No32 May 1981 20p BRITAIN Avenge Bobby Sands! Smash HBlockl Troops out now! II I '.

It took 66 days to homes and blame the kill Bobby Sands, con­ Protestants ('IRA Plans demned to a slow and to Burn Belfast', read painful death by the the Daily Express head­ arrogant butchers of line). Westminster. In Parlia­ In Belfast and Derry ment, the announcement the population, Catho­ that 'Robert Sands, Es­ lic and Protestant, has quire, the Member for prepared for a bloody Fermanagh and South Ty­ showdown. A few days rone' was dead met with before Sands' death the an obscene solidarity Protestant paramilitary of Labour and Tory with Ulster Defense Associa­ Margaret Thatcher's re­ tion held a show of fusal to budge an inch strength in the Shank­ on his just, elementary ill Road; the next demands. But around the morning two families world it met with dem­ reportedly moved from onstrations of outrage Bombay Street near the and indignation at this Falls. As an Observer calculated, imperialist (3 May) correspondent murder. In Catholic noted, 'memories of West Belfast, the an­ fire-bombed houses in nouncement that Bobby the mixed fringes 12 Sands, officer of the years ago are still Irish Republican Army, vivid'. Republican was dead was met with Citizen's Defence Com­ the beat~ng of ~ustbin mittees have prepared lids, the construction contingency plans in of street barricades West Belfast. House­ and the rattle of Bri­ holds have stocked up tish rifle fire. North- on bread, bottled gas, ern Ireland stands ready to explode. tary honours two days later. But with nightfall tinned goods, powdered milk. Already in mid­ Bobby Sands died a martyr in the struggle ag- the rioting started again, and in the coming April, Derry more and more resembled 1969 with ainst brutal imperialist oppression. The prolet- days everyone knows that it will escalate. barricades and petrol bombs against the army and ariat will remember him, his death will be Three thousand demonstrated in Paris to pro- police every day. Following the martyrdom of avenged. In the US, East Coast dockers announced test Sands' death; another thousand marched in Bobby Sands, they will continue. a 24-hour boycott of all British shipping. In Athens. In Dublin security was tightened outside Ireland there is talk of a general strike the the British Embassy while thousands queued be- Years of mythmaking out the window day of his funeral. In Britain the labour move- hind black flags at the General Post Offic~ to When the voters of Fermanagh and South Tyrone ment must sweep aside the, treacherous leaders sign a book of mourning and 2000 marched to the elected Sands their ~w in a bye-election on who condone this imperialist atrocity with mas­ Irish parliament. American demonstrators marched 9 April, the government's long propaganda cam­ sive demonstrations of protest against this in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles. paign to 'prove' the IRA were isolated fanatics vicious ruling class. The British government's us imperialist politicians, keeping one eye on was demolished forever. This was a sweeping, terror and murder in Northern Ireland, -- carried their Irish-American constituents and worried well-nigh unanimous vote by the Catholic commu­ out with the full support of the Labour traitors that Thatcher's hard-line policies will provoke nity against imperialist oppression. The full -- is vile, repugnant and criminal. GET THE a major crisis in Northern Ireland, expressed pressure of imperialist opinion and scare­ ARMED BUTCHERS OUT NOW! FOR THE IMMEDIATE, UN­ their 'concern' and 'regret' at the death. mongering had been unleashed on the voters of CONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL OF THE BRITISH ARMY! But even as three other Republican prisoners this border constituency, contested in a SMASH'THE IMPERIALIST TORTURE CA~WS! AVENGE on hunger strike for political status wait be­ straight fight between Sands and Protestant BOBBY SANDS! hind Sands in a grisly queue, Hargaret Thatcher Unionist leader Harry West. West placed adverts The British press claims it was 'suicide', vows to stand firm. British troops continue to in the local Catholic press reminding readers of bu~ all West Belfast knows the truth. Cars shoot down and kill unarmed H Block protesters the Pope's words against the 'men of violence'. blared their horns in the early hours of 5 May in the streets of Belfast an~ Derry. Dozens of The imperialist propaganda mill put it about as to awaken residents with the news that Sands had protest leaders have been arrested in Gestapo­ a fact that 'an IRA gun' had murdered a Protest­ died in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh, and within style dawn raids. And the Loyal Labour Opposi­ ant census, taker on the eve of the poll, even hours barricades were thrown up throughout the tion backs Thatcher, Humphrey Atkins and the though the Republicans flatly denied responsibi­ area. Youths hurled stones and petrol bombs at army to the hilt, crying 'No surrender! Defeat lity for this atrocity. the hated army and RUC patrols. An army post at the terrorists!' The army's Spearhead batallion Imperialism's Labour lieutenants pitched in the top of Springfield Road was beseiged for stands ready for despatch across the water to to do their bit as well. In an unprecedented hours by angry crowds. Troops firing plastic the Six Counties and all police leave has been polling day appeal from Westminster, Labour bullets and live ammunition injured scores, at cancelled. While international media correspon- spokesman on Northern Ireland Don 'Concannon told least one seriously. With daybreak, the street dents cram Belfast hotels, Her Majesty's Govern- voters that they had a 'unique opportunity to battles wound down and an uneasy calm hung over ment has provided a steady stream of black denounce the men of violence'. 'A vote for Mr the city as preparations were made for Sands' propaganda, including outrageous accounts of al- Sands', said this servile toady, 'is a vote of funeral, to be held with full Republican mili- leged IRA preparations to set fire to Catholic continued on page 6 the right, and in particular US imperialism has set out to 'morally' and politically rearm fol­ The unfolding-.dy'namic of late Pabloism lowing its humiliation in Vietnam. From Jimmy Carter's 'human rights' crusade through to Ronald Reagan's choice of Central America as the • • front line for the struggle against 'Communist subversion', deep economic crisis international­ • ly has gone hand-in-hand with stepped-up anti­ 1MB • to r Sovietism and the threat of imperialist war. How long can it go on? In early April Tony Benn declared that he state is a gross travesty of any pretension to In a new issue of International (May 1981), would stand against Denis Healey for the post of Marxism. the IMG's occasional theoretical journal, Alan Labour Party deputy leader next autumn. Reac­ And Bepn's calls for full employment, better Freeman takes the British Socialist Workers tions were predictable right across the politi­ social services and the like are all premised on Party of Tony Cliff to task for not joining his cal spectrum. Establishment pundits saw further a future Labour government adopting his 'alter­ organisation's enthusiasm over Bennery and its evidence of the unfitness of the Labour Party as native economic strategy' -- a strategy of capi­ headlong dive towards the Labour Party. In vain: a stable gov"ernmental al terna ti ve. Tory gutter talist economic protectionism. His call for Cliff & Co long ago sold their soul to the bour­ rags once again sa"w the threat of a left-wing withdrawal from the EEC, far from reflecting op­ gOisie, but they have carved out a sort of niche takeover! Various union bureaucrats and Labour position to an anti-Soviet economic adjunct of as a small, organisationally independent, viru­ parliamentarians howled about the damage done to NATO, is part of the same little England chauv­ lentlyanti-Soviet 'militant' syndicalist party unity. But the most nauseating spectacle inist perspective. Through import controls and competitor to the Labour 'lefts'. But the IHG is was the rush of fake-revolutionaries seeking a parallel measures Benn seeks to shore up centrist, and by virtue of that incapable of any piece of the action as Benn's self-appointed decaying British capitalism against its competi­ consistent perspective and orientation. With fhe campaign managers. Few were more ardent than the tors, dragging the proletariat behind its ex­ demise of the 'new mass vanguard', it has been International Marxist Group (IHG). ploiters for the purpose of trade war against reduced to clutching at one after another new Ever in search of a new 'main chance' to its class brothers in other countries. Such a 'mass movement' at an increasingly furious catapult them towards mass influence, the IMG's programme is not 'inadequate' -- it is counter­ pace. Socialist Challenge has been plumping for Benn posed to the communist perspective of a social­ It is not surprising that in the present cli­ in one way or another for some time. But Benn's ist Britain in a socialist United States of mate the reformist wing of the USec centred on the US SWP has been on the ascendancy inter­ nationally. In countries where the old Hansenite/ Mandelite feud was settled by a fusion of com­ peting sections (Canada, Australia), the cen­ trists have been gobbled up and indigestible ele­ ments regurgitated. The disorientation of the centrists in the face of a right-wing Cold War climate is complemented by the organisational decline of the USec. The major split in 1979 by Argentine political chameleon and adventurer Nahuel Moreno -- leading to a rotten bloc with Pierre Lambert's Organisation Communiste Inter­ nationaliste and the creation of a competing 'Fourth International' has sharply undercut the pulling power of the USec as the 'Fourth Inter­ national'. Thus particularly in France, the Mandelites have lost heavily to the Lambertistes. The rightward political motion has, if any­ thing, been less pronounced in Britain than in most other countries. The severely depleted French Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire, former flagship of the Mandelites, denounces the Com­ munist Party not for its culpable betrayals of the proletariat, but for being 'splitters' by not coming together with the Socialists in a repeat of the 'Union of the Left' popular front. IMG hopes to help 'left' social-democratic traitors go from strength to strength. The Swedish KAF, once furthest to the left in the USec spectrum, today consciously mimics the line of Bukharin's Right Opposition in its challenge to the deal worked out between Europe. front-page headline on Poland: 'Peasants, enrich newly elected leader Hichael Foot and Healey at Such explicit support to a bourgeois pro­ yourselves' (Internationa1en, 29 January 1981). Blackpool has driven them to euphoria. 'Back grarrune is a graphic illustration of the extent In Germany a protracted internal crisis culmi­ Benn's Campaign' ran the front-page headline in of the IMG's rightward movement. Apart from a nated in the spectacle of the GIM publicly split the 9 April issue. 'We give full support to the few tired older faces and the name, the BIG can and marching in separate contingents in Berlin candidacy of Tony Benn', read the article. While hardly be recognis~d as the continuity of the last May, with one wing adhering to the syndica~ calling on Benn to build more mass actions and IMG of ten years ago. Then, as a factional war ist notion that the German SPD is a bourgeois admitting to 'inadequacies' in his programme, it dragged on inside the 'United Secretariat of the party pure and simple, and the other calling for declared: 'As far as it goes it should be Fourth International' (USec) between supporters a vote to the SPD even though it rules in coali­ supported. I of Joseph Hansen's reformist US Socialist tion with an openly bourgeois party. Now Mandel For Trotskyists the precondition for applying Workers Party (US SWP) and the centrist Euro­ & Co seem to have sorted out their 'ultraleft­ the tactic of critical -- let alone 'full' -­ pean-centred wing led by Ernest Handel, the IMG ists' for the time being and are more and more support in elections inside the workers movement was often held up by the Hansenites as the capitulatory before the social democracy. is the existence of a candidacy with a programme classical illustration of Handelite 'ultra- For all that, the Mandelites remain a cen­ which, however inadequate, represents a clear leftism'. In an impressionistic appeal to a trist current, capable of empirically shifting break from reformist class collaboration towards layer of youth radicalised through sympathy for to the left under the pressure of events. The class struggle politics. But what is Benn's the heroic Stalinist-led struggle against US centrist tensions which prevent them from pur­ programme? The same Socialist Challenge provided imperialism in Indochina, the Handelites based suing virtually any course consistently are cap­ this five-point summary: their strategy on tailing a 'new mass vanguard'. tured nowhere more graphically than in the " IMG members participatyd in .and defended the letters column of Socialist Challenge. Three from the Common Market. disruption of Labour Party speakers at public '*Withd~awal times in little more than a year -- over the '*A non-nuclear defence strategy, no Cruise, meetings. Capitalist elections were dismissed as continued on page 11 no Trident. 'carnivals' and Red Mole carried articles like '*A return to full employment. Robin Blackburn's 'Let it Bleed', which, in the CONTACT THE SPARTACIST LEAGUE: '*Full restoration of the social service cuts. words of a domestic Hansenite critic, Alan '*Extension of democracy, including defence Harris, 'argued that the Labour Party is a Birmingham ...... (021) 4599748 of the democratic rights of women and blacks.' "capitalist party" not essentially different London ...... (01) 278 2232 Sheffield ••...... (0742) 686427 This programmatic summary is heavily doctored from the Tory party or the Democratic Party in by the IMG. For example it avoids any mention of the United States'. Harris was particularly Benn's support to the United Nations, that chagrined by a 'cartoon strip which showed red thieves' kitchen whose 'peacekeeping' activities moles beating up a Labour and a Tory election in defence of imperialist order from Korea to speaker, trampling them underfoot and tearing up SPARtaClST the Congo may have been distasteful to some the "Vote Labour" placard' (International Inter­ BRITAIN Socialist Challenge readers. And it carefully nal Discussion Bulletin, November 1973). leaves out many other things Benn stands for: This was not Trotskyism -- far from it! -­ Monthly ...___ er of the Spertacist L.... ue. British section of the inte.... tional Spertacist tendency. his support to NATO, his refusal to fight for qut it certainly reflected a healthier, more the withdrawal of troops from Ireland, his advo­ revolutionary impulse than today's grovelling to EDITORIAL BOARD: Len Michelson (editor). Caroli ... Car... cacy of wage control. Benn. Today IMG supporters are more and more en­ (production manage". JUdith Hunter. Mark Hyde. John Masters. Dnid Strachan. But the potted programme supported by the sconsced in Labour CLPs, fighting not for IMG is bad enough .. Amid Cold War hysteria ag­ 'Victory to the NLF!' or 'One solution -- revo­ CIRCULATION MANAGER: Rob Holt lution!' but for CND pacifism and sub-reformist ainst the USSR Benn dreams of keeping this Publilhed monthly. except in January and September. by Spertacist sceptred isle out of the way should the shooting rates and cuts campaigns. Publications. 26 Harrison St. London WCI. Addr_ alll_r. and start -- and the Dm helps him peddle this reac­ The heady days of the 'red university' are ..bocription requests to: Spartacist Publications. PO Box 185. long gone, and Tony Benn occupies the place in London WC1H BJE. Subscriptions: 10 ..... for £2.00; international tionary pipeaream. British imperialism has long air mail rat.. : Europa £3.00. outside Europa £4.00. Printed by applied a 'non-nuclear defence strategy' -- from the Pabloite leaders' hearts that was once re­ Anvil Printers Ltd. London (TU). served for Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara. Since India to Ireland. 'Full support', BiG? The very Opinions expressed in signed articles or lettfJrs do not necessarily idea of support -- full, critical or otherwise the mid-1970s the political climate in most ad­ express the editorial viewpoint. -- to the military programme of the bosses' vanced capitalist countries has been shifting to

2 'SPARTACIST BRITAIN US imperialists provoke Soviet Union n ? For proletarian political revolution!

Poland is coming unstuck. The 'Solidarity' union movement (Solidarnosc) is polarizing. The Polish Communist party is in chaos. The economy is in a shambles. And United States imperialism is wildly seeking to provoke a P.ussian inter­ vention. Reagan and Haig have seized upon Poland as a pawn for their superheated Cold War drive against the Soviet Union. And their ultimate aim is to overthrow the remaining conquests of the October Revolution, the main bastion of prolet­ arian state power. Revolutionaries and all clas'S-conscious workers must. oppose this imperi­ alist provocation and unconditionally defend the Soviet bloc states against counterreVOlutionary attack. Washington hectors its West European 'allies' to stiffen their anti-Soviet resolve with nu­ clear missiles aimed at the 'Russian aggressor - in Poland'. General Haig tries to line up NATO governments to break off economic and diplomatic .•N~" relations with the USSR. American secretary of Warsaw Pact tanks in Poland. war Weinberger threatens terrible reprisals if the Soviet Union intervenes. He even flashes the US' menacing 'China card', threatening to arm sions and contradictions. One million Polish broadly supported measure. Yet three decades of Peking, presumably with atomic weapons capable party members have joined the new unions, and Stalinist bureaucratic rule have turned much of of reaching Soviet cities. And the Chinese are the party is in deep trouble -- hardliners the population, and much of the industrial ready, even eager: they don't just want thermo­ isolated, the leadership weakened, the ranks in working class, against what they view as the nuclear missiles, they want to use them! uproar. And the church has pulled back from 'Russian-imposed Communist system'. And this is Ever since World War II the American bour­ Walesa & Co, hoping to maintain itself as a not simply a reaction to the police suppression geoisie has tried to talk itself into the idea stable pole for counterrevolution in the face of of democratic rights and the gross privileges that they can nuclear bomb the Soviet Union and Russian military intervention. and corruption of the 'sociqlist' officialdom. live! This goal is now openly stated by the This political fluidity by no means signifies The present Polish crisis, especially the Reagan administration. White H~use Russia expert a fundamental change In the relationship of dangerous growth of clerical-nationalist senti­ Richard Pipes says the Soviets face the choice forces, which is still distinctly unfavorable ment, has its roots in the failures and broken of 'changing their Communist system in the from a revolutionary standpOint. But if a genu­ promises of reform Stalinism. direction of the West or going to war'. Reagan/ ine Leninist-Trotskyist opposition were precipi­ When Wladyslaw Gomulka came to power in 1056 Haig believe that Soviet intervention in Poland tated, it could quickly grow and have a tremen­ proclaiming the need for the widest workers will remove all obstacles in their preparations dous polarizing impact. Should the Kremlin, democracy, he enjoyed enormous popular authority. for such a war. goaded by imperialist provocation, move to re­ Then he turned and suppressed the workers coun­ Even if the Kremlin doesn't intervene, the store bureaucratic order in Poland, however, it cils and dissident intellectual circles which US has already made Poland a focal point of the would in the best case freeze that political had supported him against the hard-line Stalin­ Cold War with its endless talk of 'invasion by differentiation necessary for the only progress­ ists. When Edward Gierek replaced Gomulka in osmosis', 'indefinite extension of Warsaw Pact ive solution to the Polish crisis: workers pol­ 1970 after the Baltic coast workers' uprising, war games', etc. The US 'seemrsl to be playing itical revolution. Thus genuine proletarian in­ many believed his promises of unparalleled econ­ some kind of game with a whole nation', ex­ ternationalists must bitterly protest a Russian omic prosperity. Then he ruinously mortgaged claimed one Pole angered by Washington's con­ military intervention, which would represent a Poland's wealth to Western bankers and also. stant alarms (New York Times, 6 April). Indeed, defeat for the cause of socialism. ruinously SUbsidized the landowning peasants! Reagan and Haig have made it clear they ['-!ant But far worse would be violent resistance by So when under the pressure of rising prices full-scale Russian intervention, and they're the Poles, which could produce a bloodbath. This and food and other consumer goods shortages the doing their best to spark it. They want to see would be a historic catastrophe. A 'cold' sup­ workers exploded last summer, they looked to the Polish workers under the eagle and the cross pression would only postpone the confrontation powerful Catholic church as the recognized oppo­ throwing Molotov cocktails at Soviet tanks. They between the Polish workers and their Stalinist si tion to the discredited Communis.t regime. The want to provoke a bloodbath in Poland so that rulers. If there is a Soviet tank on every Internationa1e was replaced by the national they can use the battle cry' of 'Russian ag­ street corner and the Polish people walk by them hymn, 'Oh God, Who Has Defended Poland', and the gression' to push forward on all fronts in their hissing, what has really changed? But if there new workers' leader, Lech Walesa, declared him­ drive toward World War III. is a violent response, the resulting repression self at every opportunity to be a true son of the Polish church. Many of the 'dissidents' who Imperialist politicians and the Western press would crush the Polish working class into the raised their heads are openly reactionary -­ all speak of a Soviet 'invasion of Poland'. In ground politically and produce an explosion of virulently nationalist, anti-communist, anti­ fact the Soviet Army drove the Nazi German anti-Russian nationalism that would ~ake years, jemocratic and even anti-Semitic (despite the forces out of Poland and liberated the country perhaps decades to overcome. It wduld also fuel in 1944-45. They have been there since, and to­ US imperialism's war drive to a white heat, fact that there are almost no Jews left in day two Russian divisions guard the vital com­ which is why Reagan and Haig are pushing for Poland) . munication links to East Germany and the NATO such a bloodbath. Proletarian revolutionaries The upsurge of clerical nationalism is asso­ front. To demand withdrawal of Soviet troops must therefore emphatically oppose all violent ciated with pro-Western sympathies, often ex­ from Poland is to demand that Warsaw leave the resistance, whether mass action or individual pressed in calls for 'free trade unions' like in Warsaw Pact -- tantamount to calling for uni­ terror, against such a Soviet military the US and West Germany. Polish workers would do lateral disarmament of the Soviet bloc. It is intervention in Poland. well to look at the blood-soaked American neo­ not an invasion that is posed, but a Russian The present Polish situation is the product colonies before buying the Radio Free Europe military intervention into the civil life and of decades of capitulation by the Stalinist line. The RUssians would have to kill something class struggle in Poland. And those processes bureaucrats to capitalist forces. It makes rev­ like 150,000 Poles to proportionately match the have undergone important developments during olutionaries yearn for a Trotskyist leadership number of workers and peasants slaughtered dur­ nine months at full boil. in the USSR which would make short shrift of the ing the last year by Carter/Reagan's junta in The massive strike wave in the Baltic ports Polish crisis. Only a political revolution El Salvador. In Brazil, the popular union leader last August brought Polish workers before a throughout Stalinist-ruled East Europe can open 'Lula' has been sentenced to three and a half Ihistoric choice: with the bankruptcy of Stalin­ the road to socialism. And that requires inter­ years in prison for far less than threatening to ist rule dramatically demonstrated, it would be nationalist Trotskyist parties which can reach lead a political general strike every month or either the path of bloody counterrevolution in out to the Soviet working class in defending the so. Even United Auto Workers observer John league with Western imperialism, or the path of gains of the October Revolution. Christensen commented: proletarian political revolution. With the 'It's incredible to me that in comparing Brazil and Poland, a Communist country, there clerical-nationalist influence in Solidarnosc Stalinism fuels clerical-nationalist reaction and now the emergence of a mass organization of seems to be more freedom there than here. the landowning peasantry, the counterrevolution­ The Soviet armed forces entering German­ Walesa is freer than Lula. There the Govern­ ary danger remains great. But a process of pol­ occupied Poland in 1944 were greeted as liber­ ment agreed to hold a dialogue with him, not itical differentiation has begun. Above all, ators in a social as well as a national sense. here.' (New York Times, 3 April) 'Solidarity' has come to embrace the whole of The expropriation of the large landed estates A visit to El Salvador and Brazil by a 'Soli- the Polish working class, with all of its ten- and big capitalists in the mid/late-1940's was a continued on page 10

MAY 1981 3 classically unprincipled lash-up with Sean ~'at­ gamna's ostensibly Soviet-defencist Workers Left oppositionist expelled Fight group. Matgamna dismissed defence of the USSR as a 'tenth rate' issue and the In~erna­ tional-Communist League was created -- only to predictably come apart just nine months later. So WP emerged anew (minus some members), having failed by self-admission to clarify any of the programmatic questions which faced it. Burned by • Matgamna and under pressure from an Inter­ national Marxist Group 'unity offensive', the Workers Power • group embarked on a leftward trajectory. But the evolution was slow and painful, reflecting how much WP was held together by cliquist ties rather than a common programme. Thus it effect­ ively dropped its 'state capitalist' line in late 1978, but then had no position on the Rus­ sian Question until the beginning of 1980, when In fearofli it took a Soviet-defencist line on Afghanistan. Noting WP's leftward motion and important line shift on the Russian Question, the SL We reprint below two statements to the sought to engage the group in a dialogue which National Committee and forthcoming national con­ would enable it to make the break with centrism. ference of the centrist Wor.kers Power (WP) group But, seeking to preserve cliquist 'independence' by Comrade Charlie Shell. Shell, a founder and and still adhering to much of the pervasive longstanding National Committee member of VW, Stalinophobia of the British Labour-loyal 'far was expelled from the organisation on 4 April, left', they proceeded to duck it. A series of five days after leading WPers ransacked his bed­ SL approaches to initiate discussion met with room to find evidence of his political collabor­ the same wretched response. In a letter of 23 ation with the Spartacist League (SL). As well June 1980 the WP Political Committee rejected as expelling him, the WP leadership instructed an SL proposal for a debate on the Russian members that 'all personal and political contact Question but claimed that documents were being with this renegade should be avoided'. The cause written: 'We will of course let you have the of this political purge lay in Shell's decisive documents on publication.' In an undated letter break with the cliquist practices and program­ received by the SL on 12 September WP rejected matic confusion prevalent within WP. His experi­ discussion on Cuba: 'We are however not immedi­ ence inside the organisation -- in particular ately occupied with this question. We will his opposition to the majority's support of Iran nevertheless contact you again in this matter. ' in the Gulf War and the potential political di­ They didn't. And the s~me on 14 October in re­ rection of the organisation's discussions on the sponse to a proposed debate on the Russian Ques­ Russian Question -- brought him to the under­ tion and events in Poland: 'We will, however, standing that the group had no revolutionary contact you again on this matter.' Again, they future if it failed to confront the genuine Trotskyism of the SL and international Spart­ Meanwhile the real position was captured in acist tendency (iSt). But the le~dership would a Sheffield WP perspectives document: 'We have have none of it. no orientation towards the iSt whatsoever. Un­ fortunately they have one towards us.' They WP's origins were in the Left ~action of Tony whined about the SL's insistence on sharp pro­ Cliff's International Socialists (IS -- fore­ grammatic clarity in typical centrist style: runner of the Socialist Workers Party), expelled 'What is more they are completely devoid of in October 1975. Despite retaining a Cliffite tact'. In pursuit of an orientation towards the 'third camp' position on the Russian Question, local Cliffites, WP was primarily concerned not shortly after its· inception WP was sucked into a to be 'tarred with the same brush'. And when the

tions would revolutionaries urge the proletariat to join forces with the ayatollahs -- a struggle For a Trotskyist for democratic rights, for national self­ determination for the minorities, against the oppression of women and gays, for freedom of orientation proletarian organisation? No, nothing except Koranic law. It's about time the lessons were drawn. Those who prefer to rummage through rooms looking for Fifteen months ago we took a decisive step in 'incriminating' evidence rather than debate out formally and publicly breaking with a state fundamental programmatic differences will not capitalist position on the Russian question. have a long lifetime in revolutionary politics. From the outset the extension and elaboration of I have nothing to hide -- I supported the change that breakthrough on the key question for revol­ in position towards defence of the Soviet Union utionaries in this epoch, and indeed the central a year ago, I support it today. That's why I question facing Workers Power since the split have engaged in discussions with the Spartacist from the International Socialists in 1975, was League in the recent period, Three time in the subjected to foot-dragging and backtracking by past year the SL has approached the leadership the leadership. with proposals for discussion or debate on cen­ Things do not stand still in the world of tral aspects of the Russian question; three politics; in refusing to go forward the organ­ times the offers were rejected out of hand with­ isation has been driven backwards. Increasingly out discussion among the membership or even on since the 'adoption of a degenerated workers state the N.C. At the same time there were no hesi­ position there has been a division between thos~ tations about engaging'in discussions with the who sought to tackle the programmatic questions WSL! head on and those who sought to avoid 'unpleas­ Let's have a look at the abuse and hysterical ant' organisational conclusions: Every member of recriminations made against me. 'Spart agent'? Workers Power should be aware that the positions I heard that thr~e years ago from s~me comrades. Kurdish militants face Khomeini's hit squad. Workers Power of the organisation are increasingly being form­ My expression of leftist ,differences with the tells Kurds to defend Khomeini's 'revolution'. ulated to prevent a confrontation with the pro­ majority line is nothing new. Neither was I gramme of the international Spartacist tendency. planted in Workers Power by the SL. Nor was I leadership. Particularly since the last group The most glaring example of this was the pos­ 'manipulated' into adopting my present positions perspec~ives document contained a cynical and ition on the Iraq/Iran war. Within the space of by a sinister outside force. What I came to re- manoeuvrist conception of fusion. Remember that, less than a week the entire P.C. flipped over alise was that the extension and deepening of a comrades? The idea was to fuse on a program­ 180 degrees from the initial impulse to adopt a Trotskyist analysis could not be carried through matically inadequate level and use fusion as a Leninist position of revolutionary defeatism. solely within the confines of Workers Power. means to break up opponent organisations. This Why did this occur? Certainly not because of This is evidenced by the hysterical anti- method was actively considered in relation to programmatic considerations. Even after the Spartacism which pervades every level of the the WSL. And whilst comrades are busy trying to February revolution, in a situation of dual organisation. Appeals to organisational norms denounce me in the manner it would be legitimate power, the Bolsheviks refused to abandon defeat­ are no substitute for programmatic to use only against someone who has crossed ism. The comrades of the P.C. don't have to be clarification. class lines or worse, they would do well to told that. No comrades, the newspaper admitted The most ludicrous charge made against me was remember back to the days of the fusion with the real reason; a defeatist line was consistent that I 'acted in the manner of a police agent', Workers Fight. That fusion was orchestrated by only with the 1ST's opposition to Khomeini from a charge made at the kangaroo court which con­ Matgamna as a means of breaking up Workers the outset. The,refusal to reexamine a previous fronted me when I arrived home on 30 March. Power. And indeed Matgamna succeeded in split­ position in order to avoid the 1ST is not a Since when is committing oneself to the defence ting off half the Birmingham branch. So do we Leninist~esponse but anti-Leninist and of the revolutionary programme 'acting in the therefore denounce Matgamna as 'acting in the cliquist. The IST'was right, the 'Iranian P.evol­ manner of a police agent'? Since when' is collab­ manner of a police agent'? No comrades, cuite ution' deposed the shah only to impose a regime oration with political cothinkers an act morally the reverse! The leadership has responded of clerical reaction upon the masses. Where are repugnant to revolutionaries? All these accu­ favourably to every overture from Hatgamna to the gains of that revolution? Around which ques- sations are sheer hypocrisy on the part of the continued on page 8

4 SPARTACIST BRITAIN SL initiated a successful united front demon­ erate centrists of the German Spartacusbund and road out of a history of playing hide-and-seek stration involving WP against fascists at Shef­ its sister Austrian IKL (which recently split' with the great questions of proletarian class field University, the local leadership put it apart). These latter groupings certainly share strategy. ,Charlie Shell's appeal to his former about internally that the whole action was a WP's dilemma: castoffs from the mainstream fake­ comrades points to the only road to resolving 'sect~rian' Spartacist manoeuvre •.. designed to Trotskyist United Secretariat unwilling to come these questions. demonstrate that WP was sectarian! to terms with the politics of the Spartacist Years of centrist functioning have a debili­ At the time, a minority led by Keith Hassell tendency, they have paid their price in stagna­ tating effect on revolutionary integrity and put forward the view that 'the correct line in tion, crisis and heavy loss of cadre in a series revolutionary will. The cadre of Workers Power Afghanistan for revolutionaries was to oppose of spl-i ts to the iSt. Now their manoeuvres with have been trained in a bad school -- a school in the SAF [Soviet Armed Forces] from the start WP too look like foundering, as the Germans and which adaptation to alien class influences both strategically and tactically' (emphasis in Austrians have adopted defeatist positions on within the proletariat is valued as non­ original). Hassell's call for support to the re­ the Iran/Iraq war while WP remains on the berri­ sectarianism, in which programmatic contradic­ actionary Islamic rebels against the Soviet cades for Khomeini. tions are hidden beneath appeals to organisa­ army and denial that there was anything pro­ Workers Power members who truly want to fight tional loyalty and personal associations. It is gressive in the post-war social overturns which for Trotskyism and international proletarjan possible to break from that training; Comrade created deformed workers states was 'third camp­ revolution must recognise that an international Shell has taken the decisive step, other serious ism' in practice at its worst. At the time the Bolshevik party cannot be built without an in­ elements in Workers Power will follow. We do not WP majority shrank from extending their mealy­ ternational Bolshevik programme. While WP has prejudge who those serious elements are. Workers mouthed condemnation of the Soviet invasion to gyrated and drifted 'and now pulls back to the Power can choose to make use of its forthcoming the pOint of linking up with CIA-backed feudal­ right, the Spartacist tendency has an 18-year­ conference to draw the organisational lines like ist insurgents. But as they desperately seek a long track record of fighting for Trotskyism a noose around its neck. Or it can use the op­ position on the Russian Question which distances and has built a truly international democratic­ portunity we offer it to engage in a frank de­ them from the iSt, it is Hassell's positions centralist revolutionary tendency. Now a senior bate with-cadre of our tendency to allow the whj~h are gaining the ascendancy in WP today -­ WPer has been expelled for pOinting to the only programmatic issues to come to the fore .• particularly a version of the 'theory of struc­ tural assimilation~ once expounded by Ernest Mandel and later Tim Wohlforth as an explanation of the post-war social revolutions. (For a thorough demolition of this transcendental, :);1\,)\t\\l~j I: ,~, A; ,,\ ~:,.- Kautskyan 'theory', our readers are referred to \Z,\'lt (In '~' \~ the two-part series 'The Real Lessons of Cuba' in Sparta~ist Britain nos 3 and 4, July-August qnd September 1978.) " Unless it breaks with its present course the Workers Power organisation has no real future -­ J and the expulsion of Charlie Shell will ceriain­ ly not resolve its crisis, only exacerbate it. Lacking a stable revolutionary programmatic basis for independent existence, centrists will take all kinds of measures in a bid to escape the contradictions generated by their own con­ fusion. But it just doesn't work. At most such measures can lead to shor.t-term 'success', and WP has not even achieved much of that. After six years it remains a small, isolated, nationally­ based grouping. As Trotsky noted in 1929 'By its very nature opportunism is nationalistic'. Cen­ trists truly are incapable of developing an in­ ternational programme or forging a democratic­ centralist internationalist party, and so it is with WP. Apart from some stagnating 'fraternal relations' with the Irish Workers Group, they Workers Power opposes capitalist restoration in Poland, but refused to take a stand against Vatican·inspired have been reduced to flirtations with the Qegen- restorationist danger.

Spartacists at arms length. We couldn't 'enter' the SL; letting down the organisational barrier Confront Spartacist politics openly comrades! I would just give their consistent, coherent pro­ gramme a chance to win our people away from , I eclecticism and confusionism. So we never talked to the Spartacists, even though we knew we had I have been a member of Workers Power for 'comrades' into crawling around in my wardrobe. to. six years, and I have worked hard for this or­ All the WP comrades who just 'can't stand' the And we do have to. WP is parasitiC on the ganisation. Over the last period, I came to bitterness of a real fight (not the faked-up Spartacists. Our good positions are cribbed from agree with the Spartacist League on a r.umber of internal discussions we have, where nobody ever the SL; our bad positions are cynical rightist points that I considered central to revolution­ draws any conclusions) like the discussion on reflexes determined not by political consider­ ary perspectives. For a while I accepted at face the Russian Question at the 1980 conference ations but by the need to draw a hard line to value the WP leaders' lip-service to the idea of where the theses were explicitly designed to seal ourselves off from the SL. Iran/Iraq was discussing with the Spartacists. But after the cover over emerging differences and forestall the final straw: an anti-internationalist abrupt shift to the right in WP marked by the debate -- had better wake up fast. Revolutionary atrOCity whose rightism is even out of character Iran/Iraq position and the increasing tendency politics isn't a gentlemanly game where nobody for us -- more gross than that of centrist towards a Stalinophobic structural assimilation gets hurt. People who are so surprised that I groups we used to criticise for being so slavish position both of which I strongly disagreed put my political convictions before my organ- in tailing Khomeini! The gross rightism of this with, I became alarmed enough at our political isational associations ought to ask themselves line is an index of how vulnerable to Trotskyism course to begin working with the SL. The WP just what it is they're 'loyal' to. Look at the our line change on the Russian Question made us: leadership now uses my 'indiscipline' as a pre­ politics first, then decide your organisational at all costs, we had to create a new barrier. text to avoid confronting my politics even loyalties. We have to come to grips with the inter­ gOing to the extent of instructing the member­ Organisational loyalty is a very fine thing I national Spartacist tendency. It's like the ship not·, to talk to me. I collaborated wi th the in the right hands. No bolshevist organisation famous quip about dialectics: we may not recog­ Spartacists because of my politics, not the could exist without ft. This means: disCipline nise the SL, but it goes right on trying to work other way around. The fact that a long-time in the service of a programmatically-defined its will on us. Why don't we take an active role cadre of WP was led to a growing acceptance of vanguard party nucleus. If WP were such a thing, in the process, through discussion and open the politics of the SL on many questions is no I would feel differently about people going out­ debate? less significant because I took organised action side our official discussion process. But we are Certainly, WP as it stands has no future. to fight for my ideas. a clique, violently unstable on the crucial We've been around a long time and haven't got Though we in WP sneer at the undisciplined Russian Question, held together by personal anywhere. Politically we aren't so different dilettantes of the other small groups on the ties. With the differences we contain (and not from the rest of the ex-IS and ex-Healyite left, in fact WP is run in the 'disciplined' just mine!) we don't deserve to ex~st a. a sep­ milieu fragments floating around to the left of mode of social-democratic 'centralism': the arate organisation. Iran/Iraq demonstrates that the USec. The logic of that fact already led us leaders don't respect our 'discipline' or our there are split issues being contained in a once into the endless blocs and 'unifications' conference decisions, but woe to the member that 'party' which is not united by politics. If and splits, resulting in the abortive fusion gets out of line. Time and time again our others in WP were principled, they would start with Matgamna. Now that Matgamna's at it again, leaders claimed we were going to seriously dis­ from their political views, not deduce them from trying to swallow the WSL, it's just cliquist cuss with the Spartacists, but nothing ever their clique ties. sectarianism and personal pique that keeps us happened. I had to do something! Finally, I made What I mean by 'politics' is mainly the from getting back into bed with these types. a bloc with the SL ~o bring SL positions that I Russian Question. We are so used to looking at Indeed, if they pull off another 'fusion' -­ agreed with before the WP membership the only WP as an entity standing above politics that we rotten, faction-ridden and probably short-lived way they would be. Not the WP leadership's dis­ don't see what really happened. When we adopted though it will be -- we will have a hard time tortions, but the real politics. This was my a leftist line on the Russian Question, we resisting the pressure. Ultimately, unless we 'crime' . placed ourselves in an intolerable contradic­ become simply an irrelevant personalist cult, we I should have expected that the leadership tion. We had removed a big barrier to real can either take part in the sordid reshufflings would also transcend chummy politeness. I should Trotskyism, but of course we weren't prepared to among the same cast of long-time operators of not have been so shocked when they went and draw the conclusions. But the logic of the line the centrist niche, or we can take on the iSt. searched my room. The political stakes were high change made us more vulnerable to the SL. We The members of WP presently stand no clospr -- high enough to push me into working with the couldn't sit still, objectively politically to SL politics than the leaders do. But a real Spartacist League, and high enough to push my flirting with Spartacism while keeping the continued on page 8

MAY 1981 5 civility! Less than a score of Labour 'lefts' .0 concede. Snivelling pro-imperialist reform­ could even be heard to murmur that the govern­ ists like Belfast MP Gerry Fitt and the former Butchers ••• ment might consider negotiating ('imaginative­ Officials (now 'Sinn Fein the Workers Party') ly') with Sands. Left hero Tony Benn graciously condemn the desperate hunger stri~e as 'violent', (Continued from page 1) hinted that 'someone' (someone else,that is) while others simply wheedle their 'peace' mes­ approval for the perpetrators of the La Mon mas­ should propose seating Sands at Westminster. Of sage. But there can be no peace so long as sacre, Warrenpoint, the murder of Lord Mount­ meeting his demands, not a word was heard from Britain lords it over Northern Ireland, and batten, and all the other senseless murders that Benn or anyone else. With Sands' death, it has Bobby Sands, a determined man, stood firm to the have taken place in Northern Ireland over the already been mooted on both sides of the HOUse, last .. ·years'. Yet in his fortieth day without food, there will be no haste to issue a writ for Bobby Sands was elected a member of the im­ another bye-election. Disliking the voters' Free all victims of imperialist repression I perial Mother of Parliaments on an 87 per cent choice on 9 April, the MPs so fond of prattling turnout. about democracy will not be in a hurry to give There is real tragedy in the death of this There was an outcry from the gentlemen of them another chance. man with the courage to die for his beliefs in a Westminster, who engage in polite debates about Westminster's well-nigh unanimous message to slow and agoniSing way. The imperialists claim policies of mass deprivation and bloody repres­ Sands was crude and vicious in the extreme. he was a criminal; but Bobby Sands' courage and sion, against having this 'criminal' seated Meanwhile he was also the target of more subtle dignity have made him an honourable symbol for among them. Eventually ~Ws decided not to expel 'humanitarian concern' by emissaries from Dublin, the oppressed Catholic minority of Northern Ire­ Sands from their august body --, in the expecta­ Rome, Brussels and almost everywhere else -- to land in their struggle against the obscene Brit­ tion he would soon be dead anyway. Imperialist put pressure on him, not the murderous Thatcher, ish presence. He was an IRA officer who would not ask his men to do what he would not do him­ self. Dr John O'Connell, a member of the Irish Parliament who came to Long Kesh to persuade Sands to give up his fast to the death, remarked i~ after failing: 'I have never seen so determined a man.' Sands and his fellow hunger strikers have simply demanded that the Republican prison­ In:...... •. N L , ···t~ ers should not be treated as criminals. They are \J right. Their demands for po~itical status and II- L- ~ s1 Ot- better prison conditions are just, even minimal. FREE THE HUNGER STRIKERS! FREE ALL VICTIMS OF I~WERIALIST REPRESSION IN IRELAND! Bobby Sands' only 'crime' was to have fought against oppression. He was moved to join the Provisional IRA after his family was driven out of their predominantly Protestant neighbourhoo~ and he was threatened out of his job at gun­ point. He spent only six months out of prison In . H his last eight years. Some old handguns were ~OOPS found in his home in 1972: this earned him five p"f~'IST years in the Maze. Six months after his release in 1976 he was stopped in a car with three LOCK SPA others, and the RUC found one revolver in the IRELA~ vehicle. Each of the four received fourteen years. Contrast the British troops, armed to the teeth, killing with impunity. On Easter Sunday an army Land Rover ploughed into a group of pro­ testing children in Derry at 50-60 miles an hour. JRO[ Two young boys were killed and the vehicle was reversed over the broken, dead body of one. The Army Commander 'regretted' this 'traffic acci­ dent'. Fourteen years for possessing a handgun ",. if you are in the IRA; 'regret' over a 'traffic accident' for cOldblooded murder if you are in the army. Such are British imperialism's scales of justice. Protest Sands' murder! But the other tragedy of Bobby Sands is the sad fact that his death, however honourable its 'The International will not judge the British Athens, less tha~ one-sixth the number in Paris. intentions, is at the service of a programme comrades by the articles that they write in Having settled on a strategy of reliance on the which cannot further the cause of Irish libera­ spokesmen of Liberal imperialism, they waited the Call and the Workers Dreadnought, but by tion. The bankruptcy of the Republicans' strat­ the number of comrades who are thrown into for their erstwhile 'allies' to act. Their egy was shown with the defeat of the last hunger gaol for agitating in the colonial countries. 'patience' was as futile as it was criminal. strike, whose 'humanitarian' focus and emphasis We would point out to the British comrades Two years ago, when the Young Liberals became on recognition from notables in foreign capitals chief organisers of a 12 August 1979 march in that it is their duty to help the Irish move­ did nothing to stop the manoeuvring and arrogant London, it was not only Liberals, lords and ment with all their strength .... We have a refusal of elementary rights by Britain. The right to demand this difficult work of the Labourites who endorsed tbeir plea that the Tory whole strategy of pressuring imperialism, government 'commit itself to a policy of with­ British comrades.' (Karl Radek in The Second whether by civil libertarianism or by the bomb, drawal' in the overall interests of British im­ Congress of the Communist International, Vol offers no road forward. 1, New Park, pp 127-28) perialism -- i.t was also such pseudo­ revolutionaries as the SWP and IMG. The SL at As the focus of world attention shifted onto For anti-sectarian, anti-imperialist workers militiasl Britain's brutal role in Northern Ireland, the the time raised the slogan -- 'No to Liberal im­ responsibility for immediate action from prole­ perialism!' During last winter's hunger strikes, The tragedy of Republicanism is that it can tarian revolutionaries in Britain was clear. The virtually the entire left dropped the once only, ineluctably, fall into the communalist evening following Sands' death, as some 400 prevalent call for troops out now in favour of a trap set by British imperialist divide-and-rule angry protesters rallied in London, the Sparta­ single-minded emphasis on the demand for politi­ policies. British imperialism will face its day cist League (SL) was there with a militant con­ cal status (if that much!) in order to appeal to of reckoning in Ireland when there is a unified tingent to provide a clear, anti-imperialist 'humanitarian' bourgeois public opinion. But as mobilisation of the proletarian masses surging lead. ~he protesters took up our chants of the situation in the North polarised with the towards power. But what Republicanism urges its 'Westminster butchers' and 'AVenge the blood of renewed hunger strikes, the Liberals' 'humani­ supporters to fight for, to die for, is a united Bobby Sands -- Troops out now'. Our banner domi­ tarian' pretensions were tossed to the wind. And capitalist Ireland. And the Republican strategy, nated the demonstration and pOinted to the the fake-left sat on its hands and waited for suited to this goal, is a unity of Catholics single most immediate task for the British Sands to die. across class lines, not a unity of workers workers movement in its struggle against the ob­ Now some of them are reviving -- in a milksop across communal divisions. Bernadette Devlin scene imperialist presence in Ireland: 'Smash way -- the call for troops out. ·The front page McAliskey summed up this perspective, which is a Britain's Torture Camps -- Troops Out Now!' In of the IMG's Socialist Challenge virtually roadblock to the emancipation of the Catholic Sheffield likewise, almost all of the 100-150 pleaded with the murderous Thatcher to 'Take the masses from their oppression, when she urged all protesters took up SL-initiated chants of troops out now'. But one little grouping, the Catholics to vote for Sands in the Fermanagh 'Troops out now!' The day before the SL contin­ centrist Workers Power, appears to have turned bye-election: 'Whatever our differences let us gent at a Birmingham May Day march focussed on its refusal to support troops out as a minimal stand together thirty~two thousand strong, beat the Ireland issue. united-front basis into a principle of faith. West, beat Thatcher and save Sands' life' (An Both in Sheffield and at North London Poly­ The WP contingent in Sheffield maintained a Phoblacht, 4 April). But such cross-class unity technic (NLP) student supporters of the SL in­ pathetiC, conspicuous silence -- as much out of did not save Sands' life, nor can it avenge it itiated united-front rallies to 'Protest Sands' sectarian hostility to the SL as out of its own through smashing imperialist oppression. Murder!' and demand: 'Political status now! disorientation -- when the marchers chanted With the situation in the North about to boil Smash H Block! Troops out now!' To their credit, 'Troops out now'. And when demonstrators joined over, the Catholics will be on the receiving end student supporters of the International Marxist the SL chant, 'Trade unions, take a stand -­ of stepped-up repression -~ from the British im­ Group (IMG) and the Socialist Workers Party black military goods to Ireland', WP counter­ perialist army, police and Loyalist paramilitary (SWP) , as well as Troops Out Movement (TOM) mem­ posed 'Self-determination for the Irish people', terror gangs. The IRA may well be the only force bers, at NLP joined in building the rally. a vague nationalist slogan which ignores the defending the no-go areas and Catholic communi­ But the general response of the ostensibly deep communal divisions. The British fake left ties from Paisleyite atrocities and imperialist revolutionary left in Britain at this moment of renders internationalism as vicarious national­ rampage. Youth in the Catholic ghettoes, trapped solidarity with the oppressed Irish masses was ism, denouncing our call for 'Not Orange against in a cycle of unemployment, social misery, dis­ abysm~l. It is a savage indictment of these Green, but class against class' in Ireland as crimination and vicious repression, are attract­ 'Marxists', who have nary a word of criticism 'pro-imperialist'. But genu1ne anti-imperialism ed to Republicanism by hope of a better future. for ~e mis-directed nationalism of the IRA, means class .struggle in Britain and in Ireland, But it is in the very nature of Republicanism that"l\he total numbers who came out to protest the struggle for international proletarian that as and when the conflict deepens, polaris­ Sands' murder was less than half the number in revolution .• ing along the lines of the early 1970s and

6 worse, their nationalist strategy will lead to an ex~cerbation of reactionary sectarian vio­ lence on both sides. Republican nationalism di­ rects its acts of terror not only against im­ perialist targets like Earl'Mountbatten and the Rallies: SMASH H BLOCK! British army of occupation. It is also capable of such indefensible atrocities as the killing of thirteen innocent Protestants in the La Mon • Political status for the ReptMcan '" 'l\ .,. .~ restaurant firebombing of early 1978. Class l unity can and must be forged against sectarian prisoners IIIW! , ~' ~~ terror as well as against imperia~ist rampage, through the struggle for integrated workers militias. And what about the political goal of the Re­ represSlIl1 ! i ·\L l - publicans' fight for cross-class Catholic com­ munal unity -- a capitalist united Ireland? What sort of future does a capitalist Ireland hold • Tro~s out IIIW ! that is worth dying for? Looking south, a fellow Republican faces the death sentence in Charles Haughey's Republic right now, the economy is floundering, and unemployment and inflation are especially desperate in the deliberate absence of state benefits. With elections impending, Haughey has only the 'Irish unity' card to play in his bid to dodge the issue of the economy. But even here Haughey and other Irish bourgeois politicians are deliberately coy and evasive faced with the explosive H-Block issue. The prime minister lets fellow Fianna Fail member Sile de Valera do a little Green nationalist frontrunning for electoral purposes, but H-Block activists nonetheless denounce him for refusing to take a stand for Bobby Sands. LONDON SHEFFIELD Bernadette Devlin McAliskey insisted that Fianna Fail 'would never rule again if Bobby Sands 1. OOpm, Thursday, 7 Hay 1.00pm, Tuesday, 12 11ay dies' . TV P.oom, North London Polytechnic The Concourse, Sheffield University All the while Haughey has been working on Ladbroke House some kind of deal with'British.imperialism, widely rumoured to involve a 'confederal solu­ Initiated by NLP Spartacist Society Initiated by SU Spartacist Society tion' or some other chimera for Northern Ireland For further information contact the Spartacist League: in exchange for the republic dropping its osten­ London: (01) 278 2232; Sheffield (0742) 686427 sible 'neutrality' and entering NATO. NATO has long been known to pri~e the strategic value of Shannon Airport and other potential bits of their role as 'moral witnesses', face nothing Road. The fake-left's disastrous record around Irish real estate. The Dublin Sunday Tribune more 'threatening' than the pressure of p~o­ the current hunger strike could not provide a pOinted out that a senior British diplomat re­ imperialist Labourism. And they whimper in capi­ more striking confirmation of the warning we cently posted to the second-highest position in tulation. The fake-left scrambled after the have repeatedly given of the demobilising the embassy in Dublin went straight there from handful of Liberals and 'left' Labourites who character of the popular-frontist perspective a tour of duty at the NATO Defence College in wanted a vague 'commitment to withdrawal' only they have increaSingly adopted for Irish soli­ Rome. The Soviet Izvestia worries out loud that in order to better 'defeat 'the gunmen'. They darity work. Britain may use Northern Ireland as a bargaining dropped campaigning for 'troops out now' to What is needed in Britain, as in Ireland, is counter to bring Ireland into the anti-Soviet tailor their demands to fit the fashions of a perspective of class mobilisation against im- war alliance. Thus even Haughey's wheeling and these latter-day Lloyd Georges. And now that the perialism and for a proletarian-socialist solu- dealing in the name of 'Irish unity' is 'left' Labourites and the Liberals -- whose tion. The British labour movement today bears parliamentary spokesmen on Ireland oppose poli- the brunt of endless vicious attacks by a directly in the interests of imperialism. tical status as staunChly as the rest -- have government seeking to make them pay for the de- stopped marching, the 'left' isn't marching crepitude of British capitalism. And this is the Popular front demobilisation either. same government that has unleashed the troops on As Bobby Sands prepared to die for his con­ the population of Northern Ireland. To the If the Republican solution offers no solu­ victions, they awaited his death in order to labour movement of Britain we say: Black all tion to the plight of the Catholic masses, it is act ... with vigils. There have been a few hu­ military transport to Northern Ireland! Demand not for lack of courage but for lack of politi­ manitarian protest rallies, petitions to West­ troops out now! Throw out your misleaders who cal perspective to focus a death blow against minster and Downing Street and the like, but ·the uphold imperialist repression in Ireland just as their imperialist oppressors. But the supposed biggest single action has been an impotent moral they betray your own struggles at home' 'revolutionaries' in Britain who enthusiasti­ gesture of confrontation with the police by a Bobby Sands must not simply become another cally echo Republican rhetoric and wallow in few hundred leftists on London's Kilburn High addition to the long list of martyrs for Irish freedom. He will only be avenged, and British imperialism and its vile deeds finally defeated, when the united Irish working class puts an end to the rule of capitalism, Orange and Green. An Irish revolutionary vanguard must be forged to lead the fight for an Irish workers republic in Vile Labour traitors a socialist federation of the British Isles. If ever there was a time for an MP with a And when Sands' death was announced in Par­ That fight must begin now -- Avenge the death of Bobby Sands! British butchers out of Ireland shred of socialist prinCiple to get himself liament the following day, an ITN news report now! _ thrown out of the Mother of Parliaments for correctly noted that 'Michael Foot could not disruption or an 'insult to the House', this have been more unswerving in his support' to was it. In the face of Tory/Labour bipartisan the Tories' cold-blooded stand. An official arrogance, someone like the German revolution­ statement by Foot and Concannon stank of smug ary Ka;'l Liebknecht would have stood up, de­ ruling-class arrogan~: fied the Speaker, branded 'the assembled blood­ 'Those who chose to advise Mr Sands to take stained lackeys and imperialist swine for what his own life have know,n from the beginning ICT they are, and declared his intention to lead a that Parliament would not agree to sanction mass labour protest to Downing Street in de­ violence by acceding to such demands.' , TO THE fiance of the government's month-long ban on 'Sanctioning violence'! From Foot ~o Benn to marches in London. But only one Labour MP, Concannon, the Labourites are guilty of one Catholic Patrick Duffy, was outraged enough violent crime after another against the Irish over the ruling-class killing of Bobby Sands people. Labour sent the British army of re­ ~DAY even to rise to condemn Thatcher's 'moral pression into Ireland in 1969. Labour intro­ bankruptcy' -- not to denounce the imperialist duced the Prevention of Terrorism Act which troops in Ireland or call for the hunger­ has seen over 5000 .rrested without charge~ in strikers' demands to be met. And this was met seven years. Labour let Republican hunger by cries of 'shame' from both sides of the striker Frank Stagg die in Wakefield prison House. in 1976, rather than let him serve his sen­ As for the rest, 'left' as well as right, tence in Northern Ireland. And Labour took they demonstrated their social-imperialist away the political status granted by the loyalty to this murderous bourgeoisie to the Tories to Republican prisoners that Bobby hilt. Opposition Northern Ireland spokesman Sands died to regain. Don Concannon went out of his way to denounce . Concannon, like former Labour Northern a vote to 'the men of violence' when Sands Ireland minister Roy Mason, is sponsored by stood for MP. Tony Benn, darling of the 'far the NUM. That the militant miners should be left', has throughout the hunger strike assid­ associated with the likes of Concannon is an uously avoided the issue, thus giving tacit insult to their history of struggle against support to the Labour leadership line. Chal­ this ruling class. When they rid -themselves of lenged in Blackheath as Sands lay on his these social-imperialist swine, they will also deathbed on 4 May, he promised only to say rid themselves of the greatest obstacle to something on the matter ... later. their own emanCipation.

MAY 1981 7 with Lenin's state and Revolution could see that Poland today -- and therefore to the proletarian there is a particular form of state apparatus property forms upon which the regime rests -­ Trotskyist ... common to feudal absolutism, the bourgeoisie and comrade Hughes still maintains that any Soviet (Continued from page 4) the Stalinists. But how can the content of the invasion would be necessarily reactionary. What Russian degenerated workers state be the same as does that mean? If either before or after a reopen political discussions. Only Hatgamna's that of U.S. imperialism? If it is then there is Soviet invaSion, the defence of the collect iv­ refusal to take his own proposals seriously has no reason to have a position of defence of the ised property hinged on the suppression of a prevented this from happening. Soviet Union. And the abandonment of that pos­ reactionary onslaught backed by the imperialist The simple fact is that all the cries of ition is precisely where this latest Workers powers and orchestrated by the Vatican, Trotsky­ anguish and thundering denunciations of my Power new-think is heading. If private property ists would of course bloc with the bureaucracy actions will be usep by the leadership to has been overturned and the capitalist class in the defence of the very existence of the further avoid political confrontation with the politically and socially expro~riated as a workers state, even as we bloc with a trade SL. The fact is that I refused to let matters of class, then it is meaningless to speak of the union bureaucracy when a struggle is threatened organisation stand in the way of political existence of a bourgeois state. Wohlforth used by strikebreaking. To deny that the Stalinist clarification. This is the action of a commun- it to deny that Cuba had in fact undergone a bureaucracy must at times defend the collectiv­ 'ist; I stand by my actions absolutely. The real social revolution. There was no state in Cuba ised property forms upon which it rests, if onJy issues at stake are political and programmatic between 1959-60 -- the bourgeois state had been to defend its own privileged caste position, is and it is precisely these issues that the smashed and the Rebel Army was not yet decis­ to deny the contradictory character of Stalin­ leadership are seeking to avoid. I am accused of ively committed to one set of property forms or ism; to deny that proletarian property forms are damaging the organisation, of seeking to wreck another. In Eastern Europe, the bodies of armed under all circumstances progressive in relation its development. How is this the case comrades? men after World War II was the Red Army, commit­ to capitalist property forms is to deny the I simply sought to sharpe'n the political debate ted to defence of proletarian property forms essence of Marxism. within Workers Power. If an organisation is in within the Soviet Union. In neither case was the Loyalty, comrades? Yes, to the programme of danger of falling apart because it is attacked bourgeois state appropriated. To argue that the Marxism, the historic interests of the prolet­ from the left then that organisation is truly bourgeois state under the Stalinists can equally arian struggle for international communism. That worthless. be the agency of repression for the proletariat is the only loyalty any revolutionist can pro­ The more directly the SL has placed political in defence of its property forms and for the fess. And at least on this key question of pressure on the organisation, the more has the bourgeoisie in defence of its property forms Trotskyism that loyalty necessitates discussions leadership's consciousness been fixated with leads to an openly reformist conclusion that the with the SL -- not with Matgamna's Labourite, attempts to escape -- dropping public meetings bourgeois state need not be smashed at all in Stalinophobic outfit -- and not organisational in London, attempting to pullout of principled the process of destroying capitalism. Behind all games to skirt programmatic clarity. united fronts in Sheffield, frequent references the obfuscating 'analysis' lies a fundamentally If Workers Power is really serious about de­ in the internal documents but at best sporadic Stalinophobic premise straight out of the 'third veloping a principled position on Stalinism and attempts at polemics in the public press. These camp' book of Shachtman/Cliff -- that any social not just utilising an analysis to demarcate it­ are not the methods of revolutionists. A correct overturn accomplished through the aegis of self from the SL then it is necessary to con­ programme can withstand the test of political Stalinism is counterrevolutionary. What would front the programmatic issues head on. The SL struggle -- a revolutionary party will not be the comrades have done in Cuba -- joined with will not go away; Workers Power is faced with a built through evasion. It didn't help us when we those who wanted to smash Castro's state, the simple choice -- either take up and discuss the went into a fusion with Workers Fight despite state which defended the expropriation of the programme of the SL which has stood the test of principled differences; it didn't help us when Cuban bourgeOisie? the last 20 years or retreat to the right, back we split from Matgamna without programmatic In Afghanistan this line of thinking led com­ onto the terrain of Sean Hatgamna. Once again, clarification. Matgamna, a slick operator and rade Hassel to argue for a Soviet troops out comrades, which one is it to be? organisational manoeuvrer, predicted a fair position -- a line directly counterposed to the • while ago that the organisation would undergo a chante on the character of the Soviet Union -­ Charlie Shell left/right split in which he would capture the that it is not 'Better to be occupied by the 2 April 1981 right while the left went to the 1ST. Which is Kremlin than by the White House'. Indeed comrade it to be, comrades? Hassel explicitly argued that Trotskyists in There are only two consistent poles within Afghanistan would fight against the Soviet pres­ the proletarian movement: the reVOlutionary one, ence inside a nationalist movement whose 'short Confront politics. reflecting the historic interests of the prolet­ term outcome' would be a 'nationalist, pro­ • • ariat; and the reformist one, reflecting the imperialist government'. A pro-imperialist anti­ (Continued from page 5) alien class pressure of the bourgeoisie within Soviet popular front -- is that what Trotskyists democratic discussion would give them a chance .. the workers movement. These are never more fight for? Th~ P.C. opposed that line ~ year ago to learn, to decide if they want a political clearly expressed than on the question of de­ . .. not by adopting a clear stand on the side of future. There's something very wrong with stay­ fence of the gains of the October P.evolution. the Red Army in this conflict which posed a ing with a sinking ship so as not to offend your And the eVidence is there. In recoiling from the defence and extension of the democratic gains friends by impoliteness. What's at stake is not dreaded spectre of SRartacism, the P.C. has come achieved under the PDPA regime and, more funda­ just whether you waste your future politicial virtually full circle from the Afghanistan dis­ mentally, a defence of the Soviet Union itself, activity, but the workers you can lead or mis­ cussion over a year ago. The very positions on but by waffling, refusing to oppose the Soviet lead in the course of it. We must begin this which comrade Hassel was beaten down then are forces, but refusing to support them. Now, in discussion now, at this conference. all but predominant in the organisation today. the latest issue we read that there is an equiv­ I've considered myself a Trotskyist for over A year ago during the Afghanistan discussion alence between the Soviet invasions of Hungary six years, but real Trotskyism is just beginning comrades King and Hughes lifted arguments from and Czechoslovakia -- where the Red Army was to come together for me. I propose that we bring the 1ST against comrade Hassel's position in thrown against inCipiently revolutionary some authoritative Spartacist spokesmen to this favour of structural assimilation. They were working-class upsurges -- and the invasion of conference and let them present the real pos­ right at the time: this position leads to fund a- Afghanistan, where it is arrayed against an itions. All we ever get to hear are the jokey mental revisions of Leninism on the question of openly reactionary force (albeit one including distortions of Spartacist positions popularised the state. comrade Hassel's mythical 'Trotskyists'). by the leadership or the a-political gossip The pOSition now prominent in the organis- The Trotskyist programme is the defence and intended to titillate the imagination of the ation suggests that the bourgeois state itself extension of proletarian property forms inter- membership. Stop playing games comrades! If you is capable of overturning capitalist property nationally. The recognition that the Soviet are interested in finding out the real positions relations. This 'feature' of the bourgeois state Union is a degeneratEd workers state necessarily there are authoritative Spartacist spokesmen was somehow missed by ~~arx, Lenin and Trotsky. entails an analysis of Stalinism as a contradic­ prepared to debate with you. I am confident that Apart from its obviously reformist implications tory phenomenon: coun:errevolutionary in its our members will learn more from this than from this shoddy analysis attempts to equate directly programme and aspirations, bureaucratic in its years of cliquist 'internal discussion' in the the Stalinists and the bourgeOisie. Thus the methods, but resting on revolutionary social WP sandpit. Stalinist state is designated as bourgeois in foundations. Even in recognising, in his most If the leadership rejects this proposition, form and content. We can accept the pOint about recent article, the possibility of counterrevol- then I urge you to think about the positions I the form. Anyone with a passing acquaintance utionary challenge to the Stalinist regime in have raised and study the published materials of the SL. But be prepared -- he who raises leftist 'd~viations' will not be dealt with in the spirit of gentleness and pedagogy that structural-assimilationists expect in WP. The EL SALVADOR 'spectre of Spartacism' evokes a swift and brutal response frcm the leaders of WP. The organisation is making a lurch to the right. All comrades who want to oppose this had better act FRONT LINE OF THE COLD WAR now. The only way to do this, and it's long overdue, is to confront the politics of the Spartacist League. SPEAKERS INCLUDE: CHARLIE SHELL Charlie Shell RECENTLY EXPEllED NATIONAL COMMITTEE MEMBER OF WORKERS POWER 29 April 1981

SHEFFIELD LONDON Spartacist League Spartacist: theoretical journal ThursdaY,14 May 7.00pm Friclay, 15 May of the international 1.00pm TV Room Room S175, St Clements Building Sheffield University SU London School of Economics Spartacist tendency public meetings 7.30pm Station Hotel, The Wicker Houghton Street Single issues: 40p

Make payable/post to: CONTACT THE SPARTACIST LEAGUE: READING BIRMINGHAM Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, 7.15pm Thursday, 21 May Birmingham .. (021) 4699748 Tuesday, 19 May London WCIH BJE London .•..•• (01) 278 2232 Room 44, Dr Johnson House Sheffield •••. (0742) 686 427 Time and place to be announced Bull Street

8 SPARTACIST BRITAIN \

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to arrest a black mini-cab driver for no appar­ the need for British police to adopt 'American' ent reason. The crowd gathered, and fighting solutions -- the use of 'controlled gunfire at Racist cop broke out. Within an hour Railton Road looked 'selected targets' (Sunday Times, 19 April). like Falls Road, Belfast as young blacks and The cops no doubt lust for the same sort of whites hurled missiles at the police, now hud­ firepower employed by their American counter­ parts, who would have left plenty of dead blacks occupation defied dled behind their riot shields. Buildings were behind under similar circumstances. As pro­ set alight. The firemen, prevente& from ex­ ficient as anybody in dishing out a vicious tinguishing the fires, nevertheless refused to turn their hoses on the protesters. tIt doesn't beating in a nice, quiet pulice station cell, British cops are neither armed nor trained for matter what happens, we can't turn the hoses on For a class struggle fight the type of situation that arose in Brixton. people', said one fireman. 'That makes us The army, however, has developed ruthless pro­ enemies as well.' fessionalism in 'police actions' in the former On Saturday night, when the main confron­ against racial oppression empire and today in Northern Ireland. What the tations occurred, police were forced into chaos cops would like to do in Brixton is bring home and panic by the fierce resistance of local the sort of treatment Britain's gendarmerie has They said it had to happen, and on the week­ youth, taking a long-awaited opportunity to vent traditionally meted out to blacks and Asians in end of 10 April it did. Black youth in Brixton their hatred at this enemy occupation army with the colonies -- not only for use against blacks, bricks and cans, with makeshift petrol bombs and fought back in three nights of spontaneous anger but in the expectation that there are bigger bare hands. Then with the cops in retreat, the against the racist ~rutality of the occupying explosions ahead. Indeed the police raid on explosion overflowed, as local buildings, shops Metropolitan Police force. After three nights of Birmingham strike headquarters and the anonymous and pubs were set alight, broken into and resistance, fought behind makeshift barricades (probably fascist) firebombing of. Rotherham looted. Some of the violence was wantonly mis­ of burnt-out police vans, smoke rising above the strike headquarters during last year's steel directed against small Asian-owned shops. But country's best known black ghetto signalled in strike were portents of the future. many of the targets were more consciously many eyes the coming of the 'long hot summer' to With the myth of the friendly British bobby chosen. A local pub which had refused to serVe Britain. being torn to shreds as the social crisis blacks was burnt to the ground. As the cops The police and press tried to label the deepens, the social democrats leap in with counted their toll, reportedly 143 injured and Brixton upsurge a 'race riot' or, alternatively, utopian schemes for 'community control' of the 63 of their vehicle~ damaged, they began to take the work of 'outside agitators'. But the over­ cops. An LPYS-organised rally at Brixton Town their revenge, with plainclothes police in whelming testimony of eyewitnesses and the local Hall featured the Militant group's pet scheme squads armed with clubs, rubber hoses and community was, as the Times acknowledged, that for a 'labour movement. inquiry' on Brixton. What chains, indiscriminately beating any local resi­ 'the objects of the hatred were blue, not is there to inquire about? Whether the cops are dents they got their hands on. Some 300 people white'. Many local white youths joined in the vicious, provocative and sadistic? Whether there were arrested. All the charges against the vic­ running street battles against the police. In is large-scale unemployment and black op­ tims of this, racist cop occupation must be this area many youth under 20 have never had a pression? Born-again 'revolutionary' and Labour dropped immediately! Cops out of Brixton! job; for years the police have roamed the Party leader of Lambeth Council Ted Knight, streets, arresting blacks at random under the endorsing the Militant proposal, declaimed about hated 'sus' laws; and Special Patrol Group thugs Community control of police pogroms? the need to 'make the police responsible to earned such hatred that they were withdrawn from elected Labour movement representatives', ie the area. The events of the weekend were but the Alarmed by the inflammatory behaviour of the Labour-run councils like his. Socialist Press culminating explosion of years of seet~ing re­ cops, community leaders and local Labour coun­ (23 April), paper of the right-centrist Workers sentment in Brixton against a police force cillors had argued for a reduced police pres­ Socialist League, in turn touted Knight's call, seeking to make it an offence to walk the ence. But what has particularly worried the touched up with its 'militant' appeal that 're­ streets if you're black. ruling class about Brixton was the manifest sistance is channelled into a mas'Sive political breakdown in the police's ability to maintain fight against Thatcher and her police'. It control. On the fOIJowing "on day in Westminster, More police than humans on the street' wasn't Thatcher's police at Lewisham and Notting fro,nt bench ~'!Ps, both Tory and Labour, rose Hill, or when the SPG went into Brixton, or when In the preceding week, an intensive plain­ unanimously to condemn the local population and Blair Peach was murdered, Labour or Tory in clothes police operation code-named 'Operation to c,ommend the police brutality. Roy Hattersley, office, the cops are the hired thugs of the Labour spokesman for Home Affairs, despicably Swamp '81' had stopped 1000 people on the bourgeois state, racist to the core. Not sur­ added his voice to the chorus, deploring the street, charging 150 with offences. In one prisingly, the black population of Brixton sees 'suggestion' that the police should have scaled instance, local schoolteachers were horrified little difference between their brutal treatment down their operation and 'abandoned the protec­ to observe from their staff-room window a group at the hands of the nearly all-white police tion of residents'. Home Secretary William of white men beating up a black and repeatedly force and fascist terror. Whitelaw announced a public inquiry under the banging his head against the pavemen~. They Predictably the fascists rushed forward to direction of Lord Scarman, veteran of three pre­ investigated. The white men were plainclothes exploit the Brixton events, calling a march for vious inquiries aimed at whitewashing state cops. 25 April through Brixton. Equally predictably, repression. The Times leader was quite clear on On Friday evening a black youth seriously the Home Office imposed a month-long ban on the purpose of a public inquiry as an immediate wounded in a stabbing incident was picked up by marches throughout the London area under the measure: 'An inquiry could'take the heat off the the police. Instead of rushing him to medical public Order Act, the second in as many months. streets and put it in the tribunal room. care, the cops held him in a police car and In a graphiC demonstration of the futile and re­ The Guardian (18 April) daydreamed about an began interrogating him. Other youths, this actionary character of the strategy of relying time spurred into action by the sort of callous­ 'American scenario' for Brixton -- by which it on state bans to stop the faSCists, the fascist ness they have come to expect, attacked the meant a lower police profile and more economic provocation took place as scheduled under the cops, rescuing the youth and seeing him off to . aid. Even in the US, the token ghetto aid pro­ watchful eyes of the cops in a town just outside hospital. The police reacted to this challenge grammes which followed in the wake of the urban the limits of the ban. What the ban did succeed to their control of the streets through a mass­ rebellions of the sixties have been reduced to in stopping was any effective countermobilis­ ive increase in their presence the following scarcely a trickle. Given the state ~f the ation. Several leftist demonstrations were day. On Railton Road, at the heart of the black British economy and Thatcher's drive to slash either prevented or harassed -- including a May community, there were police on guard in pairs social services to the bone, the very idea is a Day march at which the cops arrested a number of at every corner from early morning. As one black cruel joke. The only 'American scenario' the leftists under the pretext of the ban. resident put it, 'There was more police than British ruling class could afford is guns for The government has been employing the Public humans on the street.' the thugs in blue. Indeed former Hetropolitan Order Act with alarming frequency of late. Today Then just before 5.00pm the'police moved in Police Commissioner Sir Robert ~'ark pointed to continued on page 11)

MAY 1981 9 marid that the supposed powers of the Sejm be vested in a congress of soviets as in the Poland ... Russian OctQber Revolution. But soviets in them­ (Continued from page 3) selves do not guarantee the socialist direction of society. Especially under present Polish darity' delegation might teach them a thing or conditions, they could fall under the influence two about the 'free world' .-- if they got out of reactionary nationalist forces seeking im­ alive. With the strong clerical-nationalist influ­ perialist backing against the USSR. The crucial element is an authentically revolutionary work­ ence over the new unions which became Soli~ darnosc, we have repeatedly warned of the ers party capable of organizing the socialist danger of capitalist counterrevolution spear­ impulses among the working masses around a headed by Pope Wojtyla's church. At the same Marxist, internationalist program. time, we recognised that the emergence of a A communist vanguard must be militantly anti­ powerful workers movement fundamentally chal­ nationalist. It would look back to the tradition lenging Stalinist bureaucratic rule could also of the pre-World War I socialist party of Rosa open the road to proletarian political revol­ Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches. In contrast to Pil­ ution. We have therefore insisted that the key sudski's chauvinist Polish Socialist Party, they strategic task for a Trotskyist vanguard in called their organization the Social Democracy Poland was to split the mass of workers from of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. They reactionary forces. This means fighting for a maintained that the socialist transformation series of programmatic demands including strict of Poland was inextricably bound up with the separation of church and state, defense of col­ proletarian revolution in Russia. lectivized property, defense of the Soviet bloc One of the leaders of the Luxemburg/Jogiches degenerated/deformed workers states against SDKPiL was Felix Dzerzhinski, who later played a imperialism. A Trotskyist vanguard would seek to distinguished role in the Bolshevik Revolution polarize the workers movement, attracting those as head of the Cheka, the police arm of the who seek a genuinely socialist solution and are early Soviet power. Dzerzhinski, whose Polish hostile to the Vatican and Western capitalism. accent in Russian became stronger when he was agitated, was chosen for this most sen~tive post because he was a revolutionist of outstand­ Solidarnosc in turmoil, Communist Party polarised ing moral integrity. On a far lesser historic Today we see the beginnings of internal pol­ Felix Dzerzhinski, Polish revolutionary and Bolshevik leader. scale, there was Konstanti Rokossovski, a young itical differentiation within 'Solidarity' and POlish socialist who joined the Soviet Red Army the Communist party, For the first time forces moving toward a rediscovery of authentic Lenin­ in 1919. Imprisoned in the Stalin purges of the are opposing bureaucratic rule not in the name ism. They tend rather toward liberal Stalinism, late 1930s, he reemerged to become one of the of the eagle and the cross ,but calling for 'socialism with a human face', as the Czech greatest Soviet command~rs of World War II. 'socialist renewal' and even a return to the Stalinist reformer Dubcek called it during the Marshal Rokossovski was not a revolutionist but Prague Spring of 1968, and they seek a favor­ principles of 'Marxism-Leninism'. The Nel<; York a Stalinist military officer. But his service in Times (12 April) now projects: 'Barring Soviet able hearing from the present leaders of ·defending the Soviet Union against imperialist military intervention, the likely next phase in Solidarnosc. Moreover, they are quoted express­ attack does him honor -- and he played a key the workers' revolution in Poland will not be a ing anti-Russian prejudices and political senti­ role in liberating Poland in 1944-45 from night­ ments common in Poland today. One delegate at struggle against the Communist Party but a marish Nazi occupation. the Torun conference remarked: 'Our Soviet struggle within the party itself.' This makes In his great essay on 'The Tragedy of the even more urgent the crystallization of a Trot­ friends have a history that has accustomed them Polish Communist Party', Isaac Deutscher to absolutism in government. But the history of t ••• skyist propaganda nucleus in Poland which alone stressed as his main conclusion: if the our nation is closely connected to democracy.' history of the Polish CP and of Poland at large can offer a way out of the desperate and seem­ And what of the national hero and fascistic dic­ proves anything at all, it proves how inde­ ingly endless crises which are wra~king Poland. tator Pilsudski, a former right-wing social structible is the link between the Polish and ~he political landscape has changed consider­ democrat who defended Polish capitalism against the Russian revolutions.' Today it is necessary ably since the Gdansk-based general strike last the Red Army in 1920?! As Trotsky pOinted out, to revive the tradition of revolutionary unity summer. Walesa is under several-sided attack the Stalinist bureaucracy itself could generate of the Polish and Russian proletariat. Now it from within Solidarnosc. Meanwhile, many of the a fascistic wing -- he called it the 'Butenko must be directed against the Stalinist bureauc­ more than one million working-class members of faction' -- which in Poland today would be im­ racies, in defense of the collectivized econom­ the Polish United Workers Party (PUWP) now par­ bued with virulent anti-Russian nationalism .. ies and proletarian state powers against the ticipating in 'Solidarity' must find their If the PUWP liberals are talking of a threat of capitalist-imperialism. socialist convictions (however deformed by Stal­ 'socialist renewal' in Poland, the Kremlin is The leadership of 'Solidarity' stands direct­ inist ideology) in conflict with the reactionary warning of 'creeping counterrevolution'. The ly opposed to these principles. Wales a and his views of Walesa and his associates. The church Brezhnevite Stalinists pare not attack the real colleagues see themselves leading the entire hierarchy, on the other hand, has pulled back, Polish nation against Russian 'Communism'. This basis for counterrevolution, the powerful Cath­ fearing a Soviet military intervention. A few olic hierarchy, but instead target relatively is most strongly expressed in their active sup­ days before 'Solidarity' had scheduled a general port to the peasant organization, Rural Solidar­ small dissident groups, notably Jacek Kuron's strike at the end of March, Cardinal Wyszynski ity. In fact, the recent near general strike was Committee for Social Self-Defense (KOR) and the issued a joint statement with Prime Minister called primarily on behalf of the peasant organ­ Confederation of Independent Poland (KPN) of Wojciech Jaruzelski urging that 'strikes can be ization. Expressing the acquisitive appetites of Leszek Moczulski. Of course, the Kremlin hacks eliminated as extremely costly Fo the enfeebled Poland's numerous landowning peasants, Rural would denounce any political opposition, includ­ national economy' (Daily World, 28 Harch). Solidarity aims at the complete reestablishment ing and especially Trotskyists, as 'counter­ of capitalist relations in the countryside. Its Most striking is the impact which the workers revolutionary' and even 'fascistic'. But Stalin­ non-economic demands include the construction of struggles have had on the Stalinist apparatus of ist slanders notwithstanding, KOR and KPN are more churches, no restriction of religious edu­ the PUWP. The recent Central Committee meeting each in their own ways enemies of socialism. cation and an end to compulsory teaching of at the end of March turned into a political The KPN is openly clerical-nationalist and Russian in the schools. Little wonder, then, that brawl. 'We must know that Solidarity is in the anti-socialist. This is not the case, however, Pope Wojtyla himself demanded that the Warsaw first place the working class itself', declared with Kuron's KOR. In the West Kuron is widely regime recognize Rural Solidarity, a potent base the party secretary of the Baltic port of regarded as some kind of left radical, even a for capitalist restoration. The fact that the Szczecin. Only the fear of the Kremlin's reac­ 'Marxist' -- a reflection of his stance in the Stalinist regime has just legitimized this tion prevented this meeting from throwing hard­ 1960s. As we have pointed out in the face of his peasant organization, reversing its earlier liners like Stefan Olszowski off the Politburo. pseudo-Trotskyist cheerleaders, he has since stand, marks a major concession to the forces of A recent national conference in Torun of dissi­ moved far to the right. Tamara Deutscher con­ reaction. dent groupings within the party called for full firms this in an important recent article in New The socialist answer to Rural Solidarity is and adequate~information, secret ballots, mul­ Left Review ('Poland -- H~pes and Fears', Janu­ not maintaining the status quo in the country­ tiple candidates. One delegate protested: 'The ary-February, 1981). She recalls that when sen­ side. For that situation is disastrous. Poland's authorities should not present the changes going tenced to prison in 1964, 'Kuron and his comrade ineffiCient, aging smallholders are a major on in our country as the work of antisocialist defiantly sang the Internationale in court. Such barrier to balanced economic development. The forces but as a proper restoration of Marxist­ a gesture on his part would be unthinkable toda~ $10 billion food subsidy -- the difference be­ Leninist principles' (New York Times, 16 April). He has moved towards social democracy, the tween what the state pays the farmers and what However, overall the PUWP dissidents are not Church and a nationalistic position.' it charges urban consumers -- is by far the largest item in the government budget and ac­ Above all, a revolutionary internationalist party counts for a significant share of total national Subscribe!. . income. Russian and Ukrainian collective farms Whether or not Moscow intervenes militarily now supply Poland with food, even though the SPARIACIST in the near future, the Polish crisis is fast consumption level, especially of meat, is much BRITAIN heading toward the explosion point. The econom­ higher in Warsaw and Gdansk than in Moscow and ic chaos is assuming disastrous proportions. Kiev. An immediate key task for a revolutionary NAME Food supplies are shrinking rapidly; hard cur­ ADDRESS ______soviet government in Poland would be to promote rency exports have fallen 25 percent since last the collectivization of agriculture. Cheap year, coal exports have dropped 50 percent. credit and generous social services should be Politically the situation is anarchic. There given to' those peasants who pool their land and £2.00 for 10 issues o Spartacist Britain: must be a tremendous felt need for the working labor. Those who want to remain petty agricul­ people of Poland to take control of society, of o Joint subscriptiol'l: tural capitalists should be subject to higher the. economy, and direct it in their interests. taxes and other forms of economic discrimination. £:6.00 for 24 issues WORKERS Seeking to placate the masses, the Stalinis't VANGUARD (fortnightly Marxist paper leaders are now talking about granting more Along with the backward smallholding agricul­ of SUUS) plus SPARTACIST BRITAIN powers to the parliament, the Sejm, nominally ture, an enormous foreign debt is at the root of for duratiol] of subscription plus the highest governing body. the current Polish economic crisis. During the SPARTACIST liSt journal) In Poland today the classic Bolshevik' demand 1970s the Gierek regime tried to buy off the workers and peasants with massive loans con­ Make payable/write to: -- all power to the Soviets, the democratically tracted from the West. His successors have ac­ Spartacist Publications, PO Box 185, London WC1 H SJE elected workers councils -- would have a broad appeal. A revolutionary vanguard might well de- celerated this disastrous policy. Poland's debt

10 SPARTACIST BRITAIN to the West has increased by one-third in the ment inquiries', but a fight to mObilise the last seven months alone! Repaying the bankers of labour movement around a class-struggle pro­ Frankfurt and Wall Street will absorb all ?f Brixton ••• gramme to smash racial oppression -- an end to Poland's hard-currency export earnings for years (Continued from page 9) all discrimination in jobs, housing and edu­ to come. (And no small share of Soviet hard­ the International Marxist Group (lUG) and the cation, a fight for full and equal rights for currency exports are expended on repaying di­ Socialist Workers Party (SWP) tout their oppo­ all blacks, the mobilisation of trade union/ rectly or indirectly Poland's Western capitalist black defence guards to crush the cowardly ver- creditors.) The demand to cancel the imperialist sition to state bans. But they built the min who firebomb black families. popular-frontist Anti Nazi League, lately' re- " . debt is crucial in breaking the capitalist . d' d t d fl t th t· LIkeWIse blacks who want to destroy thls stranglehold on the Polish economy. But this born', WhICh was eSlgne 0 e ec e an 1- " . . . fascist strugg. 1 e In . t 0 pressurlng. th e b ourgeolsle,.. brutal ImperIalIst bourgeolsle must look to the would be possible only under a revolutionary even to the extent of dabbling with bans. The British proletariat, not to utopian suicidal soviet regime which could counter imperialist 'carnivals' went, but the fascists returned. schemes of 'self-organisation', to secure their economic retaliation by appealing to the workers What is necessary now as then is the independent rights here and avenge centuries of colonial of West Europe to become comrades in inter­ mobilisation of the workers organisations to rape and exploitation. A community increasingly national socialist planning in a Socialist build trade union/black defence guards to under siege, with their very right to remain in United States of Europe. crush the fascist vermin and defend the black the country being called into question, Brit~ As important as appeals to the working class communities. ain's black minority simply does not have a hope of the capitalist West are to a proletarian in hell of overcoming on its own the oppression poli tical revolution in Poland, still more im- Legacy of a dying empire which it faces. Even the Brixton area, for port ant is the perspective toward such a revolu- example, is predominantly white and a stronghold tion in the Soviet Union. Should the Kremlin Brixton is the second massive explosion of for faSCist recruitment. intervene militarily, the immediate fate of the black anger against unrelenting cop racism in The road forward for Britain's blacks re­ Polish workers would in large measure depend on a year. The deep-going social crisis of British quires the intervention of a revolutionary, their ability to influence and win over Soviet capitalism has thrust the country's minority Trotskyist party, with a programme capable of conscript soldiers -- that is, young P.ussian, West Indian and Asian communities to the fore- transcending racial and national divisions and Ukrainian and Central Asian workers and peasants front in a battle for self-preservation. defeating racial oppression through class in uniform. Anti-Russian Polish nationalism, and Chronic, climbing unemployment and decaying struggle. Key to this task is to split Labour's especially violence directed at Soviet soldiers social services hit at blacks particulary hard, mass working-class base from the pro-capitalist or officers, would sabotage the proletarian while providing a fertile recruiting ground for misleaders who relish the crumbs of a dying cause. fascist terror among lumpenised white youth. The empire. Though not a strategiC section, blacks Here it is important to recognise that il- pervasive racism which is the fruit of Britain's are overwhelmingly concentrated in the prolet­ lusions about 'good will' and peacefulness of long-decayed colonial past and encourages the ariat, providing a lever for mobilising a uni­ the Western capitalist powers, common in East increasingly brazen assaults of the fascists is fied working-class response to racist attacks. Europe and particularly in Poland, do not ex- tOday crystallised in the Tory government's Only with the support of the organised working tend to the Soviet Union. After losing 20 Nationality Bill. Having stemmed the influx of class, which has a vested interest in combating million fighting Nazi Germany, the Soviet people black immigrants from the former colonies, the increased police repression and the growth of understand full well that NATO's nuclear arsenal r,uling class now wants to reverse it, by cre- the faSCists, will the struggle to defend Brit­ is targeted at them. This understanding is now ating what amounts to an apartheid system in heightened by Washington's open threats of a ain's West Indian and Asian communities be suc­ citizenship qualifications. nuclear first strike. The Soviet people legiti­ cessful. It would be truly fitting if the mately fear the transformation of East Europe The black population of Brixton is itself the former colonial slaves provided a significant into hostile, imperialist-allied states extend- legacy of colonialism. The British bourgeoisie cadre for the British revolution. could have opted after World War II for the sort ing to their own border. Drop the Charges! Cops out of Brixton! Smash of 'gastarbeiter' scheme adopted by Germany, but The Kremlin bureaucrats exploit this legiti­ the Nationality Bill! Full citizenship rights chosi instead to play the imperial card one more mate fear to crush popular unrest and democratic for Britain's blacks! No to state bans -- for time. Now the children of those who came to keep aspirations in East Europe, as in Czechoslovakia trade union/black defence guards to halt racist London Transport running, to staff the hospitals, in 1968. But the situation in Poland today is attacks and smash the fascists!. to take the jobs others didn't want are no signtficantly different from that during the longer wanted themselves. And they're beginning 'Prague Spring'. Anti-Russian nationalism is far to fight back. They don't want to be 'repatri­ more virulent, while Washington and its NATO ated' -- they want j~bs, housing, an end to cop allies are being far more provocative and mili­ terror. They were born here, they want to stay tarily threatening. For these reasons the ques­ 1MB ... here. tion of defense of the Soviet Union against Brixton was not only bigger than Bristol and (Continued from page 2) imperialism takes on far greater importance ~n in the heart of the metropoliS, it evoked the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, the pacifist the present Polish crisis. Revolutionary Polish palpable feeling that Britain is coming apart at drift towards disowning the Soviet 'workers workers cannot hope to appeal to Soviet soldiers the seams. With unemployment slated to rise to bomb' and the defencist line towards Khomeini's unless they assure them that they will defend three million before year's end, with Northern Iran in the Iran/Iraq war -- the letters page the social gains of the October Revolution against imperialist attack. Ireland threatening to blow up, the government has exploded in vitriolic exchanges. Likewise, had to breathe one enormous sigh of relief that the IMG voted three different ways (with some Only by addressing their Soviet class their cops proved able -- barely -- to contain supporters literally fleeing from the room) on a brothers in the name of socialist international­ Brixton. Not only are the colonies gone, the Soviet-defencist resolution put by the ism can the Polish proletariat liberate itself former colonial subjects demand to be treated Spartacist League to the Manchester anti- from the chains of Stalinist oppression. with as equals. And when the arrogant Thatcher paid a missiles conference in March. And most recently, this perspective a Trotskyist vanguard in Poland visit to that former jewel of the blood-drenched to the horror of senior IMGers present, a con- could turn a looming catastrophe into a great empire, India, she was forced to explain what tingent of Revolution Youth (Dm youth group) victory f,or world socia1.ism. happened at Brixton and to confront not only the members chanted 'Stop the US war drive, defend -reprinted from Workers Vanguard no 279, 24 April 1981 official protests of the equally iron Mrs Gandhi the Soviet Union' and even a call for 'Reagan over her racist Nationality Bill, but the anger out, Brezhnev in' at an Easter CND parade in of outraged demonstrators in the streets. Brit- Birmingham. ain's pretensions to the status of a world power The enthusiastic paeans to Tony Benn are EI Salvador ... -- if only among its former imperial possessions more than faintly reminiscent of similar kudos (Continued from page 12) -- are easily shattered by a look at life in for erstwhile 'left' Harold Wilson in the early managed to capture the SWP's niche, doing the Britain. 1960s. Then the IMG's predecessor (centred legwork for the 'respectable' liberals. So the It is not only the bourgeoisie which is un- around The Week) was firmly ensconsced in the SWP reformists first tried to outflank PAM with nerved by this state of affairs, but the oppor- Labour Party as part of Michel Pablo's perspec­ a counterposed 'legal, peaceful' proposal for a unists on the British left. A year ago, tive of being a left pressure on pro-capitalist 9 May march, viciously baiting the 3 May march Socialist Challenge, paper of the International bureaucrats through entrism s~i generis (deep proposal as 'disruptive', 'narrow, confronta­ Marxist Group, proclaimed Bristol a 'carnival of entry) into mass reformist parties. IMGers have tional' an~ 'almost guaranteed to result in a the oppressed' and attempted to find a basis for in the past scoffed at the very notion of the physical confrontation with the police or army' its bizarre call for 'seif-determination for organisation's Pabloism __ after all, didn't ([US] Militant, 27 March). Such disgusting blacks' in Britain. Socialist Worker exhalted Pablo openly break with the 'Fourth Inter- statements, designed to assure the government of about how 'things can never be the same'. Today national' nearly two decades ago? Yes, but the the SWP's respect for bourgeois legality, would Socialist Worker solemnly warns that things will USec has never broken with Pabloism, the aban- make great evidence for the prosecution in fu­ be the same: donment of the struggle for a Leninist vanguard ture witchhunts of the left. But as church, com­ 'But after Saturday night came Sunday morning. built in combat against all non-proletarian cur­ munity-group and low-level labour-faker support Hundreds were arrested .... This has happened rents. Its hallmark has always been the chase for the 3 May protest mounted, it became clear after every such explosion .... When the after other forces to accomplish the historic that the SWP had been outmanoeuvred. And when flames of defiance abated, the slums, the mission of the working class and its Leninist even the Unitarian Church and the War Resisters police and t~e dole queues were still there.' vanguard __ socialist revolution. Impression- League endorsed 3 May the SWP had to admit 'May But they will not be done away with thrOugh. the istically shifting with the climate, the IMG 9 is not viable' -- though still demanding SWP's simple-minded workerist 'Black and whIte, has wandered back towards capitulation to the further guarantees of a 'peaceful, legal' demon­ unite and fight' rhetoric. And certainly not by main obstacle to proletarian revolution in stration, working to try to shift the venue away the IMG's current reCipe, which is to channel Britain __ the Labour Party. And with its youth- from the Pentagon to better please 'respectable' the hatred of blacks for this oppressive system ful energies sapped by years of stagnation, the people, and generally keeping a very low profile. into support for Labour's 'lefts'. Thus the 29 IMG threatens to succumb to the same reformist April Socialist Challenge applauds the formation pressures that made Labour entrism the political For liberals 'No more Vietnams' means no more of the Asian Labour Party Alliance and its sup- graveyard for many other would-be Trotskyists. losing imperialist wars. Contrast this to Che port for the 'lefts'. The IMG was closer to the Those who joined the IMG in the desire to Guevara's exhortation for 'two, three, many truth six years ago, when it warned 'Labour make a proletarian revolution must find them- Vietnams' -- imperialism was badly defeated by the NLF. The Salvadoran masses are heroically lefts open door to racism'. selves alarmed at the current rightist capitu- fighting against tremendous odds, sacrificing White workers today face the choice of being lations. The alternative to impressionist be­ their lives in an unequal struggle against the dragged down the road to the destruction of trayals is not to forsake the authentic Fourth most poweriul imperialist war machine in his­ their class through racist appeals to 'get the International (destroyed by Pabloite revision­ tory. They have chosen their side. And the van­ blacks' or of recognising that they have a valu- ism in 1951-53), but to struggle for its re­ guard of those in the US who will stand with able ally in the class struggle among militant birth. If the will is there, the programme is them marched in the Anti-Imperialist Contin­ blacks who have good reason to hate this bour- there as well -- the programme of the inter­ gents on 3 May .• ~eoisie. What is necessary is not 'labour move- national Spartacist tendency .•

MAY 1981 11 BRITAIN VICTORY TO LEFTIST , •

In the largest demonstrations in the US in a The mobilising leaflet for the contingents, scribe to many aspects of Spartacist activism in decade, 50-100,000 demonstrators marched in distributed in the tens of thousands at earlier the US, I am much more comfortable marching Washington and up to 10,000 in San Francisco on protests in New York and Los Angeles on 18 April under that explicitly anti-imperialist banner 3 May demanding no US intervention in El Salva­ and elsewhere, on campuses and at workplaces, than with a group which has failed to cleave dor. Significantly over 500 at the march to the explained the need to take a side: itself from the Democratic Party, a capitalist Pentagon and 250 on the West Coast joined the 'A bloody civil war is raging in El Salvador. party, which indeed under the Carter administra­ Spartacist League/US (SL) and Sp~rtacus Youth Nicaragua is threatened with counterrevolu­ tion initiated economic and military aid to the League (SYL)-initiated Anti-Imperialist Contin­ tionary invasion. Reagan has proclaimed Cen­ junta. ' gents which, in contrast to the liberal imperi­ tral America the front line of his anti­ And what of the reformist American Socialist alist 'peace' politics of the march leaders, Soviet Cold War. r~ich side are you on? Workers Party (SWP) , sister group of the Inter­ proclaimed 'Military Victory to Leftist Insur­ 'The US sends Huey helicopters and Green national Marxist Group (IMG) in this country, gents in E1 Salvador!' Beret "advisors" to prop up the junta, which prided itself on being the 'best builders' of the ~0cial-patriotic section of the anti­ 'It was the Democratic Party lib/rad anti­ threatens military blockade of Cuba, rattles Vietnam War movement in the US? While the re­ Reagan march; it just happened to be about El nuclear missiles over Poland. But seeking to formists generally squabbled among themselves Salvador', reported Workers Vanguard editor Jan placate imperialist liberals like Kennedy, over the rally site, speakers and money, the SWP Norden of the main body of the Washington march. reformist organizers of E1 Salvador protests took the prize for the most disgusting -- and Against this background the impressive Anti­ refuse to side with the Salvadoran rebels. ended up with egg on their face. Workers World Imperialist Contingent's militant banners, red 'A militant protest is needed NOW against the continued on page 11 flags and spirited chants stood out sharply. imperialist war drive! The Spartacist League Indeed th, American press the following day all and Spartacus Youth League are calling for an Anti-Imperialist Contingent to march on May 3 carried, a~ the photograph of the demonstration, a vivid SL/SYL banner reading, 'Military Victory in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco for the ELSALVADOR:-~ to Salvadoran Leftists! For Workers Revolution' demands: Stop all aiJ, military and economic, Throughout Central America!' to the Salvadoran junta! U.S./OAS hands off The Anti-Imperialist Contingent rallied at Central America! Military victory to leftist the Pentagon to demonstrate its solidarity with insurgents in E1 Sa1vado'r! Defense of C~ba l\tal' It.S. the leftist insurgents in the Salvadoran civil and the USSR begins in E1 Salvador.!' to\.e I i~ war and its defence'of the Cuban and Russian Badges and posters emblazoned '~Iilitary Vic­ workers states in the Cold War. Shamefully, tory to the Leftist Insurgents' were distributed goons from Workers World Party, which controls across the US. Rallies, public meetings, im­ \ftsUlteft\S\ the Peoples Antiwar Mobilization (PAM) -- an promptu soapboxing and energetic interventions initiator of the 3 May action -- linked arms to into the Salvadoran protest milieu on campuses prevent protesters from coming to this rally, helped to get the word out. In Los Angeles mili­ attempting to label it a 'counter-demon­ tant communications workers in the class­ stration'. So PMI wants to say that its tepid struggle Militant Action Caucus (MAC) centred a StOPA" US Aid 10 the .. pacifism and footslogging for the Democratic union election campaign on US intervention in El Detenseot Party hacks is counterposed to the Simple, nec­ Salvadoran Salvador and their union's complicity with the JUnta! Cuba and essary demand for the ba,ttlefield victory of CIA-backed American Institute for Free Labor USSR Begins in those fighting the Salvadoran junta! Development (AIFLD). MAC participated with other U.S.!OAS Hands Ott EI An SL speaker explained the nature of the SL-supported class-struggle unionists in the Central Salvador! Democratic Party-dominated rally. 'It's no ac­ Anti-Imperialist Contingents. America! cident you won't find any F~~N flags over there, A student co-operative at the University of the flag of the leftist insurgents. They consid­ Wisconsin sponsored a benefit so that as many iii=-=-z=~ er those people to be the enemy; they're for US stUdents as possible could make the long ride : Ha,3 imperialism. They just don't want US imperialism ~~rch 5I?s=. (about a thousand miles) to Washington to march Jlnti-I ~gto~, D,C. with the to lose a~other war.' The contingent demon­ in the Anti-Imperialist Contingent. In Boston a strated its internationalist stand by reading member of the pro-FDR CISPES (Committee in Soli­ <., mD~"a',st Contingent' _ <;r>ARif.(If,'IJA'il !!, "', '. • out a statement from the Spartacist League/ darity with the People of El Salvador) explained ~ "'"I.-~"'<" Britain on Bobby Sands and raising the chant, why he was asking to march in the Anti-Imperial­ 'Smash H-Block!'. ist Contingent: 'While I do not necessarily sub-

12 MAY 1981