No 141 May/June 1994 30p Newspaper of the Spartacist League ANe/De Klerk neD-apartheid regime: enemy of black freedom

Buthelezi, De Klerk and Mendela shake hands on elections. "Power-sharing" deal preserves neo-apartheid capitalism, as power of black proletariat is shackled through nationalist popular front with bourgeoisie.

_,",_"". MAY _.. lO-Today Nelson Mandela, means that Anglo is no longer such a leader of the ANC, was sworn in as presi­ natural target for an ANC-controlled dent of South Africa. It is only four years. For a Bolshevik workers party! government either to break-up ... or since he was released from prison after nationalise" . being locked up for 27 years by the racist The outcome of the election was in regime. Yesterday, Mandela walked arm­ For a black-centred workers republic! fact determined well before it took place. in-arm into the newly elected multiracial There would be a coalition "government parliament with his former jailer, apart­ of national unity" between the ANC and heid ruler FW De Klerk. The inaugural heid edifice, legalising black unions, elim­ petuate that exploitation by utilising as De Klerk's Afrikaner-based National ceremonies drew 46 present and former inating the segregation laws of "petty their agent the very organisation claiming Party. Now this has been amplified by a heads of state and government, at least apartheid" (against interracial marriage, leadership of the black liberation move­ deal to include Mangosuthu Buthelezi, nine kings, princes and sheiks and UN imposing separate beaches and public ment, Mandela's ANC. The Financial head of the Zulu tribalist Inkatha party, Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali. This accommodations) and "grand apartheid" Times (9 May) highlighted the triumphal­ giving him control of Natal province. In "New World Order" gala was to cele­ (the infamous pass laws, Group Areas ism of the gold and diamond mine KwaZulu/Natal there is evidence of brate a supposed "negotiated revolution" . Act and bantustan "homelands"). But the owners: "Anglo American and De Beers massive voter fraud. However, Mandela But in the desperately poor black shanty­ owners of South Africa's mines, factories Have Much to Celebrate - African refused to challenge this, raising specula­ towns, revolution is yet to come. and farms have by no means abandoned Empire Open to the World". And due to tions of a "deal within the deal", to let Over the past decade and a half, the their superexploitation of the black the counterrevolution that swept East Buthelezi have enough votes to bring him blows of revolt chipped away at the apart- toilers. Rather they are seeking to per- Europe and the Soviet Union, "this continued on page 6 Electing Labour has not, will not stop- the fascists Trade unions, minorities must crush the BNP!

The fake left is claiming that Labour's mobilisations. The East End of London has been a on Jews, blacks, Asians, Gypsies, Irish victory in Tower Hamlets and the unseat­ Electing a Labour council does not battleground between the racist scum of Republicans, gays, leftists and trade ing of BNPer Derek Beackon strikes a change the fundamental reality of the the BNP and militant anti-fascist youth unionists. real blow at fascism. This is a lie! The state, which is an organ of class rule by who have sought to stop them. Life has Last September, after the murderous fascists will not be stopped by means of the bourgeoisie and is necessarily racist. become a living hell for black and Asian assault on Quaddus Ali and a fascist voting and by relying on the capitalist The BNP will continue to carry out its minorities - on the Isle of Dogs alone rampage through Brick Lane, an action state, whether administered by Labour or race terror and, as they have done in the reported cases of racial attack have led by the Militant's Youth Against F~.a> Tory. The BNP do not believe in abiding past, the cops and courts will seek to increased by 300 per cent since 1988. ism in Europe (YRE) and the S\'fp'~ by the results of the ballot box or other protect the fascist scum against the just Muktar Ahmed and Quaddus Ali have Anti Nazi League (ANL) succeeded in democratic niceties. They are an extra­ outrage of their intended victims. In been put in hospital by fascist-inspired leaving the BNP in a humiliated heap in parliamentary gang of race terrorists, breeding illusions in the chauvinist terror gangs, beaten to within an inch of Brick Lane. This action was welcomed by kept in reserve by the capitalist class. The Labourites who run the council, the fake their lives. Capitalism in deep economic thousands of anti-fascists across Britain. fascist scum must be broken and smashed left has in fact assisted in the demobili­ decline is the breeding ground for the The question was how to build upon this on the streets, through militant workers' sation of anti-fascist struggle. fascist BNP with their murderous designs continued on page 4 In memory' of Blair Peach Vindictive court judgment Anti-fascist martyr against anti-fascist fighter

On 23 April 1979 Blair Peach was Union amidst imperialist "New World It took them two trials, but on 15 April Quaddus Ali and Muktar Ahmed are free murdered by the British state. Along with Order" crisis. the state finally convicted Martin Milne, to kill or maim their next victims. thousands of others, Blair Peach, a mem­ Blair Peach was murdered by cops a supporter of Militant Labour. Milne Four months after the 16 October anti­ ber of the Socialist Workers Party, had administered by the capitalist Callaghan participated in last September's action fascist demonstration, the cops launched turned out for an anti-fascist rally in the Labour government. And it was Harold on Brick Lane in which several BNP a renewed witch hunt, searching nation­ predominantly Asian Southall area of Wilson's Labour government in 1974 that scum had their heads "acquainted with wide for protesters they could frame up London against the National Front (NF) was responsible for the death of anti­ the pavement". Anti-racists everywhere for acts of violence in Welling. The Parti­ fascist scum. That day saw hundreds of fascist Kevin Gately in Red Lion Square. cheered at the news of this act of elemen­ san Defence Committee held a protest anti-fascist protesters arrested and dozens Appeals to the capitalist state, whether tary sanitation, which gave the fascists a outside Scotland Yard on 5 March injured. The murderous cops of the Tory or Labour, to stop the fascists are taste of the treatment they deserve. Far denouncing the dragnet and demanding Special Patrol Group killed Blair Peach, suicidal. Nor will the fascists be stopped from a criminal, Milne is an anti-racist charges be dropped against all anti-fascist fracturing his skull through repeated by wretched pro-Labour electoralism. hero and should have his conviction protesters. The PDC stressed the central­ blows to the head. Those responsible for What is urgently needed is massive expunged and be financially compensated ity of the organised working class in the Blair Peach's murder were never brought mobilisations of trade unions and minor­ for his trouble and expense. fight against fascism: "We call for disci­ to justice. ities to crush the fascists! But as Milne told the Militant (22 plined, trade union centred workers Today there is a sinister rise of racist The memory of Blair Peach should be April): "the police and Crown Prosecu­ defence guards to make the fascists afraid state and fascist BNP terror, which has seen seared in the minds of every cIiiss­ tion Service (CPS) wanted to make an to show their faces." We appeal to our the murders of Stephen Lawrence and Joy struggle and anti-fascist fighter. It will example of me". He was found guilty of readers to help defray the legal costs of Gardner along with brutal attacks on Quad­ take workers revolution to smash the "affray", bound over for two years and Martin Milne convicted for a courageous dus Ali and Muktar Ahmed. Fascist terror rotten capitalist system, which breeds the fined £500. In this racist capitalist soci­ act of anti-fascism. gangs are on the increase across Europe, fascist scum. Only then will the death of ety, anti-fascists are hounded by the cops spurred on by capitalist counterrevolution'in , Blair Peach along with all the victims of and courts, while the murderers of Send donations to: YRE Defence Fund, Eastern Europe and the' former Soviet this racist capitalist system be avenged .• Stephen Lawrence and the attackers of PO Box 858, London E9 SHU•• Timex strike sUPRDrter faces im! Support to the popular front is class treachery! Drop the charges against After hearing the news of the Febrnary Revolution 1917 while still in Switzer/and, Lenin wrote his "Letters from Afar". Len­ Drew McEwan! in's first letter was originally censored by the Pravda editorial board (including Stalin) for In late April, the Scottish courts post­ raid on McEwan, police photographed being too critical of the Mensheviks and the Provisional Govemment. In it Lenin warns poned their frame-up trial of Timex strike posters and confiscated phone numbers. TROTSKY LENIN supporter Drew McEwan. The adjourn­ This was nothing less than a terror raid against any suppolt to the bourgeois Pro- ment came after McEwan showed up in aimed at intimidating leftists and trade visional Government, a govemment of the court accompanied by 60 supporters, unionists. The raid followed the massive "capitalist landlords and bourgeoisie which mainly trade unionists who demonstrated 17 May 1993 demonstration in Dundee in has long been ruling our country economically". Lenin argues that the situation was tran­ in his defence. Charged with breach of support of Timex workers, which :iitional and the working class and its allies must fight for "bread,for peace, for real free­ the peace, Drew McEwan is the only attracted widespread working-class sup­ dom ", which can only be achieved through the rnle of the workers soviets. In South Africa person facing prison out of many arrested port from across Scotland, England and today, as in Russia 1917, it is impossible to satisfy the many llllfu/filled revolutionary­ during the seven-month-Iong Timex Wales, indicative of the deeply felt work­ democratic tasks sholt of the seizure of power by the proletariat. Real peace, bread and strike. The strike ended in the shafting of ing-class anger at the years of govern­ freedom can only be achieved by expropriating the assets of the mining and manUfactUring its over 300 mainly women workers, who ment and bosses' attacks. houses, laying the basis for a planned economy under the rnle of workers councils. Those had been sacked for refusing to swallow Last November the Partisan Defence who advocated suppolt to the ANC/De Klerk neo-apaltheid deal were betraying the vicious cuts to their pay and conditions. Committee (PDC), the legal and social interests of the working class just as much as those who Lenin labelled as traitors for sup­ Throughout the struggle, the Timex defence organisation associated with the ,/JOlting the bourgeois Provisional Govemmellt of Febrnary 1917. strikers fought a bitter battle against Spartacist League, sent a letter of protest cops, scabs, a vicious union-busting man­ He who says that the workers must suppolt the new government in the interests of to the Procurator Fiscal, Dundee Sheriff agement and sell-out treachery from the the struggle against tsarist reaction (and apparently this is being said by the Potresovs, Court. The PDC letter drew attention to trade union tops (see "Combative Timex Gvozdyovs, Chkhenkelis and also, all evasiveness notwithstanding, by Chkheidze) is a the fact that the "show trial of a known strikers shafted", Workers Hammer Sep­ traitor to the workers, a traitor to the cause of the proletariat, to the cause of peace leftist and supporter of the Socialist temberJOctober 1993). The struggle and freedom. For actually, precisely this new government is already bound hand and Workers Party is part of the climate of ended when the Timex Corporation foot by imperialist capital, by the imperialist policy of war and plunder, has already the reactionary 'New World Disorder' .... closed its Dundee plant for good last begun to strike a bargain (without consulting the peoplc!) with the dynasty .... It comes in the wake of the defeat of the August. Vindictive in victory, the state No, if there is to be a real struggle against the tsarist monarchy, if freedom is to be Timex strike, the most militant strike has gone so far as to change the charges Scotland has witnessed in years. It is guaranteed in fact and not merely in words, in the glib promises of Milyukov and against Drew McEwan in order to have intended as a threat by the bosses to any Kerensky, the workers must not support the new government; the government must his hearing moved to the sheriffs court "support" the workers! For the only of freedom and of the complete worker or oppressed person who might guarantee and thus deny him the elementary right destruction of tsarism lics in annif!g the proletariat, in strengthening, extending and contemplate standing up for their rights." of a trial by jury. We demand: Drop the developing the role, significance and power of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies. ", charges now! The left and trade union movement Drew McEwan was initially seized can and must defeat this blatant frame-up - VI Lenin, Letters from Afar (March 1917) along with a fellow supporter of the and rally as one to defend Drew McEw­ Timex strike committee at the latter's an: an injury to one is an injury to all. home by eight police officers. During the Drop the charges now! •

Spartacist League Public Meeting WORKERSIIAMMER South Africa: For a federation of workers republics in the British Islesl ~ Black freedom requires socialist revolution For a Socialist United States of Europel Mandela/ANC front for racist capitalist rule Newspaper of the Spartacist League, British section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), EDITORIAL BOARD: Jon Branche, Ralf Eades, Andrew Gatsos (Editor), Alec Gilchrist, • For a Bolshevik workers party! Eibhlin McDonald, Alan Mason, Len Michelson, Ellen Rawlings, David Strachan • For a black-centred workers republic! PRODUCTION MANAGER: Lorraine Richards CIRCULATION MANAGER: Kathie Tennant Thursday, 26 May Published by Spartacist Publications, PO Box 1041, London NW53EU 7.30 pm Subscriptions: £2 for 1 year, Europe outside Britain & Ireland £3, overseas airmail £6 Opinions expressed In signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. Room 20, University of London Union (ULU) Printed by Chittern Offset (TU), tSSN ~7-8721 Malet Street, London WC1 (Nearest tube: Gooclge Street)

2 WORKERS HAMMER International demonstrations Protest Germany's repression of Kurds and Turkish leftists!

On 14 April demonstrators picketed the German embassy in London. The AU-- protest was initiated by· the Partisan Defence Committee to demand an end to the German government's ban of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) and 35 other Kurdish organisations, as well as the Turkish left group Devrimci Sol, and to raise the alarm against the threat of mass expulsions of Kurds to near-certain torture and death in Turkey. The ASian Times (3 May) notes that our German comrades of the "Spartakist Workers Party (SpAD) has repeatedly denounced the attacks on Kurdish organisations, participating in mass pro­ tests and calling upon the labour move­ ment to take decisive action to halt the repression" . The London protest was one of five that day outside German embassies and consulates. The Toronto protest brought out a contingent of PKK supporters, as WoriBritish National Party and France's isations, whose supporters number in tutional right of asylum, instigating and Look what the imperialists did to Iraq" Jean-Marie Le Pen." the tens of thousands. This comes atop rewarding fascist terror against "for­ and a Spartacist spokesman linked In London, the demonstration will a ban imposed years ago against the eigners". defence of Kurds to the struggle against take pll;lce from 5.00 to 6.30pm, Thurs­ Turkish leftist group Devrimci Sol. There are today more than 500,000 the deportation of Sri Lankan Tamils, day, 14 April outside the German Em­ A pogromist climate was unleashed Kurdish immigrants in Germany, many Africans and others from Britain. bassy at 23 Belgrave Square, London against Kurds throughout West Europe. having lived there for decades while We reprint below the PDC's demon­ SWI. Other protests have been called In early September, more than 1500 denied citizenship rights. Kurdish and stration call. for New York, Paris, Toronto and Kurds travelling from Paris to a PKK Turkish wor~ers are a strategic and mili­ Sydney, Australia. festival in Frankfurt were stopped at the tant component of the German trade­ Successive Turkish governments have German border and held for hours in union movement. But, driven to the wall As the Turkish army steps up its waged total war against the Kurdish their buses. In the notorious tradition of by the genocidal attacks of the Turkish genocidal war against the Kurdish minority of 15 million people. More the Gestapo, during pre-daWn hours of regime, Kurdish nationalists have des­ people, the German government is now than 1.7 million Kurds have been forced 26 November German police raided and perately lashed out against anything calling for mass deportation of hundreds into exile. For decades the chauvinist devastated 160 Kurdish institutions and Turkish, including vile indiscriminate of Kurds for the "crime" of engaging in regime in Ankara has sought to extir­ clubs as well as a number of private terror against Turkish restaurants, cul­ protests against this mass murder. Turk­ pate any manifestation of the national apartments. In mid-December, the po· tural centres and travel agen.cies. ish prime minister Tansu Ciller has now existence of the Kurdish people, even lice again stopped buses going to a PKK The attacks on Kurds take place in declared this year "the final solution of banning Kurdish music and the Kurdish event in Frankfurt; as hundreds of the climate of resurgent German na­ the Kurdish question". Anyone expelled language; the very mention of the exist­ Kurds blocked the Autobahn at Kassel tionalism unleashed by capitalist reunifi­ from Germany faces the prospect of ence of Kurds as a distinct people was in protest, the KfsV raised a banner cation, which has fuelled murderous hideous torture and in many cases death ,outlawed. While denouncing the out- calling for. "Down with the Ban on the Nazi terror from the 1992 Rostock at the hands of the Turkish regime. 1awed PKK as "terrorists", the Turkish PKK and All Kurdish Organisations!" pogrom to racist murder of Turkish The Spartakist Workers Party of government is waging a war of terror Last month, the Kurdish Newroz families in Molin and Solingen a few Germany (SpAD) and its fraternal against the entire Kurdish people. (New Year) festivities in many German months later, and the firebombing of a class-struggle defence organisation Kfs V Last year alone, Ankara reportedly cities were banned as "illegal political synagogue in Lubeck in late March. have prominently and repeatedly spent $7 billion on its murderous re­ activity". Hundreds of Kurds stopped by This is all part of the bourgeoisie's anti­ denounced the Fourth Reich's attacks pression against Kurds in southeastern police roadblocks were beaten and working-class offensive to divide the on Kurdish organisations, participating Turkey. Equipped with US Phantom arrested. In utter desperation, three workers movement and make it pay the in mass protests and calling upon the jets and German tanks, the Turkish Kurds burned themselves to death in bill for Anschlufl (annexation) of the labour movement to take decisive action army destroyed 874 Kurdish villages, protest. Two were women whose fam­ former East German workers state. to halt the repression. Now, in an in­ driving the popUlation out and impris­ ilies have been murdered in Kurdistan The international workers movement ternational campaign of protest, the oning them behind barbed wire. As by the Turkish military and death must raise an urgent cry of outrage Partisan Defence Committee is calling local elections were held under martial squads. A funeral march for them in against the Fourth Reich's racist perse­ for an emergency demonstration against law in March, the headquarters of the Mannheim on 27 March was also cution of Kurds and its threat to deport Germany's anti-Kurdish repression. "legal" Kurdish Democracy Party banned - just like in racist South them to the torture chambers and firing The protesters are demanding: Down (DEP) were bombed and its seven Africa - with a massive deployment of squads of its NATO ally in Ankara. Join with Germany's Ban of the PKK (Kurd­ members of parliament jailed. A mili­ the paramilitary Bundesgrenzscllutz (bor­ the Partisan Defence Committee on 14 ish Workers Party) and All Kurdish tary force of 300,000 troops was mobi­ der police). Nevertheless 10,000 marched April in demanding: Down with Ger­ Organisations! Down with the Ban on lised to terrorize the Kurdish region. through Mannheim, indicting the German many's Ban of the PKK tmd All Kurdish the Turkish Left Group Devrimci Sol! Since the bloody US-led invasion of Fourth Reich as continuator of the Nazi Organisations/ Down with the Ban 0fJ the Stop the Deportations! Iraq in 1991, the Turkish government regime with the chant: "Yesterday the Turkish Left Group Devrimci Soli Stop Drawing the parallel to Germany's has carried its anti-Kurdish terror into Jews, today the Kurds." the DeportDtions/ •

MAY/JUNE 1994 3 & Co were allowed to spread their racist to the liberal anti-racist sermonising and Labour ... poison with virtual impunity. Beackon impotent actions pushed by much of the received 2041 votes, a substantial increase fake left, the Russian Revolutionary (Continued from page 1) of his vote from last year's election. In leader Leon Trotsky explained how to victory. We said that to deliver a decisive one ward of the inner London borough of give the fascist scum a good working-class blow to the fascists required mobilising Newham the BNP received 32 per cent of "education": the trade unions, together with the mi­ the vote and came within 65 votes of "The tactical, or if you will, 'technical', norities, in a massive display of power to winning. task was quite simple - grab every fascist sweep the racist vermin off the streets Last year's Millwall by-election reveal­ or every isolated group of fascists by their - that it was the organised working class ed that the local Labour Party and the collars, acquaint them with the pavement that has the social power to crush the Liberal Democrats were shot through A VOTE FOR THE BNP a few times, strip them of their fascist with racists pushing the sinister "rights insignia and documents, and without fascists and put an end to the capitalist OR IS carrying things any further, leave them system that breeds them. We repeat: for whites" campaign over housing. And NF AVOTE FOR this time around, despite a little window with their fright and a few good black and what is necessary is a political struggle NO Utll()r~S blue marks." against Labourism inside the unions­ dressing, the Labour Council, that the - "Ultraleft Tactics in Fighting the that the Labour and trade union bureau­ fake left was so hot to elect, has made it NO NATIONAL Fascists", March 1934 cracy, seeking to ingratiate itself with the crystal clear that racism is respectable. HEALTH ...... ".A~ Their election manifesto is subdivided But the problem here is a political one. country's bankers and bosses in anticipa­ The Labour Party is in the business of tion of getting into No 10, fear above all into sections like "More and better homes, New jobs for local people, Better enforcing capitalist austerity. Capitalism militant class struggle in the streets and always seeks to divide the working masses factories. education and training", etc, omitting the need to fight racism. Quaddus Ali, Muk­ against each other, and the logic of ref­ We warned from the start that the ormism is to quarrel over a shrinking pie. SWP and Militant's wretched appeals to tar Ahmed - maybe a mention of them Somebody's got to be on the bottom, and the Tory Bexley Council to close down or any of the other numerous victims' of the BNP HQ, as well as their support for BNP-inspired terror in Tower Hamlets? that's where racism comes in. A Labour trade union rights for the racist cops, Not a chance! The one mention of "ra­ Workers Hammer government, enforcing capitalist austerity, would necessarily be racist, and at the generated suicidal illusions in the "neu­ cially motivated crime" - a term that is "Anti-fascism" SWP-style: no same time the economic misery it per­ trality" of the capitalist state. Although deliberately ambiguous - comes in a mention of racism. petuates provides the breeding ground for the 16 October march in Welling was in section dealing with drug use and drug fascism. It's no accident that the National fact conceived as a way of pressuring the dealing! get elected (who else do they want Front grew substantially under the last state, tens of thousands of militant anti­ For all intents and purposes, racism workers to vote for?) because of their Labour government. fascist youth responded to the call to shut doesn't exist, according to this manifesto, sectarian obsession with the Labour Labour vies with the Tories ,over who down the BNP. The brutal police attack and therefore it doesn't have to be party" (Revolutionary Fightei', issue 2, will administer this capitalist system of on the Welling demo confirmed that the fought. And you can be assured that it April/May 1994). racist austerity. The Labour Party stabbed capitalist state will stand by its fascist wasn't just the local Labourites in Tower RIL's attack on us retails the parlia­ the heroic miners strike in the back. scum. We said, "The trade unions were Hamlets who braintrusted this electoral mentary cretinist line that if you don't Throughout the Thatcher years and not mobili&ed for a display of the massive campaign. This campaign was a statement vote Labour then you must be helping the beyond, it has been Labour-led councils social power of the integrated working by the Labour Party brass that their fascists. In fact, had the workers move­ which have instituted job-slashing and class (black, white and Asian), which "broad church" welcomes the racist vote. ment been mobilised on the streets to wage cuts amongst council workforces would have taught the BNP fascists a Interestingly, along those lines a state­ give the fascists the drubbing they de­ and enforced the hated poll tax. And it is lesson and made the cops think twice ment printed in the Guardian (9 April) serve, the BNP would not even be around a Labour-run council in Sheffield which before attacking the demonstrators" and signed by Labour "left" Tony Benn to run 25 candidates in London. And RIL recently announced plans to slice £39 (Workers Hammer no 138, November / and other "left" Labourite luminaries, had its own contribution to winning the million from its budget by including a ' December 1993). In fact, that same day counselled a campaign to drive "a wedge "soft" racists. In the event of a BNP three per cent cut in wages for council the TUC tops supported a diversionary between the 'hard' racism and fascism of election victory RIL proposed the setting the far right, and their 'soft' racist up of an "alternative council" that would workers. Moreover, Tony Blair-a front "anti-racist" demonstration miles away. runner for John Smith's job-has been This treachery underlines the need for a supporters" . involve "many local fascist voters and and in the forefront of appealing to the racist sharp fight against the pro-capitalist racists" (Revolutionary Fighter, issue 2, Fake left: doing it the Labour April/May 1994). Workers defence cops as a defender of "law and order". It bureaucrats who hold back and strangle was a Labour government that sent the workers movement. way guards based on the unions would split the communities the fascists are running troops to Northern Ireland in 1969. The Initially the fake left had sought to talk Taking its cue from its chauvinist in - we want class polarisation, not race Labour~artybrought in the notoiious out of ooth sides of their mouth, occa­ Labourite masters, the SWP adopted as system "virginity tests" for Asian sionally posturing about the need for mil­ polarisation. But to do that you have to their election centrepiece a poster titled fight politically against the Labourite women en . ng the country, and a itant anti-fascist actions, while preaching "Don't vote Nazi" because this would Labour government would continue the social-democratic illusions in the state. In stranglehold on the unions, and that RIL mean, "No trade unions", "No National won't do. state's attacks on asylum and immigration reality, militant proletarian struggle Health Service" and "No rock, rave or rights. Full citizenship rights for illl foreign­ against fascism and social-rlemocratic soul music". Scandalously, this poster bom workers and their families! Fascism: how to fight it, and Labourism are two counterposed perspec­ deliberately refuses to say that the BNP is Conciliating the most backward sec­ how not to fight it tives. Having had their fingers burnt by racist, let alone mention its genocidal tions of the working class, the fake left the capitalist state at Welling, the SWP intentions! The SWP spits on the victims Hitting the hustings for Labour and has criminally turned its back on the most and Militant signed on eagerly as cheer­ of race terror, and the courageous anti­ building an ANL carnival on 28 May conscious elements who are looking for a leaders for the TUC's 19 March "Unite racist youth who have fought back against became the centrepieces of the ANL's ,communist alternative to the dead-end of against Racism" rally, whose purpose was the BNP. This scummy, chauvinist poster "anti-fascism". The ANL at its last carni­ rotten Labourite reformism. What is to channel anti-fascist sentiment into - a direct appeal to "soft" racists - is val in 1978 consciously scabbed by desperately needed is the forging of a Labour's electoral bid. the horrible logic of prostituting yourself keeping tens of thousands of anti-racists revolutionary party built through splitting Both prior to and during the election to the Labour Party! ten miles away from where the fascist Labour's working-class base away from its campaign, the fake left deliberately Moreover by describing the fascist National Front were marching in the bourgeois leadership, to fight for workers demobilised anti-fascist actions. Beackon BNP singularly as "Nazis" (and conse­ vicinity of Brick Lane - and for 15 years power and the establishment of a workers quently"foreign" to British "tradition and thereafter the fascists obscenely main­ state. The sinister rise of fascism across culture") the SWP's Anti Nazi League tained a presence in this predominantly Europe today is a product of capitalist consciously appeals for "popular unity" Asian area. counterrevolution in Eastern Europe and with elements of the racist and conserva­ Throughout the last months the fake the former Soviet Union. Imperialist tive British establishment. But the BNP lefts have boasted in their newspapers of "New World Order" has brought increas­ are as home grown as you can get­ • how they have "convinced" backward ing inter-imperialist rivalries in its wake. products of a decaying and thoroughly workers not to vote BNP. The end result It will take international socialist revo­ British capitalism. of such a perspective is to "debate" the lution to end once and for all the capital­ Further dOwn the syphilitic Labourite fascists. In 1992, for example, Scottish ist system and all its debris .• For a Workers chain, the Workers Pbwer (WP) group Militant leader Tommy Sheridan boasted Fight Against Anti-Immigrant and Revolutionary Internationalist League that Militant had engaged fascist thugs in Racism! (RIL) were eager participants in Labour's debate at a Militant meeting in Penilee. P_ge 115 electoral campaign, albeit complaining But just recently the fascist scum beat up Contact addresses about how "tragic" it was that "the BNP ANLers campaigning in Penilee. This is has been allowed to campaign unhin­ an object lesson in how fascists carry out spartacist League/Britain dered" (Workers Power, May 1994). Sur­ "debates". Glasgow Holiday Appeal for Class War Prisoners The fascists do not recruit by debating PO Box 150, Glasgow G3 6DX OUlragel GerOnimo Denied Parole_AgaIn' prise, surprise! The price for campaigning umers from Prison-An Exchange WIth Bob Buck Tel: 041-3320788 New York Clry Rallv Demands-Save Mum,a Abu-Jamal! for Labour meant no struggle against ideas. They are an extra-parliamentary fascism! gang which recruit and grow through London The centrist RIL took particular excep­ demonstrating in action their murderous PO Box 1041, London NW5 3EU No 20, tion to our headline, "Voting Labour will intentions. The dangerous fascist thugs Tel: 071-485 1396 Fall/Winter 1993-94 not stop the BNP rampage" (Workers fear no scandal or exposure. Their audac­ 75p Hammer no 140, March/April 1994). RIL ity grows out of violence and thuggery Dublin Spartacist Group Order from/make cheques payable to: described us as a "tiny crazed sect", and is spurred by working-class inaction. Partisan Defence Committee, claiming that: "they don't have the guts to It is necessary to break their will, and in PO Box 2944, Dublin 1 SCM So< 4986, Lordon V\C1 N 3XX stand a candidate themselves so what so doing to demoralise and discourage Tel: 830 4230 they are really doing is letting the BNP their would-be recruits. In sharp contrast

4 WORKERS HAMMER ReactionaO! vendetta against Irish students continues Not a penny to SPUC anti-abortion bigots!

We print below a leaflet produced by the ing back to the Blueshirts) is demonstrat­ women have a right to: free abortion on de­ deal" which would leave British troops in Dublin spartacist Group, dated 2 March ing at the Four Courts. mand, in this country! Northern Ireland. The Labour Party didn't 1994, in response to the threatened seques­ The line of those who voted Labour need to even be in government to give its tering of student union funds by the Society Not a penny to SPUC! (helping to put the anti-working class support to the PNR [programme for Na­ for the Protection of the Unborn Child Mobilise against Youth Defence! coalition in power) is now to plead with tional Recovery] and PESP [programme for (SPUC). As we go to print, these anti-abor­ the government. This can only have the Economic and Social Progress] austerity tion reactionaries have managed to get their The new court/SPUC attack, designed effect of defusir,g and demobilising the deals. Now it is of course backing the PCW to intimidate any future struggle for filthy paws on substantial sums belonging to very struggle that is called for today. This [programme for Competitiveness and abortion rights, should be met with deter­ the Trinity College Students Union and government has introduced the draconian Work], ie the same wage-cutting crap, mined, militant opposition. Not just USI, without any opposition by student Public Order Act. It was drafted largely Mark III. students, but working people and espe­ union leaders whatsoever. in response to the mobilisations that hit The Labour Party is a bourgeois work­ ciallywomen in Ireland, would respond to Meanwhile all talk of a divorce refer­ the streets when the X case blew up two ers party; ie it is based on the working a clear fight against the SPUC reaction­ endum has been put on the back burner. years ago. The Labour Party will join in class but its leadership is reactionary, aries, just as they did over the abortion And the Labour Party seems to have had quashing any serious fight for abortion pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist. no difficulties in ramming through the information campaign itself. Don't let police state style Public Order Act (see SPUC take a penny off the student "Fianna Fail/Labour government targets unions! Occupations, demonstrations, workers, women, Republicans", Workers and other militant tactics should be used Hammer no 137, September/October to build up a campaign of resistance and 1993). Already the Act has been used to to gain broader support, especially from target leftists and Republicans in Dublin Trade Unionists, for the students. and Cork, where the police-have harassed", Behind SPUC lurk other forces, like paper sellers, intimidated the owners of Opus Dei, the Knights of Columbanus, meeting rooms used by the left, and and the very active Youth Defence (YO). brought charges over "offensive" posters. Youth Defence should be stopped in its In Cork, a number of supporters of Cam­ tracks. YD prefers thug displays on the paign for Choice are facing imprisonment streets to legal vendettas grinding through for merely fly-postering. the courts. Last year it attacked a Demo­ Attacks on Travellers have been esca­ cratic Left meeting with billiard cues. An lating since the horrific assault on the Four article in Hot Press revealed how key YO Roads pub in Glenamaddy, Co. Galway, activists admire Franco, Mussolini and Hitler and pine for the heyday of the last November. This attack came after an Blueshirt fascists. orchestrated campaign by local businessmen YO is an organising centre for violent and the police to halt the renewal of the pub's licence, on the grounds that it served clerical reaction. It should get the kind of Travellers. When the courts wouldn't oblige, hot reception the Blueshirts met in the a frenzied mob of local thugs attacked the thirties from RepUblicans and socialists, bar and went after Travellers' caravans, in every town and village across the terrorising their inhabitants. Many were country. Criminally, groups like the SWM injured, while the police watched from the and Militant Labour minimise the threat Dublin, 23 October 1993: Reactionary SPUC/youth Defence bigots attack sidelines allowing these murderous thugs of YD, ignoring the need to stop them leftist demonstrators. free rein. while they are relatively small, and refuse In Navan, local residents called a stay­ to mobilise against them. This Saturday, while YO are demon­ rights, using such laws, because it is a Like all the social-democratic parties away campaign from the community party which bends the knee to the bosses' internationally,the Labour Party (and its school to pressure the local council to strating outside the Four Courts, the SWM promise to press ahead with leaf­ courts and the church. hangers on in the Militant and the evict 25 Traveller families living near-by. SWM). cheered on the destruction of the Then on 26 April Travellers' caravans letting (!) against YO-a mile away in Great Earl St. - instead of mobilising for Mary Robinson and the Labour deformed and degenerated workers states were fire bombed. It is the elementary Party: frontrunners for in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet duty of all socialists to defend Travellers, what is needed: a joint counter-demon­ stration of all socialists, women's groups capitalism Union. It's pretty nauseating to hear and fight for their right to decent halting those who backed So1idarno~c (the only sites. The trade unions must be mobilised and trade unionists, right where Youth Four years ago Labour backed Mary Defence are going to be on the day. "union" with the Pope as chief shop now to stop these vicious attacks. Robinson for President. Militant and the steward), or hailed the victory of the SWM added their voices (and votes) to The Youth Defence demonstration at Afghan mujahedin, or supported Boris the campaign. "Irish elections-a blow the Four Courts (referred to in the leaflet Yeltsin in August 1991 talking about the Fianna Fail-Labour Party against establishment", burbled the Brit­ below) went ahead, utterly unchallenged rights of women today. coalition: anti-abortion, anti­ ish Socialist Worker. This was the election by the likes of the SWM and Militant. By working class, pro-imperialist The social counter-revolution in the allowing these reactionary scum free rein that was supposed to change things, es­ old Soviet bloc has devastated the lives of to spew their anti-woman hatred, the A dangerous illusion is being put pecially for mna na Eireann (Women of women especially. Child-care facilities Irish fake left helps the clerical reaction­ about by many self-styled socialists: that Ireland]! At the time we wrote: have been destroyed in East Germany aries in their campaign against women, the current coalition government (blessed "But the working class and women don't (where women today are getting ster­ gays, Travellers and all working people. with the presence of Labour ministers, need a glossy image: they need a social ilised in a desperate attempt to convince and watched over by President Robinson) revolution which will expropriate the the capitalist boss to employ them). is a vehicle for "liberalising" Irish so­ bourgeoisie, destroy the stranglehold of Abortion has been criminalisedin Poland, ciety, which can and should be made to the Catholic church on social policy and where the most reactionary forces, take the side of social progress. education, and provide the possibility of a drenched in anti-Semitism and male This idea has come out in many just resolution of the national question in chauvinism, hold up Ireland as their Down with SPUC/Youth responses to the SPUC Receiver, includ­ Northern Ireland. From this standpoint Mary Robinson's anti-Haughey coalition model of a Catholic state! Unlike the Defence Reaction! ing from groups like the Socialist is an illusion-filled trap." Labour traitors, Marxist revolutionaries For Free Abortion on Demand! Workers Movement and the Irish Work­ fought tooth-and-nail against capitalist For Women's Liberation through ers Group [sister organisation of the Two years later, Labour ran in the gen­ restoration in these countries, while Socialist Revolution! British Workers Power group]. It was eral election, promising a new bright future- hand in hand with Albert Rey­ calling for workers political revolution to The anti-abortion reactionaries are summed up in a letter to the Irish Times oust the Stalinist bureaucrats, as part (28 February) by former TCD SU Presi­ nolds, the Taoiseach of the day, and long­ campaigning hard these days. On 21 Feb­ of the fight for international socialist dent, Ivana Bacik: time cabinet minister under Haughey! Ig­ ruary SPUC's solicitor was appointed as revolution. "the Government should pay the union's noring the pledge of allegiance to capi­ Receiver overthe funds ofTCD Students' talism represented by Labour's openly co­ Union and the Union of Students in Ire­ costs in the public interest. Students, and alitionist campaign. the fake-left groups British troops out of land (USI), empowered to seize £30,000 student organisations, should not be left to fight for such a vital issue alone." once again called out the vote: for La­ Northern Ireland! in costs from the abortion information bour, for class collaboration. No just solution without case. SPUC wants to quash any future SPUC shouldn't get a penny. But as In both elections the Spartacist group Marxists, we do not put our faith in workers rule! defiance of the Irish clerical state-with told the truth, and refused to join the Dick Spring's biggest ambition seems the assistance of the courts. the state, or the current FF [Hanna FailV social-democratic bandwagon. David Alton, a notorious British anti­ Labour coalition which is administering the to be brokeringa deal with British imper­ abortion bigot and MP, was invited to state. Reynolds, Spring and Mary Robinson ialism and the Ulster Unionists. The Trinity College this week. And on Satur­ stand in defence of the existing capitalist Labour's record outcome of any such deal will be bloody day the sinister Youth Defence (which order, and are squarely against legalising The labOur Party has played an ardent and brutal for the Catholic population in harbours a truly rotten fascist core hark- abortion, let alone providing what Irish role in pushing for an imperialist "peace continued on poge 9

MAY/JUNE 1994 5 against the British colonial rulers and South Africa ... later, after 1948, against the Afrikaner­ ! (Continued from page 1) dominated system of apartheid. ~ The threat of white-supremacist revolt against the ANC-dominatedjgovernment into the cabinet. The Guardian (7 May) which Mandela will head after the elec­ bluntly asserted: '_'The Independent Elec­ tions is real and dangerous. But the enor­ toral Commission and the African Na­ mously wealthy white mine owners, indus­ tional Congress conspired to hand control trialists and financiers and their senior South Africa's of KwaZulu/Natal to Mangosuthu Buthu­ partners in Wall Street and the City of army of racist lezi in the hope of buying peace in the London - the real owners and rulers of killers will be blood-soaked province." South Africa - are staking their future preserved under But the future of South Africa will not on the National Peace Accord, their deal neo-a partheid be determined by the outcome of these with the ANC leadership. They correctly regime. elections. Moves by the new regime to calculate that the ANC (already installed repress black struggles will rapidly dis­ in the corridors of power since last De­ credit the ANC leadership in the face of cember through the Transitional Execu­ unrest by militant sections of its base. On tive Council-TEC) will uphold and the other hand, attempts to conciliate the administer capitalist rule in government. demands of the black masses may lead Speaking last week at the Johannesburg key sectors of the white ruling class, Stock Exchange, Mandela declared: "The which retains fundamental control over The South African Police and the rural black population (particularly in the economy must be built on sound and the army and police, to scrap the "power South African Defence Force (SADF)­ barren bantustans) to land stolen over the market principles. If you look at our sharing" deal altogether, raising the the butchers of Sharpeville and Soweto centuries, first by Afrikaner colonial settlers program, there is lIot a single sentence spectre of civil war. A resurgence of and the former colonial occupation forces and then by the British imperialists, equality about nationalization." ethnic conflagration exacerbated by the of Namibia and Angola - will be left for women - to realise all these elementary The white capitalist rulers know that intervention of the apartheid army could under their existing command. Meanwhile democratic demands requires that capitalist the ANC's vast political authority is the turn whole regions into bloody battle­ the ANC's military wing, the MK, is rule be overthrown by workers revolution. strongest tool at their disposal for sup­ fields. Whatever happens in South Africa, dissolved and partially incorporated into South African capitalism's viability, its pressing and denying the hopes and de­ one thing is certain: freedom and equality the SADF or the impotent National ability to compete in the world market, is mands of the black masses. And the for the black African, coloured and Peacekeeping Force, charged with polic­ based gn the system of superexploitation expectations are enormous. The huge Indian toilers demands the struggle for a ing the black townships. And at one of symbolised by the lives of the mine formerly disenfranchised non-white ma­ black-centred workers republic under the his fmal campaign rallies Mandela workers. The core of the economy has jority sees these elections as opening the leadership of a racially integrated revolu­ "vowed that gun control would be firmly been and remains gold mining. With the road to "freedom" and a share of the tionary party. enforced by the new government that he richest veins having run out, the "Rand­ wealth produced in South Africa. A com­ expects to lead" (New York Times, 24 lords" like Anglo American are left with ment by one grandmother in a squatter April). This means leaving blacks de­ vast quantities of low-grade ore that they APRIL 25 - Yesterday a powerful car camp in the Western Cape indicated the fenceless in the face of racist army, police can mine profitably only by paying slave bomb explo<.led near the headquarters of limits of the "patience" of the downtrod­ and fascist paramilitary killers. wages. Over the last 90 years, nearly the African National Congress (ANC) in den: "We will be patient once he [Man­ Mangosuthu Buthelezi, whose Zulu 90,000 South African miners have died at Johannesburg, killing ten and injuring dela] is elected, and so maybe the first Inkatha movement has allied with the work: apartheid capitalism is blacks' over 100; damage extended for five improvements won't be seen here for one Conservative Party and white reaction­ blood transmuted into gold. And for the blocks. Today more than a dozen taxi or two months" (New York Times, 21 aries even further to the right, has for apartheid bOsses, that is not negotiable. ranks and polling stations were bombed April)! months been attempting to sabotage the in several areas of South Africa. These Although the elections are billed by elections. Inkatha forces have whipped up ANC/SACP: black front men for vile racist attacks are almost certainly the the ANC as the "transition to democ­ and perpetrated horrendous. attacks on neo-apartheid capitalism work of hardline white right wingers racy", in fact they are a far cry from "one ANC supporters, seeking to exploit tnbal assisted or planned by recalcitrant person, one vote". Whatever the outcome, divisions. But last week Mandela guaran­ The understanding that in a country like South Africa it is impossible to sat­ elements within the army or the intelli­ the main party of the white ruling class, teed Buthelezi's cousin, the Zulu king isfy the many unfulfIlled revolutionary gence services. the National·Party, led by President De Goodwill Zwelethini, the status of a democratic tasks short of the seizure of The bombings, aimed at the ANC, the Klerk, is guaranteed a place in a "Gov­ "constitutional monarch", complete with power by the proletariat is cen­ organisation supported by the overwhelm­ ernment of National Unity" for a five­ king-sized personal subsidies, in a suc­ socialist tral to Trotsky's theory of permanent ing majority of the black population, year period. This is included in the "!iun­ cessful effort to get Inkatha to end its revolution. This was demonstrated by come one year after the murder by state­ set clause", agreed to by the ANC, which boycott of the elections. Lenin's' Bolshevik Party as it led the connected fascists of South African Com­ gives a cabinet seat to any party obtaining The capitalists are gambling on an successful struggle for the dictatorship of munist Party (SACP) leader Chris Hani, five per cent or more in the ballot, and ANC-Ied government as their best hope the proletariat in October 1917. Securing who was also head of the ANC's military then. imposes the need for approval by of obtaining stable conditions for con­ basic democratic rights, let alone the arm, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). The two-thirds of the cabinet on "certain tinued extraction of soutb,ern Africa's huge economic expansion and redistribu­ bombings are an attack on the very idea issues". The National Party and the other natural resources and superexploitation of tion required to give a decent life to all that the black, "coloured" (mixed-race) main white party, the Democratic Party, its black proletariat. The dominant white the people of South Africa, can only and Indian peoples of South Africa will thereby have effective veto power caste, making up 13 per cent of South come by breaking the economic and should have any democratic rights at all. over all major decisions. Africa's population, owns 86 per cent of political power of the giant mining and The elections to the new, common Mandela has bent over backwards to the land, 90 per cent of all productive National Assembly, which will be held reassure and conciliate the capitalists, wealth, and on average has an annual manufacturing houses through e;q>ropri­ arion of their assets, laying the basis for over three days beginning tomorrow, are whose junior partner he has now become. income ten times greater than that of the an economy planned under the rule of the first time that a vote of any kind has All the radical talk of the years of strug­ blacks. Three out of every five blacks live workers councils. been given to the black African majority gle - the rhetoric of "socialism" by the in rural areas where over 80 per cent who make up three-quarters of the total SACP and the COSATU union feder­ have no electricity and over 90 per cent South Africa requires a black-centred population. The white ruling class has ation - has evaporated, to be replaced by have no sewage. Fully half of the black workers government, not the installation of been forced into this concession by the the language of "moderation" and com­ labour force has no permanent regular aspiring black exploiters in the antecham­ long years of determined struggle by the _promise. The rights of capitalist property employment. bers of verligte [enlightened] apartheid oppresse.~ South African masses, (irst are incorporated into a "Bill of Rights"! Faced with these appalling conditions, power - which is what the ANC offers the ANC is promising a five-year "Recon­ and desires. As we wrote in Workers struction and Development Programme" Vanguard no 598 (15 ~pril): (RDP), including building one million "A vote for the ANC-including its new homes, supplying electricity to 2.5 Communist Party members and affiliated million households, ten years of free trade-union leaders of COSATU - is a schooling for all, and the creation of two vote to perpetuate the racist oppression million jobs through the public works and superexploitation of the black, col­ oured (mixed-race) and Indian toilers in programme. But the bourgeoisie has .no a different political form." intention of financing this scale of public works. The chief economist of the From being a petty-bourgeois national­ Johannesburg Nedbank pointed out: ist movement in opposition, the ANC is "With limited resources and limited tax­ in the process of integrating its leading able capacity it can't be done. The prob­ elements into the South. African ruling lem facing the incoming government is class as it becomes a bourgeois-national­ whether the new electorate is going to ist ruling party. The Wall Street Journal (3 accept the shortfall between what they March) reports, "Blacks Enter South expect and what is actually going to be African Boardrooms." South African delivered." corporations, especially those looking for Genuine universal suffrage, universal government contracts, are falling over schooling. equality of all the peoples of each other to recruit ANC cadres as South Africa, full citizenship rights (includ­ managers. They are also prepared to buy Shariff/Work in Progress ing the right to vote) for the hundreds of off sections of the black middle class and COSATU union federation met in 1991 under banner of "socialism". thousands of migrant workers drawn from skilled workers by widening pay differen­ Today ANC wants black unions to prevent strikes on behalf of neighbouring countries and their families; tials in the black workforce. "government of national unity". equal pay for equal work, the right of the Today the ANC leaders are no doubt

6 WORKERS HAMMER getting fitted for top hats and morning draw the conclusion that the "ANC lead­ for the ANC. ders of the 1910 Union of South Africa coats on London's Savile Row. Nelson ers must cut ties with the bosses!" and The question of political organisation but to achieve political and social equality Mandela will perhaps ride to his presi­ that "the bosses must be driven out of of the proletariat, independent from and for all of South Africa's diverse' peoples. dential inauguration in the red Mercedes­ the ANC' (whoever and whatever that in opposition to the nationalist ANC, is a This requires a racially integrated Benz armoured limo built for him by the means). key strategic question for South Africa Leninist party. We call for a socialist combative Mercedes workers in East The CWG's punch line is: "We must today. In this regard, the WLP does draw federation of Southern Africa, with re­ London before the ANC tops with the aid put demands to the ANC leaders and the a crude class line and a vote for it will be gional autonomy, should they desire, for of the SACP sold out their militant 1990 in-coming ANC government - demands seen in South Africa as a vote for a work­ such peoples as the Ovimbundu in Na­ strike. As the ANC tops become increas­ such as the scrapping of all power-sharing ers party rather than the ANC. mibia/Angola, the Ndebeles and Shonas ingly estranged from the township agreements; the expulsion of the open At the same time, we emphasise that in Zimbabwe and the Zulus in Natal. the platform of the WLP is left-reformist. masses, the SACP and COSATU leaders bomgeois elements in the ANC and in In giving critical support to the WLP are playing a vital role in defusing discon­ the ANC-Ied election front." In effect, Never once does it define itself in refer­ slate, we note that we are not able to tent. The SACP's Stalinist theory of "two­ they treat the bomgeois-nationalist ANC ence to the ANC, nor even mention it, judge the reality of its -campaign on the stage revolution" (democracy frrst, social­ as if it were a reformist workers party which takes some doing in South Africa ground in South Africa. We also point today. Nor does it raise the need for a ism in the sweet by-and-by) is a reformist which had entered a popular front, rather out that groups with centrist politics like socialist revolution against the neo-apart- rationale for subordinating the working than a force outside the workers move­ WOSA (whose demand for a workers class to the nationalist ANC_ ment. The bottom line is that an ANC party is consciously confined within the The ANC sell-out to the South African government -like other bourgeois-na­ framework of a social-democratic La­ ruling class is so blatant, including the tionalist regimes in the Third World, such bourite programme) are highly suscep­ open repudiation of its liberal-nationalist as Peronism in Argentina, the Mexican tible to calls to pressure the popular Freedom Charter, that most groups PRI, the Ba'athists in Iraq and Syria­ front, or to vote for the "workers parties claiming to be Trotskyist have criticised could (and may be driven to) smash the of the popular front". One may ask: the Mandela/De Klerk "power-sharing" unions, whereas for a reformist workers under a constituency-based electoral deal. But, mesmerised by the popular party, which bases itself on the labom system, were WOSA and its allies unable support for the ANC and the SACP, movement, this would be suicidal. to stand candidates everywhere, would several of these groups share the practical Meanwhile, the militant nationalists of the WLP have opposed the bourgeois­ conclusion of the Stalinist reformists. The AZAPO (Azanian People's Organisation), nationalist ANC, including its Marxist Workers Tendency (MWT), derived from the "Black Consciousness" COSATU /SACP allies? This goes to the which sees itself as part of the ANC, calls movement, are caIIing to bo)'oott the elec­ heart of the debate over a workers party for voting ANC. "Kick out the Nats!" tions. While the ANCjNP "power-sharing" Nelson Mandela at Johannesburg in South Africa which has been raging in they headline, proclaiming: "The elections deal, on which these elections are based, Stock Exchange. the black union movement over the last give us the chance to crush the party of violates even the elementary principles of year. apartheid and dictatorship. Every vote bourgeois democracy, nonetheless the black heid ANCjNP capitalist regime. While calling for "self-defence and a workers' In an article last autumn, we noted must be used to close the door on the old masses are determined to participate in militia", the WLP platform does not call that in pushing this issue, WOSA c0n­ South Africa" (Congress Militant, Febru­ their first-ever chance to vote in any way on for smashing and replacing the existing sciously looks to the example of the Bra­ ary-March 1994). the South African government. Proletarian capitalist state machine which is the zilian PT (Workers Party) of Luis Ignacio The MWT are the co-thinkers of the revOOrtionaries seek to use the elections, as da Silva ("Lula"), as a Third World vari­ British Militant Labour group, which likes the Bolsheviks sometimes did with the votes direct continuity of the apartheid state. Union-based workers militias, composed ant of the British Labour Party. We to posture as a thoroughly orthodox for the tsarist Duma, as a platform for their noted that many "workerists" within Trotskyist tendency. Yet one of Trotsky's communist programme. In partiwIar, Marx­ of all ethnic groups, are needed to over­ come the Inkatha thugs, defend strikers COSATU, the main political current crucial fights in the formation of the ists wooId counterpose the fight for a towards which WOSA is now orienting. International Left Opposition against workers party to voting for the ANC, the and smash whit. racist terror. While the WLP speaks of "a socialist talked of forming a workers party only Stalin was over the latter's policy of entry oo-rulers of a capitalist "new Sooth Africa". after the April elections, in order to not into the Kuomintang (the bourgeois­ democracy" and "democratic planning Critical support to the Workers process", this is in the spirit of European break with the ANC at this crucial junc~ nationalist party in pre-revolutionary lure. "We emphasize that the workers China). The Stalinist policy led straight to Ust social democracy r~r than the kind of revolutionary regime based on workers party needed today is not a South African disaster in the bloody Shanghai massacre One of the $Toups running is the councils (soviets) that would be needed in version of British Labourism", we wrote, of 1927 in which thousands of worker Workers List Party (WLP), initiated by ''but a Bolshevik-Leninist party forged on communists were slaughtered by KMT the Workers Organisation for Socialist order to expropriate the wealth of the Randlords and crush the bitter-end resis­ the program of permanent revolution" leader Chiang Kai-sbek. Action (WOSA). Aftel- examining the (Worien Vanguard no 587, 5 November Organisational seporrllion and political programme and statements of the WLP tance of the apartheid racists backed by international imperialism. 1993). independence from the nationalists are that are available to us, we Trotskyists of Yet in South Africa today, more di­ A party of the Bolshevik type, built in the bedrock of a working-class revolution­ the International Communist League rectly and immediately than anywhere the struggle to reforge a, democratic­ ary party. And tilose who today call for (Fotrrth Internationalist) call for critical else on the planet, virtually every social centralist Fourth International, is neces­ votes to the ANC are assuming the politi~ support to the Workers List Party in the and democratic struggle necessarily poses sary for the South African masses, like cal responsibility for the inevitable mas­ April elections. The platform of the WLP the question of workers revolution. the workers of all countries, to make a sacres of South African workers by the­ can be summarised by its opening sen­ WOSAjWU' has campaigned heavily on successful socialist revolution. A revolu­ ANC/De Klerk neo-apartheid regime. tence: the right to a job, and reportedly plans a tionary workers party can come about Other smaller groups have also directly "1be WLP enters the elections in order only through the intervention of a Marxist capitulated to the ANC/SACP in these march for jobs on 6 May, at the opening to promote the formation of a 'Mass of the National Assembly. But while their nucleus, committed to sweeping away elections. The International Socialists of Workers Party' (MWP). We believe that every vestige gf apartheid capitalism and only such a Workers' Party will be able to platform calls for "a 35 hom week with­ South Africa (ISSA), acolytes of Tony dedicated to the cause of international Cliffs British Socialist Workers Party, call carry forward the struggle of the exploited out loss of pay, an end to retrenchments and oppressed masses of South Africa. [redundancies), scab labour and lock­ socialism. There can be no justice in for a vote to the ANC. ISSAer Terry South Africa until the non-white majority Bell, in an article in Worlc in Progress We do not believe that any of the white outs", it presents these demands in a or bIacIt nationaJW parties can solve the pressure campaign directed towards the has power in a revolutionary workers (reprinted in Socialist Organiser, 21 crisis of unemployment, homelessness, state which would unite Xhosa and Zulu, April), argued: capitalist parliament rather than calling disease, iUiteracy and poverty that afflict for sharp class struggle such as plant coloured and Indian, with ample room "In this particular battle, the working the urban and rural poor; those who live occupations, establishing genuine workers and full democratic rights for those class is lined up behind the ANC aUiance in the crime-ridden townships apd squat­ control (dual power in the workplace), whites who would join in building a against the NP (De K1ert's National ter settlements of our cities, in the rural society based on genuine equality. Party]... . Since revolutionary socialists slums in tbe Bantustans and in the slave­ and demanding a sliding scale of wages stand for the self-emancipation of the lik:e conditions on the white farms and in and homs to create jobs for all. A proletarian revolution in the indus­ working class, the Left should argue that the dorps (small farming towns]. These Although the WLP makes ritual refer­ trial powerhouse of South Africa would we vote - without illusions in party or parties cannot do so because they accept ence to "internationalism", in reality this be a beacon to the whole of sub-Saharan parliament-with the class on April '1:1." the capitalist system." - tendency has long stood for a certain Africa, helping to lift the continent out of So since many workers have illusions in - "Manifesto of the Workers' List Party species of South African "nation-build­ imperialist-enforced starvation and pov­ the bomgeois nationalists, these consum­ of South Africa", reprinted in Socialist ing". WOSA's principal leader, Neville erty. It would be an inspiration to the Organiser, 17 March mate opportunists call... for feeding their Alexander, has written: "The existing hundreds of millions - black, Asian, illusions. The WLP calls for "nationalisation South African state forms the boundaries Latin American - across the world who One small South African grouping, the under workers control of the monopoly of the potential nation, not the particular have suffered the violence and degrada­ Comrades for a Workers Government companies, banks, mines and land with­ existing cultures" (in Alex Callinicos, ed., tion of racial arrogance at the hands of (CWG), who publish Qina Msebenzi and out compensation". The party's manifesto Between Apartheid and Capita/ism: Con­ the haughty white ruling classes of the are affiliated with the British Workers also "rrject[s) the idea of a Government versations with South African Socialists Western powers-whether in the col­ International League, has in the past of National Unity that includes the rac- [1992]). The WLP platform's call for "a onies or within the imperialist metrop- been identified with the demand for a - ists". It says that a "genuine constituent united socialist nation" reflects an under­ 0lises themselves. Black people in the US "mass workers party". But as the elec­ assembly could be no more than a step­ standable reaction to the divide-and-rule in particular see in apartheid slavery the: tions approached they switched gears and ping stone to a Workers' Government". policies of apartheid (most visible in the mirror of their own oppression. Socialis! came out for a "Vote ANC" line which (We have in the past polemicised against alliance of the Zulu-nationalist Inkatha revolution in South Africa is not just a echoes that of the MWT. Describing WOSA for "constituent assembly fetish­ with the most reactionary, fascistic sup­ matter for South African workers - Or' themselves as "supercritical" supporters ism" when it failed to connect this revolu­ porters of an Afrikaner Boerestaat). less than the Russian Revolution of 19 t -, of the ANC, the CWG points out: "The tionary-democratic demand to the fight The colonial-derived South African it would be the cause of the workers al;') ANC will not be able to implement even for workers soviet rule.) The WLP claims state consists of different national, racial oppressed peoples of the world. the most minimal social demands of its to be standing some 80 candidates in all and ethnic groups, with the whites on top, For a black-centred workers republic! RDP and the popular demands of the regions. With an electoral system based the black Africans on the bottom and the For a socialist federation of Southern masses because the ANC leaders have on national and regional party slates colomeds and Indians occupying an inter­ Africa! For a South African Trotskyist bound themselves hand and foot to the (rather than constituencies), a vote for mediate position. The goal of communists party as part of a reforged Fourth Inter­ capitalist class." From this premise they the WLP will be counterposed to a vote is not to forge "one nation" in the bor- national! Those who labour must rule!.

MAY/JUNE 1994 7 of the bourgeOisie, that is, the "Left Bloc" and its bourgeois discipline.''' South Africa: fake lefts' phoney Noting that in the given instance the Dissidents "will be compelled to reply opposition to nationalist popular front that they prefer a bloc with the bour­ geoisie", Trotsky stressed that "Such an answer will not pass with impunity among The recent South African election was enter Kerensky's popular-front Provi­ oration, for the democratic counter-revo­ the proletarian reserves on whom they an acid test for Marxists. Our opposition sional Government. The Bolsheviks' in­ lution." are counting." to a vote for the ANC was grounded in transigent opposition to this popular front Workers Power reluctantly gave critical In contrast, centrists like Workers Power our principled opposition to this national­ was the necessary precondition to the support to the WLP, after initially refus­ say to the workers parties of the popular ist popular front. A popular front is a successful proletarian insurrection in ing to do so ostensibly on the basis that front: "Break with the bourgeoisie! If you mechanism by which the proletariat is October 1917. the WLP is not a mass organisation (what do, we will support you - and if you don't subordinated to the bourgeoisie by means Far from sharing the Bolsheviks' prin­ changed?). More fundamentally, while we would support you anyway, if only of a political bloc between reformist cipled hostility to popular frontism, both not wanting to openly call for a vote to a South African election laws would let us workers organisations and a section of SO and WP in reality advocate a Men­ bourgeois formation, WP yearns to give play our little game of voting for the the capitalist class. The ANC itself is a shevik party that would simply be a tail "critical- support" to the popular front workers parties of the popular front! But "popular front in the form of a party"; since they don't, we're stuck." That's not that is, it encompasses bourgeois nation­ a tactic, but a strategy of tailing the alists, as well as the South African Com­ reformist class traitors. This led WP to munist Party (SACP) and the leaders of call for votes to the Labour Party even at the COSATU trade union federation. the time of the Lib-Lab pact under Cal­ As the American Trotskyists noted: "In laghan. And in France, in the most recent the People's Front the proletariat re­ parliamentary elections, it stood to the nounces its class independence, gives up right of much of the left in advocating its class aims-the only aims, as Marx­ votes to Mitterrand's Socialist Party, ism teaches, which can serve its interests" which after a decade of being the core of (James Burnham, The People's Frollt: The a racist Cold War popular front that had New Betrayal, 1937). The central question administered capitalist austerity, was in South Africa is breaking the nonwhite hated by the most militant sections of the toilers from the nationalist ANC, which working class. In reality, Workers Power falsely claims to champion black emanci­ wants to replicate the Labour Party.~. pation. In calling for a vote. to the ANC everywhere so they can tail it. - petty-bourgeois nationalists who have To argue that calling for a vote to the evolved into black bourgeois aspirants for reformist workers parties in a popular power in the course of becoming co­ front does not constitute support to the rulers of neo-apartheid capitalism - such popular front itself is necessarily wrong; organisations as the International Social­ particularly in the European experience, ists of South Africa (connected to the the reformist workers organisations are British SWP), the Marxist Workers Tend­ the very means by which the working ency (Militant), and Comrades for a class is lured into supporting a popular Workers Government (affiliated with the front. In most popular fronts historically, Workers International League) called for the overwhelming bulk of the votes has a vote for the new black front men for gone to the reformist working-class com­ racist South African capitalism, who will Guardian ponent. In Spain, Trotsky referred to the call in the army to break strikes and put Mandela and South African Communist Party leader Joe Siovo preside over _ bourgeois component as the "shadow of nationalist popular-front betrayal. down township revolts. Congress Militant the bourgeoisie". In other instances, (September 1993) even ran an interview on the nationalist ANC. In the case of­ through the back door. Thus, WP indi­ bogus ''workers parties" have even been with "comrade Enoch Nelani", national Socialist Organiser, this can clearly be cates that had the electoral mechanism invented in order to create a popular deputy president of the Police and seen from their attitude to the state. It permitted it, it would have called for front. The American Trotskyists correctly Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru), should be noted that the often harsh votes to the working-class components refused to give critical support to the demanding that these enemies of workers criticisms of petty-bourgeois nationalism (SACP and COSATU) of the popular American Labor Party, which was set up and black struggle be admitted to by these arch British Labourites serve a front: "Had it been possible to vote sep­ by trade union bureaucrats and bourgeois COSATU. different purpose from delineating a class arately for the workers' organisations and democrats expressly in order to lure the In the South African elections, we gave line. Thus, their attacks on Green nation­ candidates within the ANC alliance then workers into voting for liberal Franklin critical support to the Workers List Party alism in Ireland are a cover for capitula­ revolutionaries should have supported Roosevelt in 1936. (WLP-see article this issue). While tion to British imperialism. SO refuses to these candidates critically" (Workers One should note that Workers Power's sharply criticising its left reformist pro­ call for unconditional withdrawal of the Power, April 1994). stated position in South Africa of refusing gramme, we noted that in advocating the British troops from Northern Ireland, and To argue that it is permissible to vote to vote for open bourgeois formations is building of a workers party and in stand­ gives back-handed support to Major's for the working-class organisations within at some variance with its practice else­ ing in opposition to the nationalist ANC, bogus "peace process", demanding that a popular front is to make a mockery of where. If this is a "principle", how then its campaign drew a crude class line. the IRA unilaterally disarm. In South class independence. Normally reformist do they justify regularly calling for votes There are, as well, other organisations on Africa, they supported the mobilisation of workers parties embody a duality, claim­ to the petty-bourgeois nationalists of Sinn the left - including Socialist Organiser the South African army in KwaZulu: ing to represent the interests of their Fein in Northern Ireland? There are no and Workers Power-who claimed to "socialists should support the use of force working-class base while in reality serving fundamental class differences between the oppose a vote to the ANC on the basis of - even by the SAD F - to ensure that the capitalist class by means of its bour­ aspiring bourgeois nationalists of Sinn class principle and called for a vote to the the elections take place in Natal Kwa­ geois programme. However, when such Fein and the ANC. It is simply that the WLP, and attacked the Militant and SWP Zulu ... " (Socialist Organiser, 14 April). parties enter a popular front, this duality ANC has the opportunity to achieve its for their prostration before the ANC. To preach illusions in the fascist-infested is suppressed formally and in practice, bourgeois aspirations. In a similar fashion At first sight, these considerations and racist SADF is the height of oppor­ because the reformist parties then cam­ the Algerian FLN or Mugabe's ZANU / might appear similar to our own. How­ tunist folly, for it is precisely these forces paign and promise to govern on a com­ Patriotic Front in Zimbabwe, originating ever, it is necessary to examine the pro- . that will be unleashed by the ANC/De mon platform within the purely capitalist as petty-bourgeois nationalist formations, gramme p12t forward by these organisa­ Klerk government against the black toil­ • limits set by their overtly bourgeois allies. became bourgeois ruling parties. While tions. As Leninists, we stand for building ing masses! Thus, an elementary precondition for one can under appropriate circumstances a revolutionary workers party in South Following the elections, SO ran a considering critical support to a workers enter a military bloc with petty-bourgeois Africa, as opposed to a reformist South headline: "White minority rule ends­ organisation is that it run independently nationalists against imperialism, to give African version of British Labourism. The South Africa: half a revolution". This is of the bourgeoisie. electoral support to such forces means mere advocacy of a workers party, organ­ patently false - while the elaborate edi­ In laying out communist tactics to the crossing the class line. ised distinctly from the ANC, does not fice of apartheid laws has, been dis­ French Communist Party (CP) in 1922, at The Revolutionary Internationalist equate per se to defending the class inde­ mantled, the white ruling class remains a time when the social democrats League (RIL) has a position to the right pendence of the proletariat in opposition firmly entrenched. Black emancipation ("Reformist-Dissidents") were in a bloc of Workers Power. The RIL asserts that to the bourgeoisie. Thus, in the earlier and the other burning democratic tasks with bourgeois elements, Trotsky em­ the ANC is a popular front and claims to Russian context, the Mensheviks were cannot be achieved short of proletarian phasised: be for building a workers party. However, its bottom line is: "In general, going organised separately from the bourgeois revolution, as Trotsky's theory of perma­ "We say to the masses, 'The Dissidents, liberals (Cadets) and the Socialist Revo­ nent revolution asserts. The effect of sa's because they do not want the revolution, through this struggle with the most mili­ lutionaries (party ofthe peasantry). How­ headline is to bathe the jagged brutality have split the mass of the workers. It tant workers and youth means that we ever, the Mensheviks adhered to a of South African society in a soft pink would be insanity to count on their help­ would also vote for the ANC list (there "stages conception" of revolution (similar light, making it seem more amenable to ing the proletarian revolution. But we are are no constituency elections) but Trots­ to what the SACP advocates in South their perspective of reformist parliamen­ ready, inside and outside the parliament, kyists can give no political support to the Africa). While claiming to stand for the tary Labourism. to enter into certain practical agreements ANC, and in situations where sections of with them, provided they agree, in those "organisational independence" of the Workers Power seemingly grounds its workers see a vote for an alternative list cases where one must choose between the (like WOSA or the Azanian Peoples' working class, the Mensheviks abdicated opposition to the ANC on class consider­ known interests of the bourgeoisie and to the liberals the struggle for political ations: "The workers do not need the tt,e definite demands of the proletariat, to Organisation [AZAPO] as a left-wing power against the tsarist autocracy. Ulti­ experience of voting for a popular front support the latter in action. The Dissi­ challenge to ANC treachery, we will join mately, these politics of tailing the bour­ or an embryonic bourgeois party. An dents can be capable of such actions only with them, despite our criticisms of these geoisie le<\ the Mensheviks in 1917 to ANC vote is only a vote for class collab- if they renounce their ties with the parties organisations" (Revolutionary Fighter,

8 WORKERS HAMMER Fascist threat fails to stop Spartacist day-school in Glasgow

GLASGOW - A successful Spartacist front defence against the fascist threats. place there on Saturday afternoon. Men­ out leafletting in Penilee recently." League public meeting was held on Satur­ In the last period BNP scum have been acing phone calls have been received by The phone calls claimed that the Spar­ day, 7 May at City Halls, despite repeated threatening and attacking Anti Nazi the restaurant management, who have tacist League is a "pro-IRA group", in an threats by the fascists to the original League, Socialist Workers Party and decided to cancel the booking as a result. attempt to frighten the Sloan's manage­ advertised venue at Sloan's Restaurant. Youth against Racism in Europe (YRE) But the Spartacist League, a Marxist ment. Ms McDonald pointed out, "we are Determined to go ahead with our meet­ members with impunity. But the lead­ socialist group, is going to press ahead. pro-Irish freedom: we think the British ing, we issued a public appeal to left and erships of these organisations chose to The public meeting will now be held at troops should get out of Northern Ire­ anti-racist groups and the trade unions, stay well away from the meeting. Militant the City Halls, Candieriggs, at the land, we are for unity between Catholic offering speaking time from the platform councillor Tommy Sheridan, notorious for planned time of 1.30pm. The meeting will and Protestant workers, and we're for a for participating organisations. We were "debating" the BNP in a Militant meeting discuss the fight against fascism, and federation of workers republics in these determined that the fascist scum should in Penilee a few years ago, received our the need for a socialist, black-centred islands. We don't support the nationalist not get away with their dangerous intimi­ appeal in the Council Chambers and workers republic in South Africa. politics or the strategy of the IRA. We dation. This would only embolden them. promised to "refer it to the YRE". But Spartacist spokesman Eibhlin McDonald are anti-racist: we stand up for the rights The 'meeting was well defended and the YRE did nothing. Militant and the said today: "We're not going to let this of blacks, Asians and Jewish people, we exemplary. It included the participation SWP were, however, happy enough to intimidation stop our democratic and are pro-gay rights, and above all we're of individual leftists, including Paul campaign for Labour in the council elec­ open socialist meeting taking place. The pro-working class, unlike the Labour Cockshott of Anti-Fascist Action, who tions. The Militant Labour candidates for :neeting will be carefully stewarded, to Party leadership." '. spoke from the platform. Lively dis­ Strathclyde Regional Council ran a sub­ prevent any violence or disruption." Eibhlin McDonald concluded: "The cussion followed after an ANL supporter reformist campaign that did not mention She continued, "These threats are Spartacist League is calling on all social­ (attending in spite of her organisation's a word about racism or the fascist threat typical of violent fascist groups like the ist, trade union and anti-racist organ­ boycott), spoke from the floor: The meet­ (nor about revolution for that matter). BNP and Combat 18. As last week's isations to come along on Saturday. All ing scored a modest but important victory Scotland on Sunday reported, 60 Scottish attending will be welcome to speak frOID for the left and working-class movement, anti-fascist and socialist activists have our platform. A threat like this is an underscoring the point made in our 6 , Socialists "will not be been placed on a published fascist hit-list. attack on the whole labour movement, May press release (below): socialists "will silenced by fascist threats" In the East End of London the BNP have and we need a united front against the not be silenced by fascist threats". Fascists have threatened to burn down orchestrated murderous attacks on Asian fascists. They are race-terrorists with a Many supporters of left organisations Sloan's Restaurant and Bar in Glasgow youths. Anti Nazi League members have plan for genocide, and we will not be welcomed our call for a strong united- city centre if a socialist meeting takes been assaulted with broken bottles when silenced by such scum.".

within a federation of workers republics can't even get decent information on get told to go to England (where things spuc ... in the British Isles. safer sex because it doesn't conform to aren't that much better) or to take a the "Catholic ethos" of the hospital slave-labour SES [Social Employment (Continued from page 5) This country needs a administration. Scheme] job for £75 a week-if you're workers revolution! For the separation of church and state! lucky. If you're in work, don't hold your the North. Militant and the SWM, who To this day you can't get a divorce in For·, universally available, free secular breath because the bosses are throwing tail after Labour, also support the idea of Ireland, let alone an abortion. Thousands education at all levels! For a state-owned workers on the scrap heap every week, an imperialist peace deal, and downplay of women must travel abroad, often in se­ and run national health service, providing while the trade union misleaders sip tea or eliminate the call for British troops cret, for the abortions they can't get at free, quality health care to all, including with their Labour and Democratic Left out. Once again they believe the Irish home. You still can't disseminate all provision of contraception (irrespective of colleagues and negotiate over the PCW capitalist state can be pressured into abortion information legally. The oppres­ the age of those wishing it), and abortion, social con-trick. Ask the TEAM Aer acting progressively-and end up wel­ sion of Irish women weighs so heavy that free on demand! Under a planned, social­ Lingus workers, or workers on the Dublin coming imperialist plots and plans. At the young women are still traumatised by un­ ist economy these needs could be filled, buses, or from An Post, what they've had same time, much of the left has no inde­ wanted pregnancies,still forced to go full­ and the domestic drudgery heaped on the from Labour in power. pendence from the nationalistideology of term as social outcasts, and still driven to shoulders of women within the nuclear Oppression, misery, poverty, joblessness, Republicanism, and no answer to the abandon their babies in unspeakable tor­ family could be replaced ,by high-quality obscurantism: these are still the hallmarks situation of interpenetrated peoples in ment and shame-the latest case coming social provision for child-care, laundry, of Ireland today, under Albert Reynolds, Northern Ireland. We are against forcible ten years, almost to the day, after the care of the elderly, meals etc. This would Dick Spring and Mary Robinson. reunification of Ireland, which will only horrifying Kerry babies case. The truth, lay the material basis for eliminating the The fight for abortion rights and for help weld Protestant workers to Unionist that women's liberation will only come special oppression of women, which women's liberation is part of the fight for masters in a reactionary, Loyalist block. about through socialist revolution, is derives from their role in the family. workers revolution. This requires a strug­ Not Orange against Green, but class starkly shown in this country. If you're a traveller you still face the gle to win workers and radicals away against class! Only the working class, And what if you're gay? They've de­ prospect of murderous pogroms like the from the pro-capitalist Labour Party, Catholic and Protestant, has an Objective criminalised homosexuality, but try to obscene frenzy against the Four Roads Democratic Left and their "far left" interest in unity, in a just and equitable get a job as a teacher in a church-run pub in Glenamaddy last November. Still acolytes, and the building of a revolution­ arrangement within the framework of "National" school if you've come out. If the Council will try to move you off by ary party of the Bolshevik type. workers power, across these islands. We you develop HIV and are sent to places dumping cow shit around your caravan. For abortion information phone fight for an Irish Workers Republic, like the Mater Hospital's AIDS clinic you If you're a youth looking for work you 6794700 •

April/May 1994). Leaving aside the fact tional ... withdrew from WOSA, condemn­ trayal of voting for the bourgeois popular a lame editorial, "We fall victim to 'dirty that the militant nationalists of AZAPO ing the decision to stand against the front. tricks' ", Workers Press, 25 November called for a boycott of the elections, and ANC". But the 26 March issue of Social­ The Workers International in South 1989). Their current election manifesto is notwithstanding the confused and evasive ist Outlook printed a WOSA statement Africa, linked to Cliff Slaughter's WRP in no less virulently Stalinophobic. gobbledygook quality of this statement, above a financial appeal for WOSA. The Britain, also ran candidates in two prov­ The proletariat must jealously guard its this means willingness to give electoral same appeal appeared in the April edi­ inces. However, their unrepudiated re­ political independence from the bour­ support to the ANC. The RIL pointedly tion of International Viewpoint, which cord of blocs with reactionary forces in geoisie, whether of the "progressive" does not say anywhere in its article that it sceptically commented: "It remains to be the region, in the name of "fighting Stal­ variety such as Nelson Mandela or the is unprincipled to vote for bourgeois seen which approach is the most peda­ inism", makes it impossible to give them more unsavoury types courted by the formations. gogical and constructive towards the critical support. Thus in the November Siaughterites. As Trotsky stressed, "the Ernest Mandel's Disunited Secretariat hundreds of political and trade union 1989 elections in Namibia, it participated People's Front is the main question of seems to have a bad case of conflicting activist members of the ANC and SACP in an electoral lash-up called the United proletarian class strategy for this epoch". opportunist appetites. Prior to WOSA's who will in their majority vote for the Democratic Front (UDF), which included Popular frontism has dire consequences February decision to put up the Workers ANC ticket." The French LCR's paper several bantustan parties and tribal for the working masses. Stalin and Bu­ List, International Viewpoint promoted Rouge (28 April and 5 May) takes no "chiefs" who were collaborators of South kharin's support to the Kuomintang led "the idea of calling for a vote for the position on the vote, nor breathes a single Africa's Namibian puppet government. to a bloody massacre of Chinese commu­ ANC while running an independent cam­ word about the Workers List Party. Ditto The UDF received money from the nists; Allende's version in Chile paved the paign of immediate democratic and social for Socialist Outlook (14 May), which apartheid government. Charging that the way for Pinochet's coup. A revolutionary demands", ie putting up a phoney mili­ mentioned in passing that "some tiny left central crime of ANCjSWAPO was that perspective in South Africa - of sweeping tant platform to cover the fact that they wing groups" ran a "propaganda cam­ they wanted to bring Stalinist gulags to away nco-apartheid capitalism through would vote for the bourgeois nationalist paign to warn people of the dangers of a the veld, the Siaughterites published proletarian revolution - requires iron­ ANC. Wolkers Power (May 1994) reports future government of national unity". disinformation from the South African clad refusal to give one iota of political that South African "supporters of the One thing is clear: for the USec there is intelligence services to smear their oppo­ support to the popular front, whether United Secretariat of the Fourth Interna- no principled objection to the class be- nents (which even the WRP admitted in through the front door or the back door..

MAY/JUNE 1994 9 Ex~Yugoslavia: counterrevolution and nationalist fratricide Fake left in the camp(s) of imperialism

Communist partisans led by rlto (left) defeated German/Italian occupation forces and reactionary nationalists to lay basis for pan-Yugoslav deformed workers Slate. "Defenceless" Bosnian forces pound Serbs (right) as capitalist countelTevolution fuels all-sided nationalist bloodletting.

Counterrevolution in the ex-Yugoslav­ danger of capitalist restoration. In 1991 VteWpOint (no 248, September 1993) even that "Support for Croatia and the Bos­ ian deformed workers state has unleashed WP, along with the SWP, pimped for the boasted of a joint press conference with nian Muslims is little more than support an orgy of nationalist bloodletting that "rights" of Ustashi-loving Croat national­ the Bosnian government on 18 September! of the interests of the Austrian ruling threatens to explode in a wider European ists demanding the immediate recognition The convoy soon found itself bogged class." conflagration. Despite the current veneer of the Croatian and Slovenian declara­ down by numerous obstacles, and a bitter More recently WP has lurched over to of imperialist consensus over the plight of tions of independence. dispute led to a split at a conference in a position in defence of the Bosnian Bosnian Muslims, war-tom ex-Yugoslavia Shared hostility to the Soviet Union October last year. The key issue? According Muslims. They now declare that since is a cauldron for imperialist intrigue and muted inter-imperialist rivalries and the to one account, the WRP were upset that a Autumn 1992 the Bosnian Muslims "have conflict. Fake-left organisations in Britain European social-democratic parties hap­ breakaway convoy (manned by uSee sup­ been engaged in a just struggle against and across Europe have joined the camps pily combined in anti-communist enthusi­ porters) broke "unity" and capitulated to genocide" (Worlcers Power, no 178, May of their own bourgeoisies as protagonists asm for each and every counterrevolu­ the UN by posing as humanitarian aid in 1994). It was about the same time that of their side in the civil war. In Britain tionary movement which sprung up in the order to reach TuzIa (Worlcen Power, no the Western imperialist campaign for they take their cue from the Labour Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Fur­ 173, December 1993). The WRP's version is "poor little Bosnia" went into full swing. Party. The Labour Party tops have joined ther down the syphilitic chain the fake that the dispute centred on whether or not Now the inveterate centrists of WP coun­ with the likes of Margaret "Butcher of revolutionaries followed suit. But now to press ahead all the way to TuzIa. To sel that in the event of air strikes, the the Belgrano" Thatcher demanding deci­ with mounting inter-imperialist rivalries acIliC\'e this the WRP demanded "UN assis­ workers movement should denounce the sive UN/NA TO military action and at­ and the social-democratic reformists tance as part of creating a force in the air strikes, "support the Bosnian Serbs tacking the Tory government for appeas­ bidding to serve their respective compet­ working class that would be able to take right to resist" and "continue to give ing Serbia and not doing enough to de­ ing national bourgeoisies, new complica­ advantage of any divisions amongst the support to the Bosnian Muslim-led resist­ fend Bosnia. tions have been introduced. And what enemies of the convoy" (Worlcer.r Press, no ance" - all at the same time! Revolutionary Marxists take no side in happens when the "national liberation" 381, 30 October 1993). As we said at the Despite the hue and cry over the the hideous nationalist/communalist slaugh­ movements unleash fratricidal war on time: "The long and short of it is that Sarajevo regime's "self-determination" ter between the Serbs, Croats and Slavic each other as in the case of Croats, Mus­ 'Workers Aid for Bosnia', which retails the Bosnia was never more than simply an M.lslims. But in the case of imperialist lims and Serbs? imperialist propaganda campaign for 'poor administrative subdivision of Yugoslavia. attack it is the duty of the international In reality the bloody fratricide which little Bosnia', is simply a staIking horse for The outgunned Bosnian Muslims have working class to stand in defence of has engulfed ex-Yugoslavia is the direct NATO intervention" (Worlcen Hammer, no long seen direct imperialist intervention Serbia. We say: Down with the starvation result of capitalist counterrevolution in 137, September/October 1993). as their main hope. In the past year they blockade! All US/UN/NATO forces out Eastern Europe, something all the fake­ have built up an army of 200,000 launch­ of the Balkans! Trotskyist and social-democratic anti­ Workers Power: support to ing a military offensive which has driven the Croats out of much of the area of Militant Labour and the Socialist Work­ Soviets supported. The fake left attempt Chetniks, Ustashi fascists and to veil their treacherous support for coun­ now••• central Bosnia. And while the Western ers Party have rejected advocating support media focuses almost exclusively on to any of the contending sides in the com­ terrevolution by elevating the "democratic Bemoaning the "tragedy" of the right of self-determination" into a class­ Serbian atrocities there are numerous munal war. But they flinch from taking a Workers Aid campaign, sabotaged "after examples of Muslim forces carrying out side in defence of Serbia against imperialist less principle. All forms of capitalist­ only the frrst few steps", Workers Power restorationist nationalist and fascistic "ethnic cleansing" when they have the attack. Instead their line is tailored to decided to line up with the alternative upper hand militarily. appeal to pacifIst currents within the Labour forces suddenly became "freedom fIght­ International Workers Aid for Bosnia ers". But this is a fundamental distortion WP and others like to point to the Party and liberal bourgeoisie; if they can Campaign launched by USec leaders existence of integrated communities in fInd aUy. This is a replay of the SWP's of everything that the Bolsheviks fought Catherme Samary and Dick Forsland. for. Lenin and Trotsky recognised the cities like Tuzla and Sarajevo as justifIca­ position during the Persian Gulf War in WP explained that at least in Britain this tion for their support to the Bosnian 1991 when they dropped any reference to right to self-determination while asserting new campaign maintains a "formal com­ the predominance of the class question. Muslims. But one of the tragedies of the the defeat of imperialism and the victory of mitment" to anti-imperialist demands counterrevolutionary break-up of Yugo­ Iraq in a headlong rush to join the Labour As Trotsky noted ih 1940, "the safeguard­ (Worlcers Power, no 173, December 1993). ing of the socialist revolution comes slavia, which WP did their best to abet, is "left" and the CND. Militant's "anti-war" One of the new campaign's first actions the tearing apart of such heavily inte­ line at the time boiled down to a campaign before formal democratic principles" (In was a picket of the UN Headquarters in Defence of Marxism). grated communities and their subordina­ to elect Labour. London on 11 December under the soli­ tion to nationalist and communalist During Cold War II so-called Trotsky­ tary "anti-imperialist" demand that the "Poor little Bosnia" forces. ists like Ernest Mandel's United Secre­ UN open Tuzla airport! The only way out of the murderous tariat (USec) and the British centrist Last year with the barrage of imperial­ Workers Power have the dubious cockpit of former Yugoslavia is through Workers Power (WP) group, who claim­ ist war propaganda focusing on the suf­ honour of, at one time or other, having socialist revolution throughout the region. ed to defend the Soviet Union and the fering of the Bosnian Muslims, many supported every side! Initially they Trotskyists fIght to build proletarian­ Eastern European deformed workers British fake Trotskyists were quick to pimped for the rights of the Ustashi­ internationalist communist parties that states against imperialism and counter­ follow suit. The British USec Socialist loving Croat nationalists. Come July 1992 will wage uncompromising struggle revolution, made common anti-Soviet Outlook group allied itself with the and the WP's Austrian affIliate, the Ar­ against all forms of nationalism. In such cause with open state capitalist organi­ Slaughterite Workers Revolutionary Party beiterinnen-standpunkt (ASt) were scan­ an area of geographically interpenetrated sations like Tony Cliffs Socialist Workers (WRP) to launch the "Workers Aid for dalously involved in a "united-front" peoples, as with the Catholic and Protes­ Party in Britain. The USec hailed Baltic Bosnia" convoy to deliver goods to Tuzla action with Great Serbian monarchists tant communities of Northern Ireland, fascists like the Estonian "Forest Broth­ in Bosnia. Amongst the long list of en­ and fascists. At the time WP's interna­ the democratic issue of self-determination ers", who allied with Nazis against the dorsers were Socialist Organiser and tional journal, Trotskyist Intemational can only be resolved equitably within the Red Army, while cynically denying the Workers Power. The USec'sIntemational (September/December 1992) declared framework of the proletariat in power.•

10 WORKERS HAMMER crisis. The lesson is that Russia should be "looked more like confrontation" than dealing with Russia, they are dealing with Balkans ... treated as an equal partner" (Economist, "cooperation". Indeed, the Clinton White a great power and not a banana repub­ 26 February). . House was initially irked by Moscow's lic." Yeltsin himself declared: "The (Continued from page 12) But this is not counterposed to acting move. But the Russian intervention's Bosnian Serb leadership must fulfill its in concert with Western powers. We purpose was to implement a UN ultima­ promises given to Russia, stop the attacks tum to the Serbs to pull back from Sara­ Yugoslav state. When these plans were noted in "Bosnia: powder keg of Europe" and withdraw from Gorazde... enable the torpedoed by the Fourth Reich, the US (Workers Hammer no 140, March/April jevo, and Moscow supported a US shoot­ introduction of UN forces in the area and down of four Serb planes in late Febru­ had no coherent Balkan policy. However, 1994) that the Russians intervened to unblock the UN personnel in Bosnia and the Serbs' defiance of Western imperialist help broker a German plan to establish a ary. As we wrote in Workers Vanguard no Herzegovina." Clinton praised Yeltsin's diktats, their open contempt for UN Greater Croatia overlapping a Greater 598, 15 April: "The now-capitalist Rus­ stance as ''very helpful". Russian workers resolutions and NATO threats, is an Serbia. The Croat and Muslim regions in sian army is acting as the shill and cat's must oppose the pan-Slav demagogy of affront to the American would-be masters of the world. Some in the US ruling class have been itching to teach the Serbs a bloody lesson. But the US has its own constraints ... on the home front. The continuing po­ tency of the "Vietnam syndrome" was revealed and reinforced recently in Somalia. The US troops supposedly sent on a UN "humanitarian" mission to help feed the starving people of this East African country were in fact a colonial expeditionary force which massacred hundreds of black Africans. But when Somali clan warriors managed to turn the tables and kill a few dozen US soldiers, the overwhelming response of the Ameri­ can public was: Pull US forces out, now! While Clinton waffles on Bosnia from one week to the next f the Pentagon gen­ erals have been vocally "dovish" about getting stuck ina Balkan "quagmire". Anxious to avoid any American casualties in the Balkans, the policy of US ruling circles is to arm and incite the Muslims and Croats against the Serbs. This was expressed in a particularly open and cynical way by liberal Democratic Senator Joseph Biden: Bosnian Serbs welcome Russian troops with reactionary three-finger Orthodox Christian salute and hail fascistic pan-Slav demagogue "The Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats are perfectly capable of fighting Zhirinovsky (bottom right). Boris Yeltsin and Helmut Kohl (top right) for themselves. There's no need for a engineered Russian intervention to bring Serbs into line in imperialist Vietnamization. There's not a need for a carve-up of former Yugoslavia. single American soldier. Let's supply th::m with weapons and let them go after the Serbs." Bosnia would link up with Croatia. paw for Bonn's plan to impose an imper­ Yeltsin and Zhirinovsky and demand: -New York Times, 18 April Krajina Serbs would dissolve their statelet ialist partition of ex-Yugoslavia by Russian troops out of the Balkans now! In other words, US imperialism is willing and accept the sovereignty of the squeezing the Serbs." While defending Serbia against imper­ to fight the Serbs to the last drop of Croatian government. In turn, the Speaking to a conference of his Chris­ ialist attack, we maintain a position of Croat and Muslim blood! Bosnian Serbs, with a diminished terri­ tian Democratic party, German chancel­ revolutionary defeatism towards all three tory, would be allowed to link up with lor Kohl bragged about his close co­ sides in the nationalist civil war wracking Russia: soft cop for the NATO Serbia. Moscow's slated role in selling operation with the Russian. leader: "I the former Yugoslavia. However, decisive powers this deal was to solace the Serbs, for want to say very clearly that I am happy military intervention against the Serbs by example, promising the Krajina Serbs that that with Boris Yeltsin and the Russian one or more imperialist powers would Enter at this stage Russia, the historic the Russians would protect them against government, a new power is now assum­ change the character of the war, subordi­ patron of their Serbian "Slavic little the fascistic Croatian regime of Franjo ing its responsibility." Russian emissary nating the Croat and Muslim nationalist brothers". Partly to divert popular discon­ Tudjman. Vitaly Churkin emphasised that they were forces and posing the need for revolution­ tent at home over the economic devasta­ When several hundred Russian sol­ working together to line up their respect­ ary defencism towards Serbia. In any tion resulting from the capitalist diers, wearing the blue helmets of UN ive clients: "Some of us have privileged case, we call on the workers to join in counterrevolution, the Yeltsin regime­ "peacekeepers", entered the environs of contacts: the Americans with the Mus­ overthrowing their capitalist rulers - in fully backed by the nationalist opposition Sarajevo in mid-February, they were lims, the Germans with the Croats and Milosevic's Serbia no less than Tudjman's led by fascistic demagogue Vladimir welcomed by the besieging Bosnian Serb we with the Serbs. We are seeking to use Croatia and Izetbegovic's Bosnian statelet Zhirinovsky - saw in the Balkan crisis a forces, who saw them as protectors them for the common good" (Liberation - in the struggle for a socialist feder­ golden opportunity to posture as a "great against the threatened NATO air attacks. [Paris], 23 February). Underlining the ation of the Balkans. power". Moscow's deputy foreign minis­ We quoted in our earlier article a com­ possibility of a budding alliance with Important sections of the American ter and chief envoy in the Balkans, Vitaly mentary by the Wall Street Journal (22 Germany, Yeltsin has now invited Ger­ ruling class now look on the Bosnia crisis Churkin, proclaimed: "The West should February) complaining that the interplay man troops into the ex-USSR in an as a test of their ability to control the learn a lesson from the current Bosnian between Russia and the US over Bosnia interview with Der Spiegel (25 April), post-Cold War world amid the devasta­ calling for the deployment of "the Ger­ tion and turmoil wrought by counterrevo­ man army with UN peacekeeping forces" lution in the former Soviet bloc and there to carry out "an important and increasing rivalry with German and Ja­ noble mission". panese imperialism. This view was clearly It did not take long for Serbian nation­ expressed in an editorial in the Los WORKERSIIAMMER alists to see through the double game Allgeles Times (20 April): "The Balkans Marxist newspaper of the Spartacist League being played by their Slav "big brothers". War is not an isolated aberration but a A UN analysis of the situation in Bosnia small-scale model of the large-scale in late March reported that the Serbs security challenges to come. Taking it as "see everyone winning except them, view that, the major powers can, if lhey [J 1-year subscription to Workers Hammer for £2 the Russians as siding with the Uniled choose, introduce themselves as well as (Overseas subscriptions: Airmail £6.00; Europe outside Britain & Ireland £3.(0) States and against them, feel diplomatic the Serbs to a new world order." [J 1-year subscription to Workers Hammer PLUS 24 issues of Workers and military pressure on the increase". The "New World Order" - proclaimed Vanguard, Marxist fortnightly of the Spartacist League/US for £7.00 At the same time, the German-bro­ by Washington as it was terror-bombing All above subscriptions include Spartacist, organ of the International kered deal between the Croats and Mus­ Iraq in the Persian Gulf War-is a for­ Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) lims, who had been fighting one another, mula for intensified US imperialist domi­ freed up Muslim forces to launch an nation and exploitation of working people o 3 issues of Women & Revolution for £2 offensive against the Serbs. When the around the globe. If NATO attacks on the Muslims refused to halt their offensive Serbs in Bosnia are effective, it will Name ______against Serbian-held territory in central embolden the US rulers to unleash the Bosnia in early April, the Serbs Pentagon war machine from South America Address responded with stepped-up attacks on to southern Africa, from Eastern Europe to ------Gorazde, leading up to the latest East Asia. But heavy bombing against the Postcode Telephone ______showdown with the NATO powers. Serbs could bring in its wake imperialist Make cheques payable/post to: Spartaclst Publications, PO Box 1041, London NW53EU The Serbs' belligerent response embar­ troops fighting on the ground, sucking rassed Moscow. Churkin exclaimed: "The NATO forces into an ever-widening Balkan Bosnian Serbs must understand that by war. US/UN/NATO out ofthe Balkans!.

MAY/JUNE 1994 11 WORKERS Arl UIlIArD forces out of the Balkans now! Defend Serbia against imperialist attack!

W~ reprint below an article from Workers Vanguard no 599, 29 ApriL In an ominous move, the imperialist powers are threatening to become active combatants and sharply escalate the three-year -old war that is ravaging the former Yugoslavia. On 22 April, NATO is."ued an ultimatum to the Serbs de­ manding that they immediately pull back their forces besieging the Muslim enclave " of Gorazde in eastern Bosnia - and refrain from attacking four other UN­ declared "safe areas" - or face aerial bombing. NATO's war threat has now been endorsed by Yeltsin's Russia. While the Bosnian Serb forces have reportedly begun withdrawing artillery, the imperial­ ists could launch military strikes at any moment. The Western powers are increasingly frustrated at their inability to impose order in this tinderbox of Europe. The MeIIaceIReuten imperialist economic blockade of Serbia, while causing terrible suffering for the civilian population - especially old pe0- ple, young children and the poor - had Counterrevolutionary break-up of Yugoslavia no effect on the war on the ground in Bosnia. The previous NATO attempt at using military force - the pin-prick raids unleashed all-sided nationalist blood-bath against Serbian forces around Gorazde on 10-11 April-backfired. The Serbs blockaded 5000 UN "peacekeepers" Western imperialists. The Balkan Wars of War II Ustasha regime, the Serbs glorify­ renamed the Republic of Serb Krajina. throughout Bosnia, Serbian gunners shot 1912-13 were a prelude to the first imper­ ing monarchist Chetniks and the Muslims Then came the three-sided communal­ down a British Sea Harrier fighter, and ialist world war, which slaughtered mil­ unfurling the green banner of Islamic ist slaughter in Bosnia between the Slavic the offensive against Gorazde was lions of working people. The US which fundamentalism. These were precisely the Muslims, Serbs and Croats. The Serbs in stepped up. spouts about "democracy" is responsible forces which TIto's Communist Partisans Bosnia are predominantly peasants and The latest military moves by the West­ for the A-bombing of Hiroshima and overcame while defeating the German owned 65 per cent of the republic's land ern imperialists reflect divergent appetites Nagasaki, the carpet-bombing of Vietnam Wehrmacht to create a multinational although making up only a third of its in the Balkans. Clinton's White House and the terror bombing of Iraq. And the Yugoslav workers state, albeit bureau­ population. The Muslims, slightly less keeps harping on NATO's "credibility" German Fourth Reich, which sanctimoni­ cratically deformed. than half the population, are largely an - and its own - as the US seeks to act ously denounces Serbian "ethnic cleans­ But the nationalist jackals, all of them, urbanised people. Consequently, when the as top cop in a "New World Order"... ing", is self-proclaimed successor state to picking at the corpse of Yugoslavia, are figllting began the Serb forces gained without risking American casualties. the Nazi regime which murdered millions not the only forces responsible for the control of most of the country and be­ Reunified German imperialism, which of Slavs, Jews and Gypsies. communalist bloodbath. Behind them sieged the cities where the Muslims were instigated the break-up of Yugoslavia in Inrperialist hands off Serbia - Down stand imperialist powers who are increas­ concentrated: 1991, seeks to reestablish its historic with the starvation blockade! All US/ ingly pushing their own particular inter­ The Wall Street Journal (21 April) overlordship in the western Balkans­ . ON/NATO forces out of the Balkans, now! ests as economic rivalries emerge which pointed to the fundamental dilemma Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia. Meanwhile, were formerly muted by shared anti­ facing Western imperialism, headlining in the wake of the capitalist counter­ Western imperialism behind Sovietism. Of these, Germany is most "Serbs Bet That the West Won't Risk the revolution that destroyed the Soviet Balkan bloodbath directly responsible for the destruction of Thing They Fear: Ground Troops". In Union, Russia wants to reassert its "great Titoist Yugoslavia. After buying out East Bonn, the Kohl government is pushing power" status in the region, particularly Western propaganda blames the war Germany in 1990 from the disintegrating hard to overcome "constitutional" objec­ towards its traditional client state Serbia. on Serbian "aggression" and "age-old Soviet Stalinist regime, German capital is tions to sending in the German army as But despite differing long-term inter­ tribal feuding" in the Balkans. In reality, pursuing important economic interests in "peacekeepers" . But Germany has ests and short-term concerns-the this orgy of mur4eroUs nationalism orig­ the Balkan peninsula, which produces another problem. Such an action would AmeriCans want to go further and arm inates in the capitalist counterr,evolution strategic minerals - chrome, zinc, lead, provoke a violent response from those the Muslims, the French and British are in Eastern Europe, prepared by decades copper, bauxite, silver. peoples who suffered as the Nazis laid worried about their troops on the ground, of Stalinist bureaucratic-nationalist mis­ In late 1991 Germany steam-rollered waste. to the South Slavic lands. It would the Russians don't want to see Serbia too rule and engineered by the US, Germany the European Community into recognis­ certainly inflame anti-German sentiment humiliated - they are all united for the and the other NATO powers. Since the ing the independence of Slovenia and in Greece, which has backed the Serbs. moment in forcing the Serbs into line and imperialist powers had different policies, Croatia over the objections of Britain and More generally, a German army in the more generally imposing an imperialist they did not intervene in Yugoslavia in a France, allies of Serbia during the Balkans would send shudders throughout carve-up of the former Socialist Federal united and decisive way. . interwar period. The establishment of a Europe-East and West. Republic of Yugoslavia. In the ethnic-nationalist wars set off by Croatian nationalist state provoked a Unlike Germany, the US has no intrin­ While opposing all sides in the fratri­ the secession of Croatia and Slovenia in revolt by the large Serb minority, backed sic interest in how Bosnia and the other. cidal civil war between the Serbs, Croats the summer of 1991, tens of thousands by the Serbian-dominated Yugoslav fed­ former Yugoslav republics are divided and Slavic Muslims, we call upon the have been killed and maimed, and hun­ eral nmy. The war for eastern Croatia between the contending Balkan nation­ working people to defend Serbia against dreds of thousands driven from their ended-or, more accurately, was tem­ alisms. Originally, Washington sought to imperialist attack. The nationalist atroc­ homes. All sides have embraced the most porarily suspended - with the Serbs con­ bring about the restoration of capitalism ities carried out by all sides in Bosnia reactionary "traditions", with the Croa­ trolling 30 per cent of the territory of that in the region while preserving a federated pale in comparison to the crimes of the tians harking back to the pro-Nazi World former Yugoslav republic, a region now continued on page 11

12 MAY/JUNE 1994