No 132 NovemberjOecember 1992 30p Newspaper of the Spartacist League Dump' the Labour sellouts! No coalition! For workers· action committees to stop the pit closures and to run the country!

Hundreds of thousands of workers took to the streets in two massive demon­ strations in London late last month. Coming in the context of two years of an ever-deepening depression, the an­ nounced pit closures unleashed massive popular outrage. But the marches "for the miners" were undertaken as a pres­ sure tactic, a diversion from the necessary class-struggle actions that would pose concretely the possibility of a proletarian solution to the crisis of decrepit British capitalism. NUM leader Arthur ScargiII has become a key player in a cross-class coalition aimed at defusing workers' anger and pressurising the Major govern­ ment. At the 25 October rally initiated by the TUC, Scargill shared a platform not only with the Labour Party and TUC tops who knifed the heroic miners strike eight years ago, but with the open class enemy: Liberal Democrat Paddy Ashdown and a representative of the bosses' Confeder­ ation of British Industry (CHI). Dropping any serious talk of strike action, Scargill and the NUM tops today compete with the scab UDM in futile appeals to the union-busting capitalist courts to keep the mines open. Meanwhile coal-faces at the threatened pits are already being sealed Miners, raill transport, power workers: strike now! up. while miners are being driven into taking redundancy. Echoing Scargill's no-strike line is But at the recent TUC rally Scargill strike action (see article p9). leaflet dated 21 October, which was dis­ "left" Yorkshire NUM gadfly Dave embraced the anti-communism of his new Meanwhile Major continues to hang on tributed in thousands to miners, other Douglass, who pontificates against those bloc partners, comparing opposition to to the doomed, reactionary Maastricht workers, women and youth protesting the who call for industrial action in the pages the Major government to the counter­ Treaty (which is also supported by the pit closures. of the "Leninist" organisation's Daily revolutionary overthrow of Stalinist Labour Party tops). The shattering of the Worker. Meanwhile, in a pathetic apology regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet European Monetary System signifies a for class collaboration, the "Leninists", Union: "If people power can bring down sharpening of interimperialist rivalries Fight or starve: that is the message now calling themselves the Communist governments in Poland, Czechoslovakia, within Europe and at the same time the from the one-sided class war being waged Party of Great Britain (Provisional Cen­ Hungary and the former Soviet Union, it breakdown of the GATT talks now by the British ruling class now. With the tral Committee), defend the refusal of the can turn back a government who's lost all threatens trade war. Overextended by the announcement of the closure of 31 pits NUM's special delegate conference to credibility here in Britain." costs of its counterrevolutionary swallow­ and the throwing of over 30,000 miners ballot for all-out strike action, and chime The massive industrial devastation here ing up of the DDR and its imperialist onto the scrap heap, the bosses have in that "miners and their supporters is not the result of a "mistaken policy" appetites to the East, the dominant Ger­ hurled down ..the gauntlet to all of the should reject those calling for an instant but reflects the iron logic of decaying man bourgeoisie pulled the plug on its working people. This is a political on­ pit strike, even an instant general strike" capitalism. Economic depressions and the capitalist "allies" in the West. Now the slaught which must be fought down the (Daily Worker, 24 October). The bulk of consequent immiseration of the working capitalist thieves are falling out with each line by the trade unions and their allies. the Labourite fake left has of course been people are inevitable under the system of other, while simultaneously tightening the What is urgently called for is the howling as one "Kick the Tories while production for private profit, as Karl screws on the working masses. The Euro­ mobilisation of the power of the organ­ they're down!" "Bring down the Tory Marx emphasised. While the government pean workers are in a race against time. ised working class - the miners along Government!" "Get them Out!" in order fiddles unemployment figures, the real Economic conditions and official govern­ with workers in strategic industries such to install John Smith & Co in No 10. level of joblessness already exceeds four ment policy are pushing towards class as rail, transport and power - to throw As we note below, ScargiII was vicious­ million. Ford has announced compUlsory battles in which the labour movement the gauntlet back in the face of the ly red-baited on the eve of the 1984-85 redundancies and 40 per cent pay cuts! must mobilise its strength or face sharp profit -gouging bosses, their politicians strike because he refused to toe the line Medical and ambulance services continue cuts in its living standards. But the and Labourite trade union lackeys. For for the bosses' Cold War drive. The witch to crumble. And Major's "new look" biggest obstacle to workers struggles are all-out strike action now! hunting was instigated by Gerry Healy's economic policy means substantial cuts in the reformist leaderships of the mass And now the ruling class is running WRP-one of whose putrid decomposi­ real wages and jobs for five million public workers parties and unions. A genuinely scared of genuine class struggle. Every tion products is the International Com-. sector workers. London transport and rail communist leadership must be forged on a effort is being made by Labour and its munist Party (ICP) - and eagerly picked workers must answer the government's revolutionary programme. hangers-on to turn the popular outrage up by Fleet Street and the TUC brass. union-busting attacks with militant, mass We reprint below a Spartacist League continued on page 8 The defence of the OOR was no crime, its sellout was Trotskyists say: Freedom for Erich Honecker!

We print below the text of the press SpAD in Berlin at the time of Honecker's release produced by our comrades of the seizure and deportation to Gennany. Spartakist-Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands (SpAD) calling for a demonstration in On 12 November the vengeful anti­ Berlin on 12 November at the criminal communist trial of the Fourth Reich court where Erich Honecker's trial is taking against the former DDR head of state place. The demonstration demanded: Erich Honecker will begin. Nazi pogroms Freedom for Honecker! Freedom for all in Rostock, the planned mass deportation representatives of the fonner DDR! That of the Roma and anti-communist show protest received widespread intemational trials in Berlin are the dirty face of capi­ coverage from Japanese, American and talist counterrevolution, which Kohl and Italian television, the BBe, and Stockholm Engholm want to whitewash with their Press and some ten interviews were given big rally on 8 November. The Honecker to Gemtan and other TV joumalists. Trial is the high point of the SPD-Ied Earlier, on 7 November our comrades of witch hunt, which is directed against the Liglle Trotskyste de France (LTF) everything recalling the victory of the Red participated in a demonstration in Hon­ Army over Nazi Germany and the ecker's defence initiated by "Comite Erich deformed workers state DDR which

Honecker" in Paris. 17lese actions follow arose from it. For the "crime" of having Spartakist earlier united-front protests called by the defended the DDR, Honecker has now SpAD demonstrate for Honecker's freedom at Moabit prison in Berlin, Spartacist League in London and the been thrown into Moabit prison by the August 1992. SPD justice senator Jutta Limbach, the deserted to the Red Army, fought the prison where the anti-fascist resistance fascists and is supposed to have killed a fighter had already been locked up by the Nazi war judge who had the blood of Leon Trotsky on the Gestapo. The decision of the Berlin­ over 100 Soviet partisans and Wehrmacht Tiergarten criminal court to begin the soldiers on his hands. Popular Front trial against Honecker is already a death The purpose of the witch hunt is to In Jllly 1936, as the Civil War raged in sentence for the seriously ill 80-year-old intimidate the workers and to strangle Spain, Leon Trotsky polemicised against the man. The Spartakist-Arbeiterpartei their resistance to the consequences of treachery of the Spanish Communist and Deutschlands (SpAD) together with the capitalist reunification - to mass unem­ Socialist Parties as well as the centrist Komitee fUr soziale Verteidigung (Kfs V) ployment and racist terror. To this end, POUM who had entered the popular-front is calling a protest rally on 12 November thousands of teachers, scientists and govemment of Azana & Co. Tying the at 8.30am before the criminal court in doctors were fIred, throughout the civil revolutionary Spanish proletariat to the Tiergarten, Turmstrasse 91. We demand: service a witch hunt was set in motion TROTSKY "shadow of the bourgeoisie': the popular LENIN Freedom for Honecker! Freedom for all and the PDS is being systematically per­ front disanned the workers and peasants, representatives of the former DDR! secuted through expropriation of its prop­ paving the way for Franco's victory. The We, who have fought on every front erty and through anti-Stasi hysteria, even lessons of Spain are especially relevant today as the refonnists and centrists, not. least against the capitalist reunification, also though the PDS leadership at all levels is those who falsely claim the mantle of Trotskyism, in Ireland, Britain and throughout demand: Freedom for Erich Mielke! As going along. The revolutionary working Ellrope are set to repeat again the betrayal of the class stnlggle in the service of "unity" if to prove its continuity once more, the class in power would have its own score with the "democratic" bourgeoisie. bourgeoisie of Auschwitz is dragging into to settle with the Stalinists for their court the former DDR security chief on crimes against the working class, includ­ The workers' party that enters into a political alliance with the radical bourgeoisie the basis of charges stemming from the ing the sell-out of the DDR. But this is by that fact alone renounces the struggle against capitalist militarism .... The political Third Reich. Hands otT Markus Wolf! not the business of the bourgeoisie and alliance of the working class leaders with the bourgeoisie is disguised as the defense of He is charged with "treason" because as its social-democratic henchmen. Hon­ the "republic." The experience of Spain shows what this defense is in actuality. The head spy of the DDR he successfully ecker's extradition by Boris Yeltsin was a word "republican," like the word "democrat," is a deliberate charlatanism that serves fought against NATOfWest German blood sacrifice from the side of those to cover up class contradictions. The bourgeois is a republican so long as the republic imperialism. Stop the legal proceedings who have landed the former USSR in protects private property .... The articles appearing in Le Populaire and L'Humanite against the border troops! They are mass misery, anti-Semitic pogroms and on the events in Spain fill one with rage and disgust. These people learn nothing. They being persecuted because they defended bloody nationalist civil wars, in order to do not want to learn. They consciously shut their eyes to the facts. The principal lesson their workers state on the front lines. The open up the remains of the USSR to for them is that it is necessary at all costs to maintain the "unity" of the Popular Front, decision of the German high court that being pillaged by the Deutsche Bank. We that is to say, unity with the bourgeoisie and friendship with Daladier .... A genuine the D D R border law was "unconstitution­ Trotskyists called for proletarian political alliance of workers and peasants must be created against the bourgeoisie, including the al" is paving the way for mass trials. revolution in order to overthrow the Radicals. One must have confidence in the strength, initiative, and courage of the Freedom for the anti-fascist hero Ger­ Stalinist bureaucracy and struggled proletariat, and the proletariat will know how to bring the soldier over to its side. This hard Bogelein! He was sentenced to life against the capitalist counterrevolution will be.,a genuine and not a fake alliance of workers, peasants, and soldiers. This very imprisonment in the SPD stronghold of from Rostock to Moscow. We demand: alliance is being created and tempered right now in the fire of civil war in Spain. The Hamburg several months ago because he Stop the anti-communist witch hunt!. victory of the people means the end of the Popular Front and the beginning of Soviet Spain. -Leon Trotsky, "The Lesson of Spain", 17le Spanish Revolution (1931-39) Spartacist League ~PUbIiC forum

Drive for capitalist restoration in the ex-USSR and Eastern Europe fuels racist terror! WORKERSIIAMMER For a federation of workers republics in the British Isles I ~ For a Socialist United States of Europel

Newspaper of the Spartacist League, British section of the International London Glasgow Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). EDITORIAL BOARD: Bonnie Bradley (Editor), Jon Branche, Ralf Eades, Alec Gilchrist, Eibhlin 7:30pm, Wednesday, 2 December 1pm, Thursday, 26 November McDonald, Alan Mason, Len Michelson, Ellen Rawlings, David Strachan, Jay Tregellis Conway Hall, Small Hall Queen Margaret Union PRODUCTION MANAGER: Jay Tregellis Red Lion Square University Gardens CIRCULATION MANAGER: Suzy Driscoll Nearest tube: Holborn Published by Spartacist Publications, PO Box 1041, London NW53EU Subscriptions: £3.00 for 1 year, overseas airmail £6.00. For more information phone: London 071-485 1396 Glasgow 041-332 0788 Opinions expressed in Signed articles or letters do not necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. printed by Amersham Press (TU). ISSN 0267-872t

2 WORKERS HAMMER '...... ' • .. .. ,. t ...... :" :0 • ~ .. -. \ ~ f ~ J-~I _! ~ "'. " " ~ ! +

Vienna: Workers Power rallies with Serbian monarchists, Chetnik fascists

/' r" "For the following political horror trip there is no precedent in the history of the Austrian left. At least I cannot remember having seen such a bizarre 'bloc constel­ lation' during the last thirty years." -Die Linke, 4 September 1992

Not "just another scandal" from the right-centrist Workers Power and its misnamed League for a Revolutionary Communist International (LRCI) but a mind-boggling lulu has emerged from Austria. In late July the LRCI's Austrian group ArbeiterInnen-standpunkt (ASt) carried out a "united front" action with Great Serbian monarchists and fascists - an event so disgusting that even the Austrian supporters of Ernest Mandel's Tito's (left) partisans defeated Nazi, United Secretariat were repelled. Recall Ustashi and Chetniks in World War that the USee saluted the Estonian Nazi II. Waldheim (centre) with Waffen "Forest Brothers" as well as the sinister SS, Yugoslavia, 1945; partisans Croatian HDP in the service of Cold War hanged by Nazis, 1942 (right). "anti-Stalinism" and that French USec Unifying with monarchists, honcho Alain Krivine recently signed an Chetniks, WP spits on partisan appeal to the imperialist Common Mar­ struggle. ket "Europe of Twelve" to "act collec­ Tanjug tively" in Yugoslavia. It takes a lot to disgust the USec. The story: according to Arbeiterlnnen­ intervention and hardly addressed a single Saved by the strudel. Fresh from organising its "reactionary standpunkt's own account, it had partici­ concrete question of the war in former This "political horror trip" is not nationalist event", WP has made a posi­ pated at "a public forum on the imperial­ Yugoslavia. There was not even any denied by Workers Power, it is not repu­ tive programme out of the complete ab­ ist aggression in the Balkans" with the mention of Croats, Albanians and the sence of principle which led to the Kosovo. The very general sounding slo­ diated - quite the opposite! In its amus­ leader of the monarchist Serb National gans against nationalism were interrupted ingly titled article "Yugoslavia: bringing Vienna scandal. The Trotskyist Intema­ Rebirth, as did the SOAL (Pabloites), CP from the audience with chants of 'Long the war to Austria" (Trotskyist Interna­ tional article concludes with a grotesque and the Austrian pseudo-Trotskyists of live Serbia'. tional, September/December 1992) Work­ parody of Leon Trotsky, who urged the the RKL. The Austrian Workers Power ers Power complains that "the whole left" crushing of the fascist scum: "For our group, in their own words, were "warned "There can be no justification for this refused to participate in this circus of part, we take those lessons into the strug­ by all possible sides not to go into a running amok of the AST. Already at a reaction! "Why? The wretched pretext gles and organisations of the working united front with 'such reactionary Serb forum called by the AST that was held they offered was that the demonstration class as they now exist, learning from nationalists'" (ArbeiterInnen-standpunkt, prior to the rally this same speaker of the them how to advance the cause of com­ 'Serbian National Rebirth' had appeared was supported by Draskovic-ite 'Serb September 1992). The ASt goes on to and had demanded 'God may not forgive National Rebirth', a nationalist munism. We do this not simply despite recount that: "it should not in any case the Croats, because they know what they grouping.... Without their participation, having to make temporary alliances with be prettified that Milatovic proved to be do.' of course, few or no Serbs would have 'the Devil and his grandmother' but, in­ at this forum a Great Serbian Chauvinist, marched with us." And a damn sight deed, through such alliances" (emphasis an anticommunist and a proponent of the "Attempts at the beginning of the rally fewer Chetniks might have been out on ours). WP's third-campist methodology free market economy, as well as an when it was already clear that the com­ the streets chasing unprincipled and has in fact placed them squarely in the admirer of the interwar Serbian mon­ rades would only be the fifth wheel to the criminally idiotic leftists into pastry shops camp of capitalist counterrevolution, on cart of the Chetnik supporters to con­ archy. Without any doubt a reactionary the barricades with the Yeltsinite spivs vince the AST that it was necessary to as well. Workers Power's article admits Serbian nationalist." leave the rally were brusquely dismissed." that "a group of Chetnik fascists physi­ and racketeers in Moscow in August The ASt's conclusion was ... to organise cally attacked a Serbian ASt comrade" 1991. It was a decisive act of its rightist a joint rally with Milatovic & Co! We At least as hair-raising is the account and goes on: degeneration and from sponsoring the print below excerpts from the report of provided by the Austrian RKL's KJassen­ "In that situation the 'moderate' national­ infamous tour in Britain of fascist the Austrian USec's Die Linke: kampf: ists of the Serbian Rebirth, failed to NTS/scab UDM-supported Yuri But­ "For July 18th the Gruppe 'Arbeiterln­ "On a truck as the speaking platform, the actively join in our defence or kick the chenko to pimping for the "rights" of nenstandpunkt' together with Serbische leader of the 'Serbian Rebirth' and then Chetnik scum off the demonstration. Ustashi-loving Croat nationalists against Nationale Wiedergeburt [Serb National that of the 'Trotskyist' AST blared out Indeed, they even gave the microphone to the then-Yugoslav deformed workers Rebirth], the Vienna local of the Serbian their speeches in front of pictures of a Chetnik speaker to placate them, thus state to its Viennese waltz with Chetnik Monarchist Vuk Draskovic had called for Serbian kings and the great Serbian turning the demonstration into a reaction­ fascists-whatever cause Workers Power ary nationalist event" (emphasis ours) a rally in front of parliament and then a emblem on the rostrum. The former is advancing with its "temporary march to the US embassy .... more than half an hour on god, King and A "reactionary nationalist event" alliances" it certainly isn't communism. Serbian fatherland, the AST speaker " ... a kind of nationalist masquerade finally against Austria and imperialism indeed - an event initiated by the ASt Nationalism has been the spearhead of developed, that was frightening. In front and against imperialism and Austria. jointly with monarchists and pursued until capitalist counterrevolution which has of the parliament some 250 Serbs had Applause of the roughly 1000 mainly the monarchists' fascist Chetnik buddies perforce plunged the former multi-nation­ gathered, the ten representatives of the Serbian people was assured, namely when dra[:ged them off! And Workers Power is al Yugoslavian workers state into a fratri­ 'ArbeiterInnenstandpunkt' therefore the Serbian leader on the platform quite clear that it is not interested in what cidal bloodbath. That state, bureaucrati­ already quantitatively had to play the role ordered applause from the masses with a it calls "nonsense about 'principle' ": cally deformed as it was from its incep­ of extras. The rally therefore bore the hand signaL ... stamp of the portraits of the former "Unfortunately, there are no Serbian tion, was built after Tito's partisans de­ Serbian royal house and of the pretender "Then they marched and at the final rally workers' organisations or leaders in feated not only the Nazis and their to the crown, Alexander, Chetnik symbols the AST's 'united front politics' defin­ Vienna, independent of one or another Croatian Ustashi allies but also the Ser­ and cheers to the Serbian army. A itively came to an end: when, there in the type of nationalist. If there were, we bian monarchists, the Chetniks. Tito shot speaker of the 'Serbische Nationale Wied­ vicinity of the US Embassy an AST cadre would happily organise a demonstration Chetniks and Ustashi. In the genocidal ergeburt' in his speech lambasted his finally tried to criticise Chetnik national­ with them." As for Draskovic's "anti­ slaughter of World War II, workers and listeners with a barrage of chauvinism .... ism. " he was dragged down from the imperialism", he has come out as a more peasants came to know that they were truck by Chetnik fascists. Soon the AST "Grotesque indeed was the speech of the found themselves on the run away from extreme anti-communist than Milosovic safe when the partisans with the red stars representative of the AST that followed. the place, chased by a group of Chetniks, and offered his links with the Chetniks to in their caps arrived in town. Even given He carefully tried to avoid confronting his whom they could escape from in the end promote "peace", ie to secure the Bal­ our fundamental differences with the 'bloc partner' in the fight against military only by hiding in a pastry shop .... " kans for imperialist exploitation. continued on page 8

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1992 3 Elliott recently authored a document, entitled "Real Trotskyist Platform or CoUaDse of Stalinism shakes Dseudo-Trotsky'ists Spartacist Platform", attacking a left opposition in the USec's Algerian section, the Parti Socialiste des Travailleurs. (Elliott'S document and the LTF Open Letter are available in English in Number 7 of our bulletin series, Hate Trotskyism, The new anti-Spartacists Hate the Spartacist League, which reprints attacks on us by our opponents.) Acknowledging that the USec "is undergoing a deep crisis marked by the political and organisational liquidation of The following is adapted from an ICL and increasingly dissident youth group of instances, of a 'united front' with the numerous sections, with disarray among leaflet distributed at a 23 October meeting the French LCR. Originally, an influential Thermidorian section of the bureaucracy thousands of militants", Elliott warns that in London featuring USec leader Ernest part of the JCR leadership threw in their against open attack by capitalist counter­ this could "benefit sects with a clearly Mandel. lot with Matti. But in the face of the revolution". more coherent programme than that of On 23 October Ernest Mandel, leader counterrevolutionary tide sweeping East­ But for all his alleged opposition to the the USec". Again Trotsky's description of of the so-called "United Secretariat of ern Europe and the Soviet Union, popular front, Elliott has recently found centrism fits Elliott like a glove: "The the Fourth International" (USec), is together with the imperialist slaughter in it expedient to join with the "Faction for centrist frequently covers up his dawdling scheduled to speak at a national rally of the Persian Gulf, many of these youth the Trotskyist International", headed by by referring to the danger of 'sectarian­ the Socialist Outlook group in Britain. have been propelled into leftist opposi­ the consummate political swindler Franco ism,' by which he understands not The talk was initially titled, "75 Years of tion. Their leadership, notably the JCR's Grisolia, a small-time union bureaucrat abstract propagandist passivity (of the the Russian Revolution: In Defence of principal spokesman Damien Elliott, whose USec career has been defined by Bordigist type) but an active concern for October". Those who know the track seeks to keep them chained to Mandel's capitulation to the popular front in Italy. purity of principles, clarity of position, record of the USec would fmd that pretty USec as a loyal (kept) opposition. But As for militarily blocking with a wing of political consistency and organisational rich. In every key event in which defence the collapse of Stalinism and the evident the Stalinist bureaucracy against the completeness." of the gains of the 1917 October Revo­ crisis of the USec and the rest of the fake forces of counterrevolution, for Elliott Elliott obviously spent some time lution has been posed, from Afghanistan lefts has compelled them to address and this is purely hypothetical. As the LTF ransacking the publications of various and Poland at the beginning of the '80s to confront the authentic Trotskyism of the noted in a 27 July "Open Letter to the renegades and deserters from the ICL for Yeltsin's August 1991 pro-capitalist coun­ the fabrications he writes about our tercoup in Moscow, Mandel's outfit has organisation. Although he doesn't ac­ been on the anti-Soviet side of the barri­ cades. Now that imperialism and counter­ knowledge it, he is particularly indebted revolution are reigning triumphant in to the "Bolshevik Tendency" - a collec­ Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, it's tion of embittered ex-members who quit cheap to come out "in defence of Octo­ our tendency under the early pressures of ber". But maybe not cheap enough: days Cold War II and who have since made a "political" career out of trying to smear before the event, the title was abruptly and set up the organisation they deserted. switched to the innocuous "Tories in Crisis - European Capitalism in Crisis". Elliott borrows from this "reputable" source to depict our organisation as a cult When the USec joined the imperialist of senile and cynical Tukhachevskyites hue and cry over Soviet intervention in who worship before portraits of General Afghanistan, we warned that these invet­ Jaruzelski. Certainly, no member of ours erate tailists, after years of chasing after would recognise Elliott's portrayal of the every manner of popular front, were well L'UlUaoque...... declwa ...... acac ..... dII ICL as the organisation to which they on the way to becoming full-blown Cold _delMlr\.rUNDn~'" O_kMII" -~~ l'6chec du coup ental d'00I0II ..,...... _...:k*e belong . .... ~de War social democrats. In the spirit of the cMInoc ..... pOoII-c_cr.,.ItIUI· __ Ioc__ ~Po.IrkipreIfItIMI ...... Feeling the heat from the, ICL's con­ Reaganite '80s they not only declared r"",--,, diu ...... ~dM ~~ont..,c~_~ sistent Trotskyist politics, the lcR partici­ "Solidarity with Solidarity" in Poland, but ~6Inpmtf._"''''''''' .....odk ... pated in a public "meeting-d&ate" with began running articles saluting Nazi col­ URSS: the LTF on 25 September on ''The Rus­ laborators like the Estonian "Forest ~~:--."-"- :::::-,:,,:".=c.:...=-.:.: -...... '...... _-,. sian Question and the Continuity of the Brothers" as "freedom fighters" in the L'ESPOIR Fourth International". At the debate, an "struggle against Stalinism". A whole ~~~~~=: Algerian woman supporter of the PS1 faction of the USec openly hailed the ENMARCHE spoke powerfully from the floor: "I was imperialist Anschluss (annexation) of the ~!~~~~~ ~§~~§ ;:',:'r::'.:::::':":::::':': :::.'::::.~==."-" expelled from the USec camp [in Portu­ East German deformed workers state. :::-::.• :::.:;"-':.7!'. ";, ;:'.~ ;::~.~-==~:;:-:::: ~:::::';,":" .. ':~-~ ~J~fl\~-~=' _._ ...... _..... '- =-..;::~.:::~=!:: gal this summer] which I was legitimately And now they are falling into lockstep attending, for defending my tendency and with the German-orchestrated break-up my document.... I also want to demon­ of the Yugoslav deformed workers state. JCR newspaper L'Egalite headlines "USSR: Hope on the March", joining strate the really outrageous manner in Erstwhile "red '68er" Alain Krivine, star with Mandel and the rest of USec in cheering counterrevolutionaries on which comrade Damien Elliott responded of the French Ligue Communiste Rev­ Yeltsin's barricades, August 1991. to us, the faction, in Algeria. He is acting olutionnaire (LCR), recently signed an as a fmgerman by refusing to debate with appeal calling on the imperialist Common International Communist League (Fourth JCR-I'Egalite" about Elliott's position on Internationalist) . the August 1991 Moscow coup: "In a soft us and sticking a label on us that is very Market "Europe of Twelve" to "act col­ prejudicial." lectively" in Yugoslavia (Le MOil de, 26 way, he wants to be with the 'masses' August). The spectre of Spartacism who were on the Yeltsin barricades. He thinks that Yeltsin is a counterrevolution­ Alibis for USec support to Politically the USec has nothing in The ICL is well known for our intran­ Yeltsin counterrevolution common with Trotsky's Fourth Interna­ sigent opposition to the forces of capital­ ary, but he wants to 'fraternise' with his tional, and it's hardly united in any case. ist counterrevolution in Eastern Europe shock troops instead of smashing them!" In trying to exorcise the Spartacist Wherover it has supporters they are and the Soviet Union. Many members of And Elliott continues to defend the USec's spectre, Elliott's opposition to Mandel & divided into publicly competing groups, the JCR-I'Egalite come from CP Mck­ support to Polish Solidarnosc- the coun­ Co vanishes as he seeks to alibi their submerged in reformist parties, and/or grounds; among these a number have terrevolutionary, CIA-bankrolled "union" egregious anti-Sovietism. In his document riven with multiple permanent factions. long been repelled by the USec's capitu­ - against Jaruzelski's crackdown in 1981. to the PST, he argues: "It is a lie and a For a whole layer of USec cadres and lation to imperialist anti-Sovietism from As Trotsky wrote in his article scandalous slander to claim that the USec ranks, the mask of social democracy has Afghanistan to Poland. During the Per­ "Centrism and the Fourth International" 'clearly supported counterrevolution in the become the face. This is epitomised by sian Gulf War, some members of the (February 1934), centrism's "main argu­ USSR"'. Well, as Marx was fond of say­ Matti, leader of the faction which cel­ JCR-I'Egalite were wearing badges read­ ments against the right it borrows from ing, "facts are stubborn things". Follow­ ebrated the Fourth Reich's annexation of ing "Sink Mitterrand and Bush in the the Marxists, that is, first of all from the ing the Yeltsinite countercoup in the East Germany. For some years Matti Gulf!" -which was the headline in Le Bolshevik-Leninists, dulling, however, the Soviet Union, the USec's Illprecor echoed attempted to give an "orthodox" veneer BolcMvik, the newspaper of our French sharp edge of criticism and avoiding the imperialist celebration over "the to his rightist politics by calling for build­ section, the Ligue Trotskyste de France practical conclusions, thereby rendering Second Russian Revolution", while an ing the "International", in opposition to (LTF). their criticism meaningless". Against the authoritative article by Catherine Verla Mandelite liquidationism. But the "Inter­ Last July at a JCR-I'Egalite day school, bankrupt leaders of the USec, Elliott has stated baldly: "It was necessary to national" he was referring to was the Elliott lauded the ICL for our principled readily borrowed from - and blunted - unhesitatingly oppose the coup, and on "Second", not the "Fourth". Now Matti opposition to voting for any of the parties our politics. But as Trotsky also noted, cen­ these grounds, to fight at Yeltsin's side" has taken this to its logical conclusion of a popular front, in contrast to the trists direct their main fife not against the (lnprecor, 29 August 1991). Elliott himself and is a de facto dual member of the capitulations of the USec. Elliott was also right, but against the Bolshevik-Leninists. declares that "it was completely to the LCR and Mitterrand's Socialist Party. the author of a pamphlet entitled "From What really haunts Elliott, Grisolia & credit of the LCR that they published a At the same time, the manifest bank­ the Fall of Stalinism to the Formation of Co is not the grotesque betrayals of the press release delighting in the failure of ruptcy of the USec in the face of the the CIS" (the stillborn "Confederation of USec but the "spectre of Spartacism". the putsch" (while, for the record, "warn­ collapse of Stalinism has also produced Independent States" proclaimed by Yel­ Seeking to establish themselves as "lead­ ing the workers against Yeltsin")! leftward-moving oppositions for the flfst tsin in December 1991). Here he claimed ers" of a centrist opposition within the As the old saying goes, the acorn never time since the mid-1970s. Among these is to support the position that Trotsky confines of the USec, they are desperate­ falls too far from the tree. Like his for­ the Jeunesses Communistes Revolution­ outlined in the Transitional Programme ly trying to inoculate any leftward-moving mer tutor Matti, Elliott reduces his criti­ naires, JCR-I'Egalite, the heterogeneous of "the possibility, in strictly defined elements against our politics. To this end, cisms to chiding the USec for refusing 4 WORKERS HAMMER "to construct the Russian section of the Polish Stalinist regime! If that were the Elliott is all too happy to' tail after Fourth International". But on what pro­ APP.L case, then how does one explain the mil­ Solidarnosc or even the Yeltsinite "mas­ gramme? While he admits that the -=r:a~~:-""""":r:::::"~="''''''''=I~ lions the imperialists sank into financing ses", but he wa,nts nothing to do with the ==.-:==-.:=.:::"__ .... ___ ...... e.-. _ ...... a:.:c-:":F-..:.~= ____ ...... et Trotskyist programme of unconditional ...... c...... ~ ..... _,..~ __ ..... et .... r...... Walesa's outfit? Even Time magazine, 250,000 people who came out to the defence of the USSR "meant the defence ... ,...... -----* ...... that mouthpiece for the American impe­ Treptow demonstration to protest the ::-1.~:~.::=:r=::a::::;r~-:::___ ...... -raNeU ___ ""' ...... ""~ft .. ...-.;_r.,... of workers' gains and frontal opposition ..... rialist rulers, ran a front cover this year Nazi desecration of a memorial to Soviet ...... L...... cWI ...... - _...,...---.r...... ,r ...... ----- to the maneuvers of Gorbachev and then o._ ...... -~-- ..... - ...... entitled "Holy Alliance - How Reagan soldiers. The German Spartakists initiated ...... -...... r ...... _c--.. ... ----~-·-·- Yeltsin", Elliott condemns the "Spartacist ...... -~. the call for this anti-fascist demonstration -:===--:.=.~;,;;;=__=::k.....t_--- ...... ,...... and the Pope Conspired to Assist Po­ position making Yeltsin the main enemy ,...-:==-..!.~~.!.:~...:::...- ...... _ ...... ___ ...... __ ...... ,.,...... ,.e' land's Solidarity Movement and Hasten under slogans calling for "Workers and in August"! If Yeltsin, who spearheaded ___.....-..=-...:::-.:;:::. .. -...... cn~r:::..--:. -=-..., .... .,...--.... ,... the Demise of Communism"! In 1981, we soldiers councils to power! For a Lenin­ .-._fII\. ______~IrMqIb ..... -ct ...... - the forces of capitalist counterrevolution, ...... , ....' ~ 1.1 c..th"'C••• '.' .. 11 ...... 1 ...... , • Lo.. d,'" .n •••IIU rec:>gnised that the Solidarnosc leaders ist-egalitarian party!" The speeches given was not the "main enemy", then who ~----_ .. cu...... :..::.=:.":'!:.!.::' ,...... - ..... ---__ .. ~._,_ .. - were traitors to the working class on by representatives of our organisation, was? Obviously, for Elliott the answer ~~==.r~==.:=:':=~~::.:~ behalf of NATO imperialism, and we from the podium in front of the demon­ is ... the pathetic coup plotters! While the urgently called to "Stop Solidarity's stration, were an explicit frontal assault coup committee wanted to pursue Counterrevolution!" When the attempted on the Stalinist dogma of "socialism in Gorbachev's policy for controlled, gradual power grab by Walesa & Co was spiked one country" and "peaceful coexistence", capitalist restoration, they were eclipsed by Jaruzelski's countercoup, we supported and warned of the Social Democratic by the forces pushing to smash the Soviet this crackdown. As we wrote then: SPD "Trojan horse". The Stalinist heck­ workers state - both the imperialists and "What do revolutionaries do when the lers who tried to drown out our calls for domestic counterrevolutionaries - who Marxist programme stands counterposed independent workers mobilisation certain­ rallied to Yeltsin. to the overwhelming bulk of the working ly saw this as a threat to them. While he continues to offer back­ class, a situation we of course urgently For Elliott the question of anti-Soviet handed support to Yeltsin, at the 25 seek to avoid? There can be no doubt. fascism was simply a "smokescreen". This September debate with the LTF Elliott The task of communists must be to was precisely the line of the social demo­ defend at all costs the programme and charged that our position was one of LCR leader Alain Krivine signed gains of the dictatorship of the prole­ crats and the West German imperialists, "hypocritical support to the putschists". August appeal to Common Market tariat." who hated and feared the Treptow mobi­ Certainly any serious opponent of capital­ imperialists to "act collectively" in - Spartacist Britain no 36, lisation. Seeing in this anti-fascist and ist counterrevolution would have looked Yugoslavia. October 1981 pro-Soviet demonstration, a quarter of a hard, as we did, to determine if there was million strong, the forces that could pre­ a basis for giving military support to the was taught by Matti - that the Stalinist Chafing under the Fourth Reich vail against the drive to capitalist re­ coup against Yeltsin's open counter­ bureaucracies in Eastern Europe and the unification, the bourgeois press attempted In the debate with the LTF, Elliott revolutionaries. But there was nothing to Soviet Union were "counterrevolutionary to smear the SED with responsibility for conceded that "self-criticism" was called support: the coup committee refused to through and through". This he dates from the fascist provocation, calling it a "Stasi for on the question of the capitalist re­ go after Yeltsin and told the workers to the 1938 extermination of the Reiss fac­ trick". After Treptow, the campaign to unification of Germany. This is putting it stay off the streets. We called on Moscow tion. He would be hard put to explain stampede the DDR into reunification was mildly, since at the time he was allied workers to clean out the rabble on the how, close to 20 years later, in the 1956 massively geared up. The "demand" that with Matti, who called for breaking out barricades in front of the Yeltsin "White Hungarian Revolution, the bulk of the the SED leave was realised, as the "champagne" to celebrate the Fourth House". But the coup plotters feared ruling Communist Party went over to the Stalinists completely capitulated. Now, as Reich's annexation of the DDR. Retro­ unleashing the forces that could have side of the working-class insurgents. But the resurgent German nationalism that spectively, Elliott claims agreement with defeated the Yeltsinites, because that in the debate with the LTF, Elliott tried accompanied the annexation of the DDR would have raised the possibility of civil to elude such thorny problems by declar­ our call for a "Red Germany of Workers is being brought home in racist pogroms war and the immediate prospect of pro­ ingthat the JCR-I'Egalite has no position Councils". But this is simply the jumping­ and utter social devastation, perhaps off point for an anti-Spartacist diatribe letarian political revolution. on any event preceding 1979! Elliott will discover a "painful awaken­ As for "hypocritical support to the echoing the arguments made in his docu­ ing" in Germany too. ment to the PST, where he argues: putschists", months after the victory of "Solidarity" with Today the German imperialists drag the Yeltsinite countercoup we fmd counterrevolutionary "The Spartacist policy [was] entirely former Stasi chief Erich Mielke into court Elliott's centrist bloc partner Grisolia oriented toward the attempt to split off a Solidarnosc wing of the East German SED on charges stemming from the Nazi writing: "If sectors of the working class Of course, when decades of Stalinist bureaucracy which they could use as a period. Erich Honecker, the cancer­ had rallied in support of the coup, want­ lever. Their attempt culminated in the stricken former head of the DDR, is to ing to struggle against austerity and other betrayals and economic mismanagement drove millions of Polish workers into the anti-fascist demonstration at Treptow be tried for defending his country's bor­ moves toward capitalist restoration, Park in Berlin, a 'united front' where they ders. Yet Elliott charges that the Sparta­ arms of Solidarno~c counterrevolution, Trotskyists should have allied with them" were manipulated by an SED which was cists are "making a cult of symbols of the ("For a Workers' Emergency Plan to Grisolia & Co readily "allied" themselves looking for a smokescreen to conceal the on the side of the Vatican, the CIA and former DDR" because we intransigently Combat the Crisis of the Soviet Union", central problem at the time: the demand defend Mielke, Honecker and the other Bulletin of the Faction for the Trotskyist the Western banks. In the debate, Elliott by the masses that it leave." declared that Walesa's company union targets of a massive witch hunt aimed at International no 1, March 1992). One Only a complete Stalinophobe could seeking revenge for the Red Army's could hardly fmd a more chemically pure "posed a new theoretical problem" be­ cause it wasn't clear to the "masses" what argue that the already fractured and victory over Hitler's Third Reich. Of expression of opportunism. If only the disintegrating SED was "the central iJro­ course Elliott hastens to add that, unlike workers had moved against the counter­ Solidarnosc was. In his document to the Algerian PST he writes, "It was only in blem" in the DDR in January 1990. What Matti who obscenely demands a "Nurem­ revolutionaries, then Grisolia would have about the forces of imperialist Anschluss berg for the Stalinists", he would "deny moved with them. But the workers 1984-85 that the underground leadership of Solidarnosc definitively dropped its -like Kohl's Fourth Reich and its the capitalist Kohl regime any right to didn't ... so Grisolia sidled up to the social-democratic front men? In a re­ judge Erich Honecker". Instead he calls Yeltsinites instead! mask", when they came out with an open programme for Wall Street domination. markable feat, Elliott never once men­ for a labour auxiliary to the Fourth While in his pamphlet on the Russian tions the West German Social Demo­ Reich's witch hunt, demanding that question Elliott talks abstractly of the So in line with the Grisolia school of "leadership", revolutionaries should have crats, who served as the spearhead for Honecker "be judged by the German possibility of making a military bloc with capitalist counterrevolution! contillued on page 10 a wing of the Stalinist bureaucracy against refrained from telling the truth to the open attack by capitalist counterrevo­ Polish masses until it was obvious to all! lution, not only is there no concrete Already in the autumn of 1981, with its first national conference, Solidarnosc The International Communist League Makes Available instance in which he would apply this the Polemics of Its Opponents on the Left "hypothesis", in his document to the PST consolidated around an openly counter­ he in effect dismisses Trotsky's position revolutionary programme of "free elec­ on this as null and void. Thus Elliott tions", "free trade unions" and opposition outlandishly claims that: to a planned economy. This programme didn't come from nowhere, for the impe­ Just Out! Hate Trotskyism, "all of Spartacist's politics concerning the workers states are an extrapolation of the rialists, as the whole world now knows, Hate the Spartacist League hypothesis of a bloc with one Stalinist were massively bankrolling and brain­ tendency against the others as envisaged trusting Solidarnosc counterrevolution. in the Transitional Program. A hypothesis Now Elliott writes that "With the advent Hate Trotskyism, that was based on the existence of the of the Walesa government and the Hate the /lUMBER 7 'Reiss faction,' that is, a revolutionary measures taken, the awakening is rather Spartacist League tendency in the bureaucracy. A tendency painful." We might point out that this IntrodUction which was massacred the very year said "awakening" is rather more painful for No.7 program was written." "Real Trotskyist Platform Or Spartacist Platform" the Polish working class, which is being Contribution 10 the Debata with Algerian PST Militants ground down by unemployment, poverty £1 (24 pages) by Damian Ellloli. editor 01 I"EgaItr9. newspape, of the JCR. Trotsky understood that the Kremlin youth group of French s&c"on 01 the Unile

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1992 5 ~. " ~: :.. >: .. ,~. <: ~. ~ ~ :' ./'~ ------11 PART 2 ]1------THE "QUIT INDIA" MOVEMENT 50 YEARS ON STALINIST ALLIANCE WITH CHURCHILL BETRAYED INDIAN EVOLUTION

worked out on the plea that they would damage the war effort or help profascist elements to sabotage it, ego CC plenum reports, articles in weekly People's War. Quit India movement was opposed, on the same basis the Forward Bloc and socialists who attacked communists as 'British agents' were denounced in retali­ ation as fifth column and fascist agents. In B. T. Ranadive's report to the first congress on 'Working Class and National Defence' it was stated that production is 'a sacred trust' and 'conditional support of production was a left-nationalist devi­ ation' therefore 'strikes should be firmly prevented'." In addition to its self-confessed "anti­ struggle" line during the war, the CPI as well played straight into the hands of British imperialism's schemes to con­ sciously promote communalist divisions.

CPI and Britain's "Divide-and-Rule" From the outset, all Indian nationalism was "a theme scored with religious, class, caste, and regional variations" (Wolpert, A New History of India), which given its social origins, was dominantly Hindu and upper-caste-based and frequently openly reaction;rry. A prime example was the early Congress "Extremist" leader BG Tilak, who first made his mark when he opposed the token reformist 1891 "Age of consent" Bill (raising the age of statu­ tory rape of child brides from ten to Peasant rally under red flag in Punjab. During WWII CPI held back agrarian struggle and pandered to communalist twelve) under the war cry "Religion in Muslim League, helping to lay basis for Partition blood-bath. danger!" Gandhi alienated vast numbers of Muslims with his explicitly Hindu-myth In their efforts to crush the Indian its "mentor" role to the Indian Commu­ tem of repreSSive legislation, progressively and scripture-based rhetoric, describing independence struggle and radical social nists. inaugurating a gendarme regime not less his utopia as Ram Rajya ("the kingdom struggle, imperialist Britain, Churchill's Having enlisted enthusiastically in the systematic and ruthless than that of of Ram" - the Hindu epic hero-god). wartime coalition and Attlee's Labour "People's War" the Communist Parties Russian czarism or German fascism. Since the commencement of the imperial­ Such themes are the basis for subsequent government alike, and the bourgeois­ not only insisted on "sacrillces" (ie, no ist war, repression has been many times fascistic Hindu chauvinism, such as the landlord lackeys in the Congress and strike pledges, cessation of social intensified. Even those nominal rights BJP jRSS combine today. In the absence Muslim League were fully aided and struggle) from the working classes within previously possessed by the masses have of a communist leadership consciously abetted by the treacherous Stalinist trinity the "democratic" imperialist countries but been openly withdrawn, and a naked rule able to transcend and combat it by bring­ of the Kremlin, the Communist Party of also from the colonial slaves of those of terror substituted through the Defense ing the revolutionary proletarian, anti­ Great .Britain and the Communist Party imperialisms. Thus, when resistance to of India Act.... The press has been gag­ communal, integrated class axis decisively of India. The first part of this article (see British rule broke out in India, the Bridsh ged by a series of iniquitous Press Acts to bear on the events leading up to 1947, Workers Hammer no 131, Septemberj Stalinists (as well as the CPI) denounced and a systematic police censorship of all this poison was bound to skewer any publications. Rights of free speech and October) concluded: the struggle as playing "into the hands of assembly have been so curtailed that they possibility of a progressive solution to "During this period of subordination to the Axis powers" (Black, Stalinism in are practically non-existent. Radical and India's complex internal problems. Churchill and in line with the British Britain). CPGB leader Harry Pollitt wrote revolutionary political parties are com­ Far from communalism being an "eter­ divide-and-rule stratagems, the CPI flirted to Churchill with the following advice: pelled to lead an underground existence. nal" feature of the Indian landscape, as with the feudalist, British-backed Muslim "our [!) paramount aim must be to win the racist imperialist apologists would League. It even .decided there was a the willing co-operation of the Indian "The right to strike no longer exists in all have it, it was the British who, through Muslim 'nation' and adopted for some nation in the common struggle against 'essential war industries' .... Thousands of their systematic backing of one commun­ time the project of Pakistan. Later, they militant mass leaders have been impri­ would shift back to fawning blandish­ Fascism". At its Congress in 1944 the ity against another to subjugate both, CPGB emphatically rejected indepen­ soned on flimsy pretexts or detained ments to Gandhi's Congress. We will take without trial. The restriction of individual consciously nurtured this phenomenon as up in greater detail these and other con­ dence before the war ended, instructing movement by means of externment and well as other caste, religious and national crete examples of their perfidy and how the Indian masses that: "Establishment of internment orders has become a com­ differences. Following the 1857 Sepoy Stalinist betrayal helped pave the way for a representative Indian National Govern­ monplace ... " (quoted in Henry Judd, Mutiny (signillcantly sparked by the the 'solution' of the Churchills, Mount­ ment as an ally of the United Nations India in Revolt). refusal by Muslim and upper-caste Hindu battens and Cripps in the second and during the war, and freedom for the sepoys [soldiers) alike to bite a new concluding part of this article." Indian people to choose their own form By contrast the ban on the CPI was lifted cartridge coated with animal fat) which of Government after the war" was the by a grateful British Raj in 1942 and a far exceeded the bounds of the initial Before turning to the CPI's own contribu­ government circular of 20 September tion to the horrors of the Partition, it is order of the day. Black's description of triggering episodes and revealed the these Stalinists as the "Empire builders of 1943 praised the CPI as "almost the only depth of anti-British anger in the country, worth reviewing the line of the Commu­ Party which fought for victory". A CPI nist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) on the British 'Communist' Party" is apt. Governor General Elphinstone urged: The Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India, self-criticism produced years later is "Our endeavor should be to uphold in India during World War II, not least damning enough about what this meant: becau:;e the CPGB were the agency for revolutionary Trotskyists, described the full force the (for us) fortunate separ­ enforcing the subordination of the strug­ situation in India during the war: "It adopted an antistruggle antistrike line. ation which exists between the different gle for independence to Churchill's war in "British imperialism has instituted a sys- A. line of avoiding mass struggles was religions and races: not to endeavor to

6 WORKERS HAMMER amalgamate them" (Henry Judd, India in relief work that the CPI organised during their attempts to extricate themselves men. Revolt). From this to the creation of the Bengal famine. That famine in 1943 from India. Right up to the day of the invasion separate Hindu and Muslim electorates in was a direct result of the imperialist war: Undoubtedly the INA was popular, Stalin was shipping vital raw materials to 1905-6 and thence to a series of other wartime inflation, grain speculation and particularly in Bengal, and among its Germany. Warnings and precise intelli­ notorious "Communal Awards" culminat­ hoarding exacerbated by the loss of grain ranks were those seeking a way to fight gence from Trepper's Red Orchestra and ing in the Partition: the imperialist logic from Burma led to mass starvation. The British imperialism rather than "turning Richard Sorge in Japan were labelled as of "divide-and-rule" was clear. arrogant indifference of the colonial the other cheek" a la Gandhi. However "English provocations" and not passed on The novel Tamas no doubt truly por­ administration was compounded by the paeans offered to Bose in, for ex­ to the general staff. Stalin forbade the trays the efforts of CPI militants in the Churchill's decision to cut back shipping ample, a feature article in the 4 August dispersal of the air force (and it was Punjab to fight the communalist slaughter to India. AJP Taylor noted "A million Asian Times as achieving "a signal vic­ consequently massacred on the ground) during the Partition, but that blood-bath and a half Indians died of starvation for tory" and providing "the last nail in the and ruled out any effective planning of was prepared both by the cprs general the sake of a white man's quarrel in coffm of British rule in India" miss the defence in depth. Even after the invasion support to the bourgeois nationalists and North Africa" (English History 1914- point that larger world events had inter­ had begun, Stalin countermanded orders its particular wartime policies with 1945). vened and in fact Bose had subordinated for the artillery to return flre, and for­ respect to the Muslim question. One The cprs famine relief work was not himself to the Axis powers who were bade air-raid precautions in cities under aspect of the Cripps' Mission proposals in part of some revolutionary agitation Britain's imperialist rivals during the war. attack. The criminal conduct of Stalin and 1942 was a concession aimed at the Mus­ against the war, but linked closely to its Where the CPI bowed before Churchill, his gang directly led to the loss of two lim League that areas could "opt out". "war effort" on the food production the INA functioned at the behest of and and a half million soldiers in 1941, huge Given that Jinnah's Muslim League had "front". Even if it did assist many in dire under the protection of the Japanese areas of territory (including important pledged "benevolent neutrality" in the straits, the cprs famine relief work was imperialists. As the Japanese forces industrial plants which Stalin had refused imperialist war and the importance of a variant of Salvation Army mission work scored victories in rapid succession at to locate east of the Volga until that recruitment from Muslim Punjabis, Path­ for Winston Churchill. In Bengal the CPI Hong Kong, Malaya, Singapore and summer) and an almost fatal blow being ans and Baluchis for the British Indian lost cadre because of its flirtation with Burma the possibility of a Japanese delivered to the workers state. Army, this was a crucial divide-and-rule inv,asion and victory in India was strongly The Soviet Union survived because attempt to uphold the British war effort. felt. Bose had thrown his lot in with despite Stalin the Red Army fought tooth The CPI, in its Central Party Education another would-be colonial conqueror. The and nail to stop the onslaught. In Decem­ Department's Guidelines of the History of INA fought in Burma - just as Chiang ber 1941 Zhukov's effective counterattack the Communist Party of India (1974) Kai-shek's Kuomintang fought on the was wrecked by Stalin's personal med­ admits the "serious mistake our party other side with American imperialism. dling and as late as the summer of 1942 made on the question of Pakistan": Both the Kuomintang and the INA subor­ the simple incompetence of Stalin and "With the antistruggle line referred to dinated the national struggle to their one of his toadies led to the loss of above went the right-opportunist ap­ respective imperialist overlords. In China 200,000 men in the Crimea. It was only proach to the question of Congress­ and in Southeast Asia the colonial masses with the emergence of a competent layer League (or national) unity, logically cul­ very quickly learnt that the Japanese of generals not liable to listen so much to minating in our support to Pakistan and masters were no better than their deeply Stalin that the heroism of the Red Army the akali demand for sikh homeland. and Soviet peoples was turned into the Failure to build up enough pressure on hated English, American, Dutch and British imperialists and to build unity French masters. The tragedy in India, and liberation of the Soviet homeland and from below led to helpless reliance on especially Bengal, was that the masses Eastern Europe from the Nazi scourge. unity from above. 'Destiny of the nation were given no choice but subordination to Not only did Stalin's general policies of depends on national unity - Congress­ one or another imperialist. "socialism in one country" lead to near League unity' which with Jinnah adamant These betrayals in India expose those fatal catastrophe but his particular mili­ on his demand for Pakistan led to trailing such as the Stalinists of the Lalkar publi­ tary contribution was disastrous. behind the Muslim League in order to bring Gandhi-Jinnah together." cation of the Indian Workers Association who absurdly insist that "revisionism" For a revolutionary proletarian The CPI went from denouncing the Mus­ began with Khrushchev's reign. For them, solution! lim League as reactionary and commun­ Demonstrators massacred by British "So long as Comrade Stalin was in the authorities during protest in support At independence the subcontinent alist (which it was) to generally giving it leadership of the CPSU and was organ­ faced the unspeakable horrors of Parti­ more favourable coverage than Congress. of Indian sailors' mutiny, February ising the tireless vigilance that needed to tion and today it remains one of the most 1946. Muslim League General Secretary be exercised" "trounc[ing]" "the reaction­ impoverished, oppressed and exploited Liaquat Ali Khan for example praised the the Muslim League, and it is noteworthy ary Trotskyite and Bukharinite op­ areas in the world, a veritable prison­ CPI for its "ceaseless efforts to convince that in areas where the CPI dominated position" all was well! (In fact, the house for national minorities, women and the Hindu masses of the justice of the the peasant associations ~uch as eastern CPI(M) still celebrates Stalin's birthday lower castes. The communalist slaughters demand for the rights of self-determina­ Bengal and Telangana the peasant in Calcutta.) And the Stalinists today engulfing Partition killed between one tion to Muslims". And CPI leader Joshi struggles over land and usury were re­ prefer not to talk too much about their and two million Muslims, Sikhs and argued in August 1944 for strong and strained during the war compared to record in India during the Second World Hindus (mainly in Punjab and Bengal) independent Muslim states in the north­ other areas. War, not only because it is such an af­ and the forced migrations in its aftermath west and north-east. Additionally in late The situation in Bengal impinges front to the revolutionary aspirations of displaced over eleven million. A New 1944 the CPI argued for separate elector­ directly on the question of Subhas the masses but also because they continue York Times correspondent, Robert Trum­ ates for Untouchables, exactly in line with Chandra Bose and the Indian National to pursue a class-collaborationist alliance bull, reported of the Partition: "In India British imperialist "divide-and-rule" Army (INA). There are Stalinoid critics with the Indian bourgeoisie. today blood flows oftener than rain falls. manoeuvres at that time. of Gandhi's Congress (and thus presum­ Instead they seek to hide behind the I have seen dead by the hundreds and, The cprs flirtation with the Muslim ably its CPI tails) who look to Bose's figure of Stalin as a great war leader who worst of all, thousands of Indians without League and Pakistan was not some INA as a revolutionary alternative. At defeated fascist barbarism. Somehow the eyes, feet or hands. Death by shooting is healthy attempt to grapple with the com­ one time a left critic within Congress and Stalinist sins in India are to be exoner­ merciful and uncommon" (quoted in plexities of the national question as some elected as its head over the objections of ated on the basis that Stalin saved man­ Collins and Lapierre, Freedom at Mid­ apologists have suggested, but a direct Gandhi et al, Bose split to form the kind. To this end, LalkaT's Harpal Brar night). Muslim babies were discovered product of the alliance with Churchill and Forward Bloc Party in Bengal. Forward turgidly regurgitates all the old Stalinist "roasted like piglets on spits" and the 45- their efforts to cement that alliance. After Bloc was banned and Bose arrested in lies about Tukhachevsky being an agent mile road from Lahore to Amritsar be­ all the Muslim League was also opposed 1940; he escaped on the eve of his trial in of Hitler to justify his murder and the came such an "open graveyard" that, to the "Quit India" struggles. And when 1941 and travelled across northern India purge of the Red Army officer corps in according to one British officer, "The the CPI "corrected" its flirtation with the to Afghanistan, from there to Moscow. his book Perestroika: The Complete Col­ vultures had become so bloated by their feudalist Muslim League it was only to During the pre-June Russo-German lapse of Revisionism. In the course of feasts they could no longer fly". A swing back to bourgeois Congress, pol­ alliance, Bose was welcomed by Hitler these bloody purges - between 1937 and stationmaster at Amritsar recounted what icies that led directly to the CPI and and "given high-powered radio facilities 1939 (ie beginning during the popular had initially seemed to be a "phantom CPI(M)'s refusal today to defend legit­ to beam daily broadcasts to front period) - the Red Army lost three train", one of many rolling into Punjabi imate national struggles such as those of India ... urging his countrymen to rise in of its five Marshals, all eleven of its stations at the time: "The floor of the the Kashmiris and the Sikhs. revolt against British tyranny" (Wolpert). Deputy Commissars for Defence, 75 of 80 compartment before him was a mass of In the service of tailing Congress, CPI In the spring of 1943, Bose travelled to of its members of the Military soviet, all human bodies, throats cut, skulls leader PC Joshi reached new depths of Southeast Asia whereupon Tojo turned its military district commanders who held smashed, bodies eviscerated. Arms, legs, Stalinist prostration before the leader of over all his Indian POWs to Bose's com­ that post in June 1937. The naval and air trunks of bodies were strewn along the India's Kuomintang. At the time of mand. In January 1944 he started his chiefs of staff were killed. Thirteen out of corridors of compartments .... He turned Gandhi's release from prison in 1944, Indian National Army on their march 15 army commanders were shot, 57 out to look back at the train. As he did, he Joshi declared: north crossing the borders of India and of 85 corps commanders were shot, as saw in great white-washed letters on the "Gandhiji, the beloved leader of the reached the outskirts of Tripura's state were 110 out of the 195 divisional com­ flank of the last car the [Pakistani] Mos­ greatest patriotic organisation of our capital, Imphal, by May. Defeated by the manders. In the Far Eastern forces, over lem assassins' calling card. 'This train is people, the mighty Indian National Con­ British garrison, the INA surrendered in 80 per cent of the staff were purged. our Independence gift to [Indian Con­ gress is back in our midst again .... Every Rangoon and Bose escaped on the last son and daughter of India, every patriotic Tukhachevsky had predicted an attack gress nationalists] Nehru and Patel''' organisation of our land, is lOOking to the Japanese plane to leave Saigon. He died like Operation Barbarossa and he and his (ibid). greatest son of our nation to take it out in Formosa after a crash landing. When comrades had a lively sense of techno­ The lessons of the struggle for Indian of the bog in which none is safe." the captured officers of Bose's INA went logical innovation. These experienced and independence and the social liberation of on trial in the winter of 1945-6 they were talented veterans of the Civil War were India's toiling masses are crucial not only Amidst this record of sordid betrayal, widely heralded as nationalist martyrs. On replaced by incompetent cronies of Stalin, for revolutionaries on the subcontinent acknowledged by the Stalinists' own self­ 18 February 1946 the Royal Indian Navy who abolished the Red Army's tank units but in all those countries where the per­ criticisms, about the only thing left for mutinied in Bombay harbour; the mutiny - one of these replacements thought manent revolution applies, from South them to point to in that period is the spread to Karachi. The British stepped up automatic weapons were just for police- continued on page 9

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1992 7 in the shape of Winston Churchill Minor fake lefts-like Workers Power, the the bosses' Murder, Inc. are ex-miners. Pit closures ... and a slew of Thatcherites. What we need WRP, Militant-were on the side of A class-struggle programme to bring is the mobilisation of the working class in Solidarnosc then just as they were on the out rail, transport and power workers (Continued from page 1) the miners' defence; the political indepen­ barricades with Boris Yeltsin's capitalist­ alongside the miners opens up the possi­ dence of the proletariat from its class restorationist counter-putsch in Moscow bility of a revolutionary fight. When the over the pit closures onto the road of enemies and their agents within the work­ in August 1991. The bosses and their trains stop running, the lights go out and parliamentary adjustments. It could not ers movement! It won't solve anything to Labour lackeys have pursued a vendetta the City grinds to a halt it's not just a be more clear that the Labour traitors have a few Labour behinds warming against Scargill and the NUM, for rightly matter of "pulling the plug on Major" but and their trade union misleaders are the ministerial seats. And the whole popular­ accepting "Russian gold" from Soviet poses point blank which class will rule. main obstacle to the necessary struggle front lash up is rushing to save British miners. In October 1990 at a Soviet min­ And such a struggle will not be led by the against not just a discredited and wretch­ capitalism. ers conference, we Spartacists of the anti-Communist Labourite leftists whose ed government, but the capitalist system In the aftermath of the Cold War, the International Communist League (Fourth empty calls to "Sack Major" in reality which has led inexorably to the deindus­ imperialists' "new world order" has al­ Internationalist) temporarily spiked a bid translate into some sort of National Gov­ trialisation of these isles and the vindic­ ready revealed itself as capitalist disorder by UDM and American AFL-CIO hacks ernment or a Labour government com­ tive attack on the militant miners. This -preparations for interimperialist war, to poison Soviet miners against the prised of the Kinnockites who knifed the battle cannot be waged within the frame­ a rising tide of racism and fascism, re­ NUM. Those who pimped for capitalist last miners strike and will take over the work of Labourite parliamentarism, newed attacks on the unions. The assault counterrevolution in the Soviet Union administration of decaying capitalism for lobbies of the TUC, or any other sort of on coal miners is part of the British and Eastern Europe have and will betray their masters. legalistic gimmicks. Decaying British bourgeoisie's enforcement of capitalist again the workers here. It is no accident that Militant appeals capitalism cannot be reformed, lobbied, austerity in the context of the widely The heroic yearlong strike of 1984-85 to capitalist "logic" - not to mention legislated into providing a decent living hated Maastricht Treaty. But while the was isolated and betrayed by Labourite national chauvinism - pointing to how wage and life for the working people: it is bosses were not w long ago boasting traitors like Ramsay MacKinnock and much cheaper British coal is than Ger­ necessary to smash the profit system root about the "death of communism", work­ Norman Willis - this time the miners man coal, without any word, let alone and branch! ers throughout Europe are increasingly must not fight alone! Britain is already an criticism of the Labour Party's role. So­ Trade unionists, the unemployed, combative, from the German public industrial wasteland, and every day thou­ cialist Organiser grovel to the Labour pensioners, students, minorities, un­ workers strike this spring, a massive sands of additional job cuts are an­ traitors, demanding they campaign for a organised and immigrant workers: this strike wave in Greece, and the biggest nounced. British Rail, London Under­ General Election: "Kick the Tories out!" fight is our fight! These brutal measures workers mobilisation in Italy since the ground, British Telecom: massive redun­ and providing spineless tactical advice to against the miners are designed to oblit­ "hot autumn" of 1969. Italian workers dancies are in the works. The trade union the TUC on how to keep its calls within erate the most class-conscious section of have made this a "hot autumn" not only tops have stood by without lifting a fmger bourgeois legality. The Socialist Workers workers in this country. Thatcher's heirs for the bosses but the sellout labour as hundreds of thousands of jobs have Party of Tony Cliff can only say of the and their Labour quislings have not for­ lieutenants of capitalism as well. Thus, been slashed. Even a bourgeois journalist Labour Party for which they actively gotten the massive support from all sec­ trade union bureaucrats were pelted with from Scotland on Sunday can note: "It is campaign no matter where, no matter tions "of the working class and oppressed a hail of eggs, tomatoes, red paint and a historical irony that would have made when: "more people supported the min­ for the miners' bitterly fought battle in bolts from workers shouting "traitor" in Leon Trotsky laugh out loud. Just when ers during the 1984-85 strike than voted 1984-85. Heseltine's "stay of execution" Florence and Milano last month. Defying you thought it was safe to embrace the Labour in the subsequent general elec­ for 21 of the pits after a massive popular the clerical-nationalist Solidarnosc "free market, capitalism blows up in your tions". Yes - because even despite Scar­ outcry (extending to Tory backbenchers market" regime, Polish workers are re­ face." gill's call on his members to support the with their own axe to grind) is nothing sisting their systematic subordination to Shut down the pits - from Yorkshire vile scabherder Kinnock many miners and but a continuation of government plans to the IMF. A strike wave throughout the to Scotland, Wales and Notts! Those their supporters would not stomach a smash the miners and the entire trade summer embraced the coal and copper redundancy payments mean little stacked vote to Labour. Such cannot be said union movement. They couldn't get away mines and workers chanted "Down with up against a lifetime on the dole. While about the British fake left. Workers Pow­ with the whole hog, but their backtrack­ Walesa!" predictably the scabherding clique around er (17 October leaflet to TUC General ing will be reversed at the fust opportun­ Above all what's necessary to win here soon-to-be-retired UDM head Roy Lynk Council lobby) doesn't breathe a word of ity. Let's be clear: if the bosses succeed, and abroad is a revolutionary leadership of opposed industrial action, many Notts criticism of the Labour Party, but moans there will be no NUM, no mining jobs, the working class! The Labour traitors­ miners who thought they would get spe­ that "it would be fatal to rely on support whole communities devastated and in­ echoed by their fake-left camp followers cial treatment under the Tory government from Liberal and Tory MPs. Every one of creased reaction down the line. The - will try to push protectionist poison are beginning to realise that scabbing them will support using the anti-union wretched, incompetent and desperate against workers abroad: but the intema­ doesn't pay. (And we can support the laws against workers giving solidarity". As British ruling class hopes to wield this tional support to striking miners - from sentiment that at least one shaft should be every worker knows, the Labour Party final assault on the miners as the spear­ South Africa to the USSR - was key in sealed tight during Lynk's so-called sit-in.) pledged to maintain these anti-union head of its war against all the organised the heroic battle of 1984-85. On the eve The increasingly hated government can laws. While criticising the most blatant working class and oppressed. of the last miners strike, the Fleet Street and must be defeated, but that requires manifestations of popular frontism, all The time to strike is now! Scargill now press viciously witch hunted Scargill for linking the miners to other sections of the these fake lefts are in fact for an anti­ says "we need a public debate and an his correct statement that the company working class in massive anti-capitalist working-class Labour government. Most independent inquiry". Thus he has placed union Polish Solidarnosc was anti-social­ struggle. For a solid strike of miners, of these birds want to sing for a "General himself in the van of an extremely pure ist. The same TUC tops who scabbed on power, rail and transport workers! For Strike" which for them is but an extra­ form of popular front which extends from the miners endorsed this red-baiting, elected strike committees to co-ordinate parliamentary tactic to make John Smith the TUC and Labour Party, through scandalously initiated by the Workers the struggles! Dump the labour traitors! the next Harold Wilson. And should the odious UDM scab leaders to the Church Revolutionary Party of Gerry Healy/Cliff For a fighting programme to get what we Labour Party enter into a pact with sec­ of England bishops and Tory Party rebels Slaughter. And the whole lot of Labourite need, not what the capitalists say they can tions of the Liberals or other bourgeois afford: smash the privatisation schemes outfits, there is every reason to believe and cuts in social spending, no sackings, Workers Power et al would repeat their tion in the Soviet Union, Workers Power jobs for all through worksharing at full betrayal in 1977 when they supported the Vienna •.. has more than moved far to the right -it pay, for a big pay boost and full cost-of­ Lib-Lab pact. has become unhinged. living protection! We said at the conclusion of the min­ (Continued from page 3) WP's Great Serbian "united front" is The unions must be mobilised in strug­ ers strike in 1985: "The key lesson of this now infamous throughout the European gle, but appealing to the TUC tops­ strike is the burning need to forge a Yugoslavian Stalinists whose later "mar­ left, but the pages of Workers Power in whose recent invitation to the head of the revolutionary workers party so that the ket socialism" policies paved the way for Britain have contained not a word of this CEI led to Scargill's own walk-out at the next battle can end in victory" (Workers the triumph of counterrevolution, we "work" of its Austrian section. (Instead, TUC Conference - or relying on the Hammer no 67, March 1985). Trade Trotskyist~ stand with the tradition of you can read Workers Power's self-serv­ Jimmy Knapps is just as much a recipe union reformism is a dead end, and for Tito's partisans against those like LRCI ing apologies for gooning leftists at the' for defeat as looking towards the tender all his militancy Scargill has kept workers who have grossly defended in turn behest of the anarcho-thugs of Red mercies of the Churchills. Today the tied to the traitorous Labour Party. Ustashi-loving Croatian nationalists and Action who dominate "Anti-Fascist pathetic TUC misleader Willis bleats that What's necessary is to forge a Bolshevik Chetnik-loving Serbs. Amid the horror of Action".) If Workers Power's leadership workers must abide by the bosses' anti­ party in the course of sharp class strug­ nationalist slaughter, a new generation of thought their alliance with Serbian mon­ union laws. Miners got it right in 1984 gle, splitting the working-class base from internationalist Yugoslav proletarian archists and fascists could be thus swept when they lowered a noose by Willis at a the pro-capitalist tops of the Labour militants will have to be cohered to under the rug in its little English home­ strike rally. And miners will also remem­ Party. We are fighting to forge such a defeat the counterrevolutionary drive. land, they're more unhinged than even we ber that trade union "lefts" like Knapp Leninist/Trotskyist party! We need work­ The ASt should have been something thought. In Russia, the political platform helped sabotage the 1984 strike by send­ ers rule and the establishment of a plan­ of an embarrassment ever since it alibied which the ASt shared with the monarch­ ing back to work railworkers who struck ned, collectivised economy and a five-year the Nazi war criminal Kurt Waldheim, ists/Chetniks is called the "Red-Brown" alongside the NUM. plan or two to overcome the devastation calling two years after his exposure to bloc. Workers Power's LRCI now bears Screw the bosses' laws - as striking of capitalism in Britain. Under capitalism "unconditionally subordinate all his deci­ the "distinction" of singularly translating militants put it eight years ago: "The only there won't be a "rational" policy on sions to parliament" and to pay him "the the "Red-Brown bloc" to the murderous illegal strike is one that loses." Then energy or anything else - to rebuild the average wage of a skilled worker". But competing nationalisms of the Balkan miners said "bollocks to the ballot", economy in the interests of the working with its soft core support to German cockpit that have savagely torn apart the defying the government and spreading the people will require the co-ordinated unification under capitalism, its goading Yugoslav deformed workers state. Now strike through the coalfields. Millions of efforts of at least several workers states of the "one-fatherland" mobs of skin­ all the "old crap" is coming back and workers, jobless and oppressed are look­ with an evolved division of labour. Not a heads and social democrats to "hunt Workers Power are up to their necks in ing to the miners for a lead. For flying call for new elections to install an anti­ down" the Stalinists, its calls on the gov­ it. We think you should be told. pickets to shut down the coalfields, the working-class Labour government, but ernment of Margaret Thatcher to aid the The English translations of material, power stations, rail and transport. No revolutionary class struggle to point the Nazi-infested Lithuanian Sajudis, the which originally appeared in other lan­ coal must move! Call out the brothers way to a federation of workers republics Butchenko scandal and not least openly guages, contained in the above article and sisters in North Sea oil-many of in the British Isles, as part of a Socialist siding with Yeltsin/Bush counterrevolu- were made by the ICL. these largely unorganised workers fighting United States of Europe!.

8 ,WORKERS HAMMER -'- " ' . " '.# '. "\~: ~. '. '. "'1:' union embracing all transport workers! No sell-outs - no arbitration! Above all, London tube workers: strike to win! what is necessary is a class-struggle lead­ ership to prevent treachery by the bur­ eaucrats and lead the strike to victory. London Underground's vicious "Com­ have the power to shut down London­ and socia! spending. London transport For elected strike committees! Such strike pany Plan" must be smashed through and without London this country won't union leaders have already accepted committees, chosen from among the most determined strike action. Management run. Millions of working people­ whole parts of the "Company Plan", sig­ militant and determined workers, should wants to slash 5000 jobs - a quarter of outraged at the closures of pits and hos­ nificant chunks of transport operations appeal to other unions - miners, hospital the workforce - and institute a regime of pitals, the massive unemployment - will have been privatised or contracted out, workers, power workers - for joint class virtual slavery and massive intimidation love watching the City fat cats crawl for a while workers' militancy has been thrown struggle. where you don't have a job if you don't change. The working people want to fight away by limiting struggles to one-day Exactly five years ago thirty-one people lick the bosses' boots. The union and a solid London transport strike could actions. Last spring Knapp, among others, were incinerated and scores injured and misleaders have grovelled so long that the galvanise broad sections of the trade derailed strike action in the service of the severely burned in the King's Cross bosses think they can get rid of the union movement in struggle. Labour Party's effort to court the bankers inferno. This was no accident, but wanton unions altogether - pitting the workers Above all what the workers need is a and bosses at election time. capitalist murder through negligence. against each other, threatening to sack fighting anti-capitalist leadership. The The union tops have put transport Now, the profit-gouging bosses want to anyone who strikes or who doesn't sign attack on London tube workers is the workers in a hole, but this is no time for slash more jobs in the dilapidated Under­ their phoney "contracts". government's answer to the toothless defeatism: every worker must answer the ground. For free, safe, decent public But these scare tactics won't work if all "days of action" and lobbies of parlia­ RMT's strike call and take his place on transport! The workers who sweat in the transport workers - RMT, ASLEF and ment sponsored by the trade union the picket line. Shut down the tubes­ factories, mines and Underground must TSSA - strike together. They can't fire misleaders. The Labour Party traitors and spread the strike to the buses and rule. Dump the labour sell-outs - for a the entire workforce - and they can't run hate class struggle because they want to British Rail through flying mass pickets! revolutionary workers party! For workers the tubes, buses and trains with court administer the stinking capitalist system bne out, all out: fight together - or hang action committees to smash ths bosses' injunctions or cops! Transport workers that dictates union-busting, cuts in jobs separately! For one powerful industrial attacks and to run the country!.

Russian revolutionaries Leon Trotsky for the conquest of power .... " ("The the lessons of October to the workers of India ... called for "a revolutionary workers' govem­ Struggle for Power") every land. ment, the conquest of power by the Rus­ (Continued from page 7) Because the Bolsheviks were committed Today we in the International Commu­ sian proletariat": to such a programme, the Russian Revo­ nist League (Fourth Internationalist) fight Africa to Iran. A Leninist -Trotskyist party "But revolution is first and foremost a lution of 1917 produced the first workers to forge a revolutionary international must be built in irreconcilable struggle question of power - not of the state state on the planet. The USSR stood then which Lenin and Trotsky would recognise against every kind of nationalism and form (constituent assembly, republic, as a beacon for the colonial and semi­ as their own. It will be an especially grat­ united states) but of the social content of popular frontism, counterposing a revo­ the government. The demands for a colonial masses struggling for their liber­ ifying victory when the workers of the lutionary programme for the emancipa­ constituent assembly and the confiscation ation, as well as for the exploited working entire Indian subcontinent lead all the tion and reconstruction of the oppressed of land under present conditions lose all masses in the imperialist countries. Lenin oppressed in throwing off the chains of nation under the dictatorship of the prolet­ direct revolutionary significance without and Trotsky's Third International, later to neocolonial enslavement through victori­ ariat. Writing in 1915 of the tasks for the readiness of the proletariat to fight be destroyed by Stalin, sought to bring ous socialist revolution .•

clerical reaction here in Ireland. Abortion the Workers Party, would be a signal that reformists and centrists stand qualitatively Irish rights have been among the very first thousands of Irish workers have had to the right of even those in the pre­ targets of the capitalist restorationist eno"ugh of the years of sacrifice and the World War I Second International who Elections ... regimes in East Germany and Poland. FF lies" . Yes, they've had enough - but were outraged at the French socialist (Continued from page 12) Indeed the role of the Catholic Church in the popular front offers more of the Millerand joining a bourgeois govern­ Poland today mirrors that of the Church same! Militant Socialist likewise head­ ment. coalition. We say: Down with all fontlS of in Ireland - spearheading attacks not lines: "Kick Them Out! Vote For Left Groups like the IWG have belatedly class collaboration from the PESP to only on abortion rights but also divorce, Candidates" and in a new low of parlia­ tried to catch up with the sentiments of electoral blocs/ For the complete indepen­ contraception and secular education. We mentary cretinism announce that Labour masses of women and started to call for dence of the working class! in the International Communist League "should force Fianna Fail and Fine Gael free abortion on demand. But this more The explosive nature of the abortion (Fourth Internationalist) - of which the into coalition, and then lead a mass radical-sounding rhetoric is utterly gain­ question today is graphically demonstra­ Dublin Spartacist Group is the Irish movement of opposition to them, to said by the fact that they wish to put in ted in the ominous appearance of the sympathising group - fought down the prepare the way for a Labour govern­ power the Labour Party and Workers sinister Youth Defence. Fronting the line against the reunification of Germany ment"! (This is the same outfit which has Party, neither of which even defend legal­ reaction to the demand for abortion under capitalism, Solidarnose in Poland actually argued that the "Army and Gar­ ised abortion. rights, its provocations have steadily and Yeltsin/Bush counterrevolution in dai should have the right to refuse to The workers and women of Ireland are grown. It has held night-riding pickets at the Soviet Union. But, doing their bit for break strikes" in its October issue.) being offered increasing capitalist misery the homes of mainstream politicians the "new world order" groups such as the The Irish Workers Group have an­ from the reformist parties and their tame considered "pro-abortion", organised Socialist Workers Movement, Militant, nounced it "will call for a vote for Labour left tails. The struggle for such elemen­ marct.es of aggressive thugs in Dublin Irish Workers Group apd People's Dem­ and Democratic Left and urge workers' tary rights as the separation of church and recently launched a full-scale assault ocracy took their side on the barricades organisations to demand full co-operation and state, free abortion on demand, free with pick-axe handles against leftist pro­ of the counterrevolution - with Solidar­ between the parties to maximise the vote 24-hour childcare and free, quality health testers, hospitalising several. Youth De­ nose, with Anschluss in Germany, with against the openly capitalist parties"! But care to name but a few will be won on fence is generating a fascist core hark­ the Yeltsinite rabble in Moscow in of course Labour - historically the party the road to the revolutionary overthrow ening back to the Blueshirts. And behind August 1991. of coalition which twice in the 1980s of the capitalist system and the establish­ the ominous figure of Irish fascism there Socialist Worker's "General Election joined a reactionary Fine Gael govern­ ment of a workers state and a planned, will always loom the spectre of Opus Dei, Special" blares: "Kick Out Fianna Fail! ment - is clearly set to make a deal with collectivised economy. We in" the DSG the Knights of Columbanus and the Vote Left But Build a Socialist Alter­ any of the "openly capitalist parties"! For are fighting to build the revolutionary Church hierarchy. While the working native", shamelessly arguing that "a high its part, the pre-split Workers Party, Leninist party necessary to lead the strug­ class of Ireland sent more than its share vote for the main parties of the Irish left, supported the short-lived minority gov­ gle for victorious socialist revolution. No to join the International Brigades in the the Labour Party, Democratic Left and ernment of Fianna Fail in 1982. These to the popular front! Workers to power!. Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, the Church also took its side in openly bless­ ing Blueshirt contingents departing to Workers Hammer subscription drive fight for Franco and fascism! The time to act is now to crush this outfit while it's still in the egg. On counterdemonstrations in Dublin against Youth Defence we have raised the slogans: Workers movement Workers Hammer subscription drive [J 1-year subscription to Workers Hammer for £3 (Overseas subscriptions: Airmail £6.00) take a stand -For free abortion on de­ final totals, October 1992 mand! Workers movement must take [J 1-year subscription to Workers Hammer PLUS 24 issues of Workers Vanguard, action -Smash Youth Defence and Area Quota Total % Marxist fortnightly of the Spartacist League/US for £8.00 ~n points) ~n points) SPUC reaction! All above subscriptions include Spartacist, organ of the International As Irish society polarises over the Glasgow 70 88 126 Communist League (Fourth Internationalis:) abortion issue, the fake left has buried itself firmly in its various sub-reformist London 175 259 148 [J 3 issues of Women & Revolution for £2 "campaigns" to oppose the "bigots" or Name ______"repeal the Eighth Amendment" (which DSG 70 72 103 would simply remove one constitutional Addffiss ______prohibition but leave in place other legis­ Other 9 lation outlawing abortion). Not surpris­ Postcode Telephone ______ingly, these same fake socialists who Make cheques payable/post lID: Spartaclst Publications, PO Box 1041, London NW53EU cheered capitalist counterrevolution from TOTALS 315 428 136 Poland and East Germany to the former Soviet Union fail in the struggle against

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1992 9 drawal from one of the USec's typical for stating, in a speech on the 25th anni­ even a few hundred would have had, not Anti mealy-mouthed, hedge-your-bets reso­ versary of the October Revolution: "The only in Afghanistan but in the Soviet lutions, he hides the fact that the Mandel­ Red Army that the world hails is an army Union? Former Afghan veterans, the ite majority joined the imperialists in created by a proletarian revolution." afgantsy, actually petitioned the Soviet Spartacists ... condemning the Soviet intervention. Elliott recognises that our proposal to government to allow them to go back and Meanwhile, a hefty minority (including a organise an international brigade to fight on a volunteer basis. Consider the (Continued from page 5) near-majority on the LCR central com­ Afghanistan at the time of the pull-out of impact that an international brigade for mittee) had an openly defeatist position Soviet troops in February 1989 was the Afghanistan could have had on subse­ workers". With the SPD as prosecuting calling for Soviet withdrawal. And the "logical conclusion" of our aggressive quent events in the USSR. For that mat­ attorney? majority's "courage" rapidly evaporated, defence of Soviet intervention. At the ter, consider the impact in Algeria, where To be sure, many of the Stalinist rulers as it caved in to the imperialist furor and LTF meeting-debate he denounced it as Islamic fundamentalists sent volunteers to and secret police were guilty of crimes demanded Soviet withdrawal. "adventurist" and "substitutionist" (unlike fight alongside the Afghan counter­ against the working class. But they are This raises the interesting question, to the financial aid campaign-to which revolutionaries. Things might look some­ being charged with the wrong crimes paraphrase Mao: "where do incorrect Elliott contributed-for the civilian victims what different in Algiers today if the before the wrong class. What began as a ideas come from?" Elliott tries to slide in Jalalabad which we conducted when shock troops of the PIS had been nascent political revolution in 1989-90 was over this sticky point by pretending that our brigade offer was not accepted). In bloodied and defeated in Afghanistan. derailed by the intervention of the Fourth "some sections" continued to support his letter to the Algerian PST, this Reich of German imperialism, which cut Soviet intervention, citing the American becomes the occasion for a tirade against "Anti-Imperialist" front with across the whole question of working­ SWP. Even at the outset, the SWP tried "Spartacist guru Robertson" and our Islamic reaction class justice under a proletarian state. to minimise the question of Soviet inter­ supposed "cynicism" in proposing to While the Matti wing of the USec cham­ vention, but by December 1980 Jack recruit, not just "hard Trotskyists", but Elliott can't stomach actually making a pioned the cause of German reunification Barnes' outfit publicly came out for with­ sundry radical elements internationally. military bloc with the Stalinists against and the Mandel wing accepted the imper­ drawal of the Soviet forces. Barnes Just as Elliott can't imagine the masses the bid for power by counterrevolutionary Polish Solidarnosc, cries "Stalinist manip­ ialist annexation of the DDR with some explained that seeing the "Spartacist sect" hailing the Red Army, so imbued is he ulation" over the Spartacist-initiated mass "conditions", the ICL was the only organ­ calling to "Hail Red Army" convinced with Europacifism that he can't conceive anti-fascist pro-Soviet demonstration at isation which forthrightly fought against him that the SWP was "off base". So one of leftist youth angry enough with the Treptow, denounces our call to hail the capitalist reunification. month after the election of Ronald whole system to trek to Afghanistan to Elliott, by sneering at the Treptow Reagan, the quirky reformist Barnesites fight imperialism. Red Army fighting CIA-backed mujah­ mass mobilisation, is dismissing the very got back "on base" with the bourgeoisie. It's nothing but "pulling together ten edin in Afghanistan. But over the Persian Gulf War he is foursquare for a bloc with possibility of a proletarian political revo­ The Mandelite majority, in turn, came lumpens that you were contemptuous of", lution which would have sent shock waves out for Soviet withdrawal in June 1981, he sneered contemptuously in the 25 the Islamic reactionaries of the Algerian FIS. This is simply an extension of the throughout Europe, East and West, in one month after the election of Cold War September debate. What about the possi­ traitorous policy of the USec which particular pointing the way forward to the "socialist" Mitterrand (who they sup­ bility of enlisting fighters from among the beleaguered Soviet proletariat. Now he ported). If the SWP was running scared, thousands of leftist Iranian exiles, or cheered on Khomeini's "Islamic Revolu­ tion" in Iran. And Elliott is quite forth­ amnesties the reunified German imperial­ the LCR smelled opportunities in the Latin American youth inspired by the ist state by objecting to our references to social-democratic union bureaucracy. internationalist example of Che Guevara? right about this as he accuses the ICL of having "a vision of anti-imperialist a Fourth Reich, claiming that the Sparta­ Elliott then takes on our slogan "Hail In India, masses of young Communists struggle so narrow that it led them to cists are "thus placing themselves on the Red Army in Afghanistan!" A typical marched in support of the Kabul regime. sectarian abstentionism on such central terrain of the French Stalinists of the example of "obtuse sectarianism", he Just who does he suppose joined the questions as the Iranian Revolution". Of course, we hardly abstained but rather called for the mobilisation of the power­ ful Iranian proletariat against the shah and Khomeini's mullahs. It is this that sticks in Elliott's craw as he lectures about the "anti-imperialist united front". In justifying the call for a "Workers and People's Front" by the Algerian PST - that is, a popular front with Islamic reactionary forces-Elliott grotesquely attributes the "AUF' to Trotsky. But to accomplish this he has to resort to crude falsification, extracting a clause to give it a meaning counterposed to that intended by Trotsky. The quote he cites does not mention the words "anti-imperialist uni­ ted front", nor does the article it is taken from; nor does Trotsky use this formula at all after the disastrous experience of the Shanghai massacre of 1927, which was prepared by Stalin/Bukharin's "hloc of four classes" with the b_ '-;her Chiang Kai-shek. Moreover, Elliott omits Trot­ sky's call for the proletariat to take power. What Trotsky really said was: "But if the Indian revolution will develop on a basis of a bloc of the workers, peas­ ants, and petty bourgeoisie; if this bloc will be directed not only against imperial­ ism and feudalism but also against the Afghan women under arms prepared to fight to the death against the CIA-backed Mujahedin cutthroats. USec joined national bourgeoisie which is bound up the imperialists in condemning the Soviet intervention on the side of social progress; JCR's Elliott condemns with them in all basic questions; if at the Spartacisf'slogan "Hail Red Armyl" • head of this bloc will stand the prolet­ ariat; if this bloc comes to victory only by PCF with their traditional anti-German claims, designed to separate the Sparta­ international brigades in Spain-plenty of sweeping away its enemies through an xenophobia". Does this mean that our cists from the rest of the left, in the ser­ footloose adventurous types flocked there armed uprising and in this way raises the comrades of the Spartakist Workers Party vice of "self-interest", rather than to to fight against Franco. Don't forget the proletariat to the role of the real leader of Germany are boche-hating French "increase the consciousness of the mas­ "Red '48ers", exiled from Germany after of the whole nation - then the question nationalists? No, it means that Elliott ses". First of all, what separated us from the defeat of the 1848-49 revolution, who arises: in whose hands will the power be squirms at telling the truth about the the rest of the left is that they bowed to spread across the world, fighting in revol­ after the victory if not in the hands of the reactionary consequences of the bour­ imperialist anti-Sovietism, while we were utions and civil wars from Poland to the proletariat?" geois "democratic" counterrevolution in enthusiastically for the Red Army inter­ United States. - "The Revolution in India, Its Tasks and Dangers" (May 1930) Germany. vention, which not only defended the And does Elliott give a moment's USSR's southern flank but also opened thought to the impact that a brigade of Trotsky summarises here the programme Two, three, many lines on the possibility for social liberation in Afghanistan Afghanistan. Our slogan highlighted the temporary contradiction between the On Afghanistan, Elliott pretends to be Spartacist League/Britain Soviet bureaucracy's act of self-defence for military victory of the Soviet forces and its overall counterrevolutionary policy and outrageously claims (in his letter to Glasgow PO Box 150 London PO Box 1041 the Algerian PST) that the USec "early of peaceful coexistence. Glasgow G3 6DX London NW5 3EU on took a courageous and correct posi­ Elliott calls our slogan "Stalinophilic". 041-332 0788 071-485 1396 tion". Courageous, correct? He is cynical­ The Stalinists, of course, never hailed the Dublin Spartacist Group ly presuming ignorance among young Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Elliott comrades who have no personal knowl­ PO Box 2944 should likewise denounce as Stalinophilic Dublin 1 edge of the USec's actual policies. While American Trotskyist leader James P 01-783674 quoting some lines against Soviet with- Cannon (whom he claims as a mentor)

10 WORKERS HAMMER Cf) has tailed behind the various kingdoms, '0 II> sheikdoms and colonels' regimes in every ~ Middle East war. For them, as for the [ petty-bourgeois PLO, this was the road to liberation for the Palestinian masses. Today Elliott accuses the ICL of "com­ placency toward Zionism", lyingly accus­ January 1990, ing the ICL of "refusing to defend self­ East Berlin - determination for the Palestinians" and Spartacists calling our revolutionary defeatist position initiated 250,000- in the 1948 Arab-Israel War a break with strong rally the Trotskyist position. In fact, the posi­ against Nazi tion of the Fourth International in that desecration of war was revolutionary defeatism. An Treptow Park article, written even before the entry of memorial to Red the Arab League forces, adamantly Army liberators declared: from Nazi "Make this war between Jews and Arabs, scourge. JCR's which serves the end of imperialism, the Elliott echoes cOimnon war of both nations against social-democratic imperialism!... slanders that "The only way to peace between the two Treptow was peoples of this country is turning the guns Stalinist against the instigators of murder in both camps." "smokescreen" . - "Against the Stream", FQJUth International, May 1948 But swimming against the stream is anathema to the Pabloites, whose liquid­ of permanent revolution, which is dia­ French troops" (Autre Chose, October ing class (rather than the unemployed ationist revisionism destroyed the Fourth metrically opposed to the USec's line on 1990). This attempt to build a "united lumpen base of the PIS) in the Maghreb International. Instead they tail the Arab Iran, and on Algeria today. front" (really a popular front on a social­ was very real. And in Europe there were bourgeoisies who have historically con­ Elliott raises this in the context of the pacifist line) was modelled on the "anti­ the beginnings of organised working-class nived with the Zionists to disenfranchise Gulf War, saying that according to the war" "coalition-building" of their USec action, with a de facto general strike in and destroy the Palestinian Arab nation. ICL, "standing fast on Saddam's trenches comrades of Socialist Action in the US. northern Italy and attempts by French While Arafat embraces Jordan's King was correct, but attacking the imperialist Socialist Action took a cravenly social­ rail and dock workers to stop the trans­ Hussein, the butcher of the Black Sep­ coalition from behind its own lines"­ patriotic line in the red-white-and-blue port of arms and troops to the Gulf. tember massacre of 1970, the USec em­ through "a bloc with the PIS or the FLN" "peace marches", even condoning the braces Arafat and his colleague Habash. - "would have been a popular-frontist wearing of yellow ribbons to "support our Spartacism is real Trotskyism We Spartacists say that it will take an betrayal". He is wilfully confusing military boys" (ie, the imperialist troops) in the intransigent fight against both Zionism and political support, the vital distinction Gulf. Krivine's LCR followed a similar As always, behind Elliott's war of lying and the Arab bourgeois regimes for the which Lenin drew in 1917 between fight­ line in France. werds against the ICL stand more nef­ Palestinian people to achieve national ing on the side of Kerensky against White Under the impact ofthe war, the youth arious methods of seeking to "neutralise" liberation. What upsets Elliott is that we general Kornilov's attack, and making a in the JCR were impelled to take a more revolutionaries. Last February, when the recognise the right of self-determination political alliance with Kerensky's capitalist militant stance. After the LTF criticised JCR-I'Egalite organised a "meeting­ for all the myriad, interpenetrated Provisional Government. To understand them for refusing to call explicitly for debate" of its own, their goon squad peoples of the region, including the the principled difference between support defence of Iraq, in February 1991 the threatened and shoved militants of the Hebrew-speaking people. The national "from behind the lines" and support "in JCR published an article, "Hands Off LTF for protesting the JCR's glorification question can only be resolved in an equi­ the trenches", just read Trotsky on the Iraq-For Iraq", criticising the "essentially of Palestinian nationalist PFLP leader table and democratic manner through Spanish Civil War, where he insistently pacifist" character of the anti-war pro­ George Habash as a "hero of the struggle common class struggle for socialist revo­ calls for a common military front against tests and calling for "boycott and strikes" for Palestinian national liberation". And lution and a socialist federation of the Franco while denouncing any political against the war. But this went hand in a: subsequent reply to our comrades' Middle East. support to the bourgeois Republican hand with talk of being in the same letter of protest set us up for even more It is grotesque that, out of loyalty to government. trench with the Algerian FIS and calling violent attack, accusing us of spreading the stinking corpse of the USec, Elliott Interestingly, on the Persian Gulf War, for Kuwait to be incorporated into Iraq. "Mossad's slanders about Habash's 'indis­ goes to such lengths to seal off leftward­ Elliott attacks the ICL for "proposing Under the guise of the "anti-imperial­ criminate terrorism'''. In fact the PFLP moving youth from Trotskyist interna­ 'Victory to Iraq' as a slogan in all coun­ ist united front", Elliott blocks with Arab in the past took credit for various indis­ tionalism. To the oppositionists in the tries, including France and the U.S.". As nationalism, seeing this as the only mass criminate terrorist attacks, and more PST, he says to embrace the Islamic he knows only too well, our slogan during reactionaries through a "Workers and the Gulf War was "Defeat US Imperial­ People's Front" including all "anti-gov­ ism! Defend Iraq!" The call for "Victory ernmental forces". This is the same trea­ to Iraq!" was in fact the central slogan of cherous line as in Iran, where the USec the tiny "International Trotskyist Com­ went from calling for "unity" of all oppo­ mittee" (raised by the RWL in the US nents of the shah, to chanting "Allah and the RIL in Britain), formerly led by Akbar!" ("God is great") along with the one Peter Sollenberger and Grisolia, mullahs, to seeing their own comrades Elliott's new bloc partner. So Elliott arrested and executed by the Khomeini wants to pin on us the slogan of the r.:!gime they helped put in power. This is former comrades of his new comrade. the suicidal logic of Pabloist l,iquidation­ As we noted at the time, the call for ism, abandoning the struggle for a Trot­ "Victory to Iraq" implied political sup­ skyist proletarian vanguard in favour of port to Hussein's Ba'athist regime and tailing after "substitutes" led by alien more generally to Arab nationalism. But class forces. Ironically, it was in Algeria Elliott simultaneously denounces us for that Michel Pablo reached the apex (or holding a position which we did not have nadir) of his career, becoming a govern­ and for our opposition to the mythical ment adviser in the first FLN regime "Arab Revolution". The very notion that under Ben Bella. there is an "Arab Revolution" is an "anti­ To the youth of the JCR-I'Egalite, imperialist" alibi for the bloody-handed, Elliott/Grisolia offer only a rehash of imperialist-dependent bourgeois (and 1970s-vintage Mandelism, which paved feudalist) rulers of the Arab states who the way to support for Mitterrand and the have time and time again stabbed the Workers Vanguard current paralysis of the USec in the face besieged Palestinian people in the back. Abortion rights rally in Washington, D.C., April 1989. Partisan Defence of the "New World Order". Once again Elliott's convoluted polemic against the Committee/ICL launched campaign on behalf of besieged Afghan city the USec school of opportunism is push­ ICL over the Persian Gulf War reflects Jalalabad following Gorbachev's treacherous withdrawal of Red Army. ing leftist-minded youth into the arms of the fact that the JCR membership was inveterate manoeuvrers like Grisolia, powerfully attracted to the ICL's interna­ force siding with Iraq. The PIS actually recently has made a political bloc with where they are learning how to use "left" tionalist line on the Gulf War. In his was organising brigades to go to fight in the fundamentalist Hamas movement, criticisms to alibi their rightist Mandelite "Real Trotskyism" document to the PST, Iraq, just as they sent groups of mujah­ which grew out of the arch-reactionary leadership. The way out of this morass is he dismisses Spartacist "verbiage about edin to fight against the Soviet-backed Muslim Brotherhood. At best the PFLP's to take up the fight to reforge a genuine 'strikes'" against the war and claims that reform nationalist government in Afghan­ nationalist strategy is an expression of the Fourth International on Trotskyist poli­ our position showed "lack of confidence istan. But if Elliott had ever tried to get politics of despair and impotence in the tics. As Trotsky wrote in The Lessons 'Of in the working class". This applies quite into a trench with these fanatical anti­ face of brutal Zionist repression. October, "Without a party, apart from a accurately to his own policies on the war. communist reactionaries, they would have But for the JCR, this is the acme of party, over the head of a party, or with a The JCR initially campaigned on the slit his throat. In contrast, the possibility the nationalist "Arab Revolution" which substitute for a party, the proletarian slogan of "immediate withdrawal of of organising anti-war action by the work- they hail. Behind this fig leaf, the USec revolution cannot conquer.". NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1992 11 .', :->-1 ~ .• , ... ( .. ·~.:f: (.. " ~ .' "} •. ', ~ ,. , , WORKERS No vote to Labour, Democratic Left, Workers Party Irish elections: scoundrels and charlatans against workers and women

in the constitution: that troublesome claim of sovereignty over the North." Meanwhile, Hanna Fail can be counted on to demagogicaIly play the Green card of nationalism when in trouble, but our concern is not for the aspirations of the gombeenocracy, constitutional or other­ wise. As revolutionary Marxists we de­ mand the immediate, unconditional with­ drawal of British troops from Northern Ireland! Not Orange against Green but class against class! No to forcible reunifi­ cation! For an Irish workers republic as part of a socialist federation within the British Isles! The nationalists of Sinn Fein are also running candidates in the election, offer­ ing the same failed strategy of seeking seats at the "negotiating table" with Brit­ ish imperialism, its political bankruptcy reflected in the IRA's military "strategy" of increasingly targeting civilians (ie, pub and tube bombings) in Britain. Recently Sinn Fein have used exposures in the bourgeois press concerning the reformist Demonstrators for abortion rights in Dublin, 6 June 1992. Sign reads: ·SPUC OFF I 6794700" in defiance of ban on Workers Party supposedly soliciting funds abortion information. Right: thugs of sinister right-wing Youth Defence sport taped knuckles. from the Communist Party of the Soviet Worlcer.f Hammer prints below the In the current round, the referendums something that resembles a modern secu­ Union during the 1980s to red-bait that leaflet dated 17 November distributed by on the right of women to travel freely lar society. This is what lay behind the organisation. To top it off, Sinn Fein has the Dublin Spartacist Group. and to receive information on abortion election of Mary Robinson as President embraced the election of Democrat Bill services overseas are supportable and in 1990. At the time, the Dublin Sparta­ Clinton as US imperialism's chief, inanely The ruling Hanna Fail/Progressive Dem­ Marxists advocate a "yes" vote to these cist Youth Group (DSYG-now DSG) writing that with Clinton's election ocrats coalition, which has for three years minimal gains. The third referendum . told the truth: "Robinson's popular front: "American foreign policy would no longer ruled the reactionary clericalist state and proposal is a hideous statement which is trap for workers and women". Robinson, be an appendage to British policy" (An enforced anti-working-class austerity, a step backward even from the Supreme who announced "I'm against abortion" Phoblacht, 5 November). finaIIy coIIapsed amid personal recrimina­ Court ruling, outlawing abortion under during her election campaign, has certain­ For the rulers of this country the situ­ tions between the party leaders - Albert virtuaIly all circumstances. This reaction­ ly proved to be no friend of the women ation is fraught with danger. The abortion Reynolds and Des O'MaIley. Fine Gael ary proposal, seeking to further enshrine of Ireland on even the most elementary question is so explosive that it threatens leader John Bruton immediately offered the anti-woman dogma of the Catholic level. And the "enlightened" wing of the to tear apart the fragile social fabric of the electorate the "alternative" of a Fine hierarchy in the Irish Constitution, should Irish bourgeoisie which she represents are Irish society while the largely unionised Gael/Labour /Progressive Democrats be soundly defeated. But the fight for notable for their efforts to accommodate workforce has had just about enough. coalition thllt would be equally committed even the most elementary rights will not British imperialism and the reactionary The question for the Mary Robinsonites to the capitaJist policies which have kept be won at the poIIing booths or in the • Unionist politicians in the North. is how to keep the lid on this pressure 20 per cent of the workforce on the dole courts - what is necessary is the mobili­ Regardless of their coalition appetites, cooker and it is here that the pro-capital­ and condemned one third of the popula­ sation of the social power of the working there would be no reason to extend criti­ ist labour traitors earn their keep. For tion to live below official poverty levels. class to struggle for free abortion on cal support to the left parties, all of years the trade union and labour mis­ Predictably the wretched Labour Party demand as part of a revolutionary pro­ whom support the blatantly class-coIlab­ leaders have tied the hands of the work­ leadership has been salivating at the gramme to smash the whole rotting edifice orationist PESP [Programme for Econ­ ing class by broke ring class-coIlaboration­ prospect. We say: the coming general elec­ of capitalist rule in Ireland! omic and Social Progress].The Labour ist deals with the bosses. First it was the tion offers nothing to the working class, The elections and referendums are Party was also the prime mover behind PNR [Programme for National Recovery] women or youth! No vote to the Labour only the most recent reflections of deep the election of Mary Robinson as presi­ and the PESP, both explicitly designed to Party, Workers Party or Democratic Left! divisions within the ruling class. Decades dent in 1990; in 1991, during the ESB prevent class-struggle opposition to capi­ November 25 sees also the three refer­ of urbanisation have generated a reaction [Electricity Supply Board] strike, the talist austerity. Then it was the Labour endums on the question of abortion arising against the arrogance, smaIl-mindedness Labour Party and Workers Party sup­ Party/Workers Party orchestrated deal from the Supreme Court ruling on the "X and corrupt cronyism of much of the ported an all party denunciation of the with Fine Gael to put Mary Robinson in case" last February. Ironica11y, with that Irish ruling class, a quality most graphi­ strike and called for strikers to go back to Aras an Uachtarain [the Presidential ruling, abortion in Ireland became nomi­ caIly embodied in Fianna Fail. Bogged work. On the North, that British bour­ Palace] to head off the growing pressure naIly permitted under the so-ca11ed "Pro­ down in endless investigations into fman­ geois mouthpiece, The Guardian (12 for change. Now it is the "Rainbow coa­ Life" Eighth Amendment to the constitu­ cial chicanery and corruption Hanna Fail November) wrote of the defunct "talks" lition" where Spring is just waiting to see tion, if there was a "real and substantial are no longer seen even by significant on Northern Ireland: "Should the present if he will have enough TDs [MPs] to threat" to the life of the mother. Needless sections of the ruling class to be a cred­ administration in Dublin be replaced by trade off for the Tanaiste's [Deputy to say abortion remained as unavailable in ible force for administering the state­ a Fine Gael/Labour coalition in the Prime Minister] chair. And since no one Ireland as it had been before the learned tribunals and the hasty retiring of "CJ" forthcoming general election, then the is offering him anything yet, De Rossa judges' ruling, a situation due in no smaIl [Haughey] notwithstanding. situation will be changed overnight. For declares that Democratic Left is only part to the fact that the church controls A section of the ruling class seeks to both have already indicated their willing­ prepared to coIlaborate in a "left led" most of the hospitals in Ireland! revamp the clericalist state so as to have ness to reconsider articles two and three continued on page 9

12 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 1992