Workers Power no. 79

a—

THE VENOMOUS OUTBURSTS from Paisley and the Unionists of the DUP and the OUP to the Anglo/Irish Agreement were of course expected. So too were the paramilitary UDA's threats to kill Dublin civil servants who dared to cross the border. One hundred thousand loyalists marched in Belfast to condemn ‘treacherous Thatcher' and it now seems certain that all 15 Unionist MPs will resign their Westminster seats to force a mini-referendum in the “x, Counties to make clear Protant opposition to the accord,

On the face of it, the unionist reaction is hard to understand. After all, the Agreement is designed to help stabilise Unionist rule, Thatcher's main aim is to increase the operational co-operation between the RUC/UDR and the Garda in the South directed against the IRA. Such co-operation is recognised as essential if the British are to have any hope of ‘winning the war' against the IRA. The ink was hardly dry before the chiefs of the RUC and Garda met to begin this work,

PARTITION

Moreover, the agreement on Dublin's side actually recognises for the first time the legitimacy of partition and the right of the unionists to veto any developments towards a united Ireland, The document goes out of the way to make clear that no political power or control has been ceded to the: Twenty-Six Counties, just a process of institutionalised consultation. So at the end of the day all that's new is the formal setting-up of an inter governmental apparatus to discuss all these matters, (In reality, this apparatus

has already existed for more than a year.) We must look elsewhere for

the Unionist's acting in the but over their signalled a

an explanation of response, In interests, Thatcher has

angry Unionists heads,

BRITAIN OUT OF

IRELAND

definitive shift in attitude to loyalism, and the latter's place in That-

cher's overall policy towards Ireland. She has broken with what is meanderthal and primitive’ in

Ulster Unionism.

Thatcher's game strategic one, She aims Fitzgerald's status in and repair the image of the constitutional nationalist Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) in the North by showing to the nationalists that they can deliver the reforms, not Sinn Fein. The agreement also commits Dublin to giving Britain as much say in the South's affairs as Dublin has in those of the Six Counties. This is of a piece with the aim of Thatcher to pull Ireland even more firmly into NATO,

Most importantly for the future of Unionism, Thatcher has, by this accord, openly lost patience with the Unionists stubborn rejection of any form of powersharing with the SDLP, even those arrangements heavily weighted in favour of the Unionists. In that sense, Thatcher is trying to boun-

plan is a to boost the South

ce the Unionists into accepting limited devolution and powersharing. She is saying ‘if you do not wish to have Dublin interference in the North then’ you

can remedy the situation by accepting devolution’.

The accord is that any matter which becomes the prerogative of a devolved government will automatically be taken out of the Dublin-London

quite explicit

KINNOCK'S MOVE AGAINST the Liverpool Labour Party is intended

to pave the way for a _ further onslaught on the left throughout the labour movement. The left

have been given a clear ultimatum, Either they can shut up and toe Kinnock's line between now and the election or they can resist him and, in so doing, share the fate of Mulhearn and Hatton,

Hand in hand the parliamentary and trade union leaders are preparing to purge’ the labour

movement in order to make it

presentable to the bosses aml the middle classes in the next election. They do so confident that they have the full backing of their self-ordained "cuddly" left, that is the emerging alliance of

new rightists.

ANTAGONISE

a SES} Zé Neil Kinnock has now his Bournmouth attack on Militant with a declaration of intent to drive them out of the Party, 'The British public knows very well that I am deeply antangonistic towards Militant. I want nothing to do with it. I want them out of the Labour Party.' Having ensured that the bureaucratic weight of the Party and unions had been used to crush’ any chance of resistance to Thatcher in Liverpool, the NEC moved swiftly to suspend the District Labour Party. It has initiated proceedings to bring Neil Kinnock the head of Derek Hatton. It wants s to block any chance of Mulhearn ousting front bench spokesman Kilroy-Silk as candidate for Knowsley South and to establish a Liverpool leadership that is acceptable to the NEC, This purge was set in motion ago. To the parliamentary leaders Militant are a threat to their electoral credibility. In the search for the electoral "middle ground" Labour must

long Labour

sphere. It is this attempt to face down the Unionists opposition to power-sharing which lies behind Unionist reaction,

Can they face wn? It is certainly true that the near-dormant UDA (and the UFF, its military wing) have been recruiting hand over fist in the last few weeks. It is equally true that the DUP and the OUP withdrawal from committees and councils in the Six Counties will be a problem for Westminster,

Yet, on the other hand, once the constitutional protests have been exhausted and most of the Unionist MPs are safely returned, and the UFF have made a few ‘reprisal’ killings, can the Loyalists repeat their success of May 1974 when the Ulster Workers Council strike wrecked the power-sharing Sunningdale Agreement? The = answer is almost certainly, no. For one thing, ten years of recession has eaten into the strength and confidence of loyalist workers, The shop stewards network of

Thatcher do-

topped

AGAINST THE

xs TAMILS NHS’ & Liverpool crumbles

HUNT

itself from = the

slightest whiff of militancy or class struggle. Labour's are increasingly

distance

electoral soothsayers worried that Labour has no hope of securing sufficient votes to form a ma)jority government on its present form and policies. They take this to mean two things. First Labour stould “yank; “its “derailed policy commitments and concentrate simply on presenting an image of itself as a responsible, authori-

tative yet caring alternative to Thatcher. That is the recommendation of top adviser Bish. Secondly, it should cap its renunciation of "Scargillism" with a purge of Militant, which the

right wing press and the the SDP in particular point to in order to scare the quaking middle class electorate away from the Labour Party. In doing |so Kinnock can show himself to be a man of authority and Labour can free itself from any policy embarrassments.

Lurking behind all this, unspoken but not (unthought of, is the looming prospect of a coalition government jin the event of a hung parliament, Of course no Labour leader can come out openly and espouse the cause of an anti-Thatcher coalition with the SDP-Liberal Alliance. Neither can the Alliance itself make an unambiguous coalition offer to one or other of the major parties.

But with Labour's’ electoral

the UWC is not /the same force as a result, nor is|the newly emerging ‘Ulster Club’ the same _ kind of power. Secondly, all the signs this time round age that the army will support the gdvernment, Thirdly, there will be fll party support in Westminster far such a _ resistance to loyalism 4 again something which was absent in 1974,

Whether the Unionists attempt to take this road, however, -is another matter, Thatcher and King will seek to placate them, They will aim to show she the operation of the Cofference - that on balance the significant concessions are all aes from Dublin not London,

Socialists in |Britain however, have to realise that being attacked by Paisley is not ja sign in itself that Thatcher hag taken a_ progressive step. The} Labour Party's usual bi-partisan welcome for the agreement is a further betrayal of the antiuniohist population, Kinnock et al failed to use the occasion to publicly proclaim

Support seemingly stuck in the mid 30% band, all the Red Wedge concerts in the world e@an't guarantee Neil Kinnock the key to number 10 as head of a majority Labour Government. A_ hung parliament would confront the Labour leaders With the choice of an overt or covert coalition, Either Kinnock would rule on_ policies the ANiance could accept or directly share power with them.

At present the open advocates of coalition are confined to the

editorial board of Marxism Today and Labour intellectual circles around Colin Crouch and Barry Hindess, But Labour's purge of

the left is itself a precondition of rendering the Party an acceptable coalition partner with the Alliance.

It is also meant to guarantee vhat if Labour did win a majority, Kinnock's government would be an anti-working class Labour government. Every militant needs to be reminded of what such a government looks like. The Callaghan-Healey government was a classic of the type - wages were cut under the Social Contract; troops were used to break strikes by firemen and ambulancemen; low paid workers were denounced

as "swine" by Labour ministers when they took selective action to improve their wages; Healey

continued on page 2 >

Labour's Conference policies on Ireland; against strip searches, plastic bullets and for a_ united

Ireland. Instead they tried to prove

to the bosses that they were super-patriots as far as _ Jreland is concerned,

The agreement is an immediate blow against Sinn Fein and the IRA. It further legitimises partition, Socialists must resist

any attempts to repress Sinn Fein further as a result. We must continue to insist that Britain has no right to strike deals with anyone over the Six Counties. It has no right to be there at all.O

- Troops Out Now - Self-Determination for the Irish People as a Whole

BRITAIN OUT OF IRELAND!

Demonstrate 2 Feb

details from Coordinating Committee for British Withdrawal from Ireland, c/o Peace through democracy, PO Box 51, London SE5 8JJ

WORKERS POWER 79 December 1985/January 1986

AFTER TWO YEARS of leading the campaign against Tory cuts in jobs and services in Liverpool, the Militant-led City Council has finally caved in. They have gone down the road paved by Blunkett and Livingstone,

On Friday 22nd November the Liverpool District Labour Party voted 694 to 12 in favour of accepting a financial package which would balance the City Council's books and deal a blow to the working class in Liverpool and beyond,

The "rescue package" which is "based on capitalisation and new loans" (Militant Editorial Statement) represents a total departure from the City Council's stand, Capitalization will mean cutting the housing programme _ involving large scale job cuts, especially amongst building workers, The package also includes an_ initial cut of £3 million, a loan of £30 million from a Swiss bank and a further loan of £3 million from the Association of Metropolitan Authorities (AMA). The massive interest payments on these loans coupled with the moneylenders condition that Liverpool keeps a balanced budget and remains within the law will mean further cuts and attacks on workers living standards in the near future.

Yet this climbdown by the City Council, which clearly represents a major defeat, was met with glee by Kinnock and his cronies in the Labour and trade union leadership.

LESSONS

Whilst all left-wingers and rank and file activists in the labour movement must fight all attempts at a witch hunt of Militant, it is equally vital that the lessons are learned from Liverpool.

This means examining the Militant-led councils strategy which led to the debacle. Derek Hatton and Liverpool Council claim that they had no alternative. The City had no money left to pay its workforce, and mass lay-offs were on the cards,

The question that needs to be answered is how could this happen in a_ struggle which had seen tens of thousands of workers on the streets behind a leadership that really wanted to take the Tories on and whose message, reflected in the polls, was the support of a majority in the community?

Militant are fond of referring to themselves as the ‘Marxist wing of the Labour Party'. But their conduct of the local government fight has had more in common with the traditions of 'municipal socialism’ of left labourism rather than that of revolutionary communism,

ACTION COUNCILS

Real 'Marxists' would never have stood on the left reformist platform in the elections of 1983 which promised an expansion of jobs and services but hid from the local workers their view that these were only attainable through confrontation and strikes with the City and central government,

Real 'Marxists' would not have concentrated political power and accountability in the Liverpool District Labour Party so as to preserve it as a Militant stronghold. Instead they would have built real action councils on the sestates and in the major workplaces. By embracing the working class community who know’ what their needs are, these bodies would have determined and controlled the council's programme of public works, This would have made it possible to mobilise the mass of workers for a fight with the Tories for services they themselves had decided on and which they themselves would control. It would be the workers and not the occupants of the Council Chamber

MILITANT’S LIVERPOOL DEBACLE

Tony Mulhearn, Derek Hatton and John Hamilton

by Liverpool's workers, Yet even this meant being beholden to the banks in order to maintain credit worthiness. It meant keeping a monopoly of information in the hands of a few top councillors, chopping and changing the story of the councils resources everytime ‘the crunch' drew near. It meant 'marxists' playing with the local workforce and community, treating them as a _ stage-army and keeping them a good arms length from the real centre of political decision-making.

Eventually, the inevitable happened. The patience and goodwill of the union rank and file was exhausted and the Tories, standing firm, took the honours,

It's only within this failure of strategy that the succession of disastrous tactics of the Council make sense.

For example, the failure of Militant to open up a new front against the Tories at ,a time when the miners and the dockers were striking, amounted to the squandering of the best opportunity. who would yield real power locally.

Unlike the Militant ‘real Marxists' would have counted on the hostility and hatred of the banks and their withdrawal of loan facilities and immediately funded a public works programme, = saving urgently needed cash by refusing to pay debt interest charges to the banks,

Instead of this approach the ‘Marxist wing of the Labour Party' had the perspective of ‘taking Liverpool to the brink’ to force Jenkin to negotiate a ‘reasonable settlement’. In the best possible case this settlement would not have raised rates or rents but it would have barely scratched the surface of the problems faced

Hattersley.

up by the NEC to run Liverpool.

John Harris (IFL)

the government then as a victory.

more, the deal stored up difficultthis financial

the hook. Liverpool wasn't.

even in the recent package. In September the key workers

before the Tory ballot Jaws rather

than argue that the 47% of work-

indefinitely and persuade

John Smith (iFL)

the right of all so-

Labour Party.

the challenge Kinnock and if you continue to attack the left,

the working class face an almighty battle with-

constituencies and trade unions in a united front

But matters cannot be left there. All trade union and Labour Party branches must also prepare to resist the NEC attack. All constituencies and wards must commit themselves now to refuse. to recognise any stooge body set

cooperate with any stooge Labour Party bodies and their candidates, which you set up to replace disaffiliated or suspended constituen-

Unfortunately in Socialist Action, Socialist Organiser and Labour Left are scared of LLC model

Coordination such a fight. resolution begins with

The witch hunt is not simply a ‘clean up' of personnel. It is a signal to any section of the labour movement’ which fights the Tories to shut up or get out, Kinnock has posed a direct challenge to the left - it must be met with a counterattack. Condemning expulsions is necessary but not enough on its own. We

local and the next general election are to be won party must There can only

ballot - to join them.

This retreat was bound to have a demoralising effect. But instead of marshalling their forces - through mass meetings in worktime, preparation for strike action, etc - the Council leaders got bogged down in rounds of discussions whose aim was to find a ‘solution’ based on compromise.

Indeed the search for compromise characterises the whole approach of the Council. When Blunkett asked, "will you do it Derek?" at the Labour Party Conference, he must have been confident of the outcome,

Militant is compromised by its loyalty to the Labour Party and the Parliamentary road, When these so-called ‘Trotskyists' stand as Councillors, they do so on a reformist, albeit militant reformist, programme. They share the electoralism and legalism of the Labour Party. They argue for loyalty to ‘Conference Policies' when the unaccountable trade union block vote can swing those policies to the electoral whim of Kinnock, Their calls for unity can only mean unity behind Kinnock's rotten policy unless they challenge it, rather than drop their challenge. Their desire to remain the "marxist wing of the Labour Party" at all costs blinds them to the fact that by their auctions they have retarded a vital struggle so necessary against the Tories,

In Liverpool, the rank and file of the trade unions must orgunise to combat the Tory attacks. This will include the defence of the Militant Councillors against surcharge. But this must be done on the basis of class struggle to achieve victory, not compromise.@

by Julian Scholefieid

Witch Finders General - Kinnock and Whitty

Unite to fight Kinnock

KINNOCK AND WHITTY must be stopped. It is vital that we build a united fightback against the witch hunters in the Labour Party and in the trade’ unions. The executive must be bombarded with resolutions denouncing the enquiry into Liverpool, denouncing the suspension of the District Labour Party and demanding a halt to the expulsion of Militant supporters and other class fighters who have opposed Kinnock and

left have already given up = any fight for working class interests. And this is precisely what these

timid lefts have done. Socialist

Action argue that to challenge Kinnock's leadership would be

"ultra left"! In other words, please

don't expel us Neil and then we can unite behind your leadership

to win the next elections,

These fake! Trotskyists are scared of a fight, preferring to allow Kinnock t@ pursue his antiworking cluss alicies unhindered in the Party im return for the privilege of being allowed to stay in the cosy security of the Labour Party.

Socialist Organiser whilst condemning the NEG enquiry proceeded to hand ammunition to the right by arguing) that there probably should havé been an _ investigation into Livefpoo!l DLP 2 years ago! (A labour |movement enquiry of course),

Indeed Militant themselves are fighting the purge on purely constitutional grpunds. They have narrowly focused) their own defence campaign on|/recruitment. They refuse to generalise the issues

and the resistance. The planned purge is a threat to all militants, The left must build a real fight in the Party and unions, not dodging the arguments about defiance of the NEC,

in each town of all labour movement activists prepared to resist the witch hunt. They must organise to take this fight into the wards and branches’ which the witch hunters control. Representative delegate committees must be formed to coordinate that work and build support.

there must be a national delegate conference of all labour movement bodies prepared to fight the witch hunt, That conference must organise to stop the witch hunt and to stop the rightward shift in the official labour movement. Kinnock has seized the _ initiative against the Left. There is no time to lose if he is to be met with united and determined resistance.@

by Helen Ward (Vauxhall CLP)

FIGHT THE WITCH HUNT > continued from front page

slashed the public services. These are but a few examples. But they well illustrate the type of majority Labour government that Kinnock's purge is intended to clear the path for.

The purge would not have been possible without a major re-alignment of one-time left talk~- ers in the Labour Party and the trade unions. It has the full backing of the Labour Coordin-ating Committee which has _ beavered-: away to create a platform for an anti-Militant Labour "left" in Liverpool.

On the very weekend of the enquiry the LCC had deliberately organised its annual conference in Liverpool in order to beef up the opposition to Mulhearn = and Hatton. "Lefts" like Meacher, Blunket «and Audrey Wise all raised their hands in favour of suspending the District Labour Party and an enquiry that would result in expulsions should anyone be proved to be members of Militant.

PIVOTAL

Leading trade union officials *ave also been pivotal in engineering the purge. NUPE's Tom Sawyer has been a consistent fighter for this witch hunt. NUPE's annual conference called for the expulsion of Militant. It was Sawyer who moved the crucial ammendment at the NEC that set the machinery of the purge in motion,

The combined weight of the

NUPE, GMBATU and TGWU bur-eaucracies used to dampen any chance of a fight from Liverpool's council workforce. It was Jack Dromey, a TGWU "left" and LCC supporter, who persuaded the council's TGWU members that the council should cave in-~@ set a balanced budget.

These trade union leaders see no prospect for their personal advance outside the return of a Labour government. They accept the need to rid the Labour Party of Militant in order to strengthen up its electoral appeal as against the Alliance.

But there is another factor which has driven the trade union bureaucracy to campaign zealously for a purge, In their own way the Militant have been strengthening their base in the unions over the last years. In unions like the CPSA they do have an organised presence. To this extent Militant have not only fallen foul of the Parliamentarians fear of an electoral drubbing, they have also run up against of the barons who claim proprietorial rights in the trade unions.

In order to clinch the ca for the purge Whitty and Kinnock are out to criminalise Militant, General Secretary Whitty has said

There must be a_ meeting

As well as local joint action

rt

WORKERS POWER 79 December 1985/January 1986 3

that uncovered malpractices will be reported to the police. The ex-Labour Lord Mayor from the days when the Liverpool Labour Party was run by a right wing catholic mafia, the ex-Police Chief Superintendent and the ex-housing director could all be guaranteed to complain of malpractices to the enquiry.

This is all a smokescreen for the right's political purge. Labour councils and leaders have

often been shown to be harbouring corruption and nepotism, but it hasn't led to the closure of the North East or South Wales parties for example.

Should any complaints of corruption or malpractice be known to the Liverpool workers’ they should be put to a workers' enquiry that should take the necessary steps to openly investigate the complaints and act on the findings. We should have no truck with the findings of a kangaroo court that included Militant's chief prosecutors, Tom Sawyer and Audrey Wise, that met in secret and dec'led whose opinions it was prepared to canvass and who it would ignore.

The object of the witch hunt is not simply to silence the supporters of Militant. While the right was rubbing its hands with glee as it got down to the job of purging Liverpool Hattersley was setting the pace with a witch-hunt in his own parliamentary patch.

Two members have been expelled for daring to challenge Hattersley's rule in the Birmingham inner

city. Black councillor and black section organiser Amir Khan was given the boot for bringing the

Party into “disrepute” by reporting fake applications and membership returns to TV's, Ban-dung File. Kevin Scally, a Labour Committee on Ireland activist, has suffered the same fate,

LOOMING

With the prospect of an eleclooming closer all those who bow the knee to Kinnock Hattersley can expect to the threat of expul-

tion won't and come under sion.

The same will go for the trade unions. Alastair Graham is now calling on CPSA members to ‘overcome their revulsion and kick them out of office in Newcastle and in every city, town and village where they seek to abuse the union.'

That call wil doubtless be repeated in other unions. Already GMBATU is re-organising its branch structure in Liverpool so as to eliminate Militant's influence, TGWU leader Ron Todd vigorously opposed moves on his Executive to oppose the purge. The bureaucacts will use every trick in the Book to silence opposition to their refusal to fight and their bid to turn every union conference irito a unanimous electoral rally for Kinnock's Labour Party.

The fight to defend Militant therefore be a fight against those who want the Labour movement to stop fighting Thatcher, give up any pretence of supporting .workers in struggle and hope in the process to woo the electoral favours of the middle class away from the SDP. It must be a fight against all those who have given soft left cover for the right. During this fight it will be possible to sharpen the conflict between those who want to wage the class struggle and those who are besotted with purely electoral concerns,

Kinnock has dispatched a subcommittee to discover a definition of "democratic socialism" which can ward off all known revolutionary spirits from the Labour Party, Now is the time for all those who defend the right of all socialists to be in the Labour Party to stand up and be counted.

In every ward, constituency and trade union branch a revolt

against Kinnock's rule must be mounted, Not only must we raise the banner of opposition to the purge. We must rally all those elements in the Party who are prepared to fight Thatcher now under the slogan - no holding back on the class struggle to get an anti-working class Kinnock government elected.@

must

NUM LEADERS

COLLAPSE ON PAY

THE NCB'S ATTEMPT to rub the

NUM's nose in the dirt is continuing apace. In order to avoid expanding production, the NCB has deliberately turned down the opportunity of selling coal to Denmark. Opening up this new market (the Danish government

is looking for an alternative to South African coal) might mean keeping pits open and MacGregor wants none of that!

With 17,000 miners having taken redundancy since the end of the strike, the NCB is hoping to reach its target of 70,000 before too long. Nobody — should believe that the reprieve given

to Darfield Main indicates a U-turn on the part of the Board, Its plan - part of an EEC plan to halve coal production in member countries - is being carried through relentlessly. Durfield Main = may be open, but Bold, St Johns and a host of others face the chop.

NCB CONDITIONS

The main line of attack on the NUM, however, is now centred on the pay front. In a bid to maintain the flagging momentum of the scab UDM, the NCB is withholding a pay offer from the NUM, It has said that it is not prepared to give the NUM _ the £5.50 plus 50p a shift that it has already awarded the UDM_ until the NUM gives a written undertaking to abide by certain conditions, Even then it is refusing to make an offer increasing national grade rates. In line with the CBI's 'Nowt for nowc' slogan it is muking all increases conditional on increased productivity.

The aim of the board is transparent. By giving the scabs a backdated bvost to their wage packets it hopes to encourage loyalists to leave the NUM. This _ bribery of the members is of a piece with the board's offers of cars and pensions to the scab leaders, like Jack Jones, who have opted to stuy in the NUM. It shows that smashing the NUM was and is a central part of the NCB's strategy.

The NUM's leadership's response to this onslaught has been appalling. The Yorkshire area under Jack Taylor led the way. His area was the first to argue for sending the NCB a= written undertaking to abide by its conditions,

LEGAL BATTLES

A letter was circulated recom-

mending that branches support Taylor's line. Confusion, demoralisation and desperation to get some money led many branches to accept Taylor's line. Even in the militant Doncaster area only

4 branches voted against Taylor.

Act first Taylor was unable to get his way on the National Executive A 10-9 vote in late Noveinber = went against giving the NCB a surrender note.

However, instead of building on this und launching a campaign

in the coalfields to rally morale, offer a way forward and prepare for action, Scargill and his supporters opted for a_ legalistic fight. They chose to prove that the board

is in breach of the 1946 National Conciliation Scheme by taking individual cases to an_ industrial

tribunal to demand pay parity, While legalistic methods like this cannot be ruled out they are no substitute for organising the mass of the rank und file to fight. For a start the ‘impartial’ people (like lawyers!) who stuff the tribunals are only ever likely to rule in favour of the NUM if they feel and fear mass pressure. The increasing reliance on tribunals and the courts to fight the scabs

a dead end. It fighting

and the NCB is will not rebuild the strength of the union, Eloquent proof of this came at the very next Executive meeting. The 10-9 vote was overthrown by a 12-6 vote in’ favour of giving the NCB written undertakings. The executive has accepted that pay will be tied to incent-

ives. The Area Incentive Scheme will be supplemented by attendance bonuses, Divisions between

pits and areas will be supplemented by divisions within pits and areas. The chance now

NCB stands a_ better than ever before of doing to the NUM what BSC did tw the steelworkers. And the executive's decision on the pay offer,

a decision in total breach of the policy on incentives agreed at the last delegate conference, will

help the board in this project.

A fightback must be mounted. Voting aguinst the offer were the peripheral coalfields, Durham, Kent, Scotland, etc, who will gain least by incentive payments. In some of those ureas Furo-Communist elements, like Bolton and McGahey in Scotland, predominate, Their position on pay does not reflect their willingness to fight. It dues reflect the fact that they could not sell such a deal to their

members, These members must begin to organise quickly to stop the retreat. They must link up

with each other and with the militants in the Yorkshire and Midland's coalfields.

A national fight on pay and closures is unlikely. But there is still, much that can be done. rank & file news-

In every pit

AS WE GO to press the December 10th deadline at Mirror Newspapers is fast approaching. By that date Robert Maxwell is demanding that the print union SOGAT negotiate

a deal that could cut 2,000 of the union's 3,500 jobs at the Mirror,

The situation at the Mirror is only one part of the rapidly escalating management offensive in Fleet Street. The last month

also revealed that Rupert Murdoch is well advanced with his plans to shift all his printing to a plant on the Isle of Dogs that will be manned by EETPU scabs, already being bussed in daily from as far away as Southampton.

Maxwell, being a loyal Labour Party member prefers to work with the established print unions - providing only that they are all willing to accept the same conditions as the seabs. His ‘ratchet’ tactics ure clear to see. In the case of SOGAT he_ began by announcing that all jobs were called into question by the need to compete with the likes of Eddie Shah and that the unions would

huve to uccept this before negotiations could even begin. He then issued dismissal notices to all SOGAT, members when the union refused to negotiate under such conditions,

The response of SOGAT summed up the weaknesses of the print unions, They balloted for

Unity is needed

letters, like The Armthorpe Tannoy, must be launched to supplement the Rank and File Miner.

closure that is

must be met by spread within and across areas. In particular Kent, as a militant area, could begin building a fighting alliance’ of the areas around resistance’ to closure of Betteshanger, The recent election in South Wales of Des Dutfield, a Scargill by a sizeable majority Kinnockite (and Euro

Every action

supporter, over the supported)

Terry Thomas, should be used us an opportunity to rekindle militancy in South Wales and link

up this area with others prepared to fight.

WILL TO FIGHT

By building on strikes and disputes that do take place militants will be able to renew a feeling of confidence amongst their mates. Recently Socialist Worker Review pointed out that

they had recorded 20 local strikes since the end of the Great Strike. This is by no means a complete record, but it shows that a willingness (to fight does still exist. To really be able to build on it the manoeuvers and retreats of the leaders must be countered by the determined actions and campaigns of a locally rooted but nationally orgunised rank and file.@

by Mark Hoskisson

Kinnock can now afford to laugh at Scargill's fighting talk

u strike to force Maxwell to withdraw (and not just suspend) the notices so that negotiations could begin. When the strike proved solid and Maxwell could only produce 30,000 copies with scabs und management| crossing picket lines, he ‘gave | in' and agreed to lift his threats until December 10th. In effect the union had only won an extension of three days on Maxwell's origifal deadline. Since the strike the negotiations have been carried on in complete secrecy. There have been no report back meetings to keep the menibers informed and, therefore, prepured. This has led to widespread rumours about which departments are | to be chopped and reinforced the feeling that massive job losses are now inevitable throughout Fleet Street. When the vow of negotiations

are made known /they will in all probability be mwresented as a complete package The under immediate | threat will be set against thos@ who can keep their jobs, under new conditions, Meanwhile the EETPU has

sections

MAXWELL'S OFFENSIVE

Andrew Wiard (Report

made it clear that it is willing to undermine any fightback by accepting whatever conditions SOGAT rejects. Yer, for all his careful preparation of his tactics, Muxwell is not in a strong position. From the end of the year

he intends to shift all his printing operations to London, closing the Thomson Withy Grove plant’ in Manchester. The London operation, therefore, is central to his plans, He has to secure his deal quickly if the transition is to be successful.

a background of fallrising Competin Fleet Street

Against ing circulation and ition, the unions can still yo on the offensive, But this will need united action by all the unions involved, The potential for this was clearly shown during the SOGAT strike at the Mirror when the NGA machine minders struck in support. The mobilisation of the rank and file printers, those whose jobs’ are on the line, is the key to a successful fightback,

The new technology is rapidly making a nonsense of the craft divisions within the workforce and points urgently to the need for the formation of a single industrial union within the — printing industry. The first step to such a union should be the formation of joint union committees to coordinate uction against Maxwell's proposed package of cuts. The building of such unity in action has to be demanded of the leaders of all the unions’ involved. But if they will not take the lead, then rank and file militants must shoulder the responsibility by forming such committees unofficially.@

by Steve McSweeny

Stefano Cagnoni (Report)

WORKERS POWER 79 December 1985/January 1986

NHS : BEHIND TORY

Harrison, a leading militant and COHSE shop steward at St. Thomas',

WP, There have been increasing

disciplining of staff and victimisation of shop stewards. Have you yourself been victimised?

Yes. Six months ago | was threatened with dismissal while on a small demo against a visit from Fowler. A short while later, when { was on the megaphone challenging Fowler, | was assaulted by a senior member of staff. | knew if | hit him back I would be dismissed on the spot. The next day

if | accepted a telling off in writing they would leave it at that. If not | would be disciplined. | refused! A few days later | got a letter saying there was a disciplinary hearing against me. We went to that hearing, explained that the personnel department had tried to make a deal and therefore prejudged the case, and walked out, I received a written warning. I appealed against the warning. My hearing was put off and off and is now in January. But | still have no chance because the person who made the allegation is chairman of the health auth-

that the NHS is being swamped cCluirmen proposes measures to by the increasing demand for make it harder tor in-house tendcare. This is not only due to the ers to succeed in competition increusing number of the old, but with the private sector. to the yeneral impoverishment The success of privatisation of the working class. Bad housing, has been a mixed one for Fowler. poorer food, inadequate’ clothing, A mid-year Commons Social Ser- : harder work, financial worries, vices Committee reported — only NORMAN FOWLER NEVER tires isniution, all of these breed physi- a £9.4 million saving in a budget of telling us that the NHS is 64) and mental problems. These of £848 million for catering, launbigger and better than it ever) pfroblems have become endemic. dry and cleaning during 1983-84, was. "800,000 extra patients treat- jhe {ow Pay Unit reported ‘hat as a result of private tendering. ed in 1984 compared to 1978 and jyw income families are now no But real savings have been made 25 extra hospitals built", Conven- better off chan they were in the as a result of the fear created iently he forgets to mention the carly 1950's. by privatisation amongst the NHS number of hospitals closed since Labour party spokespersons Workforce. To prevent manugethen or the shorter stays these jike to tell us that Thatcher hates ment contracting out, workers extra patients have had in hospit- (he NHS simply because she is in hospitals have been willing to als. He also forgets that change 4 spiteful and vindictive person, accept lower pay and worse con- - f doing has been very good for the (he inability of Fowler to = inevitably means an_ increase cupitalists. achieve the predicted massive in patient numbers. = The less the capitulists have Savings as yet, has placed severe sincdihptvtanble ta: take sonar’ 8% MONT oe AB ‘hele oh phen strates, ae, he, NEES: bade Ne opinion. A recent OECD diagnosis WORK ETS, ie more iMoney they (Sib apgl Keske we sue 7 of Jsritish healthcare is far less nave «fete eek packets. i 5 me ration as aisles as rosy. Britain's expenditure on Spe yale Thatcher has improv- . rie SVN TRESS BERETOKE ary ones health is the Sth lowest of the Bd) pratiranility in Britain by. 40%. pag eae ner Pere ‘8 anita 24 OECD countries (richest capit- Vhis is far better than that ach- the bouks. Hospital administrators alist nations). Only Portugal, New eved in other maga one fowler Wi nn. ROP: Jenluad..\Gracoet - and Takey spend Alas for Thatcher, even this titute their hospitals by increasing an ity : ee 4 large improvement in profits has the number of pay beds, by offerless: Britain spends arotand one not been enough to restore the ing some of their facilities to third of what bead tee ren British economy to health, The the private sector, and by increas2 acl Pret cheek of amd economy continues to stagnate, €d sales of blood and organs. The Ft) crea surtay bai Gvuas and the more it stagnates the ‘ich are not only living off the (or. Operarions,. the majority of more desperate Thatcher and her well of our brows, our vital Kaelih uréas raported over 50% class are becoming. pe baci or being used to keep of patients had to wait more than _ 'WO and a half years ago : Petineo: has promised to ina year for routine general surgery. Fowler gave the 245 district health crease NHS spending by 3% in In some areas as many as 72% authorities embracing 2300 hoshad to wait for over a year. In Pitals, clinics, etc, until Septem- real terms compared to the allegdesperation and in pain, many ber 1986 ‘to invite tenders for ed 1% increase of the Tories. who cannot really afford it were all domestic services. By March This is equivalent to Kinnock's driven to seek these operations this year only 190 contracts had pledge to reduce unemployment privately. been awarded, A recent confiden- by 1 million not abolish it, A Fowler's claims of improve- tial draft leaked from the DHSS miserable 2% increase above the ments in the NHS must, of course, called for the need to speed up ‘Tories will have only a_ small be taken with a big pinch of bicar- the pace of privatisation, Another effect on the problems of the bonate of soda! What is true is draft shown to regional health NHS, he was found guilty on such a have changed. Now it does not In small technicality that he only matter what you say. They have had to pay the court costs, also scrapped most of the disci- ~~ Then I received a letter that plinary procedures, The word of a complaint had been lodged management is mow enough to LUIN against me by the chairman of get you disciplined or dismissed, the local health authority, the As far as | am _ concerned, St. Thomas' is one of London's person who had threatened me if they need to get rid of staff ae se most perce hos- with dissmisal on the day of the from that area, this is one way pitals, and was one of the most demo. of getting them out. militant hospitals during the 1982 The personnel department . strike. WP recently spoke to Ray tried to stitch up a deal, saying WP. You mentioned they are begin-

ning to use the same tactics they used against the miners - that is to dismiss workers for outside offences unrelated to their work,

member of security

final warning and transferred to casualty because he was fined for having a _ bent MOT. He had worked for the hospital for 5S years. A little while later he was dismissed altogether when personnel somehow, and we think illegally, got hold of his previous criminal record. Scotland Yard promised to investigate how they got hold of it, but I have not heard anything from them,

Recently a was given a

field Community and _ Glenfield General Hospitals the in-house tender has won the contract keeping out the notorious privateers, Crothalls.

The staff have been praised by management for working so hard for this contract, They must be delighted. They will save £47,000 over the next year. This will be done by reducing hours (and pay!) Supposedly there will be no redundancies. But anyone who cannot afford to accept the reduction will be out, The staff

ber of this year, there were 53 unfilled domestic vacancies’ that could not be filled. No one wants work was the place! What they did not say was that in fact since May 1985 only temporary contracts

have been offered. So when it comes to. tendering, job losses are not so much of a_ problem as contracts will simply not be renewed. However, management pointed out in this document that

"it must be remembered that we need to make significant changes to the way domestic services are

when we came back | reported ot ant ts «cna pakoeatient, i We are very worried about this to the police, They came ave NaC, this. About six out of ten staff sund savi k at here have had minor offences See aes eres we ne all about wp, How has the appeals proced- jike traffic offences, no T.V. licenthis Mr Harrison, he is a trouble- ’

ure changed and is it being used se nd the like. This means

maker. I protested saying that , te [f? ces a 1 was the one assaulted. They ‘°° CUt Gown on stall® management can transfer us betold me to take out a summons, Up to 1983 you got a fair hear- Cause of these offences and dis-

| did. We went to court where ing. In the last 2 years things iss us if we refuse.@ a certainly will be ‘working hard'. currently provided in order to ln The management at the Leicester be competitive and this means General Hospital must be even that there are inevitable reducmore jubilant. They will save tions in both numbers of staff

LCi £363,000 over the next year. The and numbers of hours." cost here, unless fought by the The in-house tender will mean THE BATTLE AGAINST privatisa- staff, will be 43 jobs, a reduction of fulltime staff from tlon made front page news In The only major hospital left 70 to about 40. The night jobs the local rag, the Leicester is the Leicester Royal Infirmary. have been halved. There will be Mercury. ‘Staff win wards cleaning There has been much publicity no redundancies as such; reduced battle’ (4/12/85). At both the Glen- made of the fact that in Septem- hours will be offered to the full-

timers and no temporary contracts will be renewed. This will mean a cut in the pay of the already very low-paid domestics. Privatisation may not have been a particular success for That-

chers profiteer friends who need the contracts. But it has been a winner as far as making cuts is concerned. Moreover it has drawn the staff and the unions into joint efforts with management. Now making staff ‘work hard! for ‘their' contract is a

weapon for the management and

Nevertheless this promise has been enough for the union leaders to caution workers against strike action and to wait for the next Labour Government. As we approach the next elections, the union leaders will become more and more anti-strike saying that nothing must be done to rock

the boat and upset Labour's chan-

ces at the polls.

We must reject this do-nothing «approach, We must organise for strike action. Kinnock who

in Opposition attacks every strike and struggle and consistently sides with the bosses, will do the sare, only more so, in office. He will do more damage to the NHS than the last ‘cash limits’ Labour Government of 1974-79 did. Workers must not hold back and wait for Kinnock, they must rally their forces, and as the recent NUPE

THE NUPE LEADERSHIP has failed to lead any fightback against privatization and the cuts, Instead they have tried to pacify workers

with ‘hang on until the next Labour government’. Fortunately, the NUPE shop

in London are becoming increasingly fed up with the Kinnock loving, Militant bashing national teadership, of Bickerstaffe and Tom Sawyer. At the November 5th London Divisional Conference delegates voted overwhelmingly for a national NUPE con-

stewards

ference in Marth to organise a centralised fightback against the attacks on the NHS.

Many delegates pointed out

that the national leadership's fail-

ure to lead opposition to the attacks had reduced many local fights - Barkjng, Adenbrookes,

Cambridge - to guerilla skirmishes. There was a recognition that a successful fightback had to be centralised and (co-ordinated, That was the intentipbn in calling for

an excuse to dodge action for the union bureaucrats, It is seen as a victory simply if the in-house tender wins, depsite the redundan-

cies or reduced hours and pay that go with |this. This attitude has been fostered by the union national leaderships., They completely ducked out of a national fight.

The contracting experience has brought to light just how deep the cuts have gone, In 1980 there

were approximately 800 domestics at the Leicester Royal Infirmary. By the Ist Seproaiher 1985 there were just 310!

But there js still more money to be saved. Nurses are the next in the firing line. Privatisation has meant that in the Leicester Royal Infirmary, nurses will be expected to Toate extra duties that were formerly domestic duties. We are meant to be getting extra nurses for these duties but

@ For a

ORGANISING RESISTANCE

Lundun Conference did, prepare for action against the cuts and privatisation. And in the battle

with the Tories we must put for-

ward demands that defend the

NHS and serve the interests of

the whole working class:

M No Cuts - restore spending in the NHS to its pre-1976 levels in real terms and protect it against inflation with

automatic budget increases,

@ For a fully integrated NHS - no privatisation, abolish private practice. Nationalise the profiteering drug com-

panies, with no compensation, and under workers’ control.

massive programme hospital/clinic building as of a programme of pubcarried out under

of part lic works

workers control.

the natiotiai March conterence.

\f that conference is to take place and pose a real challenge to the NUPE leadership, it must have che rank and file behind it. Delegates must go back to their members and = argue for another national strike. This difficult task depends on convincing workers, politically, that a future Labour Government is not a _ solution to the mounting attacks on the NHS in the here and now.

In addition, NUPE must invil as many delegates from the other health unions as possible to the conference, If NUPE decides on any course of action, it must argue for this action with the other unions. [t must seek to build a fighting alliance of NHS unions based on and controlled by the rank and file - the branches, stewards' committees, etc. What it must not du, as it did in 1982, is water down its proposals to suit the other unions, or create the cumbersome bureaucratic ‘alliance’ that sabotaged the fight.m@

management will not discuss it. The allocation of the extra nurses will not be on the basis of work to be done but on money being available,

Leicester health workers are wondering how far management will go. Recently in Hartlepool the Health Authority — seriously considered getting sponsorship by local businesses to cover the running costs of their General Hospital. They had _ considered commercial sponsorship of nurses uniforms but rejected this as too demeaning. Imagine waking up from a heart and lung operation to see a nurse with a Benson & Hedges T-shirt on!

The final insult came in Leicester when management saw fit to allow a private health care scheme to put adverts in our pay packets! We must urgently begin organising in every hospital to stop the attacks on the NHS - in Leicester and everywhere else.@

a |

WORKERS POWER 79 December 1985/January 1986 5

THE MONARCHY - NOT ABOVE POLITICS

CHARLES AND _ DIANA'S _television interview with Alistair Burnett in October marked a_ turning point in media _ presentation of the monarchy. After months of training by Richard Attenborough (that's the actor, not the nature lover) Diana was entrusted to answer a few simple questions, Word perfect and exactly on cue she droned: "I see my main role as a wife and mother".

Safely over the first hurdle "Noddy and Big Ears" have become the new stars of TV news reports. Scarely a day now passes without them looming onto our screens courtesy of the "objective journalism" of the BBC and ITN.

CONSTITUTIONAL

At the same time however the question of Royalty has been preying on the minds of the politicians more than usual. At the SDP conference David Owen suggested that if the Alliance was to hold the balance of power after the next election then the Queen

might just as well choose him as Prime Minister - even if Kinnock stood at the head of the largest party. Labour's 'constitutional experts' have blustered about there being “no precedent for this". The servile Labour

leaders were swift to attack Owen for insulting the Queen by dragging her into politics! But they cannot deny that the Queen would be well within her rights to do this - that is to organise a coalition from Buckingham Palace,

This ‘constitutional is in fact not new, In the Tories were trying to hold onto power through a_ coalition with the liberals, Elizabeth stood waiting in the wings for four days after Heath's election defeat before he gave it up as a bad job. Likewise the National Government of 1931 was formed under the aegis of the King.

This power of the monarchy to become the organising centre for political deals within British "democracy" is even more useful to the ruling class than its power to momentarily enchant the unorganised and the downtrodden with regular shows of tinsel and glitter. It deserves close scrutiny.

debate’ 1974 when

PREROGATIVE

The powers of known as the Royal are as follows:

-~ the power to dissolve parlia-

the Queen, Prerogative

ment or refuse to _ dissolve it

- the power to appoint or dismiss a prime minister

- the power to veto any act of parliament

- the power to declare war, mobilise the army etc.

- the power to distribute hon-

ours including peerages in

the House of Lords. In addition the Queen is Lord Admiral of Britain and Commander in Chief of the armed forces. Every soldier swears an oath of loyalty to the Queen, not to parliament.

Of course, we are told in school, such powers would never be used. Yet they were used throughout the 19th century, and they remain intact “in case of need",

Writing of his resignation as Tory Prime Minister in 1963, Harold Macmillan said: "l was determined at all costs to preserve the prerogative which had been so useful in the past and which might be so valuable in the future".

Fifteen years later the "prerogative" did come in useful when the Governor of Australia (appointed by the Queen and with the same powers) resolved a_ political crisis there, by simply sacking Gough Whitlam, ‘the Labour prime minister, and replacing him with Tory Malcom Fraser.

Despite this, the myth remains in the minds of many people that che’ British monarchy is a neutral body, standing above party politics and class conflict. Let us examine the reality.

The Queen is in fact a well informed, active participant’ in the business of state. Every day after she has finished reading the Sporting Life from cover to cover (a fact!) she spends 3 hours reading state papers.

These include all cabinet minutes which even many MPs don't get to see, and secret documents relating to defence, security services, etc, In addition she is briefed in a weekly meeting with the Prime Minister. During the last Labour Government Prince Charles even sat in on Cabinet meetings.

CAPITALISTS

As for being above "class", the Queen is undoubtedly one of the biggest capitalists in the country. In addition to Civil List payments totalling hundreds of thousands a year, the Queen and Char-

les reeccive massive ameounts_.of money from the land they own. Charles "earns" so much from

the Duchy of Cornwall that, after giving half of it voluntarily to the Treasury he still takes home £800,000 a year. Of course some of this is farmed out to charity, but like all good capitalists Charles "puts his money to work" in stocks, shares and securities. Just how much, and where, is of course a closely guarded secret. But the Queen, for example, is estimated to have a_ personal wealth (not counting the Crown Estate, the jewels, etc) of about £100 million.

In addition the Royal family is tied to the upper echelons of the capitalist class through bonds of Public School, University, Sand-

hurst, the gentlemens' clubs = - not to mention freemasonry (the Duke of Gloucester is the top

man in British freemasonry). Charles' recent speech about Britain being a fourth rate nation, his hypocritical pity for the homeless and the inner city deprivation is accompanied by a plea for the entrepreneurial business methods of the USA. In placing the blame squarely with the working class Charles does a loyal service to the industrialists and financiers. The so-called 'neutrality' from

political and class conflict is a sham. But there is a_ very important reason for this sham. George Orwell once wrote: "In

a dictatorship the power and the glory belong to the same person. In England the real power belongs

to the unpreposessing men_ in bowler hats; the creature who rides in a_ gilded coach behind

soldiers in steel breastplates is really a waxwork. It is at any rate possible that while this division of function exists a Hitler or Stalin cannot come to power." This is also the view of many

a modern Labour politician. It misses the point completely. Every military dictator in

history has seized power claiming to represent "the good of alli" rather than any one of the warring factions or parties. "The politicians have made a mess of it. We need a strong man to stop the squabbling." Such wisdom brought the Hitlers and the Mussolinis to power, and today backs

up the rule of General Evren in Turkey or Pinochet in Chile. In every case they are able to rely on the "neutral" army, police and courts to crush democracy. They can do this’ precisely because capitalist "democracy", a sop to the working class that the ruling class is only willing to grant so long as it can afford it, always leaves the state machine out of direct control of parliament. In Britain the monarchy is just waxworks, [t "legally" constitutionally retains all powers that could suspend activities of the "bowler hatgentlemen". And the monarch the head of an army its ceremonial duties retires to barracks to polish not only its breastplates but rifles, tanks and rocket launchers,

not and the the ted stands at

which after

STABILITY

likewise stands as head of the Commonwealth. Here she presides over a sham of ‘equal partnership! between British imperialism and its former colonies. In reality the Commonwealth _institutionalises _ Britain's semi-colonial domination of these countries. The Queen, as leader of the Commonwealth, gives this domination a caring, maternal gloss,

If the next general election resulted in a “hung parliament" the Queen could well be used to resolve things in favour of the Alliance. She could similarly prevent a dissolution and a new general election if "stability" required this,

In cases of more acute needstrikes and mass working class struggles - the British ruling class would not in the first place need a Hitler. It already has Charles; Colonel in Chief of the Royal

The monarch

‘TODAY I AM GOING To

SAGAY | GIVE yous GIF haya i

WS ALMOST 1 To BUY A PAig oF on

Td zZens OR SEE ATA, I BiscK.

Regiment of Wales, Cheshire Regiment, Parachute Regiment, the Gordon Highlanders and a_ trained Navy Officer: or perhaps an Andrew, full time RAF _ pilot who lists his recreations as "shooting": or even an Edward, currently embarking on a career as an officer in the Royal Marine Commandos,

Whilst, as yet, they do not need such measures, it is as well to know the potential threat the monarchy poses.

Whilst the Royal is ultimately the real monarchy poses to class, it could not potential power without the constant parading of the royal Family on the press and TV, Diana's role has been vital for the upgraded image we are shown,

Prerogative danger the the working maintain its

On the one hand she represents self-perpetuating links between the ruling class and the Royal family. Even the reactionary novelist Anthony Burgess was moved to write, of her: "There is a fine stratum of useless elegant retainers surrounding the royal family. Out of this climbs into

the bosom of the family a personage like Princess |Diana - she bakes no bread, paints no pictures, reads no books abev the level of Frederick Forsyth, _ contributes nothing to the world's work; she merely proclaims the decorative function of her class."

GLAMOUR

On the other hand, and more importantly, Diana is presented to the readers of The Sun, The Mirror and Woman's Own as the ‘ordinary' woman |for whom romance brought every girl's dream of becoming a Princess. In addition to the glamour, she proudly stands as mainly ja ‘wife and mother', exuding ighorance and the

Nh it ;

26 MA

notion that intelligence does not matter so long as you get your man. This nauseating image of

family life is used daily to shape the ideas of women in particular.

The working class wife and mother is supposed to view her own drudgery at home as_ her rightful place ordained by the mutterings of Princess Di, The constant attempts to get working class families to ‘identify’ with the monarchy is part of the con which presents them as above politics. If successful this greatly increases the potential power of a figure like Charles to intervene in a political crisis if it becomes necessary.

qo

Whilst the demand for abolish-

ing the monarchy has no special mobilising potential in Britain today it should be inscribed on the banner of all who call themselves socialists. ABOLISH In opposition Labour should

boycott all ‘royal’ occasions and wash its hands completely of the filth of knighthoods, honours, etc. In power it should immediately abolish the monarchy along with the House of Lords.

In the middle ages Kings and

Queens claimed they ruled on behalf of God. The God on whose behalf the British monarchy now reigns is capitalism. Workers justifiably sick of the sight of these trinket-laden parasites must be-

ware, Behind the glitter lie the guns; as capitalism's twilight years draw-in their royal highnesses are well prepared by law, tradition and class to exchange one for the other.@

by Paul Mason

PEACE TALKS FAIL

FOR THE PAST six months in Sri Lanka political attention has been fixed on the fate of discussions between the various Tamil guerilla groups and the United National Party (UNP) government. Also involved in these talks was Rajiv Ghandi's government in India, Neither the ‘ceasefire’ that accompanied the discussions, nor the discussions themselves were a success from the Tamil's point of view.

Scores of Tamil civilians in the North and Eastern Provinces have continued to be _ butchered by the army and police, made up exclusively of members of the majority Sinhalese community. Since the horrendous pogroms of 1983 when well over 1000 Tamils were slaughtered, another 2000 have been killed by the state forces or armed Sinhalese thugs. This state orchestrated’ terror has led to 100,000 Tamil refugees fleeing to the state of Tamil Nadu across the narrow’ Palk Strait in South-West India. A further 50,000 Tamils have fled to Europe.

Although continued, the significant Tamil guerillas' ions earlier in the year, the desperate plight of the Sri Lankan economy and the subsequent political crisis within President Jayawardene's UNP government have all contributed to these developments.

NEW CAMPAIGN

The All reconciliation the end of

the bloodletting has last year has seen developments, The successful act-

Party Conference talks collapsed at 1984 - when the UNP withdrew modest concessions to the Tamils at the behest of the reactionary Buddhist clergy. After that the Tamil guerillas mounted a new campaign against police Stations, army personnel, banks and hotels. Despite savage reprisals, Jayawardene's forces were unable to gain the upper hand,

By the spring of this year the government was coming under great pressure to do more’ than seek to impose a military solution on the Tamil question. The inability to contain the Tamil guerillas was not the UNP's only problem. The tourist industry has been decimated. The tea trade - the backbone of the country's economy - took a severe blow when the price of tea plummetted from 60 rupees a kilo (c£1.59) to 31 rupees in a couple of months,

In addition the fragile economic base was creaking under a growing defence budget which is expected to be in excess of 14 billion rupees this year, some 15% of GDP. Jayawardene allowed the budget to get out of control as he bought arms, tanks and helicopters from China, Pakistan and the US. He was desperate to try and impose a ‘final solution’ on the resistance of the Tamils which

has made two of the country's nine provinces ungovernable. His repression failed to stamp out resistance.

FOREIGN AID

By the summer of this year the Finance Minister, Ronnie de Mel was forced to concede:

"We cannot continue like this

for ever. Our earnings from

tourism have already declined.

Foreign investments will decrease, Foreign aid will become more difficult to

obtain, Production of exports

will decline", With a Foreign Aid Group meeting, convened by the World Bank, scheduled for the 20th June to determine Sri Lanka's aid package until the end of the decade, the political pressure mounted on the UNP

to talk to the guerillas. It was hoped that some sort of deal would, once again, create a 'favourable investment climate', and

help restore the tourist industry,

As a result of this pressure a four-phase cease-fire plan was agreed preparatory to talks. This was signed on June |8th. Between July 8-13 talks were held in the Indian city of Thimpu. They were inconclusive and new talks were resumed in Delhi last August.

In truth the discussions have led to no meaningful movement on the part of Jayawardene. The guerillas have pursued the aims of achieving elected provincial councils in the North and East, where Tamils pre-dominate, together with a regional government with federal powers linking up the two provinces. They have also demanded total contro! of the police and judiciary in these areas and control over land settlements, The latter is extremely important to the Tamils since the govern ment has been promoting Sinhalese settlement in Tamil areas to break up their communities,

MASSES DIVIDED

Jayawardene's proposals have not satisfied the various Tamil groups. In essence, the UNP has very little room to manoeuvre, As the chief party of the Sinhalese semi-colonial bourgeosie it has - ever since independence in 1948 - fostered and encouraged the repeated outbreaks of Sinhalese chauvinism.

In this way it has tried to cover up its own bankruptcy in the face of imperialism, and the poverty and oppression that such

imperialist domination brings with it.

In Sri Lanka, splitting the working class along communal

lines has prevented a unified mass resistance to the _ pro-imperialist policies of successive UNP and SLFP governments. Hence, any real concessions to the Tamils would spark off a massive wave of chauvinist resistance which the opposition parties would have no hesitation in demagogically exploiting to oust the UNP,

The political settlement then is less aimed at satisfying the grievances of the Tamils than

at calming the international money lenders and governments. The Tamils are being used as pawns, not only by the UNP, bur also by Rajiv Ghandi. Ghandi is

not interested in justice for the Tamils any more than Jayawardene

is. His treatment of the Sikhs and other communal groupings in his own country are proof

enough of this. Two other considerations are motivating Ghandi's intervention. The first is his desire to move India further away from

the USSR and back to a more solidly pro-US position. He hopes to eventually displace Pakistan as the White House's favourite

satellite in the region,

INDIAN SOLIDARITY

Reagan has insisted that Rajiv help Jayawardene bring the Tamil guerillas to heel. He obliged by insisting on the ceasefire to the Tamil groups. He demanded their presence in TVhimpu and _ Delhi. He deported two leaders (Balasingham and Chandrahasan) in

August when they voiced doubts over the talks. He _ threatened them with the destruction of all

their camps and aid in Tamil Nadu if they were not ‘flexible’.

The only restraining factor on Ghandi is the mass, open support for the beleaguered Tamils in Sri Lanka, among the 50 million Tamil Nadus in India. Thus he has to satisfy the solidarity movement more than the guerillas. The September 24th hartel (General Protest Strike) in Tamil Nadu was only one of the more spectacular signs of Ghandi's problem.

STATEMENT

For the moment the result of this parallelogram of forces is a political stalemate. Jayawardene's actions during September and October, after the failure of the August talks, indicates

what lies ahead. Then the military offensive was stepped up against the Tamil population — resulting in the destruction of a major guerilla camp and leading «.o a renewed flight of refugees from the North. Only an agreement on the composition of a Ceasefire Monitoring Committee on October 10th between the UNP, Ghandi and the six main groups _ stabilised the situation. This stability cannot last for long.

A HISTORY OF

OPPRESSION

THE INTER-COMMUNAL strife in Sri Lanka is a legacy of British imperialism's method of administrating its colonies. With limited numbers of troops and _ colonial admininstrators quite unable to hold down so vast an empire the British were masters at divide and rule. Wherever possible they based their colonial administration on minority peoples, systematically stoking up communal antagonisms. Sri Lanka (Ceylon) was such an example.

In 1802 under cover of the Napoleonic wars, Britain took over from the Dutch, After the 1850's when tea replaced coffee as the island's main export crop, the real power lay with the tea barons of Liptons and Brooke Bond, Ceylon's economy was effectively controlled from London's Mincing Lane.

It was the form of political control that the British sponsored to safeguard their super-profits that explains the ethnic rivalry today. Britain -selected out the ‘Ceylonese Tamils' (about half of all Tamils in Sri Lanka) as a privileged caste to administer the state bureaucracy. These Tami-

is are the descendants of the original Tamil population who came to the island from Tamil Nadu in India thousands of years ago. They form the majority in the North and Eastern provinces, The "Indian Tamils' on the other hand, _were brought over as_ conscript labour from india to provide an agricultural proletariat on the tea plantations of the south Highlands. Today, they are the most oppressed and super-exploited section of the Sri Lankan proletariat.

CHAUVINISM

Since 1948, political power has been held by one or other party of the Sinhalese bourgeoisie. The 1947 elections gave power to the United National Party (UNP). This party is the most conservative, most slavishly proimperialist. It traditionally represents the big Sinhalese landowners and, today, the higher and middle ranks of the state bureaucracy and the management of the state sector.

The alternative party of government for the Sinhalese bour-

MAIN ROADS “+s TEA AREAS aS TOWNS e

MAIN TAMIL AREAS @

UNP leader Jayewardene

geoisie has been, and remains, the Sri Lankan Freedom Party (SFLP) led by Mrs Bandaranaike. This party is based more in the traditionalist, religious sector of the Sinhalese bourgeosie, partly in the large areas of rice cultivation and partly amongst the landowners of: the central highlands. The Buddhist monks themselves are considerable landowners of the central highlands and this helps to explain the SLFP's virulent Sinhalese chauvinism which is part and parcel of its popular demagogy. The pace of anti-Tamil 'reforms' went further and faster under SLFP governments in the 1960s and 1970s!

Whether it | was under the SLFP or the UNP the Tamils of Sri Lanka have been systematically victimised. The political, educational and language privileges of the Ceylon Tamils have all but gone. They are systematically discriminated against in education through a ‘standardisation’ scheme which demands higher levels of achievement before Tamils can qualify for higher education. In employment, Tamils now occupy less than 5% of) the civil service posts and professional jobs and’ general unemployment is proportionately greater for them than for the Sinhalese.

Further, in | the 1970s. the government __institutionalised Sinhala as the only state language and has promot Sinhalese colonisation of the predominately Tamil areas, particularly in the East to break down| Tamil national cohesiveness.@

HAMBANTOTA

FOR TWO WEEKS duris ber the veteran Sri La skyist Edmund Samarak in London. He was i to represent the Re Workers Party (RWP) sions with the Moveme Revolutionary Communi national (MRC!) and ot conference. Later, toge representatives of the G discussions were held wi Power.

During his _ fortnic comrade Samarakkody a very successful pub" organised by Workers the Tamil question. He three other well atten ings at the invitation of Information Centre in the Eelam Solidarity and the Liberation Tiger:

LTTE guerillas - is the armed strugg

WORKERS POWER 79 December 1985/January 1986

LLAISM; A FLAWED STRATEGY

RANGED AGAINST Jayawardene are the organisations of the Tamils, many of which have taken up the armed struggle. How should

revolutionaries assess the role of the guerilla organisations in the present struggle? What has_ the

last twelve months revealed about their petit-bourgeois nationalism?

Ic is true that Ghandi has exerted pressure on the guerillas but it is also true that they have conceded to that pressure.

There could be no doubt that Rajiv's aim was to crush the revolutionary potential of the liberation struggle. Of course, there are circumstances when entering negotiations with the enemy may be unavoidable, in a_ situation of weakness or as a result of military exhaustion, for example. But this should not be presented to one's own supporters as anything other than the need for a negotiated, temporary truce to buy time, In fact all the discussions illusions in the

the groups in sowed aspira-

actively role and

Eelam. He also did an interview for Tamil Times.

At each of these meetings a lively, comradely exchange took place on the national question

in Sri Lanka. Because of the nature

of the current repression in Sri Lanka itself and the subsequent difficulties of establishing and

maintaining political contacts between all the forces fighting Jaya-

wardene, these meetings were of exceptional importance to the RWP.

Finally, we would like to

thank Comrade Samarakkody for enabling us to participate in discussions with representatives of these forces in the forefront of the struggle in Sri Lanka. These discussions have greatly helped in writing this article.@

tions of Rajiv Ghandi. The spokesperson for the Eelam People RevoLiberation F

lutionary RLP) was We went come peace, are not Our = faith

typical in

this

(EPregard:

ront

to Thimpu and we have

to Delhi honour against

in

because and di

the

India's Indian govern-

we want gnity. We efforts,

ment has not diminished".

What diminished mass

does

is

mobilisation

working class

The guerilla Tigers emerged

They genuine

of

most groups,

T in

emerged defence

seem their fai of

and poor

important

the amil Eela 1977.

and

organi

to have th in the the Tamil peasantry.

of the Liberation m (LTTE)

as of

grew sations

the Tamil villages and are sustain-

ed by they have

and daring

forces, bu

them.

At a mil

been capable

attacks

on

itary level of heroic the state

t they have never been

strong enough

or reprisa

weakness -

Is.

one

to prevent

pogroms

A more fundamental

inherent

in gueril-

laism pursued as a_ political stra-

tegy -

has

been the

failure to

set the mass of the Tamil working motion behind liberation,

class in of national

As we give the fight for including to secede ol

The may ban the becuuse they solved a much when the did not and

of

th

revolutionary

unconditional

of

self-determination,

the

separation -

and Tamil Eelam.

Sri

denounce

TUL it,

created,

ie

lower demands gO much

educational rights and against

form t

Lankan the FF from but it is They c Tamil ‘pr level de of beyon

job discrimination,

Under enforced

the and

yoke ~of cemented

R AGAINST

Tamil up

the

the goal

communists

support to people to and right state-

the heir

bourgeoisie

separation and

Parliament a problem ould have oblem' at cades ago, Tamils d language

oppression, by pog-

roms and even colonisation of Tamil areas, the Tamils have now come to see separation as the only answer. Not to support this

right is to capitulate to Sinhalese chauvinism,

However, as Marxists, we do not advocate the road of separation as a real and lasting solution to the oppression suffered by the Tamil people. We are in principle in favour of the largest possible integrated national territories as a way of fostering national political and economic development under the rule of the workers. The national geographical entity of Tamil Eelam would be the Northern and Eastern’ provinces which are amongst the most impoverished economically. Most of the guerilla groups have, to date, rejected the option of becoming integrated into a unitary state with Tamil Nadu in India. The majority of the Tamil groups

recognise that those who hold this view in fact aim to reduce the Sinhalese to a minority and

thus tend to fight chauvinism with chauvinism.

GUERILLA SPLITS

this pro-Indian nationalism most Tamil groups claim to be in favour of a ‘socialist’ Eelam and some count themselves 'Marxist-Leninists'. They at least recognise chat Rajiv Ghandi has not the slightest intention of allowing a socialist Tamil Eelam to be created on India's SouthEastern flank. However, this fact only serves to underline the oppor-

Against

tunism and deceit involved’ in their attitude to Ghandi in the recent talks.

The failure to advance the cause Of Tamil Eelam by the struggle of the masses has, this year, led to the ideological disintegration of the guerilla movement and organisational — splits. Today, there are two umbrella organisations. The largest is called the Eelam National Liberation Front (ENLF). Within this are to be found the LTTE, the Tamil Eelam Liberation Organisation

(TELO), the EPRLF and the Eelam Revolutionary Organisation (EROS), The second is the People's Liberation Organisation of Tamil Eelam (PLOTE) which claims 6000 fighters in the field and the Tamil Liberation Army (TELA), However there are probably no more than 1,000 armed fighters in the field spread accross all six groups.

While the split reflects the growing impasse of the movement, the differences are of a secondary character. On a day to day basis the two groups differ as to the military targets of thei guerilla action. Those in the ENLF tend to hit economic targets such as hotels and banks; in addition the LTTE tend to concentrate on killing individual soldiers. They have been accused by PLOTE of succumbing to chauvinism and killing Sihalese civilians without good cause.

STAGEISM

PLOTE purpose of

argue that the prime military action is to defend the Tamils from _ attack. They also conduct raids on_ barracks andon police stations with the aim of capturing arms. They claim to be non-sectarian and even have some Sinhalese members.

Despite these

to

differences the groups are united at a more fundamental level; namely, over the relationship between the democratic and socialist stage of the revolution and over their attitude to the Tamil working class and its role in the struggle for national liberation. For example, PLOTE has argued: "In the struggle for the establishment of a_ socialist state PLOTE has clearly identified two phases. During the first phase the aim is a democratic revolution via a national liberation struggle,

the second stage being the consolidation of the first phase, and the continued class struggle leading to the establishment of a socialist state" (Our Enemy Is Imperialism page 2.)

It is only necessary to ask which class has the interest and power to achieve ever the ‘democratic revolution’ in Sri Lanka, and the weakness of PLOTE's _ position emerges, The Tamil bourgeoisie are a weak force. Their social base is largely confined to commerce and the professions. It is only the Tamil working class - particularly the Tamil plantation workers of the hill country where 70% of the GNP is produced - that can crush Jayawardene's Bonapartist rule,

The PLOTE, more than any of the groups recognise the force of this argument. That is why they insist that the democratic phase means; "a strong people's democracy. This alone can guarantee the democratic rights of the masses as a whole, and do away with the pseudo-democracy enjoyed by a section of the people - the priviliged class". (ibid)

Moreover, to prevent the emergence of Tamil Eelam as u "bourgeois state", it is essential

that "the working class assumes leadership at all levels of the struggle”. (ibid)

Yet it is precisely this recognition that introduces an unbearable tension into PLOTE's strategy. How, around what demands and goals, with what methods of strug-

gle, can the working class come to the leadership of the struggle for national liberation? What exactly will it take to arouse the Tamil plantation workers? the simple call for a separate famil Eelam state has, by and

large, left them unmoved.

CLASS STRUGGLE

This cannot simply be explained by reference to the slave-like conditions under which they coil. Rather, these Kandyan Tamils do not see how a separate Northern and Eastern Tamil Eelam relates to the question of relieving their oppression and exploitation. Are they being asked to vacate the Southern Highlands and .move? For what? Poverty and unemployment under their ‘own' state? The contradictions of a_ struggle limited to nationalist goals are obvious. They explain the passivity of the Kandyan) Tamils in the present nationalist! struggle,

To seriously mobilise the masmeans to agitate and organise the key!) democratic and social demands that strike at the heart of the enslavement of the Tamil plantation Workers, Of course, this must include the fundamental democratic rights which have been stolen) from the plantation Tamils. Today, only a quarter of them have voting and citizenship rights.

Yer unless the! social demands of the plantation| Tamils are placed in the foreground they will remain passive. | Whole families work for less thah £2 a day. They survive on rice Handouts. Families of ten live in one room ten foot square. Demands jon pay and conditions of work) and home life are decisive here.}

The guerilla groups must also

ses around

recognise that the methods of class struggle néeded to achieve these demands are the _ strike, occupation and | General Strike, At the moment,| as a statement of PLOTE reveals, they do not understand this: re is a consensus of opinion |jamong all groups involved in the liberation struggle of Tamil Eelam) that the only means to achieve their goal is through the armed struggle." (ibid page 7)

So long as this outlook predominates then e working class will not be allowed to assume the leadership f the = struggle. Armed = actions nd guerillaism,

can only be an auxiliary method of struggle.

In the first instance, armed defence of the villages from attack, of workers meetings, of demonstrations or to supervise the occupation of factories and plantations, are the necessary military tasks that relate to the

mass struggle. But the main weapons of the workers are the strike and the occupation, Only these will guarantee the participation of the mass of workers in their own jiberation. Only these will generate a movement to immobilise and overthrow Jayawardene's rule,

REVOLUTION

To advance along this road, however, is to consciously abandon the search for a distinct ‘'democratic phase’ in the Sri Lankan revolution. While common actions with bourgeois forces cannot be ruled out if those forces are prepared to engage in a real struggle against the Sinhalese oppressors, we cannot subordinate the demands and goals of the Tamil workers to what is acceptable to «these forces. The forces in the TULF and those most closely associated with Ghandi's iniatives include landowners or small employers as well as professionals. They will oppose the mobilisation of the masses around their class demands because it threatens their own Class privileges,

Those fighters sympathetic to the guerillas must face up to this dilemma. To achieve national liberation the Tamil workers must be mobilised in class struggle actions around their own class demands. If they come to the leader-

ship of this struggle, if they succeed in establishing a Workers and Peasants government then

they will not stop their revolution half-way. With political power they will move against capitalist property and their imperialist overlords. Indeed, the full flowering of a ‘people's democracy’ can only take place after the overthrow of capitalism in Sri Lanka, In short, the revolution must become a permanent revolution.

Finally, a radical break with the outlook and programme of Tamil nationalism is crucial precisely because success is unlikely unless the bulk of the Sri Lankan working class, which is Sinhalese, is brought over to the side of the revolution. [t is hardly necessary to point out that they cannot be mobilised as a class to the fight for a separate Tamil Eelam even though it is crucial to the task of breaking them from the UNP that they are won over to supporting the right of Tamils to self-determination.

PROGRAMME

Above all, leturian unity can be to the end only by action programme of immediate and transitional demands aimed against Jayawardene's regime and its imperialist backers.O

Sinhala-Tamil prosustained

a common

Against the cuts in _ food subsidies!

Against all cuts in social services and benefits!

For the cancellation of all debts to the imperialist bankers and all payments to the former plantation owners!

For workers' control of the nationalised estates and plantations!

For a sliding scale of wages

to defend living standards against inflation caused by repeated devaluations of the rupee!

For a real programme of agrarian revolution, Take the land away from the land-

owners and the state bureaucrats to ensure its collective

co-operative or individual ownership by those who work on it!

WORKERS POWER 79 December 1985/January 1986

THE TRANSITION FROM military dictatorship to bourgeois democraTHE TRANSITION FROM military dictatorship to bourgeois democratic rule in Brazil has not led to the political and social stability that the bourgeoisie hoped for. The intense class conflict that began with the strikes of 1978, has not yet been dampened by "democracy", In fact struggle has

the tempo of the intensified as have resisted the effects of Brazil's economic crisis. With inflation running at an unprecedent 230% real wages are continually falling. The whole economy is burdened with a foreign debt totalling $100 billion, As a result the demands of the IMF and foreign banks are leading the government and the bosses to step up their attacks on the workers. In response the working class have taken militant industrial action. Politically the bourgeoisie is finding things difficult. President Sarney's Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB) which emerged as the dominant party in the transition from military rule, secured contro! of 17 out of the 23 state capitals in the November municipal elections. However, it suffered a major

class workers

set-back in the city of SAo Paulo where Junio Quadros was elected on an extreme right-wing, anticommunist, law and order platform. Of more significance, and of greater concern for the ruling class, was the advance of the lefi-wing Workers Party (PT). Quadros' success in Sado Paulo was an isoluted instance of right— wing advance, and is widely seen as largely, although not wholly,

& product of his personal popularity. In contrast the PT's vote increased substantially throughout the country. So while Fortaleza was the only city to elect a PT majority - itself an impressive indication of the T's growing support ~ the party did manage to gan 20% of the vote in the major industrial city of SAéo Paulo and came second or third in many other areas, defeating many of the established parties. These developments led a journalist, close to Sarney to comment, ‘The threat of a more radical PT is high on the government's list of worrisome issues.'

STRIKES

The advance of the Workers! Party comes at a time of continued working Class unrest in Brazil. At the same time as shifting allegiances to the PT from other parties (in particular the PMDB) workers are taking industrial uction on a large scale, Rio de Janeiro health workers fought a 68 day strike during the winter (our summer). Bank workers held 4 national strike in September and in October 180,000 metal workers in Rio de Janeiro struck. November saw more than 500,000 workers in the Sado Paulo region wage a strike during which police used tear gas and truncheons to attack pickets, Chemical and plastics workers, retail clerks, bakery workers und metal workers were ull involved in this mass strike wave.

Such strike waves are not new in Brazil, Industrial action by the working class was one of

the major factors contributing to the collapse of bourgeois confidence in the military regime and the consequent transition towards "democratic" rule. Similarly, the developing political polarisation in Brazilian society has its roots in the period of military rule.

MILITARY RULE

Throughout the early 1980s it became increasingly clear that the military dictatorship was incapable of solving the severe problems besetting Brazil. The full brunt of the world economic crisis hit the country in 1981 causing a fall in the GNP for the first time in 10 years.

In 1981 and 1982 the government was unable to even meet the interest payments due on the foreign debt. Resorting to IMF direction in 1983 failed to solve the economic problems. Despite

IMF imposed which cut public duced wages and the government tempt to reduce ion.

Suffering the effects of rising inflation and a consequent decline in real wage levels, workers launched intensified action both industrially and politically, In 1983 workers launched street demonstrations, organised food raids on supermarkets and took widespread strike uction, For example in July 1983, Sado Paulo was paralysed by a partial general strike which was about 80% elfective.

Heightened trade union struggles led to greater working class politicisation, It was in this period that the PI established itself as a ujor force in the workers' movement. Indeed the formation and rapid growth of the Workers Party reflected the rising class consciousness of the working class, his posed a growing threat to the military government.

austerity meéeusures expenditure, reincreased taxes, failed in its) atthe rate of inflat-

CONSENSUS

Fuced with deepening economic crisis and the growing combativity of the workers, the ruling class, under pressure from its imperialist masters, was keen to contain unrest. Increasingly, the military Was considered incapable of dealing with working class discontent. Moves to transform the dictatorship into a more "free" electoral system rapidly gained momentum.

In this way, the bosses hoped to obtain a consensus for "national reconciliation" and "peaceful" re-

trenchment. The more perceptive elements of the ruling class believed that a more subtle approach to making the’ working

class pay for the crisis, was necessary. "Democratic" rule provided a way out of the impasse.

Once the government decided to institute moves towards — increased democratisation, arguments concerning the form these elections should take raged fiercely.

So as to ensure the maximum

continuity between the military and civilian regimes Figueiredo - the military President favoured

indirect elections through an electoral college. Confident in the belief that the pro-government PDS purty held a majority in the 686 member electoral college, Figueiredo opposed direct elections by the electorate as a_ whole. He well knew that an electorate would overwhelmingly reject his party.

In response, united in the Now' committees, the PMDB (which liberal bourgeoisie, elements’ of the middie class and sections of workers) as well as the PT. During the period leading up to the vote on the issue in the Chamber of Deputies, a gigantic movement grew around the ‘Direct Elections Now! committees, Demonstrations attracted over 10 million Brazillans onto the streets - the biggest mass movement in the history of Brazil.

Figueiredo moved against the call for direct elections and used his military powers to help squash the demand in the Chamber of Deputies. A majority of Deputies voted for elections via the electoral college, Yet Figueiredo had not recognised the depth of feeling on this question -_ including within his own party, the PDS,

Opposition parties ‘Direct Election These included represents the

Fearful of their constituents' views and influenced by pressure from their supporters, a group of PDS deputies took an independent line over ‘Direct Elections’. They refused to support the government.

Then, during the process of selecting a PDS’ candidate for the impending Presidential elections

(January 5th 1985), this grouping solidified into an open opposition within the PDS. The © selection

PT leader Lula

of a right-winger, Paulo Malul, as PDS candidate against the wishes of the more "liberal" elements

finally pushed the into extablishing a

of the party oppositionist

formal organisation known as_ the Liberal Front. Allying with the main oppo-

sition party the PMDB, the Liberal Front supported the candidature of Tancredo Neves.

This grouping of the PMDB and Liberal Front became known as the Democratic Alliance and

defeating Matherefore be-

successful in Neves

was juf. Tancredo

FOR THE LAST THREE years

the Chilean ruling class and its imperialist allies have been struggling with a seemingly insoluble problem, How to dismantle Pinochet's dictatorship without at the same time producing an enormous working class upsurge.

The economic crisis facing Chile is intense. The foreign debt has risen to 20 billion dollars, unemployment is 30% and inflation running at 25% for the last 6

months. Continuing working class resistance to the poverty and repression adds to the instability

of the regime. The Chilean bourgeoisie is looking enviously at moves towards controlled bourgeois democracy in both Uruguay and Brazil hoping that such a solution would both defuse working class militancy, and make it easier to open up the economy to further imperialist investment, But they have so far failed to persuade the military that they cun achieve something approaching democracy without precipitating the Chilean workers into a revolutionary upsurge. The traditional strength of Chilean workers’ political organisations makes the bourgeoisie fear a "Nicaraguan" road more than any other outcome,

The 1973 coup inflicted an enormous defeat on the Chilean workers and its organisations, but ten years later, led by a generation which has grown up under Pinochet's tyranny, the workers again took to the streets to oust the dictatorship. The bourgeois parties face a dilemma, Whole sections of business have suffered from the regime's economic policies and want a government more

came the country's first elected civilian President in 21 years. José Sarney, Neves' running mate

was elected Vice President, and after Neves' sudden death, became the President.

Since its formation in the late 1970s the Workers Party (Partido do Trabalhadores) has grown rapidly, Based on the most militant sections of the industrial working class (eg the metal workers) the Party hus begun to attract other, traditionally less) militant sections such as the agricultural workers,

responsive to their needs. But Pinochet remains intransigent,

pointing to the spectre of a revived and militant workers movement if he is ousted, |

The Octobér 1984 strike led to & marked change of strategy on|the part of the largest bourgeois| party - the Christian Democracy (DC), That strike, organised by the Peoples Democratic Movement (MDP) led by the Communist Party (PCC), demonstrated the | growing strength of the workers (movement in Chile. It was followed by a Declaration of a Ange Siege" by Pino-

general

chet, During the period it was in force (November 1984 - June 1985) repression escalated with over 33,000 people imprisoned,

censorship extended and all meetings banned,

Terrified by |the growing strength of the y seed movement the Christian Pemocracy moved rapidly to try |and reassure the extreme right that the transition could be accomplished without handing power |to the workers. It stepped up its attacks on the

"violent" methotls used by the PCC in the sttuggle against the dictatorship. In| August of _ this year, under thé good offices of

Cardinal Francis¢o Fresno, appointed by the Vatican, a new "Accord" was signed which struck an agree-

ment between the parties to the right of the DC, the National and National nion Parties, the

bc the

itself and ja section of Socialist Party (the PS-Briones). This National "Accord for the transition t6 democracy" does not call for thé removal of Pino-

chet, nor for the abolition of his

BRAZIL AFTER THE MILITARY

The recent election results are just one indication of this, Originating in the trade union movement and dominating the radical union tederation, the CUT (United Workers Federation) the PT has developed political positions which reflected the influence of the various elements’ which constitute the party. Revolutionary and reformist tendencies co-exist within the party, though the Marx-

ists, as yet, form only a minority current. Conflict between the different tendencies occasionally

erupts into the open, The resulting

tension means that the party frequently vacillates in its policies at crucial times in the struggle,

This is particularly the case when there is conflict between the leadership and rank and file.

POPULAR

This was shown in the run up to and during the election pro-

cess. Despite initially providing the main impetus’ behind the 'Direct Elections Now' campaign in the formative stages, the PT soon lust the initiative to the PMDB, Faced with the entry of these bourgeois forces the PT became satisfied with operating

as the "left wing" of the popular movement led by the PMDB. It fuiled to advance an alternative strategy or leadership to counter the bourgeois-liberal elements. While it did advance and _ insist upon a series of important economic demands of the workers, it did not raise, as an alternative to bourgeois democracy, the call for a workers and peasants government. Indeed, for a period, it played the idea of a social peace with Neves and a vote for him in the electoral college. The leader of the PT, Luis Inacio da Silva, or "Lula", as he is popularly known, explained the potential terms of such a pact, "We are not opposed in principle to the the idea of a pact, but it must be properly negotiated on a firm political basis.’ In response

A NEW

1980 constitution, only its ‘ammendment’, It also declares that all those who advocate violence and reject democratic ‘pluralism’ place themselves outside the con stitution and therefore the transition to legality - a threat obviously directed at the PCC, In this way the Christian Democracy is signalling its willingness to accept the most restricted democracy in return for some concessions from the dictatorship, The Accord

with pact

to criticisms that

has even been welcomed by the Pope and by Reagan,

Needless to say Pinochet immediately denounced the Accord - saying the gap between his government and the opposition was "unbridgeable".

The key to the destruction

of the Pinochet regime lies with the workers' parties - the PS and PCC, The disaster of Popular Unity and its demobilisation of the working class befure the military coup shattered the Socialist Party, which survived the repression only in warring fragments. The PCC

with its well financed apparatus and international support from the Communist’ Bloc, — survived the repression much better. In

the last period of struggle it has been growing rapidly - especially amongst the working class youth of the 'Poblaciones' (shanty towns).

The Stalinists have followed a dual strategy. On the one hand to maintain and win support amongst the militant youth they have embarked on an "armed struggle" through the Frente Patriotco Manuel Rodriguez (FPMR). The FPMR- has been responsible for numerous bomb attacks on power stations, the US consulate, govern-

Sn ee =

WORKERS POWER 79 December 1985/January 1986 9

the PT was waging a class war Lula insisted, ‘There is no war, All that is happening is that the

workers are organising themselves to put their just demands,'

The pact that Lula and the other reformist elements in the PT had argued for, failed to materialise. Lula himself has since admitted that such a deal was never struck because of the success of the Liberal Front in striking a deal with Neves first!

After the defeat of the ‘Direct Elections Now' movement

Figueiredo put an end to all hopes

of direct elections, Faced with this the PT could only argue for an abstention from the electoral college. With some of the PT's 8 deputies breaking ranks and voting fur Neves anyway, the party was left making a symbolic protest at the moment of a_ political crisis.

This debacle did push the PT in a more militant direction. Emphasis switched to rejecting

any social pact proposed by Presi-

dent Sarney, campaigning for democratic demands, including a sovereign Constituent assembly, and using strike action to win economic improvements for the masses. This renewed militancy explains the recent electoral successes of the PT. Via the CUT, the PT hus put itself at the head

of the opposition to Sarney's austerity programme.

The growth of both and the PT has also militancy in the ranks of CONCLAT, a major union federation kept in check, until recently, by the "moderate" Brazilian Stalinists. Facing the danger of defections to the CUT, CONCLAT has made overtures to its rival and, in the November strike wave, an alliance was concluded between the two federations. Although the joint platform was a watered down version of the CUT's original demands, the fact that the strike Jas so effective, and largely successful, will possibly lead to calls for greater unity in the future. The main demands of the strike were met, including a real wage rise, quarterly wage increases, and a reduction of the working week from 48 to 45 hours.

Such unity must be encouraged. However, CUT sections and other militants must ensure that unity is not achieved at the expense of militancy. Militants must be wary of and prevent, attempts

the CUT stimulated

Chilean army - still in control

ment port to

declared "

buildings etc. A recent rethe central committee the aim was to render a state of generalised rebellion which will paralyse the country". At the same time they have repeatedly declared their willingness to support a bourgeois government which represented a break with military rule, preferably a "government of advanced democratic tendencies, with a socialist perspective". Thus the armed = actions remain for the PCC a negotiating tactic, aimed not at breaking the army, but strengthening its so called reform wing and forcing it “back to barracks" and out of the political arena,

The PCC and its allies in the MDP - the MIR and yarious PS factions - were even unwilling to denounce the Accord. Indeed

POPULAR UNIT

by the CONCLAT leadership to weaken the CUT's_ tradition of militancy and radicalism.

Unity must be forged on the basis of a principled, militant approach to fighting for workers' interests, and not by accommodating to the right-wing union bureaucrats keen to sell out workers in the interests of “social peace" with the bourgeois regime.

At the same time revolutionaries must be ever ready to pre sent a workers' answer to the continuing political crisis in Brazil, tlere, a correct assessment of the PT is vital. Born under the shadow of repression and nur-

tured in the light of intense class Struggle the PT has not yet finally .crystallised into a reformist instrument of the bourgeoisie. Revolutionary tendencies are tolerated in its ranks, Its leaders, as the electoral debacle showed, sull vacillate junder the keenly felt’ conflicting pressures of the masses and the bourgeoisie.

TWO TASKS

au situation revolutionmust combine two tasks the PT. First they must combat every vacillation towards the right that Lula and the reformist leaders make. They must counterpose to all talk of pacts with the bourgeusie, strict working class independence and class struggle against austerity § measures. Secondly they must rally the class conscious workers to a revolutionary banner within the PT. The Brazilian working class cannot do without a revolutionary party. The starting point for building such w party is the fight with-- in the py

In such aries within

A clear programme that links the completion of the burning democrutic tasks in Brazil with the struggle for working class power must be advanced by a revolutionary tendency in the PT, Whether such a tendency will tri-

umph within) the PT,(which it should aim to do) or whether the PT will face a split, will be deter-

mined in struggle, It cannot be said that the transformation of the PT is, as yet impossible. No

time must be lost. And no compromises by revolutionaries, in the interests of unity with the reformists, Must be made.@

by Steve Foster

“Tn |

‘o

response was to declare ic a "positive" step, because it brought in mew sectors, eg the far right, into opposition to Pinochet! Later they declared they could not approve such a document because it did not specifically call for the removal of Pinochet,

The best allies offer class is a of Popular would prefer alliance with

their first

the PCC and its the Chilean working repeat performance Unity (although — it to strike a broader the Christian Democracy.) With the Chilean economy in deep crisis after 14 years of "free enterprise" dictatorship, such a government could only manage capitalism and preserve the mixed

economy by making the masses continue to sacrifice their living standards, this time in the name

of “preserving democracy",

to a

A MASS RALLY of 10,000 in Durban celebrated the formation of the new independent trade union federation COSATU. A day earlier on December Ist, 900 delegates met, debated and created the Congress of South African Trade Unions.

This conference brought to a conclusion four years of unity discussions between’ the various rival union federations which had emerged in the period after 1979. COSATU now embraces 33 unions with a combined membership of over 500,000. It is now the largest union federation in South Africa

and the largest in the country's history.

The main components of COSATU are those previously in FOSATU, the powerful NUM and

several smaller general and industrial unions.

The formation of COSATU is a great blow against Apartheid. This will be particularly true if COSATU lives up to its founding

principles which set down a commitment to a centralised, but democratic structure based on _ industrial unionism. Already merger discussions are under way between various COSATU unions to build united industrial unions especially in the engineering, car and food sectors,

DELEGATES

The federation has made provision for a wide network of local and regional shop stewards councils and for worker delegates to form a majority at national congresses. While the independent trade union movement is growing from strength to strength’ the old union federations are split and declining. SACLA (whites only) has shrunk from 250,000 to 100,000 in recent years, TUCSA_ which has a large percentage of black workers has lost 150,000 members in two years and now stands at

340,000. COSATU now © stands to make further inroads’ into TUCSA's black membership. Socialists and trade unionists the world over will welcome the formation of COSATU. But the

Against the fake democratic transition proposals the working class must counterpose the fight

for a sovereign constituent assembly. Any assembly or parliament would be a farce if it met under the bayonets of the "gorillas", Only the destruction of the dictatorship by an insurrectionary general strike which disintegrated the armed forces and armed the proletariat would open the way constituent assembly genuinely under the democratic pressure of the masses. Such a struggle however posses in the sharpest form possible - which class shall rule in Chile? The only solution to the bourgeoisie's economic and political crisis is to fight for a workers government which would make the bosses and imperialists pay for their own crisis,

Such a government would include in its programme the immediate and complete cancellation of the debts to the imperialists and their banks, the nationalisation under workers control of major monopolies, be they Chilean or foreign owned, It would include a massive programme of public works to deal with unemployment and move to immediately solving the land question through a massive redistribution of land to’ small farmers and cooperatives,

The current leadership of Chilean workers by the PS and PCC offer no such similar solution. They merely propose a class collaborationist utopia which is of no use to workers seeking to destroy the dictatorship and its imperialist allies,@

by Stuart King

o Bex, —_

Armed Boer

major task for black workers still lies ahead af them. The decisive questions are how and in what direction will the new union

power be used ?

The’ political and economic situation in South Africa is_ still deteriorating. The revolutionary crisis is deepening. Nearly 1000 people have died since the beginning of the present crisis in September 1984. Some 430 of these have been killed since the State of Emergency was declared on July 21st when Botha's state forces were given a licence to kill. This measure, as with the decision to ban media coverage from November 2nd, was designed to intensify the state's attack on black activists. The lie that it was the media's presence that caused much

of the unrest has been well and truly nailed with the’ revelation that the daily death rate has gone up since the ban to 3.5 . Seventy-six people were killed in November, the second largest monthly total in 1985. Nearly

1,500 of the six and a half thousa-

nd arrested under the State of

Emergency remain locked up. Meanwhile, many of the small-

er townships - never the scene of major unrest |- are now joining in the struggle against the troop

occupations and organising boycott committees against white businesses. In addition, in the last weeks the ANC's military wing (Umkhonto we Sizwe) have stepped up their guerilla attacks in urban areas on black police, army patrols and economic targets.

A grave danger facing the South African revolution at this moment is that) the energy and

heroism displayed in the township struggles will be) exhausted before the trade union might of the black workers is| brought decisively into the political fight. Before the new amalgamation unions like the NUM and FQSATU as a whole not only rejected political affiliation to the ANC/UDF but eschewed any thought of the trade unions taking a}! leading role in the fight to bring down the aparteid state. They! concentrated on the narrower (economistic) aim of building up trade union strength and organization to fight for better wages and conditions now and protect the working cluss' independent interests’ in any future black capitalist uth Africa,

The founding conference of

CHOICES FACING COSATU

COSATU represented a shift away from this position, While the UDF affiliates to COSATU have agreed to industrial unionism the NUM and FOSATU have moved a step closer to the popular front politics of the UDF/ANC.,

The influence of popular frontism, and its prime movers, the Stalinists who lead the ANC, pre-

sents COSATU with a very real danger. If the Stalinists are allowed to triumph they will turn COSATU into a powerful weapon but one in the hands of petitbourgeois nationalists and subordinated to their interests. Genuine working class independence and therefore the potential for work-

ing class leadership in the revolu-

tion is jeopardised by Stalinism's popular front project in the unions. And, when Apartheid is defeated this leadership will try

to limit the demands and struggles of the workers to what can be harmonized with a "democratic" black capitalist South Africa,

In fact the issues debated at the delegate conference - overtime bans, shorter working week, defending the minimum wage - show the _ incompatibility of workers' interests with any form of capitalism in South

Africa. Capitalism in the country is crisis-wracked, A black "democratic®™ South Africa would have to take on the working class over these issues, The nationalist project of “economic reconstruction" would clash with the most vital needs of the workers. Moreover, pressure from world imperialism to make a black governed South Africa safe for their investments would necessitate attacks on the working class,

Precisely for these COSATU, and AZACTU CUSA, the black unions still outside its ranks, must reject the Stalinist inspired class collaborationist policies of the ANC. They must maintain absolute working class independence. They must throw their full weight into the present struggle for democratic demands and generalise this fight to one against capitalism as well as against Apartheid,

reasons and

If COSATU is not won to this course then COSATU will be used by the ANC/UDF as a

stage army to frighten Botha into making concessions,

VIGILANT

In the coming months militants in COSATU need to be vigilant. Their federation will stand as a pole of attraction to thousands of, as yet, unorganised workers. COSATU's ranks can and must be swelled. The new elements can be mobilised for a fight against Apartheid and for socialism. To ensure that this happens all tendencies towards bureaucratism in COSATU (which will be encouraged by the world's trade union apparatuses and _ possibly even the apartheid state itself) must be resisted. Today COSATU has the lions share of 12,500 shop stewards and 1,440 shop stewards committees, as well as most of the very smal! (306) layer of paid officials, This relationship of forces must be preserved and extended in the building of COSATU,

COSATU can and must play the key role in building an independent party of the working class. If this goal is set then leaders and rank and file can debate its

programme and organisation, Against all attempts to direct such a workers' party onto the

Labour Party, will fight for a combat party. They will fight for an action programme which starts from the burning revolution-

road of a reformist

revolutionaries

ary democratic task of smashing Apartheid and shows’ how _ this must culminate in the _ seizure

of political power by the working class. The exploited and oppressed the world over will hail the emergence of COSATU, Forward to victory!d

10

WORKERS POWER 79 December 1985/January 1986

NOT THE LEAST dramatic after effect of the 1984/5 miners' strike was the split in the WRP. Before the strike no organisation could have seemed more sealed off from reality, a closed world where the embalmed errors of 40 years had been turned into a cult around the figure of Gerry Healy.

But the great strike blew down the doors and threw open the shutters of the WRP. Having breathed che fresh air of class struggle and workers democracy in the strike, the WRP's members, especially the youth, were not going to be shut up again in Healy's fantasy land, Their pressure forced a section of the oldguard leaders to break with Healy. Once started this process went a good deal further than the expulsion of Healy and the blindly loyal gang that supported him.

POLITICAL CRIMES

scarcely a Newsline passes without extending the list of Healy's political crimes and the time scale of their duration. The problem is whether the present intoxication with denouncing Healy and with re-examining their past will pave the way for a thorough going Trotskyist break with the tradition that Healy represented or whether it will merely lead to a new form of watered down Healyism.

The danger to be = avoided is to simply blame all of the WRP's past sins on the crimes of the cult-figure turned demon, Healy is and has long been a disgrace to the name of Trotskyism. But a single individual cannot be blamed for the degeneration of a political outfit for over 30

Nowadays,

years. To answer the riddle of Healyism the WRP must address the political roots of their orga-

nisation's degeneration,

Much that many of us have known for years is at last acknowledged in Newsline's columns. This is to be welcomed. Healy's once vaunted dialectics are now ridiculed as gobbledygook. The absurd perspective of a permanently existing revolutionary situation § since 1974 and of the British working class having already entered into a ‘decisive revolutionary struggle for power’ has at last been jettisoned. The comrades have rightly recognised the relation between this perspective and the degenerate tyrannical rule that Healy and his henchmen imposed on those that believed it. Among

“Diabolical Materialism"

the youth and trade unionists there seems to be a genuine desire to break out of the sectarian isolation that Healy kept them in.

The craven and _ consistent opportunism that accompanied Healy's bombastic posturing has also been recognised. The outrageous assistance offered by the Healyites to the murderers of [raqi communists, the slavish trumpeting of the ramblings of Gaddaffi are now denounced by those who once bore well-deserved infamy for aiding and abetting Gerry Healy.

But even the political attack on _ Healy's blocs with Ken other municipal What is more significant here is that long serving WRPer Tom Kemp could go into print quite rightly pointing out that this opportunism has deep roots. In December 3rd's Newsline he argued that Healy took a similar thoroughly opportunist attitude to Aneurin Bevan back in 1952.

At their recent

this air.

helps to clear So too does the unprincipled Livingstone and Labour leftists.

public meet-

AFTER HEALY HITHER THE WRP?

ings WRP leaders have announced their intention of trying to get to the roots of quite how their organisation hit the depths they now acknowledges that it did. More to the point hundreds of past and present WRPers are asking themselves and their leaders that very same question. Having declared that Healy's methods ‘virtually reduced the party to an opportunist sect'. The WRP has announced, in the words of Geoff Pilling, that, ‘we intend to carry out a systematic investigation of the move- ment's history, from the time of Trotsky's death onwards’.

MYTHS

We think the comrades are right to start their investigation that long ago. Without doing so

they will not be able to rid them-

selves of one of the fundamental myths that Healy propagated, namely that he and his International Comittee embodied a_ principled revolutionary struggle against a degenerate liquidation-

ist tendency called Pabloism. We

reject this understanding.

It is our view that in the aftermath of Trotsky's death and under the pressure of World War, the post-war expansion of Stalinism and stabilisation of capitalism, the Fourth International underwent a centrist degeneration and disintegration, This manifested itself in many ways and in different forms of political accommodation to non-proletarian and non-revolutionary forces,

Healy wrecked Trotskyist movement, tionary Communist Party, in his bid to take it deep into the Labour Party. In this opportunist project he was in a close alliance with his then close friend,...Michel Pablo. The forces that were to form the International Committee - the SWP(US), the French section - all argued with the liquidationist line that Healy and Pablo were pushing. In the years that followed, as Tom Kemp has now observed, Healy pursued the policy of cuddling up to the Bevanites -

the British the Revolu-

who he dubbed centrist - via the "broad" paper Socialist Outlook, Of couse after the 1953 split in

the Fl, Healy fulminated at Pablo for committing liquidationist crimes no different in content from those he himself had pioneered during

the late 1940s! Only if we can honestly address this reality can we begin

to understand the problems of the history of the Trotskyist movement. The alternative will be for

the WRP - and those who were once forced out of it like Alan Thornett - to simply argue over

the day when Healy somehow became a "Pabloite", Tom Kemp,

for example, has already raised the spectre of Healy having been a ‘fully fledged Pabloite' back

in 1952....one year before the International Committee split with "Pabloism".

The WRP promise an ‘open and honest' discussion of the _history of Trotskyism, Cliff Slaughter has declared that ‘we are

at the beginning of an objective analysis, and all those who wish to really learn the lessons can certainly participate.’ Given the philistinism and national isolationism of the British left such a development is to be welcomed. Our views on the disputed questions are to be found in our book, The Death Agony of the Fourth International, which we are prepared to discuss publicly with any interested comrades and with the WRP as an organisation,

The rejection of Healy's grossest opportunism and sectariansim by the majority of his followers marks an important moment

in left politics, At a time when the USec section in Britain has also split and where the left is on the defensive after the defeat of the miners' strike there is a major crisis on the Briti: left.

A serious discussion and principled resolution of the questions the WRP members have set themselves can play un important part in bringing together a serious revolutionary communist alternative to crisis wracked centrism. Without holding back on any of our criticisms of the WRP, past and present, we will work for such a development.@

by Dave Hughes

THE

DEATH AGONY OF THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL

and the tasks of Trotskyists

The Death Agony of the|Fourth /nternational and the Tasks of Trotskysts Today

£1.50 plus 50p p&p

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every Saturday from 12pm onwards HDC telephone 021-554 2747 Support the Jailed youth!

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

IN | NOVEMBER THE Movement for a Revolutionary Communist International (MRCI) held a conference in London. Delegates from all the MRCI sections - the Irish Workers Group, Pouvoir Ouvrier (France), Gruppe Arbeitermacht (Germany) and Workers Power - attended the conference. Chilean exiles working with the MRCI were also present,

At the start of the conference delegates discussed an applicaution for entry into the MRCI from oun Austrian group) Arbeiter Standpunkt (AST). This group was recently formed following a split in the IKL, The split was over fundamental disagreements on the nature of reformism and the tactics of revolutionaries towards it. The comrades of the AST are in basic agreement with the estab-

lished positions of the MRCI. After many years discussion inside the IKL and between Workers Power and the IKL it was clear that the comrades who now constitute the IKL were wedded to a_profoundly sectarian position, The AST, which hus agreement with the MRCI on other questions, was welcomed into membership. We will continue to develop our common positions confident that the Austrian group- will contribute much to the development of the MRCI.

Certain sessions of the conference were also attended by observers from the international grouping of the RWP (Sri Lanka) and GOR (Italy) and from the fKL,

The MRCI was founded in April 1984 with the common understanding that a principled regroup-

ment of revolucionary forces can only take place on the basis of programmatic agreement. This involves not simply common positions on fundamental — principles, but also on major tactics in the international class struggle. A major section of the conference wus therefore devoted to a discus-

sion of the South African Revolution, The nature and development of the economy, the working class and Apartheid, the false leaderships in South Africa and the programme of Permanent Revolution were all discussed,

A high degree of agreement was reached within the MRCI and theses on the revolution are

being drawn up for adoption at

a delegate meeting of the MRCI in December. A debate on Nuclear Power,

control, and anti- nuclear launched at the document from basis for a lively be continu-

workers’ the

role of tactics towards | movement was conference. A the IWG laid the discussion which jis to ed within the |sections, with a positon document, being taken to the 1986 conference of the MRCI, The situation in New Caledonia was ulso discussed around a resolution frum PO. The programme for liberutidn of the Kanak people is complicuted by the specific nature of Hrench domination, and as with South Africa the relative weight of} democratic and socialist demands |was discussed. One session pl the conference devoted to a debate with GOR. They feject the possibiusing the anti-imperialist front as |developed by the

the

wus the lity ol united

revolutionary Comintern, The = written exchange on this will be published in the next edition of Permanent Revolution,

This conference revealed the correctness of the method we have adopted towards — building an international tendency. We will continue to. strengthen the

national sections through collaboration and debate over key questions, combined with exchanges with other tendencies on the international left who are seriously concerned with programmatic re-- elaboration, as the precondition for revolutionary regroupment.@

- Forward to the Refounding of a Leninist-Trotskyist International!

- For a New World Party of Socialist Revolution!

WORKERS POWER 79 December 1985/January 1986 1

DANEFORD STRIKES

AGAINST RACISM

OVER 2000 TEACHERS were joined by other anti-racists in a_ strike on the morning of November 22nd, in support of 9 teachers and 2 other trade unionists arrested on a peaceful demonstration against racism in East London schools,

The demonstration followed the slashing of an Asian boy at Daneford School by a racist white gang (the culmination of a_ long history of racist violence ut the school). Those arrested were appearing in court on the morning of the strike.

More broadly, the strike was to expose ILEA's refusal to implement its muchpublicised ‘anti-racist policies', in particular its failure to provide sufficient support and resources to prevent racist attacks on pupils.

The strike was only half-heartedly supported by ILTA (Inner London Teachers Association). This is led by the Socialist League dominated Socialist Teachers Alliance. The original decision to strike was taken by ILTA on October 1l6th, However, no ILTA publicity about the strike was issued until a mailing arrived in schools on November 14th (4 weeks yfter the decision was taken, and only 8 days before the strike date). Even then the information was on the back page of the mailing.

In contrast it only took them a few days to circulate a threatening letter from the Action Committee of the National Union, informing members that their action would be unofficial and leave them open to discipline both by the ILEA and the national leadership of the NUT!

Despite this were closed for

aim of the

over 70 schools the morning and many more sent delegations to the picket of the court hearing. Much more could have been achieved if the ILTA leadership had not sat on their hands for four crucial weeks.@

by A Shier (Westminster NUT)

FORGEMASTERS > continued from back page .e common attack they are under

and the need for a united fightback. The main obstacle to this will be the officials who already have cold feet. Two weeks ago the ISTC ordered their members back to work. The strikers held firm and rebuffed what was described by convenor Ron Ward as "the biggest sellout in Sheffield

trade union history". The AUEW national leadership now doing the same - they the convenor down to London to try and force him to accept the ISTC demands! The strikers and convenor refused. Strikers at Forgemasters and militants at other steel works must build now for a united fightback against cuts and worsering conditions. In doing so they must transform the unions into fighting

are brought

bodies, clearing out the careerists and time servers, and forging a militant leadership accountable

to and under the control of the rank and file.O Monies and messages of support, requests for speakers, etc, to: Forgemaster Atlas Strike Committee c/o AUEW House, Arundel Gate, Sheffield 1 Tel (0742) 79042

LAMBETH Defend the surcharged Councillors Lobby the Law Courts 13 Jan

Rally Jubilee Gardens 8:30am

\ \ 1 } March to Courts 9:00am ; »

\ t 4 \ \ \ 2

IMPERIALISM and the BOMB

ATOMIC DIPLOMACY: EXPANDED & UPDATED EDITION by Gar

Alperovitz. Published by Penguin (£4.95 pp) THE INCREASED TEMPO of the

arms race and the recent Geneva summit makes this new edition of Alperovitz's book extremely valuable and timely, First published twenty years ago and now republished with less timid conclu-

sions ‘Atomic Diplomacy' effectively destroys the major myths that surround America's decision

to devastate Hiroshima and Naga-

saki with the newly developed Atomic bomb.

America's then President, Truman, repeatedly claimed that the bombs were dropped in order to put a speedy end to Japan's war effort. As he put it himself:

"The dropping of the bombs stopped

the war, saved millions of lives," Alperovitz meticulously demolishes this claim, He makes it abundantly cleur that prior to the August bombings the US administration knew that the Japanese military machine was collapsing and that Japanese diplomats were under

orders to open peace negotiations,

COLLAPSE

From June 14th 1945 American Pacific commanders themselves were under orders to prepare for a ‘sudden collapse or surrender’. This is not surprising given that the Japanese Foreign Minister

had been given the go ahead by Japan's Supreme Military Council to approach the USSR in order to end the war by September, In July the Japanese Emperor's personal envoy made arrangements

to visit Moscow to ask for mediation to end the war. The US administration was aware of all these moves yet it proceeded to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For Alperovitz the key to explaining the decision to bomb Japan lies in America's view of the USSR and not in its military needs in the war with Japan.

At the Yalta conference in 1944 Stalin had agreed to deploy Soviet

troops against Japan three months after Germany's — surrender. At that particular time the US was

desperate to secure such an undertaking from the USSR and prepared to make significant concessions

to the Stalinist bureaucracy's demand for a ‘buffer zone’ in Eastern Europe in order to reach agreement, The successful testing of the Atomic bomb meant both that the US had the means of preventing the USSR playing any role in shaping the nature of post-war Japan and of undoing

the agreements over a buffer zone

EVIEW

in Eastern Europe which had been struck at Yalta, Using Truman's

disshows delayed meeting with he knew the fate of the bomb. As he Atlantic he told an explodes as |! think it will, I'll certainly have a hammer on thuse boys." Once the bomb was successfully tested the US administration set out to end the war with Japan as _ speedily as possible so as to dictate all of he terms and exclude the USSR, The USSR was due to enter the

recently Alperovitz deliberately

Potsdam

covered diaries how Truman his 1945 Stalin until the testing of crossed the aide: "If it

war with Japan on August 8th - Hiroshima was bombed on August 6th, Nugasaki was bombed

on August 9th,

In the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima the US administration - particularly Secretary of State Byrnes - felt strong enough to increase their demands for the USSR to relinquish its European buffer zone and to cease American Imperialism's war time policy of reluctant but necessary cooperation with the USSR, This was made abundantly clear at the September 1945 Council of Foreign Ministers in London,

If Alperovitz provides a painstakingly exhaustive destruction of Washington's myths he is far less successful in explaining why the US initiated Atomic weuponry and used it as a direct means of weakening and threatening the USSR. As a liberal he can lay bure the actual events but without ever grasping their significance,

DOMINATION

The bomb was a means for securing global domination for US imperialism. The USSR - in

which capitalism had been abolished by the October 1917 revolution -~ was the principal threat to that domination. It was and = remains the real target of the atomic weaponry that the US deployed from 1945 to the present day. There is ample evidence for that case in Alperovitz's book, The author's politics prevents him from grapsing this though,

The book should be read by all who are interested in the threat of nuclear war, the origins of the arms race, and the attitude of imperialism to the USSR. With so many recent works on the origins of the Cold War peddling Reaganite and Thatcherite antiSovietism, and with most of the better ‘leftist' accounts of the period long out of print, it is a welcome change to see Alperovitz's book in paperback.™@

by John Hunt

CAPITALISM AND APARTHEID

CAPITALISM AND APARTHEID by Merle Lipton. Published by

Temple Smith/Gower 1985 (£18:00 hbk 376pp)

Lipton is a liberal academic. The purpose of the book is_ to:

“investigate whether capitalists in South Africa wanted to retain, strengthen or destroy Apartheid and whether they have the power to secure these aims."

She is not primarily concerned with political apartheid (i.e. the various constitutional settlements that are possible to incorporate the black masses), Rather, she investigates in detail the labour policies of various sectors of capital and the apartheid state,

SOURCE

The wealth of statistics and the excellent collection of tables at the end of the book make It an invaluable source, Lipton also unravels the complex relationship of Apartheid to the labour process. Her thesis is simple and uncontroversial: political restrictions on black labour (i.e. influx controls, jobs bar) makes it unskilled, abundant and low waged. Conversely, white labour is restricted and therefore scarce and, as a consequence, high waged,

She traces in detail the history

of the Afrikaaner nationalist alllance that existed from the early 1920s between the white

trade unions and the Afrikaaner petit bourgeoisie, Squeezed between the mass of unskilled black labour and the skilled English white immigrant workers above, the growing Afrikaaner working class in the 1920s and 1930s (as small

farmers were driven off the land) became the decisive component of a reactionary alliance. This had at its heart the super-exploitation of the black masses and immense labour aristocratic privileges of the white workers,

Lipton shows how all sectors of the South African ruling class (agriculture, mines, manufacture, state enterprises) benefitted from

Apartheid in general, but each sector gradually came to oppose specific aspects of its labour policy in the 1960s and 1970s,

This even applied to some extent to the mining Interests, which generally relied upon the severest forms of Apartheid (influx control and jobs bar) to ensure a large supply of cheap labour. But the main advocates of restructuring Apartheld were the growing number of manufacturing bosses who felt the need for a greater industrial training of blacks to meet the shortage of skilled labour,

TOO EXPENSIVE

They were also driven by the fact that, by the 1970s, the cost of the labour aristocratic privileges of the white workers were too expensive to endure. By ending the job bar on skilled labour and employing black workers at lower wages (even if substantially higher than they had previously received) the bosses almed to lower labour costs and restore productivity - both essential If South African capitalism was to compete effectively abroad,

Lipton is an advocate of "multi-racial capitalism" and believes this can be achieved in South Africa if the process of

Multi-racial armed

reform advocated by the "progressive capitalists" is continued. At the same time she notes that all sections of the South African fulling class were, and remain, opponents of full democratic rights for blacks - one person, one vote - as they rightly pecelve that this would be ¢ severe blow to their continued economic dominance,

While apartheid might need "reforming" from the point of view of South African capitalists they do not forget that the strength of their economy is founded upon the super-exploitation enshrined in that system.

That allies,

is why they - and their the enormously privileged white workers - will fight tooth and nail against any movement which threatens to destroy Apartheid Itself. Events since Lipton wrote her book and the growing resistance of the Afrikaaners to political change testify to the irreformability of the South African state through gradual and peaceful methods. It needs to be smashed from top to bottom. Only the black working class can do that - not the "enlightened self interest" of sections of South Africa's capitalists. @

forces still gun down blacks!

workers power

NO PLATFORM FOR FASCISTS!

THE FASCIST SECTS in _ Britain are an unsavoury bunch of thugs. A recent Searchlight survey of convictions of known fascists - mainly National Front and British Movement members - for violent crime over the last 10 years shows fascisms preferred methods’ of political operation,

The fascists have notched up 16 murder convictions, 37 for possession of firearms and explosives and over 100 physical racial attacks. In the past two years attacks on Jewish targets have doubled, and arson’ attacks” on Asian homes and businesses have escalated beyond Counting.

From organisations that like to wave the Union Jack and rant about the need for ‘law and order' these few facts speak volumes about the stinking hypocricy that surrounds fascism. It is vital that workers realise that fascists are not simply a bunch of head cases who dislike blacks and Jews, Their violent racialist activity of today is a foretaste of and preparation for far more systematic, military style violence aimed against the whole of the working class. As the economic crisis of capitalism deepens, fascism will become more and more useful to the ruling class as a weapon against workers, They will use the private armies of the fascists against workers in struggle. The crisis furnishes the fascists with recruits from desperate elements of the middle class and elements of the working class who have been lump-

enised, demoralised and _— turned against their class by the misery of permanent unemploymeu and

indifference of the leaders

the upparent reformist labour movement to their plight.

STEPPING UP

Recent months have an increase not only in racial violence but also in the public activity of the fascists. They have launched 3 attacks on Irish solidarity demonstrations - in London, Birmingham and = last month = on the Manchesters martyrs! demonstration, Just as ominously the BNP and NF are now concentrating much of their activity in schools. The NF have launched a new youth paper New Dawn to replace the old Bulldog.

he decline in the NF after the 1979 election was mainly due to the Tories taking over their arguments on ‘law and order’, racism and = nationalism. But the Tories flave not gone as far as

seen

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many of their far-right rank and file supporters had hoped. The fascists are stepping up their public profile precisely to capitalise on the «disillusionment of he hardbitten racists and the "hang ‘em and flog 'em" brigade. This human rubbish had hoped Thatcher would act more quickly than she has dons to leygalise their prejudices and satiate their blood lust.

The massive growth in unemployment in _ particular creates a fertile ground for right wing ideas to gain a more sympathetic hearing. The fact that such fertile ground exists within certain sections of the working class is the fault of the Labour Party and trade union leaders. With 4 million unemployed, cuts in social = services, racial discrimination in jobs and elsewhere, the leaders of the labour movement buried their heads in the sand. They only emerged to shout ‘criminals! when the youth take to the streets Lo resist racism and give vent to, their anger at capitalist society. With the failure to resist the bosses! attacks on jobs and the subsequent failure to organise the unemployed into the labour movement, small sections” of the unemployed = are beginning to look to the false, simple but extremely dangerous solutions offered by the fascists,

What can be done to prevent the growth of fascist ideas, to proiect the black community from attack?

BEST METHOD

working class must be against the fascists, a moral question for fascism grows rhen it will 3+ek to un.lermine the unions, to prevent socialists and militants from arguing and organising. They will smash its picket lines and seek to divide the class along the line of race, religion, sex and sexual orientation.

The best method of fighting the fascists is the mobilisation of workers to deny them a platform. ‘No platform for fascists! means no meetings, no marches, no propaganda.

Liberals will of course wring their hands and plead for ‘free speech’. This is music to the ears of the fascists. They know that argument and rational debate are not the way for them to grow. Their marches, rallies, victories in streetfights ar+ the traditional methods used by the fascists. These events give the ruined shopkeeper, the cowardly and unorganised

The mobilised This is not workers - if

. —_ / \ api

Human offal

clerk, and the desperate lumpen element a sense of importance. They are a source of growth for the fascists. That is why to stop the fascists the working class must stop them marching, meeting, selling their papers and carrying out assaults.

In fighting for 'No Platform! the working class must learn from past mistakes. In particular we’ should reject calls espoused by the ANL in the 1970s, and the Labour Party now, for the state to ban the fascists. True, the state NF marches on

sometimes the grounds ‘disturbances' being this gives them equal ban left-wing demonwhich the fascists

bans of potential caused, But licence to strations

Mark Rusher (IFL

attack. In fact the rather ban a_ fascist march then see the working class successfully mabilise against it. Apart from that, in the long term the stute has! no real interest in banning fasc{sts. Whilst at the moment the state has no real

threaten to state would

use for them, jin times of de:per crisis and conflict the police will work closely with ultra-right hit squads attacking picket-lines, workers’ Communities and demonstrations.

Relying on) the state’ also avoids taking ¢he argument into

the working class. We must convince the labour movement’ of the need to fight fascism and defend the black) communities,

In the last period of major

anti-fascist activity the ANL made the fundamental mistake of seeking to unite, as a priority, with non-working class, frequently reactionary forces, Seeing fascism as an evil ‘everyone! could unite against, like everyone could unite ugainst Hitler, the ANL peppered their propdganda with chauvinist arguments.

fhe sew anti-fascist’ group, Anti-Fascist-Action (AFA) is carrying on this tradition. In calling for a counter-demonstration at the Cenotaph against the NF on Remembrance Sunday, an AFA

Neaflet berated the NF _ for not genuinely wishing to ‘mourn the Allied dead' and condemned the NF for trying ‘to pass themselves:

off as respectable patriots’.

COVER UP

While tor many working class people the nationalist sentiment that inspired their fight against Hitler was a desire to protect their democratic organisations, the jingoism of our ‘democratic! wur against Hitler was nothing but a hypocritical veil to hide the nakedly imperialist interést-

Remembrance Da, ruling class

of Britain. in particular, is a

commemoration ceremony chat needs to be exposed. Anti-fascist propaganda must never lose sight

ruling class sympathy for

of the memory = of collaboration and Nazism in the 1930s, lo refuse to do this, or worse to cover it up, is to hamper the possibility of an independent work-

ing class fight against fascism. And this is crucial because - as the experience of Nazism = shows - our democratic friends in the Tories und the Alliance cannot be trusted to resist it.

A ‘popular front’ against the fascists, pioneered by the ANL und effectively called for by AFA, will never pursue militant antifascist tactics. To oppose the fascists a fighting unity needs to be established between the labour movement and the blare community. Racism must be Wi,

orously fought in the labour mowe= ment. Fascists must be prevented from organising. As they step up their activites we must reply with a workers’ united front to fight for:

* No Platform for fascists!

No to immigration controls!

* Support Black Self-Defence! Build Workers Defence Organisations!

FORGEMASTERS

AS WE GO to press 700 strikers at Sheffield Forgemasters are out despite management attempts last week to force them back to work. Following a management threat of redundancy if they did not return to work last Monday precisely seven workers’ turned up for the shift! This forced the bosses to withdraw their threats of sackings. Since the sell-out of the 1980 strike thousands of jobs have been lost in the Sheffield steel industry - with over 4,000 lost at Forgemasters and its predecessor Firth Brown. After every round of redu-

ndancies the bosses come _ back with demands for more. But the workers at Forgemasters have decided that enough is enough.

As one striker put it “we're like any workers in the country, if they're pushed to the limit then they'll come back fighting."

Workers at Forgemaster certainly have been pushed to the limit with the tactics of their newly appointed manager - Mr

P, Wright, a MacGregor-style roving job cutter and union basher.

His first actions on taking over at Forgemasters were to withdraw the meagre pay offer, and make it conditional on acceptance of a whole number of cond-

itions; sack the convenor = and senior negotiating team; withdraw facility time and insist that he chose who he would negotiate

with over pay and conditions. This goon is also trying to get rid of pay guarantees when there is short time working, and cut back on Health and Safety provision, This seems almost unbelievable

when you consider that there have been 7 deaths and 9 serious accidents in the past 2 years.

Since the strike started support has been} coming in, with the strike centr@ walls being covered with letters of support from Trade Unions and Labour Party wards, but this needs to be extended to cover mpre rank and file

workers. Militants at Renishaw Park Pit for jinstance preceded their bucket g@ollection with a

leaflet putting [the arguments for suppport, and more than doubled the amount any strike collection had managed previously.

However, as| the miners’ strike shows, thousands of collections and messages of support cannot guarantee victory against a determined management onslaught. In order to ensure |victory the action needs to be spread to the rest of the steel jndustry. Although

workers at the local River Don works have arranged a levy, there have been no moves to come out in solidarity. This is an essential call since River Don is owned by the same group and they face similar management attacks,

The strikers need to leaflet, picket and address mass meetings in the other steelworks showing

continued on page 11>

published by WORKERS POWER, BCM p78 London WCIN 3xXxX