The Next Step: No. 9, 4 March 1988

VICTORY TO THE PALESTINIANS! See page 13

UNITED

ALL-OUT

ACTION

ins the next step -9 Revolutionary Communist Party Weekly • Health workers need.... Support our fighting El fund pay for your tns 4 March 1988 improving dramatically.

WHY BRITISH

TROOPS

SHOULD

GET OUT

OF IRELAND

see pages 3,5,8 and 9 40p National industrial action involving one million health workers could quickly make the Tories back down in the NHS dispute. The way to organise such united strike action is to give all health workers an equal stake in beating the government. And we can only do that by prioritising the issues of pay and working conditions, which everybody from skilled nurses to cleaners shares an interest in (Continued on back page)

SCOTTISH HEALTH WORKERS

SHOW THEIR STRENGTH

ome 60 000 Scottish workers streets last to protest

CUL

Council workers and postmen, firemen and miners, and

CHCHUCCIS

unemployed all joined health workers to bring the centres of Edinburgh Glasgow and The streets rang to the standstill. sound of buses and cars honking their horns in solidarity.

The protests showed we have the power to defeat the Tories. Yet the next day you could be forgiven for thinking they had never happened.

Except for a few unswept leaflets the streets were back to normal, apart from the handful of and, workers taking selective action in Glasgow, so were the hospitals. The domestics, porters, technicians and nurses who had vented their anger on Wednesday were back at their posts on Thursday, wondering whether the day of action was just a waste of time. While workers took to the streets and showed their determination to stop the Tory attacks, union leaders debated how best to cooperate with management's drive to make cuts.

GUN-TOTING killer cops are not getting the public sympathy they deserve, according to a new home office report. Post-shooting Experiences is a survey of 25 police firearms officers who have killed or wounded while on duty. The officers describe their feelings as they pulled the trigger. Most said that 'time seemed to siow down'. One experienced tunnel vision' as he fired. Four crackshots reported feelings of intense fear rapidly replaced by overwhelming anger'. All said that they were prone to stress disorders ranging from cold sweats and nightmares to prolonged depression and, in as to cause partial, temporary his hair turned grey overnight.

STRAIN

The home office report presents firearms officers as victims. It calls for confidential counselling and professional support for marksmen suffering Trom posttrauma stress disorder. The authors conclude carrying a gun on behalf of the britisn state deserve greater public sympathy. The publication of Post-shooting Experiences follows a series of shooting incidents involving the police which have served to deepen public unease about the force's free and easy use of firearms. The aim of the report as well as recent medra coverage is to focus public only doing their job, rather police violence. When a West Midlands policeman shot and killed fiveyear old John Shorthouse in 1985, police spokesmen and 2 • 4 March 1988 At the Scottish Health Service Campaign conference before the demonstration, the Spiers. deputy genera secretarv of the Scottish TUC, the health workers' campaign was the not about higher wages. Rodner Bickerstaffe, general secretary of Nupe, insisted that the union had done everything possible to make the NHS efficient. Management have advantage of the union's supine attitude netter to health begins w nica Colleagues, Laurence general manager of the Greater Glasgow Health Board, explained how union cooperation improve our efficiency' has saved ESm per annum' over the past two years. But, he added, "we need to achieve a lot more.... Greater 'efficiency' mean fewer health working harder for less pay in worse conditions. leaders' determination to balance CO e

BOOKS

OT destroys any possibility of defending health workers' fighting conditions. Instead of building for No sympathy for killer cops media pundits tried to evoke sympathy for the unfortunate officer who 'acted in the heat of the moment. In 1987 Inspector Douglas Lovelock stood trial for the shooting of Cherry Groce during a police raid on her Brixton home. The judge portrayed Lovelock as a dedicated public servant who made the 'mistake' of putting a bullet in a black woman's spine and crippling her for life.

Lovelock was free to walk from the courtroom; his victim could only sit and watch from her wheelchair. The press played up the mental scars which Lovelock said would be with him forever, but barely mentioned the paralysis which Cherry Groce has to live with.

ENEMIES

The authorities are keen to win acceptance for the increasing paramilitary capability of the police. ast year's spate of 'psychopath' seresame enema encouraging people to accept Ine necessity for arming une police against the menace posed to society by maniacs ike 'Rambo Ryan'. Postsnooting expenences Is another piece in the composite picture of the police as overworked Jack Regans committed to public safety. But the authors give the game awa commended firearms training should include psychological preparation for the reality of killing. Britain's rulers recognise that in future the police will be required to engage in more and more lethal operations. We should recognise that the target of those operations will not be 'maniacs, but political enemies of the ruling class. Andrew Calcutt only way to win our demands, the Bill bureaucrats have fightback to token activities, which declared that will not upset management.

Many workers their union officials restrictions. On Wednesday morning picketed the workers Infirmary in Glasgow. taken full ancillaries spontaneously turned a formal picket by blockading the road and Dear refusing to move until delivery Peterkin, vans turned away. We need spontaneous anger and militancy.

to the momentum of action is being lost. It is vital that we involve as many workers as possible from every sector of the workforce and from every hospital to coordinate can only workers the action that management most effectively in The union the shortest possible time.

management jobs or wages and 'black mafia' inner cities. how the police are using scares about black crime to infiltrate the black community. built up a picture of the Yardies in Britain as international mobsters. The Yardies were originally involved in small-time drugs and extortion rackets. seventies they were drawn into the power struggle between supporters of former prime minister Michael Manley backed right-wing stooge Edward Seaga. Seaga's fight to oust Manley marked by murder. poet Michael supporter, was stoned to death by Seaga's gangs on a visit to Jamaica in 1984. where, according to the authorities, restricted the have already contempt tor 200 health Western Women protest into an effective build on this Many activists are worried that will disrupt Alan Harding ast week Scotland Yard set up a new squad to tackle the Yardies, which supposedly controls crime in the Scotland 4-U The campaign shows authorities. The police and the media have the Yardie legend. vicious gang of Jamaican gangs Even During the about the infiltrating and his rival. the ClAbrutality and The Brixton-based reggae Smith, a Manley Many Yardies moved to America POLICE RAIDED A HACKNEY CLUB ON THE PRETEXT OF CATCHING YARDIES

POLICE INFILTRATORS

USE YARDIES PANIC

they became an organised crime syndicate, rivalling the mafia in the scale of their operation. Two years the Yard claimed Yardies were moving to Britain because of a clampdown by US Ever since, periodic stories in the press have embroidered Most British Yardies are smalltime crooks who use the notoriety of the name to boost their reputation police dismissed much of the publicity Yardies 'media as hyperbole'. However, the authorities have seized on the issue as a way of the black community and cracking down on all black youth.

At midnight last Thursday, 60 armed policemen smashed their way into Hackney's New Four Aces Club used and arrested seven people for drugs offences, claiming that they were members of a Yardle ang hree now face deportation. According to local police chief Frank Wilkinson, way the officers swooped after suspicious 'strangers' were seen in the area.

KAL

RSES

"The key clue', claimed Wilkinson, 'was that they simply did not know the area. They stood out from the local black community who certainly haven't welcomed them." Black people in Hackney have for little time the anti-social behaviour of crooks. But the police are trying to exploit fears about "mafia-style' gangs to encourage black people to cooperate with a police clampdown. By gaining black support for their anti-Yardie operations, the police hope neutralise resistance to their of black evervdas harassment youth. Recent high-profile police campaigns against knife gangs on the underground steaming gang at the Notting Hill carnival and Sikh gang warfare in Southall have all community leaders to black front the operations.

BEGINNERS

Cooperating with the police is no to deal with anti-social elements. The police are the biggest gangsters of all, with a history of terror and violence against black people that would make even the Yardie gang look like toughest beginners. The police who raided the Four Aces Club came from Dalston police where Tunay Hassan, a station, local Turkish youth, died last year a few hours after being arrested on suspicion of burglary. Colin Roach, Michael Ferreira and Aseta Simms were all killed in Stoke Newington police station, just half a mile from Dalston. Fifteen months ago Trevor Monerville almost joined the list, after Stoke Newington police beat him to within an inch of his life. There is nothing that the • Yardies could teach the gangsters in blue about terrorising the black community. every we should relect attempt by the police to use concern crime to invade the black community. Kenan Malik the next step

Revolutionary Communist Party weekly THE body of Aidan McAnespie, shot dead by a British soldier at Aughnacloy, Is exhumed for a second post-mortem. Private lan Thain, the only British soldier convicted of on-duty murder in Northern Ireland, is out of jail and back on duty.

Two IRA volunteers are blown up by a premature explosion outside Crossmaglen. And three Irish people are hauled before a London court, under armed guard, charged with conspiring to kill Tory Northern Ireland secretary Tom King. It's the start of another week in the Irish War. At a recent press conference, Margaret Thatcher was asked what she would do to allevate the concern among Irish people campaign and the cover-up at the centre of the Stalker affair.

'Do you know,' she replied, 1 asked today how long the Irish problem had been going on. I always thought 400 years. I was told 700 years. So you know, you have to take the long perspective. All the ignorance and arrogance of When Thatcher says she will "take the long perspective, it is a declaration of the British government's determination to continue its colonial occupation of six irish counties. And that is the guarantee that many more weeks will begin with deaths, post-mortems, trials and scandals, The British authorities have gone to great lengths to blame the Irish for the recent upsurge or violence and controversy.

Panorama, the programme tamed by the Tories, did its bit for the British war effort on Monday, by broadcasting another timely piece of nonsense about the IRA, Libya and 'international terrorism'.

But the cause of the conflict in Ireland is not the Libyan connection; it is the London connection. The war continues because Northern Ireland is not nationalists caught within its phoney Borders are not prepared to accept the authority of the British Crown.

Who can claim that the British have the right to rule the parts of Ireland on which current events focus? Aidan Meanespie was shot dead in County Tyrone, an area whose people elected IRA volunteer Bobby Sands as their MP in 1981. Private Thain shot his victim, Thomas Reilly, in 1983 the next step the next step No 9

TROOPS OUT OF

IRELAND NOW

in West Belfast - just two months after nationalists there elected Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams as their MP, a seat he still holds. The two IRA members blown up on Monday died in South Armagh, where the British Army has to travel everywhere by helicopter to avoid the hostility of the Irish population. These places have not been turned into militarised zones because the British authorities fear some handful of "terrorists Colonel Gadaffi. They are the centres of bonular resistance to Westminster rule, where people have learnt from bitter experience of British Sovemments that they will have to fight for Treedom see conte pases).

Since 1921, when they partitioned Ireland, British statesmen have claimed that republicans in the North have no legitimate case. Ireland already has its independence, they say, in the souther state Now It Is becoming obvious has little more independence of Wight. It remains a satellite state, were ponticians condemn British Imperialism in public while bowing to British orders in private. The Anglo-Irish agreement role in protecting the interests Instead, all it has done is to extend British influence in the South. Despite all the insults which Britain has flung at Dublin of late, the Southern ts forces will continue to British military machine against those struggling to unite Ireland. Indeed, during all the public arguments this year over Stalker, the Birmingham Six, McAnesple and Thain, the Irish police have unearthed and stolen even more IRA ammunition than the British.

Dublin might make the gesture of holding a second postmortem on McAnespie. But Its security forces still work handin-glove with the British Border guards who murdered him. North and South, British imperialism denies Irish people their right to selfdetermination. So long as dominated by force of British arms, the ilberation war will continue. The only way to end It is to campaign for the immediate withdrawal of British Publisher Revolutionary Communist Party, BM RCP, London WC1N 3XX ® copyright Printer Morning Litho Printers Ltd (TU), 439 North Woolwich Road, London E16 Annual subscription rates • Britain and Northern Ireland £26 • Europe and Irish Republic £34 • North Africa and Middle East (airmail) £34 • Americas, Asia Central and Southern Africa (airmail) £37 • Australasia, Japan (airmail) £40 • Outside Europe — AlI destinations (surface mail) £33.

All cheques payable to Junius Publications Ltd Circulation 01-729 3771. Newsdesk 01-729 3771. Correspondence to The Editor, the next step, BCM JPLTD, London WC1N 3XX.

ISSN 0144 350 X 4 March 1988. Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office.

Editor: Mick Hume troops from Irish soil. Britain has no political solution to the Irish War. No Anglo-Irish agreement or new sham assembly in the North can paper over the basic contradiction between the British state and the aspirations of the oppressed.

Neither can the British government find a military solution, short of genocide.

Acts of state violence like the shooting of Aidan McAnespie only serve to harden Irish hearts against the occupying 'This', says his sister

CONCE

Eilish, 'is what makes young people round here republicans.'

All that the British authorities can offer the Irish is 'the long perspective' of continuing oppression and resistance. We will see another round of shootings, followed by more inquiries and talks and mock trials. Then there will be other false promises of peace, until the sound of British gunfire and the reply from the IRA drowns out the lies and the All of the arguments which convince people in Britain that their rule in the North of Ireland is just have been shot full of holes over the past month. British law and order has been revealed once more as a legal charter for state murder. The 'sovereign' up as a British dominion disguised as an irish renublic It has rarely been more obvious that the government is fighting a dirty war in Ireland in our name. Yet the official British opposition continues to collaborate in the carnage.

Last week, while Thatcher waved the Union Jack in Irish faces, the Labour Party leadership could only complain that the continued presence of the red, white and blue on the South African flag was an 'insult to Britain'. In truth it is entirely fitting that the flag of the British ruling class, which is called the Butcher's apron' in Ireland, should be associated with oppression around the world. We have been led for too long by politicians who take 'the long perspective' on the Irish War. Another week of It will be too long. Our aim is to build a movement in Britain that can support the Irish in their fight to remove the root cause of the conflict, by forcing the troops out now.

groups activity federation, but they Law African already opposition government Dealer die state has been shown cratic federation, Cosatu trade union symbolic strangled political activities. wrecked uprising,

AT THE SHARP END OF BOTHA'S REPRESSION

NOW ALL RESISTANCE

TO APARTHEID IS...

BANNED

he South Atrican governmen effectively closed down the United Democratic Front and 16 other black anti-apartheid President last week. PW Botha also banned political by trade union Cosatu. The listed organisations still exist in name — cannot post a letter that without germen perission and order minister, Adriaan Vlok, claimed the bans were to suedess arevorunolar climate' in the country. But South security forces have largely suppressed the Since groups. declared the latest off state of emergency in June 1986 11 has detained over 30 000 people.

Many more have been intimidated, murdered by security forces or governmentbacked vigilante squads. The new crackdown is not needed to dea with anti-apartheid organisations.

Instead, it is designed to persuade the white electorate that Botha's National Party remains committed to upholding the apartheid order.

Alter state repression dealt a body blow to the United Demo- Front, the mass union Cosatu, became the main channel for political activity adopted the UDF's their programme, and increasingly took on broader political issues. But last week's decree restricting Cosatu to was largely work both open and covert, had already Cosatu's most of Bombs have its public offices and white union officials face harassment and detention. The defeat of the bitterly fought miners strike last September seriously damaged the National Union of Mineworkers, the largest union within Costu.

BACKTRACKING

Last week's measures, the most wide-ranging since 19 groups were banned in 1977 after the Soweto were widely expected. The real question was when Botha would make his move. This week's by-elections in the conservative ities. Transvaal, for seats in the all-white parliament, persuaded Botha that now was the time. He announced the new powers barely 24 hours before he was due to speak at an the Northerr e ecion rally in Transvaal Standerton. town The by-elections are in torme government strongholds which the far-right Conservative Party now The ruling National Party has had trouble maintaining its traditional Afrikaner base in face of Conservative Party charges backtracking on its It IS commitment to apartheid. The Conservatives won 22 Transvaal seats in last May's allwhite elections and almost halt of Afrikaner vote in the The tota country. Botha is concerned that the rightward drift among whites is the result of his party's so-called reform strategy, which aims to buy of the black

-SCCLIOT

population and modernise and stabilise the apartheid system.

SHAM

Alongside detentions and bans of the last two years, Botha black has put money into the ghettos at the of the

COLIC

He is

BOVCRECE

spending millions rebuilding the political credibility of sham black councils, and co-opting a new layer of collaborators. Black stooge councillors who took refuge in stockades behind armed guards just 18 months ago are now back at The UDF-affiliated posts. associations, which Teste ens drove these collaborators out in the first place, are banned under the new decree Botha's reform-and-repression may have helped strategy to stabilise the townships but it has upset the government's traditional electorate, already angry over the impact of drought and economic recession. bv demon strating his willingness to hammer the resistance movement Botha hopes to restore his electora bast while still pursuing the twintrack strategy. Even the draconian nature of last measures is unlikely to week's placate the right-wing Afrikaners of the Transvaal. As go to press the We Conservatives look set to win the oy-elecuons with increasea major- But the real worry for the apartheid regime is that, destroying the last remains of legal black opposition, it may unleash a far more ruthless resistance.

Russell Osborne 4 March 1988 • 3

ABORTION

TIME-LIMIT

DEBATE

ournalists heralded the select committee report as a setback for Liberal MP David Alton's reeuce abortion time-limit from 28 to 18 weeks. But can it be true that the noble lords are really the latest recruits in the fight for women's rights? And will their recommendation thwart Alton's efforts to limit women's access to abortion?

A closer look at the report reveals that the answer to both questions is Equal Opportunities Commission's new ICUUlL. Barriers Fair Selection, details the range of practices which ensure that women are kept in the worst-paid jobs and the lowest grades. The document was compiled from a survey of workplaces in the private sector. The responses were a great disappointment to the EOC, but will come as no surprise to most women. The report revealed the predominance of women in the sector and in temporary jobs. In one firm more than 99 per cent of parttimers were women. The employers gave vanus reasons tor caproving so many part-time staff, ranging from the concerned. — it gets them out of the house after they've sorted the family's tea out'- to the blunt some start asking when they're to be laid off.' In this case 346 women were laid off with one day's suit the interests the company.

LOW

Many women interviewed held a low opinion of existing equal opportunities legislation. Only 29 percent believed they were being given an equal chance to men, and 4 • 4 March 1988

LORDS

LEAVE IT

TO THE

DOCTORS

A house of lords select committee has recommended the rejection of legal time-limits on abortion. But, explains Fiona Foster, this only shows how confident they are that the DHSS and the doctors will police women's rights a resounding no! The select committee had been discussing the Infant Life (Preservation) Bill, introduced in 980 b the the Bishop of Birmingham and now being sponsored Houghton of Sowerby aimed to bring the law into line with the medical profession's view that a fetus is now viable from 24 weeks, by amending the 1929 Infant Life (Preservation) Act to outlaw terminations after 24 weeks.

EOC REPORT

WOMEN ARE

WORSE OFF

-OFFICIAL

68 per cent elmey discouraged from promotion. Most commented on une complete absence of any opportunities whatsoever.

The report uncovers numerous procedures which breach existing legislation but which are virtually impossible to stop. A large number of employers use the mouth network to keen women out of senior positions. worker explained how his firm used to recruit new staff: "They didn't like to advertise in case they got the wrong sort. No Jews, Catholics, or negroes and particulariv no women.

HOSTILE

If an women managed to get to the interview stage, they would then face a barrage of hostile questions their family circumrelaung to stances. After being asked about how she would deal with a personal in somebody's house and assault about her plans to woman soon got the impression that it wasn't really a female they were for. Employers put looking emphasis on 'geographical mobility wilingness of women to move if the job required it. Few women are able to uproot themselves due to responsibilities at home and

THE

ALTON

BILL

state exemplary record by Lord The bill criteria for were their lack of economic independence.

tages women immediately, interview to 'word of applicants. The An insurance little hope to women in badly paid, who are denied place. extent and clear in the report that the 'extent the situation. proposals opportunities and process. for operating seems at odds with the evidence in the surves in discriminating against women.

For nearly

FIGHT

ABORTION

ASEARLYAS

POSSIBLE...

AS LATE AS

NECESSARY

departments The peers felt that the proposed restrictions were an insult to the and medical authorities which they consider to have an poncing women's access to abortion. The 18-page report highlights goverhment controls on abortion clinics and the medical profession's tough terminations evidence that no legal restrictions on late abortions are necessary: non-NHS Having regard to the restrictions

PART-TIME CLEANING IS ALL SHE COULD GET

work. As a result, this requisite disadvanand in worsened. many cases is only announced at the discourage report's conclusions offer insecure employment, or to women work in the first It recommends that firms The monitor their practices...to identify location any women, barriers to equal opportunities'. It is

EOC

of these barriers are very great. It is not so clear what can the greatest be achieved simply by monitoring There are also full equality formalise equal the selection the report To release gives personnel managers responsibility these This plans. which shows personnel officers to have taken a leading role decades two 20 equal to lead this struggle. -years opportunities legislation has failed to improve the position of women at

WOMEN NEED

RIGHTS

THE ANTI-ABORTIONISTS ARE DOMINATING THE DEBATE — WE NEED TO MAKE OUR ARGUMENTS HEARD already imposed administratively by the combined force of the health and the medical profession on abortions after 24 weeks of pregnancy, the committee see no purpose in retaining the 28week restriction at all. Convinced that the state and. the medics, with a little help from antiabortion agitators, have created a climate in which women already find it so difficult to get abortions, the peers concluded that further legal controls serve no purpose.

The select committee noted that successive Tory health ministers have made extensive use of their powers to impose restrictions on which carry preiises out abortions. Only 65 private nare Indeed the EOC's report seems to show that the situation has Women have even less chance of securing stable full-time employment today than was the case in the seventies. Yet the EOC calls complacently for wider changes to the law. This includes tackling issue leave, paternity career the breaks and childcare facilities'.

of question childeare facilities is of major importance to although you would not think so given its low priority in the For women report. with children, lack of nursery provision is barrier decent employment. If women are to gain there at work, the issue of women's role as domestic drudges and child-bearers must be confronted.

the women from these burdens, we need to fight for free abortion on demand and free all-day nurseries. The Equal Opportunities need Commission, which has spent all of discovering that discrimination exists, is not the body Joanna Doyle

FUL

ABORTION

RISHTS

nursing homes are authorised by the DHSS to carry out abortions, and then only up to 20 weeks. Only seven can do abortions up to 24 weeks, leaving the small number done after 24 weeks in the hands of

NHS

private sector nursing homes are subject to periodic, unannounced inspections by the DHSS and their right to continue operations is reviewed every two years. The lords produced striking statistics vindicate their faith in medical practitioners. 1986 only 29 abortions were carried out after 24 and only seven were on "social grounds". Endorsing what is already committee general practice, the recommended that the 'social clause' of the 1967 Abortion Act be amended ensure that two to doctors agree that an abortion would be 'essential' to the mother's physical and mental health.

By adding the word "essential", the tors want to turer underming the already tenuous basis on which the vast majority of women gain to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Because the figures snow unal ne abortions were carried out after 24 weeks on the grounds of injury to existing children, the lords propose a legal limit of 24 weeks on these grounds only.

CONTROL

The committee's rejection of a sweeping 24 week limit on abortions may well mean a rocky ride for Alton's bill should it reach the house of lords. But it will do nothing to undermine attempts b Alton and his supporters to shift the climate of opinion in favour of stricter controls over abortion Indeed, so successful has the antiabortion lobby been that the lords now feel confident enough to reject time-limits in the knowledge that and the state medical profession will continue clamping down on women's rights. The select committee report confirms that women are as far from having the right to abortion as we have ever been. The 1967 Abortion Act was carefully framed to ensure that would be all possibility of abortion on demand.

It is now so widely accepted that state and the medical profession have the sole authority to decide who can and cannot have an abortion that there is hardly any for this principle enshrined in legislation The only purpose of retaining the law seems to be to allow the anti-abortion lobby to attack it as a means of prejudice promoting arals. the next step

im Collins is a photographer from the Bogside, experience of harassment by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the British Army has with that of

CO BBERO

Aidan McAnespie. *The first time was me in jail in arrested they put They gave me a Crumlin Road. going-over, I was bashed around through the time I was interrogated.

That was in June 1985. Jim was held for seven and a half months.

Then the

RUC

dropped released and him. 'Remand in Ireland", explains Jim, is just another form of internment.

Somebody can just snatch you off the street and put you in jail for up The charges may be to two years. thrown out in court but at the end of the day you've spent two years in jail on the word of an RUC man or a supererass.' As soon as Jim steps outside his door the security forces are on his back. He has been arrested eight times in the last 18 months, and hauled ott to Castlereagh interrogation *Sometimes you're lifted straight off the street. You could be going to the shop and they just pull One you're you up. walking in the fresh air, the next minute you're locked up in a cell.'

TORTURE

Last week they came for "Tuesday again. morning, seven, the RUC came and raided the home and took me to Strand barracks and later Road Castlereagh. I was arrested under 12. That allows them to Section hold you for seven days without charge. They took me into the back of the jeep and told me to sit on ground which I refused. One

RUC

man kept his boot on my back and the other held me down with his elbow on my shoulder."

Castlereagh is the main torture Six centre Counties use "They've become very sophisticated in how they ill-treat people. They can slap you on the head for maybe four hours and you still wouldn't have a mark on you. But it has the same effect as kicking you. There are times when they'll leave you standing for hours and if you sit down ther throw you back up Or again. bend your else uney fingers or your wrist back, various blows to the stomach or testicles.

But they don't leave any marks."

Before he left Castlereagh last week Jim was put on an identity parade. 'A girl came on heavily disguised with a blonde wig and dark glasses. man in charge walked in my direction and said "Are you sure you can't

TWO

FACES OF

BRITISH

JUSTICE

e consider the incident to or judgement made by a of judgement made by a young difficult circumstances.' This was how a British Army spokesman justified the decision to release and re-enlist Private Ian Thain. Thain, British only soldier an Irish convicted of murdering nationalist while duty, for the sentenced blooded shooting of 22-year old Thomas Reilly in Belfast in August 1983. Now it has been confirmed the next step whose AFTER AIDAN McANESPIE,

WHO'S

NEXT?

ever the

JIM COLLINS

identify anybody?" He didn't tell her right over. identify me. That was the second time in as many months that he had been put on an identity parade by his captors. recognise iney republican so they do their utmost hum half to get me off the streets. Eventually they'll stitch me up or shoot me.

well-known He disc photographer, whose pictures aim to show the reality of war for Irish

PRIVATE IAN THAIN AND YOUNG IRISH POWS

that Thain was released in February 1987, after serving only two years and one month of his sentence.

The British authorities justified their decision on the grounds that Thain was a young man who made a he mistake when pressure. He had been in the Army less than a year and was 18 when he killed Reilly, three months into his first tour of duty in Ireland. At his trial the judge said he had taken account of Thain's youth, inexperience and lack of sleep. Last press made much of the week the fact that Thain had been suffering from 'emotional shock' at the time of the shooting, after the death of a fellow soldier killed by a bomb two months earlier. British government spokesmen, who showed sympathy for Thain's very plight, do not grant clemency to Irish republicans of the same age and younger who are detained at the 'Secretary of State's Pleasure. ever who are imprisoned offences against the of their country occupation coldsentenced with release dates. But those convicted of crimes' allegedly committed when they were under 18 detained indefinitely at the

'THEY'LL

Aughnacloy last week She still didn't British Army.' tortured in Castlereagh. If you live in Creggan, recognised you no matter what. A JIM COLLINS PHOTO CAPTURING AN RUC ATTACK AT A DERRY FUNERAL There are more *prisoners of war serving sentences In Northern Ireland. was under back to Because he Northern secretary. Lynch Joe the same behind bars.

UNPRECEDENTED

alleged for British The release him.

STITCH ME UP,

OR SHOOT ME'

Joe Boatman spoke to Jim Collins from Derry, who has been harassed by British occupation forces for years - just as Aidan McAnespie was threatened before a soldier shot him dead in nationalists. That's very little in terms of the war going on, but something so small is enough to get me hounded by the RUC and the going your life.' Everybody in the Bogside has a friend who has been whisked off the street or a relative who has been had a the Bogside or Ireland. nationalist areas, the RUC are going to harass They don't have to know you or know you're a dismissed unprecedented 'Secretary of State's Pleasure'.

minderer than 50 Irish

'SOSP'

regiment. British jails in Terry Boyle from Strabane was 21 when he was arrested. But the attacks he was charged with dated

'SOSP'

1973 when he was was convicted of a murder committed before he was 18, he was sentenced to be detained at the whim of the Northern Ireland prisoner's family He will have served 10 questions years in April, yet he still doesn't know when he will get out. In 1972 take over. and Brendan Malley were jailed after being convicted of participating in an IRA operation.

have Lynch got life and Malley, then 17, got 'SOSP. Lynch was released after serving 13 years, but Malley is still inside and likely to remain there for at least another two years. By then he will have spent half his life If you are The way in which the authorities arrive at their decisions on release

'SOSP

dates is instructive. Thain's case was considered at top level before the parole board made its decision to British Army cine republican. If you live in the Bog there's every chance you're going a to be a Catholic so they re not to give you a minute of The murder of Aidan McAnespie was no surprise to Jim. "The RÙC and the British Army have always shoot-to-kill policy They didn't suddenly come to the conclusion "Right, uses let's go and start shooting some people." They've always done it."

im collins concluded that Thain should not be from the force for a convicted and the parole board agreed to release him back into his The final decision was taken by home secretary Douglas Hurd, who gave his approval for Thain to rejoin the Army.

Contrast this to the way Irish prisoners are dealt with.

the They are supposed to attend review hearings with the assistant governor who is a professional Loyalist. After the formalities of inquiring about the and education, about his attitude, remorse, guilt and political beliefs says The implication is that only if the prisoner renounces his political convictions and promises to involvement in the republican movement will he stand a chance of getting out. If you are a young British soldier who shoots an Irish nationalist in cold blood and gets sentenced to life imprisonment you can expect to be released back into the force which is waging war against the Irish people a 16-year old Irish nationalist who gets sentenced to for resisting the British occupation of your country you will never be allowed out to rejoin the fight for Irish freedom. Joan Phillips the oper side

THE FEAR

"WHAT

do you want?' ask the shady Men-in-Suits whose illicit operations are threatened by Carl, the razor-faced boy gangste in The Fear (ITV, Wednesday). 'A profit' spits Carl the Islington upstart. Then he pops out in his Porsche to kill some more people he ease

-ERE

his investment. Everybody says that The Fearis 'controversial" moral allegory about Thatcher's Britain. because Carl has a yuppie lifestyle and the same thrusting qualities found among the young City slickers who have made fortunes in the The difference is that markets. Carl breaks laws other than those concerning insider dealing, and designer violence rather una comoser Tale to make as So what's controversia money. The basic story in The Fear young hood challenges old gang land bosses - is the staple stufi of crime thrillers. Carl is only an updated, better-dressed and better-armed version of Pinkie under his thumbnail in Graham Greene's Brighton Rock. Carl even has a boyhood mate, Marty, who wants him to give up crime - the temporal Jimmy Cagney's pal-turned-priest (Pat O'Brien), in Angels with Dirty Faces Neither is the idea of presenting organised crime as just another business exactly new. From the old prohibition gangster films to The Godfather, the line separating capitalists and the politicians has always been a fine one. After all, didn't Cagney lose his boozesmuggling fortune in the Wall Street crash in The Roaring Twenties? Presumably what makes The Fear'controversial' is the fact that it's about Britain; now, rather than

USA

ago. Dignified years establishment have always prided themselves on belonging to the Confederation of British Industry rather than the Cosa Nostra. But the spate of City crime scandals, and the revelations like those in the Stalker affair (of police chiefs, Tory dignitaries and businessmen mixing with crooks at swish soirées), have allowed mask to slip a little. The powers that be don't need any more embarrassing reminders difference IS between the methods used by Carl's crew to extract extortion from a pool halt ('Be 'ard, Jo-Jo one, as Jo-Jo kicks in the door), and those used by budding British businessmen making a dawn raid on a rival company's shares. If Carl symbolises anything, it is that little apart from packaging has changed either in crime movies or capitalist standards. He even exhibits the same vicious chauvinism as the Cagney gangster who pushed a grapefruit in a woman's face in White Heat. But then, the dodgy Hoorays in the City wine bars probably aren't averse to throwing up fruit juice over a gel, either.

Eddie Veale 4 March 1988 • 5

anama's strongman General P Manuel Noriega ousted president Eric Delvalle last week and appointed replacement, after Delvalle had threatened to dismiss him.

Few general's of the outraged Civic Crusade opponents chose to remember that Delvalle had come to office in 1985 with Noriega's help and using similar methods.

But then the middle class Civic Crusaders are only recent converts democrac Geese ves 1987 Panama's middle classes had backed Noriega and every other dictator who has wielded power throughout their country's brief history.

CARVED

The history of this small Central American state eveals Panama has never achieved independence from its US sponsors or managed to establish a stable democracv. And the tumultuous events of the past few months show that the

USA

finding difficult control over its own backyard" If any country can claim the title the 51st State of America', it is Panama (short for Pan America).

The country was carved out of Colombia in 1903, when a number of Colombian shareholders in the Panama Canal Construction Company signed an accord with US president Theodore Roosevelt.

This granted the USA sovereign rights over a 10-mile wide strip of isthmus 'in perpetuitv Following his walk softly and carry a big stick' policy, Roosevelt overruled Colombian objections to the separation and despatched several US navy cruisers to the Panamanian coast.

SOVEREIGNTY

The canal was built between 1904 and 1914, and the USA began to install its 10 000-strong Southern Command there. The force was sent ostensibly to protect the canal and its American operators, but its true mission over the decades that followed was to police the entire In 1977 president region. Jimmy Carter consented to hand over sovereignty of the canal zone by the year 2000. But Panama was compelled guarduice international neutrality of canal and to grant the USA the 'perpetual right" to defend this neutrality. Panama's General Omar Torhis rIJOS began sovereignly negotiations with America in the with support from the

SILICS.

Panamanlan macle classes wne were eager to reap the benefits of running the canal themselves. They had precious few interests of their own to develop, since every section of Panama's economy is alrectly dea to te fortunes or lac international economy. But the damaging impact of the decine in woria trade trom me early eighties has encouraged Panamanian middle classes to think twice about cutting ties the USA. The world recession hit the Panamanian economy on several fronts. The fall-off in world trade Panama's *flag devastated convenience shipping fleet, which faces stiff competition from newcomers like Cyprus and even land-locked Luxemburg. economic crisis cut canal traffic, and the opening of the Transisthmian oil pipeline in 1985 led to decline In revenue. Panama's international banking took oft in But seventies. they struggling compete

•LUT

Miami's still financial facilities, even though Panama's currency is the US dollar. Falling prices have decimated Panama's main agricultural cash crops bananas and sugar. All this has led the thoughts of Casses ditching their special relationship with the

USA.

They have thus 6 • 4 March 1988

CRISIS IN PANAMA

Until that keep become increasingly unhappy with the anti-us Noriega uses to keep control over the masses. General command over Panama's 15 000strong defence forces in 1983 as the effects of the recession began to bite. He got the job with the help of a good reference from his CIA 1980 employers. From

COSTA

RICA

PACIFIC OCEAN

Ls0 mules the

LEC

RUSSIA

the with

BLACK SEA

of The

TURKET

now with million Armenians demonstrating on the streets of their capital city Yerevan the Soviet of Since the riots in Kazakhstan in 1986, middle national question has emerged as one of the most important political issues facing Gorbachev. More than 100 nationalities

UP THE CANAL

WITHOUT

A PADDLE

which in Panama for The US Noriega assumed conscious Contras, and Noriega

CARIBBEAN SEA

The Canal

PANAMA

GORBACHEV'S NIGHTMARE

ARMENIAN UPHEAVAL

THREATENS GLASNOST

NAGORNO-KARABAKI

GEORGIA

ARMENIA

AZERBAIJAN

EREVAN

IRAN

the ethnic smouldered for decades caught leadership by threatening to explode. anti-Russian the predominantly live inside the international his CIA sponsors.

IMF

$60m indefinite nine-day allowed the CIA to train Contras quick use against the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.

year undercover subversion conciliatory and assassination agency laundered desperate drug money via Panama's secrecyclasses banks to arm the established sacked his listening post to monitor subversives throughout the continent.

Colonel Roberto Noriega turned a blind eye to US Colon Panama City canal zone Armenia. Christian

CASPIAN SEA

ethnic violence. for change. Over the local Communist Parti borders of the Soviet Union - and that have are now The protests in Yerevan have been sparked off by the demand for the to Armenian autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh to be removed from the jurisdiction unresolvable of Azerbaijan and transferred to Krem in. dirty tricks and infringements of growing working class unrest at home has since forced him to cold-shoulder In March 1986 Panama accepted of harsh programme austerity measures in return for a commercial bank loan to few help relieve its economic problems.

Panama's trade union confederation, Consato, protested by calling an national strike. The strike was marked by clashes with the defence forces, but was called off after Noriega's stooge Delvalle made substantial This concessions to the unions.

victory unleashed a strike wave that lasted the rest of the Relations between the But Noriega and the middle Panamanian deteriorated throughout 1986. They reached an all-time low in March last year when Noriega second-in-command Herrara, who had accused him of drug trafficking like, that

COLOMBIA

the The disputed area of Nagorno-Karabakh has been part of the Azerbaijan regime since 1923.

Ethnic tension between the largely Armenians and the Muslim Azerbaijanis goes back to pre-1917 The threatens to engulf the region in The past week's demonstrations over Nagorno-Karabakh are symptomatic of a more general desire the past 12 months Armenians have protested against nuclear power plants and industrial pollution in Yerevan. It appears that leadership of the las bravels significant role in the demonstrations.

The Armenian party leadership is well-known for its corruption, and was under investigation by Moscow before the protests began. The local bureaucrats have used the national aspirations of the Armenian people strengthen their hand in negotiations with Moscow.

The explosion in Yerevan is an problem for the makes Moscow and conspiring with the CIA to kill ortios in 198 Noriega's middle class opponents moved into the streets and formed the Civic Crusade to press for his Lacking any demoresignanon cratic tradition, they were obliged import the 'People's Power model Filipino president Corazon Aquino. Remarkable scenes of well-dressed lawyers and doctors confronting soldiers in riot gear hit the world's TV screens.

The new crusaders for democracy issued unsuccessful appeals for a general strike, but failed to put Noriega under pressure. Their hope only ousting Noriega lies in persuading Washing.

ton to take their side, and beyond a unlikely gestures this to happen. When the American embassy in Panama City was bricked by a mob last July, Noriega's soldiers stood by and watched. Like Argentina's General Galtieri in 1982, who popular against eucectee Stevo! Britain's usurpation of the Malvinas, Noriega has beer obliged to channel domestic opposition against US imperialism same time he has at int undermined the protest movement by making his own personal battle, than US rather the issue of interference in general, the focus of popular dissension.

CONFLAGRATION

American courts can issue many drug indictments as they US leaders but seriously considering unseating Washington Noriega. These days is grateful to find a third world leader who can pledge that 'all American interests in the Republic of Panama shall remain intact, undisturbed and unharmed,' and still manage to keep a grip on the Washington is rebellious masses. endanger its vital strategic interests in Panama by precipitate action, and a direct military intervention would risk conflagration across Central America. For the moment it seem.

that Noriega's position is assured, but the continuing upheaval means his future tar iron guaranteed Andy Clarkson concessions to the Armenians it will provoke backlash among the Azerbaijanis. But itthe Soviet leadership ignores the demands of demonstrators then it risks fuelling further unrest. Gorbachev is playing for time. All he can offer in negotiations are cosmetic concessions. Gorbachev wants to avoid a repressive military that could finish off his policy of However has little room to manoeuvre. The ruling bureaucracy cannot allow nationalist protest to succeed lest it set an example to other ethnic groups Sooner or later Gorbachev will threaten to use force, and if that doesn't work he will have to send in the troops.

INDICTMENT

growing importance of the national question grave indictment of the Stalinist system in the Soviet Union. From the mid-twenties the Soviet bureaucracy usurped all power from the working class and systematically liquidated revolutionary politics. The communist tradition, which had considerable influence in Armenia and neighbouring Azerbaijan during following 1917 years revolution, perished in the Stalinist era. With the destruction of working politics, become the dominant form political expression in Armenia and the other repubics. he respons bility for this tragedy lies with the Soviet bureaucracy. Only a new proletarian revolution the can create conditions overcoming the ethnic divisions which now plague the Soviet Union.

the next step

NINE

THE establishment knows that control and manipulation of nurses as a workforce depends on the maintenance of the image of nurses as 'ministering angels' with infinite patience. John Moore, the social services minister, has already drawn the distinction between 'decent' nurses who don't take industrial action and the rest of us, portrayed as lacking in compassion and humanity. Most nurses feel a deep commitment to those they care for, and the authorities know they can control us by insinuating that we are personally responsible for patients' well-being. Now is the time to make

CUTS AND

BRIBES

FROM BR

BRITISH Rail management in Scotland are forcing through job cuts and changes in work practices among clerical grades. Union officials have accommodated with management all the way. A recent example of their approach occurred when delegates from all over Scotland met management in Glasgow. The first half of the meeting was between local staff reps and a group of full-time union negotiators. This lasted for nearly eight hours. During that time, any dissent from the floor was automatically attacked by the top table. Then at 6pm management arrived to work out the finer details of how they intend to implement the cuts and changes in work practices.

As they negotiated through the night with the the next step

HEAL

OUR FIGI

For decent pi For better conditions

NURSES ARE NOT 'ANGELS'

emergency cover. They dedicated Florence mostly women workers. Sarah North London full-timers, local staff reps watcned trom tne sidelines, unable to take part. Write to tns

SPLTD,

WC1N

3XX decent For bett conditi Pandora Anderson clear to the government and managers that, under the present structure, if we decide to strike it is they - not us who are responsible for providing services, including perpetuate the appalling pay and conditions that we have to work under, not us. We need to encourage our colleagues to realise that the continuous emphasis on the image of Nightingales is kept up for the purpose of covering up the reality, ie, that we are a group of low-paid, totally exploited, When the meeting came to an end at 3.45am, staff reps were put into taxis and given a day off with pay. Management even offered rooms at the Hospitality Inn at British Rail's expense. I declined their bribe. The next day I went to work to tell union members about the farcical negotiations I had witnessed. The only way to stop job cuts is for militants to go to weaker areas and argue for action. Railworkers must also unite across sectiona lines. My colleagues in the union tell me Tan vers that their officials have ordered a news blackout on the current negotiations over the introduction of the 'traincrew concept' management's fancy name for further flexibility and job cuts. We cannot allow our fightback to be sabotage by demarcaton between drivers, clerks ana guards NUR member Glasgow letters page

AIDS IN AFRICA

TO say that the bubonic plague bacillus originated in the Himalayas does not Imply any prejudice against the people of Centra Asia. Nor is there anything racist about admitting that there are a large number of people with Aids in Africa, or about conceding that it seems likely that the virus originated in Africa.

The letter from Tunde in last week's tns reveals a widespread radical inabillty to face up to

STRIKE FOR

JOBCENTRE

JOBS

I WORK at Tottenham Jobcentre and have been on strike since 1 February against staff cuts. Two WeeKs eoe we came out, I was assaulted in the office by a client who had been waiting to be seen day there were 30 people waiting and three staff on duty. A few days later, the area manager promised us two extra staff. They were recruited during the

AFGHAN

PUZZLE

GORBACHEV'S

declaration of withdrawal from Afghanistan has certainly pulled the rug from under US propagandists. It has also caused great Constellation among speech writers in Whitehall. Yet while the analysis in James Malone's article (tns, 26 February) is excellent, the conclusion is somewhat vague. It's all very well to say that 'only the independent struggles of can liberate the Afghan people'. But what workers •••••

HOW TO

STOP THE

CLAUSE

THE Stop the Clause demonstacon in Manchester was one of the biggest-ever lesbian and gay marches. The carnival mood was in the tradition of Lesbian and Gay Pride. But the rally at the end didn't do anything to raise our spirits. The speeches were mainly rhetorical - • Cl doout now nasty and horrible Clause 28 is. No one put forward any strategy of how we might build a fighting campaign.

This was in stark contrast to the militant and angry march in London earlier this year, where the speakers and marchers were in fighting form. In London. Linda Bellos spoke of how she would be prepared to break the law by operating a policy reality and a tendency to evade political problems.

The evident fact that there is a serlous Alds epidemic in central Africa the Western estab ishment te reinforce racial prejudice.

when ant-racists respond by trying to deny truths that are ev dent to everybody they simply conna bunc suspicions that left wingers are head-bangers and leave the influence of reaction unchallenged. following week. Then we received a memorandum from senior management saying that the new staff would have to go By this time, we'd heard about the Camden strike, and we knew that their dispute and ours were both about the same thing: staffing cuts as a result of last year's merger of Jobcentres and unemployment benefit offices. We voted overwhelmingly to join the offices are now involved, and it looks as if it could escalate into a Londonwide maemnite strike including DHSS offices as well. and peasants? With next to no industry there cannot be a working class in Afghanistan; and, as the article states, the reforms introduced by Muhammad Taraki's • the radical government administration which took power in 1978 -

- WCTC

resented by the Muslim peasants. Since then, the fundamentalists have consolidated their influence in the rebel movement. Any 'independent' struggles will only be independent of the Kabul government, not independent of the reactionary mullahs. Najibullah's regime would not survive a Soviet withdrawal, and if it falls the ensuing fundamentallst administration would of non-compliance. However. when spoke with her before the vancester Tally, she made it clear that although she would still adopt this approach, her Labour group did not support her. Her speech was as rhetorical as the Tool As we get near to the time when the shit hits the fan, the excuses are abundantly clear that we cannot rely on Labou councils to fight on for us.

When the crunch comes, they will capitulate to pressure in the Tory Coul Our response to the use of Alds to stir up racial bigotry

- TOI

example, by Imposing new regulations on Immigrants or visitors should be to step up opposition to all forms of Immigration controls. This fits naturally into the work of a campaign such as workers Acainst Racism which has played a leading role on this front for several years. Don Milligan London The pay in the civil service is an insult Staf morale is at its lowest for reaching new heights. I Che KaLees thing is to leave, because there seems very little chance of changing anything that the government does. I've been involved in industrial past year, and it's clear to me that the government is carrying out a wholesale assault. The only possible way of making a proper stand is for all public sector workers to unite CPSA striker Tottenham make Khomeini's look liberal. There is nothing progressive about any wing of the Afghan rebel movement. it was correct to condemn the Soviet invasion in 1979 on the grounds that It would only remrorce reaction in Afghanistan. Yet if the Soviet forces witndraw the fundamentalists will carry out a monstrous pogrom. If the Soviet forces remain, the civil war will continue and the mullahs will gain even more support. It's not just the US state department and the British foreign office who have no answer for Afghanistan. Paul Flewers South London We have to respond to this situation by putting forward an effective strategy to win council workers and the rest of the working class to fight for lesbian and gay rights The Fighting Charter for Lesbian and Gay Rights (tns, 26 February) is a clear platorm trom waich to present the arguments for the complete decriminalisation of homosexuality. It is imperative, now more than ever, to begin to build a campaign for lesbian and gay rights and for equal rights for all. Andrew Liverpool 4 March 1988 • 7

the propaganda ACCORDING to the latest issue of Money magazine, Al Capone had the highest-ever annual income made by any individual; the £2.5m he took in 1927 is equivalent to £390m today.

None of the wealthy listed in Money's survey of 'Britain's richest 200' get close to the gangster's Income, but many make the same contribution to British society as he did to Chicago. Money points out that the old British aristocracy has been in decline for years, so that today 'Only five aristocratic familles make It into the top 20, and there are just 30 nembers of the landed gentr adds, 'Self-made men outnumber those who Inherited their wealth by more than two to one.' This might suggest that the entrepreneurial spirit which bullt the workshop of the world is still alive. But a closer look at the survey reveals the modern British rich as dead wood. Most of the modern British rich have assumed the parasitic style of the aristocracy. They make their money not from industry, technology and enterprise, but by creaming off rent, interest and dividends from land ownership and share speculation. The prophets of Thatcherism like the mythical image or an economy sustained by industrious individual capitalists rolling up their sleeves at the family factory.

But today's economys dominated by massive corporations with their fingers in a thousand ples, swapping paper shares across the globe.

These outfits, as Money discovered, are run by managers whose 'share stakes were much lower than their profiles and their salaries'. The men with the real money (and more than 90 per cent of those on Money's list are men) simply fortunes on the strength of owning things. They are living adverts for the argument that

CONCO HECTE

bankrupt way of running the world.

BILLIONAIRES

Take a look at who owns what in Thatcher's Britain.

Money reckons that there are seven billionaires In Britain today. The Queen comes top of the pile with an estimated £3340m. She gets a £4.3m annual handout from the state, and owns castles, thousands of acres of prime land, a vast personal portfollo of stocks and shares, jewels and racehorses • 'Although, Money notes sadly, 'the triumph of a Derby winner still eludes her.' Our hearts go out to the poor woman. Then there Is Sir John Moores, 'Britain's richest man", wort about servum. Money tries to make something of the fact that Moores left school in Eccles at the age of 14 and worked his way up. But that was at the turn of the century.

Today the 92-year old Moores rakes it in from owning Littlewoods football pools hardly an enterprise which can compensate for the collapse of Britain's manufacturing industry. Other billionaires Include the Duke of Westminster, just 36 8 • 4 March 1988 war

VERY FILTHY LUCRE

and sitting on £1400m. Money that his wealth is due to being in the right place at the right time'. In fact he was only in the right womb at the lucky break came centuries back, when Buck House was bullt on marshy land they owned in Belgravia, which quickly became a lucrative plece of real estate. Sir James Goldsmith is worth £1000m.

Money politely describes him as a corporate raider. In other words he is a City shark who dives through the markets biting chunks out of anything tasty and spittine out the remains. The Vestey family are on the same billion mark. They are best known as the most infamous tax-dodgers in Britain, whose exploits make Lester Piggott look like an honest citizen. And just behind the billionaires, with £700m, Maxwell. He is another his Image as a hard-working publicity efforts of his own Mirror which mentioned his name a mere 94 times

SPIVS

Successful hi-tech businessmen like Alan Sugar of are few and far between in moneys survey. ougar started out selling car aerials from the worth £280m. But even he boom in share prices, which multiplied the value of his holding in Amstrad, rather than from flogging computers. The fragllity of Sugar's fortune was revealed in last October's crash, when he lost £100m overnight. The myth of the dynamic entrepreneur Is finally exposed by the survey's reve ation that a ful third of those with between £10m and E50m are fading entertainers like Mick Jagger and Elton John, pulp novelists like Jeffrey Archer and Barbara Cartland, ham actors like Roger Moore and Joan Collins, and human 'saucy postcard Benny Hill.

Money admits that its survey is flawed and incomplete.

DHSS claimants might have to account for their every penny, our te accountancy proiession exists to keep the lil-gotten gains of the rich away from the public - and the Inland Revenue's • gaze. It is also true that being very rich is no guarantee of direct power. The people who make the final decisions concerning the future of British capitalism do not appear on this Ilst; Denis Thatcher's few million in the bank leaves him and Margaret down in the third division of the filthy rich league. Despite this, and its sycophantic tone, Money's survey is a useful antidote to all the hype about British entrepreneurship being reborn.

In the week when Britain recorded its worst-ever monthly trade deficit, the catalogue confirms that the rich Brits ripping off the world's wealth are a jaded collection of spivs and coupon-ciopers. so tar as the horse race of the historic struggle for social progress is concerned, they could not saude a very winter between them. heavily In exactly people the British forces have shot dead since the fighting began again in 1969. Various organisations and through the smog of propaganda to arrive at a reliable figure. Information recently produced statistics showing that the total stood at 304.

killing of Aidan McAnespie by a British soldier at Aughnacloy last Sunday makes 305. More than 55 per cent of them were civilians with no involvement in the republican armed struggle. Mc Anespie's killer has now been 'unlawful killing'. But judging by the record, he Army, and Royal Ulster Constabulary have ever been prosecuted for committing murder or manslaughwhile Ireland. And just two of those cases have ended with convictions in the no-jury Diplock courts. That McAtamney: 'Once you have decided to open fire, you shoot to take out your enemy.

Judge: Do you mean manently out of action? per- McAtamney: 'Yes" Exchange constable McAtamney of the Royal Ulster Justice Gibson, during the 1984 trial in which three of McAtamney's shoot-to-kill squad were acquitted of murder he Irish War is shrouded so British lies, myths and cover-ups that nobody seems certain how many Irish tried cut false wel go win te Partnership, which with charged has little to Only 20 members of the British Ulster Defence Regiment on duty in Northern mostly Ireland. Even between deputy chief Constabulary and Lord Reid Davidson, in Whichne

MUR

"reasonable in th Another Irishman was shot dead by a B that the only British squaddie convicte of jail and back in the Army. The way Mick Hume, is a sure sign that ther is an acquittal rate of 90 per cent. It contrasts dramatically with the 34 per cent acquittal rate for all cases.

involving republicans, Dublin which have been heard by single Davidson judges in the courts of Northern the two British soldiers who were convicted did Offenders' not exactly suffer for their crimes.

sentence The first was Private Robert who shot anc The killed Theresa Donaghey as the car was a passenger ne snol passed through an Army checkpoint at Strabane in April 1980.

Army have never

JUDGES AND GUI

The Army said it was an accident (a claim they repeated while Aidan McAnespie lay dead on the Derry- Road last Sunday). convicted was manslaughter. He was sentenced to all of 12 months in a Young Centre was suspended for second and ast soldie convicted was Private lan Thain.

Thomas "Kidso' Reilly through the heart as the Belfast nationalist ran away from a bullying patrol in August 1983. Thain was convicted of murder and handed a life sentence. He was shipped home to serve his sentence in Britain - a privilege repeatedly denied to the Irish republican prisoners in British jails. Then, last week, it was announced that Thain had been released after serving just two years and one month of his sentence, ane naa even rejomea the Army to serve out his six-year contract. The authorities said they leniently because "he was only a young man at the time of the incident." They allowed this consideration to alter their attitude to Irish republicans convicted at the 'Sinn Fein has had al sport up to the present a are going to have the now. The more you shoc better I will like it, a assure you no policemai get into trouble for sho Lieutenant Colonel Smyth Irish Constabulary comman Munster, 1920, telling his n shoot any irishman seen suspiciously - eg. walking hands in pockets

-LAW IN IRELAND

ripe old age of 16, and locked up for indefinite sentences at *Secretary of State's Pleasure' (see page 5). The courts' treatment of soldiers and policemen who nationalists is the clearest indication that the law in Northern Ireland is a weapon control over its oldest colony.

The law should be used as just another weapon in the government's arsenal, and in this case it becomes little than a propaganda more disposal of cover for the unwanted members of the public. For this to happen efficiently, the activities of the legal system have to be tied into the war effort in as discreet a way as possible.'

General Frank Kitson, brigade commander in Northern Ireland, 1970-72 Over the 18 years of the current conflict, the courts have handed down many judgements which give the British forces a free hand to kill any Irish person. They have acted along the lines laid down General Frank Kitson, the author of much of Britain's insurgency policy. The law should be used as just another weapon in the government's arsenal, wrote Kitson in 1971, 'and in this case it Ing becomes little more propaganda cover for the disposal of yal unwanted members of the public.

in one piece of Kitson's advice which the judges have failed to follow is that they with "discreet' in legalising murder by the armed forces. ine key case was in tne seventies. In August 1974 British soldiers raided the family farm in County Tyrone.

None of the family had republican connections. ordered

WOODS

young McElhone outside and beat him Then a Private Jones took the farmer into a meadow and shot him dead. Jones was charged with murder In his defence, claimed that he thought McElhone might be an iRA member seeking Justice escape. ruled that this (entirely groundless)

DER

e circumstances' tish soldier last week. And news broke of murder in Northern Ireland was out the law treats British killers, argues is an undeclared war on in Ireland belief made the use of deadly force the "reasonable in the circumstances.

une most important curcumstance.

said the judge, was the situation" in Ireland'. MacDermott thus admitted that Britain was at war with the nationalist community, and that it war to keep nationalist was an IRA member deserving OI SCuLCICe. The case Northern Ireland court of appeal which, under the authority of Lord Chief Justice Lane, head of the Six Counties judiciary, endorsed the idea that the killing was 'reasonable".

But it was left to the house of lords, where the McElhone case ended up, to approval murdering Irish nationalists.

Lord Diplock gave the judgement at that 'the legal rights and duties of a soldier were normaly no more than those of an ordinary citizen in uniform'. But, Diplock went on, view misleading in the circumstances in which the Army employed in aid of the civil power in Northern Ireland...[where] there has existed for some years now a state of armed and clandestinely organised insurrection against the lawful government of Her Majesty.

In other words, there is a war on, counterand the technicalities of the law cannot be allowed to stand in the way of delencing government of Her Majesty' against than the Irish. And nor, can soldiers be blamed for treating all Irish nationalists as enemies of the Crown. Alright, he admitted, McElhone was not in the should be IRA and had no gun on him. But it was still reasonable for midshoot Jones assumption that 'if he got away, McElhone [McElhone] was likely sooner or later to violence.' In the noble opinion of any The the house of lords, Patrick ruled, the only innocent Irishman is a dead one. The McElhone case set the legal Jones precedent for the British forces to pursue a shoot-to-kill policy Northern Ireland. MacDermott have since view of the law as a weapon in wartime. In 1977, for example, an Army sniper squad shot dead in cold blood three men attempting a bank robbery. they IRA bombers, and the authorities said that However, the widow of one of the dead, James McLaughlin, brought a civil case against the ministry of defence. Lord law was operable films, woman, their method of arrest." judgement on for the Irish, them for bringing unarmed murdered to of justice illusion of law and order.

"general

RUC

Northern manslaughter of John death then went to the know put the highest seal of practice OI Mitchell Westminster. He noted

VICW

currently Diplock concluded mortal Private him the on participate in acts of Diplock had in Other judges endorsed Diplock's The soldiers said thought the dead men were alright then. Justice Gibson heard it and threw it out on the grounds that old-fashioned gun- Northern defence In Ireland. If you watch Wild West Gibson told the bereaved free, the posse it need be need be. shooting may be justified as a That was not, of course, Lord Justice Gibson's best-known murder by the British forces. In 1984 he heard the that murder case against three RUC officers charged with one of the shoot-to-kill incidents which are at the centre of the Stalker affair. In an infamous judgement which is stil the most honest statement of what British law and order means Gibson freed the kill Irish police killers and congratulated the three republicans they had the talk final the court Prosecutions of British soldiers and Loyalist police are a charade, a formal exercise in keeping up the The evidence is irrelevant. The aake accused are judged according to which side they are on in the Irish War. In the 1984 case, Gibson did not even bother to hear the defence case before freeing and praising the RUC gunmen. In 1986, the courts went through the motions of trying man Neil Hegarty for the Downes, with a plastic bullet Mitchell: "What I'd like to do is to have a machine gun built into every television camera and then say to the IRA, come out and let's talk...and then shoot the lot of them. Coleman: "After a trial?'

Mitchell: "That would be a complete waste of time. I've met because similar people. Lieutenant Colonel Mad Mitch of the Argyle Sutherland Highlanders, interviewed by Terry Coleman in the Guardian, January 1972 before millions of TV viewers at a Belfast march. The state offered a pathetic prosecution case. Hegarty's lawyers cia not bolet He walked calling any witnesses. and nobody in Northern Ireland was surprised. The courts often accept that the killing of Irish people by soldiers and policemen is 'an accident. Aidan McAnespie's murder is the latest to be excused in this way by the Army. But it's not an accident British are troops there operating heavy machine guns on the Border post at Aughnacloy where he was shot. They are there to defend by force of arms the divide which Britain imposed on Ireland more than 66 years ago.

They are not given guns by chance, but by the British authorities, to people who want their nation to be free and united. All of law and order designed to disguise the fact of continuing British oppression.

Britain's colonial law legalises Yet British murder by the state. statesmen still throw their hands up in horror when Irish republicans the exercise of justice into their own hands. Last year the IRA blew up Lord Justice Gibson in revenge for his acts of courtroom violence against Irish people. The republicans statement issued a *there are which affirmed that in Ireland besides ome Tuese those imposed by the British." It is that thousands of little wonder Irish nationalists look to those to defend them 'other judges against Britain's gun-law.

Eighteen years experience of open shootings in street,

SAS

undercover assassinations, cover-ups in the courts and lies in parliament have destroyed any many Irish nationalists might have had in the process of British justice. Yet the authorities keep up the facade of legality, largely for the benefit of the British public We should seize upon cases, like those of McAnespie and Thain, to expose the people in Britain Behind the wigs and the judicial jargon, the law is just a rag used to for public inspection. Our job is to get beneath the legal sheen and cone inse people hee of a British cause of all bloodshed in Ireland. Governments and judges who make murder respectable can never grant justice to ordinary people on either side of the Irish Sea.

BUILDING THE PARTY IN THATCHER'S THIRD TERM

THE PROBLEMS OF

DEFENSIVENESS

Last weekend Revolutionary Communist Party supporters met in London to discuss perspectives for the coming period - this is he performance of Eddie 'the Eagle' Edwards in the Winter Olympics at gary provides a striking image of the plight a heroic capitalism. In

THESE

display of the indomitable spirit of British enterprise Eddie managed to complete the ski jump and set a new British record. In the national celebrations, the commentators nearly forgot to report that Eddie came last competition ine against the rest of the world.

Despite the fragility ot the economic miracle, the establishment is in remarkably confident form. US recession though looms ahead, the British economy remains buoyant, especially com- European pared wItn

SHES

Hence, while Thatcher

OCLILOIS.

may be riding for a fall in the not too distant future, for now she is riding high. She has just won her third general election in a row and has since consolidated the Tories the Over Since the election the Alliance has disintegrated and Kinnock's Labour Party remains ineffectual and lacking in direction.

The Tories are making the most of what is likely to be a short interim period before another slide global capitalist slump. Since June the government has launched a wide-ranging offensive against the working class, pushing ahead regardless ruunlessly outcries of protest and indignation.

The Tories are carrying on their programme of privatisation, their shake-out of the civil service, the local government, squeeze in the health service and welfare benefits. The spate of anti-Irish judicial and legislative décisions shows that no old-fashioned notions like justice or fair play are going to be allowed to stand in the way of British imperialist rule in Ireland. News and current affairs programmes have been given over increasingly arrogant and authoritarian prime minister, and selfcensorship of anti-establishment opimon is now founne first Whereas Thatcher governments the Tories carefully picked off the unions one by one, since June employers have gone for the kill on several fronts at the same time.

Unions like the seafarers and the pilepunes dre now taredlened While it took with extinction. Rupert Murdoch 12 months to crush the unions at Wapping, trade union organisation at TV-am has been destroyed in a couple of months, In local government, the civil service and the health service.

unions are coming under intense Pressure as a result or privatisanon and spending cuts.

RESISTANCE

The class struggle in Thatcher's third term has two key features.

The aggressive character of the establishment offensive has provoked resistance on a wide range of Clause 28

TOIS

lesbian and gay rights, over the Alton Bill and abortion, and in the unions. The scale and militancy of the popular revolt has come as a shock to a government that has become used to getting things its own way. ts saniticant resistance has often come many people - such as those on Clause 28 or Alton Bill demonwho have previously been much involved in labour movement campaigns. It has also come from workers such as those at Land Rover in Solihull or the Vauxhall plant in Luton - who have generally been Tesareee as moderates Tamer teas militants. The high level of votes for industrial action in the motor industry and the preparedness of workers to follow their votes with action has led to media speculation about a

TCLUT

UnC militancy of the 1978-79 winter of 10 • 4 March 1988 of Alcominto of two the

WORKERS SUCH AS THOSE AT FORD

discontent the of 1969-74. The second feature of political action today differences between happening now and the events of the seventies. takes place after nearly a decade in WiCH industrial confrontation has ended in defeat for the workers.

cumulative expertence or setbacks in a climate of growing reaction across the board has strengthened conservative The

SCILIBICIILS

I COULL IS

resistance has an overwhelmingly defensive character: defend is the keynote slogan NHS, 'Defend the 1967 Abortion Ilea', Act', *Defend perception that it is not really possible to fight encouraged Corward limited demands and to that from have low expectations about what can be achieved. Thus workers at Vauxhall voted to take industrial not action over pension rights, while workers voted to return to work at Ford for a two-year rather than a three-year pay deal.

FATALISM

Whereas the spirit of resistance is strongest among people remote from the traditional labour the closer you get to the Machine. unions, the Labour Party or the left, the stronger is the mood of fatalism and resignation. The Revolutionary Communist Party directs its energies towards THE CUMULATIVE EXPERIENCE OF DEFEAT HAS LED TO DEFENSIVE STRUGGLES BY strike wave the more active, positive sections of the working class. Our aim is to promote resistance, to direct it and highlights the take it forward. what is labour movement relates to the more passive, negative side of the Resistance today working class. The old left reflects and reinforces pessimistic ments, curbs and contains revolt and generally acts as a wet blanket.

The

UNITY

Since our intervention in last year's general election under the banner of the Red Front, we have and pessimistic shown that it is possible to give a lead in fighting back against the We are widely Tories. ledged as a leading force in Irish •Defend the solidarity, anti-racist action, and etc. The campaigning liberation and lesbian rights. and win has neglected oppression, it has always regarded the unions as its exclusive power- This BaSe significant success has been in the dispute in the health service in in London, West Sorkshite, London, Scotland and shown the scope for working class unity in action in for better fighting more conditions. Let's look more closely at the different responses to the current situation of the RCP and the established left. in the upsurge provides the potential to politicise a new layer of activists. The wave 10%

ONE

YEAR DEAL

SLEEP

WITH

FORD.MOTOR

The traditional

POLARISE

acknowthe for and gay But whereas the British left class mote why our most Yorkshire, elsewhere have mobilising wages and resistance tunities, movement For the RCP the present minor in society. struggle class, scale an edited version of Mike Freeman's introductory the the what of strikes and anti-government campaigns reveals a substantial body of people who are angry and want to fight, but who currently have limited targets and objectives.

Our aim is to engage these people through our activities and campaign work and through selling and to show them that the problem is not just the Tories, the council, Ford Motor Company the but the capitalist system itself, which is the real barrier to the mass emancipation of the working class from all forms of tyranny.

We want to convince people that way forward lies through mobilising the working class in a party which aims at the overthrow of the capitalist system. To do this it is necessary to push working interests the fore, to demands which proworking class unity and polarise workers from the capitalist class. In our campaign and trade union work it is essential that we never lose sight of our fundamental objective of building the party and that we make that priority explicit to those we engage in our activities While for the RCP the upturn in presents great opporonly the OTTerS potential for further setbacks and further damage to its own standing Hence it responds to militancy by trying to restrict the and COLORaLO. minimising the offensiveness of its speech to the conference demands. Rather than action to win, it pleads for mercy.

It is remarkable how the left has followed the labour bureaucracy in its Twenty

HOT ZOES

years ago, the left was out to change the world. By the close of the seventies it settled for trying to change the government. Now it has, understandably, given up any hope of replacing the Tories with Labour Party. Today the greatest ambition of the left is to keep things the same. Pursuing the politics of the lesser evil to the bitter end, the left has ended up defending the capitalist status quo - after all, things could get a lot worse. The retreat of the official labour movement opens a growing conflict between the bureaucracy and the working class Defending the status quo may suit the officials of the unions and organisations the left, because they have a substantial stake in the existing order. But the existing order offers less and less to the working class: the status quo means mass unemployment, and oppression for and the of workers

88B OSS

promise of worse to come.

The labour bureaucracy's rechange sponse organisation of society is to defend already exists. Thus the union leaders defend every aspect of the trade union machine from workplace level to their seats on high-level quangos like Acas, the Services Commission Manpower and the National Economic Development Council. Labour politicians defend everything from the Central Electricity Generating Board to Inner London Ene Education Authority, claiming that these are the historic gains' of working class movement, though it is difficult to recall the struggles these state agencies.

COMPLICATED

For the working class matters Yes, are more complicated. should defend jobs, wages and workplace organisation. But why should we defend the

TUC

the dead wood at the head of labour movement union leaders like Jimmy Airlie and Mick Murphy, who acted as management stooges in policing the recent strike at Ford? We are all in favour of defending workplace organisation in the health service but what use is the machinery of Cohse, Nupe and all the rest of them in the current dispute? We are against the Alton Bill, but what are we supposed to defend about the 1967 Act? The humiliation of getting permission doctors, the bureaucratic delays, the restrictions imposed by cuts and Catholic consultants? We are against Clause 28, but we are also against the panoply of oppressive legislation that currently criminalises homosexuality. the next step

Revolrnat.,

TABA

Sop the Tory bigots

FIGHT FOR

LESBIAN

ND GAY

RIGHTS

For the RCP, the issue is not to defend mythologised past gains, defend to working interests today. Insotar as any institution assists the defence of working interests, we should defend it. But where such an institution becomes obstacle advancing interests of the working class, we should not hesitate to challenge it.

Making this distinction is always straightforward, particularly in the sphere of trade unionism, which, because of its role in mediating between capital and la bour, Bas таетепну ambivalent character. The current NHS dispute illustrates some of the tactical difficulties that arise in the defensive climate that prevails over the labour movement at present.

SHABBY

From the point of view of the working class there nothing progressive about the NHS. It is a system that was established after the Second World War to provide a modern capitalist society with a fairly cheap and efficient system of healthcare. breaking snow down under the strains of chronic underfunding and the growing demands of an ageing population.

It has always provided the working class with a slow and shoddy service in crumbling workhouse hospitals and shabby GP surgeries.

It has long relied on atrociously paid men, women and immigrant work

WHO

conditions. Ever since the Labour government started cutting spending on health and closing hospitals, wages and conditions have got worse, waiting lists have lengthened and the general quality of care has deteriorated. The fact the next step a Party THE TORY OFFENSIVE HAS BROUGHT NEW PROTESTERS ON TO THE STREETS that the NHS is 'popular' is itself indicative of the low expectations that have been encouraged by nine class of Thatcher sycals particularly, by five class of Kinnock.

MAXIMUM

While the NHS as an institution the is not worth defending, the jobs and services provides important to the working class.

BOU

Our strategy should be to mobilise the maximum unity in action to better fight for conditions for all workers in the health service. This is the only way to ensure a decent living for health workers, which is also the first condition for a decent health- Calling for action in defence of the living standards and working conditions of health workers is not the same as appealing to people to "Defend the NHS'. The strategy of defending the NHS begins from the view that it is impossible to rally health workers action Lake government. From this pessimistic assessment the left concludes that the only way to improve wages and conditions in the health service is by launching a crusade to mobilise public government to provide more resources. This strategy means restricting 'angels pleading for militancy public sympathy cannot be seen on poor picket lines. ase sectional divisions between 'caring

MAST

nurses and other hospital workers we die more remote on Daneni care. The left's policy of replacing industrial action with relations stunts means handing the initiative to the union leaders who have 'organised' a series of token days of action stretching into the indefinite future. short, sharp, all-out action that is necessary to win, we have a chaotic and ineffectual campaign that can only dissipate militancy and take the heat off the government.

GURU

*It seems unlikely that a broadbased, anti-Thatcherite be boltics can politicising the charitable impulse' wrote Professor Stuart Hall, the guru of the soft left, in an article about Bob tamine reliet campaign in July 1986. At the time the idea that the way forward lor through promoting old-fashioned Victorian middle thropy was widely dismissed as an eccentricity. acducile than two years later in response to the NHS dispute the whole of the official labour movement and the left from Neil Kinnock to David Widgery of the Socialist Workers Party has adopted Hall's strategy 'politicising the impulse'. •Politicising impulse' is the antithesis of the RCP approach to the NHS. Whereas clarify a working class strategy, the old left acceols impossible and argues instead for the working class to put its faith in appealing for middle class sympathy. with class politics, the left seeks to politicise with the politics of class collaboration. that there is some resonance for the left's moralistic approach. an echo lost faith in the collective find workers, particularly nurses, who are strongly fessional attitudes and values and have little sense of themselves as members Because the attempt to politicise the charitable impulse can only have a divisive and demoralising effect it is essential to challenge this strategy take dispute forward. NHS dispute requires tactical care.

Because we refuse to join the allclass crusade, catured by left wingers with limited and. years intellectual capacities as being in favour of the destruction of the health service. The point is that no amount of public sympathy for the NHS will force the Tories to pay hospital

WORKERS

are Only all-out workers can do that. To win all-out action we have to mobilise around demands that and wages workers and reject demands that restrict and divide the struggle.

DECISIVE

Many activists service and in other campaigns instinctively superiority of our tactics. Yet to grasp the these tactics and our wider strategy of building the party requires a process of political development.

This process involves challenging the prevailing attitudes of the labour movement and arguing for the the wider perspectives of the party around our activities cussions of tns. Such a dialogue is always crucial in building class party, workIng particularly important today when the fatalistic impossible to do anything exerts such a widespread influence.

have shown that the Revolutionary Communist Party can give a lead in the class struggle. Te torces make the most of upsurge to rally a solid group of activists around the party that can put us in a position to play a more public decisive role economic bubble bursts. Instead of the popular built without Geldof's Ethiopian the left lay philan- Crass Yet less charitable the charitable we have set out to that this Where we seek to politicise There is no doubt petit-bourgeois This strategy can find with workers who have possibility of t can also favour with healthcare influenced by proof the werking class

NHS

Challenging the left over the we can be caridecent wages. action by health unite all in the health recognise the relationship between and disbut it is view Over the past eight months we We must the current when Thatcher's

A DOCTOR

WRITES

February). These - a fraction of one - where HIV

AN OCCASIONAL COLUMN

there is a much smaller total number of cases, far fewer drug abusers and less extreme conditions of inner-city deprivation, Aids is likely to remain a rare disease among heterosexuals. Alds has undoubtedly had a devastating effect on gay men in America: they make up around three quarters of the total of 52 000 cases. In San Francisco it is estimated that half the gay men are infected with the HIV virus and the fact that many will die will inevitably have a major economic and demographic impact on the city. However, there are now signs that the spread of HIV infection among gay men is slowing down. According to San Francisco epidemiologist Dr Andrew Moss, 'Aids may kill half of the homosexual men in American cities, but the epidemic in gay men is basically over in San Francisco. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that some 500 000-625 000 gay men are HIV positive, and an additional 125 000-375 000 bisexuals have also been infected with the virus. But these figures are based on estimates that the total number of homosexual men in the USA is 2.5m with an additional 2.5m-7.5m bisexual out of an adult men - ....... Yet 40 years ago the Kinsey reports found that 10 percent of white American males were more or less exclusively homosexual for at least three years of their lives and that four percent were exclusively homosexual. The American public health authorities appear to rely on figures based on men who openly admit to their homosexuality - those extent out - when it is evident that in response to the oppression of homosexuals in modern society the majority of pay men conceal and diseuise their sexual orientation.

The relationship between the 'out' and the 'closeted' world of male homosexuality is of the greatest importance in assessing the dangers of the spread of Aids and how best to prevent it. Aids has swept through the 'out gay scene of the Western world over the past five years. The impact has undoubtedly led to a change in risks, and the death of a high proportion or members of we established gay community over the next decade may limit the pool of infection. But what about the world of male homosexuality that remains underground, where sexual relationships are carried out in conditions of shame and secrecy, which are not conducive to safe sex propaganda and practices?

For as long as homosexuals continue to surel discrimination and harassment in society the conditions for the dissemination of the Aids virus among the submerged majority of gay men will continue to exist and Aids will continue to take its toll. The real lesson of the experience of Aids in the USA is to stop trying to scare heterosexuals and start fighting for homosexual rights. 4 March 1988 • 11

t talks in Washington last A West month Germany's chancellor Helmut urged the US senate to intermediate nuclear forces (INE) treaty agreed December by Reagan Gorbachev. Before the treaty was concluded the idea of removing ground-launched Cruise Pershing missiles had revived fears.

in Bonn that the USA might one day 'decouple its nuclear from the defence Europe. But on Capitol Hill Kohl praised the INF accord, urging the USA to add new arms control treaties to it. Although Reagan reassured Germany that for him a Soviet nuclear attack on Munich would be the same as taking out Chicago, he despatched secretary of state George Shultz to Moscow with an agenda downplaying arms control.

In talks with Soviet foreign Eduard Shevardnadze minister last week, Shultz highlighted Moscow's treatment of dissidents and of Afghanistan. But ne was optimistic that 50 percent cuts in intercontinental missile warheads were a DOSS oLy wide reagan and Gorbachev meet in May. Reagan has since dismissed the possibility of doing a deal on nukes in May, and has reaffirmed that Star Wars is 'not a bargaining chip' arms negotiations. While Kohl has switched from US nuclear withanxiety OVer drawals to a desire to speed up Europe, denuclearisation in Reagan has rhetoric less than three months after the reputedly epoch-making INF agreement.

CLOUT

What is on? going Germany is glad to be consulted by the USA in Brussels over the stance Reagan will take in Moscow this Bonn hates to be left out spring. of multiplying irom ue process bilateral US-Soviet relations.

(American defence secictat) Frank Carlucci has overturned the policy of his predecessor, Caspar Weinberger, and agreed to Dmitri Soviet counterpart, Yazov, month.) We later this should take the renewed

HOL

stridency of US anti-Sovietism at face value. While the about-turns in Bonn and Washington indicate the growing instability of world politics, Reagan's Cold Warrior act is primarily a means of putting pressure on West Germany.

By magnifying the issue of Soviet power, the USA reminds military Bonn that German economic prosperity substitute IS American nuclear clout. The fact that Reagan has made Star Wars the main obstacle to reductions, project is widely tell to technically unworkable, that the alleged Soviet threat has little to do with belligerent moods Star Wars is just in America. Kohl that another way of telling Uncle Sam still calls the shots.

Since its launch by Reagan in 1983, its main effect has been to reinforce German anxieties about with which the USA SCOUSIeS regards its nuclear responsibilities in Europe.

DEFICIT

America needs to militarise relations with its allies because it is heading for deep economic trouble. We face formidable challenges over 1988 and beyond' declared the Federal Reserve Board. Government officials deny that a full-scale

CCCOSIOE

break this year, but forecast a cut in annual growth from nearly four formidable challenges principally from Japan and West Germany, the two countries whose reluctance to continue funding US indebtedness occasioned the crash of 1987. Economic decline in America has immediate military cussions. The US budget deficit is 12 • 4 March 1988 Kohl and of West meet for when are mounting be reveals so great that even a committed militarist ike Reagan has had to d stomach cuts in state expenditure reached have WIlC Pentagon. As a result there has been a spate of resignations by US militarists, as well as a spate of the calls for Europe to *burden-sharing' in Nato politicians troop withdrawals from Europe and demand that it spend more on conventional defence. that increased US naval

SISTES

commitments in the Gulf compel Europe to pay its way on arms.

America cars wal tne Deutschmark is now strong enough to allow Bonn grow independent of the White House.

will But its commercial nightmares are always couched in the language of Nato-speak. The tone well-captured by Discriminate Deterrence, Pentagon stem issued in January Kissinger and others. arguments are as follows: • Europe should rely less on US strategic nuclear deterrence, and ready instead conventional or theatre nuclear ROWS OVER MISSILES REVEAL MORE ABOUT WESTERN RIVALRIES THAN THE 'SOVIET THREAT

RETURN TO

GREAT POWER

POLITICS

This week's 16-nation Nato summit meeting in Brussels is an ostentatious display of Western unity. But underneath the current camaraderie, explains Gemma Forest, conflicts war on its own soil; Warsaw Pact into the Nato territories as far-flung Norway and Turkey as much; • Spain and Greece should not have chased US forces off their turf ao more Top even to the limited extent they have; France also erred in refusing threaten US F1-11 warplanes flying rights when they were on their way to Carlucci bomb Tripoli in 1986; • Europe should Nato-area conflicts, and especially in the Gulf. For the USA alliance unity means more that Europe must do America's will on an increasingly global basis.

macho the sixties, today it is Bonn not

EEC

fervour. report stitutionally barred from possessby Henry The main ing nukes or sending gunboats to the Gulf, Germany's sole countertry to project its relative industrial dynamism on basis. This is why Kohl insisted at - to ngat the recent

THE WESTERN ALLIANCE IN CRISIS

of alliance war decades. the

RIVALRIES

world. The German border with the the isn't everything: operate as Coull German offer direct would be military aid to America in out-ofat "wedge-driving' In contrast to the Gaullist era of Paris which leads the rest in pro- Given it is conweight to US military pressure is to invite all-European Common Market build Nato from only summit that France and Britain subsidise Bavarian farming, and why Bonn has taken the lead in

USA,

calling for a common European currency which would of necessity be basee on me elseamark Far from being a demonstration unity, the Brussels summit signals the return of the Great Power politics of the inter- The chief feature of this era was fast-changing of

SUSUCH

temporary, bilateral alliances in defence and mounting multilateral While non-aggression pacts and treaties went through bewildering permuover overseas trade and spheres of investment grew in linear fashion.

This pattern has now returned to East-West relations mainly as soundingboard for inter-imperialist rivalries.

The issue of moving towards the elimination of battlefield nuclear weapons (BNW) based on West soil, being deliberately avoided at Brussels, highlights the relative insignificance of East-West hostilities. If groundlaunched Cruise and Pershing were removed, a nuclear double zero' Groundthe result. launched missiles in the ranges of and

1UUU-DUKI

would no longer grace European territory. In a well-judged attempt between Nato members, the Kremlin has therefore called for a 'triple zero which means removing 0-500km BNW.

This would affect 1400 Soviet Scud missiles in silos in East Germany, and 88 US Lance missiles situated on West German soil After the dismantling of INF is complete, only West Germany will have the ground-launched nukes pre-emptive Soviet strike. No other European member of Nato will face this predicament, which is why Kohl initially jumped at the Kremlin's offer of ending battlefield nukes. Kohl has since remembered that total removal of BNW would be tantamount to yet another major decoupling of America from West Germany. But he has still said that a broad range of East-West arms control agreements, including cuts in BW and elimination of chemical weapons, must precede any Nato drive to 'modernise' the 88 Lance.

Kohl's worries about Soviet BNW or gas attacks, however, are nothing compared to his desire to a network of profitable economic links with Eastern and especially Europe East Germany. The USA best can prevent this by demanding that a Nato decision Kohl stick by taken way back in 1983, that Lance be modernised to give it a range of 450km rather 100km than America is again trying to compensate for economic weakness - its inability to match Bonn Eastern bloc opening markets - by military bluster.

FLUID

their leaders are tearing hair out in the present abou developments that still are relatively distant. Everybody now debates US withdrawals

LOOD

Europe, although destabilising effects promise to be so great that neither America noi Europe can entertain this for some years yet. Everybody debates the impetus to a united Europe that will follow the ending of EEC internal market barriers, although une compieuon or that process l probability by the end of 1992. Western friendships and enmities over defence become more fluid as economics becomes of Kohl would prefer to solve his Lance problem by Britain building British-sited missile for its Tornado fighters. In the meantime he has established a 3500-strong joint infantry force with France. Britain has sought help from France, or may go to the upgrade its Tornado missiles Thatcher nevertheless called the French 'crazy at the and condemns

SUR BET

Kohl's collaboration with the French as "playing to the gallery.

POSTURES

Thatcher is cold about the burgeoning plans for European defence collaboration. She wants a stronger European pillar to Nato, not a European Third Force. At every stage she upholds the 'special relationship' with the USA, when the only basis for this US-takes-all Downing Street's economic plight is nearly as global and just as advanced as that of the White House. Sales of British arms to America, always derisory, have been hit by Yet Reagan's spending

CULS

Thatcher wanted the Nato summit to reiterate the "Carlucci line on Lance against Kohl. The hopelessness of Britain's diplomatic

EROSE

France. Mitterrand has gone some way to checking Bonn's Eastern designs by involving it in Franco- German defence. He has the basic missile technology that Britain's Tornadoes • require He benetits from Nato but remains outside it.

His links with Moscow persist. But while -rance is courted ov al Britain lacks any firm alliances. It is in on the Airbus, formally out of European Monetary System but in practice tied to it, and unable to find the cash for European space cooperation. The City looks forward to the deals it will be able to strike in the EEC of 1992, manufacturing dreads a flood of imports trucked in through the Chunnel.

It is impossible to predict the outcome of the growing conflicts in Nato, but the return of Great Power politics 1s omen international conflagration.

the next step

CONFRONTATION ON THE STREETS OF OCCUPIED PALESTINE: ISRAELI REPRESSION PROVOKES A BACKLASH FROM LOCAL WOMEN he TV image of four Israeli soldiers standing over two you rocks at neir armat their

LOCKS

shocked Western viewers last week. The four Israelis who were shown beating and breaking the arms of the two Palestinians in Nablus now facing After 12 weeks watching similar scenes of torture and violence in the West Bank and Gaza, can now doubt the Te w ferocity of the Zionist response to the Palestinian uprising. But there confusion about intentions and about how to end the conflict. Let's look at some of use assumerous walsave tormed the popular response. Myth 1: Israeli troops are out of control The argument that Israeli soldiers are out of control was voiced most frequently of the at the Slall uprising. According to this view Palestinian casualties are caused by ill-disciplined soldiers panic and fire at demonstrators.

Palestinian True that resistance has terrified Israeli troops. One member of a frontline Inlantry um cord me verusatem Post that it's no joke when they catch you in one of those alleys and throw building blocks down on you from the roofs' (27 February).

Faced with opposition of this sort many soldiers have simply opened up indiscriminately After three months of fighting it is clear, however, that Israel's Palestinians aLLacKs systematic and deliberate. minister January Israeli defence Yitzhak Rabin declared that the use of force, might and beatings to quell Palestinian demonstrations was now state policy. Israeli troops well-stocked are with rubber bullets, tear gas and wooden clubs, well as standard issue assault rifles. Palestinians suffer beatings, curfews, arrests, detention without trial and deportations. The Zionist state survives only using violence by against Palestinians. society STae1 totally militarised to counter the threat from the freedom struggle.

able-bodied adult every male spends time in the army each As long as the Israeli state yoal. deny Palestinians Connues their right to self-determination, the cycle of violence will continue.

Myth 2: 'Opposition inside Israel can stop the violence' Many Palestinian sympathisers often look to radical Israelis to take the heat off the resistance movement.

They cite the call lor international peace conference by foreign minister Shimon Peres and several recent demonstrations by Peace Now as evidence of growing sympathy for the Palestinian plight.

The problem with this argument is that it overestimates the number Israelis who oppose pogroms and underestimates the political limitations of the peace polls show the vast majority of Israelis to favour the official handling of Palestinian demonstrations or to support even Newsweek harsher measures. A poll last week revealed that only seven per cent of Israelis believe the army is 'too harsh'. Israeli society is founded on the privileged status of the Zionist population and the inequality of the Palestinians.

Most Israelis appreciate that if the autortues lost control over une West Bank and Gaza the whole system would be threatened.

Official Israeli peace nouncements should be treated with scepticism. Peres might make sanctimonious statements about peace, but he has no intention of making concessions to the Pales- He told Israeli television B 0121S. that if Israel withdrew from the West Bank the security border would be the River Jordan, with united Jerusalem. In other the next step alI.

COLLE

Israeli are In the words, Israel would withdraw its troops from Palestinian population centres while keeping control of His the area. alm off this South bantustan from the Israeli society. The vast majority of the Israeli movement share approach. They are worried about the corrupting effects occupation on the 'Jewish character' of the Israeli state, and fearful of the instability generated by Palestinian resistance. demonstration in featured a poem by an army officer complaining about the effect of the occupation on his troops in Gaza Nobody had anything to say about the the devastating effect of Israeli repression on the Palestinians.

Myth 3: Islamic fundamentalists are behind the uprising Israeli apologists . outbreak of unrest to the growth of Muslim fundamentalism. January spokesman for Israeli foreign ministry declared that the state could not leave the streets of Gaza frenzied, radicalised youth incited by the fundamentalist Al-Jihad- Al-Islami. This view overstates the influence of radical Islam and obscures the pronature of the uprising. Palestinians who endure conditions of extreme deprivation and repression do not need Islamic fundamentalists to tell them oppression. Radical Islamic groups are fairly strong in Gaza and have sway in the West Bank. But given impasse the the OI movement, the influence of radical Daniel Nassim looks at some of the misconceptions that have arisen over the struggle between Israel and the Palestinians Islam expected. seal sentiment,

1S LO

African-style the Israeli rest of Palestinians feel Peres' most holy of the communists, recent another Tel Aviv Palestinian territory. Myth 4: 'Western diplomacy can bring peace The possibility three months. amount to little attribute the strategy the Western diplomats to the rule or about safeguarding rights, while commitment rhetorical states "peace process". specific when it came to against teeing Israel's asserting that the friends ties between Israel and the United

SONIO

States have never been stronger.

nationalist of the diplomatic process is its

THE PALESTINIAN REVOLT

less than mignt be endorsement by Even when resistance minister Rabin. appears to be inspired by Islamic the conflict is between oppressors and the Palestinian freedom struggle. All device to revulsion at Israeli army attacks on the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, the third site of Islam. Many thousands, including atheists and have protested against Israel's desecration of the site. Their concern is to stop yet Zionist incursion on to of Western

DECEMBER

diplomatic solution to the Palestinian conflict is the most resilient myth to emerge over the past initiatives peace more than we Jubarya Camp of containment. The Israeli army uses armed might to the Gaza Strip try to crush demonstrators, while encourage Palestinians to pin their hopes on West Bank endless rounds of talks about talks' in various world capitals.

Western politicians talk vaguely Palestinian affirming their to Israeli security.

JANUARY

Thus when US secretary of state George Shultz arrived in Palestine week he made a typically 4 Tary Shultz leaflets appear right 13 Four Pal West Bank 15 Israeli police The most damning indictment

THE MYTHS

THAT MASK

OPPRESSION

israel delence The architect of the policy of might, power and beatings' is happy for Western leaders to promote diplomacy as a divert Palestinian resistance. He told Israeli television that he took a very positive view of initiatives to reach political talks" While Western politicians try to obscure the issues, we should be

THE UPRISING

8 Four Palestinians killed when Israeli army lorry drives into 9 Israeli troops shoot dead the first Palestinian of the uprising at 10 Another Palestinian killed in 11 Three Palestinians shot dead during demonstrations in the 19 First demonstrations in Palestinian East Jerusalem 21 Palestinian general strike inside the pre-1967 Green Line 1 First Palestinian murdered in the "Greater Jerusalem" area minister David Mello visits Jubalya and the the Dome of the Rock, firing tear gas inside the mosque unequivocal about the nature of the conflict in Palestine. Israel is an oppressor state which survives by denying the democratic rights of the Palestinians through force of We unconditional support to the Palestinian struggle There can for self-determination. be no peace in the Middle East until this conflict is resolved in favour of the oppressed. 19 Israeli defence minister Yitzhak Rabin announces policy of beating Palestinian demonstrators 23 Palestinian demonstration in Nazareth, inside the Green Line 24-25 Arab foreign ministers.

summit in Tunis 28 Egyptian president Mubarak arrives in Washington, on a tour taking in the Gull, Paris and London

FEBRUARY

5 Israeli troops use bulldozer to bury four Palestinians alive 8 Jordan's King Hussein meets the 12 EEC foreign ministers 14-21 Labour leader Neil Kinnock visits Egypt, Jordan and Palestine 15 Zionist agents bomb Palestinian ship on its way to take by Palestinians 25 Shultz arrives in Palestine 4 March 1988 • 13

BAD SPORTS

SUMO

IF you aren't wondering whether the 38-stone Hawaiian Konisuiki ('the Dump Truck') is going to win the Aki Basho, whether the champion Chiyonofuji ouuicilc ('the Wolf") will triumph again, or whether the disgraced newest Yokozuna, Hokutoumi, ('the Puppy'), is finally going to have a good tournament, then you havent been watching Sumo on Channel 4. Sumo from Japan may appearto consist only of two extremely fat men in uncomfortable jock-straps, slapping and shoving each other for a few seconds until one lurches out of a small circe. Itte die vou Some will watch Sumo with all the usual prejudices about funny foreigners. Seeing it as another novelty turn from abroad, they'll be waiting for Clive James to pop up and sneer about how hilarious and inscrutable these Japanese are. They don't go on strike, they love brutal game shows, and now this! In fact, James is equipped to go a round with these blokes. But toes to grip like fingers? They can.

Sumo wrestling is the oldest martial art. The real interest lies not so much in the short bouts as in all the ceremony and background detail which is so stylishly weaved into the programmes. The emphasis on style has rubbed off from the sport itself. It is intensively competitive and but physical, conducted with astonishing attention to dignity and detail, every oiled hair in place, every step of the ritual renglously observed The British like to think of themselves as a great sporting nation. But Britain has been ripe for Sumo for some time. Those who can watch the juggernauts of darts park their lagers and waddle into position again and again, and listen to the interminable cries of 'One hundred and eighty!'

should be ready for some real heavyweight poetry. Those who can savour crown green bowls Harrogate will trom the etiquette and appreciate Sumo restraint of the Comparisons wrong even to would Giant Ladey Haystacks and the tawdry theatre or brusn wresuing in te same breath as Sumo. But take boxing.

awaited massacre of Frank Bruno, Sumo has the edge in beauty and spectacle, drama and suspense.

And nobody gets brain-damaged either. It may not always be easy exactly which arcane technique the Dump Truck has, according to the commentator, opponent from the circle. They do pretty uninitiated. But then just think wnal toreigners musl make cricket; think of what you make of you would never hear the Giant randd say d cross word to umpire. Pat Ford 14 • 4 March 1988

BERTOLUCCIS

CHINA EPIC

The Last Emperor, Bernardo Bertolucci (Director) It is an impressive riches to rags story. When Pu Yi became emperor in 1908 ne was ureatea as a demigod by a vast entourace or eunucns guards and servants. The Qing dynasty which had ruled China since 1644 may have been tottering towards collapse but the boy emperor remained cocooned within the sumptuous splendour and elaborate ritual of life in the Forbidden City, a complex ot palaces temples and grounds wnicn was te imperd headquarters in Beijing. It was downhill from there. At first, after the es ao snment ora republic in 1912, he was simply confined within the City, although kept in the manner to which the 'Lord of Ten Thousand Years was accustomed. In 1924 he was banished to the Japanese concession of Tianjin, where he degenerated into a Western playboy. He tried to make a comeback, but picked the wrong horse in 1934 when he let the Japanese instal nim as emperor in occupied Zedong declared the People's Republic in 1949, Pu Yi was beginning a 10-year prison sentence, which, under the new regime, compulsory re-education. hewsase. ton his place in the new China as a humble gardener, in good time to be further frightened and bewildered by the Cultural Revolution of the sixties. Bertolucci's 162-minute epic begins in 1950 with Pu Yi as a suicidal prisoner and ends in 1967, the year of his death, with a man apparently reconciled to his lot. The bulk of the film deals, by way of fluent flashbacks, with his early life. The structure focuses the story around the most interesting questions. Dic the emperor, having fallen from the pinnacle of glory to the pit of despair, come at last to accept the role of ordinary citizen, cisonw Unfortunately the film fails to answer them. The problem is not that Bertolucci dwells so long on his subject's formative years. The experience of being born into a world where the courtiers study the stools in your chamber pot or drink green ink at your childish whim, where you are imorisoned in Isolation from other children, where

KIDNAPPED

BY HISTORY

no sooner do you appreciate your role at the centre of society than it slips maddeningly away: this is the experience the film in the way that it foomea over ru ris ute And so it does. Bertolucci takes every advantage of the permission he got to film within the Forbidden City, to create the magnificent spectacle of an ancient culture in all its bewitching detail. He is not concerned with the warlords, nationalists, communists and red guards struggling to make history, but with a man who, in Bertolucci's own phrase, was 'kidnapped by history. Pu Yi's communist captors exhort him to write, by way of confession, 'a frank and sincere' account of his life. The memories of his youth need no encouragement to come crowding back into the austerity of his prison wone. tre cocol wit the Forbidden City could Frank Mort, Dangerous Sexualties: Medicomoral Politics in England since 1830, Routledge & Kegan Paul, £7.95 Dangerous Sexualities is about the development of social medicine and moral politics. Frank Mort's framework is historical, but he deals with issues of immediate relevance: the rise of official morality, the role of the state and the medical profession, the standpoint of the women's movement and the left. The result is a stimulating, wellresearched and entertaining book. Mort traces the ideas around which the Victorian ruling class constructed a moral consensus, taking in sexual debauchery and cholera epidemics in the 1830s, prostitution and venereal disease in the 1860s, homosexuality and national degeneration in the 1880s and 1890s. The passing of the Contagious Diseases Acts in the 1860s, which imposed harsh restrictions on prostitution, signalled an important shift towards state intervention in the moral sphere. But this reviews page not be more effective. The erevness of walls and uniform is relieved only by the occasiona red star The problem is that no sooner is the excellent portrayal of his interrogation and rehabilitation getting interesting, than it is over.

He has been taught to tie his own shoelaces and pee against the side of his slop-bucket so as not to disturb his cell-mates, but he is displaying colluclaue recalcitrance, telling his guaras wilal tney want to hear. We are then abruptly brought forward to his release, and shuffled through the rest of his life, past a demonstration of fanatical young red guaras, to a covil ambivalent conclusion in which he revisits the Forbidden City as a tourist. It is hinted that while he can really smile at last, he still harbours delusions of grandeur. This is frustrating, because the film wastes

FROM CHOLERA TO AIDS

THE STATE AND MORALITY

was an exceptional response to the problem of venereal disease in the armed forces. Only from the 1880s did the state move in to police morality on a wider front. The Contagious Diseases Acts provoked widespread opposition, and an alliance of feminists, Liberals, clerics and radicals succeeded in repealing the legislation in 1886. They had objected not to state intervention itself, but to the idea that wowen were une source of immorality. For them male vice was the problem. Many of them came together again in the social purity movement, to campaign tor an even more extensive imposition of repressive laws. The social purists mobilised a formidable movement for moral reform in the cause of national regeneration.

demanding laws to deal with prostitution, homosexuality, indecency and obscenity. In the late nineteenth century the state massively extended ts system of survell ance and regulation. Mort's analysis fails to explain the impetus for legal Intervention. He overestimates the Influence of the lobbyists and underestimates the

BOY EMPEROR PU YI BEFORE HIS BANISHMENT

much time in Tianjin and Manchuria, and all we are left with is a portrait of a weak and not very attractive man who made the best he could of cruel circumstances Nevertheless it is a visual treat, with fine performances from Ying nuocheng ue prison governor), Peter O'Toole role of the state itself. He puts the success of the social purists down to melr dolllty Lo hegemonise the public debate. But their success was not due to the proficiency of their campaigning tactics, but to the fact that they articulated the interests of the state. In the late Victorian years the British establishment was desperate to strengthen the authority of the state ver SOnet eweslneei pressure from movements for colonial freedom and labour movement unrest. The creation of a moral consensus based on the elevation of the family and the nation was a godsend. The social ourity movement o aved an important role in tosterine a cimate of conformity. But it grew on the tertile cround of nationalism cultivated by the British ruling class.

Mort disparages the tendency of Marxists to tie their analysis of morality to the needs of capital. But in dismissing the central role of the state in shaping morality, his own analysis tends towards incoherence. This becomes clearer the closer he gets to today. He argues rightly that the hysteria over Aids must be placed in the context (the royal tutor) and most of all from John Lone and the three child actors who play the emperor. Lone could easıly have carried a Hue oealciH. examination ot pu yIs confrontation with both the new order and himself. Pat Ford of economic decline and SOCC LeSE SIre argues wrongly that the media and the right have made all the running in fuelling the Aids panic. For Mort, the problem is one of right-wing bieots dictatine the terms of the debate, and uis preoccupation is now to 'combat such dominant discourses.n responding to the Aids •ane ue ses wna languages to mobilise? Having failed to locate the source of the Aids panic within the wider drive by the state to reassert conventional morality, Mort is incapable of offering a conerent chuiquc or tor moralism or a strategy for CONOCEe persecution of been its consequence. Mort's analysis betrays a weakness which has dogged the left since the latter days of the social purity movement. - an underestimation of the state and the necessity of challenging its divisive ideology. For all its flaws, however Dancerous Sexualities is recommended reading for those seeking a fuller grasp of the development of official morality. Joan Phillips the next step

TWO

LAST WEEKEND RCP

supporters from around the country met in North London to discuss their political work. The event gave leading RCP organisers a chance to explain our analysis, tactics and strategy. It gave supporters an opportunity to offer their suggestions for future work, voice their trustrations and difficulties, and compare other branches. It was a working atmosphere, with some laughs thrown in. The beauty of attending a conference of RCP supporters is that everyone knows everyone else is on the same side.

That doesn't mean it's a gathering of hacks and 'yes men where everyone always agrees and praises each other. In fact usually it's quite the opposite because we know we're all working towards the same goal we can discuss issues much more critically. This conference was no exception. At times debates were lively and arguments were heated. The discussions of our work in the Clause 28 and the Fight Alton's Bill campaigns and in the NHS dispute dealt with genuine problems faced by supporters in different branches. Two main points came out of the conference: the need to sell our newspaper to a much wider audience, and the need to build our summer school Preparing for Power into our biggest event ever Selling the paper is the most important work an RCP supporter can do. Through the various disputes and campaigns we're involved with we are meeting hundreds of people who may not yet be active in politics, but.

are interested in what we have to say. At the moment we are sometimes too siow to get these people to buy, read, and discuss ins nu activists must always have the next step

TASKS FOR

SUPPORTERS

a supply of papers and should be waiting for opportunities to interest people in particular articles. Whenever possible we should try to involve our new readers in weekly 'readers groups where they can discuss articles and demand explanations of points they do not understand. It was clear To me cone ence al our most vibrant supporters groups are in branches where our supporters sell a large number of papers. This is not just because more people read the paper and want to join the supporters' group meetings. Selling tns forces our existing supporters to work out answers to new questions and to think about how to dea with new situations. It's no coincidence that Kerry Dean, who ran a workshop on selling and using tns, found that the supporters with the most to say were often the ones who sold the most papers. This year's Preparing for Power summer school is probably our most important yet. The vast amount of campaigning work we've recently undertaken means that thousands of people have now heard of the RCP and even read our newspaper, but they know very little about us. Preparing for Power is an opportunity to show the world what we're made of. It's a week-long public summer school designed to give supporters and working class activists a chance to discuss how the world works and how to The summer school sta runs For a 22 The and runs for a week.

NE WEENED MANU

at the top of the agenda im 1988 of the brate om 15 ourses ramging and Revolutiom in the Middle East' to The Roots of Racism'. There'll be lots of one-off sessions too. Last year we included workshops on artificial intelligence, animal rights, Freud, Einstein and a host of other issues. We've worked out a generous discount rate for a vone wie messes before 1 April. All supporters and regular ts readers should take advantage of this deal. But don't plan to come on your own. Every supporter should try to get their friends, relatives, neighbours, workmates, whoever, to come and join in. If we meet the aim of last weekend's supporters' conterence - double our paper sales, and mobilise summer school - • we snould be dole to nave d supporters conference in the autumn that's twice as big. Anne Burton party page Irish Freedom Movement Wednesday 16 March, 7.30pm 'Loyalism myth and reality Room S53, St Clements Building (Holborn tube)

BRISTOL DEBATE

'Which way forward for Irish solidarity?'

Speakers: IFM, Labour Committee on Ireland, Labour and Trade Union Group Thursday 10 March, 7.30pm Mail Coach pub (near Littlewoods)

VIDEO SHOWING

VIDEO SHOWING

The Longest War Tuesday 8 March, 7.30pm Rutland Street (near Odeon Cinema) Leicester

FIGHT BACK!

Half-day conference Saturday 12 March 1.30 6pm Quaker Meeting House SUBSCRIBE TO tns The best way to make sure you get ths every week is to take out a subscription.

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

LONDON IRISH FORUM

London School of Economics, Houghton St WC2

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S WEEK

Woodhouse Lane (Opposite University) Leeds Workshops include: Name Address Post code Phone Send to BCM JPLtd, London WC1N 3XX

ESPAS

HIGHT FOR

LESBIA

BECOME AN

RCP

SUPPORTER

Name Address Tel Postcode

PUBLIC

MEETING

How to beat Alton Tuesday 8 March 7.30pm Rose and Crown Stoke Newington Church Street London N16 women Treedom Tienters • Making the unions fight for women • Clause 28, Alton's Bill and moral reaction • Building a new opposition Tickets £2/£1 UB40 Evening social. Creche and refreshments available Please send me tns for 12 months starting at No..

On the Stop the Clause demonstration in Manchester two weeks ago, RCP supporters sold 700 copies of tns. Our arguments about the need to fight for the complete decriminalisation of homosexuality in response to the Tory clampdown on lesbian and gay rights won wide agreement 4 March 1988 • 15

ACTION

Everybody involved in the health dispute says that they favour a united campaign. The question is, who do we most need to unite with, and in what sort of campaign, to win against this cost-cutting government? The leaders of the health unions Nupe and Cohse, the Royal College of Nursing and the Labour Party all want to unite with the respectable pillars of British society. They want to line up with the medical establishment in the royal colleges, the media and the Tory wets to lobby the government for extra resources. To keep on the right side of these responsible bodies, the union and Labour leaders have played down the demand for decent pay and working conditions in the NHS. They fear that raising such issues might scare off the consultants, the Conservative backbenchers and their other middle class allies. Instead, the unions have appealed to public sympathy for the NHS, and depicted the nurses as ministering 'angels' who deserve a little more charity.

The unions' search for respectable support also means that they cannot sanction militant industrial action.

They have tried to stamp out strike initiatives taken by health workers.

Instead, the officials have organised a series of one-day (or even two-hour) gestures, and assured everybody that the health workers involved are standing on 'protest lines', not picket lines. The TUC rally in London on Saturday is the biggest event that the the next step

UNITED ALL-OUT

(continued from front page) union chiefs have worked up the courage to call. This sort of low-key campaign might win polite applause from some top doctors, opposition politicians and sections of the press. But it won't worry the Thatcher government. Tory ministers have been prepared to ride roughshod over the official opposition and dissidents in their own ranks for nine years. They are hardly likely to turn tail and retreat now at the prospect of a windy speech from Norman Willis of the TUC on a Saturday afternoon. The union leaders' pathetic idea of 'action' is incapable of shifting the Tories. Worse still, the arguments they are using to attract middle class sympathy play into the government's hands. The official labour movement leaders are echoing the royal colleges in asking the Tories to invest in making the NHS more 'efficient' and 'caring', especially in specialist areas like children's surgery. These might sound like admirable aims. But in a health service which is run according to the dictates of capitalist accountancy, increasing efficiency has always meant making health workers work harder for desperately low pay. And appealing for special treatment for those who care the most endorses the division between skilled nurses and other health workers, especially the ancillary staff. This is exactly what the Tories want. The government's major concern over the nurses' pay review is to ensure that it introduces new variations between the pay of different groups of health workers. The Tories want to open up divisions within the

35. GHT

Nurses A Profes the specialist 'angels' on the foremost are the health workers themselves. the top nursing staff. What every health worker that could succeed.

HLL HEALTHAT LYNE

WAGE AND BETTER CONDTONS

DEMAND A

NO NurSes.

STRVE!

NS workforce by rewarding a few and leaving the rest on or below the breadline. Then they can drive bigger spending cuts through the gaps in our ranks. The union leaders' approach can only aid the government, by separating children's wards or in intensive care from the hundreds of thousands of other health workers who will suffer at the sharp end of any 'efficiency' drive.

Health workers need a lot more than themselves. token protests to beat the Tories. Allout industrial action to make the government's schemes inoperable would create the one sort of pressure which Thatcher cannot ignore. We need a militant campaign for national action, and we cannot worry about whether or not it upsets the public opinion makers. The people we need to worry about uniting first and The question our leaders ask is, what sort of campaign can we organise to plead for mercy in unity with public figures?' But the question health workers must address is, 'what sort of campaign will bring our own forces together in a fight to win what we need?' Seen in this light, the answer should be clear. We need a campaign which centres on the concerns of every worker in every hospital. It is especially important to involve those who have so far been pushed into the background, like the nursing auxiliarles and ancillary workers. They have no interest in calling for investment in efficiency drives which operate at their expense.

Nor is there anything for them in a campaign about the angelic efforts of desperately needs is a significant wage rise and a big improvement in working conditions. These demands are the obvious focus for building a united campaign. By burying these vital concerns beneath their timid appeals to defend the NHS, the trade union and Labour Party leaders are throwing away our one chance to pull health workers together in a struggle The way ahead in the health dispute lies through fighting for all-out

MERS

To THE NHO

OUR FIGHT

For decent pay For better conditions industrial action - with emergency cover under health workers' control behind health workers' own demands on pay and conditions. We would be fooling ourselves if we imagined that the union officials currently heading the campaign could ever be willing or able to organise such an initiative. So, if health workers are to make progress along these lines, they will need to seize control of the struggle Instead of looking to the TUC general council or any other dead labour movement body, health workers should set about forming action committees at rank and file level.

These would provide an ideal forum in which to overcome longstanding divisions among different groups of hospital staff. They would also bring together all of the expertise required to work out what sort of emergency cover to provide. Action committees in the hospitals would be building blocks from which a national campaign of industrial action could be created.

All-out united action over wages and conditions is not an idea that can appeal to the middle class bodies our leaders are courting. It will be condemned by the medical establishment and pilloried in the press. But that is not important. What matters is that it would shake the Tory government. And it would provide the basis for appealing for active solidarity, rather than passive sympathy, from other sections of the working class. Workers around the country have already shown willing to take action alongside health workers This is the sort of unity we must build on. It will be a lot more effective than getting a kind word for the 'angels' out of a Tory wet. Florence Nightingale is no match for Margaret Thatcher. But nurses fighting for what they need, backed by the rest of the NHS workforce and others in industry and services, are an altogether more formidable opponent.

NEATH WORD

OUR FE

decent

MAKE

THEM -

LISTEN