No 79 May 1986 20p Monthly paper of the Spartacist League·

Hands off Libya! Defend the Soviet Union!

III •

For Margaret Thatcher, it was 'inconceiv­ -...... able' not to participate, as fullyasBritain's standing as a second-rate imperialist power 4 would allow, in Reagan's Libya atrocity. Four ~. years ago the Iron Bitch vented her bloodlust on several hundred young sailors aboard the , "..• ---.... Argentine cruiser BelgTano. Now she could re­ vel in the terror-bombing of defenceless men, women and children in Libya by the consider­ ably more formidable firepower available to her fellow anti-Soviet maniac in the White House. While America's other NATO allies sought to distance themselves from Reagan's murderous Libya raid, 'Rambo's daughter', as /.l],. -Jl the 17 April Guardian put it, prides herself J as 'a fellow crusader against evil empires of any kind'. .. But if Rambo Reagan is momentarily 'stand­ ing tall' as a wave of patriotic fervour sweeps America, Rambo's daughter is in deep, ..... deep trouble. Already reviled by broad sectors ( of the population for her year-long civil war t. ,"""- ~. .' against the miners and her attempts to incite ,.~. a racist bloodbath in the inner city ghettos last autumn, the Thatcher government has been ~ff plunged into even deeper crisis over the Libya " bombing. Were it not for the SOCial-patriotic misleaders who animate Her Majesty's Loyal Op­ position, workers action could bring Thatcher down.

As the US F-Ills returned to their bases in Patrick Robert - Sipa-Speclal Features Britain following their dead-of-night bombing Reagan/Thatcher murder mission was aimed at killing Qaddafi and family and terrorising Libyan population. continued on page 8 British-based US F-111 s rained death and destruction on Tripoli residential areas. No to deportations of Libyans!

Not content with its bloody partnership in the And labour must clear out of its house pro­ terror-bombin~ of Tripoli and Benghazi, the Thatcher imperialist, racist scum like Kinnock's shadow home government has embarked on a racist round-up and secretary Gerald Kaufman. This anti-Arab Labour Party deportation of Libyans from Britain, viciously pig denounces Thatcher for being too soft and too labelling them 'dangerous to national security' and slow: 'In the two years of complacency following the 'potential terrorists'. In a dawn swoop across death of ~~C Fletcher, why have the Govern~ent sud­ Britain on 22 April, cops from eleven forces de­ denly acted with such speed? Have they at last re­ scended on twenty-one Libyan nationals (many of them alised, following approaches from this side of the resident in this country for several years and most House two years ago, that some potential terrorists of whom were students) and whisked them off to deten­ are at large in this country?' (Guardian, 23 April) tion, with no right of legal assistance or appeal. One ~his filth recalls the obscene insult flung by Don of the victims of this vile attack, a second-year PhD Concannon, who during the 1981 Irish hunger strike student at University College, Swansea, was frog­ visited Bobby Sands in his cell just to inform him marched away by twelve policemen. By the weekend, the that the Labour Party was backing Thatcher to the twenty-one were on their way out -- and Thatcher's hilt . Horne Secretary Douglas Hurd has threatened more. The Labour Party is a consummately bourgeois This calculated chauvinist onslaught targets all workers party whose role today is to police the of the estimated 7000 Libyans in Britain (about 2000 working class and minorities of Britain in order to of them students), including those who are political regiment them for Reagan/Thatcher's war drive against opponents of Qaddafi and may be at risk if sent back the Soviet Union -- and the codeword is 'internat ionHl to Libya. Meanwhile, another 225 Libyans in Britain, terrorism'. When it comes to racism and deportations, all students of aircraft engineering and maintenance, the Labour Party stands second to none. It was Labour have been banned from flying on the pretext that they that in the 1970s imposed the outrageous 'virginity

Hammer might turn into 'kamikaze' pilots! The whole labour tests' on Asian women immigrants. We say: Stop the Spartacist League placard at 15 movement must protest these racist attacks. Stop the deportations of Libyans! Dep0rt Thatcher to Tripoli April US Embassy protest. deportations! Reagan/Thatcher bloody hands off Libya! to be tried by her victims for mass murder!. ------letters Neil Hinnock - no friend of the miners

20th March 1986 hard months for the benefit of living the rest of my life in near penury. Dear Comrades, I therefore attended the march to celebrate It is some time since my last contribution not the first anniversary of the end of the to rvorkers Hammer in which I expressed my strike, but to celebrate the second anniversary anger over what I considered false imprison­ of the start of that great event, for without ~ent of the two South Wales lads who appar­ ~uestion its failure has resulted in many job ently 'murdered' a scabherding taxi driver losses especially in the South Wales coalfield during the Coal Strike of 1984/85. I write now where there are over 7000 mineworkers now out of my impressions when attending a demon­ of work, 4500 of them in my own area with the stration in London on Sunday 2nd March 1986. threat of more to .follow. It was held in protest over the jailing of During the march I spoke to many mine­ mineworkers, of the sacking of mineworkers as workers from other coalfields throughout the a result of 'offences' by them in the course country who, I am pleased to say are not only of that dispute. It was also called to cele­ still working, but are still militant toward brate the first anniversary of the end of that the Coal Board against their policy of victim­ strike. isation toward them in apparent revenge for I attended the demonstration as a redundant their strike action even after twelve months mineworker who lost my job as a result of the of the dispute being lost. I also spoke to strike being lost when the colliery I worked miners who had been sacked for the part they at closed, and to those who may think that I played in the dispute,but surprisingly, I did readily grabbed the 'fortune' offered me by not meet any miners who were made redundant the National Coal Board for the loss of my because of the vicious pit closure programme employment with them, I will say this. I do over the last twelve months. It would appear not consider th~ £10,000 lump sum and £58.00 therefore that I may have been the only redun­ per week until I am stxty five to be the fortune dant mineworker there. It was great though to that the Thatcher Government and the Coal be once again among the people that have been TUC chief Norm Willis greeted with a noose by militant Board would have people believe, and I most South Wales miners. 1984. Remember the Labour ITUC certainly did not fight for twelve long and continued on page 10 traitors! Quote of the month Lambert and 'CIA socialism' London into creating the MPPT (Movement for a Workers 9/2/86 Party) with the backing of part of the FO bureaucracy. The MPPT's programme is pure-and­ ~ Defend colonial Dear comrades, simple bourgeois parliamentarism -- its foun­ .~~ In the February 'Workers Hammer' you say ding charter calls for a system where 'the ;-"""-.. J peoples against you've 'scrupulously documented' the degenera­ people's elected representatives can plainly "~ imperialism tion of the IC. fulfill their role of political expression of Well I'm doing some investigations of my the citizens' -- and explicitly anti-revolu­ own in that area and I'd be interested if Trotsky and Lenin tionary, the preamble of its charter warning you've got anything on Lambert. I want to know that the Mitterrand government has created a two things -- Why was there a split? Was it 'political vacuum', 'thus favouring the most all Healy's fault? What happened to them after extremist solutions', It's as if one decided Whcn Mussolini' 5 Itill Y invaded Emperor the split? to build a second-rate version of the Labour Hili Ie Selassie's Ethiopia in 1935, Trotskyists You mention in passing that OCI/PCI TV Party with the politics of (and support from) gave unconditional military support against functionaries in Force Ouvriere are taking CIA Lord Frank Chapple or Bill Sirs! this colonial aggression, and denounced the money. That's a very serious thing to say and Lambert's British acolytes in the Socialist 'Iwutra1ists' of tile ccntrist London Bureau I'd like to know Gore. Also what about the Labour Group recently excluded Spartacist and Bri tish Independent Labour Party who British end, Blick/Jenkins. Do you have stuff League members from a 'public' meeting featur­ claimed th is colonial vlar was simply a dispute on this sort of thing like your 'Healyism ing PCI spokesman Pierre Broue, with SLG leader betelecn dictators. A July 1936 resolution of Implodes' i.e. solid facts but analysis as John Archer frothing that we had 'slandered' the Fourth International stated: well. I enclose £1 for cost of any back issue the PCI over the CIA/FO connection. But this The struggle against war, properly under­ of a Spartacist/WV with this sort of thing scandal is all too real, having elicited com­ stood and executed, presupposes the uncompro­ + p and p. ment in newspapers from Le Monde to the Guard­ mising hostility of the proletariat and its Yours fraternally, ian. NOW, in the past two weeks, the PCI has organisations, always and everywhere, toward George Hallam undergone a major split, and guess who Lambert its own and every other imperialist bour­ is blaming? Certain 'bureaucrats' in Force geoisie .... Ouvriere .... The struggle against war and its social Workers Hammer replies: Pierre Lambert's We have scrupulously documented the degen­ source, capitalism, presupposes direct, active, French Parti Communiste Internationaliste eration of the Lambert organisation from the unequivocal support to the oppressed colonial (formerly OCI) is today a deeply anti-Soviet, days when, together with James Cannon's Amer­ peoples in their struggles and wars against reformist outfit working the fringes of Fran­ ican SWP and the British Healy group, it imperialism. A 'neutral' position is tanta­ cois Mitterrand's Socialist Party. As we re­ helped form the anti-Pabloite International mount to support of imperialism. Yet, among ported in Workers Hammer no 75, January 1986, Committee in 1953. Lambert & Co supported the announced adherents of the London Bureau a number of PCI members are paid functionaries Healy's bureaucratic expUlsion of the Spart­ congress are fofind ILPers who advocate leavin[ of the Force Ouvriere (FO) ubion federation, acist delegation from the 1966 IC conference, the courageous Ethiopian warriors against which the French newspaper Liberation revealed only themselves to fallout with Healy five marauding Italian fascism in the lurch on the last November has been taking money from a CIA years later. Ostensibly the 1971 split oc­ grounds of 'neutrality', and 'Left' Poale conduit, Irving Brown's National Endowment for curred because Healy 'rediscovered' Trotskyism Zionists who are even at this moment leaning Democracy. We wrote: 'For the past 15 years at in relation to Guillermo Lora's Bolivian POR, upon British imperialism in its savage cam­ least, the Lambertists have regularly voted which had jOined the IC under OCI sponsor­ paign against the legitimate, even if confused, for [FO president] Bergeron's report at FO ship a year earlier, The POR had a policy of struggle of the Arab peasantry. conventions --, giving political support for conciliating the 'left' bourgeois nationalist -- 'Resolution on the Antiwar Congress of this CIA tool .... In 1983-84, the PCI pulled ~mR government following the 1952 Bolivian the London Bureau', Documents of the Fourth all their supporters out of the French teachers uprising, a policy which came to disastrous International -- The Formative Years union -- until then one of the only French fruition in the rightist coup of 1971. Of (1933 - 1940) [1973] unions which had not succumbed to a Cold War course Healy's 'defence of Trotskyism' was split -- and took them into Force Ouvriere, cynical fakery, since he had already ex­ putting the finishing touches on Irving pressed his own egregious popular-frontist Brown's wrecking operation' ('The Cold War appetites over Chile, Ceylon and the so-called connection'). WORKERSIIAMMER 'Arab Revolution'. The real reason for the ~ And what was FO doing with its CIA money? Monthly newspaper of the Spartacist League, British section split was organisational: with the POR and its of the international Spartacist tendency According to Bergeron, 'Among those helped by roots amongst the strategic Bolivian tin EDITORIAL BOARD: Len Michelson (editor), Jon Branche, the union ... were trade unionists from Poland, miners, the OCI and not Healy would have had Alec Gilchrist, John Masters, Elbhlin McDonald, Fred Purdy, Afghanistan and Latin America' (International Ellen Rawlings the upper hand in the rump 'IC'. Herald Tribune, 28 November 1985). In other PRODUCTION MANAGER: Ian Donnelly At the time of the split we characterised words, 'free trade unions' (the CIA codeword the OCI, which contained a core of cadre with CIRCULATION MANAGER: Patricia Matthews for counterrevolution in the deformed workers continuity back to the Trotskyist movement of Published monthly, except in January and August, by states) like counterrevolutionary Solidarnosc, Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, London WC1 H 8JE the 1930s, as a 'serious current with a per­ Islamic reactionaries in Afghanistan, and who Subscriptions 10 issues for £2 00, overseas airmail £5.00 sistently rightist thrust' (see Workers Van­ knows what in Latin America -- probably some Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not guard no 3, December 1971). In January 1973 we necessarily express the editorial viewpoint of Reagan's murderous contras and death squads wrote them a letter expressing our desire to Printed by Slough Newspaper Printers Ltd (TU) ISSN 0267·8721. in El Salvador. Last year the PCI thre~_all of its forces continued on page 10

2 WORKERS HAMMER Reauan/That~her murder mission provokes mass protest The main enemy is at home!

In leaving Tripoli following the US Sixth -'. .~' Fleet attack in the Gulf of Sidra in March, a I . f ':, ~ journalistic team of the international Spart­ acist tendency issued a statement pledging the iSt to 'undertake every effort to propagandise . the need for the world working class to take B(DoQY'i;~Q~iiFftt:;A!~ the side of Libya against US imperialism'. The terror-bombing of Libya by British-based US DEFEND THE SDVl[T UM\OM1 F-Ills several weeks later made that pledge SPARTAC lEACUE particularly relevant to the tasks of Trotsky­ ists here, as mass protests swept Britain in outrage over the murderous raid and the Thatcher government's enthusiastic complicity. The Spartacist League threw its forces into these demonstrations in order to hammer home the connection between Reagan/Thatcher's criminal assault on the Libyan people and the imperialist anti-Soviet war drive. We organ­ ised a series of four public meetings around the country, titled 'The Russian question point blank' and featuring an eyewitness re­ port from Tripoli during the earlier attack. While the rest of the left has either taken a dive on defence of Libya or sought to amnesty their 'own' bourgeoisie through pushing social-patriotic anti-Americanism, we fought for effective, broad-based united-front ac­ tion in defence of Libya. Our central banner on the demonstrations reads, 'Reagan/Thatcher bloody hands off Libya! Defend the Soviet Union! ' On the evening of 15 April, immediately after the attack, SL contingents joined pro­ tests in London and Birmingham. In London, CND had called demonstrations both outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square and outside Spartacist contingent at 18 April protest in London. While fake lefts push anti-Americanism, we say: The Downing Street. Our chant, 'Reagan, Thatcher, main enemy is at home! hands off Libya!' was picked up by many of the several hundred demonstrators at Grosvenor crowd was one of outrage at both Reagan and Israel.' So that's why the USS Yorktown Square, which included a contingent from the Thatcher, and fear that their insane war pro­ stopped off at Sevastopol on its way to the Banda/Slaughter Workers Revolutionary Party vocations would trigger nuclear world war. Gulf of Sidra -- to scare the Syrians! (WRP) as well as supporters of the pro-Moscow The same evening some 60 people gathered in Further, WP claims the Russians were even opposition within the Communist Party, the protest in Birmingham, where a Spartacist con­ complicit in the attack on Tripoli: Communist Campaign Group. But both the Stalin­ tingent raised the call, '1,2,3,4, No to 'Indeed, the actions against Libya took ists, who shortly wandered off, and the os­ NATO's Libya war -- 5,6,7,8, Defend the Soviet place with full prior knowledge by the tensibly Trotskyist WRP refused to join in our workers state!' On 19 April another 10,000 Kremlin of US targets and timing -- in­ spirited chants of 'Defend the Soviet Union!', protesters rallied in Grosvenor Square and formed as they were by US intelligence. instead counterposing in unison: 'US bases out Hyde Park, with police arresting dozens who This allowed the USSR to remove its ships, of Britain!' staged a sit-in on Oxford Street. Spartacist personnel and equipment from the field of To underscore the full and enthusiastic comrades sold almost 600 newspapers at the attack .... Had the Kremlin so much as made complicity of the Thatcher governm~nt in day's events, making a total of more than it clear that they would refuse to take Reagan's bloody operation, the SL contingent 1000 sold on Libya protests in four days. any evasive action, Reagan would not have then led some eighty demonstrators, including dared risk a major confrontation with the WRP contingent, on a march to Downing Looking for a 'third camp' the USSR.' Street, where some 2000 protesters were Similarly, the VlRP sought to justify its re­ already gathered. As the march approached In contrast the fake revolutionaries, fusal to call for defence of the USSR with Downing Street -- with an SL banner at its tailing as usual after the Labour 'left', have the bogus argument that the Soviet Union has head reading, 'Down with Reagan! Down with pushed anti-Americanism while providing a done nothing to defend Libya. Funny, those Thatcher! For workers revolution!' -- it was 'left' cover for the anti-Soviet war drive looked like Tupolev'transports and Soviet greeted enthusiastically by many of the dem­ which is the motive for the terror-bombing of 'SAMs the US was targetting .... onstrators already there. eND leaders tried to Tripoli. Incredibly (but typically), not one These self-proclaimed Trotskyists think push the line that what was criminal about the other organisation raised a call to defend Reagan's anti-Soviet war talk is just that American aggression and Thatcher's involvement the Soviet Union against the war drive on any talk. So Reagan wouldn't dare 'risk a major was that it set the British people up for of the Libya demonstrations. In the face of an confrontation with the USSR'? In the last 'terrorism'. But the general tenor of the imperialist attack which even the bourgeois five years, the US has staged one provocation press recognises is aimed at the homeland of after another against the Soviet Union. the October Revolution, fake Trotskyists like Russian submarines were struck by American the WRP and Workers Power (WP) group are look­ ships in November 1983 and March 1984; a ing for a 'third camp' position. Soviet carrier was sideswiped by a US Navy The gymnastiC contortions of WP over Libya vessel in April 1984; in November of that and the Russian question have been astonishing year, the USS Nimitz and Arkansas went to even for these classiC centrists. WP couldn't within five miles of Cuba to tow out a dis­ even get it together to send a paper seller abled US spy ship; and in December 1984, two (let alone a contingent) to the initial pro­ Navy carrier battle groups staged manoeuvres tests at Grosvenor Square and Downing Street. only 50 miles off Vladivostok, hub of the They did manage to find some people for the USSR's Pacific defences, causing the Soviets Birmingham protest where, even after goading to launch a full-scale defensive alert. And from our comrades for their refusal to chant add to that the Korean airliner provocation any Soviet-defencist slogans, they could only into Siberia in 1983 and now the incursion manage a CND-style feeble chorus of 'No to into the Black Sea. There is a method in this war drive -- Close the bases now!' By 18 April madness: the Reaganites think that if they they managed to produce a leaflet which, after continue escalating the pressure, the Russians sixteen paragraphs of waffle, listed five will surrender. Hitler tried it once, and 'clear and unequivocal' slogans including 'De­ lost. We say: Don't mess with the Russians! fend the USSR against any attacks by imperial­ Trotskyists understand that the Kremlin ism'. But someone must have noticed this Stalinists' policy of 'peaceful coexistence' dangerous (almost 'Spartacist') line wobble with imperialism acts as an obstacle to de­ because, 10, a week later their newspaper ap­ fence of the Soviet Union. But we counterpose peared and the five slogans had become four. a perspective of international proletarian 'Defend the USSR' having vanished in the mist. revolution, inclu~ing proletarian political Behind this disappearing act lies WP's e±'­ revolution to replace the conciliationist fective denial that there is an anti-Soviet Kremlin bureaucrats. But for outfits like the war drive. According to their leaflet, WRP and \\'P to denounce the Soviets for a sup­ Reagan's attack had nothing to do with the posed failure to aid Libya is pure hypocrisy. Australasian Spartacist USSR: 'In striking at Libya Reagan serves a When the Red Army undertook a major, pro­ Sydney, Australia: Spartacists denounce Reagan's warning to other anti-Zionist forces such as gressive intervention in Afghanistan seven terror-bombing of libya. Syria and encourages the bellicosity of continued on page 10

MAY 1986 3 WRP after Healy: The god that failed?

We print below, in edited form, the remarks captioned: 'The immediate response to the following several years. In 1966, we raised of Spartacist League speaker Faye Koch at a bombing was a picket outside the US embassy our criticisms to the comrades at the Inter­ 30 April public meeting of the Banda/Slaughter -- followed by a spontaneous march to Downing national Committee conference: our understand­ Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP) in London. Street.' Hardly a Marxist conception, sponta­ ing of the struggle for the Fourth Internat­ This was a continuation of an earlier meeting neity. This particular 'spontaneous' march ional, Pabloism and the Marxist analysis of on 'The tasks of the Fourth International'. happened to be initiated, organised and led Cuba. I would like to ask the COmrades where The dwindling attendance at these meetings is by the ... Spartacist League. they stand on the presentation of the Sparta­ itself a barometer of the political downward The WRP leadership may not want to acknowl­ cist League to the 1966 conference. We are spiral of the post-Healy WRP in recent months. edge the existence of our Trotskyist organis­ still waiting for the anwer. While some 500 attended the first gathering ation, but their membership is looking for Coming out of our experience with Gerry in London in November, the second was at­ answers. Though WRP spokesmen refused to take Healy, we did not junk communism because of tended by about 100 people, and the most re­ up a single one of the political attacks made that. Because Gerry Healy denounced the dia­ cent by less than 70. by our comrades in the course of seven inter­ lectic and stood it on its head and in fact Following three interventions by our com­ ventions at a 26 April WRP dayschool in used it as a mode of control, we did not junk rades, WRP main speaker Cliff Slaughter felt Nottingham, the fewer than 90 people there the dialectic. In fact, we consider it key in compelled to defend his organisation's im­ bought more than 70 items of Spartacist understarding especially the Leninist posit­ plici t 'third campism'. In an attempt to literature. Indicative of the WRP's current ion on the question of the Labour Party. obscure the WRP's refusal to defend the Soviet trajectory is the fact that Workers Power was We bring you our criticisms coming from a Union in concrete circumstances (eg Libya), invited to lead a workshop outlining its different tradition and a different programme. Slaughter falsely claimed we 'entrust the de­ 'plague on both your houses' attitude to the This meeting is on the struggle for the Fourth fence of the Soviet Union and the gains of the 1953 IC fight against Pabloite liquidationism International and the tasks of the Fourth October Revolut)on to the Stalinist bureauc­ and Alan 'Scab' Thornett to lead another on International. I must say that there are com­ racy'. Yet again, he defended the WRP's sup­ trade unions and the Transitional Programme. rades in the WRP today who have already gone port to capitalist-restorationist Polish Solidarnosc as though it were analogous to defending the trade union movement here, thus obliterating the class difference between the Polish deformed workers state and imperialist Britain. Our call to 'Stop Solidarnosc counterrevolution', said Slaughter, meant to London, 15 April: 'support one counterrevolutionary in putting WRP contingent down another'. Thus Slaughter flatly and ex­ 'spontaneously' plicitly repudiates Trotsky's analysis of the following Spartacist Stalinist bureaucracy as a contradictory lead in march from US Embassy to caste formation, and his perspective that a Downing Street. bloc with the bureaucracy can be permissible WRP tries to and necessary in defence of the social bases 'disappear' Soviet­ of the workers state against capitalist defencist SL to cover its own 'third restoration. campism'. True to form, Slaughter again refused to comment on the 1966 International Committee (IC) conference where Healy/Banda bureau­ cratically expelled the Spartacist delegation for refusing to bury our differences and scrape before the 'great leader'. Since the ousting of Healy seven months ago, we have in­ sisted that the WRP could either return to the revolutionary Trotskyism espoused in such documents as the 1961 'World Prospect for Socialism' or take Healy's Stalinophobic heri­ tage in the direction of mainstream Labour­ loyal fake Trotskyism. The more the WRP hardens on the latter course, the more it is compelled to rewrite history. It was the SL which gave a counter-present­ over and denounced the Fourth International Our origins in and continuity with the ation in defence of the early IC -- to which altogether, like Mike Banda. Those of you who anti-revisionist stance of the IC of 1953-66 neither WP nor the WRP could manage a reply! want to be Trotskyists, who want to remain and our consistent refusal to capitulate to As an SL supporter at the London public Trotskyists, should look at the experience of Healy (as Banda/Slaughter did) is an embar­ meeting put it, what brings this centrist Lenin and how he fought to build the .Third rassing bogeyman to them. So they try to treat swamp together is that they all support International, and the experience of Trotsky us as 'non-persons'. A case in point is the 19 'Khomeini's Iran, Red Army out of Afghanistan, and how he fought to build the Fourth Inter­ April Workers Press, whose photo of the WRP counterrevolution in Poland'. And at home that national. For example, Trotsky used the key contingent at a 15 April Libya picket is means strategic support to the Labour programmatic questions of his day, the question traitors: 'come the next general election in of the Chinese Revolution, the question of Britain, all of these parties will be out cam­ Soviet economic policy in conjunction with paigning for the Labour Party, it doesn't 'socialism in one country', and the attitude matter how much they say tonight about Neil on the Anglo-Russian Committee. And he used Kinnock. ' these as a touchstone and judged organisations The WRP's insistent refusal to break with on those questions. We follow th~t example, we the anti-Soviet underpinnings of Healy's stand on that tradition and our struggle to crimes can only lead it in the direction of reforge the Fourth International is built on deepening and explicit anti-Leninism. Notably, those lessons. Therefore we have been raising WRP spokesman Richard Goldstein, at a London the key programmatic issues of today with you WRP class on 25 April, went out of his way to comrades of the WRP. assert that just as Healy wasn't infallible, That is mainly the Russian question today. neither was Lenin. No, Lenin wasn't 'infal­ Cannon made the point that those who touch the lible' -- but he built a party that led the Russian question touch the question of revol­ only successful workers revolution. And the ution. That is especially the case tOday when WRP is going in a very different direction. there is an anti-Soviet war drive to smash the Soviet Union, the war drive of Reagan and I want to go back to part one of this Thatcher. So if you look at it, wherever this public meeting. Those of you who were here question comes up concretely, we see that the policy of the WRP is more akin to a 'third would reme~ber that in the presentations we campist' position than a Trotskyist position. heard lots of stories about the crimes of Gerry Healy and the atrocities he committed. Libya is a good example of that. We stand for the military defence of Libya against However we noticed that there is a 'god that Reagan and Thatcher. We say: Hands off Libya! failed' quality in the WRP's approach to its Our stand is clear -- in order to take this split with Gerry Healy. We of the Spartacist position we don't have to paint green into red, League consider the organisation question very important and key for revolutionaries. In 1967, we don't have to pretend the 'Green Revolution' is a red revolution, unlike the comrades of for example, we said ~Oust Healy!' -- over one the WRP who still carryon the classless con­ thing -- when one c9mrade, namely Ernie Tate, was beaten up by the WRP and then they tried ception of the 'Arab revolution'. We don't have to say 'comrade' Qaddafi. We stand for to throw him in jail. In 1966, we also consid­ American Trotskyist leader James P Cannon led 1953 the military defence of Libya and we also ered a split over this question; however, the IC fight against Pabloite revisionism. Where does WRP continued on page 11 stand on that anti-revisionist struggle? programmatic conclusions came out over the WORKERS HAMMER 4 Who bombed Berlin disco?

Reprinted from Workers Vanguard no 402, 25 April 1986

Something is fishy about Reagan's story, the pretext for the US terror-bombing of Tripoli. The La Belle discotheque in West Berlin was bombed April 5, killing a black American GI, Kenneth Ford, and a Turkish woman, Nermin Haney, and injuring 230 others. The White House claims the disco was bombed by agents acting under Libyan orders, a charge which was bought wholesale and echoed ad La Belle disco was nauseam in the American bourgeois press. The popular among black lead editorial in the 20 April New York Times Gis, a fact hushed up claims that 'proof of Libyan complicity' is in American press. affirmed because 'skeptical Democrats in Con­ Kenneth Ford's mother holds photo gress' and 'West Germany's Chancellor Kohl' of son killed in bomb believe it. Well, we know about 'skeptical' blast. Democrats. If it's so believable, where is it? The fact of the matter is, they haven't re­ leased one shred of evidence. Nothing. What the Times (and others) did not see fit to discuss'. Whereupon Reagan gets on the box to print, and effectively hid for a number of to Libya', according to the 6 April Washington with the story of intercepted cables and days, was the vital fact that the soldier Post. What has not been reported here is that broken codes supposedly proving that 'orders killed was black and La Belle was a well-known one of the groups claiming to be the authors ... sent from Tripoli to the Libyan People's soul music club frequented by black GIs and of the indiscriminate terror at the La Belle Bureau in East Berlin' directed the Berlin foreign workers. When we read of this in the disco was a fascist organization. bombing. If there really were secrets they're 7 April Los Angeles Times, we wondered. In the On April 6 Die Wahrheit, newspaper of the trying to protect, this procedure is guaran­ scenario worked out in Washington months ago West Berlin section of the East German Com­ teed to blow anything or anybody's cover. When to 'get Qaddafi', the bombing of the Berlin munist Party, wrote of the bomb investigation Qaddafi was asked about the 'secret message', disco fell in the time slot assigned by Reagan that 'the right-radical spectrum is no longer he just laughed, saying, 'We defy them, we for Libyan terrorism. Qaddafi may not be very being excluded', particularly given the claim challenge them, to publish it.' likeable, but as the head of an Islamic North from the 'Wehrsportgruppe Hess', or 'Hess Both Libya and East Germany have explicitly African country, it doesn't seem reasonable or Defense Sport Group'. Rudolf Hess, a leading denied the US charges. On April 9, UPI repor­ likely that he would order the mass murder of Hitler deputy, imprisoned for life in Berlin's ted from Tripoli that 'Khadafy said he was blacks and Muslims. Indeed, it seems much more Spandau jail, has been the object of repeated not responsible for the TWA and West Berlin like the modus operandi of fascist killers, fascist campaigns for his release. One of the attacks, and he challenged the Reagan adminis­ who have launched numerous murderous attacks leading fascist terror groups in West Germany tration to prove its claim. "This is an old on Turks in West Germany and West Berlin. And was the notorious Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann, story", he said. "The world has not heard any when we began checking into the various ac­ since banned. Is the 'Wehrsportgruppe Hess' evidence or any proof about this old story. It counts, we found that a neo-Nazi outfit had the old Hoffmann gang in new guise? is only an excuse for aggression against an claimed the heinous bombing of the La Belle On April 7, Die Wahrheit wrote that LaBelle independent state".' On April 10, the East disco. This lead was buried, except for some was 'known as a meeting place for foreign German foreign ministry issued a statement ex­ whispers in Berlin. citizens', raising speculation concerning pressing disgust and indignation over the bom­ In the US, where the state-sponsored 'ter­ right-wing elements and 'certain tendences bing, calling it a 'criminal act' which they rorism' scare is being trumpeted as the march­ hostile to foreigners, which even extended to had nothing to do with. Again after the US ing song on the road to World War III against the head of the [Berlin] Senate'. The article terrorist assault on Libya, AP (17 April) re­ the Soviet Union, whatever the White House reported that 'slogans calling for the per­ ported, 'East Germany denied today that the says is printed as truth, unless proved other­ secution of foreigners' were found scrawled Libyan Embassy in East Berlin had orchestrated wise.• Among the few media in America not buy­ nearby the disco, reinforcing the view that the the April 5 bombing of a West Berlin disco­ ing the White House story whole hog is the bombing co~ld be the work of fascists. Exactly theque. ' black press, which is none too pleased by the one week before, on March 29, a powerful bomb And Washington keeps changing its story. Reaganauts' bloody assault on a North African exploded in Berlin at a meeting of the local The f~rst version was the one about the 'com­ country. 'Libya Bombing Gets No Cheers', head­ German-Arab Friendship ASSOCiation, in the munique' which US intelligence said they lined the front page of the Amsterdam News Turkish district of Kreuzberg, injuring seven 'intercepted from Colonel Qaddafi to his en­ (19 April), noting that while Reagan asserted people. voys in East Berlin congratulating them on a that 'Libya was responsible for the nightclub And on April 8, Unsere Zeit, newspaper of job well done'. This was floated for a few bombing and the Trans World Airline bombing the West German Communist Party, published a days, then they withdrew it and subsequently '" the President presented no evidence to commentary titled, 'The Signature of the officials 'flatly denied' all knowledge of it. support his allegations.' Nazis', noting that the disco bombing looked As political/intelligence analyst Leslie Gelb By now the American public is used to White more like the work of the fascist perpetrators wrote of the daily shifting accounts: 'Offic­ House spokesman Larry Speakes' Newspeak and of the Bologna railway station bombing that ials' assertions that the evidence is "strong all the verbal contortions surrounding the killed 80 people in 1980 or the Oktoberfest but inconclusive", or that it is "incontro­ 'overt/covert' war against Nicaragua, where bombing of the Munich beer festival by neo­ vertibl~' tend to be tied to their policy Congress openly discusses how much funding to Nazis that same year. stances. For example, several who say the evi­ give the 'secret' CIA-financed contra war. Now As we go to press we learn that these re­ dence is definitive seem to favor a strong we are told that the US' 'incontrovertible evi­ ports have finally broken through the wall of mili tary response' (Ne,,· York Times, 12 Apri 1) . dence' of Libyan involvement is 'too sensitive silence. An article by Norman Birnbaum in Der Such blatant 'news management' led Robert Spiegel (21 April) reports: MacNeil on the MacNeil-Lehrer TV news show to 'The "proofs" of Qaddafi's responsibility comment on the 'nearly,universal skepticism' for the Berlin disco explosion have re­ concerning the Reaganites' story. As for the portedly convinced everyone -- except for West German government, they continued to the West Berlin State Security. label the 'evidence' of a Libyan link 'not 'These officals deserve respect. In a city completely clear' -- until the US attack, where the word "protecting power" causes so whereupon Helmut Kohl declared it fact. many to snap to attention, it takes courage to so directly contradict an American 'Signature of the Nazis' president. Nine days after the West Berlin incident, 'The more is said about Qaddafi's guilt, the the New York Times (14 April) ran a story be­ more I recall the f6rmer CIA official who latedly reporting that the American soldier commented on every revelation by our govern­ was black, and that there was something ment on Central America with professional strange about the disco bombing: disdain: "I personally produced much better 'But one of the mysteries of La Belle is fabrications." why Colonel Qaddafi would approve an as­ 'Because the disco was a friendly atmos­ sault on a disco patronized heavily by phere for black Americans and Turks, it is black G.I.s and foreigners from third world not unthinkable that Berlin neo-Nazis were nations. at work here.' 'One of the dead in the blast was a 21- The West Berlin police are evidently not year-old black soldier, Sgt. Kenneth pursuing this line of inquiry. This is hardly Terrance Ford, and the other was a 28-year­ surprising. Consider the recent scandal sur­ old Turkish woman, Nermin Haney; among the rounding the forced resignation of West 230 wounded were a number of Arabs. A curi­ Berlin's interior minister and deputy mayor, ous mixture of victims for an Islamic re­ Heinrich Lummer. According to Der Spiegel volutionary and professed defender. of the (7 April), Lummer funneled several thousand down trodden. ' German marks in Christian Democratic Party Curious, indeed. Particularly in view of the funds to a fascist outfit. Lummer has also Workers Hammer fact that several groups had taken 'credit' been implicated in supplying arms to the fas­ Protesting outside US Embassy in London, 15 April - for the bombing, including supposed leftists cistic Lebanese Phalange and was a bosom buddy not all Americans bought Reagan's lies. and an Arab group, but 'none with known ties continued on page 10

MAY 1986 5 Book review: Move Your Shadow - -.. - - The living hell of apartheid South Africa

By Alan Roux

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning account of life in white supremacist South Africa, Move Your Shadow (New York, 1985), Joseph Lelyveld tells of a visit to a wealthy Afrikaner farm and a desolate camp for blacks nearby on the open veld (plai'ns) of the Orange Free State. At the end of the day, he watches as both are White police state rules by terrorising blotted out by a huge dust storm. He reflects black majority. that 'the dust storm was exactly what the producer of a second-rate TV documentary might have seized on for his fade-out on such a day. But I had grown mistrustful of all South African metaphors. The thoueht of an inevit­ able catastrophe was frightening, but even more frightening was the thought that it could be indefinitely deferred.' Lelyveld looks at South Africa through the eyes of an American liberal, but here he comes to a conclusion most liberals shy away from, as they take re­ fuge instead in mealy-mouthed rhetoric of 'peaceful change'. A long-time New York Times foreien corre­ fear even the shadow of the black maD falling regime uprooted hundreds of thousands of spondent, Lelyveld is currently the Times on their special preserve of white privilege. blacks -- destroying neighbourhoods in London bureau chief and has been mentioned as Such concrete details that illuminate the an­ Pretoria, evicting labour tenants from white­ a contender for the succession to powerful atomy and pathology of social relations under owned farms, expropriating landowning agri­ Executive Editor AM Rosenthal, who is sched­ apartheid, so violently contradictory yet so cultural communities (so-called 'black spots') uled to retire. Politically, Lelyveld ident­ deep-rooted -- these are the stuff of Move -- and dumped them in the rural ghettos ifies himself as 'a naive democrat who be­ Your Shadow. known as 'closer settlements'. To get there, lieves in what a South African Cabinet member This book is Lelyveld's summing up of what Lelyveld writes, 'You drove through the dismissed as "simplistic Western solutions"'. he personally saw and heard during his tour as Pretoria suburbs and then through more than Though he is on target about the tendency of the Times correspondent in South Africa. He forty miles of rich [white] farm country be­ American liberals 'to misconstrue the con­ does not devote much attention to news events fore you hit it; then you could drive another flict, to talk about human rights and living or to well-known South African political fig­ forty miles, and it was seldom out of sight: a standards while fuzzine the central issue of ures such as PW Botha, the Mandelas and Bishop serpentine stream of metal shanties and mud power', he is basically indulgent toward what Tutu; nor does he explain the origins of houses the metal roofs of which were typically he calls the 'earnest but inconsistent dab­ apartheid in settler colonialism and capitalist weighted down by small boulders to keep them bling' of US imperialism in southern Africa. development. But combining a journalist's from blowing off the Transvaal's violent The strong point of Lelyveld's powerful nar­ tenacity with a novelist's command of the hailstorms. Such sights can be seen in other rative is not his political conclusions, but language, Lelyveld fills a need in the litera­ countries, usually as a result of famines or his sharp newsman's eye for the hideous ture on South Africa for a reasonably compre­ wars. I don't know where else they have been contradictions in the land of apartheid which hensive book that gives you the harsh feel of achieved as a result of planning.' cry out for revolution. life under apartheid. Having grown up in South KwaNdebele has no economy of its own. The Lelyveld found the title for his book in a Africa, I expected that reading Move Your only jobs are in distant Pretoria. But the handbook of phrases in Fanagalo, the lingua Shadow would bring back many memories. But it apartheid social engineers are prepared to franca which originated with the influx of men is a measure of this perceptive account that I invest heavily to keep KwaNdebele's people in from many different black tribes to work South continually found myself reflecting as if for the status of perpetual 'commuters'. The Africa's gold mines. Fanagalo consists chiefly the first time on things that had seemed South African government's subsidy for bus of expressions used by the racist white fore­ simply normal when I was there -- it was like transport between KwaNdebele and the Pretoria men to order black workers around. Susa 10- being given a sharper lens. area works out to more than $1,000 per passen­ mtunzi gawena ('move your shadow') was listed One recollection concerned my nine months ger per year -- it adds up to more than Kwa­ in the phrase bDok as one of several handy as a conscripted troepie in the apartheid Ndebele's 'gross national product'! Lelyveld expressions for white golfers to use on their army. To a troepie who showed any lack of rode the 2.40 am bus KwaNdebele workers must black caddies. It's an apt metaphor for life obedience, the redneck Afrikaner corporals endure just to get to work each day and ~ot in South Africa, where the apartheid rulers would scream, 'Jy raak wi t, troep!' (' You're the riders to tell their own stories: acting white, private! '). At the time and 'John Masango ... said he worked six days New York Times since, I don't recall anyone reflecting on the a week at a construction site near Benoni, South Afrtc:a'. Black Homelands irony of one white disparaging the 'whiteness' an industrial town forty miles on the far Source: Move Your Shadow of another in an institution dedicated to side of Pretoria, taking three buses each c::J KwaZuIu . 3.860.000 by Joseph Lelyveld CiZlTIIfISkef - 2.IiKKJ,OOO slaughtering blacks. In South Africa the dom~­ way. Even at the concessional rates ar­ IllllletIowa - 2.040,000 .8oQhufhatswana - 1 6eO,OOO nation of white over black is the relation of ranged by the authorities for KwaNdebele, _C ..... '900,000 c::DGazank.ufu - S80.000 master and subordinate, stamped on the whole the total bus fares he paid out in a weeL ~Yenda· 381,000 ~KaNgw.ne· 371,OfXl society; to tell a troep he can't act 'white' gobbled up one-quarter of his wages. He was mawaqw. - 178,000 _ KwaNdetlele - is the clearest way of telling him he has no fifty-three years old, and on days when he 176,000 rights. was not required to work overtime, he could get back to Kameelrivier by eight-thirty at Bantustan system 'A nation of sleepwalkers' is key to super­ night. Only on Sundays did he ever see his exploitation of Move Your Shadow represents a powerful ap­ home or his family in the light of day .... black labour. plication of Lelyveld's principal maxim as a With four hours' sleep at home and a couple journalist: that each person is an expert on of hours' sleep on the bus, he managed to the circumstances of his life. Instead of just stay awake at work.' reciting statistics on black migrant labour in In Pretoria, KwaNaebele is viewed 'as 'a South Africa, he makes the acquaintance of mi­ tremendous success for the racial planners', grant workers employed in his block of flats he reports, A high official said seriously and, on their annual leave, drives them the blacks didn't want to live in towns: 'They soul-destroying hundreds of miles back to the were much happier with their own kind out in SOUTH AFRICA starvine KwaZulu bantustan where their famil­ the bush. The Afrikaans term he used WRS dood­ ies are forced to live. Perhaps his most memor­ gelukkig ("dead happy"). That seemed sing­ able eyewitness reporting concerns the insane ularly apt for emergent KwaNdebele, a nation apartheid project that is the latest bantu­ of sleepwalkers.' Lelyveld reminds himself that stan, KwaNdebele. the KwaNdebele 'commuters' are more fortunate In order to create KwaNdebele, the Botha than many South African blacks -- they at least

6 WORKERS HAMMER have jobs and 'live with' their families. contradictions compel Lelyveld to see beyond 'white' South Africa. The KwaNdebele 'com­ These journeys measure the gulf (the moat?) his frequently stated liberal anti-communist muters', less fortunate, are still better off apartheid has dug between black and white. prejudices. Thus, he writes of the SACP: than the migrant workers, who are in turn While the nature of apartheid is brutally clear 'South African security men tirelessly better off than those who can only starve in to the blacks who live under it, the whites spread the ancient allegation that the min­ the bantustans or seek work illegally. who live off it are experts in masking the uscule, antediluvia~ Communist party which Talking with a young man cast to the bottom reality of oppression from themselves. This has dutifully followed Moscow's line on of this pyramid, Lelyveld finds him blaming applies to all ruling groups, but reaches Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Afghanistan, the blacks who have jobs for his plight. fantastic proportions in 'white South Africa'. dominates Umkhonto we Sizwe ('Spear of the Lelyveld describes also the grotesque little Having uprooted millions, apartheid ensures Nation'), the [ANC's] underground's black tribal despotisms that police the that 'Hardly anywhere do whites now have to military arm .... If this is so, then the bantustans for apartheid. When rural blacks live near blacks ... and hardly anywhere is it effect for many blacks is not to lower the are to be forcibly moved from land they have even n~cessary for them to see where blacks prestige of Umkhonto we Sizwe but to raise cultivated for decades to the bare veld in a live, except occasionally at a distance from that of the Communist party. ' bantustan, workers from a distant tribe are a passing car: For the whites, 'the resentment employed to do it. In the tribal violence of in the depths, among blacks and browns, is be­ recent months we have seen the success of yond their comprehension'. apartheid divide-and-rule tactics in inflaming Throughout the book, Lelyveld dissects the divisions. racist consciousness of whites, from the kept 'sociologists' who lament that the black 'South Africa awaits its Lenin' 'national character' is 'inimical to growth', to the baas on the farm who 'knows the black' Workers Vanguard has, uniquely on the left, but not the real name of his oldest servant. warned that so long as the national principle 'If whites took the long view, they would be in predominates, there is a danger of a multi­ a panic', Lelyveld observes. In fact, panic is sided communal-race war in which blacks would not far below the surface; but the whites' today be overwhelmingly the victims. The overwhelming monopoly of force gives them the black nationalists cannot overcome the div­ luxury of projecting 'any version of reality isions fostered by apartheid -- witness the they please', from the myth of 'separate de­ confrontations between the largely Xhosa Uni­ velopment' under apartheid to the recent de­ ted Democratic Front and Gatsha Buthelezi's lusion that apartheid is being reformed out of Zulu impis, and between black township youth existence. and migrant workers this past year. But with This delusion in particular is annihilated its six-million-strong black wor~,ing class as in Move }'our Shadow. Lelyveld has actually the motor force for proletarian revolution, been the New York Times correspondent in South the class principle can prevail in South Africa twice, and this has given him a certain r., ," Africa. vantage pOint on the evolution of apartheid. The biggest weakness of Lelyveld's book, a He was first sent there after covering the direct result of his liberal politics, is his racist murder of three civil rights workers in denial of the significance of the black workers Mississippi during the 'freedom summer' of movement_ He measures the distance between 1964. When Lelyveld arrived in South Africa in whi te and black, but he does not show the utter 1965 the apartheid rulers had crushed all dependence of 'white South Africa' on black organised opposition and they booted him out labour. His discussion of the black trade eleven months later. In 1980 they let him re­ unions falls in the chapter, 'Controlled turn, apparently hoping to impress him with Strength', where he describes the roundups, their 'reform' programme -- or did they perhaps the hideous torture of union militants, the just want him to see how firmly they were tremendous courage of those who persist in the still in control? face of inhuman cruelty. The changes Lelyveld found in 'white South Lelyveld is markedly defeatist about the Africa' are rather bizarre. The dour Afrikaner black unions, commenting on the 'touching but who in the 1960s cited scripture to sanctify Weekly Mail basically dizzy sense of invincibility', the apartheid is now an 'arriviste puritan' aping 'atmosphere of a revival' in the union head­ Achilles' heel of apartheid capitalism is dependence on every Western comsumer fad. Clad by Gucci, he black labour. Black unions have the power to bring quarters, raising an eyebrow when told 'that mixes with blacks at casinos and fancy res­ South Africa to a standstill: the power of the new black unions would ulti­ taurants; he dares to be regaled by Richard mately put an end to the pass laws, the mi­ Pryor tapes. Apartheid too is reclothed, in grant labor system, and the Group Areas Act'. jargon borrowed from American sociology, and Lelyveld would not be surprised at the 'On subsequent trips to East London and Port dismissed as passe. But the reality, which appearance of the Soviet red flag with its Elizabeth', he writes, 'I saw how hope was Lelyveld graphically documents in thousandS of hammer and sickle at funerals for black mili­ systematically cut down to size, how the re­ miles of travel throughout the bantustans, tants over the last year. He goes on: ality of white power in South Africa gradually those barren fragments of land where millions 'The immediate attraction is its supposed made itself felt.' have been sent to starve, is that apartheid extremism -- ideology comes later, if at But there is a reason for the tremendous has been and is being relentlessly extended. all -- because the choice for blacks be­ energy and hope unleashed with the explosion When the umpteenth verligte ('enlightened') tween "moderate" and "radical", as it is of black unionism -- organised as workers, Afrikaner rhetorically asks him if he sees any defined by whites in South Africa, is a black militants had touched on the source of changes, Lelyveld replies, 'Yes, I never im- I choice between reaching some accommodation power, the motor force of social revolution. agined they would be able to carry apartheid so with apartheid and insisting on full The black unions today are no longer just far. ' ci tizenship. ' 'green branches ... regularly pruned', as In fact the combination of the ANC's call to Lelyveld writes. As organised workers stand up 'W-A-R' 'make the townships ungovernable', appeals for for their rights against the apartheid bosses, an international boycott and meetings with the whole range of apartheid practices is Move Your Shadow was not written to demon­ leading capitalists like Anglo American's Gavin thrown into flux. A small but interesting strate a political thesiS, but the cumUlative ReIly, are all part of a programme in which example is the fate of Fanagalo, the artific­ effect of its description makes a statement of militancy is employed in the service of press­ ial language of apartheid command. With black cardinal importance: apartheid is a social uring apartheid capitalism to reform itself miners now organised in a powerful union, the structure as elaborate, as entrenched, and as and, ultimately, finding accommodation with bosses can no longer simply tell superexploited inimical to all forms of human emancipation as it. migrant workers what to do. As contracts are slavery was in the American South, or tsarism 'South Africa could be worse than Belgium thrashed out, as the miners raise their demands, in Rus~ia. No amount of reformist tinkering, and Northern Ireland and Lebanon all rolled Fanagalo is proving to be increasingly obsolete. 'responsible' imperialist statesmanship and into one', an Afrikaner law professor told With hundreds of thousands of members, or­ divestment 'pressure' will eradicate it. It Lelyveld, 'underscoring with a curious com­ ganised now in every important industry of this will take social revolution to topple the bination of pride and alarm the possibilities heavily industrial country, the black unions edifice of apartheid slavery which has created have the power to bring the country to a stand­ glittering empires for the 'Randlords' while of racial and ethnic strife'. Move Your Shadow anatomises the social divisions still. The power, but not the programme. Lely­ the black toilers who dig the gold are denied veld notes that the ANC in 'nearly a quarter every right. fostered by apartheid that could produce such a disaster. Apartheid, pyramid-like, not only century of exile has failed to produce a South In the chapter titled 'Controlled Strength' keeps white over coloured (mixed-race) over African What Is To Be Done?' Or, as Ne~sweek Lelyveld depicts not just the nightmare of Indian over black, but maintains a complex correspondent Ray Wilkinson put. it last Sep­ surveillance and torture in which the South hierarchy among the blacks. A fortunate few tember, for which he was expelled from the African security police envelop their op­ may own homes in segregated areas within continued on page 9 ponents, but also the enormous capacity for racist violence of the white population at large. There is a licensed private gun for every white adult male. After two bull Workers Hammer [ ii~Riil!i~~:hdtet I terriers break their chains and kill the household's black maid, the SPCA is besieged South Africa packet i Handsworth by whites wanting to buy the dogs. from to Soweto: In 'W-A-R' Lelyveld delineates the military I SmasIJ tire ~'racist tenur weakness of the African National Congress, the Articles from Workers Vanguard emphaSis on martyrdom. He understands that and Workers Hammer Nelson Mandela 'has become the living symbol I of his movement and the personification of the bondage of his people'. But why have the ANC -----£1, incl pip. and the allied South African Communist Party I (SACP) proven unable to lead a revolution in I the land of apartheid, where the dramatic Make payable/postto: I social contradictions have repeatedly reached ", ,ST Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, PO 8JE the boiling point? The pressure cooker of London We1 H 8JE apartheid's social oppression and social

MAY 1986 7 -----_ .. -

the US Sixth Fleet sailed towards t~e Gulf of ism, just as they did at the time of Thatch­ Libya ... Sidra in March, its ships had been engaged in er's bloody Falklands/Malvinas adventure. a brazen provocation within Soviet territorial Labour leader Neil Kinnock counterposed to (Continued from page 1) waters outside its major Black Sea naval in­ Reagan/Thatcher's blood-thirsty provocations stallation at Sevastopol. The Soviets would an alternative imperialist policy of isolat­ raid 14 April, Reagan and Thatcher must have have been entirely within their rights to have ing Libya until 'the pressure of commercial, rubbed their hands in glee. Thatcher's initial blown these Navy warships out of the water. economic, financial, diplomatic and political absurd lies to the contrary, this was no 'sur­ Recognising that this could mean world war, sanctions squeezed the life out of the Gaddafi gical military strike', but a murder mission the Soviets said, 'we showed patience and regime' (Times, 17 April). While shadow home to kill Qaddafi and terrorise the Libyan restraint' -- 'this time'. secretary Gerald Kaufman railed against people. The Pentagon later admitted that In the wake of the Libya terror-bombing, Thatcher for being too slow in booting Libyans Libyan army bases were not the target. They Reagan vows, 'If necessary, we will do it out of the country, CIA-lover Denis Healey de­ bombed Qaddafi's residential compound in again.' Meanwhile Thatcher orders wholesale nounced the EEC for not policing 'terrorists' Tripoli, his alternate headquarters in Ben­ expulsions of Libyans from Britain. In the effectively enough. ghazi, his personal transport carrier. With face of opposition even from within her own What NATO-loyalists like Kinnock, Healey and Thatcher's blessing, the F-111s were loaded Cabinet she hardlines it, committing Britain the SDP are concerned about is that this latest action will exacerbate opposition to with anti-personnel cluster bombs -- and their to supporting future raids while acting as drill sergeant among the more recalcitrant the Atlantic alliance and the presence of US gory effect was evident on every TV screen the West European NATO partners. In preparation bases here. A columnist in the pro-Atlanticist for the Tokyo summit, the US and Britain have Guardian (14 April) on the eve of the attack gone all-out to consolidate support for their expressed open concern that 'Rambo Reagan has terrorist provocation among their imperialist achieved the impossible: he has made getting allies. The ultimate target of these imperial­ rid of the bases look not only conceivable but ist war provocations, of course, is the Soviet perhaps desirable'. Even Tory 'wet' Lord Car­ Union. In the classic style of Cold War brink­ rington, NATO secretary-general, has been manship, Reagan and Thatcher think they can moaning about a split in NATO as a result of terrorise the Russians into abject capitu­ the Libya raid. lation. The Libyan strikes will embolden the France in particular earned the Pentagon's imperialists in their anti-Soviet war drive, ire by refusing to allow the US bombers to aimed at 'rolling back' the 1917 October Re­ cross their airspace en route to Libya, forc­ volution and restoring unhindered capitalist ing them to fly an extra 1200 miles in each domination of the world. direction. Was the bombing of the French em­ As a team of journalists from the inter­ bassy in Tripoli the Americans' reply? (No national Spartacist tendency which visited overflight? Take that!) But the difference Tripoli in March, during Reagan's earlier between Reagan/Thatcher and the other European attack, stated in a declaration to the press: bourgeoisies (and their social-democratic 'We have come to Libya whilst the US im­ lackeys) is essentially tactical -- having far perialist 6th Fleet was threatening to re­ more to do with geographic proximity to Libya peat its criminal aggression against the (and dependence on Libyan oil) than anything Libyan state, in order to reassert con­ else. Mitterrand is no stranger to state ter­ cretely with our presence here the iSt's rorism, as his lethal operation against Green­ deep respect and support for the just peace in New Zealand and his despatching of cause of Libyan independence and territor­ troops to Chad and New Caledonia show. Mean­ ial integrity against assault by US imperi­ while Mitterrand announces surveillance of alist aggression. anyone who has even visited Libya recently, 'The terrorist actions of the US imperial­ and German chancellor Kohl echoes Reagan's ists against Libya are part and parcel of preposterously unfounded charges that Libyan the war preparations of the USA and NATO 'terrorists' were behind the indefensible powers against the Soviet Union, Nicaragua, Berlin disco bombing (see 'Who bombed Berlin Cuba, Afghanistan, Poland, and any other disco?' in this issue). country that is perceived as an obstacle to The working class must stand militarily imperialist domination.' wi th Libya against this imperialist aggression. In Afghanistan and Nicaragua, both under As Leon Trotsky, co-leader with Lenin of the Newsday Reagan's guns, tens of thousands rallied in Photo distributed in Libya shows Qaddafi with baby Russian October Revolution, wrote during the daughter Hana. defiance of US imperialism after the attack. 1930s when European social democrats refused The pro-Sandinista newspaper Nuevo Diario to defend colonial Ethiopia even against the following evening. Washington wanted a visible wrote: 'Yesterday it was Grenada, today Libya Italian fascist Mussolini, on grounds that bloodbath. As one reporter in Tripoli noted: and tomorrow Nicaragua.' Indeed, Reagan ex­ Ethiopia was led by a repulsive monarchical 'The American attacks on a missile base at plicitly linked Libya to Nicaragua in his dictatorship: Surt and on Libyan vessels in the Gulf of global counterrevolutionary plans, using the 'If Mussolini triumphs, it means the re­ Sidra last month, although they may have Tripoli bombing to try to push through arms inforcement of fascism, the strengthening cost the lives of more than 60 Libyan aid for the CIA's anti-Sandinista contra of imperialism, and the discouragement of sailors, made so little impact on this terrorists. If most Americans (though barely colonial peoples in Africa and elsewhere. country's major cities that Qaddafi domes­ half the black population) seemed to be buying The victory of [Ethiopia], however, would tically was able to claim the engagement as Reagan's line on the Libya raid initially, mean a mighty blow not only at Italian im­ a victory.' (Washington Post, 15 April) this reactionary triumphalist mood is brittle. perialism but at imperialism as a whole, So Reagan and Thatcher have their 'vic- When Reagan moves to send 'American boys' to and would lend a powerful impulsion to the tory': they managed to kill Qaddafi's adopted die on foreign soil, he will find the 'Vietnam baby daughter and to kill and maim more than syndrome' very much alive and still in his 100 civilians. After two days of stories of way. It's one thing for US bombers to rain gunfire in the streets and rumours of coups dJwn death in Libya with virtual impunity. But and Qaddafi's death -- purposeful wishful to take and hold Nicaragua would cost many thinking by American intelligence -- the thousands of American lives. Libyan leader went on TV to denounce the 'Rambo's daughter' in trouble bombing as barbaric and 'crazy'. 'We tell Reagan that he does not need to protect his In Europe, the Libya raid served to ex­ children and his people', he said. 'We are not acerbate existing fissures within the NATO like you. We do not bombard cities.' Bursting alliance. Mass protests hit the streets in into tears in front of Western reporters, his London, Athens and Madrid; demonstrators wife denounced Reagan and Thatcher as 'mur­ battled cops in Germany: it was an atmosphere derers': 'If the Americans and British are not seen since the Vietnam war. In Italy democratic, they should judge Reagan and dozens of factories were shut down by work Thatcher' and have them 'liquidated'. stoppages to discuss the attack. In Britain, Predictably, the Libya raid received bi­ the Anglo-American terror-bombing unleashed a partisan support in the US from Democratic wave of opposition and outrage, in distinct Party 'doves'. The Democrats hate Qaddafi be­ contrast to the muted response to the earlier cause, like Reagan, they link him with Russia. US provocation in the Gulf of Sidra. The pro-Irish lobby in the US Congress -- ex­ One BBC news commentator noted that emplified by the likes of Senator Ted Kennedy Thatcher was getting 'bouquets in the US and and House leader Tip O'Neill -- virtually brickbats at home'. Only hours after news of crumbled when Reagan moved to push through an the attack broke, several thousand demon­ anti-IRA extradition bill in gratitude for strators came out onto the streets, many of Thatcher's support. Hailing Thatcher's Britain them headed straight for Downing Street. A as 'our staunchest ally in our battle against MORI poll conducted the day after the bombing international terrorism', Reagan proclaimed: registered opposition by two-thirds of the 'We need to stand tall with our British allies British population to the attack; an even at this important moment' (Times, 24 April). greater number opposed British participation. The sentiment among working people was aptly Defend the Soviet Union! reflected in a resolution approved by the NUJ Under Reagan, fighting' international ter­ annual delegate conference, which condemned rorism' has been the codeword for escalating the raid and authorised a telegram of con­ anti-Soviet war preparations. Washington im­ dolence to be sent to the Libyan government as mediately tried to blame the Libya raids on well as 'calling on journalists in the US to the Russians. 'We urged the Soviets and East stand firm against war fever'. ./ Germans to restrain the Libyans', State De­ But for the social-patriotic Labour Party partment spokesman Bernard Kalb said. 'Had it was an ideal opportunity to rally around Thatcher's earlier murder mission: HMS Conqueror was thei done so, this entire cycle' of events the butcher's apron and deflect any challenge ordered to sink Argentine cruiser Be/grano outside would have been avoided.' Indeed, even before to the Tory government and British imperial- Falklands/Malvinas war zone.

8 WORKERS HAMMER ~';"''''t

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A. ~~Jt~ Down, Down Reagan! . ~,

A team of journalists from the international Spartacist tendency went to Tripoli in late March as Reagan attacked in the Gulf 6f Sidra. Sixteen years ago the British colonialists were booted out of their military bases in Libya. followed by dismantling of American bases. Now. as Thatcher aids Reagan. Libyan masses are demonstrating against US imperialist aggression.

rebellious forces of the oppressed peoples. War III. This' decapitation' policy was laid Americans over the disarmament of the Soviet One must really be completely blind not to out in Jimmy Carter's Presidential Directive Union is a betrayal of the October Revolution. see this.' (' On Dictators and the Heights 59 in 1980. Of course, murdering foreign In his July 1932 'Declaration to the Antiwar of Oslo', April 1936) leaders is ostensibly prohibited by US law, Congress at Amsterdam'; Leon Trotsky trench­ but even this legal formality will be elimi­ antly exposed the fraud of 'disarma'ment': Pentagon's Murder, Inc nated by a Congressional bill which would 'per­ 'Without the slightest confidence in the mit the President to order the assassination capitalist programs for disarmament or arms The US attacks on Libya were planned nine of a foreign head of state under some circum­ limitations, the revolutionary proletariat months ago, long before the bombing of the stances' (New York Times, 18 April). asks one single question: In whose hands West Berlin disco or the Rome/Vienna airport The Pentagon warmakers think that their are the weapons? Any weapon in the hands of massacre which provided the excuse. As the laser-guided 'smart' bombs will gave them the the imperialists is a weapon directed against Sunday Times (30 March) revealed, the Reagan­ pinpoint accuracy to accomplish this ultimate the working class, against the weak nations, ites wanted to pick on somebody to restore US terrorist strike. And the main lessen they against social ism, against humani ty. Weapons imperialist prestige on the cheap and send a have drawn from the bombing of Tripoli was in the hands of the proletariat and of the message to the Soviet Union: that high tech works. 'But Operation El Dorado oppressed nations are the only means of 'At a White House meeting of the national Canyon was something less than the 'flawless ridding our planet of oppression and war.' security planning group in July there was success' claimed by Weinberger and Reagan. The imperialist war drive can only be answered general agreement that a target must be Credible Soviet accounts indicate six planes by revolutionary class struggle. The work- chosen ... , Libya was the soft option with were lost in the raid. Fully one-third of the in~ people of America and Britain, united Gaddafi able to count only on words to F-Ills had to ,abort the mission because of with their class brothers around the world, support his leadership. The Arab world and mechanical failure, and their targetting can't must rise to their historic mission and disarm the Soviet bloc would not back him with have been too good unless they really intended the bloody imperialists by smashing capitalist muscle .... to 'take out' a chicken farm two miles away class rule and establishing the revolutionary 'In December, at Bolling airbase outside from a Libyan air base, killing 300 chickens! regime of workers power .• Washington, a special conference attended This, and the explosion of the US' last two by mainstream policy-makers from the White Ti tan missiles and the Challenger space shut­ House, Pentagon, State Department and in­ tle, does not augur well for Reagan's 'Star telligence services agreed a broad outline Wars' plans. for action.' Workers revolution - the only road to peace South Africa ... So Qaddafi, a military client of the Soviet (Continued from page 7) Union and small-time Arab nationalist strong­ The Libya raid drove home to millions the man whose own terrorism has never been shown very real danger of nuclear holocaust posed by to touch anybody abroad except Libyan dissi­ the US-led imperialist anti-Soviet war drive. country, 'Their revolution awaits its Lenin. ' dents, was chosen to take the rap for all the Typically the Labour 'left' and CND renewed As we have insisted: world's terrorist incidents -- by trying to their pleas for nuclear disarmament, while 'The black proletariat is still being used murder his family! Referring to the death of directing all their fire at the 'superpowers' as cattle to haul the ideological cart of Qaddafi's l5-month-old daughter Hana in the and trying to amnesty their 'own' bourgeoisie nationalism. A Bolshevik party must be bombing of Tripoli, even former US president by pushing anti-Americanism. The call for the built to lead a victorious strueele for Jimmy Carter remarked that if someone had 19 April Hyde Park rally which featured Tony "amandla", power, for the oppressed, through killed his daughter Amy 17 years ago, 'I would Benn and other prominent Labour 'lefts' was workers revolution.' ('SouthA:frica:Razor's have sworn as long as my life existed, I would the social-patriotic appeal to 'Protect Brit­ Edge', Workers Hammer no 68, April 1985) retaliate' (New York Post, 18 April). ain and world peace'. These 'Little England' What is lacking in South Africa today is In fact, with their far more deadly state nationalists, with the fake revolutionaries revolutionary leadership at the head of the terror, Reagan and Thatcher invite retaliatory tailing behind, focus on American imperialism, burgeoning black workers movement. In the course of his book, Lelyveld makes several al­ indiscriminate terrorist attacks by anyone out­ parodying Liebknecht's stirring international­ lusions to the history and literature of 19th raged by their imperialist crimes, like the ist appeal from World War I by turning it into murder of two British schoolteachers inLebanon the slogan, 'The main enemy is abroad!' century Russia. But even more important than in apparent retaliation for Britain's role in Such illusions to the contrary, Britain can": historical similarities is the unique legacy the raid. Not only are such random, indis­ not opt out of the world. The only road to left us by the Bolshevik Party that led the criminate terrorist attacks abominable crimes, peace is workers revolution to smash the war­ workers to power in October 1917. That legacy they are playing Reagan's game, helping him mongering imperialist system internationally, is embodied in the Trotskyist internationalist whip up war fever in an American population extending the October Revolution which over­ programme of permanent revolution, which holds that ever since Vietnam has resisted every at­ threw the Russian capitalist class in 1917 that the emanCipation of the oppressed nation tempt to drag them into another dirty, losing throughout the world. But the Stalinist rulers can only be achieved through the revolutionary colonial war. in Moscow are no less wedded to illusions in dictatorship of the proletariat. In fact, the Reagan administration has a 'disarmament' and 'peaceful coexistence', the A South African Bolshevik party must be cen­ policy of assassination, and is openly bragging direct consequence of their treacherous pro­ tred on the black proletariat, and integrate the vanguard of the coloured and Indian op­ about it. The National Security Council had gramme of 'socialism in one country' ratper even drafted a statement describing Qaddafi's than international proletarian revolution. pressed r.lc~sses as well as revolutionary whi tes. A book such as Nove Your Shadow arouses the death as 'fortuitous', and War Secretary Even as the Soviets were breaking off a planning Caspar Weinberger was quoted by the New York meeting for the summit in the wake of the Libya determination to smash apartheid; the inter­ national Spartacist tendency, inheritor of the Post as saying that Qaddafi had 'forfeited his bombing, Gorbachev was unveiling a new initiat­ right to occupy space on the planet'. The ive for reducing conventional arms. But the lessons of October, has the programme to do it. Libyan leader is labelled a 'mad dog' -- and NATO imperialists are only interested in dis­ Reprinted from Workers Vanguard no 402. 25 April 1986 we all know what you're supposed to do to a arming the Russians. For them, Reaganite rhe­ mad dog: shoot it. toric aside, 'detente' served to hold back the CONTACT THE SPARTACIST LEAGUE: It was a small-scale practice run for Soviet missile programme while the US rebuilt BIRMINGHAM ...... (021) 236 9774 Reagan's nuclear first-strike plans against its nuclear arsenal which had deteriorated LONDON ...... (01) 278 2232 the Soviet Union, which call for 'decapitatine' under the impact of the Vietnam war. For the SHEFFIELD ...... (0742) 751828 the Kremlin in the first few minutes of World Kremlin bureaucrats to be bargaining with the

MAY 1986 9 in the French elect.ions. Within a year t\1ey In Liebknecht' swords, "The main enemy is Kinnock ... haa crossed the rubicon to social-democratic at home!'" (Spartacist Bri tain supplement, (Continued from page 2) betrayal by cheering on the (CIA-aided) Portu­ 1 June 1982) guese Socialist Party as they spearheaded a Today, in this country and elsewhere, my colleagues for thirty eight years of my counterrevolutionary mobilisation against the millions of people are again scared out of working life. Communist Party and the 'left' MFA popular their wits at the prospect of thermonuclear Before and after the march there were many front government. In the midst of a pre-revol­ war. There is a real interest in a revolution­ fine words spoken by a number of very fine utionary situation, the OCI stood on the op­ ary-internationalist alternative to the speakers, but in my honest opinion they were posite side of the barricades from the mass of popular-front pacifist nationalism supplied by empty words, for I considered that little was revolutionary-minded proletarians. the fake left. Hundreds of people on the Libya said that was worth noting. More or less protests were eager to read our eyewitness re­ The OCI's various British offshoots have everyone who spoke urged the return of a Labour port from Tripoli, 'Under Reagan's guns in carried their anti-Soviet reformism to a logi­ Government at the next General Election, and Libya', in the last issue of Workers Hammer, core or less stated that such a Government cal, anti-Communist end in the Labour Party. Robin Blick and Mark Jenkins, after brain­ and scores of Workers Vanguards were sold to would be the panacea of all our present ills. those who wanted to read the paper of the trusting the Thornett split in the WRP in the I hope that they are right. It was also stated American Trotskyists who defend Libya and the mid-70s, soon collapsed into witchhunting that the threatened closure of the Bates Soviet Union against imperialism. Let's go right-wing Labourism. The SLG which they left Colliery in Northumberland would be opposed forward to the building of revolutionary van­ behind is a social-democratic sectlet buried with the utmost vigour and with every means guard parties worldwide to overthrow this in a couple of Labour Party wards. The sorry possible, even to the point that the Leader of war-mad capitalist system! We say: Reagan/ history of Blick/Jenkins and the SLG, and par­ the Opposition, the Right Hon Neil Rinnock Thatcher hands off Libya! Defend the Soviet ticularly that of the OCI/PCI, should serve as would be throwing his weight behind the men ~nion! The main enemy is at home!. employed at that pit to fight its closure a salutary warning to members of today's post­ (provided they do so within the law I assume). Healy WRP about the political price to be paid I would point out to the men at Bates Colliery for refusing to break from Stalinophobia and that in Rinnock's area here in South Wales Labour-loyalism .• there were six pits working at the start of the Berlin disco ... Coal Strike, there is now only one left. In (Continued from page 5) the twelve months since the return to work of Bashir Gemayel, whose assassination was the five of them have closed in his constituency Main enemy ... pretext for the Phalangists' mass slaughter at of Islwyn. While I freely admit to being some­ (Continued from page 3) the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee what cynical at times, I must say that if I camps. Now West Berlin police have announced years ago these fake revolutionaries opposed was employed at Bates Colliery I would be a the arrest of a 'stateless Palestinian', pro­ it, screaming about 'Stalinist aggression'! In trifle worried that Neil Rinnock is trying to bably from one of the camps, on 'suspicion of any event, the Trotskyist defence of the USSR do for them what he could not, or would not do involvement' in the disco bombing; the alleged has nothing to do with the immediate policies for mineworkers in his own constituency. I connection was not specified. fervently hope that any efforts he will make of the Stalinist bureaucracy but with the ob­ toward that end will be successful for the men jective interests of the world proletariat. Reagan-Hitler: lying provocation employed at that colliery, and also for their dependent families. Down with all imperialisms, not just American! Speaking in the United Nations Security At the start of the march I met a person Eschewing defence of the Soviet Union Council April 18, the Libyan ambassador, Dr Ali who was, and I believe still is, an executive against the war drive, the fake revolution­ Treiki, accused the US of pursuing 'a campaign member of the NUM (South Wales Area). He poss­ aries prefer to join with CND and the Labour of aggression and provocation': ibly recognised me as being a worker at my 'lefts' and focus on opposition to American 'What is the problem that exists between the former colliery, and he asked me if I was imperialism, in particular to US bases in United States and Libya? It is the same still employed in the industry. When I told Britain. At the 19 April demonstration, Tony problem that exists between the United him that I was now a redundant mineworker he Cliff's Socialist Workers Party even initiated States and all small peoples, beginning said, 'What are you doing here then?' I told the burning of an American fla6 -- but, con­ with Nicaragua and Grenada and extending to him that as one who had fought for twelve spicuously, you didn't see the Cliffites ig­ Viet Nam, to Angola, to Ethiopia, to the long and hard months for the right to a job, niting a Union Jack. Palestinian people and to the people of I cons ide red I had every right to be there .... There is an iron link between anti-Soviet­ Namibia. The United States has fallen prey Finally I will say this, trade union ism and the amnestying of one's 'own' bour­ to the arrogance and madness of power, and leaders today are mostly out of touch with geoisie. Of course we oppose the presence of it wants to become the world's policeman. their rank and file memberships. It is now US bases in this country and throughout West Any party that does not agree to become a time for them to consider going out occasion­ Europe -- just as we oppose the British bases vassal and agent of the United States is an ally from their palatial offices and visit the in Cyprus, Gibraltar and elsewhere, so con­ outlaw, a terrorist, a communist and a places where their members work. It is their veniently ignored by the pacifists and fake devil.' job to fight for their members, not anyone lefts. But to campaign around this demand in Treiki said the US had 'attempted to forge else, no secret deals with management and no this country under present circumstances is documents, which were subsequently proven to compromises, for at present they seem to be to embrace 'Little England' social-chauvinism be fabrications', and recalled 'the famous doing little in this field. Disputes and in­ and cover for the crimes of the British capi­ "Ems cable", fabricated by Bismarck when he dustrial actions for whatever may be the cause talist class, from Ireland to the South wished to carry out aggression against are not won by words alone, it takes fearless Atlantic to Libya itself. It is analogous to France' . leadership and presence on picket lines if the campaign against German rearmament so be­ Bismarck's forged cable totally distorting people are no longer to be exploited or loved of British Stalinists and Labourites in a report from the French ambassador was the threatened with the dole queue as is so under the 1950s. And it is to sow illusions that a pretext for the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. In any capitalist system. It is also equally the 'peaceful' capitalist Britain can somehow opt September 1939, the Nazis had recourse to the job of the rank and file union member to en­ out of a world threatened with global thermo­ same method of lying provocation. They dressed sure that these people they elect to serve nuclear holocaust. The presence of US bases German concentration camp inmates in Polish their interests do the job that they are in West Europe is intrinsic to the NATO al­ uniforms, trucked them up to the frontier and paid to do, and must ensure that they attend liance, not a reflection of some 'semi­ then shot them, claiming 'self-defense' as many union meetings as possible whenever colonial' relationship to the US as Labour a£ainst a Polish attack on Danzig. As William they are called to make sure that this hap­ 'lefts' like Tony Benn would have it. This im­ Stevenson wrote in A Man Called Intrepid -­ pens. Trade union members must remember too perialist anti-Soviet alliance must be The Secret War, Hitler's 'ruse' worked: that the movement was born out of militancy, smashed. Not surprisingly, WP et al make no 'The New York Times reported that regular and any would-be leaders who consider them­ criticisms of the Labour 'lefts' over Libya. Polish Army troops took part in an attack selves 'moderate' should be avoided like the Four years ago hundreds of thousands of on German pOSitions and that this was the plague. Failure to do this will mean that people marched in protest at Ronald Reagan's signal for a general offensive by Polish things within the trade union movement will warmongering tour of West Europe. We wrote forces. The lie confused the British -­ continue as the 'status quo', and all future at the time: bound by treaty to help Poland if she was disputes ~ill be doomed to failure, as with 'Capitalist America is the number one enemy attacked first -- long enough to make the Coal Strike of 1984/85 and, as it seems, of the world's working peoples. But "anti­ intervention too late.' the Sogat 82 and NGA dispute with Rupert Americanis~' does not equal anti-imperial­ And, of course, there was the 1964 Gulf of Murdoch's newspaper group, News International. ism. In the mouths of social democrats and Tonkin incident in which the US falsely Stalinists, anti-American rhetoric only claimed they were fired on by the North Viet­ Sincerely Yours, serves to amnesty one's own bourgeoisie .... namese: this Big Lie was used to provide the Don Hughes Former mineworker, Celynen South Colliery (Deceased) NUM (South Wales Area) It -Subscribe!-

Lambert ... o 10 issues of Workers Hammer for £2 (Continued from page 2) o 10 issues of Workers Hammer plus 24 issues of participate in the 'international discussion' Workers Vanguard, Marxist fortnightly of the which they claimed to seek, outlining our Spartacist League/US £6 major points of political disagreement (re­ (all above subs include Spartacist, organ of the international Spartacist tendency) printed in Spartacist ~o 22, Winter 1973-74). On the Russian Question we noted that the o 4 issues of Women & Revolution for £1.50 OCI's tendency 'to equate the struggle against Name ...... imperialism with the struggle against Stalin­ Phone ...... ism' had been taken 'a step further' when it Address ...... denied the dual and contradictory nature of the Stalinist bureaucracy. By early 1974, the Make payable/post to: Spartacist Publications, OCI had hardened into yight centrism by call­ PO Box 185, London Wel H 8JE ing for a vote to !,:i tterrand' s popular front

10 WORKERS HAMMER 'legal' basis for the entire Vietnam War. makes a point tha~ we differentiate our anti­ fists in their pockets go to Tower Hill hoping We ask, cui bono -- who benefits? The La Stalinism from the anti-Stalinism of the bour­ that 'tonight will be the night' when the Belle bombing is oh-so-convenient for the rreoisie. The WRP amalgamates them, and this is scabs are taught some hard lessons. One SOGAT Americans. In Reagan's attack on Libya in at the centre of this question. It was because member's reaction to talk of a sellout was, March, high US officials admitted the whole of that logic you set up Scargill at the 'Over my dead body!' This strike can win. purpose of the Sixth Fleet's move into the Blackpool conference, it was a continuation of Don't play by Kinnock's rules; For militant Gulf of Sidra was a provocation against Qad­ the same policy. Many miners will remember the mass pickets -- Miners, lorry drivers, printers dafi: 'If he sticks his head up we'll clobber WRP and the 'contribution' it made to the from throughout Fleet Street and beyond, all him. We're looking for an excuse.' There is no ~iners strike at the Blackpool conference in out to Wapping! Blockade Murdoch! Bust the reason to believe this is any different. 1983. union-busters!. The US is now on war footing, and the im­ Since 1966, in fact going back to 1963, we perialist- press has been conscripted; it is no have documented every departure from Marxism accident that the New York Times has been which was made by the Healy organisation: 'Se­ sounding like Hitler's Volkischer Beobachter curity and the Fourth International', embrac­ these days. As columnist Alexander Cockburn ing the 'Arab revolution', beating up Ernie Orange terror ... said in a speech on American news coverage at Tate, Solidarnosc today, Scargill. And in (Continued frolll page 12) the New School for Social Research; everyone of those testing questions, we were 'The basic technique of the Reagan adminis­ right and the WRP was wrong. So now the WRP the RUC in order to win a section of the para­ tration has been to endlessly reiterate wants to draw the 'logical' conclusion that military to more active participation in anti­ falsity. The president says black is the they were right and we were wrong! Catholic violence. Northern Ireland's current vortex of right­ same as white. The press will initially So I would like to hear comrade Slaughter wing sectarian terror underscores the fact worry about this and say, well, most people and the others say what they think of these seem to agree that black isn't the same as criticisms that we have raised and where he that any imperialist 'solution' to the Irish white. Eminent academics are consulted; stands on 1966. I want to repeat that because question can only be a reactionary one. Brit­ they say, no, there are definite distinct Healy was bad we didn't conclude that you have ish imperialist 'divide and rule' created the differences between black and white. to junk communism. And just because it took communalist conflict, historically upholding Protestant ascendancy in the sectarian North­ 'Now Reagan keeps at it -- that is his you comrades 20 years to see some of these ern statelet and setting Orange against genius, and his tremendous, and in a way things, it doesn't mean that you have to junk Green. British imperialism is the number one reasonRble, contempt of the media and of communism either. We are fighting for commu­ terrorist in Northern Ireland. On 26 April, their senility .... He says no, black is un­ nism and our struggle to reforge the Fourth IRA member Seamus McElwaine was brutally mur­ questionably the same as white, there's a International is part of that .• dered by the SAS in Co Fermanagh; his comrade report from the heritage Foundation to Sean Lynch was seriously wounded. McEl waine was prove it. Then the media begin to fear that initially shot and injured, for they might be excessively critical of the inter~ogated president, and they say, well, black is the half an hour, then shot at point blank range. same as grey, after all, when you look at Wapping ... The sadistic RUC refused to call an ambulance, it, to a degree, and grey possibly bears (Continued from page 12) but instead brutally and gleefully tortured some identity to white, and therefore you Lynch. We say: Defend the IRA against the Neil Kinnock's rules. Some 500 pickets have can see that, in a characteristic leap, a British army! Troops out now! heen Rrrested over the months as the cops have conflation of these stages, it is true that What would really stop the Orange marauders been allowed to ride roughshod over strikers black is the same as white, as the presid­ and the imperialist army in their tracks are and their supporters. And now the smell of a anti-sectarian workers militias, integrated ent says.' (WBAI, 6 March) sellout deal with Murdoch hangs heavily in the That was before the bombing of Libya. Today from both communities and organised to re­ air, as a TUC-sponsored joint negotiating com­ when The President says the evidence is pulse communalist attack from any side. This r:littee effectively concedes everyone of Mur­ 'irrefutable', they don't have to see it to requires the programme and will of a revol­ doch's original 'dirty dozen' demands. This believe it. Reagan said it, they all read it. utionary Trotskyist party, committed to ex­ strike can still be won -- and if there is to be Did the fascists bomb La Belle discotheque? punging from the Irish working class the curse a future for trade unionism in Murdoch's We don't know, but Reagan's story stinks .• of Orange-v-Green terror and instead pitting sprawling empire, it must be won. What is the entire class against the real enemy: the needed is mass pickets to shut down Fort Mur­ imperialists and the Orange and Green capi­ doch, backed up by a couple of dozen well­ talists, Key to this programme is the recog­ placed TGWU juggernauts. Victory to the News nition that Northern Ireland's Protestants WRP ... International strike! are a distinct community -- neither identical (Continued from page 4) The key to turning this strike around is to the rest of Ireland's population nor simple the fight for an alternative, class-struggle tools of British imperialism who cannot be understand what is involved in this question leadership. Militants must move to organise polarised along class lines. -- in fact you yourselves made the point that elected joint strike committees of all the The very ferocity of the Orange reaction to !leagan's war drive is not only directed against print unions and fight within those committees the accord, and the increasing talk of UDI (an small nations but ultimately he plans to take for solid picket lines that nobody crosses and Orange 'unilateral declaration of indepen­ out the biggest 'terrorist' and 'evil' in the for blacking action to halt distribution of dence'), show graphically the distinct charac­ world, the Soviet Union. Murdoch's scab rags. Instead of bureaucratic ter of the Protestant community. The Anglo­ But though you make that statement, what hobnobbing at the top, appeals must be made to Irish pact aims, first, to better suppress the conclusions do you draw from it? In the recent the ranks of printers, miners, transport IRA on both sides of the border, and more pickets around Libya, you refused to chant workers, all trade unionists, to come out to broadly, to open the door towards a reaction­ 'Defend the Soviet Union!', to raise that the pickets. No backroom negotiations! No se­ ary reunification of Ireland, in which the question. In your article you seize on the cret deals to sell 5000 printers' jobs down island would be another NATO aircraft carrier opportunity just to denounce the Soviet Union, the road! and submarine base on Europe's Western ap­ giving examples of the 'atrocities' of the Above all this means a political struggle proaches. Stalinist bureaucracy and how it's bad. It's against the Labourite policies of the bureau­ The Protestants see this pro-NATO imperial­ ironic in fact -- here you're complaining how cracy. What the Labour Party stand for in this ist agreement as threatening their interests the Soviet Union didn't do enough to defend strike is exemplified by the fact that Labour as perceived. And indeed, if they calculate Libya. When the Soviet Union went in to smash is standing a Wapping scab in the 8 May council that the overheads are not too high, British Reagan's mullahs in Afghanistan you complained election in Stevenage! Meanwhile the Labour imperialism could well junk the Protestants they do too much. 'left' Militant (25 April) runs an article in favour of its more general long-term in­ I'll tell you this: it should not be nec­ from one Dave Power of Bemrose SOGAT complain­ terests, not least the build-up of the war essary in a meeting of comrades who consider ing how he was 'abused' while waltzing through drive against the Soviet Union. Today the themselves Trotskyist to state that the un­ a printers picket line. And the so-called Protestants, unified on a reactionary basis, conditional military defence of the Soviet Communist Party too has two members scabbing are strong enough to make British imperialism Union and the other deformed workers states at Wapping. move with great care. Only a working-class the Trotskyist position is very clear -- does From the start of the strike, the union programme can disintegrate this reactionary leadership -- with the support of the fak€ not depend on the crimes or atrocities of the Protestant unity. Repulican nationalism -­ Stalinist bureaucrats and how bad they are. left -- has been pushing an impotent consumer promising the Protestants only that they will But it does depend on the class nature of those boycott as a 'peaceful, legal' substitute for be a minority in a Catholic-dominated all­ states. These are the ABCs of Trotskyism. You effective picketing and blacking action. We Ireland state -- merely helps to drive Prot­ sell the book In Defence of Marxism outside, warned this was a diversion; now it is acknowl­ estant workers into the arms of reaction. which in fact is precisely the fight over this edged that circulation of Murdoch's rags has Today mass unemployment and social depriv­ question. Except you don't fight for the pro­ been virtually unaffected by the boycott. ation in the Six Cou?ties help to fuel sectar­ gramme that Trotsky struggled for there. Honths after issuing 'instructions' to lorry ianism, as social discontent is channelled I'll give you one example. We know the drivers to black Murdoch, TGWU 'left' Ron Todd into 'us against them' conflict for jobs and crimes of the Stalinist betrayers. Look at confesses that scabs will not be disciplined decent housing. But the 22 per cent Protestant Poland. It was the Stalinist bureaucrats who (Guardian, 4 April). As we've said before, unemployment (among Catholics it is 35 per mortgaged the Polish workers state to the instead of Todd sendine engraved invitations cent) is hardly the mark of a 'labour aris­ Western bankers and they led to the develop­ not to scab, how about sending a couple of tocracy'! There is an ongoing serious threat ment of an organisation such as Solidarnosc. thousand militant TGWUers down to Wapping to of massive redundancies in Belfast's Harland However it should be understood very clearly hand-deliver anti-scabbing intructions! And and Wolff shipyard and in many other sections that Solidarnosc is a counterrevolutionary what of miners leader Arthur Scargill? of industry where for decades only Protest­ organisation, and when it developed to that Scargill told Wapping pickets that, 'The TUC ants have been employed. A revolutionary position at its 1981 congress, we said: Stop has to show that it does not merely represent vanguard would lead anti-capitalist struggle Solidarnosc counterrevolution! The Stalinist on paper 10 million men and women, it has got for jobs and decent housing for all, without bureaucrats were only able to check that, but to put that repres€ntation into action' (Guar­ discrimination. While combatting imperialist they cannot solve the crisis created by dian, 7 April). Scargill more than others repression and all aspects of sectarian priv­ Stalinism in Poland. It takes a Trotskyist should know what sort of 'action' the TUC car­ ilege, it would oppose any forced reunific­ ~arty and political revolution to de that. The ried out during tpe militant strike he led. ation of Ireland, instead mobilising workers struggle for political revolution and support Reliance on the TUC is a dead-end. The NUM on both sides of the border and of the Irish for Solidarnosc are totally counterposed. should be mobilising its members by the thou­ Sea in a struggle for .an Irish workers re­ This position should ring bells for every sands to head for Wapping. public in a socialist federation of the member of the WRP. When the WRP supported the The sentiment to bust union-buster Murdoch British Isles. Smash Orange terror -- Defend execution of 21 Iraqi Communists, we heard a is there -- it must be channelled into effec­ Catholic communities! Not Orange against Green lot about how they were Stalinists. Cannon tive action. Hundreds of printers with their but class against class!.

MAY 1986 11 WORKERS

No sellout! Mass pickets can turn it around! u own ina!

Workers Hammer Workers Hammer Print union bureaucrats march away from struggle. Wapping strikers face down cops.

The three-month-old strike against Mur­ Midland miners talked about how they were out Instead SOGAT marshals acted to stifle doch's union-busting now hangs in the balance. to storm and take Murdoch's fortress. Within a militancy, frantically trying to clear demon­ In recent weeks the Saturday night mass demon­ minute of arriving at the plant gate missiles strators from the area near the front gate and strations outside Murdoch's scab fortress at and smoke bombs flew and police charged into allowing police to run riot until they re­ Wapping have dwindled seriously. Then on 3 May the crowd on galloping horses with truncheons gained control. One Scottish SOGAT official more than 8000 printers and their supporters drawn. The cops were out to kill. One Scottish told the crowd to 'fight' against police ter­ converged on Wapping and engaged in pitched printer suffered a heart attack during the ror through ... the ballot box. Tony Benn battles with the cops in the largest, and melee but police prevented an ambulance from added he would raise the whole question in bloodiest, protest yet. But the militancy of arriving. First-aid buses were full of pickets Parliament. And later SOGAT leaders announced the print workers is being squandered and mis­ with serious head injuries. But especially in they would seek a 'public enquiry' into led by union bureaucrats who are moving hard the early stages, several cops got a beating 'police tactics'. towards a rotten sellout. and one was nearly torn from his horse. Given Week after week, Wapping has been the scene The demonstration, with a Scottish SOGAT systematic, organised and militant leadership, for a sharp clash of appetites between militant banner prominent and many miners present, the cops could have been thrown back on the strikers intent on victory and the cowardly brought loud cheers from other printers and defensive and a serious move made to seize the bureaucracy intent on playing by scabherding passers-by as it passed through Fleet Street. plant. continued on page 11 NATO deal fuels communalist frenzy Smash Orange terror!

The wave of Loyalist terror that against Us -- and the Them were the hit Northern Ireland in the wake of IRA. Now the Them is every Roman the Anglo-Irish Hillsborough Accord is Catholic' (Observer, 20 April). It is swelling, and an anti-Catholic pogrom urgently necessary to organise de­ of ominous proportions is in the air. fence of the Catholic communities In Portadown on 31 March, thousands of against Orange terror! Orange rioters tried to get past an In April alone, about forty Cath­ RUC police cordon to attack a Catholic olic homes were stoned, firebombed, enclave. One rioter was shot in the torched. The town of Lisburn was par­ neck, and subsequently died, when the ticularly targetted, with Catholic RUC fired 148 rounds of plastic bul­ schools and libraries going up in lets, a weapon normally aimed by this flames. But Portadown and Belfast loyal Unionist paramilitary at the saw veritable orgies of violence as Catholic minority to the applause of well. Cars and buses were routinely the Orange bigots. This was the signal hijacked and set on fire, and auto­ Tor the start of a calculated frenzy matic weapons bristled everywhere. of anti-Catholic terror -- largely ig­ In Belfast six hundred bus drivers nored by the bourgeois media in Brit­ stopped work on 9 April after seven­ ain -- as well as massive Loyalist teen attacks on buses had left two attacks on their own RUC, whom they drivers injured. Meanwhile, about now see as enforcers of the Anglo­ forty-five Protestant RUC families Irish deal and 'traitors' to their were also forced to move house in sectarian cause. Loyalist thug Andrew Portadown and Belfast after Loyal­ Wright, chief of the ultra-rightist ist mobs stoned and firebombed them. The Orange thugs are out to crack LIster Clubs, threatened, 'before it IFL [the accord] was signed, it was Them continued on page 11 Loyalist thugs terrorise Catholic population in Northern Ireland.

12 MAY 1986