reagan's aim was to avoid Dictator 'Baby Doc' Duvalier and leaving behind a regime the aeveropments the real presidential taking smooth prevented that his have depended not calculation. sacrificing US foreign from ship. the

USA

a repeat of past debacles un Vietnam, Iran and Nicaragua.

The defeat in Vietnam did great damage to US prestige, the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979 was a further blow to American standing, and the collapse of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua in the same year was the final straw.

These encouraged a re think by top US policy-makers.

In Vietnam and Iran the demise of pro-American devastating impact on the balance of power across entire regions.

The USA did not simply lose individual allies when its puppets were deposed; given that it had been so closely identified with the old rulers, the loss of US influence was complete. Reagan's advisers argued that potentially explosive situations had to be stabilised, by precipre the transition to In Washington a debate began about how the USA could have Ayatollah Khomeini from coming to power in Iran. The problem for US rulers was not just that the Shah had fled Iran, but had whole regime crumbled. It was generally agreed tnal tne UsA should nave been able to get rid of the Shah without the regime. The conclusion of this foreign policy review was that in future the aim should be to hold back

BLOSS

resistance movements, until such he as more popular, but re American, ruler could be installed.

In the ideal situation, elements within the ruling regimes would switch allegiances at the last minute and put themselves forward as an alternative leader- This would guarantee the continuity of the existing state, while at the same time ensuring popular support for fake opposition. The experience in Nicaragua, where the USA supported dictator Somoza until the last minute and in so doing accelerated the rise of anti-American Sandinista regime, reinforced the lesson of Iran. In retrospect, many foreign policy experts argued that had the withdrawn support from and forced him Somoza 1979 Sandinista earlier. une takeover might have been avoided.

Reagan learned the lessons of the Carter era and began to experiment with a new strategy. singularly successful, establishing experiment new pro-American regimes in five countries. all these cases, dangerously unpopular dictators have departed but pro-American puppets remain in place. How did the USA succeed in Sudan, E Salvador, Haiti, the Philippines and South Korea, when it failed in Iran and Nicaragua? • Sudan When the Sudanese military staged Nimeiry's conduring a coup veniently timed visit to Washington.

US officials dissuaded the deposed president from attempting return to Sudan. They then arranged asylum for him in Egypt and secretly offered their support to the new Sudanese regime.

• El Salvador Pressure from Washington. dis- D'Aubuisson taking the presidency of Salvador in 1983 and tempered the more extreme activities of the death squads. Despite the growing influence of rural guerrillas, the Duarte government managed to mess under control. • Haiti Duvalier's departure from Haiti was the result of sustained US armtwisting. He and his entourage left for a comfortable foreign exile in a US-chartered plane. • The Philippines The Reagan administration was reluctant to see off its loyal ally in the Philippines, but given the vital strategic role of US naval and air force bases at Subic Bay and Clark in the Pacific, it never really had any choice. US officials groomed a replacement regime in readiness for the time when Marcos would nave to go. Arnouganguino s assassination on his return from exile in the USA upset Reagan's plans somewhat, once it became clear that Marcos could not hold the next step

on to power much longer, Corazon Aquino took her husband's place The USA had as head of state successfully overseen a hand-over of power from one section of the Filipino ruling class to another.

• South Korea What really worried US foreign about the policy strategists situation in South Korea was the anti-American character of the opposition to the Chun Doo Hwan dictatorship. The USA came to be seen as the most important prop supporting the Chun regime, and even the more moderate sections of the opposition began to express resentment about US interference in the region. As the demonstrations militant, US officials grew more encouraged Chun to draw moderate oppositionists away from the mass movement and involve prolest parliamentary reforms. Chun had at first attacked constitutional opposition as illegal and a threat to national security.

the next step The collapse of the Marcos regime was a timely warning, and Chun was forced to agree to presidential Chun's CCCLiOS. successor Roh Tae Woo won easily due to a split opposition, electoral and assistance from big corporations Hyundal suke Samsung which mobilised hunof •reas workers in his support. Roh has already distanced himself from the old dictatorship by adopting mildly populist measures against big and OUSINeSS campaign against corruption.

GROOMED

In all these situations the USA pursued a twin-track approach.

On the one hand it withdrew support from leaders whom it had previously sponsored, on the other hand it groomed a replacement ruler throughout the crisis that ensued and smoothed the departure of the former leader.

The USA discovered that it was AQUINO PROVIDED A BREATHING SPACE FOR THE ARMY TO REORGANISE ITS REPRESSIVE MACHINE relatively simple to neutralise the popular protests debates which accompanied the transition from one regime to the hand-picked next. Invariably the masses had no organisation through which they could express view and

DOLL

themselves as a coherent opposition.

their As a consequence mass resistance was pretty channelled into support for new pro-American regimes. Fortunately the durability of the People's Power strategy is strictly high-level limited. It is only a matter of time Delore tae masses reanse thal tne have been cheated and demand real change as they are now in the Philippines. The question of power is working class must take it.

Lask contronung tae masses or the third world is not simply one of suitable the ruling overturning clique, ruling class altogether. the public and independent organise easily contained and about posed the Jesse The political but of getting rid of the racism.

UNSPOKEN

niggers.' propaganda war The truth LET us, as they say across the Atlantic, cut the crap. The Reverend Jesse Jackson is not going to be the next president of the United States. True, he will not lose November's presidential election only because he will not even be the Democratic Party candidate. And it is very unlikely that he will make it on to the ticket as vicepresidential candidate. The sooner the US and British left face up to these facts, and the reasons for them, the sooner we might stand a chance of truly revolutionising the political scene in the way that they claim Jackson has done.

There is an oft-stated opinion among American and British radicals that the thing preventing Jackson succeeding Is the fact that the press keep saying he is unelectable. It's not, they claim, a problem of popular racism; after all, Jackson is winning white working class votes. The liberal establishment over here has also pointed out that there seems to be no racial barrier to Jackson's progress. The Independent is even of the opinion that white attitudes towards Jackson are awesome examples' of 'positive discrimination'. The paper is particularly impressed by the way in which the other candidates have handled JaCKSON WILl KId BlUVOD. It is certainly true that the other candidates have not been harping on about the colour of Jackson's skin, or telling him to get back to Africa, or asking him to sell them a slice of water-melon or shine their shoes. But that is hardly an Indication of an absence of Democratic candidates like technocrat front-runner Michael Dukakis are not rednecks running for county sheriff in the Deep South. They are sophisticated machine men who understand that there are Two good reasons tor not banging the racist drum. Firstly, their stricken party needs all the black votes Jackson can muster in November. And secondly, it would be unnecessary. Everybody knows that Jackson is black. In a society in which every institution is underpinned by an unspoken racist code, that is sufficient to ensure he will not win. As infamous racist leader JB Stoner once put it, When the constitution said that all men were created equal it wasn't talking about Whatever the media does or does not say, the strength of racist tensions in us societ ensures that Jackson is unelectable. These tensions may have been publicly played down so tar in the campaien not least by Jackson himself, opportunity to distance himself from militant anti-racism. But they have come to the surface in the approach to next week's important New York primary.

Jackson's own record of antisemitism, and of branding the as 'Hymietown' have giver racists like New York mayor Ed Koch a good excuse to declare that 'Jews would have to be crazy to vote for Jackson.'

So Jackson can't win. But why should we want that Lo anyway? Barbara Ehrenreich of the Democratic Socialists is full of awe for the way in which Jackson has apparently managed to reach out to black and white Americans with a message that is both politically liberal and class militant. Tony Jackson as an example of how diciwills cantuate call uc well. They must have been listening to a different Jackson 'message' than the American public. Jackson has done better than anybody could have predicted in winning white votes. But this has a lot to do with the appalling quality of the other Democratic candidates, and nothing to do with any radicalism on his part. Polls votes have come from oldfashioner midde class iberals who are disenchanted with the yuppie style or vukakis anu vo Jackson has also attracted some white working class support - not through challenging conservatism, but through pandering to the traditional prejudices of US socicly

SHARKS

What is 'politically liberal' about Jackson's strict moral attitudes towards women, the family and homosexuals? Or his full-blooded support for the anti-drugs panic which has served as the excuse tor a racist state crackdown on minorities in the USA? (Indeed, one reason cited by some whites for supporting Jackson is his promise to deal with 'the black drug problem'.) As for the idea that Jackson is a 'class militant, , the man is so moderate that he does not support the idea of redundancy payments! His programme is way to the right even of Kinnock's Labour Party, and of the old liberal Democratic policies or une sixies. Jackson has managed to connect with the disillusionment of those who have lost out under Reagan, and the anxiety about the coming recession. But he has done so by championing the cause of the ordinary folk' of small-town America businessmen, farmers and workers alike - against Wall Street sharks and foreign competitors. His economic nationalism and homespun populist philosophy fit easily into the reactionary traditions of US politics. It is a sign of how far Reagan has shifted the political climate to the right that Jackson could be seen as any sort of radical. And it is a sign of the desperation of the old left on both sides of the Atlantic that he should be hailed as a working class saviour. Instead of indulging Itself in semantic debates about whether calling Jackson unelectable is a self-fulfilling prophesy, the left should set about challenging the deepthe emergence of a truly class militant movement in the USA.

Linda Ryan 15 April 1988 • 13

• THE CLASS OF '68

GRADUATES

IN LABOURISM

Tariq Ali, Street Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties, Collins, £12.95 1968 was remarkable in the history of the left because it was the year when world Stalinism lost the paralysing grip it had held on the working class since the twenties. In France in particular a major social upheaval took place which threatened the regime of de Gaulle and panicked the Western establishment. Tragically the new left thrown up at the end of the sixties never managed to replace Stalinism with a coherent revolutionary alternative.

Tariq All's autobiographical memoir of the sixties provides not only an entertaining account of his own extravagant life and times, but also sheds some light on how the radical movement in which he played a leading role went wrong. Empire of the Sun, Steven Spielberg (director) JG Ballard, Empire of the Sun, Grafton, £3.50 Shortly after their attack on Pearl Harbour the Japanese, who had already invaded China, finally closed down the Intenational Settlement in Shanghai. This was one of the areas, by now fully westernised, which the imperialist powers had won at gunboat-point as a base for their operations in the region. Those colonials who were still there at the end of 1941 were rounded up into internment camps tor the duration of the war. They did not live in the manner to which they were accustomed, and there was a substantial death toll from hunger, disease and maltreatment t was à bit of a shock to the •VoLC ! In his brilliant semiautobiographical novel, Empire of the Sun, IG Ballara provides d devastating account of this experience as seen through the eyes of a pampered 11-year old English boy. Not so much a story of loss of innocence as oss of confidence both personal and imperial, the novel charts young Jim's grim struggle for survival among an increasingly demoralised and unsavoury adult population. Steven Spielberg and Tom Stoppard, for all their technical skills as director 14 • 15 April 1988 The major influences are all here. The Vietnam War with its Davic versus Goliath struggle, the influence of black radicalism in the USA, the tailures of Stalinism and social democracy to provide answers to the emerging economic crisis and the working class unrest that it provoked. These were the factors which led All and tens of thousands of others to reject the political establishment and look To new C Es. ney came up with everything from 'alternative lifestyles' to Trotsky. Ali reminds us that it was dope smoking that united the radical coteries of London artists and intellectuals with the disaffected Gis in Vietnam, rather than any coherent critique of US imperialism. The Trotskyism that became popular came in two versions. One glorified the peasant

•STEVEN SPIELBERG AND JG BALLARD

EMPIRE OF THE SUN

and writer, were not the right team to adapt a book of this sort. The mood of the novel is dark and shocked, exhausted and almost cynical. Typical is one of the closine images - a drunken group of American and English sailors, having re-entered Shanghai, urinate in unison down the steps of a public building towards a silent but sullen Chinese crowd. Spielberg's sensibility, being inclined to optimism and the sublime, is no malen for this. He was obviously the boy-protagonist, but co oce eISe story through Jim's eyes, tne canalsny canard description again and again exposes more about the adult world than the struggles of the third world and downplayed the working class in the West. The other tended to reduce all political trade union struggles. But the weakness of the new left was expressed most clearly on the queston or organisation. In their haste to reject Stalinism, the radicals o1 '68 dismissed all notion or narty discioline as well. Ali reserves his STeS CSSTO

TARIQ ALI: SEEN IT ALL, DONE IT ALL, LEARNT LITTLE

SPIELBERG'S JIM (CHRISTIAN BALE) IS AN ANGEL WITH A DIRTY FACE boy himself realises. This extremely effective ironic device is at the heart of the novel, and the target of the device and real subject of the book is the sordid reality of that adult world. Spielberg's earlier films have revealed a preoccupation with the family and the wonder of childhood, and despite his loud protestations to the contrarv. he nas imposed his preoccupations here. the text are significant. At the beginnine we have a dear familial scene at the child's bedside, at the end a big hug from his parents. Neither is in the book. More importantly, the boy's quite amoral fascination with the reviews page those who tried to maintain, even in a caricatured form, the necessity for a party and for strong organisation. in Its place All promotes what he calls the *refreshingly undogmatic' approach of the new left, which amounted to the live and let live attitude which has characterised British radicalism. The chief beneficiary of this laissez-faire trend over the years has been the Labour Party. Ali efficient, powerful Japanese and their airplanes (later transferred to the more efficient and powerful Americans) becomes in the film an utterly transcendental, almost religious experience. In fact religion is regularly introduced by the film in the guise of Jim's concern with God. For example, Stoppard has him say of the far-off flash of the atomic bomb, 'it was as if God had taken a photograph, whereas in the book he says it was 'as if the sun blinked, losing heart for a few seconds'. As in this case, the film is generally more cute and less protound than the book. The story of the young boy's progress to experience is engaging makes the point that 'the youth who were now embracine a new torm of radicalism were not the east oil muterestea in une Labour Party.' But as the wave of protests died down the left's fallure to create a revolutionary party meant that there was nothing left to offer a conerent alternative to Labour. The left existed SCeS COuus promoting different aspects of the class struggle at home and abroad. Nobody developed a broad strategy for change in Britain and gave it an organised form. As a result the '68ers never escaped from the shadow of Labourism. That is the legacy with which we are still struggling today, and with which Ali personally and his own noltica current (the old Group) have long since COHe TO Les. Although it is mostly gossip about the people Ali knew, this memoir is enough and well-told, and young Christian Bale gives an extraordinary performance as the developing Jim. John Malkovitch is also excellent as Basie, the American bum whose capacity to survive and flourish makes him as much a role model as the decent British doctor played by Nigel Havers Spielberg directs with his usual assurance, and there are some bravura crowd scenes in Shanghai as its multitudes of coolies and sprinkling of colonials descend into panic and despair. But as it goes through its two hours and more the tim loses its way, digressing ueue otle olandalu POW adventures to hold our interest. As a trim about a boy's experience of war, it compares unfavourably with Elem Klimov's Come and See, in which the relentless momentum of horror never falters. Spielberg never captures the full hysteria (never mind the flies and the stench) of the book. The surreal, hallucinatory visions of Ballard's Jim are always more cont ule ane more picturesque than in the film. Neither do Spielberg and Stoppard capture the subtle insinuations on the decline of imperia Britain with which the book is littered. Thev spare us ir particular the battering British character: the vears in the camo hac genuinely entertaining. It will be required reading for all salon socialists.

There were few places All didn't visit in those times abandoned. Rob Knight not given Jim a high opinion of the British; 'the morose and complicated British' were 'especially good at complaining': and of the snooty Mrs Vincent (Miranda Richardson), 'he knew that if he starved to death in his bunk she would find a polite reason for doing nothing to help him.' Ballard's novel is full of references to film itself, whether it be the propaganda newsreels Hollywood fantasies or the Shanghai studios. For the boy it is a shadowy, fascinating and unreliable force. It gives him 'unsettled dreams'; he is later imprisoned for a while in a deserted cinema: the distracted ws vete d invisible film' on the whitewashed wall of her hut. Spielberg acknowledges this presence in a stuning image of his own as Jim, in desperate flight through Shanghai, passes in front of a vast poster for Gone With the Wind The romantic, enticing havoc on the poster is now docki unreachable haven from ue covs oese lus al effective moment but unfortunately, one of the few in which Spielberg captures the richness of the original. The film is often enjoyable as spectacle but tor the price of a ticket you could oet an incomparable book Pat Ford the next step

TIME

TO END

THE

IRISH

WAR

THE recent events in the execution of three IRA volunteers in Gibraltar, the murder of three nationalists at Milltown cemetery, and the execution of two British soldiers who drove into the funeral cortege of - made many people sit up and take notice. High-profile media coverage of these events brought the reality of the British occupation of Ireland into thousands of living-rooms in a more shocking tashion than ever before. The TV laces calca inte question the myths that intorm ordinary peoples perceptions of the war in the IRA is nothing but a bunch of mafia-style hoodlums and that the British Army is an impartial peace-keeping force. When Northern Ireland secretary Tom King spoke on TV after the killing of the two soldiers at the Andersonstown tunera ot IRA volunteer Kevin Brady, ne eressee concertat republican stewards had been seen lo se organising the funeral, searching cars and doing ••

MOTION FOR ANTI-INTERNMENT

This union notes: 1 The continued military occupation of Northern Ireland by a force of nearly 30 000 including soldiers, paramilitary police, the SAS and auxiliaries. 2 The deaths of more than 2500 people since the troops went in 19 years ago. 3 That 9 August 1988 marks the seventeenth anniversary of the introduction of internment without trial in Northern Ireland in 1971, when troops dragged hundreds of Irish nationalists into Conce lalo calios. the next step the job of the police. This was a Tar crv trom the image of Irish freedom Tienters that the media usually projects - that of the lone gunman or individual bomber who can be portrayed as an isolated criminal.

DOUBTS

For many people who had breviousv accented the official view ef the Northern Ireland, all this aisea many questons and doubts. Sellers of tns report tat Many or tell sales over the past fortnight have been to first-time readers curious to find out what's really going on in Ireland. At a recent street sale in Islington five supporters sold 72 copies of tns in In some branches sellers put together a questionnaire to gauge the popular reponse to Gibraltar, Milltown and Andersonstown. When people were asked how they would describe the situation in Ireland, dozens likened it to South Africa. And nearly everyone, even those who were convinced that British troops should stay

DEMONSTRATION, 6 AUGUST 1988

This union believes: 1 That today Britain uses a different form of internment in Ireland imprisonment on remand behind the smoke-screen of political initiatives like the Anglo-Irish agreement.

2 That there is a war going on in Ireland as a result of Britain's denial of political independence to Ireland as a whole. 3 That Britain can play no progressive role in Ireland.

4 That the only way to bring peace in Ireland is to support the right of national selfdetermination for the Irish in Ireland, described what was going on there as a war. White many people have been forced to question their ideas about the war in reland this does not mean that they are about freedom fighters against the British state. It simply means that the assumptions of large numbers of people have been challenged, and many of them are looking for answers about the 19 year war in Ireland. we nave toke advantage of this new openness about the Irish War, to get the arguments for Irish freedom across have to turn people's events into anger against occupation which are the Cause ane volence and bloodshed in Ireland.

anger into organisation, by debunking the myths and explaining the issues.

The Irish Freedom Movement conference this week aims to do just that (see page 16 for details).

The conference will provide a torum tor neone to discuss what's really at stake tor tre brush runng class in Ireland. We want build a movement in this country that can win wider support for the fight for Irish freedom.

ANGRY

On 6 August the Irish Freedom Movement will hold its annua demonstration to introduction of internment without trial in Northern Ireland. We want the march to be a rallying point for everybody who is angry about Britain's role in Ireland, and eager to do something to get the troops out. This week's conference will gather together those activist who will start the work. We neee to soread the word about the march, to get motions of support raised in trade union and student union meetings, and start mobilising ordinary people behind the banner of Irish solidarity. With Ireland high on the political agenda, there has never been a better time for starting to build a movement that can help to end the Irish War. Anne Burton people and to campaign tor me immediate withdrawal of British troops. This union resolves: 1 To campaign for 'Troops Out Now' and 'Self- People'. 2 To sponsor the antiinternment demonstration in London on 6 August 1988 calling for *Troops Out Now' and' Irish Prisoners Out of Jail'. 3 To donate £....to the demonstration. 4 To affiliate to the Irish Freedom Movement. party page NOTTINGHAM: Monday 18 April, 7.30pm. Mandela Lecture Theatre, Byron Building, Trent Polytechnic, Shakespeare Street ••• DURHAM: Tuesday 26 April, 7.30pm. Video show: The Funeral of Larry Durham University, Manev Room 143, Elvet Riverside NEWCASTLE: Wednesday 27 April, 7.30pm. Lonsdale Pub, Lyndhurst Avenue, opposite West Jesmond metro GLASGOW: Thursday 21 April, 7.30pm. Organised oy the misa reedom Movement. Govanhill Community Centre, Daisy Street Glasgow RCP dayschool Sunday 15 May 1pm-7pm The best way to make sure you get tns every week is to take out a subscription.

A subscription from anywhere in Britain or Ireland will cost you £26 a year. So don't miss out fill in the box today.

RCP PUBLIC MEETINGS

BUILDING A NEW OPPOSITION

WAKEFIELD: Saturday 23 April, 2pm. Unity House, Westgate SHEFFIELD: Friday 29 April, 7.30pm. Red Deer Pub, Pitt Street

WOMEN AND THE NEW MORALITY

TAKE SIDES IN THE IRISH WAR

REVOLT ON THE CLYDE

Govanhill Community Centre

BECOME AN

RCP

SUPPORTER

SUBSCRIBE!

Name Address Postcode Phone Send to BCM JPLtd, London WC1N 3XX OXFORD: Wednesday 4 May, 8pm. Committee Room 1, Town Hall, St Aldates LIVERPOOL: Thursday 12 May, 7.30pm. Trade Union Centre, Hardman Street NEWCASTLE: Thursday 28 April, 6pm. Open forum: Their Morals Not Ours Fight for Women's Rights.

Education Centre, Trewhitt Road, Heaton GLASGOW: Monday 25 April, 7.30pm. Policing the Family. Hillhead Library, Byres Road • Daisy Street Name Address Tel Postcode Please send me tns for 12 months starting at No..

15 April 1988 • 15

the next step Irish Freedom Movement Dayschool

TIME TO END

THE IRISH WAR

Sunday 17 April 10am - 6pm North London Polytechnic Prince of Wales Road Kentish Town, London NW5 (Camden Town or Kentish Town tube) £3 waged/£1.50 unwaged Creche facilities available Sessions include: • From Gibraltar to Belfast: Britain's war strategy today.

• The problem of Loyalism • The myth of the 'religious conflict' • Ireland, South Africa, Palestine: British imperialism against • Why Britain stays in Ireland the oppressed

TROOPS OUT NOW! SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE IRISH PEOPLE!

Phone (01) 729 0414 for more information