Workers Power no. 21

ORGANISE THE UNEMPLOYED!

ACCORDING TO THE TUC over three and a half million workers

yyed. But the record of the official labour move-

ment im the fyeiht 2gamst closures and in organising the unemp-

lowed s absolutely pathetic.

ammoag secteas of mmemrpect ed youth shows what organised expect if it fails to give a lead to the unemployed. If unexaployment is not to become a weapon used to cow and demoralise those with jobs, if unemployed workers are not to be used agaist the organised working class, THE UNEMPLOYED MUST BE ORGANISED NOW!

But the campaigns of the Labour Party and the TUC will not build up the fighting confidence of the unemployed. Michael Foot’s campaign of bi-monthly rallies offers the jobless a rare and fruitless chance to march behind Labour's big-wigs and the fardistant promise of eventually changing Thatcher's mind or -electing one-

time Minister of Unemployment Foot to Prime Ministerial office.

Len Murray, set on changing the

government’s course, insists, “It’s

not the job of the TUC to bring down governments” . Instead the TUC want to organise tea and sympathy centres for the unemployed, hand in hand with the local authorities. Their guidelines to Trades Councils are del-

iberately aimed at taking the steam out

of, and taking control of, the pressure to organise the jobless,

The TUC argue for the establishment of unemployed workers’ centres. The centres they envisage would play an advisory role to the unemployed. Even here the TUC make plain that they are not talking about drawing in«the countless young workers who've never had a job and therefore never joined a union. The advice intended is “‘to channel requests for

Muaher (iF L)

Mail

MISLILE

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(our ¢mphasis - WP)., and to prowide information on opportunities, training and mobility to the unemployed.

The centres are to have a minor role in representing the unemployed dut not in the battle for worksharing under Trade Union control with no loss of pay, not in the battle to cut the working week and overtime working -

all indispensable elements in the

fight to weld the unemployed to

the trade union movement in the

fight against the dole queue. Instead the TUC want the centres to promote ‘““Manpower Services Commission’’ schemes and pressure local authorities for concessionary fares and recreational facilities for those on the dole, The TUC accept that the army

of the unemployed , like the Tory gov-

ernment itself, is here for the foreseeable future. Their task is to keep it quiet and win it a few concessions.

FIGHTING MOVEMENT

Neither is there any danger that the TUC will allow the centres to fall into the hands of the unemployed themselves. Responsibility is to rest with the TUC itself and TUC

regional councils, even the Trades Councils are not to be trusted with the task, Management committees are to be the joint responsibility of the Trade Unions and local authorities.

The project of securing funds from local councils, Manpower Services Commission and charities limits in advance the scope of the

“me threat facing the labour movement if it fails to organise unemployed youth

centres. Of course these bodies may tumd recreational and training centres. But there is no chance that they

will fund a fighting movement of the unemployed. In every area, militants musi demand that all centres be under the control of the unemployed ; ives, that all funds accepted Om government local authorties be taken only on the basis that there are no strings attached, no restrictions p'aced on the activities and campaigns financed with the funds. If that battle is not won then the centres established will remain dead and useless.

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FIGHT UNION OFFICIALS

Against the souped-up ‘social work’ role that the TUC have allotted to these centres, revolutionaries should fight within them, where they are set up, to turn them into actionoriented bastions of the unemployed. This will undoubtedly involve a fight with the officials of the trade union movement. It makes imperative the need to cement links between the unemployed and rank and file employed workers.

The centres could in this way become important weapons in the campaign to make the unemployed visible - to the labour movement as a whole. In every town such centres would have to organise regular demos, meetings, street meetings, factory - gate agitiation, support for employed workers in struggle. From them unemployed workers would be dispatched to picket and disrupt local gatherings of the bosses who’ve condemned them to the dole - dinners, galas, charity shows and all the other excuses they use to display their finery. Lacking in industrial muscle, requiring publicity, such tactics would be crucial in building up an unemployed workers movement. At the same time they turn the TUC ‘guidelines’ on their head.

With the full backing of the Communist Party the North West Region of the TUC, supported by the Midland and South East TUC are calling a month-long protest march in May. They intend to march from Liverpool to London and intend their arrival day in London, May 29th, to be a Day of Action (including strike action) against unemployment. The march does offer some opportunities for breaking the deadening grip of the Labour and TUC leaders, but only if the plans of the organisers are foiled.

Continued on Back Page

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STRIKE TO WIN

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INSIDE: SPAIN MINERS CND

MINORITY MOVEMENT

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ANSELL’S: SPREAD THE

will be on the dole! If the Ansells workers are beaten the rest of the brewery division will soon taste the same medic-

BY MARTIN MAY

‘THREATS FROM MILITANTS’ and “Men in Fear in Beer War’ were the head- '"°-

lines run in the Birmingham bosses rag The Ansells workforce have refused ‘The Sunday Mercury’ on the 22nd of Jan- to be intimidated back to work, On Febuary asthe employers stepped up their "Uy 3rd, when management announattempts to break the five week old strike C&¢ they would recruit scab labour from at Ansells brewery in Birmingham. The the dole queue to reopen the brewery, new smear.campaign, pumping out lies the workforce responded with a mass

about how ‘outside political agitators’ a picket, while the office workers, memare stirring it up (a Workers Power bul- yids: the, TOW write Pelee ‘iced letin was singled out for special attdntion) >, refused to interview potential

shows how determined Allied Breweries — rth ot an then “a bosses are to force through redundancies "OUNCEC the closure of the brewery wit

and break union organisation at the pracy, ia least a pgs — Aston Brewery. hagement.1s Jobs back,

The origins of the dispute lay in man- plus canteen workers and stokers, and

agement attempts to introduce a four-day TRBAGA EE RLDSNELie aaa ehanue week in early January. The 1000 Ansells cessity of sending out flying pickets,and workers responded with a solid strike, are now picketing round the clock at all The employers withdrew the lay off not- ‘problem’ pubs, stockists and depots, ie ices but proceeded to demand 96 redund- where they haya dat Géihal eg aH adres: ancies and the acceptance of a nine-point ment with the strikers. Over 300manag plan, modelled on Edwardes notorious

British. Leviand’s si hy hich:j ed public houses where the licensees are PUSSY SHES SB VE CNenelt; WRICR: I-59 Goa ern E T&G/ACTSS have supportvolved reduction of earnings levels of

ed the strike and have refused to accept £30 a week, acceptance of new working | 46, from stockists unless delivered by practices which included larger loads, Ansells workers. Agreements have’been more deliveries per load, complete mo- ' ; je 3 reached with Burtons and other brewerbility of production workers, more use ies Of the Allied group (Weeds Wari of outside contractors, etc. a ont ale

bs candies Maceo oleae that tis aic ton etc) not to increase production so . to make up for the shortfall caused by

of the Allied bosses was to deal a decis- the strike, But this is a difficul ive blow to the strong trade union organ- pe ‘ he : Be i q eer. Opes isation achieved in the Ansells plant and f ‘ ou ide’ 5 the aie longa thorn in their side. Allied one of | °" © epbgearsr vel Morea git tia the ‘big six‘brewers whose breweries in- Sighs i dee clude Courage, Whitbread, Watney-Mann, Std backed by Allied is prepared for Bass, etc, and the fourth larges contri- a long rawn out strike. 1f the Ansells butor to Tory funds (its contributions eaiaes are to succeed, it is crucial to carefully laundered through ‘British Un- Sari eile whole of Allied breweries; ited Industrialists’) has been feeling the OM'Y !n this way will the Ansells’ bosses pinch in the economic recession. be forced to back down from their pre-

Like the rest of the boss class, Allied aa onslaught on the workers. The other has decided that it is the workers who rewery workers must be won to strike will pay for this crisis through speed ups, apse Ansells workers must make clear productivity deals, and redundancies. that if management break the trade union Allieds interim company report (25/11/ SRea Nit ¥ohiatie re pith tsieet/ ta: 80) declares ‘action to cut costs and im- zs ieee a “ aM 1 Ltd lahi de aught prove efficiency in all divisions will en- be Sted te oe 3 th othe, sure that the company is poised to take betavvies kate 4 te rf eas 4 full advantage of better trading condit- stewards ‘aid the toAidaHlids to dieclis ions when they occur’. Unfortunately i

: ; the issue,

many Allied workers won't be around when Thatcher's millenium arrives -they Continued on Page 3

Another lash-up on the left’?

SOCIALIST ORGANISER AND THE WORKERS SOCIALIST LEAGUE

THE WEDDING BELLS are ringing in certain quarters of the British left. After a series of joint public meetings, exchanged articles and a liberal dose of “non-sectarian” bonhomie, the Socialist Organiser (SO) tendency (formerly Workers Action), and the Workers Socialist

League (WSL) appear to be drawing closer.

So far all that has been declared is a programme of joiit practical activity and a nonaggression pact on political issues. The final organisational shape of this alliance has not yet taken form. The Conference Against the Cuts called by SO and the Campaign for Democracy in the Labour Movement (CDLM - a WSL dominated and controlled organisation) for March 21st has, however, led to a hint being dropped on this matter, Socialist Press, the newspaper of the WSL declared that the conference will not merely plan action against the cuts, but also:

“Tt will construct the framework for a strong left wing capable of seeing that the decisions of, the broad conferences in November and Januarv are implemented and defended against backsliding”

While the degree of organisational independence that the WSL will maintain remains unclear, it is evident that politically they have accepted the perspective and method of the old Workers Action tendency. This notion of a “Marxist Left’, a non-sectarian pressure group whose activities are centrally geared towards changing the Labour Party, is nothing new. Pablo, the one-time leader of the Fourth International, and chief exhibit in the WSL’s rogues gallery, espoused a similar strategy for British Trotskyism in the 1950s. In his 1951 Perpesctives he wrote:

“In countries where the reformist parties far outdistance all other working class formations and are the polar force for the great majority of the proletariat (England, Belgium, Australia), our movement should attempt to integrate itself in these organisations, to organise and develop a conscious left wing in their ranks.” (Theses on Orientation and Perspectives adopted at Third World Congress of the FI,1951).

In Pablo’s persepctive of deep entryism, this “left wing” was to be the replacement for a Trotskyist party.

More recently the leader of the Socialist Organiser group, John O’Mahoney, articulated a similar perspective: “That therefore there is a great urgency about the work of organising a nonsectarian left wing in the labour movement to help it make itself ready to answer the needs of the situation which the working class faces as capitalism declines and rots.” (Introduction to the SO pamphlet “Labour Democracy and the Fight for a Workers’ Government”

__ What is at first sight suprising is that the WSL, nurtured in the anti-Pabloite womb of Gerry Healey’s Workers Revolutionary Party, should now bé moving towards a deal with the Socialist Organiser on the basis of its transformation of the Labour Party perspective. The courtship of these two organisations was preceded by some fairly sharp attacks on each other. Of the CDLM, with whom they are now avidly cooperating, Workers Action argued in November 1979:

“The basic conclusions of what we wrotein March 1977 remain valid: “Thornett is still trapped in the same overall straitjacket as his former leader Healy (of the WRP). Briefly the scenario is this. The working class is

a seething volcano, prevented from erupting and overthrowing capitalism only by a thin crust which goes under the name of the bureaucracy” (Workers Action 158 Nov 10th 1979), The conclusion WA drew from this was: “The result is organisational sectarianism and political primitivism” (ibid).

Workers Action became Socialist Organiser and the latter adopted a more conciliatory line towards the WSL. Did this indicate that the WSL had shifted from the perspective outlined above, one which WA characterised as “lunatic” and “half-baked” ? Not a bit. As we argued in our last paper, the WSL’s approach to the last pay claim in BL bore all the hallmarks of “ political primtivism’’. They explain the failure of the claim solely in terms of a betrayal by Stalinist Longbridge convenor Jack Adams. He was the crust that prevented the volcanno of militancy from erupting. The real political weaknesses inside the rank and file are glossed over or ignored. No, what has really changed from the days when Workers Action refused to consider unity with the WSL, is not the WSL’s politics and perspectives, but the project that Workers Action, and now Socialist Organiser, set itself inside the Labour Party. Gone from their propaganda are any calls for a revolutionary party. Gone is the fight to develop and implement a clear revolutionary programme. In their place we get a “class struggle left’’ (Labour Democracy...pamphlet) and a programme that is far from revolutionary: “The political platform contained in our Where We Stand is not a scientific programme, but a class-struggle platform (Socialist Organiser 30/8/80). In this context the former differences with the WSL cease to become important. Provided that both parties agree on the next steps for work around the democracy issue in the

rate Party, then differences over analysis of the class struggle and programme become at most, second rate.

But the change of tune has not only come from the SO camp. The WSL have notably failed in their various party-building attempts. The CDLM, their yeuth organisation and their women’s paper have failed to halt the decline in their numbers and influence. This was strikingly revealed by their reduction in size of Socialist Press, and the incorporation of their other papers (Red Youth and Woman Worker) into it. Obviously new pastures were needed and the apparent success of Socialist Organiser was a considerable temptation. The WSL’s timeless, schematic demand ‘‘To Make the Lefts Fight’? was always there, ready to justify joining the Socialist Organiser bloc. The‘new left’’ of the Labour Party would be a useful force to realise this slogan, particularly given its relationship with lefts like Benn. A combination of these factors lies at the heart of the WSL’s latest Labour Party/SO perspective.

The WSL have shown a marked shift in their attitude to WA/SO over the last months. Only last summer in a major polemic, Socialist Press castigated WA’s articles on the Workers’ Government question as follows: “The articles studiously avoid any call for a revolutionary party”

(SP 6/8/80). Indeed, SO and its sister paper Women’s Fightback were described as ‘‘publications |

of broader left reformist groupings within the Labour Party’. The main points that the WSL took up with WA were its adaptation to left reformism, its belief that the Labour Party could be transformed into a weapon for revolutionary struggle, and WA’s own “political and organisational liquidation”. Thus Socialist Press poured scorn on Workers Action’s “‘transformation”’ of the Labour Party perspective: “To envisage the Labour Party, after 75 years of committment to piecemeal parliamentary reform of the capitalist system, beign transformed by one or two constitutional changes into a “real instrument of the working class” is, to say the least. extraordinary.” (SP 6/8/80) But the WA/SO has had no change of heart as a result of these polemics! The Labour Party is still capable of “‘renovation’’ according to them. The thing that has changed is the WSL’s attitude towards the Labour Party. After the Blackpool conference a sudden shift in emphasis occurred. The partial leftward swing in the Party that led to the partial democratic gains being made, suddenly became, in the eyes of Socialist Press, a “‘mass anti-capitalist current within the British labour movement” (SP 8/10/80). And in tones distinctly echoing those of Socialist Organiser, the report of the Labour Party conference went on to say: ‘“‘Instead of providing a reliable second option to direct Tory rule, the Labour Party now threatens to fall into the clutches of the very workers it has fraudulently claimed to represent for three quarters of a century.” In one leap, the WSL adopted SO’s “to say the least, extraordinary” perspective. From that point on the WSL/CDLM have generously been offering to work inside the SO-inspired Rank and File Mobilising Committee mside the Labour Party. At first sight this leap might appear to be an enormous one. However, it fits in exactly with the WSL’s schema of a permanent mass movement, always ready to take on capitalism and only prevented from doing so by treacherous leaders. The locus of this movement has shifted temporarily from the trade unions to the Labour Party. Conveniently for Socialist Ograniser, this turn has taken place at a time when they are trying to unite the marxist left inside the labour movement. The marriage of these tendencies then, is primarily one of convenience! Workers Power has made clear on many occaisions its different assessment of the tasks of revolutionaries with regards to the Labour Party, from those of Socialist Organiser and the WSL. The moves towards unity by these tendencies also illustrates the difference that we have with them over the question of revolutionary regroupment. It is clear from the statements made by both organisations that there are major differences of analysis, persepctive and programme. In fighting for revolutionary unity it is the task of genuine communists to hammer out such differences. This was the attitude we took when both of these tendencies approached us for discussions. Were we for discussions ? Yes. Were we willing to hide differences? No. The WA/SO grouping denounce us as sectarians. The refrain is growing increasingly loud from the WSL. In their paper they explained that they had held discussions with us “in which Workers Power has <_< p uasica and ence ae of method that have emerged” . is means is that unlike the WSL and SO we insisted i i This was not a barrier to joint action. It was a barrier to sian AANT EE Keni unity has to be preceded by agreement on programme, on perspective and on key tactical quesfons . Of course tactical differences can, and do, exist inside single organisations. But wh : those tactical differences become permanent and systematised they necessarily challenge the Programmatic homogeneity and clarity of the organisation. The lesson of the whole histo of Trotskyism is that cut-price unity - at the cost of programmatic agreement - can only | “? 7 : pateey demoralising, splits. varia _ ithe and the SO give an organisational expression to their 5 i oo thes nee only eg they es be one step forther toed th aea of political liquid- . wull also fin at thei i , i " : : Miicests thems es x ont sarees sig unity won't survive the first major tactical difference that

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Lessons of victory

FOR ONE WEEK in February the miners had the

' Tory Government by the throat. Temporarily, the

NUM leaders had lost control of large sections of their own membership. The NCB and the Tories were forced to back down. That represents an important victory for all workers. It will encourage millions of workers - particularily in the public sector - as they prepare to do battle with Thatcher on pay. It will boost the confidence of workers threatened with closures and short time working.

But the NUM leadership were able to stop the strike spreading into an all-out offensive against the Government. They were able to regain the initiative and the Tory Government was bailed out from a confrontation that could have destroyed it without naming the sum it will put into the coal industry and with its axe still poised over pit jobs.

Thatchers climb-down was due to her recognition that the balance of forces was stacked against her not to any abandonment of overall government strategy. The injection of further cash aid to the NCB and the temporary shelving of closure plans was no more than a concession to win the Tories a breathing space. Above all else, the Tories were desperate to keep the miners off the battle field so they could carry on the main project of taking the weakers sections on and carrying through the wholesale attacks on workers living standards,

DEFUSING THE SITUATION

Far better, at the moment,to make concessions, to defuse the situation and for good measure to bolster up Gormley and the right wing’s control of the NUM in an election year. While the tabloid Tory press such as the Express may have screamed “Surrender!”’ - the more far sighted and serious Cabinet supporters understood the true nature of Thatcher's intervention. For example, the city editor of the Sunday Telegraph summed up the outcome, thus:

“The end result is that the Government, dented, and irreparably damaged stil! lives to fight another day. In the miners power game, the moderates rule and the country avoids a paralysing strike. It could

_ have been worse.” (22/2/81)

For pit militants, the crucial question has to be ‘how.was it that thatcher could defuse the situation so quickly and leave “‘hold your fire’ Gormiey firmly in control of the NUM leadership.’hbw come the leadership of the NUM — Left and Right — were able to call off the action and ensure a return to work before the Tories had given a firm guarantee that not a job would be lost in the pits and without them naming the figure they-are prepared to put into the industry to guarantee jobs?

The answers to these questions demonstrate precisely why the key task facing pit militants is the building of an opposition movement in the NUM that can challenge the existing leadership - Left and Right.

The South Welsh miners exploded the plans of the NUM leadership for a protracted period of bar-

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THE CAMPAIGN for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) is organising a Labour Movement against the Missiles Conference for late March. Coming as it does in the midst of Thatcher’s strident Cold War campaign, and after largescale mobilisations of CND supporters in the past year, there can be no doubt that it will attract delegations from Trade Unions and Labour Party wards. What should be the attitude of revolution-

aries to the CND and attempts to commit working class organisations to build it ?

For two of the largest groups on the left,

the answer is simple. Both the SWP and the IMG work to build it and work within it to push it to the left. Both have a long history of chasing behind any campaign that moves and attracts significant forces, whatever its policies may be. That this determines the SWP’s attitude.is made clear when it declares: “‘The tide is flowing so strongly that the crucial point is to participate in it ” “Socialist Review” 1980:10.

ENDING WAR PLANS

Yet does the CND or any of the other campaigns offer any real perspective for ending Thatcher and Reagan’s war plans ?We would answer “No”.

UND has undoubtedly been rejuvenated in » the last period by an influx of young, mainly middle class, supporters. It remains largely and deliberately isolated from the only force which can really prevent war, the organised

must be learnt

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gaining and negotiation over closures to be backed up by the threat of strike action. When miners in all the major coalfields were already out, the NUM,Jeadership was still only Preparing to open a lengthy ballot process. When 425 men walked out at Coegnant and 800 followed at Bryniliw - Morlais, temporarily the NUM executive had lost the initiative. De claring “There is no room for compromise”, Emlyn Williams was forced to bring forward the South Welsh miners conference. Five hundred delegates from 36 pits took 20. minutes to issue their all-out strike call.

The energy and determination was there to pull out the coalfields whatever the NUM leaders

said and did. Even more alarming for the NUM leaders and the Tories, the potential existed for the miners strike spearheading a united working class offensive against all unemployment and redundancies. It was vital, in every area, to fight for the immediate establishment of Councils of Action, made up of representatives from all sections of the working class but in particular those workers like at Talbot in Linwood, Firth Brown in Sheffield facing closures. At the same time the Triple Alliance could have been transformed from a bureaucrats talking-shop into a focus for direct action.

Appeals to steel, rail and transport workers to join the strike was a key priority. There is no doubt that such calls to action linked to a perspective for immediate General Strike would have gained a good deal of very real support. The response form rail and and transport workers to appeals for support demonstrate this,

The NUM leadership worked frantically to prevent such an outcome. Of course, every militant expected just as much from Joe Gormley. This darling of the bosses press insisted on the non-political nature of the dispute from the start, Along with the rest of the NUM executive his stress was on forcing the Government to treat the miners as a special case. Ducking jan all-out fight with the Tories and trying desperately to stop the miners becoming the spearhead of such a fight,the NUM executive built their case on the need to reward exceptional productivity increases in the mines, the need to cut imports of foreign coal and the lack of adequate government funding for the coal industry

Gormley and the TUC were both quaking in their boots at the thought: that ‘other workers —\like the beleaguered Lianwem steel plant, or the Talbot car workers — would take the cue from the miners for a joint fight.

But the openly right-wing leaders were not left to hold the line for conciliation on their own. Arthur Scargill — the Left’s Presidential candidate — was deservedly jostled and booed by Kentish and Welsh miners as he tried to reach the executive _ meeting. Scargill never brought out the strategically vital Yorkshire coalfield.

Scargill's record and role during the week of the strikes should be remembered and understood by all rank and file militants. With the unofficial strike wave spreading even to his ‘own’ coalfield, Scargill heeded Gormley’‘s despairing plea and ‘held his fire’.

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working class. Its leadership remains under the control of churchmen like Bruce Kent and assorted pacifists and liberals - who want the “broadest” possible movement and who will not brook policies or actions which

will alienate the churches, Labour leaders like Michael Foot, or even the Liberals.Its aim is to create a bloc to make propaganda for “unilateral nuclear disarmament” in the cause of world “peace” and the easing of tensions between states.

INVOLVING THE UNIONS

It is this campaign that the middle class leaders, and their aides in the IMG and SWP, will be trying to tie Labour and Trade Union organisations to. They will want these bodies to distribute their propaganda, put over their message in leaflets and brochures, and mobilise for their planned campaign of pacifist demonstrations and rallies.

As socialists we are absolutely in favour of stopping the ruling class’s drive to arm itself to the teeth with nuclear weapons. But we recognise that a campaign that restricts itself to propaganda for peace and unilateral disarmament positively misleads workers and youth as to the real cause of the war threat that faces humanity. It prevents them putting an end to the root causes of.

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This runner for office — who had hoped his militant laurels were well enough established for him to seek votes from the centre and right by proving himself a leader of restraint — was caught badly on the wrong foot in his drive to use militancy in the pits to put him into Gormley’s office.

Despite having an overwhelming 86% mandate for strike action, Scargill did not budge. By his own admission, Scargill understood his mandate to relate to pit closures anywhere in the country. This was demonstrated in the previous week when he said, speaking after the NEC meeting to a miners lobby:

‘We will take action immediately if one pit is closed. Bear in mind in our ballot we never spoke of Yorkshire pits. There is only one coalfield — the British coalfield. We will strike if any pit is threatened

any where.”

WELSH MINERS PROTEST

No wonder he got the rough treatment from angry South Wales miners the following week as he arrived for the NEC meeting. Their closures were announced on Monday and by Thursday the Yorkshire area was still working and effectively producing strike-breaking coal. There are no excuses; if Scargill’s words meant anything, they meant that Yorkshire should have been out from the start of ~ the week and not a week later!

On Wednesday, when four pit closures were announced .in Yorkshire itself, even then, Scargill did not call a strike. The date remained fixed for the following Monday. That postponing of action was decided even when his Own pits were spontaneously walking out on strike. Even at that crucial moment when threatened pits like Orgreave were taking action and in need of immediate solidarity backing, Scargill treacherously delayed the decision,

THE NATIONAL UNION OF MINEWORKERS Speeeecrecentennmnnmmnrnnn sre

At this point, Thatcher played her hand by hastily summoning the joint meeting of the NCB, NUM and the Government, where the concessions were announced. Gormley came out of the meeting claiming victory and the Press backed him up the next day, all in a desperate attempt to ensure that Thatcher's plan to defuse the situation was successful. Scargill was now left high and dry.

Having failed to fight the Right and build on the widespread coalfield militancy to foil Gormley’s plans and go for the Tories’ throat, Scargill and the NUM ‘Lefts’ were powerless to prevent Gormley collapsing the action. They mustered a few brave words: “Il want concrete assurances in writing. | want to see the colour of their cash” declared Mick McGahey immediately after the news of the Government's climb-down. Scargill claimed that the Yorkshire strike due for Monday was still on because “‘copper bottomed guarantees” had not been secured about future pit closures and manpower reductions.

Emlyn Williams declared “Our strike will continue until we are satisfied that the threat of closures has been withdrawn form all parts of Britain”. But in every area except Kent, Gormley’s call for a return was heeded before the Kent miners were guaranteed their jobs at the Snowdon Colliery and before the miners had seen the colour of the Tories cash.

At the area council meeting of the Yorkshire NUM Scargill “persuaded " the delegates to call off the strike because he had personal assurances from Derek “E ra over the phone (!) that no pits would, close in Yorkshire. It did not matter to Scargill anymore that, for example, in Kent no such guarantees existed — as far as he was concerned it was all over.

Meanwhile in Parliament, the windbag Michael Foot was nauseatingly offering his congratulations to Thatcher for bringing the dispute to an end —

Prophetic headline from WORKERS POWER December 1980. Lies from the “Morning Star’. Welsh and Kent miners outside NUM HQ were lobbying NEC and calling Scargill a scab - they weren’t there

to “‘back his firm stand” !

SCARGILL: Running for ay from a fight ¢

eminers A ‘*No' vote will simply force the board ‘ back to the negotiating table".

This position was backed up by a

Micibuted to every miner in the

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war and thus actively aids the war mongers. We argue that the new war threat arises - not from nuclear weapons and the development of new weapons systems themselves - but from the new period of crisis into which international capitalism has plunged. The increasingly cutthroat competition for markets translates itself into political rivalry - a rivalry which in the end gives rise to imperjalist wars. It is the capitalists’ control over these.weapons and their willingness to use them in their fight for markets and to hold back and destroy the struggle against capitalism and the imperialist yoke, that the working class needs to end. That is why we argue that the only way to end war is through the class war. The working class must disarm the bourgeoisie themselves through over-throwing their system.

PERSUADING THE BOSSES

By contrast the CND sows the illusion that by persuading the bourgeoisie to give up its nuclear options we can avoid a nuclear holocaust~that somehow it is the weapons themselves which promote ‘“‘missile madness”. It directs attention away from the

real cause of wars and is even content to leave in the hands of the bourgeoisie all the horr-

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warfare, napalm, tanks et, etc, - all weapons of mass destruction. Even the ruling class circles in Britain themselves have discussed whether they should concentrate their resources on these, rather than the hugely expensive replacement for Polaris - Trident.

OPPOSE UNION AFFILIATION

It is because our analysis of the causes of militarism and our programme for ending it - the overthrow of capitalism - are diametrically opposed to those of the CND that we oppose Trade Union and Labour Party bodies building the CND. That is why we oppose affiliation of labour movement bodies to CND.

This sort of movement can only aid the warmongers in as far as it deflects and disarms the working class from the only Struggle which can end war and end the threat of nuclear holocaust. The CND in its search for the “broadest possible movement” welcomes all sorts of fakers from the ruling class and the labour movement

to adorn its platforms with rhetorical denunciations of war. Most of these gentlemen having established their reputations as ““men of peace” courtesy of the CND and their SWP/IMG backers, will as war

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“every time you turn you will get a nice bouquet from me. | may even ask you to dinner.”” The spectre of an all out battle with the Tories disrupting his world of debating points and cringing buffoonery had receded.

Many militants in the pits have seen only too dearly the need to challenge the leadership of both Scargill and Gormley. The Tories’ climbdown was forced out of them by the determination of the

rank and file miners not by the work of the Execu-

tive. In every area a militant minority opposed the return tot work. For example, three South Wales

lodges — Mardy, Penrhiwceiber and Tower — voted

to continue strike action. There was opposition to Scargill in Yorkshire too.

The key task facing these militants is to build an opposition movement to win the leadership of the union. Such an opposition would of necessity have as its objective the welding of the NUM into a force capable not only of defending every job and improving the living standards of the miners but of mobilising the miners for decisive action, alongside the other battalions of the working class, to destroy capitalism.

CHANGE THE UNION STRUCTURE

if the union is to be able to defend miners in the period ahead and if it is to take its place in the struggle to destroy the Tory Government and all it stands for then its bureaucratised structures must must be overhauled from top to bottom. The dispute showed that despite the action and militancy of the members, the initiative remained firmly with the full-time officials. The regional divisions within the union served to divide the miners from the start. The NUM still bears the scars of its federative nature.

The absence of.werk-place representatives

actually working in the pits — the equivalent of shop stewards — means that the members and most militants remain unorganised_and powerless compared with the weight of officialdom within the union at all levels. This renders it particularily easy for full-timers and their network in the regions

and lodges to hold on to the initiative. Tha task remains to transform the union into a body where its leaders can be recalled and are continually accountable to the rank and file. All full-time officals must be instantly recallable and regularly elected.

The present inbuilt majority of the Right-wing on the NEC must be overthrown. To this end there should be strict proportional representation on the executive, according to the number of MUM members in the areas. Urgent steps must be made to institute the equivalent of shop stewards in every pit, on every shift and for every work-team.

The Tories and the employers have not had a change of heart over the miners. They will do what they can to force the miners te pay for their present victory. A wage rise of 13% this year means that miners wages are falling behind the official inflation figures. The NCB and the Government will use the lure of redundancy payments, claims that investment funds are lacking, and spurious geological surveys to cut the workforce. They will continue their productivity deal offensive to divide the miners and diminish the importance of the national pay claim for workers in better off pits.

Only a thoroughly transformed NUM can resist these attacks. The need is for organisation now — when the record of Scargill and Gormley is fresh in the minds of countless militants — to build a leadership that politically challenges the present misleaders of the unions.

By ANDY SMITH

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approaches become the best recruiting sergeants for the ruling class. They will use their reputations to dupe the masses as to the “defensive” and “justified” nature of war. We resolutely oppose every attempt to rally the working class behind the chauvinist non-nuclear wing of the bourgeoisie.

Against the impotent slogans “For world peace and disarmament” and “unilateral nuclear disarmament”, socialists advance the slogans:

“Not ene man, not one penny for defence” “Britain out of NATO”.

“Not an armaments programme but a programme of public works”

“Disband the standing army - for an

armed workers militia”.

GENUINE WORKERS’ FEARS

Does this mean that we abstain from any struggle against Thatcher’s war preparations short of the fight for a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism ? No - we recognise that the widespread demands for nuclear disarmament and an end to Britain’s role as a “US aircraft carrier” represent the genuine fear of workers and their families of being annihilated in a nuclear holocaust. Socialists support all actions which

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the aim of getting an all out strike in the group, the only way of ensuring that Allied’s plans are defeated. Allied workers must aim to create a powerful com- ote bine committee out of the strike which st. can unite the workforce against manage- oft ments lay-off and speed-up plans. Furth- “s05) ermore the transport/haulage workers must be won to effective blacking of all raw materials entering the breweries,

s ANSELL’S... . = “ From Front Page se ro The call of the strike committee for ro “| a conference of Allied shop stewards ts “must be implemented immediately with “ate

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Management threats to close and ‘sell-off’ the Aston brewery must be countered by a well organised occupation of the buildings; not one item of the bosses assets, built up from the years of toil of Ansells workers, must be allowed to be sold or moved while the strike continues. The Ansells workers must, above all, keep control of their own strike. No negotiations behind closed doors by full- ' time officials, the strike committee and the workforce must be the only bodies to decide the course of the strike — no

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As far as possible, mass meetings should take all policy decisions on the strike. If mass meetings are not always possible because of the flying picketing, then delegates from all pickets and sections of the workforce should meet with full voting rights together with the strike committee.

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oat The bosses’ companions in blue, together with the SPG — the specially formed picket busting squad - have started to harrass the flying pickets. In one incident a group of pickets were attacked by the cops after they had helped a scab delivery lorry through the picket. Two strikers were arrested and done for assault on police and criminal damage! A police transit van drove straight at one

of the pickets who is now on crutches as q result of the incident. The strikers must ensure that they have the ability to counter such attacks through organising picket defence squads — a successful defense of the right to picket sending these uniformed thugs running will ensure that they will think twice about intimidating strikers in future,

The bosses still have up their sleeve Thatcher's ‘Employment Act’ under which flying picketing is ‘illegal’. If the bosses choose to use this, the Birmingham trade union movement must be immediately mobilised to deliver the same reply to “ss: the bosses that they gave at ‘Saltley Gates’ se during the 1972 miners strike.

4 All trade Unionists must organise max- ‘se imum support for this strike. Organise

s* workplace collections now! Money and i. messages of solidarity to Bro, J Bond,

i: 23 Barnet Rd, Erdington, Birmingham,

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weaken the ability of the bourgeoisie to conduct such a war. We fight alongside “all

those willing to take action to prevent the siting of Cruise missiles in Britain, arguing that the whole weight of the Trade Union movement should be brought to bear to black the sites, refuse transportation, obstruct the military in its efforts to counteract such a campaign.

MAINTAIN INDEPENDENCE!

While we counterpose our own arguments to the unilateral nuclear disarmers, and maintain complete independence for our OWN propaganda against capitalist militarism in all its guises, we are prepared to fight alongside those campaigning for unilateral nuclear disarmament. But to force such a position on the Labour leaders would be worthless unless they were made accountable to the working class. We demand that Labour MPs should vote against all the Tories’ war measures. We fight to

implement conference decisions on nuclear disarmament by direct working class action.

It is on such a perspective and around concrete actions which flow from them that revolutionaries can fight alongside those in CND, END etc. That is the alternative to the craven tailing of the CND’s pacifist leaders by the “revolutionary” IMG and SWP.

KING

Page 3

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SING A M

Central to the impact of the NMM was the election of improvements in wages, hours and conditions of work. the Labour Government in November 1923. At one It advocated the formation of a variety of organs of and the same time, it increased workers expectations class struggle; the extension of trade unions themselves

= ORGANI

By KEITH

HASSELL

R THE LAST two years the depth of the capitalist crisis, in Britain and internationally, has

red the bosses and the Tory Government into a ruthless offensive against the working class. The

| to refurbish British capitalism has led them to savage the livelihoods of workers by means of

> cuts, drastic welfare spending cuts and massive unemployment.

he scale of the recession determines the scale of the offensive. As both intensify so the room nanoeuvre available to the trade union bureaucracy shrinks. Their familiar recipe of class collabora in exchange for piecemeal reforms becomes redundant. The reforms they seek are utopian in a ate of severe economic crisis. The tories know this full well, and except in isolated cases, they

vent on a course of confrontation, not i\boration.

1 these circumstances the trade union leaders two options, Either they can embark on a resoiefence of working class interests, or they can the Tories by demobilising the struggles of the and file that inevitably break out as the cap-

ts launch their vicious attacks. The very

fe of the bureaucracy as a_ privileged caste,

ling above the rank and file and depending for ivileges on the subordination of the rank and

o the interests of capital, make the former

mn impossible.

he idea that any section of the bureaucracy can e guarantor of the working class’s vital needs, is opeless pipe dream of Stalinists and centrists. In yy the bureaucracy have to opt for demobilising ank and file—containing and betraying its struggles t Longbridge for example) so_ that after the crisis saders will still be in the saddle. But for workers oO fight back now, not to take action against the ’ offensive and to allow the bureaucrats to keep ‘ol of the unions would be disastrous.

he grim prospect of a working class, cowed by areat of unemployment, weakened in its organms and existing at subsistence level, will prove lable unless a fightback by the rank and file revent it.

his was the lesson of the 1920s, a period rich in iences of the class struggle. In the years preced- © General Strike—a defeat which the working class eh the hungry Thirties paid dearly for—the

lity for defeating the bureaucracy and the sexisted. Sections of the rank and file engaged ermined battles often in the face of bitter

ition from their trade union leaders. The history se struggles is linked intimately to the history ‘Communist Party of Great Britain(CPGB) led nal Minority Movement (NMM), In giving smmatic direction to the nuclei of militants

to take on Thatcher and the trade union

s in today’s class struggle, close study of the ition and degeneration of the NMM is indisp-

le. At the height of its influence it could claim resent some 25% of the organised British

me class and the early history of the NNM

ns the only principled attempt undertaken by fitish left to build a rank and file movement in Dour movement.

“The cover ofa Minority Movement pamphiet

fhe national organisational basis of the NMM was laid during the severest period of the post-First

id War crisis— 1921/22. But, during these years streat the CPGB, helped enormously by the tmunist International, assimilated the programme tactics that enabled it to launch the NMM ona lutionary basis in 1924.

kiter the World War the British working class rienced the relative benefits of a post war boom th lasted until the end of 1920. During that same od the British Communist Party was formed (April )) out of an agglomeration of small propaganda

s. and the remnants of the shop stewards move-

ty the winter of 1920/21 the boom came to an pt halt. The coal owners reacted to that crisis of tets (which had only been temporarly offset after war by the French occupation of the Ruhr coalSs in Germany), by a wage cutting offensive. The put of April 1921 produced a craven capitulation he union leaders and with this defeat, inflicted

a the most militant section of the working class, a glised retreat occured throughout 1921 and 1922. me end of 1921 more than 6 million workers had sed wage cuts amounting to an average of 8%. meers, dockers and textile workers all suffered

= reverses. Working class organisation was espondingly weakened as two million workers (a Ser of the entire membership) flooded out of the P mamoms.

fie youn: CPGB was caught | unprepared. The SS otlemewe ‘send © moe wk of lsunchime a feGeoeme: J$eme Core oe faderakem and

legacies of the CP’s leaders recent past, proved useless in combatting the disarray inside a working class reeling under the impact of an onslaught on their jobs and wages by the capitalist class. “Watch Your Leaders’’, a correct slogan in itself, was raised by the CPGB but was unsupported by any political strategy for the rank and file. These harsh lessons were forcibly brought home to the CPGB during the 3rd Congress of the Communist International (C.I.) in 1921. Through the next two years the C.I., under the revolutionary guidance of Lenin and Trotsky, reforged the CPGB in the image of Bolshevism. By the end of 1923 it had purged it of its organisational flabbiness and armed it with a programmatic method capable of effecting principled mass work despite its small size.

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DEVELOPING A A UNITED FRONT

The programme that emerged from the C.I. through its 3rd and 4th Congresses was central to the growth of the CPGB and the NMM. It was elabored on the recognition that the revolutionary tide that had swept Europe immediately after the War, had subsided, that communists were minorities inside many working classes, and that the bosses were on the offensive. In such conditions a programme was needed which has at its heart,

‘the struggle for the concrete needs of the proletariat, for demands which, in their application, undermine the power of the bourgeoisie, which organise the proletariat, and which form the transition of proletarian dictatorship, even if certain groups of the masses have not yet grasped the meaning of such proletarian dictatorship.” (Report on 3rd Congress of C.I.)

Such a programme puts the official leadership of the working class to the test and allows revolutionaries to win the confidence and leadership of the rank and file. It is an active weapon against the reformist betrayers and at the same time a programme that meets the womgers immediate needs. But an agreement for joint action to reverse the key elements of the bosses attacks must by no means obscure the strategic, and in the end decisive, differences that exist between reformists and revolutionaries.

The C.I. directive of December 1921 argued, ‘While supporting the slogan of the greatest possible unity of all workers organisations in every practical action against the capitalist front, communists may, in no circumstances desist from putting forward their views, which are the only consistent expression of the defence of the working class interests as a whole”.

(J. Degras: ““Documents of the CI” Vol | p313). Such a united front programme, then, represents a

bridge from today’s consciousness to a struggle for power under communist leadership. The organisational form of that bridge in the trade unions is the rank and file movement. The material basis for this organisation rests in two facts. First, if the trade unions, in the epoch of capitalist decay, are going to be able to effectively defend their members’ interests, then

they have-to be totally transformed. Against the interests and the wishes of the bureaucrats, they

have to be made into weapons of struggle for the overthrow of capitalist society. Only the rank and file has a material interest in doing this. Secondly,

to achieve this the rank and file need to be politically independent of the trade union bureaucracy asa whole. The material interests of the rank and file are not merely different to those of the bureaucracy, they are actually opposed to them. Making

this tactical method absolutely clear, the Fourth Congress of the C.I. advised the CPGB as follows: ‘The aim must be to create a more numerous trade

union opposition movement. Our aim must be that our communist groups should act as a point of crystallisation around which the opposition elements will concentrate. The aim must be to create, to marshall, to integrate the opposition forces, and the CP itself will grow concurrently with the growth of the opposition.’ (4th Congress of the C.I. Abridged Report

P 226-7).

Over the next 18 months, and with considerable practical prodding by the C.1. agent in Britain, Borodin, the CPGB put this perspective into practice. But a correct perspective alone cannot explain the success of the NMM. Significant conjunctural factors played a key role in its growth.

The economic situation in Britain underwent a change at this time. During the course of 1923 and 1924 there was a marked upturn. Exports rose from a low of £719m. in 1922 to £767m. in 1923 and £801m. in 1924. Whereas unemployment had rocketed to 14% during 1921 it had receded to 11.5% and 9.7% in 1923 and 1924 respectively. Throughout the coal fields in particular, unemployment declined from 4.6% in December 1922 to only 2.1% four months later.

The overall effect of this ppturn was to increase the confidence of the rank and file, to make them feel safe from victimisation, and more determined to fight to retrieve some of the ground lost in 1921/22.

and their willingness to take on the bosses, and it deepened the class collaboration of the trade union bureaucracy which attempted to halt the wave of strikes throughout 1924.

The resulting unofficial nature of the strike wave served to embolden the rank and file against their leadership, particularly in the Miners Federation of Great Britain (MFGB) and the engineers union (AEU). These unions had suffered most from the betrayals of the earlier period. The early work of the M.M also found itself intersecting with a rich tradition of rank and file organisation amongst the miners and the metal workers. Despite the ups and downs of the previous ten years there was a definite continuity, of ideas and personnel, amongst the unofficial opposition such as Murphy, Gallacher and Pollit. In the MFGB there had been the 1911 syndicalist Charter, the ‘Miners Next Step’, and then later the South Wales based Unofficial Reform Committee. Within the AEU there was the rich, if politically limited, experience of the shop stewards struggles to draw upon (e.g. Sheffield and Clydside Workers Committees).

Also important were the internal structures of the official unions themselves. To some extent the bases laid down in the MFGB and AEU by the NMM and the rather limited gains made in the NUR, can be explained by the differences of organisation. Both the MFGB and the AEU had grown by a process of amalgamation. These unions enshrined sectionalism and local separatism. The MFGB in particular,. had a weak central executive, meeting monthly and possessing only two full timers. A high degree of - decentralisation made it difficult to enforce bureaucratic control and victimise communist militants. The metal workers could point to similar favourable circumstances. On the other hand, the NUR was heavily autocratic, like Chapple’s EEPTU today. An Executive of 6 full time officers elected for life and with a power to disolve branches they considered to be ‘Prejudicial to the interests of the NUR’ and a system of District Committees which were purely ‘propagandist and consultative’ both made MM progress a slower and more difficult struggle.

The South Wales coal field was the first and strongest bastion of the NMM. Under Borodin’s guidance a Miners Minority Movement was built there. Through 1923 it spread to Scotland, Durham and Lancashire. At a conference in Sheffield the National

Mineworkers Minority Movement (NMMM ) was formed.

In its heyday the NMMM had 200 groups. By August 1925 16 lodges were affiliated with a membership of 14,500. Such was its influence that by May 1926 in South Wales alone there were 16 separate MMM pit papers. Such was its political influence that it rallied some two fifths of the MFGB to reject the 1924 agreement with the coal owners even though that agreement represented a partial success.

During the course of 1924 similar Movements were formed amongst Engineers and Transport and Building Trades workers, All were coalesced in August 1924 at the First Annual Conference of the National MM in Battersea Town Hall, at which some 270 delegates formally represented 200,000 workers.

Because the NMM was a CPGB initiative, the Party dominated the NMM leaderships at every level. Its four officers were all members as were the leaders of all the sections. This was not the result of a bureaucratic manoeuvre, however. It flowed from the CPs relentless fight for political leadership of the most militant sections of the rank and file.

Within the NMM supreme authority rested with Conference which consisted of delegates from affiliated union branches, unemployed committees and trade councils (which were allowed two delegates). Conference elected a National Executive which in turn, appointed a Working Bureau. In the period of its revolutionary ascendancy the NMM prioritised the winning of affiliated bodies. Individuals were only allowed ‘associate membership’ status and no power to decide policy.

Unlike the trade unions as a whole, the NMM was careful not to allow a privileged “bureaucratic caste’ to develop. Full timers, though indispensable, were fully accountable and the General Secretary received a meagre £4.00 per week with even less for other fulltimers, A’ A A “A A A A A A

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A PROGRAMME OF ACTION

But it was not only the orsanisational strength and extensive trade union influence of the MM that was impressive. Particularly instructive for revolutionaries seeking to build a new Minority Movement today was the programme and policies that the organisation was built upon. The Minority Movement was not a gathering of rank and file militants exclusively concerned with ‘trade union’ issues and held together by a minimalist programme as the British SWP would have us believe. The workers that it organised were not ‘frightened off" from the movement by the avowed communism of its leaders and the references to the struggle for power in its policies. On the contrary they were won to the Movement in such large numbers precisely because the ‘transitional’ programme of the MM was self-evidently, relevant to their needs.

The programme presented to the first NMM conference was sharp and principled. Whilst not the » programme of a revolutionary party (eg it had nothing in it about the dictatorship of the proletariat), it was an action programme whose logic and direction were revolutionary. The NMM’s ‘Aims and Objects’ stood unequivocally for the overthrow of capitalism, Its nine-point Charter began withdemands for

into unorganised sectors; an accountable and authoritative central leadership which hadian obligation to

lead workers as a class into combat; and, most importantly, the development of Factery Committees which could help overcome inter-union divisions place’

power in the unions and workplaces in the hands of the rank and file and lay a firm basis for the struggle for workers control. These power points were also seen as organs of struggle to enforce political demands on the Labour Government, First, that it should base itself on and make itself accountable to workers industrial organisations. Secondly, to repeal all anti-working class legislation, such as the Emergency Power Act. Such demands flowed from an understanding that the demands of the working class had to be fought for right up to the level of Government. As the position on the Labour Government made clear:

“This is not a question outside trade unionism but the central question for trade unionism. .. on every side

it is realised that trade unionism is not enough and that only a workers government can solve these problems.’ (Report on the First NMM Conference London 1924 p.5).

This tactic was aimed at putting the Labour Government to the test of action in front of its supporters inside the working class. Act in our interests, if not... ‘the workers will not fail to recognise in such a refusal a complete betrayal of the best interests of the working class.’ (Emergency Resolution on Labour Government passed at first NMM Conference).

The communists did not hide their belief that the Labour Government would betray the working class but they recognised the need to place demands on it as a tactic for drawing reformist workers into joint struggle,

Significantly, the programme was shot through with working class internationalism. Repudiation of the rapacious Dawes Plan, which aimed to solve the British bosses problems on the backs of German workers, Was demanded.

The programme also contained numerous proposals on international trade union unity.

This political action programme for the trade ypions based itself on the recognition that in the course of resisting the immediate waves of the bosses offensive the working class comes to recognise that it is capitalist private property and the capitalist state that are the major obstacles to the realisation of their demands. At the 6th Congress of the CPGB in May 1924, this was made explicit.

‘the CP has on all occasions assisted in the development of this movement and will continue to do so, but at the same time warns those active workers who participate in it, that only a revolutionary communist struggle

can serve to achieve the object they have in view.’

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DEBASING

The Minority Movement provides British revolutionaries with an exemplary model of correct and incorrect tactics with regard to the trade unions. The contemporary left in Britain usually choose to ignore the correct side of the experience and learn only from the period of the MM’s centrist degeneration. This is most obviously the case with the International Marxist Group (IMG).

During the last Labour Government, the IMG made much of the need for a new Minority Movement. An article by Rich Palser in Socialist Challenge No 8&3 during the Labour Government gave a formally correct account of the NMM. But when comrade Palser turned his attention to the concrete class struggle,he turns his teaching on its head.

The IMG do not possess a clear action programme for the rank and file in the trade unions, instead, we are told, “The objective must be the creation of a class struggle left wing in the labour movement as a whole.” (Socialist Challenge 39).

“Class struggle left wing’ is meant to hide an unspecified bloc between the rank and file and ‘progressive’ left bureaucrats like Scargill.If criticism of Scargill was only whispered from the sides of IMG members’ mouths when Callaghan was in office, it has now all but vanished. In the ‘Victory To the Miners’ issue of their paper (Socialist Challenge No 185), they carried a speech by Scargill, outliged a strategy for victory, but gave no warning whatsoever about the likely role that Scargill would play. The South Wales miners who jeered him when he delayed in bringing out Yorkshire were more clear sighted than the IMG's policy makers, The IMG rationalise their ‘left wing’ schema by posing the right wing as the only enemy at the moment. Thus in Socialist Challenge (no 98) we read: “‘If over the last five years it was essential to build an Organised left wing in the unions—a new MM—to fight the right wing collaboration with Callaghan, today that left wing is just as vital." The IMG’s strategy of a ‘class struggle left wing’ fudges the principled political and organisational conclusions that flowed from the early NMM's work. They jettison a clearly enunciated political strategy within the rank and file of the trade union movement, in which tactical united fronts with /eft and rightofficials are indispensable, Instead they race from a “campaign vanguard” (feminist/anti-nuke CND) to Scargillite rhetoric in the search of an illdefined ‘class struggle left wing’. What should be clear from the experience of A.J. Cook, however, is that only

by maintaining the absolute political independence of the rank and file movement from the bureaucracy, can bitter defeat for that movement be avoided.

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ILLUSIONS 1 N PHE “Geis

In the period leading up to the foundation of the NMM the CPGB were clear about the role of the trade union bureaucracy. No section of the official leadership was regarded as 100% reliable. This was true as much for the ‘lefts’ as for the open boss-men on the right. Most prominent of the “Left” leaders was A.J. Cook, an ex-CPer and founder of the Miners MM. In 1924 CPGB and MM support did much to guarantee Cook’s election as General Secretary of the MFGB. Cook’s election was a refkection of a leftwards movement within the whole working class which was refracted within the bureaucracy.

At first, the CPGB reacted with revolutionary realism:

‘It would be a suicidal policy, however, for the CP and NMM to place much reliance on what we have called the official left wing. .. It is the duty of our Party and the NMM to criticise its weaknesses relentlessly.’ (Communist Review October 1924).

Lefts like Scargill, and Cook before him, are capable of much resounding rhetoric. Enjoying the rank and file’s respect they must be put to the test of action. Yet their leftism is not unconnected to the fact that they do not hold the real power and responsibility within their unions. Cook was isolated within the MFGB leadership, as were Hicks and Purcell on the General Council of the TUC. As Trotsky explained, ‘The right wingers have a system: They have behind them tradition, experience, routine, and most important of all, bourgeois society as a whole is thinking for them. .. The weakness of the left wingers comes from their lack of cohesion and this arises from their ideological shapelesness. . and is therefore incapable of organisationally ‘assuming the leadership of the trade union movement.’ (L.Trotsky on Britain -

P. 163/4 Pathfinder).

Tragically for the British working class, these principled considerations less and less guided the practice of the CPGB and the NMM after 1924.

This is largely accaunted for by the centrist degeneration of the C.I., increasingly coming under the hold of Stalin, in league with Zinoviev. Guiding the line of the Sth Congress of the C.I. Zinoviev refused to recognise the partial stability that imperialism had attained, preferring, in Britain, to see revolution around the corner. Since the British working class were not yet ready to rise to Zinovievite schemas, the C.l. shifted attention to the TUC ‘lefts’ in the ie of

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accelerating the revolution through gentle flattery. This policy was enforced upon the CPGB by Tomsky, who attended the TUC Congress of 1924 and 1925.

But by the latter part of 1924 and throughout 1925 the crisis of British imperialism intensified once more. This time the bosses were confronted by a more confident working class which had been significantly radicalised. At a special NMM conference in January 1925 the number of delegates (and workers represented) had tripled in four months! 617 delegates representing some 17% of the TUC membership,

Yet as 1925 progressed the policy of the C.I. under Stalin was changing , On the basis of the reactionary utopia of ‘building socialism in one country’, the main plank of Stalin’s foreign policy was to pacify the international bourgeoisie—to buy time to ‘build socialism’. And the main agent of this pacification in Britain? The same ‘lefts’ that were to have been a catalyst for the revolution nine months earlier!

The CPGB and the NMM responded to this opportunism uneasily at first. Their centrist decline entailed vacillations and waverings within which some principled work could occur. Throughout the spring and summer of 1925 the NMM was actively preparing rank and file organisations—Councils of Action in preparation for a general strike. They particularly put effort into building joint committees of miners, dockers, railway workers and engineers. Dozens of these emerged between April and June 1925. The Metal Workers MM had established 13 District Committees and the Transport MM some ten others. Alongside this the CPGB was busy, if belatedly, building party cells in the plants and mines.

However, a major turning point occurred after ‘Red Friday’ (July 31st) when the coalowners and the Tories backed down from a confrontation with the miners. The situation threatened to escalate into a General Strike. The Tories were ill prepared for this in 1925. They bought time with a myihen retreat and

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THE TRADITION ~

3.W.P

The largest group on the British centrist left today who purport to build a movement in the tradition of the NMM, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP GB) have completely abandoned this conception, and this method, They have in fact returned to the minimum/ maximum programme divide of the Second International, combining it with the syndicalism that was rife in the European and American working classes before the First World War. They confine their rank and file agitation to the need to return to some mythical halcyon days of trade unionism when militancy itself was supposed to have consistently defended the interests of the working class. The SWP’s rank and filism thus approaches the syndicalism of the ‘Miners Next Step’ or the Union Reform Committee - a mixture of wage-agitation and union reform.

Long time ‘rank and file' theoretician of the SWP, Steve Jefferies, rationalises his party’s position by lumping together the non party dominated First Shop Stewards Movement and the CPGB inspired NMM. Both grew, he claims, in a period of ‘economism'—i.e. when there were struggles over wages! His conclusion was neatly expressed in an article he wrote for the international Socialism Journal (second series):

‘It is only in the revolution itself, when new forms of Organisation are necessary to achieve the basic economic and social demands that these become absolutely central. In non-revolutionary periods, struggles over economic questions often conceal a higher level of class struggle. (ISJ 2:5 p.43)

The conclusion he draws from this is fer from new as far as the SWP's practice is concerned. Never mind politics and programme—wage struggles merely need to be fought for militantly until the revolution. A rank and file movement is needed because it can fight more militantly than the bureaucrats.

All of the lessons of the NMM’s development of a programme that met the needs of the class and linked them with the struggle for power are junked. It is no surprise, therefore, that the SWP’s very own National Rank and File Movement (NRFM) established in March of 1974, has not served as a focal point for organising resistance to the bosses offensive. The programme of the NRFM has no revolutionary dynamic. Its four point Charter consists of platitudes about the need to take direct action, to challenge the power of the bureaucracy, and link up isolated struggles. This has nothing in common with the NMM. There is nothing

in their programme that can lead workers to the realisation that it is capitalism itself which obstructs them. The romantic scenarios of a future socialism, that Paul Foot is given occasional leave of absence from the Daily Mirror to paint for the faithful, invariably fails to bridge this programmatic gap. Thus, despite their ritualistic claim to stand for a new Minority Movement the SWP, in circumstances of in-

creasing capitalist instability, lack the politics to be able to carry this claim into life. They remain cheerleaders for the class struggle as it is. When it is at fever pitch they can only marvel, when it is in retreat, they can only mourn, In no circumstances can they give it revolutionary leadership.

W.S.L.

The Workers Socialist League (WSL) are the one other contemporary contender for the mantle of the

Minority Movement in Britain. But their Campaign for

Democracy in the Labour Movement (CDLM) is an unhappy cross between a WSL front and a rank and file caucus. Unhappy because it has never fully made up its mind as to which of the two variants will bring the WSL the most recruits.

The method of the WSL/CDLM is essentially that

of sectarian propagandism. Sectarian because the prog-

rammatic base of the CDLM is that of the WSL, not merely in terms of demands and action, but also in terms of analysis of the class struggle. Propagandist because it cannot draw in forces willing to struggle

because they are not necessarily prepared to accept the

WSL's view of the world. Thus the role of the CDLM is reduced to that of being a lifeless trade union appendage of the WSL. The CDLM is not the basis for a real revolutionary rank and file movement and the politics of the WSL make it unlikely that it will ever become so.

Their politics have at their kernel a stageist notion of class struggle. The workers are led by reformists and Stalinists who have to be ‘exposed’. Once this stage is passed, then the revolutionaries take the leadership.

Whilst the WSL recognise the necessity of placing demands upon the official leadership of the unions to act, they abstain on the question of building a revolutionary rank and file movement which is the only guarantee that such demands will result in action from the leadership. If steps are not taken to organise such

a movement then such demands remain purely /iterary,

as does the resulting ‘exposure’ when the bureaucracy refuses to act.

during the next nine months they refined all the coercive machinery they needed to smash a General Strike.

In this context the September Congress of the TUC took place. Cook and Purcell had now been made honorary members of the Moscow Soviet. Left resolutions were passed—opposition to the Dawes Plan and to Imperialism,— For British Troop Withdrawal from China. Only Trotsky gave a revolutionary estimate of the Congress when he said of the Congress, “‘it was left so long as it had to accept no practical obligations.” Indeed, the General Council blocked any attempts to make it responsible for organising the General Strike, and a larger right wing majority was enthroned on the General Council.

Trotsky’s perspective was lost on the CPGB. Under the C.I:’s tutelage Gallacher said of the ‘left’ Swales, “In the stern, tough voice of Swales spoke the working class dictatorship.”’. (Calhoun—‘United Front’ p 174).

In the months leading up to the General Strike (May 1926) the NMM continued to build action committees. The March 1926 Action Conference of the NMM gave voice to the a$pirations of more workers than ever before. More than it ever was to again. Nearly one million workers through 883 delegates were represented, 52 Trades Councils were present. Alongside this by April 1926 the CPGB had built upwards of 300 Party Factory/Mine cells—a_ five-fold increase in

10 months.

But precisely when the organisational influence of the NMM and CPGB was increasing preparing the basis for a challenge for power, so the political line of the NMM was being more and more tailored to the limits of the ‘left’ officials. A two-fold process was occuring. On the one side, the CPGB was depriving itself of its revolutionary independence, “by the actual disolution of the party into the so-called Minority Movement...” (p36 - “Trotsky on the Trade Unions”).

On the other side, within the NMM the independent line of the rank and file was being subordinated to that of the /eft reformist bureaucracy. In February 1926 Cook was to say that he agreed with ‘nine tenths’ of the €P’s policies. That is, Cook was not to be trusted. But Hardy, the Organising Secretary of the NMM thought otherwise. Of the March NMM Conference he declared:

“We sent out from MM headquarters instructions for our members to work for the establishment of Councils of Action in every area. We warned, however,

that the Councils of Action were under no circumstances to take over the work of the trade unions... The Councils of Action were to see that a// the decisions of the General Council and the union executives

were carried out.’ (Hardy “Those Stormy Years’ p 185).

Murphy added to this view a total identification of the left bureaucrats with their followers, as an excuse for not attacking Cook, Purcell et al: “If we vigorously attack the ‘left wing leaders’ we attack the

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This method was clearly revealed at the recent Longbridge Defence Conference, convened to defend the victims of B.L.’s anti-union drive. The WSL supported a resolution which resolved to disseminate information about the victimisations including the reactionary role played by the Stalinist-led Works Committee. It also promised to: “draw up petition sheets and send petitions into the two unions involved (T&GWU and AUEW—WP)” and “‘to organise a series of local meetings’’.

A Workers Power emendment which argued for the assembling of those forces present to build fora delegate based conference of Leyland stewards committed to action against BL’s plans and victimisations was defeated. The WSL spoke against this perspective saying that we should demand that the Combine organise such a meeting. Demand it by all means but we know, and the WSL know, that the Combine wont convene such a conference except under the pressure of an organised, mobilised rank and file. This understanding was central to the politics of the MM during its healthy period. It placed demands on the leaders with the clear knowledge that it had the responsibility of organising the rank and file to fight for their demands, irrespective of the leaders.

In rejecting that perspective in favour of literary exposures, the WSL reject the only way an alternative revolutionary leadership can be built inside the labour movement to halt the attacks by the BL and the rest of the bosses.

WORKERS POWER in magazine format. Special double

issue on the Trade Unions. “MARXISM AND THE TRADE UNIONS”

CONTENTS:

Factory Committees” / Minority Movement” /

“Marxists and the Trade Unions” / Action Programme and its Theses on Workers Control and

“The Comintern, the CPGB and the “"The Rank and File Movement Today” /

mass With a similar outlook and drive them away from the party.” (Communist Review no number, 1925).

On the very eve of the General Strike from his prison cell, Harry Pollit, the NMM leader wrote,

“The Party’s most important task is preparation for this; at present more danger arises from the unorganised character of the left wing than from the right wing. .. we should consider concentrating on the left wing in the localities and extending the MM as an allin oppositional movement.’ (H. Pollit by J.Mahon p.131).

Through this policy the General Strike was doomed to defeat in advance, The CPGB taught the working class, through the NMM, to place their trust, not in the CPGB, but in the TUC ‘lefts’. They left the working

class rudderless when the likes of Purcell and Cook were politically incapable of giving an independent lead when Citrine and Pugh on the General Council aborted the struggle,

The CPGB should politically and organisationally have prepared the rank and file, through the NMM, for the task of throwing aside Purcell and Cook when

they became a brake upon pushing the struggle ro the end,

After the General Strike Stalin’s maintenance of the alliance with the TUC via the Anglo Russian Committee (ARC) precluded the possibility of learning this key lesson of the General Strike. The CPGB fell into line with the by now thoroughly centrist Communist International. It remained impervious ta Trotsky’s criticisms of its policy of*courting the Left’ Indeed it went on to make excuses for the ‘lefts’. At the NMM Conference in 1926, after the General Strike the weaknesses of the left officials were explained thus:

“The MM... declares that the fundamental failure of the left-wing in the General Council was due,

(i) To their domination by many right-wing ideas; (2) To their lack of trust in the masses.

And a resolution on the General Strike at the same Conference concluded:

““The Conference declares that no left leadership can be trusted in the future, unless it breaks with the rightwing policy and allies itself with the leftwing trade unionists organised in the Minority Movement”. (Report of 3rd Annual Conference of the NMM 1926, p.48)

The central task remained, therefore, the wooing of this “left” in the hope that it would swap its allegiance.

The CPGB paid dearly for their centrist errors. After the General Strike the TUC went on the offensiv: against the NMM. In Apnl 1927 the TUC refused to recognise any Trades Council affiliated to the NMM. Event then the CP refused to fight the proscription. In 1928 the NMM was given a reward for its servility. It was totally proscribed by the TUC. Thereafter the NMM collapsed and held its last conference in 1929.

A new, a revolutionary NMM, remains an imperative need for the British working class, as does the building of a revolutionary Trotskyist Party that will be both built through it and alongside it. In the next years there will be conjunctures which will either facilitate or make difficult the building and consolidating of this movement. That is purely secondary. Today these who consider themselves revolutionaries have a duty to search out the existing focal points of resistance to the bosses offensive which could prove the point of departure for a revolutionary rank and file movement, The recent battle over the Longbridge victimisation was one, there will be others, Revolutionaries must strive to give leadership to these struggles in the tradition of the revolutionary period of the CPGB and the NMM. In the 1922/23 period the CPGB laid the basis for the NMM, a programme summarised in ‘Stop the Retreat’ and ‘Back to the Unions’.

Today the foundation stones of new Minority Movement must be laid around a similar programme. But the key lessons of the Minority Movement must be assimilated. Its early success was bound up with its fight for a programme that related the defence of basic working class needs with the overthrow of capitalism - a transitional programme. As the General Strike approached, it dropped its programme in order to win the approving smiles of the left union leaders. This error sealed its fate. The new Minority Movement must be built independent of all sections of the union leadership, and it must be won to a programme that leads inexorably to the conquest of power by the working class.

Hittin Sie AND THE |

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“The WORKERS POWER Action Programme for the Trade Unions”

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Movement today. on these pages.

ORDER NOW: Price 75p plus 25p postage and packing.

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+ sombre faced newscasters, conjures up = images of unspeakable destruction. Terr = Terrorism — the violent deeds of mon- =: strous men! Or so we are led to believe. =. Yet the epithet ‘terrorist’ is used discriminately in the newspapers and on the television. It only ever applies to people whose violence is aimed against an oppressive force. It is never used to describe the violent excesses of the world’s ruling capitalist class.

Ronald Reagan has his finger on a button that can launch missiles capable of destroying the world. His agents are currently aiding the wholesale butchering of the El Salvadorean masses, who are fighting to rid themselves of a vicious dictatorship. Terrorist - of course not! The Salvadorean guerillas he is fighting, the men and women of the IRA fighting the British army, the Zimbabwe guerillas before they became acceptable — all of these, and more, we are told are ‘terrorists’.

These different attitudes to violence can only be explained politically. They have nothing to do with the nature of the violence committed - everything to do with the social forces committing political violence. The bourgeoisie are clear that they need to safeguard their property against anyone threatening either to overthrow them or at least de- “= Stabilise their rule — the working class,

“s the oppressed peasantry of the under- «=; developed world, and oppressed nation- =e alities.

There is only one way to do that effectively — terrorise the enemy or potential enemy with the bodies of armed men, the police, the army, and the zi Whole coersive machinery of the state “ that is at the desposal of the bourgeoisie. = This objective fact is the starting point = Of a Marxist approach to the question of == violence, It is a clear knowledge that the =“ bourgeiosie will fight like a maddened “~ animal to retain its rule that leads Marx- = ists to state, unequivocally, that we re- “: gard violence as a necessary weapon, to = defend the working class and the op “= pressed, and to overthrow the bour-

“i= seoisic.

es But this understanding of the nature i. of the ruling class’ violence also deter-

=. mines the nature of our revolutionary

= response. We recognise that it is not the ill-will of particular members of the bour “= geoisie that leads them to commit bar- =: barous acts. Their violence is an integral “- feature of their system. The task for revolutionaries therefore, is not to eliminate members of the ruling class. no = matter how repugnant these people may ot . DE.

sect, Rather it is to organise the masses to employ ‘terror’, that is, an act of force which has a political objective, to further the class struggle to its eventual resolution in the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Such force can be used

for the defence of immediate working

= Class interests — a picket line so organ-

<= ised that it can defend itself against

“=; physical attack from the police or fascists = for example. Or it can be utilised for decisive “: action against the capitalist state, as in

== Russia in October 1917.

Se But, under all conditions, it is terror con- =: ducted.ona mass scale, related directly to

“= the actual level and tempo of class struggle.

* Lenin made this position clear as early as

=: 1901 in his pamphlet ‘Where to Begin’:

: ‘In principle we have never rejected, and cannot reject, terror. Terror is one of the forms of military action that may be perfectly suitable and even essential at a definite juncture in the battle, given a definite state of the troops and the existence of definite conditions. But the important point is that terror, at the present time, is by no means suggested as an operation for the army in the field, but as an independent occasional attack unrelated to any army’.

Underlying Lenin’s defence of genuine

= class struggle terror is the different approach == to tactics that Marxism, has! from all other =- tendencies:

=: “Marxism differs from all primitive forms of Social- : ism by not binding the movement to any one parti- :* cular form of struggle. It recognises the most varied - forms of struggle, and does not ‘concoct’ them, but =: only generalises, organises, gives conscious express- = ton to those forms of struggle of the revolutionary = classes which arise of themselves in the course of Marxism, therefore, positively =. doesnot reject any form of struggle.’ (Collected

=. Works, Volume II, Page 213, 1906)

+. For Marxists, then, the a He ce of the

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= through to the armed struggles now being

= waged in almost every continent by move

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MASS FORCE OR INDIVIDUAL TERROR?

“: TERRORISM! The very word rae “; spoken inmorally indignant tones by

Aeeeeiine tion ‘GF denier IL Ist eases 1881.

A strike itself involves force. For one thing it is an attempt to force the bosses to make a concession. Any trade unionist who has been on a picket line knows that the boss will use force in his turn. It is no accident that at picket lines there are always police. They are there to aid the boss. They will protect scabs and intimidate workers. They will use more violence as the struggle intensifies. If workers are to avoid bloody defeats in these circumstances they need to defend themselves, with force if necessary. The armed struggle by so called ‘terrorist’ national liberation movements is obviously conducted ona much grander plane than that of a local bust up with the police. But the difference is quantative, the principle is the same.

The bourgeoisie’s denunciation ?f such violence as irrational “terrorism” The Marxist defence of ‘terror’, however,

does not imply an agreement with all forms of terrorist activity-far from it . From the time of the First International in the 1860s right through the histroy of the Communist movement, Marxists have opposed the use of ‘individual terrorism’ as a tactic of the class struggle. And this difference, posed a again in all its sharpness by the activities of the Red Brigades (BR) in Italy, the Red Army Fraction in Germany is not simply tactical, It flows from a completely different analysis of capitalism and the class struggle.

By the term individual terror, Marxists mean acts of violence perpetrated by small groups of self proclaimed leaders of the working class and other oppressed classes which are totally divorced from the class struggle. The avoweg aim of these acts is to arouse the slumbering masses to action. The result is all too often to allow the most reactionary leadelements of the bourgeoisie and state bureaucracy to surface and carry through savage attacks on the workers organisations in the name of ‘re-establishing order’.

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PROPAGANDA OF THE DEED

The Italian BR are the purest modern expression of the old anarchist conception of the ‘propaganda of the deed’ (although the conception is by no means limited to groups such as the BR, it has infected guerrilla organisations in every continent of the world. In the nineteenth century sections of the anarchist movement turned to individual terrorism arguing that the masses, atomised and lacking consciousness or corrupted by capitalist “pay offs’ could only be roused to action by the audacious acts of a small but determined organisation. The inevitable back lash from the state following terrorist ‘outrages’ would, so it was argued, raise the consciousness of the masses by clearly exposing the reactionary and brutal nature of the state. Unfortunately for both the terrorist and the masses, it has precisely the opposite effect, as Trotsky showed:

*The anarchist prophets of ‘the propaganda of the deed’ can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the masses. Theoretical considerations and political experience prove otherwise. The more ‘effective’ the terrorist acts, the greater their impact, the more the attention of the masses is focussed on them—the more they reduce the interest of the masses in self-organisation and self education.

But the smoke from the explosion clears away, the panic disappears, the successor of the murdered minister makes his appearance, life again settles into

the old rut, the wheel of capitalist exploitation turns as before; only police repression grows more savage and brazen. And as a result, in place of the kindled hopes and artificially aroused excitement come disillusion and apathy.’ (Against Individual Terrorism p.7).

The tactic of individual terror is not the inyention of groups such as the BR. Its basic precepts were most cogently laid down by the 19th century Russian anarchist, Bakunin. Drawing eclectically from Proudhon and Marx, Bakunin argued that the liberation of humanity could only be achieved by the complete elimination of all forms of authority; essentially this meant the abolition of the state in general. Bakunin was an intransigent opponent of all forms of the state—feudal, bourgeois or proletarian. He made this perfectly clear when

he said of his fellow Russian anarchist Aksakov:

is cons.cious hypocrisy.

“Konstantin Sereevich (Aksakov— WP) and his friends were enemies of the Petersburg state and of statism in general, and in this attitude he even anticipated us.”

Aksakov’s position on the state is in many ways the classical anarchist one:

“The falsehood resides not in this or that form of the state, but in the state itself.’

Like the modern day Italian Autonomes Bakunin believed that workers should dispense with political action since this could only lead to institutionalisation in the state structures, Plekhanov pointed out that ‘if the working class were ever to follow this line of inaction the Governments could only rejoice.’ But in rejecting the need to wage a relentless struggle to politicise the masses and draw them into revolutionary struggle with the state, Bakunin did not reduce anarchism to simple abstentionism. Like all revolutionaries who turn to individual terror, Bakunin sought a substitute for working class political action.

Bakunin had been a warrior for liberty in the revolution of 1848. His pursuit of liberty had led him into prison, danger and hardship. But in an important sense, it also led him into disillusionment with the masses. The failure of 1848 taught Bakunin not that liberty could only be achieved by proletarian revolution instituted by the masses themselves, but that it had to be achieved behind their backs. The failure of 1848 produced a whole grouping of anarcho/terrorists who had rejected Marx’s crucial teaching, that it was the working class that was the motor force for historical progress. Like the middle class radicals who passed negative judgement on the working class after the 1968 events Bakunin and his followers, rooted in the pre-industrial revolution artisan class (Swiss Watchmakers for example), despaired of the revolutionary potential of the working class. Bakunin rejected Marx’s view that this class alone was the force for progress. He rejected it, because for him the goal was a return to a primitive communal past in which the state would be immediately abolished and the peasants and artisans would exchange their produce freely and equitably. In other words Bakunin wanted to turn the clock of history backwards. His ideas were not those of proletarian socialism, but of petty-bourgeois utopianism:

“Universal peace will be impossible so long as the present centralised states exist. We must desire their destruction. .. in order that there may arise free unions organised from below by the free federations of communes into provinces, of provinces into nations, and of nations into the United States of Europe.’

This rejection of the working class as the force for change lay at the root of his tactical experiments and eventual turn to individual

terrorism, After unsuccesful experiments with the purely economic struggle, and then the lumpenproletariat - led riot, Bakunin saw the need for new tactics. However, he was unwilling to give up his notion of ‘revolutionary destruction’. The act of revolution, Bakunin believed, was the act of destruction. If the masses would not take to rioting, then they needed to have an example set. A detonator was required to inspire them to act. That detonator was to be provided, literally, by the ‘revolutionary terrorist’. He would assassinate a leading state functionary or politician or even indulge in “excitative terror’ which involved random bombings of the population. Bakunin and a fellow Russian anarchist, Nechayev codified these views in two unsigned pamphlets ‘How the Revolutionary Question Presents Itself’ and the ‘Principle of Revolution’. The latter declared:

“We recognise no other activity but the work of extermination, but we admit that the forms in which this activity will show itself will be extremely varied —poison, the knife, the rope etc.’

But this single minded pursuit of destruction, though certainly anti-authoritarian, was incomprehensible to the masses who were supposed to be excited by it. As Plekhanov pointed out: “An Anarchist will have nothing to do with ‘parliamentarianism’ since it only lulls the proletariat to . sleep. He will have nothing of ‘reforms’, since reforms are but so many compromises with the possessing classes. He wants the revolution, a ‘full complete, immediate and immediately economic’ revolution. To attain this end he arms himself with a

saucepan full of explosive materials and throws it amongst the public in a theatre or a cafe. He declares this is the ‘revolution’. For our own part it seems to us nothing but ‘immediate madness’. (Anarchism and Socialism p.135).

Bakunin’s last act as a romantic terrorist served to under line the futility of the road of struggle he had chosen. In August 1874 he set off to join a completely politically unprepared anarchist uprising in Bologna, Italy. The elaborate military plans miscarried completely. The small band of rebels who had planned to attack the city from outside its walls dispersed in the face of a show of police force. Bakunin, inside the city, waited in vain to link up with his fellow conspirators. As though in recognition of the pointlessness of his schemes and strategies Bakunin tried to commit suicide. He was only prevented from doing so by the presence of friends, His individual war on society achieved nothing in the course of his life. But the rising of the Parisian workers in 1871, 5 years before Bakunin’s death, was an eloquent vindiciation of Marx’s view that capitalism could be fought and defeated, but by a whole class, the working class, not by its heroic putative spokesmen.

Bakunin’s death did not mark the end of an era of terrorism. In fact it recurred just at the time when the terrorists in Bakunin’s own country, were organising on a broader scale than ever before—the mid 1870s. It was during

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this period that the broad and variegated ‘pop ulist’ or “Narodnik’ organisations flowered in the-harsh soil of backward, autocratic Russia. The Narodniks were not anarchists in the Bakunite sense. In their majority they did not favour the destruction of the state, merely the destruction of the autocracy and particularly its personification, the Tsar. Indeed the later Narodniks, true to their petit-bourgeois democratic outlook and social origins, favoured merely the establishment of a republic and the convocation of a Constituent Assembly. In the conditions of Tsarist Russia, an autocracy without, at that stage, a large working class, it is clear that the Narodniks struggle for democracy did have a revolutionary content.

But this was also their limitation. They took the historical lateness of capitalism’s development in Russia as a sign that Russia could bypass capitalism altogether. Thus, against the perspective of work amongst the working class, they turned to the ‘people’— which in Russia meant the vast peasantry. In the peasantry they saw the class of the future. In the rural commune, always an ideal that ignored the reality of Kulak hegemony in the villages, they saw the blueprint for the future. In the 1870s and early 1880s this aspect of their theory did not negate the revolutionary democratic side of Narodnism. However, as the working class developed in Russia, leading to a Marxist break from Narodnism around Plekhanov and Zasulich, the reactionary aspect of their utopianism became dominant.

Of the two major Narodnik organisations,

Zemlya I Volya (Land and Freedom) and Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will), it was the latter who became the major proponents of individual terror, This aspect of their politics underlines their heteregenous nature. They combined the most daring acts of violence with a fundamentally constitional programme.

Narodraya Volya based their individ- as ual terrorism on the ideas of Labrov and | to a lesser extent Bakunin. Lavrov, an exiled mathematician turned anarchist theoretician wrote off the masses as a force for social change:

“The majority were condemned to monotonous tedious, and endless peaceful labour for the advantage of others, without any leisure for brainwork, and so remained incapable of using their immense energies for the conquest of the right to develop, and to live a truly human life.’

In place of the masses, therefore, the Narodnaya Volya set up their own ‘Executive Committee’. At its meeting of August 26th 1879 it decided “‘to concentrate all efforts on the person of the Tsar.” Their efforts proved to be heroic, ingenious but ultimately futile. Alexander II unleashed massive repression against all suspected radicals and the Narodniks lost many of their key leaderss-The legendary Zhelyabov, the organiser of bombings, shootings, knifings and more, was one of the leading victims of Tsarist terror. Alexander II noted his capture on February 28th 1881 in his diary, He was obviously relieved. On March Ist, however, Alexander made no entry in his diary. He was blown to bits by a Narodnik bomb.

Inevitably, Alexander III ascended the throne. Yet more repression followed. Sections of the revolutionary democratic wing began to question the value of individual terrorism. The assassination had proved not to be the revolution. Marx’s teaching was|re-acquired even in underdeveloped Russia. And it was to Marx that Plekhanov and others turned when they left the Narodnik movement. The formation of the Emancipation of Labour Group in 1883, the first Russian Marxist organisation, started a process that eventually provided the greatest historical vindication of the tactics of class struggle as

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A coup, followed by a return to the sort of openly brutal dictatorship that characterised the Franco period, could not have been justified, as yet, to the bankers and governments of western capitalism. Juan Carlos wanted to maintain the veneer of parliamentary respectability. But, he also wanted to maintain, intact, the Guardia Civl, the army and the police.

against those of individual terror—the oe October Revolution of 1917 led by the Bolshevik Party.

This revolution, and the civil war that followed it, demonstrated to the latterday Russian terrorists, the Social Revolutionaries, that it was not violence that the Marxists objected to. Rather it was the separation of that violence from the actual struggle of the working class. The revolution itself, politically prepared by the Bolsheviks fight to win leadership in the Soviets, was executed with superb military organisation. The civil war, the formation of the Red Army and the destruction of the armies of Kolchak, Denikin,

SPANISH oTALINIOT

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The resignation of Adolfo Suarez in late January was a public declaration that Spain was gripped by a major social and political crisis. The blend of parliamentary democracy and maintenance of the Francoist repressive state structures is incap-

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His real attitude to the conspirators is not outrage at their disrespect for democracy. On the contrary he is already sounding the warnings to the parliamentarians not to presume that he is for them and against the army. He declared:

“An openly harsh reaction by the politicians against those who have committed subversive acts in the

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and the imperialist invaders, all involved the utilisation of terror. As the White armies advanced, slaughtering workers and

able of solving this crisis. Traditionally a poor relation of Europe, Spain, still outside the EEC, has been suffering from the

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past few hours would be extremely inadvisable’. The much publicised purge is also an essentially cosmetic job, involving the sacrifice of some lesser

peasants out of hand, regardless of wheth-

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scapegoats. The military chiefs that he had to spend 7 hours convincing not to support the coup are still firmly in control of the state’s security forces.

What becomes clear is the semi-bonapartist role of the monarchy in post-Franco Spain. The coup attempt has brought the army back to the political centre stage. Parliament has had its knuckles rapped and the army has been able to make assessment of its likely chances of success in overthrowing the Constitution. It has learnt that it will need to win the King’s support. It will need to have him, in place of Parliament, playing the role of Bonaparte proper. This was precisely the role that Franco evisaged for the King before his death - a symbol of national unity who had not been compromised by having been on either side during the Civil War of 1936-39, which brought Franco to power.

The threat of another coup has not been removed by the King’s action. And, despite his defence of parliament this time, he could well turn the tables in parliament as the struggle of the Basques continues and as the Spanish working class begins to tight back against the effects of an economic austerity programme and political repression. Both of which were hinted at strongly by the new civilian Prime Minister Sotelo, of the right-wing Union of

er they were in uniform, the Bolsheviks effects of the world recession. Despite the tourist were forced to take punitive measures, boom of the 1960s and 70s, it has not been able including executions, against counter-rev- ss; to offset a steadily rising rate of inflation (16%) olutionaries inside the young workers state, %: and unemployment (12%). But the Spanish ruling By means of this experience the revolut- class's headaches are not merely economic. The ionary Marxist movement made clear to limited “‘de-Francoisation” that has taken place all, that revolutionary violence was a nec- since the dictator's death in 1975, under King essary tool of class struggle, but not a Juan Carlos, has aroused the suspicions of man substitute for class struggle. Against old-time fascists. These elements have their many those, such as Karl Kautsky, MacDonald power base in the army and police. But amongst and Co., the ‘social democratic’ assailants sections of the petty-bourgeoisie, and amongst of the need for such measures, Trotsky the unemployed, fascist sentiments, a hankering explained the objective necessity of the for the “good old days” of Francoist rule also

Red Terror: exists. The army is a nest of conspirators. Tejero himself

was the mastermind of the last coup attempt in 1978, the ‘Galaxia Conspiracy’. The army authorities made sure, after that, that Tejero was given a lenient sentence (of only a few months imprsionment) and was then promoted to his present work. But Tejero was only the front man. His seizure of Parliament was part of a wider plot to secure military rule in Spain under the leadership of the deputy chief of staff of the army, General Alfonso Armada Comyn. It is absolutely clear that Armada and the other commanders of Spain's armed forces hoped to present the King with a fait accompli.

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THEIR KING

were members of the 62,500 strong Guardia Civil, the paramilitary force that stormed the Cortes.

Just prior to the coup attempt the Basque region, the Euskadi, had exploded in a wave of general strikes and demonstrations. They were in response to thugs of the Spanish state who had killed an ETA member, Jose Arregui. When his body was recovered from the police it bore all the marks of severe torture.

To the generals these protests were the final straw, and the carefully prepared plot (Tejero’s wife had bought the buses that transported the paramilitaries two months previously) was set into motion. However, what is now clear is that not all the generals were absolutely certain that they _ would be able to mobilise enough troops to take on the king as well as the parliamentarians.

The two key figures in the plot, General| Armada and General Bosch (who brought tanks onto the streets in Valencia, the region he commands), seriously misjudged the willingness of the King to go along with their plans. However, it was touch and

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‘It is only possible to safeguard the supremacy of the working class by forcing the bourgeoisie accustomed to rule, to realise that it is too dangerous an undertaking for it to revolt against the dictatorship of the proletariat, to undermine it by conspiracies, sabotage, insurrections or the calling in of foreign troops. The bourgeoisie, hurled from power, must be forced to obey. .. The man who repudiates terrorism in principle—i.e. repudiates measures of suppression and intimidation towards determined counter-revolution must reject all ideas of

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the political supremacy of the working class

and its revolutionary dictatorship. The man who repudiates the dictatorship of the proletariat repudiates the socialist revolution and digs the grave of socialism.” (pp 22-3—Terrorism and Communism).

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Their pretext was the same as that recently used by the Turkish generals in their takeover. Like them the Spanish generals had the aim of crushing

go. When the King decided to oppose the military's bid for power the ranks of the 9 chiefs of staff became divided. After 7 hours of negotiations the King persuaded 8 of the 9 to keep their troops off the streets. This was enough to isolate Tejero, Bosch and Armada, and the coup collapsed.

The bourgeois press have hailed the King’s eff-

the Democratic Centre (UDC), who has been dubbed in Spain as “Mr, Thatcher’.

CLASS COLLABORATION

In this context it is nothing short of criminal for

orts as ‘courageous’ and ‘heroic’. They claim that he has proved his loyalty to democracy,and has been rewarded by the Financial Times (28/2/81)

by being chosen as their ‘Man of the Week’ - a

title previously bestowed on the leader of the Turkish military coup, General Evren. The King, hawever, acted not out of any noble desire to save democracy, but out of an assessment of which form of rule was best suited to gaining Spain's entry to the EEC and NATO,

the “terrorism’’ that had, according to them, been allowed to flourish because of the experiment of parliamentary democracy.

This so-called terrorism was in fact the armed struggle by the Basque organisation ETA, Under Franco the national rights of the Basques were ruthlessly supressed. With his death Basque militants inside ETA stepped up their military camp-

agign against the Spanish state. Over the last year they have killed over 100 people, many of whom

the Communist Party and Socialist Party to encourage the masses to place their faith in the monarch and the capitalist constitution. Eurocommunist santiago Carillo, was one of the first to declare his thanks and support for the monarch:

“In the long hours that some of us were kept incommunicado, we were all aware that the only person who could oppose this adventure was the head of state. Those hours have brought us all together. | believe that millions of Spaniards,too, have learned the value of democracy - when they saw

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DEFENCE OF TERRORISTS

Our irreconcilable opposition to the capitalist state, in the context of a conflict between it and terrorists, determines our class position. For us the social content of an act of violence is decisive, not the act itself. The fascist bombing of workers

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In a similar vein the Morning Star cheerfully reported:

““Onlookers were treated to the unusual sight of Conservative leader Manuel Fraga marching arm in arm with Marcellino Camacho, Communist leader of Spain‘s biggest trade union, the Workers Commissions.” (28/2/81).

This spectacle of class collaboration is truly nauseating. The interests of the working class are subordinated to the defence of ‘democracy’ - democracy in capitalist Spain that is. That defence of bourgeois democracy is not even entrusted to the working class by Carillo etc. The 1.4 million people who marched against the coup in Madrid, the many hundreds of thousands who marched in other towns, and who were attacked by fascist bombs as they marched (!), were given the reactionary slogans of “Liberty, Democracy and the Constitution!” and “Long Live the King!” by the

against the fascists. The bombing of ciy- ster ilian targets by Irish Republicans however, we view differently, While we do not think their tactic is correct, we recognise their violence, asthe violence of the oppressed. We would defend Irish Republicans uncompromisingly, and we would oppose any attempt by the British state to take action against people who are fighting a progressive war, And so with the action

of individual terrorists, the BR and others like them, who direct their fire against

our class enemy. We say, that they are misguided in their actions, but not their sentiments. Their hatred for the bourgeoisie is noble, it is one we share. We preface our criticism of the BR with Pushkin’s lines against the Tsar, that Plekhanov often quoted before polemicising with the Nar-

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life during the Spanish Civil War. At that time the Stalinist CP peddled a broadly similar line to Carillo’s Eurostalinist party today. Then the independent interests of the working class were subardinated to the defence of the Republic, a capitalist Republic, ruled by bourgeois parties like the UDC that had a proven record of anti-working class policies, That, strategy fundamentally weakened the working class in the face of Franco’s fascist offensive. It resulted in 36 years of brutal tyranny in Spain. The CP has learnt nothing from this. It holds fast to its popular frontist strategy. It has declared in advance that it would support (though not enter) a Socialist Party/UDC coalition. It chooses to barter working class needs for positions of influence in Parliament, With the latest coup attempt by the would-be Francos of the 1980s, it is necessary to reaffirm the correctness of the strategy outline by Trotsky in the 1930s. Of course workers will defend their democratic rights against the coup-makers, the ‘golpistas’ as they are called. But the only way to put the defence of working class interests on a firm basis is to smash the system that breeds ‘golpistas’ Against the mere defence of bourgeois democracy peddled by the CP, Trotskyists fight for the establishment of proletarian democracy, which can Only be born out of the revolutionary overthrow, by the working class, of Spanish _Capitalism.

sileadlans = CP, in conjunction with Spain's other parliament- “O despotic villain ss ary parties. The semi-Bonapartist monarch becomes I hate you and your line cscs democracy’s main ally in the CP’s scheme.

With a wicked delight.’ . ing class. One that was bloodily confirmed in real

We stand with these perpetrators of individual terror when they are faced with the courts of the bourgeoisie. We declare for the terrorists and against the hypocritical capitalist terrorisers of humanity.

And in carrying out that defence we endorse the yearning for vengeance that has prompted the terrorist to act, But we combine our defence with a lesson, an exhortation to adopt different methods. When Herschel Grynsypan assassinated a Nazi official in the German embassy in 1938, Trotsky responded in a truly revolutionary manner.

“In the moral sense, although not for his mode of action, Grynsypan may serve as an example for every young revolutionist. Ourjopen moral solidarity with Grynsypan gives us an added right to say to all the other would-be Grynsypans, to all those capable of self-sacrifice in the struggle against despotism and bestiality. Seek another road! Not the lone avenger but only a great revolutionary mass movement can free the oppressed, a movement that will leave no remnant of the entire structure of class exploitation, national oppression and racial persecution.’ (Against Individual Terrorism p.23).

BY CHARLIE SHELL

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With NATO Britain and the US have taken the lead in pressing for an extension of the activities and range of the NATO forces, Speaking in Munich, Geoffrey Pattie - Thatcher's Defence

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is determined to keep the blood-soaked

El Salwadorean junta in power. Pentagon reports expect the insurgents to become

stronger Over the next two months, to a

degree sufficient to challenge El Salvador’s

THE TRAVELLING sales representatives of the Reagan administration have toured the capitals of the world attempting to show that El Salvador’s 5000 - strong guerilla army is armed, and poised to advance, as a result of Sovietbacked shipments of arms. Haig has declared that Cuba’s “activities in the Wes-

tern Hemisphere -

El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala - have reached an unacc-

eptable peak”, and has dispatched a 40-strong US naval armada to intimidate

Cuba through a threatened blockade.

As the fleet took position in the Caribbean,R2agan and Thatcher were indulging themselves in an orgy of antiSoviet rhetoric as they passed their first formal summit together. Both agreed that the West had to strengthen itself and summon up its spirit, to stand firm against the Soviet menace,

The new Cold War drums of Thatcher and Reagan have a distinct purpose.

Even Reagan’s administration knows that the instability in Central America is not the creation of the conservative geriatrics in the Kremlin. The major bourgeois politicans learnt from tran that the regimes that guard the oil wells of the Middle East for them, can be swept aside without sinister arms dealings in Havana, Hanoi and Moscow,

But they also know that they have to hold the line for their investments and interests, The last decade has seen major blows struck against the US as the policeforce of world imperialism, in Vietnam, in lran and Nicaragua. Carter's attempts to stop the rot with a ‘human rights’ campaign to spruce up the client chain of decaying dictatorships exploded in the face

of the US administration. Now is the time,

Reagan argues, to get tough and stand firm behind their remaining string of tyrannies.

Such a stand by the US - egged on by Thatcher - necessarily sharpens the conflict between the US and the Kremlin. In order to defend themselves, their bargaining position and privileges, against the White House, the Soviet leadership sells

arms and gives aid, albeit on its own terms,

to its hoped-for allies in the anti-imperialist struggles. It seeks to use and turn these movements for its own purposes of international collaboration with the major imperialist powers. Necessarily therefore, a collision course between Reagan and the

Headed for the USSR |

UNEMPLOYMENT. . . .

From Front Page

The March is intended as a ‘People’s March’’, not a march of the militant unemployed. Plans to keep a bureaucratic straightjacket on the march primarily depend on the intended system of sponsorship; Trade Union branches are being asked to sponsor and nominate representatives on the march. Not only does this give the organisers potential discretionary power over who they will accept on the march, but it also automatically militates against the previously un-organised young unemployed who have no access to sponsors or trade union branch meetings.

oppressed masses of the imperialised world must be reflected in increasingly strained relations between Washington and Moscow.

Whatever olive branches and doves of peace Brezhnev and the Kremlin bureaucracy care to conjure up, the West is out to weaken and destroy the power of the Soviet bureaucracy. This must ultimately mean breaking up the control that the Kremlin bureaucracy has over the planned productive forces of the USSR, the ultimate source of its strength.

FANNING THE FLAMES

Reagan and Thatcher's Cold War drive, which now includes the reopening of discussions with the Afghan opposition about possible US aid - aims to isolate the Soviet bureaucracy. They aim to frighten it back into its shell so that they can get on with the job of battening down the hatches of America’s declining empire

Thatcher and Reagan have other motives for fanning the flames of the Cold War. By stoking up genuine conflict with the Soviet bureaucracy the Reagan administration hopes to pultsits less reliable allies into line, The administration is openly expressing its belief that West Germany and Japan are not paying out enough to foot the bill for their own defence, and that both France and West Germany show too much independence in their dealings with the USSR and East European states, Haig and US Deputy Defence Secretary Frank Carlucci, are calling on the European powers to shoulder more of the burden for policing the Gulf. Upping the tension between Washington and Moscow helps them force the allies to take sides more firmly.

if Reagan is allowed to get his way, the first victims of the mew line will be the masses of El Salvador. The US government

If the march is to capture the imagination of the unemployed - particularly of the youth - and therefore lay the basis for the buil-

ding of a fighting movement of unemployed workers, militants must organise now, Unions must organise to recruit the unemployed and keep them on their books. Trades Councils, Shop Stewards Committees, Trade Union branches and Labour Parties must vote the funds to sponsor marchers and campaign to win mass involvement on the march.

They must insist that the march be under the control of an openly selected committee of the unemployed and that all tendencies in the workers movement be free to distribute their material and argue their programme.

Printed by Spider Web Offset, 9 Rosemont Rd, NW3.

16,000 strong army. The Pentagon predicts that without US backing the-regime’s armed forces will be defeated, 17 giant C-130 transports have been sent from the

US in the last month to re-equip the junta’s

army. The US knows that the corrupt and hated regimes of Central America will fall like ninepins unless there is a massive injection of US armed force. That is why it has chosen to fight in El Salvador, It wants to strengthen those elements in Nicaragua’s Sandinista government who want to maintain their ties with US imperialism. Jt can do this by threatening to cut off all US funds unless they accept the US intervention in El Salvador. It wants to stabilise the hated right-wing

regimes in Honduras and Guatemala where

resistance is growing - 3,000 ‘subversives’ were murdered in Guatemala in the first 11 months of 1980! And it wants to put the pressure on those regimes in the area, including Mexico, who've been prepared to trade and talk with Cuba.

The British bourgeoisie has proved the most immediately reliable ally for the White House's vicious clamp-down in Central America. The Foreign Office has declared that it has seen evidence from the US which “clearly points to activitjes which can only be regarded as unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of El Salvador’. Doubtless they took little persuading. The depths of their cynicism, the brazenness of their committment to this bloody pact for counterrevolution was summed up by ‘“The Econ-

omist’’: “Whatever the Salvadorean army's

record it remains opposed to allowing its country to become a place fromjwhich to export revolution to other places in Latin America”.

STRENGTHEN THE CHAIN

Only the West German government has evinced even minorcriticisms of the White House line. Their strategy for counter-revolution, with its own murderous consequences for the left among

E| Salvador's insurgents, is a deal between the Junta chief, Napoleon Duarte, and the most reliably pro-capitalist-elements in the opposition, such as Ungo.

As they move in to pulverise the masses of Central America the imperialist powers are prevaring to strengthen their chain of military bases throughout the world, To the evident delight of Reagan and Haig, Thatcher called for the ‘‘resurgent American leadership” to stand at the head of a “revitalised and strengthened NATO” during her American visit.

Especially important is that the particular impact of unemployment on women workers be addressed by the march, The occupation of the Lee Jeans factory in Scotland by its largely women workforce is a clear demonstration that women workers are willing to stand in the front ranks in the battle to stay off the dole.

As delegations visit factories facing redundancy they will have to argue with those male workers who hope to save their jobs by supporting schemes for “‘women out first”’. That

is why we favour the formation ofa “Womens Right to Work’ contingent on the march.

The Liverpool and Glasgow marches, numerous meetings in the localities, show that sections of the unemployed are willing and ready to to take action alongside the organised working class. What is at stake now is that this energy is not sapped

Published by WORKERS POWER, BCM-Mono Box 7750, Lonaon

Under Secretary - declared that “The west may havefto station troops in developing countries to prevent Soviet intervention”. He announced that the Tory government is ‘‘actively considering’’ NATO deployment outside the NATO area, in order to meet the Russian menace. At. the sarae meeting of West European military chiefs, Carlucci urged the West European governments to improve thier ties with the Gulf states arid deploy their forces there.

Fearing for its shaky circle of proWestern oil-rich dictatorships - and recovering from its defeat in lran - the Reagan regime is bracing itself and its alliance to strengthen their detatchments in the oil zone again. Thatcher and Pattie have both offered to arm regimes concerned with self-defence against the Soviet threat. They have given the green light to the repressive juntas of the world to apply, singly or in groups, for guns, ammunition and bases to crush the opposition of the exploited and oppressed.

SAVAGE ATTACKS

In order to finance the war drive, Reagan, like Thatcher before him, has made savage attacks on welfare spending. Within one month of taking office, he is proposing cutting $41.4 billion off federal spending immediately and deeper cuts in 1982 and beyond. The working class in the imperialist countries must be forced to pay for the their rulers’ bellicose policies

The only interest the working class has in Reagan's war in Central America is in securing his defeat at the hands of the oppressed masses. To that end all supplies to the Salvadorean junta and military must be blacked immediately. Only in this way can workers play their part in the overthrow of the bloodstained regime. Dockers and transport workers must play the decisive role in blocking Thatcher and Reagan's war plans. The Trade Union movement must be mobilised now, put on ,its own war footing, to foil the plans to arm and bolster a string of anti-working class, anti-Soviet dictatorships thoughout the world. To do otherwise is to allow the capitalists and employers to arm and strengthen themselves at the expense of workers everywhere.

But there is more to countering

the war drive than solidarity with all those fighting the imperialists and their stooges. Anti-Soviet, anti-Russian propaganda does have a resonance amongst workers who have observed the invasions of Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Afghanistan, and the anti-working tlass policies of the

Twin faces of reaction

Kremlin bureaucracy. As the winds of the Cold War biow fiercer so the temptation for militants and socialists to declare a plague On both sides in the Gold War - articulated by the Socialist Worker in the recently dusted-up slogan ‘Neither Washington, nor Moscow” - will become stronger.

It is vital that that tendency is combatted vigorously. We do not equate the worlds major imperialist power with the bureaucracy in the Kremlin. True, it is opposed to the struggle to take political. power directly into the ~ hands of the working class - on a world scale no less than in its own society, But it presides over something that we will not let the capitalists get their hands back on and use to their own advantage. As a result of the 1917 revolution the Russian workers overthrew capitalism. Despite the massive political degeneration that has taken place the capitalist class has not managed to get its hands back on those productive. forces again. It remains necessary to defend the USSR against the plans of the capitalists to isolate, blockade and destroy that historic gain. Just as militants in the AUEW and the EEPTU don't look to Thatcher to dump Chapple and Duffy for them, so it is for the workers of the USSR to settle their own accounts with the political rule of the bureaucratsas part of defending and extending the gains the Russian revolution made possible.

and diverted into endless rounds of negotiations for the formation of soup kitchens and drop-in centres. We must build an Unemployed Workers Movement that is a fighting organisation. And we must make sure that organised labour fights alongside it, putting its funds, its facilities and its industrial strength at its disposal.

Unless that work is done in the next period, a wedge can be driven between substantial sections of the younger unemployed and the Trade Unions. The heavily-policed charity schemes of the TUC and the controlled “peoples march”’ will not build the necessary union of struggle. It will be the task of revolutionaries to intervene in the building and organising of the May march, march, in mobilising the contingents of militant unemployed to block the plans of the bureaucrats.

WCIN 3xxX