~ Australasian ...

Number 119 February I March 1987 30 cents

Goondiwindi - Apartheid .Face 01 Hawke's· Australia

hourI He had attempted to attend jected to white racist and cop terror ALP's formal and minimal program Drop the Charges Against . the local disco. When a group of and vicious Apartheid-like con­ on land rights has been thrown the Goondiwindi 171 black women tried to rescue him, ditions, whether they live in the overboard by . Hawke; welfare, white punks wielding blocks of rural bantustan-like shanty towns education and health programs wood chased the women through or the rigidly segregated urban slashed, and the green light given On a hot Friday night in the the main street· and out of town. ghettos. And Hawke's regime of to police and vigilante racist terror Queensland cotton town of Goondi­ Two Aboriginal tribal elders were Cold War anti-Sovietism and a across the land. windi; 9 January, a 19-year-old also beaten up that night. grinding domestic war against the Goondiwindi's mayor, one Bill Aboriginal man, Reggie Hinch, was This savage racist atrocity was unions has inevitably spawned a Lee, described the torture of locked in the toilet block of the local no isolated event peculiar to Bjelke­ vicious white racist backlash tar­ Reggie Hinch as "nothing more Victoria Hotel and viciously beaten Petersen's "Deep North," as all getting these original, surviving . by four white thugs for up to an over the .co~ntry blacks are sub-~ victims of White Australia. The Continued on page ten

Aguino·Bni·me ·URf:aV8Is~--. assaere • In , ,

FEBRUARY 1 - Thousands of des- symbols [and] the most human." perate peasants march on' the presi- Cory's massacre .on January 22 tore off dential palace demanding land. Hun- the mask. January 22: P.... nts demanding land are massacred by Aquino's troops dreds of riot poli~ and heavily armed Under the slogan of "people they are seeking to protect the Philip­ police produced guns from behind riot troops block their way. As the mar- power," Aquino was installed a year pines as a strategic anti-Soviet "archi­ shields stenciled with the words , chers approach, troops and cops open· ago when Washington told her pre- pelagic aircraft carrier" for their mas­ "Maximum Tolerance." Most of the fire point-blank on the defenseless decessor, the butcher 'Ferdinand ters in Washington. dead - landless tenant farmers and crowd. Marchers flee in terror, bodies Marcos, he was finished and put him migrant agricultural workers - were litter the bloody pavement, tear gas on a plane to Hawaii. Two of Marcos' Mauacr. Planned In Advance shot in the head or the back. fills the air as soldiers pursue fleeing chief lieutenants, armed forces chief Cory's imperialist patrons ob- demonstrators through the streets. Fidel Ramos and defense minister Eighteen people died and almost a scenely blamed the victims for provok­ Pinochet's Chile? El Salvador under Juan Ponce Enrile, jumped ship in hundred were wounded that Thursday ing the massacre. "On the left, zealots the junta? what amounted to a military coup in a fusillade ofautomatic weapon and thirst for martyrs and shootings, the It could have been the work of the backed by the US embassy, Roman . pistol fire that lasted more than a stuff of revolution," ran the editorial murderous despots backed by Wash- Catholic Cardinal Sin and hundreds of minute. The march of 10,000, chiefly apologia for Aquino in the 28 January ington from Central· America to South thousands of people in the streets. But peasants from north of Manila, was New York Times. Aquino professed Korea. But this time it was the work of the carnage in Manila on January 22 organized by the Communist-led Phil­ "shock" and appointed the usual com­ the regime headed by ~orazon surpassed that of any siftlilar outrage ippines Peasant Movement. The mission to "investigate" - ie. to Aquino, president of the Philippines in the capital in Marcos' bloody 20- march organizers had announced in whitewash the government and per­ and "democratic" darling of US year reign. Behind the facade of advance that they intended to go all haps come up with a scapegoat. (Such imperialism. Only three weeks pre- "democratic" talk and "progressive" the way to the Malacanang Presi­ . a commission on the military death­ viously Time (5 January) named ministers, this is a regime that does dential Palace. Police didn't bother to squad murder of leftist KMU union Aquino "Woman of the Year," laud- not shrink from cold-blooded mass put up the usual barbed-wire barri­ leader Rolando Olalia last November ing her in nauseating terms as leader murder, butchering workers and pea- cades. Videotapes showed that as the took months to come up with a 'single of a "fairy-tale revolution" standing sants in defense of the ill-gotten gains marchers approached Mendiola low-ranking fall guy.) Ramos and the on a "platform of faith, hope and char- of the greedy landlords, capitalists and bridge, marines cocked and aimed current defense minister. Rafael Ileto, ity," "the happiest symbol ina year of rapacious Western banks. Above all, their M-16s. The supposedly unarmed Continued on page five Reg...... by Auttra... Poll - Pu",IcaUon no NlF0710 58. Wainer, who was part Jewish, tralian military from 1960 to 1965 Wainer was a member of the and grew up in the working-class (when he resigned his commission British section of the Fourth slum district of Gorbals, in Glasgow, in opposition to Australia's military International for a short period in Scotland, was a kind of Sir William intervention in Vietnam), told us a the 19405 .. He was responsible for Wallace (heroic leader of the story about how he got rid of some the Beach and Kaye Inquiries into Scots in the 13th century, who drove Australian anti-woman fanatics who police corruption. His involvement the invadin~ armies of the English had invaded his clinic: in tackling police corruption, which he first encountered in relation to king from Scotland) in the struggle .. . .. we had crying women every­ for women's rights. The availability where, the 'Right to Life' were backyard abortion practices, made of relatively cheap, safe abortions in chained to my operating theatre him subject to death threats and most major Australian cities today, tables and refused to move. . .. I massive cop harassment. Wainer despite the continuing existence of said, listen, you've got fucking maintained that it was the police legislation which makes abortion a three minutes to get out of this corruption battles, and not his fight crime, is in large part a tribute place or you'll be gassed, and I for aborti~n.rights, that had ruined to his militant struggles. turned on the anaesthetic gas. And his health. the copper said, you can't do that. In an interview with Australasian And I said, look, we know just A memoir in the Sydney Morning Spartacist (no 112, August/Septem­ where you stand, you said you've Herald (20 January) noted that at ber 1985), Dr Wainer told us no authority in here, now get gassed or get out. So he got a funeral service for Wainer in he hadn't gone looking for the, Melbourne "an opera singer will issue of abortion specifically, out. And the ~Right to Life' at this stage started undoing their sing A Scottish Soldier, and the but that when it came up he saw chains .... Then I, turned the bagpipes, no doubt playing The that "there's something special fire extinguishers on them and Flowers of the Forest, will skirl a about women being oppressed by then I threw them down the brave and great man to his resting laws which were designed to keep back stairs and turned the hoses place in Eltham cemetery." Com­ BERTRAM WAINER the poor down and to advantage on them. I was beside myself rades of the SL/ANZ attended the the rich .... So the best that can with rage. I mean a real Glas­ service, and also sent his family the be said of me is, yes, I cared about wegian Gorbals rage, you see. And the TV arrived and filmed following note: "Our deepest 1928-1987 people and here was an issue where condolences to the family and I could finally do something. I all this. There had been buckets of water flowing on them and friends of Bertram Wainer. The had always, wherever I could have, they said, why are you doing death of such a

Back in 1984 we called on our with you, had come into the Office as accompanied by repression against their class-struggle perspective: readers to support the strike by Mag­ spokesmen for the others, which in the anyone who engages in struggle, "We have always tried to appoint num garment workers in Colombo, circumstances can only be viewed as from the suppression of the nurses' the correct leadership to all trade Sri Lanka. The predominantly female intimidatory.' , strike to the detention of Sinhalese unions. Because of this view we are workers, who slave for a pittance in . In a letter to S Siriwardene, General leftists. The perspective of inter­ against the formation of other union in the textile factories of JR Jayewar­ Secretary of their union, the All Ceylon nationalist class struggle in defence of the same place. We are no political pimps. We are fully conscious of a dene's Lanka, won their strike after Commercial and Industrial Workers the Tamils and all the exploited and socialist system for the liberation of ' a long struggle. The militant strike Union, the women detailed some of the oppressed shows the way forward. the masses. We strongly believe that " advanced the consciousness of these events which led to their firing: Women workers, from the down­ the only way towards that goal is workers, most of whom are in their "We need to remind you that when trodden Tamil women of the tea plan­ through class struggle." early 20s and came straight from small the Magnum authority grabbed our tations (the so-called Indian Tamils, We call on our readers to again dig. Sinhalese villages. Through our fund­ rights one by one we protected those descendants of tea-pickers imported deep for funds to aid our sisters in raising we were able to express our rights from them through our class by the British) to the mainly-Sinhalese Lanka in their battle to win back their commitment to solidarity with our struggle. We wish to remind you that women in the factories like Magnum, jobs. Send cheques earmarked "De­ working class brothers and sisters in in all struggles we participated, we will be at the forefront of victorious fend the Magnum Four" to: Spartacist Asia against capitalist exploitation. did our best to win them. On the proletarian struggle. In their state­ struggle made when comrade Ghana League, GPO Box 3473, Sydney, On 12 December 1986, a stop-work was suspended from work, one of our ment, the Magnum Four laid out NSW2001 .• was called in response to an attempt sisters named Renuka had to be in the by the Magnum bosses to take back police custody. In January '85 when bonuses, one of the gains of the 1984 the management of Magnum tried to strike. The bosses retaliated by suspend six' of our employees in the pounded by the evident fact that sacking four founding members of Jacket section, we could defeat their none of his friends, roommates, the union who had led the stop-work, effort having stopped the work due comrades, lovers or others who to our instant intervention against the were close to him at the time had Leela Samarasinghe, Indrani Daya­ management's decision .... In such nanda, Latha Gomes and Renuka. In any inkling of. such an impending occasions our responsibility is to act. Thus he was deprived of any· the management's notice of dismissal measure our strength under the cir­ they charge: cumstances and act accordingly. That support in what must have been his agony. "We have now come to know that is the real meaning of leadership. " To tJIe extent that others knew you and three others not only led the The union leadership, supporters of worker8:·to the office, but also caused him, and especially his comrades, the reformist Lanka Samasamaja they felt affection and personal re­ the workforce to congregate at the Party, is criminally allowing the entrance so as to prevent the Pro­ spect for him, which feelings oftly sacking to go unfought. The four grew with time, thus making his duction Manager and his staff from women charged: leaving the Office. We have also been death all the more bitter. informed that you and the three others "Your inaction up to now for the In a note which he intended as his request of 48 members of our union will, written a few months before regarding reinstatement of the mem­ and found by his side at the time of bers who were dismissed and the his death, he wrote among other letter that was sent by the .Magnum things of his regard for the Sparta­ SPiiTACIST , management in which was stated that ~ 'we are satisfied that the stoppage of cist League as mankind's last best Marxist two-monthly of the Spartacist work on the 26th November '86 was hope. But he noted that, like his League of Australia and New Zealand, sec­ not the result of Union action,' can be grandfather, he was taking the tion of the international Spartacist tendency. construed as the work of some unseen reasons for this will to the grave EDITORIAL BOARD: Greg Blythe, Doug Flynn, Andrew Glannakis (editor), hands. If the office bearers are treated with him. G Mcintyre, Sandra Morris in this manner, how will the general Alden is free now from his CIRCULATION: Jenny Klein membership be treated by you." Alden Burr Cavanagh torments and our world is a poorer PRODUCTION: Linda Brooke These four militants face a long and place for it. Printed by trade union labour. -Registered - Bay Area DIstrict of the Sl/US at GPO. Sydney for posting as a pubHcation difficult fight to win back their jobs. 1957 -1987 - Category B. Subscription 52 for 6 issues; Their courageous struggle is taking - Central Committee of the overseas airmail 57 for 6 iasues. Acldreas place in a Lanka torn by communalist SLIUS all correspondence to: Spartaclst PubH­ strife and reeling under deepening Tragically dead at 29 years of age 25 January 1987 cations, GPO Box 3473, Sydney. NSW, 2001. by his own hand. A member of our economic crisis and massive re­ Opinions expressed in signed articles or organization for more than eight The SL/ANZ extends its deepest pression by the JR government. The l~tters do not necessarily express the years. condolences to family and friends editorial viewpoint. murderous terror suffered by the The shock of his death is com- of comrade Alden. Printed by Spotprels Ply LM, 21 Rou St, Tamil minority for years at the hands Glebe. of the vicious regime is increasingly 2 Auatl'lll ...... -.Iii;. Afghanistan:

. I';' ~I(·· ~ Soviet troops defend ballc loclal galDI In Afghanlltan. Young glrll on their way to school (left), freed from Il,avery under the veil. Extend Gains of Bolshevik Revolution

When Soviet troops went into US intervention and the American Afghanistan seven years ago to defend bourgeoisie's dreaded spectre of the beleaguered nationalist-reformist to Afghan Peoples I "another Vietnam." So for Democrats regime in Kabul against CIA-backed and Republicans alike, Afghanistan is Islamic guerrillas, Jimmy Carter the "good war." As one Reagan aide launched Cold War n. America's shot down a civilian plane with 30 Islamic guerrillas to Communists is put it, the US' immediate aim is "to rulers pumped in massive military people on board. Likewise, in a simply impossible. In the Pakistani keep the Russian blood and money support to the reactionary "holy war­ hideous May 1984 bombing at Kabul refugee center in Peshawar, a rally flowing until they find settlement a riors." Iran/Contragate r,evelations airport, a "moderate" guerrilla group was called by the guerrilla leaders to better alternative. " show the Afghan mujahedin at. murdered a dozen children on their reject the cease-fire. While tens of Nowhere has the bipartisan anti­ the· top of the list of recipients (S400- way to school in the USSR. The policy thousands chanted "Death to Soviet consensus been clearer than SOO million a year) from a "Reagan of Reagan's Afghan terrorists toward Russians' Death to Communists'" over Afghanistan. Indeed, the Demo­ Doctrine Superfund" set up to finance the urban population seems to be: one mujahedin chief demanded the cratic Party has been way out in front "covert" anti-Soviet wars around the "kill 'em all and let Allah sort overthrow of the Kabul government, of the Reaganites in pushing aid for globe. Up to one billion dollars a year 'em out." establishment of an Islamic state, and the Afghan "rebels." Two years ago in arms and other aid is being funneled Following the December 1979 Soviet the surrender of Soviet Central Asia the Democratic-controlled HOllse of by the US and its allies to these bar­ intervention, gutless "leftists" (New York Times, 18 January). There Representatives tripled Reagan's baric champions of feudalism, mass throughout the West joined the im­ is a civil war in Afghanistan, and one request for aid to the Afghan contras. illiteracy and the enslavement of perialist hue and cry over "fiercely side or the other must win. Offers of "There were 58,000 [American] dead women. But contrary to the pro­ independent Afghanistan." Social "compromise" will only embolden the in'Vietnam," said Texas Democratic nouncements from their .patrons in democrats, liberals, conservatives apd imperialists. The sooner the feudalists Congressman Charles Wilson, "and Washington, arming these 7th century fascists united in Jimmy Carter's anti­ are smashed, the sooner the bloodshed we owe the Russians one" (Washing­ cutthroats with 20th century weapons Soviet "human rights" crusade. The will end and the road to social progress ton Post, 13 January 1985).But for all has failed to turn the tide in the international Spartacist tendency, in will be secured. the claptrap over Afghanistan being contrast, forthrightly proclaimed: civil war. Imperialist Godfathers of "Russia's Vietnam," the New York "Hail Red Army'" Sixty years earlier Times (19 June 1986) reported that the Red Army of Lenin and Trotsky Islamic Jihad "a Government study in April 1985 liberated the peoples of Soviet Central found that the Soviet forces were Asia from the chains of feudal and pre- / The imperialists profess a touching gradually wearing down the rebels." feudal barbarism and fundamentalist concern for the "national sovereignty" That led Reagan to issue National Islamic reaction. The Soviet Army of Afghanistan against "Russian Security Decision Directive 166, intervention in Afghanistan, under­ expansionism." But the Afghan guer­ calling for driving Soviet forces from taken for defensive reasons, raised the rillas aren't on the receiving end of the 'Afghanistan "by all means available." possibility of revolutionary social biggest "covert" aid operation since But the Red Army is still mopping up transformation in thU hideously back­ the Vietnam War just so they can pre­ the Afghan contras. ward and enslaved country. We called serve such quaint national traditions During the 1986 DRA forces all but at the time, and repeat that call today, as skinning "infidels" alive or trading wiped out rebel forces in Herat and to "Extend social gains of the October women like sheep. The imperialists Kandahar, and mounted a spring Revolution to Afghan peoples." have their sights trained on a much offensive that smashed an important , Recently there have been reports of bigger . target: the Soviet workers guerrilla strongJiold at Zhawar, a mile a possible Soviet pullout from Afghani- state. Everyone in Washington knows from the Pakistani border. According istan. Returning from Kabul, where a the m,qahedin can't win. But unlike high-level Kremlin delegation met the contra losers in Nicaragua, there's with Afghan leaders, Moscow no danger of them precipitating direct Continued on page foar foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze called for a "political settlement" and declared that "the time for a with­ drawal of Soviet troops is not far off." (Already last fall, six Soviet regiments 'Afghan feudaliit cutthroatl gloat - rougbly 8,000 soldiers - left amid over body of downed Soviet pilot. great fanfare.) And speaking to a meeting of the ruling People's Demo­ cratic Party (PDPA) last month, Far from being bogged down in the Afghan leader Najib (who just re­ Hindu Kush mountains, the Soviet­ turned from a visit to Moscow) ordered backed forces of the Democratic a cease-fire, beginning January Is, Republic of Afghanistan (DRA) are calling for "national reconciliation." winning hands down. The m,qahedin, 'Najib added: "We don't want to lacking support in the cities, are exclude different political groups, increasingly relying on long-range moderates, monarchists and heads of WIJIINEIIS 'AN'''A'' 25' firepower supplied by the US, armed anti-Government bands active ~~ .'" launching' indiscriminate rocket abroad, from national reConciliation" While Carter Stews." attacks on Kabul. They scored three (New York Times, 2 January). Soviet Army Rolls Back Afghan Mullahs direct hits ... on the US embassy. This "peace initiative" from Mos­ Even the Americans' shoulder-tired cow and Kabul is misguided and Soviet forcel land at Kabul Hail Red Army I "Stinger" antiaircraft missiles have dangerous. The modest social gains airport, December 1979. Sparta­ proved ineffective against Soviet achieved by the Soviet-backed regime clltlln 11 January 1980 WV armoured helicopter gunships. But the are directly threatened by any kind of hailed Soviet Intervention agalnlt mullah-led "freedom fighters" did deal with the CIA-backed rebels. And the theocratiC counterrevolution­ score one "victory": last month they a coalition government ranging from aries. February/March 1987, 3 arms and aid to the Islamic reaction­ ~fghanistan ... ~ aries. As CIA director William Casey put it ()Jer Spiegel, 7 April 1986), the c.tJaaed from,..e tine J US' goal is to "bleed the Russians" as part ,of their war drive to "prevail" to Jane's Defence Week{y (2 August over the Soviet Union. 1986): Hew Afghan The only "political solution" is to "The forces were comprised primarily complete and extend the social trans­ of DRA armed forces and militia, I..... H.Jlb formation begun with the Red Army numy of the l4tter former resistGnce (centre) call. men . . .. Resistance sources admit for "reconclll­ " intervention in 1979, through finishing that the Afghan' troops fight effec­ .tlon" with the job of mopping up the reactionary tively, and there are no reports of murd.rou. cabal of landlords, tribal chieftains and desertion or collapse of units ... mull.h r..c. mullahs. This would have a revol­ [emphasis added] lon.rl•. utionary impact throughout the region. Lite any military clash between two / General Zia's Pakistan is highly social systems, the civil war in Mghan­ ,"" ,. unstable: Baluchi and Pashtoon istan is a political struggle. The Soviet peoples separated by an imperialist Army intervention has brought doctors border from their tribal brothers to the and hospitals, schools and literacy to cloth covering them from head to toe. elimination - and the land reform has north already are attracted by' over­ Mghanistan. Formerly veiled and Dliterate and ignorant, they were sold been cut back. Over the last couple of tures from Kabul, and there are invisible, Mghan women have been lite chattels under the bride-price years the ulema (Islamic clergy) has reportedly thousands of Pakistani brought into public life. Over 300,000 system. The landlords and tribal khans been increasingly coddled by the oppositionists in exile in the Mghan peasant families have received land. literally held power of life and death government. Their lands and tithes are capital. And smashing the Mghan This soICial progress is helping win the over the mass of peasants, controlling exempt from taxation or redistrib- Islamic fanatics could revive revol-, war against Islamic counterrevolution. 42 percent of the cultivable land and ution, and many of the mullahs and utionary agitation among the working James Steele, writing in the London the irrigation systems. Half the khans are on state salary. The new class in neighboring Iran, now suf­ GUIlrdian (25 February 1986), quoted a children died by age five and life constitution pledges to "respect, fering under the theocratic, clerical­ Kabul River valley peasant who joined expectancy was 40. observe and protect holy' Islam." Last feudalist regime of Khomeini's ayatol­ his village militia after being freed The 1978 "April Revolution" was year Najib was brought to power, lahs no less than it did under the hated from debt and receiving his own plot of essentially a left-wing military coup replacing Babrat Karmal (who was Shah. land: "We will not allow anyone to which brought the People's Demo- installed at the time of the 1979 Soviet Writing in 1919, as the revolutionary be against the revolution in this cratic Party to power. A petty- intervention) as the leader of the wave was receding in Central Europe, country." bourgeois nationalist front, of school- PDPA, in order to "broaden the base" Trotsky noted that the Red Army could The Cold War liberals, of course, teachers, university students, govern- of the regime. Najib mates a point of pave the way for extending the have joined Reagan in praising the ment officials and army officers, the being seen praying in mosques around October Revolution to the East, Mghan "democratic resistance." PDPA had no base among the peasant Kabul. beyond the border of the former Writing in the New York Review of masses nor the'tiny urban working Now, ominously, N!ljib is calling for tsarist empire: Boob (i8 December 1986) Jeri Laber class. Coming to power in one of the "reconciliation" with the chiefs of the "We have up to now devoted too little of the Helsinki Watch Committee rails most primitive and tradition-bound CIA's murderous bands. According to attention to agitation in Asia. How­ against" Soviet expansionism" and in countries on the face of the earth, they the Mghan news agency Bathtar, at a ever, the international situation is defense of feudalist reaction: "The had little support for even the limited special plenum of the PDPA on evidently shaping up in such a way Soviets are pursuing expansionist democratic reforms they introduced - December 30, he called for "making that the road to Paris and London lies policies in Mghanistan, under the ie, land redistribution, compulsory compromise with the political forces via the towns of Afghanistan, the education for both sexes, separation of who are in opposition" and for "active Punjab and Bengal" .... Naturally, we guise of bringing progress. But the had had in mind even earlier on the progress they offer the Mghans - lit­ church and state. In particular it was contacts ... with the leading per- the regime's step. toward the equality sonalities of the past regime as well as need to assist the revolution in Asia eracy, industrial development, a and had never abandoned the idea of centralized economy, and equality of of women which fueled. reactionary the Islamic parties." Najib added that revolutionary offensive wars. " the sexes - is not what' most" Mghans resistance. "creation of a coalition government - The Trotslcy Papers, Vol. 1 want[f] .... Most Mghans are set in Faced with the certain defeat of its with the participation of the above (1917-1919) their tribal ways, and want only to be Kabul allies by an lsl8mic jiJuul, the mentioned groups is possible." left alone." Laber depicts the Islamic USSR intervened in late December The PDPA leadership is not proposing 1 guerrillas as intrepid defenders of 1979. The ~ective wall of,. Soviet to cott1J!lit suicide: Najib. ~~ts,!O ~ ""\'""',;;ki"C"t::,'AJ"i':;"'{"~i#;{',\,:, small children against the evils of tanbandhelicopters made pdDlble'~." 'tlkr"'-1f)R:AJ '. ; ; army,' moretflan z '''' Soviet education (' 'long-term indoc­ real social "transformation in Mghani- 170,000 party members and the trination"),' and speaks glowingly of stan. Some of the changes reflect most "strong, loyal and trusted friends, that Mghan contra kidnappings and of all the abject backwardness of the is, the Soviet Union." But the social "reha~ilitation" of children to be spies country. For example, since 1979 the reforms are up for negotiation: and assassins for the mujahedin. number of doctors has been raised by he doesn't mention the "April For seven years the liberals and the some SO percent ...... : to around 1,500 - Revolution." media have portrayed the Mghan while hospital beds have doubled, to contras as nature's noblemen being 4,8001 At the same time more than 1.5 Mop Up the Afghan trampled on by Soviet totalitarianism. million people have passed the state­ Counterrevolutionaries! But even the imperialist media have run literacy course in a country where previously 90 percent of the population The Mghan news agency report had difficulty disappearing the Mghan matte it clear that the "national recon­ drug connection." Last summer the was illiterate. The Soviet Union has poured millions of rubles in consumer ciliation" came from Moscow. Fol­ New York Times (i8 June 1986) quoted lowing a ieciprocal visit to Kabul, a mujahedin leader explaining, "We goods and industrial projects into Mghanistan, developing mines, petro­ Soviet foreign minister Shevardnadze must grow ,and sell opium to fight our talked of a "sovereign independent" holy war against the Russian non­ leum wells and hydroelectric plants. The most striking changes have Mghanistan "pursuing a policy of Afghan peaunt.. Limited I.nd believers." When the Pakistan army neutrality and non-alignment." He tried to pull a crackdown against occurred in the position of women in reform I. th ....t.ned by .tt.mpts to Mghan society. Liberated from the added, however, that a Soviet with­ conclll.t.I.I.mlc reaction. Mghan drug traffickers in Karachi, a drawal "would require an end to the rather clear picture emerged of these chador, 5,000 Mghan women have taken up arms as members of the support of the rebel forces by the Within the framework of Mghanistan "freedom fighters." To defend their freedom-loving cowboys of ,the US." lucrative trade, gangs of Mghan and Soviet-backed DRA militia. Formerly alone there is no solution to national enslaved and secluded, now many What is the Kremlin proposing here? and social oppression. These questions Pakistani Pathans went on a tetrorist As one American professor put it, the rampage against neighborhoods women work in Mghan industry. are linked, historically as well as Women workers at the Guzargah tex­ Soviets "might in fact be acceding to socially, to the fate of the Russian Rev­ inhabited by Muhajirs, Muslim what they describe in private as a refugees from India. Armed with tile factory in Kabul, for example, are olution. One need only look next door unionized and have access to free child 'P'm1andization' of Mghanistan - the to Soviet Central Asia to see the gains auto~c rifles supplied by the emergence of a largely non­ mujahediltc rebel leaders, axes and care and health care at the plant. Pre­ won by the proletarian liberation of viously it was forbidden for a doctor to Communist coalition government that these pre-capitalist areas by cour­ daggers, they dragged Muhajir would nevertheless not be hostile to women and children into the streets touch a woman, and when West ageous Bolshevik agitators and the German feminists tried to start a Soviet security interests" (J¥ew York Red Army. Compared to Mghanistan where they were beaten and hacked to Times, 6 May 1986). ~eath. After five days of this commu­ health clinic in an Mghari refugee today, the social progress in these nalist pogrom over 160 people were camp in Pakistan they were all but Try as they will, Mikhail Gorbachev areas can be measured not" in decades reported dead and hundreds wounded. lynched by the mullahs and tribal et al aren't, going to get P'm1and on but in centuries, despite the Stalinist chieftains (see "Hail Red Army in the Soviet Union's crucial southern degeneration of the Soviet workers From the "Aprll Revolution" Mghanistanl", Women and Revol­ flank. Backward Mghanistan could state. 10 "National Reconciliation" ution No 31, Spring 1986). Themuja­ never sustain anything remotely Soviet .Communist Party leader hedin have shot more then 2,000 resembling a stable bourgeois democ­ Mikhail Gorbachev, speaking at the The Islamic mujahedin. are fighting teachers for teaching young girls and racy: even the most minimal CPSU congress last February, called the "godless Communist infidel" in women to read and write. bourgeois-democratic reforms pro­ the Mghan war a "bleeding wound." order to preserve a society based on Ominously, however, these steps to­ voked a violent feudalist reaction. It· The Far Eastern Economic Review the cruelest, bloodsucking social ward a social transformation in took the iDtervention of the Red Army (14 August 1986) noted: parasitism, critninality and slavery. Mghanistan are now being held back to carry them out. The Kremlin Stalin­ "Gorbachov denounced the theory Pre-1979 Mghanistan was a squalid by the DRA government in the ists keep dreaming of "detente," of of 'revolutionary war' before the 27th hellhole where emigration was vir­ interests of conciliating the forces of "peaceful coexistence" with imperi­ party congress as a Trotskyite heresy, tually a national aspiration. Per capita' Islamic reaction. Education for girls is alism. But the US imperialists are 'completely at variance with Marx­ income was 5200 a year. Women were no longer compul~ but "voluntary" .committed to keeping Mghanistan ism.' 'Today, too, we are more firmly kept smothered under yards of heavy - which for the masses will mean its' unstable through funneling millions in Condnuecl on page ten 4 Austral.slan Spartaclst Down with Cain's Thought-Cop Terrorl For nearly three years Melbourne what she thought. One PSG defendant her teaching position. youth wlio face the inside of a teacher and leading member of the under the pressure of Cain's "child The Thome case has become some­ "training centre" for having a consen­ tiny Freedom Socialist party (FSP). ' molestation" mailia committed suicide thing of an index of the reactionary sual sexual relationship. Alison Thome has been denied her - Cain killed himl In response to the social climate engendered by the Thome and the FSP's procla­ technical school teaching position, BOB d~sion Cain threatened to pass bourgeoisie's anti-Soviet war plans. mations of "victory" ring hollow victimised for her defence of the draconian new laws banning all thOse Cain was at the forefront of the union­ indeed, revealing their prostration to Paedophile Support Group (PSG) and with "deviant" ideas from teaching or busting assault on the BLF. Then in the capitalist state. Thome herself for otJending Labor Premier Cain's working in the public service­ December of last year he deprived the excused tam saying that he was puritanical moraUty by suggesting that vicious Cold War thought-police laws state of medical services fOr 10 weeks poorly informed and advised, adding youth have the right to a sex life. She that threaten everyone who doesn't in order to break the Victorian nurses "I am extremely disappointed that a has been the target of an intense cam­ measure up to Cain's reactionary strike, using his 'union lieutenants in Labor Government would go to. such paign run by a cabal of anti-sex, moral standards. the ACTU to finally strangle the strike lengths" (Sun, 29 November 1986). reactionary bigots from the yellow From the very start we of the Sparta­ in Arbitration. The FSP is notorious for favouring, in press through to Cain's office. Late cist League have been conspicuous on Cain is a self-appointed Big Brother. principle, feminists drafting legis­ last year Thome succeeded in having the left for our defence of Thome and His motto is "we know what is good lation for the government to ban por­ an Equal Opportunity Board (BOB) the PSG, and our opposition to reac­ for you" - no sex, no booze, no nography. Internationally they rank as ruling restore her to her teaching tionary age-of-consent laws. When smoking, not even Tropicana Cooler. It contra-socialists for their support to' position. This set off an hysterical out­ Cain announced his new legislation we hits particularly hard at youth who face Brooklyn Rivera, a Miskito Indian cry that began with notorious witch­ sent a telegram of protest demanding meagre wages or the hopeless despair contra who sold his services to hunting "radio personality" Derryn the immediate reinstatement of of unemployment. Now Cain and his Reagan's Cold War against the Nic­ Hinch vowing to track her down Thome to her classroom position, . brigade of Mrs Grundys want to araguan revolution. wherever she went. Television stations and opposing the witchhunting of deprive youth of their few remaining The reactionary bigots from Cain responded with phone polls and Thome and any further thought-police pleasures. down who dictate their corrupt newspapers invited readers to vent terror. Our stance has been sharply Thome's determination to win back "morals" are an excrescence of capit­ their spleen. counterposed to the whole Laborite her teaching position collapsed 'in alism in its death agony. Equal oppor­ The charges of "conspiracy to cor­ union bureaucracy and its fake-left December last year when she accepted tunity for working people, youth and rupt public morality" against the PSG tail. Thome's union, the Technical , a "deal" offered her by Cain - with­ all the oppressed will come through were thrown out of the courts over two Teachers Union of Victoria, dumped drawal of his new legislation if ~he the building of a Bolshevik party years ago. The vendetta directed her from the start. The anti-Trotskyist accepted a tertiary position. Cain got acting as the tribune of the oppressed, against the PSG and Thome has been Socialist Workers Party supported what he wanted and his new legis­ to overthrow capitalist class rule and pure hysterical bigotry with hardly reactionary age-of-consent laws and lation lies ready for any future establish the dictatorship of the ev~n the figleaf of bourgeois legality. the misogynist, anti-gay Socialist , instance. It was a bitter defeat directly proletariat. Youth who want a future In true Orwellian style Thome was Labour League actively campaigned for any teacher not measuring up to should join the Spartaclst League in gone after not for what she did but for on Cain's behalf to deny Thome Cain's "standards" and indirectly for this fight .•

democratic coalition government," Philippines ••• -'I;"i which means betrayal of the masses c-tbnaed from paae ODe for the sake of a "share of the power" within a capitalist framework. _The cynically said the troops "over Stalinist-led peasant movement's reacted," But the depth of popular demand for "genuine land reform" is outrage is such that Aquino ordered a will 0' the wiSp. The bloodsucking troops to stay out of the way on Jan­ landlords, with their private armies, uary 26 when a march of 15,000 pro­ Cold-blooded will not be reformed away. Aquino's testing the massacre went, to the own family estate, Hacienda Luisita, palace,and she even sent cabinet m... murderby '. AquIno'. copt is one of the country's largest sugar ministers out to greet it. and marlMl plantations. One of the demands of the Reacting against Aquino's "soft" exceeded even marchers on January 22 was that line, the same day a small group of Marcoa' butchery Aquino show her "commitment" to officers loyal, to Marcos and Enrile land reform by starting with Hacienda moved, unsuccessfully attacking two Luisita. The answer was bullets. air bases and occupying a government­ The only way to deal with such ex­ run TV station in Manila. When A 6O-day cease-fire with the New violence against \ the people .... ploiters is an agrarian revolution, in Aquino ordered the military' to take the People's Army, guerrilla arm of the The Aquin.o government cannot wash which the poor peasants and agricul­ station by force, Ramos ignored her Communist Party, ends on February 7. its hands Of its \responsibility for this tural workers seize the land. This can and negotiated a peaceful exit. In be carried out only by a revolution in "Peace talks" in the interim have bloody incident~' (San Francisco Hawaii, Marcos was prevented from ,which the urban proletariat places gone nowhere and were suspended Examiner, 23 J~uary). But the flying back to the Philippines by indefinitely the day of the massacre. Stalinist-nationalist CPP and its itself at the head of the insurgent Aquino's main patron, the US govern­ Meanwhile, it has been revealed allies, in their commitment to peasant masses to smash the' whole ment. His wife Imelda had gone shop­ how Aquino intervened during her "popular-front" class collaboration, framework of capitalist/landlord ping for the occasion, buying $2,000 American tour last fall to ensure that rule. worth of camouflage pants, jackets and soon started apologizing for Aquino. the US' giant Oark Air Force Base Two days later Bayan leader Leandro Following Aquino's victory last Feb­ combat boots. The store manager ruary, in the wave of enthusiasm for and Subic Bay Naval Base will remain Alejandro said the group was with­ remarked laconically that the gear was open as staging points for nuclear war. apparently not for her, since the boots drawing its criticism of the president A "mandate" for the new constitution because "we do not believe she was were not her size. is part of the preparation for renewed Especially after the January 22 directly responsible" for the killings bloody suppression of the guerrilla (New York Times, 26 January). The massacre, Aquino's "people power" insurgency and for further neo­ regime is foundering as Philippine January 26 protest march to Malaca­ colonial subjugation by the Yankee nang demanded the resignations of society is increasingly polarized. Aqui­ imperialists. no is pinning her hopes to restore Ramos and Deto but not Aquino. In fact, Aquino and Ramos differ, stability on a new constitution, written Stallnlata Stili Tall Aquino by her band-picked commission, to be if at all, only in how best to crush the working people. Since squelching , voted on in a plebiscite February 2. At first the Philippine left­ The idea that a new constitution will the coup plots of Enrile last November, dominated by the Communist Party of Ramos has increasingly been calling restabilize bourgeois rule is, of course, the Philippines (CPP) - denounced absurd. But Aquino needs to win big to the shots anyway. Aquino accuses Aquino for the January 22 massacre, both Enrile and the left of trying to undercut ambitious rightists like reflecting the felt outrage of their "destabilize" her regime. It couldn't Enrile, reassure her imperialist back­ ranks. The leftist umbrella group ers in Washington and gain a cloak of get much more unstable than it is, Bayan declared: "In less than one and it sits atop a mass of social TNT. "democratic legitimacy" in dealing. year, the Aquino regime has outdone In the countryside nothing has with the left; . its fascist predecessor in the scale of changed since Marcos, unless for the f!.U lid" •.• _.' 2 2 2CW worse. Rapacious landlords starve Cory Aquino, a Reagan lackey In peasants and kill their· organizers. the Phlllppln... On the sugar island of Negros the new regime, the reformist left Aquino Regime Unravels plantation workers get 40 cents a day was scrambling to climb aboard the for backbreaking labor when it is Cory bandwagon. The CPP, which available. When there is no work, in wields mass influence in the Philip­ the "dead season," the peasants eat pines, called its electoral boycott "a 1pm, THURSDAY FEBRUARY 28th roots, or nothing at all. major political blunder" and advo­ Brennan Room, Holme Building, The CPP is committed to a class­ cated "critically participating in the snap election." In the US, inveterate SYDNEY UNIVERSITY collaborationist alliance with the "national" bourgeoisie, a "national- c-tbmed_ .... tea February I March 1887 5 North's Workers League Cult Attacks Marxist Spartacists Lord of the Fleas

Tile . foIlowin, article is abrid,ed from tile original publislaed lat year in Workers Vanguard no 412 (26 Sep­ tember 1986). paper of tile S]HI1tIIcist League/US, American section of tile interrudional SpartQcist tendency. In Austndia, David Nortla's rump "Inter­ national Committee" is represented by tile Socialist LtJbour Leape (SLIJ led by Nick Beams, whicla. joHowin, tlae intertUltional Healyite implosion and tile split ofa pro-WRP minority in AustrtJlia to 10""" tlae Communist Lea,ue last Marcia, stuck slavislaly to Nortla's "Healyism witlaout Healy" and has parroted his anti-Spartacist slanders in tlais country.

Our party, the Spartacist League, is currently being subjected to the "polem­ ical" attentions of one David North. In David North Alan Gelfand Martin McLaughlin fact, a series on "The Politics of the Spartacist League" appearing in North's Bulletin is already in its 13th part and own groups might be, the British WRP though it is. Once Healy the supreme history, covering two decades, is long still going. But who or what is David led by Healy (who eventually dubbed authority of the IC was exposed as the documented, most lately in the last two North? He is the little lord· of neo­ himself the Ie's "founder-leader") was emperor who had no clotht;s, the issues of our Spar/aeist. Healyite, anti-Healyite, total Healy­ conquering the masses through its daily members.revolted. No longer could they paper. be kept in line with doubletalk "dialec­ Healyites: Counterfeit ism-i.e., of nothing-who heads the Trotskyists American Workers League (WL), a In fact, Healy's daily paper was also a tics," endless mindless activism and felt very small and very discredited staphy­ fraud which, lacking a sufficient number threats. All of Healy's loyal lieutenants The Workers League's own history lococcal pimple on the rump of ostensi­ of members to support it, came to scrambled to wash their hands of the begins \\;ith its· former leader-Tim ble Trotskyism. depend on funding from the most Ie's more spectacular crimes and Wohlforth-acting as Healy's agent to Why North chooses this moment to unsavory forces. And the WRP's sole organizatiomil "excesses." split the left opposition (Revolutionary work us over at such length must have significant "contribution" in many years The departure of Healy and his well­ Tendency, RT) inside the SWP in 1962. something to do with his having to the British class struggle came when it heeled ally, actress Vanessa Redgrave, The pretext was an ultimatum that all become, at the moment, the top dog in a made itself the "vanguard" of a red bait­ with a minority of the British WRP was R T members must sign a document fragment of what used to be called the ing, union-busting attack on the Nation­ only the beginning. North's .demand affirming they believed that the SWP, "International Committee" (I C), an al Union of Mineworkers, on behalf of that the WRP recognize the hegemony which was then centrist and moving unpleasant formation once built by the right-wing lea~ers of t,he .1"r"ad,es of theJC (i,e., him) took. another rapidly to the right, remained a "revolu­ Gerry Healy in his own image. When Union Congress. Healy's "expose" of . minority out of the WRP, along with tionary party." In the hope that the Healy was ousted last year by backstab­ miners' leader Arthur Scargill's minimal most of the WRP youth. Cliff Slaughter SWP would remain aligned with Healy bing intrigues among his lieutenants, criticism of anti-socialist Polish Solidar­ leads what's left now sans Banda, who as part of the International Committee, including North, the "IC" broke into at nose was timed for maximum exposure split after writing his ignorant anti­ Healy identified the party leadership's least four pieces, with splits within its in Margaret Thatcher's Tory press, and Trotskyist diatribe, "Twenty-Seven deepening revisionism as solely the sections in several countries. became' the opening shot of the cam­ Reasons Why the IC Should Be Buried property of right-wing elements like Only someone who wanted to be "the paign to isolate the militant miners Forthwith and the Fourth International Weiss and Swabeck, putting forward leader," never mind of what, would rush union on the very eve of their heroic Built." North took the bigger piece of the perspective of the R T effecting "a to claim Healy's mantle. Healy's IC was strike. the split in Australia as well as the West united front where. possible with the an appendage of his British organiza· When Healy was pushed out of power German and Sri Lankan groupings. center elements"-i.e., the Dobbs lead­ tion, the Workers Revolutionary Party in the IC last year, the lid came off a real So North's IC doesn't amount to ership. Most of the RT, led by Jim (WRP), which was distinguished by its stinking garbage can. We responded by much. Its record is of a bunch of Robertson and Geoff White, refused to physically brutal internal regime and by publishing a special issue of our SpliTta­ political bandits who became corrupt sign the Wohlforth/ Healy diktat. Wohl­ its capacity, unmatched by garden­ eist (No. 36-37, Winter 1985-86) on· . press agents for despotic" Arab nation­ forth's only successful "united front" variety opportunists, for wild swings of "Healyism Implodes." There we re~ alist" capitalist regimes. Alleged to have with the Dobbs regime was in setting the political line in pursuit of egregious and viewed Healy's history, which impinged received at least a million pounds from RT majority up for expUlsion. often mutually contradictory appetites. on our own history until about 20 years 1977 on from Libya, Kuwait, Qatar, In the present Bulletin series, great To the extent that the Healyites had a ago; the next issue of Spartaeist (No. Abu Dhabi and Iraq, among others, exception is taken to our remark that coherent political core, they were 38-39, Summer 1986), devoted to the Healy's British group and its subs~rvient Wohlforth in 1964 "engineered his own cringing legalists/Labourite econo­ degeneration of the Socialist Workers IC worked to give "anti-imperialist" group's expulsion" from the SWP. Aha, mists, and virulently anti-Soviet in Party, also had some relevant things to cover to anti-working-class crimes by says Bulletin editor Mclaughlin, or concrete program. Through it all, the say about Healy and his IC. And now we their patrons. In 1979 the Healyites whoever is actually writing the series, hapless denizens of the IC were assured find ourselves being vilified at such great hailed the execution of 21 members of the Wohlforthites were expelled for an that, small and miserable though their length in the Bulletin. We know from the Communist Party of Iraq by the exemplary fight against the Ceylonese experience that this means we've Ba'ath regime. This is North's IC- Trotskyists' class-collaborationist be­ touched the WL where it hurts, and that J loathsome, but at least it's all his. trayal in 1964. No doubt for distant Provided that the American WL (which copsumption, the Bulletin fulminates - the Northites have decided it's time for them once again to administer some Slaughter in 1984 said had 74 members) that Spartacists, "as 100% American [$PAJJTACl5Tr:' "education," Healy-style, to their sup­ can avoid its fair share of the implosion. radicals ... could not understand why ~ ...... ~...a ~ porters-a refresher course in cynicism North played the "who's dirtier?" game someone would risk being thrown out of and how not to think. when required to oust Healy and secure the party because of a dispute over the IC label. Once that was accom­ events taking place halfway around the REllllSM l Healyism Implodes plished, he began to'move to belittle the world." North himself became a "leader" in Ie's crimes in the service of oil-rich Near What happened in Ceylon didn't drop the IC when he was specially chosen Eastern dictators. Now he's embarked magically from the skies at the moment 'MPLODES on a crusade to rally his ranks, not least Wohlforth decided he wanted out of the _With­ by Healy to head the Workers League as his -:.eward for eager services ag through a hate campaign against the SWP. "Trotskyism" in Ceylon was Documents and Interviews a mouthpiece for Healy's infamous Spartacist League. founded very late and by some people of on the "Security and the Fourth Internation­ Why us? For one thing, we are the extremely privileged social oriains. The WRP'. awled History al" slander campaign against the his­ acknowledged TrotsJcyist organization Ceylon Trotskyists, the Lanka Samasa­ toric American Trotskyist movement. . in this country. Our forces are rather maja Party (LSSP), involved them­ In the early I 980s, though, North larger than North·s. We exist today as selves in anti-imperialist activism and began testing the waters for a revolt an international tendency, the only one plebeian social struggles, achieving against Healy, through timid criti­ to have fought in a principled political ',omething of a mass electoral base. cisms-always withdrawn with craven fashion against both the degeneration of When after independence from Britain apologies-mainly of Healy's idealist­ the ex-Trotskyist (now explicitly anti­ the main ruling-class political formation The §Rlrtaclst that D. North can't gobbledygook perversion of dialectics; . Trotskyist) Socialist Workers Party split to produce a populist, "national" answer. Now he claims he "fought" Healy. He and. early on, against Healy's funda- party, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party has to make such a claim, ludicrous mental corruption of the IC. This (SLFP), the LSSP was pulled in its 8 AIIIt,...... ap.""'lt wake, led by the LSSP's reformist wing, as there seemed to be a programmatic which had always ultimately called the basis of agreement, we were very patient shots for the party's vacillating "center.tt about it. In 1962 we evaluated our first By 1960 it was evident even to a close encounter: "if Healy intervenes distant American comrade like Jim roughly and using authority to try to Robertson that the situation had gone shove a puppet regime down our rotten. On 8 August 1960 comrade throats, it opens up a lousy vista of the Robertson wrote a letter (reprinted future of the IC" (Jim Robertson, letter below) to the SWP Political Committee' The way they were to Geoff White. 27 September 1962). (PC) urging the SWP to wage an open (from left): From the time of our inception as an struggle against the LSSP's course; G. Healy, M. Banda, independent tendency in 1964, we Robertson's letter was appended to the c. Slaughter, 1983. sought to work with and examine those PC minutes, as were news articles from who stood to the left among ostensible this period from the Ceylon News Trotskyists-e.g., Healy, Lambert in reporting the LSSP's electoral pact with France, Guillermo Lora in Bolivia, the the SLFP and its withdrawal of OppOSI­ expelled theSpartacist delegation, World War II and the Second World group in Ceylon around Edmund tion to the SLFP's chauvinist "Sinhala ostensibly on the grounds that Robert­ Congress in 1948. ·In 1953-54, "ortho­ Samarakkody. These tendencies (except Only" language program. son had missed a session without dox" Trotskyists put together the for Healy, who was a political bandit) The SWP, which didn't have 'much "permission." In remarks to the confer­ International Committee out of nation­ proved to be nationally defined and going for it in Ceylon, was proposing to ence, Robertson had sketched out the al factions which had come out against delimited, and/or used up. publish a Militant article criticizing the views of the Spartacist group. His the revisionism which gained hegemony Throughout, we were also aware of LSSP's policy as a classic "Popular subsequent absence was then used as the under Michel Pablo in the early 1950s. the United Secretariat (USec) led by the Front." But a letter dated 14 August excuse· for savage attacks by Healy & Healy claimed to be the IC in the face erudite Belgian Ernest Mandel. The 1960 by Gerry Healy (also reprinted Co. on the Spartacists for petty­ ofthe SWP's political defection, and we USec was the Pabloistssans Pablo (who below) urged the SWP to hold up any bourgeois arrogance and American were prepared to give him some condi­ we also checked out) and somewhat comment. Healy's implication is clearly chauvinism, and an "apology" (confes­ tiomil credit based on what looked like allied with the SWP of Dobbs and that he has people lined up who might be sion) was demanded. ~the next two impressive work in England and some Joseph Hansen. The USec had by far the disturbed' by criticism of their party. If decades of Healy's history amply dem­ good documents. We were the majority most groups in the most countries, only the /SWP will avoid flying off the onstrated, this method was absolutely of the small forces which had opposed adhering to them in a semi-accidental handle in such a delicate situation, ch~racteristic: to try to extract cringing the centrist degeneration of the SWP, way; then they got a big jolt from the Gerry will take care of it. What is 'fal~e confessions from comrades, ren­ once a revolutionary party and a close international "generation of May '68." striking in Healy's letter; as much ,as his de~ing them thereafter subservient collaborator of Trotsky's struggle for It was our observing that the anti­ claim that the situation could be 'saved instruments, destroyed in their own eyes the Fourth International. We had no revisionists had not done a very good by maneuvers, is his gratuitous mendac­ and before their comrades. doubt of the necessity for disciplined joil of expOsing the USec's (and others') ity in suggesting that the reports in the North's own account of how he subordination of our national group to claims to be the Fourth International Ceylon bourgeois press were just a pack "fought" Healy is revealing. In an a programmatically cohesive interna­ that evidently got us tossed out of of lies. ' October 1985 speech to the British WRP tional movement committed to Trot­ Healy's 1966 IC conference. It was a foregone conclusion that the "Special Congress" North describes sky's program. So Healy thought he had Healy. though, proved to be a very LSSP would decisively capitulate when how he raised his differences over us on trial in his "IC" kangaroo court? opportunity presented. In 1964 the "dialectics" beginning in late 1982. "We 'We had Healy on trial too, and so long CoatIaaed _,..e e.... t SLFP offered the LSSP ministerial decided," he says (using the royal "we"), portfolios; the LSSP eagerly accepted. "to come and take the first opportunity Embarrassed, the Pabloite USee hastily to raise it With Gerry Healy in an New York, N.Y. emerge out of the shambles, and (2) expelled the LSSP, as elements of the objective manner. Well, the reaction August 8, 1960 that now the blocks would really be was an explosion. We were told immedi­ put to Pablo, not over an obscured left wing shook themselves out of the To the Political Committee: LSSP, finally. Now Wohlforth also ately, within a half a minute ... he said vote by his English followers in a discovered betrayal in Ceylon. the alliance is finished." After the provincial British Labour Party Dear Comrades, Wohlforth's restlessness prior to the Political Committee unanimously sup­ meeting, but over a clear act of emergence of the Ceylon pretext is ported Healy, North says. he was I am addressing you on the matter historic proportions by a major testified to by Albert Philips, bloc privately approached by Banda. who of our party's public silence concern­ party, an act about which the central partner of Healy and Wohlforth in "said that in fact he had grave differ­ ing the recent and continuing betray­ world organs of the FI would have to splitting the RT. "The Methodology of ences .... And I must say that while I was al of the Ceylonese working class and take a stand and on the grounds/or Frustration." a document by the Philips shocked by the depth of the political of the world Trotskyist movement by , or against elementary revolutionary group dated 23 April 1964, complains differences that existed between Com­ the Lanka Sarna Samaja Party. I principle. that "several months after the 1963 rade Banda and Gerry Healy. I wasn't in refer, of course, to that party's entry But the silence in the Militant SWP convention." the "frustration" at a sense surprised." After "lengthy into a "Popular Front" electoral pact weakens both these hopes. Within the SWP's degenera:tion that had discussions:' it was "agreed that there with the Stalinist party and with the Ceylon our silence While it may "characterized the' Robertsonites" would be a common fight in the left bourgeois nationalist party repre­ temporarily continue our "respecta­ showed up in Wohlforth. '''There had International Committee to raise these sented by the widow Bandaranaike. bility" in the mouths of the leaders been no real changes in the SWP," issues." In raising this matter privately also places a terrible weapon in their Philips observes, "yet comrade Wohl­ North returned for tbe next IC with several members of your body I hands against any militants they may forth thought it was time for a reevalu­ meeting "fully'expecting" to pick up his was told that letters have been sent have to contend with-"Even the ation." At the November 1963 tendency alliance with 8anda. "But instead when the Ceylonese and that your view is Americans are only privately· dis­ meeting. says Philips. "it was stated that I arrived I was immediately confronted that for the present a greater advan­ turbed and are treating this as a the party was an unfinished centrist [by Banda] .... I was immediately told tage is to be gained by revolutionary matter between comrades." And as organization. and that we had better put that the notes which I had written Marxists in the LSSP through our for Pablo's stature before the world ourselves in the best factional position constituted a huge attack on Marxism. remaining publicly silent. I must movement, every day of delay allows for the time when we would be ex­ He said he had been wrong to come to disagree and urge you to reconsider. him to say in effect: fAy ou're another pelled." After the Kennedy assassina­ an agreement with me." They then went When I read in the New York maneuverer subordinating principle tion, says Philips, "in terms that the into a WRP PC meeting "in which we Times of the electoral pact and tben to tactics." Robertsonites never dared to use. [North] were told that if we pressed of the election and finally of the Comrades. that you condemn the comrade Wohlforth explicitly called for ahead with these differences it would continued support by the LSSP to Ceylonese ex-Trotskyists, I have no us to split." But under pressure from mean a split with the Workers League. the new capitalist government, my doubt, but your failure to raise this those like Philips who 'still wanted to And I must say under those condi­ concern over this classically social­ publicly and with great seriousness cling to the SWP and its purported tions ..." (guess what!) "we thought that democratic capitulation was mitigat­ does the movement internationallya< "proletarian core." Wohlforth "pulled given the enormous authority and ed by two thoughts:, (I) first that the disservice. back," Philips says, from an open split experience of the British section we construction of a genuine Trotskyist With comradely greetings, perspective. InStead, he demanded a shoul.d reconsider our position." North party for the island could perhaps James Robertson discussion on Ceylon, violating internal "bit our tongue. we said we did discussion procedures, knowing this withdraw the document, it wasn't really would get his group expelled from the a document it was notes ...." And so it no longer very democratic. SWP. went. right up to the end. SOCIALIST LABOR LEAGUE mation concerning the present situa­ But. says North today. Robertson still 186 Clapham High Street tion in the party in Ceylon. Now, North recasts this deliberate should have submitted himself to London S. W. 4, England There is no doubt that they are in a organizational provocation as a su­ international authority. (Never mind severe crisis but if we take their preme political act of internationalism. why North thinks it's so natural. and so 14th August, 1960 situation and recent events in Europe And no doubt inspired by that paragon smart, to grovel and lie; it never occurs Joe Hansen it is not improbable that there will of internationalism himself, Gerry to North that in 1966 we thought: we'll Dear Joe, now be. important developments in­ Healy, who had intervened so strongly say what we believe and see' what side the Pablo camp. This is all the in 1960 to reassure worrywarts like happens.) But what makes Healy (and We discussed at some length on more reason for us to proceed with Robertson that he had the Ceylon the rest of his crew, like Banda and our Organizing Committee (the caution-as you have in the past so problem in hand. Wohlforth, now shown to have been a equivalent of your ~itieal Commit­ rightly insisted. bunch of semi-competents and semi­ tee) the proposition concerning the We are going to cable them to­ Healyism: A Machine for situation in Ceylon. Destroying Cadres gangsters) synonymous with "interna­ morrow for information and we tional authority"? Gerry was hardly the .The opinion here is that the Ceylon suggest you do likewise and hold up We had refused to accept Healy's only person around laying claim to the News, being a Ceylon Embassy in­ for the time being put1lication of 1962 rupture as definitive, given that we mantle of the FQurth International. formation hand-out, is not reliable anything in the Militant. and Wohlforth both still claimed to and should not be used as the basis of stand on the same anti-revisionist Healy Flunks - the piece for the Militant. We think Best wishes, program. Unity negotiations were un­ We spent a long time looking at the that it is necessary to write again Gerry dertaken in 1965. But at the infamous fragments of the disintegrated Fourth asking for the fullest possible infor- Copy to J.P.c. 1966IC Conference in London, Healy International, i.e., as it emerged from FebruaryIMan:h 1187 7 News Line, Wohlforth's side in the dispute" (this Workers 2 February 1979 letter by Robertson is quoted in the WL's 1981 pamphlet, "Security and the ~--.It is true that 21 CP rim!(beh League ••• were executed early last year for Fourth International: The Carleton illegally fonning cells ill the armed Twelve"). Robertson, himself in opposi­ forees. The purpose of these ceUs CoatInaecl from page lIeVeD was to figbt against the govern­ tion on Cuba, suggestt:d the students ment. There are DO prizes for the should join the SWP if they wanted to different sort of character-a political answer to wbat would ~ to bandit capable of anything. What form Ba'alhisls wbo set up cells in the be privy to its internal life. For Healy & Soviet anny. They would be ruib­ Co., that these non-mel1lbers had.gotten the "anything" would take for him and ~ssly purged ~ those who through the self-selection some interesting documents (from SWP proce.ss of groveling and lying became News Line, 8 March 1979 leader Carl Feingold) is "irrefutable" evidence of an FBI conspiracy, carried his creatures was not predetermined at From an historical point or out by Hansen and Feingold, to groom the time Healy broke with us in 1966. --....------view. th(' Arab 8a'ath Socialist Jack Barnes and his Carleton cronies to But it quickly ceased to be our problem Party of Iraq has pl;lyed a take over the government's SWP opera­ at all. because by 1967 Healy had hundredfold more progressive role In th(' Midclle East tllan tion from Hansen. Those familiar with broken far away from "orthodox" Stalinism. Healyite doublethink will find nothing Trotskyism. H is forces emerged as the unusual about the idea that Robert­ most vulgar. super-Pabloist cheerlead­ Banda News Line, son-elsewhere portrayed as the most ers for Stalinism (Mao's "Cultural 20 November 1985 pernicious agent of Hansen-here Revolution") and Third World nation­ fore-un! i1iee~ w c:olfillt..... constitutes an unimpeachable witness to alism. The "Arab Revolution" line the the report, and e had. Then another comrade who was a the Carleton College "conspiracy." Healyites adopted as the excuse tohail photographer on News Line But perhaps there's more to it. Is the 1967 Arab-Israel conflict proved came to the microphone and told how she was sent by A North himself an agent of Robertsol1? most fruitful. A transclass, transnation­ MitcheU. a Political Com­ wv Why else would he use Robertson as an al, totally disembodied "Arab Revolu­ mittee and Editorial Board New York City: Spartaclst protest expo... authority, when we all know how tion" is elastic enough to embrace any member, to photograph sup­ Hulylt.' support for murder of Iraqi Com­ Robertson covered up for Hansen the act by any Arab regime, depending porters of the Iraqi Com· munist Party demonstrating munists. After 1985 Healylte Implosion, FBI agent? Did David North also go to perhaps on which monarchy, theocracy outside the Iraqi Embassy. Banda/Slaughter admitted Healyorganlza­ Carleton College? or military dictatorship is dispensing (When slle r,ealj"-....what tion had fingered Iraqi CPers to bloody As we have noted before, "Security patronage. Thus in 1979 Healy hailed --.v Ba'athlst regime. and the Fourth International" was the execution of militant Communist always a supremely cynical device, used workers in Iraq, who were allegedly and white racists, Shachtmanites and ary party; after that party degenerated, along with a deliberately mystified undermining the· glorious "anti­ Stalinophiles (i.e:, anti- and pro­ he spent long years as a centrist and then "dialectics" to keep the Healyite mem­ imperialist" Iraqi army. But later, Healy Russian). a reformist spokesman. In this he was no bership scared witless and hopelessly supported Khomeini's Iran in its war different. from many others, in many Did David North Go to confused. with that same Iraqi regime. Carleton College? countries, whose leftist impulses wore out before they themselves wore out. The Big Lie as "Method" We think the Bulletin will be hard put For Healy, though, such an explanation Healyism and Racism The present Bulletin series strings indeed to consider the elementary labor is not sufficient. No, Hansen has to have When Healy wrote of "D. North's together lies so outlandish and shame­ principle that the bosses' courts are not been a police agent-indeed, a simul­ whiter than white socialism" he doubt­ less that they are clearly designed· to the vehicle for solving disputes in the taneous agent for the FBI and the drive away anyone in or around the WL labor movement. Healy made recourse Stalinist G PU. The implicit corollary is: less didn't know how right he was. For who has the ability to read and think. to the state' against opponents a hall­ if Hansen, why not SWP founder James North continues the long tradition of This use of the Big Lie was perfected by mark of his "tactics" 20 years ago Cannon? And why not Trotsky himself? U.S. Healyite "colorblind" economism. Stalin as a method of control; Healy I against the USec's Ernie Tate. North & After Hansen died, the emphasis of Perhaps the most self-indicting piece in North elevated this method to a' psy­ Co. have themselves dragged the capi­ Healy's paranoid slander campaign the Bulletin's series is the one entitled, chotic principle. It goes like this: here, talist courts in to police the left-most shifted to the present SWP head, Jack "An Obsession With Race." It both comrade, are 50 articles in the Spartacist notoriously in the case- of one Alan Barnes. Hundreds of pages in the proves that nothing in the real world press calling for the smashing of apart­ Gelfand. WL agent Gelfand was ex­ Healyite press sought to show that stands in the way of what the Bulletin heid, the forging of a genuine Bolshevik pelled from the SWP and sued that Barnes (who's not one of our favorite will print and that the WL's profile in party to lead a proletarian revolution, organization in federal court in 1979, people, by the way) was an FBI agent; in this deeply racist country is, on the black for the establishment of a black­ citing Healy's notorious slanders that fact, they claim, so are all his cronies in question, akin to the old AFL job­ centered workers republic in South the FBI (along with the Stalinist GPU) the present leadership of the SWP. trusted white-racist unions. Of the Africa. Memorize them and then go out controlled the SWP. He demanded the Why? Because a bunch of them all went latter, founding American Trotskyist and sell the Bulletin which says that court uphold these slanders and rein­ to Carleton College, a small school in James P. Cannon said: "They also had Spartacist "Opposes Anti-Apartheid state him as an SWP member. Gelfand the American Midwest. For "proof" we. nothing special to offer the Negroes; Struggle." If you have a problem with was vigorously supported by North and are offered, among other things, a 1961 nothing at all, in fact" ("The Russian this. you don't understand "dialectics." financed by Healy. Since the WRP split, report on a visit to Carleton by ... Jim Revolution and The American Negro You are supP0f>ed to kno ..... you're lying; Slaughter and Banda have belatedly Robertson! Movement"). disavowed both the Gelfand provoca­ According to the Bulletin's research: then having lied. you are bound to your Robertson, then a leader of the leaders until you finally slink away­ tion and the scandalous "Security and "The Workers Vanguard's 1985 subject SWP's Young Socialist Alliance, went index contains references to at least 60 the Fourth International" campaign ashamed. destroyed. Such intentional on tour for the YSA in 1961. At articles on the 'black struggle: civil against the SWP. North-a major destruction of cadre. is a Healyite Carleton, he met with a loose group of rights, police terror, racial attacks, mouthpiece of "Security ... "-is still fascist groups, etc. These included a hallmark. the ugly cult side of Healyism. youth, some of whom were SWP In the past. the WL has smeared us as proud of it. number of articles on the MOVE supporters. When he arrived he found bombing which was certainly one of the "racists" and "fascists" (see our article. North's cohort was one Alex Mitch­ that these leftist students "had all the most important political developments "Smash Fascist Smear of SL." WV No. ell, formerly the editor of Healy's party [internal] bulletins on the Cuba (!] of the year. but dozens of other 379. 17 May 1985), and even as "the British paper and now described by his Incidents as well. discussion and in the presence of a "'n the same one-year period, according fingerman for the world capitalists" ex-comrades as "ace Healy snoop and whole group of 18 students, their leader (Bulletin. 2 December 1969). In Novem­ to the index, the Spartacist newspaper his top hand-shaker! Master-minded innocently asked me to fill them in on managed a single article on auto ber 1978 a leaflet of the German disgraceful 'Security & FI' with North, Healyites. now with North, called Jim justified killing of Iraqi CPers .... Mid­ D. North's Robertson the "main spokesman for the east link man, widely mis-trusted" "whiter than national interests of the American (Workers Press, 7 June). The "Securi­ white" Bulletin bourgeoisie"! We note our demotion to :1', ty ..." slander campaign was aimed ridicules \ ~:t.>lIll &Y... "/~". the old "middle-class radical" category specifically at veteran SWP leader. Labor/Black ,~ ;~"'Jl-' V in the current series. which simultane­ Mobilization .... ~;\~ l't-~.:s ... ~ ~ Joseph Hansen, accusing him of being ...... ,!""- (. . . ously portrays us as black nationalists an accomplice of the Stalinist assassina­ which stopped '" ,~, ..., tion of Leon Trotsky. Mitchell is still KKK in Wash­ ""'->-1.. ~'-' .. with the Healy Healyites. ington, D.C., 27 November North was Healy's accomplice in the 1982 (below). loathsome assault on Hansen's reputa­ ~PA~!~9~lJ~ ; tion, and, through that device, they attacked the reputation 'ofthe old SWP $1.50 and Trotsky himself. After Trotsky's murder by the degenerate Stalinist secret police in 1940, the Stalinists tried to put about the disgusting lie that Trotsky was murdered by "his own people." This claim got no credence at the time, and the main effect of its re­

Whal HlpP9-n.d 10 P.!., F,~~, suscitation in new form by the IC was Fou"U,RlI,,'.rnlhonal Hansen had served as one of Trot­ ,N"'Y

Northite "Internationalism": David North: Little Lords of Nothing A Healyite's Healyite By the mid-1970s, the IC had become North and his gang are worthless unashamed apologists for Near Eastern people for the international working­ bourgeois regimes. In 1985 Slaughter class movement. Separated from their ad.mitted: own "continuity"-Healy-their trajec­ "GH [Healy] sought and found rela­ tory might lead anywhere. With su­ tions with bourgeois leaders like Sad­ preme cynicism, the Bulletin has begun dam Hussein, Gaddafi, and Nkomo. It a series - penned by North on "The is not only that Marxism was distorted in order to mislead on their class nature. Heritage We Defend," which obscenely This Party,' through Healy, sought tries to claim connection with Trotsky financial support from these bourgeois, and Cannon. The heritage North really not just for this or that political defends is Healy's at its worst: "Security purpose. but as a system." -News Line, 20 November 1985 and the Fourth International"; eager NSW Labor Premier Barrie in their press, has appointed this ventures across the class line in pursuit But now that these revelations have Unsworth (centre) inspecting fas­ gusano as his "special advisor on of trivial opportunist advantage or community affairs." ~erved their purpose in dumping Healy, cistic Vietnamese mouthpiece Bell financial support; shameless use of the North & Co. want to turn the Ie's of Saigon, which openly calls for And the Socialist Labour League? crimes into Healy's personal responsi­ bosses' courts within the workers extermination of communists, with Last year the SLL admitted its party bility. Slaughter says that it was when he movement. its founding editor, Hop Van Chu. printshop had printed the Bell of "raised the question of Comrade North Programmatically, the IC under Unsworth, Hawke and Labor tops Saigon. And the fact that Unsworth tackling his own responsibility for the Healy and now North is a virulently gave Vietnamese fascistic elements was trained in CIA-run "trade anti-Soviet sect. Beginning with em­ Ie's past" that North "moved very the green light to attack left and union" courses at Harvard Business brace of the Maoist "Cultural Revolu­ quickly to propose suspension of the labour meetings in 1985 celebrating School did not deter the SLL from tion" in 1966, they have moved on to WRP from the Ie." He also spills some the 10th anniversary of the campaigning for a vote to him in support v~tually every hostile force on beans about Nick Beams, North's bloc Vietnamese Revolution. A Sparta­ last year's Rockdale by-election - partner in Australia: the borders of the USSR, from Khomei­ cist forum in Melbourne defended to "expose" him they claimed. "Is it only the WRP which receiyed ni's Iran to the Afghan mullahs to itself against these scum, but at But Cold Warrior Unsworth as the financial assistance from one or other Polish Solidarnosc. Their enthusiasm one left-SpOnsored Sydney meeting picture shows isn't exactly shy Middle Eastern bourgeois national for Solidarnosc, tht' Pope's and Wall a retired wharfie was knifed and the about "exposing" his allegiances. governments? ... Street's best hope for plunging Poland Waterside Workers hall attacked. Rather the SLL· only exposes "Is it not a fact that the Australian into a bloody civil war for the restora­ section did receive a sum of (tens of In 1985, Chu was Hawke's itself - sinister, corrupt political thousands of dollars) in 19837 ... tion of capitalism, led them into the regional director of Ethnic Affairs bandits, masquerading as Trotsky­ "Is it not a fact that the receipt of this arms of Margaret Thatcher' when they in NSW, a conduit between the ists. One question remains - did money by ihe Australian section [w ]as redbaited miners' leader Arthur Scargill gusanos and ALP tops. Now SLL leader Nick Beams go to reported to the Central Committee of on the eve of the heroic miners' strike. the SLL (Australia) only in the month Unsworth, who parades in Viet­ Harvard Business School, perhaps before the IC meeting of Dec 16 "Anti-Stalinism" was their cover for namese emigre circles and is feted on Unsworth's recommendation? [1985]'! ... supporting the beheading of the Iraqi February I March 1987 9 leader from Toomelah explained, "It's have been in Labor-ruled NSW and Workers Afghanistan ... always the same four white men Western Australia, not Queensland. involved. That's who we were after. And none of the killer cops have been Leag~e ••• ContJnaed from page foar We decided to take matters into our found guilty of a thing in Labor's own hands because that's the only way courts! blacks can get justice around here," ContJnaed from page nine convinced that promoting revolutions For Union Action to from outside, and even more so by (The Age, 14 January 1987) while Defend Blacks I sought to intersect and test out every military means, is futile and in­ another added, "We were defending admissible'. " our pride, our dignity, when we went Now some of the chastened white kind of grouping that claimed to In a speech at the Soviet Far Eastern have something to offer in the way to Goondiwindi on Saturday" (Sydney punks are talking guns, tear-gas and port of Vladivostok in September, he Moming Herald, 12 January 1987). vigilantism to the bourgeois media. of international leadership. For our announced the withdrawal of Soviet American-based grouping, tossed out One white man who was in the Already they and their cop protectors regiments from Afghanistan, as part Victoria Hotel at the time described are armed to the teeth. Against this of the SWP with small forces, the of a broader initiative aimed at im­ struggle for international collaborators what happened: "They were really murderous threat the black communi­ proving relations with China. In only after a few. One of them came ties must have the right to armed was an uphill battle, and one that still addition, the Kremlin has "sought in continues. into the hotel and yelled at me to get self-defence. But left to themselves recent months to give the impression behind the counter because I wasn't the tiny, marginalised Aboriginal pop­ Gerry Healy and his heirs are a of prodding Vietnam to be more forth­ world apart from this. They have a part of it. He pushed me down to ulation is vulnerable and relatively coming in seeking a negotiated protect me" (ibid). This witness powerless - only the organised publishing machine, so we have to settlement in Cambodia as well" refused to give his name to the bour­ working class has the social power and answer what they say. But what they (Washington Post, 7 January). Cer­ geois media "because it's more than interest to defend blacks and cham­ say means nothing - their words are tainly an end to the hostile confron­ but applications for some sordid and my life is worth." When the blacks left pion their rights. It is the duty of tation between the Soviet Union and militants in the labour movement episodic advantage, bearing no re­ China is to be desired. But not at the Goondiwindi they were chanting, lationship to what they claim to "We won! We won!" At least three of to mobilise labour /black/ minority expense of Afghanistan and Indo­ actions in the streets to crush believe. What is Healy, what is North? china! the thugs had got what they deserved. We have to concur with Trotsky's A few years ago we suggested a racist terror wherever and whenever possible. It is especially urgent now for remark about Stalinism, but in micro­ rather different response to the im­ The entire bourgeois media the workers movement to defend the cosm of course: to the extent the peria
ists' for revolutionary proletarian launched a Big Lie campaign in a Goondiwindi 17! Healyites/Northites are part of the internationalism rather than a bureau­ conscious attempt to whip up a mur­ working class, they are its syphilis .• cratic nationalist accommodation: derous white backlash, quoting local Mobilising the power· of labour "What is the necessary response to white racists about "black mobs," "a against racist terror requires a hard the insane American provocations? In big dark cloud of blowflies," "snarling political fight to the finish by revol­ the first place, reach an understanding like dogs" ranging through the town utionaries against the White Australia Philippines • • • with the .Chinese .... Rectify the terrorising peaceable white folks. The trade union bureaucracy, the main 17th ce$ry (and later) treaties ContJnaed from page five Queensland cops launched a dragnet prop of the Hawke/Keating regime of between the tsars and the Manchu "investigation." They boasted that Cold War and economic austerity. The emperors. A generous gesture ex­ they "knew nothing" about the Australian Workers Union (A WU), the tailists such as the SWP hailed the plicitly motivated: 'Well, it looks like bashing of Hinch and were not about union covering rural labour and an his­ Aquino "revolution," while the the US is going to come for us now, to investigate it. The bosses state is toric pillar of the ALP, had a "whites . dubious Workers League published an and we hardly want you people to hit us from behind. And while you're at it, after revenge. The Queensland cops only" clause until 1969. Today the after-the-fact call for "a critical vote have issued warrants for the arrest of union ,tops promote anti-Asian racism for Aquino." The January 22 massacre take the pressure off the Vietnamese so they can finally clean up the seventeen blacks from Toomelah and with their reactionary White Australia has starkly exposed the fraud of Cambodian mess' .... the nearby hamlet of Boggabilla. protectionist schemes. The leadership "people power," and urgently under­ "Next, clean up Mghanistan ... They got eager help from NSW Labor of the NSW Teachers Federation lined the need for a Leninist­ instead of capitulating to the mullah Premier Unsworth's cops. Threatened (NSWTF) piously wrung its hands over Trotskyist party, forged on the pro­ reaction, by limiting land reform and with a massive cop raid of their Goondiwindi, and called on Labor gram of permanent revolution. As we literacy campaigns, the Soviets should community, the 17 blacks chose to Premier Unsworth to build a separate warned a few months ago (' 'Philippine be pouring the money in there on a front up to Moree court in NSW, along Workers Must Fight for Power!", massive scale: land to the tiller black school for Toomelah's children and cheap credit, health programs, with friends and family, to be formally on the NSW side of the border, to over­ WVNo. 415, 7 November 1986): served with arrest warrants for .• . .., the present prerevolutionary etc. But; that means sociQl revol­ come discrimination at the Goon­ ution, a; tremendous leap from "riotous behaviour" and extradition diwindi school. Instead of this capit­ situation is fragj.le in. the extreme, orders. They were forced to spend the and will not 41st for long .. Under orders feudalist backwardness to proletarian ulation to racism, the NSWTF should dictatorship on the backs of the day in jail while the "formalities" from Washin~on" the PhiIiPrrioe be leading the way in mobilising military will move, to restore capital­ Soviet Red Army. And that does not were completed and released on union-based defence guards of hefty ist order by seeking. to crush both the square with the Kremlin's policies of S500 bail each. The bourgeois state is unionists, not least from its own mem­ militant workers movement and leftist detente and 'two-stage' revolution. engaged in an ostentatious "legal" Reformism abroad, by conciliating the bers, to ensure that black children can insurg~nts. The only question is enforcement of the racist status quo. attend school on both sides of the bor­ whether Aquino, like El Salvador's forces of reaction, undermines de­ fense of the Soviet Union." This judicial witchhunt and potential der free of racist terror. The NSWTF's Duarte, will serve as a 'democratic' legal lynching is an outrage. The call is a variant of the Laborite pro­ fl!Wrehead for , the rigpt-wing. - "Reagan, Begin & Hitler," WVNo. 308, 25 June 1982 charges against the seventeen blacks gram of segregation for blacks. In the butchers, or be overthrown by; the must be immediately and uncon­ military. The situation cries out for Afghanistan should become an inde­ mouths of the guilt-ridden Laborite a revolutionary vanguard party, pendent workers republic with an open ditionally dropped! There must be no "left," support to Aboriginal Land such as the Bolsheviks forg~" in border with the USSR and a ruble­ extraditions! Rights means "out of sight, out of Russia, ; to lead the Filipino prolet­ convertible currency. Look at Mon­ What really infuriated the bourgeois mind," a cover for continued racial ariat, supported" by the peasantry, to golia for a model. An Afghan workers' state, its media and its uniformed exclusion, poverty and terror. We flgpt fodts own class rule." assembly might have an exchange of enforcers was that this time blacks had communists defend the rights of Abor­ Reprinted from Workers Vanguard - observers with the USSR soviet. But fought back in an organised way, iginals to ownership of their ancestral no 421, 8 February 1987 it will take proletarian political revol­ enforcing some basic justice and tribal lands as a minimal democratic ution in the USSR to restore the Red avenging a racist atrocity. As revol­ right. But "land rights" under White Army and the Soviet state to their utionaries we salute and defend the Australia capitalism is no answer to action of the Toomelah blacks as a internationalist and revolutionary black oppression. mission, through defending and ex­ minimal act of self-defence - dis­ WfJRltERS VANGIIARD tending the gains of the great October criminate and effective in execution. As a Spartacist spokesman put it at a ------=--=-~=-=--=---=---:--=~----=-=----=-'~~~' Revolution. Only the defeat of imperi­ The Aboriginal Legal Service" is 27 June, 1984, Sydney public meeting Drugs, Guns and the White House alism internationally, through workers resisting the extraditions, arguing that of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)­ supported Committee to Defend revolutions under the leadership of a there is no justice for blacks in Black Rights: contragat.eMur~~~ Plots Trotskyist world party of socialist rev­ Queensland. Absolutely! But neither olution, can lay the basis for the gen­ is there justice for blacks anywhere in "The flght for Aboriginal rights is uine social equality of all peoples .• this deeply racist society. In the last the flght for integration, full social ~~:~4 . ~. Reprinted from Workers Vanguard five years at least thirteen young black equality. The right to jobs, equal no 420, 23 January 1987 men have been murdered while in wages, equal political rights, free !lolice custody. The majority of these quality health care, open admissions

Howard Beach: UM" rtlIWtlrp,,!.-. Goondiwindi ••• Black Victims ContJnaed from page one On Trial than a normal pub fight." Racists ;~ .:,~' _"' ,,' ":0"':" ~~. ~",:.:~:~,"";",.;,: ~ like Lee and his friends in and out of uniform believe that they can get away with anything. But this time at (SPiiiTACIST ~ Koch's Cops Kill! Vengeance for Eleanor Bumpurs! least the racist scum got a hell of a lot more than they had bargained for. D Australasian Spartaclst - 6 Issues (1 Year) for $2 (Includes Spartaclst) ~ Overseas rates: Subscribe I Racist Punks Get D airmail - $7/6 Issues D seam all - $2/6 Issues

24lssu.. - 520 (airmail) Get Taught a Lesson Name, ______~ ______- 55 (s.. mall) About fifty blacks, mainly from the Address Order from/pay to: ------______Clty" ______Toomelah Mission, 20 km south of Spartaclst Publications, State Postcode Phone No. ______Box 1377 GPO, Goondiwindi on the NSW side of the New York, NY 10118, USA border, hit town the next day looking Order from/pay to: Spartaclst Publications, GPO Box 3473, Sydney, 2001. for the racist thugs. As an Aboriginal 10 Australasian Spartaclst to the universities with stipend for They are also organic Laborites. those who can't afford it. And that Noting the "racist nature of the means class struggle, that means a Queensland government," which is fight against this racist austerity obvious even to the blind, they pro­ government. That means a fight in the unions, that means mass ceed to calion their friend, CIA-lover strikes to seize the factories, that Unsworth, to set things aright­ means class struggle all the way uncritically reporting the NSWTF's through to a collectivised economy segregationist call for a black NSW and workers republic of Australia, school. part of socialist Asia, in which black The American Trotskyist James P people have full social equality Cannon once described Australia as and the only thing black people are "an all-out Jim Crow country, where called in this country is comrade." Negroes are not permitted to come in - Austra.l(!,sUm Spanacist no 107, times of peace" (Militant, 11 April July/Augpst 1984 1942). Forty-five years later his words Numerous examples exist to prove are still true. We in the Spartacist that workers will fight on behalf of League are committed to the revol­ blacks. In 1946 black bans by the utionary destruction, root and branch, mainly white Seamen's Union in sup­ of White Australia imperialism, and port of striking black pastoral workers the establishment of a racially­ in Western Australia's Pilbara region integrated workers republic which will extracted almost immediate con­ link up with socialist revolutions cessions from the bosses. The key is throughout the Asian region .• the forging of a genuinely communist, Aborigines live In Apartheid-like condltlonl - Infant mortality II more multi-racial vanguard party to lead all than five times that of whites. the oppressed in the struggle to smash White Australian imperialism. opponent of Apartheid, is also an out­ minister "Diamond Jim" McOelland Indonesian spoken anti-communist. But he's was not joking when he remarked Australian Apartheid blad. Prominent white supremacist recently that ex-Tory prime minister and Victorian Returned Services Malcolm Fraser was to the "left" of Communists • • • Goondiwindi was accurately de­ League head Bruce Ruxton labelled Hawke on the "race question." Hawke Continued &om page twelve scribed by Ray Robinson,· head of the Tutu a "witchdoctor" and a "ter­ is Reagan's man in Southeast Asia, Communism with chauvinist hysteria Queensland Aboriginal Legal Service, rorist" and ranted against Asian and determined that this white imperialist against the country's significant as a "little South Africa." Margin­ black African immigration. The media enclave in Asia should play its role Chinese minority. Three times in this alised into missions, shanty towns on empire of the sinister Rupert Murdoch alongside other key US allies like century the combative Indonesian Zionist Israel and Apartheid South the outer fringe of the rural towns manipulated an outpouring of anti­ worker and peasant masses have risen - tiny versions of South Africa's black Tutu sentiment from what it called Africa in the war drive .against the Soviet workers state and its allies, in struggle, at times to the point of townships - until the late 60s in "middle Australia," and in Sydney posing the question of power. And NSW, and even now in Queensland, a group of National Action fascists especially Vietnam. Preparations for and League of Rights anti-Semites war abroad mean reaction across the now, two decades after 1965, a new the residents needed passes to enter or generation has come on the scene, leave. When blacks go into town to picketed. board at home as the bourgeoisie seeks to regiment the population thirsting for vengeance. Moreover, shop or go to school they face massive Meanwhile Hawke and his ministers executing Communists also serves to and constant harassment. rubbed shoulders with Tutu, sup­ behind a rampant" Aussie" chauvin­ For Aboriginals life in White Aus­ ism which targets externally the placate rising Islamic fundamentalist posedly "defending" him against the opposition. tralia is a living hell and getting worse. racists. Why? Because the Hawke oppressed Asian masses (the "yellow hordes") and internally the miniscule This demonstration was especially Aboriginal population and all ' 'for­ significant for revolutionaries in racist . eigners." White Australia, where the ALP has historically poisoned the working class Vengeance for John Patl with anti-Asian chauvinism, and the A watershed in Labor's racist roll­ nationalist "left" seems to itch for back was the cop murder of 16-year­ "democratic" Australian imperialism old Aboriginal John Pat in Roebourne, to rescue East Timor and West Papua Western Australia in September 1983. from their Indonesian invaders. The ruling class is stirring the pot of anti­ Sydney, 1 June, The killer cops were let off scot-free by '. the W A Supreme Court and the Indonesian chauvinism because they I 1984. Spartacllt fear that the crisis in the Philippines acquittals were openly endorsed by League Initiated has destabilised the region and the protest of redl Labor premier Brian Burke. This was Labor's green light for racist terror. regime that follows Suharto in Indo­ and blackl nesia may not be so reliable an anti­ against cop The Spartacist League was the only left group to actively respond to this Communist buffer. One SL placard, murder of John "Waterfront Unions: Remember the Pat. ruling class provocation. Our call for labour/black/minority action resulted Black Armadal For Labour Action to in a militant, 6O~strong demonstration Stop the Executions!" recalled the of reds and blacks in Sydney on 1 June better traditions of the Australian 1984 which demanded "Vengeance for working class - the large-scale black John Patl Jail the Killer Cops!" bans of Dutch shipping by dockers and Both the SWP and the Healyites­ seamen in solidarity with the without-Healy of the Socialist Labour Indonesian independence struggle League (SLL) echoed the bourgeois from 1945 to 1949. The road press in describing the Goondiwindi to revolution in this white imperialist The grinding institutionalised poverty, regime wants the same thing as Tutu events as a "riot," ie, an outbreak outpost lies in struggle against racist Laborism, for revolutionary class unemployment, non-education and - to head off black working class of lawlessness. Both consider black disease means that Aboriginal life revolution in South Africa and create a self defence "unlawful," reflecting solidarity with the workers and expectancy is over twenty years less revamped South African capitalism their role as loyal lapdogs of the racist peasants ·of Asia, a perspective expressed by the Spartacist slogan, than for whites. Infant mortality is which will mean the continued sub­ imperialist Labor government. Thus a more than five times that of whites. jugation of the black masses. Hawke/ 1985 demonstration commemorating "For a workers republic of Australia, Just one percent of the population, Hayden are enemies of the black the anniversary of John Pat's death part of socialist Asia!" blacks make up a staggering ten masses, and White Australia is proof. found SWPers unsuccessfully trying to The 1965 bloodbath can only he percent of the prison population. Immigration minister Hurford pro­ have the Spartacist contingent take avenged by forging a revolutionary Trotskyist leadership that has drawn tested that Australia's immigration down its placards demanding "Ven­ the lessons of tllat defeat and the Tutu's Visit - Racist policy is "non-racial." Liarl The num­ geance for John Pat!" and "For the bankruptcy of the PKI's strategy, Polarisation ber of black Africans or Asian workers right of armed self defence I" The which the Chinese Maoists backed to South Africa, which is the embodi­ or peasants who can get into Australia SWP is more interested in being in the the hilt. As Giannakis explained: ment of hideous capitalist oppression, can be counted on the fingers of one government's pocket. Its front group, "It was the PKI's alliance with the touches a raw racial nerve within its hand. Those who can get in are white the Committee to Defend Black Rights, received some thousands of nationalist bourgeois Sukarno that sister nation across the Indian Ocean. Europeans, Hong Kong millionaires disarmed the proletariat before the So when Anglican bishop Desmond and Vietnamese contras. It's for this dollars from Hawke, purportedly to butcher generals and the reactionary Tutu visited Australia in early Jan­ reason that Australia is the favoured brief lawyers for some future Royal Muslim marauders. The Stalinist uary it touched off a racist furore destination for white South African Commission which could only white­ strategy of class coUaborationism/ which dovetailed with the backlash emigres. As for Tutu, he paid his way wash the killer cops. popular front has its history drenched over Goondiwindi. Tutu, a self-avowed with his outrageous whitewashing of As we have noted elsewhere in this in workers' blood from China and Hawke's record on Aboriginals, issue, the political bandits of the SLL Spain to Indonesia and Chile. Only the Spartaclst League: stating that "significant progress" are colour-blind, essentially oblivious proletariat can lead the oppressed GPO Box 3473, had been made. to racist terror. Thus their 20 January masses of the imperialist-dominated 1987 Workers News headlines its countries to working-class revolution. Sydney, NSVV,2001 The historic example of the 1917 Phone: (02) 281-2181 Founded on the "principle" of article "Aborigines slandered," as if White Australia, Hawke's ALP all that needs to be fought is Mur­ Russian Revolution remains to this day the inspiration to the oppressed GPO Box 2339, remains its best defender now under doch's lies. It refers to "allegations of Melbourne, Vic, 3001 and exploited of the world. The Phone (03) 854 4315 the banner of "national consensus" discrimination at Goondiwindi High Indonesian masses today need their and Cold War Former Whitlam School," as if there is doubt about it. n. Bolshevik party. ". February I March 1987 11 .. Australasian "-" SPARTACIST Stop Execution 01 Indonesian Communists I The following article was first "l$'l'.. alism's anti-Soviet war frenzy. It is printed in Workers Vanguard no 419, a war drive that the Australian bour­ 9 January 1987, the paper of the geoisie is four-square behind. They Spartacist League/US. Since then, are the self-styled imperialist cops for there has been no word on the fate the US in this region." of the seven communist prisoners Placards at the demonstration read, scheduled for execution. Usually the "Smash ASEAN, US-Australian Indonesian regime makes no public Alliance! Defend USSR/Vietnam!", announcement until after the ex­ "Down with Hawke, Suharto's anti­ ecutions (especially inhumanely, Communist Ally, Reagan's Lackey!" giving even their families 2-3 days and •• Stop Australian Military Aid to warning at most), therefore we can Indonesia!' , only assume they are stili alive, but in According to Amnesty International, imminent peril. The demonstration's there have been as many official message of international labour action executions in Indonesia in the last to save their lives remains more urgent three years as in the entire preceding than ever. 38! After a long lapse of 13 years, the junta resumed executions of Com­ SYDNEY, Australia, December 17- munists sentenced to death in 1985 Today some 25 people took part in a with those of SOBSI general secretary militant picket at Garuda Indonesian Mohammed Munir and three others, Airways, the Indonesian national air­ followed by a further nine executions line, to protest against the threatened in September/October 1986. They are execution of leaders of the Communist Emergency picket called by the Spertaclst League of Australia and New linked to a new campaign of anti-Com­ Party of Indonesia (PKI) planned by Zealand demands freedom for condemned Indonesian Communists. munist hysteria, including mass the blood-drenched Suharto dictator­ sackings of former PKI members, ship. The protest was called at short The seven in imminent danger are "The bourgeoisie ofthis country along supporters and even their relatives notice by the Spartacist League of among between 16 and 33 political with its servants in the ALP bu­ and children. For example, 1,638 oil Australia and New Zealand, section of prisoners remaining under death sen­ reaucracy breathed· a sigp of relief. workers were sacked and blacklisted the international Spartacist tendency, tences imposed in the wake of the For years previousl~ they had· offered by companies including the US in response to reports that seven horrendous anti-Communist bloodbath their services to a US imperialist giant Caltex for membership in drive to quell the combative Indon­ political prisoners held in Cipinang in which Suharto. came to power in a pre-1965 PKI-Ied union. Another esian proletariat via CIA/ ASIS 900 "ex-PKI" railwaymen are to be prison, Jakarta, were to be executed 1965, and who have spent most of two [Australian Security Intelligence Ser­ by the end of the month and possibly decades in prison. They include four vice] provocations. The aftermath of dismissed, according to TAPOL before Christmas. PKI leaders: the 1965 massacre enabled them to Bulletin (July 1986). Chanting •• Stop the executions of • Ruslan Wijayasastra, 69, former disengage from the Vietnam debacle Why has the butcher Suharto now Indonesian Communists!" and "Free deputy chairman of SOBSI, the All­ and embark on a streamlined opted to resume killing members of a Indonesian Communists! Free all Indonesia Federation of Trade Unions, imperialist push into Asia. Indonesia party drowned in blood 20 years ago? class-war prisoners!" the spirited which numbered 3 million members today is a key anti-Communist Part of the reason must be to terrorise in 1965. bulwark for imperialist anti-Soviet anew the Indonesian masses. With the z war preparations in this region. It .~~ • Sukatno, 56, secretary-general of economy in crisis and oil prices falling, the PKI youth organisation Pemuda forms a central part of the reactionary revolutionary turmoil next door in the ~>< ASEAN [Association of Southeast J!~ Rakyat (People's Youth). Philippines where another 20-year !>-j Asian liations] alliance directly §. • Asep Suryaman, 61, and Iskander targeting the Vietnamese workers anti-Communist tyrant has just fallen, '(t Subekti, 64, PKI Central Committee and the aging Suharto preparing '" state as part of the war drive members. The other three are non­ worldwide against the gains of the his succession, the Jakarta generals Communist military personnel Russian Revolution. Suharto wants to sit nervously atop a social volc~o. charged with involvement in the place the threatened Indonesian And they invariably combine anti- abortive "September 30 Movement" Communists on the altar of imperi- Continued on page eleven coup of middle-ranking officers led by Lieutenant Colonel Untung, the pretext for Suharto's takeover. In Telegrams addition, over 200 political prisoners from 1965, including many women, remain in prison. On December 13 1986, the US Partisan Defense Committee (a class struggle, anti-sectarian legal defence organisation in accordance with the A key demand of the· Spartacist political views of the Spartacist League/US) issued an urgent appeal, sent demonstration was "Avenge the 1965 to more than 600 individuals, newspapers, civil rights and civil liberties massacre - for workers revolution!" organisations, calling for international protests against the executions of In the orgy of mass slaughter un­ Indonesian Communists. The PDC sent' the following' telegram to the leashed by the military in the last Indonesian Embassy in the US: Hands of Iadonesian gevernment dripping Hundreds of thousands were months of 1965, at least half a million with worken' blood for more than 20 years. Stop executions of PKile.den massacred In 1965 anti-Communist and probably many more members WlJay.... tra, Sukatno, Suryaman and Subektl. Demand immediate release bloodbath In Indonesia. and supporters of the PKI and its of all worken and PKI memben Imprisoned after government slaughter picket attracted much attention from unions, peasant, women's, youth, of one-half million In 1965. passers-by, including several Indo­ student and cultural organisations, as nesians. Calling for urgent action by well as the Chinese minority, died. The Spartacist League/ ANZ sent protest telegrams to Dr Mochtar the Australian and international The annihilation of the largest Com­ Kusumaatmadja, Indonesian Foreign Minister; General Murdani, labour movement to save PKI pris­ munist party outside the USSR and Indonesian Defence Minister; and to the Ind'onesian Embassy, and' called 'Jners from the military firing squads, China, in this strategically central on unions to do the same. demonstrators chanted, "Union country of Southeast Asia, was an The Victorian branch of the Federated Engine Drivers and' Firemen's action must be the weapon, against historic defeat for the international Association sent the following protest on 19 December 1986 to the Indo­ Suharto's bloody repressionl" A proletariat and stabilised imperialist nesian Embassy in Australia: The FEDFA protest. the projected Execution protest telegram from the Partisan domination of the region. Spartacist . of memben of the Indonesian PKI currently Incarcerated by Government, Defense Committee of the US was spokesman Andrew Giannakis told the and calls on you to stop this crime. read out. picket: 12 Marchi April 1987